A Little Bit Longer || YeonBin

3

Breathing is something that need not to be taught. It naturally occurs from the moment you were born. You don't need someone else's guidance to follow just so you can inhale and exhale oxygen to avoid suffocation. It's something normal for almost every living creature that ever stands on earth.

But then again, Soobin isn't normal.

Atleast, he isn't anymore.

It was funny really, how something as simple as breathing has to be taught with people like him. He knows how to do it, he knows how the process goes, and he totally knows about how fucking hard it is. About how breathing feels like being set on a small confined place, about how it's like to feel his chest being tightened by an invisible force and how it feels to have his entire body slow down because breathing cause him to suffer so much and it hurts, it hurts, it hurts but he has to endure it because it's the only thing that could make him stay alive.

But he doesn't want to stay alive anymore. He's giving up. He's done. He has suffered enough already. And he doesn't care about these breathing exercises he's been doing for years that was supposed to help him but they didn't.

So take away his breath now, he doesn't care.

"Okay big guy, you know the drill." He heard the instructor called to him. The instructor then set up the treadmill in a light pace and reminded Soobin of the terms.

'Try to control your breathing and avoid panting. Do it slowly, 4 seconds in, 7 seconds out.' he had it memorized. He's been doing the same thing for years now, alright?

And nothing helps.

"Okay! Just continue with that pace, yeah? I'll come back to you later and if you ever feel out of breath you know where the oxygen tanks are."

Soobin gave him an uninterested nod and dismissed him. He questioned himself as to why he's still doing this when he knows the outcome would still be the same anyways. He's just wasting his time and energy when he could be doing something else.

Like breaking another rule, for example.

"Oh, so you're here too." A voice snapped him out of his trance and he quickly turned to his left and saw the fox looking male from yesterday.

"I should be the one telling you that."

Yeonjun ignored his response and adjusted the pace of his treadmill and noticed Soobin's unamused expression.

He examined his face from the side, pale and a little gaunt. Lips partly opened and chapped, his nose a cute pointed little one, and his eyes. Those eyes, he's familiar with how dull looking it looked, how it lost all the shines, and how it held so much doubts and questions. How frightened and lonely they were behind that look of void.

He knows that, he sees the same pair of eyes staring back at him in the mirror everyday.

He took his time and watched the taller, he was practically just walking on the tread, his expression bored and tired. Like he was desperately waiting for something and it never came so he grew tired of waiting. Like he was hopeful that something would change but those hopes were repeatedly crushed so he grew tired of hoping.

He looked so tired.

And Yeonjun knew that feeling all too well.

“It’s starting to feel really uncomfortable,” It was now Yeonjun’s turn to be snapped out of his trance when Soobin spoke, gaze still fixed on something else, “—with the staring I mean.”

“Oh,” Yeonjun blinks as he tries to disregard the sprouting bubble of awkwardness slowly emerging up his being. “Sorry, I didn’t notice.”

Soobin didn’t respond after that and chose to just continue with his task although the image of the boy’s reddening flustered cheeks still lingered at the back of his head like an essential memoir.

He tried to shake it off, wanting to get rid of whatever it is that’s threatening to bloom as he’s convinced it’ll bring no good. However, this seems to be a difficult job when the one he’s trying to ignore keeps on pestering him and Soobin’s about to lose it.

Oblivious of the male’s thoughts and hardship, Yeonjun did everything in his power to get Soobin’s attention on him by the means of calling his name and repeatedly poking his arm which were all left in vain for the past few minutes.

But it looks like he succeeded this time when Soobin finally turned his head at him.

Yeonjun sent him a wide grin, uncaring even though the taller male is basically killing him through his eyes. “What do you want?”

"Do you want to get out of here?"