chapter six

"If you want to talk about it, I'll listen."

Not a muscle in Hyesung's body dared to budge at Eric's statement. The truth was, he did want to talk about it. For several years, he could only brood and mourn by himself. But he had no idea how he should go about telling someone else about everything; his gradual accustoming to holding everything away from other people built walls around him.

His legs moved on their own when Hyesung stood up and walked over to one of the bookshelves. On one of the shelves, at eye level, was a camera. He placed his fingers on its surface, layered with dust: another testament to how long it had been.

He clutched it within his hand and returned to Eric with it. He dropped onto the couch and held the camera slightly toward his companion.

"Your pictures together?" Eric assumed, mostly due to the disturbed contortion that Hyesung's face had become. He reached for the camera and had to coax it away from Hyesung's fingers, which were clamped around it with a significant amount of strength.

Hyesung mutely nodded. He hadn't so much as taken a glance at that object since Miran left him, and the anticipation and anxiety within him were bubbling.

"How'd you meet?" Eric inquired.

"Hospital," Hyesung answered mechanically, the memories playing as if pinned onto a film strip using his mind as a projector. "I had some throat issues that I was in for and she was a medical student shadowing my doctor for observation."

A shadow of a smile dawned on Eric's face. "That's interesting." He pressed a button on the camera to flip through the photos.

"She was in charge of making sure what I ate was all according to plan," Hyesung continued. He smiled to himself, a difficult smile. "And she hit me with her clipboard a lot when I tried to sneak stuff. 'Shouldn't singers care more about their voices' was what she would tell me."

He caught sight of the picture that Eric was glancing over. Hyesung was donned in medical attire, a stethoscope from his neck and a surgeon's mask. Beside him was Miran, who was clearly ill and looked as if she had swallowed something disgusting. It was from one of the few times Miran caught a cold. Hyesung had found it absolutely hilarious and couldn't resist the urge to play doctor.

"It's cute," Eric told him earnestly. "It looks like you were happy."

Hyesung cringed at the past tense in Eric's phrasing, mostly because it was true: he was happy. But now he wasn't. His sense of happiness was only flitting, and had departed from him once he had gotten a taste of it.

"You know," he darkly said, "I couldn't even go to her funeral."

Eric didn't respond, but Hyesung continued on his own. "I wasn't busy that day. I didn't have other plans. But I couldn't go. If I went and someone saw me there and recognized me..."

He scoffed, appalled at how terrible he sounded and how real it all had been. "I put my reputation before honoring her."

As the words left his mouth, a sinking feeling latched onto his heart and sank to his stomach like an anchor. He remembered that day's service, how he passed by the venue and saw the grieving people inside, a mass of black fabric and tears and comforting words. It was as if the building was tugging at him to go inside and say goodbye. But he had scurried past, afraid, pulling his cap down further on his head.

"Maybe I didn't love her enough," he whispered to himself. "I couldn't sacrifice anything for her."

"That's not it," Eric jumped in. He gingerly placed a hand on Hyesung's back, a hesitant touch. "I'm sure it wasn't out of selfishness that you didn't go inside."

Then what was it? Hyesung bit his lip before saying, "Eric, maybe you should leave." He realized how harsh it sounded the moment the final syllable entered the air, and hurriedly revised his statement: "I don't mean that in a mean way. I just...I feel like maybe it's better if I'm alone for now."

"I get it. But I'm not going anywhere."

Hyesung and Eric made eye contact, with Hyesung filled with confusion. He didn't know how he was to deal with a situation in which he asked to be left alone and the other person did not wish to honor his decision.

Eric wore the epitome of a confident look when he headed straight for Hyesung's kitchen, disappearing inside. Hyesung could only wait in silence until Eric reappeared, holding a soju bottle.

"You were going to get drunk, weren't you?"

--

"I'm so dumb!"

Hyesung dropped his head onto the table, not feeling the sensation of skull against wood in his intoxication. He banged his forehead again in despair.

"Stop that," Eric scolded, reaching across the table and pulling on Hyesung's shirt. He, indeed, had suggested the drinking. But he didn't realize that Hyesung was actually mentally prepared to...well, to lose his mental state. "You're going to hurt yourself."

"What does it matter?" Hyesung lamented. He straightened up before leaning back in his chair, waving around a half-empty soju bottle like the middle-aged drunkard he was. It was the third one he was going through that night. "What does it matter that I'll get a little bruise on my face?" He placed the bottle onto the table, poking it as if he were touching a baby's cheek.

The longer Eric stared, the more he realized that there was no way he could return home with a clean conscience if he would be leaving Hyesung like this. Some drunk people quietly go to sleep, others seem to lose the ability to sleep without being knocked over the head first. Hyesung definitely belonged to the latter group.

"Okay," Eric said, standing up resolutely. "Time for bed."

Hyesung didn't show any signs of having heard. He patted his fingertips on the table, his nails making persistent tapping noises against it. 

Eric stared at this man, who he idolized and who now could have been a child stuck in an adult's body. He always did wonder what Hyesung was like when he did human things. And now he was in the singer's house, watching him progress through a drunken personality.

Eric sighed, pulling out his phone. It was almost midnight, but his sister would certainly be up studying. He dialed his number and brought his phone to his ear, his eyes sharply keeping an eye on Hyesung.

"And where are you, sir?" Yurin asked promptly upon picking up.

"And hello to you, too," Eric replied. "I'm at Hyesung's."

No response for a moment. Then, in utter disbelief: "You're at who's?"

"Hyesung's."

Yurin cackled, laughing so hard that Eric could picture her keeling over at her desk, nearly tearing up. "Are you serious?" she said, her voice shaking violently from her convulsions. "Oh, dear. You're hilarious. Why are you trying to sound like you two are best friends and you're just over for a friendly sleepover?"

"I'm not joking, Mun Yurin!" Eric snapped. "I ran into him a couple of hours ago and long story short, he's drunk and might set the house on fire without proper adult supervision."

"Wow, and you got him drunk? I never knew you were capable of such a thing."

Eric grimaced. "Oh, yeah. So funny, hahaha. Anyways, I'm calling to tell you I'm going to be home late. As soon as I get him unconscious and in bed where he can't hurt himself."

"Okey dokey, bro. Whatever you say."

Eric couldn't quite pinpoint the reason for the sarcasm in Yurin's voice before she hung up. But he soon discovered that he had bigger things to worry about when he saw Hyesung stumble to his feet.

"Whoa," Eric said, sliding over to his side. "What're you doing?"

Hyesung scratched his head, a mannerism that Eric found overwhelmingly adorable. "I want...water." Hyesung pointed a shaking finger at the soju bottle. "Water."

"That's not water," Eric said, moving the bottle out of Hyesung's reach. Hyesung, though, continued tilting his body forward as he strained to grasp the bottle and ended up toppling into Eric's chest.

Eric instantly froze, becoming so flustered that his brain could not process what to do. Hyesung's face felt warm, the heat seeping through Eric's shirt to his skin. Redness crept up to Eric's face as Hyesung mumbled "water," transferring more heat from his breath.

"Off to bed!" Eric bumbled, turning Hyesung around by the shoulders and shoving him in the direction of the bedroom. Poor Hyesung was not in full possession of his balance to begin with, and with Eric's pushing he nearly tumbled right onto the floorboards.

Eric didn't bother turning on the lights to the bedroom and instead threw Hyesung onto his bed in the dark. Heaving as if he had just run a marathon, Eric slumped against the wall, still blushing. He placed a hand over his mouth to attempt to control his breathing, shutting his eyes.

When he had considerably calmed down, he lifted his gaze. Hyesung only shifted in negligible increments on his bed, so Eric felt it was probably safe at this point to assume that Hyesung would pass out. He was about to turn and sneak out to leave when he heard Hyesung mutter something against the blankets.

"Not...sleepy. Dreams are...bad."

Eric paused in his tracks, his hand against the side of the doorway. That was right...he remembered that Hyesung had been having trouble sleeping due to his dreams. He looked over his shoulder. Hyesung's brow was furrowed, forming an anxious look in the dim lighting of the night.

Eric frowned upon seeing the expression. His feet physically would not inch any more past the doorway, away from the troubled figure on the bed.

He sighed, wondering why on earth he had grown up as this kind of person.

--

Hyesung clapped his hands over his ears as the bell noises reverberated through his brain. The impact of his palms against his head did not help in healing his headache, but he was more intent on blocking out the sound of his doorbell.

He had been dozing nicely but was fully awake now, thanks to his migraine and the doorbell. It was mysterious, hearing that noise, especially since he usually had so few visitors that he generally never even heard it. Whoever was out there now was not making himself stranger to that button.

After a few seconds of silence, Hyesung came to the conclusion that the person was gone. But then he heard muffled voices.

He did not want to get up. He only wanted to lay in bed and nurse his aching head. But he could have sworn that those voices were loud enough to be coming from inside his apartment.

It took him a painfully long time to drag himself out of bed. He wasn't motivated enough to care about his clothes or his bedhead and instead stumbled out into the hallway. When his vision stablized enough, he saw both Eric and Junjin standing at his door. 

His initial reaction was to be confused. He was very confused, especially when he noted that Eric's hand was on the door handle from the inside, meaning that he had been the one to open the door, meaning that he had been inside.

"What's happening?" Hyesung groaned.

Junjin held up his phone. "I called you a bunch after we left work to see if you wanted to meet up and keep on going with the songs. You didn't answer."

Even with Hyesung dealing with his headache, the tension in the room did not pass him. He couldn't put his finger on it, but Junjin and Eric were standing too stiffly, too defensively. They impulsively were not directing their attention at one another.

"Why don't you two sit down," he offered, leading them to his couch. Mostly, he wanted to sit down for his protesting head, which was opposing him standing on his two legs.

When the three of them sat on the couch, Junjin took the spot on Hyesung's right side, and even though it would have been simpler to sit beside Junjin, Eric seemed to make a point in crossing the room to sit on Hyesung's other side. Hyesung felt like some kind of prey between the two of them, until he noticed that whatever animosity existed between the other two men was going straight through him and toward each other.

Hyesung sniffed a little bit to interrupt the atmosphere. "So...you saw I didn't answer your calls and came here?"

Junjin nodded swiftly. "I was worried that something happened. And it was weird when you weren't answering your door before, too." For the briefest moment, he glared across at Eric. "And then he opened the door."

Hyesung made a glance of inquiry at Eric, who explained, "I was only going to stay here for a little bit. You were drunk. I was worried you would crack your skull open. But then I fell asleep here."

Something about the way both of them were talking was putting up Hyesung's guard. They certainly did not know of one another's existence before this, but why did it feel like they were...enemies?

"Well," Hyesung said, trying to make himself as small as possible, "I guess I should introduce you two."

"Oh, no need," Junjin said, his voice tainted with scorn. "We met at the door."

"Yes, we did," Eric agreed, although his tone could not have clashed more with Junjin. He sourly smiled. "Yes. We did."

Hyesung's headache intensified as he tried to decipher what exactly was going on. The whole situation was unintelligible, and far too much for his brain to currently handle.

Junjin abruptly stood, patting the front of his jacket for nonexistent lint. "Well, I'll get going to work then."

"I'll go with you!" Hyesung said, standing and immediately reeling from the dizziness that struck him.

"I guess I should take that as a sign to get on my way," Eric said in such a polite manner that Hyesung felt almost scared of him.

Junjin barely acknowledged Eric's words and stiffly turned away, marching off toward the door. Hyesung helplessly followed after him with Eric trailing along in his footsteps.

"I'll see you around," Eric said, putting on his shoes and stepping outside first.

"Okay," Hyesung answered. "Thanks."

Junjin was silent on their way to work, and Hyesung felt out of place yet didn't dare to start any conversation. Instead, he withdrew into his own thoughts, overflowing with how Eric had stayed over to keep vigil over him. He pursed his lips to contain the smile that was trying to reveal itself. Maybe it was the feeling of being cared for, or the sense of companionship, or something else. 

Whatever it was, it was making him feel a spot of glee shine through his heart.