This is all I can write. The ending of this chapter is rushed, I know, and I'm sorry. I really am sorry, I'm still not over my loss until this very day. I was very close with my father, and the day he passed away, I felt as though I've lost half of my life. It's easy to smile in front of people and say that you're okay, but when you're alone, you can't help but to let out all the overflowing feelings and cry. So I write. That's the only thing I can do to surpress my sadness. It's just that I can't write well with this condition. Haha.

I hope you like it though. I'll pay it by writing the next chapter better. Promise.

Love,

Ainihaya

둘

Words: 3k+

Kyungsoo thought he had only made two biggest mistakes so far in his life. First, for living his almost thirteen years being a timid, fragile, and cold looking guy, and second—and second, he doesn’t have to explain; you don’t want to know about it.

            At the time he was yet to move to Goseong-gun, he was yet to wake up to a crisp and cloudy sky, dim morning light barely getting through the thin silky layer of his room curtain, and it didn’t occur to him that he would someday meet that person, without any build up, locking their eyes altogether somewhere above a small lonely country lied down on a farthest north of Gangwon Province.

            —And that had bothered him. That had bothered Kyungsoo more than anything.

            Him, that little wolf, that haughty puppy, that board shouldered boy, he was supposed to barge into Kyungsoo’s life riding a white, expensive Connemara pony (in fact he wasn’t supposed to barge into his life at all), but him, his husky laugh, his slanted eyes, his pine tree scent, they didn’t emerge to him that way. He just sat there. Him, sitting across the outline of Kyungsoo’s shadow, with both elbows propped against wooden table, stealing away the vibrant afternoon through his brown iris. There. He just sat there. Not doing anything aside from smearing a sly grin. He just sat there, sans one single reason. It was as though he was there because it would be wrong without him doing so. As though Kyungsoo’s first day in his new school would be so badly incomplete had he not caught the messy ruffles around the boy’s slightly ed uniform, and his hair, just like the color of dirty concrete sand, mussed up by the bracing wind that was wedging inside the class windows.

            Everything about that person was bright. Kyungsoo didn’t exactly happy with this said fact. His skinny back, the frail yet masculine spine beyond the ruddy skyline. He would stand at the very front streak at lunch, while the minutes went up in a fast blast, and on that moment Kyungsoo could more than understand that he’d finally found his third biggest mistakes. The third biggest mistake that shortly after, as he looked through the fading files of his memory, remained the greatest of them all.

         —Yes. It was him.

****

            It was Byun Baekhyun.

****

            “I like you.”

            I.

            Like.

            You.

            —I like you.

            The words left his mouth too soon than he expected.

            First, the realization flipped his mind with a deceptive slap that skimmed along the noisy canteen. The man whom he was staying all his pedestal away was giving him intense gaze and it was much sharper than the usual look he used to set on Kyungsoo’s back when they weren’t facing each other—and he didn’t like it at all. Kyungsoo didn’t like it at all. For a cryptic minute, he flashed the boy a helpless face with every little ardor left inside his body, but guess what, Baekhyun wasn’t accepting any. It was then the next realization appeared with a loud thump deep below his screaming brain when Baekhyun, slowly but steadily, sat up from his seat to approach Kyungsoo’s (and Jongdae’s) table, eyes never leaving his round doe-like orbs.

            this. that. the whole universe. He should’ve known from long time ago that words had never came out from his swollen mouth well. Somehow he apparently, with no surprise, forgot about this case.

            “What did you say?” he got the brunette asking him once he landed in front of Kyungsoo (leg sticked out to the left), which was bad because he wasn’t ready to stare at Baekhyun without feeling a shoot of hot blood rose up all over his pasty cheeks.

            Let’s face it like a man, his mind said. No, you can’t, you’re totally doomed, Kyungsoo, his surroundings replied. The small, crowded green and yellow painted cantine that once fell into a deep silence gradually gained its clamorous state back. Kyungsoo convinced himself that he shouldn’t mind the constant gawk he was getting from throughout the place, and especially from the man sitting before him, but screw those s, who was he kidding?

            —How could he be calm when everyone was literally stripping his clothes off with their ogling eyes?

            As the clock continued to tickle, he looked up from side to side. There was a bewilderment of worry and scare from Jongdae, whom Kyungsoo, for multiple counts of seconds, forgot the existence about; and next all the feeling flooded him, on the verge of despair, with the thought of digging a hole at the school front yard and tossing a certain human inside. Almost.

            Unless you count Kim Jongdae a human, because by then in Kyungsoo’s vision he had somehow turned into a worth-to-punch looking dinosaur.

****

            He wondered if fate could be more cruel than this.

            But it could.

            It certainly could.

            Diarrhea—as if his problem wasn’t complicated enough, he must came across an unexpected diarrhea. Suddenly his stomach (and ) was aching for toilet, a nice empty one, and he was so close. He was very close to defecate, but whatever. He could save it for later. He was good in holding the urge to poop, anyway.

            Just, there rushed up a small regret. Back in Seoul, he had spent so much time planning about finding a way to perform teleportation thanks to Jongin’s obsession for things like this, and if only he had succeeded in bringing their project into reality, he was sure he wouldn’t have to restrain himself from farting straight away. Was it because the cold noodle he ate for lunch? No, it was certainly the fault of kimchi jjigae his father cooked for yesterday’s supper. He didn’t remember eating anything too spicy that day, hence he blamed the kimchi stew, and he didn’t remember having a hankie, moreover a feminine looking one. So when a pair of trembling hands met his sweaty ones by the end of a pink handkerchief, he couldn’t help but to linger his gaze to the owner and perhaps blush a little to say thank you and thank you very much because it might be Byun Baekhyun who was offering him the help, right, who knows.

            Wrong.

            Of all people that Kyungsoo wanted to contemplate right now, it had to be his new self-claimed enemy.

            “Use it, Soo,” Kim Jongdae called to his name, only it was too friendly for his liking, “you look pale.”

            And that was it.

            It needed merely a dhiarrhea, an unintended confession, a punchable Kim Jongdae and his protruding cheekbones and his pink handkerchief, and then Kyungsoo blew a gasket.

            He didn’t always fake sick when he’s angry, but it was the moment he sprinted out of the school cafetaria, the sound of Baekhyun’s raspy voice calling after his name, and then he didn’t knew why—it happened so fast in a blink of eye, like a drop of fresh blood being by thousands of hungry fleas. He ended up bumping his shoulders with some irrelevant strangers end the hallway and falling on his growling stomach while he mumbled in the middle of his pain something about killing Kim Jongdae with a blunt knife later in his sleep, and soon behind, soon behind, he had already called his father, telling the latter to fetch him as soon as possible.

            Not forgetting to create a small, sickening cough before finally he whispered in a pleading tone thick lies that more or less sounded like, “Dad, I think I’m kind of having a very,” very, “bad,” dhiarrhea, “flu.”

            For some couple of days afterwards, Kyungsoo gone missing.

****

            But he couldn’t run away forever. He would do that, gladly, but the chance to grant the proceeding was nearing impossible.

            Hence he showed up, a week after his famous disappearance. For the first time he noticed how skinnier he had gotten after going through a very bad dhiarrea. His cheeks were no longer puffy, they’d deflated in a gaunt curve, bleak and goomy and he could notice the bone butted out two fingers distance below his lower eyelid, but he thought he might like the change because he was always tired of having fat cheeks. And after those buns were now disappeared, he was faced with a great wall of confidence. He didn’t need to waste ten minutes in the midst of morning to squish the elastic skin in a desperate manner of aiming to have a much more masculine features, and another ten minutes to sigh at his unchanging reflection.

            Kyungsoo didn’t like his appearance. He wasn’t proud of it. Not a bit. Everybody in his family had a slim, narrow cheeks. Kyungsoo did not. His were puffy, and round, and sometimes square, and it looked ugly if you line it with his small shoulder altogether. When people praised them, those two bouncing fats on both side of his face, it was almost a taunt. Or at least he did feel this way. So long story short—

            Kyungsoo was happy with his weight loss.

            Extremely.

            He popped up at the school corridor, forest green sweater clad tightly around his torso. The school was still quiet. The town was still a sleepy beauty. High above, the sky was a vague shade of blue—Goseong-gun was after all a depiction of grace and melancholy. Still it didn’t stop him from stomping his feet, albeit soundlessly, to match Musiq Soulchid’s song that was being played by his black iPhone. Instantly, he had become a different Do Kyungsoo. All his previous worries was suddenly forgotten. One time he even tried to swallow every little pride he got to smile at the owner of locker next to his. The name was Minah or something, he could ask about it to Amber later. Or maybe he would forget the girl by the time the first course started, and they would bump into each other the next day and she would sing his name in a shy, shivering voice. By then, he would not have any memory of the girl’s name, and the situation would get really awkward, and he wouldn’t feel sorry, because Kyungsoo was cold just like that.

            But it was impossible. Since Kyungsoo had a very good capability to memorize many things.

            Like his very encounters with the certain broad shouldered Byun Baekhyun; there was much about him that he would like to brood over. On a damp country land of this isolated place, Baekhyun was a child of sun. The kind of soothing radiance that didn’t start to fade until forever. He wasn’t just another name Kyungsoo would forget by the next lunch time. He was a bless. A hope.

            A gift to everybody lived throughout the territory. Ignoring his presence was out of the question, for every details of Goseong-gun was calling up to Baekhyun’s existence. The way he stood by the faucet to wash the dirt from Chanyeol’s red bean paste bread that was accidentally patched to his autumn uniform when the taller shamelessly rubbed his giant hands all over Baekhyun’s smaller frame. The way he swung his arm when he ran, and the landscape behind him was an idle piece of painting. Kyungsoo saw sea, sky, lagoon, north birds, peninsula, and Taebaek which was the king of mountains in his dictionary, then soon it would be just Baekhyun. It was always Baekhyun, he wasn’t making any big exaggeration. A short yet stout-hearted country boy; it was him. Him, and his scent, and his warm iris that jumped around many shades of brown—Kyungsoo, even, had learned how they looked like in the dark, those martyr colors; chamoise, mahogany, taupe. Amberish that’s not even a proper word. Everywhere. Along the lonesome and narrowing winding road, the shady clouds, the tad-sad blue horizon just above Hwajinpo lake; pine trees.

            Within the misty part of his eyes when he tried to close them just to be greeted by other visions about him, but he would still do it.

****

            “Kyungsoo! You’re back!”

            He knew it was her.

            He remembered her scent. Or better yet, her rather boyish odor, even after a full week of just talking to the girl from behind of his main door—mainly shocked by the fact that she found out about his address while he was sure to have kept it a long running secret—when she stopped by to lend Kyungsoo her notes during his missing from appearance period.

             “Yeah,” Kyungsoo let the girl hugged him tighter. It was just, he didn’t mean to feel her on his back. He didn’t know how to put it into words. They were small, probably. Or actually it could be counted as big, he wasn’t positive. He’d known Amber well enough to say that there were girls with bigger than her. But still those were still s anyway, and what was worse, Amber didn’t look as if she was aware about it. In the end he managed to catch her attention by whispering, “Uhm, I can’t breath,” which she responded by glancing at his side profile, confused pout constructed on her blossoming lips. When it was later clear that Kyungsoo wasn’t feeling strikingly comfortable with his back pressed tightly on her chest, Amber decided to let go. Pulling back from her firm hug to Kyungsoo’s pitch black lock, she asked with a concerned face, “How’s the flu?”

            “It’s getting better,” Kyungsoo said flatly just as her fingers left the shoot of his hair. He looked way up at their class entrance on the second floor, cleared his throat, and continued to answer his friend’s question without staring back. “Thanks anyway,” he added, still hadn’t lifted his gaze from the class entrance; at this point he was genuinely wondering why hadn’t he bumped into anyone, “for—for stopping by my house everyday. Your notes really help me to catch up with my study. Umm, sorry I couldn’t let you in,” here, he was feeling a bit guilty. Just a bit. A tiny, tiny bit. Because, mind you, he couldn’t let anyone knew that he was having a very bad diarrhea—but of course, he was unable to just state the actual reason. So he decided to distract the boyish girl’s attention by faking a cough.

            Sadly it sounded nothing like a normal cough.

            Defenseless, he supposed he should clarify right off what might be the possible excuse—it’s just that Kyungsoo is a fool when it comes to twisting words, so blatantly fool that the phrase didn’t even come out close as he desired to be. “Err, the flu,” his voice trailed off, “y-you know, it spreads.”

            Now, he did think, he’d made the right choice to befriend Amber.

            Or not.

            The girl was so generous it was almost hurt him inside to tell her anything but truth. She didn’t just accept Kyungsoo’s words like that, though, she did raise her left brow for a fast moment before silently nodded in a knowing manner and there was an abundance of eagerness in between. A fast moment that was actually long enough for Kyungsoo to notice her slightly toned calves that were turning paler as they climbed on the school stairs—those calves were perhaps stronger than his own. No. They were definitely stronger than Kyungsoo’s flimsy ones.

            “No probs,” Amber smiled, she was beaming and Kyungsoo was overwhelmed by both her kindness and the cold morning. “I understand it. That’s what friends are for, anyway. But you better be careful, Baek is still looking for you.”

            Kyungsoo, who looked flustered after being reminded of his major problem, unwittingly blurted out some complicated words that he himself or any other human being on planet earth couldn’t understand at the moment; and when Amber gave no reverberation over his stupid moves, Kyungsoo realized that God, apparently, still considered him a nice kid. If you ask him, he’d choose to never be born again with this embarrassing habit. The last time he murmured the same complicated words to himself, last summer in Seoul when he got to attend one of his school’s worthless swimming class, everybody ended up making jokes about it. Including Jongin. That cute, little, . In fact, Jongin was the first ones to burst into laughter, followed by his fangirls, and that smuggy faced swimming teacher. Poor Kyungsoo could only shut his mouth and pretended not to care, and he felt as if that day he was killed in a massacre. A very big massacre. Only, the victims were all named Do Kyungsoo. Short, small, doe-eyed boys whose names were Do Kyungsoo-s.

            Fortunately, he caught a somewhat courage underneath his heavy breath. So when Amber turned to face him, and she did, Kyungsoo wrapped a grey autumn scarf around his neck, trying to appear as calm as possible. And when she wasn’t looking at him anymore, then he questioned the girl’s words with a kind of innocent intonation, “Me?”

            Amber tossed him a low snicker. “No, your Mom,” came the reply in a form of bitter deadpan. “What actually happened between you two? I only heard nasty rumors about you liking him, but I can’t take it seriously since, oh, Well, you seems straight. But I don’t know, Man, life has been too complicated lately. For some reasons I began to doubt it.”

            “I am straight,” Kyungsoo halted to make a quick eye contact with Amber. Somebody behind them was calling after his name, but he didn’t bother to turn his head and greet the unimportant supporting character back. “And I don’t like him,” he created a further explanation as they finally arrived on the second floor, only several steps away from the class entrance, “it’s just a stupid misunderstanding. Don’t—don’t believe any of it.”

            “I said I don’t know,” Amber shrugged, and by the look of it, she sort of tried to hold a very big laugh. “Come on, or we’re going to be late!”

            It was a long walk. Creating another step to approach their class was a lot of struggle. Amber told him while smoothing down her short hair that their classmates had missed him so much, so he shouldn’t be worry, but all Kyungsoo cared at the time was nothing concerning this case. The image of him dashing out of the school’s cafetaria just a week ago was still going. Whirling. He must’ve looked like a complete coward when he did it. The current image of him then must be no other than his sissy part; and that got him to thinking about taking several more days off to hide this embarrassment. The moment the class entrance welcomed him, the thought knocked Kyungsoo harder. Should I come in? Should I go back to my room and hide myself forever? He had no idea. The second choice sounded better, however. It will do any other time too.

            But Kyungsoo had decided to go. He had decided to deal with his problem since yesterday and he wouldn’t change this compromise. He had to fight it, or he would lose eternally. He believed that by challenging his situation, and also his fright to that, he would overcome all the spinning worst speculation sooner. No. Actually, he didn’t usually believe in lame concept like this. It was just at some rare occasions, he acted like he did.

            At the top of the class entrance was a new pink, bright, dizzy decoration he wouldn’t want to describe. He stepped back a little when he saw some of the glistening pink, bright, dizzy thingy fell down to the floor, almost on the toecape of his shoes. He shrieked one time, and then twice. And when he was in the middle of doing it for the third time, Amber had pulled him in a bit roughly, her grips were solid as fine metals and thrice stronger than his mother’s pinch. She appeared to be dragging him to their table, with the same rush she always used when she was being chased by their Math teacher—Kim Jonghyun songsaengnim—for not doing her homework. They started walking among people, and their classmates gawked at the scene. Kyungsoo could see the epitome of surprise and astonishment on their faces. He stared at one. And another. And after testing to find out who was who (despite his outstanding ability to remember things, he still hadn’t memorized his classmates’s names and features), he couldn’t help to put one hand on the girl’s shoulder, trying to inform her that he could walk by himself.

            Alas, it was already too late.

            He already caught the sight of Baekhyun wiggling what seemed like a piece of paper plane with his pretty, skinny hand at the class entrance.

            —Then it happenned all over again. All without his defense.

****

          “Hi,” he wasn’t sure whether the word was audible enough for everyone to pass the glance at him, “you look handsome today.”

****

          Wait, what, he didn't mean to shout that.

****

          Wait, what?

****

To be continued