--- Prologue ---

Red.

It’s the color of Jongin’s scarf sprawled against shattering blades of ice. The color is vivid, a harsh contrast to the dull white landscape that surrounds him.

There’s screaming and shouting in the distance and he finds himself wanting to join in with the chorus, but he can’t. His voice continues to fail him as he gags his breaths away each time the icy, cold waters come to fill up his lungs. He tries his hardest to pull himself to shore, but his body rejects his wishes. Instead they plead for him to stop, which he complies by going ahead and letting the numbness overtake him little by little. There’s no point in struggling against the inevitable. Jongin knows his time is coming soon anyway.

His impending thoughts of doom are interrupted when a boy his age stands in front of him, a boy whom Jongin has wanted, yet didn’t expect to see.   

He suddenly feels angry after piecing all of the puzzle pieces together and in that moment he finds the strength to speak, but his voice comes out exasperated and broken.

“Why?”

The boy standing before him is now kneeling down, carefully caressing both of his cheeks with warm hands. A smirk appears on the boy’s face, but his eyes are sympathetic as he looks down at the other. The boy then speaks making sure Jongin was looking at him straight in the eyes, “It’s because I gave you my heart, Jongin, but you wouldn’t give me yours.”

Jongin starts to gag once again when the icy, cold waters forces its way inside of him. It restricts him from being able to respond back to the boy. His teeth are now chattering loudly as he grips the boy’s arm with his hands for leverage, although with difficulty since both of his wrists were tied together. He feels too weak to hold onto the boy any longer.  

The boy then pulls him up by the hair to keep him from sinking and surprisingly he does this with the utmost care before whispering quietly into Jongin’s ear, “Since I can’t have your heart I decided I should take it away from you instead. That way no one else can have it, but me.”

Those very words echo repeatedly in Jongin’s head as his vision begins to turn grey. The cold, biting waters are taking away even more of his life, that is, whatever life that is still left inside of him. He can no longer fight against this numbing feeling and he finds himself welcoming it with open arms instead, fulfilling his body’s wishful pleading to accept his unfortunate fate.

Jongin’s mind is also becoming blank, but he tries his best to stay focused, and he does this by concentrating all of his attention on the boy who still continues to caress his cheeks lovingly with warm hands—even though this type of situation was hardly a time for such intimate interaction—strangely, Jongin found it comforting.

“You know that I love you, right? I love you. I love you so much, Jongin.”

Jongin tries to say something back, but being on the brink of death makes it difficult for him to form words. He now regrets not telling this boy sooner before everything fell into ruins that he also loves him too. Yes—despite it being this boy’s fault for him dying right now before his very eyes in a half frozen lake, Jongin still loves him. He loves him so very much.

Jongin thinks he must be insane.

And because he does not have the strength to speak, Jongin opts to smile at the boy instead, hoping that he’ll understand that this was his way of saying he knows that the boy loves him and that he also love him back.

He begins to wonder where things had gone wrong for it to become like this—ha. What does it matter? He doesn’t have the time to ponder on all of his mistakes for there is nothing he can do to fix them now. What’s done has been done. For now, before death completely takes him away, he’ll enjoy the warmth of the boy’s hands against his cheeks. That’s the least he can do for something as tragic as this so he just continues to smile.

“Why couldn’t you just give me your heart, Jongin?” The boy whispers, a tear escaping from his eye as he holds onto Jongin’s almost lifeless body in his arms, “Now your heart will always be as cold as ice.”

Jongin’s smile is now gone, his lips blue, and his eyes grey as he takes in the boy’s final words with him before his world becomes a permanent black.

--- To Be Continued ---