The Afterlife

29) When Winter Takes Over

(a/n: flashback part 2 here we go
silent prayers for kim miran to fuck off
ah also kim miran, kim minho, and Kim Jongyul have the same last name but that's an honest mistake theyre not related they are (were) friends)

The cold winter took over the streets were life has been always the most loud. It brought quiet hovering over the alleys, and it made every last corner smell of rain and grief.

A year it had been, but a merciless one as it passed. It was cruel, feeding over the souls of those who held on to what little hopes they could for their lives to go back to the way they were. Only a year it had been, but so long and so agonising, was it, as it passed by those who lived it.

They remained as six on the same street, while Choi Soojin was shortly taken away after their trial at a free life. It had been the worst night the street got to witness, for when they were all ripping from the insides with agony, no one could speak a word of their pain.

They watched in silence, the bride who left the alley in a white dress with tears on her face, ones that no one mistook for tears of joy  for they spoke volumes of all the pain the seven of them felt on that night.

It was the last time they looked each other's way. While all of them lived so close, only four of them lingered by one another's side, leaving behind Donghyun and Minho as if they had never once known them or looked at their faces.

And so it went - the entire year - until a day came when the same dark spirit rose to its feet, and the quiet ended only to make way for the misery to return tenfold.

It began when Jongyul was it his own door, bidding his friends farewell as they had always done on their weekends. With no one to linger behind and ask to stay, he almost returned to the warmth of his home from the cold of winter so soon, but a shadow that cast itself on his porch made him stop moving at all along with his beating heart.

With wide eyes, he stared at the girl whom he never stopped missing; his eyes dared not speak even of tears, and his lips trembled in their trial to voice their complaint, the sickening need for such sight that they had felt for so long, but "Soojin," was all he managed to say at last.

"There you are, Jongyul," she smiled, a small one, and her head turned every which way in across the street of their childhood, the street that had evidence of all of their love, "barely different."

He stood there, mirroring the quiet that had been their lives for so long. He spoke not a word and waited for the girl who looked like she had an age of sadness to let go of.

"I have not come to reminisce," she sighed, and at last, she looked at that who was once her beloved, "I have not planned to see you first, but," she looked like she was barely breathing at all, she, too, burdened by the weight of the things he did not know, "when I saw you waving them goodbye, I thought I should do so, too."

"Soojin," again, he said nothing but her name, and it earned him naught but a tiny smile, one that hid behind it all the real tears that never ended since the day of her wedding.

"My husband died, months ago," as she spoke, the sky above them decided to cry for the both of them, and when the first droplets started coming their way, it was only then that Jongyul noticed what should have been the first to catch his sight when Soojin stood before him; he was blinded by her presence, then, but then when he was made to blink by the rain and found Soojin clenching a blanket to her chest, he saw it.

Soojin held a newborn close to herself, hiding it from the rain the best she could as she smiled again when she figured that Jongyul only now noticed it, "and this is Wooshik," she pat the wrapped blanket gently and looked down at her child, "I am naming him after myself, deeming his father to never have existed," Jongyul did not understand why she was telling him that, but he listened, and he stood holding his breath like the earth would split and swallow him if it takes note that he still is alive, "Choi Wooshik, his name will be," she looked up at Jongyul again, "and I will make sure he never bears the weight of the misery you caused me."