CURTAIN CALL

Jinhwan's lungs burned with every hurried step he took, every heartbeat that passed. He couldn't feel his face or the tips of his fingers but that shouldn't matter now. The warm wind hitting against his body as he ran told him he was trying hard enough.

It was his first time visiting Seunghoon's house and it was when Seunghoon was already dead. He wanted to laugh at the irony of it all, but that would speak more for his lack of grief, or his ability to feel anything but emptiness.

He couldn't believe his eyes, knowing he had the address down, that he went into the right building, and climbed the right flight of stairs when he could've just taken the right elevator, and that he was in front of the right door. He couldn't believe it at all that he thought he was hallucinating at first. Even from here, he could hear the loud music coming from the inside. Judging from just that sure made him think he wasn't coming in to see Seunghoon's dead body, if that's what Mino called him for.

He just stood there and waited for his heart to calm down. He was sweating from head to toe, and he felt the nausea bubbling up from his stomach.

He looked at his phone after he fished it from his pocket, and meant to send a message to Mino but his fingers kept on trembling that he had to wait. After a few minutes, he sent the text: I'm here.

Not long after, the door opened to let Mino out. He looked defeated, eyes red and wet. Mino's crestfallen expression and the loud pop music belonged nowhere near each other. Jinhwan prayed to whichever god that listened that it was all just a twisted prank because that's exactly what it looked like to him.

"Nobody knows yet," Mino began, eyes unable to meet Jinhwan's. He sounded so broken that Jinhwan somehow wanted to forget that Mino thought he killed Seunghoon. Jinhwan couldn't connect the dots, couldn't come to a conjecture as he was. He didn't even want to think.

"I'm so—" Mino paused and held his face with trembling hands as he drew a shaky breath. "So scared."

Jinhwan's heart broke, that is, if it could break any more. He reached out to touch Mino's forearm, as though to offer him some consolidation. One thing was for sure: Mino trusted him enough to let him know, but he still couldn't confidently think that Mino thought of him as a friend.

"Where is he?"

Mino wiped the tears off his face, cleared his throat and–with his bloodshot eyes and wet lips—asked Jinhwan, "How do I look?"

"High."

Mino then snorted, and there was a smug smile on his face. “Come in.”

Jinhwan didn’t know what to expect when Mino let him into Seunghoon’s lavish loft apartment but it certainly wasn’t everyone inside stopping what they were doing just to look at him. It felt like that exact second froze just for him, and he couldn’t do anything to stop feeling like something was lodged down his throat.

He couldn’t name anyone because everything blurred in that sea of familiar faces, faces he didn’t want to see for as long as he could. He also couldn’t deny that despite his state of disorientation, one thing was so damn clear: not one of them wanted him there.

The loud music took the back seat and heightened the whispers everywhere as Jinhwan passed by them. He couldn’t make sense of their murmurs in his head, didn’t want to. He was sure they all talked bad about him, anyway. It was probably just their usual talk, how he was a dirty little and how he shouldn’t even dare breathe the same air as them. It was probably just their usual talk, and he should be immune to it by now, but he wasn’t.

He all of a sudden felt heady, felt unsure of every step he took even if it was just putting one foot in front of the other repeatedly, felt like his legs would give in, felt that he should probably hold on to Mino so that he wouldn’t fall and wouldn’t make himself look any more pitiful than he already did.

And that was when it became crystal cle