Archive of Our Own ^beta

He can feel it. 

The unbearable weight of the sun pressing heavy and insistent on his skin. Sweat tracing rivers of exertion down his neck. The reverberation in his bones as quick-footed steps meet unrelenting earth. 

Dust billows up and settles unwelcome across his tastebuds. His heart beats a steady, staccato rhythm of youth, of power, of joy. He can keep going forever. He will keep going forever. 

Suho is running, and he can feel it all.

The faded summer breeze whispers commendations in his ear, carries him gently and earnestly on its tide–faster, further, you were made for this. Bodies pass by in a blur in his peripheral vision. Slower, meeker boys who can’t keep up, who never will because he’s on top of the goddamn world. But he shouts and offers encouragement anyway, because shouldn’t all of them feel like this? Nearly drunk with the thrill of adrenalin, like he just dunked his head in the fountain of youth–or that it lives inside him, that eternal blossom of longevity sitting idle in his blood all along. 

In the dream he can never say out loud, Suho runs. 

He runs. And runs. And the world and its sick, heady hunger for him pass right by like one of those slower bodies in his peripheral. Weak. Inconsequential. Nothing and no one can catch him. 

He’s 16. He’s whole. His body is his own. 

He can feel it

    thrumming in his ears. Rain falls steadily against the thick glass pane of Suho’s hospital room window. The heavy patter of droplets is dragging him unwillingly into the present–back into the trancelike bubble of his sterile little room. Cold. Quiet. The memory of the sun beating down his back as he ran fades between one blink and the next. 

Suho’s brain feels thick with fog. His heart does a suffocating leap in his chest, dripping dread down into his stomach. These days, with waking, there comes the fear. Sleeping scares him a little–that tug of darkness he’s never sure won’t drag him back into a place he can’t escape from. But the exhaustion is endless and relentless in its pull, seizing him whenever it wishes before he’s even aware of it–which, really, how much more sleep can someone that’s been asleep for 2 years possibly need? When his eyes open, there’s always a split second shock of dread, like his body is equal parts surprised and concerned to see its survived. 

He takes a short breath in, swallowing the small pill of anxiety. There are other things slipping into awareness through the sleep and rain-addled haze now; soft, careful footsteps. The slide of a drawer, the creak of a door. Suho forces his eyes to focus, taking in the scene in front of him. 

His grandmother shuffles quietly around the room, unpacking a duffle bag filled with Suho’s clothing. She flits back and forth carefully between his bed and the small dresser on the opposite wall, mumbling to herself about the weather and how best to organize his underwear. A week after waking and the doctors and nurses suggested that Suho bring in some personal belongings to help make the room feel more comfortable. Less soulless. The implication being that he’s going to be here for a while.

You should make it feel more like you, a nurse (Harin? Jia? He can’t sort the names straight in his head) had suggested. 

He’d wanted to tell her that he has no idea what that means anymore, but then he figured that’d probably land him a few extra hours with the therapist—Dr. Seo-ah. A perfectly pleasant, careful woman who gives him the distinct impression of wanting to scrape his guts out and examine them beneath a microscope.  

So he’d just bit his tongue and nodded. His grandmother had left earlier in the day to quietly collect the measly little pile of things he’d amassed in his room at their apartment. 

Now, he’s sat up against a stack of fluffy pillows–he must’ve fallen asleep watching her, though he can’t remember. He’s on doctor’s orders to practice sitting up for longer and longer periods of time, to rebuild the muscles in his spine. He has no idea if its been minutes or hours since he fell asleep, but Suho feels winded and achy, like he’s just finished a long night of deliveries and not just sitting. More than anything he wants to lay down, to ease the strain he feels building in his back and trickling steadily down towards his hips. But if he does, Halmeoni will get that look on her face—the guilty, heartbroken one that makes him want to punch a hole through the wall. Suho grits his teeth, sits up straighter. 

The shuffling draws his grandmother’s attention. 

“Suho-yah,” She says, gently. “You woke up.”

Obviously, he wants to bite back. That’s another thing–the incessant, unrelenting anger. Everything makes him mad. Everyone. Even his kind, gentle and loving halmeoni, who he’s never even had the gall to complain about behind her back. Suho doesn’t get angry–he laughs it off, tells a joke, flings an arm around a shoulder.

Except for that night. Outside his door. A cast. A boy in black.  A boxing ring. 

He’d never felt anger like that before–desperate and all consuming, less like it was something he was feeling and more like it was him. He thinks maybe that anger was the only thing inside him strong enough to survive the coma, to pull him out of it in the first place–wake up, I’m still hungry for more. 

It takes everything in him, every moment of every day,  not to let it seep out and asphyxiate everything and everyone in his path. 

Suho swallows. “How long did I doze off for?”

“An hour or so,” Halmeoni takes a careful seat at the edge of his bed. “You’ve been sitting up for that long too. Much better than yesterday already, hmm?”

He shrugs. Winces when the movement burns his shoulders. Feels that twisted, ugly, angry little beast inside of him grow that much bigger. “What did you…”

A deep breath. It takes a second for the words to settle comfortably in his mouth. A dropped signal from his brain to his voice he’s still having trouble reconnecting.

 “What did you end up bringing over?”

He doesn’t really care. But—normal people talk, make conversation. My back hurts so bad, he thinks. I want to lie down. I want to rest. 

Halmeoni scooches over and brushes gentle fingers through his hair. “Just a few things. Some of your favourite sweaters, and your phone too. I kept it charged for you. A couple pairs of pants…oh, what else? Some books–I know you don’t like to read but I thought maybe they would be good for passing the time. Maybe you can...”

He lets her babble off for a while, partly because he doesn’t have it in him to respond, and partly because his body is already expending so much energy on trying not to collapse in on itself. Weak, he thinks. You can’t even fucking sit down. 

“Oh, well,” Halmeoni cuts herself off, standing up. “How about you take a look with me, hmm? You can help me figure out where to put everything.” 

“Sure,” Suho forces out, nodding. He’s so, so tired. But he can’t sleep. He won’t. What time is it? He thinks drearily. What day is it? 

His grandma carefully drags the duffle bag up to the bed, setting it gently beside where his legs rest. One by one, she pulls things out for Suho to assess–a stack of books he won’t touch, his phone, which she rests on his bedside table. Some pants. Magazines and manga. His vision has gone blurry with the effort of pretending to care, of being awake, of his spine carrying its own weight. He can hardly see what she’s showing him until—a flash of red. White and black. 

Suho sucks in a breath of air. The sound cuts through the careful ambience of the room—even the rain seems to still, droplets suspended midair like they’re waiting for something heavier to blow in. Something dangerous. 

Halmeoni pauses mid-motion. In her hands is Suho’s windbreaker. The red, black and white one. The one he’d been wearing. The last thing he’d worn. 

Suho swallows. He can’t tear his eyes away from it, something so simple—a small little bundle of cloth in his grandma’s hands. Barely anything at all. 

“Where…?” That dropped signal again. His words keep getting caught in the spiderweb of damaged brain cells collecting dust in his head. Halmeoni seems to sense and spare him the humiliation of speaking.

“They gave me all your belongings when you were first admitted.” Her thumb soothes delicately over the fabric. “I washed everything. It took me a while to—” She stops suddenly, lifting her gaze. The remainder of her sentence rings sharply in the air like the aftermath of a gunshot. 

Get the blood out. He can see it—his grandma’s weathered, gnarled hands scrubbing ceaselessly to remove the blood stains. Her little boy’s blood. He thinks he might throw up. 

Halmeoni lets out a heavy breath. “I brought it just in case. I know it used to be one of your favourites.” 

It was. He’d saved up weeks worth of delivery money to buy it—a brand new, shiny Nike jacket. Something he’d worked for. Something he could be excited about. 

It’s silly to think about now, but he really had loved that jacket like it was a part of himself. In a bubble as lonely and as isolated as Suho’s, the smallest things had offered comfort. A jacket, a scooter, a pair of shoes. Later— a boy. A pen scribbling against paper. A friend. 

Looking at it now, hanging limply in his grandmother’s hands, he wants to keel over. More embarrassingly, he wants to cry. 

Red. Black. White. Sinister, hungry laughter echoing in a ring. A shoe cracking against his temple. Stop blaming others. The stutter of his brain flicking quietly off. 

But there are other memories too, fond ones. He remembers hands clenched carefully in the nylon fabric of that jacket as he’d driven a scooter through nighttime streets. Hands that were worn and blistered from hours of determined studying. Hands he’d wanted to hold. Hands he’d wanted to protect. (Hands he’d failed to). 

It’s a mistake, he knows it. He can hear the cool, clear voice of Dr. Seo-ah in his ears— Don’t rush yourself. You need time to process. 

But. 

It’s just a jacket. And he wants to try. He’s allowed to try. 

He pauses. Thinks. Makes sure the words are lined up carefully at the entrance to his mouth, ready to make their way into the world. 

“Can you help me put it on?” 

Halmeoni hesitates. There’s a moment where it looks like she’s going to say no, to question him. Are you sure?  But her expression clears a second later. It soothes the anger in him just so— that she’s trusting his decision. Trust towards Suho and his capabilities is so rarely offered now. 

Slowly, she unfolds the little bundle and steps toward him. 

“Careful now,” Halmeoni hums. She steadies one hand against his shoulder as she helps him lean forward to work the jacket behind his back. All they can manage to do is have it drape over his shoulders—he’s too tired to even attempt the battle of lifting his arms. He doesn’t know if he should be embarrassed or thankful that his grandma understands. 

Halmeoni spends a few more seconds restlessly smoothing out the material, the warmth of her palms seeping through layers of fabric like distant sunlight. 

A deep breath. A flash of heartache in her eyes. Halmeoni helps him settle back against the pillows and—

And it’s not monumental. It’s not overwhelming. 

It’s just sad. The jacket hangs loosely and ill-fitting atop his hollowed out body. Where there used to be muscle and strength to fill out the cloth lies only space now. Lies only loss. 

Suho has the distinct feeling like he’s stepping into a house he used to live in. There was love in these walls. Life, laughter. Youth. But it’s lost to him now, swept away to a place beyond his reach. The sun has gone down. Summer has ended. It’s time to come in. Pack up. Get out. 

Your time here is done. This isn’t yours anymore. 

An awful, heavy silence coalesces over the room. Suho’s back has crossed the threshold of heightened pain into numbness. He can’t feel it anymore. He can’t feel anything at all. 

“You can take this one back.” For once, the words are clear. “Get rid of it.” 

“Suho—"

“I’m tired, Halmeoni—I, I need to lay down.” 

“Right.” She shuffles into action immediately, like he knew she would. “Let’s get you nice and comfortable.” 

She slips the jacket off his shoulders and tucks it carefully out of sight. He wishes he had the strength to throw it across the room, to rip it to shreds, to do anything. 

But he just watches. Waits. Feeds the anger spreading slick like tar in his chest cavity. Halmeoni settles him back down so he’s laying flat and finally, finally giving his body a chance to rest. 

Suho lays. Halmeoni hovers. Outside, the world trudges on. 

Red. Black. White. 

How is it we go on living knowing we’ve lost a part of ourselves, knowing we’ll never get it back? And worse, to have lost something you didn’t know you had, some inconsequential part of you you were willing to bargain without realizing just how much your body would falter in its absence. 

And worse, to live with the memory of letting it go.

And worse, to not know which parts of you are worth holding onto now. 

And worse. 

And worse. 

And worse.

The days flow carefully onward, a river of routine eroding a path to progress. 

Suho sleeps. He tries to read until his eyes get dry and achy. He answers questions. On a scale of 1-10, how much does it hurt? Do you remember what day it is? Can you try moving this arm? This leg? 

He watches people. Doctors. Nurses. His grandmother. Sieun. Always Sieun. His strange group of loud, lively friends. 

He tries to relearn what it means to be a person. 

And underneath it all runs that same suffocating, angry current. That wave that keeps tugging at his legs, begging to pull him under. 

Somewhere in the hollow cavern of his chest, a child won’t stop crying out, 

Why me? 

May. 3 weeks since he opened his eyes. Outside, the trees have bloomed into a mosaic of tantalizing colour. Every single sprightly shade of green, flowers of fluttering pinks, yellows, purples. The days are longer—sunlight stretches its greedy fingers through his window early and eager, and lays unbothered across the floor like a napping housecat until deep into the evening. 

Suho closes his eyes against the light, letting the warmth glaze over him. He thinks of his dream, of running. 

He used to love summer. The thrill of endless time and possibility. All those syrupy slow hours in the day to move, to live. And that last summer had been better than most—the summer of beginnings. Of Sieun. 

He hadn’t known, then, it would be the summer of endings too—or the ending, full stop. 

How strange, to close your eyes at the end of one season, only to open them to find you’ve been jolted back to the beginning again. When he’d woken up, it had been August just yesterday. And here he is now with May fallen suddenly into his lap. 

Progress made. Progress undone. The difference between what felt like a couple hours rest. 

But still. Summer. Sunlight. There has to be something in that, Suho thinks. In the simple arrival of a new season. 

A hand rakes through his hair. Suho blinks his eyes open, startled, but pleased. 

“Hi,” He breathes, a little dopey. Sieun is standing in front of him. He’s in his summer uniform; a light blue button up left open over a faded, white graphic tee. Blue dress pants folded carefully on top of his high-top converse. The sleeves of his shirt are short—exposing skin that’s already starting to brown, sun-kissed and honey-like. Inky black hair splays messily over his forehead. Eyes like gossamer. Suho’s entire body goes slack with comfort in the radiance of his steadfast warmth. 

The touching—it’s new. For Sieun, especially. Before, Suho had always been the one to reach out. A brush of hands, pinching his cheek, pulling him in by the shoulders, ruffling his hair. Sieun had always seemed begrudgingly resigned to Suho’s clinginess—carefully accepting, but never reciprocating.  Never in his wildest dreams (and dream he did) could Suho have imagined a day where Sieun would want to reach for him back. 

But now— the touches are nearly constant, almost greedy in their nature. Hands in his hair, on his shoulders, fixing clothing, checking his temperature; and sometimes, when Suho is perched on that careful border between sleep and awareness, he feels callused fingers fiddling carefully with his own. 

Summer, Suho’s blood sings again. Heat. Sieun. 

“Hi,” Sieun nods. “Late?” 

“Hmm?” Suho tilts his head.  “Oh. Not yet.” 

Sieun tries to time his visits with Suho’s physical therapy sessions—3 in a day. On weekends, he’s there standing stalwart and sentinel for each of them.  But on school days, he can usually only catch the last one. 

Sieun’s shoulders sag with relief. “Good,” He sighs. He settles himself at the end of the bed, careful not to crush Suho with his weight. 

“Humin held us up for so long. Something about picking the right colour shirt for a date,” Sieun grumbles. “Nobody wanted to be there, but he insisted…”

Suho lets him talk, even though his mood sours slightly at the mention of Humin and the rest. 

It’s fine, Suho thinks. Sieun is happy. I like listening to him talk. It’s fine. 

Everything is fine. 

Replaceable, the angry hovel inside of him echoes. You’re replaceable. 

“Suho?” A tug on his shirt sleeve. Sieun is staring at him, head tilted slightly, eyes earnest and eager.

A blink. A beat. A moment to let the correct sound claw its way up his throat. “Yes?”

“Nurse Jia is here. She said she’s ready for you.” 

“Oh,” Suho’s stomach does a humiliating little swoop. He forces his eyes up, taking in the sudden presence of Nurse Jia standing patiently behind Sieun. He feels a little nauseous, a little off kilter.  Awake for too long, probably. 

He didn’t notice her come in. Didn’t even register that something had changed. His world keeps morphing between one blink and the next—details slipping in stealthily, waiting to smother him with the ache of embarrassment, of failure. 

Suho sighs. Squeezes his eyes shut.  “Okay.”

Carefully, Nurse Jia and Sieun lift and shuffle Suho onto his wheelchair. Once he’s settled, Nurse Jia steps back almost instantaneously—habitually— to let Sieun grab the handle bars and push. Suho can feel his quiet, dedicated presence at his back all the way down the bustling, suffocating hallways of the hospital. It’s harder still not to fall asleep like this, with Sieun sheltering him in a sense of safety and comfort. Hard to not let the chaotic ambience of the evening hospital pull him under. 

But the slowly sweltering dread crawling through his veins at what’s to come keeps him upright despite it all, awake and anxious. 

Physical therapy is, undoubtedly, the worst part of his day. Even with Sieun there. (Sometimes, though he can’t say it out loud, especially with Sieun there). The whole thing feels like a study in ritual humiliation. Lift your arm. Reach for this cup. Slide your foot forward, back. Things anyone could do. Things that went unspoken and unthought of in a body that could dodge, twist, spin and kick in the air, punch like lightning. 

But now, everything hurts. Breathing, blinking. Being. 

The shame of it feels like a virus festering deep in his bones, like at any moment it could sear straight through him and burn everything to ashes. 

Some days—most days—that doesn’t sound so bad. 

When they get to the physio room, Suho is lifted back out of his wheelchair and tasked with sitting upright on a special, stiff and uncomfortable chair, made for forcing him to sit up straight and train his muscles into obedience. 

And so it starts. The physiotherapist— a blocky, older male nurse he never bothered to learn the name of—settles into their routine. His focus this week has been on rebuilding the mobility in Suho’s shoulders. Suho is tasked with holding his arm out to the side and lifting it in gradual increments. From Monday to Friday, he’s managed to force his arms up to slightly above a 90 degree angle–and most importantly, hold them there for just under a minute. 

You’re doing so well. You’re progressing faster than expected. Words that seep through the fabric of sound so often in the confined spaces of the hospital he’s no longer sure if they’re said with honesty or placation.

He wishes someone would tell him why progress feels like sorrow, like heartbreak, like clawing senselessly and desperately at a brick wall. What is all this pain for? What is there ahead that’s waiting for me?

“Just a bit longer,” The physiotherapist’s voice is gruff, but gentle. Suho’s left arm is shaking like a leaf about to fall off a branch. His shoulder hurts so bad he wants to curse, to give up. But through it all, a low, melodic voice carries words through the air like dust billowing through sunlight. Suho closes his eyes, bites his lip, and lets himself sink into the cushiony grace of Sieun’s voice.

It goes like this–Everyday, Suho struggles. Heals. And Sieun sits perched in the chair across the room, reading aloud. 

At the start, during physio sessions, Sieun liked to hover. He matched Suho pace for pace, reaching forward at the slightest inclination of hesitation, of a need for help. Steady hands always up in the air just slightly, like birds perched on a ledge, ready to take off. 

And as much as it means more than the world to Suho to have Sieun here, always here–it drove him a little crazy. Gave him the impression that maybe Sieun thought he was too weak now, too feeble and fragile. And there was that anger again, wanting to sick its prey, wanting to destroy, whenever Sieun stepped in, offered a hand, crumpled his face in worry. 

Suho would rather have his head kicked in all over again than let that anger touch Sieun. 

He thought he’d been doing a good job at reigning it in, swallowing the words on his tongue, until a moment 2 weeks earlier. 

Suho’s task, at the time, was trying to hold a spoon in his crumpled up fingers. After the 3rd failed try, the demeaning echo of the metal falling jarringly onto the tray ringing through the room, Sieun had stepped forward. Reached out to touch Suho’s hand, to help him pick up the spoon again.

Clenched teeth. “Don’t.”

A pause. Hands guiltily trapped in midair. 

“What?”

“You don’t,” Deep breath. Words fading through a dense layer of mist. Try again. “You don’t always have to do that.” His voice had been slurred, barely comprehensible, but even then the biting tone of bitterness had managed to lilt up through the cracks in his words.

“I can do things by myself.” See. I can talk. I can pick up a stupid fucking spoon. I can be Suho. I need you to see that. Please see that.  “It’s just—just a spoon.” 

He’d half expected Sieun to pull back sharply, offended. To be hurt. Mad, maybe. A fight, the fury in him sang, thrilled, a victim. But Sieun’s expression hadn’t changed. His hands had dropped carefully, gently, not hurt or stung, just simply moving. His face remained perfectly blank. Suho had watched as his thoughtful, calculating eyes had merely reassessed the situation. Approached the problem from a different angle.

When he’d opened his mouth to respond, Suho’s whole body had gone still in anticipation, bracing itself for—something. 

But then,

“Okay,” Smooth. Clear. Normal. “What helps?” Said like a fact. Like asking about the weather. Not a trace of pity to be found.  The air had rushed out of Suho’s body in a relieved huff. He’d slumped back against his pillows, eyes closed. 

What helps? Nothing. Sieun’s blank slate of a face flashed behind his eyes. His careful voice echoed in his ears. And Suho had come to the realization that Sieun’s ability to weather the storm unphased, to offer a logical, steady response is what helps more than anything. 

Everyone watches him like he’s a feral, wounded animal. As though at any moment he’s liable to break or run off or lose his mind completely. 

Everyone, except Sieun. 

Here, in this rushing stream of horror that has swept away most of Suho’s life, there remains one stone unchanged, unmoved. Laying almost at ease beneath the unrelenting current. 

“Talking,” Suho had finally whispered. “Your voice.” 

It’s a heavy ask for someone like Sieun, who prefers mostly to listen and observe, offering responses rarely and with careful consideration. So Suho hadn’t expected much. He’d just let his eyes flutter closed, body sagging defeated into the pillows. The harsh sound of his agitated breathing pacing the quiet like a metronome. 

Until—the evening hush had been delicately split open by words. Pretty, rhythmic words from a boy who contained the universe and all its capabilities for softness. 

Suho had cracked his eyes open to see Sieun reading determinedly from a textbook—something about velocity and distance. Tears had burned unbidden behind his eyes, like embers from a fire that had never died out. Suho had swallowed. Sat up. Let his body relax in the waves of Sieun’s voice, and he had picked up the spoon. 

Now, he lets himself fall back into that same place of rest. He can see it— the light bouncing ethereally off that single, untouched stone in the water. They’ve moved on from textbooks to actual novels now; today, he’s wrapping up Heaven by Mieko Kawakami. 

Suho lifts his left arm. Then his right. 30 seconds. 40. A minute. 

Sieun reads, “Everything that I could see was beautiful. I cried and cried, standing there, surrounded by that beauty, even though I wasn’t standing anywhere…Everything was beautiful. Not that there was anyone to share with it, anyone to tell. Just the beauty.”

Suho closes his eyes. He thinks of earlier, of the trees and colours outside his window. The light kissing his face. Sieun’s hand in his hair. 

Summer. Everything was beautiful. Not just yet but—maybe. 

Maybe.

Later, after his allotted 40 minutes of physio come to a blissful end, Suho lays half reclined on his bed. He’s been drifting slowly in and out of sleep for the past hour like the ocean at low tide. His muscles are sore and tender from the exertion, a heavy, pressing sort of burn that begs for rest. But it feels sort of nice, too. Before, he’d chased that ache in his muscles relentlessly, the exhilarating burn of his body changing, growing. 

It’s the same feeling now, the same chase. Only a different body. A different type of growth. Suho tries to let himself enjoy it all the same, though it’s hard to focus with all the noise permeating the quiet room in the form of Sieun. 

Something isn’t right with him, if the way he’s been shuffling around the room ever since they got back is any indication. Smoothing Suho’s blankets over and over, adjusting his chair, his elbow knocking into the tray of mostly uneaten food, standing up to pace and sitting back down again, a backpack zipped and unzipped, a heavy sigh here and then. 

It’s driving Suho a little crazy.  

“Yeon Sieun.” Suho drawls without opening his eyes. The creaking of the chair moving for the hundredth time comes to a standstill. “Why are you shuffling around like a mouse?” 

Sieun coughs slightly. “Sorry.” 

Suho cracks an eye open. Sieun is staring decidedly at the wall across from his chair, though every while, his eyes flicker down to flit apprehensively over Suho’s bedside table before moving back to the blank wall. Suho’s exhausted. He can feel sleep calling to him, a siren’s pull in a vast ocean. But he’s curious now, too. 

“Something you need?”

Sieun’s gaze flicks over to meet Suho’s. “Um, I don’t think so?”

“Are you asking me?”

Sieun opens his mouth, once, twice, and then lets out a frustrated little huff of air that makes Suho want to reach out and pinch his cheeks so bad. His gaze slides over to the bedside table again. Suho’s confused. The only thing of consequence on the stout wooden table is a stack of dusty books and his phone, which lays face down on top. A glass of stale water. Maybe he’s thirsty? 

Sieun lets out another deep breath. He draws his eyes back to Suho again, then straightens up in his seat like a meerkat on the lookout for prey. Suho’s heart does a fond little jump. Cute. 

“Your phone,” He starts. Coughs again. Clears his throat. All signs of a nervously bumbling Yeon Sieun. 

Suho’s interest is piqued. With Sieun like this, he can almost forget he was ever exhausted at all. 

“My phone,” He parrots, one eyebrow raised. 

Sieun’s cheeks tint—just slightly, a faded wine stain. “Have you… looked at it much?”

“Not really,” Suho tilts his head.  “I can’t look at screens, makes my head feel all funny.” TVs too. The one time he’d tried to watch something idly, he’d had to lay in the pitch darkness for hours afterward. Head buried under the blanket, tears falling steadily from his eyes at the sheer unyielding pain of what felt like his head being repeatedly split open. He hadn’t tried again after that. His phone has remained powered off and untouched since Halmeoni brought it back with his little pile of belongings. 

(And–though he can’t admit it to himself–he’s terrified. His phone is an artifact frozen in time, the last remnants of a brighter, bolder, more lively Suho living untouched in every message, every photo, in every stupid little game he had downloaded for breaks between deliveries. And especially from that day, that awful, endless night. The last phone call he made, the sealing of his own fate.  If he opens it, if he lets himself look, he’ll have to acknowledge that he’s no longer that person. He’s scared to find he won’t recognize himself anymore, in the texts, in the pictures. Like biting into a food you’d loved wholly and completely, only to find the flavours warped–bitter and rancid on your tongue.)

When Sieun had come to see him that same day Halmeoni dropped it off, and later sometimes in the days since, he’d chanced frequent glances at the little phone—always blushing and biting his lip, looking wide eyed at Suho like he was waiting for something. But Suho had never thought to make the connection, had always chalked it up to general nerves and Sieun-esque mannerisms. 

“Right,” Sieun nods. Once, twice. “Okay.”

The corners of Suho’s mouth twitch up into a smile. “Should I be looking at it?” 

“No!” Sieun blurts, panicked. Suho is thoroughly amused now. His smile breaks into a full-blown grin. 

“No?” He teases. 

Sieun steadfastly looks away. He’s still sitting up straight and stiff, expending all his effort into appearing nonchalant. “I mean—do whatever you want. It’s your phone.” 

“Hmm,” Suho nods. “Okay, then.” Slowly, he extricates one arm from beneath his blanket and slides it over to the bedside table. Thanks to the stack of books, the phone is easily reachable at his arm level without him having to move around too much. He lets his fingers close over the cool metal and glass, sliding it carefully back into his lap. 

Sieun’s eyes go wide in alarm. “What are you doing?”

Suho flashes a wicked smirk, amusement heavy in his voice when he says, “Looking at my phone?”

“Now!?” Sieun is horrified. Suho lets out a delighted little huff of laughter. 

“You said do whatever you want!”

“I didn’t mean—look, Suho! Don’t open it now.” Sieun is up on his feet, leaning over to grab the phone from Suho’s hand, and suddenly Suho’s world becomes overwhelmed with Sieun—silky black hair brushing against his cheek, the smell of ink and mint, warmth pressing down into him from everywhere, everywhere. 

Suho’s breath hitches. Sieun is leaning across the bed, half sprawled on top of Suho in his effort to grab the phone, but careful not to let the full force of his weight bear down onto Suho’s torso. And it’s ridiculous, really, because with Suho’s current grip strength it would take Sieun barely any effort at all to pry the heavy cell from his fingers. But Suho keeps dragging his hand away, and Sieun scoots in just a little closer, and in the quiet of the hospital room the two of them let each other get away with the pretense of it all—like this is just simple, pure banter between friends who weren’t nearly buried alive under the weight of loneliness and loyalty. 

It’s nice. It’s good, having Sieun close. Suho feels light and unburdened, like—maybe, with Sieun here, he could be happy. He is happy. 

“Yah, Sieun-ah,” Suho breathes out, and he’s really laughing now. “What’s on my phone, hmm? Freaky photos or what?”

“Yah!” Sieun’s blush is nuclear. He freezes, fingertips brushing Suho’s wrist, and whips his head around to glare haughtily.  “You and your sick mind.”

“Well, when you’re acting like this—”

“Look, it’s just—messages.”

Suho stills. The smile slips from his face, laughter dying a meek death in his chest. All the air in the room has been sucked out, suddenly. 

“What?”

Sieun draws back. The loss of his body heat prickles at Suho’s skin. He shuffles back to his chair, sitting down heavily, as though he’s carrying a weight on his shoulders he has no idea where to put down. 

“I sent you.. some messages. While you were away. It made me feel like you were still here, like I could still talk to you.” A helpless little shrug. He’s staring down at his hands in his lap, voice quiet and drawn into himself. And Suho can see it so clearly: Sieun, alone, hunched over and painstakingly sending messages to a ghost. Sieun, calling out for him. Suho, never answering back. 

Nothing’s funny anymore. 

“How many is some?” 

Sieun sighs, resigned. He glances up to meet Suho’s gaze, face flushed a deep shade of red. “A lot. I sent one everyday… sometimes more.” 

“Oh,” is all Suho can manage, breathless. Broken. 

Because what else is there to say? He feels as though they’ve been cursed, the two of them. Even before they were born. All Suho and Sieun had ever done, their entire lives, was have the gall to exist. And they’d been punished for it relentlessly—by parents, teachers, other boys. 

And now, knowing what Sieun was put through while his own body rotted away for 2 years, he feels like they’ve punished each other just the same. The curse made complete. 

“You can read them,” Sieun starts again, biting his lip, “just, maybe when I’m not here.”

Suho swallows. There’s something bitter and acidic crawling up his throat. “Embarrassed?”

You should be. Embarrassed that you wasted all that time and effort on me. 

Sieun tilts his head. Thinks for a second, like he’s trying to pry behind the curtain of Suho’s eyes to understand the meaning in his words. 

“Not for waiting.” Sieun says and Suho flushes, caught. “But I’m embarrassed of… myself.” 

Sieun shakes his head, then seems to remember something crucial. His expression clears into something more wide eyed and serious—the face he takes on when he’s worried about Suho’s health.  “Don’t read them right away, if it’ll hurt your head.” 

“I won’t.”  

The levity that presided through the room just moments earlier retreats, dejected, to the shadows. Sieun stops shuffling, nerves assuaged, and works on assignments. 

Suho falls asleep eventually, and his dreams are tormented with the haunted echo of Sieun’s voice, calling his name, and Suho lost, unable to find him.

For days on end, it taunts him. The phone. Suho thinks a thousand times about grabbing it, turning it on, picking through the graveyard of Sieun’s thoughts from the past two years, his life. He wants it more than anything, to know Sieun. To understand him. 

But something holds him inexplicably back. Whenever he thinks he could really do it—hand hovering above the screen, cold glass brushing his fingertips—that same bitter, angry feeling spreads slick through his chest like an oil spill, forcing him to snap his hand back as though burned. 

He doesn’t understand why, where it’s coming from, how to stop it. Anyone else would have torn through the messages in a day, an hour, would have been brought to tears at the thought of someone they love remaining so loyal. And it does pull violently at his heartstrings–the thought of everything Sieun suffered through, because of him. 

But he just can’t do it. He can barely even look at the stupid thing without feeling a maddening, unscratchable itch beneath his skin. Eventually, he has to shove it petulantly in the tiny little drawer stored in the table, out of sight. 

So the phone remains untouched, and Sieun doesn’t ask again, though Suho wonders if he’s still waiting for a reaction—if he’s internally assessing changes in Suho’s demeanor to parse whether or not he’s read the messages. If he is looking, he’s going to be disappointed. 

It’s not until a moment a week later, that Suho finally understands what it is that’s holding him back. 

Alongside himself and Sieun, Humin, Hyuntak and Juntae all sit gathered at a table in the hospital cafeteria. Suho in his wheelchair, the rest of them sprawled on the uncomfortable metal chairs. There’s an array of snacks spread haphazardly in front of them—at least 6 different chips bags open and unfinished, different flavoured milks and sodas, wrappers discarded from fruit gummies. It seems the 3 of them raided a convenience store on their way here, in hopes of offering Suho a reprieve from the bland, doctor approved crackers and jello cups he’s offered everyday. 

He’s not allowed to eat any of it, but it did endear him slightly to see their effort. He’d even mustered a small smile at Juntae, when he’d shuffled forward timidly with the plastic bags clutched tightly in his hands, and said, “We didn’t know what you liked, so we just got some of everything. I hope that’s okay.” 

Now, they sit idly picking at the food, filling the clinical, lonely cafeteria with their unrelenting joy. Laughter echoes through the room like birdsong, like the first gentle brush of a warm breeze in late April. The evening sun spills its honey gold warmth across their table more so than anywhere else in the cafeteria, as though drawn to them. Suho rests his head on Sieun’s shoulder, and beneath the table, he has Sieun’s right hand pulled into his lap—while the rest of them talk, Suho listens and fiddles lazily with Sieun’s callused fingers. He lets their earnest warmth lull him into relaxation, and though he’s still not really sure how he feels about them, he can admit in this moment that he’s glad, somewhat, to be in the presence of people so alive and happy. People that Sieun loves. 

“I’ve been rejected from like, 5 different places now. And I need volunteer hours,” Juntae huffs, resting his chin in his hands, “They look good on university applications. I mean seriously, who gets picky about volunteering!” Suho watches him absently, tries to figure him out, this gentle, timid boy who seems well-intentioned enough. 

But the last one did for a while, too. 

“I don’t know what else I can add to my resume.” Juntae finishes, pouting. 

“Jun-ah,” Humin starts. “How many times do I have to tell you, just make stuff up! Huh?” 

Hyuntak slaps his bicep with the back of his hand. “Tsk. Stop encouraging him to lie.”

“Oh, come on. As if none of us have ever lied on a resume before.”

“And how’s that working out for you?” Hyuntak leans forward and makes a show of patting down Humin’s pockets while he yells and fights him off. “Where’s all that money from the job you’re supposed to have?” 

Juntae shoots Sieun a helpless glance.  “Guys, can we focus?”

Humin finally shoves Hyuntak back into his seat, clothes disheveled, panting, face a far too telling shade of red.  “Look, it doesn’t have to be anything crazy. Oh! You could say you know how to play an instrument. Makes you sound all cultured and fancy and shit.” 

Humin settles back in his chair confidently, as though pleased with himself for figuring it out. Suho takes curious note of the arm he casually slings around the back of Hyuntak’s seat. 

“An instrument?” Juntae sounds unsure. “Like what?”

Hyuntak tilts his head, thinking. “You could say piano.”

Humin turns an accusatory finger on Hyuntak. “Hah! Now you agree with me.”

“Yah, listen you idiot,” Hyuntak grabs his finger and drags Humin’s hand down to the table, though he doesn’t release his grip. “It wouldn’t be a lie, technically.”

Hyuntak gestures to Sieun with his chin. “Just get Sieun to teach you.” 

That draws Suho up short. He lifts his head from its resting place on Sieun’s shoulder, turning to look at the boy in question. 

“You play piano?” He can feel the others’ eyes snapping to him in shock. It’s the first time he’s spoken since they sat down. 

“Sure he does.” Humin pipes up, all eager like he’s happy Suho’s finally joined the conversation. A flash of irritation heats Suho’s skin. I wasn’t asking you, he wants to say, opens his mouth to snap—but Sieun answers first, shooting an annoyed look in Humin’s direction. 

“Stop exaggerating. My mother signed me up for lessons when I was little,” weary eyes back on Suho now. “I hated it, so I stopped. I’m not very good.” Sieun shrugs. 

Suho can’t find the words to reply. He feels like he’s been doused with ice cold water, dragged against his will out of a hazy dream and into a stark reality he hadn’t known existed. The cafeteria feels too open, too loud. The sun too jarring against his eyes. He wants to leave, suddenly. 

Humin scoffs. “With your crazy memory? I’m sure if we sat you down in front of a piano right now, you’d start playing Mozart or something.” 

Sieun holds his gaze for a second longer, eyes flitting carefully back and forth between Suho’s, before he turns delicately to Juntae. 

“Juntae, your resume is fine. Just keep applying to new places…”

The conversation falls out of his register, out of his reach, lost to a world Suho can only observe longingly, looking from the outside in. University applications. Jobs. Words that drift soundlessly through the air, like an old, distantly familiar song he can’t quite remember the melody for. 

Suho looks down at Sieun’s hand in his lap. He tries to picture it, this hand that he’s seen in all its capabilities— writing, stabbing, striking, holding—poised gracefully over the smooth black and white keys of a piano, and finds that he can’t. He just gets a headache for trying. 

He’s not sure if he imagines it, but for the first time, Sieun’s hand feels different, clutched in his own. Changed. Though Suho could’ve sworn he had every inch of it memorized, every little crease and curve, the precise shape and weight of his fingers, the beat of his pulse in his wrist, he’s—he’s not sure anymore. 

Suho’s been violently thrown off kilter with one simple, damning fact that pounds sharply at the forefront of his brain: 

There are things about Sieun that he doesn’t know. 

After that, he learns more. All of it about Sieun, but none of it comes from him, from his own mouth. 

Hyuntak lets it slip that Sieun’s favourite colour is navy. Humin remarks, a casual, infuriating arm flung around Sieun’s shoulder, that the local supermarket doesn’t stock Sieun’s favourite type of strawberry milk anymore. Juntae makes a point of mentioning a new release from a stationery brand Sieun prefers. A dozen remember when’s peppered into conversations Suho can’t follow, events and sequences in Sieun’s life that have nothing to do with him and never will. Strange names and things that he can’t parse, that he’s too scared to ask after. Seongje. Hyoman. Union. Songs Sieun likes, places, foods. 

Simple things. Things he wants to hear from Sieun. Things that, in Sieun’s own words, he finds too embarrassing to share with Suho. 

It hurts. 

The worst of it—when Humin makes an offhand remark to Sieun having been in the hospital. 

“When?” Suho bites out, horrified, ignoring the guilty, wide-eyed look Humin keeps sending his way—as if he hadn’t expected Suho not to know. 

Sieun’s face burns pure crimson. He can barely meet Suho’s eyes when he explains, “A few months before you woke up. It was only for a few days…you had a bad night, your heart rate was unsteady. When I heard I…went into shock.” 

Why didn’t I know? Why didn’t you tell me? 

What do I really know about Sieun? 

“Halmeoni,” he asks his grandmother, one late evening. “What does it mean to know someone?”

Suho’s grandmother pauses in the act of brushing his hair. “Where’s this coming from?” 

Suho shrugs. “Just wondering.”

What does it mean, to not know someone’s favourite colour, or how they grew up, but to know that you would die for them? To have memorized the exact rhythm of their breathing, but to stumble when asked about their day-to-day joys and upsets? 

Halmeoni hums lightly. Gives herself a minute to think, before she continues working her way through Suho’s long, dark strands with a comb. 

“I don’t think we can ever truly know a soul besides our own, even when we think we do,” she starts, and Suho swallows disappointment.  “But there are things that count more than others.”

“Like?”

“Like, what makes someone happy. What causes them pain. What keeps them up at night, and what makes them smile when they walk down the street. And most importantly, who they want to be in your life—the precise way that their soul fits next to yours.” 

Suho frowns. He knows, has always known, what—who he wants to be in Sieun’s life, even if he can’t say it out loud. 

Is it the same for Sieun?  

Halmeoni sets the comb down gently on his bedside table, and circles around to face Suho from the front. Her earnest eyes bore through his, and she clasps one of his hands in both of her own. “Suho-yah, what really matters most is this—that even if you can’t know it all, you never stop trying to learn. That’s what it means to love someone.”

Her words ease some of the tension that’s been steadily making a home for itself, deep in his bones. But still. He thinks about his phone—all those messages, precious snapshots into Sieun’s life—and still feels like he’s been forced to stare glumly through the windows of a house he’s banned from entering. Humin, Hyuntak, Juntae, they know it all from Sieun. They lived it with him. And even if Suho’s too late for that—is it really so cruel of him to want Sieun to tell it all to him, face to face? 

He doesn’t know. He just goes on like that. Clenching his fists at every casual touch passed between friends. Watching hollowly while Juntae offhandedly unwraps a snack bar and hands it to Sieun, almost subconsciously. Staring pointedly at the wall when Hyuntak ruffles his hair. Letting the ringing in his ears grow deafening at every fond Sieun-ah and ice princess. 

Sieun must notice the phone suspiciously absent, but he never acknowledges it. 

And so it goes. 

Sieun waits for Suho. And Suho waits for Sieun. 

How long until this fragile thread they’re traversing on snaps, he wonders. 

Suho thinks he’s been doing a job at hiding it. The miserable, bitter rage towards Sieun’s friends that festers and sucks at his soul like a parasite. Sieun doesn’t comment, doesn’t change the way he acts around Suho in the slightest. Still just as touchy, as warm, as always. So Suho lets himself settle into the comfort of knowing he’s gotten away with it, that he hasn’t embarrassed himself by letting the blatant envy show. 

Until an unexpected visit comes knocking down Suho’s perception of his own restraint like a set of bowling pins.

Suho’s sitting dizzily upright on the side of his bed, recovering from the effort of showering and changing, when he hears the timid knock at his door. Nurse Woojin, the stocky male nurse who clinically assists Suho with bathing, sends him a questioning look. Suho’s confused. It’s a school day, so he’s not expecting Sieun for another hour or two, at least—though his brain isn’t always adept at keeping pace with the seconds skipping by, so maybe it’s later than he thought? But even then, Sieun doesn’t knock like that, quiet and hesitant. Nor do the doctors or nurses who frequent his room—it’s always one loud, perfunctory knock. Halmeoni’s already stepped out for the day. 

But who else could it be? 

Suho nods, and Nurse Woojin strides over to open the door. 

If you asked him, gun to his head, which of Sieun’s friends he’d begrudgingly predict to visit him alone, Suho would have only two guesses. Humin, definitely. Juntae, maybe. Who he doesn’t expect to come quietly into his room on a sullen Wednesday afternoon, is a sheepish looking Go Hyuntak. 

Hyuntak shyly plants himself in front of Suho. He’s still in uniform, though he has a light blue windbreaker flung on top of his school shirt in a style that Suho—jarringly—recognizes to be similar to his own. The black crossbody bag he has slung over one shoulder is familiar, too. Suho hates it.  

“Um,” Hyuntak clears his throat, nervous. “Hey.”

Suho just stares. “Did Sieun send you?”

Hyuntak kicks at the floor with a Vans clad foot, hands in his pockets. He shakes his head. “No I, um, I wanted to come. By myself.” 

Oh. Suho doesn’t know what to make of that. He’s having trouble thinking clearly past his own irrational annoyance. Hyuntak’s harmless enough, standing doe eyed and sincere, like a baby duckling that's accidentally wandered off from the flock, but Suho wants him gone. 

“Okay.” He responds, eventually, voice flat. 

They fall into a weighted silence. Suho’s feeling a little lightheaded from holding himself up for so long, but he’ll be damned if he collapses in front of Hyuntak. Hyuntak rocks back and forth on his feet. Every little while, he opens his mouth as if he’s about to say something, but whatever words he’s trying to reach escape him faster than he can catch them. 

Suho’s genuinely irritated now. Whatever little experiment this is, he doesn’t have the energy for it. He grits his teeth and offers a disjointed morsel to the conversation, whatever it takes to figure out what Hyuntak wants and get him out of here faster. 

“School? 

“Huh?” Hyuntak’s gaze snaps back to Suho from its curious perusal of the room  “Oh, I left a couple hours early. It’s the only way to beat Sieun here.” 

Suho raises an eyebrow. Waits again, for Hyuntak to finish his thought. To answer the blatant why? sitting taut between them. 

But Hyuntak just goes on being nervous. Biting his lip. Rocking. 

For fuck’s sake.  “You…need something?” 

Hyuntak takes a deep breath, gathering himself. “I brought you something.” He slides his bag to the front, cracks open the velcro and digs through its contents until he pulls out a small rubber ball, about the size of a melon. 

“You wanna play?” He offers, grinning crookedly. 

Suho stares at the ball in his hands. It’s familiar—he uses similar ones in his physical therapy sessions, light balls that are easy for him to throw around while improving his dexterity and grip strength. Except this one has been manufactured to look like a miniature basketball. 

Which means Hyuntak went out and bought it himself. 

Suho stares at the ball until the orange and black start to blur, until his eyes itch and burn and ache, though he’s not sure if it’s from the effort of looking or if—if he wants to cry. 

“Okay,” He finally chokes out. Hyuntak lets out a happy little huff of relief. 

They make it halfway down the hallway, Hyuntak pushing Suho’s wheelchair, before Nurse Jia stops them—appalled. She shoos them back to Suho’s room, then spends an extra 10 minutes thoroughly towel drying his post shower hair. 

“Boys and their one track minds,” she grumbles, “How can you let him go outside like this?” 

Hyuntak shares an exasperated look with Suho. A humble blooming of camaraderie. 

Nurse Jia tuts, stepping back with the towel slung over her shoulder, arms crossed while she observes her work. Even then, she doesn’t let them leave until she manages to find a simple grey beanie buried in one of Suho’s drawers. She slips it on his head to cover his damp roots, tucking stray strands of hair underneath the soft fabric where she can. She sends them off with one final warning, a reprimanding finger pointed at Hyuntak, 

“If he gets sick, Sieun’s going to kill us both.” 

Outside, May is unabashed in its beauty. The heat of the 2 o’clock sun welcomes them ardently. Lush leaves rustle on the breeze, trees and bushes whispering longingly to one another. Suho can hear the joyful thrum of life echoing all around—cars driving past, a horn honked every now and then, the distant ring of a bike bell. And voices. Light, airy laughter, the patter of children running quick against the pavement. The hospital grounds are busier than he expected. As Hyuntak wheels him to the basketball court, they pass by a myriad of patients and their dedicated visitors. Everyone seems brighter, happier, bellied by the fresh air and sunlight. 

The basketball court is empty when they get there. Hyuntak snaps into excited action immediately, all signs of nervousness carried gently off his shoulders by the buoyant summer air. He drops his bag haphazardly on the ground, then stoops down to retrieve the mini basketball. 

“Okay,” He starts, with an excited little hop, planting himself a couple of feet away from Suho, “Let’s play pass.” 

Hyuntak tosses the ball, letting it bounce once on the concrete between them, and it lands perfectly in Suho’s outstretched hands. His fingers spasm slightly from the effort of keeping his grip, but the ball remains clutched in his grasp. Hyuntak hoots, then throws his hands up in front of him, ready. 

“Your turn!” 

Suho launches the ball as hard as he can and is proud, embarrassingly, to see that it bounces the exact same as Hyuntak’s throw, easy to catch. They go on like that for a while, not talking, just passing the ball back and forth. Letting the distant ambience of the city fill the space with sound for them. And even though it’s a little stupid, what they’re doing—it can hardly be counted as playing basketball—Suho finds that he doesn’t mind it. Hyuntak’s company, the way he doesn’t pressure Suho to talk or aimlessly chatter himself. The repetitive, easy rhythm—throw, bounce, catch. 

When Suho’s arms start to get tired after 10 or so minutes, he’s a little thrown off to find that he doesn’t know how to tell Hyuntak. He’s used to Sieun and his almost freakishly in-tune awareness to Suho’s every miniscule feeling—if he were here now, he would’ve found a way to nonchalantly steer them into a different activity, to spare Suho having to say it out loud. But he’s not here. It’s just Suho and his shame.

The next time Hyuntak passes the ball to him, he doesn’t move to catch it. Just lets it bounce a few times before it rolls dejectedly off to the side, past his wheelchair. He waits—for the pity he’s sure is going to morph Hyuntak’s content face, the discomfort. But Hyuntak just lets his gaze trail after the ball and, inexplicably, brightens even further when he spots something in the distance. 

“Oh sick!” He shouts, bounding off. Suho turns his head to follow him. Hyuntak stops at the corner of the court, by the metal fence closing the space off from the busy Seoul streets. He drops down to his knees, reaching underneath an overgrown shrub to extricate what Suho can now see is a full-sized basketball, left abandoned by somebody else. 

Hyuntak rolls it into reach, then scoops it up in both hands and stands. He dribbles it a few times, experimentally, on his way back to Suho. It doesn’t bounce as high as it should. 

“It’s a little deflated,” He remarks. “But it’s still good enough for shooting.” 

“How far can you shoot?” Suho pipes up. Hyuntak sends him a pleased smile, then straightens his posture confidently. He plants himself right at the 3-point line, takes a steadying breath, then shoots the basketball in a beautiful, symmetrical arc, straight through the hoop. 

“Not bad,” Suho shrugs. “I’ve seen further though.” 

Hyuntak makes a show of dropping his smile, pouting. “Fine, then,” he says, shuffling backwards a few wide strides. 

Suho goads him into making further and further shots, and each time the ball rattles loudly through the metal hoop, Hyuntak gleefully shouts and runs a small circular lap, arms held out to the side, windbreaker billowing out behind him like a cape. He seems to never run out of energy, his internal battery endlessly powered through the force of his own unyielding joy. 

Watching him, Suho feels a little like he’s watching himself. The boy he was, the one he thought he’d be forever. Bright, electric, whole. Could this have been him, now? If even one thing had gone differently? On his feet and free, a lifetime of potential poised perfectly within his grasp, waiting for him to take it. It pulls painfully at his heart, an anguished, nostalgic tug that demands to be felt—just as much as it delights him, to be able to play a small part in fuelling Hyuntak’s vivacious spirit. He knows his eyes are glistening. He’s glad Hyuntak’s standing too far away to see it. 

“Farther!” Suho shouts, and if it comes out a little torn, Hyuntak doesn’t comment. 

On this last shot—about 30 or so feet away from the hoop—Hyuntak arcs the ball as perfectly as always, but it lands just shy of the hole in the net, instead bouncing aggressively off the metal rim. Hyuntak clutches his head in defeat, and the two of them watch as the basketball bounces a few times off the concrete—right into the back of a nurse standing off to the side, talking on the phone. When the ball knocks into her, she lets out a surprised little shout and places a hand on her back, turning around. 

“Oh, fuck,” Hyuntak gasps, and then he’s off, chasing after the ball. When he reaches the nurse, he snaps his body into a perfect 90 degree bow. Suho can hear his profuse apologies carried through the air and—

It makes him laugh. Really laugh. By the time Hyuntak turns around to stumble shamefully back with the basketball in his hands, face burning bright red, Suho’s almost breathless with mirth. 

“Yah!” Hyuntak kicks lightly at one of the wheels on his chair. “You did that on purpose!” 

“You’re the one that’s supposed to know how to shoot.”

“Whatever!” Hyuntak places the basketball down on the ground in front of Suho, then plots himself on top of it. “I got literally all of the other ones in. Laugh all you want!” 

He sounds petulant, but he’s smiling too. A little awed as he watches Suho chuckle, as though he can’t believe what he’s seeing. They drift into silence again. Suho lets his eyes flutter closed—not sleepy, for once, just letting himself sit with the peace pulsing a steady course through his blood. 

“Look, Suho,” Hyuntak begins. And here it is at last, the real reason behind his visit. Suho opens his eyes. Hyuntak has his arms wrapped around his knees, hands interlocked in the front. He’s staring at a point in the distance just past Suho’s shoulder, thoughtful and a little nervous looking. 

“I just wanted to say…Something similar happened to me a while back. I know I can’t really compare my experience to yours, but I think I can understand. Better than anyone else can, at least.” 

And there’s the anger again. No you can’t, Suho wants to snap. Don’t sit here and pretend like you know anything. Hyuntak seems to sense that something in Suho’s mood has shifted, because he looks wearily back at him and takes a heavy breath, cutting in again before Suho gets a chance to respond. 

“Did Sieun tell you I used to be a Taekwondo athlete?” 

Suho stills. Shakes his head. 

Hyuntak nods. “I was good, really good. Scholarship lined up and everything.” The way he says it—there’s no bitterness in his tone. He sounds accepting, the wisened voice of someone who faced their past head on, wrestled with it, and came out victorious. 

Suho wonders if he’ll ever sound the same, one day, recounting his own horrors. 

“First year of high school, I ended up getting into a fight with… some guys that were angry with Baku. And even though I knew how to fight, even though I was good, it ended up not mattering. I guess—they were just better. And I was still a kid.” 

Hyuntak stretches his right leg out in front of him. Shifts it side to side a little, considering. “They destroyed my knee. Badly enough that I had to have surgery.” 

And it’s all just so familiar, isn’t it? This cycle of violence that has its claws dug deep into their skin—inescapable, always hungry for more. An eye for an eye. A friend for a friend. 

Hyuntak draws his eyes back up to Suho’s face. “I had to stay at the hospital for a little bit, too, while I recovered.” A deep breath. “All of it made me angry. The doctors and the stupidly fucking cheery physiotherapists. I hated it when they’d tell me I was lucky. I wanted to tell them they didn’t know shit, nothing had changed for them. They got to go home everyday like nothing ever happened. But it was my leg that was fucked up. My future that was ruined. It felt like forever before I stopped being mad.” 

And oh. 

That’s just it. All the placebic positivity and suffocating, spoon-fed assurances. It’s a miracle you’re awake. You’re so lucky to still have your memories. You’re doing so well, given the circumstances. Fuck the circumstances and fuck you too. 

“What if you can’t?” Suho’s voice is raw, aching. “Stop, I mean.” 

Hyuntak lets out a humourless chuckle. “Yeah, I get that too. It’s hard when—when sometimes the anger feels really good. Like it's the only thing that can make you feel good.”

It’s like looking into a mirror, like hearing his own voice echoed in another body. Suho doesn’t know if he should feel relieved, gratified that there’s someone who sees it, this stark little corner of hell that Suho’s been thrown into. Mostly, he just feels sad. For himself, for Hyuntak. For anyone who’d suffered in the way they had, unfairly and cruelly at the hands of other people.  

“I can’t tell you how to feel…and I’m not good at giving advice, but,” and he pauses, blowing out a shaky breath. He looks apprehensive, scared, when he looks at Suho and offers, “If you want, I can do some physio sessions with you, sometimes? I mean, my knee could probably use it too.” 

There must be something wrong with Suho today, an imbalance in his chemical composition, because he feels like he might cry again. 

“Okay,” he agrees, and it’s barely a whisper. “Thanks, Hyuntak.” The smile he gets in return is blinding. Suho looks away, unsure what to make of it—of any of this. This whole, strange day with this even stranger boy sat determinedly on a deflated old basketball. 

“So,” Hyuntak starts again. “What did you used to do?”

The question throws Suho off balance. No one has asked him that since he woke up. Not a single soul brave enough to delve into the cold-water trench of Suho’s past. Sieun and Halmeoni never had the cause to, seeing as they witnessed it. He finds he doesn’t quite know how to answer. So many things he used to do. How can he sum it all up? 

I took care of my grandma. I rode a shitty little scooter that I loved with everything in me. I worked two jobs. I was a fast runner. 

“I was an MMA fighter.” Is what he settles on after a beat of silence. Hyuntak lets out an impressed whistle. Suho’s surprised by his own answer—he didn’t think he cared about fighting that much, seeing as he gave up pursuing it professionally a while back. But when he thinks, really thinks, about it Suho finds, achingly, that he misses it. Not the violence, but the control, the power. The graceful way he was able to manipulate his body—a dancer, an artist in his own right. For a while, he’d been untouchable. 

Or so he thought. 

“I gave it up in middle school.” He continues, swallowing the acrid burn of tears in this throat. “The older I got, the more people wanted to take it too far. Cross the line. But I was good, just like you. And it ended up not mattering, either.” It’s the most he’s spoken all at once, in who knows how long. He feels winded, breathless with the effort. 

Hyuntak swallows heavily. A flash of remorse troubles his expression before he forces it to clear again. 

“Crossing the line, huh?” He smiles. “Sieun’s mentioned something similar, before. I guess he got that from you.” 

Suho pointedly ignores the happy little pulse his heart gives. Hyuntak offers him a knowing glance. “I know it must be weird, seeing him with new friends. When me and Baku were kids, we were together all the time. Just the two of us. And then one day there was…” He trails off, troubled. Suho tilts his head in confusion. Hyuntak shakes himself a little, as though physically clearing his thoughts. 

“Anyway. I know it can be a lot, and the 3 of us aren’t always good at reigning it in. But we’re just really fond of Sieun.”

Suho doesn’t say anything. This, it seems, is the one thing Hyuntak won’t be able to understand. Because the problem isn’t that they’re fond of Sieun. Anyone would be. The problem is that the years Suho should’ve spent with Sieun were ripped forcefully out of his tight fingered grasp and offered callously to this new group of boys instead. And he really is glad that they were there for Sieun while Suho slept. That Sieun wasn’t alone.

But more than anything, Suho is greedy. And greedy about Sieun, above all things. 

Hyuntak grins wolfishly, all of a sudden. “And we all get it. You and Sieun.”

“Get it,” Suho echoes. “Me and Sieun.” Hyuntak nods eagerly. “I’m not following.”

“You know.” And he gestures helplessly in the air. Suho doesn’t, in fact, know. 

Suho blinks. “You’re making me feel like my brain’s being kicked around my skull again.” 

“Fuck, damnit—I’m not good with words. How can I say…” Hyuntak clasps his hands together and holds them up, biting his lip, then seems to finally sort through the words tumbling in his head. He spreads his hands wide again and leans in close, earnest. 

“It’s like this. After Sieun went into shock, Baku told me the very first thing he wanted to do was see you. Just woken up, probably couldn’t even stand up on his own, and he just kept saying he had to go to you. He couldn’t even look Baku in the eyes until he heard that you were okay. Baku told me that’s when he knew that it was different. That Sieun’s in l—“

“Okay!” Suho cuts in, panicked. He throws his hands out in front of him, as though desperate to cover Hyuntak’s mouth. 

There’s no way in hell he was about to say what Suho thinks he was. 

Hyuntak stares at him wide-eyed for a second, then lets out a disbelieving chuckle. “Yah. You have no right to look shocked right now. I mean seriously man his entire body went into shock all because he heard you were—"

Oh god. “Alright!” 

“He texted you everyday for two years like he was in The Notebook—"

“Yah, Go Hyuntak!” And the perpetrator in question just laughs, heartily. “That’s plenty. I mean—I get it. So shut up.” 

“Oblivious bastard,” Hyuntak mumbles under his breath. Suho doesn’t even want to know what his face looks like right now—he can feel the heat permeating through his cheeks, his ears, his neck. He desperately needs the ground to swallow him whole. 

Hyuntak shoots him one last cheesy grin before he spares Suho, mercifully. He slaps his thighs decisively and hops up, standing. 

“One last round of pass before we go in?” He calls over his shoulder, already walking over to retrieve the miniature ball.

Hyuntak stays true to his word. 

As often as he can, he frequents Suho’s physical therapy sessions, bounding happily after Suho and Sieun like their new loyal, excited pet puppy. When Suho does leg exercises, Hyuntak goes through the routine right by his side. And on days when he doesn’t, and Hyuntak still shows up, he simply offers himself as an extra set of supportive hands, ready whenever Suho needs him. 

It’s strange—but he slots into place almost perfectly in Suho’s little routine, as if he was meant to do so all along. 

Sieun takes it in stride, Hyuntak’s more frequent presence. He’s confused, at first, Suho can tell, but the more he sees Hyuntak hanging around the more he takes on an air of cautious hopefulness—that the gap that’s been continuously dividing Suho and the rest of his friends may finally be bridged. Suho doesn’t want to let him down, even if he’s still angry, even if the jealousy just won’t die a quiet death the way he desperately wants it to. 

But Hyuntak is… fun, to have around. He knows when to be loud and boisterous, and when to mellow out into a calmer, easy presence. When he visits, he always has something to offer Suho–a story, a joke, a manhwa series he thinks Suho would like. Once, he teeters in with Sieun in tow, the two of them carrying bags of healthy, doctor approved snacks that they dump out on Suho’s bed and spend the next hour taste testing.

“For how expensive half this crap is you think they’d make it taste better,” Hyuntak grumbles, making a face at a protein bar he’d taken a bite of. 

“Then stop eating it.” Sieun protests, disgruntledly brushing crumbs off of Suho’s lap.

Hyuntak puts a solemn hand on Sieun’s shoulder. “Sieun-ah. I’m taking the bullet for Suho and you can’t even show me some appreciation, huh?” 

He leans over so he’s directly in Sieun’s line of sight, half falling out of his chair. Sieun draws back with a feigned disgusted expression. “How come you aren’t cleaning my crumbs for me? You want the ants to come and eat me while I’m here saving your Suho?”

Suho laughs, chest warming delightfully at that phrase–your Suho. Hyuntak whips his head around, sitting back in his seat. 

“Yah, yah, yah,” he chants triumphantly, snapping his fingers with one hand and aggressively tapping Sieun on the shoulder with the other. “That’s the second time I've made him laugh. Not so special now, are you Sieun?” 

Sieun rolls his eyes and shoves his hand off. But while Hyuntak distracts himself with his own hyperactive jabber, Sieun locks eyes with Suho, and smiles.  

And just like it did that first time, in a different hospital room, a different lifetime, it draws the air out of Suho’s lungs. Of all the beauty in the world, he doesn’t think there could ever be anything more lovely and effervescent than Sieun’s smile. It’s enough that he wants to fall back in time, wake all the poets and the artists and the madmen and the lovers up, tell them look, here, I found it. The thing they’d given their lives to capture, the thing humans will spend all of eternity trying to capture. 

Beauty. Love. 

All for Suho. 

In the weeks to come, he’ll think back on this moment and remember it, distantly, as the last good thing.

Late May. On a day when the clouds loom menacing and dreary—the last of a whole week full of pointlessly grey skies, no rain in sight—Suho stands quivering between two parallel bars. His hands dig heavily into the foam surrounding the bars, fingers aching from the force of his grip. After weeks of menial tasks meant to reteach his body basic functions, he’s finally been granted the all-clear to start relearning how to walk. They’ve gone slow this week. All he’s been practicing is holding himself up using the bars as support. On the first day, his arms had shaken so much he’d barely managed to hold on for 10 seconds. And it hurt so bad—a fiery burn that licked its way up his muscles greedily, lingering for hours afterward. 

But even if his body’s forgotten, Suho remembers—he’s a fighter. He pushes through. He manages. And so far he’s been doing okay, holding himself up for longer and longer. Today, he’s even being coached on how to take a step. And, like some stupid baby penguin learning to waddle for the first time, he has a little audience for the ordeal–Sieun, Halmeoni, Hyuntak and the physiotherapist. 

Suho has managed to shuffle forward 5 steps. Hardly anything at all, but he can tell they’re happy, the others, and it makes Suho a little proud too. Makes him want to keep trying. 

He should’ve felt the threat in the air. Should’ve remembered that things just don’t go his way that easily anymore. 

On this day, this heavy, dark day with the clouds waiting like prey in the shadows, cautious of the real storm brewing—Suho falls. 

He falls, and hits his head. 

It’s a silly thing, really. A moment that got away from them, a breath missed, a skip between scenes caught on a dusty old tape.

Blink, and he’s standing upright. Sieun reads. Hyun-tak hovers somewhere in his peripheral. 

Blink, and his knee—the left one, the weak one—snaps forward. 

Blink, and he’s tumbling forward. A shout. A hand brushing his shoulder too late. His head pitches to the side—smack—against the padded bar. 

The effect is instantaneous. Suho keels over and throws up. The ringing in his ears is so loud he’s deathly afraid his ear drums are going to burst, and oh god he’s never going to hear again, never anything but this—this shrill, echoing scream of his head dying. I can’t hear I can’t see I can’t breathe not again someone please oh god oh god 

Except he can’t talk, can’t ask for help, can’t open his mouth to do anything but keep throwing up. The nausea is all consuming, never ending, it’s coming from somewhere deep and endless inside him, it’s going to swallow him whole. He retches on that floor even after his stomach is cleared of all the measly hospital food, until there’s nothing left to throw up but his guts, his insides, his soul. 

He thinks, delirious, maybe I can throw up all that anger too. 

And, am I really going to die again after waking up? 

Shadows pulse behind his closed eyes. He thinks he can maybe feel hands on him (kicking they’re kicking me they won’t stop someone please make them stop) but he can’t tell. 

All of it pales in comparison to the electricity tearing his brain apart cell by cell. He’s never felt pain like this before, like it’s clawing its way out from inside of him, jagged nails scraping deep against his skull let me out let me out. 

Suho doesn’t want to die on a hospital room floor surrounded by his own vomit. He thinks maybe the boxing ring would’ve been a better way to go, a mercy he’d taken for granted. 

Enough. Haven’t I paid enough? 

And then, mercifully, he stops thinking about anything at all. 

The night is long, daunting. Suho thrashes fitfully between throes of delirious wakefulness and a dark void he can hardly call sleep. When he does manage to pry his eyes open, the nausea attacks instantly, sending him teetering over the edge of the bed to dry heave. His throat is stripped raw. His ribs and chest bruised and begging for reprieve from the effort of throwing up. He wants to cry–thinks maybe he does, maybe he screams too, but he can’t hear it. That ringing is still there, ominously presiding over all of his senses.

And the pain—there’s nothing to describe it. Only that he’s willing to do anything, beg anyone, to make it stop.

Hellish hours creep unbearingly forward like that. Sleep. Wake up. Pain. Vomit. People won’t stop touching him, sticking things into his arm, grabbing his head, holding him down. It terrifies him that he can’t fight back, can’t process what it is they could be doing. Maybe he never left that ring after all, maybe he’s still there now, dying and dying and dying while they kick at him. All of this has just been one long dream, dredged up by his consciousness in his final moments. 

What a shitty fucking dream. 

At some point, he thinks maybe he can hear yelling, an altercation. A door slammed. Sieun’s torn up voice piercing through the middle of it. His chest seizes in turn, responding to Sieun’s pain even in the depth of his own. And oh god, why is Sieun here? They’re going to get him next they’re going to get him next they’re going to 

Sieun-ah, he wants to call out. You need to run. 

(I’m so scared. Come back.)

Eventually, sometime near dawn, the pain in his head breaks like a wave cresting against the shore— just slightly. Enough for things to slip in through the cracks of his awareness. The smell of antiseptic, an IV drip in his arm–they must have dosed him with pain meds, and whatever it is has finally started doing its blissful job. He can’t expend the energy to open his eyes, but he can tell there are others in the room. Hospital, he reminds himself, I’m in the hospital. 

Words reach him fragmented and distant, like the crash of glass breaking in a faraway room.

Hit. Head. Light. Body. Shock. Process. 

And he’s so sick of that word. Everything is about the stupid fucking process. His body, his brain, all of it needs time to process. 

He doesn’t want it anymore. He just wants to rest. 

I’m tired, he tries to say. I’m so tired. He’s not sure if the sounds even make it past his lips, but someone or something must hear, because he slips down finally into real sleep. And for once, instead of choking on the fear that he might not wake up, instead of panicking, 

he just feels ready. 

He’s in the dingy corridor outside of Sieun’s apartment. There’s a finality to the heat in the air–summer stretching out its weary bones one last time before settling in for hibernation. It’s quiet, still. It feels almost sacred, this shitty little lonely hallway; something crucial was sacrificed here, a ritual made complete, the place where a clear line between before and after was etched hollowly into the walls of time. 

At the sound of a knock on a door, Suho turns his head to the left—and sees himself, standing outside Sieun’s door. Head bowed, shoulders drawn tight with barely restrained anger. Not a single thought in his head other than revenge, than guilt, than the belief that he could fight and make it through this.

He thought he would make it through this. 

Who is it? He hears, muffled through the door.  

Suho walks slowly toward the mirage of his past self, stopping just short of his shoulder. 

Delivery.

Why is he here again? Why is he being forced to relive this? The sensations feel too real–the tang of the burnt August breeze, the pounding of his heart in his chest. Suho looks down at the palms of his current body, half expecting to see marks from his nails digging into the skin the way they had been that day, with his fists clenched in his pockets. 

Sieun opens the door. He won’t meet his eyes. He looks exhausted, worn out. And there–that glimpse of white hidden beneath his black hoodie. 

A break. A cast. A score to settle.

Suho remembers thinking, in that moment, that he would do anything, hurt anyone, cross all those imaginary lines he’d so carefully drawn in the sand—for Sieun. To never see him hurt again. 

Now, watching himself, all he feels is the cold, choking fingers of fear cinching tighter and tighter around his throat. The ritual is complete, the sacrifice laid bare–Sieun for Suho, Suho for Sieun. Penance for each other’s sins, the only way they know how to be.

The anger is still there too–only this time, Suho’s angry at himself, that he was foolish enough to think he could fix anything. 

See you tomorrow. And Suho’s watching himself turn around, watching himself leave. It’s too much, all of it— he can’t take living this, again. And even though he knows it's pointless, that the past won’t ever change, he can’t stop himself from taking a step forward, from reaching out. 

“Wait,” He chokes out. He doesn’t know how he can be crying in a dream, but he can hear it in his voice, can feel phantom tears sliding down his cheeks. “Come back.”

He’s still walking away.

“Come back, you idiot!” His voice is shrill and unfamiliar, slicing the air with the force of his distress. “Don’t just leave him here. Turn around, please!” 

He’s almost to the end of the hallway. Suho weeps and weeps, watching himself disappear down the corridor, powerless to stop it. “You’re going to lose,” He spits out.  “You can’t fix it. Just stay here!” 

He’s even further away now, a speck of ghastly red in the distance—no longer a body, just a smear of blood. Suho turns on Sieun, who stands hollowly in the doorway, eyes locked on his past self’s retreating form. Suho moves, plants himself right in front of him–but Sieun’s eyes don’t change, they stay looking right through him. 

“Sieun-ah,” And it’s barely a name, through the pain. More so a whimper. “Don’t let me leave, please?” 

Sieun stares past him. There’s a slick sheen of tears over his eyes, though he doesn’t cry. 

“Sieun-ah,” Louder, this time. “Go after me. Drag me back by the hair if you have to. Please.”

Sieun doesn’t even blink. He just steps back, closes the door. It snaps shut with a harsh echo that flies mournfully down the hallway. Suho turns around, and he can’t even see himself anymore. 

There’s no one and nothing left out here.

He spends the next few days in isolation. When his senses settle down enough for him to be able to process information, Nurse Jia gives him a gentle rundown of what happened. 

Luckily, thanks to the foam padding on the bar, Suho’s head hasn’t sustained lasting damage. Not even enough for a light concussion. The nausea and the pain came on so strong because his body is still very much in its early stages of healing— like a child throwing a tantrum at every little upset. They have him on pain meds and an IV drip to help his body retain hydration and nutrition, just until the nausea loosens its grip enough to let him eat again. 

The part he’d hated the most: that it was all partially shock induced. “From the trauma,” Nurse Jia had said. “Your body panicked, because it thought you were going through something awful again.”

He could’ve laughed, because when did it ever stop going through something awful? 

“No visitors for a little bit, okay?” She’d concluded, resting her warm hand lightly on his arm. “Just to give yourself a chance to rest properly. And you’ll be back up on your feet before you know it!”

What’s the point? It’s all gone, everything he’d been trying so hard at for weeks. All that fragile hope he’d managed to scrounge up—quiet days with Sieun held close, Hyuntak’s kindness, those first few hesitant steps—shattered in the space of a breath. Everything made worse by the knowledge that it could be this way forever, that at any moment, his body can drag him through the mud back to that one stupid, awful night. Up on his feet, crawling, heaving–it doesn’t matter. Nothing will ever change what happened to him. What’s the point of a step forward if he can’t guarantee that the ground won’t give way? If he’s stuck in this game of Russian Roulette he’s playing with his own head? He’s going to live forever waiting for that shot to go off. 

And so he doesn’t see Sieun, or Halmeoni, or Hyuntak, no one he cares about except for the blank faces of nurses and doctors that drift around him like ghosts. They keep the blinds mostly closed, the lights dimmed as low as possible, because he still can’t cope with brightness. The slightest bit of it sends him reeling back into a spin of dizziness and nausea. It grants the room a strange, almost underwater-like effect, like he’s floating suspended in time. He can’t tell when the hours pass, how many days slip by. If its been a week, a month. 

He doesn’t care to ask, either. Nurses check his vitals, ask him the same questions, leave trays of food that they know he won’t touch. 

He’s been here before. He’s done all of this before. 

August. April. May.

April again, now. One step forward, about a hundred steps back. 

Summer won’t stop holding him prisoner. He might just have to die to escape it.

He wakes and finds a head of silky black hair resting on a set of carefully folded arms, perched on the edge of his bed. Sieun. They must’ve lifted his purgatory at some time while he slept. It’s almost strange, to have someone else here now, in this dim little bubble Suho’s been cast adrift in. Sieun stands out starkly–even when Suho can’t see his face, he’s more alive and lovely than anything in this room has the right to bear witness to. His head is turned away from Suho, the low golden lamplight reflecting dully off his hair. His breathing is slow, shaky, as he sleeps.

Gingerly, Suho lifts a hand and lets it brush, just barely, across Sieun’s hair. Sieun shoots up instantly, eyes wide. Not asleep, then.

“Suho-yah,” he breathes. Suho drinks him in, greedily, a man parched after crawling through a drought torn desert. And though he’s beautiful–always beautiful–Suho has to acknowledge that Sieun looks like shit.

His eyes are bleary and smudged around the edges with redness. Skin washed out and gaunt, as though he hasn’t slept in forever. His lips are cracked and bleeding in some places, enough to make Suho want to reach out and brush over them delicately with his hands. Enough to make him want to cry. 

I did this to him. I keep doing this to him. 

Sieun’s eyes rake desperately over every inch of his body, searching for injury. Like he was afraid he might never see him again.

“I came by everyday,” he says, softly. “But they wouldn’t let me see you.” 

Suho nods, though the motion hurts his head. Sieun, in his fluency in Suho’s pain, seems to notice. 

“Are you–” He cuts himself off, realizing the stupidity of the question. Sieun pauses, squeezing his eyes shut and taking a deep breath, before his face twitches into an expression that makes Suho want to burn the world down for him. Only, this time, it’s not the world causing Sieun pain, it’s Suho. 

“I’m sorry,” Sieun whispers, and there are tears slipping silently down his pretty face. Suho can feel his own eyes start to burn in tandem, though he doesn’t have the energy to cry anymore. 

“Suho,” he says, louder, anguished. “I’m sorry.” He cracks his eyes open, and his gaze is suddenly wild, intense on Suho’s, like he wants him to understand that he means what he’s saying with everything in him. 

Suho lifts his hand and tugs on the shoulder of Sieun’s grey crewneck. Sieun comes immediately, willingly, leaning forward and tucking his head into the space between Suho’s shoulder and neck. He presses his face firmly against the skin there, the cold tip of his nose and the brush of his chapped lips flooding Suho’s nervous system with shivers. Suho wraps his left arm around Sieun, lets his hand rest between his shoulder blades, and taps his back lightly every few seconds. Sieun is warm all over, familiar and firm, but he’s shaking too, and Suho is at war with the relief and the agony rushing through his blood in equal saturation. 

“S’not your fault,” Suho croaks. He turns his head so his face is half pressed into Sieun’s hair. Breathes in the faded smell of eucalyptus shampoo. Sieun’s left arm is splayed heavily across his torso, so Suho feels it when he clutches tightly at the thin hospital blanket, distressed. 

“I should’ve been able to stop it.” It’s muffled, barely legible. Suho feels it more than he hears, the words branded into his shoulder by way of Sieun’s cracked lips. He’s not even sure which incident Sieun’s talking about anymore; the last one, or before, at the boxing ring. 

It’s a sad thought–that there’s so much cause for pain between them he can’t always pinpoint the source. All this blame and guilt and regret trailing after them at every moment of every day like an angry spirit unable to pass on into the next life. 

“Not your fault,” he repeats, because it’s all he can manage right now. And he wants Sieun to know he would never blame him, not ever, not for anything. 

“I’m sorry anyway.” Sieun sniffles, pressing impossibly further into Suho, like he’s trying to crawl inside of him. The movement hurts, and Suho lets it. 

“I know, Sieun-ah.” Suho whispers. Goes on tapping Sieun’s back. Swallows the ugly lump of sorrow stuck in his throat.  “I know.”

Suho sleeps a lot, more than before. He hardly eats. When he’s awake, he spends most of his time vacant and checked out, removed from his surroundings. Goes where they tell him to. Lets them spout their medical talk and meaningless placations. 

Dr. Seo-ah sees him daily. She talks. Suho stares. It’s normal to have setbacks. You’re allowed to be upset. Everything comes in its own time. 

He nods. Okay. Okay okay okay okay. 

They still send him to physio, even if Suho doesn’t have it in him anymore. He barely tries, follows through the movements robotically. He tells the nurse to stop letting anyone join. No Sieun. No Hyuntak. 

Though they still linger around his room. He can hear their voices a lot, though it’s always distant, muffled, like he’s listening through water. He can feel their presence. But whenever Suho looks at them, he can’t––

Can’t see their faces clearly. They’re blurred, like the smudge of fresh ink on paper. When he closes his eyes, he thinks he remembers what they look like. Sieun most. His pretty black hair and even nose and perfect, perfect eyes. 

But he can’t see. Sieun-ah, he wants to say. I can’t see you anymore. 

He doesn’t. He just does as he’s asked, because he’s good. 

He has to be good. Or else the anger will kill him, kill everyone in this entire damned hospital. 

He stares out the window. It’s always summer. He doesn’t know what month it is anymore–but the trees never change. Always green. Always full. Like they’ve been taxidermied. 

Maybe it’s fake. Everything. Maybe Suho doesn’t even exist at all. 

Wouldn’t that be nice?

Suho thinks a lot, too. He remembers things. 

A knife at his throat, breaking through his skin in a chillingly blue lit parking garage. His Mom and Dad, wheeling bags out of his childhood apartment door, you be good with Halmeoni now, okay Suho-yah? The sound of his own voice echoing back to him in a hauntingly decorated party room. Cars honking and swerving around him, I can’t brake, I can’t stop. 

His face. His petulant, bitter voice. I don’t want to fucking apologize. Who’s the pathetic one now?

Beomseok-ah. Is that really what you thought of me, in the end?

Maybe he’s right. Suho feels it now. He’s pathetic.

Where are you? Are you sorry, even just a little?

“You know something,” he finds the energy to say, one day, voice hoarse from disuse. He’s sheltered under an awning in the garden, watching the rain spill furiously from the clouds. Sieun sits on the ground beside him, one arm wrapped around his left leg. “I was scared.”

Sieun’s grip tightens around his calf. “I was scared in the ring. I was scared, stuck in that house with Gil-su. I was scared,” and he stops, taking a second to draw a short breath in. The rain drones relentlessly on. “The night they cut the brakes on my bike. And when I woke up in that party room all alone, when I couldn’t reach you.”

Sieun hasn’t looked at him. He’s shaking. Suho can feel it against his leg. He knows it must be wrecking him, tearing him to pieces, to see Suho like this, to hear him. But Suho just keeps going. 

“Everybody wanted to hurt me. I don’t know what I did wrong…I just wanted to go home. Can I do that now?” Suho closes his eyes. A crack of thunder breaks the storm, angers it further. The rain is desperate,   almost hungry, in its rush to drown everything. 

“Can I just go home?” He repeats. The wind howls a mournful cry. 

Sieun doesn’t answer. He just turns his head, pressing his face into Suho’s thigh. He can feel tears soaking through his grey sweatpants. The steadily growing wet spot burns–Sieun’s pain branded into Suho’s skin. 

It doesn’t stop raining. 

He hits a breaking point. Like all things do–the point of no return, the last slip of tectonic plates before an earthquake splits the earth. 

It’s unfortunate that Sieun is both the cause and the witness. 

He doesn’t have it in him to drag himself to physio today, but Sieun is insistent. Stubborn.

“It might feel better, if you go.” He’s leaning against the wall across from Suho’s bed, arms crossed. Expression heavy with concern.  “Even just 10 minutes.”

Suho clenches his fists in his blankets from his perch sitting on his bed, legs hanging off the side. “I already told you I’m too tired today.”

“You missed all of yesterday’s sessions too.”

“And? It’s not like it makes a difference.”

“Suho,” Sieun starts, and Suho really can’t take it anymore. He doesn’t want to hear the rest of that sentence. 

“You can just go,” he cuts in. Sieun rears his head back a bit, as though slapped. 

“What?” 

Suho grits his teeth. “You can go early today. I’ll be fine.”

A pause. Suho keeps his gaze determinedly away from Sieun’s face. When he finally speaks up, his voice is hesitant, unsure, in a way he’s never heard Sieun sound before.

“You–you want me to leave?” 

No. 

Yes.

Suho drops his head back, looking at the ceiling. “Don’t you have an exam or something you need to study for?” He can hear the sour note in his voice, and he hates himself for it. Sieun’s eyes bore into him, demanding, aching. 

“It’s a Saturday. And exams are over. You know that.”

And that–that’s what sets him off. Three simple words, and the petulant beast inside of him wakes itself from slumber, ready, finally,  to strike. He pulls his gaze back to Sieun’s face–blurry, still, even more so through the haze of red rage settling itself over his pupils.

“How should I know anything about you or your schedule? I’m not Baku or Gotak or Jun.” 

“Suho,” Sieun says, torn. “You know me.” 

“Do I?” He snaps, loud. Sieun draws back in shock. “I know shit all about what happened to you while I was gone—”

Sieun pushes off the wall and cuts in, tone accusatory, “You would if you’d ever bothered to read my messages.” 

Suho scoffs. “You just don’t fucking get it, do you?” He’s half panting now. He should stop, before this spirals into a place they may not recover from. But he can’t—the anger won’t rest until it’s offered its due payment. “What if you’d never sent those messages at all, huh? I shouldn’t need them. You’re supposed to be here aren’t you? You’re with me?”

He lets the words hang in the air for a second, angry. Asking.  “You can tell me.”

And now it’s Sieun’s turn to be vicious. “I can’t.” 

“Why?” 

Sieun takes a sudden, furious step forward. “You think I have any right to stand here and look you in the eye, and tell you about my pointless life after I took 2 years of yours away from you?”

And—that catches Suho off guard. “What?” 

Sieun brings his hands up to run them through his hair, frustrated. “It’s my fault. I could’ve stopped you that day. I could’ve called you back inside, found you earlier. I could’ve let the police take Beomseok the night he broke my arm, instead of–of trying to protect him.” He sounds wild, unsteady. Like some splinter in his soul has been torn loose and the blood won’t stop pouring out. 

“That’s not fair.” Suho chokes out. Sieun’s heavy breathing mingles with his own, fills the room with the synchronized melody of their pain. 

“It’s not fair,” he repeats. “You don’t get to take that choice away from me.”

“Suho–”

“It was my choice,” and he’s vehement. Loud again. “In a 100 different lifetimes I’d make the same one, even if the outcome was the same. Even if it killed me.” Sieun lets out an awful, distressed whimper. 

“It doesn’t change the fact that you–you’re supposed to tell me things. I shouldn’t have to hear everything from—people I don’t even know. Who don’t know us.” He lifts a trembling hand to gesture between them, sharp and disjointed. 

“I didn’t know how to tell you. And I–” Sieun swallows, looks away. “I wanted you to like them. I thought you could. Is that so bad?”

“Ask them, since they know you so well, ice princess.” Scathing, cold. This conversation is draining him, draining them both. He wants it to be done. 

“You’re not being fair, either! How can you think that–that after everything, there’s anyone more important to me? I waited for you. Not Humin. Not Juntae. Not Hyuntak. You.” 

“And what? You regret it now?”

Sieun sucks in a breath through his teeth. “Suho—”

“No, you don’t understand.” Suho cuts in. “I died. Do you get it?” And he’s really yelling, now. His hands are starting to twitch and shake and it makes him even angrier, even more desperate. He wants to throw something at the wall but he’s too fucking weak. 

Sieun has gone completely still, face carefully wiped blank. He’s staring at Suho like—like he doesn’t know who he’s looking at. Which is the whole problem. Nobody knows who Suho is anymore. Not even Suho. 

“The boy you waited for, the one you wrote all those messages to—He’s dead.” 

And it’s true, isn’t it? His heart had stopped. His breathing snuffed out. He’d been legally dead before they’d managed to save him. These days, he wishes they hadn’t. He wishes he had gone quietly like that, into a long sleep where all the world and its hurt was lost to him, and he was still just Suho. 

“He’s dead.” He repeats. Sieun’s face crumples into something horrified, distraught. Suho wants to take it all back, wants to stop hurting him so badly. But he can’t. He feels almost possessed in his need to—to speak. To mourn. To pull the words out of his mouth like pulling rusted nails from wood. 

“He’s dead, he’s dead, he’s dead.” And oh—he’s sobbing, now. Loud, ugly, childish sobs that crack through the air jarringly. His lungs burn with the strain of trying to suck air down his throat. Tears slide heavily down his face, an endless torrent of rainfall. And in the midst of it all, like a broken radio, he can’t stop repeating those words. He’s dead he’s dead I’m dead I’m dead. 

He doesn’t see Sieun move through the thick glaze of tears over his eyes, but he feels arms around his neck, suddenly, squeezing like they’re trying to hold all his pieces together. Suho buries his face into Sieun’s neck, half embarrassed, half feeling like his soul is being torn to shreds inside of his body. He inhales, nose pressed against skin, breathing in that uniquely Sieun smell of mint and ink and books. His arms come up to wrap around Sieun’s waist, and for a while he goes on like that, sobbing and calling out and letting himself be held like a child. Sieun strokes his hair and doesn’t complain even as his shoulder grows steadily more soaked with tears. 

After a little while, Sieun turns his head closer, so his mouth is right by Suho’s ear. His fingers tighten their grip in his hair, and maybe Suho does know Sieun after all–because he can feel, in Sieun’s unspoken language, that he’s building up the courage to say something he finds difficult. 

Sieun takes a deep breath. Then—

“I don’t want you to be anyone else.” He whispers. Suho’s heart gives a painful lurch. “You can be angry. You can hate all my friends. You can hate everyone, I’ll hate them all with you.” Suho lets out a broken little laugh against Sieun’s neck. 

“I don’t want you to be the old Suho. I just—I just want—“ Suho squeezes Sieun’s waist, tries to let him know that it’s okay to get the words out. 

“I just want you.” The words come out breathless, but steady. Like there’s nothing else Sieun is sure of in the world except for this one, simple fact. 

And it doesn’t solve anything, not really. Because it can’t. Nothing can bring back everything that was ripped away from Suho. But it’s—enough. Enough to satiate the angry, wounded animal in his chest, who he knows now is just himself, just the boy he used to be. 

And so Suho squeezes Sieun tighter and weeps and knows he has to let that boy go. He has to step out of the boxing ring now. 

In a hospital room in mid-July, held steadily in the arms of the boy he loves, 16-year-old Ahn Suho is laid to rest.

The trees are skeletal against the grey December sky. Dustings of snow sit delicately on every branch, granting them an otherworldly, crystallized effect–like they’re made of sugar. Blankets of white pillow the street, the sidewalks, the rooftops. The world is quieter, muted, all that extra, maddening noise lulled into sleep by the snow. Suho stares and stares, letting his eyes take in the wonder, the beauty. He wants to memorize it, wants to be able to close his eyelids and still see it all in the darkness. 

His breath materializes in a misty cloud in front of his face. He blows out a few times on purpose, just to see it happen. Awed. Overjoyed. He laughs, and is delighted when that’s visible in the air, too. Evidence of his own happiness, offered to him by the frigid wind. 

Sieun stands to his left. Fluffy black bangs spill from beneath a navy beanie with an obnoxious pompom on top–a gift from Suho. A wooly grey scarf covers half of his face, so Suho can only see the pretty red tip of his nose and the cherry flush suffused across his cheeks. From the way his eyes crinkle slightly at the corners, Suho can tell he’s smiling. His familiar gaze on Suho is enough to warm him straight through down to his bones—fleece-lined jacket be damned, this is all he needs to beat the cold. 

Not that he wants to. Its been so long–since Suho was cold. He has half a mind to take his jacket off, his hat, his gloves, and plop himself heavily in the snow in just his sweater and jeans. He wants to feel it–the chill seeping through his skin, his veins, his blood. 

He takes a step closer to Sieun, using his cane for support, though he doesn’t always need it as much now. 

“Isn’t it amazing?” He breathes out, sounding a little like an overgrown kid. But it’s okay. He’s allowed that. 

Sieun nods. “It’s pretty.”

And then–wondruously, incredibly–a singular snowflake drops onto Suho’s nose. He stills and looks down, going a little cross-eyed in his effort to see it. Sieun laughs, slips off one of his gloves. He brushes the melted speck of water off of Suho’s nose–then lets his hand drift carefully over Suho’s cheek, trailing down his jaw. Suho’s wide-eyed, breathless. Sieun looks a little awed too, overwhelmed by some type of childlike wonder. Like he can’t believe either of them are here.

Suho’s skin tingles. It’s not from the cold. 

Sieun drops his hand, puts his glove back on. Then he tugs on the sleeve of Suho’s jacket, dragging him steadily forward. 

Through the snow. Through the heavenly, glowing streets. 

Everything is beautiful.

Winter, at last.