|Chapter 6: Out in the Dark|
Baekhyun’s world doesn’t stop spinning under his closed lids. Much to his dismay, he also feels his dinner rumbling up at the back of his throat when he feels his world start bouncing as well, urging his brain to work what little reflexes he has left functioning to cover his mouth just in time for him to stop and swallow back whatever composes that gutter-taste down to the depths of his stomach and grimaces at the even worse after taste that burns lashes in his throat.
“Ack – that tastes awful.” He slurs on his loose mouth.
He hears someone else’s voice ring next to his ear of a “Are you okay?”, but the alcohol drowns them out of his system as soon as it hits, unaware of the situation he was currently in.
Baekhyun feels worse than sick. Actually, he feels like dying. Out of many reasons, but mostly thanks to the alcohol he had told himself he’d just have one, promised Kris he’d just have one. But then again, it was Kris, and he had started forgetting soon enough after he hers his voice disappear. Thus, one shot becomes a bottle and before he knows it, there was one after another. What’s the difference? He shrugs midway because it didn’t matter. He stops caring because he had already lost count of it all. But more, he keeps wanting more. He wants more of the temporary bliss his profuse drinks were able to keep bringing him.
More light-headed.
More pain-relieving.
More numb of the pain.
More time to forget to forget love – love that was Jongin.
Alcohol has this effect; the effects of making someone die in an instant despite still living in their shitty lives. It grants a pile of hours of escape before every senses you have in your numb body comes back again to life and see your problems slap your face for running away – see them closer, until you realize that you had just lost some more of time instead of gaining them.
Baekhyun had learned it the hard way, as everything in his life is. It’s always the hard way and never the gentle one.
One day he lives because of love and dies of it in the next. One day he dreams of a perfect life and rue it to dust all by himself.
Life is cruel. And the world is harsh. His perspective is filled with lies.
Baekhyun nods onto this and agrees in an unpatterend rhythm inside his head, every reality of him limping sideways, in all directions, still hasn’t sunk in, because reality hurts too much that all he can do is let himself succumb at all the lies he had built up in his life.
Walking down a pavement of red bricks, strolling in the middle of the night, smiling and waving at people that come at his way, for a moment he thinks he’s dreaming. The dim lights he sees tells him so. Though the man beside him can only crease his eyebrows and wonders for himself, ‘what’s happening to you?, and never lets his eyes fall away on how the strong boy he had clearly known back then could look so pathetic and weak in his eyes.
