Kibum's Side Story Excerpt
While you wait for the new chapter of WDKMS II, here is an excerpt from Kibum's Side Story from WDKMS I!
Kibum didn’t know what to make of his new life. Mostly he didn’t know what to make of the new people in it. He’d always been a solitary person. He’d been too busy with his studies to have friends or romantic relationships. But now none of that was important. Grades, making his parents proud, graduating early…it didn’t matter now. To the rest of the world, Kim Kibum was dead. He had never thought about what he would do when it all ended. He’d planned on being dead at that point, quite literally dead, so he was somewhat at a loss as to how to continue living now.
The people around him didn’t help. They were all so sure of themselves, sure of what they were doing and the justifications behind it. Even those like himself, those deemed “useless”, had a role to play in everything or at least created one for themselves. He was lost and completely overwhelmed.
The others tried to make him feel welcome. Leeteuk hyung always asked how he was doing, always ate breakfast with him and forced him to talk. He dragged out strained conversations about the weather and the apartment and danced around the subject of Kibum’s past. He never asked directly and Kibum never put forth the information willingly. They were at a standstill and Kibum felt a bit guilty for the pained, worried look on the elder’s face.
It just felt awkward because he was so much younger than the others and yet he felt that sometimes he was ancient. Shindong joked around, called him an old man, and the teasing made him feel welcomed, oddly enough. Out of them all, Shindong acted the most normal, or put on the best façade of normalcy. He joked, laughed, talked about girls and the new variety shows they watched on their old TV with its twenty or so basic channels.
Hankyung…well, Kibum tried talking to him, but Hankyung didn’t talk much to anyone. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to, but he spoke minimal Korean. Kibum was someone with limited patience, despite how calm he seemed outwardly, so it was difficult to try and wade through Hankyung’s faulty, accented, grammatical incorrect sentences and make meaning of them.
Because of it, though, the two would often sit in silence. It wasn’t necessarily a bad silence, and Kibum enjoyed the fact that Hankyung didn’t try and force him into talking. Besides, Hankyung spent most of his time sitting by the window. Staring out of it, as if he could spot the others when they came for their few and far in-between visits.
The others…Kibum didn’t know what to think about them. He knew he should have felt grateful because they had saved him, but he’d been ready to die in the first place. He hadn’t wanted to live.
It was ironic that out of all the people they could have saved they’d picked the one that didn’t want saving.
Kim Kibum still wanted to die. He knew that much at least. Just because he was no longer a medical student didn’t mean he was free from responsibility. He wondered if that was the manifestation of the childish side of him, the part that resented being forced to grow up too fast and rebelled against the idea of responsibility and duty and self-worth.
He was too tired of being a monotonous drone of society and his parents’ carefully crafted blueprint for success. But maybe not totally…because he hadn’t rebelled. He hadn’t rejected their ideals, he’d simply allowed his parents to pile them on until he was ready to collapse under the weight and so he’d decided to die rather than change and tell his parents no. That had simply been the easiest, simplest route and Kibum had always enjoyed simplicity.
It was also cowardly, but he’d never claimed to be a brave man.
It wouldn’t have been hard to kill himself while at the apartment. The others wouldn’t have known until it was all said and done with. But he couldn’t yet, not until he met Lee Donghae again and asked why he’d saved him even though he’d asked to die.
origamiaround
tangentwithtanner
2087
jacobvanloon
snowghoul
vaporwave
blakekathryn
romaincrisis
titsay
