“I shouldn’t be here,” Sehun lifted his eyes. He was sitting cross-legged. Opposite, on the other side, sat Taemin. They were in his bed and Sehun was having a hard time juggling with his thoughts.

“Yet, you are.”

“Yeah.” Sehun lowered his eyes, opening his hands and turning them up and down. Bandages ran across his knuckles and cut into his palms. The pain left him a couple of days ago, but they were healing a lot slower than usual. “I got suspended.”

His parents were awfully nice about it. His mother hadn’t yelled and his father merely told him to go to his room and that they would talk about it later. The talk never came and Sehun had no idea how to feel about it. He kind of missed his stern parents that actually had an opinion and enforced their rules on him. At least, they gave him a sense of reality. Their actions were too surreal and it further confused Sehun whether he was still asleep and walking through a nightmare or a time-traveler messed with Sehun’s timeline and everything changed accordingly.

“I heard you quit your job too.”

Their gazes locked for a second. Sehun had to stare down again, chewing on his lower lip. Jimin must have told him. He hoped the other brother wouldn’t say a thing until Sehun was ready to tell everything himself to Taemin.

“Yeah.”

They sat in silence, until Taemin finally uncrossed his legs and scooted closer to Sehun. He grabbed the teddy bear from between the pillows and nudged it against Sehun’s shoulder.

“This was my brother’s. Whenever he had something to tell me but didn’t know how, he spoke through the bear.”

“I can speak well on my own.”

“I’m not saying you can’t, but it helps you begin?”

Sehun barely averted his eyes from the bed. He pulled the bear at his chest and hid his face between the toy’s plush ears. His shoulders were shaking as he squeezed the teddy bear, weeping silently over it. Taemin watched him until he finally had the strength to face him, with the bloody-shot eyes and quivering lips Taemin grew accustomed to.

“Why did you lie to me?”

“Lie about what?”

“You knew Jongin. He’s in your photo.”

Taemin glanced at the framed photo. “I only met him once.”

Sehun breathed in deeply, looking at the altar and where the frame photo took back its place.

“Then why do you have his photo?” Everything gushed out of him, every question that had been churning him came pouring out. “And why are there two of you? And why did you come to school that day? Why did you approach me? Do you even care about me?”

Taemin wanted to touch his knee and stop it from shaking too. He wanted to wipe Sehun’s tears. He wanted to close the distance between them and kiss him. He wanted to at least hold him without fearing Sehun might liquefy and disappear. Instead, he kept the gap wide, enough for Sehun to inhale and exhale without suffocating in the already small room. He crossed his legs again and hoped Sehun had the patience to listen like he used to do once. Sehun was a good listener around him.

“I never lied to you, Sehun.”

“You said your brother owned a restaurant!”

Taemin chuckled. “I might have exaggerated that part.”

“And you said you came back because of your brother.”

He nodded, hands twitching again to touch Sehun, but never moving out of their spot in Taemin’s lap.

“I had a twin,” he confessed, pausing to observe Sehun’s reactions. “He’s the one in the photo, in the middle.”

“Twin?” Sehun’s voice lowered to a whisper, the warmth he shared with the teddy bear somewhat comforting him.

“Identical twin.” He stood up from the bed and headed to the altar. Carefully, he pulled the photo out of the frame and straightened it. Back at the bed, he placed it in front of Sehun, whole, with Jongin holding the twin from his middle and grinning at the camera. “We’re almost undistinguishable with the same haircut. Makes your childhood a lot more fun when you’re pranking people,” he tapped the photo. “This is the last photo I have of him. It just happens to also have,” he covered his mouth, rubbing his chin, almost too difficult to say those words, “his boyfriend in it.”

“B-Boyfriend?” Jongin had a boyfriend. He had someone who showered him with the love Sehun couldn’t give him. He hoped teddy bears’ heads couldn’t fall from gripping too strongly around it.

“Yeah,” Taemin’s face darkened. His brows angled, looking at the photo in an almost bittersweet way that reflected in his voice. “His boyfriend.”

Sehun hiccupped. He let go of the teddy, clutching at his chest. He could swear his heart hurt and it paralyzed his lungs too. He hiccupped again, hyperventilating.

“It’s my fault,” he wailed. Taemin didn’t think for another second. He rushed at Sehun and embraced him. “All my fault,” he repeated, newspaper titles flashing before his eyes and all those news reports in the evening and how close he had been to die too from his heart imploding.

“Shhh,” Taemin rubbed his back, slowly swinging back an