After.

It was better before, Yixing recalls. His music was better.

Dawn threatens to settle before his eyes painting the scenery in burnt orange, the kind of colour Yixing would never imagine he'd accept as existing, but in all honesty there were times he used to believe the life he's had for the past few years would never be possible, too. Yet, fate had managed to surprise him again, to jolt him awake from that dream he was living in carelessly with no touch to reality. Yixing should have known better, nothing good ever lasts in his hands.

He smiles at the irony with a broken grin that looks more like a cry blurred in hopelessness, and goes back to composing. It's sad, because the whole process resembles much more decomposing these days - melody wasting away in covered with dust nothingness, words staining his heart with ink that he coughs out from his system just to drown in again later. Buried alive, beyond the veil where silence is vital, there comes music from to life now. Just the corpse of an old requiem and how silly, Yixing still thinks he can realign it's bones, tack the skin back together, and so he does, but the creature before him is always so grotesque, like an experiment gone bad, that he tears it down with disgust and disdain, calling out curses from the very grounds of his soul.

He is shaking, so he wraps his hands around his own body, breathing unsteadily, and he props his head up against the polished surface of his royal to listen to the sweet tune of his heart breaking in million pieces. Pieces that are all scattered up his trachea and sting and crack his singing voice and tear him apart and make him lose himself over and over again in less than a day, and then repeat the whole cycle with each damned sunrise.

~


Yixing prays. To God, or whoever is ready to listen, he prays each day, to at least find closure, because he knows lost is lost and in his case, finding what's his is not an option.

There are the good days, naturally, when he realizes he has everything he has ever asked for, but when his demons step out and from under his skin, he can't forget he has all what he's worked for taken away from him relentlessly. In such days his pills double, and so does the anxiety, and the scratching of nails over the back of his hands, and the kisses that are meant to calm him down, but bury him deeper in misery instead. Whispers of sorry sting like salt over his wounds that don't bleed for years now, but still feel open and infected with the plague of worn out excuses.

~

Sehun meets him on Friday. He has come in Changsha only to see him, so Yixing can't say no, not this time, and is forced to go.

The kid tries to persuade him to go and drink bubble tea in the store that just opened a few months ago. Yixing snorts back that really, Sehun is way ahead of the age when it was completely normal for him to rot his insides with sugar, but the latter somehow still wins the argument and here they are, in a crowded boba shop, trying to have a decent conversation over the puberty shrieks of teenagers.

“It's like you never grow up, Xiexun” Yixing says with a bad Korean accent, his Changsha dialect taking a prevail after so much time spent here. Sehun doesn't sound bothered even a bit as he takes a sip of his chocolate poison. Actually, he does seem a lot more mature now, calmer than he was before, like he is already used to the life throws at him.

“I can't say the same about you, Lay hyung. You look like a grandpa.”

“I am not Lay anymore, kid.”

“And I'm not a kid, but you still call me that. Besides we practically kissed once, on national TV, for that matter, so at least have the decency to give me the right of some further personal space invasion.”

Yixing would laugh, except he hasn't done it for such a long time, that he doesn't seem to remember how to do it exactly. Sehun is worried about him. Sehun is here, seven years later, to remind him of that ridiculous pseudo kiss thing that the others used to mock him about all the time, because he wants to see Yixing's eyes twitch and his dimple show again, the one that makes everybody smile back sub-consciously.

“How are you doing anyway, hyung?”

Ah, that question. He hates to answer that one. Luckily, he is not often the one to pick up the phone and explain that it's the same, Jongin or Minseok, or Yifan or whoever is calling to hear how things are going I mean, he is trying. We all are. But it's like I am losing him.

Strange. He feels like he is losing himself too.

“I haven't slept a wink this week, but other than that I'm fine. Working on stuff. Living it through.”

“Yeah, I can totally see that” Sehun retorts, dropping all the formality. “You are a train wreck.”

What right does he think he has to say...

“Don't zone me out, Lay. You've been doing this for quite sometime now and it's starting to get on my nerves, you know? I swear I don't understand how Luhan... ”

“It's getting on your nerves, Xiexun? Wow, because for what I remember, you are the one who bailed when it was hell for me. How sweet my misery is getting on your nerves now.”

It's inevitable, Yixing believes. They always end up here. On the phone it was easier, he could hang up on Sehun if he wanted to, but he has to watch him in the eyes now and see how throwing the daggers at him slowly brings Sehun down, face low, gestures dripping with remorse. By the third word it's not Yixing speaking, nearly shouting, it's the anger he has bottled inside, that boils his blood with venom.

“You are not the only one who went through hell and back, hyung. All of us did in our own ways. Mine was running away, my hell was leaving all of you and having to deal with that decision by myself. I was twenty years old, Yixing, and I will be sorry for the rest of my life for acting like the child I was, but how does that change anything?”

“It doesn't.”

“Damn right you are” - they grow silent just to realize they are of the few people left in the shop, embarrassing as it is. Yixing pays the check, cutting Sehun's every aim to treat him, and they go out where they have the cold hug of the windy afternoon soothing the cuts their words have left on the other's consciousness.

“I just want things to be like they were, okay?” Sehun admits as they walk towards Yixing's house.

“I am a little too old to be a Korean idol again, kid. Also, a bit too handicapped too.”

This time they both laugh somewhat crustily, like the past is trying to peel the layers of regret and betrayal from their deformed friendship bubble by bubble.

“You know what I meant.”

“And how is that supposed to happen, Xiexun? I see you, forgive and forget... what then? I am still numb from the inside out, so how did that help?” Yixing's voice is tired more than anything, cause really, all he wants is to fall asleep and never have to wake up again, except it would be too selfish, especially when he has someone to take care of. How easier would things be if he were all alone.

“You are asking all the wrong questions, hyung. You keep on repeating I can't do music anymore, and I , I am so incredibly worthless, how can there be a person who still gives a about me yada yada yada. You can't do music because you are stuck in the same old dungeon of self-pity and you don't even try to get your out of there.”

“Listen, Xiexun...”

“No, you listen to me, hyung. How about this time you ask yourself, what good did any of this bring me? Or... given the circumstances, what can I do to feel again? Or, am I really not good enough?”

Yixing listens, he sincerely does, although these are questions well known to his mind. He has spent nights shifting in bed, waking his beloved one, even, whist trying to answer them. Albeit to no avail. If he's lucky, sleepy kisses draw him back to dreamland, and loving hands wrap around his waist with wordless security, as a breath mingles with his own, keeping him more alive than air does.

“Because I was good enough, that's why this kid did it, Xiexun. If it weren't me, it could be any of you.”

Yet he would have had it so much easier if he was not the one to have suffered. Guilt. That's what leaves him awake at night, the guilt of wishing it was not him, but one of them to have opened that thing. The wish that it wasn't him who was frightened every second of every day that something like this can happen again and this time, it might put an end for real.

“It's sad hyung, cause you still don't grasp any of it. It was all of us back then. “We are one?” That bullcrap was supposed to be for the publicity only, yet we managed to actually become one. Hating on each other, cheering on each other, eating together and sweating together on the same stage for four years, that made us a family. When you hurt, we did hurt too. Except you were too busy worrying you failed us to understand that neither fame nor money even mattered after seeing you crushed like that.”

Yixing's throat feels dry and he clenches his fingers rhythmically just so he doesn't panic, he has to deal with this once and for all.

“You can stay at our house, kid” Yixing sighs with nothing else left to say. “I am cooking tonight and you will be able to taste your hyung's famous rice rolls with shrimps.”

“Infamous, you mean” - Sehun corrects him, suddenly back to his normal self. Changsha is refreshingly quiet at this time of the day and the only sounds in the street are their voices, rising louder than appropriate.

“Just because the shrimps were bad once eight years ago doesn't mean my cooking , Sehun.”

“Whatever, hyung. Just make sure that sinks in, okay?”

Yixing doesn't have to ask him to clarify, since he is already aware. He doesn't promise anything. But it's a fact that when he falls asleep tonight, drunk on wine and the delicious lips of his most beloved one, the past kind of sneaks at the back of his mind, threatening to open old wounds or scar him with new ones.