“I really lov--” Sehun frowns. “I feel less lonely when you’re around.”

Sehun sighs through his chapped lips, his breath coming out as a long puff of fog. It was too cold for him. He just wanted to get a nice night out but all he’s feeling now is the icy, prickly sense probing against his skin. But no matter how much the weather’s frowned upon, he couldn’t complain about it. It was nice. No matter how cold it was, it was still nice. Sehun his lips once and decided that it wasn’t smart to do that. Once the saliva dries, it freezes on his lips. Sehun sighs once more just to get it out. His whole body starts to react irritably to his endless sighs.

“I love you, too.”

○○○

“We have all gathered here today to collectively send our blessings to the late Oh Sehun.”

There was silence and then there was a sob. Jongin closes his eyes shut to prevent his tears from falling again. He looks around the room from where he stands, the position giving him a clear sight of everything and everyone in the room. The inked sheet of paper he placed right in front of him did no justice to the words he wants to truly convey. So he rips it up and shoves it into his blazer’s pocket. Sehun said to have secrets but what does he know? He’s dead. The man can’t tell Jongin what to do. They say going against the dead’s words can bring you bad luck but Jongin honestly doesn’t care about that. He’s already had the worst luck ever. Jongin sighs, just like how Sehun always does and catches himself before he trails off into his train of thoughts.

“As his best friend and his…”

Jongin bites on his tongue. May God bless Sehun. And may God bless me.

“As his best friend and his… lover…”

There were collective gasps echoing around the room. His friends were eyeing him with bright warning signs flashing in their orbs. They’re telling him it isn’t a great idea. They’re telling him it isn’t in his place to say anything. What do they know? They weren’t there when Sehun begged for help. They weren’t there to see the aftermath of stress and pressure building up on the exact man who is now lying in a God damned coffin. Jongin turns his head to look over the crowd, breathing in once to continue his speech.

“I could see that he was not doing fine.”

May God bless me.

●●●

“Sehun, you need to get a hold of yourself! You can’t keep slacking like this! If this is what you call successful then we really need to have a talk.”

The machine beeped. Another message passed along. Jongin stares at the small device placed atop Sehun’s work desk. He stands before walking over to said desk, reaching over to pick the telephone up before throwing it across the room. Sehun stares almost too incredulously. Jongin laughs.

“We’ll get you another one.”

“Just like that? Man, you’re the money out of me.”

Sehun laughs, ruffling Jongin’s hair adoringly. In all honesty, Sehun didn’t just want the moment to remain exactly like so for a long time but he also wants to be able to visit all the other times he’s felt happy. Like now. Like here with Jongin.

“Better money than sanity. If that thing beeps again with another message I’m sure you’d lose your mind.”

Sehun goes awfully quiet at that response so Jongin frowns down at him.

“What’s on your mind?”

“No, it’s just… that’s not the only thing making me lose my mind.”

Jongin’s speechless. He doesn’t know what to say. He’s never the one people come to for them to talk with, he’s always been the one to just be there for them but never here with them. People never really saw him as the type to care anyway, so it really isn’t his fault in any way. But now he really does want to say something -- anything -- to ease Sehun’s mind, and when he parts his lips to say something, nothing. Not even a stutter of words. Nothing was said. So they stand there, together, in silence. In a silence where Sehun ventures the different thoughts of his problems, of his stress, of getting away from them. In a silence where Jongin selfishly assumes Sehun would understand his lack of words. In a silence, a period of time, where they would drift apart just the slightest.

Jongin looks at Sehun, suddenly missing that happy smile of his. In hopes of pulling one out from Sehun, Jongin leans in to give a nice, big hug.

Sehun doesn’t respond.

○○○

No, don’t say anything! Sehun trusted us! He trusted us! His friends looked at him as if those words were said, as if they were really screaming at his face. But they weren’t. So he just has to continue speaking.

“Out of everyone in this room, I’m pretty sure I knew Sehun the best. I lived with him, I worked with him.” Jongin takes a deep shaky breath. “Sehun would always say that he… was losing his mind. He said it a lot of times and I didn’t know how to respond to that. I didn’t know how to comfort him but when it comes to me, he knew what to say or what to do to make me stop crying. You see, he seemed like he knew what to do so I assumed that if I was there to hug him when he’s feeling down then he’d find himself a way to get better. Obviously, I was awfully wrong.”

Jongin fidgets around to lean on his left leg instead of his right. He was getting nervous. Why did I think this was a good idea? Am I doing this out of spite? Jongin huffs. No. Sehun told all of them to not reveal the fact that he was homoual but he also did get on his knees in front of Jongin, claiming that he wanted the world to know how he really felt about everything. Killing himself pretty much explains about two-thirds of what he bottled in himself. The remaining one-third? Jongin takes the tears and the begging and the vulnerability he saw just a few days before Sehun decides to leave as a question, a favour.

“So I tried to talk a little bit more with him. To get his feelings out. I learnt that if there’s one way to help people sort their feelings out, it was communication. And it didn’t need to be a deep, meaningful conversation about the complexities of life. It could be anything. Just anything.”

●●●

Jongin lays on the bed in silence, just waiting, and waiting, and waiting. He shoots up when he hears the door opening with a snick. Sehun enters with a grim look etched onto his face, his mood down and his expression down. He smiles when he sees Jongin staring at him adorably with owlish eyes. Sehun feels safe.

“Where have you been?”

“I was at some party with some colleagues. They’re all drunk but I couldn’t get drunk somehow. What were you up to?” Sehun sits next to Jongin on the bed, his hands brought up to caress Jongin’s hair.

“I was just… you know… waiting,” Jongin mumbles. “I wanted to talk to you.”

“About?” Sehun frowns.

“Nothing!” Jongin says in a loud, squeaky voice, feeling scared that Sehun would get so stressed over nothing. He says it again but softer this time, to reassure the other one that it wasn’t anything serious. “Nothing. Nothing really. I just wanted to freely talk about whatever -- no particular topic needed, you know? Just a fun and very long conversation.”

And just like that, Sehun was beaming with happiness. His body language, his words, his mood -- everything about him suddenly changed and he was finally back to being the 24-year-old man with a kid in his heart instead of cold ice. Jongin will not forget the look on his face. That look. That expression. Jongin will always love it. Sehun was happy. Because of that, Jongin feels happy too.

He realises something. That he didn’t need to be someone who knew how to get so deep. Sehun was a very simple man. He just wanted a simple and happy life. That was Sehun. With a high position in work, a luxurious car, a luxurious house, a demanding family, everyone else holding him up on a pedestal with high expectations; simple was not easily obtained. At the end of the night, Sehun and Jongin cuddles. When Sehun thinks Jongin’s in deep slumber, he buries his face in the crook of Jongin’s neck, and sobs miserably. He sobs like his life depends on it.

He sobs because he knows he’ll miss it. He’ll miss another memory.

○○○

Jongin’s tearing up quite bad. The memories comes a lot faster than the words he’s thinking of saying. He can’t help sobbing almost as miserably as Sehun did. Jongin hitches on a breath as he tries steadying himself. The room was silent. It was almost as if everyone kind of forgot the fact that Sehun was actually homoual. Everyone watches him wipe his tears away weakly. The obvious difference between the meaning behind Jongin’s teardrops and theirs remains as the main reason why people paid attention to him. Unlike them, it was obvious that Jongin was crying because he’s hurting, he’s crying because the reason why he’s delivering such a speech finally hits him right in the heart. They were crying because they felt sad, because Sehun was a great man, because Sehun had everything everyone wanted but still left anyway. Jongin’s crying simply because Sehun left.

It was apparent in the way he wipes his tears, or the way he tries to speak with a mouthful of sobs, that Jongin’s crying because he’s losing hope -- because Jongin’s hope killed himself. His friends stares at him with sympathy in their eyes. No more warnings and no more anger, just sympathy. Jongin’s lips tremble. He’s trying his best. Once his throat isn’t closing in and his speech isn’t impaired, Jongin prepares for another sentence and more.

“He…” Jongin sighs, taking another minute or so. “Sehun was miserable. He started to like very little things and even then, it doesn’t grow. It just gets lesser and lesser. I didn’t know what to do or what to say to him. He seemed so uncaring about a lot of things and all he wanted to do all day was sit, or sleep, or talk. We talked a lot but I still had a lot of stuff to do for work and for my life. Sehun understood that but he was too understanding. Maybe if he asked me to stay with him, maybe this wouldn’t happen. But he was just so selfless. He didn’t even say anything to me when he wanted me to stay at home with him. Maybe if I noticed something was wrong and stayed with him then maybe, just maybe, he would still be alive right now and none of us would be crying. Maybe if I wasn’t so deh-dense and stuh-stupid.”

●●●

“The beach? It’s very crowded there.”

“Yeah, I know, but it’ll be fun! It’s the beach season, we should be out there swimming or something. Plus, you like swimming!”

Jongin’s excited. Sehun isn’t.

“I don’t know… I’m not very fond of going to the beach or places with big crowds.”

Jongin doesn’t want to react so strongly to Sehun because it always happens but that day was different. He clicks his tongue and walks out of the room with a big frown. On the way out, he mumbles quite begrudgingly the words Sehun feared the most.

“You’re not fond of anything.”

Sehun’s felt hurt before but he feels it pretty strongly coming from Jongin. He stares at the door, the same door Jongin slammed on the way out, and frowns to himself. He doesn’t understand himself. He wants to but he can’t. He’s always liked the beach and the warmth, the sand and the waters, the crowd and the laughter. He feels ashamed of himself but he can’t do anything about it. He doesn’t feel like going. He wants to stay at home and rest.

When he approaches Jongin to apologise, Jongin frowns down at him but forgives him anyway. They sit and talk, and Sehun laughs a lot. He’s happy. Like this, with Jongin. They joke around, Jongin pretending to leave when Sehun cracks a lame joke.

“Hey, what if I leave?” Sehun asks.

“What do you mean?”

“Just in general, what if I leave?”

“Then I’ll kill you!”  Jongin exclaims childishly.

Jongin scrunches his face up, grabbing a fistful of Sehun’s hair before tugging on it. Sehun lets out a loud yelp, his cries of pain turning into laughter the more Jongin laughs like a hyena; high pitched and loud. When Jongin settles down, Sehun decides to answer him.

‘“Then I’ll make sure you can’t kill me.”

“There’s no way that can happen. No matter what you do, no matter where you go, I can always hire someone to kill you,” Jongin folds his arms, responding petulantly as if he was stating a true fact.

“You can’t kill a man who’s already dead,” Sehun mumbles.

Sehun thinks Jongin doesn’t hear him but the latter did. It seems so loud and clear in his head as it repeats, in contrast to the tone Sehun spoke in. Because of that one sentence, Sehun has Jongin thinking for days, weeks, always. He’s never really taken it seriously but Jongin did shrug it off. He thinks it was a joke, like how everyone jokes about killing themselves whenever they’re facing a difficult task. He didn’t know how to ask Sehun what he meant anyway so there wasn’t really anything Jongin could do. Or so he thinks.

○○○

“That was a sign. He hinted on it. He was asking for help.” Jongin sobs again. “He was scared for his life. He didn’t know what was going on with himself. He didn’t understand anything about himself and all he wanted was something understandable, something simple. And he’s thinking about all these things like dying and he just wanted someone to be there for him, someone to understand him when he couldn’t bring himself to. He didn’t want to do it. He wasn’t planning on doing it but I knew he was thinking of it day and night, over and over again. Because that was the only question he felt like he could answer without any trouble. What happens if I die?”

Everyone catches on. As soon as they hear Jongin’s words about how Sehun had constantly hinted on how he felt on the inside, they understood that Jongin was blaming himself. Jongin isn’t just crying because of Sehun, he’s crying because he regrets his decision of brushing everything off like it didn’t concern him one bit. In truth, it did. Sehun meant the world to him but how did things get this bad? It’s not that Sehun hadn’t tried reaching out, I just didn’t grab on. It’s all because of me. Jongin looks up at the crowd with