kim jongin's guide to loving oh sehun

we were here

x. Make it say: we were here

the day before yesterday, jongin felt his internal hourglass tip. the sand grains of his seconds slithering closer to the end by each belch his throat produces to accompany the bile flowing out to the toilet bowl. and then there's the crimson liquid that was supposed to be keeping him alive, but even that attempts to escape from him. a voice in his mind instructed him to get on with it; he should be used to the pain now. and then another murmuring to go ahead and cry, because even kings have scars that never bleed.

these voices were drowning in his desire to yell out sehun's name.

yesterday, jongin received a message from sehun saying that he'll be home late because he's invited by some of luhan's friends for dinner. this strip of normalcy in sehun's life pushed jongin on edge, and this time, he did not even dig his weight against the ground to stop the force, even just by a centimeter. he got up and did what he planned to do, all the while telling himself that death isn't solid; you can't grasp it or hold it or shove it to another room or get down on your knees and beg for it to please wait because you need more time to appreciate someone's hoarse laughter and corny pick up lines.

death is like the air that followed jongin as he rummaged through his drawers, bringing out his carefully hidden shoe box and a stack of papers held together by a thin string and what's left of his sanity. the rhythm of his breathing and his footsteps getting closer to sehun's room served as jongin's companion. left, right, legs, please don't give out, left, right until he's in front of sehun's coffee table.

and he timidly placed the papers and box down, something hot and warm --were they tears? welled up behind his eyes. maybe it was because he's conducting his own little burial and no one was around to watch him grip pieces of himself and leave them on the table; a letter, never-ending papers containing lists and a box full of souvenirs. then a thought materialized and he scampered around for a pencil and paper.

he wrote with a compliant heart and a brain that told him to go on and write because this is what's best for sehun. kim jongin scribbled a list on a torn notebook page. a list that he didn't want to make, but he had to. a list that no one can pull off the same way he did, but maybe they can do better

today, sehun comes home wearing smile and a shirt that isn't his because his gray ones were drenched by some unsuspecting stranger. his limbs and head hurts as if they've just been stepped on by a buffalo. it's his first time staying out of his house and away from jongin overnight. it feels nostalgic and euphoric at the same time. he expected to come home to a pair of open arms, waiting for him and maybe some warm toast and fried eggs for breakfast. jongin's cooking skills surprisingly improved after episodes of sehun pretending that jongin's oily meals were god's latest miracles after rice cookers.

the smile, however, fades from his face little by little as he caught sight of a brown shoe box (that isn't his) and some papers (that surely isn't his) on his coffee table. he opens it and takes the items out one by one; a molten candle, a pressed rose petal, cigarette stick, a shard of glass, movie tickets, a damaged wheel of some roller skates, a torn paper with a little hole that fit perfectly on sehun's index finger.

today, kim jongin listens to the roaring of the angry waves below him. and another; the sound of loneliness. he's high enough for the sea's foam to be pools of white. with eyes open and dry, he lets his last thought be the three volatile raps of his neighbor's knuckles against his door. his right foot inches forward, half in the open air; there's oh sehun's deep voice yelling at jongin to fix that goddamned hole because he was the one who discovered it. by the time jongin takes a deep breath, he rewinds back to sehun's job-searching and later on, his complains. kim jongin spreads his arms out and lets himself fall, knowing that sehun will be okay.

today, sehun forces himself to read the wrinkled paper on top of the box. after, of course, absorbing jongin's letter written with words like; hematasis, metastasis, cancer, the end. as he finished with the first one, sehun thinks it's the perfect time for someone to barge into his door and yell 'time stops, the world ends' because that's exactly how he feels right now;

Kim Jongin's guide to loving oh sehun; [a depressed individual]

i give him a reason to get out of bed every single morning

ii Act like his phantom limb be there when he needs you, eave when he doesn't

iii Go to Hallmark and buy him as many cards as you can with your allowance or salary

iv.Dig a hole in the backyard and give him a shovel then step back as he rips his sadness in handfuls and bury it in the hole

v. Cook a romantic dinner for two play a recording of you saying something important again and again until the needle scratches

vi. Fill the bathtub with roses and hot water light some candles remove his clothes one by one

vii. Take him rollerblading at night

viii. Be patient. things like these take time

ix. Wait until there's a full moon, trace his scars, for each one revealed, tell him you'll stay for another year; t tell him that if he only had one scar, you'll stay forever

x. Get a telescope and find mars

xi. Label it

xii. Make it say we were here

xiii Don't tell him you love him, show it

(notice that there aren't any periods on the lists, these thoughts are endless)

tomorrow, sehun will wake up to the groaning engines and incoherent chatter composing the seven o'clock street noise. an unwelcomed noise, perhaps, but it was inevitable because he forgot to close his windows shut last night. he'll instinctively grab a plate and his spoon and fork before going out of his house to knock on jongin's door. the echoes his knuckles against wood cause and the lack of reply on the other end will remind him of jongin and his absence. he'll feel his knees give out beneath him tears follow suit, even though he doesn't think it's physically possible for a human to have this much tears leaking out of their sockets. he'll loiter on fast-paced highways, trying to find pieces of jongin in a stranger's wrist, the way that girl sitting by the park bench squeezes her eyes shut, a man's hip as they sway when walking.



tomorrow, sehun will pour his hate out on luhan because the stupid chinese bigot didn't allow him to take a day off to nurse his broken heart. sehun will accidentally-on-purpose put too much water on luhan's tea and not enough sugar because there's nothing in the world luhan hates aside from that. he'll get forty-three minutes' worth of scolding from the passionate painter, and forty-three minutes is more than enough for sehun to be frustrated to the point of bitch-slapping that nagger across the face. he'll leave luhan's studio, worrying that he'll lose his job. but later on, luhan will show up in his doorstep, eyes on his feet and heart on his sleeve as he mutters I'm sorry.




tomorrow, sehun will impose self-loathing. he'll fuel the fire of his self-hate using jongin's multiple lists and letters. he'll reprimand himself for being so selfish he didn't notice the signs of jongin--gosh, jongin practically turned transparent in front of his eyes. sehun will tear the polaroid pictures down and pry his sheets off in a fit of rage. a rage that'll kill itself like arson in an abandoned warehouse. when seconds quenches the fire, the ashes of what we have beens, what we should have beens, what we never will be, would manifest on him. his fingers will fumble to tape back the pictures and put them back properly, like a suspect hiding evidences of his crime. he'll be secretly hoping that doing this would bring jongin back, would return the kisses and childish pillow fights, the nasty name callings and hardcore lovemaking.




tomorrow, doors will open for sehun. tomorrow, a hand would flip the page of a thick book. a book that happened to be about sehun's life. a story without end, but a story nonetheless. a story with chapters meant to be finished to introduce a new one.




tomorrow will come, maybe with the sun's greeting or the heaven's drizzle. maybe with yesterday's regrets or today's mistakes. with a potential lover or mortal enemy. maybe with a broken water heater or a surprise hole in the wall.



either way, tomorrow will come.

f i n