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"How are you doing?"
Jeonghan doesn't look up as Jisoo comes to stand next to him on the balcony. It's a bright morning, the kind where the sky is cloudless and the sun is strong, reflecting off the shiny rows of wheat and corn in the fields in an endless, golden sea. The city is just beginning to wake up, its people opening up the shops and setting up their carts for the day's work.
A shrug. "Alright, I guess. Considering." They've been friends for years, so Jisoo knows not to push and Jeonghan knows Jisoo will wait forever for him to say something else. A game of patience, one that Jeonghan predictably loses.
He sighs. "What did you expect me to say, really? I'm super sad and that everything sucks and then fall dramatically to my knees, weeping?"
"Well, no." Neither of them mention Seungcheol's mother who had done exactly that, though both of them are inadvertently reminded of her. "You can talk to me, though," Jisoo says, then, thinking it over, adds, "I know everyone says that but you know I won't judge you if you say something mean."
Jeonghan snorts. "Why would I say something mean?"
"You're always mean."
"Okay, but why would I say something mean about a dead person?"
The entire castle had been dancing around the subject so delicately for so long that it was a shock to hear it spoken about so bluntly aloud. Jeonghan bites his lip, looks regretful for about half a second before plunging onwards like he'd purposefully meant to be so brusque about it. "Aren't we meant to speak no ill of the dead or something, anyway?"
Jisoo lets him pretend. "Social customs have never stopped you before," he says, watching some children run around in the grass below them, kicking a ball back and forth. The balcony is so high up that everyone on the ground looks barely bigger than an ant, and Jisoo wonders wistfully if this is what the three of them looked like as kids. "I just thought that you might have some opinions to voice about him, that's all. So often these days everything we hear is from those that never knew him who exalt him like he's a saint."
"Tell me about it. Did you know, the other day I heard somebody tell their son to stop crying and be brave like Seungcheol the Hero! Seungcheol! He was always such a crybaby, if the kid was more like Seungcheol then he'd cry more instead of less."
"He was," agrees Jisoo. "Though the part about his bravery is true."
"It is," says Jeonghan, and smiles sardonically. "Got him killed in the end though, so I still wouldn't say that's a trait of his worth imitating."
"There's the meanness," Jisoo points out, although not unkindly.
"Oh please. If there's one person who should be allowed to besmirch his name, it should be me, his lover."
Jeonghan spits the word like it's poison. His fist clenches where it's resting on the balustrade for a moment, then relaxes. "Just. He promised me so much bullshit, you know? It was all meant to be like, la-di-da happy ever after ending, you had a hard life and defeated the evil people, now you get to reap the rewards of your super selfless actions and ride unicorns blissfully into the sunset on a rainbow. He defeated an evil resurrected after a thousand years, but died after falling into a well and hitting his head barely a month later. What kind of ending is that meant to be? What kind of hero's death is that meant to be?"
Jeonghan's voice is light as he speaks, like he's just wondering idly about something he doesn't care too much about. Jisoo knows better, watching him stare detachedly out at the country Seungcheol helped to save, the country now prospering under his direction even as one of Jeonghan's most beloved people lies dead and cold and buried in its soil.
"The thing that gets me the most is how I thought it was all going to be okay after we finished off the Dark Magician. We killed them, they were dead and gone and it was all supposed to be over. No more stress, no more pain, no more grief and no more loss. And then Seungcheol just goes and dies like an idiot. Not even for a good reason. What am I supposed to do with everything he said to me then, all the love and the reassuring and the "haha let's get a seaside cottage" and "we'll go and this time write our real names on the lanterns at the Sky Festival" and all the stuff we said we would do together in the future. What was all of that supposed to be about?" Jeonghan drags a hand down his face, huffs through his teeth and laughs. "Why did he do this to me?"
Wrapping an arm around his friend's shoulders, Jisoo just hums and says nothing.
"They all talk about him like he's so great but they don't even know him. They all treat him like he doesn't have faults when at times he was the one who made everything go wrong and we were the ones who had to clean up after his mess. They say he's good and amazing like he didn't just randomly get himself killed and hurt everyone that cared about him in the process. I'm sick of sticking him on a pedestal and pretending like I feel the same. I don't. I just want to scream at him and hurt him. Make him feel like I do right now. But I can't. And I can't say this to anyone."
"You don't think they would understand."
"I know they wouldn't understand. How would you react to someone badmouthing the prophesised hero that freed the country from tyranny and ruin after a thousand years?" Jeonghan laughs again, bitter. "If it was going to end like this, I wish he never said anything to me at all. I wish it never happened. I wish that I had never believed in any of the happy 'after-everythings' he dreamed up for us."
"But he did, and it did, and you did. And this is how it ended," Jisoo murmurs.
"Yes."
"So," he says, and gently nudges Jeonghan with his hip. "What will you do now, then?"