Love Yourself: Him

D

 Sometimes, it feels rare for Jeongguk to have a day off. Sometimes, it feels like he's always working, always at work. Always thinking. He usually blacks out on his days off. Sometimes with alcohol, sometimes with drugs, if he can muster anything to get either.

It's always sometimes with Jeongguk. He doesn't have the time or energy to think anything more than sometimes.

He hadn't slept the night before, not really. He had kind of just lain there and stared at his ceiling and before he knew it, his stomach was growling angrily and it was ten in the morning. Evident by the sounds of the city outside.

His stomach growls and he attempts to ignore it. It growls again and he turns in his bed and holds his stomach, as if that would keep him from being hungry because he really doesn't want to eat anything.

Another growl and he gives in.

He trudges his way to the kitchen and eyes everything. There's bits of dust littering the counters, having not used them in so long. There are pans with, he's sure, old food in them from when he thought he could actually cook, then gave up halfway through because the effort was too great.

He spots instant ramyeon sitting on the counter, unopened.

He can't find any scissors, so he digs around in a drawer and clutches back his hand when it catches on the edge of something sharp.

A cutlery knife he didn't know he owned.

He wonders, for a brief moment, how thin the skin is on his neck or his wrists. On the inside of his thighs. He knows which places have the most potential to make him bleed out. He's had to patch up similar wounds when he had been a kid.

The knife glints as he stares at it. Like it's staring back at him. The nick on his finger still gushes small droplets of blood and he wonders if he would feel more of that...feeling. What he felt when he nicked himself.

Anything is better than nothing.

With motivation he didn't know he still had, he drops to sit cross-legged and pulls up his sweats to look at the skin, muscle, and lack of fat on his calf. It looks like it'll hurt. It looks like it'll make him feel something.

The first prick is careful. He draws it barely an inch and waits. Nothing happens.

He presses harder and draws quicker and longer and then he sees it.

The cut is deep and blood starts to seep out slowly, not all at once like he's expected. He just watches it, the most mesmerised he's been in months.

But he doesn't feel anything. So the effort was in vain.

He stands up and a few lines of blood drip down his calf and curl around his foot before pooling on the floor. He throws his sweats back down and feels the material cling to the liquid. It's wet and gross but he really, truly, can't find it in him to care.

He throws his hands into his pockets and pauses when his finger comes into contact with money. The money from the grocery store.

He goes to bed and doesn't eat.

When he wakes up the next day, the money is still on his mind and he finds it compelling to get up.

His leg is in pain and he looks to see his sweats completely stained, in a straight line, making the grey an almost-black colour. The blood has seeped through and left light marks on his sheets. When he peels away the material, the wound starts bleeding again.

He hobbles his way to his bathroom and, haphazardly, tightens bandages around the wound, possibly too tight. But it keeps the blood away. He doesn't need any questions.

He changes into a new pair of still-dirty sweats, having not done his laundry in weeks, and catches himself in the mirror.

The blood loss somehow shows in his face. He looks a little paler and a little more tired. His hair is matted down on his head and the bags under his eyes are evidence of his sleep deprivation.

He looks dead.

He slips his feet into shoes and fingers the money in his pocket as he steps outside.

He doesn't know if he's going to spend it, doesn't know where he's going in the first place. Just intent on walking somewhere. Maybe into traffic again. This time doing it right.

When he stops at the crosswalk, he feels a tap on his shoulder.

"Hey." Jeongguk doesn't recognise the voice or the face when he turns, but the word 'converse' comes to mind. "From the grocery store, right?" The man snaps his fingers before he points, "Jeongguk?"

Jeongguk nods slowly and directs his attention back to traffic, his previous thoughts lingering on his mind.

"So, what're you doin'?" the man questions. Jeongguk keeps his eyes trained forward and doesn't answer. Maybe if he doesn't answer, the man'll go away. "Just...out in town?"

It's very apparent that the man is trying to make friends with him, trying to get him to speak, but Jeongguk doesn't necessarily want to speak right now. His eyes follow the cars speeding by and he blinks when the crosswalk signal starts up and everyone begins to walk forward.

Jeongguk walks with them. Pretends to be part of the crowd. The man, he thinks, is still trying to talk to him. He's determined right now. Incredibly. The most he's ever been.

He makes it to the end and hears the traffic start up behind him again.

"So...," the man continues on with talking, "were you planning on doing anything in town? Or are you free now?"

Jeongguk is free now.

He turns around, back to the rushing traffic.

"Jeongguk?"

He stares at it until it all blurs together and he really feels the wind rushing through his lungs. Like he's the car. He's driving.

He takes a step forward.

He feels the whip of vehicles around him.

"Hey!"

He looks to the left and sees someone speeding down the road, with no intent to stop.

He closes his eyes and waits.

"Jeongguk!"

He feels it then.

Someone pulling him back to the sidewalk.

"Dude, are you crazy?" the voice questions, and it's the man who'd pulled him back. "Are you trying to kill yourself?"

Jeongguk almost answers that yes, he is trying to kill himself because he's sure he wouldn't feel a thing, and he gulps.

He blinks out of his head and gets a big whiff of the world around him, pausing when he sees the man holding him in place and looking at him, worried, almost curious.

"Hey, are you okay?" the man asks him in a quieter voice, and Jeongguk blinks because he really doesn't know. No one's asked him that question in a long time, and he hasn't bothered to stop and ask himself. "Um... Look, if you... Look, you want to come to my place? My roommates would love to meet you."

The man has the audacity to grin and drop his hands down from Jeongguk's shoulders to his hands, and take one of them in his own, before he starts leading Jeongguk without any warning.

They stop in a store and the man buys him candy and waits until Jeongguk eats it when they go outside, as if making sure he's fed.

"You like it?" he asks, and Jeongguk blinks. "I get it for Hobi when he's feeling down." He takes Jeongguk's hand again. "Come on, it's this way. There's six of us all together, so don't feel bad if you don't remember everyone's name right off the bat."

Jeongguk isn't worried about feeling bad.

He isn't worried.

He wishes that car had hit him.