#winterxboy

He snickered at the statement, taking another swig out of his bottle, knowing who it was without having to look. “If you’re here to give me advice on how to salvage the life that I’ve ruined, save it. Exit’s the same way you got in. If not,” he took a new bottle from the bag beside him, letting out a sigh as he realised that it was the last of his dozen, but stretched his arm out to offer it to the boy anyway, tilting his head to beckon the boy to take a seat beside him on the ground.

"I thought that if I left, I would be able to breathe again. Well, having been there and done that, it doesn’t seem like the case," he chuckled, leaning his head back on the wall, staring ahead into nothingness. "I didn’t realise quitting also meant that I wouldn’t be able to go back home ㅡ and home was actually the first place I thought of after tearing that new contract into half in front of the president." Venturing into the acting industry for nearly a year seemed to stuck the dramatic streak onto him, re-enacting acts of those swoon-unworthy male leads that he had been repeatedly offered. Look how pathetic you are right now, Park Chanyeol.

"I wonder if this was how they felt that… the hyungs," he turned his head towards the veranda, remembering the times that he had sneaked into this apartment for refuge from life, how inhaling the night air was a ritual for him - telling himself to hang in there - before he would shut the windows close, and step out of the bachelor’s pad, back into the reality that was waiting to engulf him. "I thought I had enough pre-empt of the snowball effects of my decision… I didn’t know that quitting this whole celebrity business meant that I don’t get to be ㅡ me," he turned to face the boy who had been watching him the whole time, tears unlike himself welling in his eyes, threatening to spill over and break the last chord of his composure that he had been hanging onto for too long.