# D for Dearest:

His scent still lingers in every corner of this room, the nostalgic scent made of sandalwood and a subtle hint of patchouli. Jungshin remembers how he has been clinging to this scent for almost six years, from the very first day they lied sleeping together on the cold floor of the apartment in Tokyo. It is still here, but that person is gone. Perhaps he has gone back home, a little bit too excited while waiting for tomorrow to come. Or perhaps he has gone nowhere near, some places out of Jungshin’s reach.

Jungshin remembers how relentlessly Jonghyun used to talk back then of how easily he can become absorbed in his own solitude, and of how it has been the reason for his persistent longing to love.

“But don’t you have me?”

Jungshin also remembers when Jonghyun falls asleep how he will brush away the mischievous bang lying stubbornly on his forehead while leaving a slight kiss upon the closed eyelids, whispering into the older boy’s ear.

“But don’t you have me?”

Yet now it is Jungshin all alone lying on his bed staring at the ceiling, letting himself soaked up in memories of Jonghyun. He has drowned, but there is no one to lift him up on the other side. Jungshin finds himself suffocated, surrounded by a nostalgic scent made of sandalwood and a subtle hint of patchouli.

“But don’t you have me?”

His eyes opened, his vision blurred. Yet Jungshin does not want to shed any tears. He never allows himself to be pathetic enough to shed tears.

“But don’t you have me?”

His lips keep murmuring the same phrase over and over again. He feels his heart shattered and comes time, mending the fragments into one big chaotic pile of debris.

Perhaps right from the beginning Jonghyun did not even see him there.