Oh Sehun

                While Sehun expects time to slow, it doesn’t. While Sehun expects the boy in front of him to smile in his presence, such a thing doesn’t happen. While Sehun expects the soundtrack of the moment to be the sound of their anxious fluttering hearts, it is, instead, the a sort of disorderly song of Suho’s shouting and Sehun’s whimpering; it’s a wonder that the nurses haven’t wondered what the chaotic racket is, yet.

                “Sehun,” Suho begins again after losing his breath in the screaming. He seems less livid, now, like the calm after a storm, “Who let you in?” He wants to answer Suho’s questions, but he does not say a word, avoiding eye contact and peering out the window at the shimmering skyscraper in the distance. The lights of day reflect into the dark room, though, and eventually looking outside brings Sehun back inside, as does Suho’s further prodding, “I asked you a question.”

                “Um.” He utters coyly, sliding into the chair next to Suho’s bed, ducking his head, “Kai let me in.” The boy in the bed gripes about this fact, revealed, but before he can say anything, Sehun intervenes, “Don’t be mad with him. He was just trying to help me because I was desperate.”

                “Desperate. Hah. If you’re desperate, what am I? I’m desperate for normal. I yearn for people to stop babying me and treating me like some fragile doll. You know what else I want? I want you to leave—now.”

                “But—“

                “Out.” His voice is laced with emotion, but it’s not anger, and, if it’s not that, Sehun has something to hold onto. He has hope. So, he goes. And, Suho blinks once before his intruder turns, little glints of mystification swimming in his brown eyes before he scoffs and hides his head with his blanket.

                He doesn’t bother looking for Kai--the boy will eventually realize that he’s gone home—and nearly floats out the door, patients and nurses alike, staring. He’s rather emotionless throughout it all and his mind is entirely blank except for a portrait of Suho painted across the back of his mind. He wants to say that he gets a fuzzy feeling in his stomach from seeing the boy, but, surprisingly, there’s nothing. His mother had said something along the lines of this: love baffles you and makes your insides all tingly and all you want to do is sing—sounding like something straight from a Disney movie, no doubt. But, Sehun feels none of that. Instead, he feels a bit lightheaded and overwhelmed.

                Maybe he isn’t cut out for emotion.

                But he’s at home now, under his own roof, watching his mother and father bicker over something silly like whether to watch her drama or his news channel. She’ll eventually win and both Sehun and his father know it, for she has that stubborn look to her that won’t allow her will to bend for anyone. He admires that about his mother; she won’t give up.

                For that reason, he finds himself on the floor, petting his mother’s needy cat, watching another Historical drama that his mother claims is, “getting really intense.” His father’s eye rolls match his mother’s squeals, but they, nonetheless, hold hands and, at one point, his mother whispers, “The leading man in this drama reminds me so much of you.” And Sehun has to gag; he thinks that his father would too if not for his wife staring him in the face. But, when she turns back to the television and Sehun lets out a laugh, Mr. Oh does manage to kick his son rather harshly onto the floor for being too obvious.

                Sometimes, Sehun doesn’t entirely dislike his father; he has his moments, after all.

                At the end of the drama, Sehun cannot remember a single characters name, nor can he truly say he understands the plot, if there is one. What he can say is that, despite the funny hats that they wear, the characters are definitely emotional; they’re all sentimental messes, he thinks, and he laughs in their faces for being so childish and naïve with their feelings.

                “I’m absolutely fine with being characteristically icy cold, Panda.” He voices to the cat that he carried into his room, “I was silly to think that I’ve fallen in love. It must’ve been Kai’s personality that swayed me to think that way, right? And, of course, I was a bit wound up over seeing Suho again; it has been a year, so I would naturally act that way, right?” The cat her head, confusedly, before settling herself in his lap, “What am I even saying?” He retracts into a sprawled out position,—to the frustration of the feline as she’s unfortunately kicked out of the way—and knocks his palms against his cheeks until they feel sore, “I’m literally the most illogical human being on the face of this planet—right, Panda?” The cat, who, at the moment, is not too pleased with her owner, turns her face away from him, almost in anger, and Sehun cries out, “You’re just like Suho!” before muttering again, to himself, about his misfortune as the cat ambles out of the room, probably into the waiting arms of his mother.

                “Even the cat dislikes me,” whines Sehun, burying his head into his blankets. He further binds the material around his head and body until he’s wrapped tightly in a cocoon, and he proceeds to roll around on his mattress, groaning in frustration. “What am I supposed to do if I can’t even properly interpret my own emotions?”

                His imagination runs rampant and he pictures himself standing in front of a classroom filled with all mocking students eager to torment poor Sehun. He desperately tries to decipher long strings of Egyptian Hieroglyphics for the teacher, but it’s no use and he looks stupid. And, in the back of his head, he hears a booming voice, “How do you not even know your own emotions? Do you even have any? Are you ice cold?”

                His body shudders and a cold sweat covers his body; somehow he managed to fall asleep and drag his daydreaming nonsense into a nightmare. It’s somehow just a bit past midnight and Sehun actually fears falling back asleep—nobody wants a nightmare recurrence—and he stirs until he can bring himself to roll out of his bed and tiptoe through the house and into the kitchen.

                Stumbling towards the freezer, he silently begs some higher power that there’s ice cream in the freezer; so late in the night—or early in the morning—Sehun can only think about two things: Suho and shoving as much of the cold treat down his throat as he can.

                Luckily, he can do just that with the two giant boxes of vanilla ice cream he finds laying in the freezer, unopened. “Thank you, mom.” He whispers, grabbing one of the cartons, a giant spoon and the bottle of chocolate syrup he hides in the back of the refrigerator; he’s feeling incredibly unhealthy.

                Falling into the couch cushions, he sighs and digs into the ice cream, pouring a heap of syrup on beforehand. He lazily mumbles to himself, made garbled from the food in his mouth, “My life .” And, at that moment, he believes his words. Perhaps he is finally becoming that angst-ridden teenager that his parents think they’ve avoided raising; perhaps he’s no longer ice cold, as he once was.

                “Is this emotion?” He ponders before shoving another spoonful down his throat. As a result, he experiences a chilling wave of brain freeze, taking that occurrence as a sign not to ponder any longer and just forget for a while.

                And he does just that. His thoughts become mute, and he becomes deaf to worry and anxiety and all he can think about is ice cream; how childish is he?

--

                He lets days slip through his hands—precious time that he could spend practicing his oboe, or practicing friendship with Suho—and he talks to nobody. In this time, he makes decisions, mulls them over, changes his mind, and contemplates meaning. The building thoughts eventually reach some sort of mock summit, and at once he believes he’s met with enlightenment; but the resulting tumble downwards into a truly clear and empty mindset is entirely unsatisfying and he realizes that this “enlightenment” leaves him empty handed in his search for one answer.

                He meditates on this idea, “I said I would do something, and I believed that I had it in me to accomplish it, I had the carpe diem attitude, but I’m a coward: an absolute coward.” He moans before getting up off the same bed in which he’s been reflecting for the last few days, sliding towards the mirror and looking blankly at his reaction.

                 “Sehun, you want to make the symphony orchestra? You want to be something that many failed auditions have proved that you aren’t? Well, the jokes on you because you’re a coward who can’t even handle the slightest speck of emotion weaseling its way into your heart. You find out that you like Suho? That’s fine, but you haven’t the courage to own up to your own emotions and you wimp out the first time Suho yells, ‘Get out!’” He lights slaps his face, “You can do this, Sehun. You can.” 

                 And so, Sehun decides he’s feeling utterly impulsive, as he makes haste out of his bedroom, through the house and down the street, sprinting as quickly as he legs allow. Though the hospital isn’t overly distant, it feels as such because all that takes over his mind is Suho, Suho, Suho. He gives no thought to his feet or where they’re taking him, nor his lungs and how their breaths are shallow and uneven, nor the people who stand in his path, the ones he rudely barrels through. If an outsider looks at him, all they see is a madman, but for him, he’s not at all mad, but consumed with hope.

                His body arrives at the front door of the hospital, but his head and heart are already in room 417, confessing wholeheartedly to Suho. After standing in place for the elevator for approximated half a minute, Sehun determines that the machine is working all too slowly, and he races towards the stair cases down the hallway, pushing past an old lady and her nurse to climb the four floors.

                It’s funny, though, he thinks, that the rhythm of quick steps actually seems slower than then pace of his own heart.

                Floor Four. Sehun arrives and takes one deep breath for good measure before scuttling in the direction in which he believes room 417 to be. As he hurries down the hallway, he eyes familiarity. Room 417, the door at which Sehun spent much time staring--contemplating, pondering, considering--- the door through which he now forces himself to come face to face with the one person for whom he’s had these emotions.

                And he allows those feelings, for the first time, to surface and bubble: and they do so out loud, but in a garbled mess that seems to be all the words Sehun wants to say spoken in one breath, and Suho scoffs. “I assumed that you’d be back sooner. What took you so long?”

                The boy standing almost lets his control slip—he almost slips back in to his cowardice—but one piercing look straight into the eyes of Suho reassures him, and he utters a quiet, “I had things to ponder.”

                “So does the rest of humanity. What of it?”

                Sehun gives Suho a look, one that compresses the thousands of emotions and thoughts running rampant in his head into something that seems to break Suho’s guard because, for a moment, Suho’s eyes lose their bitter glint. And, in that moment, Sehun knows why he has hope.

                But he says nothing, and the pregnant pause eats at the two of them until Sehun sighs, uttering a meek, “I like you. That’s what I was pondering.”

                And the silence has never been more unbearable.