August 16, 2011

Silence and stillness. That was all the starch, toasty, bare room was filled with as two strangers sat across each other in cream, chenille couches. At the corner, the radiator spurts invisible heat, battling against the cold that tiptoed through nooks and crannies. The man whose face was obscured by black, thin oval-rimmed glasses, wore a pushed up grey sweater that hung loosely at the ends of his elbows, a black vest over it and poorly laundered pants stained with what seems to be coffee somewhere near his knee (“Well, that must have been hot.” the woman assumes), breaks the deafening noiselessness by pushing a recorder’s buttons. With a notebook and a pen in hand, a tape recorder and a couple of blank cassette tapes scattered in discord across the low, wooden coffee table, he lights the cigarette dangling in his lips that are slight ajar, clears his throat and finally begins. “First of all, Jung Hyunsu, I would like to thank you for this rare opportunity. A writer of my genre would kill to get such a chance.”

“No, thank you Byun Baekhyun for serving as an instrument for me to recount the terror my husband and I faced so as to warn the good people of Seoul the danger the city holds. But then there is more to it than to stir fear among peace. You may say that I’m also doing this to comfort—or rather—to empathize those who have gone through the same pain, the same trepidation as we did.”

“A little heroism from such a frail, damaged woman. Huh, I guess Yeol forgot to mention that. I admire you all the more already. So anyway Hyunsu, where would you like to begin?”

*

“She was never meant for me, wasn’t she?” Sehun utters in a voice a little too soft for an exclamation and a little too loud for a whisper. Watching the stars suspended above them, his eyes flutter as a tear falls, the lone droplet disappearing into his ear temporarily crippling his auditory perception. It was hard to believe that just last night he held the world at the palm of his debilitated hand, cradled the sun on his lanky chest and spoke in tongues with his chapped lips. Now it was all gone. She was gone. “All I ever wanted was her. All I ever asked for was her.” His voice breaks into a sob, a wounded, hopeless sob that stung the man who lied beside him, clenching Sehun’s hand as he silently cried along.

For a while, Luhan attempts to answer the conundrum, racking his brain for some answers. But when the man stood, eyes fixated upon the heavens, he realizes that the questions weren’t addressed to him and that he ceased to exist which only wound him more. “Where have I gone wrong? Huh?!” He shouts, barely standing as he teetered to find his foothold. Luhan automatically sits up, cautiously aiding him, eyes heavy and red with tears. “What have I done to deserve this!?” The man shouts into the void, dying for an answer but anticipating nothing. 

All the while, Luhan kept the maddened man from flinging himself off the six-storey building. He drowns out the noise for nothing pains him more than hearing those words seethe through Sehun’s lips without a seconds’ hesitation. The very lips he used to moisten with his own. But that was how it was. Futile was Hyunsu’s decision. Doomed was he with Sehun. What use is there for the two of them, when the other desires for someone else? What was he going to do with Sehun now? Now that he has made everything clear?

“Are you happy Kim Jongin!? Are you entertained!?” Sehun pounds a fist against his chest as his voice crescendos. “Thanks to you, I learned that the inevitability of parting is such sweet sorrow! For despite looking forward to new beginnings, that hope is shot to hell!!”

The man was then silenced by a palm that crashed against his ruddy cheeks with an impact so intense he fell t