Took You Long Enough | hyunlix

1.

Life never seemed to be so harsh for Hyunjin. The sunrise's caress woke him more like a slap in the face that morning, when he realised he was still alive. Being alive was no good new since the night before he was fired from his workplace cause apparently they "didn't need him anymore". Just a few weeks before he had been told by his landlord that the rent of his studio apartment was increased and that's why he happened to be so desperate he ended up drinking half a bottle of cheap vodka and crying himself to sleep. And when he woke up his mind was full of anxiety, his body wouldn't respond anymore, too. He was just paralyzed in bed, his thoughts drifting off from one thing to another. He was showered with fear. Thinking he could be homeless in a short time or he couldn't grant himself at least one meal per day was enough terrifying for someone who always lived as a fair middle class boy. Now, the situation was different though. He was alone. He hadn't even get the chance to graduate since his mother passed away a few months after they moved to Sydney. She was getting a good job offer there being a biology researcher but she ended up in a car accident. Then, the only person he was close to disappeared from one day to another. It was like having the light took away from his eyes. Hyunjin took literal months to just find the strength to try calling his father - that bastard cheater being ultimately unreachable as always. That fucker hadn't even have the courage to answer one of the calls, let alone showing up to take care of his only son. Hoepeless, he stopped spending his everyday to the cemetery only when he found himself short on money. The realisation hit him right in the stomach since he would've probably starved to death if he wasn't too scared of actually dying. He rented a cheaper and more suitable place for a only person to live into, and moved again, this time with no one in his company. He was completely alone. He couldn't care of his lacking social skills until he had his mother with him, but at that point he knew he was desperately lonely. No cat on the streets was so lonely as him. Having spent just a bit more than half a year there he didn't even know how to speak English properly. He did sign up for an art major when they moved to Australia but he stopped attending the courses right after his mother passed and turned off his dream with the simpleness you'd use to turn off an alarm on your phone. He was so fucking tired he thought he wouldn't ever experience being more tired than that. But he was so wrong. The part-time job he found after countless hours of research was now gone and that meant having to search again, having to face again those apathetic middle-aged men so full of themselves rejecting him cause he didn't speak fluent English and didn't have an Australian degree. At least he could consider himself a citizen since his mother got the citizenship after years spent studying there, but finding a decent job was still difficult as ever for him. He didn't even have great strength nor great stamina and he got tired very easily, mentally and physically speaking. He was tall and had a good set of arms but they were finely sculpted only to look at and not certain to lift weights. He had the body of someone who practiced hip hop dance for many years, as he had actually done until they moved in Australia. But he was easily considered "useless" when it came to physical labor. He couldn't even lift a few boxes and was too goofy to be able to serve three plates in a restaurant. God built him as a pillow princess but gave him no Royal Palace to live in. That was kinda unfair. He always felt like living was especially difficult for him. Maybe some demon took control over him to let him find the strength to crawl into the future knowing that now it'd be almost impossible for him to even lead a normal life and pay for his basic duties, let alone continuing the art majoring he had wanted to pursue since he was a child. His dream never felt so distant in that moment. He didn't have enough fire in his loins to reach for it. Trying to clung his hands before him he only happened to be gripping thin air. Nothing helped him out that cage of hopelessness that trapped him. His fingers rarely slipping through the bars of the cage, but his mind was severely enclosed in the despair his life ended up to be. He didn't want to wake up anymore that morning. It felt like the sun entering the house despite the thick curtains was burning him alive. His head was spinning and he felt incredibly nauseous. His mouth dehydrated from drinking too much alcohol and not a drop of water, like if water didn't cost much less than vodka itself. It'd be a bless if he could just knock out unconscious by drinking water. He'd be spending much less in alcohol and would never ever be dehydrated again. He laughed himself off for a while, he laughed till he couldn't find the strength to laugh anymore. He was tired. But he also feared death too much to stop trying. He needed to get back on his own legs and strengthen his knees and stand up once again otherwise his life would've ended up miserably. He couldn't even muster the courage to end it with his own hands. It was a despicable thought, maybe, but it crossed his mind many times and none of those times he turned the idea into action - fortunately or unfortunately. He had truly hated his life sometimes during that last year. Since he moved to Sydney everything went downhill. But he couldn't just give up on his life, he wasn't able to. Even if he hated the idea of being alone suffering all that, he couldn't just give up a life that his mother spent so much time nurturing. He loved his mother deeply, it would've been unrespectful to ignore the efforts she put in raising his child with all her care. That's why, after almost a hour of overthinking, he convinced himself to get off the bed.
He dragged his feet step after step to the bathroom in order to take a shower - possibly with cold water so that he could freeze his thoughts for a bit. He slowly freed himself from the sweaty t-shirt he slept with, feeling his shoulder muscles stiff due to the nervous pressure of his mental state. His movements were evidently tired as if he had no strength even to just wash up - and in fact he had no strength at all. His head was spinning as he removed the last piece of clothing from his body and entered the shower, letting the cold water hit him almost like a punishment for all his despicable thoughts about ending up his life. Hyunjin just wanted his brain to shut up for a bit. Running his hands through his hair he started feeling the chills on his skin which was sensitive to the cold, so he didn't take long to get out of there and wrap himself into his warm bathrobe. Hyunjin wasn't the type of person too pretentious and he was fairly capable of appreciating the small little things life provided him with, just like the warm embrace of the soft fabric of the bathrobe on his cold skin. Unfortunately, if he didn't manage to find a job quickly he could end up without the possibility to enjoy even the smallest things. He couldn't think of a life without having his morning coffee, without having at least a shower per day, without listening to music, and every other little thing he had access to until then. He sighed: he needed to sort things out, once again.