It was raining.

Jongin observed the landscape tinge with grays and blues while a sheer fog was now hugging the shapes and the volumes of the town. Some birds had found refuge under the house’s gutter, shaking away the droplets by dozily flapping their wings.

It’s so quiet, Jongin thought. He was almost afraid of speaking and break that perfect silence, but his curiosity got the upper hand.

“And then? What did he say?” he asked.

Kyungsoo, sprawled on the dancer’s lap with his eyes closed, lightly shook his head. Jongin’s porch was definitely more comfortable than his house’s floor, but he still felt nots forming on his back, so he wriggled a bit more and found himself looking up, facing a barely awake Jongin.

It was warm inside the house, but they could feel the cold wind hauling behind the windowpane. They huddled a little bit closer, a little more tepid.

“He said I should have written that down. That my story could be inspirational for other people, that my words were poetic. I asked for another psychologist”

Jongin brought a hand to the other’s cheek, it softly. It was red and swollen, inflamed by the harsh rubbing, and he still managed to look beautiful. Jongin hated him for that. But he loved him all the same. It was a complicated feeling.

“And why is that?”

“There’s nothing poetic about death!” Kyungsoo roared, startling Jongin so much he almost fell backwards “You close your eyes and you’re left praying that there’s something better planned for you when your heart will finally stop beating; Heaven, Nirvana, anything that will make the pain endured worth it.

But you know what I believe? Death is just the two fingers you use to blow out the flame on the match.

My words are no poetry, they are blades. They can’t heal” his voice reduced to a whisper “I still wait for him everyday”

Jongin held out his breath. If it was indeed as the raven boy had said, then, in that moment, Kyungsoo was the brightest flame he had ever seen. No other creature on the planet could be able to love so earnestly like him and he hoped someday he could be the one to take it all, even though there was no competing with Chanyeol.

He wanted to smile, comfortingly.

Instead, he coughed.

***

It was still raining.

The party had apparently been a success because many of his aunt’s costumers were talking about how grandiose it had been, how the food was delicious and the hosts delightful… well, aside from the missing child Kyungsoo who nobody had seen that night if not to take their coats at the entrance door.

But nobody talked about him, nobody remembered he was even there to be seen and soon all the rumor about him died down.

Those were days of chilly rain and gloomy mood, thoughts flying all over to the mansion up the hill. A particular room and a particular body he knew was limping on the floor, seeking the warmth of the heated wood and trying to think about a way to cease the sense of boredom.

He liked to think of him sitting on his bed, surrounded by his photographs, reading a book with his round glasses pushed through his hair to pin them up and his icy fingers around the cover. It was a warming thought and he didn’t need anything else.

That day, he danced again.

***

Jongin was still asleep when the visit came, still exhausted from the day before.

She was coated in a thin layer of blue wool, glitter all over her sleeves and a basket of delicacies in her hand. How was she not shivering in the cold weather it was a mystery.

Chara-san made her sit in the kitchen and offered her hot tea, but Soojung refused it with a polite shake of her head. She was there for one reason and she didn’t want to make unnecessary mistakes; there had already been too many of them.

Something was different about her, maybe the way she held her hands protectively around the basket, maybe the nervous bite cuts on her upper lip, maybe the fact that, after man years of carrying a beauty like no other, she finally resembled a human girl a nothing more.

“I don’t know where to start” she said.

“Why don’t you tell me why you’re here?” came the gentle reply.

Soojung bit her lip again, fidgeting with her fingers.

“I’m here to apologize”

“What for, my child?”

Yeah, what for? There were so many things she needed to answer to, but if being bold was an easy task, being honest had never been.

“I… a long time ago I fell in love with a person. I always looked at him in awe, observed him when nobody wanted to because he was so different, but I liked him for that. We only recently gotten close but I have apparently grown up the wrong way and said some things I’m not proud of.

I thought I was ready to face the consequences and already apologized once, but I’m not that brave and ended up hurting him again and again. God, I’ve hurt a lot of people, not just one, and I regret that.

Now, I know that, being this the second time, it may seem like it lacks the honesty it had before, but I have to do it anyway, so here”

The girl handed Chara-san the basket and looked up, expecting a pair of judging eyes, but the old woman was far too experienced from life to hold a grudge to a girl who had just started living hers.

“I’ve won the competition I had told Jongin about and I’m moving tomorrow to the city. Tell him…” the words died in , not really ready to come out.

“I’ll tell him you’re sorry. He will understand, he’s a smart kid”

Soojung didn’t know what to say, so she just got up and bowed, thankful, silently exiting the house. Funny how her steps looked a little lighter.

***

Jongin looked at the basket in his aunt’s hands.

“She’s sorry? That’s all she said?” he asked in disbelief.

After everything she had done, after all the harsh and cruel words she had said that was all he got? And not even a word about Kyungsoo? It wasn’t fair.

His aunt, detecting the surging rage in her nephew, pushed the basket in his arms and caressed his head, ruffling his hair with her wrinkly hands. That was something that, through the years, she had learned he adored; it made all his aggressiveness evaporate in an instant.

“Nini, you’ll have to learn that some people are scared of being hurt. They try to shield themselves, it makes them think to be strong even when they’re not. Being mean is always easier than being kind”

Jongin looked at the basket a second time, placing it gently on his desk. He kept staring at it the whole evening, thinking about what his aunt had said. From a person who claimed she liked him, that basket was the symbol of all hypocrisy: she should have fought fair and square for her love, she should have been brave, she should have learned how to be kind.

So many things she should have done, but maybe it wasn’t her. It was all society around him, all the people he had met and talked to, the ones who had said hi and then ran away, just like Soojung, now far away to the city. How simple would it have been, a straightforward question and a straightforward answer. They could have been friends, but that was scary, wasn’t it? Confronting one’s feelings.

People inside the circle were infuriating.

***

The sky was finally clear and Jongin thought it was the perfect opportunity to return to the beach. He kissed he aunt on the cheek before sprinting on the reeds’ path, a huge grin spreading on his face wider at each step he took. The sand was stiff and muddy, having absorbed all the rain from the past days, but baring his feet and feeling the coolness of the water was a bliss he had missed. Better days were up ahead and he was ready to bathe in the sunlight of summer.

“Hey”

Jongin wanted to scream frustration.

“How do you do that?” he asked to an innocent and barefoot looking Kyungsoo, big beautiful eyes glued curiously on him “Have you trained to be a ninja?”

The raven boy laughed, his voice filling the space after all that silence was like honey for Jongin’s hungry ears, and cocked an eyebrow, mockingly. It was such a nice change from the sad and gloomy mood of the past few days and Jongin just adored it.

“There are many things you don’t know about me”

Jongin pouted, the one expression he had learned Kyungsoo loved because he looked just like Mohohan (fluffy in Korean). That was the name they had decide for the stray puppy Kyungsoo’s mother had finally discovered and miraculously agreed to take care of. The raven boy had sworn his loyalty to the little furball, much to Jongin’s blushful delight.

“Then tell me” he murmured at last, when he realized Kyungsoo wasn’t really looking at him anymore, lost in the horizon “Tell me everything I don’t know, this way I can be sure you’re a damn ninja and we can be done with it”

Kyungsoo smiled and sat down on the sand, signing for him to come down next to him. His hands were strangely warm that day.

“Do you really want to know all my darkest secrets Nini?”

“Well, since I… wait, did you just call me Nini?”

Many things could get to Jongin, he wasn’t the serious type of guy: a cute puppy, a particular good book, his aunt in a good mood, two cute puppies… but a speechless Kyungsoo topped all of them. His pale hands retreated to his mouth, as if to stop the words from coming out when it was already too late, a soft dust of pink spreading on his cheeks.

That was new.

That was new and Jongin wanted to die because a flushed Kyungsoo was just too much for him to bear.

“Well, I was taking Mohohan out and I was casually passing in front of your house and I maybe-sort of-actually definitely heard your aunt call you that and I thought it was cute so… if you don’t want me to it’s okay”

“No, I don’t mind. It’s just a little bit weird; nobody had ever called me with my nickname”

Kyungsoo’s pinky wiggled a bit closer as his shy smile transformed his expression in one of joy, finding its way to Jongin’s hand and hooking up with his in a tiny knot.

“Okay then Nini, since you want to know my secrets you also must know there is a price to pay” The raven boy held his breath in a dramatic pause “You’ll have to buy me lunch, I forgot my wallet in the house”

“Lunch”

“Yes”

Okay Kim Jongin, this is your moment. It’s now or never.

“As in, a date?”

Kyungsoo looked at him, then shook his head smiling and leaned on his shoulder, hiding his eyes behind his bangs. Something wasn’t being spoken, but this time Jongin knew what it was.

After everything had happened, there was still his shadow on his shoulder, heavy and wearing, lurking behind them and whispering things in his ear. And even if that wasn’t Chanyeol anymore, he still wasn’t ready to let go, because even if that was the easier way to not suffer, he couldn’t accept to be alone again.

There still was that scary place opening its door and drawing him in, suffocating, intoxicating. He didn’t want to come back inside.

“A date…” he said at last, looking up at Jongin “It sounds nice”

The dancer had to refrain himself from beaming down at him and opened his mouth to thank him, because he knew just how much bravery had been required to say those three words without faltering.

Then again, isn’t it time for the fateful But, the one with the capital letter? Because if something wasn’t being spoken, then something had also been forgotten. Something so big and important, something that had always been there and that for this very reason had always been left in the corner to rot, until it became too big for the little cage he was in.

So when Jongin coughed before being able to get his words out he didn’t think much out of it. He just took his inhaler out and pressed two shots, replying to Kyungsoo that they could maybe go to that little tavern he saw in town. Everything was still in place, but it was a matter of time before running out of luck.

***

“Each alone, they go west or north, towards the mountains. They go on. They leave Omelas, they walk ahead into the darkness, and they do not come back. The place they go towards is a place even less imaginable to most of us than the city of happiness”

“You know I don’t know”

“Worth the try. ‘The ones who walk away from Omelas’”

“I’m hopeless.”

“It’s simple: there is this big city where everyone is happy and everything is perfect, but to balance it all a kid must be sacrificed to an eternity of misery. Everyone know and everyone accept it as the right price”

“So the ones who walk away are the ones who knows but refuse to live as parasites?”

“I don’t know. I fell asleep at the explanation”

“…”

“Hey, I was tired okay? These fabulous hair take a lot of time in the morning.

Anyhow, don’t you think that the ones running away are cowards? There is this kid living miserably in a room without windows and you don’t do anything to help him, you just go away”

“Not everybody is a revolutionist Chan. Their refusal is just enough for a little person to change things; you don’t need to destroy to heal”

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

*comes out of the hiding cave where she was sleeping*

Being honest, after the last chapter i had fallen in the biggest writer block of my life, maybe because it was so energy-draining. I spent many days sitting in front of a blank page and it was so frustrating, then Bts Spring day was announced and the teaser inspired super duper much so here it is. \(°w°)/   You can sense the influence of many days spent theorizing about every damn detail...Oh well, c'est la vie.

I'm getting more and more dramatic in every chapter and I want to get rid of this habit but it's just too strong.

Don't forget to put your thoughts in the comments, those inspire me so much ^_____________________^

*hides back in the angst corner where i belong*