Sanghyuk makes a neat list on a piece of blank paper with the things he wants to do for Hongbin.

The first thing he writes is: Make sure he always eats.

This is the first thing he thinks of because Sanghyuk hates starving.

He hates it even more than the smell of leather. Every time his stomach growls, he gets transported to a time where he lived like that the whole time. So, to run away from that feeling, he sometimes binges until his stomach aches like its tearing itself apart; he eats until he brings it all up in the toilet. It has more or less levelled out since he’s been allowed to cook for himself whenever he likes, but the habit of hoarding and over-eating still visits from time to time.

He doesn’t know if anyone else has this problem (though with the way that Taekwoon eats, he suspects he might not be the only one doing something abnormal), but he doesn’t ever want Hongbin to feel powerless or ugly in that way. When you feel as though you are behind the driver’s seat of a careening car. He adds – make food that he likes to eat and puts two stars next to it. Because what’s the point of eating if it doesn’t make you happy?  

Then: Make sure he has time to himself.

Make sure he has his own space.

Make sure he meets his friends often.

Make sure he eats his medication on time.

Make sure he doesn’t hurt himself.

Sanghyuk isn’t quite sure how to do the last one; but he supposes if he does his job right, then he won’t have to worry about it.

It’s hard to continue the list after that. Sanghyuk writes: Make sure he’s happy. Then he erases it. Will he know really how to make Hongbin happy if he doesn’t even know what ‘happy’ means?

He searches the dictionary definition of happiness. It doesn’t help him much.

So, for the rest of the day, he forces himself to poke and prod at the deepest parts of himself. Because he knows profoundly that he doesn’t just want Hongbin to be happy. What he really, really wants to do for Hongbin is to play the role that he always wished he had but never gotten. Someone to look after him, to never hurt him even when he’s acting out – or lie to him, someone who could give him everything he desired. That’s exactly the kind of protector he wants to be for Hongbin.

He wants to make Hongbin laugh. He wants to listen to Hongbin’s days, good or bad. He wants Hongbin to be unafraid to tell him the things that make the world seem hopeless. He wants Hongbin to know that Sanghyuk is there for him – whether he needs a hug, or a bowl of soup, or a pat on the back. He wants to help Hongbin in any way he can.

He forces himself to think back to the first few years, when he was still hoping for a nice person to take him in – or maybe even when he was a kid, when he had hope of being adopted (his life blurs into a timeline of pain and hurt and an underlying current of desperate hope) – and writes. He thinks that if he had someone like that in his past, he could have been happy. That’s the closest he can get to the meaning of the word.

***

Jaehwan’s Alcoholics Anonymous group is full of people older than him. He’s the only one who’s in-patient, and it’s a bit depressing watching everyone leave after their weekly session. To go home to their wives, or children, or even a dog. Obviously, it puts him in a ty mood, a dark cloud that refuses to go away even when Taecyeon tries to cheer him up in the cafeteria.

To be fair, the loneliness has been eating him up for weeks. His exposure to the real world during the trial had been, or at least felt like, the first time he was seeing the sun. In the light, he could see just how tragically homeless he was in all sense of the word. He didn’t have anyone, or anything to his name.

Before, he could hide it behind alcohol and fighting. Now, he just accepts it and tries his best not to slip back into old habits. But his life with a roof over his head and being sober enough to walk straight more than half of the time was no better than the one he had before. Sure, there was always food and shelter, but the anger within him never went away. The jealousy with which he looked at everyone in working clothes or school uniforms never left.

People always say to look on the bright side. But he’s starting to think that there is no bright side for him – no bright side with a better view anyway. All the bright side is is blinding, and unattainable, and even scarier than what he cannot see.  

“What d’you wanna eat?”

“I don’t know, not hungry.” Jaehwan mumbles. “Gonna get some food from the vending machine upstairs.”

“I guess my roommate is sulking again,” Taecyeon teases while making a face at his girlfriend on facetime. “As usual.”

“Yeah and you could probably do me a favour by not giving me a hard time about it,” Jaehwan glares at him and can’t help kicking a chair over on the way out. He doesn’t even care that Taecyeon clearly feels bad about teasing him; and that the nice dining hall lady that always gives him extra fishcake cringes at the noise. He just wants to get back to his room and sleep.

The AA session had been about healthy coping mechanisms again. Everyone else had something to suggest for themselves – hiking, exercise, outings with friends and neighbours. He said “exercise” too, to make himself look less pathetic (last week he had said casual and expected everyone to be offended, but they just stared at him pitifully and it felt even worse than if he had said nothing at all), but he knew exercise wasn’t going to work.

He had gotten into fighting by learning how to box from a senior from junior high who opened a studio. At first, he thought it was the exercise and the sweating that helped him through dark days; then he realized he didn’t ing like boxing – he liked being hit. He liked bleeding from open wounds on his face and watching the bruises on his knuckles get darker and darker. He liked purposely keeping his hands down – even against inexperienced fighters – and seeing how long he could fool the people at the studio that he was trying his best to protect himself. When in fact, he liked that the pain was sometimes so overwhelming it made him forget.

In his head, he sees himself as a grenade. It doesn’t matter how many people he ends up hurting if he can die along with it.

He grabs a carton of milk from the vending machine and drags his feet all the way to his room. He’s slowly ripping the paper open when he realizes his room is not empty.

“Hi,” It’s Minki, who’s sitting casually on Taecyeon’s bed. He’s cradling his blazer in his hands and his tie is crooked.

“Oh. Hello,” Jaehwan takes a sip of milk. “Why are you here?”

“Just checking up on you,” Minki replies. “You look… good.”

“Ha, ha, ha. That’s funny.” Jaehwan deadpans. “For the first time in my life, I wouldn’t even do me.”

“Okay fine, you’re right. You look like absolute crap,” Minki chuckles. “What the hell have you been doing in here? Isn’t this supposed to be like a holiday for you? You can annoy the hell out of everyone in the building and they’re paid to put up with your nonsense.”

“You’re honestly talking as if you weren’t paid to put up with my nonsense.” Jaehwan laughs. “And to be honest, the nurses here don’t even react to my practical jokes anymore.”

“You’re still a riot.” Minki smiles and gestures for him to take a seat. “You doing okay?”

“I’m as good as I could possibly be.”

“Making changes?”

“Where I can.” Jaehwan grimaces. “Slow-going, though.”

“It’s okay,” Minki briefly pats him on the back. “I’ve heard from your doctor that you’ve been doing well.”

They make some more small talk before lapsing into a comfortable silence. It becomes so quiet that Jaehwan can hear Minki breathing, but it doesn’t become weird. The warmth of Minki’s body next to him almost melts all the tension in his body away. His bed also weirdly feels softer.  

“Can I ask you something?” Jaehwan asks just as Minki shifts his weight to make himself more comfortable. “Why did you fight so hard for our case?”

Minki takes his time to think. By the time he answers, Jaehwan is done with his milk and halfway through a pack of gummies he’s hidden in his bedside drawer.

“I used to be in a band in high school – don’t laugh. One of my members got really sick once and we found out he had cancer in his spine.” Minki speaks neutrally. “He survived, but there was a time where we all thought he wasn’t going to make it. He thought he was at the end too. So he wrote all his friends letters. Some of them were a few sentences, and some of them were pages long. But anyway, at the end of mine, he wrote – Everyone deserves to live before they die. You and Sanghyuk… reminded me of that. I hadn’t thought about that letter for a long time until I saw your case. I really didn’t want you guys to never get to live.

Also, my clientele are usually the wealthy and the undeserving. I kind of lost my way for a little bit and became so focused on the money that I realized my soul was rotting. So I partly worked so hard on your case to show myself that I could still do something good for the people that came looking for my help.”

“I’ve lived before, you know,” Jaehwan says after a while. “I really did. I had a family, and I was happy once. But I disappointed them so much that I couldn’t go back. I couldn’t live up to it and so I left.”

Minki looks at Jaehwan, almost as if he cannot decide if the younger man is speaking the truth or not. But the pain in Jaehwan’s eyes… “Have you tried contacting them again?”

“I’m too scared to, honestly,” Jaehwan scoffs sheepishly. “I don’t think they would want me anymore.”

“I’m sure that’s not true,” Minki says. “I can feel them waiting for you. And I have an extremely reliable sixth sense.”

That gets a laugh out of Jaehwan. “I’ll let you know if I ever decide to go back.”

“Okay, I’ll be back in a month,” Minki pins Jaehwan with a look. “I’m going to Europe for a long holiday. When I come back, I’ll look for you. You better have good news for me.”

Jaehwan smiles. “We’ll have a nice dinner. I’ll probably be better by then.”

“Just try your best. You’re fine the way you are now,” Minki holds his gaze. “I’ll send you a postcard.”

***

A week later, the postcard does come. It’s a black and white pencil sketch of the Colosseum in Rome.

On the back, there is a quote: “‘It's better to see something once than to hear about it a thousand times.’ There is a world out there waiting for you. Don’t be stupid enough to give up on trying to see everything at least once. When we die, we’ll lose the chance forever.”

Jaehwan presses it close to his chest – almost as if he can imprint the words onto his heart. A twinge of emotion curls and crests there. He borrows blu-tack from Taecyeon and sticks it above his bed.

[A/N]: i'm curious about the people who read my story. ask me anything in the comments and i'll answer it in a blog post shortly. it can be anything - ask about me, ask about this story, ask about its characters - anything!