Love of a Sinner

Ch 27 - Hate

Joohoon opened his tired eyes unwillingly, as if he didn't want to wake up from that dream. That memory. Because only there he could see Jiwook smiling at him again, his brightness and radiance unmatching.
He moved his eyes away from the nothingness in that room still so vivid with Jiwook's presence there, that he felt it was chocking him.

Nevertheless, he couldn't find his will nor strength to be in any other place. As unbearable as it was, that place, that house, was the last evidence that what he felt was real. That Jiwook wasn't just a piece of his imagination.
So unreal felt the younger's absence to him.

Like a bad dream and only when he was asleep would he live in the expected reality.

Not that he could actually sleep.
After he collapsed in Joohee's arms, only then he slept through the entire night and the next day, his body passed out from the gathered physical and psychological exhaustion.

Everything after were sleepless nights and short moments with his consciousness drifting away then being pulled back again.
Just like right now.

He was forced to face the crushing reality again and again after only for an instance he could touch Jiwook and hear his voice, see his smile, feel his warmth and the next, it was all gone.

And then anew.

He was sitting down on the floor, his back held by the bare wall behind him, as he didn't have the heart to touch anything in that room, afraid to change it, afraid to erase unwillingly least one trace of Han Jiwook.

Thus he stayed like that for God knows how long. He lost count of days, since the first thing he did after he woke up was getting himself drunk to death. He almost succeeded at that, with his already wretched state, he filled himself with tons of strong mixed alcohol to make his feelings at least a little number. Was it experience or his blood, he was a very heavy drinker and not even his condition and the countless bottles he poured in his stomach could help him get drunk enough to ease his tearing pain. The sole thing he attained was an almost critical alcohol intoxication and the devastation in his sister's eyes.

He didn't touch the alcohol anymore.
He coffined himself in the house since then. Only once he went to the hospital. However, the unmoving body of Jiwook, unable to breath alone, with all the maddening devices attached to him and the paleness of his face, his closed unwilling to open eyes and the load of heavy bandages wrapped everywhere on his body - was a sight Joohoon physically couldn't take nor look at. Whilst his mind replayed again and again the moment of Jiwook dying in his hands... because he died there. His heart stopped. Joohoon felt and saw that with his eyes, helplessly watched how Jiwook's life was drained from him and he did nothing. If not for Siwon's call and the paramedics arriving any second later, he would have lost Jiwook forever.

Even the thought of that threw him in a dread so great that only death would be his salvation, and even then still not enough. He couldn't and wouldn't abandon his sister and yet he didn't trust himself to be able to live further through it.

Joohoon couldn't help himself and those dire thoughts were swallowing him alive with just one look at the unconscious Jiwook.

He didn't leave the house since then. Not even when Joohee pleaded to go with her. Not to the hospital nor outside either. He quieted to smoke as well as it reminded him of the moment Jiwook tried his first smoke and the thought that it could be his last, made the tobacco taste like acid.
The sole thing he was clenching into was his phone, with the few photos they made together and the chance that he'd be called and receive word which would bring his heaven or his doom.

- Joohoon.

Taejoon was there again. He came first to treat his wounds, then to check his condition after the intoxication he barely survived and now, to try and make him at least eat normally and get him out of there. For once.