Box of Sunsets - Minsung

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NOTES: Just a short story. Enjoy! <3

INFO: This is sort of like the skz family universe, but;
Minho = Mina
Jeongin = Jeongnia (Innie)
(they'll be female just for this short story).

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The call came through just after the evening settled, the kind of soft, muted light Jisung loved best. Mina sat in the quiet, leaning her head against the window, her eyes tracing the silhouette of the mountains as the last crumbs of sun bled into the horizon. She didn't even hear the phone at first. Her daughter had dropped it in the couch cushions, a muffled, buzzing vibration that seemed insignificant, a small hum in the dissolving gleam.

It was only when it rang a third time that she reached over. An instinct more than anything else. For a moment, she expected Jisung's name to flash across the screen, that familiar photo she'd taken last year by the lake smiling back at her. But there were only numbers. Just a sterile, unfamiliar string that sent something cold trickling down her spine.

"Hello?" She almost whispered, as if speaking louder would break the fragile tranquillity around her.

The person on the other end hesitated. Treading carefully, picking their words like they didn't want to leave bruises. They were saying something, an introduction of sorts, their tone heavy with the weight of what they knew they had to tell her. It was the weight that tightened in her chest before the words even registered. Words like accident and sorry and gone, each a delicately placed nail driven deeper into her chest.

Everything was blurring, the edges of her reality curling inward, splintering into something foreign and jagged. Mina's heart kept beating, each pulse a steady reminder of the brutal fact that Jisung's had simply stopped.

Words tumbled on, filling the empty spaces with logistics—phrases like "if you need anything" and "we're here to support you," sounds that felt utterly useless, like pressing a bandaid over a cut that refused to stop bleeding. She wanted to ask them to stop, to hang up, as if by disconnecting, she could rewind the clock to a few minutes before, when Jisung was just somewhere else—not forever unreachable.

But then her daughter was standing beside her, tugging at her sleeve, and all Mina could do was press her palm to the receiver, shutting out the voice and the impossible words. "Mom?" she asked, small and curious, her other hand wrapped around a crayon, the tip blue as a summer sky. Mina could barely breathe around the tightening ache in her throat.

Somehow she managed a smile, thin as paper. "I'll be right there, sweetheart," she murmured, her voice spilling out as a fragile pitch. She couldn't bear to see her daughter's face change, to see the world crack open for her, too.

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Everything around Mina felt dull and distant. Like an old photograph left out in the sun too long, its colours faded and outlines blistered. The funeral hall's silence pressed in from all sides, filling every crack and crevice with a suffocating burden. Her daughter's fragile hand was the only tether to reality, warm within her own. She stood there, surrounded by a sea of red-rimmed eyes and hesitant whispers, Jisung's friends shifting uneasily in their polished shoes, their grief just as ill-fitting as their uncomfortable suits. Condolences drifted by like autumn leaves, touching her briefly before spiralling away, never really landing.

Jisung had been everything to her, the single person who made sense of all the noise. Without him, even the faces of those around seemed blurred, like she was watching them from a fogged-up glass.