2.

In Which Kyungsoo is Painted with Knowledge

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The beginning is not always where it appears to be. Most people start their lives in the middle, where the rears and whips them up into a frenzy of activity.

In Kyungsoo's case, he starts at the very end, as though God had decided to dump him on Earth as an afterthought. He is the surprise post-credits scene which the entire audience misses; cherished only by the slow-minded. Kyungsoo brings no substance. He is the period at the end of a sentence.

What people often forget is that a sentence doesn't necessarily end with a period. The good writer ends cleanly. The great writer carries on in frustrating loops and turns of semicolon after semicolon.  

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The black shines off sterile tiles like a disease. It wreaks bruising shades across clinical white on white porcelain and grout. Jongdae sits beside him in starched white while Kyungsoo bends in half with forehead pressed against knees. It's not until he straightens up with stars dancing in his eyes does he realise the choking strain that weighs on his neck.

"Tell me about Kim Joonmyun." The nurse interrupts, a pen pressed against the medial line of her lower lip. Kyungsoo fancies that he sees cherry gloss staining the plastic case waxy red. "His relation to you, any allergies, medical history, any history of seizures."

Kyungsoo says that he's lived with Joonmyun his whole life, his uncle having taken him in as a newborn after his mother's passing during childbirth. "He's my mother's younger brother." Kyungsoo explains. His whole life had been spent in the back of their stall in the fish market.

Gutting, scaling, cleaning fish; his knife held like a rapier ripping gills and tearing soft skin and fine bony layers. Kyungsoo had grown to hate the store. The thin layer of water that always laps at his feet and, if Kyungsoo looks closely enough, leaks trails and tendrils of red and watery pink. Within a meter of Joonmyun's bench in the back room, the veins grow concentrated with thick bloody lines whipping in a frenzy.

"We had originally suspected meningitis or encephalitis but  we've informed a medical examiner who may ask for an autopsy. Will that be okay with you?"

"That's fine." Kyungsoo nods, his ears buzzing with a strange background static and his throat closes up, feeling bile rise. He feels sick, reliving the bloodshot eyes staring up at him. Body heaving and snapping taut and loose with foam rising from his mouth. His uncle face down with red water lapping at his nose.

The ambulance blared Doppler peals of blue and red light. He had shone jaundice yellow with pink stains on his cheek and grey foam at his lips.

Kim Joonmyun, time of death: eight forty-six.

Kyungsoo glances down at his watch. Eleven eleven. Make a wish. "So, when can I see him?"

"Kyungsoo…" Jongdae's grip on his hand tightens and Kyungsoo swallows back the lump in his throat. He doesn't know why he's crying and he doesn't want to, yet the tear rises and drips onto his knee like an incriminating taunt before soaking into the fabric. He wants to rip his arm from Jongdae, shake the nurse and scream that she's wrong. She's wrong she's wrong she's wrong, but he doesn't know why he feels this way and he sits tight to the mantra that Joonmyun's dead. He's dead he's dead he's dead.

The nurse's voice plays like a record in his head and perhaps she really is repeating it over and over again. Kyungsoo sees her lips move but his eyes are blurry and he just couldn't care enough muster the energy to focus.

Wishes were for the hopeful. And hope is another word for delusion.

-

Joonmyun disappears in miniscule snatches, like water into thirsty sand. Kyungsoo loses him in tiny pieces for a long time. He loses his uncle's belongings to men in clinical shifts and the rustling of cotton gowns and latex gloves. Joonmyun's moments and memories topple one after the other into boxes; the ripping sound of tape piercing the darkness and drowning out Kyungsoo's desolation. The letters stop coming, his laughter echoes and fades without a source and his books turn into empty shelf space beside his Steinway upright.

The fish shop is dry, produce gone and neighbours red cheeked with growing business.

-

Monday finds Jongin at his doorstep with moonlight playing in