and he'll run back

affection is so cruel

The funny thing about the affection of a child is that no matter how cruel or deceiving their parents may be, no matter how many times they’re pushed to the ground or rejected, if there is even the slightest hint of love, the slightest drop of affection amongst all the pain, the child will love. The child will take the hand of the elder without question, without a single objection or any mistrust. Children are just like that.

 

That being said, all adults were children, once. I suppose that’s why affection can be so cruel.

 

 

 

 

He’s found by Kim Myungsoo after a fight goes wrong, after his body ends up covered in cuts and bruises, marks that claim territory which was theirs all along. He’s found and he’s picked up; he’s taken in and accepted so easily that it seems too surreal. After all, Myungsoo’s just a classmate of his. Just another boy in a room full of similar faces; Hoya has barely seen him, much less spoken to him. Kim Myungsoo sits in the middle row and he leads a normal life with normal friends and no sense of impending doom. It seems weird that he’s even here: in the most polluted part of the city – the place filled with factories and dying children and families too poor to afford a house. His face looms above Hoya’s; he squats next to the elder, his eyes flickering in curiosity. Myungsoo’s just like that.

 

He picks Hoya up; he brushes away his hair and cleans his wounds, adjusts his clothes and helps the other get up as if it’s second nature. Kim Myungsoo smiles and hands him some food to munch over while he cleans the cut under his eye. Hoya eats with suspicion, but Myungsoo’s too gentle for it to last very long.

 

“You look like you’ve been in a fight,” Myungsoo jokes, his hair glistening in the light. Hoya’s never noticed, but Myungsoo’s hair isn’t inky black. It’s brown, the kind of brown which looks black until juxtaposed with the real tone. Hoya tries not to notice too many things about Kim Myungsoo.

 

Myungsoo takes him to his apartment. It’s a small one, the kind made for single divorcees with no where to go. The walls reek of nobody and even the door has no personality of its own. Inside, it’s quiet and cramped. Myungsoo brushes Hoya up and lets him borrow a clean uniform, preparing a warm drink while he changes. It’s seven AM and Myungsoo doesn’t ask questions and Hoya doesn’t bother explaining, but by the time they reach school Hoya thinks the latter knows. Myungsoo’s like that, after all.

 

“Come by whenever you want,” Myungsoo tells him.

 

 

 

 

He promises himself that he won’t drop by, but somehow one AM comes and he’s back to rapping on the younger boy’s door, heavy pants loud enough to wake the whole complex. After fifteen seconds Myungsoo’s there, hair messed up and pyjamas mismatched. His face is crumpled in sleep, but somehow the creases in his face look welcoming. It feels like he’s been expecting the other boy to come, the way a mother knows her child will return. He lets Hoya in, wipes away his wounds, and heats milk on the stove for a little boy who just wants a home.

 

“You can stay here if you want,” Myungsoo says. He throws him a cordless phone. “Just tell your parents.”

 

Hoya blinks, once, twice. “My parents aren’t here right now. They won’t mind.”

 

Myungsoo lives alone. He blinks. “Okay.” He hands over a mug of warm cocoa, bringing sheets out from his room. “Go sleep on my bed – I’ll sleep here.”

 

Hoya turns, unmoving. “Are you always like this?”

 

“What?”

 

“Always so nice.”

 

Myungsoo grins. “This is hardly nice.”

 

 

 

 

Myungsoo reads on the balcony at four AM, worn animal slippers on his feet and mismatched pyjamas draped over his skinny body. His hair looks messy, though Hoya can’t tell if it’s because of the wind or if Myungsoo’s just lazy. Instead he wakes to an oddly strong breeze. He puts on socks and leaves the bed reluctantly. The sliding door leading to the balcony is wide open.

 

Kim Myungsoo laughs. “Did I wake you?”

 

Hoya shakes his head. He wraps the blanket Myungsoo gave him around his body. “It’s just a bit cold.”

 

“I can tell.”

 

Hoya joins the other at the balcony, looking down first, then up. Looking down at the city, at the people and the cars passing him by as if he’s nothing but a feather in a flock full of birds. He looks down at pollution, at crowded places, at the parting mist of a cold winter’s day. Then he looks up, looks up at the sky and the clouds which constantly roam, which never stay the same. He looks to his side, to Myungsoo who remains engrossed in his book. He is foreign in every way. He is the last-minute addition a painting could do without. He does not belong, and if he was erased it would be okay, because his presence means nothing anyway.

 

 

 

 

The first time they fight it’s been three months without a storm, and when he hears the angry slam of Myungsoo’s bedroom door, he figures it was bound to happen anyway.

 

It was something stupid, like did you remember to go out to buy milk? No I have exams. Go buy it yourself it’s not like I don’t do enough. Thankfully, Myungsoo talks with more slamming doors than actual fists.

 

Hoya stays in the living room, legs crossed and textbooks scattered all over the coffee table someone should really clean. Myungsoo comes out by five, apologising and promising to make something nice for dinner. Hoya nods and lets an apology slip as well, his heart stale. He’s not the type to be like this, not usually, but it seems that all the nice food and hospitality has gotten to his head. At night they sit on the couch and watch a cheap made-for-television movie, convenience store snacks filling the coffee table Myungsoo bought last year. Myungsoo laughs a bit too hard and his head falls to Hoya’s shoulder half-way through the film, as if he’s a little kid and staying up past eleven is pushing his limits. Hoya doesn’t mind though. It’s Myungsoo, after all.

 

 

 

 

On Sunday Kim Myungsoo’s awake at four AM again, reading another crinkly paperback from the collection in his room. Hoya sees it every time he goes to bed – the endless bookshelf of mismatched novels, anything from The Great Gatsby to Peter Rabbit. They all share one thing in common though; they’re all hopelessly crinkled as if they’ve been read hundreds upon hundreds of times. It reminds Hoya of childhood, though everything about Myungsoo does – his warmth, his smile, his laugh – his affinity for all things hopelessly happy. Myungsoo’s presence is a tragedy in itself.

 

Hoya wakes up with half of his hair ridden terribly by his bed. Myungsoo sees him and laughs from the balcony, another set of mismatched pyjamas covering him from the cold. The materials of them are so thin; it makes Hoya wonder if the other ever catches a cold. Myungsoo turns at the sound of Hoya’s shuffling feet.

 

“Good morning Hoya,” he says. “Breakfast is on the table.”

 

And he’s right. Near the cramped newspaper stacks and guitar the younger sometimes plays there’s a plate of steamed rice and salty fish, but before Hoya can yell a thanks Myungsoo’s back to his paperback, the world spinning at his fingers. How nice it must be, to be able to read.

 

 

 

 

He thinks if they got him to describe Myungsoo, he’d say monster. A cruel, heartless, artificial monster. Myungsoo’s like that, after all. He’s too friendly, he’s too kind, and everything he does seems to be so perfect Hoya can’t sleep knowing there’s someone like him. Myungsoo’s reading another paperback when Hoya tells him this. He leans against the railing, a mug of bitter coffee in his left hand. Myungsoo laughs.

 

“A monster?”

 

Hoya nods. “You’re kindness – why?”

 

“We’ve discussed this Hoya. I’m not kind.”

 

“But you do nice things,” He presses. “You give me a home and prepare me food, you do well in school and you treat me like I’m a little kid you want to spoil.”

 

“You are, aren’t you?”

 

Hoya ignores this. It warms his heart when he thinks about it now. “That’s not the point. You’re nice to everyone. You’re nice to teachers and your classmates and even the girls who confess to you behind the school. You’re so nice it hurts. You’re so nice it makes people wonder – why do you do this?”

 

His voice fades as Myungsoo takes a sip of his coffee.

 

“Why are you so nice?”

 

Myungsoo stares at Hoya steadily. The book in his hands transfers to his fingers, his left index keeping the page. His eyes are deeply fascinating, his voice gets higher when he’s happy, but all of this, all Hoya knows – what’s it even for?

 

“Because it makes me feel like less of a monster,” Myungsoo says lightly. He returns to the book, his lips touching the cup. “Why do you ask?”

 

“Your kindness sometimes scares me.”

 

 

 

 

Hoya runs away one day. Runs away from Myungsoo and his apartment and everything he’s built up so far. He doesn’t have much – only a backpack filled with a few sets of clothing and a spare uniform, his wallet and a snow globe from that one holiday he spent in the snow. He doesn’t know where he’s running too – doesn’t know where he wants to go or if he wants to leave at all. He’s too scared to return back to his old home – the one that doesn’t want him – and too proud to run back to Myungsoo (who would accept him with open arms). Myungsoo scares him.

 

He runs with his backpack through the streets, not knowing what he’s running from and where he’s running to. He’s pathetic in that way. Pathetic in a way that he plays the little kid who threw a tantrum and thought he was going to live by himself because of it; pathetic in the way that he’s acting like a little 5-year-old desiring a bit of love. Eventually he ends up in a neighbourhood bookstore, the kind with second-hand books and a charm threatening to fall near the door. He supposes he comes here hoping Myungsoo will find him and take him back.

 

He runs back. Runs back to what he was running from, runs back to Myungsoo and four AM and paperbacks all over the house. He knocks once, twice, and in fifteen seconds the door clicks and Myungsoo’s standing there once again, just as he always was.

 

“You’re home,” He smiles.

 

And home, Hoya thinks, wonders, tastes, says – and he’s home, home with Myungsoo, home with this, home with everything. Home, just as Myungsoo said.

 

“I’m home,” Hoya repeats. Stupidly, pathetically, pitifully, lovingly – he’s home and in love with a monster.

 

 

 

 

One morning Hoya wakes up at ten AM and realises that the balcony door hasn’t been unlocked. He gets up nervously, checking the couch for Myungsoo’s presence. No one, it seems. The couch is empty, as if it’s been like that all along. He bites his lip, looking around the house. Yesterday didn’t seem unusual. He checks the kitchen first, though it’s bare, as if no one’s ever lived there. He checks the bathroom, the closet, the laundry – everywhere in the small apartment. His fingers get cold – there’s a sense of surreal in this whole ordeal. He pinches himself, wondering if he’ll wake up.

 

(He doesn’t.)

 

The whole apartment, minus Myungsoo’s room, is bare. Bare, bleak, empty, uninhabited – as if it’s never been touched. It’s so suspicious that Hoya thinks he’s going crazy. It feels as if he is, as if someone’s grabbed him and shaken him until his world had crumbled and all he had left were the remaining crumbs no one could see. He searches for evidence, for some sense of belonging. He searches for an identity in a place where there once was. The move is too clean.

 

It’s then he realises he must run.

 

Run, run away from everything and everyone because it feels like a replay of before and he quickly packs his bag and opens the door to the apartment and –

 

 

 

 

There was a time before when Hoya had yelled, in anger, “I don’t have a home, okay?”

 

And Myungsoo had replied. “Isn’t this your home?”

 

It seemed like such a simple question, as if the answer to Myungsoo had been obvious since the start. But to Hoya, it wasn’t. To Hoya the home Myungsoo spoke of, the one he lived in, couldn’t possibly be his home. It was a temporary lodge, a place to sleep – it couldn’t be a home. A home was such a hard thing to come by; such an impossible thing to create – Hoya couldn’t possibly understand how this apartment could be his home. It was so hard, he thought, to have a home. It was such a struggle to belong. This, of all things, could not be a home. There was no family, there was only Myungsoo.

 

Loving, caring, meticulous, happy Myungsoo.

 

“A home is wherever you are loved,” Myungsoo had said, ruffling his hair like Hoya was a child. In a way, he supposes, he was. “A home is where you are safe.”

 

Hoya has no home.

 

 

 

 

Myungsoo is a monster, a demon, a nightmare waiting to happen. He is the scar which doesn’t fade, the black smoke which seeps into your skin through the cracks and grabs you so charmingly you don’t even know you’re infected til you’re gone. Myungsoo is a sick little boy who leaves Hoya because he plays sick little jokes on sick little people in hopes of gaining a sick little laugh. Myungsoo is hurt, Myungsoo is pain – Myungsoo is everything so perfectly heartbreaking, someone so obnoxiously hateable, yet someone Hoya can’t help but love. Like a child, he cannot stop liking Myungsoo. He cannot stop admiring Myungsoo, he cannot stop following Myungsoo; he cannot stop caving into the other like a fly to honey. Myungsoo is the drug he cannot resist.

 

So Hoya returns back to the place he once ran away from (the place which made Myungsoo like this; the place which created the person he loves). How sad, he thinks, it must be to love someone who destroys you.

 

Hoya was a game. Hoya was a shiny new toy; a shiny, broken boy who could be bent and twisted at anyone’s will. It’s kind of pathetic, he thinks, to take someone’s hand without question. To love them wholeheartedly, despite what they have done (and still do). Sometimes Hoya falls asleep, and in his dreams he sees Myungsoo up at four AM, Myungsoo reading another worn paperback in his weird pyjamas and Myungsoo with his morning smile and kindness and everything which made Myungsoo seem like a good person at heart.  

 

Sometimes Hoya misses him, misses him the way you miss your family. In a way, Myungsoo was right – Hoya really was a little kid, a little boy looking for someone to take his hand and assure him that it was alright. You can’t function properly without someone to love. Someone, something – anything at all. And no matter how painfully, no matter how pathetically, it seems the item of Hoya’s affection is Myungsoo. It’s laughable in a way that it so hopelessly tragic even Hoya pities Hoya. Hoya pities Hoya for loving someone so cruel, someone so heartless, someone who so perfectly broke through his barriers only to make Hoya realise that he is lonely.

 

Yes, lonely, that is the emotion he now feels.

 

 

 

 

Hoya thinks Myungsoo is a shooting star; a claim of false hope and security, the kind which tempt you with lies and leave you with heavy truth. In ways, Myungsoo’s kindness hurts. It hurts because it was fake; it hurts because it soiled so deeply into his skin that Hoya cannot remove Myungsoo from his heart. It feels so impossible to hate Myungsoo. He feels so impossible to even think about anything other than Myungsoo.

 

Without Myungsoo, he struggles to breathe.

 

The Myungsoo in his thoughts, the one who treated him with kindness and held his hand and pretended everything was alright. The cruel Myungsoo, the stupid Myungsoo, the back-stabbing lying cheating ugly annoying ruthless Myungsoo – the one Hoya can’t help but run back too.

 

The one who made him believe he had a home – how to hate such a person.

 

 

 

 

And Hoya runs, once. He escapes just like before and he runs as fast as he can – away from the gangs and the drugs and the problems which grow in lonely neighbourhoods. He runs and he runs and he doesn’t ever intend to stop – not like before, not anymore. He convinces himself he’s over Myungsoo, over missing and thinking and longing for the boy who lied. He picks up the remains of his soul, the traces of his presence, and he leaves. Leaves for bigger, better, kinder things – for everything no one ever gave him.

 

He runs and runs and – “Hoya?”

 

Familiar feet, familiar legs, familiar figure – everything and anything Hoya can remember. The person who took him in, the one who gave him a home. Hoya was wrong. Hoya is always wrong. You can’t stop missing people.

 

“I found him,” Myungsoo says to the others. (Hoya can’t see anything but him.)

 

And just like before, he’ll run back. Like a child to his parents, he’ll run back. You can’t stop missing people – and eventually your longing defines your entire soul.

 

 

 


 

a/n:

 

goodbye i can't write ok this was my attempt WRITER'S BLOCK PLZ GO AWAY btw guava you still owe me a poster js

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eseech
WILL ACTUALLY REVISE THIS AND MAKE IT LESS UGLY

Comments

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KyutiePies_EyeSmiles
#1
I'm not even sure I'll get a reply, but I have a question. Hoya is the one with a difficult and let's say dangerous past, being in fights and slacking in school. While Myungsoo is the guy that is kind and caring, everyone loves and has it overall better than him. Right? After all I wonder what's with his parents....or did I just miss that part? (please don't tell me it was indeed the "he is living alone 'cause his parents are divorced thing").

Hoya the boy, who just longs for a home finds it with him, I'll get that and even that he's kinda scared (who wouldn't be). But I'm kind of confused in the end. Did Hoya just have an over reaction/a panic attack like a child, who thinks dreams are to good to last? Like Myungsoo just went out because he forgot something and cleaned up a bit and Hoya didn't see their usual stuff and Myungsso, so he freaked and run away?

I would appreciate more clearity ^^'
raymondteo9137 #2
Chapter 1: Love the emotions in this story.
But i dont really understand the story...
LuvSHINeeSNSD #3
Chapter 1: I dont teally understand ur story because ur story standard is high. But i can say ur writing skills is amazingly done! I cant write like this and that why i dont understand.
But i really love this story!!!!!! This is just pure amazing and awesome!
Thanks for making such a wonderful and amazing story!!!!! ^^
hallothere #4
Hey. What colour scheme do you want. If you don't reply to this, your just getting black. Or a really delayed poster

...


Not that it isn't delayed already :P
kagaki #5
Chapter 1: You don't deserve my compliments anymore...
Instead let me show my love for your writing -hands an award for being my favorite piece and author-

-skips away-
infinitenbeyond
#6
Chapter 1: This was a good read :) it could have been better though, but it's awesome enough, considering how you had a writer's block
I just felt that the emotion of missing someone wasn't portrayed strongly enough. I feel deeply about the quote that the story was centered upon, but I couldn't feel that intense, raw and painful feeling of missing someone from Hoya.
Or perhaps it was the plot that didnt really bring out the certain emotion. Or maybe its the writing style. I usually like this kind of writing style. short, indirect, not descriptive yet captures the main point beautifully. it didnt work for me here, though. I don't know.
Still, you are a really great author and I really admire your works haha I could never write as well as you.
And I really liked this part <3 '“I’m home,” Hoya repeats. Stupidly, pathetically, pitifully, lovingly – he’s home and in love with a monster.'
hallothere #7
Wait. There was no promise
hototheya #8
Chapter 1: But, but you said you had a writer's block. Do you always come up with wonderful fics like this everytimes you have a writer's block? Omg. I love everything about this fic. The vivid scenery, the charaterization, the feel hiding under every word. I can't help being mesmerized by your myungsoo. He's harmful and surely unhealthy yet charming and mysterious. And don't let me start with the whole comparing hoya's love with a child's affection. His love just happened so naturally and unavoidably and hoya knew he's helpless in this but he couldn't stop himself. The metaphor is perfect. Everything is perfect. Though I still don't get the ending. I think I have to read this again to be able to get all the details. Hmmm. Oh and the poster is beautiful, just so you know.