Once Upon a Withered Rose
Title: Once Upon a Withered Rose
Pairing: Kaisoo, ex-player!Jongin
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Romance, Tragedy
Warnings: Hover
Length: ~5k
Summary: Jongin learns the long-winded way never to pity those who know how to handle fragile things.
(A/N: Written for expressoo during sncj_santa! Thank you so much for your prompt. Though I might actually still edit the very end more later (not... too fond of it, lmao), I don't plan on making any changes to it for a while so here we are~)
“The first stage of falling in love,” he says, eyes wide, lips hopeful, “is accepting love from someone else.”
Jongin quirks an eyebrow at the boy in front of him-a freshman, probably-then drops his gaze to the rose between steady, slender fingers and waits a few seconds. His fingers don’t twitch once; nor does any feature of his face. When Jongin meets his eyes again, his smile grows, and he moves the flower a little closer.
“What makes you think I’m going to fall in love with you?” Jongin says, not the least bit intrigued. He’s sure he sounds bored-more bored than he sounded breaking up with his ex-girlfriend, and the many before that, certainly-but peculiar as he is, the freshman doesn’t flinch.
Instead, he takes a step closer, holding the rose up so close to his face that Jongin can make out the uneven edges where the thorns were cut off. “I have a feeling,” he says, tilting his head to the side. “So you should take it.”
Lowering his brow, Jongin examines the rose. It’s fresh-he can see dewdrops between the petals, swirling the textured patterns, pink and fuschia. It’s quite peculiar that it isn’t shaking at all, seeing as the boy holds it between only his thumb and his index finger, gently enough so that if you looked close enough, you might see that the stem wasn’t touching his skin at all and the flower was just hovering there. Pity, that someone felt the need to be so delicate with anything.
Without a word, Jongin plucks the rose from the boy’s hands. For a second it seems as though the boy has frozen, and if Jongin walked past him he would see that it was actually a cardboard cutout. He doesn’t look back to check. Back straight and eyes ahead, he walks all the way down the hall.
When he turns the corner, he looks at the flower, stem gripped delicately between his thumb and index finger. He makes a point of putting a third finger around it, and then a fourth, and holds it like that until his grip feels awkward, teetering on not delicate, but not quite rough enough.
Pursing his lips, he tucks the flower behind his ear instead.
❀ ❀ ❀
By the time he leaves Linear Algebra, word about the rose behind his ear has spread enough that he finds out through Soojung, who greets him with a solid palm to the cheek before he can even step out of the classroom. Unperturbed, he glances at the flower before looking back to her and stepping out of the doorway.
“Hey.”
“Hey?” she says, eyebrows raised in disbelief though her tone remains steady. “Is that all you’re going to say to me?”
Jongin shrugs.
“We literally-,” she puts a hand to her forehead, brushing back her bangs, and keeps it there. “You literally stood me up yesterday. Just yesterday. I waited for you a whole hour.”
“Uh-huh.”
“And you didn’t text me about it, for a whole hour, until I asked you.” She licks her lips and then lifts her hand, flattening her bangs over her forehead this time. “And then you said, ‘Sorry, homework, I forgot.’”
“Yeah. It was literally yesterday. I remember.”
“I mean, I sort of wished you would break up with me first before seeing someone else? Like, it’s fine if you’re over it. I could totally be over it too, but-wait, maybe I’m overreacting, right? Where’s the flower from? I forgot how quickly rumors spread in this dump.”
“Someone gave it to me.”
“So you’re seeing someone else?”
He shrugs and takes the flower out from behind his ear, making sure that he places three fingers on it instead of just two. “Do you want it?”
“Jongin! I asked you a question.”
“So did I.”
Soojung pauses a moment. Jongin’s gaze follows her hand, from her forehead to the way she tosses it out to her side as an unspoken accusation of, what the fuck? and then to her face, where she cups it over her mouth and nose. The pouches just beneath her eyes swell a little bit, and he can see them narrowing. She moves her hand a little higher, so her fingers cover the swelling.
“Alright, well,” she says, “I mean, you seemed to care up until two days ago but now you don’t, just like everyone says. I spent three months on you.”
Jongin sighs and leans against the lockers. “So did I.”
“I don’t get it. I mean, I really don’t get it, but alright. Um,” she blinks a few times, takes her hand from her mouth and runs her fingers through her hair. “Thanks for everything before this, I guess.”
Though he should have expected this given that Soojung was always peculiarly pragmatic, he’s a little bewildered. Regardless, he conceals it just like everything else and watches her walk away, all the way to the door. She doesn’t shove it open, either, doesn’t slam it shut. One of Soojung’s friends slaps him again when she walks by. When the door opens again, he hears Soojung crying.
He straightens up and walks to his next class. She’ll remember him. He tucks the flower behind his ear again. She’ll remember.
❀ ❀ ❀
“You’re wearing it,” the boy says to him, out of breath as he almost skids to a halt right in front of Jongin. Then, smiling just like the first time, he mumbles, “You’re wearing it.”
Jongin quirks his eyebrow and glances at him. Stares, waiting for him to say something else. Introduce himself, maybe, or ask him if he’s going to say anything. He doesn’t, just smiles up at him and blinks at him like he’s expecting Jongin to acknowledge the obvious or start talking. They stay like that, expecting something from each other, until they’re the only people left in the hall. Jongin shrugs again and walks on.
He doesn’t hear the boy’s footsteps behind his, growing farther from his, anywhere around his at all. Just feels his gaze on his back, those wide, hopeful eyes, and sees his smile when he blinks. Not a challenge like it often is, asking him to turn back and apologize, turn back and explain, why-did-you-leave-me, when-did-you-stop-caring. Just a presence, somewhat warm, letting him go on, telling him, you’ll see.
Jongin licks his lips and wonders when that stray corner of his mouth turned up in a smile.
❀ ❀ ❀
It always happens while he’s walking out of class. Jongin turns the doorknob and all eyes are on him; whispers of he cheated on Soojung and thought she changed him, guess an asshole is always an asshole silencing with the first tap of his dress shoe against linoleum.
Or maybe it’s not just him; maybe it’s that Soojung walks past the door as he steps out and though he catches her gaze flicking ever so slightly toward him, she doesn’t turn back. When he blinks, though, it’s not Soojung. It’s Jieun, from three years ago, stepping up to him and poking him in the chest. And no one’s looking at him either, just whispering. Still whispering.
“So, who’s next in line, babe?”
He pushes her finger aside and starts on his way to lunch. “I don’t know, babe.”
“What do you mean you don’t know?” Her footsteps quicken behind him until she catches up, linking arms with him. “You dumped Soojung for her, right? Even I thought this time you wouldn’t be the one to end it. It actually might’ve made me kind of happy, to see that you weren’t really as much of an asshole as everyone thinks. Honey.”
“I don’t really care what makes you happy, seeing as I didn’t even care three years ago, honey. Would you mind letting it go? Also, he asked me out, so taking him up on that meant I didn’t have to forge an apology for missing our date on Sunday.”
Jieun stops in her tracks and tugs Jongin’s arm. He spins around and stops, checking his watch. She tilts her head to the side and smiles, furrowing her eyebrows in a way that makes her look like Taz-Mania from the Looney Tunes. “Wait, darling, ‘he?’ Who ‘he?’”
Jongin shrugs. “Yes, darling. He. And I don’t know. Some freshman, I think.”
“Hm.” Jieun pats Jongin’s elbow twice before unhooking her arm and skipping off. “Catch ya later, sweetcheeks!”
“Great. Looking forward to it. Sweetcheeks.”
“I’m not a freshman,” the boy says, poking his head out from behind one of the classroom doors, nearly startling Jongin enough to make his facial muscles twitch. “I’m in your grade, didn’t you know?”
It takes all the strength in the world to suppress the exclamation of Jesus Christ! building up in his throat. “No,” he says. He tucks his hands into his pockets. “I didn’t.”
The boy scampers in front of him and starts walking backwards. “I scared you, didn’t I? You normally say wittier things than that, I’ve heard you. I scared the great Kim Jongin, master of disguises and stoicism! Didn’t I?”
“Whatever floats your boat.”
“I really scared you. You would never say, ‘Whatever floats your boat,’ unless I’d actually scared you half to death. Also, you’re still wearing it. Does that mean I’m special?”
“If it keeps your boat afloat.”
“Do you want to go to lunch with me?”
“There’s only one cafeteria.”
“Cool. Can I hold your hand?”
“Boats keep floating… float… shit.”
The boy laughs and slips his fingers between Jongin’s. They’re cold, like he’s been outside for too long without a sweatshirt. Jongin thinks he might want to laugh, too, so he cracks a smile.
“So, because you didn’t know, my name’s Kyungsoo.”
“Nice to meet you, Kyungsoo.”
Kyungsoo moves his thumb over the back of Jongin’s hand. “Do you really not know me?” he says. When Jongin looks at him, he’s staring straight ahead.
“I do now.”
“How do you make all these girls fall for you? I thought you only talked like this when you’re breaking up with someone. It’s because I scared you to death, isn’t it? I’m special. You’re on guard.” He lets go of Jongin’s hand, raising his fists in a fighting stance. “That’s what it is.”
“You are literally a freshman,” Jongin says, eyeing Kyungsoo. “Don’t even lie. Maybe you’re even an eighth-grader.”
“Then why are you holding my hand! Pedophile!”
Jongin laughs, raising a hand to smack Kyungsoo’s arm. “What?”
“Pedophile! You like kids but you’re just a creepy old dude who lurks around on playgrounds.”
“You’re a senophile, then, since you went and seduced me by scaring me half to death.”
“Okay, but you’re a really hot senior, so that’s okay.”
“Okay.”
“So is this a date?”
“We are literally going to the cafeteria. That’s a really lame date and I don’t do lame dates.”
“Okay, so what’s not lame?”
“Picnics, ice cream, that one restaurant downtown that no one really goes to so you can tell all your girlfriends-or, well, now also boyfriends-that it’s going to be your Special Place.”
“I have a real Special Place, if you want to do that.”
Kyungsoo slides his hand into Jongin’s again. It occurs to Jongin-so briefly that if he wanted to, he could just pretend it never occurred at all-that this is what Soojung meant when she said, our hands fit together like puzzle pieces. He bites his lip and looks ahead.
“Sure. Dinner?”
“Right,” Kyungsoo says. “Dinner.”
❀ ❀ ❀
“Are you gay?” Jieun says, stopping Jongin at the school gates as he walks home. “Is that why you hurt girls so easily? Did you pretend I was a boy when we slept together? Is that why you didn’t touch my-”
“I’m not gay. And I didn’t touch your boobs because I couldn’t find them.”
“Then why are you dating a boy?”
“I can date whoever I want. Although, that doesn’t really explain why I went out with you…”
Stomping her foot, Jieun grabs onto Jongin’s arm. “Why are you being so meeeeaaaannn?”
Before he can respond, someone grabs his hand and pushes Jieun from his arm, fingers somehow finding their places perfectly more quickly than Jongin can turn to see who it is. Not that he really has to. “Kyungsoo?”
“Ooh, you knew it was me before you even looked. I bet that’s special.”
Jieun crosses her arms and Jongin grins at her. “No, your hands are just freezing.”
“Do you wanna go?”
“Mhm.”
Smiling that same, suddenly dazzling smile from the first day, Kyungsoo quickens his pace until he’s sprinting, almost dragging Jongin behind him as meets his gaze. Somehow, Jongin manages to keep up enough to notice that Kyungsoo’s mouth looks a little like a heart when he’s laughing.
“My boat is floating so high right now,” Kyungsoo yells over the wind roaring past their ears.
Jongin wants to say something witty back, but all he can think is, this is what Soojung meant when she said, our hands fit together like puzzle pieces; and this is what she meant when she said, we’re just a two-piece puzzle. Don’t ever leave me incomplete.
❀ ❀ ❀
“You look like you’re thinking about something.”
Jongin glances up at Kyungsoo and sips at his hot chocolate, gripping the cup with is left hand and lifting his pencil over his chemistry homework with the right. He doesn’t count, hasn’t been counting and will never count, but for some reason he knows it’s the fifth week they’ve been together. They started in autumn because Jongin has noticed that there aren’t as many leaves falling from the trees when they walk from school to Smoke-a-Mocha as there used to be, and that it’s becoming winter because yesterday he lent Kyungsoo his jacket.
“I said, ‘You look like you’re thinking about something.’”
Jongin puts his cup down. “Yeah, I am.” He taps his homework with the eraser of his pencil. “Very astute.”
“No, you look like you’re thinking about me.”
“What the fuck does that look like?”
“Like, you know the moment before you realize you forgot something at home? Just before your eyes go all wide. Right when you’re still feeling great about life, maybe when you’ve got a slight smile on your face because life’s so great. And then you think, ah yes, this item that I left at home-and it’s that look between being content where you are and remembering something distant, just before you realize you need that item.”
“Psh. I don’t smile when I think about you.”
“But were you thinking about me?”
“Yes.”
“What were you thinking about me?”
“I was thinking about when I’m going to break up with you.”
“No you weren’t. You wouldn’t really have to think about that.” Kyungsoo laughs. “That’s like instinct for you, right?”
“Can you, like, not know me so well for a second? I was just thinking that I like you. A lot. Like, I don’t think I’ve ever liked anyone this much before.”
“Isn’t that what you say to everyone?”
“It is.” Jongin tries to smile. “Boy who cried wolf.”
Kyungsoo ponders this for a moment before saying, “Okay, I’ll believe you.”
“Why?”
“Because when you Snapchatted me yesterday, I saw my rose in a vase on your nightstand.”
Jongin feels a foreign sweat breaking over his forehead. “Oh.”
“Also because, I really like you a lot, too, obviously. And even if you are a serial liar, believing it right now makes me happy.” Kyungsoo reaches across the table and holds Jongin’s hand. It’s warm this time, from holding his tea. “So I’ll believe it, for myself.”
Without thinking, Jongin squeezes Kyungsoo’s hand. “We fit together well,” he says, raising their hands from the table to look at them. “Don’t you like the way this looks?”
“You mean the contrast of my eighth-grader hands against your gross wrinkly ones?”
“You just threw a rock at my boat and punctured the hull.”
“But it’s okay because I love you.”
Jongin stares hard at their hands. The slight difference between their skin tones. How Kyungsoo’s fingernails are always cut short, but smoothly, while his sometimes grow out just a little bit. The way their knuckles would look if he took a sharpie and played connect-the-dots with them. How he can feel the warmth escaping from Kyungsoo’s fingers into his skin, already turning cold again. Those words, always so easy to say, stuck in his throat, trapped in the crevices between their skin. Those words, Jongin thinks, hiding at the back of his throat when before they’d never shied from the tip of his tongue. Those words, those words, those words.
He squeezes Kyungsoo’s hand and then lets it go, picking up his pencil and starting his chemistry homework again.
When he returns home that night and opens his notebook to finish up, he sees a small note at the top of the page just next to the one he was writing on.
Kiss me, maybe.
❀ ❀ ❀
“I love you,” Jongin says the next day, when he really takes Kyungsoo down to his secret place under an abandoned stone bridge and kisses him on the riverbank. The water splashes up sometimes, cold on their bare toes. “Wow, I love you.”
When they break apart, their noses brush. Kyungsoo’s breath is so much warmer than his touch and Jongin doesn’t ever want him to be too far for them to nuzzle their noses together, too far for him to trace the gentle curve of Kyungsoo’s nose out with the tip of his. His cheeks are warm too, beneath Jongin’s hands, and forget maybe; Jongin wants to kiss him again, and again, and again, and again. Kyungsoo’s lips are smiling between his. Maybe he’ll drop into Kyungsoo’s math class, because the only math he needs to know is the function for the curve of Kyungsoo’s lips when he says, the first stage of falling in love.
“I’m going to kiss you until sunset.”
“My mom will get worried.”
“So will mine, but I’m going to do it anyway. I’d fuck you, too, if you want, but I don’t want sand in my ass.”
“Neither do I.”
“Hey, how’s your boat?”
“Flying into the moon.”
❀ ❀ ❀
A little before Valentine’s day, Soojung bursts into Jongin’s study hall with her hand covering everything but her eyes again, tears already spilling over, and drags him out of the classroom by his wrist. He can’t make out words but she’s saying something to him, not at all about either of them, and by the time he’s oriented himself enough to want to ask what the hell is going on, he’s behind the school and Kyungsoo is on the ground, convulsing, and someone is raising a foot to kick him.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Jongin shouts, lunging forward and slamming the perpetrator into the wall, tugging his hood off so quickly that it rips. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
“I dunno,” he grins. “Nothing probably. I’m not a homosexual.”
“What the fuck, Baekhyun? What did he ever do to you?”
“Tainted this campus with his ass-fucking. Would beat you up, too, but I’m not about picking stupid fights. Also, Jieun said he pushed her once.”
“I’m this close to ripping your dick off and shoving it down you throat.”
“Or, you could shove yours down his throat. He’s a real pussy, anyway, I only kicked him once.”
“Piece of shit,” Jongin growls, kneeing Baekhyun in the stomach hard enough that something cracks against the wall. He hopes it was one of Baekhyun’s ribs.
Taking a deep breath, Jongin turns away and sits down next to Kyungsoo. “Hey, Kyungsoo, can you hear me?”
“Hospital,” Kyungsoo says, wheezing. “Hospital, hospital.”
“Fucking pussy!” Baekhyun calls, “Only kicked you once!”
“Alright, hospital. We’ll take you to the hospital.”
“Can’t breathe.”
“Soojung’s already calling the ambulance, alright? We’ll take you to the hospital. Hey, I love you, alright? I love you.”
Kyungsoo grabs Jongin’s hand. “Can’t breathe,” he says again. His eyes roll back in his head. “Can’t breathe.”
❀ ❀ ❀
As it turns out, Baekhyun did only kick Kyungsoo once. The hospital discharges him in two days. Aside from passing along a get-well-soon card, Soojung and Jongin don’t talk. When Jongin asks, Kyungsoo refuses to give a reasonable answer as to why he couldn’t breathe.
“He’s right, I’m a pussy.”
“It’s not funny, Kyungsoo.”
“I also couldn’t breathe when you said you’d kiss me until sunset.”
“Kyungsoo.”
“I went breathless when you came to my rescue.”
“Literally, fuck you.”
“That would be nice.”
“I’m really going to get angry like this-”
“No, I’m serious. Guess whose parents are out of town for the weekend?”
“I hate you,” Jongin says. “I’ll literally kill you. No, don’t hold my hand.”
“Slay me in bed, Kim Jongin.”
“You’re literally impossible.”
“No, you can do me anytime.”
Jongin throws his hands up in the air. When they come back to his side, Kyungsoo holds his hand again. He swears they’ve gotten colder since last time.
❀ ❀ ❀
Jongin wakes up with his lips closed, pressed against Kyungsoo’s neck, nose nuzzled behind Kyungsoo’s ear. From here, he can see the moles down his neck, over his shoulder, and shivers when he remembers how Kyungsoo reacted when he kissed them last night, one by one. He lifts his arm from around the other’s waist and runs his fingers through Kyungsoo’s hair.
“So I kissed you until sunset, right?” he whispers. He can feel the edge of his lips brushing against Kyungsoo’s hair. “How’s your boat?”
“Mmm… Heaven.”
“So I’m that good, huh? Slayed you well?”
“Shut up, you had a lot of practice before me.”
“Okay, but, I love you. That’s a first.”
“Hm.”
For a while, they lay still. Jongin listens to Kyungsoo’s breaths. Somehow, they remind him of the way he held the rose that first day, so gently that he might not have been holding it at all. He wonders how this got here so quickly. Was it just that Kyungsoo scared him half to death? Was it the smile? The hopeful look in his eyes? The wit? Or maybe he’s been gay all along and didn’t even know it. A thought occurs to him and he shifts a little, trailing his lips down slightly, to the back of Kyungsoo’s neck.
“When Soojung and I were dating, she used to tell me that our hands fit together like puzzle pieces. I didn’t know what that meant. Hands were just hands, fingers were clumsy, knuckles got in the way all the time. It was just another one of those stupid lines you find in every book. But on the very first day, when you asked if you could hold my hand and you did it, that’s what I thought of. And then she used to say, ‘We’re a two piece puzzle. Don’t ever leave me incomplete.’ I thought that was just her being poetic again, or something. A two piece puzzle isn’t a puzzle at all. But I feel it now, Kyungsoo.” He lets his fingers fall between Kyungsoo’s, holding his breath as they fold together. “Our hands fit together like puzzle pieces, and we’re just a two piece puzzle. Don’t ever leave me incomplete.”
Kyungsoo stays quiet, tracing his thumb over the ridges between bones on the back of Jongin’s hand.
Then, “I love you, Jongin. I really do.”
❀ ❀ ❀
Legend had it that Jongin wore the same dead, brown flower stem behind his ear every day because it represented his heart. Cold and lifeless, with the thorns unevenly chopped off, probably by Soojung because they were back together again, just before graduation. Jongin was perfectly content letting them think that.
The only person other than himself and Kyungsoo who knew where the stem was from was Soojung. Jongin always knew she was different, and in the end, maybe their hands didn’t fit together quite like puzzle pieces but it was the closest they’d get, for now.
But the truth was, the day after Jongin and Kyungsoo fucked in his bedroom, Kyungsoo’s parents withdrew him from school. The house was empty by the next day, and Jongin had his heart ripped out, like he was the whole puzzle piece and Kyungsoo hadn’t detached himself quite right, ripping off the piece that connected them when he left. He went back to school alone and pretended that he didn’t have emotions again. Everyone noticed; thought that maybe Jongin broke up with Kyungsoo and that Kyungsoo had to be moved into a mental ward from the depression that came with it. Baekhyun had told the whole school that he was a pussy, anyway.
Only Soojung, who sat next to him in Linear Algebra, noticed that he never had his math notebook out anymore. Just chemistry, and that he always flipped to the same page. And at the top of the page closest to her, written upside down, were the words, Kiss me, maybe. Every day Jongin flipped to that page and drew sunset after sunset; one for every day. Sometimes, if he drew the sunset too quickly, he’d draw an ocean beneath it along with a small boat. Sometimes he drew the moon under the boat, and sometimes clouds. He drew puzzle pieces and scribbled them out over and over. One time, she saw something wet fall onto the page, and then Jongin excused himself to the bathroom.
Soojung excused herself, too, and let Jongin cry into her shoulder behind the school where Baekhyun beat Kyungsoo up. Jongin took a piece of paper out of his pocket, folded neatly even though it was dated back in February, on Valentine’s day. It said:
Kim Jongin.
Thank you for accepting love from me. You know, I sat here twenty minutes trying to think about how to start this letter but it’s still this stupid. I guess I should tell you what’s going on, since on the off chance that you really do love me-which I believe, by the way, but it’s still an off chance-you might want to know why I disappeared. Left you incomplete. Also, if you can’t tell by that smudged “e,” I’m crying, too.
The thing is, a while before I gave you that flower, I was diagnosed with some lung condition I don’t know the name of. Some kind of cancer, I think. It usually happens to really young people or really old people or people who smoke and I was neither of those things, but I guess a lot of off-chance things happen to me. That’s why I couldn’t breathe after one kick, and why I didn’t want to tell you. But I’m not one of those dickheads who goes out and makes the person they love fall in love with them so they can experience that kind of thing just before they die. I really, really am not.
I picked you because we went to preschool together, and one of the teachers in preschool wanted to know what us stupid little toddlers thought about the meaning of life. The point to it. Everyone laughed because they had no idea, but you stood up and said, “I think people live so they can be remembered,” or something along those lines but in a more toddler-ish way. It wasn’t something I really thought about until they told me I was going to die. After that, I wondered, what the fuck am I here for? I wanted to do something big, Jongin. I wanted to make a mark on the world but now, I wouldn’t even grow old enough to be able to. And then I remembered, you wouldn’t have to be that old to make someone remember you. If just one person could remember me, then my life would have had a point.
I picked you because you gave me hope. You gave my life a point because of what you said in preschool. I wanted you to be the one to remember me, and I figured, it was a bonus that you were a stone-cold killer and probably wouldn’t fall that hard. I didn’t want to hurt you. I just wanted you to remember me. I think originally I’d only wanted to make sure you’d keep the flower, and then we’d never speak again. The love came long after but much too soon, and I couldn’t bring myself to let go.
I know you’ll probably be angry. I left you incomplete, just like you told me not to. Like Soojung told you not to. I’m an asshole. But please don’t forget me. Remember me as angrily as you want, but please don’t forget me. You are the point of my life, Kim Jongin. I know, I’m an asshole.
But I love you.
So don’t forget me, alright?
Keep that boat floating!
Do Kyungsoo
As much as he wanted to be, Jongin couldn’t be angry. He lay on his side every night, staring at the rose on the nightstand. Wore it to school every day even though it died long before Kyungsoo did. The petals fell off one by one, crunching under his feet if he wasn’t paying enough attention. But every day, he wanted to remember Kyungsoo, as much as he could. He was the point. And even as the petals turned black and the stem shriveled into nothing but a twig it was all that was left. For a while, when the gossip was interesting, everyone remembered Kyungsoo. The legend spread. No one really knew anything at all.
But this is the truth.
Remember it.
Pairing: Kaisoo, ex-player!Jongin
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Romance, Tragedy
Warnings: Hover
Length: ~5k
Summary: Jongin learns the long-winded way never to pity those who know how to handle fragile things.
(A/N: Written for expressoo during sncj_santa! Thank you so much for your prompt. Though I might actually still edit the very end more later (not... too fond of it, lmao), I don't plan on making any changes to it for a while so here we are~)
“The first stage of falling in love,” he says, eyes wide, lips hopeful, “is accepting love from someone else.”
Jongin quirks an eyebrow at the boy in front of him-a freshman, probably-then drops his gaze to the rose between steady, slender fingers and waits a few seconds. His fingers don’t twitch once; nor does any feature of his face. When Jongin meets his eyes again, his smile grows, and he moves the flower a little closer.
“What makes you think I’m going to fall in love with you?” Jongin says, not the least bit intrigued. He’s sure he sounds bored-more bored than he sounded breaking up with his ex-girlfriend, and the many before that, certainly-but peculiar as he is, the freshman doesn’t flinch.
Instead, he takes a step closer, holding the rose up so close to his face that Jongin can make out the uneven edges where the thorns were cut off. “I have a feeling,” he says, tilting his head to the side. “So you should take it.”
Lowering his brow, Jongin examines the rose. It’s fresh-he can see dewdrops between the petals, swirling the textured patterns, pink and fuschia. It’s quite peculiar that it isn’t shaking at all, seeing as the boy holds it between only his thumb and his index finger, gently enough so that if you looked close enough, you might see that the stem wasn’t touching his skin at all and the flower was just hovering there. Pity, that someone felt the need to be so delicate with anything.
Without a word, Jongin plucks the rose from the boy’s hands. For a second it seems as though the boy has frozen, and if Jongin walked past him he would see that it was actually a cardboard cutout. He doesn’t look back to check. Back straight and eyes ahead, he walks all the way down the hall.
When he turns the corner, he looks at the flower, stem gripped delicately between his thumb and index finger. He makes a point of putting a third finger around it, and then a fourth, and holds it like that until his grip feels awkward, teetering on not delicate, but not quite rough enough.
Pursing his lips, he tucks the flower behind his ear instead.
❀ ❀ ❀
By the time he leaves Linear Algebra, word about the rose behind his ear has spread enough that he finds out through Soojung, who greets him with a solid palm to the cheek before he can even step out of the classroom. Unperturbed, he glances at the flower before looking back to her and stepping out of the doorway.
“Hey.”
“Hey?” she says, eyebrows raised in disbelief though her tone remains steady. “Is that all you’re going to say to me?”
Jongin shrugs.
“We literally-,” she puts a hand to her forehead, brushing back her bangs, and keeps it there. “You literally stood me up yesterday. Just yesterday. I waited for you a whole hour.”
“Uh-huh.”
“And you didn’t text me about it, for a whole hour, until I asked you.” She licks her lips and then lifts her hand, flattening her bangs over her forehead this time. “And then you said, ‘Sorry, homework, I forgot.’”
“Yeah. It was literally yesterday. I remember.”
“I mean, I sort of wished you would break up with me first before seeing someone else? Like, it’s fine if you’re over it. I could totally be over it too, but-wait, maybe I’m overreacting, right? Where’s the flower from? I forgot how quickly rumors spread in this dump.”
“Someone gave it to me.”
“So you’re seeing someone else?”
He shrugs and takes the flower out from behind his ear, making sure that he places three fingers on it instead of just two. “Do you want it?”
“Jongin! I asked you a question.”
“So did I.”
Soojung pauses a moment. Jongin’s gaze follows her hand, from her forehead to the way she tosses it out to her side as an unspoken accusation of, what the fuck? and then to her face, where she cups it over her mouth and nose. The pouches just beneath her eyes swell a little bit, and he can see them narrowing. She moves her hand a little higher, so her fingers cover the swelling.
“Alright, well,” she says, “I mean, you seemed to care up until two days ago but now you don’t, just like everyone says. I spent three months on you.”
Jongin sighs and leans against the lockers. “So did I.”
“I don’t get it. I mean, I really don’t get it, but alright. Um,” she blinks a few times, takes her hand from her mouth and runs her fingers through her hair. “Thanks for everything before this, I guess.”
Though he should have expected this given that Soojung was always peculiarly pragmatic, he’s a little bewildered. Regardless, he conceals it just like everything else and watches her walk away, all the way to the door. She doesn’t shove it open, either, doesn’t slam it shut. One of Soojung’s friends slaps him again when she walks by. When the door opens again, he hears Soojung crying.
He straightens up and walks to his next class. She’ll remember him. He tucks the flower behind his ear again. She’ll remember.
❀ ❀ ❀
“You’re wearing it,” the boy says to him, out of breath as he almost skids to a halt right in front of Jongin. Then, smiling just like the first time, he mumbles, “You’re wearing it.”
Jongin quirks his eyebrow and glances at him. Stares, waiting for him to say something else. Introduce himself, maybe, or ask him if he’s going to say anything. He doesn’t, just smiles up at him and blinks at him like he’s expecting Jongin to acknowledge the obvious or start talking. They stay like that, expecting something from each other, until they’re the only people left in the hall. Jongin shrugs again and walks on.
He doesn’t hear the boy’s footsteps behind his, growing farther from his, anywhere around his at all. Just feels his gaze on his back, those wide, hopeful eyes, and sees his smile when he blinks. Not a challenge like it often is, asking him to turn back and apologize, turn back and explain, why-did-you-leave-me, when-did-you-stop-caring. Just a presence, somewhat warm, letting him go on, telling him, you’ll see.
Jongin licks his lips and wonders when that stray corner of his mouth turned up in a smile.
❀ ❀ ❀
It always happens while he’s walking out of class. Jongin turns the doorknob and all eyes are on him; whispers of he cheated on Soojung and thought she changed him, guess an asshole is always an asshole silencing with the first tap of his dress shoe against linoleum.
Or maybe it’s not just him; maybe it’s that Soojung walks past the door as he steps out and though he catches her gaze flicking ever so slightly toward him, she doesn’t turn back. When he blinks, though, it’s not Soojung. It’s Jieun, from three years ago, stepping up to him and poking him in the chest. And no one’s looking at him either, just whispering. Still whispering.
“So, who’s next in line, babe?”
He pushes her finger aside and starts on his way to lunch. “I don’t know, babe.”
“What do you mean you don’t know?” Her footsteps quicken behind him until she catches up, linking arms with him. “You dumped Soojung for her, right? Even I thought this time you wouldn’t be the one to end it. It actually might’ve made me kind of happy, to see that you weren’t really as much of an asshole as everyone thinks. Honey.”
“I don’t really care what makes you happy, seeing as I didn’t even care three years ago, honey. Would you mind letting it go? Also, he asked me out, so taking him up on that meant I didn’t have to forge an apology for missing our date on Sunday.”
Jieun stops in her tracks and tugs Jongin’s arm. He spins around and stops, checking his watch. She tilts her head to the side and smiles, furrowing her eyebrows in a way that makes her look like Taz-Mania from the Looney Tunes. “Wait, darling, ‘he?’ Who ‘he?’”
Jongin shrugs. “Yes, darling. He. And I don’t know. Some freshman, I think.”
“Hm.” Jieun pats Jongin’s elbow twice before unhooking her arm and skipping off. “Catch ya later, sweetcheeks!”
“Great. Looking forward to it. Sweetcheeks.”
“I’m not a freshman,” the boy says, poking his head out from behind one of the classroom doors, nearly startling Jongin enough to make his facial muscles twitch. “I’m in your grade, didn’t you know?”
It takes all the strength in the world to suppress the exclamation of Jesus Christ! building up in his throat. “No,” he says. He tucks his hands into his pockets. “I didn’t.”
The boy scampers in front of him and starts walking backwards. “I scared you, didn’t I? You normally say wittier things than that, I’ve heard you. I scared the great Kim Jongin, master of disguises and stoicism! Didn’t I?”
“Whatever floats your boat.”
“I really scared you. You would never say, ‘Whatever floats your boat,’ unless I’d actually scared you half to death. Also, you’re still wearing it. Does that mean I’m special?”
“If it keeps your boat afloat.”
“Do you want to go to lunch with me?”
“There’s only one cafeteria.”
“Cool. Can I hold your hand?”
“Boats keep floating… float… shit.”
The boy laughs and slips his fingers between Jongin’s. They’re cold, like he’s been outside for too long without a sweatshirt. Jongin thinks he might want to laugh, too, so he cracks a smile.
“So, because you didn’t know, my name’s Kyungsoo.”
“Nice to meet you, Kyungsoo.”
Kyungsoo moves his thumb over the back of Jongin’s hand. “Do you really not know me?” he says. When Jongin looks at him, he’s staring straight ahead.
“I do now.”
“How do you make all these girls fall for you? I thought you only talked like this when you’re breaking up with someone. It’s because I scared you to death, isn’t it? I’m special. You’re on guard.” He lets go of Jongin’s hand, raising his fists in a fighting stance. “That’s what it is.”
“You are literally a freshman,” Jongin says, eyeing Kyungsoo. “Don’t even lie. Maybe you’re even an eighth-grader.”
“Then why are you holding my hand! Pedophile!”
Jongin laughs, raising a hand to smack Kyungsoo’s arm. “What?”
“Pedophile! You like kids but you’re just a creepy old dude who lurks around on playgrounds.”
“You’re a senophile, then, since you went and seduced me by scaring me half to death.”
“Okay, but you’re a really hot senior, so that’s okay.”
“Okay.”
“So is this a date?”
“We are literally going to the cafeteria. That’s a really lame date and I don’t do lame dates.”
“Okay, so what’s not lame?”
“Picnics, ice cream, that one restaurant downtown that no one really goes to so you can tell all your girlfriends-or, well, now also boyfriends-that it’s going to be your Special Place.”
“I have a real Special Place, if you want to do that.”
Kyungsoo slides his hand into Jongin’s again. It occurs to Jongin-so briefly that if he wanted to, he could just pretend it never occurred at all-that this is what Soojung meant when she said, our hands fit together like puzzle pieces. He bites his lip and looks ahead.
“Sure. Dinner?”
“Right,” Kyungsoo says. “Dinner.”
❀ ❀ ❀
“Are you gay?” Jieun says, stopping Jongin at the school gates as he walks home. “Is that why you hurt girls so easily? Did you pretend I was a boy when we slept together? Is that why you didn’t touch my-”
“I’m not gay. And I didn’t touch your boobs because I couldn’t find them.”
“Then why are you dating a boy?”
“I can date whoever I want. Although, that doesn’t really explain why I went out with you…”
Stomping her foot, Jieun grabs onto Jongin’s arm. “Why are you being so meeeeaaaannn?”
Before he can respond, someone grabs his hand and pushes Jieun from his arm, fingers somehow finding their places perfectly more quickly than Jongin can turn to see who it is. Not that he really has to. “Kyungsoo?”
“Ooh, you knew it was me before you even looked. I bet that’s special.”
Jieun crosses her arms and Jongin grins at her. “No, your hands are just freezing.”
“Do you wanna go?”
“Mhm.”
Smiling that same, suddenly dazzling smile from the first day, Kyungsoo quickens his pace until he’s sprinting, almost dragging Jongin behind him as meets his gaze. Somehow, Jongin manages to keep up enough to notice that Kyungsoo’s mouth looks a little like a heart when he’s laughing.
“My boat is floating so high right now,” Kyungsoo yells over the wind roaring past their ears.
Jongin wants to say something witty back, but all he can think is, this is what Soojung meant when she said, our hands fit together like puzzle pieces; and this is what she meant when she said, we’re just a two-piece puzzle. Don’t ever leave me incomplete.
❀ ❀ ❀
“You look like you’re thinking about something.”
Jongin glances up at Kyungsoo and sips at his hot chocolate, gripping the cup with is left hand and lifting his pencil over his chemistry homework with the right. He doesn’t count, hasn’t been counting and will never count, but for some reason he knows it’s the fifth week they’ve been together. They started in autumn because Jongin has noticed that there aren’t as many leaves falling from the trees when they walk from school to Smoke-a-Mocha as there used to be, and that it’s becoming winter because yesterday he lent Kyungsoo his jacket.
“I said, ‘You look like you’re thinking about something.’”
Jongin puts his cup down. “Yeah, I am.” He taps his homework with the eraser of his pencil. “Very astute.”
“No, you look like you’re thinking about me.”
“What the fuck does that look like?”
“Like, you know the moment before you realize you forgot something at home? Just before your eyes go all wide. Right when you’re still feeling great about life, maybe when you’ve got a slight smile on your face because life’s so great. And then you think, ah yes, this item that I left at home-and it’s that look between being content where you are and remembering something distant, just before you realize you need that item.”
“Psh. I don’t smile when I think about you.”
“But were you thinking about me?”
“Yes.”
“What were you thinking about me?”
“I was thinking about when I’m going to break up with you.”
“No you weren’t. You wouldn’t really have to think about that.” Kyungsoo laughs. “That’s like instinct for you, right?”
“Can you, like, not know me so well for a second? I was just thinking that I like you. A lot. Like, I don’t think I’ve ever liked anyone this much before.”
“Isn’t that what you say to everyone?”
“It is.” Jongin tries to smile. “Boy who cried wolf.”
Kyungsoo ponders this for a moment before saying, “Okay, I’ll believe you.”
“Why?”
“Because when you Snapchatted me yesterday, I saw my rose in a vase on your nightstand.”
Jongin feels a foreign sweat breaking over his forehead. “Oh.”
“Also because, I really like you a lot, too, obviously. And even if you are a serial liar, believing it right now makes me happy.” Kyungsoo reaches across the table and holds Jongin’s hand. It’s warm this time, from holding his tea. “So I’ll believe it, for myself.”
Without thinking, Jongin squeezes Kyungsoo’s hand. “We fit together well,” he says, raising their hands from the table to look at them. “Don’t you like the way this looks?”
“You mean the contrast of my eighth-grader hands against your gross wrinkly ones?”
“You just threw a rock at my boat and punctured the hull.”
“But it’s okay because I love you.”
Jongin stares hard at their hands. The slight difference between their skin tones. How Kyungsoo’s fingernails are always cut short, but smoothly, while his sometimes grow out just a little bit. The way their knuckles would look if he took a sharpie and played connect-the-dots with them. How he can feel the warmth escaping from Kyungsoo’s fingers into his skin, already turning cold again. Those words, always so easy to say, stuck in his throat, trapped in the crevices between their skin. Those words, Jongin thinks, hiding at the back of his throat when before they’d never shied from the tip of his tongue. Those words, those words, those words.
He squeezes Kyungsoo’s hand and then lets it go, picking up his pencil and starting his chemistry homework again.
When he returns home that night and opens his notebook to finish up, he sees a small note at the top of the page just next to the one he was writing on.
Kiss me, maybe.
❀ ❀ ❀
“I love you,” Jongin says the next day, when he really takes Kyungsoo down to his secret place under an abandoned stone bridge and kisses him on the riverbank. The water splashes up sometimes, cold on their bare toes. “Wow, I love you.”
When they break apart, their noses brush. Kyungsoo’s breath is so much warmer than his touch and Jongin doesn’t ever want him to be too far for them to nuzzle their noses together, too far for him to trace the gentle curve of Kyungsoo’s nose out with the tip of his. His cheeks are warm too, beneath Jongin’s hands, and forget maybe; Jongin wants to kiss him again, and again, and again, and again. Kyungsoo’s lips are smiling between his. Maybe he’ll drop into Kyungsoo’s math class, because the only math he needs to know is the function for the curve of Kyungsoo’s lips when he says, the first stage of falling in love.
“I’m going to kiss you until sunset.”
“My mom will get worried.”
“So will mine, but I’m going to do it anyway. I’d fuck you, too, if you want, but I don’t want sand in my ass.”
“Neither do I.”
“Hey, how’s your boat?”
“Flying into the moon.”
❀ ❀ ❀
A little before Valentine’s day, Soojung bursts into Jongin’s study hall with her hand covering everything but her eyes again, tears already spilling over, and drags him out of the classroom by his wrist. He can’t make out words but she’s saying something to him, not at all about either of them, and by the time he’s oriented himself enough to want to ask what the hell is going on, he’s behind the school and Kyungsoo is on the ground, convulsing, and someone is raising a foot to kick him.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Jongin shouts, lunging forward and slamming the perpetrator into the wall, tugging his hood off so quickly that it rips. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
“I dunno,” he grins. “Nothing probably. I’m not a homosexual.”
“What the fuck, Baekhyun? What did he ever do to you?”
“Tainted this campus with his ass-fucking. Would beat you up, too, but I’m not about picking stupid fights. Also, Jieun said he pushed her once.”
“I’m this close to ripping your dick off and shoving it down you throat.”
“Or, you could shove yours down his throat. He’s a real pussy, anyway, I only kicked him once.”
“Piece of shit,” Jongin growls, kneeing Baekhyun in the stomach hard enough that something cracks against the wall. He hopes it was one of Baekhyun’s ribs.
Taking a deep breath, Jongin turns away and sits down next to Kyungsoo. “Hey, Kyungsoo, can you hear me?”
“Hospital,” Kyungsoo says, wheezing. “Hospital, hospital.”
“Fucking pussy!” Baekhyun calls, “Only kicked you once!”
“Alright, hospital. We’ll take you to the hospital.”
“Can’t breathe.”
“Soojung’s already calling the ambulance, alright? We’ll take you to the hospital. Hey, I love you, alright? I love you.”
Kyungsoo grabs Jongin’s hand. “Can’t breathe,” he says again. His eyes roll back in his head. “Can’t breathe.”
❀ ❀ ❀
As it turns out, Baekhyun did only kick Kyungsoo once. The hospital discharges him in two days. Aside from passing along a get-well-soon card, Soojung and Jongin don’t talk. When Jongin asks, Kyungsoo refuses to give a reasonable answer as to why he couldn’t breathe.
“He’s right, I’m a pussy.”
“It’s not funny, Kyungsoo.”
“I also couldn’t breathe when you said you’d kiss me until sunset.”
“Kyungsoo.”
“I went breathless when you came to my rescue.”
“Literally, fuck you.”
“That would be nice.”
“I’m really going to get angry like this-”
“No, I’m serious. Guess whose parents are out of town for the weekend?”
“I hate you,” Jongin says. “I’ll literally kill you. No, don’t hold my hand.”
“Slay me in bed, Kim Jongin.”
“You’re literally impossible.”
“No, you can do me anytime.”
Jongin throws his hands up in the air. When they come back to his side, Kyungsoo holds his hand again. He swears they’ve gotten colder since last time.
❀ ❀ ❀
Jongin wakes up with his lips closed, pressed against Kyungsoo’s neck, nose nuzzled behind Kyungsoo’s ear. From here, he can see the moles down his neck, over his shoulder, and shivers when he remembers how Kyungsoo reacted when he kissed them last night, one by one. He lifts his arm from around the other’s waist and runs his fingers through Kyungsoo’s hair.
“So I kissed you until sunset, right?” he whispers. He can feel the edge of his lips brushing against Kyungsoo’s hair. “How’s your boat?”
“Mmm… Heaven.”
“So I’m that good, huh? Slayed you well?”
“Shut up, you had a lot of practice before me.”
“Okay, but, I love you. That’s a first.”
“Hm.”
For a while, they lay still. Jongin listens to Kyungsoo’s breaths. Somehow, they remind him of the way he held the rose that first day, so gently that he might not have been holding it at all. He wonders how this got here so quickly. Was it just that Kyungsoo scared him half to death? Was it the smile? The hopeful look in his eyes? The wit? Or maybe he’s been gay all along and didn’t even know it. A thought occurs to him and he shifts a little, trailing his lips down slightly, to the back of Kyungsoo’s neck.
“When Soojung and I were dating, she used to tell me that our hands fit together like puzzle pieces. I didn’t know what that meant. Hands were just hands, fingers were clumsy, knuckles got in the way all the time. It was just another one of those stupid lines you find in every book. But on the very first day, when you asked if you could hold my hand and you did it, that’s what I thought of. And then she used to say, ‘We’re a two piece puzzle. Don’t ever leave me incomplete.’ I thought that was just her being poetic again, or something. A two piece puzzle isn’t a puzzle at all. But I feel it now, Kyungsoo.” He lets his fingers fall between Kyungsoo’s, holding his breath as they fold together. “Our hands fit together like puzzle pieces, and we’re just a two piece puzzle. Don’t ever leave me incomplete.”
Kyungsoo stays quiet, tracing his thumb over the ridges between bones on the back of Jongin’s hand.
Then, “I love you, Jongin. I really do.”
❀ ❀ ❀
Legend had it that Jongin wore the same dead, brown flower stem behind his ear every day because it represented his heart. Cold and lifeless, with the thorns unevenly chopped off, probably by Soojung because they were back together again, just before graduation. Jongin was perfectly content letting them think that.
The only person other than himself and Kyungsoo who knew where the stem was from was Soojung. Jongin always knew she was different, and in the end, maybe their hands didn’t fit together quite like puzzle pieces but it was the closest they’d get, for now.
But the truth was, the day after Jongin and Kyungsoo fucked in his bedroom, Kyungsoo’s parents withdrew him from school. The house was empty by the next day, and Jongin had his heart ripped out, like he was the whole puzzle piece and Kyungsoo hadn’t detached himself quite right, ripping off the piece that connected them when he left. He went back to school alone and pretended that he didn’t have emotions again. Everyone noticed; thought that maybe Jongin broke up with Kyungsoo and that Kyungsoo had to be moved into a mental ward from the depression that came with it. Baekhyun had told the whole school that he was a pussy, anyway.
Only Soojung, who sat next to him in Linear Algebra, noticed that he never had his math notebook out anymore. Just chemistry, and that he always flipped to the same page. And at the top of the page closest to her, written upside down, were the words, Kiss me, maybe. Every day Jongin flipped to that page and drew sunset after sunset; one for every day. Sometimes, if he drew the sunset too quickly, he’d draw an ocean beneath it along with a small boat. Sometimes he drew the moon under the boat, and sometimes clouds. He drew puzzle pieces and scribbled them out over and over. One time, she saw something wet fall onto the page, and then Jongin excused himself to the bathroom.
Soojung excused herself, too, and let Jongin cry into her shoulder behind the school where Baekhyun beat Kyungsoo up. Jongin took a piece of paper out of his pocket, folded neatly even though it was dated back in February, on Valentine’s day. It said:
Kim Jongin.
Thank you for accepting love from me. You know, I sat here twenty minutes trying to think about how to start this letter but it’s still this stupid. I guess I should tell you what’s going on, since on the off chance that you really do love me-which I believe, by the way, but it’s still an off chance-you might want to know why I disappeared. Left you incomplete. Also, if you can’t tell by that smudged “e,” I’m crying, too.
The thing is, a while before I gave you that flower, I was diagnosed with some lung condition I don’t know the name of. Some kind of cancer, I think. It usually happens to really young people or really old people or people who smoke and I was neither of those things, but I guess a lot of off-chance things happen to me. That’s why I couldn’t breathe after one kick, and why I didn’t want to tell you. But I’m not one of those dickheads who goes out and makes the person they love fall in love with them so they can experience that kind of thing just before they die. I really, really am not.
I picked you because we went to preschool together, and one of the teachers in preschool wanted to know what us stupid little toddlers thought about the meaning of life. The point to it. Everyone laughed because they had no idea, but you stood up and said, “I think people live so they can be remembered,” or something along those lines but in a more toddler-ish way. It wasn’t something I really thought about until they told me I was going to die. After that, I wondered, what the fuck am I here for? I wanted to do something big, Jongin. I wanted to make a mark on the world but now, I wouldn’t even grow old enough to be able to. And then I remembered, you wouldn’t have to be that old to make someone remember you. If just one person could remember me, then my life would have had a point.
I picked you because you gave me hope. You gave my life a point because of what you said in preschool. I wanted you to be the one to remember me, and I figured, it was a bonus that you were a stone-cold killer and probably wouldn’t fall that hard. I didn’t want to hurt you. I just wanted you to remember me. I think originally I’d only wanted to make sure you’d keep the flower, and then we’d never speak again. The love came long after but much too soon, and I couldn’t bring myself to let go.
I know you’ll probably be angry. I left you incomplete, just like you told me not to. Like Soojung told you not to. I’m an asshole. But please don’t forget me. Remember me as angrily as you want, but please don’t forget me. You are the point of my life, Kim Jongin. I know, I’m an asshole.
But I love you.
So don’t forget me, alright?
Keep that boat floating!
Do Kyungsoo
As much as he wanted to be, Jongin couldn’t be angry. He lay on his side every night, staring at the rose on the nightstand. Wore it to school every day even though it died long before Kyungsoo did. The petals fell off one by one, crunching under his feet if he wasn’t paying enough attention. But every day, he wanted to remember Kyungsoo, as much as he could. He was the point. And even as the petals turned black and the stem shriveled into nothing but a twig it was all that was left. For a while, when the gossip was interesting, everyone remembered Kyungsoo. The legend spread. No one really knew anything at all.
But this is the truth.
Remember it.