19. UP AND DOWN

Kyungsoo’s shoes are getting worn; he only notices today, as he stares down at them for grounding, and grants himself the time to look. Worn might not be sufficient enough now that he thinks it: they’re streaked with dirt; tattered at the synthetically-sewn seams; weak in the sole. A trifecta of signs. And Kyungsoo had been missing them all.

His hands twist in his lap, gaze darting as he sways in his seat and the floor curls a track of colour before his very eyes.

He's sat on a mundane chair in the support group circle; Yixing and Junmyeon, just opposite him, sit on the same chair as his own, only they look so very adult in them, and Kyungsoo only looks small.

Kyungsoo wonders, abruptly, why the sessions these days seem to always end with salt treks down his face and on his tongue. This had been different, he knows that- that this had been for Junmyeon far more than it had been for himself, but now that the thought has struck him, he can't seem to get it out of his head.

How many times does the average person cry everyday? He wonders to himself, and when the question hits him again a moment after, it's in the leader's snide, mocking tone.

"Yeah, how many more times do you show weakness?”  Kyungsoo imagines, and he swallows the lump he hadn't realised was building in his throat.

There's still tear paths drying on his cheeks and the taste of them lingers potently on his tongue, lashes clumped and lips cracked, heart stilling to a normal rhythm. Junmyeon, on the other hand, is the picture of recovery, wiping at his tears with a tissue which Kyungsoo had rejected, letting his nose lose the red it has gained as conversation stops. Yixing, silent, is sat staring between them both, waiting, clearly, for someone to speak.

There's something horribly trusting in crying before another person.

In tears, there is hysteria. Our minds aren't working right. The smallest things become glorious spectacles, and the biggest things become the world.

When you cry with another person, it is with the mutual understanding that you're about to expose one of the most fragile versions of yourself for them to see.

And Kyungsoo hadn't even hesitated when he'd cried with Junmyeon. It hadn't even, for the shortest of seconds, seemed like it was nothing less or more than a certainty. Kyungsoo saw himself crying with the elder, and no other alternative seemed to make sense.

"You know," Yixing suddenly pipes up, two pairs of eyes instantly darting his way. "I'm being quiet for a reason. I am expecting one of you to talk," he says, though he shoots an accusatory look Junmyeon's way rather than Kyungsoo's, brows raised and tone expectant.

Junmyeon, even with red around his eyes and dotted sparsely in his cheeks, pulls a disbelieving look back; it’s the first sign that the Junmyeon Kyungsoo knows best, the fiercely confident teacher number two, is still alive. Even if the glimmer is momentary, Kyungsoo feels instantly relaxed at the thought.

"You must really love your mum," Kyungsoo says aloud, unthinking and blunt, eyes going wide when he realises what he's said and darts his gaze to the ground. "I-I- I mean-" he starts, but Junmyeon cuts him off.

"It's okay," he soothes, expression turning sombre as before, "I get what you're saying. I'm not usually like this, am I?"

Kyungsoo digs teeth into a portion of his gums, shrugging his shoulders and still not raising his eyes. The elder, in any case, doesn't seem offended by the lack of response, and only continues to speak.

"I love her a lot," he says, tone dropping with patent sincerity. "And I hate to see her sad, or hurt."

Junmyeon looks to him suddenly, desperately, and his whole body quivers as if he had been about to reach out for Kyungsoo's hand to tug him closer. "Thank you, for being there for her." Even if he's already thanked Kyungsoo enough times that the younger is almost dizzy from the words.

Kyungsoo opens his mouth-

"Why are you thanking me?"

-and then he remembers that he's already asked, and already been explained to with loud, insistent authority until Yixing had to calm Junmyeon down. Instead, he remains silent, and Junmyeon carries on speaking.

"She didn't- she didn't even really tell me about last night," he chuckles, a harsh, paining sound that ripples through Kyungsoo's very core. "She always acts so strong, so unbeatable - I think... I think I probably get that from her."

Kyungsoo doesn't raise his eyes. He's not sure if he could handle it. The things Junmyeon is saying- he doesn't deserve them, not yet, maybe even not ever. Kyungsoo doesn't want to hear secrets for something as small as talking to someone in the cold, dead of night, especially not when it probably took Yixing years to receive them himself.

"But, Kyungsoo, when I couldn't be there for her last night, you were." Junmyeon goes on, deaf to Kyungsoo's thoughts.

Kyungsoo doesn't understand why he deserves gratitude for such a simple, humane act of kindness. Has the world honestly become so harsh and so feral as to walk by and ignore as an old lady weeps without comfort?

"I can't - I don't even know how to thank you enough for that." Kyungsoo wishes he didn't have to, even if he's starting to get why.

There's a pause, like a hesitation, and then- "I kept thinking, what if she'd been alone? What if it got too much?"

Ah, there's the story.

Kyungsoo, even as timid and unsure as he currently feels, looks up to meet Junmyeon's eyes, heart thundering in his chest.

What would have happened? He asks with that look, or, at the very least, he thinks he asks. And when Junmyeon makes the same expression that Eun-Seo had made when Kyungsoo had wanted to hurt himself, Kyungsoo gets it.

He ducks his head, back to his shoes and his hands which shuffle in ill-comfort, back to his thoughts and his questions on the unseen.

"You know, you're the first person on that street to show her kindness in I don't know even how many years." Kyungsoo trails a finger against the back of his hand, tries to block the words out; he thinks, from a feeling and a quick glance from his lashes, that Junmyeon can tell.

He goes on. "Kyungsoo, I don't think you're understanding how good what you did truly was-"

"Junmyeon. "Yixing's voice is a warn, his head turned to Kyungsoo as he looks Junmyeon's way. Kyungsoo's hands stop moving; Junmyeon's expression crumples almost immediately after the card is played, switching to a default normality.

"How do you know what I'm thinking?" Kyungsoo hears himself asking out loud, his filter burnt to ash from the heavy round of tears. His tone, he realises, is hard and accusatory, snippier than he'd meant. "I'm sorry, I-" he starts to apologise, but Yixing only chuckles lightly and smiles his dimpled smile.

"Let's say, from years of social interaction?" Yixing ventures, a sly curve to the line of his lips. "I've seen a lot, you know. And, because I've seen a lot, I recognise a lot too."

Kyungsoo stares at the older man, trying to figure out his talent, and the wise in Yixing's eyes that Kyungsoo has never before needed to know about suddenly feels so important.

What made you this strong? He thinks. And then, he wonders, what would make me strong?

"What else did you know about me before I told you?" Kyungsoo hears himself asking, fingers pressing beneath his knees in a busy bid for warmth.

"Well," Yixing ponders, even though Kyungsoo can't shake the feeling that Yixing doesn't have to think about it. "I knew you had been beat up by someone you knew even before I saw the text on your phone."

So Yixing did see it. "How could you possibly-" Kyungsoo starts, blinking his gaze up to meet Yixing, but the elder cuts in.

"Your injuries... they were too personal," he settles for, lips pinched together like he knows this conversation is rocky (he probably does, Kyungsoo thinks). "And... and I also had a feeling."

“A feeling?” Kyungsoo repeats.

“Purely intuitive,” Yixing explains. “It’s like a multiple choice question – there’s always an answer that is clearly wrong. For me though, there is always an answer that is clearly right.”

Kyungsoo can't fathom it - how someone could ever reach such a standard of brilliance, perfect such a complex art as the human mind. But he also knows that questioning again would be pointless and tiring; Yixing’s mind is unprecedented with it’s wise.

"Why didn't you phone the police that time?" Whilst the questions are being asked, he thinks. It's always been a thought, an inconsistency that hasn't sat quite right in Kyungsoo's head. Yixing, even with the mind that rivals the most spectacular, has always seemed the type to do things by the book.

"I knew there was a better alternative," Yixing says as the only thing, his gaze open and raw in the synthetic hall lighting. He's patient, rapt, as Kyungsoo digests the words, puts two-and-two together and-

"My coming here wasn't just a coincidence, was it? Wasn't just a leaflet through my letter box?"

Yixing, too decent to lie, says nothing. Or, perhaps, he can sense it: the hushed betrayal in Kyungsoo’s tone at the thought of such a great thing being planned, pre-determined. The silence drags on for so long – not a nice one, not a comfortable one, but a necessary one by all means – that Kyungsoo attempts to fill it himself.  

"I always thought it was fate," he admits, sounding small and gentle, like a child who sees with their imagination, and is trying to get back to some form of reality.

"It was fate that my colleague phoned me up to cover their shift when I had that day off," Yixing says, and Kyungsoo's eyes would pool from some sort of relief, some happiness, if they weren't all dried out. "It was fate that I was your doctor on a day I wasn't supposed to be anyone's."

It's odd. How much of a difference chance makes to a story. Going to this group, meeting all these people - even though it is amazing, even though Kyungsoo can never see himself forgetting anymore - would feel so dirty if planned. Being accidental gives it the quiet spectacular it deserves.

"Though I don't think even I could stretch so far as to say that the improper usage of confidential hospital records and the coercion of Junmyeon into posting a leaflet through your door after his night shift too constitutes as fate."

Kyungsoo can't help it - he laughs, a bright, sudden sound in the sombreness of the room and it must be such a happy thing that even Junmyeon and Yixing chuckle along, smiles on their wise, wise faces.

"How did you even know I was gay?" Kyungsoo questions, an incredulous exclamation in between a fit of even more incredulous giggles. And even though Kyungsoo had asked, he's shocked by how abruptly sheepish Yixing looks at having to explain, by how much bigger the story is.

"I-I didn't know for sure until you tried to hide that you knew who hurt you." He stutters, the first time Kyungsoo's hearing him do so. "But you blushed when I approached you, and your sister's teasing isn't really that subtle."

ing Eun-Seo, Kyungsoo thinks, cheeks blossoming a hue of red as Yixing shoots him an apologetic look for the quake of mortification that is shaking through his very core.

"Why did my hiding what happened make you know for sure?" He distracts, shielding the red in his cheeks with a bashful bow of his head.

Yixing ponders, feigns. "To me, it meant that you didn't want to talk about why they were targeting you. And, if it were for a false reason... well that wouldn't be nearly as difficult to explain." He finishes briskly, retracing his thought process aloud for Kyungsoo to grasp. Kyungsoo mulls it over, in awe of how easily Yixing can make these deductions, how good a silent spectator he makes.

He is probably the most perfect doctor, Kyungsoo concludes, smiling softly to himself at the very thought.

"Thinking back too," Yixing says, a bright glint in his eyes, "it may also have been a little intuitive of me. I don't know, it was just - the very moment the thought struck me, I felt as though it was a fact. And I kept thinking that one maybe-lost leaflet and a little more effort based off of the gut could be well worth it if I was right and you could be introduced to an outlet like this."

"Which I'm very thankful for, by the way," Kyungsoo hastens in, abruptly intent on putting forth the sincerity behind his words. "I don't know where I'd be if-if, well, I never met everyone here. So, just, thank you," he repeats, meeting Yixing's soft gaze, turning to Junmyeon's own proud sort. "You- both of you, you're really very..." he trails off, unable to put it into words, but he can tell that they understand by their damp eyes and soft smiles, and that is more than enough.

The air feels fresh that evening, a welcome companion to Kyungsoo's journey home. After much assurance and extensive (admittedly sweet) arguing, Kyungsoo rejected the offer of a drive home from Yixing and Junmyeon, intent on enjoying some alone time in the general stillness of emptied streets - music-less, for once, with the wind as the only song for his ears and his moving steps the only beat of sound.

Today, for perhaps one of the first times since he started the group, Kyungsoo feels progressed. He doesn't know if Junmyeon had said the words he did foreseeing this, or if he'd, at the very least, exaggerated his bouts of praise, but there was a raw truth to it - in Yixing's cautioning eyes; In Junmyeon's fierce, vibrant ones- that Kyungsoo can't seem to ignore. Looking back, it seems so preposterous now; thinking himself responsible for the wrongdoing when he, as he has known for years now, has little to no effect on his mother.

The bitter thought has him kicking at a stray pebble on the ground, gaze contemplative and dragging as the sky around him turns darker and darker with each step onwards. Many people say that darkness is a scary, unsettling phenomenon, a combat to one of the most key of our senses and a palette for disillusionment. But Kyungsoo thinks differently. Kyungsoo sees darkness and he sees the world come alive - not in parties, not in city district splendour, but in the silence outside, where for hours the leaves aren't green but blackish blue, the pavement not grey but night itself, skin not white but a tinted silhouette, and everything has changed. Colour is lost and re-found, identities erased and remade, and it all happens in a short few glorious hours, right below everyone's noses.

Kyungsoo sees darkness, and he sees magic.

And in the night's darkness today, as he passed in a morning dark just hours before, he sees the same hunch of a figure sat unassumingly at her doorstep, double blankets wrapped over her shoulders as a shield to the dark, and thought on her face like a painted picture.

"Mrs Kim?" Kyungsoo calls, question in his tone. It seems crazy, impossible, to meet her again at a different time but at the same time for each walk past her house. But she looks up at the call, and the name is hers in her tired eyes and frail form, just as soft and gentle as the night before. And Kyungsoo reckons the Mrs Kim with pristine hair and crisp work clothes is completely lost to him as they meet eyes and hers are still brimmed with pain. Seeing some things can just make others un-seeable.

"Hello, again," Mrs Kim ripostes, a wobbling smile on her face as she looks Kyungsoo's way. She rises to her feet, walks forward to approach where he stands, on the outside of her gate, respecting his lack of right to intrude, even if emotional intrusion has already gone under the radar. "It's- I'm so sorry, I never asked before but, I never caught your name?" She questions straight-off, as if the query had been plaguing her mind for hours.

"It's Kyungsoo, Mrs Kim." He provides, but even in her expression he can tell that that wasn't what she'd meant. He feels that same apprehension he'd felt when he'd first seen Mrs Kim cry strike him all over again, but he forces it away like it's a poison. Instead, before she can ask, Kyungsoo continues clearing his throat in the stillness of the night. "D-Do. Do Kyungsoo."

The effects of the spoken name are immediate. Mrs Kim flinches openly, a harsh, uncontrollable flinch that makes Kyungsoo so ashamed it's almost painful - Mrs Kim had been expecting someone bad; she hadn't prepared for the worst.

"I'm sor-" Kyungsoo starts to say, unhelping, instinctive, but Mrs Kim only rearranges her expression and shakes her head, soft and smiling- hold your words, it isn't you, in the curl to her lips and pinch to her eyes.

"How was your meeting with your son?" Kyungsoo asks, a vague attempt at changing the subject to something more bearable. He almost immediately regrets it when Mrs Kim's face openly falls, and isn't that her? Openly, openly, openly. One day and she has become so readable.

"He blames himself when I suffer," she says slowly, and, in Kyungsoo's mind, he sees Junmyeon's face, and the words fit perfectly, even if the thought hurts immensely; Mrs Kim, it seems, is Junmyeon’s very own weakness.

"I get the feeling. Of your son I mean," he clarifies, because it's true; even if his parents give him such little attention, and their actions bring him shame, they are and always will be his parents, and the root to all his fear surrounding ‘coming out’ lies in the offset effects it will have on them far more than on himself.

"You... what?" Mrs Kim asks, and there's something so odd about the way she says it, something so unnerving about her tone of voice, that Kyungsoo feels he has to backtrack.

"Well- I mean. I can imagine." He stammers out, staring across at her with sheepish eyes and a suggestion of a smile. Her expression, as Kyungsoo says the words, barely changes. She appears vacant, perturbed, as if a thought has struck her so strongly that she cannot force it away.

"Mrs Kim?" Kyungsoo tries, for he can think of nothing else to do. Thankfully, she seems to snap out of her stupor, even if her eyes still retain something new, something that wasn't there before, as she looks Kyungsoo's way.

"Sorry I just... spaced out for a moment," she smiles apologetically, rising to her feet. "I think... I'll go inside now, Kyungsoo. Walk home safely, okay?"

Kyungsoo's lips twitch up, and the feeling of unease washes away. "I will. Good night, Mrs Kim."

He turns away to start walking, a spring in his step, and doesn't ever see her face fall.

"Kyungsoo."

He hears immediately after stepping into his entrance hallway, like his mother had been waiting.

"Mother?" He questions, locking the door behind himself and kicking off his shoes as he looks her way. "Why are you home so early?" He questions, the happy feeling he'd held throughout his walk home disappearing at the sternness in her eyes.

"Kyungsoo, it's past 8 now," she ripostes without faltering, the knowledge making Kyungsoo's eyes go wide. He hadn't realised he'd stayed so long at the group, just talking to Yixing and Junmyeon, figuring things out.

"Where were you?" She asks next, something so excessively suspicious in how she says it that Kyungsoo actually stops in his movements, straightening up and fixing his mother with a wide-eyed, confused stare.

"What are you- why do you ask like that?" He questions, heart pounding fast in his chest as the impossible strikes him, the, the- could she know? Could she know that her son spends two hours after school at a support group for gay people? That's makes no sense, that-

But what she says next is perhaps the last thing that Kyungsoo had been expecting.

"Were you speaking with Mrs Kim again?"

Her eyes are stern, lips pursed and posture firm. Ordinarily, Kyungsoo would do all he could to ease the angry tension building between them by this conversation, but, this time, he bites his tongue. Instead, he asks the question which had been thrown at him first, unable to censor himself back.

"Again?" He questions, mimicking the disdain in how she'd said the word mere moments before, wide eyes tracing cautiously over the grimace on her face.

"Yes, again," she repeats, something grossly superior in her expression. "You don't think I don't know about your 2am talk this morning?" She coos, chiding and harsh, misunderstanding Kyungsoo's shock with his fear of being caught out. Before Kyungsoo can even begin to formulate a response though, his mother barrels on, like she's been waiting to do so all night, and she says something so unexpected that Kyungsoo does not, at first, know how to respond.

"You should stop speaking to her. She raised a gay son." And it's a hiss. The way she says, the way she instructs. Kyungsoo blinks at her, shaky, disbelieving, perhaps a little panicked- no, no, no, definitely. Definitely in his very gut, his very core, panicked.

"What?" Is all he can say, voice stolen by the words, the ease and firmness to which she had spoken them. Because- because after all that's happened, today and yesterday, the strain on himself, on his head and on his heart, how can one conversation with his mother be fast-becoming the thing which makes his smile fall? This isn't how it works, shouldn't be how it works. His mother, his mother, should make him smile, should want him happy-

"Kyungsoo you shouldn't mix with people like that-"

People like me-

"-shouldn't give a woman like her the time of day-"

A woman you hurt to tears-

"-don't want people thinking the same disgusting thing of you, do we?"

"Disgusting?" Kyungsoo repeats, a monotonous mimicry as his heartbeat speeds in tumultuous aversion for what he is hearing. His inhaling picks, his head spins, and he hears himself saying, "How is it disgusting?", tone breathy and small.

The words hit his mother like a slap in the face, her head whipping to him fast and something Kyungsoo barely recognises as fear pinpricking momentarily beneath the dark orbs of her eyes.

"Tell me you're joking." She instructs, a short, disbelieving puff of air slipping from like an apprehensive try at laughter.

The response only works to make Kyungsoo's pick further, head shaking slightly back and forth. His heart picks when he looks about himself and realises, for the second time in his life, that the room is getting smaller, the walls stretching out towards him like claws of a monster.

"Kyungsoo?" He hears his name, not from his mother, but from Eun-Seo who has appeared at the top of the stairs, and who looks him down only once for her to take quick steps towards him, by his side, ready to help.

"Kyungsoo?" His mother asks this time, eyes widening at the heavy breaths of her son, her muscles stiffening and freezing over like his own will soon, and the thought of being immobile and fighting for air with his mother to watch, pushes him into action.

So before Eun-Seo can move to help him, Kyungsoo forces himself to smile, forces his mouth closed to stop the obvious hyperventilation peeking through, forces a stillness to his body, a faux sense of calm even as the panic in his chest grows worse.

"Mum, I was joking, don't worry about it," he says quickly, manufacturing a false reassurance in the tone of his voice and the pose of his words that makes, at the very least, the original fear in her eyes dissipate to the sides. "I just- I feel ill, I'm going to-" and before he can be stopped, before anyone can reach out to get him, he opens the front door behind him and steps once more into the cool night air, dropping his facade and falling to a crouch on the ground.

In the next minute he hears vague talking, more sounds, attempts, himself, to slow his breathing down, think of happier things, but then a door slam later and Eun-Seo, her hazed form, is crouched in front of him on the same stretch of wet grass, gaze slow and earnest and calm and ready.

"Kyungsoo, look at me," she instructs, "look at me, come on, look." His eyes catch hers, and trap to her orbs as his breathing starts a shake through his body, and she holds his face in her hands with careful fingers, the cold touch startling Kyungsoo to the present, slowing the growth to losing his own air.

"Focus on me," she says, "and now breathe with me, okay? Can you do that? Just nod or shake your head, don't try to speak, okay?"

So Kyungsoo nods, and he focuses. And he doesn't know how long it takes for his headspace to return to the norm', but it does, and she makes it happen, all in quick, hazed succession.  

For a long time after, they sit in silence, breaths calm under the night sky and in the fresh, chilly air that Kyungsoo is only just starting to feel, and with such peace between them that Kyungsoo wonders how long it has been since he's felt as timeless as this.

"Whenever you want to leave, you tell me," Eun-Seo speaks up suddenly, gaze still on Kyungsoo when Kyungsoo looks down to meet it.

"What?" He asks, the first time he has spoken since the panic, the crawling in his throats and pounding of his heart.

She looks at him; in the night sky's palette or colour, her eyes are shining, beetle-like and sincere with a warmth he's forgotten in his own mother. "I mean," she starts to explain, "if you ever want to get out of here, even if it's just for a day, if it's for a week or for a whole damn year, you just have to tell me and I'll get us out. Anytime, any moment in a day. Okay?"

There is a pause. In this pause, Kyungsoo wonders when the idea of leaving home changed from a possible necessity to a possible want. Was it a gradual change? Was it abrupt and unknowing, like a 2am talk to help a woman stop crying? He cannot pinpoint it, but he knows the difference, and he doesn't hesitate to say it.

"Okay." And his eyes water with gratitude.

The prospect of an escape at any given moment in time makes Kyungsoo feel a lot calmer when he wakes up the next morning, but that doesn't mean he doesn't not stay in his room until he hears the front door opening and closing, signalling his mother as she leaves for work. He still treads carefully as he makes his way downstairs, fearing the panic, the slurs from the people who love him but hate the person they don't know. In the end it's Eun-Seo alone who is rattling about in the kitchen, and Kyungsoo feels comfort wrack through his bones like a spell has been cast over his form.

They spend that breakfast in almost complete silence, a comfortable, contemplative type, like the two are recalling the events of last night and figuring them out in their own ways. When Kyungsoo's taken his last bite of food, Eun-Seo asks him the question which Kyungsoo can tell would've been bugging her the most.

"What was it?" She stares. Not a single ounce of her worries that Kyungsoo will falter at having to think of it all over again, and that, more than any other thing, makes the word come out easy.

"'Disgusting'", he quotes, placing his bowl in the sink and turning back to the table to place his school bag on his shoulder.

At first, she doesn't respond, and Kyungsoo thinks she may not say a word in response. But then, as they are stepping out of the house together, just after she has locked the door behind her and Kyungsoo is about to start his walk to school, she stops and looks his way.

"Anytime," she repeats, leaving her expression open for dissection: her anger, her earnest, her need to protect.

"Anytime," Kyungsoo agrees. Heart-shaped smile. Squinted eyes. And then, as an after-thought- "Thank you for being my sister."

Eun-Seo doesn't even hesitate. "Thank you for being my brother."

And they walk away from each other, knowing, without even a suggestion of doubt, that they'd run back if the other ever needed it.

During school, Kyungsoo thinks.

He thinks about his mother; he thinks about Junmyeon's. He thinks about Eun-Seo's offer, and wonders if he'll ever need it. In the canteen, when Jongin and Taemin are out of sight, rehearsing, he thinks of them - he thinks of Jongin. He thinks of "I bet they feel really nice", and then decidedly spends the rest of lunch trying to think of anything else, a rosette blush on his pale cheeks and flushing down his neck beneath his shirt collar.

He tries to hide his disappointment when Jongin doesn't turn up like the last time, his eyes drawing slowly away from the doors he'd been wanting to open as people all around him rise from their seats. Eventually, he rises with them, gathering his food onto the tray, but a prickle at the back of his neck makes him freeze. He turns his head, trying to shake the feeling, and his eyes widen when he sees a group of girls looking his way and whispering amongst themselves, even as he's caught them. They're the same girls, Kyungsoo realises, who had been talking about Jongin yesterday, and the fact that they don't try to hide what they're doing shocks a quake of fear through Kyungsoo's system.

He's seen that before, that unrestrained, unashamed call for his head. The leader and his cronies had opened with that, the very day that he'd been outed years before he was ready.

Kyungsoo turns back to the table, head ducked and heart pounding so loudly in his chest he fears someone, even in this commotion, may hear it. He's so intent on that prickle, that he's startled by the, "Kyungsoo," called from right by his side, close and loud over the commotion.

Kyungsoo jumps, his tray of food nearly slipping out of his hands as he turns to the sound and sees Jongin stood there, wearing clothes much-like yesterday's, and a grin on his face and Kyungsoo tries to catch his breath.

Without thinking, Kyungsoo reaches out and lands a hard punch to Jongin's arm, relishing momentarily in the small gasp of pain that escapes Jongin's mouth at the force.

"Hey, don't scare me like that again!" Kyungsoo instructs, trying not to blush at the fact his fist slightly aches from the impact.

And Jongin, of course, only laughs - a loud, unrestrained type of laugh, so pleasant in Kyungsoo's ears that Kyungsoo can only smile back, heart-shaped and sweet. As Jongin continues to find the humour in it, Kyungsoo remembers the prickle in his neck, feels it stronger than ever before, and turns back shortly to see the same group staring his way as they languidly move from the canteen, eyes more squinted, whispers fiercer and snarling.

"Kyungsoo," Jongin says, stealing Kyungsoo's attention back in a single call of his name.

"Hmm?" Kyungsoo responds, shoulders becoming relaxed when the prickle ebbs away and only the stragglers remain in the canteen.

"You're beautiful." Jongin states, simply, softly, so assured and sincere, even with the huge smile on his face, that Kyungsoo's breath hitches silently in his throat.

"I'm- what?" Kyungsoo asks, gaze turning dazed and a pounding starting in his head.

"You're beautiful," Jongin repeats with ease, smile unwavering and devastating in its full, honest curve. "Don't forget it, yeah?"

And then he gives Kyungsoo a cute thumbs up, lingering long enough for the smaller to notice the dusty rose in his cheeks, and comes back the way he came from - Kyungsoo only snapping out of his stupor long enough to watch his back as it disappears past the canteen doors and out of sight.

Needless to say, Jongin does not leave his head for a long while after that. With motor-memory movements and a blush he can feel that just won't seem to quit, Kyungsoo makes his way to his lesson. He settles in his seat; he takes out his books. The teacher hasn't arrived so he lets himself be still, let's himself think.

Eventually, after he really comprehends all that has happened, Kyungsoo smiles. Even worse than just smiling, he can feel that it's shaped in his wide, characteristic heart, and, like a damn schoolgirl, he has to hide it behind his hands and suppress himself from squealing because Jongin finds him beautiful. No one's ever called him that before - until yesterday, Kyungsoo didn't even realise people thought it. Could that be why Jongin said it today - yesterday's support group session making him feel obligated? For a very short, terrible second, Kyungsoo plays with the idea that Jongin had only said it to make him feel better, to make him smile without even meaning it. But the thought leaves just as fast as it becomes - Kyungsoo knows people, has spent his whole life observing them, and he knows liars.

And Jongin hadn't been lying when he told Kyungsoo he was beautiful.

The thought of that has Kyungsoo smiling all over again, this time unable to help the small, elated sounds which push past his lips and ring sweetly in his own ears. He's so out of it for the first half of the lesson that he can barely focus on the teacher's words. He writes his notes still, just as diligently as always, but his focus instead is on sun-kissed tan skin and shining chocolate eyes - so dark they're almost black but so undoubtedly kind that Kyungsoo cannot seem to draw himself away from them, even in his thoughts, with the Jongin in his head that does not do the real one justice.

Then, the teacher shouts.

It is reflexive - how when Kyungsoo hears the loud bellow of a voice ring in his head, his eyes dart to the front of the classroom, gaze immediately, like all others, falling on the movement the teacher is intent on. In it, he would not linger, would not ordinarily spare a look that lasted longer than a couple of seconds (especially in this state), but the image he is met with feels so peculiarly significant that he can't tear his eyes away.

Etched uncomfortably into his pupils for that single moment is the picture of the leader crouched to collect what Kyungsoo, in the back of his head, recognises to be a dozen or so fallen cigarettes. The teacher, Kyungsoo also vaguely notes, is still shouting in the background from the front of the class, presumably realising what it is that has fallen, but the leader's movements remain languid and calm - unfazed, uncaring; perhaps, most probably, both. But in this all, in this slow, hazy scene that has captured Kyungsoo like a spell, a single, nagging thought runs prevalent through his mind-

He has seen this before.

Not this scene as it now stands, not the exact circumstances or the track of specific, converging sounds, but the image itself. Not the cigarettes, not the reaches of hand- but, yes, the hand, in a different way. Predominantly, most importantly, the same stretch of back and the same back of the head with the same head of hair, all with such frighteningly exact sameness that Kyungsoo has no doubts: he has seen this before. And it is with several seconds of desperate, wracking for answer that the preposterous concept is tried for wear, and the shoe fits.

He stands at the same time it strikes him.

His stand, which has his chair scraping back against the screeching, linoleum floor, shocks all attention his way, including the leader's whose eyes meet his own where his gaze has frozen in solid place.

"I-I-" Kyungsoo stutters, disbelieving, shocked. He swallows, forces something down his throat that feels a lot like punching material, and the leader's expression twitches faster than Kyungsoo's had done. The certainty of that, the quiet, soundless assurance he hadn't truly expected to see, burns words into his vocal chords.

"I have to go to the toilet," he announces, moving quickly behind desks to escape, escape, escape. With fast steps he reaches, and whips back for an added please and a polite glance the teacher's way, but he is too intent to linger for an answer.

In the hallways, the silence, when the world has turned empty and signs of life have ebbed away like perspiration on a sunny day, the haze thickens. He doesn't walk in a straight line - he's surprised he even walks, saves himself from imbalance for each step forward when so many questions are buzzing incessantly in his mind. In the forefront, he pretends not to hear he steps that follows. For the time, he lets himself think he's escaping.

Except, when he reaches the toilets with a huffed breath of air down to emotional, not physical, strain, he whips around immediately after, pressing himself back against the tiled toilet walls and being fully expectant for when the leader steps through the door and moves forward to reach him.

Before he can, before he can even try to hide the treks on an otherwise untouched beach, Kyungsoo speaks up, first and instinctive like he can barely handle it in any other way.

"It was you." Is all he says, not a question: a statement. Said with such firm, unwavering resolve, even with the realisation being fresh, that even the leader pauses in his steps, unable to deny.

Taking advantage of the stillness, Kyungsoo barrels on, wise or unwise a decision, and with no filter to catch his words in place.

"You- you helped me. When I was having a panic attack it was- was you."

Still, the leader remains frozen, and Kyungsoo's mind buzzes and more information seals itself together, pieces beginning to fall in place.

"I-I- I don't understand," he thinks he says, because he doesn't, a shaky hand running roughly through his hair. He recalls the scene, just days ago but feeling so far as he thinks back, and his heart thumps like a drum in his chest. Then, just as quickly, he recalls what Yixing had said, and speaks a question aloud he already knows he shouldn't.

"Who in your family has panic attacks?"

In a second so fast it feels like even less, the leader has him pinned, head pressed hard against the tile behind him and feet wiggling desperately for a firmer grounding. The tell-tale rush of panic floods his system, seeps poisonously into his veins, and for that single moment he fears that he'll get lost in it, dragged down into that harsh, uncontrollable mind-set that terrified him before. But when he peers through his fearfully-squinted eyes and gets a look at the hand which had moved to strike him, his heartbeat dims. White noise sounds in his ears; his mind pounds with thoughts. The leader's punch, hard and snaring as it had made course to barrel into the side of his head, is frozen in space - poised to punch. A tremor captures it - like a shake catches a form in the rain; like panic catches Kyungsoo when his mother calls him disgusting - and Kyungsoo can see the war before his eyes: part of the leader wanting to hit, but another, just as strong, hesitating to do so.

Abruptly, the leader steps back, releasing Kyungsoo from his hold and reeling his fist back into the closest stall door to them both, the harsh sound ringing in Kyungsoo's ears. A long, strangled cry emerges from the leader's mouth, his hands coiling into his strands of hair in frenzied exasperation. The image is so human, so perfectly flawed, that Kyungsoo, in only one question, forgets himself.

"Are you okay?" He asks his bully.

The leader stills. The words, Kyungsoo sees, does something to him so quickly and so soundlessly that Kyungsoo could've missed it if he wasn't staring so intently.

Then, like he's only just registering Kyungsoo's words, and how he should respond, the leader laughs. And that laugh- Kyungsoo is sure he will not be able to forget it for a long time: that harsh tone, that sad emptiness and brew of the pained-

It cannot easily be forgotten.

After a long moment of it, Kyungsoo getting more antsy and more uncomfortable for each time of the superficial excuse of a thing, the leader opens his mouth.

"Since when did it become so normal for me to hurt you, that you wonder if something's wrong when I don't?" He questions, a sneer plastered on his face - though this one is different to the usual, directed to himself as opposed to Kyungsoo and meaner with a hard curve to the corners of his lips.

Before, Kyungsoo has always thought that he was the most hated person in the leader's mind, the easiest to influence and the number one target. It has never once occurred to him that the role may hit far closer to home. Until now.

The realisation of what the leader had done, the juxtaposed image of the boy who had made him panic with the boy who had patiently calmed him to safety, prevails enough for him to pick some sense from his headspace.

"You're not- I don't think-" he stutters, staring at the leader's dark orbs and seeing, once more but more vividly than ever before, someone vulnerable and crying for help. "That- that last time..?" He asks abruptly, vague and short but of such importance that he has not the time to articulate further.

In the leader's silence that follows, the unwavering pinch to his grip and firmness of his body heat against Kyungsoo's own, Kyungsoo figures the leader doesn't understand. But, much like many times before it, Kyungsoo's thoughts are proved wrong: the leader's grip slackens, his eyes dart away from Kyungsoo's, and he looks so, inexplicably tired.

"I wasn't trying to you," he says it simply, the words shocking relief so strong through Kyungsoo's system that he only just realises how much it meant for the leader to not be that type of person the very moment he learns the truth behind it. "I was- well, it doesn't really matter what I was doing..." he mutters to himself, taking a step back and, for the first time, voluntarily out of Kyungsoo's personal space. Kyungsoo's feet steady, his head resting normally as it should and eyes staring straight ahead at the leader who stands but a metre away. They stare at each other then, Kyungsoo's contemplating eyes and the leader's fatigued ones, and Kyungsoo realises something he's never before even thought to realise before.

"You don't actually want to hurt me," he breathes, seeing the pain in the leader's eyes rise at the statement, justifying its abrupt truth.

The leader looks to the ground, swallowing a shallow swallow that Kyungsoo hears aloud in the stillness of the empty toilet stalls like a shout is heard in a library. He watches, he waits. The leader doesn't meet his eyes. He watches, he waits. And somewhere in that all the facade is built back-up, and the leader looks at him with fire in his eyes.

"I always want to hurt you," he lies, lingering for a bare second longer to prove the point with that dark gaze, before turning back to the bathroom door and hunching away with deafeningly loud steps buzzing a tune in Kyungsoo's ears.

After that, Kyungsoo doesn't leave the bathroom for a very long time.

A/N

So

I MEAN

AHHHHH I’M SO SORRY THIS WAS ABYSMALLY LATE >.< Lately I’ve been really unhappy with my writing, and the flow of it, so I kept deleting and rewriting over and over, hence why the update took so long to upload L

I’M SO SORRY I REALLY AHHH

Thank you for bearing with it – I’ll work hard to improve on this, and update more often.

PS. DIVIDE IS A ING MASTERPIECE AMIRIGHT

Please leave comments below (EVEN IF IT’S TO SMASH ME FOR MY LATE UPDATE LIKE I DESERVE :0) <333333