Echo of Dusk - Chapter II
Last Night On Earth - Delta Goodrem (3.85MB) DOWNLOAD!
Yunho:
There's no such thing as a beautiful goodbye
If tomorrow never comes I want you to know right now
That I'm gonna love you until the day I die
No matter how many miles stand between us, this is love.
I nibbled on my rations and stared glumly outside. I could see some bored troops sitting together on the grass outside my tent, cleaning their guns with a tiny, dirty cloth. In all honesty, I was quite relieved that we hadn’t had to fight today - my mind would have been too preoccupied. My lack in concentration would have caused serious damage to both me and my troops.
A month.
A whole fucking month.
My bed had remained lonely for twenty-eight days. Somehow I had trained myself to continue slipping into a healthy sleep during the night, but the chilly blankets next to me refused to give me much comfort in the middle of the cruel night.
I was still plagued by the memories of the times he used to lay there next to me, keeping me warm and secure. Sometimes we’d tiredly lean on each other and drift away comfortably. Sometimes we’d make love (trying to erase the reality of war if only for a little while) with such passion and intensity we wouldn’t get much sleep at all. Sometimes we tried to have sex but found our energy had been completely sucked away by the arduous day, leaving us to doze off before our clothes had even been completely discarded. But regardless of what we did, we were always together under the sheets, inevitably feeding off each other’s presence.
Cold sheets at night just hadn’t been an issue at all. It still felt so foreign to my sensitive skin. Even now.
And almost every night, before I could fall asleep I would stare intensely out past my tent flap and into the tiny specs of light that were scattered across the coal-coloured sky, as if the all-seeing balls of light could tell me where he was. But night after night as I demanded over and over again “Where are you hiding him?” the innocently glittering stars would remain silent and continue to hide the secret which could potentially free my soul.
The terrible plaguing fear sometimes crept up on me when my defenses were particularly low (which was quite often these days) that perhaps he had already left me and this world. Nothing was certain about his whereabouts. He could be hiding in the thick forests; he could be starving in a POW* camp, or he could be rotting unnoticed in the muddy Korean soil.
Eventually word was spread that Seoul would soon be recaptured from the communists by the ROKA** but the news failed to excite me or take my mind off him. One important thing was to be regained; but one equally important thing was to be forever lost.
I swallowed the last piece of bread from my ration stock and sat back onto my bed. Normally at around this time in the afternoon I would be out chatting with my soldiers about battle strategy and asking them about their families and life experiences pre-war, but now everything seemed so mundane and pointless. I didn’t want opinions about the battles we were fighting. I wanted my JaeJoong.
Yes…these days I preferred to sit in solitude in my quiet tent. I just didn’t feel like talking. I was too tired for all that now. I didn’t even really have the energy to replay the last time I had seen him, and yet I always found myself doing so, looking for any sort of clue. If I had only anticipated something diabolical was going to happen that day which would separate us indefinitely! I would have been more careful!
That day a new defensive line had been created in PyungTaek, resulting in the need for us to try and counterattack the Northern forces. The whole process had been becoming quick successful but it had meant that my unit was extremely close to the communists. We hadn’t realized just how close and how many reserve units they had until we were bombarded late into the night. They had certainly attacked us phenomenally that night and it really was a miracle that we had escaped with our lives…well, most of us.
I woke up to the sound of bullets ripping through the night air.
“What the fuck?!” I yelled, pulled up from my slumber almost immediately and scrambled out from under the covers. I could hear JaeJoong’s confused moans as his consciousness took longer to activate than it had with me.
“They’re attacking us in the fucking middle of the night?! I thought we had finished all their troops!” I continued to yell in frustration, running over to grab my M1 Rifle. I threw it over to JaeJoong who almost dropped it in his apparently overwhelming confused state of mind.
“Don’t they ever sleep?” I heard him groan, scrambling clumsily to my side and fumbling noisily with the new weaponry in his hands.
I hastily shoved my feet into my military boots and then pulled the tent open, holding onto my Browning Automatic Rifle tightly. I tried to observe the situation through the unfortunate darkness with increasing anxiety, my heart beating wildly as the sense of immediate danger teased it with its gnarled fingers.
“Stay here,” I hastily ordered JaeJoong and crept out into pure darkness. It was extremely difficult to decipher where the communists were shooting from but it sounded roughly westward. I found my startled troops and began administering orders in a furious bark. We didn’t have any special night-vision equipment so I was worried that we were fucked in this sneak ambush.
“Captain!” I heard a distraught soldier scream. “Two o’clock!”
I gripped my BAR in shock and spun around to shoot the communist before he could harm me. My heart started racing even further when my bare arms were suddenly bathed in intense heat - I had run out of my tent only wearing what I had gone to sleep in - my blank tank top and camouflage pants, resulting in the skin on my bare arms and neck to become vulnerable to the exposure of heat waves let off from the mine explosion.
A couple of trees were enflamed, as were (no doubt) the communists who had triggered the mines in the first place, which had been carefully set up around the camp site. The triggered mine at least gave us an advantage now - it had provided us with much needed light so that the fast approaching communist forces were now mostly all visible in the orange glow.
My eyes widened when the newly flickering orange flames alerted my attention to a small group of communists with their guns pointed straight towards the Captain of our unit - me. I swung my right hand upwards again and pulled down on the BAR’s trigger.
My ears soon became deafened by the repulsive sound of multiple guns and rifles going off as my troops faced off against the communists.
I was so preoccupied I almost didn’t notice a determined, beautiful soldier skidding out a few metres to my right, to bend over one of our fallen men. I glared at him in disdain as the usual worry I felt whenever JaeJoong involved himself in heated battles, enveloped me. I never felt comfortable with JaeJoong fighting against the communists, or anyone for that matter - I still remembered that awkward moment when my clumsy lover fell straight into a hidden bear hole*** during our ascent towards the 38th parallel . That bear hole hadn’t even been a direct attack on him and he still managed to get himself injured over it. How could he stand up to actual communist attacks if he was already so clumsy?
My glare towards JaeJoong turned into something darker and more out of control when in that brief second I glanced over during the middle of fire only to identify the useless soldier JaeJoong was protecting as that Shim kid who had stolen JaeJoong’s lips all those weeks ago.
Unfortunately, in that bizarre moment in time I also noticed no less than four PPsc41 submachine gun barrels pointed precisely towards JaeJoong and the useless kid who was being lifted into his strong arms.
Of course my tiny lover hadn’t noticed the guns aimed towards him - when someone was hurt it was always he who ran to look after the vulnerable, regardless of the imminent dangers surrounding him. He could never stand witnessing anyone suffering nearby when he was still capable of assisting the victim in any way. It was part of his charm, the reason why I loved him so much…but right now I was cursing him for it with all my might.
It certainly didn’t help that this particular victim was a friend of his, someone he was actually close to. JaeJoong was naturally quiet and reserved; in a place filled with anxious, crabby, young soldiers, JaeJoong would have been the last person anyone would expect to make friends with. Or maybe it had been more than that for JaeJoong - I had indeed been surprised when I had witnessed that lustful kiss between the two boys which destroyed all notions that the only thing they shared was pure friendship.
In that moment, standing nearby the warm flames, surrounded by communists and watching my lover, I felt oddly alone. In my lifetime I had made numerous friendships with both genders - it was something which just seemed natural to me, however, JaeJoong had been the only one I had actually felt safe and content with. Any threat to my stability with him as a lover evoked unpleasant jealousy and I wasn’t ashamed to say it. War makes you blunt and honest and even more desperate to protect the things dear to you. The threat of dying any second does that to you…
But now there my beautiful soldier was, pale with fear and desperately bent over that threat-to-my-stability, trying his hardest to lift him securely into his arms to escape the heavy fire. JaeJoong had run out of the safety of my tent - the tent surrounded by intricately buried mines for my own safety at night, in order to protect Shim Changmin knowing full well that he could die for his efforts. JaeJoong was a lover not a fighter, he could barely aim a gun properly much less fire it to kill another human being. He certainly didn’t belong in a battlefield unless he was assisting the Red Cross to help save lives. And yet here he was stuck in the place which could ultimately mean his death.
And as the gun barrels were lowered with precision towards JaeJoong’s preoccupied forehead, I felt my own desperate need to protect kicking in.
In a flash I had swung my left arm behind my back to hurriedly unlatch the Caliber pistol clipped to my dark brown war belt, and pointed it directly in front of me to the original enemy still firing at me, whilst I swung the powerful BAR in the direction of four o’clock to counterattack JaeJoong’s potential killers, extremely grateful that the heavy rifle was still strapped firmly across my shoulder.
There was no way I could properly defend myself with a handgun placed in my weaker left hand, but the thought of JaeJoong being wounded again (and most definitely worse than that old shoulder wound) was enough to overrule any concerns I had over my own safety.
Shooting somewhere in front of me I hoped I was lucky enough to destroy the communists threatening my life whilst I turned to focus all my attention on the bastards daring to shoot at that beautiful specimen selflessly helping a wounded soldier.
I may have protected JaeJoong successfully in that horrific moment, but it had cost me all my spare bullets on hand. My stomach churned weakly as I heard the terrible clicks signifying the empty cartridges of both my guns like the echoes of clock hands slowly articulating the limited time left before complete disaster strikes.
I dived downwards hastily to avoid being shot whilst my mind whirled hyperactively to come up with a plan to reach my tent for more bullet clips without getting annihilated in the process…
But in one way I did get shot, even worse than in the physical sense. I got shot brutally in the heart when I came back from that tent with 20 extra bullet clips and one less JaeJoong.
In the end, the wounded 21 year-old Shim had made it to the medical tent thanks to his wide-eyed guardian angel. But JaeJoong hadn’t made it back to my tent. His guardian angel had failed him - I had failed him. I should have kept a closer eye out for him knowing how vulnerable he was; knowing how stubborn he’d be by remaining in danger without a weapon in his hand in order to help someone else. Trust JaeJoong to suddenly disappear the moment I shifted my focus onto my tent.
I guess the thing that tortures me the most is not having a clue what actually happened to him. Was he shot? Had he merely run from that spot to the medical tent and been injured further away? Did he run straight into the enemy’s poisonous, awaiting arms? Did he die?
After it was all over, I went on a rampage trying to find him. I could barely dare to look for him amongst our dead, but I had, and his angelic face had not been included. He certainly hadn’t been in the medical tent - that was the first place I had checked. With a panicked lump growing high in my throat I had slowly moved past each wounded man, examining their bloody faces and bodies carefully.
Had I wanted to find JaeJoong there? At the time, no. I had wanted to entertain myself with the belief that he was waiting back in my tent and we had simply just missed each other due to the frantic, chaotic nature of the night’s invasion. But now I wished I had found him there, lying amongst the wounded, because at least I would have known where he was. If he wasn’t amongst the wounded and he hadn’t been killed, then where the bloody hell was he?
Enemy territory. It was the only possibility. He wouldn’t have been temporarily hiding in the foliage for the battle to be over because I know even though he was acutely aware of his clumsiness he would never run away from something like this. And I know he would have come back to me. If he had been wounded somewhere undiscovered he would have called out for me or even crawled to me if he had to. Because I knew he was as connected to me as I was to him. We were both one polar side of the world - seemingly opposite in every way but unable to fight the magnetic pull towards each other.
But not this time. This time the compass had broken. I could only find my opposite pole through faith and desperation alone.
I vow I will find you, JaeJoong. Because the war against communism doesn’t matter; only you matter. Only you have ever mattered to me. I wonder if you truly believed in my love… If I had known I’d lose you that day, I would have told you more of my heart. I would have held you and never let you go.
I would have loved you like it was the last night on earth.
////TBC////
*POW = Prisoner of War
**ROKA = Republic of Korea Army
*** Yes okay, I admit that was a shameless reference to the Seoul Encore Concert, when JJ fell down the trapdoor :P.
MERRY XMAS FOR TUESDAY!!! :D
PLEASE COMMENT!! I love hearing from you guys :D. Plus...as a writer, it's always awesome to hear thoughts and criticisms, right~~. So don't be shy~.
OR FOR MORE, CHECK OUT MY (somewhat temporarily limited) ARCHIVE = //THE BOOKSHELF// :D
Yunho:
There's no such thing as a beautiful goodbye
If tomorrow never comes I want you to know right now
That I'm gonna love you until the day I die
No matter how many miles stand between us, this is love.
I nibbled on my rations and stared glumly outside. I could see some bored troops sitting together on the grass outside my tent, cleaning their guns with a tiny, dirty cloth. In all honesty, I was quite relieved that we hadn’t had to fight today - my mind would have been too preoccupied. My lack in concentration would have caused serious damage to both me and my troops.
A month.
A whole fucking month.
My bed had remained lonely for twenty-eight days. Somehow I had trained myself to continue slipping into a healthy sleep during the night, but the chilly blankets next to me refused to give me much comfort in the middle of the cruel night.
I was still plagued by the memories of the times he used to lay there next to me, keeping me warm and secure. Sometimes we’d tiredly lean on each other and drift away comfortably. Sometimes we’d make love (trying to erase the reality of war if only for a little while) with such passion and intensity we wouldn’t get much sleep at all. Sometimes we tried to have sex but found our energy had been completely sucked away by the arduous day, leaving us to doze off before our clothes had even been completely discarded. But regardless of what we did, we were always together under the sheets, inevitably feeding off each other’s presence.
Cold sheets at night just hadn’t been an issue at all. It still felt so foreign to my sensitive skin. Even now.
And almost every night, before I could fall asleep I would stare intensely out past my tent flap and into the tiny specs of light that were scattered across the coal-coloured sky, as if the all-seeing balls of light could tell me where he was. But night after night as I demanded over and over again “Where are you hiding him?” the innocently glittering stars would remain silent and continue to hide the secret which could potentially free my soul.
The terrible plaguing fear sometimes crept up on me when my defenses were particularly low (which was quite often these days) that perhaps he had already left me and this world. Nothing was certain about his whereabouts. He could be hiding in the thick forests; he could be starving in a POW* camp, or he could be rotting unnoticed in the muddy Korean soil.
Eventually word was spread that Seoul would soon be recaptured from the communists by the ROKA** but the news failed to excite me or take my mind off him. One important thing was to be regained; but one equally important thing was to be forever lost.
I swallowed the last piece of bread from my ration stock and sat back onto my bed. Normally at around this time in the afternoon I would be out chatting with my soldiers about battle strategy and asking them about their families and life experiences pre-war, but now everything seemed so mundane and pointless. I didn’t want opinions about the battles we were fighting. I wanted my JaeJoong.
Yes…these days I preferred to sit in solitude in my quiet tent. I just didn’t feel like talking. I was too tired for all that now. I didn’t even really have the energy to replay the last time I had seen him, and yet I always found myself doing so, looking for any sort of clue. If I had only anticipated something diabolical was going to happen that day which would separate us indefinitely! I would have been more careful!
That day a new defensive line had been created in PyungTaek, resulting in the need for us to try and counterattack the Northern forces. The whole process had been becoming quick successful but it had meant that my unit was extremely close to the communists. We hadn’t realized just how close and how many reserve units they had until we were bombarded late into the night. They had certainly attacked us phenomenally that night and it really was a miracle that we had escaped with our lives…well, most of us.
I woke up to the sound of bullets ripping through the night air.
“What the fuck?!” I yelled, pulled up from my slumber almost immediately and scrambled out from under the covers. I could hear JaeJoong’s confused moans as his consciousness took longer to activate than it had with me.
“They’re attacking us in the fucking middle of the night?! I thought we had finished all their troops!” I continued to yell in frustration, running over to grab my M1 Rifle. I threw it over to JaeJoong who almost dropped it in his apparently overwhelming confused state of mind.
“Don’t they ever sleep?” I heard him groan, scrambling clumsily to my side and fumbling noisily with the new weaponry in his hands.
I hastily shoved my feet into my military boots and then pulled the tent open, holding onto my Browning Automatic Rifle tightly. I tried to observe the situation through the unfortunate darkness with increasing anxiety, my heart beating wildly as the sense of immediate danger teased it with its gnarled fingers.
“Stay here,” I hastily ordered JaeJoong and crept out into pure darkness. It was extremely difficult to decipher where the communists were shooting from but it sounded roughly westward. I found my startled troops and began administering orders in a furious bark. We didn’t have any special night-vision equipment so I was worried that we were fucked in this sneak ambush.
“Captain!” I heard a distraught soldier scream. “Two o’clock!”
I gripped my BAR in shock and spun around to shoot the communist before he could harm me. My heart started racing even further when my bare arms were suddenly bathed in intense heat - I had run out of my tent only wearing what I had gone to sleep in - my blank tank top and camouflage pants, resulting in the skin on my bare arms and neck to become vulnerable to the exposure of heat waves let off from the mine explosion.
A couple of trees were enflamed, as were (no doubt) the communists who had triggered the mines in the first place, which had been carefully set up around the camp site. The triggered mine at least gave us an advantage now - it had provided us with much needed light so that the fast approaching communist forces were now mostly all visible in the orange glow.
My eyes widened when the newly flickering orange flames alerted my attention to a small group of communists with their guns pointed straight towards the Captain of our unit - me. I swung my right hand upwards again and pulled down on the BAR’s trigger.
My ears soon became deafened by the repulsive sound of multiple guns and rifles going off as my troops faced off against the communists.
I was so preoccupied I almost didn’t notice a determined, beautiful soldier skidding out a few metres to my right, to bend over one of our fallen men. I glared at him in disdain as the usual worry I felt whenever JaeJoong involved himself in heated battles, enveloped me. I never felt comfortable with JaeJoong fighting against the communists, or anyone for that matter - I still remembered that awkward moment when my clumsy lover fell straight into a hidden bear hole*** during our ascent towards the 38th parallel . That bear hole hadn’t even been a direct attack on him and he still managed to get himself injured over it. How could he stand up to actual communist attacks if he was already so clumsy?
My glare towards JaeJoong turned into something darker and more out of control when in that brief second I glanced over during the middle of fire only to identify the useless soldier JaeJoong was protecting as that Shim kid who had stolen JaeJoong’s lips all those weeks ago.
Unfortunately, in that bizarre moment in time I also noticed no less than four PPsc41 submachine gun barrels pointed precisely towards JaeJoong and the useless kid who was being lifted into his strong arms.
Of course my tiny lover hadn’t noticed the guns aimed towards him - when someone was hurt it was always he who ran to look after the vulnerable, regardless of the imminent dangers surrounding him. He could never stand witnessing anyone suffering nearby when he was still capable of assisting the victim in any way. It was part of his charm, the reason why I loved him so much…but right now I was cursing him for it with all my might.
It certainly didn’t help that this particular victim was a friend of his, someone he was actually close to. JaeJoong was naturally quiet and reserved; in a place filled with anxious, crabby, young soldiers, JaeJoong would have been the last person anyone would expect to make friends with. Or maybe it had been more than that for JaeJoong - I had indeed been surprised when I had witnessed that lustful kiss between the two boys which destroyed all notions that the only thing they shared was pure friendship.
In that moment, standing nearby the warm flames, surrounded by communists and watching my lover, I felt oddly alone. In my lifetime I had made numerous friendships with both genders - it was something which just seemed natural to me, however, JaeJoong had been the only one I had actually felt safe and content with. Any threat to my stability with him as a lover evoked unpleasant jealousy and I wasn’t ashamed to say it. War makes you blunt and honest and even more desperate to protect the things dear to you. The threat of dying any second does that to you…
But now there my beautiful soldier was, pale with fear and desperately bent over that threat-to-my-stability, trying his hardest to lift him securely into his arms to escape the heavy fire. JaeJoong had run out of the safety of my tent - the tent surrounded by intricately buried mines for my own safety at night, in order to protect Shim Changmin knowing full well that he could die for his efforts. JaeJoong was a lover not a fighter, he could barely aim a gun properly much less fire it to kill another human being. He certainly didn’t belong in a battlefield unless he was assisting the Red Cross to help save lives. And yet here he was stuck in the place which could ultimately mean his death.
And as the gun barrels were lowered with precision towards JaeJoong’s preoccupied forehead, I felt my own desperate need to protect kicking in.
In a flash I had swung my left arm behind my back to hurriedly unlatch the Caliber pistol clipped to my dark brown war belt, and pointed it directly in front of me to the original enemy still firing at me, whilst I swung the powerful BAR in the direction of four o’clock to counterattack JaeJoong’s potential killers, extremely grateful that the heavy rifle was still strapped firmly across my shoulder.
There was no way I could properly defend myself with a handgun placed in my weaker left hand, but the thought of JaeJoong being wounded again (and most definitely worse than that old shoulder wound) was enough to overrule any concerns I had over my own safety.
Shooting somewhere in front of me I hoped I was lucky enough to destroy the communists threatening my life whilst I turned to focus all my attention on the bastards daring to shoot at that beautiful specimen selflessly helping a wounded soldier.
I may have protected JaeJoong successfully in that horrific moment, but it had cost me all my spare bullets on hand. My stomach churned weakly as I heard the terrible clicks signifying the empty cartridges of both my guns like the echoes of clock hands slowly articulating the limited time left before complete disaster strikes.
I dived downwards hastily to avoid being shot whilst my mind whirled hyperactively to come up with a plan to reach my tent for more bullet clips without getting annihilated in the process…
But in one way I did get shot, even worse than in the physical sense. I got shot brutally in the heart when I came back from that tent with 20 extra bullet clips and one less JaeJoong.
In the end, the wounded 21 year-old Shim had made it to the medical tent thanks to his wide-eyed guardian angel. But JaeJoong hadn’t made it back to my tent. His guardian angel had failed him - I had failed him. I should have kept a closer eye out for him knowing how vulnerable he was; knowing how stubborn he’d be by remaining in danger without a weapon in his hand in order to help someone else. Trust JaeJoong to suddenly disappear the moment I shifted my focus onto my tent.
I guess the thing that tortures me the most is not having a clue what actually happened to him. Was he shot? Had he merely run from that spot to the medical tent and been injured further away? Did he run straight into the enemy’s poisonous, awaiting arms? Did he die?
After it was all over, I went on a rampage trying to find him. I could barely dare to look for him amongst our dead, but I had, and his angelic face had not been included. He certainly hadn’t been in the medical tent - that was the first place I had checked. With a panicked lump growing high in my throat I had slowly moved past each wounded man, examining their bloody faces and bodies carefully.
Had I wanted to find JaeJoong there? At the time, no. I had wanted to entertain myself with the belief that he was waiting back in my tent and we had simply just missed each other due to the frantic, chaotic nature of the night’s invasion. But now I wished I had found him there, lying amongst the wounded, because at least I would have known where he was. If he wasn’t amongst the wounded and he hadn’t been killed, then where the bloody hell was he?
Enemy territory. It was the only possibility. He wouldn’t have been temporarily hiding in the foliage for the battle to be over because I know even though he was acutely aware of his clumsiness he would never run away from something like this. And I know he would have come back to me. If he had been wounded somewhere undiscovered he would have called out for me or even crawled to me if he had to. Because I knew he was as connected to me as I was to him. We were both one polar side of the world - seemingly opposite in every way but unable to fight the magnetic pull towards each other.
But not this time. This time the compass had broken. I could only find my opposite pole through faith and desperation alone.
I vow I will find you, JaeJoong. Because the war against communism doesn’t matter; only you matter. Only you have ever mattered to me. I wonder if you truly believed in my love… If I had known I’d lose you that day, I would have told you more of my heart. I would have held you and never let you go.
I would have loved you like it was the last night on earth.
////TBC////
*POW = Prisoner of War
**ROKA = Republic of Korea Army
*** Yes okay, I admit that was a shameless reference to the Seoul Encore Concert, when JJ fell down the trapdoor :P.
MERRY XMAS FOR TUESDAY!!! :D
PLEASE COMMENT!! I love hearing from you guys :D. Plus...as a writer, it's always awesome to hear thoughts and criticisms, right~~. So don't be shy~.
OR FOR MORE, CHECK OUT MY (somewhat temporarily limited) ARCHIVE = //THE BOOKSHELF// :D