The Summer Of That Year 6 - Reality
And comment is a love^^
P.s. I must say that it’s the wonderful friends here I have that got me going and continue writing. Love you all^^ yes. That means you wicked love shii~~~~
*************************************
“Siwon?”
The world suddenly stopped drizzling, a huge black umbrella blocked the silvered night sky and his shadow casted on to me.
“Let’s go home.”
He moved closer, kicking aside the beer cans in his way. The clinging rang crystal clear through the crisp cold atmosphere. He bend down and tried to pull me up by my left arm, the rain drop slid off the umbrella and fell on to my back. It was chilling and so I shivered.
“ No…” I replied and hiccupped, a gulp of warm sour fluid gushed out, as the result his white Nike shoes were stained yellow.
He frowned, raising his hand. The hand did not go anywhere near the shoe, did not turn to a slap, did not do anything accept to brush away the wet hair that was getting into my eyes and cupped on to my forehead.
“Let’s go to the hospital then. You are having a fever.”
It was my turn to frown when not a single drop of liquid rolled out of the can above my lips. I fumbled my hand on the floor, the cans seemed to jumping around; all of them emptied.
“Can you stand up? Can you walk…..”
I slapped his hands away, “ ya! I am not going anywhere! I am waiting for him. He is coming!”
It was so quiet for a moment that I thought he was gone for good.
Ti-da. Ti-da.
Two drops of moisture fall on to my nose bridge.
The rain started to fall again; under the umbrella, falling drop by drop singularly at a strange low frequency.
“It’s mid night Hee Chul. Everyone is asleep. No one is here. No one is coming. ”
The frequency increased, I lifted my head, the drops fell on to my cheeks, streamed to the corner of my lips, and I gave it a lick. It tasted salty.
“He wasn’t there to begin with. You knew it wasn’t him…..”
The umbrella fell to the ground.
The raining one covered me with his arms tightly from the drizzle, but his tears was the one that made me wet. The hug was so familiar that it felt so wrong.
Why should he be hugging me? Why was he even here? Why did he even care?
“Why are you crying?”
“ I don’t know. You tell me Heechul. Tell me, who are you really?! Who is he really?! Who am I to feel this pain? Why did all this happen, why am I even crying, why-”
He shuddered I placed my lips against his and all the loud questions stopped. I didn’t know why I did it.
We both didn’t close our eyes. He stared blankly in front while I wondered the same questions as him.
Who is he?
When I looked cross the wet sparkly lashes and in to blank black orbs above the shimmering hot cheeks, there I found who he was.
He was a kid.
The kid that didn’t like broccolis the kid that was annoying proud and stubborn. The kid that had a really bad accent the kid that saved me the kid that I forcefully kissed once before the kid that challenged me to love him he kid that was now crying for me when he had no reasons to do so.
He was the kid that was painfully similar to the guy that left me.
Yet he was nobody else but himself. The very self that I chose to kiss
For the first time I was sure, this wasn’t just a mistake.
________________________________________________________________
The reality is Kim Hee Chul equates to utter strangeness.
The reality is, it’s perpetually impossible for you to understand what is really going around in his head.
For instance it’s impossible for me to understand his inability to be appreciative of help offered to him, or his lack of attention in class to anything except for himself or his failure in pronouncing the ‘Geng’ in my name while he voluntarily changed it to “Kyung”.
I had spent the past weeks gathering eccentric facts about him.
The first thing that I felt odd was, despite his “popularity” , in reality he didn’t have many friends. Well I could empathised with that easily, since it was obvious Kim Hee Chul had an EQ that was less than the grumpy street cats he liked to stop by and teased. But what bothered me was his weird association with the bubbly Donghae and the quiet Kibum.
It was apparent all the three had characters that were poles apart from each other, yet the latter two claimed to be twins and stuck themselves on Kim Hee Chul like they were bubble gums on his soles; they followed the eccentric one like shadows.
Indeed they were like shadows.
Though they didn’t really wear like him, stride with pride in the coward like him, nor talked in sarcasm like him, but their auras where bizarrely similar to him.
Kibum was quiet and behaved almost as if he was a fossil, like he wasn’t paying attention to anything. Yet he always spoke the most powerful lines.
On the first day we met he shot me a “welcoming-killer-stare” and said, “Be good to him.”
That was the end of my conversation with him for the rest of the week as he slouched into his original position and never moved again.
Donghae on the other hand, was as bouncy as a cheery kid, simple minded and very friendly.
So when he saw that I couldn’t really grasp at what former had said, he explained gladly with a grin. “He meant Heechul hyung. Kibum tells that to every of hyung’s new boy friend, but they never listened.”
That made sense since Kim Hee Chul was the only one absent at the scene, but they excused him just to tell me this? As I was still processing the information gotten, Donghae leaned his arms on the table and narrowed the distance between our face to merely inches.
“We know the game between you and hyung…”
My heart skipped a bit as his usual high pitched voice lowered in to a husky tone. He was smiling no more.
How could they have known…
“You offered protection just to get hyung so that you could quench your lust and brag about it, didn’t you? It’s all the same with the other guys. If that’s what you are after, drop the idea now. Or we will make you.”
Though the conversation had just escalated to a threat, my heart managed to return to its normal beats.
They didn’t know exactly.
Donghae sagged back, two of his hands on the chair supporting him with his arms tight beside him, shoulders raised and legs swinging, the naïve curve resurfaced on his lips.
“Then again… from the way hyung treats you…maybe you are different.”
I frowned.
He explained, “Can’t you see? He cares about you.”
As a matter of fact, I couldn’t see how Kim Hee Chul could be related to the word ‘care’. Since that differed greatly from my observation and deductions of the reason behind his indifferent character.
He cared about nothing. He simply lives in his own world.
That was the second thing I noticed about him.
He seemed to live in a transparent bell jar.
A bell jar that is air tight, sound proof, shock proof and in fact probably energy proof; a bell that is invisibly light so he could carry it everywhere with a conspicuous “MY WORLD” pinned on it.
He could sit would in the jar all day, isolated from the rest of the happenings, not knowing Bush had stepped down and now it’s Obama, not knowing the lessons had started and ended, not knowing anything that he didn’t want to know.
Sometimes he would sit in it whistling the strangest tune, act out a made up conversation with a sudden loud swear that would make you drop your spoonful of rice, or just doodle squiggly shapes.
Most of the time it would difficult to make out what he was singing, even more exasperating to understand his drawings and completely impossible to comprehend his little speeches with himself.
There was a few times though, I saw him drawing an ox’s head on to a stick man’s body. Then he would narrow his eyes darkly and mark crosses over the “minotaur”, until the strokes on the poor creature would later embed at the corner of his desk permanently.
Other times he would sit in the ball jar silently, not even raising a hair on his body and stare at the surrounding with his eyes, moving his naturally yet horrifyingly huge pupils with any being that was in motion. It might be a caterpillar, it might be a falling hair from the head of the almost bald geography teacher, but it would never be you.
Don’t ever think he was looking at you. He wasn’t particularly interested in human beings.
But most importantly, don’t ever stare at him affectionately even if he had looked like a live sized doll innocently enclosed in a glass case. You will regret when he catches you in a shock with that sly smirk sandwiching his long hanging tongue.
Because he might look a sleep, but he was never really resting.
Because he lived a life through dreams and made up fantasy in exchange to be lost in touch with what’s called reality.
The last thing I found out about him was his incapability to live without alcohol.
His bell jar would turn in to a whine barrow at night.
Of what whine his barrow contained he didn’t seem to mind. In fact he enjoyed to mix and match, like he was a chemist, pouring in the barrow different shades of red, yellow, white. Then he waited as if he was waiting for something brewing.
It was unconsciousness that finally fermented and he would gladly pickle himself in his self-brewed numbness, like a specimen baby that had soaked forever long in the jars placed behind a science laboratory.
Of what reason I was yet to gather, but he had hated reality.
Well, his night habits weren’t really anything to do with me, till I had became part of it.
The first morning next to the very first day he moved in to my house, he had ended waking up beside me. He had ended up scaring a maid. The maid ended up spreading the fresh piece of “news” to other maids and before this news could get any chance ending up in my parents’ ears back in the main house hold at China; I had sent the maids back to their hometowns with a good sum of money.
As I lay under the blanket the second night, thinking of the reactions my parents would have on their faces if they had heard that their only son left had shared a bed with somebody, the somebody being a man and not a girl, I heaved a small sigh of relieve that I had managed to wrap up the incident perfectly.
I tugged the blanket closer to my neck, snuggling in its warmth in content, rolling myself from one end of the bed to the other end because I had forgotten that the reality was, things don’t ever end smoothly.
BANG. And I was back in reality.
“OUCH-“
My head hit on something hard, and I took half a second to turn around unwrapping myself from my blanket and setting up. The impact had caused my eyes to tear, the night to swirl, plus the fact that I didn’t have a wonderful vision in dark the first place, it was impossible for me to make out the black object that was lying lifelessly in front of me.
But it was strange how my instinct had told me exactly what it was…
“Ya! KIM HEE CHUL! WHY ARE YOU HERE AGAIN?!”
The mentioned one lay dead as a log and didn’t bother to answer.
I leaned in front and took a sniff. Pungent alcoholic smell emitted from him and the thought of him staining my white clean almost holy bed with that stench made me shiver in disgust. The maids would need to change the bed sheets. Then again I remembered that the maids were gone, I had to do it myself
I threw the blanket up into the air in frustration. Just how much did this guy drink?!
I pinched my nose and gave Kim Hee Chul a shove with two fingers. He didn’t move an inch.
FINE. If he liked this room so much, then it shall be his! I will go sleep in another.
I lowered one of my feet in to the slipper and just as I was about to do the same to the other feet, he grabbed my hand.
I frost in the air, like I was a thief caught red handed.
“D-Don’t...” his voice broke and ended off in little pieces like he hadn’t being using them for the past ten years.
Then he said it again, “don’t go……”.His voice was soft and almost inaudible to the ears.
He held another hand on to my arms, this time repeated firmly, “please don’t go”.
I wasn’t about to give up. I pulled and tugged my hands away from his grip with clenching teeth, once twice and thrice. By the time I was puffing and sweating, I had fully understood that nobody was going to leave the room for that night. Reluctantly, I turned around .
The moonlight fall on to the contours of his body, and the line was quivering. He shivered.
I pinched my nose and bend forward to take a better look at his face.
The eyes were closed and lips were pouting out, shinning in purple hues as the light fall on his pale face.
He looked a sleep, but maybe he wasn’t. It was always impossible to make out if he was conscious or not.
Still there was something I could confirm.
Hanging on those long lashes that switch crossed against his cheeks, were big sparkly pearls of tears.
I stared at him for a very long time, just so to make sure I was right.
I couldn’t be wrong.
The great demotic Kim Hee Chul was crying. Cuddling my hand in to his chest, his grip was so tight, like a child hugging a teddy bear, crying.
I fascinated over my new discovery for a short ten minutes and by the eleventh minute started to regret about it.
There were a few things I regret that night, of which this was the first. Because if I hadn’t seen him crying, I wouldn’t have hesitated to take my hands back, I wouldn’t have sat on the bed like a statue, unable to move my upper torso and I wouldn’t have the back sore that lasted almost a week.
The other thing I regret, was throwing my blanket on to the floor earlier on. As the night got colder, I wished my blanket had legs so it could walk itself on me and cover me with warmth. Of course that didn’t happen, so I had to sit through the cold as I tried stretching my feet to reach it but failed to shorten that few inches.
The one thing that I didn’t regret was carrying Kim Hee Chul back to his room at dawn. Because he wouldn’t release my hand, I had to carry him from the front in bridal style instead of the piggy back that I had pictured in my plan.
It just felt right to keep the night as a secrete from him.
On the way to his room, he finally let go of my hand and circled his arms around my neck.
As I lowered him on to the bed, literally tearing his arms apart from me and watched him curling up beside his blanket clutching on to it like the way he did to my hand, I wondered if getting him a soft toy would solve the problem.
Then as I saw the dark circles under my eyes in the rear mirror on the way to school, I knew somehow that no teddy could save me from this horrible fate.
And I was so right.
After yearning for the bed in school for the whole day, I thought I was the happiest person on earth when I lay beneath my quilt that I didn’t mind the alcoholic smell that still lingered on the left behind me. The alcoholic smell only got stronger and stronger. I took a sniff, something was not quite right. The smell wasn’t faint anymore; it was getting intense as if it was fresh. That was a very bad sign…
My face crumpled together like a ball of crushed paper at the thought of that, squinting my eyes shut as I prayed. I knew exactly what was behind me. Yet I chose to believe that little faith I had in me when I turned towards the left side of the bed……
A force tugged me forward and at the sudden attack, I instinctively flexed my chest muscles. Kim Hee Chul’s head hit hard against my torso and I could almost hear a little crack on my ribs.
I tried to push him away instead his arms snaked around my wrist as he huddled himself into me and nuzzled his nose at the centre of my chest. I cringed and stiffened even more when I felt his hot misty breathe penetrating through the thin cloth of the pyjamas on to my skin. My heart hammered uncontrollably at the spot where I felt his breath and that area of skin scalded as if hot pepper sauce had been applied. When he drew in the oxygen, the scalding spot would experience momentary relieve, a cooling and minty sensation. Then it would burn again as he breathed out.
That was the first time I held anyone in my arms, let alone that the “anyone” was actually a man. Yet, odd enough, the experience felt nothing foreign to me.
The school. Empty . Afternoon. Fingers. Nails shinning. Black keys between the whites. Kisses. Touching… …
Random and highly DISTURBING sense flooded my body like plaster, stiffening them into a block of brick. Well strictly speaking, I was a block of hot and aroused brick, if that made any sense.
He breathed slowly and deeply throughout the night. It wasn’t very long before I felt a part of the pyjamas gradually getting wet. He was tearing again.
I I hold in my tummy so that there could be at least a thin gap between us.
I wasn’t sleepy anymore. In fact I stayed wide awake through the night till dawn, when I once again moved Kim Hee Chul back to his room where he was supposed to be in the first place.
Two sleepless nights in a row and I had became the most precious wild life. Though I didn’t eat bamboo, I definitely had a clear resemblance to the panda around the eyes.
Kim Hee Chul was normal in the day, staring in to the air, absorbed in his own world like nothing had happened while Donghae sat beside him and smiled slyly at me during break time. He commented something about having too many strenuous excises at night isn’t good for the body. Kibum blushed and lowered his cap, while I nodded in agreement.
Flexing tummy and chest muscles throughout the night was really hard work. And it was giving me aches everywhere.
By the third night, I was experienced and was fully prepared when the drunk one fall onto the left side of the bed stretching his arms out like he did the in the previous nights. I threw the blanket on his hands between us and he fumbled as he searched for something to grab on.
I watched sitting by the right side of the bed with amusement.
He tossed and turned on the bed, dogged his head in and out of the blankets, moaned with frustration when he couldn’t find the familiarity like the other nights.
Of course I wasn’t going to let him get me this time.
He turned to the other edge of the bed, both hands tangled in the white blanket, struggling in the air and seemed to think he got the right direction. He wiggled in the quilt like he was a butterfly trying to get out of his cocoon. When one of his legs finally did immerge from the cocoon, half of his body was already outside hanging in the mid air, while the other of his body attempt to stay in balance as he wobbled at the side of the bed.
He would at least get a bruise on the head if I had left him fall, and ofcourse that would be less than what he really deserved for the eye bags and dark circles around my eyes, but to some unexplainable reason I couldn’t watch him getting himself hurt. I leaned across the bed and pulled him back by the shoulders.
That of course revealed where I was and landed me in the same awkward position as the nights before, cementing myself in to a hard block, not daring to move an inch as his arms circled around my waist so tightly that I felt the walls my stomach had been pressed together. His heat slowly radiated through the quilt that was lined in between us and I thought I could almost feel his heart beat striking against my own chest.
I looked down at the side of his face lying in the fluffy white blanket around my chest. His complexion was smooth and satin like in the deem moonlight; he sucked on his lower lips in between the hiccups that he would get every now and then while murmuring something too soft for the ear to hear in his sleep. The tears were glittery around his eyes.
It was hard to imagine that the all mighty and demotic Kim Hee Chul would look this innocent at night.
I lowered my head, until the tip of my nose was just above his brown soft hair and inhaled a deep breath.
I thought it would smell alcoholic, like how he smelled all over, but it turned out his hair had a sugary scent of apple halves soaked in orange syrup. It was all fruity and fresh.
It was a very beautiful scent, just like him, all most intoxicating.
He said something through the quilt. His voice travelled and landed on my chest muffled, like soft little paws patting on my skin gently, “stay for me tonight.”
I closed my eyes drifting deep in to his luscious scent.
Yes, maybe just for one night.
____________________________________
But it wasn’t really one night.
I kept the counts at first, but lost the numbers down the way.
It was the next night after that night, the night after the next night and the next next night; it was nights after nights.
It was every night.
He came and slept in my bed, sometimes crying and other times smiling. It was every night that I tried to hide from his embrace but failed each single time. My attempts were most determined at first, but the will had slowly vaporised in his honeyed scent and melting warmth breathes.
It became a habit.
It became a habit that led to other habits.
I began to breed the habit of wondering what his hair smelled like under the sun that shone through the windows of the classroom when he sat behind his desk with his cheeks cupped in the hands. Perhaps it would smell like baked fruits I thought one fine day, before the teacher caught me smiling like an idiot into the air and posted me a question that I ofcourse couldn’t answer.
I began to compare how different the contour lined down his forehead, nose and lips in the day from the front view than from the top view I had when he was lying in my chest at night and that was probably when Donghae stealthy spooned away the strawberry on my cake.
And I began to wonder why he had so many tears at night, why did he looked like another Heechul in the day, why and what was he thinking all the time, why this why that. But strangely not once had it ever crossed my mind to ask him for the answers. I just came up with questions after questions, which only build up on all the other doubts I had about him.
I began to realise that I was caught staring at him more and more often, I began to realise that I was caught thinking of him more often and I began to realise that my world seemed to have shrunk.
It was beginning to revolve around him.
Not because he was queer and strange to me that I wanted to know more about him anymore but because of some unknown forces that attracted my attentions to only circle around him.
Kim Hee Chul, Kim Hee Chul, Kim Hee Chul.
He was the one I was hanging out with everyday and somehow ended up sleeping with every night. It was 24 hours of Kim Hee Chul.
For a moment I thought this was supposed to be what life was about. For a moment I got used to him and thought that having him beside me was normal.
For a moment I had forgotten about the reason. The reason that I met him in the first place, the reason that we ended up in this situation and the reason for having him around me.
There was a reason
Until one particular night, while indulging in his fruity delicious alcoholic scent, I felt the soft light word brushing like dandelion against my ears. The tickle of the word immediately trigged a wash of disgust at the back of the throat as his scent coated like tallow in my windpipes.
It was sin that I had breathed in.
“Siwon.” Either the word was echoing in my ears or the one laying against my chest had said it again in his dreams.
“Siwon.” It was loud and clear.
I held sin in my arms. The very sin that was held by other pair of arms before.
I felt the sudden urge to push him away. I was afraid to stay in this position with him any longer as if I would get punished if we were found.
Then again maybe my conscious was already punishing me.
For the rest of night I couldn’t take my eyes off the pitch of darkness at the foot of the bed. Because I was busy trying to make out if the pitch of blackness was really blackness or a person standing there watching me with a pair of fiery red eyes.
For the rest of the night, the sleeping remained in peaceful slumber, singing a lullaby in between his little snores.
The tune was familiar; the vocal was dreamily sweet, only that the lyrics were nothing else but Siwon Siwon Siwon and Siwon.
______________________
The reality was no matter how much I gathered about Kim Hee Chul, I won’t be able to understand him.
I wouldn’t be able to see what the excessive drinking was about, I wouldn’t be able to guess what were all the tears for and I wouldn’t ever be able to understand why he repeated that name in his dreams.
Why did it seem that he had wiped off all traces of that past when he had remembered his name so clearly?
Why did it seem that he was waiting when he was the one that abandoned?
Why every minute of my little brewing happiness revolving around him did seem right when all of it was build upon guilt?
The other reality was I didn’t really know Hankyung well.
Sometimes understanding what Hankyung really wants would involve circling rounds after rounds in the living room with occasional cursing and swearing when all his wants became too tangled in the head to figure out.
Sometimes understanding Hankyung would be as hard as understanding Kim Hee Chul.
Because the reality was, I had stayed nights after nights in the same bed with Kim Hee Chul, listening to him chanting the other man’s name, shedding tears and pleading me to stay.
Because the reality was, I could have easily pushed him away, shake him awake and scream at him for ruining my sleep, tell him in the day that he had been constantly sleeping in the wrong bed or left him there waking up in his mistake and realising everything naturally by himself, but the reality was I didn’t.
Because the reality was, I had allowed him to lean against me and granted him to mistake me be somebody else while my heart swirled with confusion as he cried or smiled for the other man.
I tried to focus on blaming the one I hug for everything that had happened, for the bloody mess that I saw hyung lying in, but I couldn’t help but to think maybe, just a slight maybe, there was a part of the story I had missed. I couldn’t help but to think that maybe he didn’t deserve all these anguish and couldn’t help to think maybe the hyung I saw through my young worshiping eyes was too perfect to be true.
I succeeded to erase all these little rebelling thoughts away from the mind with great determination only to see every effort gone to waste when the fragile one shuddered with his hysterical wails ringing in the mid night sky, helplessly.
No…! NO! SIWON! SIWON!!!!!
He was having a nightmare, so I thought maybe it was only right if I could offer some comfort.
But the reality was, I wanted to hold the quivering shoulders, the thin frail frame, the long cold sweaty hands, the creamy brown strands soaked in tears nestled on the milky cheeks… … I wanted to hold every part of him against me, badly.
So I did. I shook him gently by the shoulders.
“Hush, hush…everything is alright, everything is right Heechul.”
Because the reality was I didn’t want night mares for him.
Because the reality was, I couldn’t focus on the reality anymore.
Because reality was, the grunge that kept me in reality was fading; something else had taken its place slowly and soundlessly. Something that I didn’t know what it was, something that felt like mist escaping through the gaps of the fingers, something unreal and uncertain, but something that was really and certainly there.
He calmed down. But I lied.
Because the reality was, everything was not alright, because I only held on to his shoulders, because didn’t have the right to have him in my hug, because I didn’t know it would hurt so much.
Because when he whispered, it was never me.
I am not him… …
But the reality was he could never see the fact so he only probed further in to my chest, probed so deep until he drilled a whole in my heart, until the pain was so excruciating that I thought I finally learnt some reality out of it.
I thought the reality was, things were never suppose to happen this way.
That’s okay...all I need is you.
Then he told me what the real reality was.
The reality was this pain that I felt was as luscious as the scent on his hair and as intoxicating as his frail beauty.
________________________________
Subsequently there was no more reality from then.
Every night had become a fantasy. So surreal that sometimes I thought I was imagining his head against my neck, his fingers drawing circles on my tummy; so hypnologic that I was afraid he would wake up in the middle of his dreams, finding that I wasn’t what he had wanted and not appearing here the very next night; everything was so very messy.
A mess of the real mixed with mystery, answers hidden in questions.
What happened between them wasn’t the main focus any more, although I still wanted to know what had happened to delicate man, why did he seem so shattered, which part of his past did the dead participate and why did he seem to be forever trapped in looping his nightmares like a bad song that doesn’t stop playing.
What really mattered was what happened between us.
What mattered was why did my heart tangle when he screamed to the nothingness in the night to get away from him and why did I feel guilty when he cursed me for ditching him in his nightmares.
I didn’t realise when things took the wrong turn, didn’t realise that I need him to be there more than he needed me, didn’t realise anything until
One night he wasn’t there anymore.
I turned in the bed, facing the left side of the empty coldness, the familiar alcoholic scent missing.
I waved my arm cross the bed; it was puzzling how flat it felt, the usual contours gone.
I turned away from the empty spot and stared at the clock ticking in harmony with the rain drops patting against the windows.
10:10, 10:20,10:40…
I listened carefully for any sound in the living room, any click to the door opening, any sign that he returned.
But there was none.
11:10, 11:20, 11:30…
I lay on my sides, lay on my back, lay on my tummy. I did a handstand, did a wheel cart and even a bridge on my hands and legs before collapsing, breathing heavily.
I turned and tossed, crumpling the bed sheet with the right hand and smoothing it flat with the left, squeezing the pillow in between my arms before sitting up and throwing it on to the wall in frustration.
There was a red Adidas watch strapped to my wrist, tickling diligently.
11:40 I sneaked into the living room, to check on the doors just in case he was standing outside because he forgot to bring his keys.
11:45 I checked the shelves in the cellar, thinking maybe he fainted somewhere in between.
11:50 opened the doors to his room, to find an empty bed looking at me.
11:55 I circled around the house panicking. Donghae’s weird glaze on Heechul’s fallen chair that afternoon surfaced from the memories, replaying.
11:56 I remembered Donghae saying Heechul had left suddenly when I had been in the restroom afterschool.
11:57 I reasoned that I was only normal for Kim Hee Chul to do something abnormal like leaving abruptly without waiting for me.
11:58 I laughed at myself stupidly, laughed at my stupidity for worrying, he was an adult already.
11:59 I returned to my room, the staring at each of the folds of the crumpled bed sheet laying silently on the vacuous bed.
12:00 I ran with a pair of sport shoes squeaking in the rain, the thin silk pyjamas fluttering in the wind and an oversized umbrella above the head.
12:01 I remembered I actually had a car that was more efficient than my legs, remembered that I had probably forgotten to lock the doors while at the same time regretted not asking Donghae where was the God- damned-missing-man was heading.
12:10 the sweat blinded an eye, leaving only the other to look around the colourfully lighted city.
12:30 I was in a park nearby, finding the swings empty
12:35 I was back at home which was still empty.
12:40 I was outside the dark empty school gates.
12:50 I prayed to the Gods that I didn’t believe in.
1:20, 1:40, 2:30……
2:35 I had stopped running. This was crazy, I was sleepy, because the whole world was asleep, even the Gods must be sleeping or they would have heard my prayers already.
2:40 I made a list of things I was going to do if I had found him. I would scream at him, I would shake him, I would strangle him, I would hug him, I would tell him all the secrets I had kept from him.
2:41 I didn’t know what to do when I finally saw him, in the middle of the city square, peeping in to a beer can.
2:45 I walked over and he was sitting on the floor looking up to me with hollowed drunken eyes, that was still damn it pretty.
2:46 I asked him to come home, 2:46 he rejected and a second late vomited.
His forehead was burning, he was having a fever.
2:50 he said that he was waiting, waiting for someone that he insisted would be coming and that reminded me the point about screaming and shaking if I was to find him.
But in the end I didn’t shake some sense in to him; I didn’t scream at him that it wasn’t very practical to wait on the dead.
Because before I could do that I found myself crying.
I couldn’t understand where the tears had come from, just like I couldn’t understand why he was waiting.
I couldn’t make sense of anything and started blabbering.
“It’s mid night Hee Chul. Everyone is asleep. No one is here. No one is coming……He wasn’t there to begin with. You knew it wasn’t him….. I don’t know. Tell me. You tell me Heechul, who are you really?! Who is he really?! Who am I to feel this pain? Why did all this happen, why am I even crying, why-”
The time was not registered when his lips touched mine; thinking of it probably time had stopped running.
My heart stopped beating. I forgot that I needed to be breathing. I only remembered that I was supposed to shut my eyes when found his chocolate pupils widening.
When I did close my eyes it was already late, as he lost his conscious, slithering down into my arms. The kiss was started and finished with only the lips touching, nothing more had happened beyond.
It was 3:10 I carried him in my arms, like I did every morning, he circled his arms on my neck like how it was supposed to be.
“ Are we flying again?” he asked.
Until now it was hard to make out if he was sleeping or pretending.
“You are having a fever Heechul.”
“Where are we flying this time?”
I rationally repeated what I said formally, but deep within and in this dream that I prayed would last eternity, I wished that the reply had been
Away from time, questions, answers and reality.
------------------------------------
okay so i finally found the time to read and edit this and I AM TOTALLY EMBARRASSED BY THE AMOUNT OF SPELLING/GRAMMAR/PHRASING MISTAKES, THE MOUNTAINS OF MISSING WORDS AND THE SEAS OF INCOHERENCY
that only goes to show one thing, i must check the crap that i write before posting them... =.=
and hell do i thank god and goddess for only having Wicked Love to read the initial copy... it's like luckily nobody else had read that piece of (your description of junk/crap/shit/generally unpleasant things here) because i could feel really emo if they did. well Wicked Love shii is an exception cause she is really really really ^ infinity nice and sweet....
still i felt bad enough for letting her go through that previous painful long piece of crap....
P.s. I must say that it’s the wonderful friends here I have that got me going and continue writing. Love you all^^ yes. That means you wicked love shii~~~~
*************************************
“Siwon?”
The world suddenly stopped drizzling, a huge black umbrella blocked the silvered night sky and his shadow casted on to me.
“Let’s go home.”
He moved closer, kicking aside the beer cans in his way. The clinging rang crystal clear through the crisp cold atmosphere. He bend down and tried to pull me up by my left arm, the rain drop slid off the umbrella and fell on to my back. It was chilling and so I shivered.
“ No…” I replied and hiccupped, a gulp of warm sour fluid gushed out, as the result his white Nike shoes were stained yellow.
He frowned, raising his hand. The hand did not go anywhere near the shoe, did not turn to a slap, did not do anything accept to brush away the wet hair that was getting into my eyes and cupped on to my forehead.
“Let’s go to the hospital then. You are having a fever.”
It was my turn to frown when not a single drop of liquid rolled out of the can above my lips. I fumbled my hand on the floor, the cans seemed to jumping around; all of them emptied.
“Can you stand up? Can you walk…..”
I slapped his hands away, “ ya! I am not going anywhere! I am waiting for him. He is coming!”
It was so quiet for a moment that I thought he was gone for good.
Ti-da. Ti-da.
Two drops of moisture fall on to my nose bridge.
The rain started to fall again; under the umbrella, falling drop by drop singularly at a strange low frequency.
“It’s mid night Hee Chul. Everyone is asleep. No one is here. No one is coming. ”
The frequency increased, I lifted my head, the drops fell on to my cheeks, streamed to the corner of my lips, and I gave it a lick. It tasted salty.
“He wasn’t there to begin with. You knew it wasn’t him…..”
The umbrella fell to the ground.
The raining one covered me with his arms tightly from the drizzle, but his tears was the one that made me wet. The hug was so familiar that it felt so wrong.
Why should he be hugging me? Why was he even here? Why did he even care?
“Why are you crying?”
“ I don’t know. You tell me Heechul. Tell me, who are you really?! Who is he really?! Who am I to feel this pain? Why did all this happen, why am I even crying, why-”
He shuddered I placed my lips against his and all the loud questions stopped. I didn’t know why I did it.
We both didn’t close our eyes. He stared blankly in front while I wondered the same questions as him.
Who is he?
When I looked cross the wet sparkly lashes and in to blank black orbs above the shimmering hot cheeks, there I found who he was.
He was a kid.
The kid that didn’t like broccolis the kid that was annoying proud and stubborn. The kid that had a really bad accent the kid that saved me the kid that I forcefully kissed once before the kid that challenged me to love him he kid that was now crying for me when he had no reasons to do so.
He was the kid that was painfully similar to the guy that left me.
Yet he was nobody else but himself. The very self that I chose to kiss
For the first time I was sure, this wasn’t just a mistake.
________________________________________________________________
The reality is Kim Hee Chul equates to utter strangeness.
The reality is, it’s perpetually impossible for you to understand what is really going around in his head.
For instance it’s impossible for me to understand his inability to be appreciative of help offered to him, or his lack of attention in class to anything except for himself or his failure in pronouncing the ‘Geng’ in my name while he voluntarily changed it to “Kyung”.
I had spent the past weeks gathering eccentric facts about him.
The first thing that I felt odd was, despite his “popularity” , in reality he didn’t have many friends. Well I could empathised with that easily, since it was obvious Kim Hee Chul had an EQ that was less than the grumpy street cats he liked to stop by and teased. But what bothered me was his weird association with the bubbly Donghae and the quiet Kibum.
It was apparent all the three had characters that were poles apart from each other, yet the latter two claimed to be twins and stuck themselves on Kim Hee Chul like they were bubble gums on his soles; they followed the eccentric one like shadows.
Indeed they were like shadows.
Though they didn’t really wear like him, stride with pride in the coward like him, nor talked in sarcasm like him, but their auras where bizarrely similar to him.
Kibum was quiet and behaved almost as if he was a fossil, like he wasn’t paying attention to anything. Yet he always spoke the most powerful lines.
On the first day we met he shot me a “welcoming-killer-stare” and said, “Be good to him.”
That was the end of my conversation with him for the rest of the week as he slouched into his original position and never moved again.
Donghae on the other hand, was as bouncy as a cheery kid, simple minded and very friendly.
So when he saw that I couldn’t really grasp at what former had said, he explained gladly with a grin. “He meant Heechul hyung. Kibum tells that to every of hyung’s new boy friend, but they never listened.”
That made sense since Kim Hee Chul was the only one absent at the scene, but they excused him just to tell me this? As I was still processing the information gotten, Donghae leaned his arms on the table and narrowed the distance between our face to merely inches.
“We know the game between you and hyung…”
My heart skipped a bit as his usual high pitched voice lowered in to a husky tone. He was smiling no more.
How could they have known…
“You offered protection just to get hyung so that you could quench your lust and brag about it, didn’t you? It’s all the same with the other guys. If that’s what you are after, drop the idea now. Or we will make you.”
Though the conversation had just escalated to a threat, my heart managed to return to its normal beats.
They didn’t know exactly.
Donghae sagged back, two of his hands on the chair supporting him with his arms tight beside him, shoulders raised and legs swinging, the naïve curve resurfaced on his lips.
“Then again… from the way hyung treats you…maybe you are different.”
I frowned.
He explained, “Can’t you see? He cares about you.”
As a matter of fact, I couldn’t see how Kim Hee Chul could be related to the word ‘care’. Since that differed greatly from my observation and deductions of the reason behind his indifferent character.
He cared about nothing. He simply lives in his own world.
That was the second thing I noticed about him.
He seemed to live in a transparent bell jar.
A bell jar that is air tight, sound proof, shock proof and in fact probably energy proof; a bell that is invisibly light so he could carry it everywhere with a conspicuous “MY WORLD” pinned on it.
He could sit would in the jar all day, isolated from the rest of the happenings, not knowing Bush had stepped down and now it’s Obama, not knowing the lessons had started and ended, not knowing anything that he didn’t want to know.
Sometimes he would sit in it whistling the strangest tune, act out a made up conversation with a sudden loud swear that would make you drop your spoonful of rice, or just doodle squiggly shapes.
Most of the time it would difficult to make out what he was singing, even more exasperating to understand his drawings and completely impossible to comprehend his little speeches with himself.
There was a few times though, I saw him drawing an ox’s head on to a stick man’s body. Then he would narrow his eyes darkly and mark crosses over the “minotaur”, until the strokes on the poor creature would later embed at the corner of his desk permanently.
Other times he would sit in the ball jar silently, not even raising a hair on his body and stare at the surrounding with his eyes, moving his naturally yet horrifyingly huge pupils with any being that was in motion. It might be a caterpillar, it might be a falling hair from the head of the almost bald geography teacher, but it would never be you.
Don’t ever think he was looking at you. He wasn’t particularly interested in human beings.
But most importantly, don’t ever stare at him affectionately even if he had looked like a live sized doll innocently enclosed in a glass case. You will regret when he catches you in a shock with that sly smirk sandwiching his long hanging tongue.
Because he might look a sleep, but he was never really resting.
Because he lived a life through dreams and made up fantasy in exchange to be lost in touch with what’s called reality.
The last thing I found out about him was his incapability to live without alcohol.
His bell jar would turn in to a whine barrow at night.
Of what whine his barrow contained he didn’t seem to mind. In fact he enjoyed to mix and match, like he was a chemist, pouring in the barrow different shades of red, yellow, white. Then he waited as if he was waiting for something brewing.
It was unconsciousness that finally fermented and he would gladly pickle himself in his self-brewed numbness, like a specimen baby that had soaked forever long in the jars placed behind a science laboratory.
Of what reason I was yet to gather, but he had hated reality.
Well, his night habits weren’t really anything to do with me, till I had became part of it.
The first morning next to the very first day he moved in to my house, he had ended waking up beside me. He had ended up scaring a maid. The maid ended up spreading the fresh piece of “news” to other maids and before this news could get any chance ending up in my parents’ ears back in the main house hold at China; I had sent the maids back to their hometowns with a good sum of money.
As I lay under the blanket the second night, thinking of the reactions my parents would have on their faces if they had heard that their only son left had shared a bed with somebody, the somebody being a man and not a girl, I heaved a small sigh of relieve that I had managed to wrap up the incident perfectly.
I tugged the blanket closer to my neck, snuggling in its warmth in content, rolling myself from one end of the bed to the other end because I had forgotten that the reality was, things don’t ever end smoothly.
BANG. And I was back in reality.
“OUCH-“
My head hit on something hard, and I took half a second to turn around unwrapping myself from my blanket and setting up. The impact had caused my eyes to tear, the night to swirl, plus the fact that I didn’t have a wonderful vision in dark the first place, it was impossible for me to make out the black object that was lying lifelessly in front of me.
But it was strange how my instinct had told me exactly what it was…
“Ya! KIM HEE CHUL! WHY ARE YOU HERE AGAIN?!”
The mentioned one lay dead as a log and didn’t bother to answer.
I leaned in front and took a sniff. Pungent alcoholic smell emitted from him and the thought of him staining my white clean almost holy bed with that stench made me shiver in disgust. The maids would need to change the bed sheets. Then again I remembered that the maids were gone, I had to do it myself
I threw the blanket up into the air in frustration. Just how much did this guy drink?!
I pinched my nose and gave Kim Hee Chul a shove with two fingers. He didn’t move an inch.
FINE. If he liked this room so much, then it shall be his! I will go sleep in another.
I lowered one of my feet in to the slipper and just as I was about to do the same to the other feet, he grabbed my hand.
I frost in the air, like I was a thief caught red handed.
“D-Don’t...” his voice broke and ended off in little pieces like he hadn’t being using them for the past ten years.
Then he said it again, “don’t go……”.His voice was soft and almost inaudible to the ears.
He held another hand on to my arms, this time repeated firmly, “please don’t go”.
I wasn’t about to give up. I pulled and tugged my hands away from his grip with clenching teeth, once twice and thrice. By the time I was puffing and sweating, I had fully understood that nobody was going to leave the room for that night. Reluctantly, I turned around .
The moonlight fall on to the contours of his body, and the line was quivering. He shivered.
I pinched my nose and bend forward to take a better look at his face.
The eyes were closed and lips were pouting out, shinning in purple hues as the light fall on his pale face.
He looked a sleep, but maybe he wasn’t. It was always impossible to make out if he was conscious or not.
Still there was something I could confirm.
Hanging on those long lashes that switch crossed against his cheeks, were big sparkly pearls of tears.
I stared at him for a very long time, just so to make sure I was right.
I couldn’t be wrong.
The great demotic Kim Hee Chul was crying. Cuddling my hand in to his chest, his grip was so tight, like a child hugging a teddy bear, crying.
I fascinated over my new discovery for a short ten minutes and by the eleventh minute started to regret about it.
There were a few things I regret that night, of which this was the first. Because if I hadn’t seen him crying, I wouldn’t have hesitated to take my hands back, I wouldn’t have sat on the bed like a statue, unable to move my upper torso and I wouldn’t have the back sore that lasted almost a week.
The other thing I regret, was throwing my blanket on to the floor earlier on. As the night got colder, I wished my blanket had legs so it could walk itself on me and cover me with warmth. Of course that didn’t happen, so I had to sit through the cold as I tried stretching my feet to reach it but failed to shorten that few inches.
The one thing that I didn’t regret was carrying Kim Hee Chul back to his room at dawn. Because he wouldn’t release my hand, I had to carry him from the front in bridal style instead of the piggy back that I had pictured in my plan.
It just felt right to keep the night as a secrete from him.
On the way to his room, he finally let go of my hand and circled his arms around my neck.
As I lowered him on to the bed, literally tearing his arms apart from me and watched him curling up beside his blanket clutching on to it like the way he did to my hand, I wondered if getting him a soft toy would solve the problem.
Then as I saw the dark circles under my eyes in the rear mirror on the way to school, I knew somehow that no teddy could save me from this horrible fate.
And I was so right.
After yearning for the bed in school for the whole day, I thought I was the happiest person on earth when I lay beneath my quilt that I didn’t mind the alcoholic smell that still lingered on the left behind me. The alcoholic smell only got stronger and stronger. I took a sniff, something was not quite right. The smell wasn’t faint anymore; it was getting intense as if it was fresh. That was a very bad sign…
My face crumpled together like a ball of crushed paper at the thought of that, squinting my eyes shut as I prayed. I knew exactly what was behind me. Yet I chose to believe that little faith I had in me when I turned towards the left side of the bed……
A force tugged me forward and at the sudden attack, I instinctively flexed my chest muscles. Kim Hee Chul’s head hit hard against my torso and I could almost hear a little crack on my ribs.
I tried to push him away instead his arms snaked around my wrist as he huddled himself into me and nuzzled his nose at the centre of my chest. I cringed and stiffened even more when I felt his hot misty breathe penetrating through the thin cloth of the pyjamas on to my skin. My heart hammered uncontrollably at the spot where I felt his breath and that area of skin scalded as if hot pepper sauce had been applied. When he drew in the oxygen, the scalding spot would experience momentary relieve, a cooling and minty sensation. Then it would burn again as he breathed out.
That was the first time I held anyone in my arms, let alone that the “anyone” was actually a man. Yet, odd enough, the experience felt nothing foreign to me.
The school. Empty . Afternoon. Fingers. Nails shinning. Black keys between the whites. Kisses. Touching… …
Random and highly DISTURBING sense flooded my body like plaster, stiffening them into a block of brick. Well strictly speaking, I was a block of hot and aroused brick, if that made any sense.
He breathed slowly and deeply throughout the night. It wasn’t very long before I felt a part of the pyjamas gradually getting wet. He was tearing again.
I I hold in my tummy so that there could be at least a thin gap between us.
I wasn’t sleepy anymore. In fact I stayed wide awake through the night till dawn, when I once again moved Kim Hee Chul back to his room where he was supposed to be in the first place.
Two sleepless nights in a row and I had became the most precious wild life. Though I didn’t eat bamboo, I definitely had a clear resemblance to the panda around the eyes.
Kim Hee Chul was normal in the day, staring in to the air, absorbed in his own world like nothing had happened while Donghae sat beside him and smiled slyly at me during break time. He commented something about having too many strenuous excises at night isn’t good for the body. Kibum blushed and lowered his cap, while I nodded in agreement.
Flexing tummy and chest muscles throughout the night was really hard work. And it was giving me aches everywhere.
By the third night, I was experienced and was fully prepared when the drunk one fall onto the left side of the bed stretching his arms out like he did the in the previous nights. I threw the blanket on his hands between us and he fumbled as he searched for something to grab on.
I watched sitting by the right side of the bed with amusement.
He tossed and turned on the bed, dogged his head in and out of the blankets, moaned with frustration when he couldn’t find the familiarity like the other nights.
Of course I wasn’t going to let him get me this time.
He turned to the other edge of the bed, both hands tangled in the white blanket, struggling in the air and seemed to think he got the right direction. He wiggled in the quilt like he was a butterfly trying to get out of his cocoon. When one of his legs finally did immerge from the cocoon, half of his body was already outside hanging in the mid air, while the other of his body attempt to stay in balance as he wobbled at the side of the bed.
He would at least get a bruise on the head if I had left him fall, and ofcourse that would be less than what he really deserved for the eye bags and dark circles around my eyes, but to some unexplainable reason I couldn’t watch him getting himself hurt. I leaned across the bed and pulled him back by the shoulders.
That of course revealed where I was and landed me in the same awkward position as the nights before, cementing myself in to a hard block, not daring to move an inch as his arms circled around my waist so tightly that I felt the walls my stomach had been pressed together. His heat slowly radiated through the quilt that was lined in between us and I thought I could almost feel his heart beat striking against my own chest.
I looked down at the side of his face lying in the fluffy white blanket around my chest. His complexion was smooth and satin like in the deem moonlight; he sucked on his lower lips in between the hiccups that he would get every now and then while murmuring something too soft for the ear to hear in his sleep. The tears were glittery around his eyes.
It was hard to imagine that the all mighty and demotic Kim Hee Chul would look this innocent at night.
I lowered my head, until the tip of my nose was just above his brown soft hair and inhaled a deep breath.
I thought it would smell alcoholic, like how he smelled all over, but it turned out his hair had a sugary scent of apple halves soaked in orange syrup. It was all fruity and fresh.
It was a very beautiful scent, just like him, all most intoxicating.
He said something through the quilt. His voice travelled and landed on my chest muffled, like soft little paws patting on my skin gently, “stay for me tonight.”
I closed my eyes drifting deep in to his luscious scent.
Yes, maybe just for one night.
____________________________________
But it wasn’t really one night.
I kept the counts at first, but lost the numbers down the way.
It was the next night after that night, the night after the next night and the next next night; it was nights after nights.
It was every night.
He came and slept in my bed, sometimes crying and other times smiling. It was every night that I tried to hide from his embrace but failed each single time. My attempts were most determined at first, but the will had slowly vaporised in his honeyed scent and melting warmth breathes.
It became a habit.
It became a habit that led to other habits.
I began to breed the habit of wondering what his hair smelled like under the sun that shone through the windows of the classroom when he sat behind his desk with his cheeks cupped in the hands. Perhaps it would smell like baked fruits I thought one fine day, before the teacher caught me smiling like an idiot into the air and posted me a question that I ofcourse couldn’t answer.
I began to compare how different the contour lined down his forehead, nose and lips in the day from the front view than from the top view I had when he was lying in my chest at night and that was probably when Donghae stealthy spooned away the strawberry on my cake.
And I began to wonder why he had so many tears at night, why did he looked like another Heechul in the day, why and what was he thinking all the time, why this why that. But strangely not once had it ever crossed my mind to ask him for the answers. I just came up with questions after questions, which only build up on all the other doubts I had about him.
I began to realise that I was caught staring at him more and more often, I began to realise that I was caught thinking of him more often and I began to realise that my world seemed to have shrunk.
It was beginning to revolve around him.
Not because he was queer and strange to me that I wanted to know more about him anymore but because of some unknown forces that attracted my attentions to only circle around him.
Kim Hee Chul, Kim Hee Chul, Kim Hee Chul.
He was the one I was hanging out with everyday and somehow ended up sleeping with every night. It was 24 hours of Kim Hee Chul.
For a moment I thought this was supposed to be what life was about. For a moment I got used to him and thought that having him beside me was normal.
For a moment I had forgotten about the reason. The reason that I met him in the first place, the reason that we ended up in this situation and the reason for having him around me.
There was a reason
Until one particular night, while indulging in his fruity delicious alcoholic scent, I felt the soft light word brushing like dandelion against my ears. The tickle of the word immediately trigged a wash of disgust at the back of the throat as his scent coated like tallow in my windpipes.
It was sin that I had breathed in.
“Siwon.” Either the word was echoing in my ears or the one laying against my chest had said it again in his dreams.
“Siwon.” It was loud and clear.
I held sin in my arms. The very sin that was held by other pair of arms before.
I felt the sudden urge to push him away. I was afraid to stay in this position with him any longer as if I would get punished if we were found.
Then again maybe my conscious was already punishing me.
For the rest of night I couldn’t take my eyes off the pitch of darkness at the foot of the bed. Because I was busy trying to make out if the pitch of blackness was really blackness or a person standing there watching me with a pair of fiery red eyes.
For the rest of the night, the sleeping remained in peaceful slumber, singing a lullaby in between his little snores.
The tune was familiar; the vocal was dreamily sweet, only that the lyrics were nothing else but Siwon Siwon Siwon and Siwon.
______________________
The reality was no matter how much I gathered about Kim Hee Chul, I won’t be able to understand him.
I wouldn’t be able to see what the excessive drinking was about, I wouldn’t be able to guess what were all the tears for and I wouldn’t ever be able to understand why he repeated that name in his dreams.
Why did it seem that he had wiped off all traces of that past when he had remembered his name so clearly?
Why did it seem that he was waiting when he was the one that abandoned?
Why every minute of my little brewing happiness revolving around him did seem right when all of it was build upon guilt?
The other reality was I didn’t really know Hankyung well.
Sometimes understanding what Hankyung really wants would involve circling rounds after rounds in the living room with occasional cursing and swearing when all his wants became too tangled in the head to figure out.
Sometimes understanding Hankyung would be as hard as understanding Kim Hee Chul.
Because the reality was, I had stayed nights after nights in the same bed with Kim Hee Chul, listening to him chanting the other man’s name, shedding tears and pleading me to stay.
Because the reality was, I could have easily pushed him away, shake him awake and scream at him for ruining my sleep, tell him in the day that he had been constantly sleeping in the wrong bed or left him there waking up in his mistake and realising everything naturally by himself, but the reality was I didn’t.
Because the reality was, I had allowed him to lean against me and granted him to mistake me be somebody else while my heart swirled with confusion as he cried or smiled for the other man.
I tried to focus on blaming the one I hug for everything that had happened, for the bloody mess that I saw hyung lying in, but I couldn’t help but to think maybe, just a slight maybe, there was a part of the story I had missed. I couldn’t help but to think that maybe he didn’t deserve all these anguish and couldn’t help to think maybe the hyung I saw through my young worshiping eyes was too perfect to be true.
I succeeded to erase all these little rebelling thoughts away from the mind with great determination only to see every effort gone to waste when the fragile one shuddered with his hysterical wails ringing in the mid night sky, helplessly.
No…! NO! SIWON! SIWON!!!!!
He was having a nightmare, so I thought maybe it was only right if I could offer some comfort.
But the reality was, I wanted to hold the quivering shoulders, the thin frail frame, the long cold sweaty hands, the creamy brown strands soaked in tears nestled on the milky cheeks… … I wanted to hold every part of him against me, badly.
So I did. I shook him gently by the shoulders.
“Hush, hush…everything is alright, everything is right Heechul.”
Because the reality was I didn’t want night mares for him.
Because the reality was, I couldn’t focus on the reality anymore.
Because reality was, the grunge that kept me in reality was fading; something else had taken its place slowly and soundlessly. Something that I didn’t know what it was, something that felt like mist escaping through the gaps of the fingers, something unreal and uncertain, but something that was really and certainly there.
He calmed down. But I lied.
Because the reality was, everything was not alright, because I only held on to his shoulders, because didn’t have the right to have him in my hug, because I didn’t know it would hurt so much.
Because when he whispered, it was never me.
I am not him… …
But the reality was he could never see the fact so he only probed further in to my chest, probed so deep until he drilled a whole in my heart, until the pain was so excruciating that I thought I finally learnt some reality out of it.
I thought the reality was, things were never suppose to happen this way.
That’s okay...all I need is you.
Then he told me what the real reality was.
The reality was this pain that I felt was as luscious as the scent on his hair and as intoxicating as his frail beauty.
________________________________
Subsequently there was no more reality from then.
Every night had become a fantasy. So surreal that sometimes I thought I was imagining his head against my neck, his fingers drawing circles on my tummy; so hypnologic that I was afraid he would wake up in the middle of his dreams, finding that I wasn’t what he had wanted and not appearing here the very next night; everything was so very messy.
A mess of the real mixed with mystery, answers hidden in questions.
What happened between them wasn’t the main focus any more, although I still wanted to know what had happened to delicate man, why did he seem so shattered, which part of his past did the dead participate and why did he seem to be forever trapped in looping his nightmares like a bad song that doesn’t stop playing.
What really mattered was what happened between us.
What mattered was why did my heart tangle when he screamed to the nothingness in the night to get away from him and why did I feel guilty when he cursed me for ditching him in his nightmares.
I didn’t realise when things took the wrong turn, didn’t realise that I need him to be there more than he needed me, didn’t realise anything until
One night he wasn’t there anymore.
I turned in the bed, facing the left side of the empty coldness, the familiar alcoholic scent missing.
I waved my arm cross the bed; it was puzzling how flat it felt, the usual contours gone.
I turned away from the empty spot and stared at the clock ticking in harmony with the rain drops patting against the windows.
10:10, 10:20,10:40…
I listened carefully for any sound in the living room, any click to the door opening, any sign that he returned.
But there was none.
11:10, 11:20, 11:30…
I lay on my sides, lay on my back, lay on my tummy. I did a handstand, did a wheel cart and even a bridge on my hands and legs before collapsing, breathing heavily.
I turned and tossed, crumpling the bed sheet with the right hand and smoothing it flat with the left, squeezing the pillow in between my arms before sitting up and throwing it on to the wall in frustration.
There was a red Adidas watch strapped to my wrist, tickling diligently.
11:40 I sneaked into the living room, to check on the doors just in case he was standing outside because he forgot to bring his keys.
11:45 I checked the shelves in the cellar, thinking maybe he fainted somewhere in between.
11:50 opened the doors to his room, to find an empty bed looking at me.
11:55 I circled around the house panicking. Donghae’s weird glaze on Heechul’s fallen chair that afternoon surfaced from the memories, replaying.
11:56 I remembered Donghae saying Heechul had left suddenly when I had been in the restroom afterschool.
11:57 I reasoned that I was only normal for Kim Hee Chul to do something abnormal like leaving abruptly without waiting for me.
11:58 I laughed at myself stupidly, laughed at my stupidity for worrying, he was an adult already.
11:59 I returned to my room, the staring at each of the folds of the crumpled bed sheet laying silently on the vacuous bed.
12:00 I ran with a pair of sport shoes squeaking in the rain, the thin silk pyjamas fluttering in the wind and an oversized umbrella above the head.
12:01 I remembered I actually had a car that was more efficient than my legs, remembered that I had probably forgotten to lock the doors while at the same time regretted not asking Donghae where was the God- damned-missing-man was heading.
12:10 the sweat blinded an eye, leaving only the other to look around the colourfully lighted city.
12:30 I was in a park nearby, finding the swings empty
12:35 I was back at home which was still empty.
12:40 I was outside the dark empty school gates.
12:50 I prayed to the Gods that I didn’t believe in.
1:20, 1:40, 2:30……
2:35 I had stopped running. This was crazy, I was sleepy, because the whole world was asleep, even the Gods must be sleeping or they would have heard my prayers already.
2:40 I made a list of things I was going to do if I had found him. I would scream at him, I would shake him, I would strangle him, I would hug him, I would tell him all the secrets I had kept from him.
2:41 I didn’t know what to do when I finally saw him, in the middle of the city square, peeping in to a beer can.
2:45 I walked over and he was sitting on the floor looking up to me with hollowed drunken eyes, that was still damn it pretty.
2:46 I asked him to come home, 2:46 he rejected and a second late vomited.
His forehead was burning, he was having a fever.
2:50 he said that he was waiting, waiting for someone that he insisted would be coming and that reminded me the point about screaming and shaking if I was to find him.
But in the end I didn’t shake some sense in to him; I didn’t scream at him that it wasn’t very practical to wait on the dead.
Because before I could do that I found myself crying.
I couldn’t understand where the tears had come from, just like I couldn’t understand why he was waiting.
I couldn’t make sense of anything and started blabbering.
“It’s mid night Hee Chul. Everyone is asleep. No one is here. No one is coming……He wasn’t there to begin with. You knew it wasn’t him….. I don’t know. Tell me. You tell me Heechul, who are you really?! Who is he really?! Who am I to feel this pain? Why did all this happen, why am I even crying, why-”
The time was not registered when his lips touched mine; thinking of it probably time had stopped running.
My heart stopped beating. I forgot that I needed to be breathing. I only remembered that I was supposed to shut my eyes when found his chocolate pupils widening.
When I did close my eyes it was already late, as he lost his conscious, slithering down into my arms. The kiss was started and finished with only the lips touching, nothing more had happened beyond.
It was 3:10 I carried him in my arms, like I did every morning, he circled his arms on my neck like how it was supposed to be.
“ Are we flying again?” he asked.
Until now it was hard to make out if he was sleeping or pretending.
“You are having a fever Heechul.”
“Where are we flying this time?”
I rationally repeated what I said formally, but deep within and in this dream that I prayed would last eternity, I wished that the reply had been
Away from time, questions, answers and reality.
------------------------------------
okay so i finally found the time to read and edit this and I AM TOTALLY EMBARRASSED BY THE AMOUNT OF SPELLING/GRAMMAR/PHRASING MISTAKES, THE MOUNTAINS OF MISSING WORDS AND THE SEAS OF INCOHERENCY
that only goes to show one thing, i must check the crap that i write before posting them... =.=
and hell do i thank god and goddess for only having Wicked Love to read the initial copy... it's like luckily nobody else had read that piece of (your description of junk/crap/shit/generally unpleasant things here) because i could feel really emo if they did. well Wicked Love shii is an exception cause she is really really really ^ infinity nice and sweet....
still i felt bad enough for letting her go through that previous painful long piece of crap....