ah, but the silence was ceaseless. the silence was stubborn. there was no denying that they have reciprocated failure in ways to speak, or gesture. how irrational it would be for jongin to muster up a sad, unconvincing interruption that would better deter them both. it would take courage. it would take the boldness of chivalry, yet the bliss of ignorance, to not know where he stood in yoosuk’s life. he had known that they weren’t dubbed as friends of the sort, but as individuals. the undetermined fracture of it all was bleak. scarce. it was a bad fortune to know that the best forms of cruelty was to be neglected.
jongin sighed. he sighed with an evident dislike that overthrew him. his face, however, no longer appeared to have suffered any pain. he had regret the loss of something, whether or not if it was taken by account of his own actions. it was though all the short lived encounters of they and them, the supposed us and we, played a broken record in his head. and to look at him, thinking as if he were to be at fault. so he sat, among yoosuk, in unbreaking silence. during this period, he had felt the return of remorse that could not be found for.
he sat as though he was suffocating. he sat as though his thoughts were suspended, almost, without knowing when they’d gradually offer melancholy to its own nature. he hated the moments, and he hated the indifference, the neutral indifference, fogging up the premises of his question. he wished to have addressed this in a more bitter manner. but, instead, his voice was small. his voice was weighted with the burden of dread, no louder than a muted inquiry. he came to look upon it with a distinguished loathing, for that he couldn’t hide. the overwhelmingness of unease, anxiety, which carried throughout his words.
he avoids contact with yoosuk’s eyes. jongin felt a certain sense of ambiguity, the remembrance of how his curiousness and incidents of openness lead to here, and now. he hears the ends of yoosuk speaking, but something doesn’t quite sit well with jongin. ‘i will never replace you’, he says, and jongin subconsciously wants to dig his nails into his skin. just like the myth of believing, instead, he wants to cross his fingers behind his back.
‘you’ve got nothing to fear’, and jongin’s eyes lift to the crack in the ceiling, outwardly grown like an old vein clinging to a dying tree. he could readily displace the meaning of ferment. jongin cannot be deceived, he will not be deceived, and he refuses to be deceived. once, he looks into yoosuk’s eyes, and back towards the crack on the ceiling.
“you don’t have to lie,” he responds, unexpectedly. jongin breathes through his nose and his lips are parted, “if you don’t have the time to see me, then say so. it could save us you and i time. it’s fine if you have other company.”
(more worthwhile than me.)