A/N: Hi, guys! Here’s the second part of the past, “Solitude”! :)

Loneliness wasn’t a strong enough word to match what Kyuhyun experienced after Yesung left him.

Emptiness might be a better description.

His life—his world—became and felt empty without Yesung. 

Their apartment was average-sized, but without Yesung now, it suddenly seemed too big. Too empty. All of Yesung’s belongings were now gone, picked up by their friends since Yesung didn’t want to come back at all anymore even to just get the rest of his things. There were now empty spaces in their cabinets, on their shelves, at their walls—spaces that Yesung’s belongings used to occupy.

These empty spaces now haunted and mocked Kyuhyun. They were a constant reminder that Yesung was now gone from his life.

A solution could be to rearrange his things so that there would be no more empty spaces. But Kyuhyun couldn’t bring himself to do it. It felt like occupying those empty spaces would make things more real. More permanent. Sure, the empty spaces mocked him, but keeping them empty reflected Kyuhyun’s hope.

Hope that, one day, these spaces would be filled again. Filled again by Yesung’s things.

Hope that Yesung would come back and fill the emptiness in the apartment.

It was just vain hope, of course, but Kyuhyun still clung onto it.

It had been about a month since Yesung ended things between them, and Kyuhyun clearly wasn’t coping well. Actually, it was worse than that—he wasn’t coping at all.

He buried himself under endless mountains of paperwork in the office. He was now always the first to arrive and the last to leave. He was already in the office before the sun had even properly risen, and he usually didn’t leave until it was nearly midnight. He also often worked during weekends even though it wasn’t required. His colleagues and even his boss became worried; what he was doing wasn’t healthy.

But Kyuhyun couldn’t really stand the emptiness of his home. He figured that it was better to just spend more time in the office. He wouldn’t even be going home at all if sleep wasn’t a basic human need.

He wanted to be out of the apartment as much as possible. Being in the empty apartment kept reminding him that he was all alone now. Solitude was sometimes a good thing, but the loneliness and emptiness were now just killing Kyuhyun even more.

On those rare instances when he was at the apartment, though, he would just stare at blank walls. Blank wall spaces that were once occupied by the decorations, paintings, and pictures that Yesung owned and had displayed. When stuck at his apartment, he would be tempted to get drunk in order to drown and forget his sorrows. But whenever he was about to get a beer or a glass of wine, he would remember his vow to never drink alcohol again. He would always stop himself from drinking. How could he drink again, when drinking was what caused him to lose the love of his life?

Moreover, the emptiness in Kyuhyun’s life was increased due to how he also lost his friends.

By cheating on Yesung, he not only lost Yesung, but also all of their friends.

Kyuhyun was the youngest in their group of friends, and as the maknae, he had always been spoiled by their friends. But when their friends found out that he cheated on Yesung, they all, most expectedly, turned against Kyuhyun. After they shouted at him and insulted him and cursed him, they all cut Kyuhyun out of their lives. They ignored him and stopped all forms of communication with him.

Kyuhyun might have been the maknae, but Yesung was everyone’s favorite hyun