#s:elf

One thought triggers another, then another, until eventually coaxing old memories from places he hadn’t visited for a while. It’s a chain reaction in his head, one that makes him grimace and his knuckles turn white as the grip on his bedsheets tightens. Remembering is painful. It claws at his organs, destroying him from the inside out. If somebody were to catch a glimpse of him they’d be none the wiser to the turmoil coursing through his veins. He tries so hard to stop thinking. To flip an imaginary switch inside his head and silence all thoughts.

After watching her friend leave, she was left alone. She looked around the hospital room, where she was secluded in a big room but small space where the curtains are hang around her. Her arm rested on her forehead and she closed her eyes. "I can't believe you're in the hospital. Nice going, Lee Hojung. You couldn't have stick it out a little longer until you get home." She mumbled to herself.

가끔씩은 같은 기억 속에 서있는지.

"You are early today," Kayla said, glasses on and lowered as she looked at him with an arched eyebrow.

Key flashed her a smile and puffed his chest out just a tad.

"I was quite eager to see you," he murmured, voice low and seductive as the way he looked at her while sauntering inside the room to occupy the sofa on the side of her desk.

Lifting his legs, the expensive material of his trousers tightening slightly in the right places and creating fashionable creases, he propped his toes on the end of the sofa; his forearm rested on the border of it, his hand supporting the side of his face as he looked at her.

"Such an honor," she answered, pushing a loose lock of curly hair to the side.

Tapping her fingers against the desk, she stared at him for a long moment. Neither of them spoke, and only until she got up did he lose the disarming smile he had carried all along.

"I had a dream," he said as soon as he turned around to face the view she got from her window. Her office was in the fifth floor of a building dedicated to treat all sorts of medical and psychiatric issues. Key had never liked to get close to any of the windows. It made him feel dizzy and it occasioned the kind of paleness that wasn't flattering at all.

Kayla hummed in acknowledgment, turning to face him again, though she perched herself against the window.

"It was like waking up in an alternate universe." He let out a sigh and his gaze drifted up to the ceiling. "I was singing one of those Taylor Swift's songs while drawing some sketches for a line of clothes that would serve to the school's club. Just when I was finishing the prince's clothing, he pointed out that the belt should be engraved with a special message. I told him there was no point into details like those since no one would appreciate it. He smiled and said he would, and muttering under my breath, I accepted and wrote something in Irish. I don't even know Irish," he snorted, shaking his head soon after. "But he was smiling and…"

Kayla's watchful eyes followed the younger's motions. Key took a deep breath as he stared off at some part of the wall in the front. His mind was elsewhere, she knew. Probably lingering into the flow of memories that contained chocolate hair and a boyish smile. She had seen that man once in a photograph, and there was something about his smile that didn't leave any option to forgetfulness. Few people were able to give such kind of smiles that reached their eyes and shone with sincerity. Kibum had always liked pretty things, and among everything he had seen, that man had been –still was– his biggest treasure.

Key bit the inside of his bottom lip and brought his hands together, fingers lacing shallowly as he looked at them. His left ring finger still sported a mark of lighter skin tone on it.

"I still make suits with him on mind," he chuckled dryly, hands separating suddenly as he looked up only to avert his gaze to the side.

Outside the sun shone over the city too brightly, blindingly so. Amongst all the buildings around, the beams of light were there, hitting crystal and reflecting on them.

"I still get up in the mornings without being conscious of where I stand, the time I'm in, and then something makes me remember that he is not here anymore. That it has been so many years since I last saw him," he continued, gaze lost.

"It's ridiculous. How can you not remember how to breathe? How to open your eyes? There are things you don't forget, and this… this… this I do forget…"

"You haven't given yourself a chance to see if he was like breathing," she remarked cautiously, but Kibum denied the suggestion with a vehement shake of his head.

"I know there is no person or place where I can say I belong to anymore," he shrugged. "Do you know how much time one can lose with a fantasy like that just because you can't accept that it's gone? How many experiences go to waste because you think love is worth everything?"

Kayla pushed his glasses up, becoming quiet. Key then looked at her, lips pressed together tightly for a moment before he spoke again.

"Nothing can be repeated twice, you know that. I know that. Everyone knows that," he stated, the words coming out with a tinge of resignation and sadness. Blinking several times, he looked to the side again and a long moment of silence dragged its way out of the room.

Kayla crossed her arms against her chest as she looked down at the floor, but as soon as she heard him taking a deep intake of breathe, she snapped her gaze up.

Key's lips curl upwards as he stares at the red moon. A glass of red wine waits on the baluster of his balcony and the wind is blowing lightly, caressing his locks of lilac hair and messing them up tenderly. It is a beautiful night, he observes as he sees the water of the pool moving in delicate tandems along with the rhythm of the wind.

His hands settle on the support, next to the glass of wine, and his gaze flicks downwards, brown eyes settling idly on the skin of his fingers. His left ring finger still sports a lighter shade of color, the same that shows the evidence of a time that passed between books of fantastic worlds and shy kisses. As he leans forwards, resting his forearms and half of his weight on the baluster, memory after memory pass inside his brain like pages of a book that has been hidden too long in a forgotten corner. In a way it has been like that, he realizes as the tip of his tongue brushes his lower lip. There are things that he has pushed to the deepest parts of his mind in the hopes of never finding them again. Yet at times like this, when he's not truly alone, when there's someone lingering behind him, observing him with hollow eyes, it's almost inevitable the way memories worm their way out from their secret place just to invade his mind; sometimes it feels like they rush by with the impulse of gravity, but Key doesn't allow himself to believe in that.

It has been so many years since he last saw a face he had grown to think that would always be in his life…

He almost laughs at the ideas that now seem childish to him. His smile is still there, but it's not one of disbelief or frank amusement. It speaks of what remains tacit inside his mind, and it is bitter.

Humming low, he wants to close his eyes, but the fine hairs of his nape are still up. He doesn't need to pay attention to the goosebumps running down his limbs to know that he's still not alone. "Nothing is eternal, Kibum. Everything is temporary," he can hear his grandma speaking to him with the same fond look she had when she watched him. She would pat his arm before reaching out to wipe out his tears with tender fingers. It wouldn't be just her with him in the room. There was always someone next to him, his arm around his waist as he shielded him the best he could with his small body. "Don't cry anymore, I am here," he would say with big, concerned eyes and a sweet voice. Kibum would try to stop sobbing quietly, but tears would keep rolling down his cheeks. He was scared because hollow eyes were still staring at him and nobody but him could see them.

It was funny how some scenes of one's life one day became pieces of something nobody could hold or live anymore. To Key, they were now like bits of a movie he had seen once. Everything became a portion of that long track that would be never repeated again. Years from now he would look back and there would be nothing left aside from scraps of his life.

"Why won't you leave?", he asks without turning back and receives no answer. "Out of all my visitors, you are the one who always comes back but never asks for anything. When will you speak."