The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance

ix.

"I've crossed some kind of invisible line. I feel as if I've come to a place I never thought I'd have to come to. And I don't know how I got here. It's a strange place. It's a place where a little harmless dreaming and then some sleepy, early-morning talk has led me into considerations of death and annihilation."

― Raymond Carver, Where I'm Calling From: New and Selected Stories

--

"I'm sorry to bother you," Minhyuk said, a clear note of hesitance in his tone.

Five years had passed since Hyunwoo had returned the kids to their families, and three years had passed since Kihyun's death. Throughout that time, Minhyuk had called frequently, often just to talk Hyunwoo's ear off about this or that. Hyungwon never called.

"It's no bother," Hyunwoo responded, sitting up in bed and rubbing at his eyes. He slipped on a pair of reading glasses from his bedside table and squinted at the digits on his alarm clock.

12:53

"Sorry, I woke you up, didn't I?" Minhyuk asked, sounding apologetic enough to almost hang up, and Hyunwoo quickly reassured him.

"No, I was just...resting my eyes, I wasn't really sleeping."

"Uh huh," Minhyuk said with a soft chuckle before pausing. "I really am sorry to bother you, Hyunwoo. But..." A quiet hesitance. "I wouldn't have called if it wasn't important."

"What is it then?" Hyunwoo asked with a small frown that Minhyuk couldn't see. He held the phone to his ear with one hand even as he was sliding out of bed and patting down his chair, trying to locate the pair of pants he'd left there.

"Hyungwon," Minhyuk said, his voice soft with an air of both sadness and affection. "I just...he doesn't want me to call you, but...he's not in a good place, and...he won't even listen to me anymore really. And without Kihyun... I just...don't know who else to go to. I tried talking with him last night, but he wouldn't listen. Just pretended I wasn't there. He said he was invisible or something and that I couldn't see him, something weird like that. It scared me a little bit. I was hoping you could check up on him."

"All right," Hyunwoo said, having managed to shove his legs into the pants and hike them up before realizing they were on backwards and having to repeat the process. He shrugged his arms, one after the other, into a jacket he'd left draped over a kitchen chair, and he fished for his keys in the bowl of miscellaneous items by the door. He sifted through several mints, a few coins of varying denominations, and what felt like a paperclip before he managed to snatch his keys up. "I'm on my way. Do you know where he is right now? If it's near the motel, I can be there in fifteen minutes."

"He's been hanging out in this one building lately," Minhyuk said before giving him the address with additional directions before apologizing again for waking him and asking if Hyunwoo wouldn't mind checking in with Minhyuk later to let him know how it went.

Hyunwoo gave him his word that he would, and then he was in his car and heading toward quadrant four.

He couldn't remember the last time he'd seen Hyungwon. Before Kihyun had died, he and Minhyuk had still hung out in the parking lot every now and then, but most of the time it had been occupied by younger boys who Hyunwoo didn't know as well. Even on the rare occasion where he'd found the two in the lot, Hyungwon had almost never been with them.

He'd thought he'd seen Hyungwon standing outside on the balcony of one of the rooms, but when Hyunwoo had tried to wave up at him, the figure had vanished back inside, leaving Hyunwoo unsure as to whether or not it had really been him in the first place. All his efforts to check in on the boy had gone unrewarded, and after Kihyun's death and his patrol switch to avoid the motel, he only got news of him through Minhyuk who had assured him that Hyungwon was fine.