When Jongin was little, the day of his fifth birthday his mother took him to the cemetery and told him a story, a very old one about angels and souls, about her father going to war and never returning, about what she believed and what she hoped. That day he discovered the concept of miracles: you are granted one when you sacrifice yourself for somebody’s happiness, when you become the martyr of virtue so that others can live peacefully.

He had listened to his mother and swore to never be in need of one, because it meant to have people suffer around him. And there he was: awake on the beach waiting for the sunset, with Kyungsoo’s head fallen on his shoulder and his hand still in his cold grasp.

What had he done to earn it?

Because that kid with the pained eyes had put on shoes for the first time since they had met and trusted him with his smile. That kid that was not a kid anymore had fallen asleep with him despite being an insomniac.

Jongin didn’t know what that mean, did it have a meaning at all?, but he wanted to believe the stars had finally smiled at them for just a night. He closed his eyes and felt his skin being drenched in the first sunlight of the day, warm and light, like a caress from the universe.

He remembered there had been talking and crying and smiling, there had just been a lot the previous night, overwhelmingly so.  And his heart, his heart felt like bursting. He placed a hand on his chest and felt it beating fast under his skin.

How long would it last?

Slow movements, eyes squinting at the sudden light and hands on tangled hair.

“Jongin? What time is it?”

Not that long it seemed.

***

Something was wrong.

Kyungsoo thought he was going to get in real trouble for staying out all night, but he just got a mild scolding. His parents were behaving like it was nothing, like that hadn’t been the oddest and most mind-blowing night of his life, and somehow he was left disappointed; they were too busy counting plated and forks or mysteriously whisper to each other to really listen to what he was saying, so he just let it drop, but something was still off.

Dubious, he sat on the living room’s couch and observed them for a while: they had cleaned all the pavements, taken out the good set of silverware and were now browsing multiple cooking books at once. But it wasn’t their action, it was not their excited words and light atmosphere… what was it?

It took him a moment to properly comprehend what was going on, but when his mother started laughing and placed a comfortable hand onto his father’s arm, an electric shock ran through his spine.

And then it hit him: they were behaving like a couple again.

The revelation left him shocked, wordless, so much he stood up and sat down again, too appalled to stay still. He was the one who had to feel different, Do Kyungsoo anew, but they were the one completely changed. What had happened?

He knew he should have felt happy for them, but all he had was a bitter taste in his mouth. The scenary before him was the definition of domestic, but he was too far into the game to know that it was just an ominous cover.

“Mother?” he called and almost jumped when the woman appeared from the kitchen with a bright smile on her lips. Something was wrong. “What are you doing?”

“Oh, we didn’t tell you?” she chirped “We’re hosting a party tomorrow night. We can’t say that we have socialized much since we’ve moved so this will be a beautiful opportunity to get to meet who lives here and make ourselves known, don’t you think?”

Funny. What Kyungsoo was thinking in that moment was just about the opposite, but that didn’t really matter, didn’t it? He just had to keep quiet and nod, because it was better this way for everybody; you can’t hurt anyone if you’re not doing anything now, can you?

Except that time, it was not fine. Except that time, when he saw that all his photograph had been taken away and put in the drawers, hidden for people not to see, for people not to ask, he started counting seconds.

Three until he would start yelling.

Four until their response.

Five until the next tear in the lose fabric of his heart.

***

“Nini, there is a letter for you”

His aunt was on his doorstep with a big smile on her wrinkly face, hands shaking a little white envelope. Jongin got up from his bed and took it, squinting to read the tiny handwriting:

To Kim Jongin,

From, a raven.

Seeing his face flashing with excitement, Chara-san chuckled behind her hands and closed the door behind her, leaving the young man alone. With feverish movements, Jongin ripped the envelope and began reading the letter, taking his time to smile at the tiny penguin decorations framing the text.

Dear Jongin,

I guess there is no choice, so I thought about doing it myself: you are hereby invited to my parent’s party at my house tonight. Dress like you are going to a wedding, my mother likes that, and bring some flowers.

I know texting you would have been faster, but I like this old style type of contact, it makes me think about what I’m actually writing rather than doing it sloppily. I know it is a lot to ask you, but there is going to be a lot of people and it would be really uncomfortable to be there alone for the entire night.

If you don’t want to come I’ll understand, but if you do, just know that you’ll make a little raven really happy.

Sincerely,

Kyungsoo.

PS: if I hold your hand the entire night, would it be a problem? Your hands are always warm.

Chara-san, from the floor below, could hear his nephew jumping up and down on the floor, suffocating his squeals in the soft pillow. It had been such a long time since she had seen him so happy and that alone was enough to warm her heart even in that cold day.

She remembered the last time he had come to visit her: his skin was so pale you could almost see through it, with eyes red from the medications and his hands always shaking, not strong enough even to walk, let alone dance. He sat all day at the deserted beach, sometimes drawing with colored pencils, sometimes just staring at the horizon.

She used to watch him from the window, afraid he could collapse from lack of strength, but looking at him now, she could not help but smile. As carefully as she could, she took from her husband’s wardrobe the nicest shirt he had and began ironing it.

“You wouldn’t mind, would you darling?”

***

To say that Jongin was nervous was an understatement: he was clutching his bouquet of flowers so hard the petals were starting to fall at his feet. His aunt had made him dress with a lose white shirt and a black suit, brushing his hair until they were shining of their own light. He didn’t feel particularly good, he thought he resembled a penguin more than a gentleman, but what’s done is done; he just had to press the doorbell and greet Kyungsoo’s parents.

Just. A “just” so big that it had sent all his nerves into alarm mode, making every movement difficult to even think about. He was about to press the golden button when the door suddenly opened and a face peeked from its edge: it was a short lady dressed in white, long and black hair framing a round face. Jongin instantly knew from who Kyungsoo had taken his beautiful eyes, because his mother had the same pair of marble irises.

“And you are…?”

“Kim Jongin, madam” he said, bowing at ninety degrees “I’m Kyungsoo’s friend”

The woman didn’t change her neutral expression, just a little of her eyebrow, and then invited him to enter, taking the flowers from his hands and placing them with all the others in a big vase. The house was nothing like he remembered it: everything had been cleaned and renewed, with dustless furniture and actual electric device such as a television and a telephone, but the structure was till the same that had fascinated him so much as a kid.

The living room was enormous, all decorated with garlands and festoons, with couches pushed to the back to create a sort of dance hall. Sleek marble pavements, shiny new chairs and tables. Everything felt foreign, cold, distant from the memory he had kept tight in his hands from when he was a kid. There was almost the entire town in the house, some with their cup filled with wine, some listening to others, some laughing to what sounded like really bad jokes.

He was suffocating.

His fingers brushed against the bump in his pockets, the inhaler, but he decided it was not the time yet. His eyes scanned the room for any sign of Kyungsoo but he saw nothing. He started walking, slow and paced, taking long deep breaths to calm himself down, but it was all too similar to that time: too many people exhaling at the same time, their brains connected to a thin red string he couldn’t see, skin touching skin where he just saw flesh.

Outside.

There was a balcony somewhere, he could remember it clearly, so he sprinted for the window and opened the French window. And there he was: the part of the house darker than the rest, the one where light was just out by the two black holes that were his eyes.

“Jongin, you made it”

Jongin was a very private person, his showed persona could be approached but his hiding one was for only the one who he loved to see. And he loved Kyungsoo very much, so, just for that time, he let himself be hugged, hands sliding down his back and cheeks pushed against his shoulder.

“I thought you wouldn’t come”

“Why wouldn’t I?” he whispered, right in the raven boy’s ear.

The other just smiled, shaking his head.

“Nothing, you’re here now, that’s the important thing. Can we can sneak out before my mother starts serving fish tarts, please?”

Without even being noticed in the large crowd, they practically dashed up the stairs, laughing like kids pulling a prank. In the dim corridor, Jongin looked with a grimace at all the polished mirrors, the spotless drawers, the contemporary pictures framed on the walls… where had the house of his dreams went?

Kyungsoo followed the trail of his thoughts and smiled apologetically.

“All the wooden furniture was rotting inside, too many woodworms, so my parents had to buy everything new and well… my mother has a thing for abstract paintings”

Jongin skimmed over the smooth surface of the new commode, right outside of what he recalled being a bathroom.

“I used to come here” he whispered “When it was still all ruined and broken down, I used to spend my evenings here. The dining hall was covered in musk and dead leaves and there were some breaches in the roof, but I loved dancing there anyway”

Kyungsoo took a step backwards with what looked like guilt in his face, but didn’t say anything if not a faint:

“I’m sorry”

Jongin, just now realizing what he had done, immediately shook his head.

“No, no, it’s not your fault. I was just realizing how much time had passed, how much had I grown since those times. It’s sad but it also means that I’m finally out of my childhood”

The raven boy chuckled, biting his lower lip to not let it show.

“Jongin, there’s no way that you could think of yourself as a child anymore. What are you? Twenty something?”

“Be careful of what you say, young man. Now that I’m a perfectly respectable adult I could even get offended”

Somehow, it ended up with the two of them sitting on the floor of Kyungsoo’s room, fancy clothes tossed to the side in favor of more comfortable pajamas (Jongin was a little tight in his, but he didn’t dare to complain), listening to the music coming from a floor below. crazily enough, the little stray dog was soundly asleep on the bed, covered with a really cute pillowcase and Jongin just had to stop and cuddle him a little bit.

The room had been repainted from cream to a light shade of blue, with tiny dots on the ceiling to make it look like a starry sky. It had been one of his only requests, Kyungsoo told him, so that he could feel like under a quiet night and not trapped in his room. That and the not entering his room if not in extreme situations.

Jongin scanned the room once more, finding more and more signs of it being Kyungsoo’s: the bookshelves were already overflowing, books scattered all over the desk along with music sheets and lyrics scribbled upon random pieces of paper, posters of his favorite singers were hovering over them from the walls and lots of plushies had been abandoned on the bed… and that was when he noticed the photographs.

There were dozens: on the walls, over the bed, on the nightstand, on the shelves… a puzzle narrating of an entire existence before Jongin had even met him. There had been a before him, days spent not thinking about each other because they didn’t know the other existed; Jongin had forgotten.

Is it weird? To forget you were somebody before falling in love?

They all showed Kyungsoo in various stages of his life: a tiny baby in his crib, a toddler running around, a highschooler bored out of his mind… Jongin looked at him in full admiration, only then noticing something was odd: in all the photographs, Kyungsoo was with the same exact person.

Tall and lanky, with hair once black then dyed red and big funny ears. If Kyungsoo had been growing one frame at a time, this kid had done it with him, always smiling and never looking at the camera, too lost in the raven boy’s smile.

“Who’s this?”

But he already knew the answer.

Kyungsoo has killed his best friend.

The room suddenly fell in a heavy silence as Kyungsoo got up and took the photo Jongin was looking at in his hands. They were so blue, shaking and uncertain. A long breath.

“This is… was Chanyeol, my best friend”

“Was?”

“Yeah, was.”

Kyungsoo finally lifted his eyes from the floor, defeated.

“Say, do you want to hear a story?”

***

Babies devote their first seconds to their mothers, tiny hands searching for the one person that wished for us and kept us warm for nine months. Kyungsoo, however, didn’t.

His mother was rushed into the intense care section the second he started crying, so they just put him in the nearest incubator, checking if he was alright. He was, in fact, so they later moved him to the nursery, just one crib away from the kid that was destined to become his sun.

Chanyeol was born big: big ears, big cheeks and a big toothless smile. His mother had told Kyungsoo that, the second he had saw him, he had started whining because he couldn’t reach him. In his eyes there was space only for Chanyeol, Chanyeol, Chanyeol.

Fortunately, they lived in the same street and their mothers quickly became friends, much to the two kids happiness. They spent all their crawling years in the same room, sleeping one over the other and sharing little rubber toys.

Then it came the primary school decision and Chanyeol refused to talk the few words he knew how to actually pronounce to his parents until they agreed to put them in school together. That already tall kid was a social magnet, always surrounded with friends, but there was no one like Kyungsoo for him: somehow, their hands looked like they just had to be glued to one another, always playing together and having slumber parties almost every night.

Kyungsoo was the one who came up with stupid prank plans and Chanyeol was the one doing them and get scolded just to see him smile.

The years went by, from middle to high school, and while Chanyeol got infinitely more handsome, muscular and even more goofy, Kyungsoo maturated in a different way: his gaze got sharper, his features more refined but never near that canonic beauty everybody else seemed to praise and yearn for. One could think the two started drifting apart.

It was however, the very opposite: they had never been this close, sharing fewer words but each one more meaningful, smiling like they were lighting up the sky whenever they were around each other. And that meant always.

Their days were filled with quiet words, light nothingness which only purpose was to reassure the universe they were still there. Chanyeol loved to talk, normally loud and clear, but with Kyungsoo his voice got soft and the yelling became whispering.

“I love you”

“I love you too”

They had said it the first time in elementary school, kept saying that until high school.

There was however a problem: everybody thought they were in love, but they were not.

It was really easy to mistake what they had for love, they didn’t really blame anyone, but it was so hard to define even them had a hard time doing it.

Their parents always checked on them when alone in their room to make sure nothing was happening, but never found anything more scandalous than a Just Dance competition in the living room.

There was this delicate balance: on one hand there was them, comfortable with being called whatever names they wanted to give them, because they knew what they had; on the other there was society, all their friends and families, teachers and strangers, who couldn’t get their heads around their relationship.

They had tried to explain it to their parents, but it wasn’t something that could be described, nor acted. They had tried the same, using big words such as soulmates, red string, fate. Nothing worked.

They felt this call to stick together, two of a kind like aliens on their own planet. It wasn’t really more complicated than that.

“I don’t mind.” Chanyeol had said to him “If they don’t understand it’s okay. But when people realize they don’t know what’s in front of them, they only think about one thing”

We have to eliminate it.

And so their friends began pulling them apart, teachers separated their desks and their parents filled their afternoons with pointless activities they both hated. Every day became a nightmare, one thinking about the other across the room that felt so empty. Three meters separated them, but they were carved like three hundred.

The only time they could see each other peacefully was at lunch, both running for their life on the roof and locking the door with the stolen key. The others couldn’t know about that place, or they would be ruined.

That day, Kyungsoo sprinted up the stairs like his pants were on fire, slamming the door behind him. He quickly checked if he had ruined his lunch box, all pressed in his backpack, and then lifted his head, hoping his eyes weren’t red anymore and that the bruise on his arm wasn’t noticeable.

“Hey”

Chanyeol smiled at him through the multiple layers of his scarves, trying not to spit the food he was already eating. His eyebrow was bloody and his lip was broken, but he still engulfed the food at the speed of lightning.

“Hey”

Every day the same: eating together and sharing their stories for the day, Chanyeol quoting some random information from what he had learned and Kyungsoo trying to understand that without context whatsoever. Never managed to, never expected to.

The giant loved to laugh at his attempts, he loved to see him choke on his food from too much snickering.

Sometime they had to move their little party to the infirmary, to buy the nurse’s silence with chocolates and get patched up as better as they could, but it was almost growing on them.

Months turned to seasons, to years, and suddenly it was their last in the school.

Funny thing how the last day is just the same as all the others.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Somebody told me I forgot to put the angst tag on. Ooops.

This is still unedited and poorly written, not very proud of it even if it the crucial section of the story but I have no time to attempt at something better so I hope you'll understand. I am still in the middle of my exams (99% sure I failed my math test) so I don't know how much time I'll have for writing, so it could take a little more.

Hope you enjoy and comment anyway ^__^