Mourn
Shinwoo is not a stranger to mourning. His father, when he was twelve. His mother, age fifteen. Those had been the hardest. He'd been the youngest then, not understanding.
Then there'd been Jiwoo's gradual decline into madness, followed two weeks later by Minwoo's off-camera suicide-run. They still don't know what happened, exactly, and h e hadn't mourned so much for Minwoo as he had for Baro, left alone with his brother's debt hanging over his head.
But the simplest fact is this:
Shin Dongwoo knows mourning.
------
It's the third morning.
The soup's still there, the surface scummy with congealed broth.
Shinwoo sighs, scoops the tray up.
He still replaces it the next morning.
And the next.
And the next.
----
The tenth day, he sits under the tree they usually met at, whispering up at it; things like I'm sorry and I didn't mean to imply you were dumb and I wasn't serious about the clothes, either, I was just trying to make a point.
There's no answer, no twigs thrown, no sap dripped to tangle in his hair.
When dawn comes and he's forced to admit he spent the night talking to an empty tree, that's when he realizes.
That's when he recognizes the feeling.
------
Shin Dongwoo never thought he'd be mourning a live friend.
But here he is.
