3.

In Which Everything is Not Okay

-

When do you think Kyungsoo will realise how terribly sick he is? Of course, I don't mean it in that sense. I can tell what you're thinking by the look in your eyes, but you're unfortunately mistaken. After all, his results have shown that he was immune to the disease which had claimed his uncle.

Yet loneliness is a sickness in itself. And what awaits Kyungsoo is a much more daunting prognosis. He will later regret the genetic combination festering in his deoxyribonucleic acid which had saved him from Joonmyun's fate. There is yet a crueller end than death itself.

I should know. I am the one to have infected him.

-

They're riding the wind against its current, buffeted by cold shoulders of leaves and a hailstorm of pinprick teardrops spitting from the sky. Kyungsoo's fingers digs shivers into Jongin's waist and counts ribs beneath each pad while Jongin drives them both to the brink of reality where money, health and education plays no part. It's a masquerade which smells too strongly of roses; sickly sweet with stagnant pools of time.

Kyungsoo's skin appears a few shades too white, bleached beneath hospital fluorescents and skin crisp with apple scented disinfectant. Jongin's tanned skin flushes dark chocolate against vanilla in the stripes of intertwined fingers; deliciously warm and tight.

They stumble into Kyungsoo's apartment with Jongin doubling back with frustration, having forgotten to lock away Kyungsoo's helmet in the under-seat compartment of his Suzuki. Loose pages on gastroenteritis crumple further into the darkness and Medical Physiology for Students bends at the spine. Jongin slams the leather down and hides them from sight. This is the one region of Kyungsoo in which he has no desire to explore.

-

Joonmyun, Kyungsoo decides, was the starting point in his life. Perhaps in this sense, Joonmyun's passing is the cue for Kyungsoo's own end, despite being twenty years overdue. His mother had taken his place on the gurney and he had opened his eyes as she had closed hers.

Despite this, she had never retained any sentimental value in Kyungsoo's mind. Joonmyun had more than compensated for his sister in both affection and support. To him, his mother was a figure in his memory with the permanent face of a twenty-one year old (as was her age in his only photo of her) and no voice or expression.

She was a person who had left this world that Kyungsoo had been borne into like a curse. In his mind, Kyungsoo had no mother. It's a terrible thought but Jongin's expression doesn't change. Kyungsoo watches lashes brush against sun-kissed cheeks with the squeaking of markers against paper long and short mars into the silence. Lamp Black drips dark faces onto creamy pages like Jongin's dark thoughts kept hidden in his mind.

"And where does it all end for you?"

"Here." Kyungsoo watches curdling ash mark the table like a habit, dusting a soft and ephemeral dream which lingers but doesn't loom, "In this room. With me at the table and my dreams stacked in the corners gathering dust. I have my books and my mind and my songs and that's enough."

"And Kim Jongin? Where will he be?"

Dancing, Kyungsoo says, sweeping his gaze over hooded lids and every hard and soft line of his features; smooth tanned skin which doesn't reflect the hollowness in his eyes and the long bony fingers threading trimmed nails over smoking paper. Jongin would be dancing with white poison tumbling from his lips into a toxic halo over his head and music sinking syncopation and kinetic rhythm into each limb in muscular flow. He'll be dancing to the ocean of glitter that is a million fervent eyes.

Jongin rests his chin in a cradle of fingers and Kyungsoo almost loses him in the tangle of black hair and bony protrusions. His eyes peek like prisoners from between cords of ligaments and condylar nodes through parchment skin. "So I live as a puppet, crumbling beneath my own vices while you play hooky with your books and music?" He barks out a chuckle which cracks along the edges and tumbles into an abyss which Kyungsoo hadn't noticed before, "That hardly sounds fair to me."

Kyungsoo cracks a smile, "Life's not fair once you've played the game for long enough."

"I think you're just making up the rules as you go along."

"The rules began to break the moment my mother gave birth to me."

"I thought you didn't have a mother?"

"Everyone has a mother." Kyungsoo shrugs, "Mine just lasted twelve minutes of motherhood."

The light bulb flickers but doesn't die and Jongin runs his fingers over Moleskine leather, snapping the book shut. Their knees bump under the table but neither boy draws away.

Please log in to read the full chapter