The foul smell keep on lingering in my nose, it’s so thick that made it hard even to breath. How many days had passed? I couldn’t see anything, I don’t know when the sun rise or going down, but I think it’s already more than two days. The liquid that wetted my legs already dried up, instead every time I reach my hands to my legs something like sand crumbling down and then the smell of iron get even stronger. I’m cold, my head hurts, I’m starving and thirsty, but above all I can’t stand the smell, it’s turning into something worse. Then I heard a loud noise, a sudden burst of light filled my eyes and a pair of hands pulled me out of that box of darkness.

 

 I breath in, eyes wide awake, feeling the dampness of my bed and sweat rolling down from my hair. Again I thought, the strange dream I can’t make sense of that I’ve been having since as long as I can remember. I sit up on my bed and look around for something that had been vibrating for a while now. My phone light up with a name written on it, ‘Heechul’.

“Yeah hyung?”, I answer with hoarse voice.

“Ya Donghae, where the heck are you? Don’t tell me you’re freaking sleeping now!”, the voice from the other side yelling.

“Uhm, yeah… I actually did”, I chuckled humorlessly still feeling drowsy.

“Whatever, you promised me so get your here!”, he yelled again before hang up the phone.

Great, now I have to get ready fast to go to the party. Whatever, it would still be going on after past midnight, so I can take my time. Why do people like to gather at a place full of people, drinking, doing stupid thing and be loud without any sense of what they’re doing? Isn’t it kind of useless, after all some of them would be too drunk to remember what had happened, so what’s the point?

 

--

 

“Donghae!”, a voice shouted out my name the moment I stepped into the restaurant, there’s a trace of annoyance in it.

“Hey, hyung”, I patted Heechul’s shoulder lightly.

“Don’t you hey me, what take you so long to get here? Your place is just around the corner!”.

“I’m here just because you told me to, you should be glad enough I even show my face”.

“Aish, you-!”, he raised his hand in a joking manner. “If it wasn’t you, I’ve already hit the brain out of them. Sit down, here, beside me”, he said after pinching my cheek.

I sit down to where he pointed at. Heechul being busy to order something for me and not long after I sat down, people started talking to me whether I know them or not. Me being me, I dove right into the conversation like we’ve been a long time friends, not really caring to what I said. But somehow, I don’t know, I can’t deny that there’s a misplaced feeling. No matter how I tried to deepen my relationship, there’s always a sense of not belonging, like something pulling me back before anything gets too deep.

About an hour after my arrival, suddenly someone standing up and make a fuss because his friends wouldn’t let him go home. His hair is blonde, have a lean yet toned body and a gummy smile, but mostly it’s his jawline that stand out to me, it looks so profound unlike mine. At a glance he looked pretty almost androgynous, but then there is a sense of manliness radiating from him.

“Ya Hyukjae! Who said you can go home now? It’s barely two!”, Heechul shouted from beside which startling me.

The said man turned around and laughed hard that there’re wrinkles at the corner of his eyes, “I got paper to work on, really. I’ve to submit it in the afternoon, it’s the deadline”.

“What, you’re here already, I bet you’ve done that paper of yours and just need to add a little something, right? Don’t be such a perfect !”, Jungsu complained. Then all the people there started to make noises and the man just stood there giggling to himself, wanting to let go of people’s grabs on him.

“Really guys, let me go back. I still need to double check it”, he said in a pleading voice, then after a while they’re eventually letting him go still with him giggling while waving his hands in victory.

“Who is he? Everybody seems to know him”, I asked Heechul in a low voice.

“Who? Hyukjae? Yeah, that boy is sure popular, not as much as me though”, he laughed. “Why, are you interested?” he asked with one of his eyebrow up.

“No, it’s just amazing how these people seems to know him. I barely know anyone here”.

“Yeah he got big circles of friends for sure. Everyone here is either my friends or Jungsu’s, and he belong to either so yeah, everybody knows him. He even have his own circle, it’s kind of weird how he have so many friends but he’s awkward with them.”

“…awkward?” my ears perks up in interest, can’t help but feeling that maybe this man have the same core as me.

“No, awkward is not exactly the words… It’s like this, he distanced himself by building a wall to keep people away, but after a while he would pull down these walls little by little. He’s a caring person by nature, but still, he keeps his distance”, Heechul trying to explain but then he turn to me, looking a bit confused. “He’s different from you though, exactly the opposite… But I don’t know why I do feel that way, even though both of you bad with people.”

“What about me?” I asked a bit taken back.

“Well… you know, hmm… you seem very open, like you let people coming around but never really give a about them, you talk only when they talk to you,” Heechul looked a bit annoyed after seeing my ‘I-don’t-get-what-you’re-talking-about’ face. “The hell I’ve been saying… okay I’ll put it in a simpler way, you let people get close, you being nice with them like you’re actually friends but honestly, it’s always these people trying to be closer to you but you never really make an effort to do so. If these people don’t try to contact you every now and then, you wouldn’t care, you’ll just let them be and not even trying to keep in touch with them, would you? Do I have to remind you that it’s always me who contacted you? And you wouldn’t even care to show your face if I didn’t call or force you?”

I keep quiet, surprised at the statement he made of me. Really? I’ve never really put any effort to people?

“Don’t get me wrong Donghae, I didn’t hold it against you, it’s just you and I knew you well,” he patted my head and then continue drinking and talking to other people.

I sit still, processing whatever he said to me, until I realize there’s a pair of eyes staring at me, Jungsu. He hold up his glass as if want to have cheers with me, so I did it out of politeness. I gulped down the alcohol in one go, feeling my head getting even dizzier and blank.

 

--

 

“Hyukjae!” a man voice called out the familiar name. It’s been weeks now since I came to know about the guy and I’m getting even more conscious whenever someone says that name. I look around until I spotted a blonde guy wearing black shirt and a camel jacket, his gummy smile decorated his face. I walked a bit closer to where he is, curious to what they are saying that made him smile that big, but it’s no use, there’s too many noises around to even hear his voice.

“Hyukkie! Wait, wait Hyukkie!” this time a girl running towards Hyukjae while keep on yelling. ‘Hyukkie? Is that his nickname? How cute’, I thought while staring to the girl. Suddenly the girl jumped and hugged Hyukjae from behind, took him by surprise. And the next thing I see is how Hyukjae trying to let himself go from the girl’s arms and doing it not too subtle. Smile etched on his face towards the girl and the man, but I can see it clearly how Hyukjae is trying to evade them, or at least keeping a distance.

This kind of scenes are not the first time I’ve witnessed, he does trying to evade people almost every time they come too close to him. But no matter what there’s always people trying to get to him and he never blatantly reject them, there’s also a time when he looked like he don’t mind the other company even though he still keep his distance. It’s kind of weird, he push people out from his personal space yet no one repulsed enough to leave him, they’re just keep coming back for him.

After day by day watching him, getting to know him little by little makes me even more interested in him. I want to know him up close, I want to try talking with him, curious to why did he behave like that, would he do the same thing if it was me? But how to start everything?

“Donghae”, a voice from behind me and a pat on my shoulder startled me from my thoughts, it was Jungsu Hyung. “Hello, are you day dreaming while standing up?” he chuckled in disbelieve.

“Sorry, I was thinking something… What is it hyung?”

“Nothing really, I just saw you standing here and it looked a bit weird. You’re alone? Where’s your friends?”

“Friends… No, I’m alone. And anyway the only one I could call friends would only be Heechul hyung”, I smiled at him.

His eyebrow lifted in curiosity, “why is that?”.

“Well, I don’t know really, they just up and leave never making any contact with me”, I shrugged.

“And are you contacting them?”

A sudden realization hit me, ‘you’re not making any efforts’. “…no,” I answer lowering my gaze.

“Why not?” he asked with a sad smile on his face.

“I don’t… I don’t know what to say. I just don’t get it…”

“Don’t you ever feel lonely or missing someone?”

At the words a sudden image came flashing and I felt my heart stopped beating for a second before it goes back beating in a faster way, I don’t have a clue why I felt that way, something in the back of my head starting to darken. “No”, I answer without hesitation almost automatically.

Jungsu patted my shoulder again and stare at my eyes, “you will, someday, I believe there would be a person who able to make you miss them. You just haven’t met the right one”.

Now I felt all my blood leaves my skin, my body feels numb and rigid. “Yeah…” I breath in slowly to keep my composure, I don’t know what hits me to feels like this, something like a panic attack, fortunately I could still control myself. “Sorry, I need to go hyung…” I leave without waiting for his reply.

After a while I feel better as I able to even my breathing and look around, Hyukjae was nowhere to be seen. So I dragged my feet getting home.

 

--

 

I haven’t seen Hyukjae for a few days. I keep coming to his faculty building, but he’s still nowhere to be seen. It feels like there’s no trace of him, like he never exist and it’s always making me feel bad, but I don’t know why I felt that way. I haven’t been able to have a good sleep and the nightmare seems to last longer than before. I’m keep sensing something deep in my mind, a piece that has been missing and it’s trying to surface. But it’s still in the dark, a mess, every time I tried to make a sense of it.

Suddenly a ring broke the silent in my room, I look up and grab my phone. Heechul hyung is calling me.

“Yes?”, I answer the phone.

“Now, where the hell have you been? I haven’t seen you for about five days! Don’t tell me you’ve been skipping classes”, Heechul’s voice sounds loud enough that Donghae had to s