half-empty

half-empty

 

 


 

 

time goes on,

even for someone who’s too delved into the past

and for someone who’s too far into the future.

 

half-empty;

 

 


 

 

prologue; where joonmyun’s just skins and bones.

-

The west coast smells of salt, salt from the oceans that drifts from somewhere else in the pacifics and maybe ends somewhere deep in the tropical, but it manages to give a moist feeling in the air and it almost, just almost, burns the scents that Joonmyun finds comforting in California.


 

It’s a few days near the start of the new semester, a new life, and a new beginning for Kim Joonmyun, a university student who was hung up on what color of a cardigan he would wear for orientation. It’s hot outside, he seems to notice, from the refracts and drapes of sunlight jaunting through his perched open window that supports from old textbooks he’s found no use of using in the closet. He wouldn’t be studying much anyway so it was practically irrelevant.


 

Maybe it’s a Sunday in his current state. It sure feels like one, with the sounds of seagulls soaring through the skies along with chatters and joyful laughs of juvenile students  coming from outside his apartment window. Joonmyun’s sitting on his bed, looking straight at the beige wall that’s been worn down from the years passed by, left in merely chips of wood, raw paint scraps falling off onto the floor, and the single drip of water that’s always managed to dribble down in a methodical line in the corner of the haggard bed area.  


 

Joonmyun sighs, tired looks and fazed eyes all there. There’s something fragile in his eyes. Something that might correspond with the oblivious stars that gleam and glimmer at nighttime when the pollution isn’t as strong as it is on regular days. But through the stars and through the lost galaxies, one could see that Joonmyun’s not tired though. Not at all, albeit the wrinkles in his jacket and the drenched areas of dried tears in his navy jeans and maybe the gray that looks like misery in his eyes, looming white. And it probably doesn’t look like that on the other side, views parallel, and worlds uncollided. Or maybe Joonmyun just lives in his own world while everyone lives in another one. Dreams against reality, Joonmyun lost in between, somewhere not pretty where the daisies grow to die, rather than grow to thrive.

 

-


 

Most of the times, Joonmyun’s nights in his new isolation ends with a dim light created from the moon barely shining through his window, and sometimes reflecting against the tears that stream down his eyes slowly, falling onto the dirtied wood with an echoing drip, drip, another drip, and a final drip that sounds like his hollow bones. Empty heart.


 

It’s the middle of the night, usually, and it always starts with a notice of the dewy, navy skies outside, and how they go on for so long, endless possibilities within. Then a small tug at his heart, full of yearnings for something that was always above the heavens in the first place. Then a scream, a scream that’s pained of emotions with how his vocal cords just stretch because they hurt so much. And finally, a final destination that’s the ultimatum of his fragile heart. One night, one coincidental night when he just feels like ending it all, he discovers why the pain’s always at the bottom of his heart.


 

Because the rest of his heart is already filled with bloody streaks and weak cuts, seeming to run all over his arms and thighs and elbows and knees and around his face. His fragile body.


 

--


 

beginning; where he paints all his pictures with black and white.


 

-


 

Joonmyun’s late again to his acting classes for maybe the third time this week. The blame’s still the same as previous nights but he’s starting to think that his professor is no longer going to accept the adamant reasons of inability to sleep, rustles and ruffles from turning the pillows onto its cold side, and unset alarms from too many tears streaming down to his blinded visions. He can’t even use the last reason as a legitimate one.


 

There’s something that sounds like pitters and patters outside as he gets ready, the same drip always in the corner of the white-washed room being accompanied by a bucket to catch every droplet below it. He really needs to call the landlord about that leak.


 

Joonmyun grabs his keys on the counters, so roughly that it makes a drag against the tiled masonry and he stuffs it into his jeans pockets, a feeling of uncomfort lying with a key propping out. No time is given for sensible thoughts since it’s raining outside and he’s now five minutes late so while in midst of leaving the apartment, he only sports on a t-shirt with the same mudded pairs of converse and dark jeans , the ones that were drenched with his tears from the first day except now, of course, washed and dried. He’s so quick out that he doesn’t even bother locking the door to his apartment complex but he figures it’s nothing of a major hassle since if anyone did manage to enter, they would find nothing but of broken shards of mirrors lying in spritz and sprites, microwavable food in the fridge that’s been bought from the nearest convenience store for an overly priced number, and generic brands of soda lying in the freezer because he doesn’t know how to sort everything out, including his own life.


 

He doesn’t realize about the rain until he takes a step out, shoes damped already and jeans met with the pouring amounts of bundling driplets, bordering on sprinkles to a storm.


 

“Damn it,” he curses out loud and then he snorts, in a way that makes himself feel even more pathetic over his habitual routine, because he needs to start taking notice of the weather more.


 

He’s in between the lines of ditching class now but he quickly decides against it because what else would he do in his freetime? Cry even more? That’s the most probable decision but he begins to run anyway, so fast that he closes his eyes because it feels good, almost. It’s the sounds of a metronomic thunders, padded drums, and lightning strikes that only appear as bright streaks of colors throughout his closed eyes. It’s the noises of footsteps pondering against the broken sidewalks, chipped pavements, and dirtied gravels that has so many footsteps left behind in losing sand. It’s the feeling of sharp forest pine needles scraping against his face and seemingly, leaving no mark as he already has too many. Joonmyun likes it, a lot.


 

But he likes it so much that he refuses to open his eyes again and sometimes, actions have consequences and this one, this one might be one of his worst ones ever. He runs into a frame a few seconds later and it’s slightly buff, but not buff enough to knock him down onto the sidewalk.


 

“Oh,” he manages to stutter, eyes perching open maybe a little bit. There’s a sudden knock of thunder that sounds as if it’s right in front of him and then there’s an abrupt strike of lightning that causes nothing but of igniting agony within his eyes, blinding him from the figure who’s still standing there, absent-minded perhaps. Once the weather calms down enough for him to look, he opens his eyes involuntarily, ruining his moment of enjoying the rain with bright spurts of colors darting everywhere, usually only lime and yellow.


 

There’s a guy who stands there, lithe body frame (that’s much taller than Joonmyun, himself, he notices), blonde hair that’s styled with a small wave in the front, and sharp eyes that manages to cause Joonmyun to shiver despite it only being spring. Joonmyun has more common sense and manners than to just stare the guy back in the eyes so he looks a little further down towards his chest, where he sees a black jacket and a white t-shirt that seems stapled onto, sticked from the moist in the air onto the stranger’s chest with some sort of band logo he can’t read.


 

“Sorry,” the guy says, voice automatically beneath the edges of raspy and voice above the qualities of being too deep. It’s nice, Joonmyun assumes. Assume because he’s not sure of what to expect for a voice. The guy keeps talking, “Didn’t mean to run into you like that but then again, you were kinda running really wildly.”


 

A fret of the lips thinned out in a manner that seems so straight-forward catches the latter in surprise before he finds Joonmyun just walking on forward, eyes now open and no longer closed. He’s been stripped of his tranquility, really.


 

“Do you want to take my umbrella to your building? What’s your class right now?” the stranger offers, voice still the same but with a hint of what he perceives as caring, but Joonmyun continues walking ahead anyway, fretting nothing back but silence. It’s not peaceful anymore, the rain. The weather was once pretty and it sounded calm a few minutes ago, but now it’s just a distraction that’s blurs out from the voice that’s calling out to him. He’s still losing a piece of his soul with every footstep that’s lost against the cracks in the sidewalks.


 

“Hey, you!”


 

The speed of every step is faster and longer in length, a good six inches between each and every step, but not that Joonmyun realizes that something’s being left behind with every stone slab, another piece of his lost mind. Because if anything he wanted back that’s lost from him in New York, or somewhere else from far, far away, it would be his mind. He just misses his goddamn mind so much.


 

It’s a jog, fast pace and forward velocity, and then it’s definitely running. Running with ears making sure there were no footsteps following in his loss and chest substituted with something so cold like it’s molded, figure from something so constructible like clay. He’s just made out of clay. Morphable, unable to stand for their own. He feels almost a little guilty for leaving behind the kind stranger that might only just wish for the best health of him but he’s not one to talk or care. He didn’t want it to be the other way around once he was finished embarrassing and quivering himself with every syllable in each verbs he would use to express his gratitudes. He’s been through too much already to just merely have a casual conversation with anyone.


 

So because of that, he finally reaches the gallery a few minutes earlier than he expected to which is a building full of complex “masterpieces” and “abstract” paintings that he could only dream of creating. There’s a minute where all he does is just pant, catching up on his last breath, hands jittering down to catch his knees which feels like the gel he uses for his hair every morning when he’s not running late.


 

The next time he closes his eyes, albeit being for not even exaggerated, a few seconds,  he immediately regrets it when he feels a stranger’s presence behind him. And the next time he opens his eyes, he also regrets it because the stranger managed to loop around to see him from the front, completely oblivious from the rain’s being.


 

“You forgot this,” the stranger says and he lifts something up that jangles loudly in the quiet hallway, causing Joonmyun to widen his eyes, half diverted from embarassment of the commotion he was causing, along with the embarrassment of his own clumsiness. “Maybe if you weren’t so busy running away from me, it would’ve never fell out of your jeans pockets--wait, not that I was looking at your...by all means, no-no--”


 

The blonde never manages to finish his jagged words because Joonmyun had already snatched the keys back into his hands and had already entered the classroom, leaving the stranger in a hallway that’s full of paintings that have no significant meaning to him.


 

--


 

Behind his back, Joonmyun’s always known as the cold-demeanored actor in his small class of ten. That’s because every time they rehearse or they practice their lines for some sort of theatrical act that’s coming up, he’s the one who always reads his lines with no textures. Maybe it’s because of how quietly he reads every word with ghosts on the ends of syllables or maybe it’s due to the monotone voice he uses while portraying a persona that seems out of his reach for his hands but it just doesn’t seem to work every time. Even whenever he given a character who has one line, he reads it as just a sentence on a scrap of paper rather than a line in a play.


 

“More excitement, Joonmyun! Give it your own style, god damn,” the director would always say in the first few weeks.


 

“Less boring, more colors,” he would then say once it’s half-way through spring.


 

It usually doesn’t jaunt to Joonmyun on how his acting skills resign at until one day, the director’s had a rough night. Or as everyone assumes because the director already lashes out at Joonmyun who’s reading the same lines with the same voice and the same mask and the same ego with the same amounts of thin layers.


 

“God, stop being yourself all the time, Joonmyun with your cold demeanor and your--gah, I don’t even know! The point of acting is that you hide your own character so you could bring out another one that’s covered with more and more layers but it seems to yet, not just me, but everyone else who wants to improve in this theatre that you have no character to begin with!”


 

Silence fills the auditorium as Joonmyun gives off an expression that seems more of an actor’s trail but as always, no one takes notice of Joonmyun’s most finest works. When it’s so quiet, even he could hear the air vents humming in the background and the spotlight being shown over him, blinding something that seems like unachievable fame, but really, it’s probably just his ego taking over.


 

And suddenly, a piano piece might begin playing as he stares at the director, a relative weapon in his hand and a of momentum force, plunging a yielded knife towards the director with a guttural noise that’s comprised of blood spewing out and trickling sparkles of crimson down his chest. The audience then stands up and he receives a standing ovation with a slight bow as the curtains fall down, something that he’s been asking for ever since he’s had dreams of being an actor---


 

The director seems stunned by his own words and he lifts a his hands up, refracting a few steps away in his own defense, echoes and echoes following the hollow stage in sorrow. It’s okay, director, Joonmyun says inwardly to himself. Joonmyun has nothing of to defend himself with anyway, so he picks up his textbooks and just leaves, no audience, no standing ovation, no knives and no wounds inflicted but just a creative mind that’s still bolted in from the hard-lifted society.


 

-


 

That night he cries harder than he ever has in the past week, every tear falling managing to hang onto his frail lips that’s chapped, so dry from lack of moist and so wounded from the teeths he sunked in to keep himself from crying. It’s so obvious that he’s failed.


 

--


 

There’s a second occurrence of the two strangers meeting again, shoulders bumping and a sorrow grin across the smiles that might travel for miles. Joonmyun never expected to see him again because after that rainy day near the art gallery, every thought seemed to escape him while he read his gray lines, including the thoughts of a lonesome stranger who maybe cares about others. Or maybe he’s just a stranger, wanting to rid of an umbrella that might have memories embedded in, painful ones perhaps. Or maybe, Joonmyun looked pathetic that day with nothing but his drenched hair and damped clothes and the stranger wanted to do something good.


 

A press against the piano and something wrong sounds out, but Joonmyun doesn’t cringe at all. He keeps on playing, eyes looking up at the bare ceilings and trying to look of something professional but it only manages to cause him another minor note that was never meant to be there. It’s not a natural, Joonmyun scolds himself, it’s an accidental, god damn.  


 

It’s a day exalted in April, cherry trees blossoming and weathers of chambering winds and something along the definition of blue skies back out. Joonmyun’s currently in the school auditorium, performing something that’s meant to be a graceful, impersonation of a sonata but ends up sounding like death. Just pitch death, grim and black all. He’s practiced, he swears and tells the composer before the audition but there’s just a grim look from the older professor that makes Joonmyun feel like sinking back down and giving up.


 

“Just try your best,” he says and that’s what Joonmyun’s doing.


 

So here he is, embarrassing his own muse and shattering the only image he had as a cold-hearted person to someone who elsewhere, signals for the deaths above. From the crowd who sense melancholy, all they see is someone who’s pressing the wrong keys on a piano and is hoping to make a good impression. But on the stage, an unflattering cold stage, is a someone who wants to have passion in something he used to be so good at but now, it’s just a futile attempt in gaining something back from the past that was never meant to be. As his whole life has been.


 

When he reaches the final last measures of his supposed song, there’s a notice from the crowd in how there’s a trembling tear slipping out of the pianist’s eye, soaking up a good millimeter of his remarkably frail fingers. Once he hits the last note, he laughs, almost and brashly pushes down all the keys he can manage to press with all ten of his fingers, causing all of the audience, which only consisted from a few strangers and a music director to cringe.


 

He doesn’t bother staying back after the recital to hear comments from his peers and directors because they’ll all say the same thing. You’re so bland. Is that really something he needs to know, by now?


 

So there’s a few footsteps again, soles onto the carpet that’s dreaded with his tears and he’s looking downwards because he doesn’t want to see anyone’s eyes meet with his. He’ll see misery. Maybe pity. Somewhere like sympathy and he doesn’t need that. He doesn’t need that at all.


 

Once again, he never expected to see the stranger again but he doesn’t recognize him this time because there’s too much blurriness in his vision to pinpoint who it is.


 

A bump across a figure and this time, he’s weak enough to land onto the floor.


 

“Oh,” he coughs, sort of. It sounds like a cough from the two figures standing in front of him but to himself, it sounds like a cry that no one else can call about.


 

He doesn’t recognize the stranger by the same sharp eyes and bristled hair that he saw a few days ago but more of that black voice he’s heard a few times ago, lost in the pouring rain. And then there’s a second one, one that sounds more sweet and more like the watermelons in the summer-times, munched on by himself and his younger friends who now never bother keeping in touch with him.


 

Joonmyun opens his eyes and runs a hand through his gelled hair, looking up to a kid he can tell is the prodigy of the music program due to his black tuxedo and a smile that’s more describable than the art itself (more against of Joonmyun’s slacks and dress shirt).  It’s Luhan, Joonmyun names to himself. Luhan, the one who received the applause that he’s always wanted for playing something so serene. Something so divine and heavenly and angelic and just so musically inclined. It’s jealousy, probably.

And then there’s that hand again, the same one that was holding an umbrella a few crying nights ago and into a few depressed days.


 

“At least accept my hand to help you up this time,” the stranger says, almost impersonating Joonmyun from his irrational behavior a few days ago.


 

Luhan laughs, and it coils something that happens to slip through the anger in Joonmyun’s red-lunged fists. It’s so sweet and brief. Why is that? Why can’t he have a laugh like that? It’s his jealousy again.


 

Joonmyun takes ahold of the man’s hand and he notices how their fingers entwine so well while he’s lifted up. And how the latter’s hands is so safe when it pulls back with gravity helping Joonmyun back up and how his own hand is so small, it just fits perfectly in perimeter against the other hand that’s dry on the tips and clammy in the center.


 

“Thanks,” Joonmyun whispers, so quiet because he would’ve said something else. “Thanks,” he repeats again, an accident when the left and right hands are released, following by an emptiness that Joonmyun hates himself for feeling.


 

“Nice job today, Joonmyun. You did...well,” Luhan compliments, hesitance only heard from Joonmyun’s keen sense while lingering eyes along the maroon carpet. He’s done his performance with silence, and then a well-done, huh?  It’s a scoff he wants to emit but he doesn’t do so because that would be rude but it doesn’t matter anyway if he did or not, because he’s the cold-demeanored person who’s an undecided major, spending most of his useless time in a place he was never meant to be at.


 

He repeats something for the third time and hopefully, the last. “Thanks.”


 

Luhan gives that warm smile back. “You’re welcome.”


 

--


 

Some days, his time is chained down onto a ladder and is always attempting to run away, only to be pulled back into a loss that’s so indescribable. Joonmyun is watching the students outside his apartment walk across the gardens, and he smiles whenever they smile because he likes to think that he’s with them, laughing along with friends that might care about him.


 

Ever since he’s transferred to California, there’s never been much going on in his social life, besides the small chatters that are considered arguments in others eyes he makes with his professors about how his performance is so lacking. But he considers that lectures and lectures are not the same as friendly conversations with friends.


 

-


 

On other days, Joonmyun’s time is dancing along an hourglass because time is ticking and his life is going on and on, making himself someway happy because that means his time is almost over.


 

He’s usually in a silent library, back across wooden shelves because he doesn’t want to be seen by others and eyes skimming across sadistic novels and melodrama novellas because he likes reading sad stuff since it relates to him so easily. Protagonist feels worthless?  Just like him. Protagonist goes through so much ? Exactly like him. Protagonist wants to commit suicide some nights when the stars are too dark? What he wants to do.


 

Somedays he reads memoirs and autobiographies in a chair that’s seated in a lonesome corner, because these days usually occur on Sundays where everyone else is out and about, lives being prodded to its extreme. Meanwhile, he likes hearing about other people’s successes because he wishes that one day that the stories in these lives might paint over his quiet ones.


 

And on some rare, rare days when the weather is just that good, he likes reading fictional novels that end in happy endings because he hopes that one day, he might get his happy ending but until then, he’s stuck somewhere between half-way and never, wanderlust and stardust.


 

-


 

And somewhere on final days when the weather isn’t like the spring’s usual coming be and feels like a few months back, he’s against the ledge of his bed because he doesn’t deserve the blanket’s warm comfort, giving justice to what his heart had been feeling all week and just crying.


 

Crying for friends who were never there for him but instead were just outside his apartment.


 

Crying for his mind that’s lost in the library, in between two words of depressed and saddened.


 

And crying for someone, who’s left him back in New York for someone better but in his mind, it’s just his jealous self again.  


 

--


 

May’s a quiet month, longing the sweet sorbets sold in the student lounge and the warm containers filled of green tea, bought my many and sold from all. Time waltzes away from Joonmyun’s conformable possession and lands in someone’s elses worthy time.


 

In the beginning times of summer, he doesn’t feel as joyful or lively. The sounds consist of no tears but just silence engulfed in the blankets he’s broken down into using, hopefully its being stealing a little loneliness from his quiet self and keeping it for its own benefits.


 

He would regret this though because the next time he would need the blanket, its time would be over and it would return the loneliness back to Joonmyun.


 

aka, a few days.


 

--


 

It’s mid-way of May and the cherrying skies has finally arrived, taking every chance it had to show the world how delicate and how fastidious nature could really be. That along with the harmonious flower gardens had finally opened up as a mandatory project from the agriculture majors, openly viewed for couples to take brisk walks through while plastering small kisses against each other’s neck and for hipsters to take artsy pictures of the daisies blooming and for friends to just enjoy their moments in, laughing too much at a petunia and how the bees look so pathetic against the small pollens. But for Joonmyun, he goes in there on his own times, not to take pictures or to smell the flowers or to just laugh but just as an enjoyment of how everything’s gone and how he’s gone from everything.


 

Joonmyun’s in the greenhouse right now, taking a small mental note in his minds on how it’s almost the beginning June and how the roses are beginning to blossom again. It makes him smile, just a little bit because he tries so hard not to but he can’t resist the smell of freshly watered flowers and how it smells like a bowl of sun-ripened fruit and scents of fresh bed sheets and the aromas of grass and the color of olive mixed together in the air--


 

“Oh,” he stutters loudly, falling against a ledge with a few pots on it, dirts on the trail of his fingers. Someone had pushed him over.


 

He looks up above through the glass ceilings, where the skies are embroidered with something like white linens and white-painted diamonds, defiantly against a few rays of the sun and during these scenic moments, Joonmyun doesn’t notice the lingering hand in front of him again.


 

“Please tell me in advance if you’re going to accept my polite and patient hand or not because my hands get sweaty and clammy really easily,” a voice says, a tone of informality maybe, automatically corresponding in Joonmyun’s lost mind to that below raspy and above too deep voice that he had talked to a month ago, maybe. He hasn’t kept track of the time.


 

Joonmyun looks up to find the same stranger again, the one who was with Luhan at the recital and the nice one with the umbrella on that rainy day with his lips swayed to the side, an arm full of veins running with blues, held out to his own lengthy comfort. His hair’s a darker shade of blonde now (with patches of salmon?) and there’s a tint of tan on him but it doesn’t faze Joonmyun at all. It’s summer, where on the west coast there’s games of drinking and icons of queens on every movie poster. Of course, people are going to get their hair dyed and get tan but Joonmyun, he’s always going to be pale like the ghosts over in Brooklyn and the strangers on that other side of town that everyone warns him about. But nevertheless, he takes up the hand again, and feels that same amount of quivering strength pull him back up likewise the other incident.


 

“Thanks,” Joonmyun whispers once he reaches the foreground again, because he’s partially too scared of committing to other words like how Joonmyun likes the stranger’s hair or how he wants to thank him for the umbrella and his lost keys that one other day. But instead of saying anything else, he just looks down at the stately poppies that grow on the coast and it smells of something from the beaches where the sand and seaweeds reside.  


 

“What are you doing out here alone?” the taller one asks and he looks over to Joonmyun, but Joonmyun doesn’t look up still because he wants to make it seem as if these Californian poppies are actually interesting. “It’s kind of weird to be out here alone in this beautiful place, don’t you think--I mean, it’s meant for couples, and best friends to throw flowers at each other, and for those camera freaks who take pictures of anything ‘abstract’. Not saying that you’re different or anything...but what’s your reason for being here?”


 

It seems like he expects a reply from Joonmyun but surprisingly, the former boy who’s never spoken to a human being in weeks feels obliged to give one, so he gives of something small. “I think it’s pretty here,” he says, frail words in definition of skeleton syllables and foggy breaths, the glass above seeming too opaque for him to drift off.  He finds it a sudden necessity to be breathing every few seconds or so because there’s some sort of feeling, marvelously similar to adrenaline and he feels it because that’s been a sentence he’s managed to spoken without humiliating himself.


 

The blonde-haired guy with slicks in every flick of the hair or so laughs, and it’s sweet-sounding, just like Luhan’s cotton-candy laughs and taffy smiles. “Oh, really now? All about the sceneries and looks?”


 

...


 

“What?”


 

He laughs again and Joonmyun can’t resist but actually like hearing him laugh. “Nevermind, nevermind. I like coming out here alone too. It’s peaceful and I can get thoughts accomplished more easily here, you know? About schools and families and and all such.”


 

“Hm.”


 

“Yeah.”


 

There’s an elongated silence bouncing from the plants’ swaying movements and the daffodils’ mockery of silence as they face the two boys, both so juvenile and both so everly youthful. The flowers and the boys, both.


 

“I’m Oh Sehun.” So that’s his name. “But, of course you would call me Sehun.”


 

Joonmyun fidgets with the sleeves of his t-shirt. A piece of string he’s been trying to pull off but he stops for a second and has gratitude for the sun that’s blinding his blush and for  the clouds that he feels like he’s on and for the beautiful scents of the flowers making this beginning seeming like an eternity.


 

“I’m Kim Joonmyun--,” and he catches his breath, fingers white against the post and his words abrupt.


 

And a small smile from Sehun makes Joonmyun feel like returning the favor with a million more. But he knows that in the end,  it’s all going to end the same way as it did before so he does Oh Sehun a favor and considers it an appropriate time to consider a goodbye apathy, and ultimately runs out the greenhouse, deserting the stranger whose name was Sehun behind with nothing but of a first and last name, a million smiles that were never returned, and a few laughing daffodils that he confusedly looks at.


 

--


 

Joonmyun spends most of his time, no longer at the flower garden but inside now, listening to Soundgarden and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and then classical music because he enjoys music that ramps out his feelings with every strum of the guitar to something that’s more graceful along every glitter and particles that dust in the air while he’s leaning against the wall with something hiding underneath his pillow. It’s a rainy day, monochromic skies and smokes puffing up and dispensing along every college student who has a hood on.


 

There’s a specific student though whose hair is even distinct from Joonmyun’s window. It’s that dark tint of blonde again, and it makes something that’s similar to a smile and closer to a frown appear on Joonmyun’s face, forced by his muscles and not by his conscience.


 

And even then, the classical music of wind ensembles can’t calm down the storms that somehow managed to travel from the moody skies to a place along the thin edges of Joonmyun’s heart.


 

“Oh Sehun.”


 

--


 

Yes, they do meet for a fourth time with words tumbling out of Joonmyun’s words like lost pieces in catacombs and it might’ve been because of his ty mood, but maybe it’s just because he wanted to finally talk to Sehun.


 

It’s still May, the last few days of the month succumbing from rain that never stops pouring and it’s probably almost dark but Joonmyun couldn’t tell because he’s too busy crying to notice the droplets smearing against his black-and-white masterpiece, or he’s just relenting his paged feelings from that last page of that melodramatic novel out, three days after completion.


 

“No, it’s too bland,” the art director says, and a shake of his head crumbles something so small in Joonmyun’s dreams. Perhaps, the dreams of wanting acceptance for something he’s worked so hard for or maybe a lucid visual of what’s going on his mind. He just wants someone to say yes, and it doesn’t even matter for what but here he is, failed and accursed.


 

There’s beige walls in the front hall of the gallery, where the most prestigious and the most art-prodigized students hang up their pieces of work, which had probably only taken them for a few days to complete whereas on Joonmyun’s border of destruction, it’s taken him a few weeks, a cramped hand, and a month in the exaggeration if he really wanted to convince. It was all there he thought, pastels and oil-paintings covered with a handprint in the corner of the art that was accidentally printed there after Joonmyun reached over for a few seconds to grab the white shade, leaving an imprint of his frightening hand.


 

The painting was him, he perceived, standing in the middle of nowhere with swirls and sparkles of white, gray, and any other typical bland colors blending in. Art, is it? A figment of what his lost mind is like in the world where there’s too many lost societies and hardships going on. He thought it was something that was true from his imagination but once the art director shooed him off to go to some student named Kyungsoo to praise him for his abstracted paintings of vibed shapes and a daze of random figures, he knew that along with his stripped mind, he’s been robbed of his imagination and creativity as well.

He watches the doe-eyed male smile brightly, possibly from the compliments across the sanctuaries that are all directed towards him and Joonmyun frowns. There’s a world of vivid dreams coming true from a few feet across him and from where he is at, there’s nothing more than failure and nothing less than depression.


 

He’s tired of trying, really.


 

Kyungsoo notices all of that in Joonmyun’s eyes and so he calls out to him, “Hey Joonmyun!”


 

But it’s too late because Joonmyun had already left the art hallway, with his five-by-five feet painting of depression underneath his arms and yes, he knows that it’s raining.


 

-


 

No more than half-way throughout his journey back home, and he’s already crying with scoffs in between every trifle. How pathetic was it of him to even think that the director would’ve chosen his piece of  lack-lusting disappointment to go up on the wall? He knew deep inside, and he didn’t want to accept the fact that Kyungsoo would always win the fight and the dry scars on his hands and on his pale arms would help in no manner against a trivial competition. But it’s not Kyungsoo’s fault because even at times, Joonmyun knows that he’s been painting nothing but of suffocation with small grasps and that no one’s at fault except him. Because he’s taught to sympathize with the artist; taught to victimize the prey; but he’s the predator of his own mind at some points, and he’s never going to learn to accept that.


 

He doesn’t even realize, but he’s fallen onto the ground, salted tears mixing along with the hoovering scents of fresh rain. The clouds create some type of shade, and his eyes relax along the outlines of cars coming by, passengers inside wondering why there’s some young boy outside crying with a piece of white and gray underneath his arms.


 

It’s wet now, and the paints are smearing and dribbling down across the sidewalk, black and white constellations onto the deep cracks that’s been embedded into the core. The human who was supposed to be him on the painting is now just specks of atoms and dying paint. The swirls that were supposed to describe his fight against depression is now more of death, because it describes his situation more realistically with the shades painting over the whole canvas, black all. Because that’s just what his world is. Black and white. Lost.


 

A few seconds travel by in just pain, and then there’s long footsteps. Thudding ones that could’ve been mistaken for the thunder but now, there’s something fighting against his vision as a body frame lingers. Joonmyun tries to fight off the feeling of someone in front of him but once he fathoms that there is definitely someone with a light breathing in view and the sound of his own heartbeat slowing down, it could only mean one person. He opens his eyes slowly and the world sort of stops, in the etiquette of no longer paying attention to the burning stars and the spaces of outer spaces but instead peering closer to where he is, where  his heartbeat’s frozen and something across the names of tears is no longer streaming down his sore cheeks.


 

“Hi,” Sehun says meekly, an umbrella with ducks in sweaters as the opposed pattern, and there’s something in his sad smiles that even makes Joonmyun feel like igniting into a mixture of both fireworks and sparks.


 

Joonmyun doesn’t know what to say, because he’s boarded onto the train where it’s a bad day so he just waves with dead arms, with his knees feeling numb though they’re still crumpled down onto the sidewalks. He watches as the boy with blonde-washed hair bend down, and takes a finger, sliding it across the palettes of neutral colors like metals crossed ice.


 

“What’s this?” Sehun asks, looking back towards Joonmyun with a smile gone, and something that floats around wander in his eyes.


 

It sort of flints, the answers Joonmyun wants to tell Sehun and the lies that he forces himself to pour out but he catches them in time, not because he’s forced to but because he sort of wants to tell Sehun the truth.


 

“Rejected painting for the gallery contest.”


 

The rain sings along, and there’s a breeze that dries something along Joonmyun’s cheeks like the dried paint, or rusted art. Something frizzling is across the empty streets, students across in warm coffee shops and the cars coming by as if nothing seems to be the problem. But Sehun is still here, and he’s just standing there, fingers drenched with made-up pigmented colors but also coated with something comprised of despair.


 

Time is ticking by with someone still hanging onto the last threads of the past while someone else is falling back onto the future involuntarily.


 

“That’s rough,” Sehun dims, his thumb rubbing across, and spreading around the customs. “It looks nice.”


 

And it looks like Joonmyun’s holding back a skewer of his lips, muscles held back to twitch onto the right side. The taller one notices, and he bends down with a hand onto the drizzled grass and the other on his knee, now bent against the pavement.


 

“What are you doing out here? In the rain? Where it’s cold and you might get sick?”


 

“...I don’t know.”


 

“Well, surely you do. You’re the one who’s out here on the streets, alone. While everyone else is in buildings, all warm and again, here you are, with a painting that’s losing its beauty by every minute.”


 

Joonmyun laughs pathetically. “It never had any.”


 

“Don’t say that.”


 

Joonmyun’s legs hurt, and they sag back down onto the ground more relaxed. He doesn’t know what to say, because he’s at a loss of words, a reason of why he never talks in the first place. His worlds are in fantastical books full of never happy endings, and in three-fourth measured pieces of hymnsongs and ballads against every pitching note that makes his ears cringe, and in the daisies that are missing his very presence whenever he sniffs them in the greenhouse, almost comically, and in the work he nevers put in enough of.


 

“Come on,” Sehun says after Joonmyun falls into his other worlds again and there’s a hand, not waiting for his reply anymore but instead, pulling him up in a forced movement that’s too brash. He’s up on his feet, and the pane is underneath the latter’s arms already. He’s too quick. “Let’s take this masterpiece back to the home of the prodigy.”


 

Scoffed at the compliment.


 

Before Joonmyun could’ve objected though, not that he would’ve but if he could’ve in any sort or way, Sehun’s already a few inches ahead, footsteps sanding back but not losing anything thats of his but instead, maybe gaining something of lost hope, a few indebts of a million smiles, and a sigh, because even Joonmyun knows that the stars are coming out tonight.


 

-


 

Sehun gives Joonmyun his umbrella, and insists along the lines of not needing it because he’ll be running too fast so Joonmyun’s holding the duck umbrella, hands on the grip where it feels like he’s holding Sehun’s hands for something that’s too, unfortunately, familiar.


 

“So, Joonmyun,” and the way he says it makes it seem like the last time Joonmyun managed to slip out his name at the garden. Taken as an atrocity against the heavens. Hesitance. “I haven’t seen you before April. Are you new here?”


 

He’s a few feet behind, lacking and his footsteps are still lost against every breaks of the tendons and every constriction of the muscles. It hurts to walk, even and not because of the forty minutes he’s been on the ground, but of how it makes his legs feel with someone taking care of him like a lost person in the unknown world, calling for something that was never real in the first place, forsay his nonchalant life.


 

“Yeah,” he says, and that’s all.


 

“Oh,” Sehun says, head faced forward as Joonmyun directs him to take a left, crossing a lonesome corner where the alleyways meet from campus to abandoned apartments. He seems interested. “Where’d you come from before California?”


 

Joonmyun’s eyes are reflecting against the wet pavements, and from the shadows it seems like a body frame that’s sagging forward too much so he straightens his posture, but it probably doesn’t matter because no one’s looking.


 

“Brooklyn. Brooklyn, New York.”


 

The rain continues pounding against the umbrella, and Joonmyun feels remorse for the boy who has to walk with more scampers underneath the soles of his vans. There’s a question that wanders on why people try too hard to do so good, and this situation answers a partial part of it, the undeniable basics and probably the foundation.  Sehun wants to help.


 

“Oh, really? New York type of person? Subways, and metros, and tall skyscrapers? ”


 

“...”


 

“Well, why’d you come here?”


 

He doesn’t know, but he does. “Stuff happened.”


 

Sehun stops, for maybe a second but it’s not that much of a lag. “Oh?”


 

“Yeah,” Joonmyun mumbles, and he already regrets telling Sehun too much but he decides since he’s gotten this far, there’s no stopping. “Friend problems and grades and other stuff, so I came down here to live on my own.”


 

“Must be rough.”


 

“Yeah. It is..”


 

Sehun has no idea.


 

-


 

The rest of the walk to his apartment is in silence, but Joonmyun isn’t sure if he should be shunned by the fact or be of grateful. The silence had become more of a friend rather than a foe over the years, and well, it’s just awkward now, standing as a third friend and as another angle.


 

“We’re here,” Joonmyun says once they reach a building that’s of his presence, with few shrubs shrilling to wind chills, making company as a guest comes onto being. Joonmyun feels embarrassed, sort of, because the apartment’s on the shabby side of the town and because of his lack of funds and his parent’s absent support, he’s been forced to have used all of his own independent funds to purchase the one-bedroom apartment.


 

“Cool.”


 

Joonmyun takes the lead, inkworks of the rain left behind with something of regret as he takes Sehun to his apartment door, where his apartment is still left unlocked.


 

“Don’t you think someone could break in?” Sehun asks, puzzled with pieces gone. There’s a thin line of hesitance as the shorter male walks in while he’s stuck on the other side, frazzled with a loss of strength with the dripping paint still dribbling down his arms.


 

Joonmyun turns around and bends his index finger forward, signalling an okay for a movement and Sehun does it, slowly, maybe regretfully. “Not really. There’s only me on the first floor. The other residents live on the higher floors. Phobia of heights, you could say.” And he’s scared of falling down, because he knows he can’t get back up without help.


 

Sehun resists against it because he’s not one to judge, but when Joonmyun walks somewhere else with his back not being able to be seen, he looks around to examine the living room. It’s small, but it seems cramped with the counters piled with loads of contracts and syllabuses from classes, bookshelves that are filled with titles of depressing sounding novels and a DVD player in the corner near a ceiling bleak where dribbles of water are pouring out, a few CD cases on the tops with the discs scattered along the floor, oak that’s shriveled up from the tears shedded onto them.


 

“What are you doing?” a voice asks, and it surprises Sehun from his eyes down back up, to a body frame that’s now wearing a crimson t-shirt, with black spirals all over in a trend that makes else seem rationable.


 

“Uh--,” he manages, “I’m not too sure myself.”


 

“I meant,” Joonmyun interrupts. “What are you still doing here? In my apartment?” It’s almost nighttime now, but the rain causes something of an orange-dewy light to arise, curtains from windows fluttering with the sounds of violins playing in a rhythmical pattern, shots of wind delved into the breeze.


 

And he seems sort of baffled, Sehun. He drags the painting to the side of the wall, one that seemed bland, and he blanches it across the wall, positioning it so it wouldn’t fall and cause of more mistakes. “I-I mean, I just got here but I’ll just leave this here. Okay? Sorry about your misfortune with the art department and uh--yeah, I’ll just go. See ya!”


 

The lights in Chicago turn on at this very moment, a few hours ahead in darkness but here, near the west coast with the smells of beaches and palms, there’s a boy. A boy who lets something primal be expressed in his words. Because if anything, he hates his words and he hates the functions that involves words.


 

“Wait,” Joonmyun suddenly says, causing Sehun to stop from behind, faces edged in the lines of the door frame, eyes closed because he wants to stay behind and hear something more of a sentence from Joonmyun.


 

“Hm?”


 

“Your name is Sehun, right?”  

“Yeah.”


 

And the fireworks that ignite, filled with the pastels of colors and arranges of hues, light up within the skies that loom to a navy color. And Joonmyun breaks in, his words like bullets on an aching gun, ready to be shot. “Thanks.”


 

“For what?”


 

Joonmyun shrugs, and his words are now getting out of hands, “I’m not sure but remember to close the door on your way out.”


 

--


 

Two days before the end of the month, and nearing the beginning of a new month, but yet a new season, there’s a toneless day where there’s no blues skies, no luscious grass, no lively trees, but just dust and dusk that’s too much of pollution and too less of life. Joonmyun deems it as the dark day because it’s his kind of day, clouds scattered like the strands of cotton on q-tips and where the colors seem more dull on earth.


 

There isn’t any breezes today, he notices. The ones that gives fluent dreams to those who yearns for paradise, someone who hopes for running away, and Joonmyun who’s resorted to creating a new world in literature and the fine arts because he hates the life he’s living in.


 

He’s sitting at a table, outside the corner coffee shop, studying, with no drink on him because he’s not feeling of a need to (and he doesn’t want to go inside, because he doesn’t feel like socializing with the too kind baristas, a boy named Kim Jongin and his father who helps him out every Tuesday).


 

Every time Joonmyun looks off into the distance, there’s always something so pretty just seeming to drift down the waves of students and cars, and he just wishes that he would have something like that. Maybe it’s with every aspect and angle he’s looking at or maybe it’s just something he wants. It’s just one of those moments where he inhales life, and exhales something that’s not life and instead it drains the remaining fluids of his world out--


 

“What are you looking at?” someone asks, and it catches Joonmyun by the end, a jerking motion enhancing a smile on the perpetrator's face.


 

“Oh god,” Joonmyun whispers, heart beating so fast, mind too exhilarated in the clouds. He looks at the boy who’s now sitting by him, eyes engulfed in smile and smile engulfed in eyes.


 

“Hi,” Sehun waves, and the smile is as warm as the disappearing sun, too bright initially so it refracts and degrades to something so insidious.


 

“Hi?” Joonmyun says, asking in a way while frowning. It slowly eases, though, through the persistent smiles and he finds himself just staring back at the empty bones and probably the broad shoulders. “What are you doing here?”


 

The distance breaks down into something too morbid, and cleaves into something so slow along the times and along the missing breeze he always feels while taking slow footsteps down onto sand, perhaps his dreams.


 

“Out and about. I was going to class.”


 

There isn’t such things as classes on Sundays though.


 

“But then I saw you and it’s been a while since I’ve talked to you.” He looks around. “Why are you out here alone?”


 

Joonmyun feels forced to answer with the only presence being acting as if a thousand. “I-I,” he stops and the lost pronunciations come out as a remaining sigh. “Don’t really have anyone at the moment to talk to.”


 

“Hm,” Sehun grumbles, leaning an elbow onto the table and propping his chin onto the hand. And there Joonmyun notices the marks that accentuates when he thins his lip, or how his brows are all clinged up to skin, pulled back as eyes stare at something too close to his packets he’s using for studying.


 

And Joonmyun feels urged to walk away, but he doesn’t because his footsteps clamp his feet back onto the pavement underneath the table. It’s probably tired of losing something everytime he walks.


 

So Joonmyun averts his attention back onto his acting notes, hoping that maybe the boy in front of him would look away, or even better, walk away. But he doesn’t, and in his periphery, he can notice the fidgeting of the taller’s fingers along the hexagonal corners of the table. “Well?” he asks, slowing placing the outline notes back onto the table carefully so the notes wouldn’t crinkle. Self-taught habit.


 

“Well what?” Sehun asks, hair through the wind, and wind through the hair in something that’s looks too comfortable and carefree.


 

“Aren’t you going to get to class?” Joonmyun asks, and his brow is raised in questioning looks, diagonal from one another and parallel. “Or do you have any classes, really? Because I don’t remember ever having classes on a Sunday.”


 

The boy whose face is suddenly flustered, makes something close to the laugh that’s arriving on Joonmyun’s vocals.


 

“W-well, you know I don’t..really, okay.”


 

With a tick of time going by, Joonmyun shakes his head and a grin is plastered on, painted on more-like with tan shades of skin and muscles involuntarily breaking free. It’s something he’s been hiding ever since they first met. “It’s fine,” Joonmyun says, smiling wryly now and sort of freely.


 

“So, Joonmyun.”


 

There’s quiet whispers on the ceilings of the skies, and Joonmyun just merely looks with nothing in his eyes comprehensible. The minutes go by with no reply, strums of guitars, and concert sixteenth notes along every blink of the eye as Sehun waits for a reply that’ll never come.


 

“That’s a pretty name,” he continues after he’s impatient, and Joonmyun’s static, latched onto just looking and not focused on speaking what his mind is thinking upon, which is still nothing major but of how it’s beautiful outside right now, with nothing but of gray clouds and gray sand dustering throughout the polluted air. He manages to smile again.


 

Sehun sighs, and he runs a hand through his hair, exasperated but at what cost. What is he exasperated for? “You don’t talk much, do you?” he asks, prying almost, his eyes prying for a verbal answer.


 

A grin made up of compliments is morphed into a frown made out of uncertainty. Joonmyun shrugs. “I guess not.” And the mood’s changed from something so soothing to now unbearably uncomfortable, moist finally getting to his face and crimson leaving it. The skies getting darker and it’s only three in the afternoon, but Joonmyun’s mind is really clouded with half of the theories he’s been memorizing and half-filled with the features of Sehun’s face and how his feet hurt so much.


 

“Well,” Joonmyun proposes, standing up from the bench. “I gotta go back to my apartment.”


 

Once again, like always, he begins to wander away so quickly, eyes misered in the clouds and how they can be reached with a stretch of his fingers--


 

“Wait,” Sehun calls and Joonmyun stops, too abruptly so his notes almost jumbles out of his hands and maybe could’ve had a flight to somewhere else far. He doesn’t turn around, but even with those sounds of a sole hitting against the pavement, a sound that unusually sounds pleasant to his ears because it’s not squeaking, he feels something on the corners of home and returning comfort.


 

“Hold on,” and Joonmyun does just so until something like paper being torn against with the sounds of chains whipping against the bench is heard.


 

But then he becomes impatient, and he almost leaves. “Look, I really gotta go now. Maybe we could talk another day? You know--”


 

Something’s stuffed into his hand, rather after a soft touch and a filler of excitement is exchanged if maybe it’s in the colors of peaches, and tangerines. Joonmyun feels the paper wreath underneath his nails, and they tingle at it, leaving him of no choice but to pull out the paper and look at what’s scribbled. An array of numbers, and a smile, on the wretched piece of notebook paper but also along the thimbles on his tiresome lips.


 

Just in case you’d ever want to talk. You look kinda half-empty and in need of a friend.

 

When he looks back up, the other boy is already gone but Joonmyun could tell that he left back another smile, and that’s another one off the list of a million.



 

--


 

middle; where he can finally begin playing music in major scales rather than minors.


 

-


 

It takes him a few days to come to a decision of whether he should actually contact the number. It takes him a few hours to slide his thumbs over the keyboard to think of some sort of witty, yet intelligent sounding comment to first send to Sehun. It takes him a few minutes to finally press the send button but it takes only a few seconds for a reply to come back, a coda in a way, turning into something of repeating from the beginning to the end in a continuous pattern that consists of laughs and hearts thumping along the basses and the trebles.


 

-


 

From Sehun:

finlly bout time u text me.


 

-


 

For as intelligent sounding as he seems, Sehun isn’t really that much to ask for on texts.


 

-


 

From Joonmyun:

You’re horrible at spelling.


 

-


 

From Sehun:

it’s just txting! wut can i say?


 

-


 

From Joonmyun:

Not much, obviously.


 

-


 

From Sehun:

2 done wit u


 

-


 

--


 

It feels different, like steps in the water with the sands curling at his toes from underneath on the beachside, creatures lurking across the oceans and the waves just moving like breezes across the windowpanes. It feels comfortable, maybe of how they start to always get coffee every Tuesday for a sentimental reason of how Joonmyun misses the coffee that was made in Brooklyn, on that one corner where there’s always a jazz group playing while he jams out across the streets, just listening and hoping that one day, his feelings could concur against the music. But most of all, it feels comforting, to know that he had formed some sort of an acquaintance relation with Sehun, that one stranger. It’s like the first of his corrupt emotions all over again. It’s like it was meant to be that way.

-

 


 

Near the end of June, Joonmyun feels that it’s appropriate to pay the garden walk another visit because the last time he had left, it seemed rather abhorrent and more cut-off. Less relaxing. And he has nothing to hide from now, except maybe that smile that’s always full of ginger and cinnamon because if anything is obnoxious, it’s that smile Sehun always gives Joonmyun after he cracks some sort of witted-joke or some corny remark that’s meant to be snarky within their texts.

 


 

The walkway to the greenhouse seems too surreal with the smells of alcohol from across the street where that one fraternity lies, to the shades of his white-paled t-shirt being stuck to his skin because of the humidity, and across the skies where there’s the sun blinding all peripheral with just hues of blanching oranges and the eye-tingling colors of lemony figment. And for once, Joonmyun seems to take it all in with a single inhale, where the world just slowly parts with him and takes him off to somewhere else that seems like a fairytale, where the mortar and the bricks along the university buildings look like blocks and just toys from his childhood.

 


 

He arrives at the warehouse a little too early in the morning when the sun’s still in slumber. But even from the stained glass that needs of a washing and a little bit more of natural light, the figure’s still noticeable with an anemone too close to his nose as he takes in nature in its delightable moments.

 


 

Joonmyun tip-toes through the archway, and through the gravel, and across the fallen daisies because he doesn’t want to hurt the flowers anymore and also, he doesn’t want to steal the attention away from Sehun. He’s a few feet away, and the seconds tense up and cripple down as he’s finally close enough to say something that’s loud enough for Sehun to hear.

 


 

“Having fun smelling the flowers?” Joonmyun asks blandly because he’s still on the borderline of awkward and attempted, but is still lingering along the metaphony in his disappearing words.

 


 

Sehun almost drops the flowers, but he doesn’t because Joonmyun ends up catching the pot and he places it back down onto the brick table with such gentility, unnoticed dirt on the tips of his fingers and the smells of tenseness from the flowers in the air now. They’re just all shivering, because there’s a murderous man in the greenhouse, waiting to kill another batch of the poppies. But it doesn’t smell bad though, not at all. It smells like summer, and the memories that spring had left behind with its final smiles.

 


 

It’s odd how Sehun thinks that Joonmyun’s up this early, since he’s usually the only one up that late at night and up this early in the morning. But nonetheless, he gives a smile. And his smile stretches too far that it feels like he’s forced to smile like that, but Joonmyun doesn’t suspect that that is the case because all he sees is just a surprising person who relates to nature for an addiction to lean out of societies for. It’s not until he feels a slight push against his arms that he finally recognizes reality again.


 

 

“Hey there,” Sehun says, bringing back a wry smile. “What are you doing up this early? In a green-house? Smelling flowers and having dirt all gritted up against your fingers. Or are you just that type of a pessimistic person who doesn’t believe in sleep? Because that’s me as well.”

 


 

There’s a lean against the table, and he almost falls but Joonmyun manages to catch himself before crashing down onto the other pots. And from there, he can see how Sehun had closed his eyes again as he brung up another pair of flowers to his face. And from there, Joonmyun can see the nightmares that are still encased within. The ones that hides whenever he turns and thrashes at nighttime, where his pillow doesn’t have a cold side anymore. And from there, he can see the smiles that seemed genuinely grateful, true to how beautiful something could be and how small it manages to be like botany.


 

 

“I just felt like paying this place a visit. No one ever comes by anymore,” Joonmyun admits after a passing of a few minutes seemed like relative hours. He opens his mouth to further on his crescendoing words but he stops himself in time before his words spiral from somewhere else hidden. “What about you?”

 


 

Sehun shrugs, and his body seems more skinnier than it does that way as his shoulders crunch up against the paleness of his neck. “Lack of sleep. I’m kinda an insomniac, but I choose to not sleep at the same time, you see. Decided to come up here to smell the roses. Ever heard of that saying? It’s all over books and pamphlets and those cheesy travelling advertisements.” The boy is grinning at Joonmyun, that subdued one sided grin where only half his mouth curves upward and his eyes seem nonexistent.

 


 

“Yeah,” is all the timid one manages to say.

 


 

“But not like actually smelling the roses. More like enjoying the scenery like in those romance films. It’s sort of therapeutic, really with the sounds of bumblebees soaring through the skies like there’s no tomorrow and the flowers swaying to the wind like a sort of tango. It’s like theatre in a smaller model and it’s more colorful and less bland and there’s no idiotic endings where everyone dies.”

 


 

And before Joonmyun could’ve said anything, something takes over his words and he just ushers out a small laugh. A laugh that grabs Sehun’s attention and causes him to laugh as well.

 


 

“Well, Kim Joonmyun. I gotta apologize but I have to get going to my class before I’m late again. But remember, those endings in Longherin . Remember that!”

 


 

He runs out of the greenhouse with a final wave and this time leaves Joonmyun with the annoying daffodils, an unexpected taste of theatre on his lips, and with now a thousand smiles, because a million seems too preposterous.

 


 

Plus, it was only five in the morning and there was no such things as classes occurring so early.


 

 

--

 


 

“Lose yourself, come on!”

 


 

Joonmyun continues reading aloud the lines, and he adds something along pitches and resonance within his words, an epitome of somewhere good and somewhere just lost. He seems lost, that’s it but not entirely bland in his own world.

 


 

“Keep on! Don’t just stand there and expect for the character to come to you. You go to it, this is a one-sided egotistical act, Joonmyun!”

 


 

He begins spinning, and the world revolves around him like a sort of glory, along the falling stars and the moons crashing down onto the audience and revealing something that’s too hidden and too engulfed by his gray mask. The words become more aggressive, and they spur out of his mouth like they’re meant to. He emphasizes a breath, and spit comes out on the ends of the words and he feels someone else take over his words. Someone too close in feelings and someone too much like a double.

 


 

“That’s scratching the surface. Keep on going!”

 


 

But then he becomes too dizzy, and the words spiral out like there’s no tomorrow, breaths rough now and world becoming stable again. He feels a mask clasping onto the tight perimeters of his face, and it sticks on again and as hard as he tries, he’s unable to take it off. The stage lights shine down onto him, muses all over the auditorium like omens and signs and the stage manages to creak again, every step he takes out of dizziness swaying along.

 


 

Joonmyun hears a sigh, followed by incoherent murmurs from behind the curtains.

 


 

“You were doing fine, and it actually sounded like an actual role,” the director says as he’s watching the student heave up and down, and up and down as he struggles to regain his breath that’s lost in those words.

 


 

And it almost sounded too good as a compliment to be true.

 


 

“But then it was like someone had shown up, and stolen your limelight, maybe choking you. Come on, Joonmyun. This is theatre, this is Broadway, and this is a production. You have to produce in order to channel your passion. Just imagine,”

 


 

But Joonmyun zones out, because he sees someone in the audience, legs dangled up on the seats as he’s staring down the rows. He’s too close to the stage, and Joonmyun feels like burning up just at the sight of the band logo and the brown vest wrapped around it.

 


 

“Spotlights, all of it. Standing ovation from the crowd. Congratulations and a final bow, all for you! But that’s only if you give in work. Kudos for you, I suppose though. At least you did better than before. Today was one of the best performances you’ve ever gave on this stage. Well, at least from what I heard back in Brooklyn.”

 


 

The actor whose passion is stuck in a town miles away just shrugs, and he grabs his bag. He slings the bag over his shoulder, and begins walking out the hallways, footsteps uneasily trembling as the director begins taking orders over the remaining cast. Joonmyun pulls at the tangible strands from his jacket, and the hot weather hits him hard as he walks away from the building.

 


 

“Hey!” someone calls out, and Joonmyun doesn’t stop because the voice seems too recognizable and though he isn’t necessarily upset and embarrassed from his act in the theatre, he isn’t so pleased either.

 


 

He’s forced to stop though once a hand, one that brings shivers despite the heat lingering in the west, clamps down onto his right shoulder and holds him into place. Joonmyun looks down at the hand, and the fragments near where the fingers bend seem almost too pretty. And how the tips of his slender fingers turn white, because they’re just holding on too hard and the dazzled veins all over his palm.

 


 

“Oh,” Joonmyun stutters loudly, and it’s like this is his way of saying hi, because he’s too dazed to say it properly. But maybe that’s okay, because not every friendships are the same. If he could even consider this a friendship, that is. He turns around and faces the blonde-haired boy, and he notices the tousle near the front where there’s strands of a darker hue from the roots. “Hello, Sehun.” Joonmyun gives that smile, one that’s still in the making since he hasn’t smiled in a long time.

 


 

But when Sehun gives a smile back, his seems too genuine and it seems too much like lavender and how the color’s too bright and too pretty. The hand lets go, and it distends along Joonmyun’s spine, swirling in sphericals and like how his back is a divinity.

 


 

“Are you free today?” Sehun finally asks, disyllable too strong.

 


 

Joonmyun stares, and he doesn’t know what to say because he’s too busy thinking of a predicament. Every half-idea of an excuse though just disappears into the air like dusts and the rust on the burning stars because maybe he wants to say yes.

 


 

“Uh.”

 


 

And his heart takes over.

 


 

“I guess.”

 


 

The hand releases from his back and Sehun pulls his forefinger to trace something along a frown on his own mouth to something like gratification that’s meant to be seen. Too happy. Too happy, Joonmyun notices.

 


 

“Splendid! Would you like to grab some lemonade with me on that one stand no one ever goes to because it’s too hidden in the corner of the park? It’ll just be like coffee, except it’s like our summer alternative, yeah?” His head is bobbing up and down, and up and down, slightly because joy might take over control of his limp body against the lamppost.

 


 

“Well, I mean--”

 


 

Sehun steps back, and he sort of guzzles because maybe he’s nervous that Joonmyun would say no. It’s just lemonade, a typical thing to do on a summer day with acquaintances because friends go out for drinks and strangers go out for coffee. This meets somewhere half-between, where Sehun would like to say where their relation stands.

 


 

“Come on, it’s just a hot day and you seem like you need a lemonade, probably iced. You know, maybe we can smell the roses after or just sit on benches like in those dramas? I don’t know, just something simple for us. Because that’s how you seem. Simple,” Sehun smiles, and it drawls over how bright the sun is and how transparent he really seems.

 


 

Joonmyun contemplates, but then he stops because he knows that he’s over-thinking everything and that this is someone trying to talk to him. “Well,” he says.

 


 

“--Well, that’s a yes, isn’t it? Cool! Let’s go,” Sehun excites, and he begins to drag Joonmyun’s coated arms across the streets, maybe too fast or maybe Joonmyun’s too slow.

 


 

And the sidewalks just goes with their tempos, letting them run across the way but not too fast at the same time, because Sehun almost trips and his shoelaces get caught in beneath the cracks, stumbling almost forward.

 


 

Joonmyun just laughs silently.

 


 

A lemonade really did sound refreshing.

 


 

--

 

 

 

 

“Hubert’s Lemonade,” Sehun reads to Joonmyun, who’s sitting besides him on a bench, grass tickling between the edges of his socks and the ends of his shorts and sun just drenched across the scenery like paint spilt across any variety of canvases. “Didn’t peg you for a pink lemonade type-of-guy, Joonmyun,” he continues on, chuckling because Joonmyun’s just giving a small smile back and for now, that’s all he could ask for.

 

 

 

The ice condensates against his fingers, and it leaves a cool drip streaming down his fingers, across his forearm and stopping along his scars, edging through the skins.

 

 

 

“Luhan’s more of a cherry-limeade person, but he’s been too busy to go out with me lately because of his recitals and stuff. Shame, really, but it’s okay. You can be my new lemonade buddy! How does that sound?” Sehun asks, taking a sip and turning towards Joonmyun.

 

 

 

“Uh--well,” Joonmyun balks, his mouth hanging too wide so he just takes a sip, and waits for his throat to unclench. “Okay then.”

 

 

 

“Perfect,” Sehun settles, and he just looks over to Joonmyun who’s trying to create a smile that’s too categorized into a facade, full of forced grins.

 

 

 

Sehun sighs, because he sees through it easily with how Joonmyun’s gritting his teeth, the sound of ice crushing in beneath his tongue, and he feels like it’s not going to get anywhere unless he says something. So he does. “Let go of yourself,” he says, beggingly, and Joonmyun’s puzzled, a grimace slowly rolling over his face like the hills that disguise themselves against the horizons. But Sehun continues, “Joonmyun, we’ve only been talking for a few weeks, and this is our first outing in the actual life together but I haven’t seen you smile at all yet, besides those emojis you always use in our texts. And when I mean smile, I mean a true smile. Not that your other ones aren’t beautiful, but they aren’t...you.”

 

 

 

Joonmyun gawks, surprised.

 

 

 

“You’re just like a body, not a human. But who knows, maybe it’s because you’re just really awkward, and that’s okay because by all means I am too but I would like it if you’d lighten up, have a good time, drink your lemonade, smell the roses, embrace the roles, ya know?”

 

 

 

And now Joonmyun just settles down, kind of composes himself back onto the bench with his back pressed against the wood too hard and it aches but he doesn’t stop. His mind’s lost, can’t comprehend any formable thoughts. He just sighs, bitter.

 

 

 

“Okay.”

 

 

 

“Yeah, so I don’t know how to say it but just don’t feel awkward around me. I’ve already settled upon a premise for you, Kim Joonmyun.”

 

 

 

“Oh.”

 

 

 

“Would you like to hear what it is?”

 

 

 

“Sure,” Joonmyun says, turning to the blonde-haired boy. He’s trying his best to put on a genuine look of curiosity but damn, it’s just so hard feeling again when he’s so half-empty.

 

 

 

Sehun’s quiet for a moment and maybe he takes this moment to admire how silent it is, how curious he puts Joonmyun onto the edge, and how the lemonade just ices his fingers through thin trails of droplets, dribbling down the fields of skin.

 

 

 

“I seemed to have encountered a case of friendlust and unfortunately, it seems to be reasoned upon you.”

 

“W-what--”

 

“I’m going to be your best friend, Kim Joonmyun, and I’m going to have your laughs memorized and your smiles will be the only scrapbook memories that I’ll have in my mind because right now, that would be a miracle. A true one. And guess what? You won’t be able to do anything about it, because I’m a very determined person. You’ll find that out later.”

 

 

 

The laugh Joonmyun coughs out, coughs because he was taking a gulp of his lemonade seems too surreal and already, Sehun knows that they’ll be laughing one day when the sun dawns down till their ribs protrude against the parallel stars and when the clouds seem so close, that they’ll be able to jump on them.

 

 

 

He contemplates, but Joonmyun figures now he just wants to give a hundred smiles back, because a thousand and a million is out of the proportions. Smiles are just too hard as presents, Joonmyun figures and that’s something that he’ll also learn along the ways.

 

 

 

--

 

 

 

The end of June’s rather sad, because Joonmyun has always liked the beginning of summer and how the sun always leaves an hour later, and it comes up an hour earlier. He’s always awake then, because he knows that there’s someone else on the other side of the campus awake as well, and they always happen to both be texting each other at that instinctive time, when the sun’s saying hello to its fellow residents, and ignoring all the abhorrence greetings.

 

 

 

--

 

 

 

Sehun learns a lot of things about the boy who occupies himself in the lonely apartment. He learns on how Joonmyun’s older, but they happen to be in the same year of college.  He learns about how Joonmyun’s an undecided major, and how he just wants to find his passion within the different branches of fine arts. He learns about how Joonmyun enjoys the theorem of perfection, and how he wants to please those around him but lately, it’s been more of an obstacle than a boundary. He learns a lot of things, but his mind just seems to be able to take it all in, bit by bit and interest in the words as they spill.

 

 

 

He also notices a lot of details. He notices how Joonmyun always breezes through his lines, and reads them like automations whenever he visits the auditorium during a specific hour where he knows that his friend is in there. He notices how Joonmyun cringes whenever he’s pressing a few buttons on the shackled piano downstairs, down in the foyer where no one’s there to listen. And he always notices how Joonmyun has paintings of rather depressing topics in his apartment. Paintings that look more black than white, and of issues in the worlds, and of disfigured life that’s too decomposed of liveliness.

 

 

 

And normally, Sehun would question on why he even bothers becoming friends with such a rather mild person. But then he questions on why not, because the pros always outweighs the cons and the flowers aren’t flowers unless they’re watered. And the stars don’t shine unless there’s a night sky. And the painting’s aren’t beautiful if they don’t have significance. Sehun plans to be the water, and the skies, and the significance that Joonmyun needs. And he’ll do anything to make sure that he delivers in his performances well.

 

 

 

--

 

 

 

July borders on edges of just nothing. Days where Joonmyun just sits in his apartment, maybe a book by his side. You know, one of those books that he always has on that shelf about the faults of love and sad relationships that never make it in the end.

 

 

 

Then there’s Sehun who always texts Joonmyun every hour or so, asking him on what he’s doing and soon repeating that question later when he feels like the conversation’s gone pale. Or if he’s being the adventurous texter he is, him asking on how Joonmyun he is. Fine, Joonmyun would always say, and maybe it’s true, because he’s not feeling depressed or happy. He’s just feeling fine. Fine like the thin margins along his books, and fine like the sharp razors he always has in his bathroom. Just fine on the tip, ragged shards and rough edges.

 

 

 

But one day within the week, two days after their coffee outing and a few days before their lemonade stand date, there’s a knock on the door of Joonmyun’s apartment, and he’s surprised. No one has ever visited him ever since he had moved in during March, and he’d always kept to himself clean of business, away from the landlord and away from the constant drug dealer rebels who lurk the college streets at night.

 

 

 

It’s five in the afternoon, and the sun’s still out but he wonders if it could be some sort of stranger that he’s never met before. Maybe someone who wants to mug him, take over his nonexistant life. But it’s still bright in the day so he shrugs it off, and wanders in sweats and a graphic tee to open the door.

 

 

 

He never expects to see Sehun though because do friends really visit each other in random spots of the weeks at the most random times of the day? It’s been too long since he’s had a stable friendship. Years, maybe, but probably months because he likes to exaggerate a lot these days (his director in theatre tells him to exaggerate his life).

 

 

 

“Hi,” Sehun says meekly, with a small wave because he feels like Joonmyun corresponds with physical movements more easily. And maybe it’s something about seeing Joonmyun without his contact lenses and in his glasses, or maybe how he just has his hair tousled up strangely with strands in adjacent angles but Sehun just laughs inwardly at how his friend looks so adorable.

 

 

 

On the other side of the doorway, Joonmyun’s shocked because he didn’t expect Sehun to remember his address and he didn’t expect to see him at all either.

 

 

 

“H-hi?”

 

 

 

Sehun glances through the doorway and sees that the painting that he had brought in from last time is still against the wall at the same spot he had left it. He would frown, but he feels like Joonmyun needs more smiles in his life so he just flashes a grin, same as always.

 

 

 

“Can I come in?” he asks, framing himself against the white plaster and almost drifting behind but he manages to catch himself.

 

 

 

Joonmyun just stares, still gasted and still ghosted along the possibilities and questions of why and how. But he doesn’t want to just leave Sehun outside with a dejection, so he nods and almost says yes but he figures that Sehun had seen him.

 

 

 

“What are you doing here?” Joonmyun asks quietly, once he’s sitting down onto the stool and watching the sun fade away with every minute going by from where it drains the whole room to just draining a luminous area of the kitchen, orange against white and turning it into something like yellows and the lemons. His breathing becomes more hitched, and he’s starting to contract again, anticipation and anxiety filling up.

 

 

 

Sehun stands awkwardly near the former, and he has his fingers entwined from behind, arms looped into a timid position. “I don’t really know. I just had an urge to visit my new friend,” and he chuckles softly, looking up to see that Joonmyun’s smiling back, and it seems more realer than before. “I was bored at home and Luhan was busy so here I am.”

 

 

 

Joonmyun keeps that smile for longer, and he just nods curtly.

 

 

 

“I hope you didn’t mind that it was so spontaneous and just on the point. I felt like if I texted you on this sudden rendezvous, you would probably say no.”

 

 

 

And as sad as it was, Sehun was most likely right. Joonmyun probably would’ve just said no, or perhaps even might’ve ignored the text until a late time at the night, but basing on Sehun’s sudden persistency, maybe that would’ve been the wrong idea as well.

 

 

 

“No, no. It’s fine, really,” Joonmyun insists, because he was feeling a tad lonely with his melancholy books and the satirical novels and his small cup of tea on the nightstand that’s still getting cold. But it’s okay, because he’ll make a batch later, and maybe invite Sehun because he knows that Sehun likes tea. Always cold with three cubes of ices. Not shredded ice or chips, but cubes. Not blocks, either. Just cubes.

 

 

 

“That’s good to hear,” Sehun says, finally taking a seat on a stool, two seats away from Joonmyun’s. Joonmyun takes notice of how there’s three stools, and how he needs to get rid of two of them because he’s the only one who hangs out in his apartment. Why he bought three still questions him but maybe he’ll keep two, one for himself and maybe the other for Sehun.

 

 

 

“So what do you do usually on these kinda days at this time?” Sehun questions, scanning the beige-painted room that has scrapes falling off at every corner. And they look human-made, and not actually by abrasion so he questions on what’s been going on in his own mind, but he doesn’t dare ask Joonmyun. He even swears he sees shards of glasses near the bucket in the corner of the room that has the rain leak.

 

 

 

Joonmyun shrugs. “Usually just study for school. I was practicing my lines for acting,” he excuses, and he peers over to make sure that his book was closed before turning back to Sehun. It feels like a dream, almost, and he tries his best to bolt awake but everytime he does, he still sees that awkward smile on Sehun’s face and the small hand gestures he pursues everytime he speaks.

 

 

 

“Oh, really?” Sehun asks, almost looking interested. He sits up with his elbows onto the island counter, and he skewers his lips to the side, contemplation on the line. “Would you mind it if I asked for you to share your brilliant talent with me?”

 

 

 

Propositions and improvisations are what Joonmyun live for, and he struggles to improvise on an excuse. “U-uh, what? Acting? Heh, I’m not really good,” he admits, chuckling because he lives for the ironic satire. He bares his eyes down onto the floor, and sees a reflection that’s smudged by the small red-hued blush that’s on his cheeks.

 

 

 

Joonmyun doesn’t notice how Sehun moves over a stool, and he also doesn’t notice how there’s a slight pat on his back.

 

 

 

“Nonsense. And if you are so bad, let’s practice then. I’m a literature major and I have no absolutely any idea in how acting works, but I always need work in dialogue and tone. It isn’t that hard right? You just read and live the characters in the form of lines in weird typewriter fonts. Correct?”

 

 

 

The two just sit there, staring at each other for what seems like a few minutes before Joonmyun just stutters.

 

 

 

“W-well, I mean--” he starts out.

 

 

 

“It’ll be fine!”  Sehun promises, and he takes ahold on Joonmyun’s arm, pulls it off the seat and leaves something of warm contact and concomitant grasps back in the kitchen as they ponder to Joonmyun’s bedroom (ponder because Sehun’s just wordlessly brisking through his apartment, lost on where the bedroom is for the first few minutes until Joonmyun points it out), floor creaking away because there’s an unexpected pair of footsteps in the house tonight.

 

-

 

 

 

Joonmyun laughs for the first time that night because Sehun manages to be very humorous with the smiles he gives and the fake dialects he acts in and how he reads his words so dramatically, despite him saying that it’s just an egotistical thing that he’s learned from high school theatre. They’re both against the wall reading because Joonmyun prefers the board against the bed, and there’s a printed script of A Midnight Summer’s Dream on their criss-crossed laps, half on Joonmyun’s and half on Sehun’s.

 

 

 

Even at points, Joonmyun feels like he’s drifting from reality and ascending into an actor’s world as he begins reading with something Sehun calls passion, and it’s efficacious knowing how he knows Sehun is smiling at his amateur skills. But not in laughter of embarrassment but on how much Joonmyun’s trying.

 

 

 

Hours pass by, meticulous words pronounced in meticulous accents, and the sun goes down with a comely look through the window, sneak peeks across the curtain shades and a final nod before letting it’s accompaniment take over. Even then, they’re still reading with those promised cups of tea kept in between their legs, and Joonmyun’s acting as Joonmyun now and Sehun’s acting as Sehun, someone too lively for their young age.

 

 

 

“Acting’s fun,” Sehun says, and Joonmyun just nods tremulously, the script on its last page and their elbows just brushing lightly enough for Joonmyun to notice. He doesn’t choose to move.

 

 

 

“It is.”

 

 

 

Sehun focuses his eyes over to Joonmyun who’s just staring at the script, rereading the last line over and over and over until it becauses memorized and embedded along his back. “I’ve never seen you act like that in class though. Why is that? Why is it that you act so passionate here, with just me, a perfectly random stranger but at school where you’re surrounded by directors and other renowned, pretentious actors, you act like someone else? Someone who’s not the same person I’m with right now.”

 

 

 

The night’s not so luminous anymore, and the question seems almost risible to Joonmyun because he scoffs, almost and Sehun just looks at him with something determined in his eyes.

 

 

 

“I don’t know,” Joonmyun sighs, and his head leans against the wall more comfortably with his throat feeling suddenly inflamed. “Something just clenches up inside of me, and I suddenly feel like I’m in another world with all these strangers around me, all fighting for a role and all fighting each other to just be on top, you know? I just, it just doesn’t feel right to act that way and so I become someone else who acts as another person. Ironic, right?”

 

 

 

His laugh is pathetic, and Joonmyun feels apathetic altogether, almost feeling like crying but not doing so because there’s someone in the room sharing the same musty air he always endures every night.

 

 

 

“Hm, yeah,” Sehun nods, and his eyes look lost for once, not having that gleamer that it always does or maybe the sun needs to be up for that.

 

 

 

“Well I don’t know since I’m not an actor myself, but I think you’re really good and you have a lot of potential, Joonmyun. You could be brilliant...but you’re a coward,” Sehun bluntly says, and Joonmyun alerts his eyes immediately towards the boy who’s always been so positive.

 

 

 

“W-what?”

 

 

 

“You could be brilliant, but you’re a coward,” he repeats and then moves off the bed, leaving the bed with coldness that could be replaced so easily if Sehun would just sit back down. And half the weight is gone too, so it almost feels half-empty because it’s been six hours of constant sitting, and limbs being outstretched with mismatched socks being noticed.

 

 

 

“Just think about that, alright? I should probably get going, it’s really late now. Thanks for having me over! It was actually kinda fun just reading your scripts. And since I know that you’re always willing to let me come over, I’ll be doing just that!”

 

 

 

He begins moving out of the frame, but his footsteps still creak and his voice still echoes easily through the narrow hallways.

 

 

 

“And remember! Lemonade in two days! Don’t forget, buddy!”

 

 

The door slams shut before Joonmyun’s could’ve said anything and that night, he ends up rereading the script because he wants to be full of brilliance and not full of cowardice.

 

--

 

 

 

From: Sehunnie

 

 

 

learning how to type properly just 4 u.

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

From: Joonmyun

 

 

 

You’re getting there.

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

From: Sehunnie

 

 

 

at least i try

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

From: Joonmyun

 

 

 

Haha, yeah. At least you do.

 

 

 

--

 

 

 

Maybe it’s just Joonmyun but he feels like July swings by too quickly, and it’s nearly already the end of the month and almost near the end of summer. He blames the too many outings, and the lemonade that tastes too much like water with the ices melted in it, and the sweet-flavored tea they always drink on Thursdays whenever Sehun comes over to continue reading scripts with Joonmyun, or maybe it’s just the simple mocha that has too much sugar and too less of cocoa but at least it’s situated in a warm coffee house.

 

 

 

Maybe it’s the small details Joonmyun likes and not the general ones like how Sehun laughs every time Joonmyun pronounces a word incorrectly during script-portraying, or how he always drops his lemonade bottle whenever they’re too busy in hysterics on the benches, perhaps even how Sehun always has a milk mustache each time he gulps down his mocha in a few sips. Just small details like that make the days of Joonmyun ten times better and because of this, he feels like the limbs in his body wakes up everyday with a tingling, ready to get moving. And his mouth’s more ready than ever to spew out words and sayings and quotes that he’s read. Along with an extra, maybe, just maybe, an extra simple smile. And maybe his mind’s on the right track to come back home because as much as Joonmyun misses his mind, his mind misses him as well.

 

 

 

--

 

 

 

“I don’t get it. We’re not even that patriotic,” Joonmyun complains because it’s late at night and Sehun’s dragging him out of his own apartment, fifteen minutes till midnight and the strike of a new day.

 

 

 

“I know,” Sehun complies, shrugging almost but he still has a firm grip on Joonmyun’s arm, and Joonmyun sort of likes it because he feels safe. Almost.

 

 

 

They’re both walking down the stairs briskly, and Joonmyun’s just in sweats and a t-shirt while Sehun’s wearing more of a formidable outfit, blazer and dark jeans.

 

 

 

“Hurry, hyung!” Sehun urges, Joonmyun right behind smiling to himself because he’s always liked being called the older one.

 

 

 

The two finally reach the doors, and the wind that hits them almost blows back Joonmyun because the shorter guy’s too weightless, and it’s probably because of how he’s just recently beginning to eat regularly again. Or maybe he’s just weak, but Joonmyun doesn’t like to think of that and everytime he does, Sehun just laughs and stuffs another piece of mocha bread into his mouth, telling him to keep on eating.

 

 

 

And the skies pretty with dews embroidered like itty bitty stars and how the navy hue just dooms over them, drenching something dark over the two figures standing against the world. Or maybe how the trees sway so easily with the wind, and how the leaves just crunch against the tender barks and the way the grass is moving in parallel dimensions on the ground, wishing that they could be there forever. Joonmyun enjoys the effulgence and the radiance the night skies bring upon them and he just wishes that he could cherish this memory forever.

 

 

 

Sehun eventually lets go of Joonmyun’s arm, and he pulls something out of his jacket, something that’s too small for Joonmyun to see. But once Sehun dawdles over a few feet and lights it, the small box suddenly sparks and Joonmyun jumps, a few feet at the least and maybe a meter at the most because the crackling noise is frightening, really. The box then breaks apart, and the wrapper comes undone and something flies directly up but Joonmyun can’t see the rest because a body engulfs itself around his own, and he feels warmth and smells coffee and he hears the small breaths Sehun manages to exhale out, mint and cinnamon.

 

 

 

The moment’s too quick and when Sehun tears himself from Joonmyun, the scene’s already set and the sparks had already dissolved a few miles into the sky into something so clustered, but yet too colorful at the same time. It starts from red, bounces against hues of blue, and then shades of green, and maybe a line of pink if he didn’t blink his eyes at that precision, back to red and then it finally fades away, losing its color back to that dark cerulean that Joonmyun loves. His breath is too big, and he doesn’t notice how Sehun’s staring at him, friendlust and wandering in his eyes. Curiosity, implied with adventures that are meant to be travelled.

 

 

 

“July 4th, the only time I ever get to light fireworks without getting in trouble,” Sehun says, the blonde in his hair glowing in the dark and the smile he gives being too happy, because he knows that Joonmyun loves colorful things. “Unfortunately, I only bought one so show’s over!”

 

 

 

But that was enough. Even if it only lasted a few seconds, or maybe how the colors just blistered into prisms of vibes too bluntly, it was well worth it. Joonmyun just stands there, appalled for a few minutes because maybe if he just keeps looking, the colors will come back.

 

 

 

“Sehun,” Joonmyun calls out a few breaths later, and Sehun turns his attention from the falling stars to him.

 

 

 

“Yeah?”

 

 

 

And the hug’s back, except Joonmyun’s the first to initiate it this time.

 

 

 

“Thank you. I haven’t seen fireworks in years. They were banned in Brooklyn because of the pollution and how they caused fires so easily,” Joonmyun says, realizing on how a few pieces of his heart still lingers in those flashing neons.

 

 

 

Sehun chuckles, pulls away from the hug, and just wraps an arm around the shorter’s shoulder.

 

 

 

“No problem.”

 

 

 

“But, Sehun.”

 

 

 

“What?”

 

 

 

“It’s July 28th, not July 4th. You’re twenty-four days late, buddy.”

 

 

 

The sigh that comes out of Sehun’s mouth makes Joonmyun laugh too loudly and Sehun just stands there, flustered. But eventually he gives in and begins laughing along as well, for a while before both of them begin to run back inside the apartments, because the siren’s are loud at nighttime.

 

 

 

--

 

 

 

August isn’t painful at all, and it’s been one of the better months because Joonmyun feels like he’s meeting an old friend along the railroad. Someone he sees everyday in the reflection but has never managed to ever talk to. That one person that he feels like he sees in his dreams every night, but he’s not too sure because dreams are dreams and dreams are meant to stay as dreams. Maybe Joonmyun’s a stranger to himself but now, it feels like they’re becoming the same person with every inch trailing closer every time Joonmyun tries to touch the other person against the mirror.

 

 

 

Every night before he falls asleep, he wonders how far his friendship with Sehun stands at. Or if they’ll ever be like those special friends romanticized on movies and T.V. series, beginning from strangers or even enemies, and then drifting along the ray of acquaintances to best friends, then a couple and finally, married. But before Joonmyun could ever get to those thoughts, something like sleep seems more of an importance at that time and the thought is pushed to the side, along with the other thoughts he’s never meant to comprehend.

 

 

 

--

 

 

 

There’s a day in a short week where Joonmyun’s sitting on the piano ledge, Sehun by his side as he practices something called a sonata, every natural and every flat in the piece just edging to the last of its pitches before turning into something like a chord, or maybe an arpeggio. It’s different playing in a major scale rather than a minor scale. Minors express something that’s always hidden too deep inside of Joonmyun. Something that lies underneath his heart, where all the blood drips too and where all the dark sides lie.

 

 

 

“But hyung, why don’t you try playing in a major scale? It sounds much more happier, and I personally like it more. Maybe a melodic major at that? Might as well go big or go home, right?”

 

 

 

So Joonmyun goes big, and he begins learning on how to play major scales. It’s easy, because there’s always a hand right by his side, dragging his fingers to the corresponding keys and pressing them down with gentleness that’s comparable to the warmth Joonmyun is feeling. The hand’s always there, every key on the way, and every time they press something that sounds wrong, Sehun just laughs it off and corrects his placement.

 

 

 

“It’s been a few years since I’ve actually played piano.”

 

 

 

Joonmyun doesn’t mind it though because it’s an opportunity for Sehun to sing along, creating his own words and improvising on the few lines that he manages to spur out in courage. The way he sings, Joonmyun notices, just sounds like the violins in the symphony and the higher woodwinds along the ensemble whenever they have their own times, delched in solos. And because Joonmyun doesn’t want him to feel alone, he joins in singing and he takes over the higher octave while Sehun takes over the lower, pitches always harmonizing and chords never being strung by something so different. It just feels equanimous, the improv they’re providing with every key pressing down and how the mumbles they start off with is so comical, because hell, they don’t know how to write songs just on the spot. But it’s all worth it, because Joonmyun feels like playing until his fingers are bruised now.

 

 

 

And thus, he learns on how to play a major scale sonata, Beethoven if he’s feeling prestigious but most of the times, just basic Mozart. Sehun doesn’t complain. He just sits there on the righter end of the seat, and he just smiles, sputtering out facts about himself like his two-year relationship anniversary coming up with Luhan, and how Joonmyun’s one of his bestest friends ever, and how he knows that he’ll have a perfect life ahead of graduation.

 

 

 

Joonmyun just smiles at every topic, even if it’s about Luhan because Sehun is just a friend. A very close friend who loves drinks, is very artistic, and owes Joonmyun fifty more smiles, because he’s already done half of his deed in the past few weeks. And though there’s always something small at the bottom of his heart, newly formed like small cells and biggering disease pathogens. He just pushes it aside along with the lost thoughts because a relationship isn’t worth pursuing anymore.

 

 

 

But his mind thinks else wise, because maybe it is. Maybe it is like how his lost mind was worth returning, and how his lost feelings was worth feeling again, and how his life is worth living again.

 

 

 

It’s all probably because of Sehun.

 

--

 

 

 

Random arrays of colors are spread across the oak floor in containers and cans, maybe a drip already drowning onto the wood, seeping underneath and no longer creaking every time a heavy footstep would wander across it. The loft smells like permanent markers and fresh paint because Joonmyun’s decided that he would finally try creating paintings with colors besides black and white. Courtesy of Sehun who thinks that Joonmyun could create something so beautiful, something that’s unexplainable to the public as long as he gives it some other shades.

 

And because Sehun reasons to himself that he had produced the idea, he insists on helping Joonmyun because he likes helping others, especially close others.

 

 

 

So there’s a canvas, white-washed and smelling like the crafts store laying on the floor, flat-down. Both of the boys have white t-shirts on, and Sehun’s already dipping his paintbrush, bristled by the touches of his fingers, into the nearest can he’s opened.

 

 

 

“Wait!” Joonmyun interrupts, stretching his arms across the canvas to prevent Sehun from making any permanent mistakes because honestly, this canvas had costed him a fortune and a raincheck on the next two weeks of coffee outings. He was no in no place of having to buy another one, or maybe even buying enough white-out to cover up the paint. “I’m still not sure on what to paint, yet!”

 

 

 

“Exactly, just paint everywhere and see how it turns out!” Sehun says, excitedly while shrugging. He droops underneath Joonmyun’s arm and before the shorter could’ve done anything to prevent an accident, the sound of a wet splat onto white causes him to cringe and because he cringes so abruptly, his arms lose balance and there’s another splat onto the board, or maybe it’s just his jeans on the shades of burgundy.

 

 

 

According to Sehun though, it’s something funny and he just laughs hysterically while it takes Joonmyun a few bundles of seconds to recognize what had happened. Once he finds the patches of blots of reds and crimsons all over his khaki pockets, it’s not much of an exaggeration of how he screams.

 

 

 

“Sehun!”

 

 

 

The blonde-dyed boy just laughs like a young child, and Joonmyun sees him as that. And on the other side across the canvases, Sehun sees someone else. Someone who he hopes will stay like that forever. But forever’s a long word, and forever’s a contradictory.

 

-

 

 

 

And maybe it’s because of how the painting ends in a disaster but how Sehun promises that he’ll buy a new one for Joonmyun without having to cancel anymore of their coffee dates. Or maybe it’s how they end up entangled, legs over leg and fingers tickling near the sides with Joonmyun laughing with too much teeth and Sehun grinning too widely. Or how the canvas has colors now and even though it isn’t as perfect as the ones he had painted before, Joonmyun loves it because it was done with a friend. And a friend means more than anything to him right now.

 

 

 

But maybe it means more. All of this. Him. Sehun. Maybe they’re meant to be something more, and maybe he just wants to believe that, and he probably does because his feelings are something so unexplainable and indescribable like the final batches of smiles he owes. And his mind always works without him, and the thoughts of him being in a relationship with Sehun is picked up from the lost universes and they’re turned into something more, along the lines of blushes, timid smiles, and late night texts up till five in the morning.

 

 

 

Joonmyun doesn’t want to accept that fact but his heart does and his mind does too and unfortunately, no matter what he says, he’ll always have those feelings in a kempt place.

 

 

 

--

 

 

 

end; where joonmyun learns how to conceal his emotions like a true actor.

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

September’s the beginning of fall and the lemonade stand closes until March, and though Sehun protests against it, Joonmyun promises him that they’ll make their own kind, even if it might not be that same trademark. But it’ll be sweeter, even if it’s more unhealthy. And it’ll be better, and that’s something maybe impossible to say but Joonmyun likes to shoot for the stars now.

 

 

 

Sehun just smiles, that same smile with the same skew towards the right and the same subdue he always gives, and he always thanks his hyung, complimenting him on how perfect of a friend he is.

 

 

 

“Yeah, no problem…” Joonmyun says dismissively, turning around to give Sehun his cup of tea for script-reading but instead, he’s being bashed in the face with something like a cotton t-shirt and that same smell of cinnamon that’s always lingering around whenever they hang out together.

 

 

 

“I like giving hugs,” Sehun would say, arms wrapped around a tiny waist and Joonmyun’s just too surprised to say anything so he just puts down the warm cup onto the counter and he returns the hug, closing his eyes because they’re tired. “You looked you needed one.”

 

 

 

But Joonmyun always likes to think that this would be them, maybe in a few months, something with commitance and something with love in the air, breezing by, but like always, Joonmyun likes to shoot for the stars that are too high in the skies and too far out of this galaxy.

 

 

 

--

 

 

 

His acting gets better and it’s not because of how Sehun helps him every Tuesday with repeating the same lines over and over until they’re phazed with black-and-white fonts in his mind, but how Sehun pushes him to be someone he’s not. And that’s the point of it all. Acting. Someone you’re not. Someone that’s fictional. Someone you love or hate.

 

 

 

“That’s it, Joonmyun! You’re on the right track! Keep on capitulating that character of yours and maybe add your own kind of flair to it!”

 

 

 

Joonmyun just nods aggressively at the comment, and he continues reading through the layers and layers of words and sentences and roles, and something three-dimensional and so vivid overtakes his persona. He becomes an artist in how he moves, and he becomes a renowned pianist with how he says his words, light on the tongue but air-filled with the middles.

 

 

 

The light’s too bright, and the stage becomes dizzy but Joonmyun pushes through because he’s not going to get lost in his perfectionism. He’s not going to get lost in his own sort of perfect delusionality. No, he’s going to keep on going because he’s not holding back anymore as cold-boy Joonmyun.

 

 

 

So he does just that and the words come on by quicker, dizziness gone and faded into the empty air with the particles of surprise and dust in the air. Once he finishes the script, the audience of one person claps and the smile that the two exchange just seeps through Joonmyun and makes him feel more than the sums of his parts, starting from the hollow limbs to every impaled ribs to each single moving muscle in his alive body. The cast claps as well, and he receives a few cheers and hollers from friends (some guys who introduced themselves as Baekhyun and Chanyeol), but none of them go as far as to the silent stranger in the darkness of the chairs who’s just clapping.

 

 

 

And after the class ends, Sehun takes him out with two bottles of homemade lemonade in his hands and they sit at that same bench as they always have, arm around a shoulder and head leaning against a shoulder because one’s tired from staying up late and the other one’s still delved into perfection, every morph he thinks being too graceful. But as much acting skills that Joonmyun could ever learn and of all the faces he can pull off with his egos, his identities, and his superegos, nothing will ever cover up the feelings he has growing for the boy right next to him. Not his conscious. Not his heart. And definitely not his mind.

 

 

 

--

 

 

 

 

But September’s mild, and the month always ends quickly with nothing memorable like how they always end months with. The usual sleepovers and getaways in dark alleyways and small remarks. No, it ends with autumn dropping in, and summer leaving its final touches and its last attempts of leaving happy memories behind. And Joonmyun thinks that it has done its job perfectly, and maybe even left a few bad memories behind from last winter.

 

 

 

Two weeks in, and school’s become a burden as always again, and as much as Joonmyun wants him to, Sehun’s unable to come over for most of the weekdays, slipping in maybe a quick visit on a Saturday if possible and maybe a coffee date once in a while. Some days it’s his dates with Luhan, and maybe one of the weekdays involve him going to volunteer at a writer’s convention for young, aspiring tweens who want to become authors and express life with words like Sehun, or maybe he’s just too busy with homework altogether. Nonetheless, Joonmyun just forges a smile that he’s learned to perfect through the statures of acting, and he just tells him that it’s alright.

 

 

 

And it really is. Or he likes to say it is at least, because Joonmyun forgets what it’s like to be “clingy” or “too attached” to someone. Partial fault because he’s too engulfed in some sort of feeling that compares to a hug, whether it’d being suffocating or too loose irrelevant because he’s just swallowing in what’s in front of him with a soft, navy-blue jacket and that subdued smile that should be something of its own kind because Joonmyun just loves it so damn much.

 

 

 

This is all Joonmyun thinks about for the next few weeks. Where he’s at, and where he wants to go because the possibilities are endless but maybe they’re limited, because Sehun’s not an open world. He’s a map with tacks all over him because there’s specific places they can’t venture too, like the kisses Joonmyun wants to feel over his face, and the hugs he wants to see happen the way they do with Luhan, and just the loveliness of it all. Frets, and grins and the courtships of how long they last till their death, maybe.

 

 

 

But no, because Sehun is not a map of the world. He’s a map of the skies, and their constellations along with all the stars pinpointed and tacked. Because some stars are owned, and the constellations always change and disappears, and the skies are too impossible to reach.

 

 

 

Just like the thoughts of something further with Sehun.

 

 

 

--

 

 

 

Three weeks travel by, and the ends of September isn’t even something to fathom of. It’s just with the leaves and how they crunch like bones breaking whenever someone walks over a bunch, or the cardigans that Joonmyun pulls out again for the season, and maybe the harder subjects he has to take because he’s apparently become too advanced for the current acting class he’s in.

 

 

 

His friendship with Sehun’s on a string now, and both ends are pulling as hard as they can because Joonmyun’s reaching too high with his hands, and he forgets about his feet so he falls. And Sehun’s too focused on another universe, full of secrets and lies he dances through. But no matter what, the two always manage to keep the string against a wall, because Sehun still takes Joonmyun out for coffee on the days where their lips are too cold and chapped. And Joonmyun still invites Sehun over for practicing out his new scripts, because he knows Sehun loves being the villain. And yes, they still love each other, but maybe not love because love’s a strong word. Too strong of a word, really.

 

 

 

--

 

 

 

But eventually, all humans reach their points and even though some don’t ever manage to express their true feelings for the person they absolutely adore, Joonmyun doesn’t want to be one of them. He doesn’t want to grow up, and have to live with the memories of having someone he loved, but was always too scared to confess. Because that just makes him seem weak, and he’s not weak. He’s not a weak person, he’s not a weak artist, and he’s most definitely not a weak actor. The word, weak, itself is rather subjective to his likings and he would do anything to destroy the possible beings and origins of it. But maybe it’s because everytime he thinks of the word, he can’t help but always correlates it to himself. And how he’s scared of what’ll happen.

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

A day in November, a break where the students begin studying for their finals, and Sehun’s position is along the walls the two managed to paint a mint color, because Sehun thinks that Joonmyun’s apartment was too bland and Joonmyun was too far away to even reject the offer so now it’s green, like the peppermints that they’ve been making in the kitchen, all from hand and crafts.

 

 

 

They’re both reading off definitions of pretty words to each other, and there really doesn’t need to be a reason for why they’re doing. But it’s probably because Joonmyun fascinates himself with words too easily and Sehun just loves whenever Joonmyun’s excited for any sort of topic, whether it’d be reciting Shakespeare quotes from the tops of ones memory way back in primary school, or how he thinks the clarinets just sound like angels in the skies within wind ensembles, or how Joonmyun just loves the dimples that Sehun forces to show whenever they’re busy smiling at each other, a competition that deems itself for something too immature.

 

 

 

“Jocular,” Joonmyun reads from the pamphlet of five-thousand words that’ll “enhance” one’s vocabulary. “Jesting and playful. Basically you, Sehun. And if makes you feel better, it rhymes with muscular! But both are two different meanings.” And the laugh he gives while reading it even surprises himself, because he’s never felt this closer to Sehun and this is the first time he’s actually taken the time to gratify their loving friendship.

 

 

 

Sehun pouts, lips dipped to the right and brows at an angle to intersect and Joonmyun tries his best to look unattended to his attention. “Well you’re hubristic, hyung,” he says, after skimming through the long lists of words that wracks his mind into something like fragments and pieces. “The meaning is, you’re just a very proud person, self-confident and almost conceited?” The look he gives off is triumphant, and he feels like he has frazzled the prodigy on the other side of the bed.  

 

 

 

But Joonmyun just shrugs with his lips slimmed like it was nothing at all. “Well, you know what you are?” he questions, and Sehun hums.

 

 

 

“What am I exactly, hyung?”

 

 

 

“Oh Sehun: an irksome, jejune, and mordant student if I’m so confident. A person who’s annoying, is foul, and maybe just a little disturbing in their own little ways,” Joonmyun says, smiling too brightly at the boy who has his mouth too wide-open.

 

 

 

A few minutes later, seconds if Joonmyun was paying attention, Sehun has the smaller boy pinned against the bed, thighs on both sides of Joonmyun’s waist and an angry look that’s too “jocular” to be genuine.

 

 

 

“What’d you say?” Sehun interrogates, peering his face closer and the smells of peppermint mocha arises from the every word he pronounces with military precision.

 

 

 

Joonmyun shrugs, and his shoulder blades ache because there’s a hand that’s too strong there, but he doesn’t complain anyway because he kind of likes the feeling. “Don’t remember,” he shrugs, dismissively, and just continues laughing away because Sehun intensifies the look he has on, brows furrowing even lower and frowns against a huger frown.

 

 

 

There’s just silence in the air now, and something sounding like the ticks of the clocks going on by, meticulously aching away and taking away of their times and adding onto a list where they’ll all owe the time they lost one day, maybe in a place called heaven but maybe in a cathedral, or maybe even an institution, because that’s where Joonmyun thinks he and Sehun belongs. In an institution, locked away from society and from the world. But it’s not on where they belong, it’s where Joonmyun wishes they belonged.

 

 

 

“Hm,” Sehun huffs and the grip he has, has his fingers turning white and his knuckles a pitch even paler, but he just inches his face closer, and there’s nothing but just their noses touching. And neither of them moves away for a bit. “Is that so?”

 

 

 

And then the moments just pass by too quickly, and Joonmyun wants to remember this forever and stay like this, except maybe he’d be on top and Sehun would just press their bodies together, the materials of fleece onto skin and something caressing the top of his ungelled hair like prickles. But even Joonmyun knows that the wishes he wants are too impossible, so he takes a rocket and flies off to space, off to that one star he’s always had an eye for, and he leans in, eyes closed and steals something of Sehun’s innocence away and leaves his own lips on Sehun’s, a few seconds at the most and this time, he’s not exaggerating.

 

 

 

Quietness is all he hears afterwards, and his eyes are still closed. Then there’s a rustle, and he doesn’t feel the palms against his shoulders anymore and the weight on the bed seems too queasy and cold.

 

 

 

He opens his eyes, and Sehun’s just sitting on the desk chair now, staring at the floor like he’s just murdered a fellow man, a best friend of his, created a monster that was all in his own restraint.

 

 

 

And Joonmyun. He doesn’t even know what to say, because his mind is hiding behind his heart and his heart’s taking all the bullets and even the ricochets it’s deserved just for the adrenaline and the moment they’ve all been waiting for. So he just sighs, eyes peering away.

 

 

 

“U-uh, I’m sorry,” Joonmyun apologizes, too quietly and his heart’s done taking bullets, so his mind’s taking the final shots. “That was...definitely uncalled for--”

 

 

 

“Yeah,” Sehun agrees, and he looks over to see a dazed stranger, one who’s lost in misery and one who awakens everyday in someone’s arm, but he never knows who’s holding him. But Sehun also realizes with the time by his side and a boy with knees up to his heaving chest, that he’s been the person who’s holding Joonmyun together.

 

 

 

Joonmyun almost laughs, and he just feels like clenching up and just bursting into small shards like how the fireworks exploded, or how the paint’s splattered all over the canvases. Everytime he closes his eyes, he just sees nothing but that memory that was a few minutes ago, where their lips just brushed too lightly and maybe pinched in too tightly.

 

 

 

“You should probably go. It’s getting late,” Joonmyun says quietly, eyes boring over the sheets and he sees how where Sehun had sat, leaves a small crease. And that crease dawns over to where he is, against the bedpost in the corner, parallel to that dripping droplet that he still needs to call the landlord for.

 

 

 

“I probably should,” Sehun says, still goddamn quietly, eyes sneaking over to see how Joonmyun’s doing but his heart wrenches him away, and the footsteps he leaves behind leaves an imprint on Joonmyun’s heart, and the wood in his house, and maybe how the house will never feel so full again. Half-empty, almost. “Well, I’ll see you another day, hyung.”

 

 

 

And no words are more painful than that, because Joonmyun knows that Sehun’s straining himself to even say those words.

 

 

 

Because they both know that another day might not be for an eternity. And one end of the string’s already drooping down, sliding to the pits and abysses of where depression lies, oceans and waves just abundant in all.

 

 

 

The door closes with such gentleness, and Joonmyun already feels too much at that, tears forbidden from existing. So he crawls underneath the covers that night, and he flips the blankets to the other side because maybe it’ll feel like Sehun’s right by his side again.

 

 

 

And that night, he tries to sleep but he can’t, because he’s too angry at himself for breaking in so easily. And he’s too frustrated with how the world’s never in his favor, and how it’s always against him. And he’s feeling the colors of morose, because not only did he lose a friend, but he lost his only friend. All because of his immature, daisy feelings that were too out of this world.

 

 

 

If someone asked him if he would relive those moments from the beginning to the end again, he regrets to say but he would say no, because he rather lives in emptiness than oblivion that’s too obvious to only him and himself, only.

 

 

 

--

 

 

 

For the next few days, there’s nothing but silence in the apartment. There’s no coffee dates anymore, and there’s no more random visits at random times in the day, and there’s no more text messages at five in the morning on how the sun’s beginning to rise.

 

 

 

They see each other on the way to classes sometimes, probably Joonmyun’s acting class because they both always walk down the same road that’s always empty. But Joonmyun just ignores him, and pulls something like an actor’s face on, and makes it seem like nothing’s wrong. And it’s partially Sehun’s fault for that, because he’s helped Joonmyun perfect the talent of morphing his emotions into something they aren’t. He’s helped him become an actor’s troupe, and he’s helped him scar his emotions into nothing but just blankness, scars faded, smile put on.

 

 

 

The piece of thread, white and glossy like mint, eventually isn’t held up anymore because there’s now someone too delved into the past, and someone too buried into the future. Time still goes on, unfortunately, and it’ll never stop for mistakes to be fixed. But maybe that’s good, because mistakes are meant to stay as mistakes. And other moments are supposed to be affected by them but sadly, there’s no other moments for the best friends. There’s just around twenty-two more smiles to be given, and a hug, and a last cup of sweet tea in a glass with three cubes of ice.

 

 

 

--

 

 

 

From: Sehun (December 1st)

 

 

 

Hyung? Are you there?

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

From: Sehun (December 2nd)

 

 

 

Hello?

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

From: Sehun (December 3rd)

 

 

 

You haven’t answered any of my text messages! Come on, hyung!

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

From: Sehun (December 7th)

 

 

 

Don’t make me come over. I still have a key, and I’m not afraid to use it!

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

From: Sehun (December 14th)

 

 

 

Joonmyun…

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

From: Sehun (December 16th)

 

 

 

I’m sorry for whatever I’ve done. I really am, but I miss our friendship, hyung. I would do anything to relive the moments we had and look, I’m even typing properly for you! Come on. Please reply back.

 

 

 

--

 

 

 

And the thread isn’t there anymore, because it’s fallen and it’s lost now. Forever, probably.

 

 

 

--

 

 

 

There’s knocks on his doors at nighttime, and Joonmyun hears the muffles and the probable tears from the other side of the door but he still doesn’t answer, because he hates himself for everything he’s done to Sehun and he doesn’t want the younger boy to deal with someone so insecure, and someone who’s such a damnation to themselves. So he doesn’t answer, and he isn’t scared of Sehun using the lone key because he knows Sehun would never. One of the main reasons why Joonmyun’s fallen in love hopelessly with Sehun is because he’s persistent, but he doesn’t ever cross boundaries. Knows his ways around, knows where to stop, knows when to keep on going.

 

 

 

--

 

 

 

Christmas is spent with cups of warm tea, because Joonmyun knows Sehun hates warm tea.

 

 

 

--

 

 

 

New Year’s pathetic, because Joonmyun ends up looking outside his window and he sees the fireworks that look almost too familiar to the ones Sehun had ignited on that one day. That one day that was too good to be true.

 

 

 

--

 

 

 

Time just keeps on going by like a lonesome friend, waving through the windows and making it’s way through the other door. Sehun ends up giving up, because he knows that Joonmyun’s mind is stubborn. But Joonmyun gives up too, because everyday when he wakes up, he ends up losing his sense of colors, starting from how blue the skies are to how green the grasses are and to how yellow the lemon slices are, and eventually it just ends with how red he feels. And how red the blood is against his arm. And how red the stains are on the door, the door where Sehun’s repeatedly slams his fist against every night, usually from five to six because Joonmyun knows that’s when Sehun’s literature class ends. But oh well, right? That’s something he’s learned from Sehun too, but maybe in the wrong way. But that’s okay. Because everything is.

 

 

 

--

 

 

 

February’s lonely. Joonmyun spends Valentine’s Day alone, and he prevents his mind from thinking about what Sehun’s doing at the moment. Probably smothering Luhan with his warm kisses, and those pale lips, and the smokes of air he puffs out because he thinks that they look really funny. But the thoughts finally end around four in the morning, and they’re just replaced by something more physical, and much more dreary like tears. Tears are too overrated though, and they’re too bland so Joonmyun stops and he just stops and he just stops like nothing’s wrong and that tomorrow will be another day, better or not being irrelevant. Because life’s life, and that’s that.

 

 

 

--

 

 

 

And time becomes too tiresome to keep track of, because maybe it’s going too fast and though everyone asks for time to slow down, it just ignores and keeps on waltzing on. But Joonmyun doesn’t care, because life wasn’t worthy of being kept track of anyway. So he lets whatever happens, happen.

 

 

 

That’s okay, though. Everything’s okay. Just ing okay.



 

--

 

 

 

--

 

 

 

F Major, eventually to a note that corresponds to an arpeggio, a scale that’s comprised of harmonizing notes and beautiful chords that always compare to the sounds of clouds. It’s B-flat in no flats, and it’s Joonmyun’s favorite scale to play ever since Sehun’s taught him the twelve major scales, melodic on his favorite ones like this particular one.

 

 

 

His fingers trail against the piano keys so delicately, and his back’s straightened up because the tuxedo he’s wearing seems rather too formal, and he wants his expression to be as well. The smile that’s on his face is half-empty, half-happy, and half-fake because he’s someone who manipulates emotions for themselves but the music’s just too pretty, and Joonmyun feels like everyone in the crowd is on the dits of the jazz room, altos just humming to something so familiar and the children wobbling against the carpet, not even paying attention to the pianist on the stage but that’s okay.  It’s all okay, because Joonmyun isn’t even paying attention to the children, or the adults, or the lights that are blinding him. No, no. He’s paying attention to the lonesome stranger on the edges of November, standing by the double doors with a smile crooked on, half-way there to the right side as always.

 

 

 

He’s remembered, Joonmyun thinks to himself while continuing to play the sonata, a piece by Calliat because he feels like Beethoven and Mozart was too cliche to play in a spring’s recital. He’s remembered about how Joonmyun was rambling on about how he needs to perfect this piece, and how he needs to make sure that it sounds so pretty that even the birds will sing along with it, hopefully in tweets and happy chirps.

 

 

 

“Perfection,” Sehun had said, somewhere back in the beginnings of autumn where there still lied something in between them. Something sacred, and something that was meant to be cherished but was taken for granted. “That’s all you comprise of Joonmyun. And no one will be able to ever take that away from you.”

 

 

 

It’s a lie though, because Sehun’s taken away the perfection from Joonmyun. He’s taken away the colors because hell, he was the one to give Joonmyun the colors to his monotonous life. So his world’s just bland, and the sunlight looks like the moon and the bits of leaves flying through the air just looks like another bite to the dust, and his own skin just looks so deathly pale against the mirror, and the figure who he’s always been, loses something like touch.

 

 

 

There’s a thing like minutes later where he’s outside after bowing down to the amazed crowd, and it’s inevitable avoiding the blonde-washed boy. In fact, Sehun’s just arching outside of the main entrance doors and when Joonmyun walks out, cold air hitting him in the face like a hit, his blazer’s already pushed against the wall and someone’s staring at him too roughly, angry not so much, but maybe just confused, and hurt. Definitely hurt.

 

 

 

It feels like that one night in November, because the palms against his shoulders tense up again but Sehun releases him before anything like before could happen again, and he just stands there, watching Joonmyun with a smile that looks so different from before. This smile just seems sad, and Joonmyun shoots himself for even bearing at the moment.

 

 

 

“Hi,” Sehun says, after an eternity and a few centuries pass by. The voice is croaky, and the pitches are distressing Joonmyun because they’re so out of pitch, and he’s so unused to hearing the boy’s voice since it’s been about two months. Two months of nothing. Or maybe two months of attached feelings still, but just denying because his mind’s so stubborn.

 

 

 

Joonmyun waves, and it feels like he’s forgotten to talk again so he says hi, too quietly though. And he notices how Sehun’s looking frail, dead almost and too-like of a skeleton in his trench coat, hair still styled like it always is. Has it really been that long? Joonmyun’s been taking a different route to acting classes.

 

 

 

“How are you?” Sehun asks, smiling with that distinction that makes it seem like it’s not a smile, and maybe it’s a pitied one. Or sad. Or tired. Or emotionally challenged.

 

 

 

His fists are clenched, and the veins seem too putrid for someone so young. “Never better,” Joonmyun replies, leaning off the brick wall and standing up for his own weight.

 

 

 

The answer hurts Sehun, and maybe goes through his back because it’s just that impaling. “That’s good to hear,” Sehun nods, and the two remain quiet again, sounds of wind against the chilling ice too loud and the murmurs from inside the auditorium too quiet. It’s not a middle-length, but just half-way for both ends.

 

 

 

“Well,” Sehun says, straightening his own frame and sticking his hands into his coat pockets because it’s gotten so, so cold outside. “I’ve just came to see how you did on your recital and I’m not surprised at all. Didn’t know you’d go for Caillat though.” And the laugh he ushers out seems so forcedly dead, and just...just gone.

 

 

 

Joonmyun smiles back, and it’s the one that has his eyes gone, and his lips unevenly pursed out, a few degrees to the left, and few more to the right. “I’m full of surprises,” he says, laughing on the last few words because they felt empty without something garrulous.

 

 

 

“Yeah.”

 

 

 

The wind’s clambering now, and it makes Joonmyun think of the forty-something outings of coffee dates they’ve had together, beginning in the weather that’s too inappropriate for hot chocolate, ending somewhere along freshly-brewed mocha in cold months like these. He brushes the thought aside, and just stares up into the white skies, dazzled with ice sculptures and accompanied by the lonesome stars that are soon thawing out.

 

 

 

“...Well, congratulations on your recital. I guess I’ll be on my way. I’m actually heading back to Angeles tonight to visit my parents for the break so I’ll see you another day, Joonmyun.” The way he says it. It’s just lost against time, and it feels like a barrier that he puts against the two of them. And it feels like it’ll never be there anymore.

 

 

 

“A-alright. Goodbye,” Joonmyun breaths out, and breaths because the cold smoke distances himself from the taller boy who’s walking backwards now, giving a wave and a final smile. One of the last smiles he’ll ever give, and Joonmyun’s angry at Sehun for that. Because Sehun owes Joonmyun nineteen more smiles, the ones they’ve always exchanged in the shops, on that one bench, along the greenhouse that’s now closed, and inside his minty loft but it just stops here.

 

 

 

He almost wants to call out, and tell Sehun to not go, maybe stay in his apartment for a few days to catch up, see what’s going on, see how their lifes been going along, but he doesn’t. Because Joonmyun’s weak, and he’s learned to accept it.

 

 

 

--

 

 

 

The road’s are too slippery the next night, or probably because of how his tears drain out his vision too easily and they happen to look like the snow for the first time, almost. He doesn’t even see the flash, or the screams from behind telling him to slow down, because he’s too focused on relieving the final moments of where Joonmyun had said bye to him.

 

 

 

He’s too clung onto the laughs Joonmyun manages to give him, with how they’re so lovely and how they’re comparable to the daffodils in the greenhouse.

 

 

 

And he’s too focused onto the future, somewhere far away that’s not in the present. Somewhere that he always thinks about, because he’s too scared of thinking of how he and Joonmyun would live out the present so he forwards himself a bit too far.

 

 

 

But most of all, he’s just living in regret because he’s managed to lost the most important person in his life. Someone who he gives his colors to. Someone who always spends their times with him. Someone who he knows will always be by his side, no matter what.

 

 

 

The memories just drench on by like a scrapbook too quickly, and he doesn’t want that. Sehun doesn’t want that at all. He wants the pages to slow down, maybe give him a few hours to just stare at Joonmyun’s face. Maybe give him a few minutes to just run over to Joonmyun’s apartment to laugh over their times together. Maybe just give him a few seconds to just remember back to that one day. But there’s no choice, because time goes on for someone who’s too delved into the past, and especially for someone who’s too buried into the future.

 

 

 

--

 

 

 

Everything just blurs out too quickly and the motions are just so rugged with how Joonmyun rushes to his car and drives so far. It begins with a phone call from someone with such an unlovely voice in the middle of the night, a night where Sehun’s not banging on the door, begging for Joonmyun to let him in. And then there’s a few words that slits the thoughts of the skies falling, and how the walls are crumbling, and how someone’s not coming home anymore. Someone who has lost their life in a terrible car accident. So Joonmyun just sits up in bed, eyes cringing near tears but resisting. It’s ironic, Joonmyun notices while driving at sixty miles per hour on the highway. He’s managed to have everything crumble, but he’s still not crying. Scornful bites on his lips too hard, blood on the inside but he just it all down. Just ignores the wallowing pains and the ices that sleet so easily and just keeps on drying.

 

 

 

Joonmyun know’s he’s arrived once he sees the flashing lights, and the ambulance in the distance, smoke arising and combining with the cold air that’s frozen along the sky-lines. The police officers stop him and tell him to go home, but he just pushes through, and it feels so unrealistic and it’s like all of this is just a nightmare. And he knows how it compares to the novels on his lonesome bookshelves now, because everything feels like a dream and maybe that when he wakes up, Sehun will still be in his apartment a few miles away and everything will still be fine. But even a small part of Joonmyun’s stubborn, oh so stubborn mind, tells him elsewise that this isn’t a dream. And that this is reality, and Sehun’s where his reality meets his dreams.

 

 

 

The nurses see Joonmyun, and they look so pitied, and they make it seem like this is a family member, maybe his long-lost brother or a cousin that’s been inseparable since birth, but no. Kim Joonmyun’s just a horrible, horrible person who’s let someone go. Someone so important in his life, and someone who’s so easily shattered because in the end, everyone’s just a human with feelings, losing pieces of themselves to form someone else.

 

 

 

And then he sees the limp body on the stretcher, and the tears ache even harder to just drip down, just a single drip but he doesn’t let it do that because he’s still lost in the delusions of everything being a mere dream. It’s just a bad nightmare, Joonmyun tells himself as he holds the cold, wimp body in his wary arms. But what if Sehun awoke just to be in Joonmyun’s arms knowing that their tragedy was merely a dream, or is that what they call nightmares?

 

 

 

The shock just gets to him, and the paramedics let him cling onto Sehun’s bloody arm, because everyone knows that the boy who’s lying on the stretcher, pale lips and eyes closed in goneness has no chance of living anymore. And that the streams of crimson down his forehead is just wiped away by Joonmyun’s jacket, and he just keeps on plastering kisses over his cheeks, over his neck, over his forehead, and along the thimbles of Sehun’s lifeless body. Nineteen, or even more because now Sehun owes him even more kisses, and Joonmyun’s just too lost in the numbers.

 

 

 

Now if someone would ask him if he would relive the moments again, for maybe one last time for the hoorahs and the kicks, he would say yes. Because he would go through all that again, and prevent Sehun from going home that night to visit his parents. Maybe invite him out for a cup of mocha. Probably let him sleep over at his place for a few nights before the ice thaws out on the roads. Partially because he wants Sehun to be able to live on his life, and partially because he sort of wants to fix their broken friendship, mend it all together with a piece of string, just hug it out because now, it’ll never happen.

 

 

 

But it’s not possible, because time is still going on and Joonmyun hates himself so much. Just so much and he regrets every word he’s held back ever since November, and all those text messages he’s deleted because he knows they’re from someone who’s too persistent, but knows to not cross boundaries.

 

 

 

So he just takes the few minutes he has left before being escorted home, and he just cries, coos at Sehun on how everything will be alright and when he gets better, they’ll be able to read scripts again and they’ll live till the lemonade stand opens again and how the green garden will have new flowers and how Joonmyun hates him for being so careless, and how Sehun will just be his best friend, forever.

 

 

 

Just forever. A word that’s too huge, but now Joonmyun’s willing to promise on it.

 

 

 

--

 

 

 

Months are like pages, and Joonmyun titles the book of his own life something like misery for the prologue, and when the chapters ascend, it just feels like etched words in ink blots over white-washed papers, his own self rambling for too long. Sentences drowning on and on, and the edges being so rough from being turned too much, that they cut whoever’s fingers decide to keep on going, like thorns almost on fresh roses in the middle of bushes. But you just keep on going, because you want to know what lies at the other end.

 

 

 

A week later, and his death is seemed as something so accidental and maybe Joonmyun cries, but he doesn’t let anyone see because there is no one else to see. He’s just bundled up under covers, and fault is just catapulting him into somewhere far.

 

 

 

It almost feels like it’s just a dream still, and Joonmyun denies the fact that Sehun had gotten into a car accident, roads too slippery and too frozen for any conditions. He thinks that every morning when he wakes up and he checks his phone, there will always be those unread texts and how every night, there’ll always be a banging on the door. He doesn’t want to accept anything, and he’s not at fault for it because he just wants to walk down that sidewalk and see the blonde-bleached boy, smiling with that subdued smile at him. He just wants to be able to flip through the pages of his novels, and look over to see Sehun studying so intently for literature because the boy’s had a future of being an author with his enhancive vocabulary and his too perfect of grammar. He just wants another hug, smells of mocha and cinnamon too gone and maybe replaced with the smells of outside, and nature, and snow, and just ice all mixed into something that’ll never be describable. Joonmyun wants too much, and he’ll never get it because he’s reached too far and he fell down hard.

 

 

 

He skips his classes for weeks, and he ignores the calls he gets from Baekhyun or Kyungsoo because Sehun was the one to introduce him to the two. He plays music that has too many piano solos and too little of major chords because he feels like dying and finding himself in another world of music. And he reads novels that always ends with a character dying because he wants to imagine himself in that spot, instead of Sehun because at least Sehun had a future to attend to. Joonmyun just has a past that he’s too lodged into.

 

 

 

The world stops in March, a few weeks after and it just stays there with cores stilled too still and hearts from beats to nothing. The tree’s grow cold, and they wither away with the sounds of birds above, crying too loudly because they know the pain Joonmyun’s going through. The coffee-shop closes down for a bit, because they’re going under renovation and it’s okay, because Joonmyun wasn’t planning on going to the shop anyway because the last time he did, the owner asked him where Sehun was but he just shrugged and said that Sehun was going to be gone for a long time. Maybe too long to count and maybe too painful for even remembering. But even when a world stops, time is still an antagonist and it still continues on, taking moments and memories that were meant to be and replacing them with emptiness that’ll stay for too long. Just too long.

 

 

--

 


 

Joonmyun’s world almost ends in April, too long of time passed by and a funeral that was never attended to. His mind’s still with him, but his heart’s still in emergency, still recovering from the cold times in November but not ever getting better and he doesn’t want it to get better so he does something else.

 


 

The day’s three weeks in, and it’s sad because spring was so excited to bloom this year but maybe Joonmyun will never see it. He’s against the wall, that same position he always sits with Sehun, and where they always recite Shakespeare quotes, poems, and maybe even plays. But he has a bottle in his hand, because he’s been living in a train that only goes backwards, and never forward because the past is just someone who never wants to leave his life. And maybe if he takes a few tablets, just a few over ten or twenty, then the train will finally be able to move forward, and he’ll finally see someone at the station who’s always been waiting for him.

 


 

The memories are scattered along the walls now, and Joonmyun takes a final look at each and every one of them, just a peek because he doesn’t want to get too lost within the smiles and the looks.

 


 

There’s one of the two in the early spring, somewhere in May, holding two bottles of Hubert’s Lemonade on that bench that no one ever goes to now and it’s probably just rusted with dust and stardust that’s from the skies above.

 


 

And then there’s another polaroid of the friends in June, walking down that same sidewalk because it’s raining and Joonmyun needs to get to his acting classes on time but Sehun insists on taking a picture.

 


 

Oh, and Joonmyun doesn’t forget the one in July because it’s a picture of Sehun lighting something on fire, and there’s a parallel one with the fireworks too bright and the smiles too.

 


 

Tears seem too cliche, so he tries to hold it in but car accidents are also cliche, and he just wishes there was no such thing possible. He wishes that maybe whenever Sehun was driving, he’d just be a little bit more careful and maybe this would’ve never happened. But what’s happened, happened and there’s nothing he can do..

 


 

August has a snapshot of the two, camera on the piano and fingers lost along the keys. Joonmyun remembers it clearly, because that was the day he’s learned to play F Major, his favorite scale and it was all because of someone named Sehun, bones and mantles from the west coast and origination with a smile always on.

 


 

Then there’s September, and it’s a cozy day because Joonmyun’s wearing Sehun’s navy-blue hoodie and his favorite pair of sweats, and they’re just both lying on Joonmyun’s bed, the one he’s sitting on right now with stacks of papers on both of their knees but they didn’t move an inch, Joonmyun remembers, albeit the light brushes. It was a sad play that day, because all the characters in the play died and so Sehun had to comfort Joonmyun by just hugging him, hugging him so hard that Joonmyun feels like it’ll never end but it does, and it does regretfully with tears and sobs that are managing as choked cries now.

 


 

And October’s joyful, because Joonmyun’s standing with Sehun right by his side, a painting behind them in somewhere labelled as the Front Hallway where all the prestigious students have their paintings put up for recognition. But it wasn’t prestigious. It was made with a few laughs, and just splatters at each other in youthful ways. But it was meaningful, and so was the smile that’s on the painting. And so was the smile that’s on their faces, and the shades of colors all scratched across their faces. Comical, Joonmyun thinks, how something so small and so little-timed could have such an impact. Just like Sehun.

 


 

But then it stops, and Joonmyun’s so ing frustrated by that because his hand turns a pale of white like the sky. There’s no more shots, and no more memories to look at because--oh, it’s all gone. And it seems like a story that was too good to be true, and how it just stops in the middle of a sentence because the author’s drowning in his own words, his own creations, and his own wallow ways of life. Because Joonmyun thinks that stories are for the satisfactions of a world that he’ll never be able to venture into, a happy ever ending he’ll never enjoy because life takes a whirl for him, and a page that’s ripped out at the end of the book.

 


 

So he turns back to the pills of antidepressants and they say don’t take more than one a day, but his hand has a few bunches. And he raises them, oh, he just raises them to his mouth, hands not even trembling and bunches of colors all sprawled across, veins protruding from blue, but it looks morbid. He raises his hand even further, few inches from his mouth by now, hoping for something that’ll never happen. Then he finally But before he could’ve just stuffed them all in his mouth, and feel the last moments of his life end, there’s a hand that seems too soft and too much of moisturizer stopping him, a mouth screaming stop.

 


 

Joonmyun doesn’t recognize the tears that blur everything out, and just smooths the colors into something of green, minty green because that’s the color of his wallpaper.

 


 

“Don’t do it,” the voice cries, desperately, and it sounds like Sehun with how he croaks on the most desperate words and how he begs so easily. And how he gets everything he wants, because Joonmyun isn’t going to be the one who ignores him, so Joonmyun stops and Luhan just seems too red-eyed, and too complex.

 


 

Shallow breaths, and classical music still playing in the background of thin cornets, pianos and songs dedicated to the deceased. “Don’t do it,” Luhan repeats, and his cardigan seems too loose and his hair is too doused in a color that’s like brunette.

 


 

Joonmyun’s just feels the tears on their ends, falling onto the pills and he just gives up, dropping the assorted colors of pills onto the bed and just feeling his chest fill up of fatigue, grief, morbidance, and depression. He drops down and falls into Luhan’s lap, with his arms just against each other and his wrists against the forehead, and it’s still all a nightmare but he’s waking up to a reality that’ll never ascend into a fantasy.

 


 

“It’s okay,” Luhan says, softly, and it’s a lie because it’ll never be okay. Because the love of Joonmyun’s life is gone, and he blames himself for Sehun’s death, and he blames himself for being such an , and he blames himself for being so stubborn because he’s pushed away too many people but for now, he’s not going to push away Luhan.

 


 

“He would’ve never wanted you to do this, Joonmyun. Sehun’s a patient guy, he’s so patient and he’ll take the years to wait for you and once you see him from the other side, it’ll all be worth it but don’t do this. Don’t ever do this. Don’t ever take a shortcut of time,” Luhan wallows, and his words seem so hollow with something missing inside because everyone’s dying on the inside. Even the cuts and the slits on Joonmyun’s wrists seem invisible, because it doesn’t matter if the wounds are physical or imaginary because in the end, they’re all still wounds and they’re all still something of humans.

 


 

He’s still crying, and maybe the other one begins to cry and they’re just against the wall, Luhan repeatedly slamming his head against the wall and Joonmyun just clenching up into smallness, and just lying there for what seems to be hours, and probably is because Joonmyun hates exaggerating now. It just ruins what he has in the presence.

 


 

“T-there was just so many conversations we’ve never got to had…” Joonmyun says, and it’s true because they planned on travelling the world together, a camera in Sehun’s hand and bottles of lemon water, pre-heated coffee, and patches of tea in their backpacks but it’ll never happen now.

 


 

“I know, just take as long as you need,” Luhan says, brushing his trembling fingers along Joonmyun’s dark hair, shades of sepia just seeming too grey and Luhan’s sorry for Joonmyun, so sorry for him because he knows that he had bigger dreams, and now his dreams are nothing but just dreams that’ll stay as dreams forever.

 


 

So they stay like that for hours, a head on a lap till the sun goes down and the moon fades away into the skies, and after a time past midnight where the bedroom is still dark, nothing but dewy colors streaming in and is refracting into quietness, Joonmyun breaks in, and his voice seems sore as well as his throat, and his heart, and his mind.


 

 

“Were you and Sehun planning on getting married?” he asks, eyes closed and mind wondering if Luhan was still awake because the past two hours have been quiet, shallow breaths and eyes drooping into the distance, dying once the drip falls into the bucket.

 


 

The boy holding the other one is surprised, because he’s never been asked such a blunt question before. But he just looks down at Joonmyun, and he just continues brushing at the brown strands, maybe not hesitant to tell him the truth and maybe hesitant, because he doesn’t want to crash down anymore worlds. Because if anything he’s found out, it’s that in the durations of minutes and hours and months of misery, he discovers that world’s are easily broken and they’re just as fragile as human beings, themselves.

 


 

“No,” he begins, heads with cracks and skulls feeling too tired as his eyes drift underneath the window panes. “Me and Sehun broke up in December, a few weeks before his accident,” and his words are so quiet but so gentle, and so calm like nothing’s wrong.

 


 

“Hm,” Joonmyun hums, and he moves his arms because they’re so sore now. Nothing pangs at him anymore, and everything just feels static, a road that never ends on the highway. “Why is that, Luhan? Why’d you guys break up?” Maybe he wants to know, and maybe he doesn’t want to know but it’s too late.

 


 

And the time of silence where Luhan’s thinking just seems rather comfortable now and Joonmyun swears he can hear the banging against the front door, but maybe it’s just his imagination because his mind’s not very trustworthy anymore.

 


 

Luhan sighs. “You know, Joonmyun, it’s kind of weird.”

 


 

The broken boy turns around, moves a little over the bed and turns to face Luhan who looks tired, bags underneath eyes and hair too dispersed with the dust that’s lingering. He watches as Luhan crosses his arms so wimpy, and then he feels the dried tears on his face.

 


 

“Sehun’s known for having that distinct personality. I’m sure you’ve realized that over the months. And well, it wasn’t there for me anymore after summer. Whenever I gave him hugs or kisses or goodbyes on the phone, it just seemed different after a while. My boyfriend was someone else, and eventually, I realized that maybe our relationship wasn’t meant to be. He was always talking about you, and he was always rambling on about what a cool hyung you are, and how you’ll always be his best friends. And the weird thing is, he would always follow those compliments with an I love you for me.”

 


 

Luhan then laughs, and it’s a laugh that makes him reminiscence the moments, maybe even cry on the inside. And everytime he does, Joonmyun just feels a shot to his head, equivalence of pain and shock because their break-up was probably because of Joonmyun’s fault.

 


 

“He was being held back by someone, and his undeniable love was behind forced back into lost looks and just a dazed Sehun. And I couldn’t take it anymore, because I don’t ever want to hold him back from his true feelings. So I broke up with him, and I kind of set him free because I knew that his other half was with you, and your other half was with him.”

 


 

The moments finally stop, and the wheels and the churns of the world is finally moving along again, tears too cliche as always so Joonmyun just holds them back, but a soft shade of indigo maybe coming back. Joonmyun’s favorite. Mint green finally recognizable again, hue too pretty.

 


 

“I always get asked, why did I break up with him? But you know what I always say. I always say I didn’t break up with him because I saw him with you. I always said that I broke up with him because he was being held back by me, and I’m in no position to be that person who holds other people back. And now, because of all of this and everything that’s happened, if someone were to ask me if it was worth it, I’d still say yes because the part that’s he lost like for say his life, and his colors, and his half-side, and his smiles. It’s all in you Joonmyun. And yeah, his battle is over but his life isn’t because you’re the one who’s holding it all together. So do me a favor, and never do what you did this afternoon again, because your other half isn’t alive anymore to take it all in and so all that passion, and all that impacts and happiness, and joy? It’ll just go to waste, and that won’t be efficient because this world needs more people like you two.”

 


 

And maybe Luhan isn’t as bad as he seems, and maybe Joonmyun was jealous for no reason because Luhan’s just a person who has feelings, but he’s also a person who puts himself behind others because he knows what’s true when he sees it.

 


 

So Joonmyun just lies there, and he’s quiet because something seems right for once. But he doesn’t say it, because his words are nothing to bring justice of his thoughts. But his heart is, and his mind, maybe so. But maybe.



 

--

 


 

Time goes on by like always, but it slows down for Joonmyun because happiness can only go by so quickly.

 


 

--

 


 

epilogue; where Joonmyun’s finally a human being. a true one.

 


 

-

 


 

Spring’s beautiful, Joonmyun notices. How the trees are given life again and how they dance with such plies, and how the weather’s just so perfect with the seagulls so happy, or maybe just how the world’s so colorful now. Whatever it is, Joonmyun learns to love it and he learns to embrace life with how he acts with such passion now, wearing dainty costumes and speaking in such funny accents that he knows Sehun would’ve loved. But he also learns of how to play music, and how to leave pieces of himself with the final notes. And, for the painting that he’s painted of him and Sehun, he’ll never enter it into an entry because he knows it’ll never win, but he’ll always leave it on the wall that’s near the old drip that’s finally been fixed, courtesy of Luhan.

 


 

And life isn’t perfect, no. In fact, life is far from perfect, but it’s enjoyable because of the impacts people leave behind, and how there’s always going to be heartbreaks everyday but on also how there will always be new friendships, and new relationships, and new successes and just new things waiting to be unveiled. But life is supposed to be like that, and because of Sehun, Joonmyun’s finally learned of how it works and maybe he’ll finally move on, move on to where reality ascends into a fantasy and where the daffodils will finally stop mocking him, because they see how happy he is and no matter what, they won’t be able to take it away from him.

 


 

--

 


 

It’s a rainy day, somewhere in May and Joonmyun’s sitting on the bench alone, an umbrella held up by his two legs. He thinks it’s finally time, and so he puts down the bottle of Hubert’s Lemonade and he opens up his phone, ignoring the cries of the gulls and the sound of university students from behind laughing too crazily.

 


 

And it takes time to think of a response, because this’ll be the last time he’ll ever do something like this, but it doesn’t because the words just pour from the lonesome months and everything just comes along the way, just like how Sehun did and just like how life does.

 

 

 

From: Joonmyun (1)

 


 

Hey there, Sehun. How are you doing? It’s been forever since I’ve seen you and it’s been forever since I talked to you but you know, I think it’s finally about time I talk to you because ya know, it’s been months since I’d reply to your last text, hehe. But here I am!

 

It’s really humid today, and it’s May now, three months since I last seen you. I have a bottle of Hubert’s Lemonade on the ground, and guess what? It’s Pink Lemonade, because you know how I always love that flavor, right?

 


 

Haha, yeah I know you do. But...in all honesty, I wanted to thank you, Oh Sehun. I wanted to thank you for a lot of things, and this text has a word limit so I’ll try to keep it short but here it is.

 

I want to thank you for teaching me the ways of life, and teaching me on how to live and how to embrace colors. You don’t know how much of an impact you’ve left on me, and you don’t know how much you changed my life but I wish you were here so I could show you how grateful I am.

 


 

Life was rough for me when I first transferred here since I was dealing with a breakup, and family issues, and economical problems with my funds but because of you, Sehun, you made me feel more than the sums of my parts and I’ve never felt anything like that. You brought me up to the skies, and you dropped me so far down, before just catching me again. You were the colors, while I was the empty page and god damn, I’d be lying so hard to myself if I said I didn’t miss you so much.

 


 

But ’s gonna happen because that’s life and I’ve learned to enjoy the better things in life, like how July 28th will always be the day where I light fireworks, and how I’ll always buy two bottles of lemonade, because I know you’ll always want some, and how we’ll always read Caillat together, even if you’re not physically there because I can still hear the lines you always read in my mind.


 

 

But yeah. So this is it, I guess. The limit’s getting closer, so here’s where I’ll stop then. Until we see each other again, I guess we’ll just both be half-empty with the other half of us somewhere else, maybe far away or maybe too close. But I know that it’ll all be worth it, every single second, once I see you again and we’ll finally be able to travel the world, maybe invisible, haha. How cool would that be?

 


 

Well, anyway, I’m going to go now. I’m meeting up with Luhan and Kyungsoo for the piano recitals, and the piece I’m playing is Beethoven. Your favorite, right? Damn right, it is you little bastard.

 


 

Haha, well, I’ll see you. Bye, Sehun!


 

 

p.s., you owe me a lot of smiles and a lot of coffee once I see you again.

 


 

-

 


 

And whenever Joonmyun unblocks Sehun’s number, there’s still one text left waiting for him, unread. He opens it.

 


 

-



 

From: Sehun (January)

 

I love you, Joonmyun and I’m sorry I never got to say that.

 


 

-

 


 

So he takes the moment, and goes back to add a small message.

 


 

-

 


 

From Joonmyun (2) (May)

 


 

I love you too, Sehun, and I always will.

 


 

-

 


 

And then Joonmyun presses send, fingers maybe too cold and maybe trembling too much but he presses it, and it’ll probably never make it to Sehun’s phone, but that’s okay. It really is, because there’s too much in life for Joonmyun to complain. Too much like that one guy who was always too tall, and was too far up into the skies where the stars and heavens lie, and was too lovely with a name like Sehun. But Joonmyun will do whatever it takes to be that other half that Sehun’s always needed, even if it means being half-empty for a long time because he’ll always be half-empty, with that other half of him somewhere else, maybe too far away or maybe right in front of his eyes.

 


 

And no matter how long it takes to reach the stars, Joonmyun will always try because forever was a huge word, but he’s managed to accomplished that. So maybe, just maybe, it’ll all be okay.

 


 

-

 


 

And time goes on by for someone who’s no longer delved into the past and for someone who’s far from the future now.

 


 

I love you, Sehun.

 


 

--

 


 

i tried my best ;_; and i just feel like this is 27000 words of nothing

sorry for reading this piece of trash but hopefully you enjoyed it oh look it's 3:28 AM goodnight ;-;

 

 


 

 

oh look, an alternative ending + extended scenes. FEED YOUR FEELS BC I FELT SO BAD AND I HATED MYSELF TOO



 

half-filled;

 

 

F Major, eventually to a note that corresponds to an arpeggio, a scale that’s comprised of harmonizing notes and beautiful chords that always compare to the sounds of clouds. It’s B-flat in no flats, and it’s Joonmyun’s favorite scale to play ever since Sehun’s taught him the twelve major scales, melodic on his favorite ones like this particular one.

 


 

His fingers trail against the piano keys so delicately, and his back’s straightened up because the tuxedo he’s wearing seems rather too formal, and he wants his expression to be as well. The smile that’s on his face is half-empty, half-happy, and half-fake because he’s someone who manipulates emotions for themselves but the music’s just too pretty, and Joonmyun feels like everyone in the crowd is on the dits of the jazz room, altos just humming to something so familiar and the children wobbling against the carpet, not even paying attention to the pianist on the stage but that’s okay.  It’s all okay, because Joonmyun isn’t even paying attention to the children, or the adults, or the lights that are blinding him. No, no. He’s paying attention to the lonesome stranger on the edges of November, standing by the double doors with a smile crooked on, half-way there to the right side as always.

 


 

He’s remembered, Joonmyun thinks to himself while continuing to play the sonata, a piece by Calliat because he feels like Beethoven and Mozart was too cliche to play in a spring’s recital. He’s remembered about how Joonmyun was rambling on about how he needs to perfect this piece, and how he needs to make sure that it sounds so pretty that even the birds will sing along with it, hopefully in tweets and happy chirps.

 


 

“Perfection,” Sehun had said, somewhere back in the beginnings of autumn where there still lied something in between them. Something sacred, and something that was meant to be cherished but was taken for granted. “That’s all you comprise of Joonmyun. And no one will be able to ever take that away from you.”


 

 

It’s a lie though, because Sehun’s taken away the perfection from Joonmyun. He’s taken away the colors because hell, he was the one to give Joonmyun the colors to his monotonous life. So his world’s just bland, and the sunlight looks like the moon and the bits of leaves flying through the air just looks like another bite to the dust, and his own skin just looks so deathly pale against the mirror, and the figure who he’s always been, loses something like touch.

 


 

There’s a thing like minutes later where he’s outside after bowing down to the amazed crowd, and it’s inevitable avoiding the blonde-washed boy. In fact, Sehun’s just arching outside of the main entrance doors and when Joonmyun walks out, cold air hitting him in the face like a hit, his blazer’s already pushed against the wall and someone’s staring at him too roughly, angry not so much, but maybe just confused, and hurt. Definitely hurt.

 


 

It feels like that one night in November, because the palms against his shoulders tense up again but Sehun releases him before anything like before could happen again, and he just stands there, watching Joonmyun with a smile that looks so different from before. This smile just seems sad, and Joonmyun shoots himself for even bearing at the moment.

 


 

“Hi,” Sehun says, after an eternity and a few centuries pass by. The voice is croaky, and the pitches are distressing Joonmyun because they’re so out of pitch, and he’s so unused to hearing the boy’s voice since it’s been about two months. Two months of nothing. Or maybe two months of attached feelings still, but just denying because his mind’s so stubborn.

 


 

Joonmyun waves, and it feels like he’s forgotten to talk again so he says hi, too quietly though. And he notices how Sehun’s looking frail, dead almost and too-like of a skeleton in his trench coat, hair still styled like it always is. Has it really been that long? Joonmyun’s been taking a different route to acting classes.

 


 

“How are you?” Sehun asks, smiling with that distinction that makes it seem like it’s not a smile, and maybe it’s a pitied one. Or sad. Or tired. Or emotionally challenged.

 


 

His fists are clenched, and the veins seem too putrid for someone so young. “Never better,” Joonmyun replies, leaning off the brick wall and standing up for his own weight.

 


 

The answer hurts Sehun, and maybe goes through his back because it’s just that impaling. “That’s good to hear,” Sehun nods, and the two remain quiet again, sounds of wind against the chilling ice too loud and the murmurs from inside the auditorium too quiet. It’s not a middle-length, but just half-way for both ends.

 


 

“Well,” Sehun says, straightening his own frame and sticking his hands into his coat pockets because it’s gotten so, so cold outside. “I’ve just came to see how you did on your recital and I’m not surprised at all. Didn’t know you’d go for Caillat though.” And the laugh he ushers out seems so forcedly dead, and just...just gone.

 


 

Joonmyun smiles back, and it’s the one that has his eyes gone, and his lips unevenly pursed out, a few degrees to the left, and few more to the right. “I’m full of surprises,” he says, laughing on the last few words because they felt empty without something garrulous.

 


 

“Yeah, you are.”

 


 

The wind’s clambering now, and it makes Joonmyun think of the forty-something outings of coffee dates they’ve had together, beginning in the weather that’s too inappropriate for hot chocolate, ending somewhere along freshly-brewed mocha in cold months like these. He brushes the thought aside, and just stares up into the white skies, dazzled with ice sculptures and accompanied by the lonesome stars that are soon thawing out.

 


 

“...Well, congratulations on your recital. I guess I’ll be on my way. I’m actually heading back to Angeles tonight to visit my parents for the break so I’ll see you another day, Joonmyun.” The way he says it. It’s just lost against time, and it feels like a barrier that he puts against the two of them. And it feels like it’ll never be there anymore.


 

 

“A-alright. Goodbye,” Joonmyun breaths out, and breaths because the cold smoke distances himself from the taller boy who’s walking backwards now, giving a wave and a final smile. One of the last smiles he’ll ever give, and Joonmyun’s angry at Sehun for that. Because Sehun owes Joonmyun nineteen more smiles, the ones they’ve always exchanged in the shops, on that one bench, along the greenhouse that’s now closed, and inside his minty loft but it just stops here.


 

 

And he watches, watches because he just needs to, for one last time. So he does. He watches the slow steps Sehun takes, and how they lose of life behind, and humanity because life’s just cold now. It aches, really, but he doesn’t do anything. He almost wants to call out, and tell Sehun to not go, maybe stay in his apartment for a few days to catch up, see what’s going on, see how their lifes been going along, but he doesn’t. Because Joonmyun’s weak, and he’s learned to accept it.

 


 

But then his heart says else wise, and his mind almost corrupts against the thoughts but Joonmyun’s done. He’s done relying on what his mind says, and how everything has to come off intellectual or strong-willed. He’s done losing what’s the closest to him, and he’s just done delving into the past.

 


 

So finally, maybe he breaks free out of the will.

 


 

“Wait, S-Sehun!” Joonmyun croaks, and it’s too quiet so Sehun doesn’t hear, and just keeps on walking, few meters ahead now and life almost drained out within the final steps near his car.

 


 

But Joonmyun calls again, because life needs more than one try. “Sehun!” he yells, a little louder and the thick words echo throughout the parking lot and he shies out, backing up against the wall but it’s okay on how the brick scrapes his fingers, cuts too deep and blood too cold to drip because someone on the other side turns around, and his solemn looks more precious than anything at the moment.

 


 

The runs are slippery, and he almost falls on the way to him but someone reaches out and catches him at the last precisions, cuts through the loops and just holds him, hands encircled by the waist. Nothing in the whole world could feel any better.

 


 

“Hey there,” Sehun chuckles, and Joonmyun doesn’t bother to look up because he already knows what’s going on. There’s going to be that same ing smile, with the same subdued smirk, and that tired voice needed of rest always there. It gets lighter, maybe. The world around him, and Joonmyun thinks that it’ll be okay for a while if they could just be like this for longer.

 


 

“Sehun,” Joonmyun breaths again, and it’s not the breath before where it distances and puts up a barrier between the two. It’s breathing like a new world, and it’s breathing like Joonmyun’s hasn’t had an ounce of fresh air until now, where he’s engulfed into another world. His world. Sehun’s world.

 


 

The other boy just stands there, holding what’s his other half, and holding a little less because color’s aren’t that heavy. They’re light, and just so jovial with how they can change something so breath-taking and turn it into something more. Something just more, no other words. No adjectives. Nothing. Just more.

 


 

“Joonmyun,” Sehun codas. He looks down, and sees nothing but just coiffed hair, and for now, there’s nothing more warm-sighting than just that. But it seems good. Too good, and that’s not how it’s supposed to be right now, so Sehun tries to pull Joonmyun off of him, but the shorter’s just clinging on, dear life and life instilled. And that’s when he realizes that Joonmyun’s holding on for a reason. A reason that was thrown out the window, spent through the night in dazes and glows for weeks before dissipating into nothing but a joke.

 


 

“Do you want to come over for the night? Maybe stay if it gets too late?” Joonmyun asks Sehun, and he doesn’t look up because he’s scared of what’ll happen.

 


 

Sehun’s shocked, he really is. Because he would’ve never expected for Joonmyun to ask him something like this. But nevertheless, he just smiles, holds Joonmyun tighter and just cherishes the moment, in case it tries to run away again, like in the past few months. “Yeah. I would like that.”

 


 

And maybe he has to call his parents, and they might have to sound disappointed. But it’s okay, because Sehun promises to visit them when the sleet thaws out, because he doesn’t want to get into an accident. Because if he does, then he’ll lose everything. His life, his friends, his family, but most of all, he would lose Joonmyun who doesn’t even have a label, because he’s just too special with the way he smiles, and the way he laughs, and the way he brightens up Sehun’s days.

 


 

--

 


 

Joonmyun’s apartment feels like a second home, and Sehun’s been homesick for a long time, the fleeting months of waiting all worth it. Just all worth it because when Joonmyun pulls Sehun inside, there’s already a pot of coffee brewing in the kitchen, and there’s already classical music playing in the background, and Sehun can see the bundles of scripts in the corner of his eyes. It just feels right, everything. And Sehun wants it to stay like this forever and yes, he knows forever is a huge word, but nothing’s impossible if Joonmyun’s by his side from tomorrow, and the overmorrow and just on and on, the pages filling up with clear, descript words.

 


 

--

 


 

They chat for hours and it seems like they’re old friends, catching up on everything like how Sehun’s managed to deal himself a publishing deal for his latest novella, seventy pages about the descripts of how colors can relate to life and how his relationship had ended with Luhan, but Joonmyun feels like he had already heard of it before. And how Joonmyun’s been promoted to the leading actor in Macbeth, and how he’s going to perform his Beethoven piece back in Brooklyn for a returning piece for his parent’s tribute. And he talks about how he’ll maybe say hello to Yixing, because it’s been years since they’ve talked, the last time ending with just a sad smile and a note on how they both need to move on and that it’s better for them. But Joonmyun would agree, because everything’s better right now and everything just seems too perfect--well, not perfect, because perfect is just preposterous.

 


 

The smiles they exchange during their chats, it just seems so surreal and how Sehun has his hand in the middle of the counter, and the way Joonmyun’s fingers just shyly crawls to it, entwining eventually and none of them moving away. And nothing can be warmer than the feelings they have for each other, not even the coffee that’s steaming in the kitchen. Just nothing.

 


 

--

 


 

It’s near twelve now, the strike of a new day and there’s two figures outside the apartment, one leaning

against the wall with a knee propped up, air too cool, hitting the skin like pavement against scrapes. Then there’s another figure and this figure’s sitting on the ground, knees bunched up against chest because something’s just pounding at it, and it feels like his heart can be heard by just anyone, and maybe that’s the truth but Sehun says nothing against it. Nothing because he likes the sound of Joonmyun’s heart, and he likes to think that it’s that way because of him. But he doesn’t get too conceited.

 


 

Sighs come here and there, but no one says a thing. The silence is pretty, and the coffee gets too cold easily, throats dry and air filled with the smells of cocoa. And then Joonmyun stands up, his feet wobbly and his heart thumping even more staccato now, beats aligned with the numbers of stars in the skies.

 


 

“S-Sehun?” Joonmyun calls, almost chirping the beginning of his name because he’s so nervous. He puts down his cup of coffee onto the ground, then looks over to find Sehun looking back, eyes no longer tired of misery, but just tired because there’s bags underneath.

 


 

“Yeah?”

 


 

Joonmyun doesn’t and probably won’t ever find a way to comprehend his words because if anything, his words are just too unstable, and that’s something  Sehun’s learned over from the past few months, a year almost. But it’s all okay because his actions are just as meaningful, and this is just as loving, because Joonmyun leans up, wraps his arms around Sehun’s neck and presses his lips against Sehun’s cheeks, and then just stands there, tip-toes off the ground and pointe too on ice.

 


 

Sehun’s surprised, but everything’s different than from the last time in November. For say, Sehun doesn’t pull away this time. And his thoughts aren’t on stop, but they’re just all circulating in colors. And his words don’t seem stuttered, because there’s no words at all. Satisdiction. There’s nothing more to say, except for one word.

 


 

“Anagapesis,” Sehun whispers, somewhere against Joonmyun’s ears and the deep consonants just travel somewhere to his heart, and leaves in the other kisses Joonmyun plasters against Sehun’s cheeks. “Do you know what that means? I’ve read it to you before whenever we did our vocabulary searches.”

 


 

Joonmyun doesn’t remember, so he asks Sehun what does the word mean. And this is where it all begins, and when the world starts to rotate again, four hundred degrees because it’s just too fast, and it all just seems too unreal.

 


 

“It means, ‘a loss of feelings for someone who was formerly loved.’ That’s what I felt for the past few months. I felt like you hated me, and that you’ve never wanted to see my face again. But that’s not the case, I’ve realized because I was holding back my feelings for you, and now, well,” he chuckles. “I finally know where they’ve been all along.”

 


 

Breath, Joonmyun does, and the indigo skies are too dark, but Sehun’s smile manages to light everything up. “Where are they?”

 


 

And at this time, the first snow of the seasons just come along, and it feels perfect now. With how the speckles just daunts against their shoulders, and how Sehun just peers in closer, smile still plastered on and how he doesn’t stop there because his lips are just tentative against Joonmyun’s and how Joonmyun pushes Sehun’s closer and they just kiss, in the middle of the roads, weathers too cold but everything feeling just like spring.

 


 

“They’ve been with you, because I love you, Joonmyun,” Sehun says after they pull away, minutes longing of each other’s moments again.

 


 

Joonmyun smiles, and he doesn’t exaggerate when he says, “I-I love you too, Sehun. I really do.”

 


 

--

 

 

 

There’s another polaroid on the wall now, and it’s of February with the words scribbled on the back, “First meaningful kiss. First day of snow. First day of love. -February 24th, 2015.”


 

 

--

 


 

epilogue; recommended song (x)

 


 

-

 


 

Spring’s beautiful, Joonmyun notices. How the trees are given life again and how they dance with such plies, and how the weather’s just so perfect with the seagulls so happy, or maybe just how the world’s so colorful now because of someone. Whatever it is, it’s nice. And Joonmyun’s thankful for it, but he’s also thankful for a person whose name doesn’t even need to be spoken of because it’s just that embedded into him. But it’s Sehun, and Joonmyun’s just thankful for him and how he’s taught Joonmyun how colors work, and how life really is, and how everything has its way but in its own beautiful ways. How he’ll ever repay Sehun, he doesn’t know but he’ll figure it out because they have years to come, and for snapshots to fill up that one empty wall, and for scripts to read, and for cups of tea to drink, and the bottles of lemonade to chug and the empty pages on their own story to fill out. Oh, and who could ever forget, the millions of smiles they owe each other because nothing is preposterous. And nothing ever will be as long as Joonmyun has Sehun, half-filled and not half-empty.

 


 

-

 


 

A rainy day in May, and Joonmyun’s late to acting classes again. He knows that the excuses of his late alarm will never work anymore, so he’s just running and praying that he’ll make it in time. But sometimes, he’s just clumsy and like now, he’s ran into a body frame.

 


 

“Oh,” he stutters, and he’s about to apologize but then he looks up, and he already recognizes that face and the stupid subdue smile on it.

 


 

Sehun laughs. “Watch where you’re going, little prick.”

 


 

And Joonmyun just pouts, and tries to get past Sehun but the taller (and much stronger) just pulls his lover back, and he just pulls him into a hug that seems like it’ll never end. But it feels too good so Joonmyun just breaks in, and they just hug, rain drenching the both of them but they don’t care. And the two halves are reunited, and nothing can feel better than a whole person, both worlds filled with the colors that’ll never end and too filled with memories that just bound for their whole life, but there’s much more to come.

 


 

“Come on, Sehun. I have to get to class, or I’ll be late again!” Joonmyun begs, and Sehun lets him go, but not without a kiss.

 


 

They both separate and they’re both walking backwards with a stare and a smile in distance that seems just too loveable, Sehun pointing behind Joonmyun and joking that he’s going to run into someone, and Joonmyun just flipping Sehun off.

 


 

“But remember that we have a lemonade date later, hyung!” Sehun yells, and it’s unnecessary because Joonmyun’s just a few feet away but he nods nonetheless, because he’ll never forget their dates.

 


 

“I won’t!” Joonmyun replies, and he turns around because he knows that time is ticking, but it’s okay because time goes at a reasonable pace now, and Joonmyun’s learned that time revolves around the person, and it only goes fast when the times are tough and goes slow when the moments are just too precious. But then it goes fast whenever the memories are too short and just slow whenever it’s wished too. It’s complicated, really, but Joonmyun thinks that he’ll get used to it eventually. Just like how he’s used to Sehun yelling “I love you” from long distances. Just like how he did now.

 


 

“I love you too, Sehun,” Joonmyun yells back, and he hears a triumphant grunt in the background. And he smiles, hiding it from the backs and just continuing to walk on, slippery sidewalks and laughing remarks with the colors too vibrant.


 

But it’s okay. Because now, they’ll always both be half-filled, with their other half maybe too far away or maybe just right in front of their faces but whatever it is, it’s always half-filled and not half-empty.

 


 

--


 

And time goes on by for someone who’s no longer delved into the past and for someone who’s far from the future now.


 

--



 

fin. (true ending)

 


 

(a/n) ;_; i feel better now

ahh, you finally finished the 30k of but omg yay!

if you have any questions or queries for this, or you just wanna reach out to me!

ask me questions at my ask.fm!

NOW GO TREAT YOURSELF TO SOME SEHO GIFS

final edit: july 30th, 2014. 9:26 pm central time or 10:26 eastern time

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brivi0800
contest ends in 7 minutes and i am just rushing and reading everything at last minute ohnononono

Comments

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yanalho #1
Chapter 3: thank you for beautiful story, thank you for alternate ending
nerdyred13 #2
Chapter 3: This is so beautiful and I can't even describe it. Thank you very much for touching my heart so much. I can't say anything anymore because I'm just speechless how much feels the journey of Junmyeon and Sehun gives me. Half-empty, half-filled oth are so wonderful. God bless you. ?
tmarianegrace #3
Chapter 3: that was amazing
exobingsu #4
Chapter 3: Wow that was good. I dont know which ending i like better cuz the first one shattered my heart but it's still beautiful and the second was happy endingg so im happy. But this is a great fic!
Ray_of_stars
#5
Chapter 3: I'm bawling
Seoulqueenka #6
Chapter 3: Needless to say I like the alternate ending more than the original. It was sweeter and didn't make me cry. But the original was more realistic. Joonmyun was so ready to just give up on life, and I knew one of them was gonna die but I thought it would by Joonmyun. Nonetheless this was one of the most angsty and realistic SeHo stories I have ever read. I want to read more but my heart can't deal. I'm being dramatic. Oh and thank God for Luhan. I'm going to read some happy stuff.
aquaticvirus
#7
Chapter 3: This. Is. So. Perfect. I'm. Crying.

( TДT)
paradisease
#8
Chapter 3: I WANT TO CRY (lol already did). reading this gave me feels from the start to the end, but when i reached the epilogue and the alternative ending i was smiling like a kid who got candy sfgsegoseithgoiwth

it was a long read but DEFINITELY WORTH IT
marmalody
#9
I've got to brace myself.
Frick.
Frick.
Frick.
I love you author-nim.
It is just truly amazing like legit, one of the best seho stories I've read.
All the emotions are there and they're.. they're being put into categories of colors.
I truly is amazing, the way you wrote and described the characters. It is just... I'm speechless.
I don't even know what to do.
Good job!!! :D write more like this cx
ephemeral24
2376 streak #10
Chapter 3: OMFG, let me just bask in the feels for the first one before I go on and read the alternative ending...
THAT WAS BEAUTIFUL! EXTREMELY BEAUTIFUL!!!
JUST OMFG... I am lost for words coz idk if any word I type as a comment will justify what I felt and how much I love this one
I LOVE how Sehun patiently made Jun come out of his shell, I love how patient he was with Jun, I may hate how Jun's past affected their possible reconciliation but how can I hate you for it when the story is really really so beautiful...
easy for Jun to crumble after Sehun's accident, but no, you didn't let him... THANK YOU for that...
THIS IS JUST... I don't think I already said how much I loved it, nor was I able to express the thoughts that are still on my mind... BUT REALLY, one of the best SeHo I ever read...
with the scarcity of SeHo fics, yours was really like an oasis in the desert... And it really really is beautiful