Kyungsoo and Jongin might be too young to seek the most important thing that they dearly desire. They did. It was worth it.

***

‘You’re going to die.’ He says. The boy, holding the little knife in his hands—all tight knuckles, dirt-encrusted hand. A slice of thunder rings outside, and almost Kyungsoo smile at the cliché of it all.

‘Doesn’t everyone?’ Kyungsoo reply, barely bothering to turn his head and face him from where he lie on the cold ground.

‘Soon.’ The man replies, it’s only now that Kyungsoo noticed the thin rope lines around his neck and cheeks, the tears in him ragged, rain-dripping, clothes, and the torn out fingernail on his left index finger. Kyungsoo looked into his eyes with utter distaste felt the outrage of triumph evident on the man’s damaged skins to where he fought. He looked again at the mess of matted black hair that cascades past his ears in snake-like tendrils, covering his narrow face and sunken eyes, and realise with a familiar sickening that it is not rain, but blood that drips from his sodden clothes. 

 ‘It’s for you, mama.’ He had said it; in an achingly sworn vengeance. He was seventeen, and there was nothing left to live. He had sworn that. He knew. 

‘Why don’t you help me, Kyungsoo?’ The man, who was Jongin, asks, wrenching him out of his reverie and taking an unsteady step towards him in the cramped, yet empty, room.

Somehow, it had been so painfully usual to laugh. He did. ‘What do you want me to do?’ Kyungsoo hissed. ‘Shout the place down? Tell everyone about how some dead body buried in a shallow grave somewhere, demand that they to troll here and drag the bodies up off the dirt?’

‘Yes.’ Jongin grinned. ‘You buried them. Oh, you do remember.’ his voice drew shallow and breathless laugh.

Kyungsoo’s face fall, and Jongin’s face drew unfamiliar pang of guilt, it’s so pure it almost buys Kyungsoo. Kyungsoo wonder momentarily if it’s because of his age, or because they look almost instinctively alike. It was never the case. Even if they pull down all this anger and outpouring triumph within themselves. Why would any of them feel guilty? What did they expect themselves to do, smile and greet him with open arms? 

‘You’ll be next, Kim Jongin, engrave on the cold marble.’ Kyungsoo said with a smile. He could taste his blood draped over swollen skin inside his mouth. It seemed to be dripping non-stop. 

‘Why all cries?’ Jongin asks,raising his head and pinning him with those lifeless eyes, as his translucent skin flushes with fury. ‘You could help me.’

His lip quivers, and those dark eyes filled with tears. It was fantastically amazing to see themselves with all reds and wounds, tears without hushes and sobs. After those months, it’s worth it. It was alright. They can manage. 

Kyungsoo froze. His eyes wide with ineluctable rile, bright under the darkness of the room.

‘Who said I could help you? It’s your life. You can’t control it. That excitement to draw your knife and hurt someone. Jongin, it’s just as the same I am.’ Kyungsoo said with saccharine voice, forcefully—too forcefully.

Jongin’s expression turns rapidly from crushingly upset to terrifyingly haunting, as a malicious smile spread across his face, and Kyungsoo’s thoughts briefly touch on how damn mercurial the damned can be.

‘You will die. Kyungsoo, you will die.’ Jongin says simply. ‘Soon.’ His grip on the knife shifted, curling fingers into tight fist.

‘Come here then.’ Kyungsoo said, letting the tears falls inevitably down his pale cheeks.

 

 

***

Gingerly, Kyungsoo sat on the wooden bench under a tree. He put the cup of coffee on the wood surface just beside him. He looked up. The wide sky blue spread and bright. He lunged the fresh air, browns and cool breeze. 

The road was bare under unveiled sunshines. He would have impaled his eyes to it; if not for somebody slowly walking into his direction. It was a boy, in a close distance. He was with his umbrella; the sun light strikes through its thin fabric, revealing the boy’s very tender face.
Kyungsoo looked at him as if expecting company. The boy was taller than him and he sat silently on the other end of the bench. He didn’t fold his umbrella, he looked up too, to the wide spread of blue sky.

For a moment, they sat quietly. Neither of them spoke.

Once or twice vehicles coming past them, people walked past them. A wind blew against them—carrying dusts and leaves. The boy beside Kyungsoo coughed several times, and this time, he began to talk.

‘I’m sorry.’ The boy with umbrella said. It was said with such profound statement. Kyungsoo didn’t understand if it was an apology for the coughing sound, he doesn’t know what else, but they sounded like, it’s something else.

‘It’s alright.’ Kyungsoo said barely a whisper. There was nothing to say. He didn’t dare to talk again but he could feel rather than saw that the boy was looking at him. It was impossible not to look back.

‘I said it’s alright.’ Kyungsoo said with clarity in his voice now.

The boy regarded him with those tender eyes—warm and almost, shocking when his lips curved slowly into a smile. ‘I’m Jongin.’

That was the beginning of friendship. They exchanged conversations about themselves the next day, at the exact place, wooden bench and blue sky. Jongin was turning sixteen and he lived just twenty minutes apart. They simply laugh with young jokes and feelings. They ate breads, drank coffees every morning. They walked across the bridge feeding doves. They watched movie. And at the second month they kissed.

‘Jongin…’ Kyungsoo whispered into Jongin’s ear. Jongin’s palm on his waist. They were on their back against the header of the bed inside an inn room. His cheeks flush with painful want. His arms winding around Jongin’s neck. Their chests rising and falling together. It was now and they desired themselves to do as they please. Under heartbeats and open secrets.

Jongin leaned back at the sound. He search Kyungsoo’s eyes and looked at him with longing. ‘Do you really—‘

‘It’s what you want.’ Kyungsoo cut him off. ‘It’s all what you want.’

Jongin froze at the words. His heart was pounding with intensity, between pain and cunning. He paused for a moment, reading Kyungsoo’s eyes. The words were made with its unending turbidity. Whether it was only his head or his stresses, his mind has never ended searching, cautious and vanishing with tender kisses and touches. It was physical. It was powerful. He was not able to stop it.

He reached up to Kyungsoo’s sweater and then further. He was melting in his own want and need, hot crawling all over his nerves. He pushed Kyungsoo down on the mattress. Kissed his neck and Kyungsoo made a sound. He was not able to stop it. He never was.

They kissed again, and again. They didn’t stop. Jongin carefully parting Kyungsoo’s legs, finding his object. He found it. He kissed him softly and then hard. They were panting together.

‘Jongin…’ Kyungsoo was evidently eager. 

And then he sank into him. It was painful and bright. Aching sweetness that opens them both. Bare and unguarded.

Jongin pushed it deeper. Tears begun to form. He didn’t want that. It shouldn’t have. But it did. He was open wide and slowly he could now feel it too, with Kyungsoo.

Kyungsoo’s palms travelling across his shoulders, to his back and to his neck. He tried, with all painful restraint, to soften his touch. He could feel Jongin’s veins, pulsing, flowing streams of blood—the significant evident of life. Life. It seemed to sound so interesting to him. It was, for the most part. He thumbed it gently—it was Jongin’s—he touched it with his fingertips, felt it with new blooming desire, want and need, closed his eyes.

Jongin looked into Kyungsoo’s eyes as he felt his fingertips trailing every lines of his neck. He smile with unreadable amazement.

 
Kyungsoo bites on his lower lip and then parted them. It was only the feel of it to react.

‘Kyungsoo—‘ Jongin said past a choking bloat as Kyungsoo deepens shifted his touch into a grip. He pressed his thumbs against Jongin’s throat. And felt Jongin jerked and instinctively caught his wrist.

‘Kyungsoo.’ Jongin’s eyebrows furrow. He looked down at him, searching his eyes.

Under him, Kyungsoo’s eyes was glassy, wide and Jongin feared the new and strange in it. 

He would have said something to it but Kyungsoo kissed him very, very gently. It turned into something deeper—a desperation. Jongin kissed him back with the same striving and jerked as he came inside him.

 

***

It was their third month that Kyungsoo came into his place which, was, oddly, and strikingly, impossible.

Or, Kyungsoo knew long time ago?

Or, Kyungsoo was just clever to stalk him back to his house?

Or, he was utterly, impossibly in love with this boy.

Kyungsoo came forward with a smile on his face. He cupped Jongin’s face and kissed him on the lips.

‘Can you bring me into your rooms?’ Kyungsoo said.

Jongin looked at him with careful expression, keeping his face calm and plain. He couldn’t make it. He knew he was plainly obvious.

Kyungsoo was looking at him. It was a month after their first night, when they were like this. Just like this. Eyeing each other for a too long time. Waiting for each other to talk. To move. To ask. Or to kiss. Sometimes Jongin would find it sweet, but then he was never been out of caution. 

They were like this.

The repression to smile. The restraint to ask. The wariness beginning to grow between them.

Beating the time that have been so long, it was too long, and Jongin can’t take it. He reached out to touch Kyungsoo’s hand and felt the shock when Kyungsoo so abruptly jerked and stepped back. His face held up with new alertness. The tautness of his neck, the angle of his chin, like he was proud.

And then with all his surety and painful desire, he spoke. ‘What are you doing here?’ Jongin asked. Slowly, he took a step back too.

There was now three dark steps between them, it threatened to be longer each second.

‘What do you think?’ Kyungsoo replied quickly.

Jongin’s head begun to pound hard. His chest heavy. And suddenly he couldn’t breathe.

His hand on the table fist, just near the glass of water, steady. And then he reached for it.

Kyungsoo was faster.

He drove forward and so hurriedly with adrenalin, threw his arms, with no apparent direction. It looked raw and full of emotion, young, but then it did. One slice—he had just slit Jongin’s neck with it.

Jongin staggered a step backward, clutching his throat in a handful of blood.

And then instinct and deeper desire amongst his desires rang up to him, he drove forward and grabbed Kyungsoo’s wrist. A fist, coming from the side, impacted on his temple, he stumbled back and Kyungsoo ran, ridiculously, outside under the heavy rain.

Thunder strikes and all roaring sound, he followed him outside.

And found him still running. There was no time for this, but this. He ran toward him, his heels thudding through the ground and rain. His hair and clothes begun to get heavy with rain water. It was hard but he made to grab Kyungsoo around the waist.

‘Stop!’ Jongin said. His voice cracked and husky. He barely noticed it when Kyungsoo turned to look at him. His eyes red with tears. ‘Stop it Kyungsoo.’

‘Why?’ Kyungsoo yelled back. Ugly sobs.

‘Stop.’ Jongin said.

‘Am I the next one?’ Kyungsoo said, he was panting hard. ‘After you me?’

‘Kyungsoo.’

‘It was the truth!’ Kyungsoo said. He was pushing Jongin away.

‘Give me the knife, please.’ Jongin cried.

‘Why? To use it?’ Kyungsoo asked, then gripped the hilt, ‘No.’

‘Kyungsoo, don’t do this.’ Jongin plead. He should stop this, or else.

‘I swear if you don’t step back I’m gonna kill you.’ Kyungsoo groaned, all painful and honest.

Jongin wrapped  his arms tightly around Kyungsoo’s waist, trying with all his strength to stop him.

And then with all scrutiny, Kyungsoo’s shoulders begun to shake, he was laughing.

‘Jongin, stop doing things to dissatisfy your father’s want.’ Kyungsoo said within laughters. ‘Or, you really want to disappoint him, your proud self. You feel like you’re stronger than him?’ he paused. ‘You really do. He’s dead.’

It was enough. Jongin pushed Kyungsoo away with shocking force and drove his fist on his face.

Kyungsoo’s body skidded on the ground.

‘Yes.’ Jongin said with utter arrogance. ‘I was glad your father felt the same way.’ And then tugged the knife from Kyungsoo’s hand.

‘You’ll be next, then.’ Jongin said.

He angled the knife, driving it down on Kyungsoo’s exposed belly. Kyungsoo faced it with his leg, knee against Jongin’s crotch. The air knocked out of Jongin.

Kyungsoo stood, and Jongin, though kneeling now on the ground, caught Kyungsoo’s ankle before he could slip away.

Counter and counter, Kyungsoo scrape his nails angrily on Jongin’s face, he succeeded and ran again, this time, inside the house.

His head was pounding hard. He could feel his chest heaving so hard, but there was no time. There was no place and chance to change it. It was over.

He ran upstairs to hide. Or to just prolong this sickening game.

He was panting hard as he strode the second floor. He found the rooms. He didn’t close the door. He was expecting Jongin with honest sympathy…
Kyungsoo have little sympathy for criminals; it is because of them that he stopped living a long time ago. They killed his family. His sisters and his mother, who he found in the bathroom; slit neck and bathing in her own blood. It took him only a year to collect himself and pick up knife of his own, ran into the night to find persons who did all of this. 

He found him, three months ago.

‘I’m sorry.’ Under the blue sky. The word meant long time ago. The words held the truth of it all. He knew. And what he had said…

He would have killed him then right away. But with the hundred nights of practise, he managed to keep it slow, perhaps, it was more appealing, with all certainty, to feel it in his own hands, slowly, painstakingly slowly.

‘It’s alright.’ He whisphered, the coffee untouched between them.

He didn’t move when Jongin appeared at the door. His tender eyes, has gone. 

‘You want to me?’ Kyungsoo said.

‘Yes.’Jongin replied, he reached up to wipe the blood on his neck. He was all wet. ‘But first, I want to tell a story, it’s what you like.’

‘It’s not enough. You need to die. It won’t bring them back, but at least…’ Kyugsoo went on. His heart crashing.

‘At least you will win it?’ Jongin added. ‘You’re right. It was never enough. Your father was criminal. Yes, he killed my father.’

‘Go on.’ Kyungsoo said. ‘I would love to hear all of it. The way you cut my mother’s throat, the feel of her breath, that you stole.’

‘It’s your father’s fault.’ Jongin said.

‘Yes, you should have killed him too.’

‘Kyungsoo…’

‘Don’t say my name. You killed my mother, Jongin. You killed her.’

‘I want to change.’ Jongin cried. ‘I want to change after all I’ve done. It was pure anger. I was young. I didn’t know how to control myself.’

‘You’re still young.’ Kyungsoo said.

‘I didn’t meant—‘ Jongin cut himself.

‘To me?’ Kyungsoo went on.

Jongin refused to be dark, internally-reflecting Kyungsoo, so he kept a distance. He glanced at him above all their darkness and anger, and felt a sudden jolt. It’s this day. Of all the days in his life, today is the most important for two reasons: first, for being the date on which he entered Kyungsoo’s house, sneaking carefully, the slice of his knife against pale skin—of Kyungsoo’s sisters, and mother; and second, for being his father’s death. He remembered his father, who was killed brutally inside the jail ward, killed by Kyungsoo’s father. He would have absorbed it then, think first, call on modesty, of common understanding, yet he was past his instinct and league—he was old enough, he thought, to end it in his own hands.

 

He couldn’t have regrets it then.

And then, Kyungsoo came. It was all he never expected. Internally—and he felt guilty even admitting it to himself—the other half of his brain, the half not trying to forget about half of his past, is thinking about Kyungsoo. It was insanity with this halves… and it was incredulously fantastic and sickening too, his life, divided in two—half for Kyungsoo and half with whole anger and madness to his family. It was never enough. It was never done. 

He remembered kissing him. Remembered himself sliding inside. It was pure love but always overlay something deeper until it brought them powerfully together, here.

‘Kyungsoo, we don’t have to do this.’

‘I want it.’ Kyungsoo said. ‘I want to see you dying. You’re going to hate it, but I’ll love watching you squirm, like how you me with your face.’

‘You know, it’s funny you say squirm.’ Jongin added sarcastically.

‘Yes it is.’

‘Do you have something else to say?’ Jongin asked.

‘I want you to die.’ Kyungsoo said.

‘You’re going to die.’ He says. Jongin, holding the little knife in his hands—all tight knuckles, dirt-encrusted hand. A slice of thunder rings outside, and almost Kyungsoo smile at the cliché of it all.

‘Doesn’t everyone?’ Kyungsoo reply, barely bothering to turn his head and face him from where he lie on the cold ground.

‘Soon.’ Jongin replies, it’s only now that Kyungsoo noticed the thin rope lines around his neck and cheeks, the tears in him ragged, rain-dripping, clothes, and the torn out fingernail on his left index finger. Kyungsoo looked into his eyes with utter distaste felt the outrage of triumph evident on the man’s damaged skins to where he fought. He looked again at the mess of matted black hair that cascades past his ears in snake-like tendrils, covering his narrow face and sunken eyes, and realise with a familiar sickening that it is not rain, but blood that drips from his sodden clothes. 

 ‘It’s for you, mama.’ He had said it; in an achingly sworn vengeance. He was seventeen, and there was nothing left to live. He had sworn that. He knew. 

‘Why don’t you help me, Kyungsoo?’ Jongin asks, wrenching him out of his reverie and taking an unsteady step towards him in the cramped, yet empty, room.

Somehow, it had been so painfully usual to laugh. He did. ‘What do you want me to do?’ Kyungsoo hissed. ‘Shout the place down? Tell everyone about how some dead body buried in a shallow grave somewhere, demand that they to troll here and drag the bodies up off the dirt?’
‘Yes.’ Jongin grinned. ‘You buried them. Oh, you do remember.’ his voice drew shallow and breathless laugh.

Kyungsoo’s face fall, and Jongin’s face drew unfamiliar pang of guilt, it’s so pure it almost buys Kyungsoo. Kyungsoo wonder momentarily if it’s because of his age, or because they look almost instinctively alike. It was never the case. Even if they pull down all this anger and outpouring triumph within themselves. Why would any of them feel guilty? What did they expect themselves to do, smile and greet him with open arms? 

‘You’ll be next, Kim Jongin, engrave on the cold marble.’ Kyungsoo said with a smile. He could taste his blood draped over swollen skin inside his mouth. It seemed to be dripping non-stop. 

‘Why all cries?’ Jongin asks,raising his head and pinning him with those lifeless eyes, as his translucent skin flushes with fury. ‘You could help me.’ His lip quivers, and those dark eyes filled with tears. It was fantastically amazing to see themselves with all reds and wounds, tears without hushes and sobs. After those months, it’s worth it. It was alright. They can manage. 

Kyungsoo froze. His eyes wide with ineluctable rile, bright under the darkness of the room.

‘Who said I could help you? It’s your life. You can’t control it. That excitement to draw your knife and hurt someone. Jongin, it’s just as the same I am.’ Kyungsoo said with saccharine voice, forcefully—too forcefully.

Jongin’s expression turns rapidly from crushingly upset to terrifyingly haunting, as a malicious smile spread across his face, and Kyungsoo’s thoughts briefly touch on how damn mercurial the damned can be.

‘You will die. Kyungsoo, you will die.’ Jongin says simply. ‘Soon.’ His grip on the knife shifted, curling fingers into tight fist.
‘Come here then.’ Kyungsoo said, letting the tears falls inevitably down his pale cheeks.

 

Silence pushed against them.

And then without any hesitation, Jongin drove the knife into his belly.

Kyungsoo’s voice shock echoed all over the room. But he kept himself not react. He watched as Jongin finally kneeled and then, deliberately, fall to the ground.

‘Kyungsoo.’ Jongin spoke with ragged voice.

Stiffed and mute, Kyungsoo stood unmoving. His mouth parted, shock and all panic.

‘Dying is terrible.’ Kyungsoo whispered, his voice dry.

He was unlooked for that his eyes now filled with tears. His heart ached, pounding hard. The pain was right. Divided into shuttered emotions. Satisfaction. Pain. Regrets. Guilt. End of it.

He couldn’t look straight to Jongin’s eyes. He would have…

He could...

He could hold the knife, tug it or dig it in. Either way was worth paying for.

He felt—he no longer knew what he felt.

Time passed. He found himself kneeling beside Jongin’s body. He could no longer whether the body was still alive or dead.

He didn’t have to think. He tugged the knife…

And drove it in his belly.

 

 Kyungsoo and Jongin might be too young to seek the most important thing that they dearly desire. They did. It was worth it.

 

_______________________________________
I wrote it in a middle of dawn inspired by a single short dream.