chapter 7; nondescript

“So, I guess we’re just a twelve-teamer kinda group, huh?” Sehun asks, leaning onto his sides, ribs protruding and seeming too thick with marrow, eyes fluttering because he’s so tired. Everyone’s gone to a separate tent, Joonmyun being the only “roommate” he’ll have. Three’s in the other tents, and four outside keeping guard, probably only one though because most likely Kyungsoo probably just told them to go to sleep.

By the time Joonmyun looks up from the stacks of papers he’s organizing through, Sehun’s just looking straight at him, waiting for an answer. “I guess so,” he says, smiling and just darting eyes back downwards and continuing to write in his so-called journal. Calligraphy and set fonts, cursive letters through the edges of his low-lined pencil, led of point seven almost running out. He does nothing against it, and just continues to write. Maybe scribble, because it’s furiosity in the ways the pencil is dragging against the paper, probably blotting through the other linings and his fingers just stained with smudges.

Sehun notices this. “Are you okay, hyung?”

The other doesn’t bother looking up, strands of sepia just charring through his eyes, something hiding within. Fastidious droops now, undergoes the letters he’s drawing, and he just swoops them right back up with such delicacy, mental note on how Sehun needs to be more oblivious to his feelings. He gives a short reply, “I’m fine,” and he hopes that it ends there.

It does, for the most part, but it furthers on in a direction that’s so invidious. Annoying some, really and Joonmyun almost wants to tell Sehun to shut up but he doesn’t because that would be considered rude.

“How about Kris’ leadership today, getting all of us to shut up. That was some tough to do, especially with most of us having weapons on. I’m surprised he didn’t fall onto the ground a few minutes later, blood pooling out of his ears, you know?” Sehun says, leaning with elbows back against the pillows now, comfort on the blades and back almost aching. He doesn’t move.

“Yeah, yeah,” Joonmyun says, shrugging the whole ordeal off. Has it only been a day? Feels like two. No, three. Maybe even four because time’s feeling fast for how slow and obnoxious it really is.

“Like seriously,” Sehun begins, but first taking a hand and ruffling through his hair that’s still managed to style. Then he takes off his jacket, and reveals the gauze that’s almost crimson-wetted now and Joonmyun makes a note on how he needs to change it tomorrow. “He was kinda cool-looking, besides how he always looks like a total-. Like in school.”

Joonmyun sighs, begins to doodle against the margins and the holes, led still crushing the paper’s weightless weight. “Yeah,” is all he manages to say, and Sehun quirks his brow at the noncomitant reply, sighs in-between becoming noticeable and how whenever he looks up, something’s not there.

“Are you sure you’re fine, hyung? You seem kinda...bothered,” Sehun points out, and he moves over to where Joonmyun’s sitting. In response, the brunette moves away the stacks of paper and puts down his pencil, looking up to meet his eyes with the slitted ones, emotions in an emotionless face that’s so morphed like clay. Like hardened clay.

“I said I’m fine,” Joonmyun says, more sternly, and Sehun flinches. From the hours of the afternoons, to midnight, to now where the horizons meets dawn is where Joonmyun’s at his nerves. “I’m just tired. Why don’t you try going to sleep, now? It’s almost morning but I bet it probably won’t matter anyway. It’s not like we’re going to be doing anything tomorrow.”

He doesn’t bother looking back at Sehun whose eyes consist of desolation. Uncompromising looks, unmutated feelings towards one another at the moment. Maybe it’s the lack of sleep, and maybe it’s just how the moments are tense at the moment but he backs away. Oh, he backs away to the other edges of the tent and he just lies down. The pillow feels warm all of the sudden, and no matter what side he turns it on and what corner he’s lying his head on, it just still feels warm.

“Alright,” he says, once he’s situated beneath mild and above too warm, halfway meeting. “Well,” he begins, takes a breath, takes another breath, swallows emptiness. Desolation, like said before, travelling from eyes down, meets in the narrows of his bones, where they don’t connect like a jigsaw and he just sighs. “Goodnight, Joonmyun.”

“Goodnight,” Joonmyun says, meeting with Sehun’s eyes for a final time, and a smile that’s exchanged is just enough for Sehun to drop asleep, probably ten minutes later into hearing indescript scribbles, recognitions of what letters are being written down, and too much memorization of the romanization before eyes drooping down. Along with incoherent mutterings, something about being too stressed out but Sehun’s mind is too boggled with other thoughts to just think about that. He doesn’t even hold his gun out, and it’s just lying there but it’s okay. Because Sehun trusts easily, even if it’s been about thirteen hours.

Approximately an hour later, Joonmyun puts the stacks of fifteen-neatly written papers to the side, the corner in the tent underneath his backpack where no one knows to touch. Then, he moves over to the side, lies down and just tries to sleep in thoughts.

Thoughts about Kris, and how Joonmyun should’ve been the one giving out commands, and orders of silence, stern looks and just fazed eyes. But he didn’t, and Kris had taken something like that away from him. His sense of authority robbed away. So easily though. Just so easily.

His side feels suddenly so uncomfortable, and not from how his jeans are just so cut through, stretched from how he bends his knees. And it’s not because of how the air’s so moist from over here, sounds of guns echoing in the backgrounds and a familiar voice that damns him so much. So he just moves back, and back, and just a little more back until it finally feels cool. Sides of pillow dragged along with him, and thoughts of Kris still circulating in his mind, blood rushing to his head of how uncomfortable it is.

Probably muttering, but Joonmyun doesn’t care because it all comes off of incoherence as his visions become more blurred, and the noises of calibers in the backgrounds being shot off sounds so distorted. The lines against the tents tangoes away, colors of tangerines apparent to him. He even feels an arm wrap around his waist, and he knows that it’s not his arm. Yet, just yet, he doesn’t pull away because it helps him trance away more easily. Sounds of breathing, soft snoring, not an irksome noise. A sort of tranquility. So Joonmyun falls asleep, thoughts of leaders in his mind and feels of fabric brushing against fabrics, shoulders against shoulders and chins on tops of skulls. Calming.

-

It’s young, the nineties and Joonmyun’s just a tiny toddler, learning the first few letters of the abc’s and confusing the b’s with the d’s. How adorable.

Currently, the four year old’s in his kindergarten class, coloring away at a Pororo figure being. Except the fur of the creature is green and his hat is red. Oh well. Kindergarteners, right? Despite the dysfunctional colors and albeit on how green clashes against red in so many horrifying ways, Joonmyun’s coloring it neatly and the lines are intact, unlike any other adolescent who’s just ripping aways at the crayons, breaking every bar they get their small, wobbly hands on.

Unfortunately, the other toddlers notice this and three of them manage to get a sneak peak of it before snatching the piece of copy paper out of Joonmyun’s grip.

“Hey, give it back!” Joonmyun yells, voice so high and just like a soprano, sharp. “That’s mine! You have your own!” He feels that it’s appropriate to yell every single word, and that it’s deemed to make him more tough-sounding. That’s what his dad always said, anyway.

But the other kids just laugh, and Joonmyun’s confused on why. “Look at this,” one of them says, and Joonmyun notices on how he’s really chubby. Almost looks like a penguin, but less on the adorable features. More on a hippo. “He’s wearing green! Pororo has blue fur, stupid!”

The lone toddler just gasps, and tries to reach for his paper back but the chubby kid just pulls it out of his reach, almost too high so he falls. “Stupid’s a bad word and you just used it,” Joonmyun says, defiantly, and he crosses his arm, no attempts in grabbing the paper back because it’s green, and not blue.

“Yeah?” another kid says, and Joonmyun notices how he’s really scrawny. He almost looks like the stick figures he’s drawn and has hanging up on the refrigerator at home. “Well, at least he’s not stupid enough to color his Pororo green, and his hat red!”

Joonmyun just stays silent, something hurting on the inside but he’s not sure of what to dignify against it, because he’s just a kid. Maybe something like feelings? He doesn’t know, because his parents uses that word a lot but he’s never gotten around to it. The only words he’s managed to say a lot were legos, and spaghetti. Typical four-year-old.

And then the final kid, the one who’s the tallest, really tall and his neck makes him look like a giraffe, says something. “You’ll never be perfect because you’re so stupid, Joonmyun.”

Then it just breaks down, adjacent to the castle blocks a few feet away being broken from the school bully. Something pangs even harder, almost seeps into where his mom says his heart is and it just drips to the bottom, drips like the juice that’s all over the table, spilt because the chubby kid had thrown it. And Joonmyun begins crying, and the three kids just laugh, and the teacher has to come over and give a scolding in order for them to stop. But even after they stop, a last smug look is thrown at Joonmyun but he doesn’t realize it. He’s just too busy crying away, and he struggles to stop. He wants to, he really does, because his parents say that big kids don’t cry and he wants to be a big kid, but the words are just like the pains of bees (that’s what his parents say a lot) and so he just cries.

Cries until he gets home, and cries whenever he’s playing with his toys. Just cries until the next day. He’ll never be perfect. He doesn’t even know what perfect means. But it hurts.

--

Baekhyun stands there, eyes peering over the rising horizons. Sun almost rising up, irrelevant from the fact that shrouded clouds oversee it to the point wher