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You leave.
And then what? Who do I go home to?
I think I’m lost, he says, in the space between his head and his mouth. I think I’m lost.
I think I want to hold somebody.
I think I want this to be over.
There’s blood in the sink and a cut on his finger. There’s a cooking knife, laying dry in a cabinet, and a red-spotted towel hanging on the oven door. It doesn’t feel like anything. It feels like being left behind.
Turn the tap off.
With his cold, mechanical hands, he turns the tap off. There’s blood under the sink. It feels cleaner when it’s hidden in the pipes.
Stop washing knives with your hands.
It’s faster, though.
I wish it scarred my finger last time, when I cut the side of my thumb. Would’ve felt it, maybe. In the shower. Hand around myself. Maybe I would’ve felt it.
I need to -
Taeyong dries his hands again on a red-spotted towel hanging on the oven door.
I think I’ll go to sleep.
“Hey, I’m bored.”
“Bored?”
Taeyong runs a finger along the top of a bottle he’s holding. “Yeah. Bored.”
There’s a crackle on the other end of the call. A buzz of static. A distant rumble that Taeyong has long since drilled into the cosmic microwave background radiation of his brain.
“I’m driving.”
Unnecessary. Taeyong has known that since the second he’d picked up the phone. “Yeah.”
“Why are you bored?”
“I miss you.”
Quiet. The hum of an engine over the phone is the only thing Taeyong can feel, and it clings to the backs of his eyelids.
“Yeah. I miss you. Too.”
Okay.
“Okay,” Taeyong whispers.
A second, or multiple. Taeyong’s hand tightens around the bottle. “I’m still bored,” he says, voice barely louder than a murmur.
“Do your assignments,” the phone reminds him, gently.
I can’t, Taeyong wants to say. I forgot how to think. I forgot how to read and write. I can’t do anything, anymore.
“Okay,” he says, again.
Taeyong opens his mouth, runs his finger along the edge of the bottle. Then he closes his mouth and swallows. He hangs up.
There’s ice cream in the freezer, and Taeyong is losing his mind. He is talking to the person at the bus stop. He is nodding. He is hungry and he wants to sleep. He is losing his mind. He wants to step off the sidewalk and wait for a car horn to pierce the shell of his skull and pry out his brain with scraping, digging, clawed fingers, sharp and cold, blinding him. And he doesn’t want to move. And he is losing his mind.
I watched a movie the other night, he says, in the limbo between the motion of his thoughts and the motion of his mouth, again. It was good. But I can’t remember the name.
It was good, but you shouldn't watch it. Because he can’t remember the name. Because he’s going to get on a bus and walk away from this part of the sidewalk and never step on it as the same person again.
I want to cry, he thinks.
And he stares at the black asphalt. And he doesn’t cry.
“Next time you visit,” Taeyong starts, “we can bake something. D’you wanna do that?”
A laugh on the other side of the line. “I didn’t know you could bake!”
It bites, a little, but Taeyong ignores it.
“Yeah,” he says. “We can. Try, I guess.”
“Sounds fun,” the phone hums. “I’m looking forward to it. I’ve had such a long day today, I can’t wait to get home and sleep. But now I’m gonna be thinking about food.”
“Can you even bake?” Taeyong asks, spite forming poison in his throat.
Another quick laugh. “I think so. I guess we’ll find out.”
The poison in Taeyong’s throat slips into his stomach. “Sorry.”
“Sorry for what?”
And he sounds so unbothered, so carefree, so unapologetically normal and happy, that Taeyong is at an abrupt loss of words and thoughts.
“Nothing,” he whispers. And again. “I miss you.”
“Miss you too. Hey, I’ve got to go, can we talk more later?”
Taeyong closes his eyes. “Sure.”
“See you.”
Just drink some water, he thinks.
Then, I can’t stand up anymore.
Then the world is spinning like a top, like an empty, tapered glass on its side, around, around, catching light in the crystal sharp corners.
I kind of want to die, he thinks.
I kind of want to drink some water.
I kind of want to pick up the phone.
I kind of want to push my head into the floor. Until it dissolves. Heavy, silty, coated in cracking paint and dust. Body and skeleton slipping away. Pulling apart. Seeping into the floor and the air and the dry earth.
Consciousness is a relic. Taeyong is a museum piece, on display.
“Water,” he says, out loud.
Someone snaps their fingers near his face and replies, “Hey man, you feeling good?”
Truthful. “No.”
“Wanna change that? Hey, you just let me know.”
I want to die, Taeyong repeats.
“What was that?”
“I’m going home,” he forces out.
“Whatever you say.”
Home to who? His mind screams. What is your home? What counts as a home? You don’t have a home.
“To my apartment,” he corrects, numbly. Nobody is listening. It’s better, like that. It feels better. Everything feels better when he’s invisible.
Taeyong digs his phone out of his pocket and dials a number before he thinks to stop himself.
“Hi.”
“Hey. What’s-”
“Doyoung,” he cuts him off. “I miss you.”
The other end of the phone is hazy and quiet. The inside of Taeyong’s head is on fire. The back of his throat burns and his eyes are sore and numb in equal measure. His forehead hurts. His neck hurts. His hands are unsteady.
“I miss you too. Are you okay? You sound out of it.”
Taeyong doesn’t know what to say. He doesn’t know any other words.
“Doyoung,” he repeats. And then he takes a shaky breath.
“You’re gonna be okay,” the phone tells him. Soft. Close to his ear. “Taeyong, take care of yourself.”
Taeyong bites his lip and squeezes his eyes shut. He hovers his thumb over the exit call button, balancing on the edge of a knife-sharp blade, and whispers, “I-”
He hangs up and mouths the next words silently.
“-love you.”