mon petit chou
Pairing: kaisoo, baekyeol
Rating: R
Genre: horror, angst
Warnings: [Spoiler (click to open)]
violence, gore, character death, implied suicide
Summary: Gardening is good for the soul... and other organs.
“Never forget that you’re just dirt to me,” Kyungsoo murmurs into Jongin’s ear.
Jongin vaguely remembers nodding before Kyungsoo inserts two fingers into Jongin’s dirty, waiting mouth. He stares through half-lidded eyes at the concentration etched on Kyungsoo’s face and groans, sucking and swirling his tongue around the fingers. Kyungsoo slaps him, as if to tell him to behave, you piece of shit. Jongin stills. He is nothing but dirt.
After pushing two seeds under Jongin’s tongue, Kyungsoo pulls out his fingers and wipes them off on Jongin’s shirt.
“Good,” Kyungsoo says.
Jongin tries not to preen. He tries not to do anything as the world blends into each other and nausea pulls him into vertigo. The trees become clouds become grass become sky become Kyungsoo. And Jongin gets it. Kyungsoo is everything: the trees, the clouds, the grass, and the sky. And Jongin is nothing but dirt.
He gets on his knees and looks up in awe at Kyungsoo, who promptly shoves his face into the ground. Jongin is surrounded by dirt, surrounded by himself.
“Don’t get up.”
Kyungsoo leaves.
And Jongin obeys. He doesn’t get up when a salamander skitters over his left arm, when lady bugs nibble at the back of his neck, or when the sun slides down the sky into a little pocket of earth. Instead, he lies face down on the ground, inhaling dirt and exhaling his humanity.
~
Baekhyun laughs, treble clefs and jeweled eighth notes spilling from his lips. On his tiptoes, he stretches his right arm to pat the top of Chanyeol’s head and ruffle his hair. He moves his hand down from Chanyeol’s soft curls to the smooth expanse of his cheek.
“You’re my cabbage head,” Baekhyun declares. “Mine, all mine!”
Baekhyun feels Chanyeol’s smile underneath his fingertips. It burns the labyrinth of his fingerprints off.
Nighttime creeps up on them, darkness engulfing them and lapping at their ankles. A crescent moon illuminates their faces with its Chesire grin.
“Mine,” Baekhyun says. “My cabbage head.”
Chanyeol nods. “Yours.”
With that, Baekhyun twists and plucks Chanyeol’s head off of his body and cradles it in his arms. Chanyeol’s curls are so, so soft, and his cheeks are so, so smooth. With his eyes shut, he looks as if he’s sleeping. Baekhyun runs his thumb over the petal pink lips. He almost doesn’t want to let go, but then he sets the head on the rich soil, among the rows and rows of other cabbage heads.
Baekhyun wants to frolic and roll around his garden, and he’s tempted to do just so, but then he spots poison ivy, its three leaves an unholy trinity, growing along the outskirts.
Baekhyun grits his teeth, tastes cyanide in between his molars.
“Weeds,” he spits.
~
This is the story of a boy so selfish, so greedy, that he gave up everything. All his possessions, his hopes, his desires, he stacked them up, one by one, to build a tower that reached the heavens. It was quite like the biblical Tower of Babylon, but the entirety of its sins rested on one selfish boy.
The boy carved an arrow from his bones, a bow from his arteries. He pulled the bow back until it was taut and aimed the arrow towards the skies.
Release.
The point of the arrow punctured the heavens, bursting clouds and releasing a thunderous roar. The gods pelted the ground with seeds, and from those seeds grew a garden full of cabbage heads.
~
Kyungsoo’s lips curl upwards when he checks Jongin’s progress. Vines creep out of his orifices, push through his ear canals and past his eyeballs, and emerge in a dazzling array of twists and turns. Wrapping around their host’s rib cage and down his appendages, the vines turn Jongin into living latticework.
In short, he’s beautiful.
Kyungsoo plucks water droplets from the surrounding air and places them on Jongin’s cheeks. He keeps one for himself and pushes it past his lips. The water droplet explodes on his tongue, releasing a torrent of memories.
He sees crumpled school uniforms, deflated basketballs, empty milk cartons, and the ashes of a cremated dog. He sees Jongin opening up a bag of chips, licking the artificial cheese flavoring and disodium phosphate off of his fingers. He sees the empty bag of chips abandoned on the sidewalk.
He walks over to the bag, the sound of his own footsteps echoing in his ears, and looks inside. Among the artificial sour cheese flavoring and the disodium phosphate caking the sides of the bag, there’s a living, beating human heart. It pulses a bright red in a frantic, staccato rhythm.
Kyungsoo blinks.
Memories fade into obscurity. The water droplet has dissolved, now leaving a bitter taste in his mouth.
Kyungsoo once again looks at Jongin, looks at the vines encasing him.
“You’ve grown, haven’t you?” he says, turning his back on Jongin and walking away. “You’ve been growing this whole time.”
~
Cabbage patch, cabbage patch
Grow all the cabbages
This one, this one
Looks particularly tasty
~
Tear off 2-3 outer leaves of the cabbage head. Slice the cabbage head in half. Rinse. Baptize the cabbage heads in water consecrated with coarse sea salt. Drain. Draw a bath filled with dried anchovies, sea kelp, shrimp, pollock fish, all these sea creatures meeting for the first and last time.
Say goodbye to your friends. Introduce sweet rice flour, the other woman. Pour the affair into a bowl of chili flakes. Anoint with anchovy sauce and shrimp sauce. Onion, garlic, ginger, sugar, sesame seeds, they demand to be heard. But the radish and green onions will sing a duet just for you. Mix. Ferment. And most of all-
“This is a lovely garden.” Kyungsoo says.
Startled, Baekhyun turns around, tearing his eyes eyes away from his garden to glare at the figure standing behind him.
“You’re here,” Baekhyun says, more of a question than a statement.
Humming, Kyungsoo walks around Baekhyun to inspect the cabbage heads more closely. When Kyungsoo runs his thumb over the petal pink lips, Baekhyun tenses.
“How long have you been tending this garden? The cabbage heads look ripe,” Kyungsoo says, nodding in approval.
“Long enough.”
“I just started,” Kyungsoo says. “My tomatoes aren’t nearly as impressive.”
He pets the cabbage head, the soft curls running through his fingers. Baekhyun watches him, gives him a long and hard look. Baekhyun wonders if Kyungsoo understands the consequences of their actions. Knowing Kyungsoo, he probably does but doesn’t care. They’re both selfish this way.
As if reading his mind, Kyungsoo says, “We’re not the same, you and me.”
“Then why are you here?” Baekhyun asks, more like demands.
“Because,” Kyungsoo says, “Jongin wanted to live. And now I'm fighting for him.”
~
This is the story of a silly, silly boy who had a horrible habit of leaving his organs everywhere.
Like all people, he was born with all of his organs wrapped up in a skin pouch. But he left his brain somewhere on the steps leading to university. His stomach, the poor thing, was forgotten in a bowl of noodles. Both of his lungs, right first and then left, were given to stage IV lung cancer. The lung cancer metastasized, spreading rapidly and corrupting every organ it touched, most notably Jongin’s heart.
And where did he leave his cancer-ridden heart? With Kyungsoo, of course.
~
Once Kyungsoo leaves, Baekhyun is finally alone with his garden. He checks each cabbage head, fixes their hair, scratches behind their big ears, and sprinkles them with water from his watering can.
His thin shirt sticks to his skin, and he wipes his brow as he continues tending his garden. When the heat becomes unbearable, Baekhyun drinks straight from the watering can, lapping up all the moisture. Before long, it’s empty, so he takes a short walk to a nearby wishing well. Baekhyun draws up enough water to fill his watering can and thanks the wishing well for its generosity by spitting in it.
“I’m back!” Baekhyun sings, watering can in hand.
When one of the cabbage heads greets him back, Baekhyun drops the watering can and breaks into a run. He kneels before the awakened cabbage head and pulls. He tugs at it until its roots surrender, and the entire plant emerges from the ground.
He hugs Chanyeol, whole and, more importantly, alive. Smiling, Chanyeol hugs back, enveloping Baekhyun in his arms. Baekhyun buries his face in Chanyeol’s chest and inhales his scent, a heady mixture of mud and manure. But it’s still Chanyeol.
“My cabbage head,” Baekhyun says, his hiccups muffled against Chanyeol’s chest.
Once he collects himself, he pulls away and looks at the figure before him, same big ears, same big smile. Baekhyun lightly runs his fingers over the dark ring around Chanyeol’s neck.
Chanyeol throws his head back and laughs. Baekhyun hasn’t heard his deep, rumbling laugh in so, so long. It wraps around his heart and squeezes.
Then Chanyeol’s laughter is amplified by a chorus of cabbage heads that have also awakened.
Eyes wide, Baekhyun watches how an entire garden of limbs emerge from the soil, sharp nails digging into the ground. The cabbage heads claw their way to the surface. Arms, torsos, and finally legs free themselves, dirt caked all over them. The cabbage heads turn to Baekhyun, something akin to desire in their eyes.
It’s hunger, Baekhyun realizes.
They’re hungry for him.
The cabbage heads, all with Chanyeol’s face, grin as they grab for Baekhyun, and Baekhyun runs, but not before one of the Chanyeols bites his upper right arm, tearing away a small chunk of flesh.
Baekhyun cries out and cradles his wounded limb as he runs away from his past and future. Even as his legs threaten to give out, he runs as fast as he can, not daring to look back at the monster he created.
~
When Kyungsoo returns to Jongin, he sees that the tomatoes, the fruit of his labor, have finally started to ripen. They’re a bright, juicy red. Kyungsoo plucks one off of Jongin’s body, rubs it against his shirt to make it shine, and takes a bite.
It’s... chewier than expected.
Kyungsoo makes an effort to tear away at the tomato’s flesh with his molars. As he grinds the fruit between his teeth, he realizes that something so chewy couldn’t be a tomato. Kyungsoo looks down at the fruit in his hand and sees a bloody human heart. It pulses in his hand, quivering against his palm. He immediately drops it and watches it splat onto the ground.
“What is-?”
Kyungsoo looks at the vines encasing Jongin and notices that all the tomatoes are actually living, beating hearts.
No.
No, no, no, no.
No.
Kyungsoo scrambles away and finds a gnarled tree branch with an awkward bend. He returns to Jongin, makeshift weapon in hand. With a firm grip on the tree branch, he stabs the hearts and skewers them together in a grotesque fruit kebab.
“You’re hurting me, Kyungsoo!”
Jongin shrieks as each beating heart is taken away from him.
“Kyungsoo, stop!”
His howls grow louder and louder, his voice twisting into something that Kyungsoo doesn’t recognize.
“I thought you loved me!”
Kyungsoo ignores his screeching and howling until all the hearts have been impaled.
Jongin is quiet now.
~
Chanyeol loves Baekhyun.
Chanyeol and Chanyeol and Chanyeol and Chanyeol and Chanyeol and Chanyeol and Chanyeol and Chanyeol and Chanyeol and Chanyeol and Chanyeol and Chanyeol and Chanyeol and Chanyeol and Chanyeol and Chanyeol and Chanyeol and Chanyeol and Chanyeol and Chanyeol and Chanyeol and Chanyeol and Chanyeol and Chanyeol love Baekhyun too.
~
There are long limbs strewn everywhere, a few legs here, half an arm there. One of the chest cavities has a deep gash in it, exposing all of its organs. Baekhyun uses his foot to roll over one of the decapitated heads, the toe of his shoe digging into the cheek. Chanyeol’s eyes are bright, and his mouth is open as if in mid-laughter.
Maybe it’s just the breeze or tree branches rubbing against each other, but Baekhyun thinks he hears a soft chuckle.
He drops the machete, sticky with blood, in his hand as if it’s scalding him. Years from now, he’ll never forget the sensation of driving a blade into human flesh. Even for Baekhyun, it’s surprisingly easy to kill. All you have to do is use gravity and the weight of the machete to drive the blade down. Chopping humans is much like chopping beef and pork; they’re all meat in the end.
They’re all food for the worms, for each other.
~
Kyungsoo rests his hand on Baekhyun’s shoulder.
“You have to let him go.”
Baekhyun turns away from the photograph of Chanyeol smiling that’s sitting at his memorial site to look at Kyungsoo, whose eyes are downcast.
“Why should I?” Baekhyun says, his voice coming out as a croak.
“Because there’s a natural order to things,” Kyungsoo says, digging his fingernails in Baekhyun’s shoulder and looking up at him. “It’s fucked up, but that’s how it is.”
After a long, hard stare, Kyungsoo releases Baekhyun from his grip and sighs.
“I’m sorry about Chanyeol. I cared about him too.”
As much as Baekhyun wants to laugh in Kyungsoo’s face, wants to strangle the poor bastard, he restrains himself. Kyungsoo is only saying these things because he’s trying to convince himself to let go too. Losing Jongin and then Chanyeol within weeks... it’s rough.
Baekhyun says, “Yeah, I know.”
He takes Kyungsoo’s hand and places two seeds in it. When Kyungsoo looks up at Baekhyun inquisitively, Baekhyun smiles.
“Don’t worry. They’re natural.”
A/N: Remember that tomatoes are full of vitamin C and cabbage is rich in vitamin K! Also, thanks to H for putting up with me this late! Time to sleep now... orz
Rating: R
Genre: horror, angst
Warnings: [Spoiler (click to open)]
violence, gore, character death, implied suicide
Summary: Gardening is good for the soul... and other organs.
“Never forget that you’re just dirt to me,” Kyungsoo murmurs into Jongin’s ear.
Jongin vaguely remembers nodding before Kyungsoo inserts two fingers into Jongin’s dirty, waiting mouth. He stares through half-lidded eyes at the concentration etched on Kyungsoo’s face and groans, sucking and swirling his tongue around the fingers. Kyungsoo slaps him, as if to tell him to behave, you piece of shit. Jongin stills. He is nothing but dirt.
After pushing two seeds under Jongin’s tongue, Kyungsoo pulls out his fingers and wipes them off on Jongin’s shirt.
“Good,” Kyungsoo says.
Jongin tries not to preen. He tries not to do anything as the world blends into each other and nausea pulls him into vertigo. The trees become clouds become grass become sky become Kyungsoo. And Jongin gets it. Kyungsoo is everything: the trees, the clouds, the grass, and the sky. And Jongin is nothing but dirt.
He gets on his knees and looks up in awe at Kyungsoo, who promptly shoves his face into the ground. Jongin is surrounded by dirt, surrounded by himself.
“Don’t get up.”
Kyungsoo leaves.
And Jongin obeys. He doesn’t get up when a salamander skitters over his left arm, when lady bugs nibble at the back of his neck, or when the sun slides down the sky into a little pocket of earth. Instead, he lies face down on the ground, inhaling dirt and exhaling his humanity.
~
Baekhyun laughs, treble clefs and jeweled eighth notes spilling from his lips. On his tiptoes, he stretches his right arm to pat the top of Chanyeol’s head and ruffle his hair. He moves his hand down from Chanyeol’s soft curls to the smooth expanse of his cheek.
“You’re my cabbage head,” Baekhyun declares. “Mine, all mine!”
Baekhyun feels Chanyeol’s smile underneath his fingertips. It burns the labyrinth of his fingerprints off.
Nighttime creeps up on them, darkness engulfing them and lapping at their ankles. A crescent moon illuminates their faces with its Chesire grin.
“Mine,” Baekhyun says. “My cabbage head.”
Chanyeol nods. “Yours.”
With that, Baekhyun twists and plucks Chanyeol’s head off of his body and cradles it in his arms. Chanyeol’s curls are so, so soft, and his cheeks are so, so smooth. With his eyes shut, he looks as if he’s sleeping. Baekhyun runs his thumb over the petal pink lips. He almost doesn’t want to let go, but then he sets the head on the rich soil, among the rows and rows of other cabbage heads.
Baekhyun wants to frolic and roll around his garden, and he’s tempted to do just so, but then he spots poison ivy, its three leaves an unholy trinity, growing along the outskirts.
Baekhyun grits his teeth, tastes cyanide in between his molars.
“Weeds,” he spits.
~
This is the story of a boy so selfish, so greedy, that he gave up everything. All his possessions, his hopes, his desires, he stacked them up, one by one, to build a tower that reached the heavens. It was quite like the biblical Tower of Babylon, but the entirety of its sins rested on one selfish boy.
The boy carved an arrow from his bones, a bow from his arteries. He pulled the bow back until it was taut and aimed the arrow towards the skies.
Release.
The point of the arrow punctured the heavens, bursting clouds and releasing a thunderous roar. The gods pelted the ground with seeds, and from those seeds grew a garden full of cabbage heads.
~
Kyungsoo’s lips curl upwards when he checks Jongin’s progress. Vines creep out of his orifices, push through his ear canals and past his eyeballs, and emerge in a dazzling array of twists and turns. Wrapping around their host’s rib cage and down his appendages, the vines turn Jongin into living latticework.
In short, he’s beautiful.
Kyungsoo plucks water droplets from the surrounding air and places them on Jongin’s cheeks. He keeps one for himself and pushes it past his lips. The water droplet explodes on his tongue, releasing a torrent of memories.
He sees crumpled school uniforms, deflated basketballs, empty milk cartons, and the ashes of a cremated dog. He sees Jongin opening up a bag of chips, licking the artificial cheese flavoring and disodium phosphate off of his fingers. He sees the empty bag of chips abandoned on the sidewalk.
He walks over to the bag, the sound of his own footsteps echoing in his ears, and looks inside. Among the artificial sour cheese flavoring and the disodium phosphate caking the sides of the bag, there’s a living, beating human heart. It pulses a bright red in a frantic, staccato rhythm.
Kyungsoo blinks.
Memories fade into obscurity. The water droplet has dissolved, now leaving a bitter taste in his mouth.
Kyungsoo once again looks at Jongin, looks at the vines encasing him.
“You’ve grown, haven’t you?” he says, turning his back on Jongin and walking away. “You’ve been growing this whole time.”
~
Cabbage patch, cabbage patch
Grow all the cabbages
This one, this one
Looks particularly tasty
~
Tear off 2-3 outer leaves of the cabbage head. Slice the cabbage head in half. Rinse. Baptize the cabbage heads in water consecrated with coarse sea salt. Drain. Draw a bath filled with dried anchovies, sea kelp, shrimp, pollock fish, all these sea creatures meeting for the first and last time.
Say goodbye to your friends. Introduce sweet rice flour, the other woman. Pour the affair into a bowl of chili flakes. Anoint with anchovy sauce and shrimp sauce. Onion, garlic, ginger, sugar, sesame seeds, they demand to be heard. But the radish and green onions will sing a duet just for you. Mix. Ferment. And most of all-
“This is a lovely garden.” Kyungsoo says.
Startled, Baekhyun turns around, tearing his eyes eyes away from his garden to glare at the figure standing behind him.
“You’re here,” Baekhyun says, more of a question than a statement.
Humming, Kyungsoo walks around Baekhyun to inspect the cabbage heads more closely. When Kyungsoo runs his thumb over the petal pink lips, Baekhyun tenses.
“How long have you been tending this garden? The cabbage heads look ripe,” Kyungsoo says, nodding in approval.
“Long enough.”
“I just started,” Kyungsoo says. “My tomatoes aren’t nearly as impressive.”
He pets the cabbage head, the soft curls running through his fingers. Baekhyun watches him, gives him a long and hard look. Baekhyun wonders if Kyungsoo understands the consequences of their actions. Knowing Kyungsoo, he probably does but doesn’t care. They’re both selfish this way.
As if reading his mind, Kyungsoo says, “We’re not the same, you and me.”
“Then why are you here?” Baekhyun asks, more like demands.
“Because,” Kyungsoo says, “Jongin wanted to live. And now I'm fighting for him.”
~
This is the story of a silly, silly boy who had a horrible habit of leaving his organs everywhere.
Like all people, he was born with all of his organs wrapped up in a skin pouch. But he left his brain somewhere on the steps leading to university. His stomach, the poor thing, was forgotten in a bowl of noodles. Both of his lungs, right first and then left, were given to stage IV lung cancer. The lung cancer metastasized, spreading rapidly and corrupting every organ it touched, most notably Jongin’s heart.
And where did he leave his cancer-ridden heart? With Kyungsoo, of course.
~
Once Kyungsoo leaves, Baekhyun is finally alone with his garden. He checks each cabbage head, fixes their hair, scratches behind their big ears, and sprinkles them with water from his watering can.
His thin shirt sticks to his skin, and he wipes his brow as he continues tending his garden. When the heat becomes unbearable, Baekhyun drinks straight from the watering can, lapping up all the moisture. Before long, it’s empty, so he takes a short walk to a nearby wishing well. Baekhyun draws up enough water to fill his watering can and thanks the wishing well for its generosity by spitting in it.
“I’m back!” Baekhyun sings, watering can in hand.
When one of the cabbage heads greets him back, Baekhyun drops the watering can and breaks into a run. He kneels before the awakened cabbage head and pulls. He tugs at it until its roots surrender, and the entire plant emerges from the ground.
He hugs Chanyeol, whole and, more importantly, alive. Smiling, Chanyeol hugs back, enveloping Baekhyun in his arms. Baekhyun buries his face in Chanyeol’s chest and inhales his scent, a heady mixture of mud and manure. But it’s still Chanyeol.
“My cabbage head,” Baekhyun says, his hiccups muffled against Chanyeol’s chest.
Once he collects himself, he pulls away and looks at the figure before him, same big ears, same big smile. Baekhyun lightly runs his fingers over the dark ring around Chanyeol’s neck.
Chanyeol throws his head back and laughs. Baekhyun hasn’t heard his deep, rumbling laugh in so, so long. It wraps around his heart and squeezes.
Then Chanyeol’s laughter is amplified by a chorus of cabbage heads that have also awakened.
Eyes wide, Baekhyun watches how an entire garden of limbs emerge from the soil, sharp nails digging into the ground. The cabbage heads claw their way to the surface. Arms, torsos, and finally legs free themselves, dirt caked all over them. The cabbage heads turn to Baekhyun, something akin to desire in their eyes.
It’s hunger, Baekhyun realizes.
They’re hungry for him.
The cabbage heads, all with Chanyeol’s face, grin as they grab for Baekhyun, and Baekhyun runs, but not before one of the Chanyeols bites his upper right arm, tearing away a small chunk of flesh.
Baekhyun cries out and cradles his wounded limb as he runs away from his past and future. Even as his legs threaten to give out, he runs as fast as he can, not daring to look back at the monster he created.
~
When Kyungsoo returns to Jongin, he sees that the tomatoes, the fruit of his labor, have finally started to ripen. They’re a bright, juicy red. Kyungsoo plucks one off of Jongin’s body, rubs it against his shirt to make it shine, and takes a bite.
It’s... chewier than expected.
Kyungsoo makes an effort to tear away at the tomato’s flesh with his molars. As he grinds the fruit between his teeth, he realizes that something so chewy couldn’t be a tomato. Kyungsoo looks down at the fruit in his hand and sees a bloody human heart. It pulses in his hand, quivering against his palm. He immediately drops it and watches it splat onto the ground.
“What is-?”
Kyungsoo looks at the vines encasing Jongin and notices that all the tomatoes are actually living, beating hearts.
No.
No, no, no, no.
No.
Kyungsoo scrambles away and finds a gnarled tree branch with an awkward bend. He returns to Jongin, makeshift weapon in hand. With a firm grip on the tree branch, he stabs the hearts and skewers them together in a grotesque fruit kebab.
“You’re hurting me, Kyungsoo!”
Jongin shrieks as each beating heart is taken away from him.
“Kyungsoo, stop!”
His howls grow louder and louder, his voice twisting into something that Kyungsoo doesn’t recognize.
“I thought you loved me!”
Kyungsoo ignores his screeching and howling until all the hearts have been impaled.
Jongin is quiet now.
~
Chanyeol loves Baekhyun.
Chanyeol and Chanyeol and Chanyeol and Chanyeol and Chanyeol and Chanyeol and Chanyeol and Chanyeol and Chanyeol and Chanyeol and Chanyeol and Chanyeol and Chanyeol and Chanyeol and Chanyeol and Chanyeol and Chanyeol and Chanyeol and Chanyeol and Chanyeol and Chanyeol and Chanyeol and Chanyeol and Chanyeol love Baekhyun too.
~
There are long limbs strewn everywhere, a few legs here, half an arm there. One of the chest cavities has a deep gash in it, exposing all of its organs. Baekhyun uses his foot to roll over one of the decapitated heads, the toe of his shoe digging into the cheek. Chanyeol’s eyes are bright, and his mouth is open as if in mid-laughter.
Maybe it’s just the breeze or tree branches rubbing against each other, but Baekhyun thinks he hears a soft chuckle.
He drops the machete, sticky with blood, in his hand as if it’s scalding him. Years from now, he’ll never forget the sensation of driving a blade into human flesh. Even for Baekhyun, it’s surprisingly easy to kill. All you have to do is use gravity and the weight of the machete to drive the blade down. Chopping humans is much like chopping beef and pork; they’re all meat in the end.
They’re all food for the worms, for each other.
~
Kyungsoo rests his hand on Baekhyun’s shoulder.
“You have to let him go.”
Baekhyun turns away from the photograph of Chanyeol smiling that’s sitting at his memorial site to look at Kyungsoo, whose eyes are downcast.
“Why should I?” Baekhyun says, his voice coming out as a croak.
“Because there’s a natural order to things,” Kyungsoo says, digging his fingernails in Baekhyun’s shoulder and looking up at him. “It’s fucked up, but that’s how it is.”
After a long, hard stare, Kyungsoo releases Baekhyun from his grip and sighs.
“I’m sorry about Chanyeol. I cared about him too.”
As much as Baekhyun wants to laugh in Kyungsoo’s face, wants to strangle the poor bastard, he restrains himself. Kyungsoo is only saying these things because he’s trying to convince himself to let go too. Losing Jongin and then Chanyeol within weeks... it’s rough.
Baekhyun says, “Yeah, I know.”
He takes Kyungsoo’s hand and places two seeds in it. When Kyungsoo looks up at Baekhyun inquisitively, Baekhyun smiles.
“Don’t worry. They’re natural.”
A/N: Remember that tomatoes are full of vitamin C and cabbage is rich in vitamin K! Also, thanks to H for putting up with me this late! Time to sleep now... orz