Angels Die

Meeting You

I wanted to believe in the impossible. I have always done so. I’ve heard it somewhere Impossible meant I’m possible therefore, it can be done, even the task itself is telling you it can be done. When anyone asks me and I give them answers with a straight face they’d look shock, some would laugh immediately, others would be awkwardly silent, ask me again then try to say something nice but I know they’re making fun of me inside those little brains.

I persevered and kept my ideals strong although at one point, yes, there was a time that I began to question myself – will everything I’ve been doing up to now go to waste? I started to doubt myself, maybe they are right, and I was tempted to throw myself into that pit of depression.

“I thought you were different,” he said mockingly, hands crossed across his chest, leaning against the door frame. My head peek out of my hands. “Where’s the Youngjae I knew?” He pushed himself off the wall and strode towards me. “Huh, what happened to him?” he says softly as he bends and sits in front of me, I who was curled in a corner of my room, his half-dead eyes boring into mine.  

“If by any chance he has stopped being interesting, he has ceased to become that fiery light for this demented moth. Then I’ll tell him – it is best that I end things now, than see him lose himself trying to fit in, when he never did. When he was meant to be different and better than everyone,” he finished with a simple smile, though its brightness didn’t reach his eyes, those hollow dark chocolate and almost lifeless orbs.

“Youngjae,” he called out softly. He just sat there, waiting for me to say something or do anything, patiently waiting. What did you guess? That I’d believe his words, whether he was mocking me or not, whether those were just colorful lies – yes I embraced every word of it and stocked all in my mind and heart. How can I not, when only saying my name was the only thing now that could make that sparkle in his eyes shine bright again?

But he was wrong, I wasn’t that fiery light and he wasn’t the demented moth. I chuckled and looked away embarrassed at myself. “Don’t I get a hug at all?” Now he laughed at me and stood up.

“I don’t embrace trash, so pick yourself up and maybe later I will,” he says as he was literally looking down on me. And with a click of his heels he walked back towards the door and closed it behind him.

When I was back to my own haven, my own world, my eyes wandered to the papers loitered on the floor and spilling from my desk, to my widescreen monitor that has rarely been turned off since God knows when and to the mini laboratory at the left corner, where my bed used to own. Hmmm, bed, sleep, since when have I actually lay down onto a real bed and really had a sleep? Sleep? I scoffed at myself all I need is a little power nap, a good fifteen minutes every now and then and coffee. I pushed myself off the floor and headed to my desk. There was this one bloody red mechanical pencil lying among the pieces of white papers, colored fine liners and the all too familiar black ball point pen. I pick it up and twirled it with my fingers a small, faint smile playing on my face as my mind slowly opened the door to memory lane.

How could I forget the reason why I’m trying to defy reality, trying to be one of those shunned geniuses when I was never a genius to begin with? Thank you I whispered against the innocent thing and touched my lips against the metallic shirt’s clip as I plopped unto my swivel chair, my executive type chair just because I can. 

                                                                  ~*~

Whatever the reason was, whether I was lucky or the beginning of my journey to Hell, or introduction to it, I crossed paths with Daehyun twenty years ago. He was beautiful, exceptionally so that despite how rude or crass he was at that moment, he left a very deep dent in my life. Twenty years ago, in a party that celebrated the end of the school year.