Chapter Text
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
- "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" by Robert Frost
The starry skies that he finally saw above him were different this time, and he made the effort to let the memory take shape in his mind, clear and vivid. Though daybreak would still be waiting for a while on the horizon, the man did not let his resolution waver. His limbs, still heavy and unaccustomed to the ground beneath him, tried to come to terms with the weightlessness of the ship that he had finally chosen to leave behind.
He looked straight ahead. There would be many miles for his feet to traverse before letting them rest. The road that lay in front of him stretched for years and decades, and that didn't scare him any more than the ones from his past. His journey wouldn't be one without precarity, nor would it be one without weariness.
However, the dull torpor of his confinement no longer seemed worth his remaining time—time that would be for joy, for disappointment, for comfort, for ache, for longing, and for hope. As long as he had a hand to hold and a heart to love.
An uncharacteristic stillness filled the air of the bookshop as Huening Kai turned over the last page of his recently published novel. His finger traced the edge of the book in his hand, his eyes still unprepared to face the unknown reactions of the audience members who sat in front of him, hanging on to each one of his words.
The dim lights above him were soon replaced by bright fluorescent ones all around. Kai had a diminishing liking for them. The applause that followed did nothing to sate the tension inside him. Nevertheless, he plastered a smile on his face as his lonely voice in the silence was replaced by small noises of people shifting in their seats, finally allowing themselves to move after that long period of stillness.
Choi Yeonjun, his agent, showed Kai a thumbs-up sign before finding himself a corner to tap away on his phone, gesticulating some directions to the staff to follow. At the same time, he heard the event moderator of his book reading gently announce that if the audience members had any questions for him, they now had the space to put them forward, sending Kai's stomach to be pulled in knots of nerves.
The reason behind his unease wasn't the fear of backlash; nothing could have universal appeal, after all. And, moreover, with the time that it took for him to return to this work, it had become more for his own sake than anyone else's. The audience remained unmoving for a while, and Kai didn't mind the awkwardness enmeshed in the quietude as much as the awkwardness that'd follow soon after he'd open his mouth.
With words on the screen, he had time to wait for the best ones and let them come to him. With words that he needed to speak, especially when it came to explaining the whys and wheres of his choices of writing, he struggled. Many of those decisions were deliberate, and a lot more still were very arbitrary. An "I don't know why I chose the red for his spacesuit" doesn't seem like an answer you'd expect from your author.
A few murmurs filled the room. Kai saw the microphone being passed to the last row, where a woman had raised her hand. The man in the row before her handed it to her and ducked down, probably to let her be visible to Kai. It made him curl his lips at how out of place the mask and baseball cap on this man's face looked in this room, like that kind of disguise belonged in this bookshop. Kai could at least see everyone else's expressions, their knitted eyebrows deep in thought, or their curious eyes. This man, however, was unreadable like a ghost.
He heard the woman tap the microphone and turned his attention to her. "Um, hi. Congratulations, first of all, on this. I've been a huge fan of Huening Kai-nim's works for a while now."
"Thank you, that's very kind of you."
"What I've been thinking about is the presence of ghosts in your stories. In both The Mirror and Dear Sputnik, your protagonists are being haunted. Is there a reason you lean heavily on these scary beings for achieving, like, a kind of opposite effect?"
"Well, for one, ghosts were never scary to me, much to the chagrin of my family at those movie nights when I got to pick." Kai prefaces what he's about to say with a joke. Another thing about words on screens is that you don't have to admit to your vulnerabilities in front of people's faces. The text helps you hide yourself in metaphors and imagery.
He cleared his throat before continuing, "Ghosts started fascinating me more once I–I started thinking about what happens to a life that's not wanted. Ghosts are what we understand might happen to life after death, but what if those lines aren't so harshly drawn? What if deadness has gripped you to the core, and your own ghost is now inhabiting your space, along with you, inside the body that seems alive from the outside, but really, isn't?"
"I had also thought, what if you meant for the ghosts he saw in the ship to be actually real ghosts? They could just be a figment of his imagination?"
"I would leave that for you to ponder. Was that the actual ghost of his dead crewmate? Are ghosts even real? Could this be psychosis? Who knows, right? It's not like I wrote this story."
The woman continued after sparing a chuckle at his attempt, "Or, just like in The Mirror, could this be his mind's way of keeping him alive, giving him purpose to hold on?"
"Or, it could be that." Kai nodded, smiling. He'd been asked this before as well, back when he'd just started getting recognised for this short story after winning a contest by sheer chance. His usual answer at the time used to be to say it was a writing choice arising from his need to subvert and work against expectation.
A shock value plot twist, if you will. That had been the original intention. Later, after much introspection, along with aeons spent in torturing himself over the book that never came to be, he realised that what would suit him better was honesty about not-knowing and embracing the ambiguity.
Kai diverted his attention as another hand rose up to his left.
"My question to you is, as someone who has found comfort in your work, do you truly feel the ending that you wrote is possible? In the epilogue, you've written something about 'a hand to hold, and a heart to love', seems like a simplification, might not be the answer to everyone's problems, right?"
Kai took a deep breath before smiling at the woman. "I would never claim to know the answers to anyone's problems. I hardly know the answers to my own problems. But my aim here is to urge people to find their reasons themselves.
"Of course, a hand to hold won't pay the house rent, but it sure would make it less lonely. Sometimes this hand lets go, and then your reason becomes trying to find it again. Or, even find another! Sometimes, you're too afraid to hold it—sweaty, clammy hands and all that you never spend twenty seconds washing—" the room broke out in a laugh "—and then your answer becomes how to rise above that fear. Don't know if that answers your question."
"Kinda, I guess."
Kai said, pushing his glasses up, "Maybe if a reason finds you, you can pick this book up again and see if what I said makes sense."
He heard someone beside him announce, "We have time for one more question."
"This book was announced a couple of years ago after your award, Writer-nim. And we were all looking forward to revisiting that short story that left us shocked with that ending, but you seem to have changed the meaning of it completely. Any chance we'll get to see a snippet of the original ending?"
Yeonjun gave him a worried look from behind the audience. Kai assured him with a shake of his head and returned his gaze to the man with the question, "You sound like a reporter."
"Just wanted to know if we have to keep waiting."
"You can revisit the story anytime, it's still out there, complete and finished for you to read, and unfortunately, that's all that it would ever be. I lost the original file for my outline for the project you're asking about. It is forever lost, and I can't return to it. But, if you read this one, you'll know I only know how to write one kind of story. Honestly, I just self-plagiarise with minor differences, so you'll get your fix here!"
"Thankyou everyone for your insightful questions, now, we'd like to thank Huening Kai-nim for his time and to…" Kai drowned out the moderator's voice as she continued delivering the vote of thanks. He bowed his head to the audience again when she thanked them for coming out tonight. "For those of you with copies in hand, Writer-nim will be staying for a short period to sign books at the front table. Please form an orderly line to my left."
Kai uncapped his pen and began his usual routine of asking the attendees for their names, copying his signature on paper, thanking them once again, and posing for pictures when they asked. After his first signing, he'd gotten pretty used to this rhythm. Yeonjun said he was a natural, could've been a K-pop idol in another life.
Between these conversations, from the corner of his eye, he noted someone from the queue leave their place. He wondered what their reason was; it could be an emergency, or they might already find Kai's small talk unbearable. He could relate to that; he found himself unbearable many times. He would've come up with more reasons had the person not stopped walking and taken the last position in the line. Kai recognised the person as the same masked man from before. Kai pondered the man's odd choice as he signed more front pages.
It couldn't be nerves, because over time, Kai had had the realisation that he would probably never be anyone's favourite with the kind of work he would put out, so really, why would anyone be nervous to meet him? You could argue that he couldn't say that with such conviction, but he knew himself, and he knew his niche, and his niche was bound not to find tremendous success with the current skill set he had. This wasn't even self-reproach, these were just facts.
But he was content with doing what he did. Kai didn't need a great many readers, he appreciated the few that he'd been able to gather here today.
That number basically showed Kai wasn't big enough to bring about any phenomenal change in someone's life with his words. Never mind that it'd only been two months since his book was released anyway. That wasn't nearly enough time for a change in the first place. That meant there was no reason for this individual to have to psych himself up to talk to Kai. He was just Kai.
He anticipated learning more about this person, and as people started shuffling out one by one, he found himself thinking about what he could ask this guy. That was something people like him—artists and creatives—were prone to do. They liked making up scenarios and living in imagination, mostly as fuel for more work. Who knows, this guy could be the person who would go on to change his life forever, like some guardian figure in a fantasy.
Life could get very draining without these possibilities; it was nice to indulge once in a while.
He almost couldn't stop himself from beaming once the man stood right in front of him. They were the last ones in the room now, though Kai could still hear Yeonjun talking to someone at the doorway.
"Hi, there!" Kai said to the man.
The man didn't say anything for a moment. Then, he did something that more or less buttressed Kai's impression of him from earlier.
He watched the man remove his cap and mask, and instantly stood up, catching Yeonjun's attention from the side.
Kai waved him off and faced the man before him.
"That sounded quite nice, your voice."
Kai ran a hand through his hair, still surprised at the sight in front of him. "It's you."
"In the flesh."
It's been days in the house. Or weeks, maybe. Has it been months? Years, even. No, no, that isn't true, it was only—what day was it today? He looked outside from the slit of his curtains. The sun wasn't up yet. The road outside looked clear. Hadn't it snowed a few nights before? The last season he remembered was winter. Winter. That was also when he had moved in. It must have been a year then, or maybe more. No, that wasn't right, it couldn't have been that long.
The empty document on Kai's screen stared back, taunting him. Save for the notification about yet another unread e-mail from Choi Yeonjun in his inbox, there had been no movement for four hours. It wasn't even that he had let himself be distracted by something on his phone or in his house. At least, that'd be an excuse, even if a sorry one at that.
In fact, his phone had been in the 'Do Not Disturb' mode for over a year, maybe longer. All he had done since the day he signed the contract for this godforsaken demon project of a book was open his eyes every day, sit in his chair, write a few words and promptly delete them. Kai was Sisyphus, and this non-existent manuscript was his boulder, and he definitely could not get on board with the whole 'one must imagine Sisyphus happy' nonsense being propagated these days. He'd never heard a stupider thing, and that was saying something as someone who had done only stupid things most of his life.
Case in point, this contract. It was safe to say he regretted ever signing it, ever thinking that something from his brain could be worth anything, ever believing that his will would persevere long enough for him to actually deliver on the promises he made. Kai didn't plan on disappointing all these people (including himself) by asking for extensions over and over again, and then failing to meet them. Then again, he hadn't planned on a lot of things panning out the way they did in his life.
He'd never once thought of himself as capable of being a writer. He'd always been interested in stories, but never believed himself to have the capacity to come up with one—that was original, that was meaningful. Because what could he even say, to think he had anything worthwhile to add to all the stories that existed in the world, seemed silly. Kai had always known that he didn't have it in him to write something that even two people would find worth discussing.
His father had told him the same. These sorts of pipe dreams weren't suited for ordinary people like them. What he was required to do was build for himself a realistic vision for his life—something which wasn't as frivolous as a work that took years and years to take shape and provide stability. That wasn't a respectable life. Hence, Kai instead chose to give a platform to stories that actually deserved people's time and attention. Still, not respectable enough of a plan for his father, but a compromise was the best he could do.
Kai pushed his journals and notebooks aside for the favour of manuscripts that bore words written by someone else. His own words would stay restricted to their margins, filled with his notes and suggestions. This conviction had convinced everyone around him, and himself, to a great extent, and he'd kept stepping closer and closer to this goal of his, till its alienating label made him a stranger to himself.
Did Kai really not have anything to say? How could that be when all his life he had been living as a witness to all that his eyes could observe? How could that be when every interaction he'd overhear between two strangers on the street would inspire an exploration about their worlds? How could that be when Kai wanted himself to be heard with the right words, with the right rhythm, with the right meaning? Wasn't that the only way for him to be seen as he was?
Amidst these questions, Kai lost his way, according to everyone else in his life. They did not know he'd never found it in the first place. He'd just been pretending to know where he'd been headed all this time. Now, he was tired of walking in the wrong direction, and all he wanted was to pause and figure out which road he needed to take. The roads were confusing, they each appeared full of obstacles of their own, and Kai was tired of staying stuck at the same place.
He wasn't alone in his exhaustion with himself.
His friends, his siblings, his parents- they had all grown frustrated with him for being the way he was, and he could see it, even if they didn't say it. They didn't know what to say to fix him, to fix his life, and their silence was deafening to him. It made him feel like he didn't exist. On some days, he didn't want to exist either. On others, he made a point of letting everyone know about his insufferable inner dilemma, which was reflected in his outwardly insufferable persona.
He hated it too, this version of him—so hateful and prickly like a stray animal of the road that leapt at unsuspecting pedestrians and increased the number of hospital bills and rabies shots.
There was a before to this barely functional, extremely unproductive, constantly fatigued and eternally irritable state of his. He hadn't grown up this way—thinking about the pointlessness of things in life, cursing the needless struggle of living or hating the persistent, ugly feeling of emptiness inside him. There hadn't always been a weight on his chest, pressing on his ribs like it would break through them any second. Kai had had questions about the purpose of his existence, sure, but never a complete denial of his worth. Till one day, it became all that he could obsess over.
These thoughts of reproach had crept up on Kai, slow but deadly, like a virus, in their spread across all aspects of his life. It was numbness that wrapped itself around the growing void inside him—and each time anyone asked him about his well-being, a simple question that merely asked Kai how he was doing, he would never give them the easy answer. He would dress his reality as a sarcastic retort and say, 'Awaiting death, can't complain.'
Kai had a friend who had once asked him why he answered this way when he found that just saying 'I'm fine' for the sake of social pleasantries was enough. This was precisely why: no one asked 'how are you?' with the actual intention of knowing a person's condition. They asked out of habit and convention. If they didn't ask it with sincerity, why was Kai expected to respond with it?
He shouldn't have to make his crisis palatable to the rest of the world. He shouldn't have to feign 'being fine' just for the sake of someone else's mental peace when his own was always stormy. He had not been fine for a long time. Anything except for the void seemed to come to him like an unwelcome stranger. He heard everyone talk about joy, and he couldn't have felt more distanced. It felt like a lie that everyone else in the world was in on except for him. When they talked about hope, it felt like a mirage in the desert.
Every emotion felt out of reach, like they were all flying right up above him in all their majestic colours, but each time Kai would try to find the thread, it would elude him in his grey ground.
He often questioned the point of picking himself up every morning and taking his lifeless corpse of a body from place to place when he could just remain glued to one place, unmoving and unstirred. Time would pass him by as he'd remain still, and soon enough, it would do its job of decaying his flesh and bones till only remnants of him would grace the Earth. No more suffering for reason's sake. And some excavator would find him just like this, like those bodies in Pompeii.
In the before, thinking about death this way had been taboo. Kai remembered that very well. His family believed that even the mention of the subject could attract misfortune on them, so Kai believed that too. When the misfortune stopped being fearsome for Kai, death became less scary to think about, and soon enough, thinking about it was like the comfort of a friend on an especially hard day. It came with a promise that if things got too overbearing, beyond his limit of tolerance, he could escape once and for all.
He never planned on hurting himself intentionally, but he was willing to let his time be cut short if the opportunity was provided. Maybe an accident on the road, maybe a terminal illness, maybe a calamity, or, like people his age often quipped about, an apocalypse. Hidden in jokes and japes was his reality that he wouldn't have minded if his life was taken away from him, he wouldn't fight for it.
It was a suffocating, debilitating, and mostly isolating realisation to have about oneself, and it felt as if he didn't let his hatred for life be known, it would drown him. Kai knew something was wrong with him—this wasn't how people could be feeling all the time. Some wires inside him had to have been mismatched for him to find his day-to-dayness so exhausting, when the other people around him faired just fine.
No one else seemed to mind watching the sun rise every day, no one else felt the heaviness in looking at their reflection, no one else felt like their legs were tied to rocks each time they tried to take a step forward.
If it were only him who found everything so dull and desolate, he must be the problem. And, if he was the problem, all he needed to do was fix himself.
As he closed his eyes and melted into the depths of his sheets, a heavy weight on his chest jerked him awake. Two hands had his neck in a chokehold. The man's eyes went wide as they looked for the body that accompanied the hands, but found nothing. Yet, the hands continued to tighten their grip. He struggled and writhed against the unfinished limbs, thrashing his body out and about till it stopped, before pounding on the man's ribs with the strength of boulders falling off a mountain with great speed.
The fingers wrapped around the man's neck like vines and reached all the way up to his eyes, not letting him close them shut. The man shrieked as loud as his lungs would allow and eventually fell onto the floor.
The floor was always filled with quicksand every time he woke up, but thankfully, this time, what he landed on was solid hardwood. He wiped sweat off his brow while gasping for air.
The hands had disappeared.
His legs took him out of the room by breaking into a sprint. Footsteps followed behind him, matching his pace, making his heart race with dread. The heart hadn't felt anything different in a long time. He was surprised the organ still remained true to its purpose. The rest of him –his eyes, his ears, his tongue, his mind– had lost their identities long ago.
Under the closed curtains, amid the low hum of his table fan, to the rhythm of the wall clock's tick-tick-tick, Kai began typing his inner battles into something the world could see for the first time. The words had poured out of him more easily than anything he'd ever done in his life.
Kai had just returned from a funeral service for his great-aunt. His father had demanded his presence, not asked, demanded to escort him from his house to his family's place in the village. While his father's cousins sobbed and sniffled, the man never showed even the slightest wetness near his eyes. It didn't surprise Kai. You'd think you'd spare half a tear at the death of the woman who raised you. Not if you were Kai's father, though.
The two men had not said a word to one another on their way, and Kai had assumed the same would be the case on the way back.
Except.
A question emerged within him, making Kai break the silence in the car. "What would you do if I died?"
The man beside him didn't move, his face remained just as it was before Kai had said anything. As minutes passed, Kai had almost begun wondering if he'd asked anything at all.
He'd concluded that this was his answer—the lack of it. Kai had returned to his apartment and stared at the sky from his window. It had looked empty and desolate. The floor beneath his feet looked muddy, he'd tracked it all the way here. Maybe it would continue piling up and bury him while he stood frozen.
That was when the idea for this narrative flashed through his head: a house that preyed on its resident. A story about a man haunted by the shackles of Kai's own affliction.
The story began with a hint at something strange within this house. While it was a perfect place to inhabit with all that one could need to sustain themselves, it was peculiar that the house had no visible doors, and the man could never seem to recall how he'd ended up living there, what was his life before, or even the duration of his stay, when did it start, when would it end, or did he even plan to have an ending to it?
The house had all that the man needed to keep himself alive, and yet every action to do so would feel like an interminable chore to him, except for lying himself down to sleep. Sleep would always come easily to him. Kai had often felt this way about sleep, too. Each time Kai closed his eyes during those days, he'd pray never to have to open them again.
In fact, he poured all his turmoil into his work in his search for the answer that would fix him, like an odd sense of manifestation. In letting his protagonist find his way out, he'd light the way out of the tunnel for himself. Articulating this struggle, putting his lost thoughts and emotions into words on screen, was the first time he'd allowed himself to be seen as he felt on the inside.
What was more important than anything else was how he found his way out of this labyrinth by himself. He wasn't rescued because he didn't need anyone else's intervention. Admitting that one needed anyone would mean burdening people with failures that weren't theirs to bear. Nor was it an option to gamble with expectations when it came to the non-existent affection of the unreliable man who was too stupid to decide against bringing Kai to the world.
It only made logical sense that Kai solve his own problem, it was the responsible thing to do.
That was how the climactic event of his short story took shape. He spent a great deal of time establishing the eeriness of the house and how it went on to show how the house kept the man from feeling anything new—from remembering his old self, and from hoping for anything in his tomorrow. When the man was finally on the verge of giving in to the stagnation and deadness of the house, Kai introduced another haunting entity into the narrative: the ghost.
A haunting figure whose presence would leave the man scared, sweating and suspicious of the house. It would jolt him awake from his slumber and make him run for his life. Essentially, it was intended as a character who made the protagonist's life in the house hellish. The ghost went around breaking down windows and doors, chasing him like a madman, and never letting him fall into the endless ease of the house that the man believed would save him.
The house changed itself again, like it was prone to do, always growing bigger and stretching to the ends till his feet bled. However, right now, as the man continued to run away from the ghoul behind him, it remained static, like it was protecting him, helping him find a place to hide.
The walls pushed him toward his destination, except the thing behind him was quicker still.
The man yelled out in fear. The house trembled with him. Walls cracking, the ground breaking open from within him.
He turned around to finally face his end.
He noticed the hands first, bloody and chafed all over, clothes all in tatters and pieces like it had fought many a battle. The man's eyes moved to the familiar visage, which he'd often seen in his own reflection.
"Leave. Now." It ordered in a voice that hurt his ears—it was a voice that sounded like it had screamed for an eternity before addressing him, but compelling at the same time.
"Who–what are you?"
It would be easy to hold the ending as the sole reason responsible for his lack of progress. If not the only one, it definitely was a major blame-holder for it. Kai hated everything about it.
First, it made him feel as though he had taken the easy way out. As a reader, he'd never liked this manner of closing a narrative. The usual 'it was a dream all this while' schtick is what he'd revamped and written his story as 'the ghost was the man himself all along.'
What a dumb choice to make for a story.
What a dumb thing to have won an award for.
That jury must have been dumb, too.
Safe to say, he hated it. He didn't like anyone telling him how great the plot twist was, because it seemed like either they were lying to him, or they were really not worth his time.
Yeonjun had flicked him on the head for this attitude several times. He'd often tell the younger man, "Kai-yah, those are people who have liked something you wrote. If you call it shit, you're calling them shit. "
And?
If someone said two by two equalled five, you don't go around making excuses for how they might feel a certain way about the number five. That was how he viewed that story. Two by two, it meant he was undeserving of everything that followed its publication.
"Mathematics has facts, Kai. Art doesn't."
Which always irked him. That was just something people said, it wasn't really true. Sure, there were subjectivities involved in how certain pieces were evaluated at any given time and in any given context. What could be called perverted and disgusting in one decade can turn into revolutionary and resistance in another. That was sound logic, applicable to everything but his work.
Those were his rules—the ones that always operated on finding fault within himself, and to keep contributing to the list of reasons he could find himself more suited to be laid to waste.
Oh, boo-hoo. Kai had no right to be lost in this bubble of self-reproach. Must be so hard being him, an award-winning young writer with a book deal. The stuff of great suffering, his life. There were people out there with real problems, and here he was, whining and whining and whining some more.
God, he really hated himself for everything that he did.
He'd hoped the story would have helped him dig himself out of this pit that he'd wandered into and never been able to leave. That was the aim: to write himself, saving himself.
The ghost would save him, because instead of being deadened and emotionally stunted, there would be some feeling, some emotion, something more than just mere numbness.
Even if it were fear, the fear would be for life.
You don't find yourself feeling afraid of ghosts once you resign yourself to death. Kai could say that from personal experience. If the worst a ghost could do is take possession of your life or take it away in its entirety, then so be it. Kai had long crossed the bridge of wanting to fight for his life anyway.
What would then make a ghost scary to him? This was the question that had given his story the shape it eventually took.
He'd be scared of a ghost if it were a reflection of his own self. There must be a reason the movies used mirrors to haunt people. What could be scarier than a reflection, a version of him similarly downtrodden by the ruinations of life, and still choosing to fight, still willing himself to wake up from the lull? He must have something to protect—a future that could hold something so precious, something so significant that even his miserable protagonist would stay alive for it, something for which a ghost would overturn the rules of nature.
If ghosts are supposed to feed on deadness and misery, then wouldn't they be the perfect heroes for the life of a man overpowered by these emotions? The ghost could rid him of these and leave behind an empty slate for him to begin again.
With that hope for a blank screen and a future that had the potential to be more than what his present was, he typed the last words of his story. Holding onto the tiniest possibility that the days that came after could have for him something different in the cards, he made himself stick around. If he left, his life's story would just remain a trifling drudgery for anyone to read. If his life had been needless suffering all this while, then it couldn't end like this. It shouldn't end like this.
And, he had to live to see it change.
For a minute there, maybe longer, it seemed true, the change seemed possible. That morning, he'd gotten up from his bed and taken the curtains off the windows in a dramatic act of wanting to feel the sun on his fingertips. That was probably too cinematic a choice to make because only insane, morning people woke up with a skip in their step and made out with sunshine or whatever they chose to do. People like Kai begrudgingly put their feet on the cold marble floors, hoped the water didn't feel too harsh on their skin, and hoped the world wouldn't make them regret their decision of stepping out.
But, hey, at least he was stepping out. It might have been easy for everyone else to do something as typical as that, but for him, it was an achievement. He walked into rooms with no hint of the void inside and walked out with slumped shoulders and a frown on his face, with the exhaustion that he accumulated with his goddamn award-winning performance.
That was just being tired, though. Everyone got tired.
He was fine, now, really fine, is what he'd kept telling himself. He had overcome that spell. It was a blip. Nothing but a short glitch. He'd located the bug and effectively removed it. The pain of before was surely, surely depleting. He was in the after now, wasn't he?
Though it was a little tough to mark the beginning of this after, when the taste of it was still nothing, when he still felt like he stuck out like a sore thumb in every place surrounded by people. Despite his confidence and the exaggerated assertion that he was a success story, he felt like all of this was just another avoidable headache.
It was like there was a list of rules and recommendations that was handed out to everyone to 'live life to the fullest'. The way Kai saw it, everyone checked off items and received the joy and happiness that was promised. However, for Kai, even when he followed these standard procedures of stepping out of his room, saying 'yes' to invitations, and finding time for things he used to enjoy—even with all of them, nothing felt any different.
Everyone expected him to feel more. And, to everyone's disappointment, along with his own, he couldn't. What was enraging was that he couldn't tell anyone either, because that would mean admitting defeat, and admitting defeat would confirm that he was a failure. With this feeling came the concomitant yet reluctant disappointment in people.
Everyone Kai knew failed him in clocking his bullshit. In all the nights, where sleep would continue to play hide-and-seek till sunrise, he'd lie in his bed thinking, what was it all even for, when no one seemed to notice how hard he had been trying? Kai knew that would be contradictory to his attempts in wanting to assure people he was fine, but did anyone really mean that, ever? He was constantly asking himself, despite his own lack of communication being the reason, why no one could see him.
Kai didn't question people's love and care for him, at least, not in the way that mattered, not in its existence, but his belief in it dwindled from time to time, partly because he spent much of his time finding himself odious, and partly because their care seemed conditional and convenient.
It wasn't their fault. Life sank its talons into everyone. How could people be expected to spare energy when all of theirs was also spent on keeping themselves alive? Kai would know that quagmire better than anyone.
Besides, they could probably have noticed his struggle if only he had voiced it out. Unfortunately for Kai, he spoke at a frequency that no one could hear. Unfortunately for him, he'd chosen this frequency himself because no one needed to hear it in the first place. He could handle himself. He really could, but just once, he'd wish that someone would just match it, even by accident and tell him that listening to him wasn't difficult at all.
His therapist (though he only met the guy for five sessions before deciding it wasn't for him, so can you really call him that?) had suggested that he try to adjust his own frequency or ask someone to adjust theirs. That people would show up if he could take one step, and they'd take one in return.
To him, it felt like he was being told to be louder when all Kai wanted was for someone to hear his whisper.
The knocks on Kai's door grew frantically louder after the first four times of ignoring Choi Yeonjun's calls. He had nothing to say to the man. The current mixture of anger, resentment, and exhaustion inside him made him a very unpleasant person to be around, anywhere. Even when he was currently in the wrong after neglecting to pay attention to all communication with Yeonjun.
There was an inevitable conversation to be had between the two of them. Probably ending with Kai getting fired, and the book being called off. Kai was so done with that demon child that he wouldn't even feel sad over it. He would, however, feel guilty about it, especially about the relief that he'd feel, followed by the feeling of all his pillars of already crippling self-esteem toppling over one another.
Over the months, he'd given the thing an honest effort, the best he had been capable of during the time. Yet, it all seemed so inauthentic. What was Kai even doing, writing about finding the spirit to hold on, when he had never done anything of the sort?
The days still felt long and tasteless and blue. All that had changed was the number of things that he told himself he had to do to keep himself functioning and out of the view of any concerned eyes. He did it because it was expected of him to go back into the normalcies of life from the dumps that he lived in, even when all he had was the exhaustion inside him.
This version of him was a mere persona for everyone else's comfort, not what he actually felt. Writing a story about having escaped the house, when Kai was probably still stuck in the doorway, felt like a propaganda piece instead, for a skill he still didn't have, only pretended he did.
"Yah!" Yeonjun's voice bellowed from outside. Kai registered it many seconds later. "If you don't open up, I'm just gonna go and ask your security guard to disable the passcode, you hear me?"
Kai sat in his chair, with his eyes closed, sighing at his friend's frantic behaviour.
"Stop bothering my neighbours, I'm gonna let you in, in a minute," Kai said, still not having moved from his place. He counted till five, shut his laptop, took one look at the state of his apartment and made his way to the door, without sparing any thoughts for last-minute tidying-up.
"If you do plan on going to the security guard ahjussi, can you bring my packages from downstairs too?" Kai said, opening the door to reveal a slightly dishevelled and stressed Choi Yeonjun. "Poor man has been holding on to them for so long."
"How long does it take to answer a goddamn email?"
"I don't know, how long is Mt. Everest?"
Yeonjun gave him a look of disgruntlement, accentuated by his flared nostrils and narrow eyes.
"What? I thought we were quizzing one another on random things?"
Yeonjun pushed Kai aside to enter, making a beeline to the small fridge Kai kept entirely unstocked. His friend uncapped a bottle of water and downed it in one long swig before crushing the plastic.
"I know you need your space, I respect that, but Kai, I'm worried about–"
"Your job?"
"You!"
"But also your job, right? It was your first big project after that promotion, and you invested too much in me already, and now you're gonna get chewed out by your boss."
Yeonjun rolled his eyes at him. He didn't deny it, though. "You done? This routine is old and unusable now. I already know that you're only provoking me, and it's not working this time."
"It's worked before." It did. Yeonjun had left frustrated and enraged, saying there was no one who stressed him out as much as Kai did.
"Kai," Yeonjun said softly, with a deep breath as if it required much of his resolve not to blast off on Kai the way he did before. "I care about you, you're my friend, you don't have to–"
Kai interjected before Yeonjun could finish his sentence and make the guilt inside him even more pronounced, "If this is going to take long, can I go and get my delivery real quick? I promise I'll be back in a minute."
He lied straight through his teeth.
The trouble with being the way Kai had been was that he was always holding two contradictory thoughts inside you at all times. A part of him believed that people cared for him, people loved him, people wanted him around, and another laughed at that belief and waited like a predator to pounce on any opportunity to prove him wrong.
Yeonjun didn't seem like he was lying, but then Kai had his counterargument ready. He knew the people Yeonjun hung around didn't share his thoughts. Kai had overheard that at one of these gatherings. 'Why does he even come out, if all he's gonna do is complain about everything? Like we get it, you're sad. That's apparently an excuse for a personality these days.'
Kai knew he was a thorn stuck in their shoes. And Yeonjun probably shared the belief, if not then, perhaps now.
Things had drastically changed from the days of Yeonjun defending him against the people who called him unpleasant to be around. Funnily enough, he didn't remember what Yeonjun said in order to defend him, but these words were so clear in his mind. He'd repeated them to himself so many times. It was all true, no reason for Yeonjun to have gotten so worked up over it on Kai's behalf.
Maybe, now it would be Yeonjun echoing the exact beliefs about Kai inside some bar. Maybe that was for the best.
Huening Kai could teach a class in cutting himself off from everyone who could show him the minutest care.
His legs felt heavier and heavier with each step, but maybe his room was only another mile or two away. Perhaps, leaving the room was a bad idea in the first place. He'd left for a meal, but then, he couldn't find anything to suit his appetite in the kitchen. There were too many dishes in the sink anyway. They would have to be washed soon. He would get to it in the morning. Once he'd rested, it would all be easier.
The walk was draining, but the bed was comfortable. His back sank deep into the covers as though they swallowed him up. It felt soothing to let himself be consumed and safely tucked beneath the darkness. The light didn't threaten to come in here, and the entrance was blocked. Even he would have to climb all the way up to come out of this pit. Had he dug the void himself as a means to escape? It was so difficult to remember his own life these days.
He closed his eyes finally. It was time. Rest.
Leaving Yeonjun alone in his home, where his lack of progress was all entirely too visible, wasn't the ideal way of getting fired, but it seemed like the only option to avoid conversation with the man. Kai felt apologetic for shutting Yeonjun out yet again, but maybe this would be the last time the man would expect anything from Kai. It was time for Yeonjun to give up already.
Kai did not know where he was headed—anywhere away from the look on Yeonjun's face of this exact realisation was his destination.
Kai put one foot in front of the other as they took him from bustling main streets to narrow alleyways to dead-ends to lanes packed with kitchens and stalls of the marketplace. There was weariness in his steps, but then there had been a kind of weariness within him that had made its home inside for ages, so really he didn't mind letting his whim take him wherever.
As he turned another corner, his feet slowed down. Through the glass doorway, Kai saw a variety of guitars displayed on the shelves inside a music shop that had strangely caught his attention as he blurred past many roads. A melody revealed itself and cut itself all within a second or two when a woman and her child stepped outside the shop, with a small keyboard in the woman's hands and a smile adorning the child's face. The opening of the doors allowed the music to escape before the doors were shut again.
Kai merely watched for a while, letting his legs rest some and his mind wander instead. Not many others walked in after, and Kai kept his eyes trained inside, waiting for another glimpse into the music he'd heard. All he saw was an older man keeping himself busy with tuning an even older-looking guitar.
Kai himself had an untuned guitar gathering dust in his closet back home, not this apartment, but the one where he grew up. He'd been one to experiment with playing all kinds of instruments at one point, hiding out in a shop just like this when his house grew too loud. And then, when he'd left the place for good, life had happened, making him lose any interest in things that had brought him joy, and he hadn't touched one in a long time.
His reverie was soon interrupted by another tune played on the same piano, he guessed, that slipped out along with the old man. The man made gentle conversation with a part-timer from the nearby cafe as he smoked, but instead of waiting and continuing his observation, Kai decided to find the source of the music. He walked up to the door, paused, and looked back as if he were being chased, when in reality he was the one running away from everything.
Maybe that Kai, the one who had left Yeonjun stranded, the one who hadn't left his house in ages, the one who had far too much exhaustion in his eyes, could stay out here.
And the one who walked inside could be someone else.
As Kai's skittish feet entered the shop, he could feel how the air inside was different. There was a stillness to it, in stark contrast to the noise and loudness outside the door, except, of course, the continuous broken melody from before. It started with a slow cascade, and then, as if the player was still figuring out where to go, the ending would be a smash of chords that didn't belong.
Kai followed the source of that sound to a large hall full of polished pianos. The music became much clearer as he continued to make his way towards the person hitting these oxymoronic, hesitant yet loud notes.
Kai couldn't recognise the song, which meant that he would be of no help to the person currently struggling with the keys. However, the music still called him towards it. Kai could hear frustration akin to his own in the player's repeated attempts to find the right chord to complete the harmony.
Kai stood against yet another doorway, still silently observing the piano player and what seemed to be his process of constructing a new piece. The man slammed a few keys, sighing, before scratching something angrily in the sheets in front of him. He still hadn't taken note of Huening Kai. Kai didn't know why he hadn't made himself known yet either.
Before Kai could begin thinking about what to say, the man started again, his fingers gliding smoothly along the keys. Something shifted when the man's voice joined the music from the piano. It was difficult to make out the lyrics completely, but the singer in front of Kai had an earnestness to his performance that had him struck.
So much so that when his voice came to an abrupt halt, Kai didn't even realise. Barely a minute might have passed, but Kai was sure the man had stared right at him throughout that pause.
As if on cue, the man shook his head, the hair on his forehead swayed with it, "Oh, sorry about that. Are you looking to buy something?"
Kai was dumb enough to look behind him before remembering his desire to be invisible to the world hadn't manifested just yet, and he needed to come up with a reason for haunting this poor guy's workplace.
"Uh," was all that the deadbeat neurons in his brain could supply.
"Mr Min sent you here?" The man asked, "Short guy, glasses?"
Kai concluded that the man whom he saw step out must be named Min. He shook his head in response to the question. "He's taking a smoke break, I believe. I'm just here to–uh,"
"Browse?"
"Sure," Kai said, happy not to have to think of an excuse. "What you were playing, that sounded quite nice, your voice."
"Thanks," the man said, showing no change in his expression at the compliment. Maybe he was used to it, maybe it didn't come off as genuine enough. Kai wondered if the man thought he only said that to make conversation. He didn't. He never gave out praises out of politeness. He only said things that he meant.
"It really was," he felt the need to emphasise. "You should play here often, might even increase business."
Though he hadn't meant that as a joke, the man chuckled. He still didn't seem convinced. Kai would probably have to rack his brain a little more to do so.
"Nice of you to say. Mr Min, the shop owner, lets me play the ones that aren't bought yet on slower days like today."
"See, even he recognises that you play well."
"Yeah, don't know about that, don't like to care either. I just like playing… do you play?"
It was a deflection. Kai could catch that kind of diversion from miles away. He was the king of swerving topics, he paved this road himself. Still, he chose not to push it.
In answer to the man's question, Kai said, "A little."
The man gestured toward the instrument, beckoning Kai to join him on the bench while shifting to the side to make space for Kai to sit next to him.
Kai knitted his eyebrows together in confusion, but the man's intent eyes pushed Kai to take the seat meant for him. He stared at the keys in front of him, somehow, they felt more welcoming and familiar than the keys on his laptop back home. Kai glanced to his left to find the man staring at the keys along with him, and he had to wonder what the man could be thinking. Maybe this piano could be to the man what Kai's keyboard was to him.
Or, maybe that was just a stretch, and his brain was just taking a leap of imagination, just as it always did, always keen on exploiting people's lives for stories, because what was a writer if not a vulture that fed off of life this way. Or, that might just be him, and other writers were more imaginatively gifted.
"No pressure," he heard from his side, removing the half-empty notation pages from the stand. The unfinished harmony that Kai heard was probably written in these. Kai wanted to see for no reason, just out of some inexplicable fascination with it.
Below those pages were more pages full of sheet music, some of which Kai was even familiar with. Kai stretched his fingers by interlocking his hands together and awkwardly nodded to himself.
Kai snuck a short glimpse at the man's eyes. There was something too abyssal about them. Just like looking at the sky.
When the man caught him, Kai turned to the piano and traced his fingers along the chords with ease. The muscle memory from childhood took over, translating what was written on the pages into sound. The memory of those summer classes flashed in front of him.
What would little Kai think if he saw him now? He was supposed to have so much potential. There was nothing he couldn't master at that age, so what happened that life itself became difficult to master now?
He paused the thought there itself and concentrated on finishing the piece, turning over the pages masterfully and not dwelling on more such questions threatening to make him pause and stare pointlessly at some wall or ceiling.
Even without much practice, he pretty much nailed the piece with only the slightest mistakes here and there, which he hoped weren't too noticeable. He'd definitely kick himself in the head out of embarrassment later in the night over them, but for now, another thing, rather another person, required and occupied his attention.
Kai turned to his left to be greeted by the man's dimples popping out. Kai had to return the smile. He felt compelled to do so, looking at this man. This one was probably the most genuine one out of all the ones that he'd had to slap on his face over the past few weeks, months, years.
It'd been so long since he'd smiled and meant it without feeling like something would immediately go wrong.
"Fishing for compliments, I see," the man said to him. His knee brushed against Kai's, and Kai didn't feel like moving his leg away.
"Guilty."
"Let's see if you can keep up." He said, with a glint in his eyes, turning over the pages to another familiar piece. From his memory, his former tutor had mentioned that this was the piece that his students would try to perfect day in, day out. Even Kai had tried his hand at it and swiftly given up.
"Oh, it's like that, I see," Kai said, accepting the challenge.
"Ready?" The man asked him, with a twinkle in his eye that would make such a great painting.
As the man's foot anchored the pedal, Kai shifted his own and tucked it beneath his other leg. The instrument came to life once again as their fingers followed the notes on the sheets. Their shoulders brushed with some movements, elbows knocked against one another, and as expected, Kai still struggled to match the man's pace.
Even so, he refused to give up. In fact, it was the man who halted abruptly with a noise after his and Kai's hands accidentally clashed in turning the pages. Their eyes met naturally, and Kai couldn't help but laugh. The sound of it seemed almost unnatural to his ears, but he did not wish to question it.
"I'm Kai, by the way. Huening Kai," he said, and cringed a little at his own name sounding so awkward out of his mouth.
"Nice to meet you, Kai. My name's Taehyun. Kang Taehyun"
Taehyun. He practised saying that in his head a couple of times for some reason. Meanwhile, Taehyun occupied himself with rearranging the pages on the notation stand again. He wanted to ask about the ones that Kai had seen him scribble on, but before he could, he was asked a question instead.
"What do you do besides one-upping musicians?"
"I think you're being too kind, but I try to write." Try being the keyword here. Kai wished he had some other straightforward answer to questions like these that didn't involve an impromptu existential crisis. Taehyun couldn't be blamed for asking it, it was typical of people to strike up a conversation this way. It was the nature of Kai's ambiguous life that he hesitated each time.
"Music?"
"Books." A lie.
"Oh? That's amazing. Anything I'd have heard of?"
Kai shook his head. "Not yet. Not ever, probably."
"But, what do you mean by 'shortlisted'? I didn't even—" Kai looked at Yeonjun, confused and befuddled about everything he'd just said. Kai had believed they were meeting for a meal simply because Yeonjun must've felt sorry for him. What with him striking out at each one of the job interviews he tried setting up for Kai in the past few months.
Yeonjun had tried his best, but then Kai had also been trying his best not to lose it all each time one of those "we have decided to move forward with a candidate whose profile more closely aligns with our current team requirements " type rejection emails from all those companies.
It made no sense to hear this news from Yeonjun then. There was no other place he'd been waiting to hear from, none of them wanted Kai.
"The story you attached to your last email to me."
Kai dropped the chopsticks in his hand. He tapped on his phone to confirm whether he'd actually been stupid enough to make the most cliché mistake in the world. He scrolled past the promotional nonsense and landed on Yeonjun's thread, and surely enough, there lay the proof of his incompetence. Why would anyone hire him if he couldn't even check attachments in an email?
"This wasn't what you'd asked me to send."
"I'm glad you did, though. You were always meant to write, Kai-yah. Why waste your time on these interviews when your heart is dedicated elsewhere?"
"You really think it was worth anything?" Am I worth anything?
"Of course, it is," Yeonjun said, without even waiting to think. He kicked his leg beneath the table while sipping the rest of his coffee. "And, even without the story, you are."
Yeonjun had said it sincerely. Perhaps the man even believed them, and despite wanting to believe his friend's words, Kai could not bring himself to even let the words settle inside him. He could only question it all because, of course, his best friend would say something like that; he was obligated to say that. What kind of a friend would say anything else? Not the Yeonjun kind, definitely.
Another day, another aimless walk. As his feet turned towards a recently familiar road, Kai mulled over whether showing up after hurriedly bolting out of the shop would be as weird as he was imagining it, or maybe even more so. Taehyun's face had been confused at the time. He'd probably see the same expression today if the other man were working. It was surprising that, despite the imminent embarrassment that awaited Kai if the man was working, he would rather see him than not.
Taehyun might just come to terms with his whims quickly. There are stranger things that happen in the world than a man leaving mid-conversation.
For instance, a friend leaving behind a fully stocked refrigerator for you after you abandoned them in your own apartment—a friend who was responsible for you not ending up on the streets and was now suffering at his own place because of your irresponsible, avoidant, cowardly behaviour. Yeonjun was clearly a victim of his toxic friendship. There was no reason for him to keep coming back, and yet, he did.
This time, when Kai entered the shop, the old man couldn't be found anywhere, which worked out for Kai. He might think Kai was scoping out the place for robbery or something. He did look like he needed the money. He also needed money, period, since he was going to be out of a job soon.
The person behind the desk was, however, the one he both wanted and did not want to see.
"Hi," Taehyun broke the ice first, while Kai was still tiptoeing around, deciding what to start with.
Kai just nodded. And then, silence. Taehyun didn't wait around for Kai to say anything, he had his eyes set on the card swipe machine, unbothered by Kai's presence.
That was the one thing he was most afraid of these days: indifference. It was Kai's own fault. He had no reason to be here. If he had come here for nothing, then nothing was what he was getting. He couldn't complain. He was upset. Still, he couldn't complain.
"Thanks, bye," Kai said, and repeated essentially what he had come to correct today.
Kai did not want to go home just yet, especially to the suffocating emptiness inside it, with that refrigerator that did nothing to sate the guilt that ate him from the inside out. He couldn't place why all of this still bothered him, why he cared about what Yeonjun felt when he'd been trying so hard to make himself remain unbothered. Why did he show up at a music shop out of the blue, when bleakness was his normal state of being? Did he expect to feel different? Did he expect a random stranger would care? Why should anyone, when Kai had renounced the feeling within himself?
The cars and scooters zoomed past him, while the streetlights and the neon signboards of shops guided his way. High-rise office buildings dimmed except for a few lights emanating from select rooms of some poor soul left to continue the day's work. He saw groups of people populating the crosswalks, bus stops and food stalls.
Everyone seemed to be headed somewhere. Except for Kai.
The walk stretched on and on till his feet landed him before the long pedestrian tunnel beneath the Olympic Highway. The air seemed as heavy as his feet as they continued onward. The path wasn't unfamiliar to him, he'd been on this road before. His cab driver had told him, at that time, to hold his breath till they came out of the tunnel, and his wishes would come true if he did. It felt like he'd been asked to hold his breath, hold himself, hold his life suspended in stagnancy just like the water trapped in these concrete drains.
The 24-hour convenience store clerk paid no attention to his dishevelled state. Either she must see enough lost passersby at this time of the night looking to walk the trail next to the Han River, or she might be far too preoccupied with the books left open on the counter with questions awaiting her return. Kai owed answers to some questions that awaited him as well, but he wouldn't return as quickly as she did after handing him his can of coffee.
Kai settled on the step near the water's edge, sipping his drink with the low hum of the city's traffic behind him. He overheard a few distant conversations between people living out their essential duties, unlike him. Kai remained there still like the sun, till the sun rose up to remind him of how he'd lost another day, and how he would lose another, and how it would continue happening till he finally accepted that he hadn't come out of anything, he hadn't bested anything, he hadn't defeated the voices in his head, not in the least.
"Hyung," he said, expecting no response despite the call connecting after only a couple of rings.
It took Yeonjun a moment for his response to come in, "Kai?"
Even though it was Kai who'd made the call, he didn't know what to say after.
"It's 4 AM, what–are you okay?"
Kai would've laughed at the absurdity of the question if he had the energy in his body. He just breathed heavily till he was sure his voice wouldn't crack. "No."
"You're–I'm coming to you, just don't run away this time."
"I'm not home."
There was a shuffling on the other side. Yeonjun must have turned his lights on. Kai should feel guilty for interrupting his friend's sleep this way, should feel like an idiot for adding to his burdens, and was one hundred per cent sure he'd regret this decision within moments.
"Where are you?"
"I came outside for a walk. Didn't realise it was so late."
"Okay," Yeonjun dragged the word like nothing Kai said made sense to him, but he was willing to hear him out anyway. "Kai, what's going on?"
"I can't finish the book. You should can it already. It's a lost cause. I'm a lost cause."
Yeonjun sighed. It was unclear what that could mean, but Kai's first guess would be disappointment, frustration, annoyance or a hellish combination of all three.
"Kai. You're not a lost cause. Fuck the book. Fuck everything else. You listen to me–"
"What would you do if I died?"
Kai knew it was an extremely horrifying thing to ask of Yeonjun. If their places were switched, Kai would drop everything and shake Yeonjun by the shoulders to get his head right. Death is real. Death is potent. No one should talk about it this way, then what joy did his inner voice derive from being plagued with these thoughts every waking moment?
"Kai–"
"I am not thinking of doing anything. I just wonder… you know. Like people do."
"That's–god, what a thing to–to, Kai, where are you? I'll come get you."
"I asked my dad, and he said nothing. I asked you, and you're also saying nothing." Kai struggled to voice out something resembling a laugh. "It's almost like it wouldn't change anything, that's why there's nothing to say."
"You asshole," Yeonjun yelled from the other side. "How dare you even think something like that, let alone say it, when you know it's the farthest thing from the truth."
"I know." Kai closed his eyes. He hadn't intended to scare Yeonjun, but he also did not want to hold this heaviness on his own at that moment. Even as he said his fears out loud, knowing they weren't true, his inner voices needed the sharp contentious echo from Yeonjun's side.
"You–you, just you wait till I find you. I'm going to punch you in the face."
"That'd be nice."
He could envision a scoff on Yeonjun's face even though the man was not in front of him. Kai placed his hand on his chest, in an attempt to soothe the ache blooming across it. There was only the sound of Yeonjun's breathing for a while as he counted his heartbeats per minute.
The cool breeze from the river sent a chill down his back. Another layer of clothing would probably be a better choice for these strolls. His shirt was pretty useless against the cold, but then again, the cold was oddly comforting, especially considering the glaring summer heat of the day. Summer nights were much to his liking, for their escape from the temperatures and the taunting light of daytime.
"I would remember you," the voice from the phone startled him. "In things you do. If something happened to you, I'd never be the same. I'd remember you and your laugh, and your cheap shots at writers you don't like, your ridiculous cheating in the games you anyway lose at, how you like mint chocolate ice-cream and the oddest of foods, how you never clean up your apartment, and you tear off the edges of pages when you're nervous. And if something happened to you, I'd find these reminders everywhere, and I would constantly think about how you didn't, how you don't deserve what you're going through–"
"Stop," his meek voice begged. "I'm so tired, hyung. I'm so tired."
"I know, sweetheart. I know."
"Can you please come here?"
Tender is the night
For a broken heart
Who will dry your eyes
When it falls apart?
What makes this fragile world go 'round?
Were you ever lost?
Was she ever found?
Somewhere in these eyes
Fall back into place
- "Space Song" by Beach House