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I remember the first and only time I ever saw him cry. It circles my mind everyday. If there was something I could go back and change, another chance for me to let him know people were there for him, then I would go back in a heartbeat.
If only I’d known what the future held.
…..
It was a rainy day in December. Christmas season is usually known to bring snow in big white sheets upon the city, but that day just proved to be gloomy. Haejoon was in his third and final year preparing for his final entrance exams. His desired college wasn’t entirely too hard to get into, but that didn’t mean he didn’t push himself over the edge and into the abyss as he threw himself into studying for the treacherous things.
He’d completely ignored his friends during that week. Juwan contacted him a couple of times about a small hot pot outing to take his mind off things, but Haejoon didn’t even waste his time opening the message. That’s how deep he was into this whole thing. He even had callouses forming on his hand from his aggressive grip on the pencil.
Because of his stupid frantic cram sessions, he didn’t even notice the lack of his roommate every night. He hated to admit it, but it was rather peaceful without the blonde headed imbecile there to annoy him every moment of the night. There was no loud tapping coming from those stupid video games on his phone, or even that ignorant smacking coming from him eating about ten bags of potato chips every night.
Sometimes it made Haejoon feel more comfortable in the space. Like he could depend on the fact that he wasn’t annoying anyone with his dumb tendencies to throw himself into his studies.
Whatever.
The days went on. The stressful, non-stop scratching of the pencil against the rough paper within those thickened workbooks sprawled all across Haejoon’s desk every night. At one point, it started getting to Haejoon. After a good 3 days of his annoying cramming, Haejoon was quite literally burned out. Every time he’d turn a page, he’d draw a blank and slam the pencil against his desk in frustration.
This…isn’t what she’d want. She’d want me to keep working hard. I can’t stop. I need to make it into college.
This mindset stayed brick solid in the back of Haejoon’s mind every time that frustration flared up. He’d remembered how he used to take walks when he reached this point in his studying, so he decided to do just that. Somehow, the silence in the room had become suffocating anyways.
The ground was wet, but Haejoon didn’t really mind. He carried an umbrella with him just in case the weather got a little too harsh, but right now it was just fine. He didn’t mind some droplets hitting him every now and then. It actually felt kind of renewing.
The streets were surprisingly empty. It was only 8 at night, so Haejoon anticipated that it was unusually early for everything to be so quiet. He was getting a bit frustrated at the silence everywhere he went. Something just felt missing.
As he slowed down the sped up pace he unknowingly carried earlier on into the walk, he acknowledged some strange things he’d ignored throughout the week as he walked the sidewalk.
Eunyung…hadn’t been there. At all.
The realization had only then hit Haejoon. He’d slightly paid attention to it when pointing out the so called “relaxing” silence while studying, but not enough to actually realize the gravity of the situation.
Eunyung. Eunyung Baek. Gone. Missing.
This weighed down on Haejoon like a ton of bricks that were hanging above his head by a raggedy crane had just released themselves from the machine’s shackles and slammed right on his temple.
“That….Freak, Eunyung.” Haejoon couldn’t even express his frustration. After the stunts Eunyung had pulled in the past, there was no telling where the boy would be.
Haejoon could feel his pace speed up. It eventually turned into a speed walk, then a full on sprint. He ran frantically around the small city searching for any sign of the boy. Traces of his hair, heck, maybe even his scent. Anything that could assure Haejoon that the boy was somewhere secure.
But nothing ever came Haejoon was left completely empty handed after running around the city trying to find the stupid roommate who’d always found a way to get into some kind of trouble before having the audacity to lie about it.
Again.
It wasn’t like this was a one time thing. Eunyung had been a runaway all his life. It wasn’t much of a surprise.
So why was Haejoon so worried?
What if he’s somewhere dead? The cars may be silent because traffic is stopped somewhere far off, and that could be because he could’ve got hit by…
Haejoon stopped in his tracks and put a pause on his thoughts as he stared ahead. His feet eventually lead him back to the dormitory without the boy even realizing, and at first he shockingly felt disappointment for failing to find who he was searching for.
That’s when he saw the blonde right there, standing at the door as if waiting patiently to be let in.
Haejoon’s anger flared up like a firecracker ready to launch. He clenched his fists so much so that his veins began popping at the seams as he rushed toward the boy and gripped his shoulder to whip him around.
Once again, Haejoon was quiet. The sight before him was overwhelming.
Someone had beat the poor boy so bad he looked unrecognizable. If it weren’t for Eunyung's red hair clip in the blonde locs along with that stupid pink jacket, Haejoon would’ve never noticed. Eunyung had a small cut running across his cheek with a couple of bruises on his jaws and a huge swollen right eye. Some of the bruises were turning blue, others already going black, and his eyes were bloodshot red like he hadn’t gotten sleep in weeks.
But the most surprising of all: Eunyung looked incredibly vulnerable for a good second before switching back on his usual expression of carelessness.
Eunyung couldn’t do anything but grab Haejoon by the wrist and jerk it back.
“Geez, what's wrong with you? What happened to hello?” Eunyung's voice came off quiet and shaky, completely contrasting its typical bite of sarcasm.
“Where…have you been?” Haejoon could feel himself riling up. This probably wouldn’t end very well.
“Um? Stop worrying about it. Get outta my business, I’m trying to get in.” Eunyung tried to use the little strength he had left to push the older man away, but Haejoon refused to budge as he remained grounded in front of the door.
“I’m not moving until you tell me why you look like this.” Of course Haejoon would react like this. The boy was well rounded in the stubborn category.
“Ah-“ Eunyung cursed under his breath as he forced himself up against Haejoon in an attempt to force the boy to move. His arms were quivering under the pressure, and so were his legs. He looked like he could collapse and second. Haejoon still refused to move.
“Just tell me-“
“Hey. Why would you care, sunbae? Why would you care? You’ve been studying all week. Finish all that. Quit wasting your time, you-“
“Eunyung. What’s so hard about telling me? I’ll find out anyway. No way someone can get away so easily after beating you so harshly.”
“I…just…Haejoon, move.” Eunyung was struggling again as his voice cracked. He squeezed his eyes shut as he tried to pry open the door with the big guy in front of it, but all failed in the end. His strength was so low he was almost sure he’d fail at even opening a normal door.
Eunyung didn’t try to get up and run away like he typically would, which kind of shocked Haejoon. He just lay slumped with one palm against the door as he glared toward the ground, refusing to lift his head and form any eye contact. It was like his entire body had given out mid confrontation.
Haejoon didn’t really mind much. In fact, he saw it as a better opportunity to get to know what could’ve possibly happened to the blonde without outing him to the whole public. He grabbed Eunyung by the hand and dragged him through the house until they got to their room, which is where Haejoon let go and finally settled down at his desk.
Eunyung didn’t hesitate to throw himself in the bed. He wound up in a tightly, curly ball before he started biting his fingernails on the messy top bunk.
Haejoon noticed. He knew when it got quiet in that dorm with Eunyung there that the boy was either up to no good or simply too exhausted to speak.
It should be pretty obvious what exactly was wrong with Eunyung based on the situation at the moment.
Haejoon carefully rose from his desk after sitting in the quiet room stuck with his thoughts. He stood at the bedside silent for a few minutes as if telling Eunyung someone would always be there for him to lean a shoulder on whenever he felt empty.
It didn’t really seem to be affecting the boy's mood at all, though. He stayed curled into the wall as his breathing started to pick up a bit, but Haejoon gave up on trying to console him in some way. He was never really good with this whole comforting thing, so he decided to just go to bed for the night and confront the blonde about it in the morning. It was best to lay off while his emotions were probably so scattered, right?
Thus, Haejoon climbed in bed and wrapped himself up in the covers. The room was unusually cold.
_____
The rest of the night was extremely quiet. Haejoon almost felt like he’d crush under all the strange pressure he found himself lodged under, so he couldn’t even shut his eyes to get a nap. The breathing from the boy above had only gotten more frantic, but Haejoon didn’t realize until he heard him shifting repeatedly on the top bunk.
That shifting eventually turned into what sounded like uncontrollable shaking, which didn’t take very long to escalate into gasps for air and sobs.
Haejoon rose up a bit. He tried not to make much noise as he carefully moved himself from his bed to peek over the barrier between him and Eunyung, and all of Haejoon’s assumptions were right. Eunyung was practically having a full on breakdown in the middle of the night, still curled up against that cold wall.
Did he think Haejoon was still sleeping? Does this happen very often, or has something so crazy went down that it finally forced Eunyung to wipe away that dumb cover of his?
Haejoon could feel his brows furrow in confusion. He couldn’t wrap his finger around what all had happened. That was unless Eunyung had visited his parents.
His ignorant, low life parents.
Haejoon couldn’t stand the mere thought of them. Not just because they frustrated him with the way they raised their son, but because it reminds Haejoon that he took his good life growing up for granted until it was too late.
Eunyung only got louder. It sounded as if he’d begun mumbling words under his breath, but Haejoon couldn’t quite make out what they were. Was he having a nightmare? If that was the case, wouldn’t he only have to pull the poor boy out of it?
Haejoon crept up onto the bunk Eunyung was on. He carefully placed himself in a position that gave Eunyung reasonable space, but also enough where he could talk to the boy face to face without much of a problem. He grabbed the railings to prop himself up to lessen the impact of his weight, but it wasn’t enough to keep Eunyung unaware.
The blonde’s shoulders stiffened as he slowly turned his head in the direction of Haejoon, almost instantly locking eyes. Eunyung knew how pitiful he looked. He was ashamed of it. He never wanted anyone to see him in this condition, especially not Haejoon. He didn’t even realize how hard the attack hit him until he saw the guy at his feet.
“H….You…” Eunyung could barely get the words out. His head was throbbing violently, and his skin was only heating up more by the minute.
“You’ve got a fe-“ Haejoon couldn’t get the words out before he was cut off by an almost pitiful retort from the younger boy after attempting to place his hand on Eunyung’s forehead to check his temperature.
“Get off my bed. Hey. Do you have fun seeing people like me suffer? Looking stupid? What? What’s wrong with you?” Eunyung was obviously spiraling at this point. His voice still trembled and cracked as if he were holding so much more back, but he tried his best to uphold his composure until Haejoon would move. He avoided eye contact at all costs, his eyeballs darting around the room as he felt Haejoon’s glare directly on him.
Haejoon never expected to see Eunyung break at the seams like this.
“If you heard someone sniffling and struggling to breathe above you, you’d check too.” Haejoon shuffled so he could move off the bunk and towards his desk where he reached for the drawer to his right. He always kept a first aid kit at hand for situations like this, because there was no telling when Eunyung would come back beat up. He grabbed it from the drawer and climbed back onto the latter to reach the top bunk where Eunyung had almost stopped breathing from trying so desperately to hold everything in.
“Eunyung, over here.” Haejoon gestured for the blonde to turn his face toward him so he could patch up all the ugly bruises and cuts along the boy’s face, but Eunyung was still avoiding any form of contact. He was still frantically glancing around the room, mostly looking up from trying to send his stupid tears back to where they came from.
Haejoon didn’t really let it stop him. He grabbed Eunyung’s face and pulled it forward, carefully applying the bandages as if he were handling glass that could shatter any moment. Eunyung’s typically smooth skin was far from it, the scars each possessing somewhat of a rough scratch with dried up blood sticking to the purple bruises. It looked like he tussled with a cat or something similar, but to Haejoon that made absolutely no sense. Why did this happen? How long has it been since this happened?
“Eunyung-“
“F-….What? Why? Stop. I’m not your redemption card.” Eunyung sighed the statement out as if it were taking all of his strength to even mumble anything out.
What did he mean by a redemption card?
“You-…Eunyung, what are you saying?” Haejoon could tell where this was going. Could they ever have a normal conversation?
“I’m not your poor, poor mom, Haejoon.”
Haejoon went mute. His hand was stuck in the same position on Eunyung’s face as before, his thoughts stuck in place. Why? Why does Eunyung never fail to bring up Haejoon’s forsaken past? What was up with him and getting excited from messing with some other guy’s inner crisis?
Haejoon could sense his skin heating up in pure rage before he realized what the situation was.
Eunyung, having a breakdown.
Eunyung, using someone’s past against them.
Eunyung, creating some sudden conflict to draw the attention away from himself.
…Seriously?
Haejoon exhaled and remained quiet as he finished up his aid on the boy’s face before moving on to his arms that were seemingly beat up, too. It made him sick to the stomach every other time he’d see Eunyung turn up like this, but this time around, Haejoon wasn’t sure he’d be able to hold back the contents of the lunch he kept feeling inch up his throat. Why was Eunyung always in some kind of trouble? Could he not have given it a rest for at least a week?
“Is it…is it something you just can’t stop, Eunyung? This constant trouble? You’re not tired of all this?” Haejoon was trying to be considerate. He didn’t understand the situation. Yes, he’d felt like this a couple of times before, but he never expected he’d have to deal with someone else dealing with the same problems but ten times worse. He had no clue how to confront the situation.
Eunyung scoffed. He simply turned his entire body as he proceeded to curl himself back into the wall’s embrace. His hand moved to the back of his head, gripping his blonde strands of hair so tightly Haejoon thought Eunyung might just pull them out for good.
Should I stay?
Haejoon was debating himself in his mind. He didn’t know if he should stay and keep tabs on Eunyung to make sure he didn’t hurt himself in any reckless moment of stress, or if he should just return to his bed and just let the younger boy sleep it off. This has to have happened before, right? Eunyung should know how to control himself. Yes, his decisions mostly always lead to consequences, but when it comes to this kind of thing, he has to know how to take care of himself.
Haejoon chose it was only right to leave Eunyung to tend his own. The boy had already gotten on Haejoon’s nerves a bit with his thoughtless comments, so it was only right. Someone invading your privacy could be one of the worst feelings in the world to Haejoon, and if he were in that situation he wouldn’t want anyone lingering around him trying to keep him company.
It only reminded him of his mother.
Thus, Haejoon took two Advil pills from the aid kit and sat them on Eunyung’s worn down mattress before climbing back to his own bedding. Although he struggled drifting back off to sleep, Haejoon eventually made it. He’d imagined himself off far away from all the stupid studying he’d been doing all week.
He could’ve sworn he heard something from above him, but he chose to just brush it off as a delusion.
______
The morning came, and Haejoon woke without thinking about the night before immediately. Instead, his thoughts drifted to the urgency of his studies because of how far away entrance exams were, and he didn’t hesitate to jump out of bed and rush to handle the typical hygienics. Brushed his teeth and hair, took a shower, and rushed off into the kitchen to eat his breakfast.
That’s when Haejoon remembered the night before.
He’d awoken, and Eunyung was nowhere to be found in the dorm.
Usually, he’d look forward to the hefty breakfasts the boy cooked, and so did Juwan as he skipped into the room before coming to an abrupt stop. They both stood idly in the kitchen, as if waiting for a cue to announce this as a joke.
“Hey. Where’s the breakfast boy?” Juwan glanced between Haejoon and the empty table before them.
Haejoon wasn’t sure why that irritated him a little. Was it because he knew the circumstances?
“I actually don’t know. It’s not like Eunyung to go to class early.” Haejoon answered, but he wasn’t all the way there. Where could Eunyung have gone this time? That's when Haejoon actually started glancing around the kitchen, and he happened to notice only one plate resting on the counter near the fridge. After realizing it, he started to smell the aroma that hit him like déjà vu. It was the fresh scent of a nicely cooked omelette with some rice and breakfast sausages. He remembered mentioning the meal to Eunyung in a trance while he was studying. It was a sudden craving that had taken over his whole being in the middle of a mock exam, so he rambled about it one day in the dorm.
“I really want omelette with some really good sausage on the side. I used to eat it for breakfast all the time.”
“Hah. Pig. Is that all you were thinking about during your mock exam?” Eunyung was clicking away on his Nintendo Switch.
“Shut up.”
“Say, Haejoon. Still think I poison your breakfast?”
“What? No, but now you’ve got me wondering.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
The conversation ended unreasonably early. It didn’t escalate any further, Eunyung remained indulged in that weird game he’d play every night.
This was about a week ago, before all that was happening at the moment started to take form.
Haejoon shoved the thoughts away. He already had enough to stress about. If Eunyung wanted what was in his best interest, he’d sort things out himself. He always did, right?
As Haejoon picked up the meal, he noticed a small slip of paper hidden underneath it. It was obvious the food was only for Haejoon. Eunyung seems to very openly express his dislike for Juwan on the daily, and the contents of the dish made it no doubt.
So this little note must’ve been for him, too.
Haejoon lifted it up as if it were a box with fragile contents inside. He carefully unfolded it before seeing the small scribbled phrase and pausing all his thoughts.
“I’ll be back, sorry! :3”
Haejoon was left dumbfounded, to say the least. Since when was Eunyung the kind to apologize? This made absolutely no sense. It was incredibly unusual.
Haejoon hoped to the bottom of his heart the boy wasn’t planning on ruining the rest of his life over something…trivial.
“Hey, what?! Haejoon gets a meal, and I don’t? Harsh, harsh Eunnie!” Juwan wasn’t passing down this opportunity to add more to his list explaining why Eunyung hates him so much.
_____
I didn’t realize how much I was missing.
It was right there. All right in front of me.
It’s like…everything was just somewhat of a temporary inconvenience. I thought he’d come around. Tell me, someday, what all went down for him to lose it that day.
But he never did.
He went missing for about one more week before coming back to the dorms. He had sloppy bandages all over him upon entry, so I, of course, did try my best to fix them up.
I still didn’t question him.
He was back to his usual self after not too long. Relief was something I couldn’t be more satisfied to feel those last couple of weeks.
I felt it way too soon.
“It’s not your fault. It’s me, Haejoon.”
Ah. I remember what he muttered that night now.
“I can’t change.”