None of this was his fault.

No matter what angle Jaehyo looked at it, he couldn’t bring himself to admit he had done anything wrong. Minhyuk was the one who went inside the café that day even when he’d told him to stay outside. Minhyuk was the one who invited Kyung to the housewarming, even though Jaehyo had stressed that it was a bad idea. Minhyuk was the one who got unreasonably jealous when he so much as looked at anyone else. It was Minhyuk who had the problem.

And then there was Kyung.

Whenever that man’s face or name popped up in his head, he wanted to scream. And he did scream. Alone in his apartment, Jaehyo screamed until his throat gave out, and then he resorted to throwing things, knocking things over, and basically destroying his own apartment in his rage. He sat on the couch with a broken picture frame at his feet, staring at the happy couple that smiled up at him. Mocking him. Beside the picture was an open box filled with what looked like useless items.  Drawing pencils and charcoal, a brush covered in short blond hair, and a few rolled-up socks were only some of the seemingly random items that littered the bottom of the box.

Jaehyo’s eyes slowly drifted to the items in his lap. One was a large, thick notebook, tied together with a string that looked as if it came from a dark hoodie. On top of the notebook was a turquoise beaded bracelet, dotted with a few silver crosses that represented the Chrome Hearts label. With a sigh, he untied the notebook and opened it for the first time since he got it, and his throat tightened.

There were dozens of drawings, most of them were drawn in pencil or charcoal, but a there were a few attempts of watercolor here and there. Nearly all of them were portraits of people Jaehyo recognized. This was one of their oldest friend, Taeil, who had moved to Busan ages ago to pursue his career. Jaehyo stared at the artist’s rendition of a smile he hadn’t seen in a long while and turned the page when he began to feel an uncomfortable wave of nostalgia.

There were some – several – of himself, all drawn from different angles. Jaehyo noticed there quite a few of them towards the beginning of the notebook, but became less and less frequent as he flipped the pages. After a while, they stopped completely and were replaced by other pictures, all of them mundane and most of them unfinished.

When he was near the end of the notebook, he stared at the page. On the page was a small sketch of Park Kyung. He was sleeping with his mouth half-open and his hair messy. Jaehyo hastily flipped the page, only to find a similar sketch. And another. And another. The man felt his cheeks redden with anger as he flipped to the last drawing of the book, and his breath halted.

It was a beautiful charcoal portrait of the man he hated so much. It filled the entire page and was so detailed that Jaehyo knew it had to have taken hours to complete. Kyung’s face was soft and handsome – more handsome than it actually was, Jaehyo thought – and he was looking directly at him. The way he looked at him was soft, almost intimate. The man was sure that was what the artist had in mind when he poured his soul onto the paper.

With a growl, Jaehyo threw the notebook across the room and watched it crash noisily to the floor.

He wasn’t sure how many times the doorbell rang before he finally answered it. Jaehyo didn’t want the company, but the constant chiming was getting on his nerves. When he opened the door, he peered into the face of his friend.

“Hey,” Pyo Jihoon said cautiously when he got a look at Jaehyo’s face. The older man was a wreck. He never let himself look so horrible, which let Jihoon know just how bad he was. “I uh…I got your call.”

Without responding, Jaehyo turned and walked back inside, leaving the door open for his friend to enter. Jihoon navigated through the wreckage, shaking his head as he stepped around a broken glass in the middle of the living room. “You’ve got to learn to control your anger, hyung.”

The other man remained quiet and sat on the couch with his head buried in his hands. The other man sat across from him on the table. Normally Jaehyo would have chewed him out, but now he wasn’t in the mood for it. He wasn’t quite in the mood for anything.