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There it is again, his apartment door’s beep. Sieun exhales sharply. He’s getting sick of it.
Sieun lives with his parents. Or maybe not—it’s hard to tell the difference. He can’t even recall the last time he heard that beep not coming from himself. His dad comes home once every few moons and even then he barely bothers greeting his son. Probably too tired from his longer-than-normal business trips, which are most definitely not strictly business trips. His mom doesn’t even remember the password for the apartment door, even though it is her son’s birthdate. She probably forgot all about it right away after she left home, like she had been waiting to.
By now, it should be clear why he never really liked the idea of coming home—he never really lived with his parents. He might as well not have parents.
…Still, for some reason, he particularly hates coming home today.
It’s hard to tell which one would be more sickening—to imagine the face his mom would make and the questions his dad would throw him if they saw the state he was in, or the reality of their absence. He’s memorised the patterns—they would act like they care about the bruises on his cheeks and mess around his hair strands, but they care more about how that burdens them than how he was hurt. He wished that he were stupid enough to be oblivious.
He hastily takes his sneakers off in front of the door, hyper-fixating on the bloodstains—a failed attempt to ignore the empty shoe rack in the corner of his eye.
He pushes the sides of his mouth with his tongue and gulps.
That shoe rack. His dad’s shoes used to be there, lined up meticulously because Sieun couldn’t stand messiness. It has been empty for a while. He noticed right away, but didn’t care at first. He never questioned where they went or why they were gone. Maybe because he kind of prefers the emptiness over the mess. Maybe he didn’t want to think about any other probable reasons.
He’s been good at doing that anyway—burying questions about his parents.
He has spent his whole life trying to be comfortable in the cold space of his empty house. He tells himself, “I’ve gotten used to this,” “it’s just another normal weekend,” “I’m alone today too, but it’s fine,” never daring to wish for more. He knows that trying to decipher the situation would only hurt him more, because explanations were something he never had and will never get.
Why did he never ask his parents? Well, why walk towards a dead end? Why kneel in front of a wall? Why shout into the void? Emptiness is better than the mess anyway, right? It’s silent. Peaceful. No hiding in the room. No listening to arguments about who lives with whom, only to end up all alone.
None of that.
That’s why he doesn’t understand why the empty shoe rack particularly bothers him today, or why the apartment’s cold air feels suffocating right now.
He finally turns his head to give the shoe rack a proper look. He struggles to focus, and it’s getting harder to ignore the anger slowly building up inside him.
Truthfully, Sieun knows how many shoes are gone from that rack. He could name what kinds are missing and the colours of each pair—the blue Sketchers his dad uses to jog, the white pair from the taekwondo union his dad works at, the neon Nike that his dad got through a buy 2 get 25% off deal, one of which he gifted to Sieun not knowing that Sieun likes neither bright colours nor exercising.
And once he starts thinking about the truth, about what’s missing from this place he reluctantly calls home, his mind becomes an unending spiral.
Right. That’s why he hates coming home today. That shoe rack shoves into him the bitter truth that his dad left. And he’s all alone. Again.
His stomach churns. His breaths are short, and his legs are becoming weak. Why? He should be used to it by now.
Emptiness is better than the mess, he chants inside his head. It’s not helping.
Emptiness is better than the mess, he doesn’t know when the phrase started becoming a mantra.
With his right hand supporting him on the wall, he quickly puts his shoes back on and walks out the door. He hears it again. The godforsaken beep.
“I’ll be back in two weeks.” Beep. The door shut before him. His dad didn’t come home until the following month.
“Call Eomma tonight, okay? Don’t forget to eat dinner.” Beep. His mom didn’t pick up the call that night.
“Sieun-ah, you know I don’t want to leave you either, right?” Beep. Lies.
He clutches his eyes and digs his nails deep into his palm as he squeezes the door handle. His ears ring with the high-pitched beeps and the endless goodbyes he has had to hear.
Stop.
He can’t breathe.
“Suho—” he calls that name in between his heaves, he doesn’t know why.
He tries to cover it up by finishing the sentence.
“Suho said he wanted ox knee soup,” the words barely came out.
Why is he thinking about that now?
“They have it near the hospital. I should— go back there.”
So he runs, and he runs like his legs were always meant to drag him away from his house, towards Suho.
Because now he has a person he unconsciously holds onto when he’s desperate. He has a name to call out when he needs help. He has Suho, who always comes running towards him instead of leaving him alone.
.
.
As Sieun watches the numbers count up on the small screen in the hospital’s elevator, he feels his stomach rumble. He realises he hasn’t had dinner, but it’s too late. He was already carrying the two bags of soup he got strictly for Suho and Youngyi.
He never really put effort into his meals. He buys frozen food and only reheats it in the oven for himself if he remembers. The only particular memory he has of dinners was the one he spent with both his parents on his fourth birthday, and how that compares to the occasional dinners his mom takes him to now.
Those dinners feel more like appointments. To eat such tasteless food in a fancy restaurant does take a lot of effort. Sometimes, those appointments seemed more like his mom flexing her money on him, like he was some coworker she needed to impress for her own benefit. Sieun would then perform some shitshow of a roleplay, listing his achievements over the past month and writing a verbal CV as the son of a professor who’s good at everything. Yes, he would turn himself into all that, because he bears the name Yeon Sieun—the name he never asked to be given.
Ding. The elevator door opens, knocking Sieun out of his daze. He thanks under his breath that it was not another damn beep, and slowly walks into the hallway.
He follows the numbers of each hospital ward he passes through, counting up again like he did in the elevator.
110, 111, 112.
That’s also how he used to cope when his parents argued—he hid in his room and befriended Maths calculations. Numbers are certain—two plus three is five, and walking down this hallway will lead him to room 119, where Suho is. No questions or explanations needed. There’s nothing to misunderstand.
With numbers, he wouldn’t need to question where the problem came from or how it started. He wouldn’t need to wonder if the problem is deep-rooted inside the walls of that house, or if he was the centre of the problem for not being able to do anything about it. Maybe he was initially born to bring some sort of change to that house and to his parents’ life; make them happier or something along those lines by being less dependent on them and being sick less often. Maybe then they wouldn’t have felt burdened and wouldn’t have argued until they ended up leaving him like this.
…117, 118, 119.
Sieun could see Suho resting in bed, but Youngyi wasn’t there. He quietly walks in, making sure he doesn’t disturb Suho’s sleep. He turns to face the door and gently closes it, absent-mindedly staring at the handle, again praying silently that there wouldn’t suddenly be a beep. It wouldn’t make sense if there were, and he must be going mad, but still—
“What is this?” He was knocked out of his daze the second time tonight. This time, by Suho’s voice. He isn’t asleep anymore. He looks at the plastic bags in Sieun’s hands, and then at Sieun.
“You wanted it,” Sieun answers as he places Suho’s soup on the table, voice low and hoarse. It is his first time hearing his own voice tonight. He can even hear the low hum of the aircon, the ticking clock, and Suho rustling under his blanket as he sits up. Suho’s presence instantly silenced his loud thoughts.
“Where’s Youngyi?”
“Youngyi? She went to see the receptionist.” Suho takes the bowl out of the bag and stares at it for a few seconds. “What’s this feeling? I’m getting goosebumps. What is this?” he blurts out, his face frozen in utter disbelief.
“What?” Sieun asks back. Is it really that unusual that Sieun is doing something for someone else? He guesses it makes sense, he has countless times pushed people away—he even did with Suho at first. This whole time, he simply saw no point in forming relationships with other people when he couldn’t have the only one that was supposed to matter.
As he gets lost in his thoughts again, his head slowly drops, and his gaze empties.
They say… the person someone grows into reflects the home they grew up in… but Sieun can’t help the fact that his home feels so cold, can he? And he really doesn’t know what else to do—
“No, it’s just that…” Suho’s voice silences his head once more.
“You’re so warmhearted.”
What? Sieun’s eyes widen. He raises his head to look at Suho once more.
Suho’s eyes wander around Sieun’s figure. “Your eyes, how you behave, how you speak, and your face… It feels strange, Sieun-ah.” And for once, it doesn’t feel like someone is seeing through him.
Little by little, starting with his eyes taking the shape of a crescent moon, followed by the curvature of his lips… he smiles . And not only that, he wants to laugh at how Suho’s baffled expression becomes even more apparent afterwards, with his eyeballs almost popping out of their cage and his mouth dropping even further as he scoffs.
Sieun’s shoulders fall as he settles onto the side of Suho’s bed.
“Dig in,” he gently instructs.
He agrees with Suho—it is a strange feeling, to feel as if the tight grip on his chest has just been released, and to feel the weight he was beyond tired of bearing lifted.
You’re so warm-hearted.
It is such a simple sentence, stated so much like a matter-of-fact, that Sieun almost believes it was the truth. But it is something no one has ever said to him. It is so far from everything he has been to everyone else. It makes every muscle in his body relax, and it delivers the kind of warmth he has never felt before. The kind that tingles on every inch of his usually cold skin and makes his heart beat a little easier, albeit louder.
Warmth feels too strange, foreign—it sounds too much like the countless lies he’s been told. But warmth is also what sitting beside Suho feels like. Warmth is the feeling that washes over him whenever Suho calls for him. That’s real. And Sieun doesn’t know where or how he might have gotten it, but he really wants to believe that somehow, he carries just a little bit of that warmth within him. Just enough so he can be the source of it for Suho, too.
“Wait, Sieun, have you eaten?”
Sieun shakes his head.
“You got us all this, but haven’t eaten yourself? Sieun-ah, you—” Suho stops mid-sentence. “Sieun?” Suho calls again, a little softer as he leans closer to Sieun. “You’re teary-eyed…”
“What? Oh,” Sieun quickly rubs his eyes. “It’s nothing,” he chokes. “Eat up.”
Sieun tries to avert his gaze, but Suho’s eyes stay glued to his. After a pause, Suho finally asks, “...Sieun-ah, do you cry often?”
Sieun shakes his head. “Why do you say that?”
“You have such sad eyes,” Suho states.
Sieun has heard that, among the many things people have said about his eyes in their whispers. Sometimes, they say his eyes are scary, other times empty, sadistic, sharp, and, well, sad.
"I stopped crying long ago.”
“Why?”
“Well, because—”
Because he had tried to cry for help, back when crying was the only way he knew to tell his parents that he was in pain.
“Because Mom and Dad wouldn’t listen.”
They wouldn’t even try. Even now, they probably haven’t realised how much their son has grown—how Sieun hasn’t cried or asked anything of them in a long time. He knows that his existence is a burden they’re stuck with for the rest of their lives. He understands that too well already. But does he really have to spend his entire life carrying that label? Is it so wrong that he wishes to be freed from his ties to the people who were never there in the first place?
He has thought about it a thousand times over, about why they refused to listen to his cries. Maybe they did it assuming that the pain would eventually disappear by itself. Or maybe because it was just easier that way. He doesn’t know. Again, explanations were something he never got. At some point, their presence became so foreign to him that he just stopped wanting it altogether.
So yes, he gave up on crying because he gave up on his parents. He is now left with this lingering misery that… he never learned how to face. So he shoves it away, until days like this come, when endless thoughts and what-ifs come rushing into his head, and everything he encounters reminds him of what he doesn’t have. He feels like exploding.
“Yeon Sieun?” Suho calls him again, probably the fifth time tonight. Sieun wants to keep hearing it. Because every time someone else calls his name, it’s always either because he achieved something great or did something wrong. Always with the empty expressions and muffled words saying either “congratulations, Sieun-ah,” or “apologise, Yeon Sieun.”
But Suho wraps his name in that gentle voice—he says it in a way that asks nothing of him and lets him exist alongside it, not under it, nor chasing after it as it grows even more foreign. Through Suho’s mouth, the name Yeon Sieun truly belongs to him, not something he owes anyone for just having.
Sieun struggles to snap back into reality this time. He’s lost in his thoughts, again. Tonight has been too much—the shoe rack, the beeps, the soup, the counting, the coldness, the “you’re so warmhearted,” the smiling, the crying—
The crying…
“Sieun-ah—” Suho sounds slightly alarmed by his sudden tears. He hastily puts his soup aside, closes its lid, and moves towards Sieun’s side. His hands wrap around Sieun’s shoulders, and then he softly rubs his arms.
“Suho,” the name rolls out of Sieun’s mouth in between cries, and it feels like breathing. That makes him sob even harder.
“Suho-ya…”
“Yes, Sieun-ah?”
He sobs, because with Suho, getting an answer is too easy. With Suho, he can hope that someone will finally hear his cry for help.
“Why are you crying, hm? Did something bad happen today?”
Why did no one ask him that back then?
“Come here,” Suho runs his palm behind Sieun’s hair and tucks his head into his shoulder, embracing him in a hug. “You can cry, it’s okay. I’m listening.” Sieun’s body shakes even more uncontrollably, his breath hitches, and he is writhing like he has been hurting for too long. Tears run down his cheeks like a dam has just broken inside his eyes.
A dam—that’s it. ‘ You have sad eyes,’ because they have been guarding his tears like a dam for too long, and they are tired. Because he may be teary-eyed almost all the time, but he stops himself there. Never sobbing, like he is right now.
Under Suho’s gentle brushes, Sieun lifts his head slightly to peek over Suho’s shoulder, catching a glimpse of their reflection in the mirror across the room. He is an utter mess. And yet, even in that mess—or maybe even because of it—Sieun can see it: how much he looks like his parents. The bridge of his nose, the curvature of his lips, the shape of his chin and ears—there is really no denying the blood running through his veins, the surname Yeon, and the state of the house he must return to later tonight.
The only thing that distinguishes him from his parents is his eyes. Those sad eyes are not something his parents passed down to him—there’s a somewhat tragic gap between the fact that he didn’t inherit that sadness from his parents and how he still ended up having such a sorrowful stare because of them.
Suho pulls back, taking a proper look at Sieun’s face like he has just read Sieun’s mind. He wipes the tears away with his thumb, cups Sieun’s cheeks between his hands, and smiles. “The ox knee soup you brought is to die for.”
Sieun giggles in between his sobs. “Is it?”
Suho nods, still smiling ever so sweetly. But his eyes are now sad, too, as he stares deeper into Sieun’s.
Sieun really looks like he has been carrying the weight of the world behind those eyes. That’s why, at that moment when his smile finally reached them, Suho felt his world shift. How can Sieun even think about getting him that soup in the middle of his jumbled headspace? How can someone radiate so much warmth in the middle of the storm they carry? Suho wants to protect it. He wants to be the reason behind that smile again. He would repaint the world with colours for Sieun.
Suho tucks Sieun back into his embrace and whispers, “I’m sorry,” under Sieun’s ear.
“Why?” Sieun asks, voice still shaky.
“I’m sorry that I can’t say sorry in place of your parents. I’m sorry that my presence can never replace their absence in your home, Sieun-ah.”
Sieun shakes his head, pulling back just enough to meet Suho’s eyes. He’s an absolute mess right now—but for the first time, the vast emptiness in his heart feels... full. Suho fills it.
“There is nothing to be sorry for. In fact, I’m sorry,” he begins. He points toward the abandoned bowl in the corner of the table with his head. “Your soup is cold now.”
“Then let me feel your warmth again, to make up for it.”
Sieun nods. “Okay.”
.
.
“Wow, all that, and not even a kiss?”
Suho and Sieun turn towards the voice.
“Youngyi!” Suho greets her, “What took you so long?! Sieun got you food, it must’ve gotten cold already.” Is he ignoring what she just said?
“No way. Sieun-ah, you know I’ll get fat if I eat this late, right? Woah. This looks so good, though?! You’re crazy, you know that? Thanks a lot.”
“How long have you been here?” Sieun asks, practically begging her not to mind his puffy eyes.
“Not long. I circled Seoul twice before coming back here. I’ll also eat outside. I even got new friends while I was out and you guys were… yeah.” Youngyi grabs her food and starts rushing back towards the door. “Thank me later! Use this time well! A hug isn’t all you guys can do, by the way!” She steps out of the room. “Don’t pretend you didn’t hear what I said earlier!” She delivers final words and closes the door.
She throws a wink over her shoulder just before the door clicks shut. What the hell?
Sieun turns his head back from the door to Suho. Suho is staring at him already. And then at his lips. He leans closer.
“You don’t have to go home tonight.”
Oh. Sieun thinks his heart might explode.
Suho pecks his lips against Sieun’s. Then pulls away and exhales.
“Stay here, Sieun-ah.”
And this time, Sieun becomes the one to lean forward, until their lips collide and the world around them vanishes.
He doesn’t have to go home tonight, and he thanks the gods for it. Someone finally proved him wrong—Suho did. Is emptiness better than the mess? No, not anymore.
With every inch of movement between their mouths, he carves Suho’s name into his bare heart, spelling it once, twice, again and again, until it fills every bit of the emptiness that’s been eating him alive. He lets the wreck that he is tonight—the mess they are right now—consume him instead, and he’s okay with it.
As long as it’s Suho, home won’t feel so cold.