Jongdae didn't know what had happened. Was it his fault? What occurred to make him like this? 

Jogging kneeled on the floor with his knees to his chest breathing deeply and exhaling slowly into the silence. His chapped lips moved at an electric speed of "" and "no more" and a bunch of other irrelevant meanings of twisted unheard sentences. Beads of cold perspiration slid down his temple and to the hard wooden ground as he shook furiously. Tears ran down his intense crimson cheeks but occasional bursts of demented laughter broke.

Jongdae was crying too, he held himself with anxiety. Standing, just watching his husband divulge himself into the unknown scared him to death. In his shaking ivory palms was a phone where he had just dispatched an ambulance.

"Just hold a bit longer Jongin. Just hold on." 

-

Work had really took over Kim Jongin's life. The numbers of clients and red and blue zigzags on pieces of poster board began to crumble together. It began with a little longer at work. A few hours. Then not coming home till the clock would read the time of dawn and a sleepy emergence from the door would awake Jongdae as he would lay in bed alone. 

"A workaholic."

Jongdae had pleaded with his eyes for his droopy eyed husband who attempted to wash the painted mural of fatigue off his ashen face. He was tired, hungry and always away. 

"Don't be ridiculous Dae," he retorted with a slight snap. Recoiling with surprise, Jongdae shuffled away but was to be halted by a tiny tug of the cotton. 

"I'm sorry Dae, but we have bills to pay," he sighed. He obviously didn't want to have a fight. 

"Then I'll work too," Jongdae urged with annoyance. "So you don't have to work so much."

"Stop, you have to do this internship. It's your passion and your dream to become a psychologist. This is a great opportunity so continue." 

His words were caring and kind, but Jongdae couldn't help but feel the tone sharp and curt. 

"How about your dreams? And your passion?" His soft tone was snipped with a laugh extending off Jongin's lips. 

"I don't have any. So quit this, and continue your internship alright?"

His voice was beginning to rise with exasperation. Dry knuckles loosened his maroon tie as he started to rub his temples.

"Jongin-it's not that bad. You see-"

"What's not so bad? Jongdae, you are getting handed an internship where you can get educated about the job you want, and you're telling me you want to quit. Staying in that internship is your place, going to work is mine. It's about time you grow up."

Storming out with an unhesitant slam of the front door, Jongdae slumped down the bathroom cabinet and ran his hand through his caramel hair. A few drops of sadness raced onto his thick eyelashes. The navy blue walls that coated the bathroom walls made him feel dizzy. Jongin and him had painted the walls together, Aging Stripe. He remembered the name. 

This continued on after months. Agitated, consumed and broken down as a human being. A walking preservative of acute angling bones and structure and a thinning mane of light ashy hair. His chapped lips that used to contain a crooked smile of mystery and amusement overturned into a inevitable scowl of thought and the quiet taps of calculators and occasional forced upturned smile. He wasn't the lanky and shy boy he had met, which seemed like eons ago. The innocence in his face was slashed with the cadence of maturity and hollowness and if you looked closely into his former thinking copper eyes now sluggish pools of dusty brown, you could see the hints and specks of dismal and sadness. 

Jongdae knew Jongin still loved him, or he was just telling himself over and over. It was a constant replay in his mind.

"Your husband loves you. Your husband loves you."

Kisses on the cheek were rare, and lips? Those were history. They hadn't made love in months. Jongdae felt alone, even as he watched his fatigued husband pass by, and giving him a tiny smile before returning to their bedroom to sleep. He hung onto the tiny smiles, rewards of staying and loyalty. He loved Kim Jongin with all his heart, but he didn't quite know if he loved him back anymore. 

The pause in their seemingly fairytale marriage had halted and transformed into a full stop. Gasps of heated air escaped Jongin's breathless lips as he spoke furiously into the phone.

"What? Why? You've got to be ing kidding me. No, I'm sorry. Whatever, it's okay. Sure that's fine."

Slamming down the landline, tensions of ill-tempered manner drifted in and out of Jongin. His face was a fierce mixture of plum and red. He closed his eyes, attempting to search for calm, serenity. Please.

Nope. He shoved all the piles of paper off his desk with such fury and fume, Jongdae who was watching secretly shivered. Quiet sobs of frustration and rage seeped outside of the office. 

"Dae, I can see you."

The hushed and faltering whisper alarmed Jongdae who slowly revealed himself in the doorway. His husband, no, who was this? This wasn't the eager and timid at times boy who he had shook hands with for a room. He looked different. So much older. 

"Sit with me." he pleaded and extended a shaking hand. Jongdae shuffled to him and sat on Jongin's lap and felt the warm but rigid embrace of worn out tendons and muscles that wrapped around his dainty waist. 

"I love you, Dae." 

"I love you Jongin."

It turned out that that was a call from his boss. Well, his former boss. He had been laid off along with a couple hundred of people who he had worked with. The company was bought by a major and larger one, and was told the workers with no remorse, to get lost. 

The first morning of being well, jobless, he woke up at 1:37 p.m., exactly. Jongdae had called in sick to watch his husband who looked confident, but he was afraid Jongin was going to break without his calculator and colorful line graphs. Jongdae waited at their compact dining table and watched the hands of the clock pass by smoothly. The timely rhythms were interrupted by a lengthy yawn and a tiny grumble. 

A disheveled Jongin stumbled into the kitchen and Jongdae leaped up with excitement to greet him.

"Didn't sleeping in feel nice?" For a reply, he got a reluctant smile. 

"Well I made you breakfast Jongin. And I'll make you some more coffee-" but he was stopped when Jongin opened the fridge and grabbed a can of freezing beer. 

"No thanks Dae." He swooped in to give Jongdae a kiss on the cheek and hopped off to devour his scrambled eggs. 

A month later, Jongdae would mentally slap himself for not stopping Jongin from grabbing that beer that day. There was something wrong. It became a ritual for him. Wake up, a beer, finished? No worries, there's three six packs waiting to be opened in the fridge.

"You've got to stop Jongin." Jongdae had attempted as he sat next to his haven't shaved in like about a month husband who reeked of sweat and disorientation and was sipping on a can of Budweiser. Giggles began to erupt from Jongin, delighted and excited, just like a five year old. 

"What is it?" Jongdae inquired with curiosity. Was there something on his face?

The cheerful laughter continued while Jongdae sat with puzzlement. He shook Jongin's flimsy arm. 

"What is it?" 

A look of disbelief and startled washed over Jongdae's face as he looked over to what Jongin was pointing at. It was the television that wasn't . 

And it was pitch black.

-

The check that Jongin received was enough to cover rent for another two months. But the two months quickly came by as another rush of seasons changing and empty beer cans. Jongdae urged him to go to therapy, and threatened to take away his beer, and Jongin would return hissy fits and silent treatments. He acted like an adult six year old. 

When he eventually took it away, Jongin would go missing. The first time it happened, Jongdae was frantic and terrified. Staying up all night, he drove around the neighborhood, and he searched nearby parks and liquor stores but he had found his intoxicated husband passed out in the bar stool of a bar two miles away. 

With all their money being drained out, Jongdae proposed they would move back into their old apartment. The modest two bedroom was still under Jongin's name and was collecting dust as they spoke. 

"Together. Please, I need you." 

He had pressed his vacant husband who sat on the couch, beer can in hand. When the words "I need you." spouted Jongdae's mouth, he swore he saw the glint of eagerness dancing in Jongin's eyes. The same hint of avid desire to make Jongdae happy that was constantly twirling and skipping before. But the desiring fire quickly burned out and returned to its pace of vacancy. 

"I'll pack the boxes." 

Moving back into the modest two bedroom, just stepping into it sent a rush of memories back. The hallway or cracked cream that led was the hallway where Jongin had passionately confessed his longing for Jongdae and kissed him for the first time. The same antique hallway where Jongdae had looked at him differently, not as a good friend, but a man. The bland kitchen that was a sacred memory of chopped bell peppers and drying bowls of Cup of Noodle. His face was flushed with the recovery of their old and memorable space, and Jongdae could sense Jongin felt it too.

His aura was more lively when he entered their museum of crooked smiles and warm hugs. He would grin at certain places, remembering the pass and goes of spilled bland coffee and tasty kisses along the alabaster walls. 

"I missed it," he whispered with a wink to Jongdae. 

"Me too." 

That night, they headed down for a stroll of the chilly Seoul autumn. Autumn in Seoul was flaky and chilly, but with no harsh edges. It was a time of laughter and less time to breathe the salty fineness of summer but too early to inhale the icy waves of Seoul winter. The crunch of the leaves were satisfying as they crumbled beneath their shoes and past. Biting air snapped through currents of warmth huddled in nearby shelters but they meandered the empty streets which used to be their home. They continued to walk but Jongin halted in front of a particular door amid the neon signs of hot chocolate and shortbread happiness.

It was bland and no one who especially knew about it would halt and take more than a mere glance at the boring frame. Faded cursive read the aging name of 'Daphne.'

Without hesitation, he entered through the door making the lifeless string of Christmas lights attempting to decorate give off an annoyed halt and hum. 

"Remember this place Dae?" he smoothed his hand across the rich mahogany bar. 

"Yeah, of course." 

This was the bar Jongin used to work in. It was run down, beat up and for some strange reason, able to still be alive and in business all these years. It was practically empty, and basically deserted. Jongdae questioned why he would choose such a dead place to work, but the strange comforting feeling of solitude seemed to calm Jongin down.

"Hey, I remember you." A voice spoke across the bar. Faintly, Jongdae could remember the voice. 

"Thomas," a chirpy tone that came from Jongin filled in the blank for him. "How's your day been?" 

"It's my daughter, Rebecca. Dating this young fellow, tats and cigarettes. It's been a terrible month," Thomas sighed heavily and ran a wrinkling hand through his thin alabaster hair. Jongdae was terribly confused, because he felt as if he had heard this conversation before, vaguely. 

"Alzheimer's," Jongin whispered silently along his neck answering his question as if he could read his mind. 

"It's ridiculous. Her husband, my son in law, died two weeks ago. Ron was a good man, knew how to fish, was a real man. Could cook hell of a steak. It's sad, dying of heart attack, he was too young. Just fell, with no notice or heads up, dead." 
-

Jongdae thought that when they relocated themselves back to their modest two bedroom apartment, it would remind what a captivated soul Jongin was back then. The constant swigs of alcohol would be cut, and the feelings who emerge. But to his unfortunate expectations, it persisted with the tassels of hesitation and ignorance in their marriage. 

His angry and naive demeanor of drunk would toss hurting words and accusations to Jongdae. It sliced through his ivory skin and made paper cuts to his heart. Then suddenly, it would be hiccups of bubbly attitude and love. Harmless winks that were innocent and eager to please. The two faces of being drunk, an alcoholic.

But something about that was different, and Jongdae saw the variation. Impatient hisses of slamming plates to the ground and screaming till he swore he could hear the tearing of his vocal chords and then a second later he would embrace Jongdae's ivory palms and sing. He was ignorant of the plates he had just broke and the angry streams of tears turned into confusing smiles that lifted sunshine. 

It scared the out of Jongdae.

Until that one night, he could hear the faint voices of a conversation brewing. Two different voices, one low and hearty and the other high pitched. When he entered the room, it was Jongin speaking to himself with different tones. Margins of confusion and nerve wrecking fear scraped Jongdae as he watched his husband begin to shake, violently. His chapped lips emerged with shrieks of lolling bliss while a scream of anger and fury escaped as well. He shivered while he wore this thick sweater that was also smeared with drenched sweat and obscenities.

This wasn't his husband, but it was someone he loved. Someone who he really cared about. A stranger with a puzzled mindset and missing cord connected to Jongdae's shattered heart.