Mirror

M a k e I t R i g h t

|| e d i t e d ||

"The moment I noticed myself I had to leave" ~ BTS, Make It Right

"I don't want to hear other people's noises. Your fragrance still penetrates and breaks me down. Let's go back to that time" ~ BTS, Make It Right

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M a k e I t R i g h t

~ Ji-han ~

JAE-HYUN IS DEAD.

Min Jae-hyun is dead. My brother with quite literally the face of an idol but with eyes too lost, too haunted by things that no one else sees because they're not really there, to ever be more than just that - my brother - is . . . dead. Gone. Passed away. Erased from existence. Dead.

People might say that repeating that word . . . dead . . . will make things easier to accept. But it's been running through my head since my commanding officer solemnly broke the news to me, and I'm no closer to accepting the fact that my brother is fucking dead than I was a three hours ago.

Because although I didn't verbally ask, the strict and extreme respect regime surrounding rank and insignia having kept me biting my tongue, he must have seen the desperation in my eyes and answered my unvoiced question. Even before he spoke, I knew by the pity clinging to his facial expression like the rain-swollen storm clouds that tend to flock to South Korea during the winter months that the answer would be something I would struggle to accept. And it was! Just not in the way I was expecting. 'Killed in a fatal traffic incident' was his answer. Like so many other poor, unfortunate souls in Seoul do every week, my brother, someone so different and difficult to understand that I doubted he would ever manage to fit into society, died crossing the street.

I couldn't believe it! It just didn't sit right with me that after all these years I've struggled to keep him safe from himself, he would meet his end in such an ordinary way. I sprinted outside in the middle of a typhoon at night to collect his unconscious form from a puddle on the pavement, and lost hours of precious sleep patching up injuries he inflicted on himself without being aware of doing so in our apartment's shitty bathroom! None of his life - of my life - was what you would consider normal, and yet my brother with all his self-endangering idiosyncrasy was struck down by a car of all things. A fucking car.

And I didn't even get to fix things with him. When I left, I parted with him on somewhat bad terms. I said some things - please at least try to understand. I've been doing it for you for years - that no matter how egregiously true they may have been, I shouldn't have said, and by enlisting, I took his main source of reliability and reality away. Jae, he . . . he didn't even say goodbye to me, having watched me leave in sullen silence and then, whether on purpose or because he didn't know how to, never answered my calls. And now I will never get the chance to make it right between us.

My breath hitches in my throat as my hands move robotically to fold my few clothes, packing them away into my bag in preparation to be sent on emergency leave tomorrow. I haven't shown much of a reaction yet. Individualism is held high above collectivism and the importance of family in South Korean society these days. And after all the drama my enlistment has caused, I won't - can't throw away the good first impression I left with my superiors. Not now. I can't let all of this be for nothing, especially if my going away was a contribution to Jae-hyun's death.

But my limbs seize up now.

There's that word again. Death. Dead. The more I think about it, the more I feel like my soul is splitting, guilt and grief tearing me in two. Half is who I was before I realised I had no real life of my own - the life where my every breath was syncopated with my brother's. Someone who spent more time sleeping in his brother's bed than his own just to know he was okay, and argued endlessly with his parents just to defend the older boy. If I saw him again, that version of myself in the mirror, I would recognise him (unlike Jae-hyun, I can't forget who I've been for the past nineteen years), but I don't know whether I'd be relieved to have changed or if I'd long to be him again. While the other half is who I am now. Or at least, who I was before I was told that my brother is fucking dead. Someone separate from his family, his brother included, but who is also thriving among new friends in a new environment because he is finally, finally living for himself, not someone else. But neither side matters in the end because either way, I am the one who did this.