Spinning Out || w o o s a n ||

❄5❄

Seven years ago, Wooyoung broke San's heart during his first aggressive manic episode. It was around the time he got diagnosed and denial was his best friend those months. He didn't want to believe it, just like his mother, he pretended the illness did not exist in the first place, that he was fine, that he was healthy, that he did not become an awful younger version of his father. He once had a father, yes, a father who did some weird things while he was a child, a father who used to disappear for months then suddenly appeared as if nothing happened in the first place, a father whom his mother hated with her whole heart. Wooyoung noticed the same hate in her eyes when the doctor gave them the news. She was looking at him, but she was seeing his father instead of her own son.

How could Wooyoung not hate himself? His own mother did, so why should he accept himself the way he was?

But denial kept him going for long months. He was provided medication, but skipped it, never took it seriously. They made him weak, kept him in bed for days, the world would spin, he would feel tired all the time, he could not concentrate at all. He felt like a vegetable on the short course of rotting itself to death. The Olympics were nearing, he could not practice the amount of hours that he wanted and it seemed like his mother was on the same page as him.

Now, looking back in time, that witch started his long process of self destruction. She started it, she ignored it first, then he ignored it, following her lead, until it all came crumbling over him.

That manic episode didn't even knock at his doors. He suddenly felt very awake, like a bubble of weird energy bloomed inside his chest. That night, at three in the morning, he got a new desire to his collection of abandoned ones. This new desire involved a sudden person to get hurt, to disappear from his life, a young man his age, few months older than him, a young man he used to love more than himself, who used to bring a genuine smile on his lips all the time, who loved him back. But this young man happened to stay between him and his long time obsession, to get that damned golden medal at the Olympics. He remembers suddenly seeing San as the worst thing in the world, similar to some kind of a monster in those childlike nightmares. He couldn't even think of him as someone kind.

But at the time, he did not try to control his rotten mind. He let it free, allowed it to take over him fully until he lost control. The medication was nowhere inside his system, the pills were long forgotten by now, and he spent all this energy and anger onto his routines. For seven nights straight, Wooyoung has not closed one eye. He worked and worked, jump after jump, spin after spin, coffee mug after coffee mug, until all he felt were his veins on the verge of popping, only saw his moves, the ice and that white open door that waited for him from far away, so he could reach it and find the happiness he has been missing for a lifetime. He felt alive, and, except for his mother, no soul had touched him. She was the dark cloud covering his thoughts, she was that hypnotizing voice whispering inside his ears to keep going. She used his madness to turn him into a untouchable weapon.

Yet, someone dared to touch him.

It was San, his best friend, the person he thought of as someone so dear to him once.

"You should take a break..." He looked stressed that evening and Wooyoung was just about to skate his routine all over again for the thirtieth time in that afternoon. A break? Was he crazy? He did not deserve a break, his body was fine, his brain was even better, he never felt so alive as in that week. "Are you taking your meds?"

Demon, what a beautiful demon, Wooyoung remembers thinking.

How dare he ask if he took his meds? Those pills who constantly turned him in a rotten vegetable, those awful pills who kept him in bed and stopped him from practicing non-stop, those pills which, even his own mother feared. How dare he ask if he took them?