Work Text:
If anyone asks whether I am sleepy, the answer is already a definite yes. I am incredibly sleepy right now, and a little hungry besides. Yet if anyone asks why I am not sleeping, or at least looking for a snack, I can give two answers. First, it is four in the morning and I cannot be bothered to drag myself all the way to the kitchen just to search for food that I know will not be there anyway. Second, because the burdens I should not even be thinking about have come flooding in by the truckload, choking every corner of my mind.
I want to sleep, but I want even more to scream out everything that is making my head feel so tight. I cannot even put into words what kind of feeling is now busily occupying my thoughts. For some time I have also been listening to songs that are enough to represent the voice I could never let out in wild, unclear howls amid these hours meant for rest.
Ah, damn it.
All right.
The weight is heavy and I cannot release it. Funnily enough, the day before yesterday I had a brief dream in which I was smoking and buying cigarettes online until they were delivered to the house by a black car and the cigarette agent. In that dream the sky above the roof was overcast and nearing sunset. I smoked inside the room while waiting for the rain. It was all so dramatic, yet in that dream I felt every burden I am carrying right now truly vanish. Peaceful. Calm. Breathing steady.
That is where the confusion lies. I want to feel what I felt in the dream, but unfortunately, or fortunately, I am not a smoker.
"Hey."
Shit, startled. Haechan’s voice suddenly slips into my ear. "Why aren’t you sleeping?" he asks.
I turn my head half-drowsy and look at Haechan who has just entered the room. "What about you?"
"What about you, what about you. You busy? I just finished playing games with John. He’s really good... Not like you."
Haechan is indeed a cheeky kid, but I have absolutely no energy left today to respond to any of the boy’s mischievous remarks. At least not right now. "Just go sleep."
Even though I do not glance at Haechan, I know the boy’s steps toward the bed have paused, watching me from behind. Not long after comes the sound of blankets being rustled. "You too, Bang."
Sometimes I cannot believe that a kid as naughty as Haechan can actually care about those around him. Or, more accurately, is it just small talk? Maybe Haechan is only making polite conversation by telling me to sleep?
I do not want to think about it. What I am doing now, what I have actually been doing all this time, is simply sitting here blankly with no way out in front of the dark computer screen, staring out the window behind the monitor whose curtains I have deliberately left open.
It is quite funny. As if it knows the state of my overly dramatic, tangled heart, the full moon tonight also appears rather dim.