Seunghoon slammed Mino’s door behind him as he rushed his steps to his own room.

No, he thought.

No no no no.

Once he arrived at his room, he sat down on the floor just next to his bed. His breathing intensified, his heartbeat was racing, his body slightly shaking. He held his knees together and buried his face in between his knees.

No no no. Those sketches do not mean anything. No, it does not make any sense. It does not mean any ing sense.

Seunghoon’s mind was jumbled up. His train of thoughts was clearly not functioning in any way, it felt like his head was about to explode.

The Mino.

He was not afraid nor terrified, nor sad. He was shocked, stunned, stupefied. He couldn’t think straight and he couldn’t figure out as to why Song Mino, the now dead Song Mino, would invest so much of his time to draw Seunghoon. Now that he knows the brevity of Mino’s life, Seunghoon wished he could trade the minutes Mino spent to draw these sketches for a heartfelt conversation with him, trying to peel his layers and understand him more.

Dubbed as the “Dumb and Dumber”, it was only a natural consequence that Mino and Seunghoon were expected to be funny and silly at all times. This had been imbued to their mind that Seunghoon often found it relatively harder for him to open up serious conversations with Mino – with him it was either endless jokes or teasing, pulling pranks or daily mundane conversations (especially about what to eat and where to eat; after all, it’s Mino, why would you expect differently?). Again, Seunghoon wished he could turn back time and asked Mino to hang out with him in a bar to talk about his favorite food, vacation wishlist, thoughts on their group, their newest songs, his darkest secrets, wildest dreams, heartbreaks and desperation – anything really, and this time Seunghoon wouldn’t mind having to drink a few shots or glasses of alcohol if that’s what it takes to sit together with Mino again.

Seunghoon spent a good fifteen minutes sitting on the same spot. He was unsure what he would want to do next – some parts of him wanted to go back to his small Gangnam flat to sulk over his emptiness yet some parts of him wanted to stay in the familiar dorm, wanting to feel normal again. Some parts of him wanted to go back to Mino’s room and feel Mino’s presence – his scent, his way of arranging his items, his drawing, his figurines, his whatever – yet some parts of him wanted to burn this entire dorm to ashes so that he wouldn’t have any reminder in this world that once in his lifetime there was a good friend of his whose life was taken away so suddenly at a very young age, with all his dreams and plans ahead of him now gone. In that moment Seunghoon was a man of paradox, of contradiction – and he hated himself for feeling that way.

He was gazing around his messy room when he landed his eyes on a familiar neon-colored object, protruding from the white cupboard.

Seriously now?

It was the squeaky toy that he and Mino bought in their trip to Kawagoe, the one they used to make ultra-fast rap sounds (that, by the way, was too hilarious and at the same time embarrassing when Seunghoon saw the clip on WINNER TV). Seunghoon dryly laughed at the sight of it and at the universe for the conveniently timed and placed coincidence.

He crawled to the cupboard and extended his arm to grab the squeaky toy. He shook the toy and just like two years ago, the toy made these weird sounds and Seunghoon couldn’t help but smile.

“Man, we were so dumb together, don’t you think?” said Seunghoon. “I bet you’re laughing at me from somewhere up there for acting so silly, huh?"

"Well, at the very least, I could still make you laugh.”

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