Jongin knows.  I don't need to tell him how to pose, how to center himself.  Jongin knows.  He allows me to kneel beside his figure, fresh as ever under the lens of my camera. Jongin lies on his back, the wind whipping through his thin shirt, ruffling his unkepmt hair.  He is undisturbed by the flush and fall of nature.  

This is model Jongin, but he's taken the persona of human Jongin.  Raw head and angled shoulders.  It's all human, tarnished meat and skin.  

This Jongin is here for one purpose - to work for a camera, just as I am.  But I can feel the passion surging from him, intoxicating like dark coffee and second-hand smoke.  Strange because these were feelings that I haven't known before.  Jongin forces me to know them.

This is my promise to you, Jongin.  If modeling makes you happy, it makes me happy.

__

After a few hours, my tailbone begins to hurt.  When I lie on my stomach, my chest aches.  My arms are numb, frozen in place.  But Jongin lies still, completely motionless.

I peer through the lens of my camera, eyes blinded by the brightening sky.  I check my watch and the time says noon, reporting that we've been up here for over four hours and my camera has been working nonstop.

"Jongin," I say.  "Wake up."

He doesn't move.  His skin remains smothered in his stillness, and I'm reminded of the first day he appeared - young and dynamically fresh.

"Jongin."

I set my camera aside as my body begs to be in motion.  "Jongin," I mumble again.

"I'm dead, hyung.  Please don't talk to me."

I breathe a sigh of relief.  Despite the well that he has carved behind his collarbones, the valleys that are so obviously dug beneath his heart, and the darkness that powerfully drowns out his young eyelids, he still has the strength to answer me.  "Jongin, please stop saying that."

He turns over, onto his front, nestling his forehead into the crook of his forearms.  He grumbles like a child, voice low.  "I'm so tired," he says, his voice muffled against his skin. 

"We're all tired."

"You don't understand," he sighs.  He lifts his head.  It isn't until he looks at me that I realize his eyes are b with tears.  "I've been tired for a very long time."

I search his eyes, the eyes that were, just hours ago, blinking and widening as he drank in the views of the moving world.  Now they are gray, dank like the placid walls of the building.  But unlike the building, there are no vines of graffiti and borderline chalk.  There is nothing to shatter the gray, only the photograph of his skin, drained of color long ago.

I squeeze his shoulder and we exchange a look that's a bit short of something shown between coworkers and more of something known by two friends.  Jongin's eyes light up when we touch, and I try not to shy away.  At least it's what I hope I'm seeing.

"In case you haven't noticed, or haven't paid enough attention," Jongin continues, "I'm not like you."  

He stands.  His legs are thin beneath the dark fabric of his pants.  His hands are shaking, trembling as they travel up to his collar.  

Internally, I beg him to put on his coat again.  I can feel the brisk wind slipping in between the crooks of my fingers and it makes me sorry that Jongin stands bare.

"The first day I came to the photo studio," he says, "was the first day you caught me on camera."  His pale fingers work their way down the buttons of his dress shirt, one by one.  "The day we played that useless game, was the first time I asked you for a favor."  He bounds the sleeves of his dress shirt into his charred hands, like a child clinging to his last toy.  "Today, is the first time I'm revealing myself, my secrets."

His shirt is off, and the wind ripples through the ridges in his chest.  

I stand, struck with confusion.  He throws the thin garment into the heap that was once his white woolen coat.

"You've seen me wear it."  He points to the coat.  "The first time we met, the second time we met.  In the supermarket with the young girl you wanted to see so much.  You said it looked like wings.  And you were right.  My wings.  But you've also seen me without them.  You're right, hyung.  With my wings, I am model Jongin.  Without them, I am human."

Step by step, he brings himself to the very edge of the roof, feet spanning less than a breath of space before he's far enough to fall off.  I swallow.

"Jongin," I breathe.  Though he's facing me, I feel that he is far away.  My eyes are quivering and I don't want to see him fall.

"You've seen the news.  That man that was found here.  Dead.  He was not killed.  His life was taken away from him."  Jongin spans his arms wide, leaning his head back to take in a deep breath.  "I want you to photograph me.  Right now, like this.  Do it now. Hurry."

I obey, raising my camera to my eyes, wanting everything to make sense, but yet I still understand nothing.  

"Hurry."

I stare into the lens.

They are empty.  I gasp.

"Hurry, hyung."

I remove my camera, and still he stands, barely there.  Confusion is not enough to describe my state. My strongest observation is how hard the wind is blowing, and if it blows any harder, he will be carried away.

"Hyung."

I gasp again.

"Hurry."

In a suffocating umbrella of muddled confusion, I bring the camera up for the second time.  Every breath I take in is like an ocean of anxiety and nausea boils in the deepest parts of me.  My hands are shaking and the tips of my fingers burn like wasted flowers on fire.

It happens in a split second.  My camera voices a distant click, and then I hear a long sigh.  A sigh of desperation, of relief, of finally I think I can let go now, hyung.  But I'm afraid to move.  

I my lips, expecting but not expecting.  The world is spinning, my head is spinning.  There is so much that I think I know, but I don't have the strength to learn it all over again.  The sky is quiet, but the silence rings like chasing fires and I listen for the image of Jongin falling, falling, falling.  The seconds are stripping away my lifetime's worth of found inspiration.  Everything is spiraling away.  I'm losing it all.

Hyung.  

I hear it.  

Hyung.  Kyungsoo, hyung.

It's there, a voice so weak, so small, so Jongin.  I hear it, and it resounds, echoes inside of me like a pounding drum.  I hear it, my ears desperately harvesting every shard, every fragment of the voice.  All an illusion to my ears.  I hear it, memorize it, remember it.

Jongin.  It wasn't long ago when we came up here together.  Do you remember?  Do you remember how you called me hyung, and asked if i wanted to make this our heaven?

If we could turn back now - if I could turn back now - then yes, Jongin.  Yes...I want to make this our heaven.