my first and last || renmin

S i x t e e n - I Need To Know

"Um.." Jaemin didn't know how to answer.

"Taeyong! Play 'Bomfalleralla'." Taeyong sighed but he did as he was told.

A few seconds later, some loud Swedish rap song blasted from the speakers.

Renjun and Jaemin sat through it, totally baffled.

"I'm sorry, sir. We don't speak Swedish." Renjun yelled over the loud music.

"The important thing is not what nonsense the voices are saying but what they are feeling." Jaehyun sipped his scotch, yelling.

The song continued for another awkward ten seconds before Jaemin had had enough.

He got up and turned off the music.

"Are you playing with us?"

"Pardon?" Jaehyun answered, completely nonchalant.

"Is this some kind of performance?" Jaemin asked, he was angry.

Renjun was really getting worried.

Did we come all the way for this?

"So anyway... when the book ends, Anna's mom-" Jaehyun raised his hand to silence Renjun.

"Imagine you are racing a tortoise." Renjun and Jaemin fidgeted in their seats.

Taeyong frowned, he clearly felt bad for them.

"The tortoise has a ten yard head start. In the time it takes for you to run ten yards the tortoise has moved maybe one yard and so on, forever." Jaehyun continued.

"You are faster than the tortoise but you can never catch him, you can only decrease his lead. Now certainly you can run past the tortoise as long as you don't contemplate the mechanics involved but the question of how turns out to be so complicated that no one really solved it until Cantor's proof that some infinities are bigger than other infinities." Renjun and Jaemin had no idea on how to respond.

"I assume that answers your questions."

"I don't know what's going on." Jaemin said to an annoyed Renjun.

"And yet you seemed so intelligent in print, Mr. Na." Jaehyun took the last drink of the scotch in his glass.

"Must be all that cancer in your brain." Jaehyun mumbled to himself under his breath.

"Jaehyun!" Taeyong tried admonishing Jaehyun while Jaemin wanted to throw a punch and Renjun tried to calm the situation.

"Can we please talk about Anna for a sec? I understand that the story ends mid-sentence because she dies or becomes too sick to continue-"

"I'm not interested in talking about the book." Jaehyun interrupted.

"-But that doesn't mean her family and everyone she loves doesn't have a future, right?" Renjun carried on.

"I said I'm not interested-"

"But you promised!" Renjun shouted, getting visibly upset.

"Nothing happens to them! They're fictions! They cease to exist once the novel is over." This isn't what Renjun came all the way here to hear.

He won't accept it.

"They can't! It's impossible to not imagine some future-"

"I can't do this. Taeyong, get rid of them." Taeyong didn't move, Jaehyun turned back to the two upset teens.

"I refuse to pity you."

"I don't want your pity." Renjun spat.

"Of course you do. Like all sick children, your existence depends on it-"

"Jaehyun." Taeyong tried to stop Jaehyun from carrying on.

"You are fated to live out your days as the child you were when diagnosed, who believes in life after the novel ends. We, as adults, pity you. So we pay for your treatments, your oxygen machines. We give you food and water though you are unlikely to live long enough-"

"Jaehyun!" Taeyong's interruptions didn't stop him one bit.

"You are a side effect of an evolutionary process that cares little for individuals. You are a failed experiment in mutation." He finally finished, a bit out of breath.

"I resign!" Taeyong had tears in his eyes, Jaemin had balled his fists but Renjun was unbothered.

Jaehyun's words didn't phase him one bit, he rised up from the couch.

"Hey, listen asswipe. You're not gonna tell me anything I don't know about illness. I need one thing and one thing only before I walk out life and that is to tell me what happens to your freaking characters!"

"I cannot tell you." Jaehyun seemed unbothered by everything.

"Bull shit!" Renjun shouted while Jaehyun went to take a drink.

"I can't-" Renjun smacked it right out of his hands, surprising everyone.

"Make something up!" Silence.

"Taeyong. I'll have a martini please."

"I have resigned." Taeyong crossed his arms.

"Don't be ridiculous." Jaehyun rolled his eyes.

Jaehyun now realised that he was all alone in this.

"You really aren't gonna tell us?" Renjun asked.

"Please leave." Renjun was furious, Jaemin stood next to him holding onto his arm as if to say "Come on, enough of this guy."

Jaemin and Renjun came out of the house, practically shaking.

As they got to the street, Jaehyun had one last thing to say.

"Have you ever stopped to ask why you care so much about your silly questions?"

"Oh, go fuck yourself." Jaehyun didn't have a response to that so he just shut the door.

That's when Renjun started to get emotional.

"I need to know what happens to everyone.. I need to know that they are okay.. I need to know that my parents are gonna be okay..." Renjun sobbed into Jaemin's shirt.

"Hey. It's okay, it's okay.. I'll write you a sequel." Renjun cried harder.

"I will, better than any shit that drunk could write. With blood, guts and sacrifice. You'll love it." Renjun nodded, wiping away his tears.

That let out a smile in Renjun and Jaemin gave him a hug.

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(a/n: double update for valentines, happy valentines day besties! thanks for reading <3)