Dongwoo sat on the bed and watched over Daniel. The way he always slept so peacefully made him stare and wonder whether it was a good idea to tell him the bad news. It had been three days since his hero attempt and despite the healing foot, his chest wasn’t well. He thought for a second that all the shadows in the room were mocking up, stretching over the walls and swirling around his head until he’d cry again like the baby he became. He had done it all so he wouldn’t keep a single thing inside of him, so he wouldn’t one day explode like Daniel. If he hadn't done that, he would have destroyed everything he built until then, stacking friendships and love affairs on top of each other until they formed one beautiful tower to gaze at from the distance.

But that was his problem – distance.

He should be part of the tower, part of its cracks mixed with the binder, part of the plants crawling up its rough surface or part of the wind whipping with every strong morning breeze and every nostalgic evening breath. He should be there with them, partying and chatting, breaking through the roofs and struggling to fix it until the next rain came to take them away.

He should have been by Daniel’s side, hand in hand, somewhere in their own room where they could have shared their worries, shared their future plans and most importantly, talk about the past for once and solve all issues. Instead, they let them grew the size of gas planets, too heavy to move, too big to destroy with one blow and impossible to live on, for they allowed no human take part of its toxic environment.

Unless one of them became the sun and swallowed the other whole within its shine, patching things would be harder than usual.

Dongwoo stretched his numb legs over the bed and cuddled at Daniel’s side, his arms wrapping around the male. He enjoyed his warmth, enjoyed his heat. He enjoyed the way he always fit perfectly by his brother’s side. Taking in the scent of paint both had, Dongwoo almost fell asleep if not for Daniel’s drowsy voice tingling at his ears.

“Let’s take a trip,” he proposed, eyes fixed on the ceiling “somewhere we both should go.”

“I got fired,” he answered, clutching tighter to Daniel’s body. The brunet smiled and brushed his forehead over Dongwoo’s, laughing out of the blue. Crystalline noises nuzzled at Dongwoo’s mouth, making it stretch in an equally wide grin.

“I got fired too,” Daniel amusingly said between hiccups of laughter, spurting up and pulling his brother along “So let’s take that trip, what’s stopping us?”

“What idiots decide to waste their last money on a trip after they got fired?”

Daniel pulled at his brother’s cheeks, earning him several curses disguised as pleads.

“Us! We’re the idiots!” he talked loudly and in a rude manner. It surprised Dongwoo. His eyes widened and his smile dropped, arms wrapped once more around Daniel. His brother was no longer a ghost he couldn't reach.

“Just never do that again, hear me?”

Daniel wanted to pat his back. His fingers itched to grab at his clothes and burst in more tears, yet it was futile to be lost again in the same sea he promised to try to swim out of several months before.

“Promise,” he uttered, giggles scaring the shadows away. “I promise I’ll try to be better.”

Dongwoo knew it was too late for the two of them. His brother was already the sun and Dongwoo had no choice but to let gravity pull him off orbit and burn within Daniel’s new world.

“Not better, you. The you I know.”

---

Henry hated the new house.

It wasn’t because of the interior decorator’s imagination (he had to admit, the place looked marvelous at a first glance) or the multitude of plants surrounding the entire estate. It wasn’t because of the luxurious furniture or the silver cutlery in his fists. For that matter, it wasn’t the food before him or his mother sternly gazing at her plate or his sister avoiding them and his brother who had didn't waste words anymore the moment they stepped inside.

He simply hated it and needed no reason to do so.

Yes, he enjoyed hugging his mother and talking all afternoon about his orchestra and other trivial things. Yes, he enjoyed seeing that smug face never appear on his brother. Yes, he enjoyed admiring his sister from afar and congratulating her again on her marriage, hinting between sentences that he’d dearly love to sing her something at the piano or violin during the wedding reception. Even their dinner was too good-looking and too delicious in scent not to devour after the first bite.

Yet, he still hated everything. It was as if they were hiding from something, even if there was nobody and nothing to fear.

Unfortunately, Soohyun came up with another round of cold remarks Henry never asked to reveal.

“Henry has a girlfriend,” he muttered while cutting the meat, making a screeching sound when the knife hit the plate.

“HE FARTED IN THE PLANE!” was the blonde’s comeback, his fork dangerously pointing in his brother’s direction.

Soohyun choked, grabbed onto his neck and pointed back with an identical fork.

“I DID NOT!”

“You sooo did,” Henry smirked and waved his fork like a conductor “That woman behind us could have died from your stinky bomb.”

“WHY YOU LITTLE---”

“BOYS,” the mother shouted “…calm down.” They huffed and they puffed, before both returned to aggressively chew their food. “Is it Amber?”

“What?” Henry spoke with his mouth full, making his mother frown and glare until Henry swallowed, wiped his mouth clean with the napkin and shrank in his seat. “I mean, no we’re not. I’ve already told you we broke off years ago.”

“Too bad, I liked her,” she spoke more to herself, Henry becoming smaller inside the chair.

“We’re good friends, that’s it.”

“Nah, he’s too busy dealing with an a…” Yuna pinched his ears “AAA, cut it!”

Henry snickered and thanked his sister between naughty glances, before returning to a soaked puppy in front of his mother.

“I have to go, excuse me,” Yuna announced, dropping the napkin from her hand on the table. “Are you coming?”

The blond tried to understand what she wanted to say, only to see her wink and hurry away from the dining room.

“Yeah, I promised to help her. Excuse me too.” Henry grinned, lowered his head as an apology and almost stumbled out of his chair. “Yuna, wait!” once he caught the girl, she threw her bag at him and untangled his locks.

“You owe me one,” her hand rested afterwards over his shoulder.

“Thanks for that.” She nodded, took her shoes on and motioned for him to follow outside at the idle car. “Where are we going anyway?”

---

Three more days, after Dongwoo’s foot healed enough for him to drive, Daniel shuffled his collection of CDs and wide-eyed everything with childlike innocence.

“I can’t believe you still have these,” he whispered, shocked at the sight of the old Epik High and Drunken Tiger albums. “Oh my God--- TASHA!” He all but yelled when he reached the end of the small sack and discovered the last precious album.

“Of course I do, you bought them all for me~!” Dongwoo cheekily said, paying more attention to the road ahead than Daniel’s sudden fanboy outbursts.

For someone that blasted rock music each day through his worn-out headphones, he would have never believed Daniel was willing to try some hip-hop. He was more surprised when he actually enjoyed it a lot more than him on several occasions. The boy perfectly memorized all lyrics and rapped their way home in random dance steps and hand gestures. It was then that their friendship truly began, sparked only by their shared love of music.

Then their fight over who to take the new title of captain in the school’s football team brought them closer when coach announced the winner. Both had been so blind in their rancid remarks, that none had seen the third nominee earnestly working his way at the top.

Sometimes, it was better to let go and laugh it all out.

Just let go and try again, through music, through sports, through any other hobby that could make them stick together and learn from one another until there was no longer a need for something superficial to draw them together. Why talk about the weather when they had better things to do?

“Yeah, I can’t believe you didn’t have any.” Daniel opened the player, took out the SNSD CD and replaced it with their high-school soundtracks. Dongwoo pouted at the sight of his brother carelessly tossing the CD over the board.

“Aish,” he looked again at the road “be careful with that!”

“I will never understand your obsession with them.”

“And I will never understand your obsession with Big Bang.”

Daniel tapped his fingers with the rhythm. He bobbed his head left and right, too immersed with the song to care about anything else.

“Shut up, shut up, Mr. Doctor.”

---

It was cold.

It was extremely cold.

It was freakishly freezing cold and Henry couldn’t stop trembling.

He dressed with thick clothes as Yuna instructed, yet she failed to mention their location. There weren’t lights strong enough to warm him up and the way Yuna so effortlessly glided over the thin ice in only a skimpy dress made him tremble harder.

She was breathtakingly beautiful, lacking any emotion in her expression as her main objective for that late evening was her number. It took away a little from Henry’s suffering, letting the music flow within his veins and be in perfect synchronization with Yuna’s every move. He was proud of what she had accomplished over the course of several years, only to give it all for Jae Rim.

At the same time, it upset him, because she could have gone even further.

Gradually, he ended up ping his jacket from jumping and supporting his sister from the edge, with no other public present. It was just the two of them, one enjoying the demonstration and the other reconciling with her first love.

After all was over, they took a few seats as their own and leaned against them, lazily drinking water and listening to every symphony that shuffled through the large speakers.

“Why are you quitting everything…?” he questioned, slow with every vowel and soft in pronunciation. Yuna surely did not wish to open the topic. Then again, Henry had always been a fool and insisted more than necessary if he had to, breaking through walls that no other person dared face.

“Who says I am quitting?” she responded bubbly, her head soothingly fixed over Henry’s shoulder. “I’ll say goodbye for now.”

“Isn’t that like quitting?” she had always been the one to speak sideways, throw obstacles for Henry to examine and lose track of the main subject. Every single time, he kicked them back and demanded more answers.

“No,” she pictured her golden days through each flashing fragment of memory rolling over her closed eyelids. “It will always stay in my heart.”

“But,” he stopped, staring back at Yuna’s calmness. Her smile never once left her radiating face.

“It doesn’t matter what I do next. This is my new dream.” She lifted her head and gazed at her brother’s puzzled stare, his eyebrows raised and mouth fastened. “Why would anybody stay in a filthy place with misery as their company?”

“Because they have no choice,” he wanted to bring conclusive arguments, yet couldn’t fully see where Yuna wanted to get at.

“They have a choice,” she got up with her hands inside her pockets. “They can carry on and get something better or fall back in the same dirty place they were forced to stay... the same place they never wanted anymore.” A deep breath later, she climbed down the stairs and left Henry just as bewildered, staring agape at the rows of seats.

She stopped and watched her brother follow, weary of his attics, weary of his never-ending run and never-ending hide and seek. Yuna waited the day Henry became the man he was intended to, taking over the crowd with his gracious heart forever beating for the music he adored.

If only she knew Henry’s heart had long split between that and Daniel.

---

“I’m afraid.”

The lush green couldn’t make up for the shabby house. Or the tattered everything. Even the soil had given up, only dust raising as they approached the rotting fence. Daniel tried to open it, surprised when the gate remained in his grasp. He guessed nails had long rusted and gave away from his simple touch. He put it away and went forward. He left Dongwoo behind in his thoughts who panicked and scurried straight after the brunet vanished around the corner.  

“Hello?” the brunet called out, searching for the main entrance. Finally, he saw the door and pondered whether it would fall in the same manner as the gate. Without taking any risks, he first knocked and then continued to call out. “Is anybody here?”

One more minute passed before he called out again. Shrugging to Dongwoo, they were about to return to the vehicle parked not far from the house when the creak of the door stopped them. A woman with a rugged dress in earth colors and her hair in a messy bun stepped outside to greet them.

She snarled at the sight of two young boys.

“I have nothing to buy and I’m not selling the house!” she reeked of alcohol, bloodshot eyes and wrinkled skin repulsing Daniel for a fraction of second. The past hit him from the stomach up, recurring fugitive moments he thought to have long forgotten.

“Don’t you recognize us?” Dongwoo, a tad bit more hopeful than his brother rushed to the woman. He grabbed her hands between his palms and tried to hold back the tears forming at the corner of his eyes. “I’m Dongwoo, remember me? And this is Daniel.”

“Get away! I said I’m not buying or selling!” she shoved the man away and limped back inside the house, pulling the door after her.

“But…” he knocked at it several times, still blinded by optimism. “We’re your sons! Aren’t you curious of what we had done with our lives?”

Daniel stood and watched the scene, his arms over his chest, quivering with fury.

After countless of knocks and Dongwoo begging after her, the woman opened the door again and crawled on her uneasy feet.

“He’s the devil!” her finger aimed at Daniel before it spun in Dongwoo’s direction. “And I never wanted you in the first place, leave me alone!”

The door slammed shut again. Dongwoo’s fist relaxed as it fell at his side.

“Let’s go,” Daniel kept his arms crossed, already passing by the broken gate and meeting the clean road. Dongwoo’s walk became almost mechanical, calculated and at a regulated speed, staring blankly at the ground.

The engine roared after Dongwoo woke it up, only to silence itself again after a few kilometers. He pulled over, his hands sliding off the steering wheel.

“Why?”

Daniel knew his brother had a lot to digest and it only confirmed his worst nightmare. The mother that never dared get in between her husband and her children had not changed. The mother that turned a deaf ear to Daniel’s screams each time the barbaric male hit him using everything he could grab, everything he could crash into his tiny body, everything he could hurt him with hadn’t even recognized them. The mother – no, the monster – who never had a speck of love to offer them shouldn’t had returned in their lives.

However, he couldn’t go against Dongwoo who asked him so many times to show him the home they both were taken from. Daniel guessed he finally saw the truth he tried to protect him from, the truth that still haunted him in the middle of the night and from which Daniel barely escaped.

“I don’t know,” he truly had no idea why such sight cursed them. Even the brunet, deep inside, wished she changed for the best.

He had no sympathy left.

“My… my poor mother,” Dongwoo stuttered, thumbs collecting each anguished tear. “My poor… my poor mother who… who…” Daniel wanted to comfort him somehow, yet it was too late. Dongwoo couldn’t stop crying. “My poor mother, my poor angel… she, she saved me from Hell and gave me Heaven, my angel… she saved me from Hell and now they say she’s bad… she… they say she is the devil… my poor mother, my poor…”

Daniel’s throat became dry at the mention of Dongwoo’s adoptive mother. She kidnapped Dongwoo as a child. Daniel got a good beat, enough to disable him from anybody's view and rest between sheets. She had not seen him, because he was sure she would have taken the brothers together if she had more time to spare and search for Daniel.

Dongwoo thought she was his blood parent until he showed her their high-school photo album. She recognized Daniel from one picture, with the same cat-like angled eyes and full lips as ever.

As everything in life, good things come to an end.

Dongwoo’s life as he knew it finished when his adoptive mother went to the police and told them everything. He lost a mother and got a brother instead.

Daniel unbuckled the seatbelt, rushed out and only stopped when he was sure Dongwoo wouldn’t see him.

He stooped before the deserted road, gushes of air inflating and deflating his lungs. Straightening his back, he started laughing. Grabbing onto his head, he laughed some more before screaming.

“I’M BETTER THAN THAT,” he yelled everything out, his voice cracking midway “I WON’T LOSE TO YOU.” He panted, battering his chest. “I WILL NEVER GIVE UP LIVING… YOU HEAR ME?” 

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