on pieces of dyed rays | woosan

Chapter Fifteen

There's a woman sobbing in the corner of a dark room. Wooyoung thinks he knows her. Almost too well. Lately, he's seen her with a man wearing worn out jeans, claiming it was "ripped in fashion" and not "torn by age". She's probably mourning he's left, like she couldn't see it coming. How many more times until she realises?

She turns around, and Wooyoung feels suffocated. He wants to disappear, but he can't, his feet glued on the floor. She calls him, she tells him she has only him like a broken tape recorder that I only know how to run the same noise, and embraces him tightly. It's burning. He feels scorched in her arms.

"I only have you, my dear."

Wooyoung gasps as he wakes up. It's hot. He realises his sheets are soaked with his sweat, so are his clothes, all because Wooyoung is burning. His head is numbly throbbing, his entire body dull, making him lazy to get up even when he so wants to change the clothes and the sheets because they feel fucking gross. It's been a while since he's felt this way—sick—and he's guessing it's because he decided to walk all the way to his basement from Seonghwa's apartment yesterday, in just T-shirt and jeans, sneaking out when Jongho fell asleep on the couch while Hongjoong and Seonghwa decided to not come back from the bedroom after Hongjoong needing a change of clothes spilling vodka on himself.

It was a good night walk, though, feeling cold air wrap him up from head to toe, feeling it freezing his fingers and toes to the point they went numb, in the dead of the night, lamp posts changing colours as he took corners. Whenever Hongjoong and Jongho (also Seonghwa these days) see him dressed a little too lightly during winter, they scold him, saying 'he'll catch a cold', but the thing is, he hardly ever gets sick. Even when his body is made of an awfully balanced diet and has kept the most irregular hours as his daily life—he's totally fine and he thinks that's part of the reason why he hasn't dropped dead yet. And now he winces, slowly recalling what it is to be sick.

His phone lying next to the pillow rings just then, illuminating the caller, 'dongsaeng❤' on his screen. His body planted on the mattress, he only moves his right arm to answer the phone, switching on the speaker mode.

"Hyung, you said you're coming today," Jongho doesn't wait to get straight to the point, his digital voice pouty.

"I was...sleeping," he replies, and he's slightly surprised by how awful he sounds.

"It's five in the afternoon," Jongho retorts. So that means, he has just gotten off work, where Wooyoung told him he'd come an hour before so that he'd be able to stock bribe photos for Yeosang. Jongho's tone changes, shifting to something less irritated and more concerned. "But hyung, are you sick? You sound horrible."

It's scary how Jongho is quick to catch with just a few words he's spoken.

"Thanks, Jongho-ya," Wooyoung tries to sound as sarcastic as he usually would. "Nah, I just woke up."

"Do you want me to come over?"

"No." He breathes in, and it hitches on his throat. Shit, is breathing a problem too when you are sick? He holds back a fit of coughing. "If I get you sick too, Boss would kill me," Wooyoung refuses his offer.

"So you are sick."

Ah, damn. If Wooyoung was in the right mind, he wouldn't have been easily caught like that, and that only proves how clouded his mind is.

"I'm alright, Jongho. I'm a grown ass man," Wooyoung says. "I just need to rest and I'll be fine by tomorrow."

"Do you need anything?" Jongho clings, worry still evident in his voice.

"For you to stop worrying about me," Wooyoung says, and he means it.

"Hyung," the boy whines.

"I'll be fine. I'm as invincible as a cockroach, you know that."

Jongho snorts, tells him to pick up the call next morning because he'll check on him and hangs up, ignoring Wooyoung whining, because mornings aren't his thing.

The room falls in silence after that, and Wooyoung feels hot, lethargic and grossed out altogether. He stays splayed on the bed like that, watching his dotted ceiling like it's going to swallow him, until the dim sunlight that was slipping through the slit window disappears completely.

Night arrives but heat keeps on crawling on his skin, churning his stomach, and he feels the urge to get rid of it. He crawls out of bed, sheds his soaked clothes and steps into the shower. He doesn't bother turning the heater on, because he wants it cold, and when the chilly shower hits his burning skin, he shudders in relief. He stands there for a while, his palms pressed to the tiles in front, leaning, his head hanging low. The stinging feeling in the throat when he swallows saliva reminds him how parched he is. So he flips his head up, hangs his mouth open and lets the shower rain in his mouth. He gulps it down, liking the coldness spreading through his body, and prays the heat to die down.

It doesn't.

A step out of the shower, wrapping himself with new sets of clothes after barely wiping excess water, he sees himself in the small mirror in the bathroom, clouded and slightly cracked.

The man in the mirror looks lost. Like—

Fuck. No, no, no—

"Eomma, it's hot."

Something surges from the bottom of his gut, swelling, and he hugs the sink just below the mirror and lets out whatever was remaining in his almost empty stomach. His body is burning with unwanted heat, and now his throat burns with acid.

Yeah, he hates being sick because it makes him fucking weak.