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He had killed him. Just like no one expected, he had killed him.
Hansol doesn't want to talk about it, who would want to in the first place. If you ask him what happened to his twelfth friend, he will tell you that he never had one. Friends? I did not have. Haven't you seen me being alone for so long? He will whisper through his lips and gracefully walk away, not realizing that some people know that secret, his dirty, dark secret. Or maybe not so dirty, because he deserved it, according to him, and not so dark because it had been celebrated. Hansol won't comment on it out loud, neither to his mother nor to the memory that is haunting him, because a feeling that suffocates him appears and the collar of his shirt tightens and his voice becomes heavy and the red eyes fill with tears and the words from his mouth refuse to come out. It is the guilt. The tormenting guilt in his deranged brain leads him back to that day, over and over again, remembering who he is. A murderer, perhaps? No, too good for what he did. A monster, maybe? He heard them whisper more than once when they didn't notice his presence. They were right, he assured them the moment they noticed him hanging around. He would not deny them, because they had all witnessed the death of the youngest of their partners, whom they had inadvertently protected from other presences in their home and even with that feeling of disgust towards him, what had happened was the last thing they wanted.
Hansol killed him. Yes. It is true.
Chwe Hansol killed someone in September when the burning shadow of Minghao was over there. His wicked heart plagued him for days until he took the liquid and the wooden artifact, sworn never to be picked up, to pour into the sleeping body of his beloved. Minghao next to him, a horrible being, laughed at the opposite tears as his body began to burn and desperate screams in his fragile ears resounded. He regretted it as soon as he did, wanting to make amends for his actions-as if that could be done- he grasped the other's fiery hands and gazed into his glowing eyes.
"How can I fix the damage done? How can I keep you alive? How do I fix it? Tell me, please." he asked shakily. Guilt, guilt, guilt on his body, on him eating.
—"There is nothing you can do now, Burning Sun."
— "Sorry." —he exclaimed, seeing how the opposite body burned so much that even his own skin turned red. Guilt, guilt, guilt in his body singing that a monster he had become, become.
"There are no apologies to express when all you've wanted for a long time is to finish me, Aching Sun."
Oh, fascinating and sad truth that the afflicted Hansol at that time hit. And tasteless mocking laughter that came out of Minghao's poisonous mouth.
"Spiteful Hansol, what the hell have you done?"
He told him, laughing even harder at the frightened eyes that looked up at him.
"You killed him, you know?" He reminded her mockingly seeing the black marks of who continued to die in front of his presence. "No one can defend you, do you understand, stupid?"
"What harm will you do to me?" Hansol responded aggressively, it was he who with cloudy words caused him to commit greater damage. "Don't you see what I've done today? Don't you see that he had done the same thing for a long time that I doubt my stability will be able to recover?"
Like the other side of a coin, a different truth was revealed again.
He killed Hansol in January when he seemed to be at the top. He took Hansol's weak parts and carefully buried insecurities in his body. A hell for the young man began and with no one else he spoke again, with no one more courage he had to tell them the reasons for extensive burns on the skin spread over him. He, cheeky, had warned him to get away because he was a terrible entity, but every time he could his voice called for Hansol, he returned to his arms and constantly made him feel that Hansol was the one causing problems. Since January it was hell, the little brown-eyed brown-haired boy in the arms of his mate for a month was burning. Seungkwan had no heart, perhaps, to be the torment of him that time. Moreover, unlike his last moments, he hugged and comforted him every time he caused injuries, healed without knowing the reason, encouraged without understanding pain. As if it had been an exchange of papers, Hansol remembers it. Most of them cared to lessen his pain than to increase it more.
The vivid memories in Hansol's mind are reflected in the burning fire in front of him.
Seokmin healed the cut on his chest that one birthday carefully poured the alcohol on his body and with a soft cloth cleaned the wound that was bleeding nonstop. He cried on his shoulders upon hearing the words of those who swore not to love him anymore, never wanting to see his face and surrendering to his brand new love. In the following month, when he seemed to improve, he returned to his chambers, with smiles and laughs full of familiarity that warmed his heart, with the word sorry written on everything he did or said. He returned, in the end, hoping to heal what he had broken without any remorse. The brown-haired man remembers Jisoo's laugh asking him to please not be naive, to not believe in the one who had hurt him. Oh silly, silly, silly Hansol, why didn't you listen to him, his mind full of regret repeated the following months. The tape of a tragic movie seemed to play on his chest along with the arrival of a sad Mingyu who did not seem in a much worse state than his. Then Hansol was helped by the tall man to his daily actions to carry out and head to the new days as if the previous night salty tears on his face had not passed. He, of course, was not there, having disappeared because that is how the superiors wanted him.
Hansol remembers the red of his tears when it reflects on the skin of the one who now suffers the most. He is sitting on the floor, the others have arrived because of the recent shock in the body of the other two. There is a hand that is gently running on his back and forearm, it is Jun, his special friend Junhui, he admits it; who calmed and embraced the aching hearts of the couple. Jun was the person who made them see reason about most of his actions, he was the one who showed them ways to overcome those problems or abandon themselves to the contrary. Jun healed the wounds made on the other, wiping red drops from each other's cheeks, encouraging with hugs when words hadn't been enough. If Hansol were asked about him, he would say that maybe he felt like an angel. The angel who hadn't intended to weather a storm after his arrival, that he hadn't wanted to see the glass castle shatter again and maybe for the last time.
"What did you do, sad Sun?" —There, with a worn smile, they were looking at him, hands tied to each other and small sheets of paper about to burn. The oldest among them gave him a yellowish flower while patting his head with some pity. His partner gave him a sad smile as he joined him.
"I don't know...I don't know what I've done." He whispered with guilt rising in his throat, so bad it felt that his heart pressed harder. He shouldn't have made that mistake. Seungcheol gave him another purple flower, Hansol did not know what he was trying to do, flower's meaning he did not know and his mind felt more lost every second, he was with them, but only his body was perceived, he burning in his face, burning up to the ashes of the last part of the red thread that united them for years. The chestnut threw the two weak objects into the fire. Seconds later an endless feeling of hatred mixed with regret in the hazel-eyed man widened.
Memories of the last two months appeared in his head, Seungcheol and Wonwoo were that subtle calm that heralds his inevitable storm. They not only consoled the minor's wounds, welcoming him in their arms when the cries coming from a dull throat hurt sensitive ears, but they also picked up those objects breaking hard on the tiles that drop of water mixed in red regularly received and took the little boy by the hand, who intended to flee through the ravine of that mountain built from the desperation perceived in each moment together. That thread of a dubious color, their necks had begun to tighten. The future they had made with effort, looking like a bridge supported by a single rope, disappeared in the carelessness of routine. Hansol killed him. He killed Hansol. Inside them, nothing but despair resided, everyone knew it. And even if they loved each other with all the strength to fly out of that almost extinct world, the moon had declined to any decision that would send more pain-filled asteroids into his soft skin, enough craters for all the remaining lives within that sad universe there had been. permitted.
Regardless of what this implied, the moon had decided to flee in the face of so much pain.
He had tried enough and his own light had been losing over time.
He was exhausted.
Hansol looked at Minghao, sitting next to him with a mocking laugh and eyes full of stars shining, he would soon cry. Hansol looked at him with such intensity that that look was returned, the minor's broken interior froze, thousands of eyes around him felt watching him. How every time before Christmas dinner between them, he felt. That colorless aura that had haunted them all year settled on top of them. Most seeing the worst to come, their eyes closed.
The melody of a tragedy in the room resounded. An angel his call began.
Hansol approached him, merging the crushing cold of his world with the bone-chilling heat of the small moon.
-"Forgiveness." he repeated, feeling the little threads of his love lose themselves in the igniting fusion they had created. "Please, I didn't mean to hurt you anymore."
—"Oh, my beautiful Sun. Please don't ask for more apologies."
—"I killed you. I killed the essence of who always protected me. I killed the only one that my interior totally knew. I killed you, you, who understood the writings around me."
The red fire intensified. Hansol's screams came closer as he felt his skin freeze on his opponent. The little fusion hurts their bond. It was the end of the story that they would have created to never finish it that way.
"I would never hate you for that, my little sun. Not when you had wanted so badly to free yourself even if it meant more pain."
"I could take it a little longer if my reward was to see you shining in your very essence."
He screamed much louder than the other as he felt the inside of him slowly burning from the bottom of him. The last lights of the presentation of him fading after so long.
"No, Hansol. You shouldn't have to bear that pain just because you got used to me. Not when we stopped moving forward with time." He smiled at her for a millisecond, then the chestnut's heart exploded at such an action.
"How could I want a breakup when it's you who I love?"
Who I can't let go of.
The angel's call grew louder. The room plunged into the farewell of a relationship that was extinguished in insecurities and despair.
"How could you take so much pain? How could I take it longer?"
The warmth of him was beginning to fade along with parts of him.
"How could we bear to feel ourselves fall in the course of our love, my Atlantis?" Hansol whispered with such sadness in his heart that the others could feel the same.
Drops of a red liquid accompanied Hansol. His screams turned up his volume; important organs were burned and small parts of his body flew into the air and seconds later disappeared. When only his face could be seen, he gave Hansol the beautiful smile of his being ready to disappear from this life.
—"Let's meet again in another life, where our sorrowful isolation is short and the moments together much longer, Chwe Hansol."
"No, Chan!" Hansol's torn throat let those words out. "Please do not go!
They all tried to push him away.
Surely at some point, you will see me as a good memory in your life, Solecito, just as I know I will about you.
A liquid in the Hansol center spilled, it was broken.
"Right now, separation is better than continuing to burn inside us."
The two of them thought about it with that stabbing pain in his heart.
In one last breath, the angel's song ended and he disappeared.
That silence that lasted just a few seconds predicted the mix between sobs and screams of a Hansol sitting on the floor hugging the body of the one who vanished in his life. Seungcheol handed the last flower to him. It was white, so white that he was afraid to dye it his horrible red, however, he held it so tight in his arms that the suffocating heat that painful fusion left behind made her vanish between the wounds in his heart.
Hansol killed him. Yes. Hansol is a monster. Maybe.
Jeonghan wouldn't lie. His work, the one he had loved to profess so much in that little month, turned into a dark disaster when Hansol's life fell under its own weight, everything breaking around him and the youngest just watching him, without any intention of wanting to move any piece of his puzzle. He didn't usually eat regularly, maybe every three days if he remembered. He slept two hours a day, his school performance was simply trying to plummet because he had lost the desire to continue studying. He remembered his youngest all the time, causing the brunette to cry for hours on end, only stopping to breathe again and renew those actions until his lungs asked for a new sense of life. He wanted that at some point that would stop and he alone would finally disappear from the face of the earth, not to meet that being -chan- but only because he wanted to cease to exist.
He was feeling so miserable. With gaps of guilt that proposed to launch into the eternal darkness of him.
Regardless, he felt that he would have no more reason to continue. His mother had finally abandoned him mentally and spiritually in an empty apartment, the brown-haired man assumed that she had grown tired of him. He wouldn't blame her, if he ever got a chance like that, he'd run away as fast as a hummingbird's wings. Being as alone as he felt at that moment, he was not able to discover more than darkness within his heart and it was overwhelming for him, who inadvertently let the memories of Chan mix with the sadness of a lost love of his own. Jihoon was a witness of what seemed like the last breath of the minor, who wanted to stop trying as soon as possible. The man had to constantly remind him to eat regularly, take a bath every day because his body had to be clean no matter how dirty he felt inside, begged him to sleep at least five hours a day, helped him study if it was necessary, but darkness had consumed Hansol with force. And on the last day Jihoon was by his side, he put a little dab on him, trying to delicately sew up one of the broken stitches in his being, keeping more of his essence from disappearing.
"Take care, Hansol. Seungkwan will try to come as soon as possible. You aren't alone, okay?" Jihoon took his needle and pulled out the small frame with a picture of the thirteen of them. He looked at it again. "Someone will spend a few days this month. Don't break yourself anymore and try to mend the pain that spread."
Then he disappeared through a light.
It was December.
When December came, Hansol's stormy loneliness increased. From what he remembers, the most beautiful month of the year had become a real disaster. Maybe he tried to stop eating for a long time if he wasn't reminded by someone once every three days. Maybe he stopped washing his body if someone doesn't force him to take a bath once a week. He left his books behind, he didn't write often anymore and all the projects he had worked on throughout the year were in the trash. The little brunette looked around him, sometimes looking white, sometimes feeling black. His body had stopped responding to many of his commands, now he found himself moving monotonously, getting up later and later in the day, and not sleeping when the moon was in his bright spot. Admiring the beauty of a soul that once felt so close, wishing to be those stars light-years away from him, which were possibly dead.
And he did not stop crying in the paint worn by the passing of the months with the fire, cold, and pain of him.
Hansol was in front of the Christmas tree, his mother had assembled and decorated it herself. He never appeared in collaboration. He touched the lights looking for the one that seemed to be broken, looked closely at the small lifeless decorations, and rummaged under the object in search of some little gift left behind there. His eyes were beginning to ache and at about nine o'clock at night the shadows of uninvited beings began to arrive, his head felt overwhelmed when the silhouette of Minghao next to him sat down. As fine as himself, just for long seconds, he looked at him and an inanimate object at his hand pierced. Was that a gift?
"The last necklace you gave Chan, he just kept it." You know he couldn't use it, but he always appreciated it and with love every beginning of the month he admired it.
Time passed, Christmas Eve arrived. There were no cheers or laughter because of the joy that it would mean for many. They sat there, observing how the intermittent lights of the tree were reflected in the almost red tears of Hansol, who, under bags under his eyes and broken lips, whispered soft words to the only shadow that did not appear that night. He hugged much more to the memory of him almost disappearing from him, feeling the essence of his faded love, seeing the smiles, looks, and caresses scattered in his mind, hearing his laughter and voice deep in his heart hidden from him. The tiny broken space that Hansol had obtained a month ago only grew for sure, all that essence that he was keeping alive on the floor of his home fell and disappeared. Even if the others had tried to help him at that time, Hansol was sinking of his own free will, who else could save him but himself? Sob after sob his voice was lost among the soft sounds of a sad night, starred in itself with repentant souls.
Hansol shining as bright as the moon that day.
He sat on his thirtieth-floor window and up into the sky his eyes led. The moon showing as strong as ever, snow on his dirty face falling. For the first time in so long, she spoke again, to him, to Chan, or his guilt.
“Being in a company, my loneliness only increases."
Footsteps behind him he felt, but to ignore them he chose.
"Before you, the void existed, after you, my void is almost all of my interior."
A hand grabbed his shoulder. Enough strength to take him inside with a single pull.
"And I realized thanks to this that I must return to that place, without them, without you."
He fell.
"You, moon, chose to levitate away from me for your own good. I, sun, chose to return again because of how lost I felt by your side. It was good, right? Isn't it so painful?"
He got up from the floor single-handedly, heading to the bathroom.
"So, Chan, why is living more horrible now that you're not by my side? Was it this horrible before?"
He opened the faucet of that shower, covered the siphon with a bag, and got in there after removing the dirty clothes that dressed him.
"And even when I thought about trying to recover what I lost thanks to you, it didn't matter anymore, because your presence changed everything."
He harshly cleaned every dirty part of his body, turning his dry skin red. At the door knocks he heard.
"If perhaps in another life we meet again, we could paint our canvas in a better way. No grudge-filled scraps or the same empty drawings after a while. Sounds like a good idea, huh?"
He roughly patted his body dry and left the place looking around, as desolate as he had imagined. A path to his room took, distant footsteps were heard. He put on some clothes, going outside in search of them, who he assumed was the same place he saw them.
"I'll go back to that place I used to hide when I was scared, maybe some of my shine will come back, maybe I'll paint my new life, maybe mend the broken parts of me."
He looked around him and then his brain brought him to reality.
"Oh. They're not here, I guess they've already decided to leave." Because they had never been, he told himself.
He knew it, there was no one.
There never was. He was alone.
"Hansol killed Chan as much as he killed the reflection that always accompanied him. The other partners of his with time would also leave his mind."
He was in his room, lying on the bed and not trying to pull the covers up when he began to cry softly. Pain after pain scattered in the dismal place. Eleven pairs of hidden eyes watched him, knowing that they could do nothing for the boy who in his agony decided to live. A long way he would have to go for the broken pieces of him to pick up and eventually sew back to the inside of him.
"But please, could you hug me one last second before you all leave? I don't want to feel so alone."
Early in the morning of December twenty-fifth, Hansol fell asleep with the scars on his heart growing in a painful frequency. He might not make it to February.
"Silently, the shadow that once belonged to him would abandon him so he could fly."
I'm sorry.