Red | Sookai ✔

four: crimson

Soobin hasn't seen Choi Yeonjun in years. So when his former best friend shows up on his doorstep with a gun, it's a shock and a half.

To put it mildly, Yeonjun looks like death. Like sin and anger and death. Soobin can't see even a trace of the loud, happy boy he used to smoke pot and skip class with in their high school days. He can't see the boy who threw paper airplanes at the teachers he didn't like and flirted with anything that breathed. The man before him isn't Choi Yeonjun. The man before him is a stranger.

"I didn't think you'd bother coming to my house just to shoot me," Soobin says. Truthfully, he's at a loss for words. He's got a headache. His boyfriend hasn't woken up yet. And Yeonjun doesn't look like he's going to grant Soobin the small mercy of death anytime soon.

Yeonjun brushes his dark hair back. It's surprising to see Yeonjun with black hair. Pink, yes. Blue, yes. Highlighter yellow, yes. But never black. Never black, like his mane and his clothes. Never black, like the deep, dark depths of Soobin's rotten soul. "The bullet's not for me."

Then, to Soobin's horror, Yeonjun chucks the gun into his open hands. He nearly drops it.

"Wha---I---"

"Kill yourself." There's no emotion in Yeonjun's voice. No sympathy. No remembrance. No camaraderie. Nothing but a flat void, a pit of nothing. "Kill yourself before you kill him."

Soobin stares at the gun in his hands. "I don't understand." He does.

Snow flies off the tip of Yeonjun's ebony boot. "Do you remember when we were high as hell and talking about all the ways we wanted to die, back in high school?"

Yeonjun's unrelenting gaze looks dull, dead, as if the man standing on Soobin's doorstep is nothing but an empty shell, as if all the good memories of the past have been leeched out of his slim form. But still, Soobin knows he remembers. He knows Yeonjun remembers how they'd fallen for the same boy at the same time, and how Soobin had gotten him first. He knows Yeonjun remembers how they'd gone out to smoke, and how he'd cried his heart out to Soobin and called him a traitor, and how they'd never skipped class together again.

(Soobin thinks Choi Yeonjun is a selfish bastard.)

"You always said you wanted to die with a single bullet to the head. Quick. Relatively painless. No time for regrets." Yeonjun's hollow gaze doesn't leave Soobin, not even for a second. Soobin feels chills crawl up his spine, and he wants nothing more than to slam the door. "Do you remember that?"

(There's no point in lying anymore.)

"Y-yeah," Soobin admits, and he hates it, hates the stutter in his voice, because he knows Yeonjun is right, and he knows he's killing his boyfriend, but he can't help it can't help it can't help it--- "I do remember."

"Here's your chance." Yeonjun's voice is cold, his words even icier, and Soobin detests how he can just throw away eight years of (former) friendship like it's nothing. Like he's nothing. "There's one bullet in there. Only one."

Soobin lifts his chin defiantly, trying to ignore the shivers trampling their way across his entire nervous system. His fingers feel like blocks of ice, locked shakily around the barrel of the pistol Yeonjun has just placed in his hands. "How do you know I won't use this to kill him instead?"

"I know you won't." It's a simple answer, and it's true.

(He'd never kill Hueningkai with a weapon that had touched another man's hands.)

"Why are you doing this?" Soobin's cry reverberates through the snow-covered forest, and he doesn't care who hears him, because there's no one there. No one except him and his former best friend and the light of his life. "How did you even find---"

"Beomgyu tracked your address during Taehyun's call with Hueningkai. It's a good thing he finally picked up." In the quiet, freezing breeze rustling through the trees, Yeonjun's coat flaps like the obsidian wings of an angel of death. "We know Hueningkai won't leave you by himself. But we can't kill you, you know? Taehyun can't do it. Beomgyu can't do it." There's a strange sort of heaviness in Yeonjun's stare, the first visual sign that he even remembers their past. "Heaven knows I can't do it."

Something boils inside Soobin---anger, fear, rage. Rage, red as the skin of a ripe apple. Rage, red as the frostbite kissing his nose. Rage, red as the rim of Yeonjun's eyes. "You're just jealous!" he shouts, so loud it sends a sparse flock of sparrows scattering from their perches. "I'm not going to kill myself just so you can swoop in and take my boyfriend! Hueningkai needs me!"

"He doesn't." Yeonjun shakes his baggy sleeve carelessly, snow fluttering off a reaper's cloak. "He'll move on. He'll be sad, and of course he'll cry, but he doesn't need you, Soobin. You need him. But what you need to do now is let him go."

It's the first time Yeonjun's said his name since their fight all those years ago. It's a dagger straight to Soobin's heart.

"I'm---I'm not letting him go," Soobin stammers, fumbling with the gun, trying to get his fingers around the handle. "I---I l-l-love him. I love him!"

"You don't! You don't love him, Soobin! You're obsessed with him!" For the first time, Yeonjun's voice cracks, a mirror shattering into a million splintered shards. "It's killing him! Can't you see that? You're killing him!"

Killing him killing him killing him killing him killing---

Soobin stumbles backwards, his index finger finally finding the trigger. He points the gun at Yeonjun's chest, shaking, shaking, shaking, hot tears running down his frozen cheeks, pain blurring his vision with red. "Fuck you!"

Yeonjun is suddenly calm again, empty hands raised in mock surrender. "Go on," he taunts, but the slightest quiver lines his words. "Shoot me."

A choked sob escapes Soobin's numb lips. He crumples to his knees, gun still trembling in his grip. Can't do it can't do it can't do it---

"That's what I thought." Yeonjun's mouth slips down in a disappointed frown. "I hope you go to hell when you die, Soobin. And you sure as fuck better not bring Hueningkai there with you." Then he spins on his heel and starts walking away, loose slush flying off the tips of his boots.

"Hyung!" Soobin screams, doorstep hard against his knees, tears scorching his face, his cracked soul haloed in blazing crimson.

Yeonjun doesn't turn. Soobin aims the gun at his retreating back, but he can't seem to pull the trigger. His fingers won't stop shaking.