#levixcr

He turned his head to face the voice. It was Levi sitting in a chair next to his bed, reading a magazine. Of course. The very person he wanted to see when he woke up. He must be in hell.

"I'm dead, aren't I?" Seunghyun asked quietly.

"Far from it. You're lucky that I managed to save you before it was too late," Levi replied, eyes glued to the magazine.

"You saved me...? Why?" He was confused. This whole time he had thought that he was only a brat to the shorter man.

Levi sighed wearily before putting the magazine down in his lap, giving Seunghyun a withering look. He drew in a breath before he started. "Kid," he began, "Don't start. You have no idea the kind of hell you put me through the other day." Then he muttered, "I have no idea what the hell I was put on this earth for, but I do know that I'm supposed to protect you."

"Oh...so you did it out of obligation, then..." Seunghyun mumbled dejectedly.

Levi's eyebrows furrowed. Was this kid really looking for a fight? After all this? "No, brat, that’s not what I meant! Look, you can't kill yourself over something so trivial--"

Seunghyun cut him off. "So trivial?!" he shot back. "I don't think you understand but Daesung and I were in a relationship. We promised each other that we'd be together forever. We promised each other that we'd have each other's backs whenever we needed it and he just apparently got up and fucking left. Without a fucking word!" The monitor recorded his heart rate and began to beep rapidly. Great. Just what he needed, everyone knowing that he was pissed off as hell.

It took everything in him for Levi to not get up and beat the shit out of the kid but at the same time, he felt sorry for the poor man. His lover walked out on him, without a word to boot. Cut him some slack.

He drew in a breath and exhaled slowly, carefully choosing his words. After a few moments, he calmly restarted. "'Trivial' was the wrong word. What I'm trying to say is that people come and go all the time. It's uncontrollable. You can't control whether or not people stay or leave. You're lucky if they stay, and if they don't? Too bad, time to let them go. You have to let some people go. Now, I have no idea what motive he had for leaving but from what I can see, it was a for real reason." He paused. "Seunghyun, you can't kill yourself over the fact that he left because...what if he comes back?"

"He's not coming back."

"You don't know that."

"He probably won't come back."

"And if he does?"

There was no answer.

"And what if he did come back and you were dead? What would I tell him? 'Oh, your ex-boyfriend off'd himself because you skipped town'? How would that make him feel? Pretty shitty, I'd imagine, because in that situation--"

"Can you stop?" Seunghyun interrupted.

"All fingers point to you. And every day he'll wake up thinking,"

"Stop, please."

"'If only I hadn't left, he'd still be alive.'"

The room fell into an uncomfortable silence. Seunghyun knew what Levi had said was true. How could he ever live with himself if he did that to Daesung? But wait...

He already tried to.

Levi was already back to reading his magazine. One could easily tell that he wasn't good in social situations.

"Levi," Seunghyun called out softly.

"Hm?" Levi answered, looking up from the glossy pages of the magazine.

"This is probably stupid but...before I blacked out in your arms...I could've sworn you were," Seunghyun shook his head. He was probably hallucinating back then.

"Crying? Yelling? Screaming like a banshee?" Levi offered. "Yeah. I don't...take to kindly to finding people dying on the floor."

"So you were? You care about me that much?" he asked stupidly.

"Kinda, yeah. And, well...if I tell you this, you better not tell anyone."

Seunghyun zipped his lips shut with his hand.

"Alright," Levi took a deep breath, "back in middle school, I want to say around eighth grade, I had a friend. I'd known her since kindergarten, actually. She was quiet and shy but she was the nicest person you could ever hope to meet. Pure as the freshly fallen snow. You'd think she had the perfect life, was the perfect girl. Had nothing wrong with her, but..." He trailed off a bit, snapping out of the trance-like state when he noticed Seunghyun's eager face. "Little did I know, she had a lot of problems. Now, she had no parents and she lived with her older brother in a shabby apartment near the school. Her brother was always gone, trying to scrape up cash in any way possible-- legal or illegal. There wasn't much I or my family could do for her but I tried my best to just be there for her whenever she needed it.

"We became friends and eventually best friends and we were always together. We probably looked like a couple, now that I think of it. Anyways, at the beginning of seventh grade, her aunt and uncle decided to move in and take care of them. Which I now know was bullshit. They abused her and kicked her brother out, who eventually ended up in jail. Every day she'd come in with bruises on her arms, legs, sometimes face and every time I'd ask 'what happened?', she'd always say 'it's nothing! I just fell down the stairs!' or 'no, it's okay! I just tripped and bumped into something!' But of course, I didn't know that back then because 'didn't everybody's family love each other?'"

"Anyways, she got bullied a lot, as well. I tried my best to protect her which only ended up in either me handing their asses to them and consequentially serving detention or with her running off and hiding, not wanting to deal with the situation and hoping that it'd just go away. But after a while...she had had enough, I guess. She started skipping class, avoiding people. She even avoided me for a while until one day."

Levi paused. This was the part that had always got to him. But he couldn't show any weakness now. He had to be strong for Seunghyun and his friend.

"One day, she passed me a note during math class. 'Meet me up on the roof at lunch,' it said. And I did as instructed. I met up with her on the roof. She was standing by the ledge, looking out to the world. I remember calling to her and she turned around with the most tranquil smile on her face. It was so strange. 'Levi,' she said to me, 'thank you for everything.' Of course I was too confused at that moment to understand but then she got up on the ledge and turned around and said, 'Hopefully, we'll meet again in the next life.' And then she jumped. Those were her last words. I ran to the ledge, trying to catch her but...it was too late and she was gone...I never forgave myself after that and I still haven't forgiven myself."

There was a stiff silence as the two men reflected on the story that now heavily floated in the air.

"So that's why," Levi announced, breaking the silence, "I couldn't let you do that to yourself. I couldn't leave you to die. Not for myself, not for you, not for Daesung, not for anybody. Because the problems you face in your life are only temporary, no matter how endless they seem. You have only one life, Choi Seunghyun, one. And you can't throw it all away just because right now is hardest fucking time in your life. Life isn't meant to be easy. What's the point in that? People with easy lives are boring and don't know what the hell the world's really like. You can't control what happens around you and you can't control the people you surround yourself with but I can tell you what you can control. Yourself. Sadly, in this world, it's only you and yourself in the end. You are your only constant and you're the only one who can create a sense of security for yourself. There's a lot of shit out there in the world but it's also a pretty damn beautiful one. This world is cruel and beautiful and you just have to make the most with what you've got."

Seunghyun was speechless. In all of his life he had never managed to find such comforting words as the ones that were just strung together to produce that speech. Levi had a point. Many points, in fact. Things change, people come and go. He had it all right and ironically, these were the things Seunghyun himself knew as well. Only now had he realized that he had gotten too comfortable with relying on other people and putting too much faith and trust into them. He had forgotten how to be independent and that's what landed him in this hospital bed.

"I'll be better," he said resolutely.

"Hm?" Levi picked up his head and looked at him, raising an inquiring brow up.

"I'm going to be better. Levi...it sounds cliché but that speech...it spoke to me. Rather, it was the swift kick in the ass that made me realize that I was being too comfortable and trusting with people. Because, yeah you can trust people but...you still need to be independent as well. So I'm going to be better. It'll...take a long time but...I'll try my best."

Levi nodded approvingly, with a small smile creeping onto his face. "I don't expect you to turn a 180 in a day, honestly, but I'll stand by you along the way, giving you that kick in the ass whenever you need it. Literally."

Seunghyun chuckled. Man, did it feel like an eternity since the last time he smiled. "Thanks, Levi."

"By the way, I bribed the doctor into not admitting you to the psych ward so now I have a date with a doctor next Friday. You better not let me down, kid. You really owe me one."

"Ah, thank you Levi," Seunghyun said, stifling his laughter.

"Oi! The fuck 're you laughing at, kid?" Levi called out, teasingly.

"Nothing. It's just that you seem a bit too old to be dating," he laughed.