LOSE MY BREATH

LMB 34

34: Nemesis.

So he was a little bit late for dinner. Just the tiniest bit. 

Only, he had been taken not to the guest quarters like Minho, but to the quarters that could not have belonged to anyone but the other him. The one that was dead. Which was, to put it mildly, a bit of a mindfuck.

It didn’t bother him that there had been a Jisung here. It would have probably been weirder had the Jisung of this place been alive. It would’ve made him seem more real, much the same way his quarters seemed to.

Jisung thought that Yongbok had probably not touched anything here since his death. There were books all over the place, notes and talismans, and other normal household items, and Jisung thought the organised mess looked so familiar that it could have been an ancient recreation of his room at home.

And then, when he walked around the room, he would think of an object and look at the room and wonder where he himself would put it, and then he would inevitably find it there, which was fucked in a whole other level.

He wondered whether there was a Minho in his original world. Then he looked around the room again, the room that was so distinctly him, and came to the conclusion that no, there could not be.

Because if the universe had decided that a Minho and a Jisung needed to meet, it would most likely have brought them together in his reality world. Perhaps there were other realities where Minho and Jisung were both alive and met, and maybe there were some where neither of them existed. A megaverse it seems.

In any case, Jisung thought that bringing the two of them together across realities was enough proof that the only happiness he could reach for was across a dimension.

It was a sad thing for Minho, probably. To be told that he had a soulmate and a fated meeting and then what he got was this stupid modern version of Jisung whose much cooler counterpart had died saving his family. And the Lee clan only fell in love for once which reminded him about the swans.

Jisung had gotten loving siblings out of this. Jisung had gotten all kinds of cool adventures. Jisung had gotten his dream guy on a plate. And then he had gotten cocky and not even realised that nothing was ever easy like that.

Jisung had read some of the text about fated meeting back in the library after his and Minho’s fight.

Only two out of many told about a couple who were not explicitly said to be in love, and even those were happily together by the end of it. The others, they-- wow. They came out of all kinds of misery and found their other half and everything went better then.

Chan had kind of scammed him, hadn’t he? Maybe he’d been protecting his brother even then.

Those stories didn’t mention whether they were wracked with guilt as well. Whether they, too, thought that happiness was unattainable to them.

He wondered whether one part of the couples took very long to fall in love. If he still had a chance, Minho could ignore everything messed up about him if he stayed longer.

But you couldn’t force feelings, and Minho had said to himself that Jisung could not come back once he left.

Was that not a clear admission? They would have to be in love, and Minho would have to accompany him. Could it work even if Minho wasn’t in love? Was there a way for Jisung to justify asking him?

‘Please, leave your life in the Geumgangsan for me, your sort-of friend from the other reality.’

He didn’t think that would be very fair.

So he did have bit of a crisis in the middle of the other Jisung’s bedroom. Just the tiniest one, pretty harmless. The only one suffering was him, again, so it was fine.

And then Yongbok started pounding at the door like a maniac, shouting his name, so he had to pull himself together and attend dinner without paying attention to him.

That was, of course, impossible – both Minho and Yongbok were looking at him weirdly for the entirety of it, but if Jisung could handle something; stares.

If he pretended it was fine for long enough, it must become true at some point.