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It hurts barely more than removing a bandaid that served its purpose, peeling off at the edges already, the material stretched from being picked and pulled at. The sudden quiet of his heart when their soulbond is stripped is a deathly hush, a frightening promise of eternal silence. For a few moments, he fears he might never feel again, and the rush of panic pouring into him is of hot reassurance.
Minseok tries to look over to Junmyeon, despite the curtain, but the exhaustion gathers him up like a wave, pulls him into the waters of a pond without a bottom or surface. He seems to have forgotten how to move his gaze away from the dirty white of the ceiling. He knows now why they were advised to lie down, to have someone pick them up after. He sinks—the bed an uncomfortable void—and his thoughts of sleep are like a heady scent, a blanket with no warmth, steadily soaking into him instead.
Minseok drifts like he’s being spun on a potter’s wheel, watches a small spot move across the ceiling, tries to remember what else they were told. He'd trusted Junmyeon to listen, process, decide, tell him about the details, the catches. It's all turned into stacks of letters sitting in his mind, distant, blurred, undigested. Minseok's mind circles back to Junmyeon, and while he doesn't regret, doesn't miss the nausea he felt in Junmyeon's presence from how much he wanted to be with him, luxuriates in how easily he can walk his thoughts away from Junmyeon already—and that’s how he knows it’s done, that the string must be gone—laughable, he thinks, how his past self trusted a perfect stranger with this. Laughable how he thought himself exempt from the effects of the bond, how he thought he was distanced, reasonable when he must have shown neon signs of infatuation. He hopes—hopes Junmyeon doesn't regret it either.
Another wave sweeps him up, into a meaningless embrace, and one of the instructions they received earlier floats into his mind. Just let go, they said, and he—he sees himself opening his hands to empty palms, and the nothing swallows him down.
The bug hasn't moved in a while when the surface shifts and tilts, aligns, enough for him to be part of it again, and Minseok wonders if it too feels like strings of sugar sitting in a cotton candy machine, waiting to be spun into a cone. He watches, stretched thin beyond what he thought possible, unable to look away from the mirrored immobility of the bug. His mind runs in wider circles now, touches upon memories in a strange rhythm, shying away whenever he tries to focus. He hears voices, close but cold like a kiss of sharp ice, and he shies away from them, too. He wishes he had a clock to watch the seconds tick by, growing minute after minute, endlessly.
He comes to when something touches his upper arm, and he blinks the light into shapes and shadows. He knows without looking that Junmyeon reached over, through the curtain. It sends a shock through his system, the way his touch feels—like nothing much at all. Junmyeon's hand pulls back immediately, and Minseok jolts up, struggling for air.
"It's just a piece of string," Junmyeon says as soon as the nurse draws back the curtain.
Minseok catches the look of disbelief on his face when he looks over, melting into something entirely else when Junmyeon finds his eyes on him, something that makes Minseok want to keep paying attention so he does, to anything but Junmyeon’s face.
He's sitting on the white bed, leaning on the two big pillows tucked between him and the wall, legs dangling off the bed, letting out a breathless laugh when he accidentally kicks off one of the slippers and it hits the frame of Minseok’s bed. It’s a display of thorough carelessness, only softened by his ruffled hair. He looks like he's been freed of his bundle of sorrows, while Minseok—Minseok doesn't know yet if he's stranded in a drained bathtub, freezing and just as empty himself, or if someone finally pulled the plug on the ice water and left him to thaw.
He feels Junmyeon’s gaze on him as he slips under again, barely overhearing when the doctor informs them of the procedure’s success, Junmyeon replying something that makes them part with laughter—and then he hears something ticking, near his head, a soothing, steady rhythm to his spinning thoughts, slowly collecting around him until he’s wrapped tight in a cushion that softens the shock of the alarm ringing a while later, allows him to gather himself up into a person, able to walk out of the clinic.
"Go on a date with me," Junmyeon says when they've stepped outside of the pristine building. He still looks like death warmed over, hands hidden away in the scarf wound tightly around his neck.
Minseok laughs at that, the stubborn determination Junmyeon is retaining even through this while he himself still feels like a blank canvas, stowed away after hours, days of being stared at. Wonders why he'd assumed they'd part ways, never meet again. There's a solidity to Junmyeon he's always appreciated, but they were barely ever more than strangers, and now, with the string gone—there's nothing left, a joint hospital stay aside.
"Okay," he says. When he looks at Junmyeon, there's unmasked surprise on his face.
Junmyeon squints at him, like he needs another confirmation. "That's all it takes, me being rich?"
Neither of them are, Minseok knows. All the money they're getting out of this—the taxes are hefty, the approval letters were expensive, they both have debts to pay off, and Minseok will consider himself lucky if he can replace Tan's cat tree or even parts of it after.
"You pay," he says. He won't let him, but he wants to see—the pout, wants to see how easily Junmyeon will agree. It's not a lot, but he wants Junmyeon to want this. He doesn't have to wait long for his answer, and he's surprised when Junmyeon reaches out, into his space, reaching for the collar of his jacket after Minseok's stepped closer, turning it up so it blocks the cold wind.
"I'll pay, and I'll pick where we're going," Junmyeon says. "Noraebang."
“Think you can sing your way into my heart?” Minseok asks, smiling into the collar.
“I’d certainly like to try.”
Junmyeon reaches out again, boldly, this time over Minseok’s shoulders to pull his hood up and tie the drawstring, and Minseok wonders if he’d tuck him into a bed, had he one on hand. The ring Junmyeon’s been wearing to cover his thread still sits on his pinkie finger, glinting when it catches the sun.
“I’m not walking home, you know,” Minseok tells him. He likes the attentive way Junmyeon looks at him now, like he’s so much more than an illusion without the apprehension of the soulbond, a person, entire and whole for themselves, blending into the fog distance once he leaves.
“Stay warm,” is all Junmyeon has to say.
Minseok watches him hurrying over to the car that had been sounding its horn since they walked past the gate, and when Junmyeon turns around to wave one last time before he climbs into the car, he thinks he’d like to hear it again soon.