𝐒𝐔𝐂𝐊𝐄𝐑 𝐏𝐔𝐍𝐂𝐇

#.. FIFTY-NINE

it was the day of jungsu's funeral. plenty of people came: his whole family, both sides of the family, and all of his friends.

the front seats were reserved for the five closest of them - that's what he stated in his suicide note:

at my funeral, please do me at least one favor and let jiseok, seungmin, hyeongjun, jooyeon and gunil sit in the front. they're my family. they're the closest to me.

and sadly jiseok was not able to be there. he did not get better at all.

before the funeral started, all of them went to visit the boy. gunil had his arm wrapped around his waist, trying to calm him down from his excessive rocking.

but as his mother said, he had no sense of reality, it was scary - as if a roboter replaced jiseok.

in the church, jungsu's coffin was the first thing everyone saw once they entered. a big picture of him right next to it.

seeing the picture felt like seungmin's heart got ripped to shreds. he missed jungsu.

he missed the collision of jungsu's kiss. he missed all the little dates they went on. and that made it so hard.

seungmin tried to get jungsu to talk about everything, but nothing ever came. his thoughts must've been too much to bear alone.

he never explained why he did it in his suicide note. jungsu just explained the conditions for his funeral, and how much he loved his friends.

just when seungmin felt his heart begin to break, he heard the music, that started to play. it began.

they sat down on the seats that were reserved with name cards - at the very front, like they were promised.

a priest appeared and the music quieted down. he started his eulogy, talking about jungsu's short, incomplete life.

seungmin felt gunil put his arm around him, trying to keep him calm. but it was almost impossible.

not even his parents seemed to be that sad. and it honestly annoyed every single one of them but it's not like they could change anything about it. sadly.

[...]

once they watched the casket settle down the earth, seungmin was the one to stay the longest.

he stood in front of the gravestone for god knows how long. he just knows that gunil mentioned that he will drive hyeongjun and jooyeon home.

then he'd come back to pick him up. and these moments on his own were the worst for seungmin.

"i love you.." he mumbled, regretting that he actually started to rummage in his pocket and that he actually fished out s cigarette.

he stayed clean for jungsu, but now that he wasn't there anymore, seungmin couldn't help it.

and it would be just this once. he needed to calm down.

with new tears streaming down his face, he placed the cigarette between his lips, lighting it with ease before taking a long drag.

seungmin noticed that he actually missed the feeling. he stayed clean for so long that he forgot how it even feels like to smoke.

but seungmin directly understood why he was addicted. maybe he was just soggy from the current events, but it actually helped him to ground himself.

"don't stare at me like that" he mumbled, meaning the picture of jungsu and jiseok that was leaning on the gravestone. "you decided to leave, why should i listen to you?"

a few minutes later, gunil joined again. "i thought you stopped" he said as he snatched the cigarette out of seungmin's fingers, throwing the small stump on the floor before smudging it with his feet.

seungmin sighed. "i can't do this anymore.." so gunil pulled him into a hug. "that's okay.."

they stayed in that position for many minutes, just silently hugging each other, until the loud crashing of thunder made both of them shrug.

and they decided to go to seungmin's place.