Part 1 - Chapter 1
I Wanna Love
1
"You can't do this to me!" Niel's pathetic cry followed Jilly from the apartment. She paused, hefting her duffel bag higher and squaring her shoulders.
"I have to. It's already done." She called back before disappearing down the stairs.
Niel slumped onto their bed, now his bed. Rather than looking at the empty half of the closet his head fell into his hands. Tears slipped through the lattice of his fingers and onto the floor. He wished more than anything that he could say this wasn't his fault; but he knew the truth. Some dark part of him was happy Jilly had left him. A darker part, still, was excited at the prospect of freedom.
Niel wrestled the feeling down into a corner of his broken heart and slammed a door shut against it. Just as he had for the last 2 months.
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HKG to YYZ - 1400 DEPARTURE GATE 32
Changhyun stared at the ticket. He checked his watch: 2:20pm. The plane would be leaving now.
He slapped the thin card against his palm. If only he could go back to being blindly in love. To not knowing anything about how he deserved to be treated. If only he had been treated better in the first place.
Changhyun exhaled, consciously unclenching his jaw and trying to calm the embers of anger burning in his stomach. The ticket had crumpled slightly in his fury. With a growl, he scrunched it into a ball and hurled it into the murky water.
Slipping the ring from his fourth finger it followed the ticket to the bottom of the bay.
It was time to move on.
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Swoosh. Clang. Thud.
The basketball fell to the ground, bouncing before Byunghun retrieved it. He slammed it against the concrete a few times before stopping and perching on the low concrete wall. Staring at the ground his thoughts wandered to Chanhee again.
Where was he right now? At the grocery store? At the apartment? Furious with Byunghun for standing him up again? Byunghun couldn't face him. Lately every time he saw Chanhee the normal happy giddiness was twisted and laced with a sludgy black worry. Worry that perhaps Byunghun wasn't good enough for Chanhee, that Chanhee was going to find someone better and Byunghun would be left behind.
Pulling his black hood over his platinum-blond hair he pushed the dark thoughts away. Bouncing his basketball and shooting once more.
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Jonghyun sat on the ferry, headphones blaring music into his brain. He stared at his wallet a moment before unfolding it and extracting a worn photo.
The woman smiled sweetly in that blank way people do when they're being photographed. She was pretty; in a boring, generic way. It was, by all means, a generic photo of a generic woman. That was the reason Jonghyun had chosen it.
Whoever she was she had served him well for the last 5 years. An easy explanation of why he was never seen with a woman. He would spout a well-rehearsed story of a long-distance relationship, produce the photo and be done with it.
Except now he didn't care.
He had come out, well and truly, before deciding to move to Hong Kong. It felt liberating, he was ready to begin again. He let the photo flutter out of his fingertips and into infinity.
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Chanhee sat on the stairs, a ridiculous number of cans on the step below him. It wasn't his fault. Byunghun was supposed to be here by now. Actually, he was supposed to be here half an hour ago.
Ok, maybe he didn't need to eat all of the cans himself, and maybe he felt a bit nauseous but it was definitely Byunghun's fault.
In all their years, together Byunghun had always been the voice of reason, the stabilising factor. Something had gone wrong though. He missed dates, he didn't talk, he didn't seem to laugh. What scared Chanhee the most was the possibility that it was his own fault. What if Chanhee asked and Byunghun's answer to all his problems was Chanhee? No, he couldn't do that.
Instead, he opened another can of pineapple; unsure whether it was spite, fear, or an overdose of fruit that made his stomach turn.
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Bang Minsu leant against a pylon staring at the brown water. Jonghyun was due to arrive any minute and Minsu hoped having his dongsaeng in town would help him figure out what he should do next. Where else to look for the mysterious boy he'd met briefly. If you could call making out in a dark club "meeting".
That blurry night two months ago still gnawed at him. Minsu needed to find whoever he was, if only to try and get back to having a normal life again. Until he knew for sure he would only have a half-life.
The few people he had actually asked had already called him foolish for looking for one specific person in one of the craziest cities in the world. Minsu agreed with them but it made him more determined to find the man from the club. If one person in this city of millions had affected him that way surely it was a connection of fate.
Finally the ferry was docking. The heavy gangway slamming into place.
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Niel lay staring at the ceiling. Tracing the cracks and marks as he always did. The shock had finally worn off. He supposed he should do something. What did you do in a situation like this? Your girlfriend of two years leaves you without much of an explanation.
You get drunk.
With a heavy sigh he found his phone and called his best friend. As the phone rang, Niel battled with the memory from last time he was drunk. It only made things worse. The dark emotions rattled against the door in his heart.
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Changhyun wandered the streets, questioning his choices and dissecting himself in the eyes of strangers:
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