HE TRIED NOT TO THINK ABOUT it anymore: all it ever did was open old wounds that didn’t heal correctly ( they never did and they never would ). loss wasn’t a weight that diminished with time — all it did was wear him down, and zemin was tired of being tired. he was tired of the anger, the bitterness, but at the end of the day anger was such a simple feeling compared to anything else. he wore it like armor on a soldier. he wore it without regrets.
even then, the boy broke, every once in a while, and the universe reminded him just how lonely he was — and that maybe, he truly stood alone in his struggles. he remembered a simpler time, one where sejoo had been one of many colors he painted his days with, and zemin had clung onto the older in hopes of maybe, just maybe, one day being something more.
puppy love was pathetic. he had learned the hard way.
when zemin lost his parents he had lost sejoo too — ridding himself of the older, discarding him like their friendship had never mattered. but it had, and seeing him around inevitably still hurt from time to time.
it was just his luck that he found himself accidentally locked into a smaller reading room in the library alone with sejoo. the door was jammed and zemin let out another groan as he tried to break it down once more, not being able to stand the thought of another minute shared with sejoo. soon though, the young hunter had to admit the defeat. «fuck this fucking door.»
— he choked on his secrets daily. secrets that weren’t his, secrets that were pored inside of his mouth and made it run down his throat against his wished, secrets that were well kept inside of him and had started to corrode him from inside out. those secrets, he knew, would suffocate him one day.
but for as long as they didn’t kill him, they made sure to destroy everything around him -- as if it was poison, the secrets had made him lethal, too. poisonous being that could not keep anything genuine around himself, for he had always to keep waltzing around the true essence of his ephemeral presence.
it was ugly, it was unfair. that the only friends he had left would be the ones to bury him for keeping their secrets from everyone else.
sejoo would be lying if he said he didn’t miss zemin. the younger boy was someone whose presence was strong, whose presence didn’t fade that easily -- and still, he had been ripped apart by his duty as a keeper and came back as one piece of the game. he didn’t blame zemin for hating him -- he, too, hated himself every time he looked at seunghee and had to swallow the words that dared to escape from his mouth every time; he, too, hated himself for making zemin suffer more than he already was.
and like he had said, his presence was hard to miss; but with his eyes cast to the book in front of him, sejoo lazily took notes for the his work in progress as he hear the other male’s struggles from across the room; he felt his need of escaping, his anger irradiating from him like hot waves rolling in his direction. “ please, don’t break the door. ” he spoke loud enough, not looking at him as he still took notes. “ i know you’re all buff boy now, but this door is old and irreplaceable and expensive. my mom will have to pay for it. ”
