AN: So...yeah, it's been over a year since I last posted anything here. I've kind of lost interest in kpop in general, to be honest. However, after Jaejoong finished his military service, I started watching a few old DB5K videos, and a lot of the feelings I had about them came rushing back. I'm still not into kpop particularly, really just DB5K/TVXQ!/JYJ/etc. because I'm just focused on other things right now - mostly Harry Potter, tbh, that's what I've been writing fanfiction about for like the last 6-9 months, at least. But I decided to look through some of the songfics I finished a while back but hadn't uploaded yet, and found one that I hope y'all will like. Good news for momoayasaki, if you're even still reading this and haven't given up on me yet, it's AU, and has nothing to do with the lawsuit or DBSK even. Bad news, or good news, depending on how you look at it, it's really angsty. Has a hopeful ending though, if that's any consolation. Talks about suicidal thoughts, self-hatred, and actually attempting to commit suicide. It's written in third person point of view, but it focuses on Jaejoong. Also, Yunho drops an F-bomb in this, I don't remember if any of the songfics I've posted have done that. I can edit it out later if it bothers y'all, but I thought it more accurately conveyed his feelings than any tamer words I could think of would have. Anyway, enough of my rambling, here's the story:

The Spill Canvas “Self Conclusion”:

    Fade in, start the scene, enter beautiful girl. But things are not what they seem, and this is no stereotypical Hollywood romance. The beautiful heroine of this story is not a girl at all, but a boy named Jaejoong. Born the only boy in a family of girls, fate had it that he would be the most beautiful of them all. On the outside, everything was perfect in the Kim household. But if one were to spend a day in Jaejoong's mind, they'd know that nothing was truly alright. The beauty everyone else saw never seemed to match the reflection he saw in the mirror. Either he wasn't pretty enough, or he was too pretty for his gender. A disappointment to his family, that's all he was.

    Things go from bad to worse for Jaejoong when he realizes something else wrong with himself: he likes boys, not girls. He's flawed, broken...and despite his every attempt to convince himself otherwise, it isn't something he can change. He pretends, and avoids questions about it, and tries to learn to live with the knowledge that he's never going to fall in love with someone else and have his feelings returned, because who would want to be with someone like him? His parents and the rest of his family will surely hate him for it. So he hides it. He withdraws from everyone emotionally, knowing that if he allows anyone to get close to him, they'll surely find out the truth...find out that he's a terrible person, nothing more than a defective waste of space.

    Years pass like this as Jaejoong dies inside, a casualty of a war he wages with himself. At barely nineteen years old, Jaejoong has had enough, so he waits until his family have all gone to bed, sneaks out, and gets a cab to the mall in town. He beelines for the elevator, going up to the top floor of the ten story building, and then continues up the stairs to the roof, ignoring the signs warning people away. Jaejoong is so focused on the painful numbness inside his heart, that he fails to notice the other man sitting on the other side of the roof.

    Jaejoong walks over to the side of the building, staring out at the city, the lights bright against the backdrop of night. After a few minutes of berating himself for being such a spineless coward for hesitating, Jaejoong steps up onto the edge. He stares down at the busy roads down on the ground fifteen stories down, and pauses, feeling a flash of uncertainty, of fear towards the oblivion he faces, before pushing away his fears and beginning to lift his foot to take the plunge.

    Jaejoong feels himself fall, but in the opposite direction he'd expected, and finds himself on the concrete floor of the roof, with the man he didn't notice earlier crouched over him.
    "Excuse me, sir...but I have plans to die tonight...and you are directly in my way,” Jaejoong murmurs, knowing that the man will probably just chastise him about suicide being wrong.
    "Excuse me, but do you have the slightest clue of exactly what you just said to me and exactly who you're talking to?" the man demands.
    Jaejoong looks over the man's face, and vaguely recognizes him as Jung Yunho, the heir to the famous Jung Inc., one of the largest, most influencial companies in all of South Korea. The pictures of him in magazines and news papers don't due him justice. The man is gorgeous. "I don't care, you don't even know me," Jaejoong replies, ignoring his fleeting thoughts of how much he wishes he could ever be with someone like this man.
    "I know...but I'd like to change that soon, hopefully,” he tells Jaejoong, shocking him.

    Why would this man, who practically has the world at his feet, ever want to have anything to do with someone like me? Jaejoong wonders to himself.

    “We all flirt with the tiniest notion of self conclusion in one simplified motion. You see the trick is that you're never supposed to act on it, no matter how unbearable this misery gets.”
    "You make it sound so easy to be alive, but tell me, how am I supposed to seize this day when everything inside me has died?" Jaejoong retorts.
    "Trust me, I know your legs are pleading to leap...but I offer you this easy choice. Instead of dying, live...with me by your side."
    "Are you crazy? You don't even know me!" Jaejoong sputters, not understanding why the man who was just recently dubbed 'Seoul's Most Eligible Bachelor' would be expressing so much interest in someone like Jaejoong.
    "I know that...but like I said, I'd like to change that soon hopefully...but I can't get to know you if you're dead,” Yunho points out.

    “You don't want to get to know someone like me...I-I'm defective. I don't deserve to live. You'll only end up hating me,” Jaejoong retorts, the raw pain in his voice and expression enough to break even the most callous individual's heart.

    “I would be lying if I said that things would never get rough. I know that all this cliche motivation could never be enough to convince you that your life is worth living. I could stand here all night trying to convince you, but what good would that do? My offer stands, and you have to choose for yourself where we go from here,” Yunho replies, getting up off of Jaejoong, knowing that the beautiful boy must choose for himself. If he wants to die, Yunho can't stop him, and physically preventing the boy from choosing death won't do anything to convince the boy to live.
    Jaejoong lies there in silence for several minutes, staring at the handsome man standing over him. "All right, you win, but I only give you one night to prove yourself to be better than my attempt at flight,” Jaejoong finally says. “But, I swear to god, if you hurt me, I will leap. I will toss myself from these very cliffs, and you'll never see it coming," Jaejoong warns.
    "Settle down, precious...I know what you're going through. Just ten minutes before you got here, I was gonna jump too," Yunho admits. “We all flirt with the tiniest notion of self conclusion in one simplified motion. The trick is that you're never supposed act on it...no matter how unbearable this misery gets.”

    Jaejoong stares up at the man practically every woman in South Korea wants to be with, and practically every man in South Korea wants to be...whom the media reveres as being the perfect man. Jaejoong stares up at him silently, shocked by the man's confession.

    “Surprised?” Yunho asks, chuckling humorlessly.

    Jaejoong nods slowly. “Why...why would you...everyone thinks you're perfect, women throw themselves at your feet, men want to be you...why?”

    “People put me up on a pedestal just because my family is rich and they happen to think I'm handsome...but what they don't realize is that I'm just as flawed and ed up as anyone else...I just keep it to myself, not letting anyone see, while my inner demons eat away at me,” Yunho confesses, sitting down and resting his elbows on his knees as he gazes out at the city. “None of them see the real me. They hold me to impossible standards, or see me as a stepping stone, a way to give themselves higher status in the world, to make their lives easier. But the truth is that I'm just a human being. A rather worthless one at that. I haven't done anything to earn the praise I get from people. I didn't earn my status. My father and grandfather did that. I didn't even earn my so-called good looks. It's my parents genetics.”

    “No offense, but...why'd you didn't you jump? What stopped you?”

    Yunho chuckles humorlessly, the corner of his mouth tugging into a fraction of a genuine smile. “You wouldn't believe me if I told you.”

    “Try me.”

    “An angel.”

    “Oh? And...what did this angel say that was so convincing?” Jaejoong asks incredulously.

    “It didn't say anything to make me step down from the edge. In fact, he stepped up onto the edge to jump himself,” Yunho replies, staring straight at Jaejoong to make it clear just who this 'angel' he's referring to is. “In that instant, I decided that before I left this world, if I only did one good thing...I would save this angel from himself. So when he moved to jump, I grabbed his wrist and pulled him away from the edge...and you know the rest.”

    “I'm no angel,” Jaejoong scoffs.

    “Neither am I,” Yunho points out.

    “What if you can't save me? What then?”

    “Then I'll know that I'm truly a failure and that I truly don't deserve to live.”

    “That's not true,” Jaejoong murmurs. “I've only just met you, but I already know that you're kind, selfless, courageous...and about a gazillion other adjectives. Otherwise why would you bother going out of your way to pull some girly looking boy you've never met from the edge of a ten story building, and then lay yourself bare to him in an effort to make him feel better about himself.”

    Yunho flashes a small, genuine smile. “Tell you what. We could go back and forth like this all night, but how about instead, we make a deal.”

    “What kind of deal?” Jaejoong asks suspiciously.

    “I'll keep living if you will. We'll save each other. From now on, when all else fails, we'll be each others' reason to continue living. If one of us gives up and takes the plunge, or there will be nothing stopping the other from doing the same, or until one of us feels strong enough to save themselves...but, until then...we'll be each others' savior,” Yunho suggests. “Deal?”

    Jaejoong thinks about it for a moment. “I guess I don't exactly have anything to lose, so...deal.”

AN2: So, I held off on posting this a while ago because I was debating turning it into an actual, proper, multi-chapter fanfic, but, clearly, I haven't written any farther into it, even though I could definitely make an actual fanfic with this AU set up, I just don't know if I ever actually will. If y'all are interested in that idea, I'll put some more thought into it and see what I can do, but no promises either way.

AN3: mysterycodes, idk if you're still interested in my writing after my year-long absence, but, although I haven't gotten around to it yet, a songfic based on Jaejoong's song "For you it's goodbye, for me it's waiting" is on my to-do list, so I'll try to write that out for you when I get a chance.