Twilight | ATEEZ

Chapter Eleven

Yeosang has been pacing back and forth in the train station for the last half hour debating on whether or not to actually take the 8 o'clock train or not. He got there an hour early because he knew this was going to happen.

A gay bar...? Really?

Yeosang's heart sank when he opened the paper Seulgi gave him and read what his mission was. His immediate reaction was hell no, he's not going to a gay bar of all places, but now, here he is in the train station with a ticket in hand. A ticket to ride the train isn't going to cement himself actually going to the bar, but it does make him one step closer to accepting his fate in going.

Yeosang has been having this war in his mind for years now, that only grew larger and more bloody when he met Hongjoong.

Meeting Hongjoong changed his life, and Yeosang could feel the war coming to its head — the part when either side's leaders would slay one another and everything started to break down into nothing.

Hongjoong brought so many complex feelings into his life, feelings that Yeosang didn't have time to focus on or care too much about. He had... more than enough occupying his mind... and someone being as forward with his interest in him as Hongjoong was sending his mind into overdrive.

The moment he fell in love with Hongjoong was the exact moment when he'd been slain. After that was when it fell apart, his internal kingdom crumbling to pieces.

This was never a part of his plan.

None of it was...

Yeosang was always quick to disregard looks from both men and women, and no one had approached him until Hongjoong — and at the elementary school where he worked, at that.

Hongjoong was so bold, so brave.

And he loved deeply.

Yeosang remembers the first night when Hongjoong confessed his love for him and it makes him go weak in the knees at the thought. Remembering his own breakdown in tears over the words made Hongjoong worried. So, so worried about Yeosang. Worried that he said the wrong thing, but how could love be wrong?

When Yeosang looked up at Hongjoong for the first time after he told him, he was blurry through the tears, but his undeniable love for Yeosang was indisputable as he held him close and pressed their foreheads together. Yeosang remembers the alcohol coursing through his veins that surely didn't help his vision, but never had he ever seen Hongjoong so clearly. He had seen him naked, sure. Hell, he was naked then... but never had he ever seen him so bare.

Hongjoong stripped back every layer he had in front of Yeosang, and Yeosang couldn't even pick off a speck of his own. He remembers how his chest clenched and ached in pain, wanting to tell Hongjoong that he loves him back, but it never came out. It still hasn't. Yeosang hated thinking about how quickly after the moment of silence that Hongjoong told him that he doesn't have to feel the same right then, or even ever...

It was then that Yeosang knew Hongjoong deserved so much better than him.

He gave so much and never expected anything back.

Yeosang felt like he's taken and taken from Hongjoong and now you'd think he hardly has anything left to give at all, but he somehow still has more.

"Are you getting on or what, Kid?" The train driver calls out to Yeosang, noticing the ticket in the young man's hand.

Yeosang looks up at him and goes to take a step forward, inhaling in a deep breath before he continues the rest of them to get onto the train. He finds a seat next to an elderly woman and nods his head subtly before he sits. Yeosang leans his head against the window and stares out, getting, once again, lost in his thoughts.