“I love you.”

 

The actions seem so sub-conscious – the pressing of lips to Yixing’s forehead, the hug, the words leaving those lips – sad even. The usual routine seems wrong and is probably wrong in so many different aspects but Yixing simply can’t put his finger to the wrong – or perhaps, just perhaps, he doesn’t want to (because no one would willingly stab themselves with the truth, no one).

 

If Yixing writes down a mental note titled ‘what’s wrong’ about that routine though, the list would very likely include the following:

 

Missing adoration

Missing warmth (It’s so cold)

Missing snugness

Missing unspoken promise of I’ll be back

Missing … everything

 

The sub-conscious actions makes him lose his usual focus of the adoration which the words being said contained — though there mightn’t be any on that day – and Yixing gets distracted by everything he shouldn’t be distracted by.

 

He sees a vague silhouette of downcast behind the veil of ‘I love you’; he notes how gently the chapped lips are brushing against his forehead – almost as if they don’t want to leave any traces for him to reminisce after they part. The hug too – barely snug and crushing like it used to be – was not radiating any kind of warmth for him to miss. Yixing’s eyes dart, noting how slack the arms around him were (as if any tighter and he’ll crumble); Yixing’s eyes dart up, noting how the other’s eyes seem to be glistening and shining (he doesn’t know whether it’s just the lights or the unshed tears); Yixing’s eyes dart down, noting how black polished shoes were pointing towards at door, itching to walk past him (somehow giving the desperate-to-leave-and-never-come-back impression).

 

Everything just seems to go by in a soft whirr and Yixing was waving goodbye with an empty smile – so long as the dimples show, it will seem as like a real smile, won’t it? – before he knows it. He stares at the fading footsteps, counting how many it takes for him to walk away. “Bye, Yeol.”

 

(Yixing never liked saying goodbye when it isn’t, and doesn’t seem like the end yet.)

 

 

He tries to gather some sort of anticipation for Chanyeol’s return in his heart; it’s – kind of – too numb with cold for him to feel anything.

 

 

•  

 

 

The morning of the day after starts with Yixing scrolling up the endless text messages exchanged with Chanyeol in the phone and re-reading them alone. The three words would always appear at certain points in time, when Chanyeol is ending conversations.

 

Yixing trying to indulge himself in the past, however, does not necessarily bring back memories. When Yixing reaches the very first message sent from Chanyeol (after a very heated phone, fingers a little sore from too much swiping over heated screens), he somehow feels a little lost; he acknowledges the blank spaces in his mind which he couldn’t quite fill in.

 

 

艺星哥，我是你最大的粉丝！(´▽`ʃƪ)”, the first text message read.

 

Yixing vaguely remembers his shock at those words, his immediate relation of the text message from an unknown number to a possible fan. He had still refused to admit the fact that he was already half-prepared to throw his phone off the SM building at the prospects of stalkers. (“That never happened,” he would deadpan whenever Chanyeol about his supposedly hilarious reaction.)

 

“Chanyeol you idiotヽ(#ﾟДﾟ)ﾉ┌┛”, Yixing had replied at the sight of Chanyeol holding back his laughter in the mirror reflection. Chanyeol’s the only one who remembers his name as “艺星”.

 

(ノ´Д`)ノYou’re no fun at all.”, Yixing catches the bottom lip sticking out in the reflection and he laughs a little at the message.

 

 

After

 

 

 

 

Yixing can’t seem to remember anymore after. He kinds of recall something about inviting Chanyeol out of his hiding place, he sorts of remember the delicious aroma of the galbi they shared. But all of them are so vague and blurry and it seems as if the more Yixing tried to reach out, the more they distance themselves, like recollections of dreams.

 

Yixing looks –stares intensely at the words and letters in the message following after, he reads them out –words a mere soft mumble leaving his lips. He hears his own voice but the words leave as soon as they are spoken, none of them properly heard or processed. It’s only him and his jumbled up thoughts.

 

It’s scary how the more memories fight against the constraints of the glass jar to expand, the more they start fragmenting into tinier pieces, slipping through the cracks the resistance had caused in the jar. They come out as little wisps and spreads about, a little here, a little there.

 

Yixing could only stay by the sidelines and watch the wisps dance around with the wind, with a wistful sigh leaving his parted lips.

 

 

 

(The very last message sent from Chanyeol was an “I love you”, like how all last messages are. Because Yixing is the sort who needs those three words. Softly, his fingers press against the reply button and he types out a reply.

 

I love you too.

 

It isn’t three seconds after that he presses on the backspace, repeatedly but reluctantly.

 

Delete draft? (auto-saved 00:34)

 

 

 

It’s over, he shouldn’t, as much as the words were tearing their way out of his heart and driving him crazy. He shouldn’t.)

 

 

•  

 

 

“—hope they would live happily ever after, like the princes and princesses in the fairytales.”

 

Yixing had no idea of what he had just replied the reporter – it wasn’t any of Yixing’s true thoughts, though he hopes it is along the lines of what Lay would be expected to say when he congratulates Chanyeol for his engagement. With a dazed smile, he looks into the camera before looking back at the reporter, over to Tao, trying to seem interested in the younger’s reply.

 

It pained Yixing’s heart, for him to convince himself – “ 忘了他吧，傻瓜. ” – to stop searching for the non-existent miracle that nothing’s over yet, that there’s still hope for salvation.

 

Really, all that is left of him is not love, but longing. Both are strong emotions, love being more of affection and longing being more of desire.

 

Yixing wants those “I love you”s, he wants to hear Chanyeol’s comforting baritone voice again. He wants his love to be returned so badly that it somehow turned into longing.

 

He knows he should have sawed to disconnect his love for Chanyeol when the foreboding signs of heartbreak came.

 

 

It was another cuddling session where Yixing’s nose was buried within the crook of Chanyeol’s neck, arms wrapped around the other’s waist bone-crushingly tight and trying to snuggle deeper under the blanket, to ensure warmth is fully shared and inhale all of Chanyeol.

 

With legs tangled together, Chanyeol suddenly speaks, “What do you do when I’m not around?”

 

Yixing doesn’t bother to lift his head up and his reply ends up muffled, “You’re always around. Since trainee days to whenever we promote as a group.”

 

“But then what if I’m really gone?” Chanyeol says, tone laced with hints of seriousness.

 

Yixing doesn’t want to think about other things besides how nicely both of them fit together when entwined in a cuddle, so he doesn’t get himself diving too deep into unnecessary worries about the sudden change in Chanyeol’s tone and replies light-heatedly, “I’ll probably be moping around for the whole day and thinking about your huge ears and maniacal smiles, and probably stay in our room and skip all the dance and vocal practices.”

 

Yixing thinks he hears a soft, almost inaudible sigh when Chanyeol’s fingers thread his hair, and then Chanyeol chuckles dryly, “I’m serious Yixing.”

 

Yixing doesn’t like the direction in which this conversation is going towards, so he flutters his eyes shut and pretends to sleep, dwelling about Chanyeol’s last statement. It’s almost as if he would be having no life without Chanyeol soon.

 

“I love you.” Chanyeol ends. His voice sounds a little desperate to convey the affection he has as he places a soft kiss on Yixing’s fringe covered forehead.

 

 

The next day, Yixing wakes up to himself alone on the bunk bed. It was the crack of dawn and soft golden lights are filtering through the translucent curtains. With a fist rubbing his bleary eyes and a small yawn, he makes his way out of his bedroom of EXO’s shared dorm.

 

Yixing counts ten members dispersed in random corners of the room, Sehun, Jongdae, Baekhyun and Tao curled up with their breakfast on the couch, Kris still asleep in bed, Minseok and Luhan are cowering over their new iPad and watching a football match.

 

He walks into the kitchen expecting to find Chanyeol helping Kyungsoo out with breakfast only to find Junmyeon taking Chanyeol’s usual place beside the kitchen sink instead.

 

“Where’s Chanyeol?”

 

“Didn’t he tell you? He’s out with Sojin.”

 

 

•  

 

 

Most days after the extravagant engagement party of Chanyeol and Sojin comes Yixing avoiding Chanyeol’s gaze with smiles tensed around the edges and Yixing disappearing by the time darkness cloaks the sky with occasional peeks of moonlight through the mist and cloud.

 

They say alcohol helps numb the pain and blur the memories, so he downs shots after shots of those under the dizzying disco lights every night, tries to forget the soft “I love you”s of Chanyeol outside the dorm doors right before the loud announcements of “I’m getting married” in fro­nt of the flashes and cameras.

 

On those days, Yixing will come back to the dorm stumbling with every steps and fumbling with his keys, trying to insert them into the goddamned keyhole because his trembling fingers can’t seem to push them in.

 

He will sometimes find Yifan waiting for him at the door by the time he manages to unlock the doors, sometimes it would be Joonmyun unlocking the doors and getting him to lean on his shoulders and helping him in to his room, sometimes he would find Luhan and Minseok sparing him a glance from the couch, football match commentaries with volume adjusted low and television giving off bright lights – all those eyes worrying and pitying, hesitant and never truly reaching out.

 

The mornings would consist of some disgusting hangover medicine Jongin makes (because he is the only one who knows the correct ingredients of the medicine) which works perfectly fine to get him through for every time Yixing wakes up with throbbing head and the faint stench of vomit on his shirt (the mixture of the taste of alcohol and bile in his dry mouth).

 

 

Yixing stumbles through the doors late one night and collapses on what seems to be Kyungsoo, his eyes red rimmed and face tear-streaked. the hems of the other’s pajama shirt and burying his face into the other’s chest, he lets out a choked whimper.

 

“It hurts.”

 

So, so bad,

 

 

The pain only intensifies when arms wrap around him hesitantly, slack at the borders and painfully familiar baritone voice replying, “I know.”

 

(He realizes that Kyungsoo could never give off that kind of warmth, that Kyungsoo’s chest and shoulders has never been this broad and muscular, that Kyungsoo couldn’t be that tall, that Kyungsoo couldn’t possibly give him this security.

 

He realizes that it isn't Kyungsoo wearing Kyungsoo’s pajamas.)

 

 

•  

 

 

EXO continues their promotions as EXO-K and EXO-M, sasaengs continue their harassments and Yixing continues avoiding Chanyeol’s lingering brown orbs whenever they meet.

 

The marriage was eventually called off – Sojin claiming that the sasaengs “were too much” with all too fake sniffles and eye drops rolling of her porcelain smooth cheeks. (Yixing guesses that there wasn’t supposed to be any wedding in the first place, that everything was just for entertainment and publicity.) Chanyeol appears on entertainment news and apologizes for disappointing everyone.

 

“Perhaps he would find someone who is truly for him, one day.”  Lay replies the reporter with his dazed smile, the same one from months before.

 

He couldn’t hide the longing in his voice despite the desperate, flailing attempts. ­It’s just— he couldn’t understand why Chanyeol had to leave. Was it too difficult for him to come out? They aren’t even high school kids anymore. The fans are making couples out of EXO aren’t they?

 

Yixing could see Chanyeol trying his best to convince (more of trick) everyone into believing that he is still hung up on Sojin, “I guess she was a memorable love,” he speaks into the microphone with what seems to be blurry traces of love in his eyes when really, it was people overthinking. The seeming lack of appetite and hollow sunken eyes help in convincing the other members for the part.

 

But Yixing knows.

 

If you think I’m that naïve, Yixing thinks bitterly, think again.

 

 

 

•  

 

“You’re back to it, aren’t you?”

 

He calls and asks one day – when he sees the true state of Chanyeol without the thick layers of make-up concealing the ugly eye bags and sickly pale skin tone through a video chat with EXO-K. The question to Chanyeol somehow sounds more like a statement, however, because internally, Yixing’s crumbling even without bone-crushing hugs and he needs to know though he already does.

 

(Perhaps it was the little affirmation that would force himself to stop picking up the crumbles and let them be.)

 

The phone line goes silent but not dead and all he can see (and is able to stand) is Chanyeol locked up in his own room and pushing the tip of the syringe through the translucence of his skin and liquid heroin flowing into the blue-ish green of his veins through the thin needle before Yixing throws his phone out of his dorm window. 

 

 

•  

 

 

The pains about really trying to forget Chanyeol would include seeing him everywhere. Television commercials, life-sized posters by the streets, on young teenage girls’ phones (and sometimes hallucinatory leads him to Chanyeol back by his side, except that one touch and he disappears all over again).

 

Yixing returns to the bar nearby after nearly every intensive dance and vocal practice, no longer cycling around in the park but getting himself intoxicated with bottles of alcohol littered around the tables. For every one time he sees Chanyeol’s face while making out with another drunk – it doesn’t matter whether female or male – he sinks his teeth into the flesh of the other’s collarbones, venting his longing and helplessness and at the same time marking them where Chanyeol likes to mark him.

 

(Hopefully, for everytime Yixing’s feelings are let out through the marks, he will gradually have none of those feelings left.

 

As if.)

 

 

•  

 

 

Yixing’s fingers dig into the other man’s shoulders, breathless moans pleading to get ed into oblivion. His half-lidded eyes open slightly wider and he sees the betrayed gaze of Chanyeol, staring directly at them.

 

His moans only become louder and he only shuts his eyes tighter, kicking the image away fingers digging deeper and hoping to leave red at the other’s skin, for Chanyeol doesn’t deserve to infiltrate his thoughts like that, he was the one who left. Chanyeol will never come back anyway, no matter how loud he screams, moans, shouts for him, even though it seems like a call is all it would take.

 

When all he could hear is skin slapping skin and all he could feel is the pleasure of the man’s member brushing against his prostate, he briefly forgets how “I love you” sounded like coming out of Chanyeol’s lips. 

 

 

•  

 

 

Yixing watches from behind his tinted sunglasses as his manager ignores the reporters and makes his way through the crowd, security guards blocking everyone from nearing but never being able to prevent the microphones from being shoved into their faces. Luhan has his arms around Minseok protectively, once again, and it had never stopped the squeals of “Xiuhan” except for just this once.

 

Yixing catches questioning stares and crossed-over questions while walking towards the twelve-seater white van.  “Is it true that Chanyeol can’t get over Sojin?”

 

He almost bursts out laughing.

 

 

•  

 

 

“You should stop, everyone’s going to get suspicious sooner or later.” Yixing starts one night, when everyone’s out for late night snacks and only Chanyeol and himself is left in the quiet of the dorm.

 

“Stop what?” Chanyeol smiles cordially, feigning innocence.

 

The way Chanyeol’s smile is so warm and seems so lazy gets on Yixing’s nerves so he takes deep breaths to regulate his temper. Fists clench and unclench, he gives him a tight-lipped smile, dimples showing and then walks into Chanyeol’s room, shared now with Baekhyun.

 

He pulls out the hidden compartment where he knows Chanyeol usually stores his unwashed socks and underpants and peels off the stinking layers of clothes to reveal an opaque ziplock bag.

 

Not wanting to it – for fear of whatever that might be inside –, he walks out with fingers gripping the bag in hands and holding it up to Chanyeol.

 

“You haven't thrown the ziplock away, Yeol.”

 

•  

 

“Stop this—“

 

“Stop what? Yixing. Stop what? I have no time to entertain your stupid speculations just because you are so goddamned afraid of reality. Say it, the word. Stop what? There isn’t any this in my life, and I’m pretty sure there won’t be one in another eternity so, stop what?”

 

The silence just shows how right Chanyeol’s outburst –though said with a calm smile and soft voice– is and reminds Yixing of his weakness. The sound of Yixing’s shattering into pierces is briefly heard and Yixing’s lips quiver.

 

“Look—” Chanyeol begins again only to be cut off with Yixing ping the ziplock with an alarming speed with lips clamped tightly.

 

Yixing relishes in the way Chanyeol stares at him wide-eyed horror as he pulls out an empty syringe from the ziplock and breaks off the needle at the end of the syringe. “Stop what?” He mimicks, voice a soft mocking mumble.

 

He dares himself to look into the bag again and finds the bottle of liquid heroin, obviously not newly bought from the half-filled bottle. Slowly, he reaches for it and pulls it out of the bag, uncapping the bottle and pouring the contents out onto the marble-tiled floor in such a way that Chanyeol will no longer be able to predict his next actions behind thickening tension.

 

 

The tension is harshly broken with the sound of splintering glass and the glass bottle ends up in a million shattered pieces on the stained ground, trying to soak up the liquid heroin.

 

 

Chanyeol barely flinches from his position on the couch.

 

The last thing Yixing finds in the ziplock bag, he takes it out and unframes it. The picture now flimsy and flimsy and glossy in his hands, he debates whether to crush it or shred it into pieces.

 

Yixing and Chanyeol in the picture smiles back at him, eyes so full of adoration that Yixing who is not in the picture thinks they are mocking himself in every way possible. In the end, he lets the picture go and watches as it floats onto the ground to join the broken glass pieces in soaking up heroin, ignoring the sound of doors unlocking, shocked gasps and darting eyes.

 

 

“Stop this.”

 

It comes out as a whimper, a cry, a desperate choked sob which Yixing doesn’t know whether was his own thoughts, what he said or what Chanyeol said, beneath all the fuss and noises about the mess on the ground. 

 

He leaves the room, clenching onto the empty ziplock and tears streaming down his face.

 

 

•  

 

 

Yixing’s face remains blank when the manager announces of Chanyeol’s departure from EXO, although his heart drops like a wineglass on the marble-tiled floor, at the exact spot where broken glass bottle lay just days before.

 

 

•  

 

 

“We will miss Chanyeol dearly, I’m sure everyone will.” Suho’s eyes tear up at the loss of one member of EXO-K (Yixing’s pretty sure he learnt to gather tears after the years of training already).

 

SM made sure the heroin incident left no traces behind the same day Chanyeol left, the dorm was cleared up and the patch of broken glass looked as good as new. The public was convinced that Chanyeol merely wanted a break from his recent (it’s been months already) breakup and that he might return to EXO after some time alone – though Yixing’s pretty sure that was never possible –, the members of EXO were to seal their mouths shut so everything would be like how it always has been (as if they wouldn’t) – though everyone knew that wasn’t possible with the memories of brown stain of drug, scratches of glass, and invisible remnants of heart on the very same patch of marble white tile.

 

Baekhyun goes up to him and informs that he would be moving to room with Jongdae but never mentions anything about the clothing strewn in the room. So Yixing keeps his silence and ignores the pieces of socks and underwear whenever he catches sight of them through the agape doors.

 

 

The sound of strumming guitars disappears along with carefree laughter. Everyone makes up their own version of “what happened before the photo ended soaked up on the ground” but no one really bothers about the truth. It’s unnecessarily tedious to find out truths and people are better off with their own fantasies.

 

 

They say “The picture says it all”, but Yixing looks at the brown stained picture on his desk and thinks, no, no it doesn’t.

 

(The smiling faces doesn’t speak of shattered hearts that come after love struck smiles.

 

Yixing finds himself guilty for being involved in the relationship which supposedly ruined EXO’s ‘team spirit’.

 

 

•  

 

 

Yixing found the pieces of his heart missing Chanyeol when he finally picks up the clothes which no one bothered to clear up that day when Baekhyun moved into Jongdae’s room for that night and the nights after.

 

Everyone was out for late night snacks.

 

Somewhere in the empty secret compartment of the drawer, he picks up a yellow post-it note.

 

“I love you.”

 

 

 

a/n

- i am personally not very fond of this piece so i'd really appreciate comments? 

- thanks for reading! 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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