[sj] too much to say (and too little time)
too much to say (and too little time)
super junior; kyuhyun/sungmin; pg; angst; 1869w
Maybe not in this life, no.
a/n: Um. I don’t know what this is. And I love writing about dead people. So yeah. /runs away
When Sungmin died, only the nerd from the class next door could see him (Cho Kyuhyun, was it?). While everybody else lined up to place white chrysanthemums beside his portrait at the front of the hall, he just sat in his seat at the back row, eyes never leaving Sungmin’s transparent form. They held each other’s gaze for some time, and he knew he could see him, when everybody else can’t.
It’s strange, really, because he’s never even talked to the guy before. Why couldn’t it be one of his best friends, like Hyukjae or Ryeowook, who had broken down holding each other in front of his portrait? He’d rather it was them, even though those two would probably cry themselves dry if they could see the ghost of their dead best friend.
What is he really? Sungmin held his hand up to his face for examination. It was pale and pearly, and very much transparent. He tried to grab one of the chrysanthemums the mourners had left on the long table behind his casket, but his hand went straight through it. Sungmin looked around, spotting a chair. He walked over to it and sat down, but instead found himself falling to the floor and landing on his rump with a soft ‘oof’, the chair also going straight through him.
He heard a soft snort of laughter and looked up to see the Kyuhyun boy biting his lip in an attempt to hold back his chuckles of amusement, eyes darting towards him. Sungmin harrumphed indignantly and got up, noticing the way Kyuhyun’s eyes twinkled before he, too, placed a white flower beside his portrait.
“Why are you always following me?” Kyuhyun groaned out exasperatedly on the fifth afternoon since Sungmin’s death. The boy shrugged, prancing and cart wheeling on air. The glow of the orange sun filtered through the library window, through Sungmin’s transparent body, and danced in the gray carpet below.
“Because,” Sungmin replied in a sing-song voice. “You’re the only one who could see me.”
“But still,” he huffed, pushing his glasses further up his nose. “It’s kind of unnerving to have a ghost follow you around every where, don’t you think? And we’ve never even talked before!”
“Well you seem to take it better than most people would.”
Sungmin the proceeded to run through bookcases with a childish ’wheee~!' Kyuhyun grumbled and covered his ears, trying to continue studying. He grinded his teeth when Sungmin zoomed past, and made him topple backwards off his chair when the older boy popped up from under the table through Kyuhyun’s thick textbook.
“Wouldn’t it be better to just be with your family, even if they can’t see you?” Kyuhyun retorted, getting up and rubbing his sore bottom. He sat back down and opened his book again, not noticing Sungmin has stopped running around and resorted to float by the window, eyes sad.
“How would you feel,” Sungmin said quietly. “If you had to watch the people you love grieve for your death every day, and not being able to do anything about it?”
Kyuhyun bites his lip and doesn’t say anything.
“Kyuhyun, you’re a smart guy,” Sungmin said one lunch break, as Kyuhyun had lunch by himself, an awkward wall flower near the soccer fields. The boy rolled his eyes.
“Aren’t you the observant one.”
Sungmin decided to ignore the snarky comment. “Mm… do you know why I’m still here? On earth, I mean,” he mumbled, watching a little brown bird flit near his feet. “Do souls normally stay on earth?”
Kyuhyun puts down his sandwich, deep in thought. “I don’t know, Sungmin,” he sighed. “Even science can’t explain death.”
Sungmin watched as Kyuhyun bit into his sandwich again, missing the flavor of tuna and cheese and eggs. “Do you see ghosts? Other than me, I mean.”
“No.”
A soccer ball whizzes through his head and hits the wall, Kyuhyun almost dropping his lunch in shock. A freshman Sungmin saw in passing once or twice jogged over, muttered an apology to Kyuhyun, and grabbed the ball from the depths of Sungmin’s stomach.
Two months into their unusual friendship, Sungmin kindasortamaybe developed a crush on Kyuhyun. It’s stupid and embarrassing, the way Sungmin’s non-existent stomach would flip and do somersaults when Kyuhyun smiled at him. Sungmin wonders how it’s even possible, because when he puts his hand on his chest he couldn’t feel any heartbeat.
“Sungmin, why are you blushing?” Kyuhyun broke the silence. Sungmin tripped and tumbled through air, and Kyuhyun jerked as if to catch his fall, but stopped just in time. It would look strange to passers by.
“W-what?” he stuttered, getting up and stumbling again when a person on a bike whizzed through him. Kyuhyun chuckled quietly, hiding his laugh behind his hand and causing his glasses to almost slip off. Sungmin found it endearing, and he too grinned sheepishly.
“How are you even capable of blushing?” he asked again, and Sungmin cart wheeled forwards, refusing to answer his question.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about~” he sang to keep the nervousness away from his voice. Kyuhyun frowned and jogged to keep up, but Sungmin simply zoomed farther away. Sometimes being a spirit has its benefits. He was not thinking about what ifs if they had met when he was still alive, no of course not. Sungmin’s certainly not imagining having lunch with him at the cafeteria, or hanging out in the roof, or long walks at the park, or -
“Min,” Kyuhyun pointed out, grinning. “You’re blushing again.”
“Lalala~” Sungmin twirled away, covering his ears and hiding his pink tinted cheeks in the collar of his shirt.
“What’s it like to die?” Kyuhyun asked quietly one afternoon on an empty classroom, the wind from the open window ruffling his dark hair, but not Sungmin’s. Sungmin knew the question would come up sooner or later, but it didn’t make answering any easier. He mulled over the question for a while.
“I don’t know,” he answered honestly. “That morning, I still remember waking up in my room in the hospital, and saw my mother and Sungjin, and then I fell back asleep. The next time I came to, everyone was crying over, well, me,” he finished in a whisper.
Kyuhyun’s head was bowed, and his bangs and thick glasses hid his eyes from view. He didn’t press on, but Sungmin continued anyway. “Dying is painful though. Like, emotionally and physically. Not knowing whether you’ll wake up tomorrow morning or not, and having to watch your family mourn. I guess I was lucky to be able to live beyond the doctors’ expectations,” he shrugged. “But death itself wasn’t painful, no.”
A comfortable pause fell over them and Kyuhyun glanced sideways at Sungmin’s pale transparent fingers, wishing he could touch them. Hold them. Maybe press his lips to them and tell Sungmin that everything will be okay, please don’t look so sad.
“I guess being dead is easier than living, huh?” he said quietly. “No pain, no suffering. No heartbreak.”
Sungmin’s mind wandered to his mother and father, to Sungjin, to Ryeowook and Hyukjae and Kyuhyun who was right next to him but so far away. He shook his head.
“No, it isn’t at all.”
Their fingers brush each others as they walked (or in Sungmin’s case, floated) side by side, but neither feel s anything. The sun is bright and blinding as they walked through aisles of weathered stone angels and crosses, past names everyone’s forgotten and souls who rest peacefully under the earth.
“I haven’t seen my grave,” Sungmin mused, attempting to kick a pebble only to have his feet go straight through it. “I wonder what it’s like.”
It’s neat and smaller than the ones beside his, small tufts of grass beginning to grow from the earth. The headstone is made of white marble and so lovingly carved with intricate designs that will only fade as years pass. Sungmin sat cross legged beside it, and Kyuhyun beside him.
“Lee Sungmin,” he read aloud, pale fingers ghosting over the headstone. Sungmin’s eyes are glassy and Kyuhyun fights back tears from the look on his face. “Beloved son, brother, and friend.”
They sat in silence for a while, minds wandering to life and death and everything beyond. It’s unfair, Kyuhyun thinks, that Sungmin has to die so young, before he got to really live and leave everything so soon (dreams and hopes, happiness and a future).
“Why am I still here?” Sungmin’s question is imposed more to himself rather than Kyuhyun, and it would pop up once every few days, but every time it does, neither has an answer. “God must’ve hated me. Wouldn’t it be better to go to the afterlife rather than stay here on earth and see people you love grieve?”
Kyuhyun replied with the classic answer, almost choking. “Everything happened for a reason.”
Sungmin smiled sadly. “I can’t see the reason why I have to stay on earth, though.”
“I think it’s me,” Kyuhyun said suddenly one day. The two of them are sitting on the curb of the house where Sungmin used to live, which was now empty. His family moved away a few months after Sungmin’s death (something about starting over again somewhere new), and he had been devasted when he found out, now sitting beside Kyuhyun with his shoulders hunched and staring at his shoes in a blank sort of way. He turned his head towards Kyuhyun, blinking slowly.
“There’s… something you have to know,” he said, twiddling his thumb nervously. Kyuhyun doesn’t continue and Sungmin waited patiently, knowing Kyuhyun would talk about it sooner or later. The last leaves of autumn leaves its tree, and Sungmin watched it float to the ground dreamily. Kyuhyun shivers and pulls his coat tighter around his body, but Sungmin doesn’t feel a thing. Kyuhyun weighs his options, what would happen and what would not if he told Sungmin.
“I like you, Sungmin.”
Sungmin’s head turns towards him again, eyes wide. Did Kyuhyun just…? Their eyes met, and in that moment, the world stops.
“I really like you. I have for a long time now. Even - even before you… died.”
Sungmin gave him a long, calculating look. He waits for Kyuhyun to crack and laugh and say it was just a joke, but the younger boy continued to gaze back at him ,eyes hard but gentle at the same time, tinged with something a little like regret. Sungmin turns his face to the sky, and if he could spare some tears, he would. He pretends he doesn’t know that he can’t feel his feet anymore, pretends he doesn’t feel Kyuhyun’s stare at his gradually fading legs.
“I guess I’ve been too much of a coward to say it when you were still alive,” Kyuhyun said quietly, and then he laughed, and it sounds like a heart breaking.
super junior; kyuhyun/sungmin; pg; angst; 1869w
Maybe not in this life, no.
a/n: Um. I don’t know what this is. And I love writing about dead people. So yeah. /runs away
When Sungmin died, only the nerd from the class next door could see him (Cho Kyuhyun, was it?). While everybody else lined up to place white chrysanthemums beside his portrait at the front of the hall, he just sat in his seat at the back row, eyes never leaving Sungmin’s transparent form. They held each other’s gaze for some time, and he knew he could see him, when everybody else can’t.
It’s strange, really, because he’s never even talked to the guy before. Why couldn’t it be one of his best friends, like Hyukjae or Ryeowook, who had broken down holding each other in front of his portrait? He’d rather it was them, even though those two would probably cry themselves dry if they could see the ghost of their dead best friend.
What is he really? Sungmin held his hand up to his face for examination. It was pale and pearly, and very much transparent. He tried to grab one of the chrysanthemums the mourners had left on the long table behind his casket, but his hand went straight through it. Sungmin looked around, spotting a chair. He walked over to it and sat down, but instead found himself falling to the floor and landing on his rump with a soft ‘oof’, the chair also going straight through him.
He heard a soft snort of laughter and looked up to see the Kyuhyun boy biting his lip in an attempt to hold back his chuckles of amusement, eyes darting towards him. Sungmin harrumphed indignantly and got up, noticing the way Kyuhyun’s eyes twinkled before he, too, placed a white flower beside his portrait.
“Why are you always following me?” Kyuhyun groaned out exasperatedly on the fifth afternoon since Sungmin’s death. The boy shrugged, prancing and cart wheeling on air. The glow of the orange sun filtered through the library window, through Sungmin’s transparent body, and danced in the gray carpet below.
“Because,” Sungmin replied in a sing-song voice. “You’re the only one who could see me.”
“But still,” he huffed, pushing his glasses further up his nose. “It’s kind of unnerving to have a ghost follow you around every where, don’t you think? And we’ve never even talked before!”
“Well you seem to take it better than most people would.”
Sungmin the proceeded to run through bookcases with a childish ’wheee~!' Kyuhyun grumbled and covered his ears, trying to continue studying. He grinded his teeth when Sungmin zoomed past, and made him topple backwards off his chair when the older boy popped up from under the table through Kyuhyun’s thick textbook.
“Wouldn’t it be better to just be with your family, even if they can’t see you?” Kyuhyun retorted, getting up and rubbing his sore bottom. He sat back down and opened his book again, not noticing Sungmin has stopped running around and resorted to float by the window, eyes sad.
“How would you feel,” Sungmin said quietly. “If you had to watch the people you love grieve for your death every day, and not being able to do anything about it?”
Kyuhyun bites his lip and doesn’t say anything.
“Kyuhyun, you’re a smart guy,” Sungmin said one lunch break, as Kyuhyun had lunch by himself, an awkward wall flower near the soccer fields. The boy rolled his eyes.
“Aren’t you the observant one.”
Sungmin decided to ignore the snarky comment. “Mm… do you know why I’m still here? On earth, I mean,” he mumbled, watching a little brown bird flit near his feet. “Do souls normally stay on earth?”
Kyuhyun puts down his sandwich, deep in thought. “I don’t know, Sungmin,” he sighed. “Even science can’t explain death.”
Sungmin watched as Kyuhyun bit into his sandwich again, missing the flavor of tuna and cheese and eggs. “Do you see ghosts? Other than me, I mean.”
“No.”
A soccer ball whizzes through his head and hits the wall, Kyuhyun almost dropping his lunch in shock. A freshman Sungmin saw in passing once or twice jogged over, muttered an apology to Kyuhyun, and grabbed the ball from the depths of Sungmin’s stomach.
Two months into their unusual friendship, Sungmin kindasortamaybe developed a crush on Kyuhyun. It’s stupid and embarrassing, the way Sungmin’s non-existent stomach would flip and do somersaults when Kyuhyun smiled at him. Sungmin wonders how it’s even possible, because when he puts his hand on his chest he couldn’t feel any heartbeat.
“Sungmin, why are you blushing?” Kyuhyun broke the silence. Sungmin tripped and tumbled through air, and Kyuhyun jerked as if to catch his fall, but stopped just in time. It would look strange to passers by.
“W-what?” he stuttered, getting up and stumbling again when a person on a bike whizzed through him. Kyuhyun chuckled quietly, hiding his laugh behind his hand and causing his glasses to almost slip off. Sungmin found it endearing, and he too grinned sheepishly.
“How are you even capable of blushing?” he asked again, and Sungmin cart wheeled forwards, refusing to answer his question.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about~” he sang to keep the nervousness away from his voice. Kyuhyun frowned and jogged to keep up, but Sungmin simply zoomed farther away. Sometimes being a spirit has its benefits. He was not thinking about what ifs if they had met when he was still alive, no of course not. Sungmin’s certainly not imagining having lunch with him at the cafeteria, or hanging out in the roof, or long walks at the park, or -
“Min,” Kyuhyun pointed out, grinning. “You’re blushing again.”
“Lalala~” Sungmin twirled away, covering his ears and hiding his pink tinted cheeks in the collar of his shirt.
“What’s it like to die?” Kyuhyun asked quietly one afternoon on an empty classroom, the wind from the open window ruffling his dark hair, but not Sungmin’s. Sungmin knew the question would come up sooner or later, but it didn’t make answering any easier. He mulled over the question for a while.
“I don’t know,” he answered honestly. “That morning, I still remember waking up in my room in the hospital, and saw my mother and Sungjin, and then I fell back asleep. The next time I came to, everyone was crying over, well, me,” he finished in a whisper.
Kyuhyun’s head was bowed, and his bangs and thick glasses hid his eyes from view. He didn’t press on, but Sungmin continued anyway. “Dying is painful though. Like, emotionally and physically. Not knowing whether you’ll wake up tomorrow morning or not, and having to watch your family mourn. I guess I was lucky to be able to live beyond the doctors’ expectations,” he shrugged. “But death itself wasn’t painful, no.”
A comfortable pause fell over them and Kyuhyun glanced sideways at Sungmin’s pale transparent fingers, wishing he could touch them. Hold them. Maybe press his lips to them and tell Sungmin that everything will be okay, please don’t look so sad.
“I guess being dead is easier than living, huh?” he said quietly. “No pain, no suffering. No heartbreak.”
Sungmin’s mind wandered to his mother and father, to Sungjin, to Ryeowook and Hyukjae and Kyuhyun who was right next to him but so far away. He shook his head.
“No, it isn’t at all.”
Their fingers brush each others as they walked (or in Sungmin’s case, floated) side by side, but neither feel s anything. The sun is bright and blinding as they walked through aisles of weathered stone angels and crosses, past names everyone’s forgotten and souls who rest peacefully under the earth.
“I haven’t seen my grave,” Sungmin mused, attempting to kick a pebble only to have his feet go straight through it. “I wonder what it’s like.”
It’s neat and smaller than the ones beside his, small tufts of grass beginning to grow from the earth. The headstone is made of white marble and so lovingly carved with intricate designs that will only fade as years pass. Sungmin sat cross legged beside it, and Kyuhyun beside him.
“Lee Sungmin,” he read aloud, pale fingers ghosting over the headstone. Sungmin’s eyes are glassy and Kyuhyun fights back tears from the look on his face. “Beloved son, brother, and friend.”
They sat in silence for a while, minds wandering to life and death and everything beyond. It’s unfair, Kyuhyun thinks, that Sungmin has to die so young, before he got to really live and leave everything so soon (dreams and hopes, happiness and a future).
“Why am I still here?” Sungmin’s question is imposed more to himself rather than Kyuhyun, and it would pop up once every few days, but every time it does, neither has an answer. “God must’ve hated me. Wouldn’t it be better to go to the afterlife rather than stay here on earth and see people you love grieve?”
Kyuhyun replied with the classic answer, almost choking. “Everything happened for a reason.”
Sungmin smiled sadly. “I can’t see the reason why I have to stay on earth, though.”
“I think it’s me,” Kyuhyun said suddenly one day. The two of them are sitting on the curb of the house where Sungmin used to live, which was now empty. His family moved away a few months after Sungmin’s death (something about starting over again somewhere new), and he had been devasted when he found out, now sitting beside Kyuhyun with his shoulders hunched and staring at his shoes in a blank sort of way. He turned his head towards Kyuhyun, blinking slowly.
“There’s… something you have to know,” he said, twiddling his thumb nervously. Kyuhyun doesn’t continue and Sungmin waited patiently, knowing Kyuhyun would talk about it sooner or later. The last leaves of autumn leaves its tree, and Sungmin watched it float to the ground dreamily. Kyuhyun shivers and pulls his coat tighter around his body, but Sungmin doesn’t feel a thing. Kyuhyun weighs his options, what would happen and what would not if he told Sungmin.
“I like you, Sungmin.”
Sungmin’s head turns towards him again, eyes wide. Did Kyuhyun just…? Their eyes met, and in that moment, the world stops.
“I really like you. I have for a long time now. Even - even before you… died.”
Sungmin gave him a long, calculating look. He waits for Kyuhyun to crack and laugh and say it was just a joke, but the younger boy continued to gaze back at him ,eyes hard but gentle at the same time, tinged with something a little like regret. Sungmin turns his face to the sky, and if he could spare some tears, he would. He pretends he doesn’t know that he can’t feel his feet anymore, pretends he doesn’t feel Kyuhyun’s stare at his gradually fading legs.
“I guess I’ve been too much of a coward to say it when you were still alive,” Kyuhyun said quietly, and then he laughed, and it sounds like a heart breaking.