Sometimes he feels as if he could drown.

In air. In space. In time. In tears.

When he was younger, he believed he was strong. There wasn't anything that he couldn't do, no suffering he couldn't pull through. This can-do attitude brought him far in life. It brought him his dream job, it brought him the corner office at his law firm, and it brought him a peaceful house outside the city. But mostly it brought him the courage to approach her that day in Astronomy class.

She had always walked in late, breathless, as she apologized to their less than pleased professor. He thought it was cute, the way she ducked her head and peered at the rest of the class as she tried to find an empty seat. At first he had thought he had found something to amuse himself with for an hour and fifty minutes, since he was only taking the class because Yoochun had told him that it would be a ridiculously easy way to fulfill his science requirement. But as he watched her, heard her ask her questions, and listened to her talk to the other classmates around her, he was drawn to her.

“Hey, Im Kim Jaejoong,” he had said as he adjusted his grip around the strap of his backpack and extended his hand, “I know this might sound weird, but would you mind studying together for the next exam?”

She had looked at him and smiled as she took his hand. And that was their beginning.

Jaejoong had never been good with endings. As a child he always hated them. Whenever his mother came to the end of his bedtime stories he had always insisted that she start again from the beginning. Because he had always thought that stories shouldn't end.

But as the coldness in the room sets in, he can see it, the “happily ever after”, the completion, the moment when his mother closes the book and tells him to go to sleep. Pulling her closer with the strength left in his arms, he can feel with his slowly dulling senses that she's still warm. His eyelids flutter as the warm wetness on his chest slowly grows bigger, and he doesn't know if she's crying. He leans closer and he can hear her whisper, distantly, like the wind, her love. The pain is fading.

And he can hear her breath slowly rise and fall.

Up. Down. Up. Down

He smiles slightly and kisses her warm lips.

Up. Down

And then there is light as he feels his warmth melt into hers.

______________________________

Yoochun rounds the last curve up the mountain road and he sighs. He's given up calling them a while ago, figuring they might be playing a belated April Fools trick on him, since they didn't do anything this year. His car seems to be driving up into the grayness of the May sky as he ascends the mountain slowly. A single strip of pink decorates its bleakness as though the sun has still not given up its not given up its struggle against the night. As his car finally putters its way into their neighborhood, Yoochun slowly pulls up to their house and packs. Getting out of the car, he frowns at the yellow tape that seems to be surrounding the perimeter of the house. As he steps over it he says to himself that Jaejoong better get better blockades so his house wont look like a crime scene every time he reseeds his lawn.

He knocks lightly on the door, but there is no answer. So he tries the door knob. It opens quietly and he steps inside. As he crosses the threshold of the house, he shivers slightly.

“Hello? Guys? You there?” he calls out as he steps tentatively forward in the house. His voice echoes back to him in the stillness. Walking forward, he enters the kitchen and stops. 

There is something about this place, perhaps the smell, that is different than usual. His voices quakes slightly as he calls out once more, “Guys? Where are you?”

He walks forward into the quiet, and then he stops. Because he sees it. Traced in white chalk, the outline of two bodies on the floor of the living room. There is a single bouquet of white flowers meticulously placed between the two. And it is then that he remembers.

“I bet you if they could, Romeo and Juliet would be jealous of Aida and Radames.”

The memory of how Jaejoong had laughed when he said that, strikes Yoochun hard, right below the gut and he feels breathless. Doubling over, he falls to the ground, his knees hitting the cold marble floor below him. Across from him, through the haziness of his own tears, he can still see them.

The flashing lights, the screaming sirens, the quiet murmurs. Everything. Like a kaleidoscope of nightmares his memories rush to the surface and his body starts to shake.

It had been just last week, on a Saturday just like this one. He had headed out here to check up on them since they hadn't called him. And as he had neared the house, he saw the flashing lights of police cars, and men in blue uniforms running across the green lawn.

Not knowing what to make of the scene, he had gotten out of his car and walked over to the nearest police officer and asked him what had happened. The man had just shaken his head sadly and told Yoochun to move along, before leaving to go back into the house. 

So he watched, unsure of what to do. Scanning the surrounding crowd, he tried to find Jaejoong and Ri In, but to no avail. As his frustration had begun to mount, he went inside.

No one had noticed him as he slipped past the police lines and into the house, but maybe it would have been better if they had. Walking through the familiar hallways of his friends house, Yoochun had followed the flow of humanity to the living room, where there was a large crowd of blue uniformed men huddled in a tight group, looking down. One of them was taking pictures. 

The words Yoochun heard made his knees weak as he had approached the crowd. Phrase such as “suicide”, “disease”, “such a shame”, “tragic” reached his ears, but he didn't listen and maybe he should have. And as he peered over the shoulders of the mass of uniformed men, Yoochun saw them.

And now he could still see them.

If it hadn't been for the dark red stain that had spread around the pair like a set of butterfly wings, he'd have thought that they were just sleeping. Their expressions were so at peace, so serene, so content, that he refused to believe his ears when the EMT announced their time of death. Now he looks at the two outlines dumbly and a choked laugh gurgles forth from his throat. Jaejoong had, the police later told him, used a gun that he had bought himself. It was the type that was powerful enough to rip through two human bodies, perfect for their, as they called it, “suicide pact”. But Yoochun still doesn't believe it should be called that, because its not really an act of death. His eyes smart and their images are becoming blurry in his eyes as he stares at the images once more through a wall of dark blue.

It is an act of infinite love. 

Tears slowly make their way down his face once more. He is alone as he sits there, looking at what remains of the two lovers.

And then he smiles for them, because Jaejoong got what he wanted-an ending that even Romeo and Juliet would envy.

And then he cries for himself, because like his younger self-he wanted them to live.

Romeo and Juliet  if they're together, is it really a tragedy?

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Original Author's note: