"Sometimes I want to say everything out loud all at once,
rather than silently sitting there watching you talk about him with sparks in your eyes."

Like how a phoenix dies and reincarnates in its own ashes, Soonyoung finds himself dying and reincarnating in silence, with a heart lacking its sanguineness, a thousand times already.

Jihoon is something utterly endearing that appeared at the neighbor's house when Soonyoung was seventeen. It was a windy day and the persian lilac tree in Soonyoung's garden shed tiny, spiralling petals like spinning tops that landed on the soft raven head of the short boy who just moved there from Busan. Soonyoung looked down from the second floor's window and saw that boy wiggling his head for the petals to fall just like a cat caught in the rain.

Closing and slowly opening his eyes, Soonyoung watches seven years have gone by endearingly without a sound. Just like the way those house spiders sneakily ran across his bedroom ceiling, his heart obliviously pines away, like being smoked.

Jihoon calls him from accross the green light of the intersection, waving and jumping joyfully like a kid. The light switched and Soonyoung calmly walked by the bustling crowd like he has all the time in the world. Jihoon looks at him smiling and drags him into a cafe all the way in the corner of the street where sunlight could only reach the small cactus' top by the window where they are both sitting by.

"Seungcheol said I have a pretty smile."

Soonyoung stared at the steam from his hot cocoa mug intertwining with that from Jihoon's dark espresso into something amorphous, then disappearing. Countless times already with countless things Soonyoung said to Jihoon are still nothing compared to a "pretty smile" that Seungcheol said. A Seungcheol who Soonyoung hasn't even seen yet.

"You do smile very prettily."

And Soonyoung finds himself drowning in the light emitted from Jihoom's smile when Jihoon cups his hands around the coffee mug and picks it up for a sip. Jihoon tells a lot of stories about the art school he is teaching, how talented students are nowadays, and about the new vocal teacher named Seungcheol.

Until there comes a time when the guy name Seungcheol walks into their never-ending conversation, and decides to stay there forever. Today Seungcheol walks to school wearing headphones, looking really dashing. Seungcheol can both sing and rap, which doubles the charm when he is on stage. Seungcheol said I have a sweet voice for melodious love songs. Seungcheol said I dance really well, if only I became an idol I would be full of potential.

Initially, Soonyoung finds that his heart whimpers soundlessly and convulses in muted pain watching Jihoon talk about Seungcheol with endearing, sparkling eyes like that. But gradually, he finds himself settled, dried up like when he saw his mother's coffin being buried to the ground. His heart stops convulsing, and his eyes stop tearing because he knows everything he does would be meaningless.

Never gonna change anything.

"Sometimes you avoid my gaze,
'Cause it seems like you always know me.
Can't stop my words, nor could I stop my tears falling."

Soonyoung has stopped believed in fairness since a long time ago.

Like how his mother was this wonderfully kind and altruistic woman who never hurt a soul, and God still took her away like a boring joke. Like how hard he studied and painted a bright future with Jihoon in art school, until mother passed away in a fire that burned all the memories they had in twenty years, and Soonyoung found himself applying for the city's Fire Department.

Like how, for seven years, he's been looking at Jihoon like it's never enough to look at your whole world, but one fine morning a man named Choi Seungcheol appeared between them and set a dead sentence to Soonyoung's helpless and pathetic unrequited love.

There is no "fairness" in life, nor is there an "enough".

Jihoon dyed his hair.

He dyed it pink, the color of the cotton candy that they used to share on the way to school with sugar still sticking on their fingers, so sweet like there was never a crack in everything. Jihoon's cotton candy hair suits his milky skin, but Soonyoung still think he likes a raven-haired Jihoon. The hair Soonyoung used to work so hard on to rid it of the gum that the kids at school smeared on to bully Jihoon because of his Busan accent. 

Soonyoung thinks Jihoon's Busan accent is the most pleasing sound ever, even more than the CDs Soonyoung used to listen before he went to bed. Jihoon has stopped talking in that accent after a few years of being bullied. Soonyoung could never listen to the "Why though?", "No have no have", "Wut da wut ah?"from Jihoon anymore.

However sometimes when he is not defensive, like when he's just waking up, or when he is really hyped up, or when he's drunk, or when he cries,Jihoon can still be seen by Soonyoung talking in that provincial voice.

The day Jihoon didn't get into college, they squeezed into a squalid bar on the road. Jihoon cried in between alcohol breathe, cried for the things he never had the courage to say when sober. Jihoon used his Busan accent to mumble seemingly meaningless words but Soonyoung could hear him clearly.

"Why you like me? Why so though? Don't like me."

If Soonyoung heard his heart whimper like a child does in that chilly autumn night, he would never tell anyone. He took Jihoon home, a Jihoon who was drunk as a skunk and bawling about how life is not fair.

Soonyoung knew as the sun rose, Jihoon would forget everything. If not, Soonyoung would still pretend like he wasn't hurt at all, and that he was okay striding over the corpse of a battered unrequited love that Jihoon had just beaten to death.

The next morning Jihoon really doesn't remember. And Soonyoung's heart starts to sob in silence again. For a long time.

"No one can stop a heart when it falls in love.
Don't stop me or tell me to stop because it's not love's fault."

Soonyoung walks Jihoon in at the apartment door after a coffee afternoon and watches him go inside but still turn around to wave at Soonyoung. Soonyoung always ask himself if he is the easiest creature to satisfy on earth when he only needs a "Soonyoung ah" call from Jihoon.

Soonyoung stands quietly in front of a street dance crew on a chilly winter day. The dynamic rhythm in the teenage boys' moves make him want to dance again. It feels like even spirit and passion could become rusty with time, and dancing seems overly strange and difficult for him now. If youth has a color, Soonyoung thinks it would be the technicolor of spotlights, where he ought to be free rolling in it with sweet sweet movements.

He turns his back to go home, hunches deeper into his jacket collar. Today he has a night shift at the fire department and he has to take a short nap first before his father comes back from a random alley full of stinky alcohol smell, smashing everything in the house. The spotlight fantasy has diminished since forever like a black out during a frosty night. The freezing breeze creeps under every patch of skin to fondle his scarred heart, silently.

Fire is a beautiful color. That's what Soonyoung thinks.

Fire is passionate and blistering, which could make him stare at it for hours. Fire string, fire dot, fire bag, fire drop. Fire can bare any shape that he desires, as long as he could extinguish it before it through things that it shouldn't.

Fire is a beautiful color, and it took his mother away.

Everything happened so fast without a warning. It was just any summer day on April when Soonyoung walked home from school and saw black, thick smoke coming out of his house. Rushing in the crowd of curious people, he saw his father broke down on the floor, crying mutedly. A few days later he said farewell to his mother from above the ground, deafened from every sound in the world. People hugged him, comforted him.

Jihoon held his hand for a long time, stayed beside him for the whole night, but no one could tell him why a short-circuited incident could take away half of his soul.

“Everyone wants to be loved,
To be able to wait for someone to pick them up and
Every morning be able to look at someone endearingly asleep.”

There are approximately ten fire alarm calls in the city a day.

Sometimes it’s a gas explosion that when fire trucks come, the fire has already spread to the living room. Sometimes someone forgets the iron and it burns the clothes, burns through the curtain, burns from the seventh floor of the apartment building. Sometimes a kid causes the fire during playtime and the adults are too frightened staring at the burning cupboard, and don’t know what else to do but to call the Fire Department.

Soonyoung is used to fire alarms so he loses the fear of seeing a partially burnt body when he brings anti-smoke masks and walks into the sweltering house. His heart shakes again, like it hasn’t been beating all these years, when he snatches someone back from the yellow tongue of fire.. Sometimes a dog, a cat, or a still-breathing body.

This damned job generates great salary. Soonyoung sees himself putting every cent he dives into the fire to earn into his father’s hand, and watches him drowns himself in alcohol. Sometimes he sees himself still very strong, unlike his father who quits his job just to stay home, drink and call Soonyoung’s mother by the inhumane voice.

However, never has Soonyoung stopped thinking about the hollow like and fleshy red, open wound in his heart, unable to fill it up. And sometimes he craves for someone to hold, to ruffle their hair, to whisper sweet and meaningless affection. Sometimes he goes crazy thinking about a small, redolent smelled of coffee body in his embrace, laugh out loud the magical sound of wind chimes on cool June days. Sometimes he dreams about Jihoon calling “Soonyoung ah” and asks him if he is free to go out with Jihoon for a tiny bit. Those “tiny bit’ sounds just as sweet as those young and naïve love stories.

But Jihoon is not like that, and will never be.

Because Soonyoung still remember as yesterday that October night four years ago, yellow lights snuck through the window pane into that dilapidated bar and the next table sang noisily in drunkenness, Jihoon was crying like a bullied kid, telling Soonyoung unconsciously “Soonyoung ah, stop liking me.”

Soonyoung spent his whole school life to make sure no one could lay a finger on Jihoon, so how could he bare to let Jihoon think of his feeling as a burden, so heavy that even in his drunkenness, Jihoon was still reminded of that it and sobbed pathetically.

“So I take a step back to see you more clearly, To look at you from afar, more endearingly
All of a sudden, my life shrinks to just a boy that is you.”

Finally, Soonyoung can see the guy named Seungcheol for once.

And that, of course, makes him feel as pathetic as a clothes hanger next to the door that people walk in, take off their shoes, hang coats and hats, and pass by.

He stands across the street from the Art College. Jihoon looks tiny among the rushing students, constantly looking at his watch. Not to wait for Soonyoung. Soonyoung thinks he is really cruel to himself sometimes, always making himself see things that are never easy. Like right now, he doesn’t spend some little time to go home and sleep, but instead stand here from across the bustling road, look at Jihoon waving to another man, smiling so painfully bright.

Soonyoung thinks to himself that he must have gotten used to this feeling, but still cannot help the open wound tearing up again, deeper and bleeding profusely like an animal being stabbed, nonstop being stabbed. Even when that animal is dead, it’s still being stabbed. Stab after stab, slowly but strongly. Blood is still dripping from the ragged wound in his heart, blacken the pupil in his eyes.

Jihoon is wearing sneakers, looking strangely good next to the other man. That man's hair is chestnut brown, while Jihoon's is pink, which make them looks like a lovely couple. Jihoon is a bit flustered. He is never flustered around Soonyoung. Is that maybe the biggest difference between the person whom you give your heart to and the person who could never get that although he has been waiting all his life?

Twenty-five years old, Soonyoung compares himself to those reed by the river bank, suffering the November wind hitting through his hair and shoulder. He lives to only look at the small boy who is his first and also last love. He lives waking up to a sunny day but doesn't know where to go, doesn't see the dancing LED colors of the streets. Live but doesn't live. Alive but dead.

And Jihoon appears brightly on the other side of the road like another world, a world that Soonyoung is looking through the view of a fish bowl, sparkling and magical. A vibrant, resonant Jihoon keeps the dying life inside Soonyoung breathing harshly, with all the endearing gestures and calmness that Jihoon has, only by the two words: "Soonyoung ah".

Soonyoung calmly stands from across the road, watching the pink haired boy saying something to the other guy. Then Jihoon pulls his phone out from his pocket.

A few seconds later, Soonyoung's phone rings. "Hey Soonyoung?"

"Uhm."

Soonyoung picks up the call calmly like he knew this would happen. He put the phone by his ear, eyes gluing on Jihoon's biting lips from across the street. It's okay, Jihoon ah. It's alright, just say it.

"I'm a little busy today. Can we make it tomorrow?"

How foolish. Although Soonyoung has guessed it correctly by word by word, how come he still feels like his lungs are being out of air?

"Yeah, it's okay."

Through the chasing traffic, he sees the guilty face of Jihoon when he hangs up the call. Soonyoung suddenly love this person a bit more, like it's not enough to love him his whole life. God, it's just a friend date. Jihoon ah, no need to frown like that. Soonyoung is okay.

That man named Seungcheol puts his arm on Jihoon's shoulder, and Jihoon's frown disappears right away, fast and light-heartedly like it never happened. Soonyoung's stunned, asking himself if he was delusional about Jihoon's sad expression from just a second ago.

Jihoon pushes his phone into the pocket then walks away with Seungcheol. Soonyoung waits until Jihoon's pink head disappears into the rush hour crowd and turns his back away. Unrecognizing music plays from a random store in a distant.

“Let’s just stay next to each other, as if tomorrow could be any different. Days just pass by unexpectedly fast.”

"I will still be next to you silently,
Though without holding your hand but walking on your path. And from then my gaze turns unexpectedly innocent."

Jihoon returns to his apartment at nine-twenty-two pm, exhausted from his first recording session with Seungcheol.

He found out how much he needs a person like him in his life, a person who asks him if he has had breakfast, if not then join him. A person who reminds him to buy groceries every week or else he'll be hungry. A person who tugs his shoulder, ruffles his hair relentlessly despite him disliking it. A person who acts like a dad and a brother to Jihoon, ever since Jihoon punches him in the stomach the first day they met, when Seungcheol mistook Jihoon as his younger brother and hugged him.

A person who can tell the whole world that “Jihoon is the cutest boy in the world.” Without being afraid of all the taunt and jeer.

Jihoon turns on the TV for the late night news. He never liked silence unless he has to focus doing his work. That’s the reason why he always turn up the volume when he’s at home to be able to hear the news announcer’s voice even when he’s in the kitchen or the bathroom. It’s so much less lonely like that.

“A huge fire just broke out at an apartment block at Yongsan. Three people were dead and five are missing, one of the missing people is a firefighter. The alleged reason of the fire is gas leakage. We will report in more details after more information is confirmed.”

Jihoon’s hand holding a pack of ramen stops in midair, unable to move. An unreasonable pain reflex aches in his stomach. Jihoon turns off the stove, ignores the boiling pot of water. He trembles to put his hand in the pants pocket, pulls out his phone and dials Soonyoung’s number.

No one picks up.

Soonyoung never made him wait for long, never. It is always Soonyoung voice from the other side of the line when the phone couldn’t reach the last ring, “Uhm”. Confirming and reliable. Like he is always there, as ever.

But now it’s Jihoon’s fifth call, and five times the call’s been sent to voicemail.

Jihoon holds on to anything that he can and struggles to the living room with wimper legs. He falls on the old sofa, Jihoon’s dead glare projects on the TV screen, blurry with complicated colors. Despite being in pain from clutching on the phone too hard, Jihoon still fixes on the announcer’s voice to repeat about the fire. Maybe he is not breathing, maybe he can’t breathe anymore.

Thirty minutes later, the cosmetic commercial is interrupted by the smoky and crowded image of a large apartment building. Jihoon freezes, waiting for the news to be read like waiting for his own sentence.

“The fire at Yongsan is extinguished. Three people were dead, four were found in severe burn condition, but are not in life danger. A fire fighter is still missing, named Kwon Soonyoung, twenty-five years old, from Namyangju.”

Everything in front of Jihoon darkens, spinning crazily like a shaking snow globe. He can’t breathe, like his throat is being hazed by ashes. Jihoon gags a sound that is both like coughing and sobbing, and his view starts to blur to each warm tear drop falling in silence from his eyes.

This is not the truth. This is definitely not real.

There must be a mistake, because the Soonyoung that he knows would never be that uncareful. The Soonyoung that he knows is the one who, waking up each morning, would not put face cleansing cream on his toothbrush, would not burn the toast, would not leave food in the fridge until it molds and then throws it away, would not forget to text Jihoon and reminds him to put on extra clothes when the winter comes.

The Soonyoung that he knows is the one who calls to tell him to go home to have dinner with his family, who never let him wait for long on the street, who paints a future in college together with him but then never goes with him, who silently watches his mother being embraced by Mother Earth without shedding a tear.

Soonyoung whom he knows is the one who let Jihoon burst out onto him but never got angry with Jihoon, who listens silently to him talking about all the beautiful and amazing things in college without getting jealous of him, who buys Jihoon a very expensive pair of headphones that he has always wanted but never could afford.

He’s the one who walked Jihoon home on a freezing cold October night and was willing to look at Jihoon, in his drunkenness, cruelly squeezing to death the feeling he had for Jihoon all these years.

But there will never be a second Kwon Soonyoung firefighter who is twenty-five from Namyangju.

And Jihoon finds himself rushing out of the house, face messed up with tears. He has to be there. He has to confirm. He has to make sure that it is not Soonyoung. That it is definitely not him.

“Why couldn’t I meet you a bit sooner?”

“Come on. Breathe. You can do it.”

Soonyoung sits by a bush, applies the oxygen mask on the tiny face of a cat that is the size of his fist. There are a bunch of people around him: curious, instrusive, condolent, sobbing, frightened. He has saved everyone that he could. The other three died before the fire truck could reach the scene, so he was helpless.

Just before he exited the fire, this tiny creature was stuck in between a door crack, and Soonyoung never passed any creature. As long as he is there, he will never let the fire take away any life. He squeezes each air pump into the cat’s nose, ignores the fact that he is sitting in a bush and no one can find him. The burn on his hand is aching painfully but he doesn’t care much. Soonyoung splashes some more water over the cat’s body, which smears its fur and reveals its bony torso. But he doesn’t let it die. He just can’t.

And he starts to see its chest pumping up and down. Still that feeling like a warm stream flows through every single cell in his body, Soonyoung’s dazed, watching the cat stretches, shivers and opens its eyes to look at the world after passing by Death Gate. Soonyoung embraces the cat into his chest, zips up so that only its head is out, then walks back to the fire truck.

“THERE HE IS! THERE IS SOONYOUNG HYUNG!!!”

Soonyoung hears Mingyu’s voice screaming like crying. Turns out he is really crying, because he is running towards him with a tear-filled, ashes stained face, and utters swear words on top of his lungs.

“What’s the matter?”

Soonyoung asks, dumbfounded in Mingyu’s embrace. The kid starts to cry even louder then plops himself to the ground, nagging.

“I thought… thought.. you died in there..” – Mingyu says while hiccupping, unbearably heart-broken - “Everyone… everyone…thought the same. They even called your name as missing… to… the press…”

Soonyoung laughs.

“Stop crying. You look freakin’ ugly.” – He pats Mingyu’s sticky and sweaty head – “It’s alright, no one minds my name.”

Soonyoung doesn’t think that his father might be sitting in front of the TV at this hour. The man must be so tipsy somewhere by cheap liquor bottles and gives a damn about the world. And aside from his father, Soonyoung has no other family to recognize him, who was just announced dead right there on live national television. Soonyoung pulls the cat out and puts it in Mingyu’s arms, looks at it fumbling on Mingyu’s chest with its tiny claws.

Sudddenly, the captain calls for over.

“Soonyoung, do you know that guy? He’s been insisting on going into the apartment building since forever, he’s looking for you I heard?”

.

Jihoon cannot remember how he could reach the fire. From Mapo to Yongsan by taxi only takes fifteen minutes, but a lifetime of a fifteen minutes. He steps down in front of the smoldering apartment building, passes the crowd like a sleepwalker.

But he was kept back.

“Hey young man you can’t go in there!” 

“It’s still very dangerous!”

“Do you have someone in the fire?” 

“Youngman?”

And Jihoon can’t say another word before tears start to fall out again, his throat choking. No this isn’t it. Soonyoung is still in there. Why doesn’t anyone go in there and call him out?

“Soonyoung, Soonyoung is still in there right?”

With his face filled with tears, Jihoon blankly asks people around him: a teary, red-eyed lady holding onto her damp blanket, two ashy-faced firefighters, but no one answers him. They only look at each other awkwardly.

And Jihoon collapses to the floor, legs dropping after his onerous effort to drag himself there. Like swimming in a murky, colorless nightmare, he hears his own voice stutters soundlessly Soonyoung’s name through tears like a kid. Can’t stop, he cannot stop it. The pain is like someone slices a piece of flesh on his living body by a dagger, as deep as being stabbed by an arrow, twitching, bleeding profusely.

“Jihoon?”

Everyone has their own favorite sound that they love to listen to. Some people like the sound of a gas stove being , the sound of a pot put on that stove. Some people like the sound of slippers sweeping the floor, the sound of doors clicking. Some people like the sound of cat’s pur when it lies down next to them. Some other are addicted to the rain drops sound on the roof.

Jihoon likes the La sound on his guitar, likes the commercial song after each news report, likes the squeaky sound of sneakers brushing on the practice room floor, likes Soonyoung’s voice calling him “Jihoon ah?”

Like seven years ago when they first met under the Persian lilac tree releasing its petals to the wind, Soonyoung said Jihoon’s name sound kind of nice, very lovely. And Jihoon just smiled, did not dare to utter a “Soonyoung” to see if it sounds as beautifully as it’s written. Those two syllables “Ji-hoon” flows out of Soonyoung’s lips has always been the safest, most peaceful, for Jihoon for all those years that he couldn’t decide of where to go, or what to do.

And now Soonyoung is using that lovingly, with his oh so surprised tone, to call out “Jihoon” from behind him.

He stands there, smudged by ash in the parched suit, leaning over to see if it’s really Jihoon. Then he calls out again “Jihoon” when he’s sure that it is JIhoon, running towards worriedly to see if Jihoon is fine, and why he’s plopping on the ground.

Jihoon starts to crawl over to Soonyoung, legs still too flimsy to stand up on his own. The view in front of him blurs through the incessantly running tear. Jihoon flings his arms aimlessly to catch Soonyoung’s pants’ cuff and Soonyoung catches him, lifts him up like a ragged doll. Jihoon tumbles on Soonyoung, hand letting go of his phone which has imprinted red marks on his palm ever since he left home. Jihoon holds on to Soonyoung, tightly.

Then Jihoon starts to break out like a kid.

It’s like he hasn’t been crying since he got there, Jihoon now can feel life flowing back to his lungs by each hiccup, when he got this man in his arms and listens to Soonyoung shushing him, comforting him. Soonyoung is alive. He is alive. Jihoon cannot even realize what he’s saying. He only knows that Soonyoung is still here, the Soonyoung who is still smelled of ash. Soonyoung is here, and Jihoon listens to the loneliness named after his name, struggling in Soonyoung chest like it has always been there, only in silence.

Jihoon feels Soonyoung his hair, feels Soonyoung lovingly rubbing his back, feels every single word Soonyoung says, that he is still here. Jihoon still cannot fight his tears. They keep running down non-stop, uncontrollably, soaking Soonyoung’s chest. Jihoon hears Soonyoung’s heart beat steadily inside his jacket, wondering how he could be so calm in front the deadly border of life and death, while Jihoon himself feels like he’s just been saved from the bottom of a river?

And finally, Jihoon understands. He cannot live without this man.

“When peace is ungranted
We let the wind heal us through bustling life 
so that we don’t fall down the abyss
so that we forget pain and sorrow
to find that pink shade of lips.”

Jihoon dyed his hair back to black.

Just because one day he caught Soonyoung looked at his hair for too long, then turned around without saying a word. Seven years make Jihoon’s brain a Soonyoung’s-facial-expression analysis-machine without him asking. He just doesn’t understand why that machine never helped him to analyze the storms in Soonyoung’s heart every time he looks at him with eyes so endearing yet so hopeless, after all these years.

It’s one of the rare nights that Soonyoung decides to not work and sits on the old couch at Jihoon’s place. The calico cat he saved from that fire is now as fat as a dog, sleeping soundly on the arm chair next to Soonyoung. He presses the button to switch channel, then switches again. The TV plays music, he switches, it plays slurping ramen commercial, he switches, it plays kids laughing from the Goodnight children channel, Soonyoung switches again. He wears the flower-printed shorts, black tank top, unveiling all the burned scars and healing cuts, like he was never hurt before.

Jihoon puts a hot cocoa and a smoking coffee mug on the table. Soonyoung glances up to look at him, smiles. His cheeks are chubby, eyes turns into two thread lines, smile as sweet as it’s the last thing in the world that belongs to Jihoon and only Jihoon’s. Like a cat, Jihoon settles in between Soonyoung’s legs, fits in his arms like he’s so small. Soonyoung adjusts his position to be more comfortable, wraps an arm around Jihoon’s tiny body, catches his hand. He stops at a sports channel commenting live on a baseball game, watching attentively.

Jihoon looks down to Soonyoung’s hand on his tummy, feels his throat bitter, eyes hurting and starting to blur from tears.

Soonyoung is unconsciously fondling with Jihoon’s pinky, a habit that he could never give up when he was eighteen. Something that he never thought to adopt, and Jihoon has never pointed that out for him.

Just because he savors the feeling of his pinky being fondled by Soonyoung’s callous fingers, lovingly.

“Never know peace, never resent 
Trace after the dull track
That we used to chase after restlessly, that we lost each other 
Now I make it up to you
So the song is fully silent.”

END.

~*~*~*~*~*~

A/N: I hope you guys enjoy my work. One of my friends said this fic should be translated into English for the world to read lol she said it's really a good fic. I dont know if its really good or not but thank you, Trang, for your kind words and for helping me translate it!