ONE SHOTS🍒| STRAY KIDS

50. Silence

Ship: ChanSung
Top: Chan
Bottom Jisung
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The Silence of Depression

The silence isn't peace. It's something much heavier than that, thicker, like fog inside your lungs. It doesn't soothe. It presses.

Chan lies in bed and listens to nothing. Not the wind. Not the cars outside. Not even the whir of the fan that's always on. It's all muted now, filtered through something he can't name but knows too well. The quiet used to be a gift, a rare kind of calm in a life full of noise and responsibility. But now? Now it's just a void. A lack of anything. A silence that hums with the weight of everything he's too exhausted to say.

He doesn't cry. He doesn't scream. He just lies there, still, eyes open, jaw slack. And the silence wraps around him like a blanket he didn't ask for.

He tells people he's tired. Which is true. But it's not the tired you fix with sleep. It's the kind of tired that lives in your bones. That clings to your skin. That makes even brushing your teeth feel like a marathon. The silence makes it worse. Or maybe it just makes it noticeable. It's in the gaps between texts he doesn't answer. In the missed calls he doesn't return. In the songs he no longer listens to.

The worst part is how loud silence can be when it echoes with all the things he no longer cares enough to feel.

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The Noise of Anxiety

Silence doesn't exist. Not really. Not for Jisung.

There's always something, his heartbeat pounding too fast, a clock ticking too loud, the whir of electricity in the walls. And beneath it all, his thoughts, overlapping, racing, arguing, questioning.

Did I say something weird?
Why did they look at me like that?
What if I messed it all up?
What if I ruin everything?

Even in the quietest room, he's never alone. His brain won't shut up. It chatters constantly, like a room full of people all talking over each other.

Anxiety doesn't wait for silence to start speaking. It fills it preemptively.

He fidgets. Bounces his knee. Bites the inside of his cheek. Silence makes him itch in ways he can't scratch.

People think he's restless. Maybe even dramatic. But they don't know what it's like to live in a body that feels like it's on fire from the inside. To be so full of fear that even the quiet feels dangerous. Like it's just the calm before something terrible happens. Like if he lets his guard down, even for a second, it'll all fall apart.

Jisung doesn't fear noise. He is noise. A storm trying to hold itself inside a teacup.

And in a world where silence should mean peace, he only ever hears the crash of his own panic pretending to be still.

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Connection Over The Silence

It happens late one night, in the stillness of Chan's apartment, quiet except for the soft hum of the fridge and the uneven ticking of a clock Jisung can't stop noticing.

Chan sits on the couch, blanket over his lap, staring at nothing. Jisung curled on the other end, legs pulled up to his chest like he's trying to make himself smaller, like maybe the tightness in his chest will shrink with him. Neither of them had really planned this. Jisung just showed up, overwhelmed and vibrating with unspoken panic, and Chan had opened the door wordlessly and let him in.

Now, they sit there. Quiet. And not.

"I hate this," Jisung blurts suddenly, voice sharp and too loud in the still room. "I hate how it's never quiet."

Chan blinks slowly, like waking from a fog. "It is quiet."

Jisung shakes his head, hands twitching in his sleeves. "No, it's not. It never is. My head won't shut up. Even when I'm alone, especially when I'm alone, it just keeps going. Like something's going to go wrong any second, and I won't be ready."

There's a beat of silence, true silence, and then Chan exhales.

"Sometimes," he says, voice low, "I wish it would get loud. Just for a second."

Jisung looks at him.

Chan doesn't meet his eyes. He stares at his own hands. "It's just... so quiet all the time. But not in a peaceful way. More like I'm screaming inside, but everything outside just... stays still. And that stillness makes me feel like nothing I do matters. Like I could vanish and it wouldn't even make a sound."

The room stills. Jisung breathes in slow.

"So," he says softly, "I feel like I'm drowning in too much, and you feel like there's nothing at all."

"Yeah."

They sit with that.

It's not a cure. It doesn't solve anything. But something eases, just slightly, in both of them. The tension in Jisung's shoulders softens. The blankness in Chan's eyes wavers.

Jisung nudges Chan's foot with his own. "If you ever want noise, I've got enough for the both of us."

Chan cracks a dry smile. "And if you ever need quiet... I can make you tea and stare at the wall with you."

Jisung laughs, small and real. And Chan, for the first time in days, lets himself feel the warmth of another person's voice.

The silence doesn't feel so heavy anymore.
And the noise doesn't feel so lonely.