chapter twelve
Powerless Wonder
After a two and a half hour car drive, Minseok stood there and stared into the room.
It's not his room.
"Minseok, I'm leaving now. I should be back at about six!", he heard his mother shout, followed by the shut of the front door.
Minseok sat down on the mattress laid out on the floor, looking at the blank white wall and the boring furniture around him. His room was now his younger brother's room, the younger may have needed two.
What was he expecting? That, after all those years, they would keep his room, his memories and most importantly, a part of him? The boy had been gone for good ten years, so he should have expected this. He shouldn't be crying, yet he was.
Silent tears - even though no one was in the apartment (he did not want to call it home anymore), he tried to quiet down the sobs that followed the tears after a while. Doing his best to control his shaky breathing.
His mother had said that his stuff was in the basement in boxes, which wasn't much because she threw away what she thought he wouldn't need anymore.
To him, it seemed, as if his hospital papers were the only thing that proved his existence - everyone was living just fine without him, practically forgetting him completely. Being honest, who would remember someone like Minseok? His thoughts were split in half yet completely cluttered. One side understood, the other did not.
He understood he was labelled as cold hearted and selfish and arrogant and quiet and distant--- the thought of him being the background character in his own life, the one that was there for the laughs, had sat in his mind for years. The other side butted in - no, he helped wherever and whenever he could and he was there for everyone and he never let anyone feel left out, even when it meant for him to be left out. And, and, and...
And he wasn't important in any way.
He remembered family dinners, back in the old days, being the one to brighten up the gloomy mood with witty comments and jokes. Also those days when one of his friends would call him at 3am and he would stay up all night to listen even though there was school the next day. Or days when family or friends would force him to come somewhere with them on a big event (loud places he didn't like), and he would actually end up coming. That, though, also stopped, even before he had to stay in the hospital.
He had felt insignificant back then and he still felt that way.
Until his usually silent smartphone in his pocket starts to vibrate, signalling a call. Minseok's eyes locked on the screen, seeing the name that made him feel wrongly significant - Luhan.
Minseok doesn't pick up, he locked the screen again and put the phone back into his pocket. But he wiped away the remaining tears, now that he stopped crying with a smile. He decided to look around the house - not expecting anything good for him, but he thought it would be better to know now than be shocked later when everyone else was in the house (to which he thought, he should not be shocked in the first p
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