Chapter 1:

I died of Blindness and Errors and Betrayals. 

Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings.

24th December 2015

“Pretend.”

Namjoon finally lifted his head up to look at the young woman who stood before him, with killer heels on her feet and a red liquor dress that hugged her slender frame. Her black fur coat fell off of one shoulder,revealing a misplaced collection of teeth marks and fading blue-black bruises. They grew darker in shade as it climbed up her neck and Namjoon had to force himself to literally tear himself away. He shifted his gaze then, meeting her eyes. But soon, he found himself looking right through her, into nothing. His pulse raced as the snow collected on his broad shoulders, but otherwise, he had no immediate reaction.

The word she’d said was difficult to administer into his brain. After all, his body wasn’t in its best shape. He was clad in nothing but a white tee, dirt and blood staining the white cotton, together with a pair of torn jeans. His split lip still oozed blood from the cut and a knock-out punch had left a dark shade of purple blooming in its wake on his cheek. Namjoon gazed at Kyuri in silence, taking in her dress that was torn at the hems and her originally ironed straight red hair in disarray, snowflakes collecting on the crown of her head.

It seemed as if… he was staring at his own reflection.

“Pretend?”Namjoon’s voice was raspy, his throat dry and raw. It felt like nails scraping against a chalkboard everytime he tried to speak.

Kyuri calmly shrugged off her fur coat and stepped towards Namjoon, throwing it over his shaking frame. He was still panting from the run to the park, his chest feeling like it was about to cave in on itself no matter how much Namjoon tried to take in deep breaths and calm his train-wreck heartbeat.

Namjoon kept silent for awhile, but he was the one to hold her chin and lift it up so that their gazes would meet eye to eye, thumb pressing against her bottom lip. Kyuri didn’t protest against his touches, even with a bruised, bloodied lip that stung painfully when Namjoon touched it. Instead, she watched him with a face numb of emotion before opening to speak.

“Let’s pretend… you never lied,”Kyuri breathed, and Namjoon swore her voice would make the Angels cry.

“Let’s pretend I’m not your friend.”She spoke again, seemingly with more determination in that one breath of a sentence.She closed her eyes, mascara running down her cheeks, finally rendered with nothing else to croak out desperately. It was her final plea.

Just once. Please Namjoon. Just once.

One more time.

The ticking of Namjoon’s Cartier watch seemed to get louder by the second. Ticking away and robbing him of every little, seemingly meaningless thing he ever owned in his 29 years of life, from the spaces between his fingers.

Dreams.

Memories.

Love.

The young man pulled Kyuri forward by her wrist before his long arms securedly wrapped around her slim waist like a vice. A chain that held her to him; he was not a safe haven nor did he provide protection. Kyuri had refused that a long time ago.

When she finally opened her eyes, Namjoon’s lips were just shy of a wisp from her own bloodied ones. He thumbed away her stained black tears from her pale cheeks, the colour of coal. She felt freezing cold in his arms though the coat should have provided her with at least some amount of warmth. He pulled her against his chest, never minding the screaming shattering pain of his bones, his ribcage refusing the weight of her. No. His heart whispered. You shouldn’t do this. She doesn’t deserve this.

But Kim Namjoon was just the man who would go through hell and back for the woman named Choi Kyuri.

“Let’s pretend we never met.” Namjoon finally said in return, with his arms around her and relished the feeling of her own hands locked around his neck.

He pressed his forehead against hers, their noses nearly touching and their quiet tears vanishing into thin air and only for them to know. The dead silence was comfortable and their staggering breaths synced in harmony. They were nearing the end and right now, he was hers.

And everything.

~.~.~

Namjoon thought of how Lady Luck must have laughed at the turn of events. She must’ve been in a bad mood, a mocking scowl on her face as she looked down upon him. Namjoon could only huff bitterly in return.

Yes. He did deserve this. An expiry date on his forehead and a hefty amount of money to go along with it. And with Kyuri in the picture, he could do nothing more to prevent it. It was sealed, impossible to escape from. That much had been made clear to both him and Kyuri. They had approximately a week left to live. Namjoon nearly cursed, wanting his death to come much sooner with a bullet to his brain so he would forget it all. To be done with it.

But instead, he had his ex-wife in his arms, weak and cold and vulnerable. The woman who cheated on him. The woman who gave him up for money, a mansion and another surname to replace his.

Yet, if she had held any sort of power in the past, it had been whisked away clean that very night. And it seemed to show in her physically, Namjoon thought to himself. Kyuri’s body was limp, weak. He’d never seen her this way before, save for the first night Namjoon had broken a wall into two along with a sacred promise he’d made to her a very long time ago. And all because of a few numbers scrawled onto his palm in permanent ink and a crimson lipstick kiss misplaced on his left sleeve.

Namjoon walked into the lobby hesitantly, looking around. Not a soul could be seen and all Namjoon could hear was Kyuri’s soft breathing. The building seemed abandoned but Namjoon knew by the ocassional passerby that a couple of homeless people still took advantage of the empty rooms and made it their homes.

He and Kyuri took the staircase to the highest floor but the longer they walked, the more Namjoon felt like laughing at himself for his foolishness. Why were they doing this? It was meaningless torture;the walk to their rooftop studio-apartment felt like retracing back old memories that wasn’t even worth a dollar. His heart clenched terribly like an old wound opening up from its stitches.

These were times when Namjoon would kiss Kyuri’s lips till their lungs screamed for air. Times when the beautiful woman would push him against the wall and wraps her slim legs around his waist, heels falling off and left, forgotten in the hallway as they stumbled their way to their apartment. Times when all Namjoon wanted to say was that he loved her but the words never made it out. It was all too familiar yet all too…empty.

They were memories that didn’t matter anymore, like the smell of smoke after the fireworks.

Namjoon glanced down at the woman in his arms, looking for any sign of refusal when they finally reached their old apartment door. Kyuri’s lips were still sealed, save for the small sobs that slipped out of her cherry-tinted lips, covered in a sheen of dried blood. She finally tugged at the end of Namjoon’s sleeve and the man put her down on her feet carefully, without protest. He then reached up and hooked out a pair of keys hidden under ontop of a pillar as Kyuri stood beside him, staring at the door. She’d never thought she would come back to this forgotten place during the last few days of her life. Unbeknowst to her, Namjoon was thinking the exact same words in his mind.

When the door was finally open, Kyuri was the first to step in and flicked on the lights. She flinched at the sudden white light before opening her eyes to look around. Namjoon did the same. And the two found that everything…was where they had left it eight years ago.

The tattered couch next to the rooftop window, picture frames and little ornaments shattered in pieces on the floor, faded photographs in shreds. The apartment worked as an all-in-one; kitchen, bedroom, living room and working area for the both of them. Kyuri caught herself mid-thought. It used to… at least.

Namjoon scanned his eyes over the room and walked towards the bed, pulling Kyuri by his side and forcing her to lay down on the old sheets.  She coughed from the dust that had piled on them before curling into the mattress. Namjoon couldn’t stand there and watch her fall apart so he eventually opted to go around the apartment and pick up glass shards and old belongings to place them back where they belonged. At least they would be able to move around more freely, he convinced himself.

But it was like trying to piece back together an old faded memory, blur at the edges accompanied with their own muted voices. Namjoon nearly couldn’t remember where they had bought that god-awful table lamp that sat untouched on the bedside table or the yellow rug that smelt like a decade’s worth of dirt and dust and probably was. A crease formed in his brow when he picked up a porcelain vase that was still in good shape, except for a missing shard that had broken off its corner. Namjoon peered at it closely, finally spotting two names that had been scrawled on the base of it.

“That was your mother’s.” Kyuri finally spoke from where she sat on the bed.

Namjoon turned to look at her. He didn’t even bat an eyelash when he realized that her red dress had been peeled off her skin, leaving her in a matching set of black lacy lingerie. Kyuri held her knees propped up to her chest. Her fur coat still sat on her shoulders, a sorry excuse to keep herself warm.

Namjoon merely nodded, looking away from her direction. “I remember.”

Of course he would. The vase had been given to them as a wedding gift, made by Sun-Young’s own hands and held a message for the couple that had been engraved on the base of the vase.

Kyuri held her hands out open wordlessly for the vase and Namjoon handed it to her promptly before muttering something about checking whether the heater still worked. The young woman gave a small nod as she turned the vase experimentally in her hands, peering at it absentmindedly.

“How is she? Sun Young?” Kyuri finally asked, fingers still tracing the pink and red flowers that had been hand-painted onto its white porcelain surface.

Namjoon gave a grunt, hitting the machine twice more. “She died five years ago. Same year as my old man.”He answered casually, even letting out a small laugh at the end.

Namjoon remembered his foster parents as a woman and a man who couldn’t function without each other, even though they were worlds apart. Sun Young had chosen her passion as her line of work whilst Jae Suk worked as a banker from the working hours of eight till nine. Once Jae Suk had left their family, SunYoung was quick to follow a month later. Fate had made it that way, Namjoon’s heart whispered.

Kyuri was silent except for an ‘oh’ that slipped free out of her lips. On the other hand, Namjoon came back to the bed with a scowl as he took a worried glance out the window. Snow was piling up on the streets and the winter winds had left the two cold to the bone.

“Electricity still works but the heater doesn’t,” He muttered under his breath. “We’re gonna freeze to death.”

Kyuri knew what Namjoon was about to do before he even picked up a nearby chair. Its legs were already broekn but Kyuri stopped him with a hand on his wrist.

“No. Leave it.”She insisted. She didn’t want to see him break apart…whatever this apartment was. “There should be some quilts in the cupboard…just use that.”

Namjoon gave her a questioning look but went to the cupboard and brought back a pile of thick quilts that promised at least some warmth to last them the night. He tossed them on the bed wordlessly.

Silence passed over them for awhile before Kyuri tugged on Namjoon’s sleeve gently before muttering a quiet, “Take it off.”

There was another questioning look but Namjoon obeyed. A white t-shirt stained with dried blood and dirt wasn’t the most cleanest clothing to sleep in, he reasoned with himself, as if he needed some kind of reassurance that Kyuri was not asking for something more than warmth. So he took his shirt off, leaving his jeans on and tossing the shirt together with Kyuri’s red dress on the floor.

Kyuri had stood up from the bed during that time, limping her way towards the sink. She searched through the drawers for towels and wet them, before bringing them back to Namjoon together with a pail of water. Thankfully the water was still running.

“Did you clean them?”Kyuri whispered as she sat beside Namjoon. The young woman surveyed the state of Namjoon’s bandaged torso with practiced eyes, lips set into a tight straight line.

Namjoon shook his head, giving out a painful hiss when Kyuri hooked her fingers under one of the bandages experimentally. She then started dismantling the bandages with extreme care, going even at a slower pace with each hiss Namjoon emitted. Once the bloodied bandages had been tossed away, Kyuri started rinsing the towels in the ice-cold water, before dabbing away at the fresh bruises on Namjoon’s back. Namjoon’s muscles clenched and he kept his teeth gritted together, trying to withstand the pain.His back was facing Kyuri and so he tugged the quilt closer to his chest, trying to conceal the more obvious source of pain. It didn’t go unnoticed.

“Stop that.”Kyuri snapped at him in annoyance, before forcefully turning Namjoon to face her.

Namjoon gave in, the quilt falling away to unveil the ugly stitches on his lower torso, spanning over the ridges of his well-defined abs. The stitches had obviously opened up from the excessive movement and more of Namjoon’s flesh was exposed to the still air. Namjoon spared a small glance at Kyuri but if she ever had any sort of response, she had restrained it well.

“You need to go to the hospital.” Kyuri mumbled, but with a tone that told Namjoon he wasn’t in a place to argue.

Once Kyuri had pressed the towels over the open wound, Namjoon’s jaw tensed and his teeth locked against each other, restraining the painful cry he kept trapped in his throat.

“This isn’t enough.”Kyuri added on, as she placed the towels and pail in the sink. “You need to check if it’s infected.”

Namjoon didn’t say anything. He knew that the cuts on his back needed to be looked at. The men had held weapons against him, long knives that Namjoon thought only the mafia used. Lady Luck was the only one that had kept him safe and breathing.

“I’m sorry about your parents.”Kyuri whispered after a long moment of silence. Namjoon gave a nod. Kyuri had known his parents since they were teenagers and she had basically treated them like her own, even after their divorce.

But Namjoon’s heart felt numb against the apology. No form of words from the young woman could heal him. His emotions had developed a function akin to a switch. On and off. On and off.  And Namjoon was pretty sure Kyuri had felt the same; that no form of words could bring warmth to their hearts on that cold winter night.

They made no sort of conversation afterwards. Kyuri had silently helped Namjoon under the sheets, laying piles of quilts over him and slipping an extra pillow under his head without him noticing. She then tucked herself in, fur coat still hanging  loosely on her bony potruding shoulders. They kept a distance between each other. An arm’s length seemed to be ‘safe’ enough for the both of them and so they laid there, on the far edges of the queen-sized bed.

Kyuri found herself staring at her ex mother-in-law’s vase on the bedside table. The message the older woman had engraved onto the base of it kept replaying on her mind.

May you live a loved and blessed life by each other’s sides. She’d said.

How wrong she’d been.

 

Author's Note:

Chapter 1 is up. My satisfactory level on this chapter is just 3.5/10 even though I prolly re-wrote this a hundred times. Tell me if you guys liked it or anything else. Rant. whatsoever.

Also, P.D.D IS LIFE. <3 #RAPMONSTER #LIFE #IDONTUSEINSTAGRAMBUTISTILLLOVEHASHTAGS

-Styx

P.S

Sam Choi is my lady crush and I envision Kyuri to look like her so yeah.

LOOK at her she is such a beauty not to mention she looks like zico but ughhhhhhhh SAM CHOI <3