atonement

He did go to the university as well, and at the other’s statement, Daehyun blinked at the other male, eyes raking over his face to locate any sign of distress. It seemed that he was right, that the other boy had only wanted to get out of the crowd, as he apparently had a medic at home. Despite the rambling, he appeared to be carrying himself well, but Daehyun couldn’t think of any other way to repay him for saving his life other than getting him some medical attention. He found himself nodding anyway, eyes flitting to the street and hoping that a bus would pass by soon, to get him patched up quickly. His face had not given away any emotion that the blow was painful, but Daehyun was fairly certain that he was just good at hiding it, managing to even smile to reassure him. That, or perhaps he had a good pain tolerance.

It had been months since he’d concocted that defense mechanism against insanity, after all; it had been months since he had embraced the concept of pain and instilled it in his blood, streaming in his veins to etch extra morphine for continuous exposure would eventually transform his system into a better, stronger machine that he’d expected to be. That was a fragment of his life which he had conjured up since the day he had picked up the mask of Kai, anything which previously was dubbed as debilitating had become nothing but a mundane disturbance for him, and with that, the pinpricking pain which shot up his arm as the blood continued dripping from his torn skin could be deemed as nothing but a diminutive aggravation—nothing that either of them should worry about, really, but he couldn’t tell the stranger that, so he relished in the concern that the other emitted anyway. Not everyone apart from his butler would wear that kind of expression for him, so he was grateful for being able to be at least needed, no matter the underlying reasoning.

✯ And sometimes it takes a friend ✯

People had acknowledged his idiosyncrasies along with time although it had only been a while since he mingled with the society in general, plunging himself forcefully amidst the crowd when he’d been so used to the concept of solitary. At least despite the constant anxiety that he felt at the pit of his stomach like a perpetual company, he’d also been equipped by the skill to overlook the scrutiny from curious eyes whenever he did something that they would deem as peculiar. It probably had something to do with the numerous exposures to the critical, grumpy old wealthy people who had always found something in him to complain about, teaching him to grow thicker skin along with time. A risible paradox, it was; on one side he was apprehensive when excessive attention was placed on him, yet he also had learned to manage the level of ignorance when it came to doing whatever his heart desired when the volition beckoned him to do so in a public place.

Daehyun could almost see the other’s anxiousness roll off him in waves. It seemed that he was in a rush to avoid the crowd, and Daehyun could relate to the feeling of getting unwanted and unnecessary attention from the passersby; he had experienced similar situations since he was a young boy, whenever his parents had brought him to meet their colleagues and their business partners’ sons and daughters. Daehyun matched the other male’s pace, gaze scanning his features once in a while to see if he was turning pale - perhaps if the injury went from bad to worse, Daehyun could just call the cab and bring him to a hospital instead of just the university clinic. His elbow throbbed a little as his arms swung when walking, but Daehyun gathered that there’ll just be bruising as opposed to bleeding like the male before him.

A stream of relief washed over him fast when the crowd diminished from the periphery of his vision; the anxiety dissipated quickly from his stomach and his heartbeat stopped escalating after the rapid pace had inflicted faint nausea into his stomach. He noticed remotely that the other male had matched his speed, striding down the pavement in silence with the sound of their footfalls to accompany them. The pain that throbbed along his arm was nagging, but it wasn’t something that he couldn’t disparage. A normal occurrence, it was, but he resented the fact that it was an old wound torn open, since if the stitches were as secure as the doctor in the hospital had claimed them to be, it wouldn’t happen. The friction had been dampened by the sleeve, after all. Maybe it was why he’d never really trusted in an outsider’s job, although it had been an exception for the emergency that the quandary had imposed. Maybe he should indeed have stuck with his butler’s work.

“Depression is humiliating. It turns intelligent, kind people into zombies who can’t wash a dish or change their socks. It affects the ability to think clearly, to feel anything, to ascribe value to your children, your lifelong passions, your relative good fortune. It scoops out your normal healthy ability to cope with bad days and bad news, and replaces it with an unrecognizable sludge that finds no pleasure, no delight, no point in anything outside of bed. You alienate your friends because you can’t comport yourself socially, you risk your job because you can’t concentrate, you live in moderate squalor because you have no energy to stand up, let alone take out the garbage. You become pathetic and you know it. And you have no capacity to stop the downward plunge. You have no perspective, no emotional reserves, no faith that it will get better. So you feel guilty and ashamed of your inability to deal with life like a regular human, which exacerbates the depression and the isolation. If you’ve never been depressed, thank your lucky stars and back off the folks who take a pill so they can make eye contact with the grocery store cashier. No one on earth would choose the nightmare of depression over an averagely turbulent normal life. It’s not an incapacity to cope with day to day living in the modern world. It’s an incapacity to function. At all. If you and your loved ones have been spared, every blessing to you. If depression has taken root in you or your loved ones, every blessing to you, too. No one chooses it. No one deserves it. It runs in families, it ruins families. You cannot imagine what it takes to feign normalcy, to show up to work, to make a dentist appointment, to pay bills, to walk your dog, to return library books on time, to keep enough toilet paper on hand, when you are exerting most of your capacity on trying not to kill yourself. Depression is real. Just because you’ve never had it doesn’t make it imaginary. Compassion is also real. And a depressed person may cling desperately to it until they are out of the woods and they may remember your compassion for the rest of their lives as a force greater than their depression. Have a heart. Judge not lest ye be judged.”

Daehyun met the other’s eyes with a no-nonsense look as the boy assured him that it was fine, that the situation was under control. It was obviously the other way around, and if he was really in tiptop shape then his knuckles shouldn’t be stained crimson. His mind went back to the small clinic near the university, which was only a right turn away from their current spot, and then they would be walking a small stretch of road. He hoped that it was open, but Daehyun was fairly sure that it was - the establishment was built there for student emergencies, and he wasn’t certain if the other even went to the same university as he did but it’ll have to do, as it was the closest from here.

Despite the years that he’d spent under the spotlight, scrutinized by myriad pairs of eyes of the elders in the society that embodied profligacy, it never meant that he was used to that kind of situations. Being under the perusal of audience made him extremely self-conscious, with apprehension stirring incessantly at the pit of his stomach, and it was only heightened since he also had an enormous secret that he couldn’t let out if he still wanted to preserve his sanity and safety. Being Kai was both beneficial and detrimental for his mental state—it provided him a form of twisted relief yet chipped away the brim of the sanity left in him due to the inevitably secrecy. It was cathartic but it amplified his fear when he wasn’t hiding beneath the protection of the black veil, for people surely would never be able to see anything from his distorted point of view. The unease was now a perpetual companion but the intensity had never dissipated despite the familiarity, and Jongin was left with the nagging wishes to escape the concerned gazes fixed on him.