perhaps, you | woosan

Chapter Seventeen

POV: San

San was frozen there for a long time, his finger not even a flinch while his heart was busily pounding against his chest.

"San...?"

"It's wrong!" he blurted, standing up vigorously as the wooden chair swung in the air. He was standing at the edge of a hill. His heart swayed as that of a swing, and his finger trembled as that of a drill. He was scared. "It's wrong...it's wrong to like the same gender. A man can only like a woman, and a woman a man!"

A pain flashed in Yunho's eyes, but San, who didn't dare look at him, failed to see.

"Who said so?"

"My mother, the priest, the therapist...all the adults and the entire world." San felt his heart crumbling down as he repeated the words he had recurrently heard for the past few years of his life. "They told me it's wrong. That it's against the world's rule. The laws of nature. God's will."

They told me over and over again. As if I, who couldn't change who I am, was a sinner who wasn't supposed to exist in the world.

"What's wrong with a person liking a person?"

Yunho's voice turned deeper than the nightfall. San flinched, but he still couldn't raise his eyes to see the tall boy.

"San, we are both persons. If someone dare tell me I can't like you, for who you are, then they are fucking wrong."

His growl turned into something softer, fonder. "It's not what others say or think. What matters is how you feel, San...Do you like me?"

San had long been crouching in a deep dark pit. With no hint of light, he believed there was no exit. But every hole needed an entrance. Of which he took all this while to realise it was, likewise, an exit. All he needed was a reliable hand to pull him up the darkest pit.

"I-"

The following events were like surging waves.

With Yunho along, he declared his sexuality to his mother and confessed his bottled up feelings. Listening to her wailing and lamenting of what wrong she has done to raise such a pitiful child in the background, San packed the basic needs of his belongings and left the house. He started living in Yunho's house, which almost felt like it was owned by two people with his parents always away on business trips.

San worked hard to earn money to be independent, and studied hard to get to the college, earning a scholarship. Soon San and Yunho moved into the college dorm, room 403.

Yunho promised he'd stick with San, and urged him to leave the toxic house and his toxic mother. And San believed him. Ridding his neglecting mother, his childhood memory—everything he had, to live with Yunho. With him, he could finally breathe. He could finally let sunlight shower him. He could finally embrace who he truly was.

He got several calls from his mother which he never picked. He got numerous texts from his mother which he seldom read and never replied.

If there was one thing that made him want to go back home was Shiber, his dog plushie acquainted for as long as he can remember that he had forgotten to bring along. San had always had problems sleeping, and Shiber was his haven. Now that he had Yunho, he didn't face as much trouble but there were times he'd mull over that fluffy, squishable object.

One day, coming back from the lecture he had found something unusual lying on his bed.

"En?"

It was a rather big bear plushie. Not giving it a deep thought, he instantly grabbed it and hugged it—it was comfortable and fitting. A smile naturally crept on his face.

"You like it?"

"Yunho!"

San probably was too busy studying this new friend of his, that he didn't notice someone else stepping in the room. It was his boyfriend looking down at him fondly, as if to say the view of his boyfriend hugging a plushie is the most adorable thing in the world.

"You got this for me?"

"Yes. So that you could stop whining over Shiber," Yunho teased, taking a seat next to San.

"I like it," San smiled, tucking plushie to the side then wrapping his arms around Yunho.

"My pleasure," he smiled back in that usual dog-like friendliness, which never failed to soften San's heart. And at such times he couldn't really hold back his urge. He pulled the man closer, placing a quick kiss on his lips. "Thank you."

Yunho blinked at the sudden affection, but it was only a second before he leaned in, asking for more.

But San learnt that happiness never lasts. No matter how much you try, no matter how much you desperately wish to keep—no, the more you wanted it to last, the more likely it wouldn't.

"What the fuck Hongjoong??"

Right, that happened in Hongjoong's party, too. So many dramas happen in that party of his and that probably is why people would consider it barbaric and well, unholy.