CRAIGSLIST THERAPIST | hyunho ✔

.28

The door reads 202 and KEEP OUT. SUBJECT TO DEMOLITION.

"Why are we here?" Hyunjin doesn't deserve this much karmic punishment. Closure has already been achieved, emotional debts paid, memories erased, grudges released. Hyunjin, for all it matters, was cured. Until now.

Minho squints an eye at the door. He swipes a finger over the crack Hyunjin made. "I'm a bad therapist, Hyunjin," he says. Minho uses the same finger to point at him. "And you are a lost cause."

Taking a step back makes Hyunjin's foot drift along the sandy floor like an ice skater. "Do you know?"

"I know."

"But how—"

"Felix told me."

"Ah," Hyunjin puffs. "Felix."

Striding ahead, Minho shoulders the door open. Holds it open for Hyunjin to follow. Similar to their first meeting. The abandoned mini-apartment, where Hyunjin did what he then thought were acts of love with someone who he then thought was his true love, now emanated loneliness. Bare of furniture but for two wooden chairs and two ropes dangling from the ceiling. Each tangled into a circle, like a donut, like a—

Hyunjin gasps, sputters, stammers. His words are followed with a bit of spit and despair: "Min, Minho." He gulps. "What's this?"

"We're incurable, Hyunjin." Minho steps on the chair. It shakes under his weight. "If you're still in love with him, even after what he's done to you, there's no choice. The exposure therapy. The bleaching. The bangs. If nothing worked, it's hopeless."

"No, no, no!" Hyunjin cries. He kneels at Minho's feet, whose hands fasten the rope tight around his neck. "Please, don't do this. You don't understand. I'm not in love with him anymore."

Minho offers Hyunjin a hand, voice stern, "You should always be honest in therapy, Hyunjin-ah."

Tears clouding his eyes, Hyunjin takes his hand. He's guided to stand on the chair. To weave the rope around his neck. To look at Minho one last time. "We jump on three. Okay?"

Hyunjin shakes a weak nod. Trailing tears escape his face and engrave the dusty floor.

"One..." Minho starts. Hyunjin shuts his eyes and clenches his hand around Minho's.

"Two..." More tears fall.

"Three!"

"I love you, hyung!"

They jump.

Hyunjin feels the pull on his neck as if the suicidal rope is just a too-tight choker necklace. Then there's a tick tick crack! splooooosh and his neck is hit by paper-like wood as Hyunjin nose-dives into the chalky floor. "Ow." Hyunjin touches his head, the fiber-y rope still tight around his neck.

Next to him, Minho also groans. His hair is coated with asbestos. He looks up at the ceiling, which now sports two holes where the ropes hung from.

"So that's why they're taking this place down."