✎ …. The worst kind of birthdays are the kind that occurs mid-week into your diet. No one seems to understand how important it is to you. You’re offered cakes, patbingsu, the works. You want to eat. But you can’t. They insist. You politely decline. And then you give in and eat anyway.
The worst kind of birthdays are the kind that ends in a hangover. It's about 4 hours before your next schedule- a radio show or something, you don't know, do you care?. Your livers screaming 'no' but the 5th ( or is the 6th?) can of beer and the shots that follows says 'yes'. 4 hours later you're playing 'Who can go through schedules without puking ‘. And you’re always the winner.
The best kind of birthdays are the kind that seem almost too good to be true- and then you realize … it is.
🔑 — There were no smiles today- the day after all of the fun and games. There were no coiling of people. There were no cheers or cake d faces that could ward off the dark cloud that had encompassed him. It lingered. Lingered long after he’d gotten the call that stole from him a day ago... on his special day.
So Kibum’s quiet on the ride to the airport. He isn’t with his members, just a manager that doesn’t bother to spark up conversation. Kibum missed today’s schedule— a Japanese promotional event— and Kim Kibum never misses a schedule. But there’s a first time for everything right? Still there was no excuse for not being there for his team so he allows himself to feel bad, allows a sliver of sourness to mesh into his countenance, but that feeling drifts slowly... just like the time that drags on and rattles his need for a distraction, but he doesn’t dare bring the Moschino clad phone out of his bag and into view for a distraction.
He feels hungry. He feels tired. He feels a lot of things, and one of them comes as a sharp pain to his gut. The type of pain that clinched tight, and released just as quickly; he’d toss in his seat, letting fox like eyes fall on something, anything to distract him.
…But everything reminded him of her.
That her that had woven a rebellious child into an adult with a surplus of love. That her who he’d told so adamantly, ‘I never asked you to raise me,’ and that her whose heartache had become all too apparent when a foolish, ignorant speck of a grandson demanded, ‘Why did you raise me and suffer?’
…How could he say that to her?
That her who’d sent a rebellious 15 year old boy to Seoul with a note and allowance to pursue his dreams. That her who’d never stopped loving her Kibummie and the bundle of flaws that came with him. That her was his grandmother.
Then he feels it, feels two twin streaks of moisture slip from his eyes and down his cheek. Slowly. Uncomfortably slow because the ride was slow and steady, too. The train ride from Seoul to Daegu was slow, too. Slow and miserable and lonely. And the moisture that was currently rippling through his Etude clad skin had the same slickness as it did that countless times on the train ride. But this time a note adorned with words of encouragement or the promise of reuniting wasn’t the cause.
What was he supposed to do now that his strength was gone?
That pain again…. a clinch sharp to his stomach with teeth sinking into the plush of his bottom lip and— release. Clinch. Release. His throat feels tight and even the choked sob that squeezes past is a soft mummer.
The van comes smoothly to a stop when they approach Incheon airport and though it’s a steady one his stomach curls and he has to swallow thickly before sliding out of the back seat and onto the asphalt. For something that hadn’t been placed on his schedule there was a decent sized pool of fans eager to see him, but he hides behinds dark shades and a smile that’s more distraught than glee. They didn’t know why. But he did.
He saunters, forces the habitual movement that, despite being so ingrained within him, felt foreign in that moment, because if he hadn’t he wouldn’t have been able to drift into the airport.
She was the most important part of his life. He lost that part.
