was there something i could've said to make your heart beat better?
if only i'd have known you had a storm to weather
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄
"seonghwa's gone." her body freezes at those words, mind unable to process the information. unconsciously, her knees buckled and yunho managed to catch her before she dropped, sitting her down at a nearby bench. "w–what do you mean?"
"he's dead, his parents told me to tell you since you weren't answering your phone." he says quietly. "what do you mean dead?! he can't just randomly die!" she screams out, not wanting to believe it. it was a good thing the park was fairly empty at the moment.
"he was sick," he mumbles wistfully. she looks up at him expectantly, through the tears threatening to fall any second now. "he's been diagnosed for a while now. i think that's why he pushed us away. he didn't want us to find out. i think he didn't want us to go through the pain of losing him. but he didn't tell his parents about us so they called and told me the news. they were shocked when i told them i didn't know anything about this."
"h–he's been sick all this while?" she chokes out, the guilt hitting her like a truck going a hundred kilometres an hour. yunho looks down at her sorrowfully, his own eyes glossy. a single tear slid down as he blinked, followed by another one, and another one, until soon a steady stream of salty tears made its way down his pale cheeks.
the girl pulls him into a embrace, both wordlessly holding onto each other, as if letting go of the other would mean letting go forever. they made the same mistake with seonghwa, they didn't want to do it again.
and so the two sat on the park bench, grieving their best friend's death.
-
"these were on the table by his hospital bed so we assume he wanted you kids to have it." seonghwa's father handed yunho two identical tapes— each with their respective names written on the piece of paper wrapped around it— and a tape recorder. it was after the funeral had officially ended that the two decided to talk to their best friend's parents properly. mrs park gives them an exhausted smile before speaking once more.
"we didn't know he stopped being friends with you. he loved you two a lot. i think he didn't want you to see him on his deathbed. selfless boy, he was. anyway, i want to thank you two for bringing light into seonghwa's life, he wouldn't have enjoyed his life as much as he did without you two. and i know that seonghwa's gone now but i want you to know that we're both still here if you need us, alright? you two are already like our own children to us."
the woman gives them a hug before the old couple walks away after bidding their goodbyes. the two teenagers look down at the tape recorder and cassette tapes in yunho's hands before deciding to go to her house to listen to them. deep down, they were terrified of what could be in those tapes.
-
she looks up at yunho after the two had just finished listening to her tape. they had just finished crying over seonghwa's recording for yunho, only to break down again after finishing hers.
"i feel so fucking bad, yun." she spoke after a while. yunho stayed quiet, knowing that she most probably had more to say. "how could i have just let him leave when i had a gut feeling something was up? how could i have been so stupid?" she let out a wail.
"how could i? calling him all sorts of names and accusing him of bad things when he had so much going on? he had to suffer alone and all i did was let it happen. if i had just thought about him instead of myself then maybe he didn't have to spend his last days alone. i'm the shittiest person in the whole world."
"stop it. you're not." yunho tells her sternly. "you saying that means you're saying i am too because i acted the same way. and i know that's not true. it's not our faults for anything and it never was. we didn't know, okay?" he attempts to convince her otherwise, though mostly it was to convince himself.
"seonghwa said to not blame yourself so i suggest you take his advice. i'm going home now, take care of yourself, okay? make sure to drink enough water and at least eat something, yeah? love you." he stands up abruptly, giving her one last embrace and a kiss on the top of her head, before leaving for the night.
she knew he was probably going home to cry more without her seeing, so she let him go, instead of making him sleep in the guest bedroom like she usually does whenever it got too late. she knew she was going to be doing the same anyway so she didn't fight it this time.
