#56 [2PM, Wooyoung/Junho]
Fandom: 2PM
Title: Here, Eternally
Rating: PG
Pairing: Wooyoung/Junho
Length: 2,603 words
Warnings: Character death
Summary: A story in five parts.
Notes: Thank you so much for letting me play in your sandbox, mychocotango! You had so many stories I wanted to remix and in the end time constraints limited me to this one. I loved your use of story terms and metaphors and wanted to expand that here. I hope you enjoy! Thanks to the mod squad and M for being so patient.
Remixee author: mychocotango
Title of work you remixed: Between Here and Eternity
Link to work you remixed: http://chromebracelets.livejournal.com/1956.html
pro•logue
n.
An introductory act, event, or period.
It begins with a turnip.
Wooyoung has never liked turnips. He is in fact strongly against turnips on principle, what with the whole mutant carrot thing and the complete lack of taste. The only people Wooyoung knows who like turnips are his paternal grandparents and the drunk guy who sleeps at the subway station, and to be honest Wooyoung is just guessing about him because he smells like the damn things.
Turnips are simply not attractive vegetables to Wooyoung. They have no redeeming features and he would have quite happily lived his entire life without ever seeing another one.
And he’s doing pretty well with avoiding them too, until one lands on his head.
He is standing at the checkout at his local supermarket, unloading his groceries onto the conveyer, separating the items into groups for maximum bagging consideration. Yoghurt with the tofu and the package of frozen fish sticks; all the cold food together. Microwave rice bowls stacked under a five-pack of ramyun. A bag of carrots, a head of lettuce and two fat onions.
He nods at the operator’s greeting and hands his basket over the register, and just as she takes it something smashes into his skull and almost knocks him to the floor. He staggers, clutching at the air in surprise, and a warm hand catches his arm, righting him with an unexpected strength.
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, are you okay?!”
Skull throbbing, Wooyoung turns to his rescuer, only to find empty air. “Huh?” he says stupidly. His ears start to ring. “What?”
A boy pops up from where he’d ducked down to grab something. “I may have accidentally concussed you with this,” he says apologetically, and holds up a turnip. “Do you feel the overwhelming urge to pass out?”
Wooyoung blinks at the boy and gets an impression of eyes crinkled with concern. His vision shimmers then sharpens until he can see everything in high definition, the curve of the boy’s mouth, a pair of pimples on his chin. “Huh?” he says again.
“That is not a good sign.” The boy takes his arm again and carefully steers Wooyoung down to the end of the checkout, digging out his wallet and paying for Wooyoung’s stuff. “My mom works at the hospital two streets over, we are going there right now and getting you checked out.” He hefts the bags into the crook of one elbow and ushers Wooyoung away from the register. “I’m Junho, by the way.”
“Wooyoung,” Wooyoung says weakly, swept into Junho’s orbit, and he doesn’t think it’s just the head wound that’s making him see stars.
bod•y
n.
The physical part of a person.
“What do you want for your birthday?” Junho asks, head popping into Wooyoung’s field of vision and obscuring his view of the clouds.
Wooyoung lifts a lazy hand and pushes him out of the way. “Nothing. Go away.”
Junho settles noisily onto the blanket beside him, crossing his legs and shuffling forward until his knee brushes Wooyoung’s side. “Sorry, ‘nothing’ is not an acceptable answer. Please try again.”
Wooyoung contemplates rolling over but it’s a fleeting thought, as distant and intangible as the clouds in the sky. He’s too comfortable on his back, lying on the picnic blanket Junho’s mom made them take to the park. “Fine. Anything. Whatever you want.”
Junho sighs like Wooyoung has disappointed him. “What I want doesn’t matter. It’s your birthday, so it has to be something you want.”
High above a pair of cumulus clouds combine with a sweep of cirrus, forming a smiley face. Wooyoung groans and closes his eyes. It’s definitely a conspiracy when even the clouds are matching Junho’s mood. “I want whatever you want.”
Junho is silent for a moment, and even without opening his eyes Wooyoung knows he’s pouting at him. He can feel it, can sense the downturned mouth, the jutting lip, the line between his eyebrows. “You say this every year.”
He even sounds pouty. Wooyoung is willing to bet that if he opens his eyes now he’d find the cloud face has drooped too. “And I mean it, every year.”
He doesn’t have the right to ask for anything. Not after Junho has given him so much. They’ve been friends for only three years but it was like Wooyoung had started living that day in the supermarket, as if until that moment he’d been waiting in stasis for his life to begin. Colours are brighter, sounds are sharper, feelings are stronger when Junho is around. It’s enough, it has to be. He can never ask for more.
Junho is quiet again and this time the silence lingers, stretching on so long that Wooyoung opens his eyes to check that his senses aren’t deceiving him and that Junho is still there. He is, of course, still seated next to Wooyoung on the scratchy blanket, but now his pout is gone and his forehead is crinkled in thought instead.
Wooyoung wonders if he should break the silence, do something, anything to break up this sudden weird mood. He shifts slightly and Junho’s eyes snap to meet his, pinning Wooyoung in place with the strangeness of his gaze.
“Do you?” Junho murmurs, almost to himself. He reaches forward and plants a hand on either side of Wooyoung, moving onto his knees and crowding into his space. “Do you really?”
Wooyoung is frozen in place beneath him, staring up at his friend, his everything with his breath stuck in his throat. His heart hammers in his chest with enough force to bruise. He licks nervously at his lips and barely manages to croak out a reply. “Do I what?”
Junho flicks his gaze back up from where it had dropped to Wooyoung’s mouth. “Do you really want what I want?” He leans in closer, crossing the distance in increments, giving Wooyoung time to pull or push or give or take.
Can I really have this? Wooyoung wonders frantically, staring up at Junho as he blots out the sky. “I want,” Wooyoung finds himself saying as if from far away, voice cracking on the words. “I want you.”
“What a coincidence.” Junho smiles as he closes the space between them, and he is Wooyoung’s world. “I was just about to say the same thing.”
bod•y
n.
The main or central part of something, especially a building or text.
The beach is deserted. Wooyoung isn’t surprised by this in the least. They’re in the early days of spring, those first few weeks after winter, and no one told the wind it wasn’t allowed to come. The sky is the grey of old smoke and the waves are gunmetal in motion and all Wooyoung can think is the setting matches his mood.
Even the sand seems dull beneath his feet, sticking damply to his sneakers and coating the laces. He stares down at his feet and tries to practice, tries to imagine what he’ll say when Junho gets here, but his mind is as empty as the beach before him.
It probably won’t even matter, in the long run. Wooyoung’s seen enough dramas to know how this scene ends.
“There you are!”
His body is a traitor, turning automatically towards the sound of Junho’s voice. There he is, jogging over the sand, and Wooyoung doesn’t think he’s imagining the way the world brightens around him the closer Junho comes. Junho stops just in front of him, bending over to catch his breath, and when he straightens his smile is the sun breaking through the clouds.
“You’re here,” Wooyoung says mechanically, unnecessarily. His fist clenches and unclenches, a nervous movement at his side.
“Wherever ‘here’ is,” Junho agrees, glancing around the beach with undisguised curiosity. “It took me forever to find this place.”
Wooyoung doesn’t answer. He doesn’t tell him how close they are to his childhood home, how this was where he came to escape his father’s fists, his mother’s tears. This was his sanctuary until there was Junho, and soon it will be his sanctuary again.
Junho is watching him now, eyes narrow and shrewd. “What’s wrong?”
The rehearsed lines won’t come. Wooyoung shrugs and tries to act anyway. “Nothing. Everything.” He takes a step towards the shoreline, twisting so he can’t see Junho at all. “I was just thinking.”
Junho’s sneakers scritch through the sand and he plants himself next to Wooyoung. “What about?” His voice is too careful, too even.
Wooyoung takes a breath and the brine tastes like tears on his tongue. “Us.” Junho tenses beside him and Wooyoung can’t let him derail this, can’t let him speak. “How we’re so different, how we don’t make sense, how you’ve given up so much for me. How you’re so good and I’m not, at all, how you deserve the best life can give you and I don’t deserve you-“
Junho spins him so quickly Wooyoung’s teeth clack together, the rest of his confession caught on the tip of his tongue. “No!” he grinds out, strong hands gripping Wooyoung’s shoulders, holding him up like he has since the first day they met. “That’s not what this is, what we are. You have to know that, Wooyoung.”
Wooyoung swallows and shakes his head. “We can’t-“
“We can,” Junho cuts in, ducking his head to catch Wooyoung’s eyes. “We do. We are. Remember what you told me? You want what I want.” He loosens his hold on Wooyoung’s shoulders, smooths his hands down Wooyoung’s arms and takes his shaking fingers in his own. “What I want hasn’t changed.”
Wooyoung stares down at their linked fingers until Junho raises their hands and shakes them. “Don’t let go, you hear me?” He grins at Wooyoung just as the grey curtain of clouds part and the sun peeks through the gap.
“I won’t,” Wooyoung promises, and lets Junho lead him down the beach.
bod•y
n.
The flesh, as opposed to the spirit.
“-died on impact,” someone is saying, the voice unfamiliar. A woman’s voice, somewhat older, calm and gentle with just the right amount of regret. “He didn’t suffer, Mr Lee. He wouldn’t have felt a thing.”
Darkness, all around Wooyoung. His eyes are open but he can’t see.
“Thank you.” It’s Junho but as Wooyoung has never heard him before, husky and wrecked. “He…that’s a relief.”
A rustle of fabric, the squeak of rubber shoes on a polished floor. A pause. “I’ll give you some time.” The shoes squeak again and fade away.
Someone is breathing unsteadily. They gulp in air. Wooyoung looks around again but nothing has changed. All he can see is black.
“Wooyoung.”
He turns, a full circle. “Junho! I’m right here.”
The creak of a chair, the brush of skin against skin. Wooyoung’s right hand warms like it’s being held but when he looks down he can’t see it. He can’t see anything. He can’t see himself.
“Wooyoung.” Junho sucks in a breath, ragged and wet. “How? How could you just die?!”
A pinch in his gut, a shiver down his spine. “Very easily, apparently,” Wooyoung whispers, the sound lost in the empty space of whatever this is. He stretches out his limbs that aren’t.
Junho is crying and Wooyoung can’t reach him, can’t touch him.
So this is what dying is.
At least, Wooyoung thinks, it was quick. As fast as thought, certainly. As fast as light. Almost as fast as falling in love. In one moment he was, and in the next, he was not.
Junho is whispering now. Phantom breath ghosts over the shell of Wooyoung’s invisible ear. He cocks his head that isn’t, tries to move closer, and that’s when he sees it, the tiny white dot in the distance.
Wooyoung stares at it with eyes he doesn’t have and doesn’t notice the darkness solidify around him until it has reshaped itself, curving up and over and meeting up above. The white dot settles, brightens. It beckons.
The darkness is now a tunnel and there’s a light way down the end.
Where Wooyoung’s heart once beat there’s only a compulsion now, a warm pulsing need to go, to put one non-existent foot in front of the other. He burns to keep on walking until the light consumes him, swallows him whole.
And yet he struggles to make that first step, to move any further from this place, where Junho’s voice still anchors him, where Junho still is, vibrant and alive.
They have it all wrong, Wooyoung thinks, taking a step back, down the tunnel, away from where he’s supposed to go. How can I go towards that light when the brightest one of all is back here, where I belong?
He takes another step back, and another. The distant light blinks once, as if in warning, and then abruptly both it and the darkness is gone.
He’s standing in a hospital room. Junho sits on a chair, shoulders slumped in defeat next to an empty bed. He doesn’t turn around when Wooyoung crosses to stand beside him, but then, Wooyoung didn’t expect him to.
“I’m here,” Wooyoung tells him, with everything he is. “Junho, I’m here.”
Junho doesn’t hear him.
ep•i•logue
n.
A short addition or concluding section at the end of a literary work, often dealing with the future of its characters.
It ends with a turnip.
Wooyoung tries everything he can think of to communicate with Junho. He chats at him while Junho eats breakfast. He perches on the basin when Junho’s having a shower and sings his favourite songs at the top of his spectral lungs. He whispers into Junho’s ear when he’s sleeping, tries to insinuate himself into Junho’s dreams. He writes messages on the bathroom mirror and makes the hall light flicker on and off. He changes the channel when Junho’s watching television and rearranges the food in the refrigerator. He makes a considerable nuisance out of himself and Junho doesn’t notice a thing, mainly because he’s too exhausted from keeping up a brave face every time he leaves the house.
Wooyoung is almost ready to give up and just resign himself to watching Junho forever when an opportunity presents itself in the form of the groceries Junho is mechanically unpacking in the kitchen. He watches Junho put a can of beans in the pantry before tugging out a bag of carrots. The carrots go in the fridge, then Junho walks listlessly back to the bag, reaching in and pulling out a single turnip. They both stare at it for a moment before Wooyoung realises this could be the chance he’s been waiting for ever since he came back. There’s no time to be subtle since Junho’s already turning morosely towards the fridge, so he reaches out with his ghostly powers and tugs, ripping the turnip from Junho’s surprised hands and tossing it at his head.
It bounces off his forehead with a thwack and Junho doesn’t even wince, just slaps his palm to the spot and whips his head around, eyes wide with shock. “Wooyoung?” he gasps, turning in a circle to check every corner of the kitchen. “Wooyoung!”
“I’m here,” Wooyoung whispers, picking up the turnip and placing it carefully on the table.
He could never like the taste of turnips, still couldn’t see their appeal, but they’d brought him to Junho twice now and for that he could overlook a few things.
Junho reaches past him for the turnip, holding it almost reverently. “Are you really here?” he asks the room in general.
Wooyoung smiles across the table. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Title: Here, Eternally
Rating: PG
Pairing: Wooyoung/Junho
Length: 2,603 words
Warnings: Character death
Summary: A story in five parts.
Notes: Thank you so much for letting me play in your sandbox, mychocotango! You had so many stories I wanted to remix and in the end time constraints limited me to this one. I loved your use of story terms and metaphors and wanted to expand that here. I hope you enjoy! Thanks to the mod squad and M for being so patient.
Remixee author: mychocotango
Title of work you remixed: Between Here and Eternity
Link to work you remixed: http://chromebracelets.livejournal.com/1956.html
pro•logue
n.
An introductory act, event, or period.
It begins with a turnip.
Wooyoung has never liked turnips. He is in fact strongly against turnips on principle, what with the whole mutant carrot thing and the complete lack of taste. The only people Wooyoung knows who like turnips are his paternal grandparents and the drunk guy who sleeps at the subway station, and to be honest Wooyoung is just guessing about him because he smells like the damn things.
Turnips are simply not attractive vegetables to Wooyoung. They have no redeeming features and he would have quite happily lived his entire life without ever seeing another one.
And he’s doing pretty well with avoiding them too, until one lands on his head.
He is standing at the checkout at his local supermarket, unloading his groceries onto the conveyer, separating the items into groups for maximum bagging consideration. Yoghurt with the tofu and the package of frozen fish sticks; all the cold food together. Microwave rice bowls stacked under a five-pack of ramyun. A bag of carrots, a head of lettuce and two fat onions.
He nods at the operator’s greeting and hands his basket over the register, and just as she takes it something smashes into his skull and almost knocks him to the floor. He staggers, clutching at the air in surprise, and a warm hand catches his arm, righting him with an unexpected strength.
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, are you okay?!”
Skull throbbing, Wooyoung turns to his rescuer, only to find empty air. “Huh?” he says stupidly. His ears start to ring. “What?”
A boy pops up from where he’d ducked down to grab something. “I may have accidentally concussed you with this,” he says apologetically, and holds up a turnip. “Do you feel the overwhelming urge to pass out?”
Wooyoung blinks at the boy and gets an impression of eyes crinkled with concern. His vision shimmers then sharpens until he can see everything in high definition, the curve of the boy’s mouth, a pair of pimples on his chin. “Huh?” he says again.
“That is not a good sign.” The boy takes his arm again and carefully steers Wooyoung down to the end of the checkout, digging out his wallet and paying for Wooyoung’s stuff. “My mom works at the hospital two streets over, we are going there right now and getting you checked out.” He hefts the bags into the crook of one elbow and ushers Wooyoung away from the register. “I’m Junho, by the way.”
“Wooyoung,” Wooyoung says weakly, swept into Junho’s orbit, and he doesn’t think it’s just the head wound that’s making him see stars.
bod•y
n.
The physical part of a person.
“What do you want for your birthday?” Junho asks, head popping into Wooyoung’s field of vision and obscuring his view of the clouds.
Wooyoung lifts a lazy hand and pushes him out of the way. “Nothing. Go away.”
Junho settles noisily onto the blanket beside him, crossing his legs and shuffling forward until his knee brushes Wooyoung’s side. “Sorry, ‘nothing’ is not an acceptable answer. Please try again.”
Wooyoung contemplates rolling over but it’s a fleeting thought, as distant and intangible as the clouds in the sky. He’s too comfortable on his back, lying on the picnic blanket Junho’s mom made them take to the park. “Fine. Anything. Whatever you want.”
Junho sighs like Wooyoung has disappointed him. “What I want doesn’t matter. It’s your birthday, so it has to be something you want.”
High above a pair of cumulus clouds combine with a sweep of cirrus, forming a smiley face. Wooyoung groans and closes his eyes. It’s definitely a conspiracy when even the clouds are matching Junho’s mood. “I want whatever you want.”
Junho is silent for a moment, and even without opening his eyes Wooyoung knows he’s pouting at him. He can feel it, can sense the downturned mouth, the jutting lip, the line between his eyebrows. “You say this every year.”
He even sounds pouty. Wooyoung is willing to bet that if he opens his eyes now he’d find the cloud face has drooped too. “And I mean it, every year.”
He doesn’t have the right to ask for anything. Not after Junho has given him so much. They’ve been friends for only three years but it was like Wooyoung had started living that day in the supermarket, as if until that moment he’d been waiting in stasis for his life to begin. Colours are brighter, sounds are sharper, feelings are stronger when Junho is around. It’s enough, it has to be. He can never ask for more.
Junho is quiet again and this time the silence lingers, stretching on so long that Wooyoung opens his eyes to check that his senses aren’t deceiving him and that Junho is still there. He is, of course, still seated next to Wooyoung on the scratchy blanket, but now his pout is gone and his forehead is crinkled in thought instead.
Wooyoung wonders if he should break the silence, do something, anything to break up this sudden weird mood. He shifts slightly and Junho’s eyes snap to meet his, pinning Wooyoung in place with the strangeness of his gaze.
“Do you?” Junho murmurs, almost to himself. He reaches forward and plants a hand on either side of Wooyoung, moving onto his knees and crowding into his space. “Do you really?”
Wooyoung is frozen in place beneath him, staring up at his friend, his everything with his breath stuck in his throat. His heart hammers in his chest with enough force to bruise. He licks nervously at his lips and barely manages to croak out a reply. “Do I what?”
Junho flicks his gaze back up from where it had dropped to Wooyoung’s mouth. “Do you really want what I want?” He leans in closer, crossing the distance in increments, giving Wooyoung time to pull or push or give or take.
Can I really have this? Wooyoung wonders frantically, staring up at Junho as he blots out the sky. “I want,” Wooyoung finds himself saying as if from far away, voice cracking on the words. “I want you.”
“What a coincidence.” Junho smiles as he closes the space between them, and he is Wooyoung’s world. “I was just about to say the same thing.”
bod•y
n.
The main or central part of something, especially a building or text.
The beach is deserted. Wooyoung isn’t surprised by this in the least. They’re in the early days of spring, those first few weeks after winter, and no one told the wind it wasn’t allowed to come. The sky is the grey of old smoke and the waves are gunmetal in motion and all Wooyoung can think is the setting matches his mood.
Even the sand seems dull beneath his feet, sticking damply to his sneakers and coating the laces. He stares down at his feet and tries to practice, tries to imagine what he’ll say when Junho gets here, but his mind is as empty as the beach before him.
It probably won’t even matter, in the long run. Wooyoung’s seen enough dramas to know how this scene ends.
“There you are!”
His body is a traitor, turning automatically towards the sound of Junho’s voice. There he is, jogging over the sand, and Wooyoung doesn’t think he’s imagining the way the world brightens around him the closer Junho comes. Junho stops just in front of him, bending over to catch his breath, and when he straightens his smile is the sun breaking through the clouds.
“You’re here,” Wooyoung says mechanically, unnecessarily. His fist clenches and unclenches, a nervous movement at his side.
“Wherever ‘here’ is,” Junho agrees, glancing around the beach with undisguised curiosity. “It took me forever to find this place.”
Wooyoung doesn’t answer. He doesn’t tell him how close they are to his childhood home, how this was where he came to escape his father’s fists, his mother’s tears. This was his sanctuary until there was Junho, and soon it will be his sanctuary again.
Junho is watching him now, eyes narrow and shrewd. “What’s wrong?”
The rehearsed lines won’t come. Wooyoung shrugs and tries to act anyway. “Nothing. Everything.” He takes a step towards the shoreline, twisting so he can’t see Junho at all. “I was just thinking.”
Junho’s sneakers scritch through the sand and he plants himself next to Wooyoung. “What about?” His voice is too careful, too even.
Wooyoung takes a breath and the brine tastes like tears on his tongue. “Us.” Junho tenses beside him and Wooyoung can’t let him derail this, can’t let him speak. “How we’re so different, how we don’t make sense, how you’ve given up so much for me. How you’re so good and I’m not, at all, how you deserve the best life can give you and I don’t deserve you-“
Junho spins him so quickly Wooyoung’s teeth clack together, the rest of his confession caught on the tip of his tongue. “No!” he grinds out, strong hands gripping Wooyoung’s shoulders, holding him up like he has since the first day they met. “That’s not what this is, what we are. You have to know that, Wooyoung.”
Wooyoung swallows and shakes his head. “We can’t-“
“We can,” Junho cuts in, ducking his head to catch Wooyoung’s eyes. “We do. We are. Remember what you told me? You want what I want.” He loosens his hold on Wooyoung’s shoulders, smooths his hands down Wooyoung’s arms and takes his shaking fingers in his own. “What I want hasn’t changed.”
Wooyoung stares down at their linked fingers until Junho raises their hands and shakes them. “Don’t let go, you hear me?” He grins at Wooyoung just as the grey curtain of clouds part and the sun peeks through the gap.
“I won’t,” Wooyoung promises, and lets Junho lead him down the beach.
bod•y
n.
The flesh, as opposed to the spirit.
“-died on impact,” someone is saying, the voice unfamiliar. A woman’s voice, somewhat older, calm and gentle with just the right amount of regret. “He didn’t suffer, Mr Lee. He wouldn’t have felt a thing.”
Darkness, all around Wooyoung. His eyes are open but he can’t see.
“Thank you.” It’s Junho but as Wooyoung has never heard him before, husky and wrecked. “He…that’s a relief.”
A rustle of fabric, the squeak of rubber shoes on a polished floor. A pause. “I’ll give you some time.” The shoes squeak again and fade away.
Someone is breathing unsteadily. They gulp in air. Wooyoung looks around again but nothing has changed. All he can see is black.
“Wooyoung.”
He turns, a full circle. “Junho! I’m right here.”
The creak of a chair, the brush of skin against skin. Wooyoung’s right hand warms like it’s being held but when he looks down he can’t see it. He can’t see anything. He can’t see himself.
“Wooyoung.” Junho sucks in a breath, ragged and wet. “How? How could you just die?!”
A pinch in his gut, a shiver down his spine. “Very easily, apparently,” Wooyoung whispers, the sound lost in the empty space of whatever this is. He stretches out his limbs that aren’t.
Junho is crying and Wooyoung can’t reach him, can’t touch him.
So this is what dying is.
At least, Wooyoung thinks, it was quick. As fast as thought, certainly. As fast as light. Almost as fast as falling in love. In one moment he was, and in the next, he was not.
Junho is whispering now. Phantom breath ghosts over the shell of Wooyoung’s invisible ear. He cocks his head that isn’t, tries to move closer, and that’s when he sees it, the tiny white dot in the distance.
Wooyoung stares at it with eyes he doesn’t have and doesn’t notice the darkness solidify around him until it has reshaped itself, curving up and over and meeting up above. The white dot settles, brightens. It beckons.
The darkness is now a tunnel and there’s a light way down the end.
Where Wooyoung’s heart once beat there’s only a compulsion now, a warm pulsing need to go, to put one non-existent foot in front of the other. He burns to keep on walking until the light consumes him, swallows him whole.
And yet he struggles to make that first step, to move any further from this place, where Junho’s voice still anchors him, where Junho still is, vibrant and alive.
They have it all wrong, Wooyoung thinks, taking a step back, down the tunnel, away from where he’s supposed to go. How can I go towards that light when the brightest one of all is back here, where I belong?
He takes another step back, and another. The distant light blinks once, as if in warning, and then abruptly both it and the darkness is gone.
He’s standing in a hospital room. Junho sits on a chair, shoulders slumped in defeat next to an empty bed. He doesn’t turn around when Wooyoung crosses to stand beside him, but then, Wooyoung didn’t expect him to.
“I’m here,” Wooyoung tells him, with everything he is. “Junho, I’m here.”
Junho doesn’t hear him.
ep•i•logue
n.
A short addition or concluding section at the end of a literary work, often dealing with the future of its characters.
It ends with a turnip.
Wooyoung tries everything he can think of to communicate with Junho. He chats at him while Junho eats breakfast. He perches on the basin when Junho’s having a shower and sings his favourite songs at the top of his spectral lungs. He whispers into Junho’s ear when he’s sleeping, tries to insinuate himself into Junho’s dreams. He writes messages on the bathroom mirror and makes the hall light flicker on and off. He changes the channel when Junho’s watching television and rearranges the food in the refrigerator. He makes a considerable nuisance out of himself and Junho doesn’t notice a thing, mainly because he’s too exhausted from keeping up a brave face every time he leaves the house.
Wooyoung is almost ready to give up and just resign himself to watching Junho forever when an opportunity presents itself in the form of the groceries Junho is mechanically unpacking in the kitchen. He watches Junho put a can of beans in the pantry before tugging out a bag of carrots. The carrots go in the fridge, then Junho walks listlessly back to the bag, reaching in and pulling out a single turnip. They both stare at it for a moment before Wooyoung realises this could be the chance he’s been waiting for ever since he came back. There’s no time to be subtle since Junho’s already turning morosely towards the fridge, so he reaches out with his ghostly powers and tugs, ripping the turnip from Junho’s surprised hands and tossing it at his head.
It bounces off his forehead with a thwack and Junho doesn’t even wince, just slaps his palm to the spot and whips his head around, eyes wide with shock. “Wooyoung?” he gasps, turning in a circle to check every corner of the kitchen. “Wooyoung!”
“I’m here,” Wooyoung whispers, picking up the turnip and placing it carefully on the table.
He could never like the taste of turnips, still couldn’t see their appeal, but they’d brought him to Junho twice now and for that he could overlook a few things.
Junho reaches past him for the turnip, holding it almost reverently. “Are you really here?” he asks the room in general.
Wooyoung smiles across the table. “I’m not going anywhere.”