fairytale hell asteroid | l.dh

nineteen.

Donghyuck has not stopped thinking about the confession he made.

It felt too much like a spur of the moment, and while a serial victim of the spur of the moment himself, he has never been fond of what it can make people do. Anything done within that slowed-down universe was an idiotic crime, an act of no-thinking, jaywalking down a freeway, squeezing a roll of wasabi down your throat, and backing a car straight into the garage door.

Or, the worst of all, admitting to yourself that you are, in fact, in love with someone.

He stared down the main campus street, which he knew you walked by every other day after your morning class ended, and he breathed at the lack of souls littered across the road. You probably already walked past here and were waiting at the bus stop. He would know because that was your routine, and he was a little late today in coming by to be a block in your route.

He had been too occupied with his ceaseless mind, one that continuously interrogated him about his romantic interest and whether they were real or not. The question had come late to him that night after his friends left his home, and he sat immobilized before his blank computer screen.

Everything felt regular when he was still fixated on the game; he raged and chatted, clicked on the mouse, and tapped the keyboard. But the second he turned all the machines off to prepare for the end of the day, the silence without your sleeping presence haunted him. The book you lent him sat on his nightstand, a symbolization of him leaving a space in his home for you; out of all the places in his big bedroom he could have put the book, he put it close to where he sleeps.

Donghyuck jumped off the high horse and never got back on. His doubt fluttered like the lashes that adorned your eyes because he wasn't sure. Was he in love? How would he know? How would anybody know? Was he even capable of fully understanding what love means? Was anyone fully capable of understand such a fickle, multi-layered, necessary concept?

He could not use his parents as an example; he had never seen them be in love with each other, and neither did he ever feel truly loved by them. He could use Jeno's parents as the standard, but sometimes the way those two old folks bicker with each other felt like there was more than meets the eye when old age had begun tainting a once youthful love. Jaemin has only recently been involved in a one-sided attraction, much like himself was at this moment.

Even though his friends had nodded his way when discussing his affection for you, seeming in perfect unison that there was no denying that he has strong feelings for you, Donghyuck could not shake off the notion that he might be mistaken. And he would hate to be mistaken about love. He would hate to cause any party involved any pain and awkwardness.

Mostly, he would hate to cause you pain. It was something he swore against unconsciously to himself. He would never hurt you intentionally; he would never bite you back; he would never press against your bones despite his overwhelming desire to consume you whole. You love them. He repeated to himself. You will not hurt them. It was not a reminder. It was not a threat. It was a reassurance of the truth.

"Hello?"

Your calm voice hit his ear and filled his heart. Within that instant, he was aware how much to the brim the sink of his chest has with a grotesque loveliness that could only come from you. Whenever he so much as received a drip of your existence, he churned up the faucet to keep it coming so he could drown in it. He was aware, in that instant where you spoke a one-syllable word, where your voice traveled to his ear and his processing mind, that you make him shake and breathe, and he is in love with you.

Then he snapped out of it.

"Where are you? I don't see you at the bus stop!" Donghyuck exclaimed as he looked around the empty area his legs had brought him to. He peered down the street further, then back into the campus. There was not a trace of you at the campus bus stop.