[Mini series] Where Wisterias Grow {1/3}
Hello. This fic is once again requested by myself. ^___^
Boring, plotless, very slow-paced and very long-winded but hey, I liked it. I like these kinds of stories that confuse people. :)
Let us put on hold all ongoing fics for this one because I badly need a sort of springboard to get me back into writing again while work and real life is not kicking my ass. Haha! This fic is almost finished but I can’t wait to post the first part just because I am one hell of a crazy person like that. :(
Where Wisterias Grow
And yes, I know how lonely life can be
The shadows follow me
And the night won’t set me free
But I don’t let the evening get me down
Now that you’re around me.
-Don McLean, “And I Love You So”
“Hey…”
“Hey.”
“Do you think there would be wisterias in heaven?”
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There’s a strange full moon beaming in the sky. Its light is paler than usual, almost bordering between white and translucent white. The night clouds cover a portion of the moon, bathing one side of the sky in eerie darkness. A handful of stars twinkle and they blink and blink on the earth like pairs of eyes that refuse to sleep. Shadows dance, skipping from one point to another, hugging walls and posts before gradually disappearing in a corner as if they are children busy playing hide and seek.
A humid wind is blowing and it slightly disturbs the calmness of the night, signaling a quiet storm. Somewhere above the light-blanketed city, a man stands five storeys higher than the rest of the world. His dull eyes stare at the strange full moon while his shoulders are hunched as if half of the world is cradled on top of it. His lips move quietly as he hums an old love song that radios rarely play these days.
One foot steps forward dangerously towards the end of the concrete floor and a second later, the other foot joins the first. He closes his eyes, feeling the wind pulling him back as if desperately saying: hold on, hold on! Wait a second, wait a minute, wait one more lifetime!
“Why wait? What’s there to wait for? Why wait?” In his mind he asks the wind. A few more baby shuffles and he’s prepared to jump. He keeps his eyes closed, feeling the wind once again pulling him back.
“One more minute, one more second, wait… wait...!” Something in the wind desperately calls to him.
And for some reason - for some strange and unexplainable reason - he waited, the way that the strange voices in the wind told him to. He keeps his eyes closed, feet unmoving and hands calmly hanging on his sides. He waited and gave the voices one more benefit of the doubt.
“I waited, I waited. What’s there to wait for? Why wait?” He once again asks. He was not expecting an answer and he was willing to wait for only a fraction of a second. Then again, just like how life often surprises us with unexpected moments in unexpected times, in that fraction of a second he met the personification of the explanation to the reason why he chose to wait when something in the wind told him to wait. For it only took a fraction of a second for him to hear a soft voice asking him…
“Hey, what’s your name?”
Cho Kyuhyun slightly turns towards his right where the sound of the soft voice came from. Under the strange light of the full moon, he made out the features of a man sitting cross-legged and, just like him, is staring at the majestic queen of the night sky.
Kyuhyun studies the man for a second before deciding to ignore him and place him in the category of strangers. He closes his eyes once again, slightly spreads his arms and prepares himself for the fall. Another fraction of a second passes and he hears the man speak once again.
“Hey, do you think… there’d be wisterias in heaven?” The man weirdly asks. Kyuhyun frowns and opens his eyes to look at the queer man once again.
“How should I know?” Kyuhyun snarls. The man smiles a little and painfully gets on his feet. Kyuhyun watches him carefully as the man tries to relieve the cramps settling on his legs.
“Wisterias are purple flowers,” the man explains. “They’re very pretty and they have such a pretty name. Have you ever seen one?”
Kyuhyun smiles sarcastically.
“No. I’m not even interested in seeing one,” he said. “I’m going to die young and I probably won’t be able to see one anyway so go away,” he blurts out and glares at the man when he realizes that he’d just blurted out the very reason why he’s standing five storeys high, ready to take his own life.
“I’ve seen some in the internet,” the man says, moving closer to Kyuhyun. “I’ve always wondered how they look like in person. I’ve yet to see one and I’m just like you. I’ll probably die within a year or a little more than that and I may never get to see wisterias in person,” the man is now beside Kyuhyun. His hands are clasped behind his back as he takes a peek at the long ground below.
Interest piqued, Kyuhyun stares at the man and wonders if he’s giving him crap. How in the world could two dying men who never saw wisterias before meet in a place like this?
“If you’re going to jump off this building, then do it. Don’t give me that kind of bullshit,” Kyuhyun snarls.
“I’m not going to waste my time,” the man says. “Do you know that people who take their own lives don’t even get to see heaven? They’re stuck in between, in some kind of a limbo. I don’t want to be stuck. It’s the end of summer now soon it will be autumn and the flowers will die out and damn, we’re in Korea, I’m not even sure if there are wisterias in Korea. But what if there are wisterias in heaven? If I take my life I won’t be able to find out. I’ll be stuck in a limbo and I’m going to have to wait to be reborn again to see one. But what if I forget that I want to see wisterias when I’m reborn again? What if I only remember it when I’m about to die again, don’t you think that sucks?” The man continues to blabber on and on and on and Kyuhyun simply stares at him, each word passing like warm air through his ears.
“So I’m not going to waste my time, I’m going to travel all around Korea, spend my money as if this day is going to be the very last day I’m going to live… well, technically, my days are numbered, and well… I’m going to look for wisterias. I want to see it. A field of violet dazzling before my eyes…”
Kyuhyun stares at the talking man and watches the movement of his lips. His voice started out melancholic and grew in pitch with each sentence, with each word, with each letter. And, in some kind of weird and simple miracle, Kyuhyun finds it amusing.
“You… suck,” he manages to say.
The man stops abruptly, stares at Kyuhyun and grins so brightly and Kyuhyun was so convinced that the stupid man is pulling his stupid leg about this dying thing.
“Want to hunt for wisterias with me before we die?” The man offers and Kyuhyun smirks. He went down from the edge of the concrete floor to stand on level with the man.
For a moment they both stare in silence at the strange full moon.
“You suck,” Kyuhyun says as he starts to walk away. “I don’t want to spend my remaining days with someone who sucks,” he says and gives the man a peace sign before completely walking away.
The man grins and shouts, “It’s Lee Sungmin, you know! My name is Lee Sungmin!”
“Yeah. Yeah,” Kyuhyun mutters under his breath and stops for a second. Why is he not standing near the edge of the building anyway? Why is he walking away towards safety when a few seconds ago he was certain he would end his life faster than his disease could? And then he remembers the wisterias and the strange man and he smiles, cursing himself for wanting to see wisterias too.
“Hey, stupid,” Kyuhyun calls his doctor best friend named Kim Ryeowook. “What the fuck are wisterias anyway?”
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Lee Sungmin grins as he watches the man walking away. At least, that was another life saved; another life stopped from being wasted.
“Hey,” he murmurs minutes later when his doctor friend Kim Ryeowook answers his call. “I still haven’t found out if there are wisterias in heaven.”
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Cho Kyuhyun is a twenty-five-year-old man who found out on a lonely September morning that he’s not going to live to see his twenty sixth year on earth. He was calmly descending down the flight of stairs in his apartment building when the world spins around him and he falls into a pool of scary darkness… so scary that when he wakes up and the first rays of light danced in front of his eyes, he breathes a sigh of over joy and relief.
“Hey,” someone says beside him and Kyuhyun turns to see his doctor bestfriend, Kim Ryeowook worriedly standing by the right side of his bed.
“Hey,” Kyuhyun clears his throat as he studies Ryeowook warily.
“How are you feeling?”
“Quit the crap and tell me why you’re looking like the world has thrown you out towards Saturn,” he tells him.
Ryeowook laces his fingers together, stares out the window and onto the quiet morning before murmuring the words that quite literally ended Kyuhyun’s life.
“Acute leukemia, we don’t know what else to do.”
The rest of the moments that followed that one single declaration had been lost to Kyuhyun. It is as if he already died the moment Ryeowook told him that he doesn’t know what to do. He doesn’t know if that was a normal reaction for people who suddenly came to terms with their own mortality or if it’s only him. Perhaps that very moment made him realize a hidden weakness within him that’s slowly creeping out and eating him whole.
He’s dying. He’s going to die. What is there to be strong about when he knows that a year from now, he won’t be around to brag about how strong he really is?
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Lee Sungmin is a twenty-six-year-old man who came to terms with his own mortality one lonely September morning. He’s a busy baker who accidentally trips on the foot of the baking table, hits his head on the floor quite hard and wakes up feeling woozy on a white hospital bed with a kind-faced doctor named Kim Ryeowook smiling at him.
“Hey,” the doctor says.
“Hey,” Sungmin says back. “Was that a nasty fall?” He asks, remembering the reason why he’s in a hospital.
The doctor clears his throat gently before speaking and shaking his head.
“No, it wasn’t,” he says quietly.
“Good,” Sungmin closes his eyes. “I still have a wedding cake to bake.”
There was silence - the kind that is filled with unspoken worries and thick anxieties. Sungmin turns slightly towards the small-built doctor.
“Why?” He asks and the moment he receives an answer, he wished he didn’t ask in the first place.
“We did some tests and… Acute leukemia, we don’t know what else to do.”
Sungmin’s face must have registered a myriad of emotions for the small doctor takes him by the hand, offering a kind of sympathy that did not manage to prevent the sudden reality from crashing on Sungmin.
“Funny, isn’t it?” Sungmin’s brain teases at that moment. “How funny and scary to receive direct answers when you ask direct questions.”
The rest of the moments that followed that declaration had also been lost to Sungmin. He couldn’t remember if he thanked the doctor and cried or if he cried first and then thanked him after. Everything that happened right after that had been packed in some secret compartment inside his head and all he knew is that he has cakes to bake, breads to be sold and wisterias to find. All he knew is that until that very moment when he breathes his last, he’s still alive and life is still flowing inside him. All he knows is that as long as he’s still breathing, no one should pity him for having a limited time.
Well hell.
Every single damn person in this world has a limited time. Technically, when you start to see that every single person will die eventually, you realize that everyone is dying. Who gets to live forever, anyway? The only difference is that Sungmin’s limit is now definite and known.
That is his belief. That is a belief he promised to live with until that little incident when his life’s train took certain twists and turns and he ended up on the rooftop of his apartment building, quietly watching a self-declared dying man ironically trying to kill himself.
Life disguises certain milestones like that, anyway. In a world full of billions of strangers, you’re pushed and pulled, ironically both guided and misled towards certain people who might seem so insignificant at first and in the end will change your life in ways you never thought imaginable.
But then again… what is there to change about him?
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Cho Kyuhyun and Lee Sungmin are two strangers who met through life’s amazing trickeries disguised as coincidence. They are two people suffering from the same predicaments; two people whose mortality is now so clear and so scary. But still… that does not make them any less of a person. And still… that does not hinder them from finding someone so weirdly compatible with them and falling… falling in love.
The second time that life decides to intervene in Kyuhyun and Sungmin’s love affairs is on a sunny morning one late October day. The leaves have taken on crispy orange color and they hang dangerously on tree branches, waiting for that one single fall.
Kyuhyun is sitting on his usual desk at the bank, feeling like crap (although it’s more mental than physical). Come the first day of November, he would officially be resigning and though he doesn’t really enjoy his job, he’d miss it.
Maybe.
A little.
He just doesn’t want to be collapsing every second and scaring the hell out of people and earning pitiful looks. He’d probably spend his last days out of the country - in Japan or Italy - and no one but his family would know he’s already dead.
That’s what’s going on in his mind on that sunny morning when the man who once again introduced himself as Lee Sungmin sits in front of him.
“Oh,” Kyuhyun unconsciously murmurs as bits and pieces of that night at the rooftop came back to him.
“Oh,” Sungmin also murmurs, recognition flashing in his eyes. “Hi.”
“What can I do to help you?” Kyuhyun immediately says, not wanting any kind of personal conversation with this… this… wisteria-what-the-fuck-is-that-man (if there’s such a word).
“I’d like to have my passbook updated,” Sungmin tells him as he smiles a little and hands Kyuhyun his passbook. Kyuhyun takes it, glances at it and types on his computer. As information after information flashes in front of his eyes, he glances at Sungmin who is now busy playing with his mobile phone.
“Use of mobile phones is prohibited inside banks, Mr. Lee Sungmin,” Kyuhyun admonishes.
“Oh, sorry,” Sungmin apologizes and grins after realizing something. “You remembered,” he says. Kyuhyun clucked his tongue like an old man and focuses on updating Sungmin’s passbook. After feeding it to the printer, he checks the little blue book and whistles a little at the amount printed on it.
“If what you told me that night was true, then you have quite an amount of money until you die,” Kyuhyun comments quietly.
“Yeah,” Sungmin answers with amusement. Kyuhyun frowns at him
“What are you going to do with so much money when you’re going to die? Donate it?” Kyuhyun asks and stops himself too late. He already intervened, might as well continue with it.
“Oh hell no, I am not a saint,” Sungmin laughs it out. “I told you, I’m going to hunt for wisterias. And if I can’t find one in Korea, I’ll try to live until spring to travel outside the country and see one.”
Kyuhyun pauses and digests the words he just heard. Live. Live.
“What else can we do?” Kyuhyun murmurs. “What else can we do but live? Try to live. Fight to stay alive. What else can we do?”
Live - a word, a verb, an encouragement that they both have taken for granted for the past years. Why does that happen anyway? We all go through life with an automatic sorter of things we want to cherish and things that could be cherished tomorrow, the next day and the next. Then we all come to a point when things begin to get lost before you get the chance to consider them as precious. And then we run after them.
We run, we keep running…
…and in the end we accept an inevitable defeat.
“Live,” Sungmin interrupts Kyuhyun’s thoughts with a bright smile. “I want to reach the end of the line, fall to my knees and breathe my last while saying ‘I’ve lived’ even for a moment, even for a short period of time. If I’d be defeated by this stupid disease in the end, I want to mock it on its face and tell it haha! Thank you for reminding me that living is all I’ve got.”
“…and then you die,” Kyuhyun bursts his bubble.
Sungmin laughs.
“…and then I die. But if I’m going to go down in the end, I will go down fighting. If all else fails, at least I have that,” he says, giving Kyuhyun a momentary feeling of guilt for trying to take his own life many nights ago.
“Right,” Kyuhyun almost laughs. “Thank you for banking with us, have a nice day,” he follows up with the usual memorized line he always tells customers. Sungmin gets up from his seat, bows a little to Kyuhyun and heads out with a bounce in his steps that almost makes Kyuhyun envious.
For twenty five years he existed maybe… just maybe… just as what Lee Sungmin has implied so strongly… maybe… it’s about time he tries to live.
And so that day he took out a sizable amount from his savings and bought himself a good camera, neon colored pens and a few sheets of paper. One by one he writes a message to different people who came and went in his life. Some of them are thank you messages, most of them are curses.
He starts with his seatmate in high school who took his lunch money and punched him on the face.
“Fuck you,” he says and he feels good.
“You weren’t as pretty as you thought you were,” he leaves a message for his cheating ex-girlfriend back in college.
“Thank you for the free lunch,” he tells the canteen manager in his old university and as Kyuhyun’s list gets longer and longer, he realizes that he cursed way too many people and thanked only a handful. Is that how bitter he had been?
When his list reached the name of a man called Lee Sungmin, Kyuhyun pauses, closes his eyes and pictures a field of dazzling violet flowers. What that man finds so amusing about violet fields and wisterias, Kyuhyun would probably never know. What kind of a dying goal is that? How can seeing wisterias make someone happy?
And then it occurs to him.
Happiness. Goals. Living.
Did he even try to achieve even one? Does he even have a goal? Does he look forward to tomorrow and see it as a step closer to a dream or does he wake up every single morning with a monotonous routine in mind?
A goal. He doesn’t have one.
And so with a not-so-sincere heart and a cloudy soul he writes beside Lee Sungmin’s name: I need to have a goal. Where do wisterias grow anyway?
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“Wisterias, huh?” Kim Ryeowook swivels around on his chair when Kyuhyun asks him about wisterias the next day during his regular checkup. “Why are people so curious about wisterias these days?”
Kyuhyun glares at him.
“What?” Ryeowook asks.
“Just answer the goddamn question, you good-for-nothing doctor,” Kyuhyun accuses Ryeowook the way he does every time he comes to Ryeowook’s small office for checkups.
“I am a medical doctor not a botanist,” Ryeowook quips, trying to hide his sinking feeling as he reads Kyuhyun’s latest laboratory results. Much as they were impliedly taught in medical school to not get emotionally involved with a patient, Kyuhyun is his best friend since high school. It’s only natural for Ryeowook to get emotionally involved. That is how friendship works anyway, isn’t it? You tie your loyalty with someone who is technically not related to you by blood but is nevertheless related to you by heart. That’s how Ryeowook feels and if there’s a small chance, a small sliver of hope for Kyuhyun to pull through this, Ryeowook would grab it and push his friend towards the boundary of safety. Just that…
Just that Kyuhyun seems to have given up himself.
“You asked about wisterias too before,” Ryeowook points out.
Kyuhyun tsks.
“Because there’s some guy that night…,” he starts and stops himself.
“What?” Ryeowook asks, curious.
“There’s some guy who asked if I’ve seen wisterias before,” Kyuhyun answers and tries to sound disinterested with it.
Ryeowook eyes his friend as he tries and tries to pinpoint something in his memories that reminds him of wisterias. Before something clicks in his mind, Kyuhyun stands up and stretches a little.
“Are we done? I need to go somewhere,” Kyuhyun says and heads towards the door.
“I haven’t…,” Ryeowook tries to say but Kyuhyun interrupts him when he bangs his head slightly against the recently opened door. A head pokes in and the smiling face of Lee Sungmin graces their eyes.
“YAH!” Kyuhyun shouts, annoyed.
“Oh,” Sungmin softly exclaims, unaware of the slight mishap he created. “We meet. Again. Haha. Same doctor? Coincidence much,” he jokes.
Unable to think of a pretty good comeback, Kyuhyun shoves his hands in his pockets and turned to Ryeowook.
“I’m leaving,” he says. He pulls his right hand out of his right pocket to pull the door open when a small piece of paper with neon-colored handwriting falls without him noticing.
Maybe there really is some playful childish god up there who pushes people to meet in unexpected ways because the piece of paper that fell from Kyuhyun’s pocket was the little message he wrote for Sungmin the night before. It is really quite amusing how destinies cross just when people least expect it, isn’t it? It is really funny how playfully life and fate and some amusing god conspire with each other to create milestones and unforgettable moments that define a good portion of a person’s life. Out of all the little messages that Kyuhyun wrote the night before, only Sungmin’s note got stuck with his car keys and was unconsciously shoved in his own pockets only to fall from it just in time for the person for whom it is made for to bend down, pick it up and curiously read. Why, people always wonder. Why do things fall exactly into place even without the intervention of human hands?
The answer might not be clear; it might come in a jumble of words and phrases that would probably read: fate, destiny, coincidence, maybe… life… love. But then people understand. How they understand.
“Hey… this…,” Sungmin tries to give it back to Kyuhyun but the latter ignores him and completely walks out the door. And so, just like any other curious person, Sungmin reads, his eyes widens… and he smiles.
“Lee Sungmin, I need to have a goal. Where do wisterias grow anyway?”
“Sungmin-sshi?” Ryeowook asks. Sungmin turns to his doctor friend, sits down on the chair in front of the table and hands the little note to Ryeowook who reads it briefly and smiles. Big, genuine, happy smile.
“I’ve waited and waited for your promised moment that everything’s going to be alright. When will it come?” Ryeowook remembers Kyuhyun asking when desperation ate him a few days after he learned of his condition. Ryeowook remembers not knowing what to say except to ask him to wait.
“Wait. Everything’s going to be fine. There must be something good that can come out of this. Wait.”
“Maybe, just maybe,” Ryeowook thinks and hopes and wishes, “Even for a short time, things are going to be alright for Kyuhyun… and Sungmin too.”
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“He’s a baker,” Ryeowook tells Kyuhyun that night when he invites him out for a simple dinner.
“What?” Kyuhyun asks and frowns.
“Lee Sungmin-sshi,” Ryeowook clarifies. “He bakes everything. He brought me some brownies a week ago and they’re yummy. If you want to meet him, here’s his address,” Ryeowook hands him a purple colored post-it where Lee Sungmin’s business address is written.
Kyuhyun rolls his eyes at his friend.
“Why in the world would I want to know the address of some person I’ve met only… what, thrice?” He contests but when Ryeowook silently shows him his very own note to Lee Sungmin, Kyuhyun shuts up and stares at his friend.
“Where did you get that?” Kyuhyun asks.
“It fell from your pockets earlier today as you were leaving the office. Sungmin picked it up and showed it to me,” Ryeowook answers him.
“Oh great. Just great. I’m dying and now I’m being embarrassed beyond my imagination,” Kyuhyun complains and Ryeowook softly smiles.
“The flowers are probably starting to wilt by this time. It’s almost autumn,” Ryeowook explains. “Wisterias originated in countries such as China, Japan and Korea and of course, if you want to see it in full purple bloom, you have to wait for spring.”
“You did your research?” Kyuhyun mocks.
“Sort of,” Ryeowook admits shyly. Kyuhyun stares at him and Ryeowook stares back.
“I need to have a goal,” Kyuhyun lowers his pride and admits. “I’m envious of that guy, Lee Sungmin. I need to have a goal, Ryeowook.”
Ryeowook sips his iced tea.
“I know,” he murmurs. “You can start with wisterias. It might be simple but it’s a goal.”
“I might not be alive by spring,” Kyuhyun tells him. “You said it yourself.”
Ryeowook takes another sip.
“I’ll keep you alive,” he promises. “If I can’t keep you alive until spring, you can haunt me for the rest of my life,” he jokes and Kyuhyun gives a bitter laugh.
“You’re feeling sorry for me,” Kyuhyun accuses his friend and Ryeowook thinks that maybe, somehow, he really is feeling sorry for his friend.
“Maybe,” Ryeowook half-heartedly admits.
“Screw you,” Kyuhyun half-heartedly curses. “I don’t need you to pity me,” he looks outside the early autumn sky. “I don’t need it, Ryeowook.”
Ryeowook leans forward.
“Then, meet Sungmin-sshi,” he suggests. “Meet him, go out, have dinner, talk about wisterias, look for wisterias, laugh, live for the moment… fall in love, goddammit. Fall in love,” he sounds desperate.
Kyuhyun takes long breaths and long moments before he asks, “Why?”
Ryeowook took the same amount of time before he answers.
“Because you deserve it,” he says quietly. “You goddamn deserve it.”
Kyuhyun sips his iced tea and makes no commitment but he took the post-it with Sungmin’s address and keeps it in his pocket.
“As if I can force myself to fall in love,” he says and didn’t have any inkling that Ryeowook just might be another conspirator in creating milestones and special moments in his life.
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Kyuhyun is sorting clothes to be laundered one weekend before he resigns from work when he finds Sungmin’s address in one of the pockets of his jeans. It is now crumpled on the sides and a bit dirty. The autumn wind outside his window is crisp and cold and he shivers a little as he reads the words written on the purple post-it.
“A field of dazzling violet,” he remembers Sungmin saying. Would there really be a field of dazzling violet, he thought. Wouldn’t that look weird? Wouldn’t that be something straight out from a cartoon? Kyuhyun would probably laugh when he sees it. He’s not really a fan of hues of purple.
He spends a few minutes laughing nonsensically at the images in his head and he realizes that the more he thinks about wisterias and Lee Sungmin, the harder he laughs. Maybe it is that nonsensical laughter that prompted him to pay the wisteria-loving man a visit.
The scenery around him is filled with hues of yellow, brown and orange. Searching for hues of purple in this mess of sad colors seems so impractical, illogical and downright crazy. But Kyuhyun continues to drive on and stops right in front of a nice little bakery painted with light purple and green.
He gets out of his car and walks in front only to be met by a ‘sorry, we’re closed’ sign.
“Great. So much for taking chances,” Kyuhyun thinks. He stands in front of the closed shop door for a few minutes, cursing Sungmin silently in his mind for whatever reason he can think of. He must have attracted some kind of attention because a young man carrying two small bags approaches him with a smile.
“Excuse me? Are you a customer? I’m sorry but we’re closed for today,” the man apologizes gently.
“Oh, ah…,” Kyuhyun scratches his head. “No. I was just, you know, looking for someone. Thanks anyway,” he answers and starts to walk away only to turn around seconds later, murmurs screw it all in his head and asks the man, “by any chance, do you know where I can find Lee Sungmin-sshi?”
The man blinks at him for a while as if wondering what business he has with Lee Sungmin.
“Why are you looking for my brother?” The man asks and it’s Kyuhyun’s time to blink. He pauses dramatically before shaking his head.
“I’m… ah… nevermind,” Kyuhyun says and gives a little bow.
“He’s in the hospital,” the man reveals when Kyuhyun starts to walk away. “He’s trying to rush baking a wedding cake this morning when he fainted and was subsequently admitted.”
Kyuhyun’s mouth hangs open. Fainting. Hospital. Death. It scares him. So much. So much that it causes a violent churning in his stomach and he wants to throw up.
“I’m about to visit him,” the man continues. “I can give him your message if you want,” he kindly offers and Kyuhyun shakes his head.
“It’s okay. I just…”
“He could use a visit,” the young man cheerfully says and Kyuhyun wonders if Lee Sungmin’s family doesn’t give a shit about death and dying. “Just in case… you know,” the brother swallows. “Just in case you want to visit, he’s in Seoul National University Hospital,” he says and for a moment Kyuhyun thinks he saw some form of plea and desperation.
He drives around in his car for hours after that. He wanders aimlessly until his car screams for fuel and as the gasoline boy refills his tank, Kyuhyun wonders how it would feel if life is like gasoline and people are like cars. The moment you run out of gasoline, you can simply have it refilled and you’re good to go. Then again… then again… wouldn’t life be so expensive if that were to happen? Maybe, somehow, the reason why life is free is because people only get to live once. If you want to have a second chance, you have to pay for it. If paying for it does not work, there is no choice but to beg some higher being up there, get on your hands and knees and ask for another chance.
That is the reality of living. It sucks and it’s scary but that is a reality that Kyuhyun is now facing. And… yes, Sungmin too.
And so hours later, when his car’s pedals take him towards Seoul National University Hospital, Kyuhyun fights the urge to run away screaming, “I don’t want to be reminded of death! Not today… not today when I’ve only started wanting to live.”
He grips the hem of his shirt tightly and walks towards the slightly opened door to Sungmin’s room. He tentatively peeks inside and notices that Sungmin is alone and is staring at the lonely autumn day outside the window.
The door moves a little when Kyuhyun’s forehead touches it and Sungmin notices his presence.
“Hey,” Sungmin smiles, a little surprised. “Come in,” he beckons and Kyuhyun hesitantly walks in. He stops a few feet from the door and looks at Sungmin who was in turn looking back at him.
The distance between them seems to have gotten smaller, Kyuhyun notices. It does not have anything to do with physical distance but familiarity; a sense of belongingness; a sense of having someone go through the same predicaments in life.
The silence stretches for very long minutes. Kyuhyun stares and Sungmin stares at him too. In the end, for lack of sensible things to say, Kyuhyun clears his throat and mumbles:
“Hey.”
“Hey,” Sugmin mumbles back.
Kyuhyun fidgets a little.
“Do you really think there would be wisterias in heaven?”
TBC.
--------------------------
1. Hello.
2. No, it’s not going to take years before this is completed. :)
3. I am too lazy to conduct a research so forgive the inaccuracy in some statements here.
4. Hello again.
5. Something has changed and I don’t know what it is.
6. My fics are still boring and long-winded but I like this one a lot.
7. Should I post in the community? Hmmm…
8. I checked for mistakes in grammar, etc while I’m in the office so it’s very haphazardly done.
9. Yes, another death!fic but I like to think of this one as fluff. The second part might explain it better.
10. Just because I’m OC and I want my footnotes to be exactly ten. Hahahahaha! *runs away*
Boring, plotless, very slow-paced and very long-winded but hey, I liked it. I like these kinds of stories that confuse people. :)
Let us put on hold all ongoing fics for this one because I badly need a sort of springboard to get me back into writing again while work and real life is not kicking my ass. Haha! This fic is almost finished but I can’t wait to post the first part just because I am one hell of a crazy person like that. :(
Where Wisterias Grow
And yes, I know how lonely life can be
The shadows follow me
And the night won’t set me free
But I don’t let the evening get me down
Now that you’re around me.
-Don McLean, “And I Love You So”
“Hey…”
“Hey.”
“Do you think there would be wisterias in heaven?”
----------------------
There’s a strange full moon beaming in the sky. Its light is paler than usual, almost bordering between white and translucent white. The night clouds cover a portion of the moon, bathing one side of the sky in eerie darkness. A handful of stars twinkle and they blink and blink on the earth like pairs of eyes that refuse to sleep. Shadows dance, skipping from one point to another, hugging walls and posts before gradually disappearing in a corner as if they are children busy playing hide and seek.
A humid wind is blowing and it slightly disturbs the calmness of the night, signaling a quiet storm. Somewhere above the light-blanketed city, a man stands five storeys higher than the rest of the world. His dull eyes stare at the strange full moon while his shoulders are hunched as if half of the world is cradled on top of it. His lips move quietly as he hums an old love song that radios rarely play these days.
One foot steps forward dangerously towards the end of the concrete floor and a second later, the other foot joins the first. He closes his eyes, feeling the wind pulling him back as if desperately saying: hold on, hold on! Wait a second, wait a minute, wait one more lifetime!
“Why wait? What’s there to wait for? Why wait?” In his mind he asks the wind. A few more baby shuffles and he’s prepared to jump. He keeps his eyes closed, feeling the wind once again pulling him back.
“One more minute, one more second, wait… wait...!” Something in the wind desperately calls to him.
And for some reason - for some strange and unexplainable reason - he waited, the way that the strange voices in the wind told him to. He keeps his eyes closed, feet unmoving and hands calmly hanging on his sides. He waited and gave the voices one more benefit of the doubt.
“I waited, I waited. What’s there to wait for? Why wait?” He once again asks. He was not expecting an answer and he was willing to wait for only a fraction of a second. Then again, just like how life often surprises us with unexpected moments in unexpected times, in that fraction of a second he met the personification of the explanation to the reason why he chose to wait when something in the wind told him to wait. For it only took a fraction of a second for him to hear a soft voice asking him…
“Hey, what’s your name?”
Cho Kyuhyun slightly turns towards his right where the sound of the soft voice came from. Under the strange light of the full moon, he made out the features of a man sitting cross-legged and, just like him, is staring at the majestic queen of the night sky.
Kyuhyun studies the man for a second before deciding to ignore him and place him in the category of strangers. He closes his eyes once again, slightly spreads his arms and prepares himself for the fall. Another fraction of a second passes and he hears the man speak once again.
“Hey, do you think… there’d be wisterias in heaven?” The man weirdly asks. Kyuhyun frowns and opens his eyes to look at the queer man once again.
“How should I know?” Kyuhyun snarls. The man smiles a little and painfully gets on his feet. Kyuhyun watches him carefully as the man tries to relieve the cramps settling on his legs.
“Wisterias are purple flowers,” the man explains. “They’re very pretty and they have such a pretty name. Have you ever seen one?”
Kyuhyun smiles sarcastically.
“No. I’m not even interested in seeing one,” he said. “I’m going to die young and I probably won’t be able to see one anyway so go away,” he blurts out and glares at the man when he realizes that he’d just blurted out the very reason why he’s standing five storeys high, ready to take his own life.
“I’ve seen some in the internet,” the man says, moving closer to Kyuhyun. “I’ve always wondered how they look like in person. I’ve yet to see one and I’m just like you. I’ll probably die within a year or a little more than that and I may never get to see wisterias in person,” the man is now beside Kyuhyun. His hands are clasped behind his back as he takes a peek at the long ground below.
Interest piqued, Kyuhyun stares at the man and wonders if he’s giving him crap. How in the world could two dying men who never saw wisterias before meet in a place like this?
“If you’re going to jump off this building, then do it. Don’t give me that kind of bullshit,” Kyuhyun snarls.
“I’m not going to waste my time,” the man says. “Do you know that people who take their own lives don’t even get to see heaven? They’re stuck in between, in some kind of a limbo. I don’t want to be stuck. It’s the end of summer now soon it will be autumn and the flowers will die out and damn, we’re in Korea, I’m not even sure if there are wisterias in Korea. But what if there are wisterias in heaven? If I take my life I won’t be able to find out. I’ll be stuck in a limbo and I’m going to have to wait to be reborn again to see one. But what if I forget that I want to see wisterias when I’m reborn again? What if I only remember it when I’m about to die again, don’t you think that sucks?” The man continues to blabber on and on and on and Kyuhyun simply stares at him, each word passing like warm air through his ears.
“So I’m not going to waste my time, I’m going to travel all around Korea, spend my money as if this day is going to be the very last day I’m going to live… well, technically, my days are numbered, and well… I’m going to look for wisterias. I want to see it. A field of violet dazzling before my eyes…”
Kyuhyun stares at the talking man and watches the movement of his lips. His voice started out melancholic and grew in pitch with each sentence, with each word, with each letter. And, in some kind of weird and simple miracle, Kyuhyun finds it amusing.
“You… suck,” he manages to say.
The man stops abruptly, stares at Kyuhyun and grins so brightly and Kyuhyun was so convinced that the stupid man is pulling his stupid leg about this dying thing.
“Want to hunt for wisterias with me before we die?” The man offers and Kyuhyun smirks. He went down from the edge of the concrete floor to stand on level with the man.
For a moment they both stare in silence at the strange full moon.
“You suck,” Kyuhyun says as he starts to walk away. “I don’t want to spend my remaining days with someone who sucks,” he says and gives the man a peace sign before completely walking away.
The man grins and shouts, “It’s Lee Sungmin, you know! My name is Lee Sungmin!”
“Yeah. Yeah,” Kyuhyun mutters under his breath and stops for a second. Why is he not standing near the edge of the building anyway? Why is he walking away towards safety when a few seconds ago he was certain he would end his life faster than his disease could? And then he remembers the wisterias and the strange man and he smiles, cursing himself for wanting to see wisterias too.
“Hey, stupid,” Kyuhyun calls his doctor best friend named Kim Ryeowook. “What the fuck are wisterias anyway?”
-----------------------------
Lee Sungmin grins as he watches the man walking away. At least, that was another life saved; another life stopped from being wasted.
“Hey,” he murmurs minutes later when his doctor friend Kim Ryeowook answers his call. “I still haven’t found out if there are wisterias in heaven.”
----------------------------
Cho Kyuhyun is a twenty-five-year-old man who found out on a lonely September morning that he’s not going to live to see his twenty sixth year on earth. He was calmly descending down the flight of stairs in his apartment building when the world spins around him and he falls into a pool of scary darkness… so scary that when he wakes up and the first rays of light danced in front of his eyes, he breathes a sigh of over joy and relief.
“Hey,” someone says beside him and Kyuhyun turns to see his doctor bestfriend, Kim Ryeowook worriedly standing by the right side of his bed.
“Hey,” Kyuhyun clears his throat as he studies Ryeowook warily.
“How are you feeling?”
“Quit the crap and tell me why you’re looking like the world has thrown you out towards Saturn,” he tells him.
Ryeowook laces his fingers together, stares out the window and onto the quiet morning before murmuring the words that quite literally ended Kyuhyun’s life.
“Acute leukemia, we don’t know what else to do.”
The rest of the moments that followed that one single declaration had been lost to Kyuhyun. It is as if he already died the moment Ryeowook told him that he doesn’t know what to do. He doesn’t know if that was a normal reaction for people who suddenly came to terms with their own mortality or if it’s only him. Perhaps that very moment made him realize a hidden weakness within him that’s slowly creeping out and eating him whole.
He’s dying. He’s going to die. What is there to be strong about when he knows that a year from now, he won’t be around to brag about how strong he really is?
-----------------------
Lee Sungmin is a twenty-six-year-old man who came to terms with his own mortality one lonely September morning. He’s a busy baker who accidentally trips on the foot of the baking table, hits his head on the floor quite hard and wakes up feeling woozy on a white hospital bed with a kind-faced doctor named Kim Ryeowook smiling at him.
“Hey,” the doctor says.
“Hey,” Sungmin says back. “Was that a nasty fall?” He asks, remembering the reason why he’s in a hospital.
The doctor clears his throat gently before speaking and shaking his head.
“No, it wasn’t,” he says quietly.
“Good,” Sungmin closes his eyes. “I still have a wedding cake to bake.”
There was silence - the kind that is filled with unspoken worries and thick anxieties. Sungmin turns slightly towards the small-built doctor.
“Why?” He asks and the moment he receives an answer, he wished he didn’t ask in the first place.
“We did some tests and… Acute leukemia, we don’t know what else to do.”
Sungmin’s face must have registered a myriad of emotions for the small doctor takes him by the hand, offering a kind of sympathy that did not manage to prevent the sudden reality from crashing on Sungmin.
“Funny, isn’t it?” Sungmin’s brain teases at that moment. “How funny and scary to receive direct answers when you ask direct questions.”
The rest of the moments that followed that declaration had also been lost to Sungmin. He couldn’t remember if he thanked the doctor and cried or if he cried first and then thanked him after. Everything that happened right after that had been packed in some secret compartment inside his head and all he knew is that he has cakes to bake, breads to be sold and wisterias to find. All he knew is that until that very moment when he breathes his last, he’s still alive and life is still flowing inside him. All he knows is that as long as he’s still breathing, no one should pity him for having a limited time.
Well hell.
Every single damn person in this world has a limited time. Technically, when you start to see that every single person will die eventually, you realize that everyone is dying. Who gets to live forever, anyway? The only difference is that Sungmin’s limit is now definite and known.
That is his belief. That is a belief he promised to live with until that little incident when his life’s train took certain twists and turns and he ended up on the rooftop of his apartment building, quietly watching a self-declared dying man ironically trying to kill himself.
Life disguises certain milestones like that, anyway. In a world full of billions of strangers, you’re pushed and pulled, ironically both guided and misled towards certain people who might seem so insignificant at first and in the end will change your life in ways you never thought imaginable.
But then again… what is there to change about him?
----------------------------
Cho Kyuhyun and Lee Sungmin are two strangers who met through life’s amazing trickeries disguised as coincidence. They are two people suffering from the same predicaments; two people whose mortality is now so clear and so scary. But still… that does not make them any less of a person. And still… that does not hinder them from finding someone so weirdly compatible with them and falling… falling in love.
The second time that life decides to intervene in Kyuhyun and Sungmin’s love affairs is on a sunny morning one late October day. The leaves have taken on crispy orange color and they hang dangerously on tree branches, waiting for that one single fall.
Kyuhyun is sitting on his usual desk at the bank, feeling like crap (although it’s more mental than physical). Come the first day of November, he would officially be resigning and though he doesn’t really enjoy his job, he’d miss it.
Maybe.
A little.
He just doesn’t want to be collapsing every second and scaring the hell out of people and earning pitiful looks. He’d probably spend his last days out of the country - in Japan or Italy - and no one but his family would know he’s already dead.
That’s what’s going on in his mind on that sunny morning when the man who once again introduced himself as Lee Sungmin sits in front of him.
“Oh,” Kyuhyun unconsciously murmurs as bits and pieces of that night at the rooftop came back to him.
“Oh,” Sungmin also murmurs, recognition flashing in his eyes. “Hi.”
“What can I do to help you?” Kyuhyun immediately says, not wanting any kind of personal conversation with this… this… wisteria-what-the-fuck-is-that-man (if there’s such a word).
“I’d like to have my passbook updated,” Sungmin tells him as he smiles a little and hands Kyuhyun his passbook. Kyuhyun takes it, glances at it and types on his computer. As information after information flashes in front of his eyes, he glances at Sungmin who is now busy playing with his mobile phone.
“Use of mobile phones is prohibited inside banks, Mr. Lee Sungmin,” Kyuhyun admonishes.
“Oh, sorry,” Sungmin apologizes and grins after realizing something. “You remembered,” he says. Kyuhyun clucked his tongue like an old man and focuses on updating Sungmin’s passbook. After feeding it to the printer, he checks the little blue book and whistles a little at the amount printed on it.
“If what you told me that night was true, then you have quite an amount of money until you die,” Kyuhyun comments quietly.
“Yeah,” Sungmin answers with amusement. Kyuhyun frowns at him
“What are you going to do with so much money when you’re going to die? Donate it?” Kyuhyun asks and stops himself too late. He already intervened, might as well continue with it.
“Oh hell no, I am not a saint,” Sungmin laughs it out. “I told you, I’m going to hunt for wisterias. And if I can’t find one in Korea, I’ll try to live until spring to travel outside the country and see one.”
Kyuhyun pauses and digests the words he just heard. Live. Live.
“What else can we do?” Kyuhyun murmurs. “What else can we do but live? Try to live. Fight to stay alive. What else can we do?”
Live - a word, a verb, an encouragement that they both have taken for granted for the past years. Why does that happen anyway? We all go through life with an automatic sorter of things we want to cherish and things that could be cherished tomorrow, the next day and the next. Then we all come to a point when things begin to get lost before you get the chance to consider them as precious. And then we run after them.
We run, we keep running…
…and in the end we accept an inevitable defeat.
“Live,” Sungmin interrupts Kyuhyun’s thoughts with a bright smile. “I want to reach the end of the line, fall to my knees and breathe my last while saying ‘I’ve lived’ even for a moment, even for a short period of time. If I’d be defeated by this stupid disease in the end, I want to mock it on its face and tell it haha! Thank you for reminding me that living is all I’ve got.”
“…and then you die,” Kyuhyun bursts his bubble.
Sungmin laughs.
“…and then I die. But if I’m going to go down in the end, I will go down fighting. If all else fails, at least I have that,” he says, giving Kyuhyun a momentary feeling of guilt for trying to take his own life many nights ago.
“Right,” Kyuhyun almost laughs. “Thank you for banking with us, have a nice day,” he follows up with the usual memorized line he always tells customers. Sungmin gets up from his seat, bows a little to Kyuhyun and heads out with a bounce in his steps that almost makes Kyuhyun envious.
For twenty five years he existed maybe… just maybe… just as what Lee Sungmin has implied so strongly… maybe… it’s about time he tries to live.
And so that day he took out a sizable amount from his savings and bought himself a good camera, neon colored pens and a few sheets of paper. One by one he writes a message to different people who came and went in his life. Some of them are thank you messages, most of them are curses.
He starts with his seatmate in high school who took his lunch money and punched him on the face.
“Fuck you,” he says and he feels good.
“You weren’t as pretty as you thought you were,” he leaves a message for his cheating ex-girlfriend back in college.
“Thank you for the free lunch,” he tells the canteen manager in his old university and as Kyuhyun’s list gets longer and longer, he realizes that he cursed way too many people and thanked only a handful. Is that how bitter he had been?
When his list reached the name of a man called Lee Sungmin, Kyuhyun pauses, closes his eyes and pictures a field of dazzling violet flowers. What that man finds so amusing about violet fields and wisterias, Kyuhyun would probably never know. What kind of a dying goal is that? How can seeing wisterias make someone happy?
And then it occurs to him.
Happiness. Goals. Living.
Did he even try to achieve even one? Does he even have a goal? Does he look forward to tomorrow and see it as a step closer to a dream or does he wake up every single morning with a monotonous routine in mind?
A goal. He doesn’t have one.
And so with a not-so-sincere heart and a cloudy soul he writes beside Lee Sungmin’s name: I need to have a goal. Where do wisterias grow anyway?
---------------------------
“Wisterias, huh?” Kim Ryeowook swivels around on his chair when Kyuhyun asks him about wisterias the next day during his regular checkup. “Why are people so curious about wisterias these days?”
Kyuhyun glares at him.
“What?” Ryeowook asks.
“Just answer the goddamn question, you good-for-nothing doctor,” Kyuhyun accuses Ryeowook the way he does every time he comes to Ryeowook’s small office for checkups.
“I am a medical doctor not a botanist,” Ryeowook quips, trying to hide his sinking feeling as he reads Kyuhyun’s latest laboratory results. Much as they were impliedly taught in medical school to not get emotionally involved with a patient, Kyuhyun is his best friend since high school. It’s only natural for Ryeowook to get emotionally involved. That is how friendship works anyway, isn’t it? You tie your loyalty with someone who is technically not related to you by blood but is nevertheless related to you by heart. That’s how Ryeowook feels and if there’s a small chance, a small sliver of hope for Kyuhyun to pull through this, Ryeowook would grab it and push his friend towards the boundary of safety. Just that…
Just that Kyuhyun seems to have given up himself.
“You asked about wisterias too before,” Ryeowook points out.
Kyuhyun tsks.
“Because there’s some guy that night…,” he starts and stops himself.
“What?” Ryeowook asks, curious.
“There’s some guy who asked if I’ve seen wisterias before,” Kyuhyun answers and tries to sound disinterested with it.
Ryeowook eyes his friend as he tries and tries to pinpoint something in his memories that reminds him of wisterias. Before something clicks in his mind, Kyuhyun stands up and stretches a little.
“Are we done? I need to go somewhere,” Kyuhyun says and heads towards the door.
“I haven’t…,” Ryeowook tries to say but Kyuhyun interrupts him when he bangs his head slightly against the recently opened door. A head pokes in and the smiling face of Lee Sungmin graces their eyes.
“YAH!” Kyuhyun shouts, annoyed.
“Oh,” Sungmin softly exclaims, unaware of the slight mishap he created. “We meet. Again. Haha. Same doctor? Coincidence much,” he jokes.
Unable to think of a pretty good comeback, Kyuhyun shoves his hands in his pockets and turned to Ryeowook.
“I’m leaving,” he says. He pulls his right hand out of his right pocket to pull the door open when a small piece of paper with neon-colored handwriting falls without him noticing.
Maybe there really is some playful childish god up there who pushes people to meet in unexpected ways because the piece of paper that fell from Kyuhyun’s pocket was the little message he wrote for Sungmin the night before. It is really quite amusing how destinies cross just when people least expect it, isn’t it? It is really funny how playfully life and fate and some amusing god conspire with each other to create milestones and unforgettable moments that define a good portion of a person’s life. Out of all the little messages that Kyuhyun wrote the night before, only Sungmin’s note got stuck with his car keys and was unconsciously shoved in his own pockets only to fall from it just in time for the person for whom it is made for to bend down, pick it up and curiously read. Why, people always wonder. Why do things fall exactly into place even without the intervention of human hands?
The answer might not be clear; it might come in a jumble of words and phrases that would probably read: fate, destiny, coincidence, maybe… life… love. But then people understand. How they understand.
“Hey… this…,” Sungmin tries to give it back to Kyuhyun but the latter ignores him and completely walks out the door. And so, just like any other curious person, Sungmin reads, his eyes widens… and he smiles.
“Lee Sungmin, I need to have a goal. Where do wisterias grow anyway?”
“Sungmin-sshi?” Ryeowook asks. Sungmin turns to his doctor friend, sits down on the chair in front of the table and hands the little note to Ryeowook who reads it briefly and smiles. Big, genuine, happy smile.
“I’ve waited and waited for your promised moment that everything’s going to be alright. When will it come?” Ryeowook remembers Kyuhyun asking when desperation ate him a few days after he learned of his condition. Ryeowook remembers not knowing what to say except to ask him to wait.
“Wait. Everything’s going to be fine. There must be something good that can come out of this. Wait.”
“Maybe, just maybe,” Ryeowook thinks and hopes and wishes, “Even for a short time, things are going to be alright for Kyuhyun… and Sungmin too.”
----------------------------
“He’s a baker,” Ryeowook tells Kyuhyun that night when he invites him out for a simple dinner.
“What?” Kyuhyun asks and frowns.
“Lee Sungmin-sshi,” Ryeowook clarifies. “He bakes everything. He brought me some brownies a week ago and they’re yummy. If you want to meet him, here’s his address,” Ryeowook hands him a purple colored post-it where Lee Sungmin’s business address is written.
Kyuhyun rolls his eyes at his friend.
“Why in the world would I want to know the address of some person I’ve met only… what, thrice?” He contests but when Ryeowook silently shows him his very own note to Lee Sungmin, Kyuhyun shuts up and stares at his friend.
“Where did you get that?” Kyuhyun asks.
“It fell from your pockets earlier today as you were leaving the office. Sungmin picked it up and showed it to me,” Ryeowook answers him.
“Oh great. Just great. I’m dying and now I’m being embarrassed beyond my imagination,” Kyuhyun complains and Ryeowook softly smiles.
“The flowers are probably starting to wilt by this time. It’s almost autumn,” Ryeowook explains. “Wisterias originated in countries such as China, Japan and Korea and of course, if you want to see it in full purple bloom, you have to wait for spring.”
“You did your research?” Kyuhyun mocks.
“Sort of,” Ryeowook admits shyly. Kyuhyun stares at him and Ryeowook stares back.
“I need to have a goal,” Kyuhyun lowers his pride and admits. “I’m envious of that guy, Lee Sungmin. I need to have a goal, Ryeowook.”
Ryeowook sips his iced tea.
“I know,” he murmurs. “You can start with wisterias. It might be simple but it’s a goal.”
“I might not be alive by spring,” Kyuhyun tells him. “You said it yourself.”
Ryeowook takes another sip.
“I’ll keep you alive,” he promises. “If I can’t keep you alive until spring, you can haunt me for the rest of my life,” he jokes and Kyuhyun gives a bitter laugh.
“You’re feeling sorry for me,” Kyuhyun accuses his friend and Ryeowook thinks that maybe, somehow, he really is feeling sorry for his friend.
“Maybe,” Ryeowook half-heartedly admits.
“Screw you,” Kyuhyun half-heartedly curses. “I don’t need you to pity me,” he looks outside the early autumn sky. “I don’t need it, Ryeowook.”
Ryeowook leans forward.
“Then, meet Sungmin-sshi,” he suggests. “Meet him, go out, have dinner, talk about wisterias, look for wisterias, laugh, live for the moment… fall in love, goddammit. Fall in love,” he sounds desperate.
Kyuhyun takes long breaths and long moments before he asks, “Why?”
Ryeowook took the same amount of time before he answers.
“Because you deserve it,” he says quietly. “You goddamn deserve it.”
Kyuhyun sips his iced tea and makes no commitment but he took the post-it with Sungmin’s address and keeps it in his pocket.
“As if I can force myself to fall in love,” he says and didn’t have any inkling that Ryeowook just might be another conspirator in creating milestones and special moments in his life.
--------------------------------
Kyuhyun is sorting clothes to be laundered one weekend before he resigns from work when he finds Sungmin’s address in one of the pockets of his jeans. It is now crumpled on the sides and a bit dirty. The autumn wind outside his window is crisp and cold and he shivers a little as he reads the words written on the purple post-it.
“A field of dazzling violet,” he remembers Sungmin saying. Would there really be a field of dazzling violet, he thought. Wouldn’t that look weird? Wouldn’t that be something straight out from a cartoon? Kyuhyun would probably laugh when he sees it. He’s not really a fan of hues of purple.
He spends a few minutes laughing nonsensically at the images in his head and he realizes that the more he thinks about wisterias and Lee Sungmin, the harder he laughs. Maybe it is that nonsensical laughter that prompted him to pay the wisteria-loving man a visit.
The scenery around him is filled with hues of yellow, brown and orange. Searching for hues of purple in this mess of sad colors seems so impractical, illogical and downright crazy. But Kyuhyun continues to drive on and stops right in front of a nice little bakery painted with light purple and green.
He gets out of his car and walks in front only to be met by a ‘sorry, we’re closed’ sign.
“Great. So much for taking chances,” Kyuhyun thinks. He stands in front of the closed shop door for a few minutes, cursing Sungmin silently in his mind for whatever reason he can think of. He must have attracted some kind of attention because a young man carrying two small bags approaches him with a smile.
“Excuse me? Are you a customer? I’m sorry but we’re closed for today,” the man apologizes gently.
“Oh, ah…,” Kyuhyun scratches his head. “No. I was just, you know, looking for someone. Thanks anyway,” he answers and starts to walk away only to turn around seconds later, murmurs screw it all in his head and asks the man, “by any chance, do you know where I can find Lee Sungmin-sshi?”
The man blinks at him for a while as if wondering what business he has with Lee Sungmin.
“Why are you looking for my brother?” The man asks and it’s Kyuhyun’s time to blink. He pauses dramatically before shaking his head.
“I’m… ah… nevermind,” Kyuhyun says and gives a little bow.
“He’s in the hospital,” the man reveals when Kyuhyun starts to walk away. “He’s trying to rush baking a wedding cake this morning when he fainted and was subsequently admitted.”
Kyuhyun’s mouth hangs open. Fainting. Hospital. Death. It scares him. So much. So much that it causes a violent churning in his stomach and he wants to throw up.
“I’m about to visit him,” the man continues. “I can give him your message if you want,” he kindly offers and Kyuhyun shakes his head.
“It’s okay. I just…”
“He could use a visit,” the young man cheerfully says and Kyuhyun wonders if Lee Sungmin’s family doesn’t give a shit about death and dying. “Just in case… you know,” the brother swallows. “Just in case you want to visit, he’s in Seoul National University Hospital,” he says and for a moment Kyuhyun thinks he saw some form of plea and desperation.
He drives around in his car for hours after that. He wanders aimlessly until his car screams for fuel and as the gasoline boy refills his tank, Kyuhyun wonders how it would feel if life is like gasoline and people are like cars. The moment you run out of gasoline, you can simply have it refilled and you’re good to go. Then again… then again… wouldn’t life be so expensive if that were to happen? Maybe, somehow, the reason why life is free is because people only get to live once. If you want to have a second chance, you have to pay for it. If paying for it does not work, there is no choice but to beg some higher being up there, get on your hands and knees and ask for another chance.
That is the reality of living. It sucks and it’s scary but that is a reality that Kyuhyun is now facing. And… yes, Sungmin too.
And so hours later, when his car’s pedals take him towards Seoul National University Hospital, Kyuhyun fights the urge to run away screaming, “I don’t want to be reminded of death! Not today… not today when I’ve only started wanting to live.”
He grips the hem of his shirt tightly and walks towards the slightly opened door to Sungmin’s room. He tentatively peeks inside and notices that Sungmin is alone and is staring at the lonely autumn day outside the window.
The door moves a little when Kyuhyun’s forehead touches it and Sungmin notices his presence.
“Hey,” Sungmin smiles, a little surprised. “Come in,” he beckons and Kyuhyun hesitantly walks in. He stops a few feet from the door and looks at Sungmin who was in turn looking back at him.
The distance between them seems to have gotten smaller, Kyuhyun notices. It does not have anything to do with physical distance but familiarity; a sense of belongingness; a sense of having someone go through the same predicaments in life.
The silence stretches for very long minutes. Kyuhyun stares and Sungmin stares at him too. In the end, for lack of sensible things to say, Kyuhyun clears his throat and mumbles:
“Hey.”
“Hey,” Sugmin mumbles back.
Kyuhyun fidgets a little.
“Do you really think there would be wisterias in heaven?”
TBC.
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1. Hello.
2. No, it’s not going to take years before this is completed. :)
3. I am too lazy to conduct a research so forgive the inaccuracy in some statements here.
4. Hello again.
5. Something has changed and I don’t know what it is.
6. My fics are still boring and long-winded but I like this one a lot.
7. Should I post in the community? Hmmm…
8. I checked for mistakes in grammar, etc while I’m in the office so it’s very haphazardly done.
9. Yes, another death!fic but I like to think of this one as fluff. The second part might explain it better.
10. Just because I’m OC and I want my footnotes to be exactly ten. Hahahahaha! *runs away*