I scuttled around the house, running from Sungyeol like a kid running from his mother after drawing on the walls. As I turned the corner into the kitchen I slipped, landing on the cold tile. "Aishhh!!" I yelled as I hit the ground. I heard Sungyeol before I saw him. His roars of laughter echoed throughout the house. When he finally appeared in the door way he immediately collapsed, dying with laughter at my clumsiness. 

"Yah!" I said, hitting him playfully. "It's not funny! What if I had gotten hurt?" I smiled as I spoke, embarrassment beginning to settle in.

"Ohh no! Aigoo! Our poor Myungie!" He said as he pinched my cheeks, "Are you okay? Should I call the ambulance? Do you need stiches?"

"Aishh..." I mumbled, pushing his hand away from my face. When we stood up, his eyes landed directly on my mother's letter.

"What's this?" he said, picking up and reading the piece of paper that lay on the kitchen counter.

"It's a note... a sad one. That's why I was trying to call you before." I said, remembering the sheer panic I had felt when he didn't answer. "Yollie," I said walking over to hug his back and rest my chin on his bony shoulder, "I want to write back to this one. I can't keep ignoring my mother like this. She deserves to know that I love her, but.... Somehow it's just really hard for me to say. The last time I tried to write back was... well..." I looked down at my hand, which no longer needed a bandage, but was still covered by one. No one could see it. None of the other hyungs or Sungjong knew about my cutting, and I wanted it to stay that way. "Hyung, I need you. I need you to help me." I said, hugging his waste tighter and shutting my eyes. He set the note back on the table, turned his body, and hugged me back. His warmth filled me with confidence. We broke apart to sit at the table along with one single sheet of paper and a pen. 

"I'm giving you one piece of paper so that you don't write too much." He said to me, putting his arm around my shoulder. "There's no need to pour your heart out. She hasn't heard from you in a long time, so let's just ease your way back into her life, okay?" I nodded nervously, hoping this would be as easy as he made it seem. "Now," He instructed, "Stop thinking about anything you've ever wanted to say to her. Clear your mind, make a clean slate." I tried to do as he said, but never completely got to an open mind. "Let's read the letter again. She said she had to stop by to get something but missed you. So what's a reasonable way to reply to this?" 

Of course. I thought as I wrote, all I have to do is literally reply to the message she wrote. "Okay, what’s next?" I said after writing my response.

"Were you with a friend? Or a gir-" he froze mid-sentence, remembering exactly where I had been after school today. I ignored his awkwardness and wrote down what I thought to be an appropriate answer to the question. 

"NEXT." I blurted out, snapping Sungyeol out of his trance. 

"I hope you're not avoiding me." He read off the paper. The words stung a little bit but I responded to them as simply as I could. I continued to write as he read the note aloud without pauses. I wasn't buried in my head, I wasn't in pain, and my hand was behaving. I smiled as I signed my name at the bottom and read it aloud to my hyung;

"Dear Umma, what was it that you had to pick up? I would have been happy to bring it to you, but I ended up staying late at school talking to a new friend of mine. I have a few new friends actually. Maybe you'll be able to meet them sometime soon. I would never avoid you, Umma. Somehow it just turned out this way, but I will always love you. Sorry to keep you waiting! Hopefully it was worth it! -Your 'lovely son' Myungsoo-ah"

Sungyeol and I went upstairs into my mother’s room and carefully slipped the note onto her pillow. I stared at the lined paper. It had so few words but so much meaning. Somehow, the satisfaction I'd been longing for was fulfilled in less than 10 sentences. I felt so stupid for hurting myself over something so simple. My eyes drifted towards Sungyeol. He was just staring at me, smiling. 

"What?" I asked, punching his shoulder playfully.

"I... I just feel... I guess I feel proud of you, Myungie." He said shyly, quickly looking away after speaking.

I blushed; I haven't heard those words in a while. "I couldn't have done it without you."

"All I did was read the letter...." 

I waved my injured hand at him and then pointed at the note resting on the bed. "Take one, take two." He chuckled and blushed. I yawned. It had been a long day, filled with a rollercoaster of tiring emotions. He nodded, as if knowing my thought process exactly, laced his arm through mine, and led me to my own bed. I pealed back the covers as he stood above me. He turned to walk away but I grabbed his wrist.

"Where exactly were you about to go?" I teased. He giggled a little and went to the other side of the bed. He crawled into bed and snuggled up next to me, curled up in a ball like a kitten taking a nap. I shut off the light on the bedside table and kissed his forehead as gently as possible. "Goodnight, hyung."

------------------------------------------------------------

I woke up the next morning before the alarm went off. I opened my eyes groggily, smiling as I turned to the side of the bed where my hyung had slept. I wiped my eyes; he was gone. The covers were peeled back and cold, the imprint of his body still left in the sheets. I got up and searched the house, thinking he was in the kitchen or the bathroom or something. There was no possible way he could have left me high and dry. The house was empty yet again. Tears stung my eyes. How could he leave me so easily, without a note, without saying goodbye? How could I be so stupid as to think he might actually stay? Everyone else in my life had left me when I needed them most, why would he be an exception.

Stupid. That's all I am. A worthless waste of space. That's why no one stayed. It had to be. I wanted to be mad at him. I wanted it to be someone else's fault this time. But somehow I just couldn't. He helped me too much. I liked him too much. I wanted him to be more than my hyung.... but what? A boyfriend? But I'm not gay... and neither is he. Even if I were gay, he isn't. He could never love me.

I raced back up to my bedroom in search of relief. I pulled the desk drawer out and reached for my scissors. I stared at my arm. It was almost completely consumed with X shaped scars. There wasn't any room for something new. I tapped my foot impatiently, trying to come up with a solution. This cut wouldn't even be caused by the same feeling of the others. This feeling wasn't anger, or sadness, or frustration, or confusion... it was something else. Something new. I was angered by the fact that Sungyeol had left without letting me know. I was saddened by the fact that he had left me at all. I was frustrated by the fact that he would never like me back. I was confused by the fact that I liked a boy. Instead of tracing over an old scar I used the scissors on the back of my hand, just under the knuckle on my middle finger. Not an X, not an O, but a +. A cross, just for the sake of change. This cut marked a new type of pain. 

That day when I saw him walking to school with Sungjong, I sped up instead of letting them in like I usually would. Not because that's what I wanted to do, not because of my awkward kiss with Sungjong, but because it's what Sungyeol wanted. He obviously didn't want to see me, or he would have stayed this morning. He would have just stayed.

In hopes of forgetting about Sungyeol I let my mind wander. Surprisingly, it didn't lead straight back to hyung. It strayed for a while until finally landing on the matter of the maknae's kiss. I never really gave myself time to process that, did I? Obviously he liked me more than a friend, but why ignore me if he did? Shouldn't he be happy whenever he's around me? If he were happy I'd be able to see it in his eyes but somehow I never could. I started to grind my teeth in frustration. If he actually spoke to me, maybe I would like him instead of Sungyeol. Maybe we'd be happy together, rather than continuing to be miserable in a web of one-sided love.

Suddenly my anger got the best of me. He could have eased my pain, I thought as I marched to the practice room (a small room attached to the music room with padded walls just big enough to fit a piano in it), where he said he'd be after school. I could have helped him too, I thought, we would have been perfect. At that moment, anything bad that had happened to me became Sungjong's fault. My mother's letters, Sungyeol leaving me, all of it. I looked down at the stinging cross on the back of my hand. This was his fault. If he confessed to me earlier I would have loved him back. This cut would never have happened.

When I arrived at the practice room I pulled him off of the piano bench and threw him against the padded walls of the small room. The fragile boy tried to escape but my grip was too tight. He looked away from me and I grabbed his jaw with my other hand, pushing his face towards mine. My strength frightened us both. 

"YAH! LEE SUNGJONG! Tell me what's going on, for 's sake!" I couldn't bear the fidgets and whines any longer. I loosened my grip, hoping that would make him speak. Streams of tears fell across his milky face. We locked eyes. "Please..." I pleaded.

He tried to take a deep breath, but was unable to due to the mild hyperventilating his body had forced onto him. When he finally regulated his breathing, he attempted to speak. "I was bullied at my other school. For being skinny, for playing piano, for dressing the way I do. They...." Another shaky breath, "They called me gay. They called me a . They called me a girl. I hated it. I still hate it. It still happens. Why do you think my guide was changed the first day of school? Why do you think I only hang out with you and Sungyeol and the other hyungs? But those things, the things that everyone would say, aren't true... or they weren't..." He shook his head and stared at the ground, as if he were still contemplating whether or not his bullies were right all along.

"Then you came along. At first glance I was scared. I was scared to meet another popular who would call me a and get the other boys to harass and laugh at me. But the second I looked at your eyes I knew it. You were sad. You were sad just like me." He reached down and pulled up the bottom of his sweater, revealing the cluster of red scars, scratches, and bruises along the side of his hip. He smiled a bit as he showed me the scars. The fresher ones had reopened from the movement of his sweater and began bleeding a bit. He then reached over to me. I flinched as he pushed up the sleeve of my sweatshirt. He stared at the trail of X's as if they were a famous painting of some sort. He looked at my face and smiled, tears spilling out of his eyes as they squinted happily. His whole body began to shake as if he had a fever.

"You.... I like you, a lot, but.... I-I can't. I'm just not s-supposed to." Every shaky word made it more and more clear. "I-I just don't know.... I don't know how to stop liking you. I tried to ignore them, the feelings, b-but they kept coming back." He paused for a while, and caressed my cheek with his small porcelain hand. "We're the same." He said, almost joyfully, "We belong together, isn't that right?" I backed away from him, scared by his behavior. Something about him was off. His perception had twisted enough to push him over the edge into a pit of insanity. His smile faded as he watched me back away. "...Isn't that right?" He repeated, a bit more questioningly, tears still spilling over with every blink.

I shook my head. "Sungjong.... I...." I had nothing to say. There was nothing to say. Any feelings I had felt for him in the past seemed to melt away. How could he think that two miserable people were a match made in heaven? He was wrong and he was twisted, but most of all he was confused. Everything that he had been teased and picked on for in the past had become his reality. He liked a boy. If only there was a way to tell him that it was okay to like a boy without dropping the bomb of my feelings for Sungyeol. There was no other way. I had to tell him. I had to break him. I had to rip his puzzled heart in two. This time it was me who wanted to run out. I knew I couldn't do that. This had to end, here and now.

"Sungjong," I said softly, "I know how confused you are right now." I rolled my sleeve back up, revealing my scars yet again. "This one," I said pointing just below the bend of my elbow at the first cut I had ever made. He stared intently, intrigued by my words. "This was my first. I was about 14 years old. It was the first week I had gone through without seeing my mother once. You know why I did it?" I looked away from the scar, and straight into his eyes. "Because I was confused. I was confused because I didn't know how a mother could possibly ignore her own son for an entire 7 days." I paused, trying to ignore the feelings that came along with the memories of each scar. I pointed at another X that I had traced into my own flesh. "What had I done?" Another X, "Where is she?" Another X, "Why won't she love me?" I pointed at each individual scar, stating the question that had begun each one. "How could she do this? How could she be so selfish? Wait, how can I say these things? How can I betray my own mother?" I held out my hand, pointing to the largest cut so far, "How could I be so selfish?" tears arrived at my eyes and I quickly wiped them away. This moment of weakness would mean nothing if I couldn't keep my composure.

Finally I pointed to the one on the back of my hand, just under the knuckle on my middle finger. The cut I made this morning. "This one's new." I said to Sungjong, the maknae's eyes shining brightly, filled with interest. "This one's different. It's not about hating my mother, hating the world, or hating myself." I paused, realizing I wasn't entirely sure why I had made this cut. "I made this because..... Because I'm in love with someone. Someone who I'm not supposed to love. Someone who'll never like me back." Despite the fact I was in love with someone else, Sungjong wasn't crying anymore. He was too interested. He was kneeling by my feet now, gazing intently back and forth from the scar to my eyes. I tried to make sense of my thoughts. I wasn't sure what to say, so I let my lips move on their own, curious as to what I might say.

"I'm in love with Lee Sungyeol."

[AUTHOR'S NOTE]

Hey guys!!! Okay so... I basically wrote this entire fanfic thinking 'what if my sister found this.' and lol guess what she found it so now I ultimately have no shame get ready for the crazy truth y'all.

Anyways this chapchap is a little all over the place and the title lololol but I hope you liked it!  ( 'u')

I really don't know what to say right now. asadhfkcvbngfk Sorry for keeping you waiting!! :** :**** love you <3