Chapter 5

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The young man before Soo Yun had a sort of hen-pecked look. His shoulders hunched together like he was trying to disappear inside himself. Even his dark eyes seemed to be attempting to retreat inside his head. Soo Yun dropped the bat and made a move towards him. He startled like a deer in the woods, almost toppling as he took a large step backwards. 

Soo Yun moved aside, making space for him at the doorway and he rushed into the house. 

What the...,

He rushed inside, following the man who had began to strip

"What are you doing?" Soo Yun barked at him.

"Going swimming." He stripped to his boxers and jumped on the carpet in Soo Yun's living room floor, making the biggest strokes Soo Yun had ever seen.

A sour and vile smell slipped into Soo Yun's nose. He figured his neighbor was drunk and walked back to the door to shut it, picking up the clothes the young man had thrown all over the floor. When he walked back into the living room his neighbor was nowhere to be found. 

He heard grunting coming from the stairs and turned to look. The stairs he usually took two at a time were a mountain being negotiated on all fours. The young man's arms flapped down on the carpet too hard, and with each push his back end swayed like a horse under tranquilizer.

He began to heave in a sickly way and then like a balloon just got inflated in his stomach everything he ate and drunk for the past couple of hours raced to be expelled. Vomit. There was vomit on the carpet in front. He stopped crawling as if realizing he couldn't go up, he looked down the stairs, not  facing to going down, his head plopped on the stairs and he blacked out.

Soo Yun walked up to him and stared down at his naked body. 

He's at most 21, he thought as he looked at his body, trying to figure out how to get him off the stairs. He bent over and placed the young man's arm on his shoulder, trying to lift him. 

Nope, no, no. He dropped the arm back down and reached under his armpits. dragging him down the stairs and onto his couch. He slumped onto the side heaving and panting.

"You look so slim and you're so heavy." He shouted into the silence. After taking in a few deep breaths, he ran up the stairs and into his bathroom.  He filled a basin, picked a face towel and ran back down the stairs. He walked back to the couch and crouched beside him. 

The neighbor didn't flinch or fight him even though his flesh was already goose-bumped. Once there was crap on the cloth it couldn't go near his face so Soo Yun began there. Really, he needed a bath but Soo Yun just couldn't get him up the stairs, it would be too cruel for both of them. 

He wiped him down in a meticulous way, the same way he wiped down patients who were bedridden when the hospital was understaffed. When he got to his legs he realized his feet were cold, icy even. He wanted to stand up from where he was crouching to go get socks and something to cover him up with when he felt the young man reach out to him and begin to cry.

In his sobbing was the sound of a heart breaking. Hearts don't snap like brittle caramel or burst like an overfilled balloon. A heart breaks in the heaving waves of a new disturbing reality that has arrived uninvited. 

Soo Yun had heard that sobbing in the hospital. The one in the woman who's child no longer lived, the one in the man who's partner was terminally sick. It was entering a life they couldn't bear and so they broke.

They weren't the same again, there was just a part of them that had to die so that the rest of them could carry on their duties to the other people they loved. So as he watched his neighbor shake with grief, tears flowing unchecked, there was part of him breaking too. 

He sobbed into Soo Yun's chest unceasingly, hands clutching at his pajama top. Soo Yun held him in silence, rocking him slowly as his tears soaked his chest. A tiny lapse let him pull away, blinking lashes heavy with tears, before he collapsed again, and blacked out. 

He dug into his closet for clothes that would fit him and went back downstairs. He took a sweatshirt and pulled it over his messy hair, patting it gently as he laid him back down. He then put socks on his perfectly sculptured feet and covered him before going about to cleaning the vomit on the stairs. 

He got into bed an hour later, completely exhausted but his sleeping pill no longer valid. Twelve o'clock morphed into one and then two. The time trickled by, marked only by those changing glowing numerals. His mind was blank; where there should be dreams was a heavy blackness. 

His eyes were as stationary as the silhouette of his bedside lamp, which was where they rested. When the sallow glow of the sky becomes bright, he knew his night was over. His mind flickered to the bedside table and the sleeping pills. He shook his head. He had to be at work anyways. He closed his eyes and they almost stung

 Open too long I guess.

He got out of bed like he was hooked to the mains. No sleepiness, no warming up. Within seconds he was on his feet and walking to the bathroom. He took a quick cold shower and changed into scrubs. It was already light out. If he was caught in traffic he didn't want to waste time changing.

He walked downstairs and stopped at the stairway. He stood there, open mouthed. His brain formulated no thoughts other than to register that he was shocked. He closed his mouth, then looked at his toes before glancing back up to the couch.

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