Final.

Myungsoo never really considered himself normal. Normal was quite boring. He wanted to be extraordinary because that was cool. His mum always told him he was special and unique, unlike anybody else.

Myungsoo liked pictures. Pictures and cameras. He liked to look through a lens and capture a moment, scent, feelings and everything else. Pictures captured memories but Myungsoo’s pictures were never able to capture him.

The first time Myungsoo met Howon was when he was ten. He remembered seeing him clearly one day in the park next to his house. He looked lonely and lost, so Myungsoo thought he needed a friend. Everybody deserved friends and Myungsoo was feeling alone, too.

“Hello. What’s your name?”

The boy looked up from the ground, his eyes were clouded and blank. He mumbled something that Myungsoo couldn’t catch.

“Can you speak louder? I can’t hear you,” Myungsoo frowned.

And then his mum called out to him. He heard her hurried footsteps pad onto the grass. The boy looked away from Myungsoo and back to his initial position.

“Hey! You haven’t told me your name yet,” Myungsoo whined. He just wanted to be friends.

He felt his mum’s hands grip his shoulders, spinning him around to face her. He watched her as she looked over his shoulder to glance at the boy. “Come. Let’s go home now.”

She ushered him, with a firm hand on his back, while staring back at the strange boy still sitting on the grass.

~

He kept appearing at the park and Myungsoo learnt that his name was Howon. Lee Howon and he was from Busan. Wow! He had a friend from Busan now. Howon was eleven and that meant that he was the hyung, but Howon told him they could be friends.

Myungsoo liked him. They played together on the playground and played tag.

~

“Happy Birthday Myungsoo.”

A cupcake was handed to him with a big lit ‘15’ candle sitting on top.

“Thanks Hoya.” Hoya, a nickname Myungsoo had given him a few months ago. Myungsoo laughed, blowing out the candle, “A year older.”

“Finally, you’re the same age as me now. Not for long though, two weeks and I’ll be a year older again.”

“You better not ditch me because you’re a big and mighty sixteen year old senior student,” Myungsoo frowned.

Howon chuckled, “Never.”

Myungsoo smiles every time he thinks back to when they were younger and he wished that someone could’ve told him to stay away because he was going to fall in love and falling hurts like a .

They grew up together and sometimes Myungsoo felt like Howon was leaving him behind as the years went by because Howon seemed to be so much more mature and knowledgeable. Myungsoo could only cling onto his waist in hopes that Howon wouldn’t go too far away. He didn’t even know when it happened when he started to have the urge to run his fingers down Howon’s jawline that he was always showing off. He didn’t know when his heart started to beat a little faster every time Howon smiled or laughed because he realised Howon didn’t smile or laugh very often and it gave Myungsoo fuzzy and warm feelings when he knew it was because of him.

You know, they diagnosed him with depression. What a joke. Because he had no friends. Myungsoo just didn’t like talking to people because everyone had to have opinions. Most of them judged, and they did it so easily to place a label on someone before even speaking to them.

Except for Howon. Howon was the only one. They, they as in those doctors in blinding white coats that Myungsoo has been seeing every once in a while since he was twelve (every week since he turned sixteen eight months ago), also diagnosed him with other things. Like schizophrenia. His mum started to sob at the word. He knew it was utter bull. A difficulty to grasp what was real. Withdrawn from reality. Good. Was it so bad that he wanted to escape this reality?

Every time he found himself stuck in the little room sitting on the red velvet chair listening to the clock tick and tick and tick he wanted to run, grab his camera and just breathe. Because Myungsoo was suffocating and he didn’t know how much longer he could last with no air.

When he told Howon how he felt Howon just laughed at him, his eyes crinkling into small crescents, his wide dimples appearing by his mouth.

“You’re not crazy.”

“I wouldn’t care if I was.”

Howon isn’t real, Myungsoo. He is just a figure of your imagination and you can’t seem to differ him from reality.

Myungsoo couldn’t care less.

Because Howon was so ing real to him that it didn’t even matter anymore. He was real because what they had was real. A friendship. Everything felt as if Myungsoo was being thrown into the deep end of the pool, with no ability whatsoever to keep him afloat and alive, and he could only grab onto Howon’s hand to keep his head above the water.

“They said you weren’t real.”

“Do you believe it?”

“I guess so.”

“No, I don’t think you believe it at all,” Howon said and he walked away.

No, Myungsoo didn’t believe it. He didn’t want to believe it. He didn’t want Howon to leave him because then he would be alone again. And being alone was what Myungsoo feared most.

“I love you, you know,” the confession was out and it hung between them, like a thick fog.

Howon nodded.

“But you’re someone I created. You’re part of me, you’re part of my imagination. And I fell in love with someone that my crazy mind created. It’s ing pathetic!”

Howon flinched at his tone, cold and self-loathing.

“But you’re so real. So, so real. My reality. You are my reality. And I love you and I’ll let you go.”

A single teardrop fell from Myungsoo’s clouded eyes. “I’ll let you go.”

And he realised he was talking to nothing but air.

~

Myungsoo remembers him clearly. His face, his smile, his eyes were perfectly and forever indented into his mind.

Looking through the stacks of pictures he had, he tried to search desperately for the familiar eyes, face and smile he had known for so long. Even after the years he wished that somehow he was able to capture the essence of his first love.

Maybe he was still crazy. He didn’t care. Because he found crazy much better than normal. 

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