he wonders, if you can drown ash, just like the way you can drown people.

the boy believes if his family were a happier place, maybe, perhaps, it could’ve been a bit more bearable. but his family isn’t; and surely, it’s not a place where he could seek comfort. they used to read him fairy-tales with happy endings, ones that vomited out magic and glitter. he turns the tap on and plunges his head under the gushing water. his brown hair turns into an dirty matte brown when it’s wet and it doesn’t stop sticking onto his pale white skin.

his friends at school talk a lot; he doesn’t mind though, because it never seems like they seem to care either. school’s a boring and bland place (just like himself); it’s useful when they teach you how to be accepted academically but not near enough useful for learning social behaviour. the tiles of the school are black, the walls are black too, but as funny as it may seem, the outer walls of the school are sparkling white. it’s like a fairy-tale, he almost says aloud. the kind of fairy-tale his sister never read him—ones which look wonderful from the surface of the story but ugly and gross on the inside. maybe if his sister read those kind of books for him, maybe he wouldn’t have turned out the way he is now.

“sungyeol,” his friend calls him, “let’s go to the beach today.”

he nods, “okay”.

they go to the beach during the wee hours of the night, when the ocean is black in a sort of comforting way. his friend races down into the salty water barefoot.

“it’s really cold sungyeol!” his friend cries in the middle of laughter.

the boy laughs too, watches his friend find seaweed, and ends up getting swept up in the mood too. they play even after the wee  hours of the morning.

his friend takes a break on the sand, where the waves kiss just the tips of his toes while the boy opts to play by himself in the water. he likes water—be it salty, tap, dirty, clean, filtered or raw kinds. he enjoys the way it slips out of his hands every time he grasps a hold of it, leaving only just the remnants (just like the way ashes and dust run away). the boy smiles, and watches the water run away, and back to where it belongs.

“you know, if you were like this at school more often, maybe people would find it easier to talk to you sungyeol,” his friend says palming his face as support.

the boy stops and turns his head, gives his friend a small shrug, “hm,” he replies in return almost as if he's considering the idea.

his friend laughs, “want alcohol?”

this time, they both sit idling on the sand. his friend drinks in large lazy gulps, while he swirls his drink around. if the boy had to choose between alcohol and water, there’s no doubt he’d choose alcohol. alcohol is like poison which burns the drinker in a gentle but deadly manner. it numbs the person’s nerves and, in general, makes you feel good about almost everything and cry about almost everything. the fairy-tales his sister read to him don’t really talk about alcohol either, but the boy would associate the vomits of magic and glitter as alcohol.

“what if,” he begins to say, “I don’t really need anyone to talk to? what then?”

“nonsense; you're talking to me aren't you?” his friend laughs, “it's three in morning—the devil’s hour—so you might feel a little funny.”

the boy laughs himself now, “you’re quite childish aren’t you? only children who were read to fairy-tales and story books believe in that baloney.”

his friend leans in, easily takes out the bottle of alcohol from the boy’s hand while asking: “and are you telling me you don't?” his friend gulps down another swig of alcohol.

he runs his hand halfway through his fluffy brown hair which smells like salt and seaweed, mixed with a little bit of his friend, “I don't,” he confirms.

“hah,” his friend chuckles, “I guess this is why I enjoy your company.”

the boy admits, his friend is sort of odd in many ways. a handsome boy who looks like the beach, but smells like a garden. a personality like the sun, but acts like clouds (ones with unlimited possibilities). and the boy admits again, he is sort of fond of his friend—fonder than all the rest of the friends he sees at school anyway. he pushes his hands into his pockets and walks down a long path, through an alley, and up a small hill, into the streets, and back into his neighbourhood home, he reaches a small house that’s cute enough for grandma but not cuter than grandpa. he opens the door, and walks through the familiar hallways, he sees a sight he’s seen for years and years and years.

“I’m home,” he mumbles.

his sister lays splayed on the floor. she giggles to herself and looks at the boy, “go upstairs and play,” she says.

he nods without much thought again. it’s the same thing over and over again anyway. he’s too “old” to whine about things like his sister injecting drugs until she’s high enough to laugh like a comedian’s crowd. she once told him to join her on her misadventures on one particular day; he refused, his sister laughed as if she was the most pathetic human being on earth—so she took the high back, whored herself for the money to buy her shots, enjoyed herself in the only way she knew how. and then, like an event that was supposed to follow inevitably, the pretty fairy-tales she used to read to him disappeared after that particular day too and it seemed like colours he’d enjoyed so much, turned into dull, boring kinds.

he hears his friends laughing in the background. footsteps, chairs and tables unable to stay still. someone plays with the whiteboard and writes clichés of “who was here” and “ my ”; his friends laugh in the background as if it really is entertaining. the boy closes his eyes and hums a tune. he feels an arm grabbing him and flicks his eyes open. he sees brown hair just like his and doe-like eyes in the colours of coffee-milk brown.

“oh,” the boy says, “it’s just you.”

his friend laughs, “who’d you think I was?”

the boy smiles, “my soulmate.”

his friend laughs a bit deeper, grinning just a bit more too, “ah but perhaps I am your soulmate, sungyeol.”

“enough,” the boy says giving a light, airy tone. “hey,” he begins a new conversation, “should we go to the ocean again?”

his friend smiles, “I thought you’d never ask.”  

years past, the boy is no longer a boy but a man instead. he doesn’t feel like a man though, not yet, he thinks. it’s a little too early to become something different again. nothing’s changed a lot from being a boy to a man—he still drinks alcohol like it’s water; still sees his sister getting high off injections; still has his friend around him. nothing’s really different he supposes. and maybe nothing changes either.

a lot of people believe the beach looks its best at sunset. the boy thinks they are all wrong, it’s when the ocean is a big blanket of black, when the stars glitter above it like freckles and reflections of the sky, when moon becomes the centre piece and the warmth of the sun instead. or when the oceans and the beaches whisper sweet nothings into his ear, coaxing him to believe that all he’ll ever become is their object of affection.

sand and broken seashells stab his feet. he feels it dig into the deepest parts of his skin. his friend stands not too far away from himself. he watches the sky and its glitters envelop him in a dream, a beautiful dream in which he wishes to escape with forever.

“coming after me sungyeol?” his friend asks from the distance.

the boy tries, running desperately for his only companion left in the small world of his. he runs through the maze of clouds inside his head, squinting with his left hand over his eyes, trying to see where he’s ending up, see where he’s going to wound up. a gust of wind that smells like the salty beach, and feels like the lonely ocean. he trips along somewhere, somehow, maybe on the sand (sand he can’t even feel anymore).

“I’m so ing wasted,” the boy manages to croak out.

he hears laughter, familiar laughter coming, creeping; closer and closer but he feels two arms lift him from the ground.

“put me down; I feel sick,” he says latching onto the other’s build.

laughter, he hears it again, the familiar sound, “says the one clinging onto me.”

his friend takes the boy to his family’s summer house. it’s not a fancy one, his friend supposes, although it was cute and small, a little dusty along the side—it gives off the kind of vibe that makes you want to see grandpa and grandma again, getting sentimental, people call it.

his friend places the boy on the couch and sits down on the ground, lighting up a cigarette. the boy turns and mumbles: “there’s alcohol down in second room to the right.”

“haven’t had enough yet?” his friend asks blowing the smoke into the boy’s face.

he laughs (the boy) like he’s in the middle of a dream, “not nearly enough yet.”

not too later, the table is filled with opened bottles of hard liquor and unopened bottles of soft liquor. slurs ride through the night as laughter and giggles fill up the summer house. the boy holds his glass of alcohol up high, sees the bubbles of the celebration drink rise in pretty pearly shapes that makes the drink even more attractive. his friend grabs a bottle with a deep flavour, and an alluring shade, it’s charming at its best and inviting at its worst.

“maybe it wouldn’t be so bad you know—to die from drinking,” the boy says, drinking from his glass in large gulps. he laughs, eyelids already too heavy to be open, “it’s funny. my parents had a smoking problem that eventually killed them. my sister is still alive, but in a sense she’s not really anymore from all the drugs she’d been ing with. and I’ll probably die because of poisoning from alcohol.”

his friend shrugs, “who cares about that kind of anyway? I’d rather die young than die old.”

clinks now, he hears clinking of the bottles mixed with a bit of ringing. the boy groans latches onto his friend again.

“if you’d had been a girl I’d have totally ed you by now,” he says mumbling onto his friend’s neck.

his friend pours another glass for both of them. laughs he hears, a mocking sort, the teasing sort of laughter, “says the mary himself.”

it comes out in slurs again: “ you,” he tries to say.

“I wonder how much, people would give to get out of the past,” the boy says, walking on a footpath.

his friend watches him walk around.

he lights up an old cigarette he finds from one of the summer house's draws. it in and coughs, stale and nasty tasting. he throws it down the drain of the kitchen and sits on the sofa again with his friend. they watch the stars this time, they watch how the open roof cramps the view of the sky.

“and if the price of moving forward is to kill the present and today of yourself, would you do it? erase all the accumulated bits and pieces of yourself into the ocean and let it drift apart and away so that you can no longer grasp it again? would you do it?”

“you talk a lot don’t you sungyeol? wouldn’t have expected it a couple of years back,” his friend smiles. “but I wouldn’t let the pieces I’ve already collected myself disappear into substance thinner than ashes,” and whispers almost as if it’s a secret, “not being able to know who you are is truly horrifying, even the most strongest crumble without an identity.”

the boy laughs like a miserable, pathetic person, one who doesn’t really have any sort of purpose for living in the world he does live in. he rubs his eyes with back of his palm, suddenly feeling sleepy, tired, and fatigued.

“good night sungyeol,” his friend tells him. but the boy knows he is far from a beautiful sleep such as a night that is good.

one day, they both decide they’re sick of the beach and opt to go to a lake somewhere far off from the city lights, and city air which intoxicates them more than the alcohol does. the boy gets a perm and re-colours his hair into a more lighter brown. his friend laughs and tells him it looks like brown ramen noodles. they muck around a lot, the boy could suppose again. the lake they visit is unoccupied by anyone else. it becomes blue when the sun is up but black as ink at night. above it is a small cliff for diving. species of trees grow around the lake.

he remembers how a lot of things he saw as child differ as he gets older. his sister is still back at home, with a whole stash of injections mixed with highs from herself out. funny, it’s funny he believes, as a child he used to care so much about nonsense and the matters that don’t even matter. but he supposes things could’ve been better if he’d been the older. maybe it wouldn’t have and he’d have turned out just the way his sister turned out, while his sister would’ve became like him instead. but he doesn’t know anymore. from his parents to his sister, to his fairy-tales to his desperate depression phases, to his friend to his ocean, and beach, to his alcohol to his cigarettes. things that all used to have colour, all become dead inside the colours of black, disappearing from the boy’s vision too.

he places a tired hand over his face, childishly believing that if he can’t see he, it doesn’t exist. and he realises as he grows older, he can’t be the cute little child he once was. because too many things happen at once, and he can’t control those things as much as he’d like too.

he’s only a boy after all; someone who’s only another part of the bigger population.

someone who could be replaced by another boy immediately just like his parents, his sister, his fairy-tales, and his friend. everybody could be easily replaced. nothing really lasts forever, he’s learnt that over the years and time he’s been living.

the boy himself, particularly likes swimming at night, so he swims for long time. he notices the way it’s cold into the shade but warm in the moon. he likes it. he likes the way the water sparkles and glistens on his skin. nothing’s changed, from back then to now he thinks. but he doesn’t realise a lot has changed from back then to now. and so nothing’s changed, he thinks again.

the boy lights a cigarette, he stands on the cliff that his friend has just jumped off from. his friend hollers him to come and join him too, but he shakes his head in an amused manner telling his partner in crime to have fun by himself. he takes another puff again, realising how quickly the substance runs out and takes another one, smoking it out again.

perhaps that’s how quickly things disappear. it only takes just a moments breath (or even less) to make something go away forever, even though forever doesn’t really exist. and he ponders for a little while, what he’d like to do from now on.

unbeknownst to him, his friend creeps behind him and taps the boy’s back, “sungyeol what’re you doing? c’mon, we’re only here for a few days you know?”

his friend has changed though, the boy knows. time stops only when you’re dead, if you’re alive, inevitably, to survive, change kicks in and you don’t really notice it until you’ve already become someone different. it’s just like the book his school made him study “educating rita” they call it. perhaps his life is exactly like so, except the boy doesn’t want change, he loathes the idea of becoming a new identity he’s not familiar with. the boy remembers clearly again, how his father used to keep cigarettes under the mattress, how his mother used to make eggs and bacon in the form of a smiley face, how his sister used to dream of becoming a lawyer, and how he himself, used to care about his own family.

he realises he’s pathetic now, beyond pathetic, and more miserable than ever. but he still remembers the past things he calls relevant but not near enough relevant enough. the trees howl, and the stones cry under the white sun that rises only at night. the city is different from the rural parts of the country. the stars in the city make you want to reach out on the highest skyscraper to catch it in your tiny little hands, and keep it in your pockets forever because you know you couldn’t have it. the stars in the country are like fantasies you’ve never seen, ones that coax you with words more alluring and attractive than the silly whispers of the ocean and beaches. he sees them glittering and wishes he’d bought some strong liquor with him instead of cigarettes and old clothes from childhood.

the boy looks at his friend, “you said once, that if you were to die, you’d want to die young and beautiful right?”

his friend his lips, “yeah maybe when I’m in my late thirties.”

the boy laughs, saying something along the line of “too long” and shoves his cigarette into his friend’s mouth.

the boy himself jumps into the lake, the pretty blanket of black covers him. he hears the sweet nothings again, whispering in his ear as if they desire him and love him just as much as he loves them. the water glides on his skin and hug him down into oblivion but he feels as if it’s almost alright. the way they attractively wound up inside skin and body, he feels as if he’s an object of affection. he sees stars in his pockets and wonder when did they decide to hide inside there. blurs of black, red and blue clouds his vision until it eventually becomes all white and all black with sprinkles of the stars and galaxies around him.

he sees the pretty and pearly bubbles escaping to the surface. he sees his friend above the black surface, smoking his cigarette casually. the boy thinks he should probably head up now, but he’s not sure if he want to escape back to surface either.

and he wonders again, if you could drown people like the way you drown stars in your pockets.

a/n: I actually enjoyed writing this. writing perfect grammar has never really been a thing I’m fond of unless it’s mandatory formal writing. the story pretty much focuses on the themes of “growing up” and “change” so I think you guys can figure out what that means. a loose thread that some of you might ask is: the identity of the friend—tbh I kind of imagined the friend to be woohyun since the character mould fits him well and wooyeol is so ing cute it makes my heart bleed. however you are free to pick anyone you like (e.g. myungsoo) into that mould and have more pleasure reading it like so.

thank you for reading if you ever did eventually get to the end and feel free to ask me any other questions about other loose threads or just about anything.

p.s this was inspired by tim winton’s novel “minimum of two” so you’re probably more than likely to find similarities.