Chapter Text
The days are always the same.
--
The sun rises, slowly dragging across the sky, dying the night orange and yellow. Birds dance high among the clouds, singing sweetly from their nests. The smell of breakfast hovers through the house, warm and delicious. The television mumbles the world news – no particularly alarming events have occurred. Life remains as it had been the day before.
The dog next door yaps and whines until she is fed. The chalk on the street corner has faded and been drawn over again. Students flow into the school grounds, friends hanging on their arms or earphones in their ears. The breeze is mild and rhythmic. Life goes on; changing for no one, stopping for no one.
Jinwoo kicks at the pebbles on the sidewalk as he walks to school, humming along to the music playing through the buds in his ears. His shoes crunch along the cement, the breeze brushes through his hair and the sun caresses his skin. Life, as it continues, blesses all those in its grasp. Approaching the school gates, a short boy with tousled hair waits, heel tapping against the metal bars. Myungjun, is his name – Jinwoo’s best friend – and he believes that the school gates too closely resemble jail cell bars. Which is, Jinwoo believes, an ironically accurate observation.
Tugging out his earphones, Jinwoo approaches him. Myungjun, not only short, has wide eyes and rounded cheeks. His eyebrows frame those curious and sparkling eyes of his, and they taper down into his pointed and endearing nose, politely set in the centre of his face. His sweet lips, full and round and plush, form around his words, usually funny or charming. Kim Myungjun is gorgeous – Kim Myungjun is nothing but a best friend.
“Park Jinwoo! Early, as per usual,” Myungjun snickers, tugging on Jinwoo’s arm and pulling them both into the school grounds. A long path splits the entirety of the grounds in half, which leads directly into the open mouth of the school building. On either side of them is greenspace, a tennis court and football field, and the like. Other’s conversations mumble around them, but they’re easily ignored.
Jinwoo rolls his eyes, “Firstly, I’m neither early nor late. Secondly, you’re always here earlier than me. You wait for me,” he points out, which makes a delightful giggle bubble out of the boy by his side, whose cheeks paint a soft pink. He tips his head back as he laughs, childlike in nature.
“Did you finish the math homework?” Myungjun asks, kicking a tuft of grass that pokes through a crack in the pavement. “I had trouble – I should probably go see Miss, but I can’t be fucked,” he whines, the cuss unapologetically slipping from his lips. Everything about Myungjun is as such: unapologetically happy, unapologetically blunt, unapologetically unique.
“Wanna copy mine?” Jinwoo asks, jabbing his thumb behind him, at his backpack. “I finished it all,” he smirks. “In perfectly un-Jinwoo fashion, I completed the homework first!”
Myungjun’s face splits into a grin, so bright it could rival the sun. Not the moon, because the moon shines in the darkness, but Myungjun provides all the light that Jinwoo could ever need. “You’d let me copy? I knew I befriended you for a reason,” he quips, nudging Jinwoo in the side, chuckling to himself. “I’ll copy when we get up to the classroom,” he declares.
Jinwoo takes a wider step, turning behind him so he faces Myungjun, now walking backwards. “Race you there?” He dares, flicking around and sprinting down the path, backpack bobbing on his back.
Heavy, thumping footsteps rumble behind him, as Myungjun calls out, “No fair! You got a head start!” The pair race through the doors and up the stairs, narrowly avoiding fellow students and staff, skidding into their classroom. Myungjun – by only half a second – slaps his hand down on his desk first. “I win!” He screeches, ignoring the bewildered stares of their cohort.
Jinwoo, heaving breaths, falls lazily into his seat. His lungs feel tight and searing as they struggle to gather oxygen back. He laughs dully, settling back and allowing his body to cool down. Myungjun wipes the sweat from his brow, sidling over to Jinwoo’s desk and leaning on it. “What was that? You almost always win, and you had a head start!” He chuckles, dropping into the seat beside the boy. “Anyway, where’s that homework?”
“Hey! I’m tired, I guess. I actually finished my homework,” Jinwoo excuses, handing him the papers. Myungjun gratefully accepts them, copying them into his work book.
Then, suddenly, it feels as if Jinwoo’s eyes might sink into his brain. The words Myungjun writes seem to melt into each other, for a moment. Jinwoo wonders why he is writing everything twice, before he realises it’s his vision. The classroom seems to spin briefly, tilting and overlapping in front of him. His head feels heavy, as if it had been inflated like a pool float. Then, as quickly as the feeling arrived, it left.
Jinwoo hisses, as his head steadies itself, thumbs rubbing at the leftover ache above his eyes.
“You okay?” Myungjun asks, peering over at him from behind the papers. His eyebrows knit together, a cute crinkle above the bridge of his nose.
“Yeah, just a bit dizzy,” Jinwoo mumbles, shaking his head. He was okay, now.
Myungjun chuckles. “You must’ve pushed yourself too hard, JinJin,” he smiles. “I have some water in my bag. Rehydrate, or it might happen again.”
Jinwoo shakily digs through Myungjun’s bag for his water bottle. As he takes a swig, he hopes rehydration is all it will take to prevent whatever just happened from coming back.
--
The sun rises, again. Again, and again. It’s not until three days later when the world before Jinwoo’s eyes splits in half and melts together, once more.
Myungjun is beside him, animatedly chatting with a classmate. The swelling in the back of his head is slow to begin with, until it erupts in a pounding, head splitting ache. The boy – whose name Jinwoo can’t remember at the present moment – is laughing at something Myungjun must have said, when his chuckle sounds garbled and robotic, as if Jinwoo had dumped his head under water.
Clutching onto the window sill beside him, Jinwoo braces himself as the hallway spins. He can’t see Myungjun, behind the black dots that gather over his vision. Panic swells up in his belly, hot and bubbling, and he reaches out in the direction he’d last seen the boy. He grasps nothing but the air, and feels the floor slide out from underneath him. And, then, nothing.
It’s only about thirty seconds later, according to Myungjun, when Jinwoo comes too. His vision clears and the thumping headache dissolves.
The classmate is clutching onto Jinwoo’s arms, supporting him where his bottom dangles above the ground. Myungjun is holding Jinwoo’s face in his hands, pushing his hair away from his forehead and gently rubbing his thumbs over the plush of his cheeks. Myungjun’s touch is heartfelt and comforting – Jinwoo wants to curl into his protective warmth.
“Jinwoo?” He asks, usually teasing voice trembling slightly. A sadness stirs in his chest at the sound of Myungjun’s hurt voice, but he doesn’t have the energy to apologise or ask. Jinwoo’s brain feels as if it were a pile of embers, burnt out to its finality. “Are you okay?”
Softly, Jinwoo nods. He smiles lightly, “Did I pass out for a minute there?” He chuckles, but the sound creates a dull ache somewhere to the left of his brain. His words are slow and lilted, and when he finishes his sentence, Myungjun’s fingers unconsciously thread through the shorter hairs at the back on Jinwoo’s head.
“We’re not sure,” the classmate laughs, and Jinwoo notices a slight scowl shrivel Myungjun’s lips. “Can you stand?” The classmate’s hold shakes slightly – Jinwoo doesn’t want to stand, but he can feel their acquaintance growing weak.
Jinwoo stumbles to his feet, finding his bearings, straightening out his uniform and fixing his hair. Myungjun warily lets him go, hands hovering by his side, spotting him as if he were walking on a tightrope, about to fall off. “You sure you’re okay?” Myungjun asks, peering into his eyes. His gaze is sharp, uncharacteristically stern.
“Yeah,” he answers, in the hopes of watching the worry cease in Myungjun’s eyes, earning the chance to watch the shine return. “Just got dizzy again,” he waves it off.
“Jinwoo, how much sleep are you getting?” Myungjun asks, wringing his hands together. “Maybe you’re suffering fatigue?”
The brunette shrugs. “Possibly,” he replies.
They leave it at that.
That night, when Jinwoo goes to shower, he spots purpling bruises around his arms, thick and chunky as if a rope had been pulled taut around them. He can vaguely recognise the shape of four fingers, and around the top, a thumb. He didn’t think that classmate had held him so tightly when he’d fallen that morning.
Running his fingers over the bruise, cautiously, it doesn’t hurt. The skin blossoms white under his skin as the pressure passes, until the mottled, dark appearance returns. Experimentally, he digs his thumb into the shadow of his classmate’s hand, and howls at the sting.
--
The moon is still in the sky when the sun rises.
Jinwoo notes this, on his way to school. He doesn’t listen to music, because his skull feels like it’s trying to tear itself apart down the centre. The dull whir of traffic is almost too much for his head. His mother had assured him, whilst handing him two pain relievers, that his headache would be gone before school began.
Myungjun waits patiently by the gates, as per usual, and greets him cheerily. Jinwoo doesn’t want to tell him to lower his voice, doesn’t want to call attention to the pain he’s in and make Myungjun worry – so, he suffers in silence.
The headache doesn’t leave.
Another set of bruises blossom blue and grey over Jinwoo’s knees, like two rain clouds. His skin turns to paper, after a few days – pale and frail. The natural creases between his joints darken, his skin tears far too easily. Confusion and fear are a toxic concoction in Jinwoo’s brain, made no better by Myungjun’s worried questions.
The topic of Jinwoo’s health becomes vetoed whenever it is suggested, brushed under the carpet for a day they aren’t sure will come. Part of Jinwoo hopes the dizzy spells will cease and his skin will grow darker again, and they’ll laugh at out funny he looked, losing muscle and the chub in his cheeks.
--
The day they discover what is wrong is painfully similar to every other day.