32. BREAKTHROUGH (CHIN HO)

(Flashbacks in italics)

“What?”

Kyungsoo can’t help it - he knows that interrupting what may or may not be a breakthrough with the person who has tormented him so severely for most of his teenage years, is probably not the smartest idea in the world, but he’s too startled by the words to keep his surprise in check.

“Just, listen carefully,” Chin Ho returns, mouth falling into a numb, mutely-displeased line, “because I’m not saying it twice...”

Park Chin Ho’s father had always been an interesting man. Demure and gentle, health-conscious, an avid Gongshi collector, a father, a husband - these were just a few of the descriptors he held when Chin Ho was growing up. Appearance-wise, Chin Ho remembers always being compared to the man.

“He’s the spitting image of you - your son,” people would coddle Mr Park with these words, though the sincerity and truth to them were ever-present, “the absolute spitting image.” With dark hair and darker eyes sunken into his skull, but with an unendingly wide smile that refused to be bound to just the margins of his face, Chin Ho’s father was a man who could meander easily between happiness and sadness with just the right press of the right feature at the right time. Perhaps Chin Ho’s earliest memory of his father is from his fifth birthday, where the father-son duo had piled into some matching outfits picked out by Mrs Park as a joke, and, before they’d headed downstairs to greet their party of people below, they’d both looked into the full-length bedroom mirror and Chin Ho remembers seeing it - how clear it was that he was cut from the same cloth that made up his father - and smiling at what he’d seen.

It was curious how much, how severely things could change. Chin Ho now despises the fact that he and his father look so very similar, despises how he can glance at himself in the mirror and each time, without fail, be reminded of where exactly it is that he came from.

On that same birthday, Chin Ho also remembers his mother’s beautiful, laughing face as she’d caught sight of them rumbling down the stairs like a train over tracks and in those same garish matching outfits. She’d opened up her arms to them both, and then Chin Ho had been smushed between the pair as they’d shared a sweet and short-lived kiss that only parents who are deeply in love could possibly share. At this point, Chin Ho always believed his mother and father to be unendingly happy together.

But maybe the word he might’ve missed out in describing Mr Park is also the word that carried the most weight: ‘actor’.

Chin Ho was too young to see his parents drift apart. He was too young to see it, but if he could pinpoint when it first began, he realises now that it had all started when Mr Park changed his place of work.

Mr Park was a financial analyst. He dealt with contracts and numbers and people, and he did it all behind an office desk. The company where he worked was also his very first job out of university, and he’d had years there. One day though, someone higher-up decided that they didn’t need Mr Park working on that office desk anymore, that they wanted someone ‘fresher’ to take his place.

Chin Ho thinks back now, and he wonders what might’ve happened if his father had never been fired all those years back, if he’d never settled at a different office desk working for a different company, never had the chance to meet the man who played such a key part in destroying the Park family as it should’ve been.

His father did leave though, and he did find a home in that new company, and he did even meet a work colleague that made him kiss his wife less and ignore his family more. He, simply, did.

It was so drastic, so pronounced a change that Chin Ho was only eight years old - too small then to even reach the second to top shelf of his fridge - when his mother first told him about ‘the gays’.

His father had come home late that day - not, by any means, an uncommon occurrence, his work keeping him as busy as ever -, but for some reason or another, it sparks the first fight Chin Ho hears his parents battle through. As a child so young, he had sat in a corner of his bedroom, and pressed hands to his ears in a futile attempt to block out the sounds of yelling from the room across the hall - so heinous and frightening a sound when novel, and when produced by people he mostly sees as soft, loving.

His mother had slammed doors, shouted without much hesitation, and then she’d entered his room and piled Chin Ho into her arms and cuddled him close to her chest. She hadn’t cried - only held him more earnestly than Chin Ho ever remembers being held - and in silence for a majority of the time. And then, quite as if a spell had been broken, she had begun to speak.

“Chin Ho,” she’d called.

“Mum,” he’d responded, burrowing further into his mother’s arms, ear to her heart so he could be soothed by her nearness, her presence.

“Chin Ho,” she’d repeated, “I want to tell you about something very serious.” She had started, brushing his too-long fringe from his eyes in a soothing caress. “Tonight, I want to tell you about boys who like other boys.”

“I realised later that she’d started saying stuff like that to me because she’d started noticing that stuff about him,” Chin Ho speaks now, a cool breeze rustling through the expanse of the courtyard. Kyungsoo doesn’t miss it - the way he avoids referring to the man as his father, the way he doesn’t give the man the right. “But, as a kid, I didn’t know that, and I listened to her as if she was telling me about stranger danger, because that’s how she made it sound - like it was fact, and it was obvious. Being gay was ‘wrong’.” He finishes with a little flourish, a tick forming at the edge of his lips in a vague, unreadable sort of smile. Kyungsoo doesn’t say anything- doesn’t know what to say. His mind is a whirlpool right now, trying to keep up with Chin Ho’s words, with this story he never would’ve been able to guess in years. But, even if it’s a surprise, some things are starting to make sense - why Chin Ho, who grew up in such a manner, holds such strong views against Kyungsoo and his uality, why he’d reacted so severely when his father had called out to him outside of their school. “I’m not your son”, is what he’d said, a raw hatred and fury in his eyes - the kind Kyungsoo had only seen before on the day that he’d woken up in a hospital with a busted lip and a broken leg. Really, Kyungsoo wonders how he never guessed it before.

Chin Ho starts speaking again then, bringing Kyungsoo back to the courtyard, “anyway, even if she’d told me about it, I didn’t know that it existed until you came out. Or, were ‘outed’, I suppose. And with my mums words in my head, I ended up... hating you for it,” Chin Ho admits. “But it also wasn’t just that. It was- I mean, I don’t think I realised it then but, I had started suspecting the man myself, even without my mother to influence me. I could tell something was different about him - whether it had been a recent change, or a long one that hadn’t been obvious until then, I just... knew.” He finishes a little lamely, eyes staring off blankly into the distant. “He wasn’t the dad I grew up with anymore.

But it was only a few years after, when it came out in the open, that I had to acknowledge it...”

Kyungsoo stares imploringly. “What happened then?” He hears himself ask.

“It’s... the day my dad left my mum. For a man.” Chin Ho breathes the words as if he can still hardly believe that they are the truth. “The day he officially came out to me...” he continues, lowering his gaze and swallowing hard and slow, his Adam’s Apple bobbing up and down his throat from behind his shirt collar. He looks in that moment the farthest he has ever been from the boy who had stared at Kyungsoo with eyes of fire and broken his leg without remorse; Kyungsoo wouldn’t have ever believed it of the boy now - the boy who is crumbling openly over his father leaving him -, if he hadn’t personally been a victim to it all.

“I’m sure my mum knew before then - knew for sure. I saw her change over the years; she had to have absolutely known.” Chin Ho accentuates the words, so wired with emotion that Kyungsoo marvels at how he’d ever found this boy difficult to read. “I’d just been guessing, and suspecting, but I’d never really been thinking it aloud - not even in my head.” His eyes fall briefly shut here, and when they reopen, they’re like endless black pits. “But then he told me,” a hush to his voice, “he told me to my face. He told me as if he was telling me about his day at work,” Chin Ho guffaws, but there’s no humour to the sound. “Like it was something casual. As if it wasn’t going to change a thing?” He shakes his head, incredulous, a puff of air exhaled harshly past his lips, and his eyes still holding that same dark quality. “And, after that, he told me that he didn’t love my mum. That he didn’t love any woman like that. But, even if he wasn’t in love with my mum, how could he not love her?” Chin Ho’s tone is so wired, so genuinely anguished - Kyungsoo’s sure he’s never heard the boy speak like that before. “Even if it wasn’t romantic, how could he care so little? He left her like it was a brave thing to do, like we were supposed to be happy for him. And I hated him for the way he told us.” He sneers, and it would be fierce if not for the way his lips quiver tellingly after, as if he can’t quite commit to only anger; even if Chin Ho might want to despise his father, a part of him cannot and will never, and the frustration of that truth is painted into every crevice of the boy’s features. It brings a fragility and youth to Chin Ho that Kyungsoo has only ever been able to glimpse in the past, and, strangely, it makes Kyungsoo think of himself, and how he’s always hated feeling weak in the same way that Chin Ho must feel now - unable to control his own feelings.

“It happened in the break and then- when I saw you in form when school started back up again, I just-“ he takes a deep, harrowing breath- “I saw my dad.” He admits, lips pressing into a thin grimace. “And I got so angry, I- I wanted to breakyou.” He finishes, fingers twitching into fists in place where they rest. His eyes close momentarily, chest puffing out as he inhales deeply through his nose as if to calm himself down. Kyungsoo stares at those quivering fists, thinking of a time where they would bring him fear and realising simultaneously that they never will again. And so he only calmly watches as Chin Ho’s fingers slowly start to relax, the fist unfurling and settling motionless against his own legs.

“How I felt- that anger... it lasted a long while,” the boy admits, eyes flickering open once more. “I remember during that whole suspension I was just angry. All the time. And then I went to find you as soon as the suspension lifted and I-“ he swallows here. “Well, you know this part... Anyway, over the next few weeks it was just my mum and I, and my mum- well she didn’t take the split too well...” But at this point, Chin Ho’s eyes change; if Kyungsoo hadn’t already been staring, he might’ve missed it, but Kyungsoo knows what people look like when they’re holding back tears. Without thinking, he reaches into his inside blazer pocket and peels a tissue out from the open packet he has there, hesitating a short moment before finally offering it tentatively Chin Ho’s way.

When Chin Ho looks down to follow the movement, the tears in his eyes become more apparent - pearly liquid glass caught at the ends of his eyelids. He doesn’t take it; instead, his hands curl once more into fists, like a protective mechanism. But Kyungsoo knows the different between someone who wants to cry alone and someone who needs reassurance.

Kyungsoo reaches out, and with a swift but gentle movement, he turns Chin Ho’s hand over, easily unfurls his clenched fist, and places the tissue right in the centre of his palm. He pulls back straight after, letting that settle. The boy doesn’t protest, doesn’t even seem to register the movement, but he stares blankly at his own hand and at the tissue placed there, eyes and the tears in them suddenly frozen in place. Slowly, his fingers curl down and press to his own palm, enclosing the tissue in a loose, barely-there hold. Kyungsoo feels as if he’s holding his breath, gaze fixated to that hand, waiting for it’s next move.

"You...” his words make Kyungsoo look away and up, but it’s the tone he’d used to say the word that keeps him in place. “You aren't just doing this because you want to get in my pants, are you?" He asks eventually, and his tone is still heavy but Kyungsoo sees that it’s supposed to be a joke.

And it’s so strange, so incredulous a situation - that this boy, the leader, would be trying to joke around in such a way with Kyungsoo when he’d been throwing punches just weeks earlier - that Kyungsoo can’t help but to laugh; a real, boisterous trill of a sound that quakes through his whole form like waves wash over a shore. And perhaps Chin Ho hadn’t really been expecting a response, perhaps he’d fretted over his poor delivery of words, for he jumps at that sound as if it had been a yell instead - staring Kyungsoo’s way with wide, speculating eyes and a strange curl to his lip.

Kyungsoo ends up saying what he’s thinking-

“You’re really not my type." He continues laughing, and maybe it’s those words, or maybe it’s the sound of that real, prolonged laugh, but it finally has Chin Ho smiling back - a real and rare little thing, so barely-there you might’ve blinked and missed the change. And it feels good, even if strange, to be able to smile as they smile now: together, even if the atmosphere is still bizarre and static.

In the end, Chin Ho doesn’t use the tissue to wipe his eyes, just clutches ahold of that little offering with smiling eyes and smiling lips, and Kyungsoo returns them with the thought that Chin Ho looks far better with crescent moons beneath his brows and wide lines above his chin.

Chin Ho started to miss his father.

It didn’t make any sense to - Mr Park didn’t leave, was still with them as Chin Ho had grown up, but, somehow, it felt like he wasn’t. It felt as if the man Chin Ho knew as his father was no longer completely there, as if a part of him was always lost somewhere else for each time he sat and spent time with his family. It was a strange feeling - having someone be present, tangible, and yet not truly in the room; a lonely feeling.

If even Chin Ho could feel it, he wondered often what his mother must have been feeling. Through the years she slowly, ever so slowly, began to lose herself. The way she changed was as if she was withering away, becoming a shell of herself rather than a real, breathing, beautiful person - a mother, a wife, a woman who deserved love.

She spent those first years telling Chin Ho about all the reasons gay people were wrong, were selfish, and all in such severe, excruciating detail, and with a hatred a boy so young would never really be able to grasp. In the later years though, she stopped. Where before she’d pulled Chin Ho in and kept him constantly close, she started to prefer an absolute solitude - the sound of silence over the sound of her son. And Chin Ho could do nothing but watch, nothing but standby as his family dynamic began to morph and change and depict a life he never in his youth would’ve thought he’d be living. The happy family he’d been so sure would last was now just an empty place which held no semblance of the love and care he’d lived his first years enjoying. If Chin Ho had known things would change so much, maybe he’d have done things differently. Maybe he’d have tried to stop it happening - maybe he’d have spoken to his father before his father changed, have helped his mother before she had even begun to lose herself in the way she did. Maybe, maybe, maybe. It’s the maybes that torture him the most; he could spend hours and hours mulling through them all, over the many changes he could’ve made.

In the end though, his life was fixed; the way things are now, the way they live - that was the truth, the reality that remained.

Chin Ho wondered often if his father ever regretted it.

“I saw my father in you for years, you know?” Chin Ho says now. Some of his anger from earlier has been alleviated through their conversation, but Kyungsoo can still hear how these recollections affect the boy. “I saw him in the way you never fought back, the way you just took everything I did to you. He never fights me. Even if I hate him, even if I make it obvious, he never fights.” He emphasises each word, something hard in his tone as he speaks. “He’s always played victim, made me look like the bad guy...” He shakes his head, and Kyungsoo is sure he must be thinking of all the exchanges where this has been the case, his face turning stiffer with each passing second. “Recently though, that changed. You started trying to stop me, and it’s the first time I started to notice that you and him were not the same person,” he reveals. “And then too, when I’d been looking at you and seeing him for years, I suddenly started to see her instead,” he looks Kyungsoo’s way here, like he still can’t quite understand it himself, “my mother in you,” he clarifies softly, “and she is the one person in this world I could never hate.”

Kyungsoo stares at the leader’s face, and he puts two and two together. “Your mother is the one who has panic attacks?” He guesses, but even if it’s posed as a question, Chin Ho’s eyes give him entirely away.

“I’ve seen my mum go through them to the point where she can’t even breathe,” he explains, gaze unfocused, seeing things that Kyungsoo can’t. “It’s... terrifying. And since I saw you go through that, it was like- I couldn’t stay angry at you anymore.” He says, brows furrowing as he speaks. “It made me realise, I never really was angry at you, it was always him, and that-“ Chin Ho stops here, looks Kyungsoo’s way as if he’s looking into Kyungsoo’s very soul. “That you weren’t the person I wanted to hurt.” He finishes after a weighted moment, and it makes Kyungsoo release the breath he hadn’t even registered he’d been holding, marvelling at the boy before him and how strange and new it feels to be interacting so openly with him about this. Chin Ho tucks his lower lip behind his teeth, drags there as if he’s thinking about whether or not he should say more.

“Do you still get them?” He asks eventually, not bothering to offer clarification.

Kyungsoo smiles. He doesn’t want to give the honest response - that the panic is still there sometimes, in the background, that sometimes it could be nowhere at all and other times it could be everything he knows until he can’t breathe from it, but-

“I’m okay,” he says, because he is. In general, in the grand scheme of things, he knows this is something he can fight- something he can deal with. “I’m okay.” He repeats.

A strange sort of silence settles over them after this, filled only by the gentle wind and the rustle of leaves that scatter across the ground of the courtyard. Kyungsoo must’ve used this place as solace from his bullies hundreds and hundreds of times over, hiding between the shrubberies and wooden posts and wasting away the minutes of break or lunch until they’d finally grown too bored of searching for him. It therefore feels like some sort of poetic justice that they’re here now - that of all the places Chin Ho could have chosen to have this conversation, he had settled on the one in which Kyungsoo had hidden from him for years.

“You know the worst thing about this?” Chin Ho speaks suddenly, but it’s clear that he’s been having an internal conversation for that time, has let himself get riled up all over again. “What’s worse is that my mum was so strong once - I remember. She’s a psychiatrist and- she’s always been so intelligent, so assured. But, He. Killed. All of that.” He says the last words through gritted teeth, leaving beats within the sentence for each time his chest puffs angrily out.

Kyungsoo though is only focusing on one bit of information revealed just then. “So, what you’re doing- explaining this to me right now... it’s because your mother wants you to?” He guesses, remembering Chin Ho’s strange words from earlier: ‘I’m supposed to talk and explain...’

“No, actually,” the boy says though, sounding surprised by himself. “It’s... kind of the opposite - it’s because I don’t think she even cares anymore.” He admits softly, something strange and unreadable in his eyes as he speaks. “But I know that she would’ve- before all this happened. I know she would’ve cared a lot that I was doing to someone what I was doing to you...” He shakes his head, and it’s as if he’s thinking of it all - of the things he’s done, the things he can’t take back. Kyungsoo would’ve never, just weeks ago, expected this boy to show remorse about anything, but his expression is clear; if there’s one thing Kyungsoo can recognise with ease, it is what a person looks like when they have regrets. “I want her to care again. I want to be someone she, herself, before he ruined it, would be proud of. I know her process, how she does this for her clients, what she tells them, and so I thought I’d try it. I thought it would help to bring her back,” he finishes, voice quiet and tremulous.

Kyungsoo can’t completely imagine what it must’ve been like - to watch your parent lose themselves in that way - but he knows at least the feeling of watching your parent change. Sometimes, on weaker days, Kyungsoo likes to think about a time where his family was more close-knit, a time where they would spend hours upon hours together in a way he hasn’t known for years. It makes it harder - knowing that such a thing is possible, was possible; knowing that if things just went back to how they used to be, life would be a little better.

“Anyway,” Chin Ho speaks up. “I’m tired of keeping up appearances- of being the bad guy. I want my mum to be proud of me, you know?” He turns here, cocking his head in Kyungsoo’s direction as if expecting a response or affirmation, but Kyungsoo doesn’t know, hasn’t known what it feels like to want that for a long while; Eun-Seo is the one and only person in his family that he wants to be proud of him now.

“What about your cronies?” Kyungsoo asks as it comes to his mind.

But Chin Ho only shakes his head, a mirthless laugh peeling from between his lips. “Just your regular homophobes. No back story there...” He says, eyes unfocused and far away. “Hey, I’m...” His words fizzle out, like he’s suddenly unsure, and he looks Kyungsoo’s way, their gazes meeting really properly for the first time. Kyungsoo looks into the boy’s eyes and he sees everything there - all things that he’s been noticing slowly over the past weeks where things have felt different, and all things he never could have believed to exist within this person four years ago. Perhaps they‘d never have been there; perhaps it’s only just begun to grow now. In any case, Kyungsoo meets that heavy gaze and feels in his heart, more than ever before, that something is coming to a close.

“I’m sorry about... your leg.” Chin Ho finally says, the words coming out soft and unsure, as if he expects Kyungsoo to throw them back in his face. “And... your head.”

Kyungsoo smiles to himself. It wasn’t all bad. Without that he never would’ve met Yixing or the rest of the support group.

Still, he never thought he’d hear those words slip past the leader’s lips, and didn’t realise just how much he needed to hear them until now.

“I’m... sorry about your parent’s divorce,” Kyungsoo responds, and Chin Ho fixes him with eyes that tremble in place. It occurs to Kyungsoo then that the boy might not have heard anyone say those words to him before. Kyungsoo watches as he musters up a short, barely-there smile as a response and in lieu of a thank you, but Kyungsoo hears it anyway, and smiles easily back.

“I’m also sorry for-“ Chin Ho starts, the line of his lips turning neutral once more, “-for misunderstanding you about all the stuff from back then.”

Kyungsoo blinks. “What?” He hears himself ask, though his mind has automatically made a connection. Chin Ho confirms anyway-

“I’m talking about Jun Ho.”

Kyungsoo flinches, his natural response to that name, and to anything or any mention of his outing four years ago. This time though, Kyungsoo is also shocked by the meaning of Chin Ho’s words- that he even knows the true story of what happened all that time ago. “How did you-“ he starts to ask-

“I didn’t.” Chin Ho explains. “Not until recently, anyway. I guess that’s another reason I wanted to stop...” He rationalises, voice tapering off at the end.

Kyungsoo can’t help it; he’s speechless. If there was anything Kyungsoo had been expecting to leave the boy’s mouth, this would never have been it.

“That’s...” Kyungsoo starts, mind gone blank, “...not something you have to apologise for.” He finishes- unsure of how else he can possibly respond to that; as with any other time what happened four years back is alluded too, Kyungsoo feels immediately uncomfortable.

“Maybe not,” Chin Ho agrees easily, jerking his shoulders up in a shrug. “But... I don’t think he ever said it to you.” He justifies. “And, in any case, it was the stuff he said- the way he outed you- that was what made it a whole lot easier to hate you, and to- well, to look at you and see my dad.” He finishes a little lamely. “You do know that that’s why most of the school is like that with you, right? I mean yeah, some are just ty because you’re gay, but, mostly, it’s because of what he said.” Chin Ho looks serious, but there’s something earnest to his expression, encouraging Kyungsoo to heed his words. “Why else do you think Kim has it okay?” He asks.

It’s something Kyungsoo hadn’t really considered - that the school might be so cold to him not because he is gay, but because of the way he was outed. It catches him completely off-guard, his lips pressing numbly to a close.

“So, yes,” Chin Ho continues, “I did want to apologise about all that Jun Ho stuff. Don’t you care about wanting to clarify the truth?” He speaks so directly and, strangely, it’s the first time Kyungsoo wishes the boy wouldn’t be so straightforward just now, wishes he would drop the subject after seeing Kyungsoo’s reaction to this.

Kyungsoo bites at his lips, the habit he can’t seem to rid himself of, and shuffles restlessly in place as he thinks about Chin Ho’s question. Does he want people to know the truth about what happened back then? Honestly, it’s not something Kyungsoo has thought about or even desired in a long, long time - he stopped caring about what his cohort thought of him when he discovered what it felt like to have mostly none of them on his side.

“Well,” Kyungsoo says eventually, “he’s not here anymore, so it’s okay. I’m not really... expecting an apology.” He shrugs.

It’s strange then, how the leader reacts - the thick line of his brows quiver downwards, teeth digging briefly into his lower lip as if he’s mulling over something deeper, something he isn’t sure he should say aloud.

“Yeah, he’s not here.” He agrees eventually. “Hey, thanks for...,” he starts, changing the subject. “Thanks for listening to me. Even if it couldn’t possibly make up for anything I’ve done to you, it’s stuff I’ve been wanting to try to explain, you know? Both for your sake and for mine...” he trails off. The boy starts kicking the balls of his feet against the ground beneath them, and Kyungsoo stares as the dead leaves beneath the soles of his feet crunch with each move.

Kyungsoo stares soundlessly for a moment and then, without too much thought about it, he curls his legs down too - their shoes in the same line.

“I know...” Kyungsoo agrees faintly.

They end up sitting in silence a lot longer than when the conversation ends, mutually staring down at the ground and the leaves beneath them as the colours of the sky above transform into a dusty, subdued palette of auburn and blues and greys. The sky just then becomes what Kyungsoo thinks finishing a book looks like; he is sure he will not see something like it for awhile. And with those last pages settled around them, crinkling like the leaves beneath their two pairs of feet, Kyungsoo smiles - his heart feeling more settled than it has in days.

A/N:

I am attempting to be faster with updates

But my uni exams didn’t get cancelled even with quarantine smh

So I am trying to balance my time for you guys :D

Anyway, hope you guys enjoyed! Definitely gives a lot of insight into this story.

Please feel free to leave comments! I love to read them, and they always motivate me to write x