love you later | yeonbin ✓

035

Soobin is staring up at his ceiling when the door to his apartment opens. He got back home a couple of days ago from his whirlwind escape and hasn't had the energy to do much aside from the bare necessities. Takeout containers litter the kitchen and the coffee table in front of him, he hasn't showered since the night he first arrived, and he has taken maybe a total of five hundred steps.

He's a mess.

He feels hollowed out inside, yet heavy at the same time, a consistent weight dragging him down. He knows it's his conscience, the guilt that's been chasing him ever since he pulled the door of Yeonjun's cottage closed behind him and left him with a sorry excuse of an explanation. It finally catches up to him. He fucked up.

He fucked up, and he knows it but he also doesn't know how to fix it. He first left Seoul in hopes of finding something better, a happier life. And he did. He just didn't expect it would come in the form of Yeonjun.

He had expected to cut his string, to get it over and done with, and be on his way back home before he had any chance to exchange as much as five sentences with the witch who was supposed to help him.

Instead, fate put a knot into his path. He found Yeonjun and his lovely little world, a paradise hidden away from the rest of the world. He found warm skin and even warmer smiles, the sound of laughter that filled his heart to the brim, to the point it almost scared him sometimes because surely no one could ever be this happy. He found acceptance, little pieces of himself mirrored in brilliant dark brown eyes, found hands that knew how to touch and unravel him in the softest of ways.

Fate fucked him over again when he realized that he'd been growing hope inside his chest, like a little plant that had been watered with each smile, with the tears they shared, with every time Yeonjun reached out for him without even looking. Because at the end of the day, he had to accept that he wasn't meant for Yeonjun.

Yeonjun had his soulmate somewhere out there, someone who was at the end of a severed string, maybe not even aware they had a soulmate at all. There was someone destined to be his, to make him happier than anyone else ever could, than Soobin ever could. It's a suffocating feeling, a constant pressure on his lungs that makes even the smallest tasks feel like a chore.

And so Soobin ends up on the sofa each day, staring up at the ceiling. Sometimes in complete silence, sometimes with the needle of a record player scratching over his favorite vinyls. Today is a quiet day.

Which is probably why Taehyun and Beomgyu don't notice his presence as they step through the door, slip out of their shoes and jackets until he speaks up.

"Hi."

"Holy shit?" Taehyun yells.

Beomgyu only gasps but he looks no less shocked as his hand flies up to cover his chest, right over his heart. "What the fuck?"

Soobin doesn't have the energy to sit up, only twists a little so he can get a better look at them.

"Sorry," he says, his voice dull and hollow like his chest.

Taehyun and Beomgyu need a moment to recover from the shock but soon enough their expressions of surprise are replaced with frowns of concern.

"Soobin? What are you doing here?"

"I live here."

"We know that, smartass," Beomgyu says as he walks into the room, nudging Soobin's feet aside so he can sit down on the sofa. "When did you get back?"

When did he get back? Soobin has no clue. He's lost all sense of time, not just over the past couple of days but over the last couple of months. He had no real obligations, time didn't matter out in the woods, and it had been a welcome change of pace from his everyday life. If it hadn't been for Yeonjun keeping track, Soobin would have probably missed the summer solstice altogether.