third chapter: sunset

He was at home. He sat on the floor, waiting for his mother to come from the kitchen and bring him some food. He looked around, trying to notice the changes the house went through as he lived away, in another place, with another person – Taehyun, his heart swelled with joy, but then deflated as he remembered that they weren’t in good terms right now – and saw how his mother had placed some of his trophies on the shelf, next to the TV, and how she had hung some of his photos on the wall, photos he didn’t really recall.

“Mom, when did we went to the zoo?”

She didn’t reply.

“And this one too? I don’t remember this”, he said, but silence welcomed him.

He sighed and called her once more. In the end, he got up and checked the kitchen. There was no one in there: the food was still on the stove, cooking, and a delicious smell was ading the air; the knife was on the chopping board, half an onion was cut, but his mother wasn’t there.

Seungyoon asked himself if something had happened.

The ring of a telephone distracted him, snapping him out of his thoughts, and he ran to the living room. It was persistent and annoying, but he couldn’t find its provenience.

“I have to-“, he muttered as he checked every little corner of the room, without results. “Where is it, I have to take this call”.

And then he awoke.

His mobile phone stopped ringing in that exact moment.

“At this moment I think we should try something different, he can’t stay in there forever”.

Seungyoon can hear them from his bed, he wants to laugh at them because they think he won’t know, he won’t be aware of what they say behind his back, lulled by his insanity – but Seungyoon is way more lucid now than he was those past years with Taehyun, this is what he knows, and won’t let anyone deceive him.

He won’t. He can’t.

He can’t say to himself that there are things he will never know, that people have worlds inside themselves that are unknown and this is the way it should be, because it’s too much to bear for another human being; he can’t accept the facts there are things behind every said word and that what he’s listening is just the surface of a more deep and tangled talk between the doctors.

He can’t believe Taehyun isn’t with him anymore and there is still so much he doesn’t know.

As he remembers the good and bad times, he notices things he overlooked when he was there, with him, and thought they were happy. Now he sees.

Every truth he finds out, he shut himself off a little more. The darkness in his room becomes more alive – the ghost of his past is there, eating him.

To escape it, he sleeps.

Seungyoon almost dozed off, too tired to really care about his missed call, but then a sudden doubt invaded his mind and he couldn’t really toss it away. Who called him at that time, in the pit of the night?

He sighed, his eyes still closed, as he stirred and reached for the telephone on the bedside table. He struggled when the sudden light hurt his eyes and tried to read the name on the display. Taehyun.

Seungyoon checked the hour – 1:59 AM – and, ready to nag him, he called him back.

“I know it’s hard to get back to reality”, he says. His smile is a white flash of teeth. Seungyoon hates it, it’s too neat for him right now.

Taehyun had a beautiful smile too, a bit funny maybe, with his bunny front teeth, but very lovable.

“And maybe as a doctor I shouldn’t talk like this, but I really think you should try a change... of surroundings. Try to free yourself from this place”.

Seungyoon doesn’t reply.

“I know you don’t want to forget him”.
“I hate him”, Seungyoon interrupts.

“Yes, yes, of course, but this is just another way of... attachment”.

Seungyoon hates him even more than Taehyun, and that’s a first.

He knows what the doctor means. He knows because he’s the one right under it: this crazy swing between hate and love, which in the end is just a sign that he really can’t go on. Not without him, even if Seungyoon tells himself how much he despises even the thought of Taehyun.

The truth is that he can’t leave him behind, not again.

For Seungyoon, Taehyun is the one.

One.

Seungyoon could feel the warmth of the blanket all around him, but he wished that the man he was calling was right there, hugging him with his strong arms.

Two.

With him the silence wouldn’t be lonely, only comfortable.

Three.

Seungyoon’s whole body wanted to sleep; he was drowning in the black of a dreamless land, he could sense it, but the ring in his ear was still enough to wake up his mind, the last strand of reality he had.

Four.

“Hello?”, a voice panted. Worry and shock mixed up with something more subtle, deeper in the uneven breath Seungyoon could hear.

“Hello”, he paused, trying to understand what was off, because there was something, besides the voice, there was-

“Are you Seungyoon?”

Then he realized: “You’re not Taehyun”.

Taehyun had an entire drawer right under the basin of the bathroom. Seungyoon remembers how he wanted to clean it up, once, and Taehyun stopped him right before he started. He didn’t nag too much, at that time, but now he regrets he didn’t. He clearly knows what he had found in it when he checked – after that night – and he can obsessively list its content by heart, as a warning to never forget.

“Where is Taehyun?”, he said then, finally wide awake. The doubt, the same that made him check his telephone few minutes ago, was running through his veins, chilling his blood. There was something wrong he couldn’t really explain – a black fear he wished was just a childish whim.

“Ah”, the voice hesitated. “Taehyun is- are you Seungyoon?”

“Yes, yes I’m Seungyoon”, he said, frustrated.

“I think you should come”.

“Why?”

“I think, I guess it’s better in person”.

Seungyoon knew where to go: to Minsuk’s house.

“This house is not the problem”, Seungyoon says to his doctor, but he knows he’s lying and that the doctor is aware of it.

“It’s not the main one”, he replies.

“I just want you to let me be... I don’t want to be cured, really, I wish you could leave me alone, here, I would be perfectly fine”.

“This is fine for you?”, he talks back and Seungyoon can hear how much he cares, somehow, and he doesn’t really know why, because if he were him he wouldn’t care about Seungyoon, he would just turn his back and run away – maybe. Or maybe he wouldn’t, he thinks, his old self wouldn’t.
But he remembers he was blind enough to not see Taehyun’s condition, so probably he’s just trying to reassure himself when he thinks he’s more human then he really is. And this is the moment when he blames himself the most, when he’s sincere.

“It is. It’s what I deserve”.

“You would want me to let you go, then, and leave you here, in this room, in the dark, all day, every day, without anyone taking care of you-“

“I don’t want anyone to take care of me”.

The doctor smiles and Seungyoon knows he’s happy he can make him angry, because this means he still feels something, he’s not numb, he’s aching and this is a way to get through it. This is what he thinks, Seungyoon is less optimistic. “Why, then?”

“Because I deserve all of this”.
“I thought you hate Taehyun – if so, why would you deserve such a thing? Shouldn’t you be happy?”.

Seungyoon knows he wants him to admit that it’s not like this, that he actually loves him and a lot and that’s why it’s even worse – and this is the truth, the real one, the sharp one that keeps stabbing his heart – and every beat is more painful. “Because it’s my fault”.

“It is not”.

“I’m sorry to contradict you in this, I wish it was not the case, but it is”.

“Nam Taehyun suffe-“

“Don’t say that”, he screams, still anchored to the bed, as his body doesn’t really want to move, all his energy concentrated in those few muscles of his vocal cords, “Never say that”.

The doctor nods slowly.

Everything was in slow motion, even if he ran fast. His panting breath and his aching muscles were just forgotten. Seungyoon was way too alive, his heart burning in his chest – it didn’t matter if his sight was blurred and his body was cold and his mind was blank, nothing mattered at that time. But he found himself frustrated, when his tongue didn’t move in his mouth.

For many minutes, he couldn’t talk.

“Do you keep talking to Taehyun, Seungyoon?”, he asks and Seungyoon knows what he wants to hear. Maybe he’ll leave him alone if he gives him what he wants.

“No”.

“Really?”, a faint hint of hope surges in his voice.

Seungyoon looks in his eyes, blacker and bigger than Taehyun’s. He can read the doubt in them. “No”.

He sees the doctor half-smiling in sadness, as he expected that answer. “Thank you for being honest”, he whispers. “Maybe we should add another pill to your daily routine”.

“I don’t want to take them anymore”.

“If you keep seeing Nam Taehyun... then you have to”.

“But why?”, Seungyoon asks and maybe he doesn’t really knows, because even if he thinks he’s in control of everything and he’s way more aware than before, there is still a side of him that keeps lying to himself. Seungyoon is so ed up that he doesn’t really know anything anymore – what is real, what is just his distorted imagination, who was Taehyun when they were together. “Why? I don’t want to leave him alone, not again”.

The doctor coughs and Seungyoon hates his way to fake and hide something behind that gesture. “What?”, he almost yells. “You have no idea of what he’s gone through – all these years of... – and I was supposed to cherish him the most, wasn’t I? Now it’s time I redeem myself”.
“Listen to yourself, you know this is just a lie”. The doctor is way too hot, Seungyoon thinks, like a fire that can’t be contained. Someone like him shouldn’t be there in that role, he’s not fitted; but Seungyoon knows that he has left the professionalism behind because he cares too much. “The more you care the more you’re blind”, Seungyoon mutters, chewing every little world with spite.

“You can’t go on between moments of pure hate and moments of... this, this professed love and spirit of sacrifice you have. This is not sane for yourself – I don’t even mind if you despise me, Seungyoon, but you should get a grip of yourself and I wish you would let me help you”.

“How can you ask me to forget him”, Seungyoon hides his face in the creases of the sheet.

“I’m not asking you for that”, the doctor wavers. “I didn’t, but you have to learn to live with this pain like everyone does”.

“I don’t want to learn”, Seungyoon remembers how stubborn he was, when he was a child and he didn’t accept his father’s hug, because he perfectly knew who he truly was. Even more, he remembers the feeling he had when he chased Taehyun, when he met him casually at that CD shop. He called it fate, but he had made it with his own two hands. They had made it together – he asked himself when it began to fall apart. “I want to stay here, yes, in the dark, I don’t care what you say, I won’t leave him behind, I can’t-“

“Is he here, Seungyoon?”, the doctors then asks.

Seungyoon quivers. “If I go out, he’ll go away”.

“Is he here?”, the doctor is a mask of rage and Seungyoon wants to kill all of it.

“Yes!”, he screams, “Yes, he’s here, there, in the corner, with his beautiful smile on and the jumper I’ve bought him for our second Christmas together, he’s there, he’s my Taehyun, my Taehyun”, he starts to cry and he knows he has ed up even more and the doctor will have to sedate him.

Seungyoon wants to break free, but he can’t leave their house, their room like this. He is half-conscious of how he’ll change his mind in few hours – after the love, there is hate, and so he’ll start to accuse Taehyun for what he has done to him, for all his lies and his I love you whispered in the night, when he thought Seungyoon was sleeping – it’s always like this, Seungyoon knows, but he can’t get out, because even when their bed is empty and the room is darker in the night, Taehyun is still there, in the corner, staring at him, and he can’t let him go. Forever.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t want to upset you”, the doctor says but he doesn’t believe him.

“He’s here and you can’t make me take another pill to make him fade out”.

“He’s not real, Seungyoon, and a part of you knows it – so please, just listen to your own common sense, listen to that part of yourself that knows the truth, grasp it, don’t let it go forgotten”.

Seungyoon falters, his tears stop. “He’s here...”

“He’s not”.

There is that part of Seungyoon that knows the reason behind it, but he can’t help himself asking once again “Why?” even if he’s sure he has already questioned the doctor about this so many times.

The doctor hesitates. “You know why”.

“Don’t say that”, an urge of hiding the truth makes Seungyoon speak.

“You know, but I’ll help you with this-”

“Don’t”.

“Nam Taehyun is...”

Dead.

.

.

.

He didn’t realize he wasn’t breathing, but a burning ache in his lungs made him inhale air, while his knees buckled and he fell on the floor.

Taehyun was-

He stopped seeing after a while, the tears flowing too hard. Seungyoon crumpled, a hand on his throat as he tried to breathe evenly, fighting the lump he had in there.

My Taehyun-

He thought he wasn’t able to talk, his tongue motionless in his mouth, but after a while he started hearing a wailing, grieving sound – his vocal cords were hurting and he knew he was screaming by then.

He crawled over him, a hand roaming on his chest. He grasped the hem of his shirt, trying to not fall – not too hard, he repeated, not all by myself.

Taehyun was there, his eyes still opened. Seungyoon kept pinning himself on him, not able to stand up or even sit properly. Taehyun was there and he looked so familiar but stranger at the same time – his face was as before, the beautiful pink of life still on his cheeks and lips, but there was a glassy film on his eyes and his mouth was cold when Seungyoon touched it.

He didn’t know how he ended up clawing his shirt, but later it was hard to make him move – Seungyoon felt hands tugging him, trying to disentangle their bodies, but his fingers were iron and steel around Taehyun and he couldn’t really let him go.

He heard himself crying out as he wasn’t the one doing that mess, but someone else. The wailing person kept repeating just one word: the name of his most precious one, now lost.

Even the darkness of the room is not safe from his monsters, but if he doesn’t see the sun rising and falling every day, maybe the time will stop and Taehyun will still be there, for him, with him, by his side. He wishes so.

Seungyoon doesn’t remember that much of the ride to the hospital – it was quite pointless, he thinks now, because Taehyun was already gone, but the ambulance was late anyway and he couldn’t do anything else but being dragged – no, he couldn’t just let him go, his hands clasped on his body, his eyes glued to his face, searching desperately for a sign of life, for a blessed changing of his expression.

The tears stopped after some time, but he didn’t notice; even the sound coming from his mouth decreased a bit, though he could still hear a choking whine over the constant ringing pain in his ears.

He didn’t listen to the doctors, he knew Taehyun was –

Was dead, deceased, gone, passed away, every word he could think of was spinning in his mind, stinging every corner of it until he bled all his hurt out.

Seungyoon remembers the last hug he gave to Taehyun: the stiffness of his body against his own, the coldness of his cheeks. His eyes weren’t looking at him anymore, closed by a nurse some hours earlier, and Seungyoon was glad of this.

He brushed his hair with his hands, with love, tucking the messy locks behind his ears, and then brushed his eyebrows with his fingertips, as Taehyun did at the mirror when he thought Seungyoon wasn’t looking; in the end he brushed his mouth on Taehyun’s, softly, closing the gap between his lips with his own, vowing his love in this last kiss, letting his tears wash his face for the last time.

Taehyun was beautiful, even if he wasn’t like himself anymore.

That night was for sorrow and grieving and mourning. With a sore throat and puffy eyes, Seungyoon stayed up until the sun rose and the light filled up the hospital room, warming up Taehyun’s marble face with its orange and yellow.  

Then it was all rushed, a following of events without much logic – his mind understood the frenetic need to organize he morgue and find a place to cremate the body, but his heart just wanted the peace and rest of time spent alone. Thanks to his friends from work, he managed to do everything as he should.  

At the morgue Minsuk didn’t show up, but the members of Taehyun’s band went there. It was then that Seungyoon found out that they had disbanded some months ago, but he didn’t have the strength to realize the implications of this fact.

Now he remembers that it was strange that Taehyun didn’t tell him – he didn’t ask for comfort, he didn’t complain at all – but that thought had faded out as he tried to stand up, while his heavy legs kept dragging him to the ground.

Seungyoon always chuckles at this moment, when he remembers, because memories are selective, as human being are. He doesn’t know why but everything of those two days in the morgue is gray and brown but Taehyun’s photo, black-framed, a beautiful smile on his red lips, and his skin glowing in white and pink, is the only thing in multicolor.

A square of light and life in the dullness of that moment.

Norpramin, Prozac, Aplenzin, Pristiq...

The drawer under the basin was full of them. Seungyoon had realized what he had lost meanwhile.

Then, it came the time for rage and anger. A destructive force got him, coursing through his veins instead of blood, and that was the same that led him to Minsuk’s house.

He couldn’t calm down even when his knuckles hurt for the impact with Minsuk’s jawbone and the skin of his hands broke, reddening in blood – he felt alive when Minsuk threw a fist on his cheekbone and when he gasped for air as Minsuk hit his abdomen.

He laughed when he managed to stop him, his whole weight on his body, and made him talk about all the months he had missed, too busy to see what Taehyun was going through. He wanted to listen, even if everything hurt, even if his heart was aching for every truth he said.
“Tell me, tell me about Taehyun”.

“Nam Taehyun suffered of depression. You know that”.

Seungyoon nods at the doctor. That’s something that he can’t forget. Today is a bad day and he hates Taehyun the most – he repeats his reasons silently, moving his lips as he looks at the doctor.

“He struggled for more than a year”.

Seungyoon doesn’t want to talk, but his tongue works faster than his mind and takes a life of its own. “He didn’t tell me anything, not once”.

“I understand why you’re upset”, the doctor smile, a perfect row of white teeth flashing in the dark. Once again, Seungyoon hates him.

“I don’t think you can”, Seungyoon scorns him. “I don’t think you can and no one can, here, because it’s just between me and Taehyun, it’s always been like this – we told each other everything or even more we understood each other without words; I don’t know what changed during our relationship, but at the beginning we were – we weren’t perfect, we were human of course, but we tried to share the love and pain, talking, cuddling, sleeping, growing old together, you know – but then it was just a lie, Taehyun was just pretending to care”.

“I do think Taehyun loved you, Seungyoon”.

“You don’t know him”, Seungyoon screams and yells and he feels his own nails digging in the flesh of his palms.

“I didn’t meet him in person, right, but I’ve studied his case and I’m sure he loved you a lot, till the end. He just wasn’t strong enough. His death was an accident, but his abuse with medicinal and drugs wasn’t new”.

Seungyoon cries and the doctor freezes, worried if he has said too much.

“He didn’t tell me a ”, Seungyoon eats every word, choking in his own venom, “He didn’t – complain or nothing. I knew something was strange when I got that job, you know, I thought he was jealous, I knew he wanted to be in my place, but I couldn’t blame him for that. That was nothing serious, though, that was just a small issue – I thought...”

“The same things can affect different people in different ways, Seungyoon, it’s not your fault”.

“It is! It is and it’ll always be! I was the one who loved him, I – not you, not his friends, not everyone, I, Kang Seungyoon. I was blind, he deceived me, smiling, and even more I left him do so. I was so easy to trick – I remember, of course I remember when he rushed to the bathroom and the strange changes in his behavior, of course I saw his red eyes and his fingers twitching and I probably noticed even the collateral effects of that he kept taking – but I dismissed every little doubt with a selfish thought – of course he was happy, Taehyun was happy because he was with me, he didn’t need anything else but us in the world, he didn’t –“

“Seungyoon, Taehyun loved you so much, that’s why he didn’t show you how he felt, he didn’t want to show you his despicable, sick, miserable self, scared that you would leave as his father did; he loved you so much that he couldn’t bear the thought to make you sad, he didn’t want to ruin your happiness-“

“He was dying inside and I let him do so”, his voice trembles as he screams too loud.

The doctor doesn’t know what to say, now.

“I let him die – Norpramin, Prozac, Aplenzin, Pristiq... tons of he took while he was supposed to be happy with me, when he still smiled at me, while I ignored his pain”.

“You can’t save the one who doesn’t want to be saved, though”.

“Don’t- don’t judge him, I’m the only one who can do that”, Seungyoon’s voice is just a whisper in the dark.

The bed is messy and it stinks a bit – of sweat and tears and broken souls.

“He was my light. I didn’t need the sun in the sky, when I had Taehyun”.

“You know what, Dr. Song? Sometimes I really want to get cured. Just sometimes, but then I remember I can’t leave him behind once again, not this time, this time Taehyun has to be with me till the end”.

“It’s ok to be in the dark, I don’t want any substitute of his”.

Seungyoon’s eyes are sharp and damp. The doctor looks at him, a wince on his lips. “I can’t go on like this, so please, for once, leave me behind”, he asks, “leave me alone with Taehyun”.

Seungyoon doesn’t want to be saved – he forgets himself when he raises his eyes from the mess of sheets on his bed and meets Taehyun’s glance, there in the corner of their room. Even if he’ll hate him in few hours, that’s enough.

*

you left me paralyzed / no cure no rehab for me