Chapter Text
The first time Tokuno Yushi feels the absence of Daeyoung, it feels like a sharp sting—a sudden, intrusive, but fleeting feelings.He had told himself it would pass, that it is simply the aftershock of something inevitable.
People leave. They always do. And being the front liners of a sentinel's team means that he had this future etched on him from the very start.
But days stretched into weeks, then months, and the feelings of losing Daeyoung didn't fade. It deepens, wrapping itself around his ribs like barbed wire. Every time he walks past the places they used to go around in the centre after training together, every time he ctches a glimpse of someone wearing a jacket similar to Daeyoung's within the centre, every time he hears a laugh that sounds just shy of familiar, the wound reopens.
Yushi notices.
At first, he doesn't say anything, not even giving this feelings of losing Daeyoung a name. He simply withdraws further into himself, his already quiet nature turning into something more ghostly. He is present but never really there. His mind drifts to a past that refused to let go, tangled in memories of a presence that once filled every inch of his life. He at least had to accept that Daeyoung had filled the gaps in his self, way too much, it felt a lot.
One evening, as the rain drums softly against the windowpane of Yushi's sentinel apartment, he sits alone with a steaming mug of tea in front of him. He had not even asked for it, had not even noticed when he made it. He blinks slowly at it as if it were foreign, as if warmth was something he no longer recognized. Then he realises, he used to enjoy drinking the tea together with Daeyoung like this.
“You don't talk about him.” Yushi whispers to himself. His voice sounds barely audible, a confession to the empty room. He exhales slowly, pressing his fingers against his temple.
“Because there's nothing left to say.”
That was a lie.
The truth is—he doesn't know how to exist without Daeyoung. He doesn't want to be that dramatic but he really feels this way ever since he met Daeyoung. People don't just disappear. Even if they are gone, they stay in the places they touched. In the hearts they left behind. And that is exactly what Kim Daeyoung does to Tokuno Yushi.
Then why did it feel like Daeyoung had taken everything with him?
The room settles into quiet, thick and suffocating. Yushi sits there, lost in a love that had long since faded into the unreachable past, lost to time and regrets.
And then, there were none.
The End.