Cheonggyecheon, Insa-dong, Jongno-gu, 20^th of April 2010

 

Weak.

You are so weak.

A hard slap echoed, ransaking the unmoving soil, a walloping disturbance for those living under. His palm was formed into a ball, long damaged with bright red scars and a mixture of bitter sweat and cold tears. No matter how deep his skin grazed onto the soil, they didn't crack. It mantained impeccable, wet, aromatish. It was too refreshing yet held no symphaty. Even the dim music on the background mocked his misery. They sang undeliberately slow and low, but undeniably aching. He kept ing his marred pearl white knuckles onto the dark brown ground. Rain had dismissed, although they had enough time to visit the petite's body before, mercilessly soaking from his highest brown locks until his lowest toe-nails. It happened almost two and a half hours ago, but none of the nature surrounding him wanted to follow the cracks in his heart. He had retired sighing in defeat at the age of twelve, deciding to turn himself to be an enigma. He was sharpened too early for his mentality, far away from his readiness, but life liked to joke around. It happily played with one's vision; creating misconceptions, interrobangs, disconnections. But for Kyungsoo, facade was the reason. 

He thought it would be the best way. It should be the best way. It indeed was the best way. Spring wind never bothered him for his inner had been wailing underneath its sky for the past four years. To be exact, he was born within this plot. Facade was his entrance to this world and he was sure his life would end with it. Enigma was his only escape. Calm waves of solemn midnight blue river in front of him agreed with his whole presence. They stilled under the rocking ship inside his brain. But one never knew what was hiding under its soundless mesmerize. One never knew what was securely locked inside a pysche of Do Kyungsoo.

Not his parents. Not his relatives. Not Park Chanyeol. No one.

Four years and counting.

 

From : Chanyeol

To : Kyungie

Kyungsoo, where are you? I called your home and no one answered. I need some help with school work, ugh :( Reach me back as soon as possible!

 

A pair of dark orbs stared hardly on the bright screen for the longest time. He only read once, yet his hard stare kept lingering on the blurred screen as if the words would extinct if he kept throwing daggers. It was already unclear in the first place anyway, remembering he withstood under the heavy rain just a mere hours ago; there was no way his cell phone would survive until next year. He shook his phone once and pressed on the thin silver stud at the side of his smartphone, decided to yet again ignored any human interaction. Chanyeol knew well that it would be useless to call Kyungsoo or even to expect Kyungsoo to reply any message from any one as fast as the wind. Not because Chanyeol knew something, but because Kyungsoo appeared with this behavior since their first encounter. Chanyeol wouldn't know otherwise, hell he wouldn't even think something was going on with Kyungsoo; something had been damaging Kyungsoo's life since he took his first breath. Kyungsoo was a greater secret than the soccerer's stone and Chanyeol was a way easier open book to read because he himself was filled with endless wonders that made him look like he was fascinated to everything. Kyungsoo wouldn't want to have it any other way, though. It was easier this way, with Chanyeol being his-oblivious-self and remembered Kyungsoo without flaws. Kyungsoo was so hypocrite that Chanyeol—and everyone else, believed his vibe.

Yet, it only deepened the existence of his facade. Even his epiphany was living under facade too.

That was another reason of why being emotionless was the best way. He despised epiphany; he despised being trapped in a situation where a brick of his shield fell; he despised being true to people moreover to himself. He had been drowning in his own sweet words. He adored white lies, even to himself. 

But once in a while he could be immensely weak that his impulse would force his whole sanity to fall to mental-destruction.

Damn it.

On the other side, a pair of another dark orbs were silently watching him. The owner might as well stepped onto higher level : observing. Brown abstracts could be seen under his white shoes' soles, accompanied with transparent tint of water-fleck on his khaki pants and several other dots on his stripped sweater. His brown bangs was still clean, as well as his sun-kissed contour. His slightly pointed nose shimered under the moonlight, complimented his masculine composure despite him being only fifteen years old. Wind blew through the back of his ears but his eyelids remained strong on this dismal emptiness. There was a silent Marriage d'amour spreading through the fine distance between them, that between them became the saddest serie of Paul de Senneville. It blinded them, yet somehow binding them. There was an unexplainable red string that tied their lost knots. A wave of nausea stricked through Jongin's fragile nostril. He carried his heavy heart with him at the first place. He could careless to the world. He had thrown all what left in his storage for humanity since it betrayed him hard. But a spark from soothing A minor rang the bell of his sensitive ears and he was itching to reach the boy in front of him.

Doe-eyes, 

whiter-pink full lips,

pale cheeks, down chin,

black jet strands with silver shimmering from the moonlight,

so—so.....unreadable.

"Don't."

Husky breath, filled with a pool of honey jam but crashed in dark, rest oil, echoed around ther limited square. Kyungsoo was in his most vulnerable state and it was his biggest flaw. Knowing someone caught him just made it even worse. Another brick of his shield fell shamelessly to the harsh ground. No, please don't. He resisted the desireable allurement to knit his cold fingers even deeper to the back of his wrinkled skin. His inner wailed uncontrollably, yet the tail of Kyungsoo's eyes caught the perfect shape of firm jaw and plump lips. Inwardly, heavy sigh shook his skull, decided to refrain on continuing his misery. He then pocketed his near-to-error cell phone back to his navy blue school's blazer before turning his heels to face the catcher. Kim Jongin, his eyes told him a story. 

As two pairs of coal crashed, Jongin was slightly taken aback by the asteroids on the other boy's eyes. It was far from blinding but not nearly as dead as a black coal, neither were they content. The taller boy couldn't comprehend the meaning behind the latter's gaze. Just a moment ago he thought he witnessed a kicked puppy trying to reach a pinch of hope from underground; but now he couldn't even tell if it was a puppy anymore. And he refused. The pale boy refused to air—whatever that he reprimanded to Jongin, out of the blue. Why? No idea. A whole pregnant pause couldn't be disregarded in the next thirty seconds.

"Who are you?"

As cataclysm as it sounded, but Kim Jongin's first question to Do Kyungsoo in their first encounter instead was his identitiy. Whether it was an organizational strange-procedure of human being's communication or a nonsense mind-clouded way of thinking from a too-fragmented boy. Either way, Kyungsoo could tell that the tanned-boy was unable of any normal interaction. He casted sprite of hollow green and watercolor orange, made him stuck in stage of imbalance and cluster of baloney. His presence played a classical medley of Gloria and Benedictus, only less in the meaning. However, it could be a good way to flip the whole scenario and centered it to Kim Jongin's misery. Another heavy sigh shook the white bones, but Kyungsoo sent his grateful to the gods above for letting him maximalize his ability even at the edge of doomsday.

"Funny that you ask, remembering you were practically shooting daggers towards me before."

Jongin found no emotion laced in the doe-eye's timbre. His pupil dilated for a mere seconds as product of his amusement. The boy in front of him could form any coherent words of curses, mocks, reprimands, warnings—or whatever, anything. But he was lack of any material that brought Jongin to the obsolete Skizze¹ on his grandfather's sheet. The pale male looked grand with his massive wings, but those were actually broken. The little branches that connected each feather faltered everywhere, every layer; and he produced, eventually, just a motionless mosaic. Jongin didn't know if a human being even possible to live under a constant....dead.

"How many times have you been here, Kim Jongin?"

Fast, interrupted Kyungsoo from Jongin's further battlefield inside his mind. Jongin might think thousands of probability as to why and how young boy—who invisibly older yet visibly shorter and smaller—bothered to mess his unguilty knuckles with rocks and land harshly. Kim Jongin, black pearl ascendant of the Kim's; fingers of slender knots made to tame black and white ivory; body of lean composure melt with air and blew Atittude derrière gracefully; smile cresended to moon and back. Well, the latter seemed to cease to nowhere since the departure of Kim Eunhyuk a year ago, the former most honored piano Prodigy in South Korea—no other than Kim Jongin's grandfather. Do Kyungsoo absorbed the information instantly and acknowledged the particular stage of mentality the Kim's heir was preoccupying the moment he felt his presence. Kyungsoo was not called a walking dictionary for no reason.

The cold soil underneath suddenly became very appealing the moment Jongin whipped his head away from the emotionless stare. Nothing could spell the name of the intention the pale boy was giving him. But it didn't matter anymore as the crusty edge was blackened by his own heatwave. His body was going auto-pilot under this kind of situation, according to horrendous thoughts and emotions he had been bearing for the past year. No wonder when Kyungsoo's question passed his sense, it immediately seeped through his thick skull and broke his veins. He was fast to be surrounded by black shadows at the corner of the street, under a broken street-lamp. Films of that betrayal kept rolling like a broken tape. A scene of Victoria Song, a replacement figure of a mother that he thought could only contain of warmth and care, snatched her sharpest sword and swung it to be the death of his beloved grandfather, after she beforehand plotted the inexistence of his biological parents as well. And the Byuns. Oh, the Byuns. Their spirited-masks were the epitome of devil.

Death skins cracked between his numb nails. There were scarlet lines inbetween spaces of his fingers due to extreme pressure from his own strength, scattered in disarray over the blurred lines of life. Salty water threatened to fall from two stout eye-bags, already overflowing its corner, only waiting to surrender under mental unstability. And it fell—fell hard on the soggy soil underneath. Every drop dragged every piece of his heart within; shattered, by flames, and burning in the sky. He had long forgotten logic and theory. How could the boy know his confidential hideaway? His new persona that was built unconsciously under paradoxical circumstance, and he seemed to know all of that? The boy didn't only know his name. He memorized him.

How? 

It slipped at the back of his mind but he was too busy mending broken pieces—or still running in circle, he couldn't tell. Because he had not done with the scars, that massive hole, hurt. It hurt. It hurt to see the world fell apart in front of you.

"Funny how a stranger could overlay my soul, yet my most valuable ones caused of the death of this soul...."

Jongin stopped mid-air. His plump lips trembled between non-periodic sobs; five fingers tried to squash the heart behind fibers of wool but failed agonizingly as it stucked between his purple nails. His head hung low and eventually his weak knees kissed the soil. He just broke down right there and then, in front of a pale boy who had been overlooking his crumbling world despite mere seconds they crossed paths. Jongin forgot the world. Just like before, just like yesterday, just like a year ago. He tussled in darkness, more than he could ever know. His brain proceed no notes inbetween G bars, not even in E bars. Nonexistent scratches slapped his tan cheeks and he surrendered upon the cruel artifiality. He sobbed, cried, wailed. He let it out. 

***

Cheonggyecheon, Insa-dong, Jongno-gu, 27^th of April 2010

 

Kim Jongin had been trusting no one than himself after his grandfather's departure from this world. He had been suffering from serious trust issues eversince. Red wine and fresh blood collided with black ashes, and he was everything but delight. A pair of dark orbs were blinded by iron scarf, bundled in one and only stereotype : fake. Upmost in Jongin's dictionary, people are fake. They liked to your feet to pat your head; praise your confident to shame back; steal your trust to betray and eventually burry you alive. His social circumstance was a complexion of joker-colonies and he was trapped between expert clowns. The moment his most beloved and trusted ones performed a great show of massacre, he lost everything. No directions to go back home existed and he was as stray as a strayed cat; stood in the middle of dark alley and unfamiliar avenue. He lost himself along the way as well. 

Not even the fact that there were still blood-related relatives—or Baekhyun—waiting at the end of the line could bash his new-found perception. Although his uncle from his mother's side went wrathful over Victoria and The Byuns after knowing the deathly scenarios and immediately took Jongin under his wing, the young dancer already decided to scratch the word trust from his memory—even his cousin, Kim Joonmyeon, gave up on yanking the silk robe that covered Jongin. Because Jongin had be friended with sorrow and hated consideration. He's undenieably unreachable, Joonmyeon would state. No more; just no more conscience.

So how then? How could a stranger unclip the buttons and mangle the robe so easily?

Kim Jongin didn't know either. There were still imbalance cruise sailing here and there, but the sparks didn't lie. This certain pale boy appeared so abruptly, unnotified, surprising. Although the fact couldn't be denied that it was Jongin who first sneaked into the older boy's secret haven. But the petite boy was fast to tear off the curtain and pushed Jongin to stand on the spotlight. Even Jongin's intellect couldn't put fingers on how he suddenly turned into a sobbing mess in front of a stranger. They were even far from acquaintance. He had lost all bet on manipulative casino table big time, yes that's true. But he had never been so lost like this. It was huge, giant, massive; million times different.

Kyungsoo crossed his mind ever since that night. His words, his looks, his eyes—oh his eyes. He couldn't story the mystery, yet slowly his own offtunes subsided and was exchanged by sweet flute. It was fast, yes it was sonic. It shouldn't happened only in one hundred and sixty-eight hours. Peoples had sprained his ankles pretty bad until he couldn't stand up anymore. He believed no one to give him the real ether spray to nurse his swollen heart. But then—there he saw a familiar figure that had been ghosting his everyday music. Again, same spot, same time. And he just knew. He just knew. 

"You—"

Ah.

Crescent eyes,

airy-pink plump lips,

tan cheeks, chin up,

brown locks with a single shade of post-lamp,

so—so.....troublesome.

"Don't."

Do Kyungsoo was sick, terribly sick. It was a kind of invisible illness, hidden behind pianissimo when sometimes minor black flag rushed through his ears. Million of thick covers made those infected cells went obsolete and mold. Despite them being forgotten, their affections didn't stop. It grew, spreading his nerves, crashed between motor and sensor; and kept going although he tried to renew. He knew it was effortless, he was helpless. The mutated cells prompted to yeast with his flesh no matter how hard he moved. And then he gave up. He gave up giving another try—to everything.

Then it was pointless when fate tricked him, trying to suffocate him and drown him in botomless Tiefsee². 

It had been a week since his first encounter with Kim Jongin, but that didn't mean there were no stories in between. A half of seven days before had been fulfilled with coincidental gathering between the two teenager; with a side-kick of Do Kyungsoo avoiding further possible affair. If he hadn't turned his shabby sneakers to another intersection in Dongdaemun, they would bump, intertwine, and Jongin might do something about it. But years of unfairness had eaten him up until his body felt droughty. Sure it would be tough to refill the deficiency with liquidal substance. Kyungsoo couldn't be bothered anymore. Not even that time, where they stood by each other again, same spot, same time. No, don't. Just no.

"I told you I didn't go for money. Kim Jongin, you are phenomenal. It shouldn't be a surprise I know you."

"I didn't say you go for money. I know you don't."

"You didn't know."

"Did you then?"

"What if—"

"No, I know you don't."

Pink lips was slightly ajar, dark orbs sparkled once, twice, when car's light crossed the higher road. Kyungsoo was taken aback, he couldn't lie to himself even if he demanded to do otherwise. Everyone, repeat, everyone judged him. His parents, his relatives, his friends, Chanyeol—everyone. And it was always bad. They dictated Kyungsoo in every way only to lower his hierarchy at the bottom-most surface of the earth. He lived for his upper's pride.

Do Kyungsoo was a living robot. 

He was under everybody's control. No matter how hard he tried to contradict, he would never win the authority. It was nature's audacity, a battlefield should be done by a human being, and it was just cruel. It was cruel to pressure one's soul unto his skin only to be replaced by something utterly incompatible. Thus, every resistance, dismissal, disagreement that urged to be unleashed should be banished. They wouldn't care, though. They wouldn't spare pity glance and withdraw on going further. The devoted facade. They only wanted an excellent product, the ones that would sparkle their glory up until top of the sun. Image, image, image, no consideration. Emotion was the only possesion that could be handled under those clammy hands of the sixteen years old teenager. That, however, was the only thing that could maintain his sanity.

But it crumbled, a bit, the crusty edge. Because Kim Jongin was anything but judging—and it was not bad. For once, it was believeable. It was real.

Why?

He wanted to cry because it had been so long—too long that he was a foreigner to baby blue and pastel pink of toodler's blanket. The taller boy in front of him believed himself so much it's frightening. He stated neither fact nor assumptions. It was something in between; dots of missing papers at the same a flowing waterfall. It was full, full of conviction behind bars of distrust. It was just Kim Jongin, presenting abstract to mosaic. It's.....it's scary. 

A snap and Kyungsoo screamed inwardly. He couldn't believe that he almost loose himself towards the boy he knew only behind glasses-screen. There was a dangerous E-major in the third part of Für Elise ringing at his Amboss³. He clenched his palms, inhaled single sharp breath before the car turned away from the bridge. Fortune goddess was kind enough that his action went unnoticed by this perilious boy in front of him. Jongin missed hundred glints of Kyungsoo's eyes before the latter's usual expresionless quickly graced his handsome face. And it was really, really strange yet familiar for Jongin. He remembered witnessing a slice of the smaller's boy agony last week but then was blackshadowed by zillion puzzles in the middle of labyrinth. The pale boy casted reciprocal color as his own skin; and it was harder to guess whether it's in white or creme's palette. 

This time the masquerade was stronger. 

In that sea of uncertainty, however, Jongin was intrigued. This certain boy had caught, although unintentionally, the falling pieces of his life and more or less that was what Jongin needed. A shock, a bomb, a big bang, that suddenly jabbed his soul and released the crow. He blurted every layer of himself without much of conscious. The words, the gestures, his true eyes. And it felt so—so right. He was not sure, but he was willing to grab that alluring wrist, reeked of rescue. For once it was valid to be considerate. It was okay to trust someone.

"Do Kyungsoo,"

The silver plate glinted on cue as the name carved on it escaped those plump lips. A little friction was made between the blue blazer and a sickly pale palm; a further confirmation that the said boy was indeed Do Kyungsoo. Jongin took a forth but Kyungsoo remained still. Tan contour ghosted around creamy foam; two pairs of dark orbs transfering white cotton in cosmonauts; curves in between their lips possessed various stars' constellation. A wistful smile but an orange lighthouse's bulb was beginning to sail, they agreed.

"...let's help each other."

 

What is fate, again?

***

---

Words in German :

1. Skizze : sketch

2. Tiefsee : deep sea

3. Amboss : anvil

Author's Note :

OH MY GOD I'M SO SORRY THAT I TOOK FOREVER TO UPDATE THIS. I AM TERRIBLY SORRY. I REALLY AM PLEASE DON'T KILL ME!

I've been really really busy with my college and outside projects. I kinda need to manange my visa as well because yeah, you know living as a foreigner is NEVER easy. Just a lot of things I have to think and do too. Chasing dream is really challenging and troublesome and difficult and tiring and and and *okaysorryforthebabbles*

ANYWAY! I will post two or three more chapters next week because now I already have the draft. I always have tons of ideas but it's sometimes not easy to put it into words despite me having no time, ugh. OH AND CALL ME BABY still got me so much I can't. They are incredibly handsome I still can't come over it, really. PLUS EXO Next's Door doesn't make it any better. I just can't get enough of Kyungsoo being the sweet guy he is and just ahhh perfect boyfriend material, damn.

AND HOW IS IT OKAY WHEN SHINEE CAME BACK TOO LIKE ALL OF SUDDEN AND LEE TAEMIN YOU LIL' HOW COME YOU LOOK LIKE JONGIN SO MUCH I WANNA CRY. KIM JONGHYUN, YOU AIN'T NO BETTER CAUSE WHAT IS LIFE WITH JONGHYUN AND PERFECT BLONDE IT SHOULD BE ILLEGAL

Okay, enough with the rant, sorry that you have to question my sanity but you love me though *kicked*

Hope you enjoyed the story. See you in the next chapter~! Anyeong~

J<3

SONGS :

Marriage d'Amor : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbYojjF9-Zo

Gloria : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aI75A1IvW6E

Benedictus : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOZihNJtjts

Für Elise : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4BysqPWgfc