Labyrinth

At dinner, Jinhwan’s food remained untouched, and two heads were turned towards him out of concern.

“Are you okay?” It was his mother’s voice that brought him out of his head, her face peering towards him as she waited for an answer.

“What are you thinking?” Jinhyeong’s voice was just as patient for Jinhwan was quiet throughout dinner when it was usually the time for the three of them to talk about what went on through their day.

Jinhwan asked himself the same question as he looked at his brother knowing he wouldn’t give him an answer.

Jinhwan was thinking that the human mind was fickle. He was sure he meant it when he said goodbye to Hanbin, but the boy was still in his head like it was welcome territory.

He was wondering where they went wrong, where it all began to change. He was wondering if there was truth to Hanbin’s words, or if they were all made up. He was wondering if all the months they spent together was worth it.

“I was thinking of the homework we were given. I actually have to get to that now. Excuse me,” he said it with a smile he hoped was convincing enough.

“Aren’t you at least going to eat?” His mother called after him as he dashed through the stairs.

“No, I’m good.”

Jinhwan expected the wave of emotions to hit him when he closed his bedroom door. He was holding back during dinner, afraid that his family would worry if they found out, not allowing an entry point to whatever it was about to haunt him. He was so certain of that but it didn’t come. Instead, there was nothing: no voice swimming in his head, except for the conversation from downstairs he could overhear. There was just this unexpected sense of peace, like he got rid of shackles around his feet, and he was afraid that he didn’t know how long it would last. He didn’t like it.

He knew he had to brace himself of what was to come, but having this peace resembling nothingness threw him off course. He didn’t know when it would pass, and he knew for sure that all things would come to an end. Nothing was an exception. He stopped knowing what to expect and he was afraid that he wouldn’t be able to get through it.

Exhausted, Jinhwan decided to call it a night and rested his head on his pillow. It was too early but lately he had found himself often sleepy.

He just stared at his stark ceiling, trying to recall the exact words he told Hanbin because he forgot, and that was weird, because if it was Hanbin, he wouldn’t forget.

He had no idea where the ideas came from. It was like there was a voice that called out to him telling him what he already knew, but didn’t admit. He shook his head, willing the thoughts away, and the moment his eyelids relented to the weight on them, he heard a voice: low but close like a whisper; distinct:

“Do you even know anyone?”

Jinhwan shot up, feeling suddenly awake and he looked around to look for the source of the voice. He was alone in his room.

He knew the voice, knew exactly where he heard it and he couldn’t take the image out of his head so he opened his drawers to look for the drawing pad and charcoal he kept there, before the boy seated on the rooftop disappeared, until he realized that he had given them up to Jinhyeong.

Jinhyeong was clearly the better artist out of them. Like their mother, Jinhyeong was a natural at art, while Jinhwan struggled to draw mere lines. Jinhwan had long accepted that he would never be great at that, so he chose to direct his attention on something else instead: poetry.

What he found on his drawer was the notebook where he wrote all his poems. Funny, because he wasn’t good at it either. He just craved to express himself. He had to put his thoughts down on paper, but as he flipped the notebook to a clean page and held the pen in his hand, he had no idea what to write. It was almost like his mess of a head was squeezed clean of everything, and left just pure emptiness.

He put the notebook back to its place and he