The world doesn’t end in fire and brimstone. It ends with a message.

It is with our deepest regret to inform you that your brother, First Lieutenant Lee Sunho, was killed in action on 17 July in Gaesong…

The telegram is the color of ripe peaches, innocent-looking when Hyesung first received it, but now has unwittingly slipped from his fingers to the floor, like a snake having already delivered its killing blow. The words swim in his head, undecipherable at first before coming into sharp focus.

He is all at once overwhelmed and enraged and confused because how can their youngest be gone? How could Eric not have protected him? How could none of them have shielded him?

“Yah!” he shouts at his phone when he uses up precious battery power and his dwindling phone credits to ring Andy’s manager but the line won’t connect. When he gets shunned on the third try, he races back to the living room, plugs the TV back up and tunes in to the news. There he promptly discovers that there’s more to it than what he already knows.

Shinhwa rapper and youngest member Andy Lee was killed in a firefight between the North and South Korean armies at around 1AM this morning. Remaining soldiers were reported to have been captured by the North and taken beyond the border. His unit member and Shinhwa leader, Eric Mun, is reported as one of the missing…

Both Eric and Andy’s pictures are flashed on the screen. Recent ones, taken right before the war started at a promotion, and juxtaposed with the pictures at the sendoff: Andy, with his back ramrod-straight and his eyes b with tears as he does the salute; Eric, with a hint of a smirk that forces a choked cry from Hyesung’s throat.

We are deeply saddened to hear of the loss of such a young hero and are praying for the safe return of the captured unit…

When he vomits, nothing really comes up and so he spends what feels like an eternity in the bathroom, curled up on the tiles, trembling, and trying to catch his breath.

He doesn’t understand it. Any of it. A little over six months ago there was no war and Shinhwa had been complete. A year ago their worries were limited to overlapping schedules, dance practices, and recordings, not them being killed by a rogue bomb or stray bullets, or if they would ever be six again.

How can the world turn on its head in such a short span of time? How is Eric nowhere to be found? How can they have lost Andy?

“Lee Sunho!” Hyesung calls out, although he can already barely breathe. His voice comes out cracked, broken, but he persists in calling out their youngest member’s name. It had brought Andy back to them, once. Maybe now if he calls loudly enough, or long enough, it will happen again.

“Lee Sunho! Sunho-yah!”

The memory of Andy’s smile flits across the dark expanse of his mind. His warm touch, how his was always a hand to hold. Their gentle little brother who deserved more than what the world or his hyungs could give him.

“Andy-yah. Andy. Andy. Andy.”

(Don’t worry about us, hyung.)

Andy-yah.

The only response comes in the wild thrashing of his own heart against his ribcage, in the small gasps he has to take when he’s already run out of air.

Hyung is so sorry.

Andy’s body is returned at the height of summer, one among nine draped with individual flags.

With no other family around, Hyesung is the chief mourner, and it is he who carries Andy’s portrait as he’s laid to rest beside Jingyo, surrounded by bouquets of white chrysanthemums. There’s a gun salute and a media blackout and even the President comes to pay his respects but Hyesung barely notices, can barely function as he fights to get through the constant haze of melancholy, anger, worry, and guilt.

He sleeps in fitful starts because Eric is still missing, with no leads on the captured unit and whether or not the North even still has them, and there are no other reports on Minwoo, Junjin, and Dongwan. His dreams are of Andy calling his name, and Eric telling him to run, and Junjin crying out, and of Minwoo reaching for his hand, and of Dongwan covered in blood, and Hyesung often wakes shaking and crying, feeling as though he’s failed them all.

His mother cries as she begs him to take the next plane out, begs him to spare himself from possible harm, but Hyseung stays where he is, apologizes again and again because he isn’t leaving, not until every single one of s is home.

“Why are you still here?” Charlie Park asks him on the rare days that he’s awake and Hyesung’s visiting. The older man’s condition has steadily worsened in the past few months, with him no longer able to walk and requiring a constant cycle of drugs to stave off infection. Hyesung hasn’t told him any news about the members, has even left specific instructions to the nurses to filter the media, but feels as though the older man knows anyway.

Charlie Park watches his movements with careful, hooded eyes.

“Why wouldn’t I be, Abeonim?” He feigns innocence and tucks Junjin’s father in with the same care and diligence as Choongjae would have done, if not more. “You don’t want me here anymore?”

“I thought you’d have gone.” The older man’s physical form is now merely a shell of what he used to be, but his spirit remains burning bright, his tongue still whip-sharp. At the moment, although he’s feverish, Charlie Park is also completely lucid. “You look like death. Your mother will have my head for sure; she must be worried sick.”

Hyesung shakes his head. “I promised them I’d stay. I’m not leaving them to run off.” It’s no mystery to either of them whom he’s referring to, and it’s a blessing to speak to someone who needs no further explanation. “Besides,” he manages a wink, “you need me as well.”

“Don’t think too highly of yourself.” Charlie Park chuckles. “I bet they told you a hundred times already to leave but you’re just being a stubborn bastard.”

A fraction of a smile. “Something like that.”

The older man takes his hand in his, rubs his knuckles the way Andy used to. “You’re a good friend and brother, Jung Pilgyo-sshi, and you’ve done so well. Since my son cannot, I thank you for everything from the bottom of my heart.”

Hyesung’s heart clenches in a funny way at the words. “Abeonim…” he stammers. “Wh-what does that mean?”

The older man waves him off, apparently having had enough of the conversation. He pats Hyesung’s arm. “Get some sleep, son. I’m tired and you are too. Everything will be better in the morning.”

Hyesung doesn’t leave that night, nor the next. He stays by Junjin’s father’s bedside, holding his hand as the older man sleeps, his thoughts and emotions a raging storm. He knows what’s coming and waits for it with trepidation, bargains with the heavens to not subject him to this too, but exhaustion claims him at some point on the second night and he falls asleep without meaning to, remains that way until he wakes in a shaft of sunlight the next morning, his hand grasping air and the bed he was watching over empty.

“It was peaceful,” the nurse says when he finally gets the courage to ask. “You didn’t even stir, so we let you be. We’re sorry for your loss.”

A hidden blessing perhaps, or an act of mercy from a god he isn’t sure he believes in anymore.

You’ve done so well. Since my son cannot, I thank you for everything from the bottom of my heart.

Hyesung cries into the sheets, arms spread out on the empty bed golden with sunlight, the warmth seeping into his clothes like a real embrace would.

Something in him seems to snap at Charlie Park’s death, and Hyesung finds himself running out into the streets, raring to pick a fight at anyone who dares approach him the wrong way.

He runs north, blinded with grief and wanting to direct his anger at anyone or anything representing the country that had waged war against his, at a world that turned a blind eye against their pain and cost him his family.

He runs among the ruins of buildings and monuments with no particular care whether or not he would be caught or arrested or gunned down. The silence accompanying him after years of listening to five sets of footsteps alongside his hurts the most, and he collapses in a heap on a sidewalk lined with the skeletons of trees, once in bloom but now only a shadow of their former glory. He shouts their names towards the sky, feels as his spirit shatters into dust as the silence persists and the shadows grow long with the burning twilight. He shouts until his voice breaks and his throat feels ripped to shreds because it doesn’t matter now, it doesn’t matter…

Let me die too. If you had an ounce of mercy, you would let me die too.

(This longing fills up in me, I rise up in this waiting
Shout out to me so I can hear it once more)

 

In August, the city heats up like a furnace underneath a glass dome.

In August, the phone rings. A blocked number.

“Hello?”

“Shin Hyesung-ssi.”

In August, Lee Minwoo comes home.


tbc


Author's notes: I'm sorry??? Honestly this story is writing itself, I'm just wrestling with it whenever it wants to kill someone. Charlie Park wasn't supposed to die in my original idea but...there you go. Thank you for the views and comments! If you have any ideas on how you think the story should go, feel free to suggest. Maybe I'll consider it. :)