H A N E U L 하늘 | jjk + kth

紹介

IT STARTED WITH BIKES. 

Small trips around the neighborhood, bubbling laughter, a few stray rocks, and then, a fall.  That's Jeongguk's first materialized memory of feeling any type of pain.  He remembers the small scrape across his knee that had felt like his entire leg was gone, but luckily his mother was there to reassure him he was completely fine. He remembers how his cheeks felt tight from the dried tears, and his throat would burn from the whimpers that escaped his cracked lips.

It was simple back then.

Eventually, the knee scrapes grew into fights with his parents.  It was a different kind of pain, but it still hurt all the same, if not, slightly worse.  It would be over grades, curfew, or simply Jeongguk refusing to listen to his parents altogether.  It was the kind of pain that Jeongguk would forget within a few hours and find himself wrapped in the warm embrace of his parents.  It was the kind of pain that he could get over: just like crashed bicycle wounds.  It was the kind of pain that Jeongguk learned to not think too much about.

Then, before the shy age of eighteen, Jeongguk learned what lasting pain was.  The kind of pain that seared itself into his ribcage, carving its name on his bones and pressing its body into his lungs.  Jeongguk learned that he'd rather scrape his knees, or even lose them altogether to go back to a time where his entire body didn't feel so goddamn heavy.  So loose.  So tired. 

Jeongguk learned that no matter how many cuts and bruises litter his skin, nothing felt worse than sitting beside his mother as she sobs into her hands, telling him that his father's sick and he's been admitted to the hospital.  Nothing hurts worse than watching someone he's tried too hard to appease, slowly wither away like rotting flowers.  Jeongguk thinks the worst pain of all was watching his mother's light die along with his father's. 

Jeongguk sometimes wonders if she's all there.  If she's really inside of her body or in some other world, too far away from the dining room table to hear him talk about his school day or his newest accomplishments.  She's too far off dreaming of a life with Jeongguk's father than to live in the one with her son. 

So Jeongguk washes away his dull, numbing pain with physical pain.  The knee scrape kind.  The kind that he gets from fights, from late-night escapades, and from angry relationships.  He favors those because at least he knows the feeling is temporary, right?

Jeongguk's always known hurt to be black and white.  Knee scrapes and loss.  He never thought that when a clumsy boy with puffy cheeks and soft fingertips admitted himself into Jeongguk's life that his entire world would be spun on its head. 

Jeon Jeongguk especially never thought that there was someone who could make the loud world go silent.

-