He has dreams, extraordinarily vivid and yet bizarrely indescribable, containing the familiar soft visage of Kyungsoo and the jagged, squiggly one of Jongin, the unknown. Flitting in and out of sleep, each time he opens his eyes to the waking world he’s greeted with a different scene—Baekhyun alone, staring out the window, sitting cross legged on the floor, Minseok and Baekhyun talking in hushed tones over the coffee table, and then Jongdae on the phone, leaning against the wall, his usually happy face drawn into uncharacteristic grim lines. When he finally sits up, night has already fallen and he and Baekhyun are alone again. The television dances with bright colors, and Baekhyun’s attention is grasped by the videogame on the screen, sitting completely still other than his thumbs pressing combinations into the controller. Chanyeol watches him play for a little while as his consciousness slowly returns.

            An evening breeze floats in through the cracked window, cutting icy cold across Chanyeol’s cheeks. The moon is especially bright tonight, the light of its pale face hitting the side of Baekhyun’s crouched form and casting a strange malformed shadow on the carpet. It triggers an image from Chanyeol’s dream: Jongin, dancing, face obscured, in some bizarre landscape of desert and tundra mixed together. As his feet swept through sand and snow, they had drawn a picture—a malformed figure, a hunched and fanged monster with clawed hands.

            “Baekhyun,” Chanyeol says, voice barely a whisper from the day of disuse. Baekhyun immediately turns around, forgetting the game. “You’re awake.”

            “Is there… food?”

            “Yeah.” Baekhyun stands. “My mom made some for you before she went to bed for if you woke up in the middle of the night. I’ll get it.” He disappears from view for a few moments before returning with a tray of kimbap, which he places in Chanyeol’s blanketed lap.

            “Thank you.”

            Baekhyun sits down next to Chanyeol as he eats. They both watch the little character bouncing on the game’s home screen.

            “Minseok and Jongdae came by. They got told the same as us. Jongdae went to Jongin’s house since he lives nearby but it was all taped off and nobody would let him inside. He ran into Jongin’s landlord who said Jongin lived there by himself, no mom or dad or siblings with him. Kyungsoo’s parents are going to have the funeral for him soon, but I don’t know what’s going to happen with Jongin. Jongdae seemed to think he had no family at all.”

            The 8-bit theme song repeats and repeats in the background as Chanyeol chews slowly through his food. “Do you know… why?”

            “No. Nobody does, except cops. Right now, at least.” Baekhyun steals a roll of kimbap off Chanyeol’s plate. “Jongdae told me both bodies were at Jongin’s but that’s all the information he got.”

            The tremble in Baekhyun’s lower lip is just barely noticeable, but his emotions are betrayed by his breaking voice. “I-I didn’t even really know they were friends.”

            This is the part that hurts Chanyeol the most, that will keep him up every night for the next few months: just how much he didn’t know.

           

            Baekhyun eventually crashes in the early hours of the morning, falling asleep face down in the couch, wrinkled school uniform bunching at his knees. Chanyeol stays awake until the morning rolls in. The sky is as pleasant as the day before, swollen white clouds grazing past the bright sun. Not a spot of darkness to be seen. Chanyeol moves a cushion so that it blocks the light from Baekhyun’s sleeping eyes before he leaves.

            The cold wind whips his body he walks out of Baekhyun’s apartment complex, and he pulls his scarf tighter around his neck. Suffocating himself, comforting himself—Chanyeol can’t be bothered to tell the difference. Today’s issue of the Seoul Herald is splayed open on the cobblestones of the driveway, pages fluttering in a desperate plea for attention. Chanyeol thinks the newspaper looks like a body, the white of bone and black of death open in a terrible erted blossom. But everything is starting to look like bodies to him now, the flowers and ivy and cracked walls and trash bags lining the streets. He snatches the newspaper into his shaking hands as he begins to make his way to the bus stop.

           

            SUCIDES IN SEODAEMUN-GU

 

            He expected something, but the title displayed on the paper’s front page still makes him wince and his heart fall into his stomach. The outside of what he assumes is Jongin’s house is printed in vivid color, a small, unassuming apartment decked in caution tape like some twisted art installation.

            The bus is full of morning commuters but Chanyeol squeezes in, folding into a corner and hiding himself behind the newspaper. Beneath his thick coat his insides feel like they’re wrapped up in some pressurized knot, only getting tighter and tighter as his eyes drink in the words.

 

            Two bodies of teenaged boys were located yesterday in a Seodaemun-Gu apartment, dead of apparent suicide. Though motivations are still unknown, the fact remains that these are two additions to the record-breaking number of teen suicides this year. Teen suicide is becoming an undeniable epidemic in South Korea, one we as a society cannot ignore any longer.

 

            Chanyeol flips angrily through the statistics and hotline numbers, looking desperately for more images, more details, names and times and reasons, but comes up empty handed. Gritting his teeth, he crunches the newspaper into a ball.

            He feels wrong. Every limb in his body doesn’t work the way it should, his brain keeps misplacing thoughts and his tongue flops useless in his mouth. Chanyeol couldn’t care less about most things; he had never had a serious outlook on life and did fine for himself, armed with a flirtatious tongue and boyish good looks. With Baekhyun by his side, he was one half of an unstoppable dynamic duo, the both of them likeable for their own good. Now, Chanyeol can’t even remember what it felt like to smile, or to function properly at all. He stares at the blank ceiling trying to understand how it’s only been a day since he got the news—how will he last?

 

            He manages to find his apartment through the thick fog filling his brain and buzzes himself in, slogging up a flight of stairs to his front door. His mother’s hair smells like flower perfume as she embraces him wordlessly into a hug.

            “Did you eat? I made toast. Baekhyun’s mother called and told me you spent the day at their house. She said you looked really ill. Are you okay? Do you have a fever?”

            “M’fine,” Chanyeol mutters as he pulls out of her embrace. “Really.”

            “Well, if you need anything…” Chanyeol’s mother falters.

            “I’m fine.” Chanyeol touches her shoulder as he walks to his room.

 

            He has the wherewithal to pretend in front of his mother. But when he shuts the door behind him, he sinks to the ground, brow broken out in sweat. It’s hurting him more than he would have expected.

            Not like Chanyeol had ever thought of a situation even remotely close to this one before—Kyungsoo was healthy, ostensibly happy, and had been a part of Chanyeol’s life since elementary school. They laughed and played almost every day; even when Baekhyun entered the picture at the beginning of middle school Kyungsoo didn’t take a backseat. They lived close to each other after all, and Chanyeol went to his house every week to do homework and watch television and drink when Kyungsoo’s mother was out. It was a normal life Kyungsoo had, and Chanyeol thought he knew a lot about it. His mind reels, attempting to reckon once more with the present situation. Again, he hits a wall. It’s too preposterous to comprehend.

            Furiously he rummages through his backpack and fishes out his cellphone, which thankfully has ten percent of battery left, and scrolls quickly through his contacts. He has to hear it from the person who knows the most. Right now, that appears to be Jongdae.

 

            His classmate picks up on the first ring. “Chanyeol?”

            “Hey,” Chanyeol starts lamely. Jongdae cuts to the chase.

            “I was at Baekhyun’s earlier, but you were asleep. I assume he told you some details.”

            “Yeah, but I want to talk to you.” Chanyeol pulls off his jacket, tossing it onto his bed. The door is cool as he leans his back against it. “You know… something, right? More than anyone else?”

            “I just live close to Jongin, that’s all. I went to his house and saw the outside of it. They wouldn’t let me in, obviously, but they told me to give them my name and they might be in contact if they needed anything.”

            “Like what?”

            “Actually…” Jongdae falters, and then clears his throat. “The police need a… second ID. On the bodies. Specifically Jongin’s. They want to be sure.”

            It’s surreal. It’s so surreal that Chanyeol’s tongue is tied and his legs are locking and his arm is hanging limply by his side. Jongdae’s sigh crackles through the speaker. “I can’t believe this is ing happening.”

            “I can’t either,” Chanyeol manages through his lips that suddenly feel too thick.

            They sit in each other’s silence for a moment. Chanyeol’s mind can’t create anything but the image of Kyungsoo’s eyes, forced perpetually open with death.

            “You should come. I told Baekhyun and Minseok as well. You should come with me to the police station later today. We were Jongin’s closest friends. Kyungsoo’s mother is going to be there too and I think she’d like to see you.”

            “Yeah, yeah,” Chanyeol says faintly. “Yeah, I’ll… I want to see her… and Kyungsoo too. It’s just all happening so fast.”

            “Take it easy. Just stay at home. Try to think about something else.” Jongdae’s sentence trails off, as if he knows his own advice is as good as impossible. “I’ll text you the time, okay? See you soon.”

            “Okay,” Chanyeol says, and Jongdae hangs up. The sudden absence of his friend’s voice makes Chanyeol shiver.

           

            His mother makes him hot cocoa, Chanyeol’s favorite childhood drink. He sits in his room, watching the sun move through the slats in his window shades, forgetting to blink for so long that it looks like a punctured orange egg yolk leaking out into the sky.

            Chanyeol already knows he’s going to have to get used to waiting. For answers, for results, for reports, for closure. It feels like he’s just started a new life where suddenly nothing is about him anymore. The stupid petty problems he had when things were normal feel like hazy dots in his distant memory. Just things he wasted time focusing on while Kyungsoo was dying every day, right before his eyes. So ing selfish…

 

            Dying. The word rolls around in his brain, still so foreign. As much as he puts the name Kyungsoo and the word dead together, it doesn’t make any sense.

           

            Him and Baekhyun and Jongdae and Minseok… all of them left behind in some split-off parallel universe that wasn’t supposed to exist. Chanyeol feels his lids begin to grow heavy with the haze of confusion and hurt and he crumples into sleep, slumping against the door.