to grieve;

Kyungsoo learns that grieving is a matter of many things, and to grieve is to suffer not just one loss, but many. To lose touch of all emotion, aside from sorrow. And with this loss of emotion, comes numbness. And exhaustion.

He has slept for many hours, but the exhaustion still hung heavy in his bones. He has lost track of the days—doesn’t know which numbers to mark off on his calendar, or if it’s even still February. All he knows is that the sun has risen and fallen many times over hours he’s laid in bed, and he is still very, very tired.

To grieve is accept an absence. For Kyungsoo, this is the hardest acceptance he’s ever faced. There are times at night when he swears he hears his door open with a familiar creak, but turns and finds the door still shut, and nothing – no one – sneaking in. And sometimes he feels a weight settle on the edge of his bed, but when he reaches out towards it, it vanishes into the flat of his mattress and cold sheets. Sometimes he hears the cabinets shutting, or the soft thud of the front door as Jongin left early. Little things, sounds, that he’d grown so accustomed to, but now were never really there anymore.

Jongin’s scent lingers in the crevices of the closet, and in the folds of clothes and coats, and sometimes, when Kyungsoo is sifting through the hung up shirts and pants, he will catch a subtle drift of Jongin’s cologne.

And one time, while he’d been waiting in the self check-out queue in the grocery store, he heard a soft call of his name from somewhere behind him; a nasally, timbre voice, familiar and embedded in his subconscious. It had been so sudden that Kyungsoo whipped around, only to find empty air and strangers going about their business. He returned home with a burning behind his eyes and weight in his stomach, unable to forget that incident, that voice, the voice of the one who was no longer there, yet seemingly everywhere he turned.

To grieve is to become aware. Kyungsoo becomes aware of many things. The silence is the most prominent. The emptiness, and lifelessness to the house he once called home. He becomes aware that he no longer has a home. That his home had taken the form of a goofy smile and deep brown eyes; warm hands, loud obnoxious laughter, and embarrassing silliness.

And without his home, he has nothing. Where ever he went, all the places he used to go when restlessness would overtake him—they no longer brought him any peace. The library had been one place, but he remembers the way Jongin liked to scan through all every single book to find the interesting ones, and he realizes that without Jongin’s form moving around the shelves, it feels empty. It feels… like just a library. Calmness doesn’t find him like it used to. It’s just a library. So he leaves this just a library, and moves to his next place of peace – the city park.

And at the park, he finds it not quite the same as it used to be there, either. Because there, Jongin used jog around the concrete path with his dogs, and feed the ducks, and run his fingers in the cold stream leading towards the lake, and play on the playground even though he was far too big and gangly for the equipment.

Kyungsoo sits quietly on one of the swings, fingers freezing as he hides them in his coat pockets, and he realizes that this is just a park. That with Jongin, it had seemed like so much more than it is. And now that Jongin isn’t there, it’s lost it’s comfort. It has become cold; bleak. Kyungsoo looks across the park, finding it empty due to the cold weather and heavy cloud cover, and sighs deeply, as he has done many, many times. He realizes that he no longer feels the right to be happy; to laugh, as long as Jongin isn’t beside him, doing the same.

In April—or at least, Kyungsoo thinks it’s April; is pretty sure—he goes into the room he has been avoiding for weeks. He feels the stillness of the air, and watches the dust particles dance in the light streaming through the bamboo blinds. He stares at the medlite bed stationed there, in the middle of the room, and his eyes water at the unmade sheets and askew pillows—all still positioned just the way Jongin liked them to be.

The hospice facility Jongin had stayed at for a bit had supplied them with it, free of charge, for Jongin to rest in and enjoy in his last few weeks, in the comfort of his and Kyungsoo's home. Being home was all Jongin had wanted. To be home, with his things, with Kyungsoo, at peace. Because Jongin didn’t want to die in a hospital. If he was going to die, he wanted to die in his home.

Kyungsoo doesn’t know what he’d supposed to do with the bed now that Jongin is gone. The bed has been in this room, Jongin’s room, for months, and Kyungsoo has just let it be. And he remembers as he crawls into the bed, the times when Jongin had so quietly beckoned him over with an outstretched arm, and whispered “lay with me”. Kyungsoo would be so careful, making sure to not nudge to much and to settle in beside Jongin without the latter having to move any. They’d watch TV together, huddled up close, until Jongin fell asleep, or they both fell asleep.

Now that it’s only Kyungsoo laying there, he doesn’t feel the same. He yearns and aches as he pulls the blankets over himself and curls against the stiff pillows.

To grieve is to remember. The pictures and various little things wedged against Jongin’s dresser mirror help him reminisce. He looks across each frozen memory, etches the smiles into his mind so he can still see them when he closes his eyes. There’s an old theater show pamphlet from 2015, and he remembers the day, when they’d attended a showing of the Broadway adaptation of Les Misérables.

It had been apart of a large stack on display, a little sign saying ‘take one’ even though no one ever did—beside Jongin, who snagged one up as they pass by on the way to their seats. He held it over towards Kyungsoo with a “look at this” kind of gist, shoulder bumping again Kyungsoo’s own, and Kyungsoo briefly looked it over before quietly offering it back. Jongin folded it and stored it safely in the front pocket of his hoodie, as they shimmied down an aisle and settled in their itchy maroon seats, the type that automatically flip up when you stand or push too far against the backrest.

Wedged beside the pamphlet is a wrinkled napkin that Kyungsoo had drawn in when he and Jongin went to a Denny’s at 2AM with incurable cases of the munches. It’s a surprisingly detailed bust of a wolf howling at the moon, and Jongin’s tiny miscellaneous doodles all around it had a stark contrast of style.

There are a few school photos of the both of them stuck randomly among the ones from resent years. There’s one of Kyungsoo holding up an octopus, freshly caught out of the mud with a proud smile and dirt and filth all over him, and another of Jongin in his dance sweats. Kyungsoo had snapped the photo whilst the other was still distracted by counting steps and critiquing himself in the studio. There’s one of Kyungsoo’s Mom, cut out in a rough heart shape.

There’s one of Jongin’s niece, when she was much smaller than she is now. Dog collars hang from the tack stabbed into the wood frame of the mirror, hanging down over a picture of their group of friends – arms all locked around each other and smiles broad and intoxicated.

There’s baby pictures of the both of them; one of a four-year-old Jongin cuddled up close to a five-year-old Kyungsoo. And there’s some of them in high school. Ones where Jongin would suddenly want to take a picture, and Kyungsoo had just enough time to look up at the camera, and ones of them in animal onesies, when Jongin’s talked him into putting one on to add the “sleepover” effect, even though they live—lived—together.

There’s white-framed photos from that one time he and Jongin got a hold of Baekhyun’s Polaroid camera and used up all the films. They’re all silly, but the highly saturated, bleached-out coloring made them look hipster and aesthetic, and Kyungsoo loved the way it captured Jongin’s toothy grin and scrunched up nose as the two of them posed with various funky props—a green wig, massive hot pink sunglasses, plastic gold chains, masquerade masks, and fluffy feathery scarves—anything they could get their hands on.

There’s some from Kyungsoo’s twenty-first birthday party. Ones of him holding up ridiculous presents and inappropriate gift bags, and others of him with cake icing smeared on his face and all over his hands. There’s also some from Jongin’s twenty-first birthday, which was held at a park, and much more family-friendly, with a deflated pastel balloon taped beside a photo of Jongin and his sister.

There’s crumpled up receipts wedged randomly, and smiley-face stickers stuck on the mirror, rough around the edges, yet so cemented to the glass that no amount of scrubbing could ever remove them.

There’s hospital letters with a highlighted dates, and bright sticky-notes with various times and medicines with names Kyungsoo still doesn’t know how to pronounce.

There’s a photo of Jongin in a Chemotherapy Station chair, with a playfully exaggerated pout on his lips despite the IV stuck in his arm. There’s another of him sat on an examination table, in a hospital gown, with a smile; mid-laughter. And one of he and Kyungsoo in his hospice room, with Jongin sat up comfortably in his electric bed, and Kyungsoo leaning over the side. They’re both smiling, heads leaned in close. Kyungsoo’s eyes are slightly puffy and bloodshot from recent tears, and he had hoped back then that it wouldn’t be too obvious in the photo – but alas.

There’s printed out photos from their trip to the United States. They’d gone to Florida because Jongin had always wanted to go—had begged and pleaded to go just one more time while he was still up and moving about on his own. He'd had wear oxygen wires. Long plastic tubing stuck up his nose and curled around his ears; a beanie on his head to cover his lack of hair, and a bleak paleness to his skin and dark eye sockets. His smile, however, stayed heartfelt and joyous as he stood at his favorite beach—the beach that he’d grown up next to, that he wanted to see one last time and show to Kyungsoo—with a beautiful backdrop of the setting sun.

Simple, and otherwise random sentiments, but they all held the familiar warmth of Home that Kyungsoo has longed for. Jongin was his home, and in the moment, Kyungsoo truly realizes that he’s lost that. And without his home, Kyungsoo has lost everything it means to live. Without his home, all Kyungsoo is certain of is that he wishes he could die, as well.