a/n: hi guys so i'm finally back from my hiatus with a fic and before you read the prologue, i'd like to say that any part in the fic that is identical to some other fic is totally coincidental. after writing it, i think it feels like failed anterograde tomorrow (i mean omg that is such a brilliant fic) and a bit of jinxed. i added a bit of absolute chanyeol for side!baekyeol.

-  p r o l o g u e  ,

He flails and kicks around on his apartment's plastic tiles and causes one chair next to him to collapse with a loud thud, but he cannot make any of it out through the murmuring and ringing in his very ears. Breathing is so tough to his weak lungs and palpitating heart that his lips and cheeks turn a lot deeper shades of blue and he trembles. He eyes the bottle of medication on the corner of his dining table and stretches his arm out to grab it. But his vision blurs the moment his fingers wrap round the cool surface of the plastic, causing the bottle to fall and the loose lid to open, the many pale orange Trileptal capsules spilling out. He grabs some with trembling fingers and pops them into his mouth, waiting for his saliva to wet them before swallowing the capsules down the dry bottom. They make him think of a rusty metal and he feels soreness in his gums and teeth.

Kyungsoo closes his eyes and his breathing slowly steadies before he hears a knock on his apartment door. He never has a doorbell because he finds it too expensive to install it and no one even visits him anyway, so there is no need for one. The knock comes again, this time harder and louder, as if wishing the man who just had a brief brush with death would spare it a glance. He feels his way up, swallows the lingering taste of blood and the spots of dizziness creeping at the edges of consciousness and manoeuvres around the collapsed chair before opening the door.

The man at his threshold looks precisely the opposite of himself - smartly dressed in a suit, his hair combed back the way you would see in old British movies, and he smells of roses and lilies and just every kind of flower known in this world. Upon seeing him, the man breaks out in a smile and extends his arms, trying to get Kyungsoo's attention to the bouquet he is holding, but Kyungsoo does not see that because his ears work faster and better than his eyes and he catches on to the man's words.

"Hi, hyung. I am Kim Jongin and I'm here to make you my boyfriend."