on pieces of dyed rays | woosan

Chapter Twenty Four

Nothing is unbreakable and all mortals die.

It's just that they all have different life spans, humans averaging longer than flowers, but this particular flower withering clenches his heart more so than any news of death he's heard.

So he decides to store it in a digital format, of its best flourishing moment.

"Forsythia."

"Huh?"

Hongjoong glances down at Wooyoung's phone and repeats, "Forsythia flower. That thing on your home screen."

Wooyoung eyes his phone one more time, a photo of the bouquet of yellow flowers filling the screen to the brim behind scarce app icons. He drops his arm down, back to folding them above his bent knees, as if to hide his phone.

"Didn't know you were educated in flowers," Wooyoung teases.

Hongjoong shrugs and crouches next to him. It's one of those back alleys of the club meetings they have, because Wooyoung refused to enter the club once again because he's heard enough music (scratch "the loud" for politeness) for the night, but more than that, he simply didn't want to be around people. It's one of those nights.

Wooyoung is wearing lighter clothing than last time but Hongjoong spares his complaints because the night has grown significantly warmer recently. There is no snow that covers the land anymore, which also means there is no layer to hide the dirts crawling on the dark side of the world anymore.

"Duh, I'm your hyung," Hongjoong scoffs, and Wooyoung chuckles at the familiar phrase. "Didn't think you're the one to appreciate them."

Wooyoung gives a dry laugh. He guesses he wasn't and he probably isn't, either.

"What's the occasion?" Hongjoong asks, pulling out a lollipop in his mouth, examining the artificial red colour of it, before he puts it back in his mouth. Rehabilitation from smoking, as Seonghwa pestered him to.

"To have a flower as a screensaver is very un-Wooyoung. I'd be asking the same question if you had a naked woman as a screensaver too, just so you know."

Wooyoung laughs and thinks that totally makes sense. He isn't the one to appreciate a woman's glorious body either, because he doesn't swing that way.

"It's San."

"He gave it to you?"

Wooyoung regrets letting that slip out, bites his lip before he gives a small nod. Hongjoong turns to him and gives an amused look.

"He seems like a nice guy, just like Seonghwa said. A little cheesy for my liking though."

Wooyoung shrugs, thinking that describes San pretty well—although "a little" is an understatement—with adjectives like sweet, kind, considerate, giving, and all other positive ones. San has been nothing but a cavalier to him; it's like he knows how to pace it with Wooyoung.

"He-" Wooyoung tries, and feels his throat squeeze again, sour taste spreading on his tongue. He breathes, "He scares me, hyung."

Hongjoong looks at him questioningly, also maybe slightly hostile.

"What do you mean?"

San isn't just a hook-up anymore, that much is obvious. He's been around for more than a mere fuck, and even though he doesn't know what to name him, he considers he's slipped into the small circle of people Wooyoung would pick up a call in the middle of his sleep. But there's something tragically different from Hongjoong, Jongho, Seonghwa or Yeosang.

He feels sorry for them. If Wooyoung hadn't come across their lives, they wouldn't have had to be wary over little shit like him. But he has, he wants to be around them, and he's accepted to carry the guilt that nips on him. He must have saved a world in his past life that he's blessed with four people who've accepted the kind of person he is, and cares. And if they decide to leave, being fed up with him one day, then Wooyoung would probably be relieved more than sad.

But with San—he feels like a fragile glass.

He makes a foreign feeling wash over him, something that pulls him out of his comfort zone, something that evokes a change in the cold waters he's used to floating in.

And change is scary, isn't it?

Wooyoung has mapped out his life—shitty map undeniably—mapped out possible scenarios and how to deal with them, and San is an anomaly to that. Wooyoung can't quite place him anywhere, and he's watching a road draw itself out and cultivate its place on his map he didn't know existed and he's never been so unsure of following a path.

It feels out of his control, out of his shelter.

San makes him feel lost.

"He's so weird, hyung. When I'm with him, I feel these things I'm not used to," Wooyoung murmurs. "And I don't know how to deal with it."

"Does that hurt you?"

Wooyoung shakes his head.

"Does that...make you resent yourself?"

He shakes his head again.

"Does that..." Hongjoong ponders, twisting his lollipop in his mouth with his fingers, and asks carefully, "make you smile?"

Wooyoung sucks in a breath.

"You have a pretty smile, Wooyoung."

San's voice rings in his mind.

When Wooyoung doesn't shake his head nor reply, Hongjoong draws a conclusion, and his hostile air softens.

"I understand that something new could be scary." Hongjoong places a hand on Wooyoung's. The one that's holding a phone, the one that has a bouquet of forsythia flowers on screen display. "But new isn't always bad, Wooyoung-ah. Let it in, and you might like it, you know? Maybe it's for the good. Maybe, it's about time you let something different inside you. And perhaps, he can make you happy."

Happy, huh?

They say that like a mantra. As if saying that repeatedly can make it happen, but every time they do, Wooyoung feels slightly more miserable. He probably isn't, though, just like they think. Everyday he drags his body to the obscurity, breathes in void, feeds off filth, because that's the only thing he can do. The most he feels elated is when he's eating fish bread, annoying Hongjoong and Seonghwa, teasing Jongho, listening to Yeosang rant, and Wooyoung doesn't mind collecting those small pieces to call the chunk "happiness".

San gives him something too big to process, to carry. He feels overwhelmed when he's hit by his fond smile and his gentle touch, because Wooyoung doesn't know how to respond to that for life.

He's scared to see his map drawing out on its own. He's scared to follow the path lit up with warm sunlight, blossoming with flowers, because what if there's a pitfall he doesn't see beneath them? He doesn't think he can crawl back up. Or say he does, with the help of his friends, only to realise his friends are in dead skin, and his world has reduced to a ruin?

He hears the sound of thin glass shattering somewhere far.

"I hope you'll be able to find your perch, one day."

It almost sounded like a dire prayer.