~ Young Min ~

It was thirteen days since Appa’s unexpected visit. Everything had returned to some form of normalcy. After Min Woo’s meltdown we’d all taken turns to take time off work and accompany him while he recuperated at home. Some of the occasions were just to keep him company and prevent him from wallowing in negative thoughts, but most of it was because Kwang Min and I were desperately seeking solace from the problems we were facing.

We’d tried to stall things for as long as we could until we could come up with a plan. Every time one of the Jung twins contacted to make arrangements for the four of us to meet up, Kwang Min and I would try to make ourselves sound as busy as possible and brush the issue off with cold responses. At the back of our minds we knew that such feeble gestures would be in vain, but we were just so desperate that we were willing to try everything. Time ran out for us anyway.

After an exhausting day spent bringing Min Woo out shopping, Kwang Min and I returned to our apartment sapped and running on backup energy supply. Before we could settle in and get ourselves comfortable, my phone buzzed with a call from Appa. We’d been dreading this day. We casted weary glances at each other before looking back at the vibrating device on the coffee table helplessly. We didn’t know how to react and the first call went to voicemail.

The apartment was eerily quiet again without the obnoxious buzzing of the cellphone bouncing off the walls and ringing in our ears. We sat in the silence with thoughts upon thoughts running through our heads simultaneously. Time’s up. What are we going to do now? The contemplation could draw no conclusive answer. The phone shrieked once again, disrupting the noiselessness our ears had accustomed themselves to. Halfway through the chorus of my favourite ringtone the pressure was too much to handle and Kwang Min finally snapped.

“. I’m about to go crazy. Pick up the damn call, hyung.” He whispered hoarsely as he pointed at the device, voice devoid of emotion.

I huffed in annoyance but heeded his instructions anyway, leaving my phone on speaker mode and cringing when Appa’s placid tone filled the apartment. “Hello? Young Min ah?”

Who else could it be? I resisted the urge to roll my eyes and answered him. “Ne, Appa, it’s me. How are you? Sorry for not picking up your call earlier. I was in the bathroom and I didn’t hear my phone ring.”

“Oh, okay. Where’s Kwang Minnie? Why didn’t he pick up the call instead? Is he home yet? How’s he doing?” Nothing has changed after all these years. Once again, I suppressed my snort and I jerked my chin at my twin, signalling for him to reply Appa. Kwang Min scowled at me before answering in a pleasant, smiley voice, patronising Appa as he showered all his attention on his younger son.

As expected, Appa soon diverted to the agenda of his phone call. In the same sweet saccharine voice, he asked about the progress of our relationship with the Jung twins. After two minutes worth of Uhm’s and Ah’s and frantic glances towards each other, Appa lost his temper and demanded to know exactly where we stood with our soon-to-be fiancés, and our answers fell short of satisfactory.

Completely dropping the kind father act, Appa started rambling about how he already anticipated this and that our reluctance wasn’t going to put a dent in his plans. “The two of you are adults now so I’m sure you would like to be treated as such. Today is Friday; I’m giving you twenty-four hours to plan a meet-up with Daeryong and Soryong. After which I expect one of you to pack up and move back to the family home so that you can spend the remaining time till your engagements living with your partners. Do we have an understanding on this?”

Understanding? There’s no understanding. What you lack most is understanding, Appa. That was what I wanted to say. When a decision was made he always had the most power, and we never had any say in it. Whatever decision-making freedom granted was only a disguise to cover up the lack thereof. Life with our father was not a democracy but a dictatorship.

Appa hung up abruptly and left us nodding mutedly to the phone. Kwang Min rose to his feet suddenly and marched into the bedroom without a single sound. The bathroom door slammed shut and from the living room I could hear the sound of the shower go on. I fell back onto the couch and exhaled all the air caught in my lungs in one drawn-out breath.

Kwang Min had turned in when I was finally done with my shower. He was already in bed, eyes closed and breathing even as he laid on his side, turned away from me. I ruffled my hair dry and tossed the towel carelessly to one side of the room. I made my way to my side of the bed and sat down gingerly, careful not to rouse Kwang Min.

22:51. The numbers from the digital clock glowed on the nightstand and seemed to be mocking me with every minute that was passing by. 22:52. One hour and eighteen minutes more till the end of the day, Young Min. And that would mark the last day you can stake Kwang Min as your property. When tomorrow comes he will be taken from you permanently.

Say goodbye.

“N-No…” My chest constricted and I found it hard to breathe. I grasped at the front of my shirt and willed my collapsed lungs to work again. The more I tried however, the less air they seem to take in. Black spots began forming in the peripherals of my vision from the lack of oxygen and I clawed at the sheets as I fought to keep conscious. Panic attacks were few and far between at my age, but they would still pop up on rare occasions when I face an extreme desperation like when I was about to lose Kwang Min. It went away as sudden as it arrived, but still it left me gasping for air.

Kwang Min stayed asleep throughout the entire ordeal and I was thankful for that. There were enough issues plaguing his mind. The last thing I wanted to do was to add to his mounting list of problems by being one myself with my almost mental meltdown. As soundlessly as I could I padded around the bed and got to Kwang Min’s side and knelt down by his head. I studied his features in detail and let out a lengthy sigh. So similar yet so different.

Kwang Min had almond shaped eyes like mine, but somehow mine came out rounder and wider in size. Our nose bridges were the same though, both upright and thin and straight. His jawline was a lot more square and protruding to my feminine looking sharp chin. And somehow when he smiled, his lips would be stretched into a wider and brighter grin unlike my timid smile.

“I don’t want to let you go, Kwang Min yah.” My words came out softer than a breathy whisper and I placed a light kiss atop the bridge of his nose. Climbing to my feet, I came back to my side of the room and got into bed beside my twin. Drawing the futon up to my chest, I could only stare wide-eyed as the digital clock ticked closer and closer to midnight. Sleep was futile. Finally, at around 3:08AM, fatigue caught up to me and I found myself slipping into bouts of restless slumber.

~~~

~ Kwang Min ~

True to his word, Appa had the movers coming in right next day. We didn’t even have time to react when they showed up at our doorstep unannounced at seven in the morning. In the short notice, we could only cancel work that day in order to pack. With their assistance, everything was boxed up into cardboard cartons and loaded onto the back of the moving lorry by noon and the house was visibly emptier with Young Min’s items missing.

I slipped back into the apartment in the slight downtime as the movers took a quick cigarette break and found my twin resting in the recliner by the edge of our living room, his neck reclined and feet propped up on the footstall. His eyes were closed and his breathing was even, and for a second I thought he had really fallen asleep if not for the slight flinch in the muscles of his forearm as he crossed his arms further across his chest.

“Hyung…” I called out softly, but it was enough to be heard. Young Min’s eyes fluttered open and his gaze met mine. No other words were exchanged but we understood each other perfectly.

“Come here,” He held up his arms invitingly and I came crawling into his embrace immediately. He wrapped his arms around me, resting one hand on my lower back and the other on the base of my neck, the baby hair lightly. “I know what you’re thinking, Minnie. Don’t. Stay with me. Don’t go down the deep end.”

I whimpered and clutched onto the hem of his shirt more tightly and he too tightened his embrace around me. “We’ll be okay, love. We’ll be okay. We’ve been through worse times than this. We can make through this storm too. Everything will be alright. We’re only doing this to appease Appa. Once his temper’s gone down we’ll be back together again in no time. You believe in me, don’t you?”

“Of course I believe you, hyung. There is no one I trust more in this world than you.” Young Min hummed in appreciation and placed a chaste kiss on my temple. He finally drew my body back by my shoulders and I was able to take a good look at his tear-streaked face. I caught a stray tear with my index finger and brushed it away.

“Uhm… Sir…” The shorter man of the two had ventured indoors and was hovering around the recess area awkwardly. It warmed my heart slightly to see that he had averted his eyes politely to grant us privacy, and had not made any snarky comments about our behaviour. We quietly disentangled ourselves from each other and I swivelled around on Young Min’s lap to face him. “Sorry about that, but we were told to bring one of you along with the move. Which one of you is the owner of these items?”

“What?!” Young Min shot up straight in a sudden jerk, almost causing me to slide off his lap. “This is ridiculous! I’m already going with this agreement without giving a squeak about it. Now I just want to spend the remaining parts of the day with my twin brother. Is that too much to ask for as well? What more does Appa want from me?”

The stocky man shuffled uncomfortably and glanced down at his socked feet. “Please, sir, we are merely following the instructions given by our client.”

I wanted to scream and shout at them to leave and protest with all my might against the movers, but I knew that they were the innocent party here and shouldn’t be embroiled into this feud so I held my tongue and kept my cool. “Hyung, just go with them. Like they said, this was all Appa’s doing. They’re merely trying to get their job done. Don’t make things difficult for them.”

“But! I… I – Fine,” Young Min was about to protest again when I shot him a look and mouthed at him to be cooperative and he shut up. I moved off him and stepped aside, allowing room for him to get to his feet and I followed him forlornly as he walked to the front door.

He paused by the doorframe and turned around, twisting his fingers in his tightly clutched hands. His eyes were downcast and he refused to make any eye contact with me. “I… I’ll call you later. Have your phone around near you.”

I swallowed heavily and nodded. “It would be great if you could. But just focus on unpacking and settling in, okay? That’s more important. You need to have all your work things out and ready since it would be a longer commute to your school from there. You can call me any time you want, hyung. I won’t mind. It doesn’t have to be tonight.”

“Alright. See you later then.” Young Min’s eyes fleeted upwards to meet mine for a second and he pasted a steely smile on his face. I reciprocated with a forced smile of my own but he had already turned away and gone after the stocky furniture mover down the hallway. I waited until the elevator arrived, the lift doors to close, and for Young Min to finally go out of sight before shutting the door numbly behind me.

The apartment was eerily cold and empty now that Young Min’s presence was no longer around. I wrapped my arms around myself and curled up in the corner of the living room couch. Beyond moving his possessions away, Young Min had taken half of my heart along with him.

Nothing felt right. 

A/N: Sooooooo... I'm back with a short update after a four month hiatus. Missed me? XD

Alright. So maybe I never really did completely left (I'd secretly ventured into the world of one-shots) and still posted a couple of stories here and there, but I never really come back properly either. It's like, an idol group releasing a digital single but never exactly promoting the song. (I don't know where this sudden analogy came from.) But yes, I'd just been lurking around for the past few months.

With this new chapter I too, still can't say that I'm completely back into the AFF writing scene either. That would be, well, a good seven months later after my A levels end in early December. Yeapah. So exciting, isn't it? I can't wait for them to be over, too, but first I'm going to have to survive it. Bleh >_<

But anyway! So I finally updated. This chapter... Feels kind of like a filler chapter. Nothing much really happened (Oh, who am I kidding. Young Min moved out of their shared apartment, for crying out loud!) and it feels as though the story didn't progress much. Next chapter would be slightly more interesting though! The Jo twins would be meeting their fiances for the first time and the Jung twins will officially move in together with them.

So my lovely stickies, hang in there with me!

And just another short rant. Does it even make sense that the prequel (Hate That I Love You) has twice the number of subscribers as this?! I mean, I even added in an extra final chapter at the back with a link to this new story! Besides, even if you didn't realise you're reading AFF on Reader's Mode and can't link it, you could have simply gone to my profile and checked up on my author stories, no?

I'm not saying this because I want more subscribers. Heavens, no. I'm beyond appreciative that I have the 95 of you with me on this journey. It's just, I DON'T KNOW. This mystery is really stupifying. After Boyfriend's Janus comeback I'd actually experienced an increase in the number of subscribers to Hate That I Love You, but that would mean that they would have finished the story and moved on to this one, no?

Does this mean that they really not want a sequel that bad that they didn't even bother checking this one out? Not to brag, but I honestly thought this plot was a lot more fancy and well thought out compared to the other one. Why wouldn't you give me a chance! >n< Okay rant over XD

Edit: Right after I posted this chapter w the very long Author's Note + rant about my weirdly behaving subbies, one person just unsubscribed to my story. And it kind of proves my point a little, doesn't it?

Not upset at all but, nothing to say, really. Apologies for offending you with my direct way of speaking? No wait, I'm not apologetic for that. It's more of like, well, I'm sorry you weren't able to stay to the end with the rest of us. it would have been fun but oh well. T'is life. Toodles! ~