Until The End of Time | Wonho [√]

29: LACHEISM

LACHEISM: THE DESIRE TO BE STRUCK BY DISASTER

Wonho was out of touch for a week after.

Nonetheless, I couldn't bring myself to reach out to him. I was deeply hurt and I recognized this grave feeling within me that even if I acted nonchalant in the past, whenever he had ghosted on me or gave me a cold shoulder, or simply dissipated into thin air, it wore me down. He hurt me without intention. For once, I wanted him to reach out to me first. Tell me what was wrong with me; us, why we couldn't work it out.

At the same, I desperately clung onto my phone almost any second of the day, my fingers hovering over the dial-pad. I wanted to go to him but a part of me stood before that resolution like a wall.

I spent nights staring at our old conversations on the phone, the textbox with his name and a photo of him smiling, showing his bright set of teeth staring at me. The date he was last active indicated a week ago. I did not visit his mind like he was always occupying mine.

Sleep was out of reach and if it came, it came in patches, knocked me unconscious for a few hours, only to jolt me up every thirty minutes or so to check the phone's screen beside me. Days blurred in, class lectures, the part-time job, club activities were all the same. Everything merged in together, night and day, they were all the same.

I was lying on my bed, my eyes begging me to sleep but my mind running the wheel of my whole body. Viscerally, unintentionally, and absentmindedly I scrolled through the texts between Wonho and me.

I scrolled between our song and book recommendations, goodnights, good mornings, photos and jokes, philosophical musings, and nonsensical, passive flirting. I refreshed the chat, nothing new. I typed in the message box, but couldn't find words to say. I pushed the back button and exited the app.

Wonho did not own any other social media except for kakao linked to his number, as far as I was concerned. He did take photos of things he liked, food, and occasionally himself but barely did he indulge in his cellphone.

Entering the familiar google bar I wrote Shin Hoseok, his real name, and Wonho beside it and then I clicked the search bar. In a second my phone screen was filled with pieces of information about the many Shins, and many Hoseoks with kpop members in it. I scrolled down to find an iwonhoyou on instagram, but it was missing the other keywords from my search.

My heart almost leaped out of my chest when the quick click revealed it was indeed his account. With a photo of his, wearing a mask and a baseball cap but I could fairly well say it was him. The last photo was posted two years ago, a picture of the sky.

He was followed by a small number of people, none I knew. The account was inactive and there was a vacant feeling to it. Though the posts shouted his existence, how he once belonged here.