Bend & Break | Wooyoung [Ongoing]

8 | he sips soda at midnight on a rickety barstool

Him.

AT NOTHING SHORT OF ELEVEN pee-em the night felt young. My mood, on the other hand, was up for feeling grouchy with common sense rendering upside smacks to the back of its head. I thought I should be angry with Changbin for reproving me. I also reeled upon the fact that, on Facebook, I was left on read. But on a day like this, I didn't want to wallow alone and for the first time in a while, I was satisfied with knowing that come tomorrow, I had no plans hence I didn't mind staying out late. Still I wondered how long it was going to keep me for.

My rendition of a fat dumb rich life, a far toss from the real deal.

I broke in time to the sweatiness between my toes donning thick socks. It was out cold, and still not cold enough. My lungs sucked in a measured dose of air, which didn't relieve me, instead compelled me to assert I honestly didn't want to be on my own.

My feet knew where to take me once we'd descended the last steps on the stairwell at my apartment complex and were out the door.

I was walking again. With a washy consciousness.

There was what to talk about, there was being so stricken by panic to lay it on the table. Shockingly, my head on the market and open to blatant judgement was the least of it. But mostly, the fact that there were people (good people) who wouldn't judge me. Lee Saerom was a case in point, the only one. A sweet woman who would down appraisals that invited inquiries and brow-cocked-cheek-scratching hums from a skeptic. Saerom was going to sit me down with a complimentary drink I would end up paying for to tell me, everyone has the way they go about their problems.

Each man to his own shit, she was capable of adding.

Saerom had always been endowed with a pretty smile. It was medicinal. I could almost bet she knew it too. I saw it more often than not while we were together, and discovered it offered more therapy than the secret we were protecting, which was why when she'd decidedly moved on first, I felt a loss.

The loss of her smile.

I turned the next corner, setting foot inside the first building to my left. Stale warmth welcomed me.

It was so much a wasteland in here I started expecting a tumbleweed to roll by. Barely thriving, it used to have a name displayed above the door on a sign that could attest of better days. Now, the writing on the plaque might as well have been sandpapered until you only saw something barely worded. I think it'd been in that instant that Saerom's boss conditioned himself to conclude his microenterprise had become a household name, and he would be throwing away serious cash if he bothered with a new sign. Wasted chunk of some healthy felled tree, cut down in its prime, Saerom told me that was what he said. The sayings of a man with an ego to sustain.

I paused for quick survey. Places like these didn't  leave you aware of the presences until you saw them. A man in a corner, masculine hand large and thready with veins. I wanted to believe an upclose study of them would reveal the calloused layer of a manual labourer. He fitted the bill of the usual clientele they got here. Mostly construction workers making do with unskilled physical work for wages. Some grew to be proud of it, cholerically running to their job's defense when the need arose—there is more to it than heavylifting in case you don't know. So, buzz off. This alone man was a long ways from his peers, and at the very least, he did what he did for nothing short of making ends meet for one reason or the other. Mouths to feed; responsibilities that became underwhelming the longer they overwhelmed. No choice to it.

The difference between us, I noted, was the ego douchebags such as myself thought they had to get finicky, and at the end of the day defend with a weak, It's tough I know. We'll get by ... somehow. The curtain call was loaning money from a half-suspicious, half-concerned friend.