Junhyung sits, chair scraping, after adjusting the battered camcorder onto its stand. There's a faint smile playing across his lips. One that's both musing and dipped in anticipation. He leans back in his chair precariously to check the dull screen of the video camera before resuming his position and rolling his hand in a motion that suggests a cue to begin

The man across from him stays as still as he was before, gaze glued to the tattered book in his hand. And as Junhyung's eyes wander across the table, littered with odd objects, the man raises his teacup leisurely. He tips the cup to drink and Junhyung lifts an eyebrow subtly at the dark, steaming liquid going past his lips. 

"What's with the coffee? You've always hated the way it tastes. And it's black, at that."

His words are responded to with silence. A rustling of paper pages. 

"What's all this for, anyways?" Junhyung pries again, shifting his elbows onto the table between them. His fingertips rustles over the dried petals of a single coreopsis, stuck in a glass vase. "You even wore the blazer you hate...” His hands wander almost restlessly, fleeting touches against strewn writing utensils, quiet fidgets with the small toy monkey.  Junhyung rolls a cork over the table's wooden surface as the man on the other side speaks.

"I heard you guys fought. Again."

Junhyung is taken aback by the abruptness, but a smile adorns his face once more. This time it's one that wavers at the edges with melancholy. "Oh? Did you hear..? That's old news really..."

He's met with a soft sigh, tinged in exasperation. Another rustle of pages.

"You should really work out whatever it is that's between you two. You guys don't even act like a couple anymore."

Junhyung's smile is brittle now. "Yang Yoseob, you really are not one to talk. Besides, Hyunseung was... difficult."

Yoseob raises an eyebrow in silence, eyes still downward to the book in his lap. "You know, I think it's that ridiculous purple hair of yours." There's a faint cheekiness to the upward perk of his lips. "It causes all of your troubles."

Junhyung's hands lift to his hat-covered head immediately and chuckles, low and closed-mouth. "You still think so, huh?"

The young man lifts his eyes briefly to flash a relatively reassuring smile. And the way his brow furrows marginally and the way his lips are spread over his teeth and the way his eyes spark faintly nearly stops Junhyung's breathing.

"I will shave it all off and send you off to enlist early if you don't dye it back to something normal."

The sound from Junhyung is an outright laugh this time around, though faint. He can't really help it. The way Yoseob's practically angelic smile contrasts with his blunt threat is priceless. It's spirited. It's so utterly Yoseob. 

Junhyung rearranges his feet so they're intimately placed with his friend's, feet tapping in a new-found ease and seat creaking as he shifts backwards. He's fiddling with the toy monkey again, searching Yoseob's face quietly. Observing. The younger is back to his book and the light through the wide window, to his side, is hitting his temples and hair in the most flattering way. Maybe it's the time of day, but really, everything looks delicate and beautiful in the light. Including Yoseob. It's almost silly, how perfectly the light reflects off vases and metal cases and the thin chain around Yoseob's neck. How the first few undone buttons of his white shirt give just enough light for his skin to glow. How the stark material of his suit blazer hangs off his shoulders. How shadows cut just the right angles in his visage. Junhyung has to breathe an involuntary sigh to stop delving.

Yoseob takes another sip of his cooling coffee, going back to scrutinizing his book. He flips several pages backwards with a nonchalant air, eyes skimming briefly before he opens his mouth and pauses a small moment. Then he speaks again, voice smooth and unblemished. "Was it really worth it? Isn't it restricting?"

Junhyung is surprised yet again, eyes enlightened in a question. "Hm? I don't... What do you mean?" He has the beginnings of a reason for the question, but ambiguous is a daily case with Yoseob.

An upwards huff of breath blows Yoseob's neat bangs astray. He sounds exasperated. Yoseob fixes wayward strands quietly, thoughtfully, before directing his gaze to the glinting lens of the camera. The stare he fixates is one b with bouquets of unspoken statements but he only asks one conclusive thing. "Doesn't it bother you?"

Pieces fit together again for Junhyung and vague understanding descends in form of a small smile. There's a faint, pensive, hum.  "Well. That... That's a..."

"That's your real problem. That's the cause. That's your flaw." His tone is lightly teasing and that faint, cheeky smile is back on his face. But Yoseob shows silent complaints by the way he tosses his book onto the table. By the way his smile is runs dry and by the way his eyes are stuck to his half empty teacup.

'This could have been avoided. You didn't have to go through this. We didn't have to do this. This is your fault, in a way that it's really not.'

Junhyung responds with a fading smile and a hesitant nod, because that's just the easiest way there is. He has to take it like the joke it was masked to be. Everything else is too much like drowning. Too much like being engulfed in a churning storm, too much acknowledgement of the dread that's about to brew.

An unscrewing of a vial and Yoseob is pouring the deceivingly clear liquid into his cup. His hand is eerily steady, like he does his every other day. Like that liquid was harmless and insignificant. And there's a crack in Junhyung's carefully concerned face at that. A crack that’s crumbling at edges and screaming indignantly as sorrow threatens his rational facade.

The younger brings the cup up near his lips, and Junhyung can feel several more cracks appear in unseen places. It's too mundane; the way Yoseob holds the porcelain between his fingers. It's too untelling, the way he swirls the contents of his cup. It's too bland, the way his eyes blink at the dark liquid.

It's stark in comparison to the ever-contemplative, undyingly bright, Yang Yoseob, that Junhyung had accepted as natural.

In between the cracks Junhyung finds words spilling before he can gather them. "Do you ever want to look back? Or go back?" His throat shifts in attempt to dissolve the swelling tumor of emotion. A tumor that's making its way to his eyes in prickling sensation.

There's a silence again, as Yoseob lips purse subtly and his gaze flicks up. And there's a moment of contact. Of searing connection and acceptance and a victory that may as well be defeat. A moment where an unnamed apprehension crashes at Junhyung's feet and washes over him like molten metal, gentle and heavy. The ferocity vanishes while Junhyung sinks. And Yoseob tilts his cup upwards and forwards then back in hesitance, and then speaks in a low murmur. "Regrets and things of the sort..." He sips at the coffee before resuming in a light, conversational tone. “I’ve always found them foolish."

Junhyung searches the face across from him. For anything, for something, for everything. For things that aren't the shutting of his eyes and the inclining of his head as he swallows the rest of the cup's contents. Anything but the other's composed face. Something that's not the nonchalance at which he puts down his cup. Everything to be seen in Yoseob's indifferent eyes.

"You should smile some more..." Yoseeob’s gaze in unwavering and tentative. It's almost like he's chiding. "You know, it doesn't hurt. Not anymore. And it didn't hurt. Neither does this." 

There's a bobbing in the jut of Junhyung's Adam’s apple as he attempts to swallow the lump of grief threatening to push through his throat. He feels like he's been blanketed by cotton, his ears seem stuffed, his head is full, his vision's hazy. But it's oddly too clear and too sharp. Everything's all too precise. He lowers his head to gather himself.

"Grow old. Live experiencing things you like. Look at what you love. This is all that I can say. These are my heartfelt thoughts as your... friend... Your friend..." Yoseob's voice pitches higher, ever so slightly, as he speaks his words, as if he's on the edge of tears like Junhyung. But when Junhyung looks up again, Yoseob's smile is brighter than it's ever been. All teeth and dimples and crescent eyes. "Cheer up. It doesn't hurt..."

So Junhyung forces the corners of his lips up in attempt of response, because his voice is too broken to speak. And he watches as Yoseob's eyebrows furrow in misplaced confusion, eyes dulling and slipping out of focus. He holds his breath goddamn as Yoseob blinks his eyes, once, twice. Slowly, as if his eyelashes were weights and eyelids were sticky. He grits his teeth as Yoseob tilts his head, attempting to regain control of his thoughts, and rub his temple sluggishly. Then it's there again, the life in his eyes and that goddamn smile. Though it's faded and half there this time Junhyung's heart seems to flop to his stomach.

"I loved you."

It's lifeless suddenly. Because Yoseob's head has fallen limp and his hands are cold. The air is sterile and stifling and it seems that out of nowhere the sun is almost gone and the brash orange of the skyline seems strangely dull.

Junhyung's lips are stretched into a line to keep them from quivering and his eyes are distant and staring. Because the spot before him is empty and the chair is bare. And alll his insides have been crushed into a rugged ball that is once again threatening to rip through him and hurtle out his throat. Because that wasn't fair. Those unhappy words, after decades, are only spoken at a departure. And it's unfair. It's cruel. Because all the unspoken were in Yoseob's final gaze. Because those words were forced to be unrequited. Because the chair is bare and so's the space and so's the eulogy Junhyung has been assigned to write.

A scraping of a chair. The soft thud as the camcorder's screen is folded in. A last glance.

 

 

 

 

So some probably noticed but this is based off of NELL's MV for "The Day Before". Which is a great song and beautiful, slow video. 

All my feels just overflow. Yo.