suicidal stud - sunsun | ✓

06 - Attempt #1 ⚠️

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The Han River looks scary at night. It's mid-October and the air is chilly post-rain, so there's not a soul around when they get there. The water looks black and immobile, barely a reflection against the Cheongdam bridge.

"This looks like the perfect place to die," Sunghoon says, fully serious and half sober. scrunching the dirty ground in front of the water

Sunoo laughs drunkenly. He can't help it. It honestly sounds so superfluous when they say it out loud. Unreal.

"How should we do it?" Sunghoon questioned

"We should strip. Then hold hands and plunge in." Sunoo suggested

The water has to be in the negatives. Sunoo fidgets. He can barely make out Sunghoon's expression as is from the dim lights and quarter moon.

"I don't want you to see me naked." Sunghoon protested

"Why? If we're gonna die, you might as well do me a favor and let it be the last image I see."

Shrugged Sunoo

"That was a totally crude thing to say."

Sunghoon's figure turns around and elbows extend inward. He's covering his eyes.

"I'm kidding. I'm only half fuckboy, unlike the rest of these guys in Seoul, you know. You go in first, then."

Sunoo regrets it. He didn't want to go in first. Alone, plummeting to a freezing death. He tries to imagine his parents finding out in the morning, the police discovering his naked teenage male body and scrutinizing if he was underweight or overweight in the headlines.

"Let's go together, Sunghoon. With our clothes on."

It was going to weigh them down faster, but so what? That's the goal, right?

Sunghoon's dark looming figure walks over and holds his hand again. He's shaking - from the cold or nerves, he doesn't know, but he accepts it, likes the way it feels in the weight of his own. They walk in slowly, up to their ankles, reactively shivering, bodies stilting from the water.

"Shit," he says, holding on to him tighter.

"It's not that bad," he lies. "Plunge in!" He leads them out further until they're at his thigh level, the water frigid, pants, socks, and shoes swallowing them whole. Their teeth are chattering and there's a pulsating sensation going up Sunoo's tailbone to his spine.

They get to their waistlines when their lips turn blue.

"You look like Jack from Titanic," Sunoo tries to joke, but his teeth are chattering so much, that only half the syllables make sense. They're up to their chest now, losing pallor, skin going sheen and Sunoo turns to face Sunghoon, his jaw tightened, cheeks sallow. He reaches over, putting his arms around him, and tries to wrap his legs around Sunghoon's waist underwater, but they are barely floating as is, clothes drowning them slowly.

So this is what dying feels like.

"Sunghoon, tell me why."

His eyes widen. He looks down at Sunoo, frozen hands wrapped around the smaller's back under his sweater in the water, holding him up as much as he can.

"Ice skating. Parents. You know, the usual pressure of living up to unrealistic expectations for others. And not yourself."

"Yeah." Sunoo has an idea or two himself

"You?" Chattered Sunghoon

"Same, mostly. It kinda sucks - being raised without being allowed to not be perfect or anything less."

"Yeah."

Birds of a feather flock together or so they say. Must be something in the blood. Or hypothermia kicking in.

Sunoo feels his eyelids getting heavy. Sunghoon breathes some air in her face out of concern.

"Sunoo," he says, words barely above a whisper, "I don't feel like dying just yet."

Sunoo's eyes flutter open to see Sunghoon staring at him in a wallow of sadness like he's already dead.

"Me either."

They unwrap themselves from each other, holding hands until they make it out of the water, frigid gasping for air on the shore, drenched in wet clothes, hair soaked, skin so pale and translucent.

When Sunoo checks his phone that she left conveniently buried in the sand, he howls with laughter. 10:26.

They'd gotten into the water at 10:21.

Only attempted to kill themselves for five minutes and somehow it felt like an eternity.

-
uhm so that was...something...

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suicide stud - sunsun