Sunrise [Yungi FF]

17. Winter Air

The call was from Mingi, and Jongho knew.

He stared at Yunho, the stone-cold eyes both a silent warning and a desperate plea.

Both of those Yunho saw, and both of those he ignored. He pressed the button to receive the call and lifted his phone up to his ear.

"Hello?"

"Have you talked to Jongho? You're okay, right? He didn't...get too angry?"

Yunho listened to the soft and slightly husky voice, recalling the first time he heard Mingi through the phone. It was the same right then; he felt as if Mingi was right next to him, speaking right into his ear.

"Yeah, I talked to him. There's nothing you need to worry about," replied Yunho, looking through Jongho's wide eyes and the torrent of emotions inside. "Why did you call me?"

Jongho's glare shifted into one of urgency and despair as he watched Yunho talk to the person who blatantly tried to hit him on their first night out. Who also most likely injured his friend who lied on the hospital bed right now. Tears circled in his sockets and shimmered under the bright ceiling lights, but he wasn't sure whether it was an emotional response, or just his body trying to maintain moisture after keeping his eyes open for so long.

"I called to say I'm sorry," was Mingi's answer.

"It's not your fault," said Yunho. He hardened his voice, eyes never leaving Jongho. "You didn't do anything."

Jongho tried to frown but his eyelid twitched weakly instead.

"No, it is." Mingi hesitated. "San's right. I've been confusing you, even if it's partly the medications. I...I think we shouldn't meet for a while."

The words took a moment to sink in. And when it did, Yunho heard his heart crush into pieces like the world that was falling apart around him, all except for the intense look still anchored on Jongho's face.

He suppressed the panic and focused on putting the pieces back together. "I don't know what your flatmate told you, but it doesn't matter. You told me, remember? You said you're still you, and I don't doubt that at all."

There was a long pause over the phone. "Even if I was arrested? Even if I tried to-"

"I don't care about that," Yunho interrupted. He remembered the times Mingi tried to hit him or the times Mingi shouted rude things at him, but they had all became faded memories in his mind. "It doesn't matter what other people think of you, because I know what you're actually like."

Jongho blinked, and before the tears could escape he turned around and went back inside the hospital ward, leaving Yunho behind.

"Should we meet?" Yunho continued, saving Mingi the need to think of a suitable response. "I think you need to loosen up after sitting in the police station for two days."

There was a short pause from the other end, and when he spoke again his voice was tinged with a sort of mischievous enthusiasm."Let's meet tonight."

"Tonight?" Yunho repeated. A string of uneasiness tugged at his heart, but his brain was too slow to catch on, and before he knew it the little string was buried under a much stronger, tingling sensation – the feeling of his nerves buzzing with the determination to prove to Jongho that he was wrong about Mingi.

"Okay," he said, turning around to leave the hospital.

He met Mingi after he finished a half-day of work, in front of the apartment building Mingi lived in. It was located in the city, not the center of it, but near enough to it that the skyscrapers obscured the vision of the sky and the sun that was slowly descending behind them.