TXT ONESHOTS

yeonbin

Loud music blared from every direction, neon lights flashing and faux-enthusiastic robot voices promising prizes one could spend a fortune trying to get, only to fail. The arcade was certainly not Soobin’s first choice regarding places to spend Christmas Eve. Yeonjun was sure he would have much preferred going to a quiet little bookstore in some corner of Seoul, maybe, or a day-trip to Jeju.

Or maybe he was wrong and Soobin wanted to come here for some obscure reason—like his boyfriend, who loved playing on those silly Dance Dance Revolution consoles, having died in a horrific train accident a week ago.

Yeonjun still remembered what Soobin had said in a broken snarl that day, punctuated with sobs and hiccups, to no one in particular at the funeral. It was held in a discreet corner of the park near his lover’s house, black swaths of cloth hanging from makeshift poles arranged in a rough cuboid. Only the deceased’s immediate family and very close friends were invited—in this case Soobin himself and two others, a Choi Beomgyu and Kang Taehyun.

“Why, when the universe was letting me enjoy my life for once,” Soobin had spat, “must they stick another knife in?” He thought his life a mere drama for whatever higher-ups commanded the ways of the world from up above, thought that they jerked around his puppet-body at their whims and fancies, thought that he saw those invisible lines of inevitability attached to him, stripping him of decision and free will.

A more apt analogy could not be used. Just a few months earlier, Soobin had walked in on his lover unconscious, bright red mouths gaping on his wrists, spewing endless thick, dark liquid that stained the innocent wooden floor, the pure white carpet and the stark pale walls with what almost looked like rounds of blood-coated bullets shot by a madman sprayed all over. Three crimson-edged kitchen knives that Soobin knew all too well from days spent cooking meals for both of them lay demurely by the limp body’s side.

Something thick rose in Soobin’s throat as he retched, clutching his stomach as strings of bile and saliva emptied out of his mouth onto the floor, mingling with the blood to form a disgusting mixture of suffering. To the what might be perceived as staying idiotically still and not helping Soobin’s credit, he threw open the kitchen drawers in a bid to find the first-aid kit as he bit his lip, trying his best not to inhale the sick rusty scent that permeated the studio apartment.

He was surprisingly adept at bandaging the other’s glaring wounds, hiding the angry gashes beneath thick folds of white gauze. Once he picked up his phone, meaning to call an ambulance, yet the memory of his lover’s head hung low as he regaled the waves of panic that would nearly knock him to his knees whenever he so much as went by a hospital stopped him. Countless days spent essentially living in a clinically detached white ward gripping his comatose mother’s hand so tightly as her life bled away took a toll on him. His physical body had long recovered, but his soul was another thing.

The times following this were trying and harsh for Soobin. Not many days would go by before he came back from work once more to find his boyfriend crouched under the sink, or in the bathroom, or pressed against a door, tears glistening like shattered glass in his eyes as he smiled so heartbreakingly, laughed so chillingly and dropped the bloodstained knives. Before they lay together in bed, the other’s hand twined around Soobin’s own while he whispered brokenly. “I can’t help it, I can’t, otherwise— otherwise they come back. Eomma comes back, and I miss her so much but not like this, not like this, not like this.” He would repeat those three words till he fell into a fitful sleep with Soobin curled tightly around him.