final ;;
throw me in the deep end, watch me drown.throw me in the deep end, watch me drown; d.o./baekhyun/iu | rating: pg-13, 2252 words
kyungsoo always found beauty in the most mundane. perhaps that was why he had liked her so much.
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she looks at the three simple words written, almost giggles (but it's never funny) from the oddness of it. who would think a sixteen year old girl writing from her dusty old bedroom capable of killing someone? murder. that's what it really is. not an accident, not a mistake, not- murder, she writes. i killed a boy. - they developed habits, and really, that was how it all started. habits were comforts for people who didn't like to take risks, comforts for mundane people in their everyday lives. she could describe everything as a habit, something that eventually became so comfortable and repetitive that it couldn't be stopped. kyungsoo started walking to and from school with her (two young kids trying to take little risks step by step), started holding hands with her along the way (a reason to smile the whole school day), started sharing his earbuds with her (they both loved standing egg), started becoming a fixture in her life (it was as if he was there all along). suddenly the boy who lived a couple blocks away became something more, became someone important, became someone she couldn't let go of. jieun didn't mind. (as for kyungsoo, it might have been his plan all along, to get to know the shy girl he had a crush on since middle school.) - her parents refer to it as the accident, talk to jieun in hushed voices (afraid, scared of what she’ll do next). they twist the half truths given to them into lies they can barely swallow down, try to sort everything into neatly categorizable events, things that are understandable in their mundane world (ignorance) . sometimes she wonders why they try to care, why they try to keep up the illusion of understanding (because the reason is always the root). jieun had asked her parents that once, as an unafraid little girl who was curious about everything around her, and they had merely responded with because we love you (as if). a flimsy reason, she thinks now, one that relies on intangible things like feelings and emotions. most things do, though. - the thing about habits, she realizes, is that you can’t just quit them completely. there will be a void to fill, an emptiness that needs to collapse on itself. the thing about habits is that they will always be replaced. - "we're the quiet ones," kyungsoo told her, eyebrows furrowed in a look of concentration, warm hands holding hers. serious. grave. he always acted like that, anyways. "we're the ones that don't matter." jieun swallowed, eyes darting away from his eyes then back towards them. tried to focus on the feel of his thumb rubbing the back of her hand. "but..." he leaned closer to her, "we're the ones that'll matter the most in the end." she considered this. he was always determined of his ability to make an impact, always looking to the bigger things, a brighter future. an idealist of some sorts, stuck inside the small body of a sixteen year old boy. - "i can't believe that boy was so careless when he drove," her mother remarks the day after jieun gets her cast, eyeing her limp leg. "can't he keep his eyes on the road?" jieun glares at her mother (kyungsoo was not careless, she thinks, was anything but) and stomps upstairs as quick as she can, tears blurring her vision the whole way. - “have you ever looked at the sky?” kyungsoo asked her, lying in a dead field of grass that was her backyard, their heads side by side. jieun looked at the bits of yellow grass still stuck to her palms. “yeah,” she said. “i mean, who hasn’t?” “no, but have you really looked at it?” he shaded his eyes with one hand, squinting up at the sky. it’s as if he saw some magic there, something that nobody else could see. “it’s always there, in the periphery of our minds. not as something that matters, but something that simply exists. it’s… it’s more important than we think.” “i guess.” she raised her grass covered hand and holds it up to block the shining sun. then, she waited for the magic to wash over her. this magic was a faulty thing, but they both had a faith in it (or at least he did). - she is nothing now. she has no purpose to live, no use for existence. therefore, jieun decides, she doesn't exist. she tries that one day, is invisible and silent the whole time, waits for someone to call her out on her childlike pretending. only when her mother calls jieun down for dinner does the spell break, does her illusion of nonexistence fade, leaving behind her and only her. in the mirror she sees what everyone else sees, and only then does she feel sheepish. (“i’m coming,” she calls, and her voice cracks. it is the first time she has spoken in a day.) - sometimes kyungsoo would just stop and stare at the world, pause and wonder at whatever it was. jieun would ask him, sometimes, what was so fascinating, but soon enough she got tired of caring. that the only part of him that wasn’t careful and perfect, really, the fact that he’d stop in the middle of a crossway to marvel at skyscrapers or stand in the same place for hours without moving. kyungsoo always found beauty in the most mundane. perhaps that was why he had liked her so much. - there’s another boy standing by the grave (his grave, jieun reminds herself, the words bitter in mouth) when she arrives. he’s pretty from afar, in that mediocre sort of way, a boy that you could see, fall in love, and forget about within a matter of seconds. now that jieun thinks about it, he seems familiar for some reason. “hello.” the boy raises his hand in greeting shyly. “jieun, isn’t it?” “uh, yeah,” she says. then, hesitantly, “have i met you before?” he smiles sheepishly and shakes his head. “i must’ve scared you, huh? knowing your name and all? i’m byun baekhyun. kyungsoo’s friend.” he didn’t answer her question, jieun notices. so she repeats it. “have i met you before?” “yeah. around… three years ago?” baekhyun tilts his head, trying to remember. “it was at the kim’s house. jongin’s birthday party.” oh. “you’re that baekhyun?” she says, the disbelief apparent. baekhyun of three years ago had been shorter and chubbier and decidedly less good looking. growing up did him well, she thinks. he blushes. “i looked different then, i know. you still look the same though.” jieun isn’t sure whether that’s a compliment or not, and so instead chooses to ignore it. he shuffles sideways awkwardly so that both of them can look at it. the grave. in loving memory, it reads, carved words on black slate. do kyungsoo, 1999 - 2015. she bends down and runs her fingers over the numbers slowly. sixteen years young. he was sixteen. all of the sudden everything seems so much more final to her, like she hadn’t fully realized before that kyungsoo is dead. and now it is, the crushing finality of that statement weighing on her. “he died young,” baekhyun states. “he shouldn’t have…” he shakes his head. “there are people who deserve to die young less than others.” there are people who deserve to die young more than others, she adds silently. like her. - “you know, in theory, if you took the public transport you could just hop on a bus and go somewhere?” kyungsoo’s eyebrows were furrowed like he’d made some groundbreaking announcement by saying that. it was probably groundbreaking in his head, anyway. “it isn’t a theory,” jieun pointed out. “my dad does that every day, along with most of the people here, for the commute to seoul in the mornings." “no, not like that. i mean that you could get off at some random bus stop and have an adventure and still return home by dinner.” “well it isn’t much of an adventure, is it? not when you’re going to get home all safe and sound,” she said. at this point she was waiting for the punchline of this whole thing; kyungsoo declaring that they go on an adventure, perhaps, or the two of them arguing some more about what exactly constituted an adventure (for jieun: risk and trust and danger and kyungsoo). “i guess.” he considered this in silence. (they did not go on an adventure.) - they meet again, and again, and again. baekhyun becomes another habit of hers, along with his easy smile and odd comments and surprising truthfulness about everything. it’s both like kyungsoo and not; instead of almost naive idealism he carries a bitter sort of hopefulness that is as unexpected as it sounds, instead of pondering about life he jokes about the good and the bad. a nice person to be around, she decides. jieun tries not to call him a replacement. - the first time kyungsoo kissed her, jieun went stiff with shock. he pulled away after a little bit (after it got too awkward), and they just stared at each other, unmoving, suspended in time, almost. jieun took the chance then to observe his face, the eyes that were either cute or ugly in the way they resembled an owl’s, the nice lips that had just been on her chapped ones. kyungsoo, she realized then, is beautiful, and even more so because of the unexpectedness of it. so she closed her eyes and pictured his face and leaned in and- it wasn’t bad. it really wasn’t. - the thing about habits, jieun realizes, is that they can become almost interchangeable with addiction. (addiction. she rolls the word on her tongue. even the sound of it is dangerous, she thinks.). - “sometimes i think that it’s my fault,” baekhyun says quietly, fingers wrapped around a cup of coffee. jieun tries not to look at him, focuses on his slim fingers (too much like a girl’s, she thinks, graceful and beautiful in their elegance) and the way they tap on the cafe table. “your fault that what?” jieun asks without looking up. baekhyun shakes his head (even though she can’t see him, she knows, has memorized all of his actions to a fault now). “oh.” she sips from her own cup, guilt crashing down on her in angry waves. “i don’t hang out with you to get a pity party, you know.” “i’m not looking for pity,” he says. “i just… it’s my fault. he borrowed my freaking motorbike.” “then it’s my fault too,” jieun announces. “i was the one who covered his eyes while he was driving.” she isn’t sure why she said that, really, but she thinks that the way baekhyun’s eyes widen in shock might be worth it. - “you bite your lips,” kyungsoo said. he was doing that thing that he always did, staring at her face intently with no real purpose. “yeah.” jieun continued chewing on her bottom lip. “so that’s why they’re chapped all the time,” he noted. “i always wondered.” “of course you did,” she muttered, running her thumb over her lips. a spot of red smeared on the pad of her thumb, fresh with the stink of iron. she did not smell the stench of iron again until twenty two days later, when they were on the road, blood on his body and hers, head dizzy with confusion, heart pounding frantically. - “did you really mean what you said?” baekhyun asks. “about, you know, covering his eyes?” “i thought… i don’t know what i thought. i just did, i guess. i did and i regret but it’s still there.” jieun closes her eyes and breathes slowly. in and out, just the way she did after they crashed. “i… i don’t know, jieun,” he says. she opens her eyes to see him rubbing his own, weary and confused. “i don’t know either.” “it was an accident, right?” she considers this, recalls the way her hands slid over his eyes, laughing, joking. they had not fully realized the consequences of what they were doing, an accident in itself. “tell me,” he says insistently. “it was an accident, right?” “i guess you could say that.” (they don’t talk about what happened then, anymore, force the memories to fade the way one would scrub a persistent stain.) - “i love you.” “i know.” they left it at that. nothing was worse than unrequited love, anyway. - “do you want to go on adventure?” jieun says, proposition a little quieter than she’d like as her parents are still at home. “sure,” baekhyun says, and she can hear his smile through the phone along with the weight of everything else. she smiles too, something stirring in her heart, and she thinks it might be happiness. (they take a bus to nowhere and get off at random stops and arrive home safely before dinner.) - “he loved you, you know,” baekhyun says suddenly. jieun looks at him for a moment, surprised, before answering, “yeah. i know.” “did you… love him?” and it’s exactly what she doesn’t want him to ask, exactly what she’s been avoiding for a year, now. “no,” she says, biting her bottom lip. “i didn’t.” she breathes in and out slowly, deep, shuddering, breaths. “okay,” he replies, and they don’t mention it ever again. (later, baekhyun kisses her, lips on chapped lips, tears in both of their eyes.)
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author's note: this was oldcaravan's request, and i'm sorry i butchered it lol. this was inspired by "the wind up bird chronicle" by haruki murakami and "criss cross" by lynne rae perkins. both are amazing books! title taken from lyrics of halsey's hold me down.
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