↱SEMPITERNAL↲ ⇾seongjoong⇽

ten

1946, Seoul.

Seonghwa huffs and shuts his book.

Silence.

It's just so quiet, so awfully boring, so terribly lonely.

He's almost forgotten the stifling silence of that great big house, its quiet, gleaming wooden floors and towering bookcases.

The familiar rustle of wind in the trees outside and the faint birdcalls in the distance.

The solitude of afternoons in summer vacation.

He used to like that, he remembers, after his mother died, he learned to like this silence.

Spending hours with the books he used to read with her, hours with the rustling of pages and leaves outside his window, that's all it took for him to feel close to her, feel happy and at peace.

Silence, he learned to value that, the kind of quiet that lets you hear crickets in the hedges and frogs in the orchard.

The kind of quiet he learned to find when he'd wake up at night to the sound of shattering glass, to drunken footsteps thudding up the stairs, to things falling apart.

Now he can barely remember how he used to pass the time before he had the option of chasing Hongjoong across the front lawn for calling him ugly and getting yelled at by the gardener, finally catching up to him only to trip him over into mud and bursting into laughter.

Or sticking their heads into the kitchen after a day spent wandering the streets, raucously begging halmeoni to give them dessert before dinner while she shakes her head with great bemusement, pretending like the pot on the kerosene stove is taking all her focus to stir.

Before the sound of Hongjoong's laughter filled his silence.

He tries to read again, embarrassed by himself, but five minutes later, he's read the same sentence eight times and he hasn't the slightest idea what it says.

He shuts his book again.

__

It's past nine when there's a knock on his door that's as familiar as the sound of Hongjoong's voice.

Seonghwa's heart leaps into his throat, eager to see Hongjoong, eager to unstick his voice from his throat and just talk to someone.

"Come in," he says.

The door opens, and Hongjoong walks in, stretching, groaning.

He's in his pajamas, clean, freshly showered by the looks of it.

He crosses the room, collapses into Seonghwa's bed again without a single word.

Seonghwa chuckles and gets out of his chair to join him.

"You're tired," he says.

Hongjoong shakes his head, his eyes already closed.

Seonghwa sits there on the edge of the bed and watches him for a moment.