(pulling) triggers

jongin clutches onto the towel as he chokes back the sobs beginning to bubble up his throat. the door hangs off its hinges, forgotten, when he collapses into a bawling fit on the bathroom floor. his throat is a clamped up mess as his fingers scamper frantically for support, any support to pull him out of the pit he’s falling into. jongin’s back slams against the wall, causing a gasp from the pain shooting up his spine. tears spill down his cheeks in what seems to be a waterfall of salty liquid. his palms press against his temples, a desperate measure to squeeze the gory image out of his head. no, it can’t be true. he couldn’t possibly be dead. his heart pounds against his ribcage as he clutches onto his head, screaming. he worries for a moment if he was having a heart murmur. jongin gasps for the air he’s releasing faster than he can take in. the pounding of his heart echoes through his ears and races through his panicked nerves.

wish as he might, the evidence is still against him. a shower of blood stains the bathroom tiles, a startling crimson against pearl white. in the bathtub floats a halo of brown hair, an empty shell that bleeds into the water. the sight is ghastly – the blood coats the shower curtains, body, and tub. his its skin is pink from rigorous scrubbing, angry scratches lining his inner thighs. there are cuts, in organized columns, on both his arms, bearing a startling resemblance to the one jongin has on his forearm. the gun lies on the floor beside the tub, unattended and tempting.

the next five minutes are a blur for jongin.

he recalls his father dragging him away from his brother’s corpse, only to realize that he’s been hugging his drenching form. he can hear his mother wailing from the entrance but chooses to focus on the limp body that was once jongdae.  jongin remembers tearing away from his father to grip onto his dead brother, crying and yelling at him to ‘wake up’. he runs his fingers through his bloody hair and cries into his neck. he can’t feel the soft breath against his cheek like his usually would or the chuckle that escapes his lips once in a while. it registers to jongin that he’s gone, totally and utterly gone.

why did you leave me? he whimpers, tightening his embrace. why did you leave without a goodbye?

as his father rushes down the stairs, heavy thumps accompanying his steps, jongin hears his mother slide down the wall. he wants to console her, to tell her that everything’s going to be okay. that’s the problem though – nothing is ever going to be okay. he falls back onto the tiles, his sobs now turning into hysterical breathing. it’s then that jongin realizes that crying is easy like breathing: the more you hold in, the more you let out. he slams his fist atop the cold cast iron tub. the vibrations ripple across the now velvet water surface, disturbing the peace his brother slumbers in. jongin pulls himself off the floor and stares at the mirror in anguish.

then he screams.

he screams a scream so broken, so empty, that he scares himself with the raw agony tearing its way out of his tiny frame. the scream catches itself in his throat, hooking his vocal chords and making them fall silent. his lips remain apart as a soundless scream tears through. no sound, except for wheezing, leaves him. he doesn’t have the energy to scream, to cry, and to do anything. jongin feels numb; everything feels so numb – the lights, the water, his limbs, jongdae’s body, the blood. he can’t feel anything. as jongin’s chest heaves from air loss, he chokes back another sob.

his fist finds its way to the mirror’s surface, an ear splitting shatter reverberating off the stained walls. he stands there, panting at the immense pain the shards of glass is giving him. blood trickles down his arm, dripping from his elbow and into a puddle. jongin continues to note that bleeding is easy like crying. it flows, trickles, steams, and leaks. it’s the same – colorless salty tears versus cerise metallic blood. the pain in his fist is forgotten as he sinks, knees first, onto the floor.

mirror mirror, don’t you see?
what you show, is killing me.

the words, written in lipstick, on the mirror have cracks in their letterings. his handwriting pierces jongin’s heart, clenching it in remembrance. he reminds himself that he will have to talk about his brother in past-tense. a bitter laugh rumbles up his throat. three times his chapped lips mumble his dead brother’s name. who’s going to be his pillar of strength now? jongin doesn’t have anything to live for anymore. the distinct sound of sirens brings jongin to his senses. jongdae is dead; he isn’t going to crawl out of the bathtub and whisper sweet nothings in his ear.

did jongdae repeat the mantra every day? did he whisper the calorie counts to himself as food touches his lips? did he smash sharpeners into walls to retrieve a simple razor? jongin recognizes that he’s finally breaking, breaking like his brother. like kyungsoo, his dead best friend, and like joonmyeon, his rotting cousin.

the ones he loves always leave him in the end.

he sits, holding jongdae’s icy hands, picking apart his flaws like weeds, wondering how anyone could’ve seen them as roses. he waits for someone to burst into the bathroom, to snatch the gun out of his hands and wrap their arms around his trembling frame. did jongdae do the same? did he wait for jongin to knock on the door and scream until he opened up? jongin feels cool metal of the gun against his palm, resembling the comforting touch of a mother. as his finger wraps around the trigger, jongin wonders why he’s doing this. why he’s going to fall asleep for eons and eons to come. why he decides that lying six feet underground would be the best for him and his soon-to-decay brother. is this all because jongdae left? because jongdae’s depression is contagious?

it takes a moment for him to grasp that he hasn’t been copying his brother. jongin recalls the two am whispers that keep him awake all night, a tossing and turning thought that penetrates his mind. he remembers that he was the one to instigate depression in jongdae; he didn’t do anything but drive it to it’s full force. how he follows the habit instead of grabbing jongdae by the shoulders and shaking some sense into his crazy mind. how he doesn’t think when he gets hurt, but chooses instead to crunch his sister’s sharpener under his heel. how, when jongdae’s sobs dissolve through the thin walls and into his room, jongin doesn’t do anything but cry along with him. a tidal wave of comprehension washes over him – he did this.

i’m so sorry, hyung. he grips onto the handle of the gun, tighter as each word syllable leaves his lips. i didn’t mean to kill you.

jongin carries a motherload of emotion on his shoulders; all in but four seconds, they slip off, landing in a heap on the floor. relax, a voice whispers in his ear. everything’s going to be alright. before everything fades to black, jongin leaves himself a question to answer as he places death in his mouth. the nozzle hits the top row of teeth in his mouth, a sickening ‘clink’ of bone against metal. the boy runs his tongue along the pathway for the bullet that will soon kill him. as his thumb disables the safety clip, he feels the barrel with the bullets turn against chin. jongin concludes that he’s ready to die.

which is more deadly – a gun or a thought?

the gunshot that rings throughout the house brings the police running into the bathroom, weapons drawn. what they find is more horrifying than what the kim family has seen. there’s a boy clinging onto the hand of an older dead boy, as if soothing him into thinking that it’s the right choice. the one white bathroom has a fresh new coat of dark red blood spilling down its tiles. both siblings die in the same way – a single bullet penetrating the skull; death is instantaneous.

a gun gives you the opportunity, but a thought pulls the trigger.