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Things can end in different ways.
In stories, it'll end with periods of happy or sad ending without the hope of sequels and second parts.
Days with friends end with simple 'goodnight' to one another.
And anything can end with a "goodbye".
Bad thing, no story anticipated an ending without getting started.
Maybe that's why Hyunsuk remembered that time he went to a place, and met one of the best people he'd forever brag about.
He knows a lot of ways of ending scenes or ending messages.
But he doesn't know the man's last words.
Because they never started.
“Sir, that's your 4th bottle. You want me to call one of your friends?” The bartender with black silky hair darted his attention to the man in front of him, gulping the glass of alcohol. It's been 1 hour since Hyunsuk arrived, but he's already getting dizzy as he gulps every glass straight.
He groaned and places the glass in front of the man. “I don't have friends here. Now please, can you just get me another bottle?”
“But sir, I think you can't handle walking anymore, are you really okay?” The new bartender contemplates whether to drop another bottle in front of him or just let the guy suffer and it's none of his business.
“What about ju—”
“I'm here. I'm his friend A. You can get back to work now, Asahi.”
A man interrupted their conversation, wearing a warm greeting smile, and gave thumbs up to the bartender as if they know each other. Asahi, the bartender rolled his eyes before taking the empty bottle on the marbled counter as he sighs. Right, he still hates his job.
“Yah! I didn't bring any friends here, you little shit. Do you think you can take advantage of me? Huh!” Hyunsuk brought his sleepy eyes to the man sitting beside his stool, brows furrowed as if he's ready to square up and punch the taller man. But before even taking a better look at the man, he heard a small chuckle that outsounds the mellow beats of the place.
“Don't worry,” the taller guy smiled. “I don't take punches from smaller unstable guys.”
“What did you say?” Ready to lose his last grain of sanity, Hyunsuk was about to grab the man's collar if only his eyes are not as blurry as they are since he didn't wear his contacts when the man laughed and spoke.
“Chill. We met earlier, at the group session, right?”
“Huh?” Hyunsuk creased his brows, confused.
The man laughed, entertained with Hyunsuk's reaction with his statements. He offered his hand and introduce himself, “Jihoon. Earlier at the group session, you called me your substitute friend since you just visited Busan.”
“I'm friend A.” Jihoon smiles.
“Friend A?” Hyunsuk still confused but gets it after 2 seconds. “Ah! Friend A!”
Jihoon nodded, amused. Hyunsuk's reaction turned into a lighter one as he recognized the guy, before smiling with his eyes almost closed. Jihoon finds it adorable to watch how he fights his sleepiness and sat in silence.
“So, why are you here?” Jihoon asks, taking a sip of his own glass.
Hyunsuk slumped his upper body on the glass, feeling the need for slumber, he sighed while waiting for his bottle. “I just wonder how alcohols outside the main city taste like.”
Jihoon placed his glass on the counter and copied Hyunsuk's position before putting his chin on his palm, admiring the amusing features of a smaller city boy he finds really astonishing.
“They all taste the same anyway,” the words from the latter made him stop from memorizing Hyunsuk's frame. His eyes darted on the older guy's drowsy eyes.
“They're all meant to get you all numb, and forget things you wanted to forget through headaches and shits. In short, they all taste like idiocy but in liquid form.” Hyunsuk laughed at his remarks, not minding the intent stares of the man.
“Then what are you?” Jihoon leans on the counter, tilting his head, and asks.
Confused Hyunsuk tilted his head also. “Huh?”
“I mean, you said they're meant to get you numb and help you forget things. So I asked, what are you? The ones that taste alcohol just to be numb?” Jihoon pursed his lips, chin still on his palm.
“Or are you here to forget?”
“You sure love sticking your nose on someone else's business.” Hyunsuk chuckled, gulping a small shot glass that Asahi gave him seconds ago with the guy disappearing just before he even say 'thank you'.
“I just love hearing people's stories.” Jihoon shrugged, emptying his glass too.
The other man chortled, “What a bad thing, I don't have a story to tell.”
“But you have a story to forget.”
Hyunsuk stopped smiling when he realized how Jihoon's eyes convey something he never knew he'll see in anyone's eyes while looking at him.
“That means, you have a story to tell.”
Comfort.
Jihoon took his chin off his palm and taps the marbled glass as he gushes, excitedly. “You can tell me anything, and I won't judge you. If you're curious, I'm really a versatile person, I can be your diary in a minute, y'know.”
Hyunsuk guffawed. “You sure know your words to anything.”
“I just know the words to say, because I'm seeing myself in you when the session started earlier.” Jihoon falls back on the table, eyes not leaving Hyunsuk's face without a sign of drunkenness. “You looked lost.”
“I am,” Hyunsuk mumbled, lost.
“I know,” Jihoon assures.
Hyunsuk felt the uneasiness the man's intent stares and little smirk plastered on his lips brings. The way his orbs slowly memorizes every flaw that gets covered with the club's lighting and the bar's blinding reflection from the displayed bottles. Hyunsuk gulped when he saw how anticipated Jihoon looked like, so he just sighed.
“I ended up hurting the person who just wanted to help me out to pull my shits together.” Hyunsuk pours alcohol on his glass before placing it on the glass as he says,
“My mom.”
Jihoon nodded slowly, convincing Hyunsuk to continue on so the older heaved a sigh. “I pushed her away because I was so lost to the point that I thought everyone close with me will get hurt from how I behave. I've been doing things to myself... like hurt myself.”
“My past relationship was ruined because of me. I pushed him away as I told him that I can't love him if I can't even love myself. You know the times when you just know that you need to push them away before you even hurt them by knowing that you couldn't love them the way they love you?” He emphasized. “I just knew that can't stay with him while I'm working on myself.”
“I don't want to hurt anyone while trying to love myself.” A tear escaped from his eyes and fastly wiping as if Jihoon didn't see it.
Hyunsuk sighed, warry of the eyes that deciphers his orbs, trying to see things in his eyes before even smiling.
“Whoever told you that you cannot love anyone else if you can't love yourself, they should've known better.” Jihoon shrugged, smiling.
“You can still work on yourself while still being in a relationship, you just need someone to pay the price of loving you unconditionally by reminding you all the time, that you are worth the love. If they're willing to stay, after seeing you suffering and getting lost by yourself, you can keep them.” Jihoon pours the last drop of alcohol from his bottle, eyes looking at the displayed bottles in front of them.
“Self-love will always be progressing, and you just need to be surrounded with people that love you unconditionally so you can feel that loving you isn't hard, and sooner or later, you'll be able to realize how to live and work on yourself with someone to lean on.” The younger rose his shot glass and offered Hyunsuk a smile.
Hyunsuk realized Jihoon's point, but his mind just laughed on that point that he covered his face with his palm. Jihoon looked at him, confusedly. “You okay?”
“That's bullshit,” Hyunsuk stated. “As if anyone can love me unconditionally when they knew how wrecked I am.”
“I told you, it's a progress, you may not know it but maybe there's someone who can help you to that part.” The latter laughed while playing with the last liquid filling his glass, before turning his eyes on the older man that got confused about his statement.
“What do you mean?”
“I meant to say,” he leaned closer and whispered. “Can I do it?”
“Can I do the loving part?”
“You sure love sticking your nose to someone else's business,” Drunk Hyunsuk leaned a little closer, feeling the cold breath of the man as it sent sparks in his body that makes his heart jolts in different emotions.
“Nope, I just think that you're amazing. I don't know if you remember this but,” he heaved a sigh. “We met before.”
Alcohol in his system, Hyunsuk couldn't hear the man's words clearly as he leans on the table with eyes almost closed. Jihoon admired how the man's eyes feature able to form into the most beautiful ones as they softened.
“You've been here before,” he remembered the boy he met from a farm years ago. “I'm glad you came back.”
“What d-did you say?” Hyunsuk while yawning.
Jihoon smiles and says,
“Can I kiss you?”
That question made Hyunsuk frown his forehead with a pout playing on his lips. “You can't just kiss a man you just met, idiot.”
“Then let's meet again,” the taller man closes the gap between them in an inch. “Maybe, the second time we meet, I can already kiss you.”
“As if. Second times don't exist.”
If only you know. Jihoon thought.
“Anytime exists. I can meet you anytime and watch me give the love you deserve as things fall onto their places, you can have me and kiss me.” He winked, jokingly. He watched how Hyunsuk's laughs outshine the led lights dancing in the club.
“What if I don't want to have you?” Hyunsuk asks, cockily.
“I told you,” Jihoon smiles. “Anytime exists. You can have me anytime, even if it means not wanting me, you'll always have me.”
“That's a big statement to say to the man you just met.”
“Who says I just met you?”
“Huh?”
“I'm your substitute friend from the session, that's our first meeting, hyung.” Jihoon compared his hands to Hyunsuk's, eyes twinkling as he can see the difference.
“And now we meet again for the second time? Coincidence? Nah, we're destined.”
“Too many disney movies for you.”
“But seriously, hyung,” the older looked upward, meeting the sobered man's eyes as if it talks to him.
“Let's meet again.” Jihoon put his hand over Hyunsuk's head and caresses his hair softly, feeling the fragility of the wrecked man beside him.
“Maybe by then, you don't need to lose yourself to the world,” the stars outside the mini club waved at them ever so shimmery minutes before they separate. “By then, you can finally love again and accept the love you provide with people that don't even deserve it.”
“And maybe by then, we can start our story.”
Hyunsuk couldn't help but make his drowsiness fade along with the wind that keeps on whispering to him that it's okay to be vulnerable in front of the taller guy after crying in front of him earlier. For the first time in a while, Hyunsuk didn't get scared of opening up to the last person he expected to see his vulnerability.
A stranger.
No.
“Let's meet again, Friend A.”
That how his summer ended.
After that night, Hyunsuk gets back to the city. With the words Jihoon said to him, he tried to sort things out. The bond that he broke, he tried to fix them while working on himself without tiring himself, because by then he knew that his mother loves him more than anything. He can get lost, suffer, and struggle, but this time, he was never alone.
Unconditional love comes from the woman who gave her pieces to him, and he thought that it's enough. His mother is more than enough.
But he wonders, after 3 years of not visiting the place of Busan, he's wondering if the man named Jihoon could still take part in his life.
“Can you still do the loving part?”
He learned that Jihoon was his childhood friend he left many years ago when they visited his grandparents, and he was the boy he promised to see again so they could be together for the rest of their lives.
And now, a man wearing a white shirt inside the grey cardigan, specs with anti-rad reflects the sunlight of spring of 2021. Tapioca-colored eyes glows in shock, apple tea on his grip, and his left hand holding a little boy with the same features as him.
“Who is he, Dad?”
Hyunsuk knows a lot of ways of ending scenes or ending messages.
But he doesn't know the man's last words.
Because they never started.
“He's Dad's friend,” Jihoon smiled at Hyunsuk whose eyes scanning the kid's features, shocked.
“I'm his friend A.”
You can't end things that never started.
“Y-Your son?”
Jihoon shook his head. “My late sister's.”
That was the first time Hyunsuk felt his heart loosen up, hearing a small chuckle from the man in front of him. Hyunsuk creased his forehead and plucks the man's and says, “I thought I just came back here to be a homewrecker, you idiot.”
The addressed man laughed, showing Hyunsuk's favorite laugh in the world. Jihoon sat on the bench and watched his considered son playing with the other kids. Jihoon leaned against the bench, turning his head to the fine man he met years ago, still have the same eye smile—no, something changed.
Hyunsuk's not wearing that wrecked eye smile anymore.
And he's glad.
“Now, can I ask you?” The older man turned to him, confidently. Mullet hair complements his casual getup, plus the necklaces hanging on his neck.
He looks pretty. Jihoon thought.
“Can you do the loving part?” Hyunsuk asks, happily.
“That's easy,” Jihoon assures. “I've been doing that since day one.”
“Self love is cool,” the man flashed his latching smile. “But have you heard how my love works?”
You can't end things that never started.
That was Hyunsuk thought.
Because they haven't started, yet.
“Pretty big words, Friend A.” Hyunsuk smirks.
“That's the truth, anyway, Sukkie.”
Anytime does exists.