XVII

Eunhyuk's gaze was glued to the door and if someone would've asked him how long he had been standing there, he wouldn’t have been able to answer. He surely looked like a total idiot as he kept standing there and it was his own luck that no one had walked by yet.

The raven head didn’t know the reason why he even stood there; this was not the place he wanted to be, not at all. This was wrong, he shouldn’t be here and what he wanted to do was to turn around and to leave so he could go to the place he belonged to. But he couldn’t do that; he couldn’t run away from his problems any longer, he had to face them. And so he stayed and idly lifted his hand to very slowly push down the small button right in front of him to ring the doorbell.

He pulled his hand back, let it fall down and his gaze fell with it. It took a moment, long enough to almost make him throw up, but then he could hear silent steps from behind the door before it was pulled open. A pair of legs appeared in his field of vision, legs and the hem of a dress.

"Oppa."

Eunhyuk's gaze slowly travelled upward until it was met with a gentle smile on a tired face. Soojin tucked her hair behind one ear and pulled the bathrobe she wore a bit tighter. It looked like she had been sleeping and Eunhyuk had woken her up; it didn’t make him wonder. It was past three in the morning, everyone with a normal sleep pattern would be sleeping right now. And that was also what he should be doing. He should be in his bed with Donghae right now. Eunhyuk would pull him close and pretend that everything was fine when in fact it wasn’t at all.

"The shooting took longer than you expected, right? You look so exhausted…" She grabbed his hand and softly pulled him inside. "We should go to bed, shouldn’t we?"

He didn’t answer, only absentmindedly toed off his shoes. Her hold around his hand wasn’t tight at all, but it felt like it was made of steel, incredible to loosen.

"I almost thought you forgot me. I sent you some messages. Didn’t you get them?"

"I'm sorry. I… think I forgot my phone", he mumbled as he was pulled along to the kitchen.

"Oh, never mind", she laughed softly and held on to his arm. "Do you want to eat something?"

The kitchen table was still set; there were candles on it that seemed to have burned for some time before she had blown them out. It looked like she had been waiting for him with dinner – and knowing this made his heart even heavier than it had been ever since putting Donghae to bed.

Donghae…   
Thinking about him didn’t make anything better. He wanted to escape from all this, but he didn’t know how.

"Oppa?" He hadn't noticed that they had come to a stop. "Do you want to eat something?"

He blinked his eyes and thought about the right words to say. There were none, he didn’t know what to say even though he couldn’t remember the last time he had eaten something. This simple question was already too much for his brain. "No, I… No, I'm not hungry."

Eunhyuk stared off into space and was too lost in thought to notice that she wrapped her arms around him and rested her head against his chest. She looked up to him and her eyes were filled with admiration. "I'm so glad that you're here", she almost whispered.

The raven head didn’t hear her. The only thing he heard was his heart that screamed so loudly that being with her was just so, so wrong and that he should break up with her, right now, right in this moment. This right here was a chance and he had to take it if he wanted to be happy again.

"Listen…" His voice was so quiet that he almost didn’t hear it himself and his gaze in search for Soojin's without finding it. "Listen, I think we… have to-"

"You look so tired. Let's go to bed", she interrupted him and already pulled him along to the bedroom. Without the tiniest bit of struggle he was pushed down to the mattress as they arrived there, but he still wanted to say it. He had to say it before his courage left him again.

"Soojin, I mean it. We really should-"

"Poor you", she said with a sad smile and made him lie down, her hands on his head until it softly hit the pillow. "Let's sleep a bit, alright?"

It was like she exactly knew what he wanted to say and blocked his words every time he tried it. She slipped underneath the covers next to him and avoided looking at him as she tucked both of them in. Eunhyuk became uneasy. He had to makes things clear.

"Please listen to me", Eunhyuk tried it again, his voice filled with silent desperation. "I don’t think that we-"

A pair of lips that was suddenly pressed against his own immediately silenced him.  
He had kissed Soojin countless times in the past and even though the kiss now wasn’t any different, there suddenly was a whole new feeling inside of him: guilt. Eunhyuk hadn't kissed Soojin again ever since the thing with Donghae had started to get more serious and kissing her now made him feel like he was cheating on him. In fact he had been cheating on Soojin because she still was his girlfriend, but now it was different.

Back then when he and Donghae had spent hours with nothing but kissing, he hadn't felt bad for doing it, simply because his mind had been filled with him only. He had been cheating on her, yes. But feeling her lips pressed against his own now made him betray Donghae because he was the one in his heart, even though nothing was official yet. And he wouldn’t cheat on him, he would never do that.

His eyes widened and he pushed her away, wanted to get out of the bed, but she held him back. "Please let me go", he whispered close to tears that finally wanted to break out of him as she pushed him back down. "P-Please, I can't do this anymore... I-"

"It's okay. You're tired, oppa. You have to sleep."

He shook his head and tried to push her off, but Soojin didn’t let him. She reached her hand out, brushed it over his chest before resting her head on it. The light weight of her made him feel like he was choking.

"It's not… It's not. All I do is making people suffer..."

A sob broke out of him and he managed to sit up even though she still clung to him. He wanted to push her away again; he didn’t have the strength.

"Oppa-"

"Please… I don’t want that. It-It has to stop. I can't take this anymore… He's… waiting for me and y-you… I don’t want to hurt you. Y-You and…"

Eunhyuk never finished his sentence because he burst into tears. Soojin stayed strangely quiet beside him, didn’t touch him or made a move. He couldn’t stop crying, wept helplessly because the pain he felt didn’t stop either.          
In his current situation he hurt them both, Donghae because Soojin was still there and Soojin because by now she surely knew that there was someone else. To make one of them stop suffering he had to hurt the other even more and even though he knew that the right thing to do was to decide for Donghae, there was a part of him that still declared it as wrong.

It was an endless fight between his heart and his mind; it was a battlefield that hurt them all instead of making anything better. And while his heart only saw the positive things like the love he had for Donghae, his mind only saw the negative ones. All those what-if-questions flew around in his head, moral questions and the undeniable fact that Donghae was male. His heart screamed that love was blind, his mind roared that other people saw it as a sickness and that men weren’t allowed to love each other. His heart shouted that Donghae would make him happy and that he shouldn’t care about anything else, his mind yelled that whatever he felt for him couldn’t balance with all the hate their relationship would draw on them.

It was like Donghae was his heart and Soojin his mind; both of them were dear to him because he had spent so much time with Soojin that he couldn’t erase her from his life like nothing had happened. He didn’t love her, but she was a friend – and no one had ever asked him to decide for one friend and with this abandon the other. Eunhyuk couldn’t do this alone and at the same time there was no one who could help him. He didn’t know what to do anymore.

If Soojin would let him go, things would be so much easier. He would've the freedom to explore what he had with Donghae then and the yelling of his mind would surely become more silent. Then he wouldn’t have to hurt her and there was one less decision to make. But it seemed like Soojin wouldn’t let him go.

"Oppa", she said in a soft tone and rested her head on his shoulder. Soojin was smiling, despite everything. "You won't hurt me if you stay here for the night."