on pieces of dyed rays | woosan

Chapter Ten

Wooyoung doesn't stay the night.

He dozes off, and wakes up at eleven minutes to three a.m. as his phone screen shoots him with sharp artificial light. He realises San has held him in his arms while in sleep, and instantly feels warm, or rather, too hot. He scurries away sneakily, not wanting to wake San up not because he doesn't want to bother San but rather because he doesn't want to bother talking to San. He considers for two seconds if he wants to leave a note or his number behind, but decides not because it's too sickeningly cheesy romance drama-like that runs on painstakingly low budget that it cuts off in the middle of a teenage girl falling in love with a transferred hot guy.

If he wants to see San again, entirely for his body of course, he would probably have a chance in the club again. If not, it's a hookup anyway. He'll just find someone new to entertain him for a night.

So he leaves the place with no trace behind, except for an awkwardly vacant spot next to the sleeping human on his queen sized bed, and catches a grumpy taxi driver to take him back home.

The pocket money Mr. Seo gives out to his 'employees' every month, allows them to afford a room in a newly built apartment, enough for a single person, at the heart of Seoul. But Wooyoung, even if it is right in the heart of Seoul, lives in a cramped semi-basement apartment that allows little sunlight through a slit, or a drain-ditch resembling windows—the room also smells like one sometimes.

Hongjoong had asked once, when he was still with them, what Wooyoung would spend his money on. He doesn't smoke, isn't interested in drinks or branded clothes or whatever expensive shenanigans capitalism-brainwashed people crave for.

It's okay, he thinks, because it somehow feels like a dungeon of a roleplaying game that he sometimes indulges in a PC bang with Jongho, hunting for treasure, fighting off monsters, looking for an exit. Only, there is no true treasure, he isn't looking for an exit, and if there was a monster, then it's himself.

He is stuck on his squeaky bed, springs too old, staring up at the dark spotted ceiling. He wonders if he'd feel any different if there was a sky drawn on it.

He wonders further, what San would paint the sky as. Paint his sky as, before he dozes off once again, let the world catch the light again before it dips in darkness.

***

"Why the fuck isn't he picking up my call?"

Jasmine's screech is the last thing Wooyoung wants to hear when having a massive hangover. He knew three shots of vodka his client forced him last night was too much for him to handle. At least he found his way back to this office, even if he did steal the cab someone had stopped before him. "Your ex?" Wooyoung asks, not out of curiosity but out of boredom he needs to kill while waiting for his boss to pay his share of the month. Unfortunately, only Jasmine is here to entertain him.

"He's not my ex." Jasmine glares from the other side of the table. Wooyoung's eyes are half-lidded, with his mind muddled from the drinks at the time he doesn't know if he could call it a midnight or dawn. He is resting his chin on the hand, resting his elbow on the said table, slouching. He bet he looks really invested in the conversation.

"It's just a misunderstanding. We are still together."

"The last time I checked, you told me you fucked with a stoned dude while stoned. And that you asked your naive boyfriend to do the same because triple high is the best orgasm you could ever get."

"I wasn't in the right mind, okay?" she snaps hysterically.

Yeah, that's what drugs do, surprise!

"Didn't he tell you that he was done with you? Why don't you take his word as it is?"

In hindsight, Wooyoung is surprised he has all this information stocked in his brain. He couldn't care less about Jasmine's life, but he guesses his life is just so uneventful that his brain has space to store hers.

"He didn't mean it," she retorts angrily.

"And you're so sure because?"

"Because he fucking loves me," she says it as if it is a conviction that the entire world knows.

He wonders why people are so adamant to read between the lines; why people bothered thinking 'he didn't mean it' or 'that wasn't her true intention' while taking the words as they are can save the work. They didn't have to over-complicate things, indulge in that theoretic doubt, rely on that thin string of invisible hope, wreck the brain with 'what ifs' and be uselessly running around the void.

But he doesn't say it out loud, because by now he considers Jasmine and him different species and he knows better than to indulge in a fruitless conversation. So he raises his eyebrows and shrugs, having nothing more to add.

"You wouldn't understand," she scoffs.

Quite the contrary, Wooyoung knows about love. More so than he would have wanted. It had soaked into his skin, absorbed into his cells, bound into his bones.

"You know I love you, right? Wooyoung-ah?"

The curse has never left him.

Love was but an indulgence, a make believe of regret, an excuse for forgiveness. Because everything shall be forgiven beneath the word of love.

He sighs. "Maybe consider the fact that it's four a.m."

"Ugh, of course!" Jasmine roars like she just had a grand revelation. "How unthoughtful of me! I shouldn't have called in the middle of the night."

Or dawn, Wooyoung muses. From the open gate of the warehouse, he can see the hem of the midnight dress starting to dye in dark orange.

He stores an everlasting moment in his smartphone.