After Dark 》Minsung

31 》The Rabbit That Chased the Sun

"Just go see what he has to say Minho."

"No matter what he wants to say to me, this conversation isn't going to go well," Minho exhaled heavily, the weight from his words deflating him back into the seat of his parked car. Halted to a dead engine at that same spot drawn between paralleled lines he always took up in the apartment structure, always found himself sitting within the mechanical armor while collecting his exuberant excitements up to make that mountainous climb to the person he loved. Still loved. It hasn't been that long despite the blur of days shifting through his eyes, it hasn't been long enough for his wounded heart to patch itself back up. Hasn't been long enough for the holes to be filled with puddy plaster and harden to not be washed free again. He clicked the volume of his headphones up, quickly pocketing his keys before stumbling his way free from the snagging hands of the car trying to root him down.

What was he doing here anyway? What did he think returning to Jisung's apartment would do for him?

Over the headset's speakers warbling the outside world to a suffocating mess of a monotonous background, Felix just sighed a heavy note directly to his eardrums, "Admit you're excited to see him again. You're still stupidly in love with the man and, he wants to see you again."

"I... I don't know, Lix," The hacker winced against himself. Against the claws which takes through his heart with those sharpened daggers impaling him gently, splayed canines from a feline that danced along his heart with those blushing paws. Tapped down to left imprints along the mailable silk of his heart, everything Jisung did was still stuck in his head, looping through him in some cruel misery of his own torture tantalizing him for ever believing he could love. Tapped down to weave through his ankles as Gummy often did when he wandered through his apartment, trying to trip him as he left the safety of his car behind him to venture into a frigid world, "I feel like my heart was ripped out of my chest and now someone is trying to force it back into my chest but it doesn't want to go back in my chest, it's happy outside of my chest."

"Try to talk to him. Hear him out. See what he has to say, he says he wants to talk to you," Felix continued to reassure him, forcing Minho to keep walking through that parking lot, keep walking along the asphalt while his ears were muted to the world. Rustling from his end of the microphone capturing those subtle noises, soft and sleepy grumbles his little brother responded to with a muted whisper, the ruffling of bedsheets, probably Seungmin beside him, mumbling something to Felix in his dreams. Covered up beneath the deep drone of Felix's voice coming through the speakers once more, "Go, and, then, come cry to me when you're done with him. I love you, don't forget that."

"Yeah, love you too," Minho sighed the response back to him. Languidly moving to hang up the phone call, pocket the device away in his typical hoodie, and pull the headphones off from their dulled encasement suffocating his ears out to drape that accessory around his neck. Fitting them easily as the necklace they became while he was tugged back to reality. Back to the rushing of city streets passing in their own liminal bustle of life around him, behind him as he stepped up to the sidewalk in front of that expensive length of the apartment building, those metal machines weaving through the serpentine highways warped around buildings in tied knots looping their concrete. Back to the tapping of his dirty sneaker down to the concrete below him, to the polished tiles freshly swept with soaked mops slurping up the residue of life outside the secured fortress.

Back to the hand that wrapped around his, inviting him lovingly into a wonderland he had yet to know.

Why was he even tolerating this? What was he even hoping for? What would happen by agreeing to him meeting with Jisung once more, instead of trying to ignore everything he felt for the fanboy, move on from him, pretend as if he never had those overwhelming feelings refusing to leave him alone? Why was he hoping that Jisung truly wanted to talk with him after weeks of ghosting his messages and giving him the coldest gazes glossed by tear-filled eyes, the chasm separating them with that one rocking jitter pulling them apart as Jisung blocked him, pretending the hacker didn't exist within the same realm as the camboy, after all of that why did he want Jisung to still see him? Why was he still hoping that camboy would greet him with the wide beam and attacking kisses that used to pepper throughout his lips, his cheeks, his neck? Why was he wanting to try to fix their relationship, try to go back to square one, try to be in love with him again?