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During his second year of high school, someone introduced Jihoon to the word ‘love’ and every night after that Jihoon stay up late to prayed for himself to be crushed by God.

The ‘love’ that he had touched for the first time in his life feels like a sin covering up his whole body like a second skin. He had tried to scrub them all off during his night shower routine (that has always invited stares of disagreement from his Musyrif) but he still able to sense the dirt on every inch of himself that all the prayers he has been doing ever since feels invalid. Having several close friends that always offer shoulders to cry on does not help him to walk out of the problem—they would be as disgusted as he is if they know the sin Jihoon had committed. The only one who would be able to save him, clearly, is God.

So he spent half of his third semester crying in his overlong sujuds that at some point, he started to feel a stinging pain on his spine. But he had to seek God’s forgiveness. He had to asked for God’s pity and mercy. He doesn’t want this sin to remains in his chest and breeds like an incurable parasite. So he endured the ache. He embraced it. Because he thought he deserved it all. It will be great if God can destroy him entirely because he would always prefer that than to feel nauseated by his own soul.

But the only thing those prayers bring to him is a sleep deprivation. And a high fever.

“You passed out,” was the words he awakened to that afternoon. The first thing his sight accepted was a dim bulb flickered weakly far above his head while the second one was a glimpse of scorching sunlight cut through the curtains that covered all the window—pale pink semi-transparent curtains, specifically; has been the face of the dorm’s infirmary for its ‘girliness’, tend to colored the whole room with the same hazy tint. Jihoon tried to push his body to sit, made an already-cold towel on his forehead fell to his lap, but the same voice that rang in his ears before stopped him. “Just lay down for a bit, won’t you? The fever hasn’t gone down, it probably would hurt your head…”

The voice was right—Jihoon felt an extreme ache attacked his head the next second, so he laid his body back to the infirmary’s thin mattress. He felt utterly comfortable from head to toes—sweat soaked his whole body, yet he kept shivering so hard that everything around him seemed to be blurry. It was when he almost opened his mouth to say something that he realized the familiar voice was not belong the matron of the dormitory, who is an infuriatingly fussy elderly woman who always called the students with wrong names. Instead, the person who bring a bowl with a warm towel to his side was, surprisingly, a young man—his slim figure covered with the same uniform Jihoon that wore, and, while not being able to see the face due to his terrible headache, the way he put the towel on Jihoon’s head made him wonder if the boy is someone that he actually knew.

“Where…” Jihoon mumbled, coughed twice before continuing the words, “Where is Bu Layla…?”

“Fell on the mosque’s bathroom floor this morning. They brought her to the hospital.”

Jihoon felt a pang of guilt. “Innalillahi.”

The other boy laughed and he sounds relaxed. “She’s fine. Everybody’s fussing over you instead, you know—collapsed during the Subuh prayer like that… we thought you were dead.”

It was the laughter that bring Jihoon back to his sense, “Hanjin.”

A short hum came as the answer of his whisper. The warmth that the towel bring to him slowly chase away the sting in Jihoon’s head, and he finally caught a glance of the big, shining black eyes looking down at him while he felt the side part of the bed he has been lying on deflated a little. The slim, almost frail fingers of Hanjin’s hand brought another kind of warmth when he felt them touching the crook of his neck. “Feeling better?”

Jihoon wanted to shirk away from the said touch. But it satisfied a thirst in him that any water could never do.

“Fiqh class dismissed early today? Or no class at all?” he asked instead. Hanjin’s long and black eyelashes fluttered when he smiles too wide so that his eyes grew narrow.

“I played hooky.”

A snort fled out of Jihoon’s nostrils. “You’re joking.”

“Actually,” the other boy turned his face away and huffed an exhale. “They still haven’t find a new nurse to help Bu Layla. So the school health unit members take turns to nurse the ill students. And today is my shift.”

Still sitting right beside Jihoon’s left arm, Hanjin rested his hand beside his own body and take another breath, as if trying to say something but those words freeze right in his throat. For a perfect minute an unbearable silence rang in Jihoon’s ears before he brings his hand to a part of Hanjin’s arm that is not covered by the sleeve he rolled up high. He press his hand to the warm skin and rubs it lightly while he senses Hanjin’s gaze moving back towards him.

“Your Mudabbir said that you haven’t slept for days,” tints of worry colored the words Hanjin gave to him in a quiet, slow murmur. “And that you’ve spent the whole week praying. Homesick or something?”

For a while Jihoon couldn’t think of any answer that will suits the question except another chuckle of irony. Talking about this topic to this certain person is the thing he doesn’t want to do the most today. But when he turned his body to face the wall, a hand seized his wrist and hold it tight—he could feel the thumb of the hand stroking his pulse point. The touch was affectionate and tender. As if crushing Jihoon into pieces is very possible if Hanjin clutched onto him harshly and it scares Hanjin so bad.

“You know you have me.”

Jihoon wondered if he really is. Have Hanjin. Or anyone or anything in general.

The touch Hanjin left lingered there even after they could hear the Dhuhr Adhan from the mosque behind the dormitory building and Hanjin left the infirmary to take wudhu. It haunted his skin like a completely invisible ghost. Jihoon felt another great shiver. Another pang of guilt.

The only thing an all-boys boarding school students knew about love is lust. Sexual wishes towards the opposite gender. The throbbing sensations down there whenever they saw a ripped page of an adult magazine with pictures of naked women on it.

But Hanjin was different—he has always been different. He saw and knew so many things about love that other men could never see.

“It feels amazing,” he said when Jihoon asked him how does it feel to be in love. Eyes watching his steps to climb down the dormitory stairs right beside Jihoon, Hanjin shaped a small, thoughtful smile to light up his face. “You would feel so many butterflies fluttered inside your stomach. And you wouldn’t be able to sleep because every time you close your eyes, their face would appear in the dark. And everything feels so light and beautiful and the flowers are blooming, the sky is clear blue, and it feels like spring—”

“We don’t even have spring here,” replied Jihoon at that time. The corners of Hanjin’s lips turned down to make a little pout that successfully made Jihoon bursts into laughters. “Just kidding. So? You’re actually seeing someone?”

“Eh, not really,” Hanjin replied with a disappointed exhale. “I mean, it’s impossible to date someone while being in a boarding school. It’s very strict here…”

“It really is. I’ve seen some seniors got kicked out because the school caught them dating someone from the all-girls boarding school across the road.”

“What about you?” asked Hanjin, lifted his face to look for Jihoon’s eyes while their steps finally reached the dormitory’s dining room. “You’re seeing someone? Or have you, before getting into this school?”

It was that question that brought Jihoon into realisation of the fact that he had never actually been in love with anyone before. He has been boarding-schooled since he started his middle school years, and he, too, attended an Islamic all-boys school as a primary school student. No girls near his age appeared to be so attractive in his eyes. No female celebrity crush. No favorite actress. Not even those naked women in those adult magazines his roommates slipped under their mattresses seemed so beautiful that it made him loses his mind. Women are pretty, but looking at them never really felt like spring.

So his answer that time was, “Not really.”

Hanjin grabbed the ladle to pour the cold chicken soup to his rice and Jihoon’s, stole a single glance at Jihoon who must have been seemed certainly uncertain. “Really?”

“I mean, my parents are kind of strict about it, too,” Jihoon shrugged, murmuring a small ‘thank you’ to the dining room’s officer who offered him another boiled egg before he continues, “And I don’t think—I just think that if I can avoid a sin that is not really impossible to be avoided by me then I should avoid it.”

Hanjin took a whole minute to stare at the metal containers the dining room uses to serve the breakfast, as if chicken soup and boiled eggs were such a fancy menu for breakfast in such a prestigious religious boarding school. Then, surprisingly, he let out a relaxed chuckle. The hand he let hanging beside his body unintentionally brushed Jihoon’s cold fingers—and an instant warmth run throughout his blood flow.

“That was so you. The answer.”

Jihoon lifted his eyebrows in confusion. But Hanjin only throw another smile at him before dragging him to the nearest table and munched his breakfast at a snail pace.

He thought that there probably is something stupid in his answer back then so for days, while laying flat on his bed and staring at the dorm’s cracked ceilings, he gave the conversation another thought over and over. Did he sound a bit too prude? Too sanctimonious? Being ‘so himself’ is clearly not a bad thing—but the memory of the smile Hanjin gave to him keep sending him a knot in his stomach.

Since that exact morning, too, seeing Hanjin biting his pencil with a frown on his face in the class or listening to his careful voice reciting Quran verses started to bring Jihoon several kinds of peculiar feelings. Jihoon has always been an observant-from-afar his whole life—but the gap between him and Hanjin was never big enough for him to notice the pair of two moles on the below part of Hanjin’s neck, or how firm his eyebrows are despite of the other facial features that he has were all rounded and seemed almost feminine, or even the habit of licking his own upper lip that he tended to do to help him gaining more concentration. Or how perfect his nose was sculpted that it appeared almost unreal. Or how easy his fingertips turned red when it’s pouring outside and the cold started to be unbearable.

The weird thing is, it’s all started to feel like spring. Something bloomed inside him whenever he saw Hanjin smile. Something withered instead if he saw Hanjin seemed troubled.

But then Hanjin would realized his unwavering gaze. And Hanjin would, always, gave him a thin knowing smile across the room and mouthing an inaudible “You’re staring,” and it would boiled every inch of Jihoon’s face at once. 

“It’s weird,” a friend told him under his breath in the middle of a class while chewing a bubblegum loudly. Immediately Jihoon turned his head away from Hanjin who sat tables away from him only to get a mocking smirk from his seatmate as a reply to his bewildered look. “Why do you keep staring at him? Disgusting. Are you gay?”

Jihoon still remember how offended he was at that time.

But when he raised his tongue to deny the claim, something is holding his voice in the throat that nothing came out of his lips. Something so much stronger than the instruction from his own brain.

So he abruptly stood up on his feet while cold sweats drenched his neck and forehead. Muttering something about ‘need to go to the toilet’, he felt every single pair of eyes like nails being hammered to his trembling body. Hanjin’s gaze was the sharpest nail among them.

The teacher pushed his glasses up before he answered, “Well, I mean I can see how you’re about to lose it.”

The classroom door did not cover every whispers he left behind by slipping out of the room. He could still hear someone giggling and said, “Maybe he’s hard and needs to jerk off. He has been staring at Hanjin for hours, after all.”

That’s not true.

“Is he really gay? Han Jihoon?”

No. No. It’s a sin. I am normal.

“Who knows. All I know about him is that he’s a hypocrite.”

Jihoon felt his heart stopped beating for a perfect second. Of shock. Of guilt. Of disgust. And the world fell into an utter silence—dark and unmoving.

… Am I? A hypocrite?

When Jihoon jolted awake again on the same infirmary’s bed that he has been sleeping on since the morning, he saw a shadow of another student flipping pages of a book while sitting right beside his bed. It took him almost a minute to realized that the book was a small, old mushaf that seemed so familiar, because the whole room was so dark. The student saw him moving, slowly closed the mushaf and said, “How do you feel now?”

“What time is it?” Jihoon asked, rubbing his eyes only to realized there are some prints of tears at the corner of them.

“Almost Maghrib,” not even pointing the fact that his question was ignored, Hanjin grabbed a glass of water from the nightstands and pushed it to Jihoon’s eyes. “I’ve tried to wake you up for Ashar. But you were…”

The sentence was paused there. Jihoon inhaled and voluntarily choose the right word to finish it, “I was crying.”

Hanjin took the mushaf to his embrace. With a glimpse of lights that came from the ajar door, Jihoon caught a dim shimmer in Hanjin’s eyes, filled with worry and confusion.

“… Can I ask—”

“No,” the answer Jihoon left to the silence come a bit more rough than how he initially intended. So he shook his head, laid his blanket aside and get off the bed. “No. I’m sorr—I need to pray first.”

Jihoon didn’t let his body move away before he heard a small “Okay,” from where Hanjin seated, shrank slowly behind the curtain of darkness.

But even after Ishaa’ came, and the next day came, and Jihoon’s Musyrif came to the infirmary to pick him up, nobody among them both raise a tongue about it. They didn’t bid each other any friendly farewell. Hanjin didn’t say any “see you tomorrow,” and Jihoon didn’t send any smile. The temperature of his body has finally decreased, but Jihoon somehow felt so much more feverish than before.

That night, Jihoon stared at his dorm’s ceiling and didn’t see the cracks in it. He saw Hanjin’s face instead.

“I think you need to stop this routine. You’re going to catch another fever.”

The Mudabbir of his room was the first to greet his sight the moment Jihoon stepped out of the bathroom, arms crossed in front of his own chest and a frown washed his kind and humble facial features. In this hour students are prohibited to wander around outside their room, so it was a surprise for Jihoon before he remembered the privilege all the Mudabbir and the student council members have. Not knowing any right words to answer the statement, Jihoon chose to grab a towel and start drying his damp hair. 

“I need to. Otherwise I won’t be able to sleep.”

Shin Junghwan let out a weary exhale, brushing his hair off his forehead. “You think I never heard you tossing and turning the whole night? My bed is literally under yours. But this—this is just not the solution.”

Jihoon gritted his teeth, “Then what is the solution?”

Junghwan hesitated.

“Tell me your problem.”

“What? Are they trying to make you pry some informations out of me? You’ve become their servant now, Akhi?”

The accusations he had thrown only make the confusion in Junghwan’s face grew deeper. “Who’s ‘they’? Listen, I’m trying to be kind right now, you know—”

“I don’t need you to be kind—”

“Are you homosexual?”

It comes again. The freezing, biting breeze that bewitched Jihoon like a dark magic to lost his ability to dismiss the question. He couldn’t even move his lips for a moment, and his eyes started to feel hot, but when he lifted his face to see Junghwan’s expression, it was still as steady and warm as it was. Jihoon’s hand move to cover his face with the towel, letting the fresh floral scent of his shampoo crawled to his nostrils. Hanjin recommended the said shampoo to him last semester.

“I really want to say that I’m not,” his voice cracked, and he saw Junghwan’s face grow softened by time after hearing his honest thoughts. “I really—I don’t want to—but I… I don’t know… what if I am?”

The older boy leaned his back to the wall right beside where Jihoon stood, allowing his junior to calm himself before he sighed. “You shouldn’t be so hard on yourself. People have their own sins. You’re not the only sinful person in this building.”

“But—but being a homosexual is terrible,” continued Jihoon weakly, voice muffled by his towel, “And if I keep lying to myself then I’ll become a hypocrite. But homosexual—people hates homosexual people, and—and what if Allah doesn’t want me anymore? What if He don’t want to hear my prayers anymore—what if… what if He hates me?”

Jihoon could feel his own lips trembling while mouthing those words. But no tears are willing to fall, no matter how shaken his heart was. He doesn’t even really sure about the real definition of love yet, but the guilt—oh, the guilt again—was trying to kill him from the inside of his soul. The guilt wants to tear him up into pieces. The guilt wants him to die and stop carrying all these mixed feelings at the same time and finally rest. Nobody was there for him like his God did—not even his parents—and to betray Him is to betray himself. But to not betray Him is, too, to betray himself. Everything seemed indistinct. All the lines blurred. And he felt so away from himself.

“What should I do, Khi…?” he whispered. “I… how do I supposed to choose? My God or my Love—Why do I have to choose? I want to love them both. I don’t want to—I don’t want to throw anyone away—isn’t it stupid? Aren’t we supposed to put God first in every situations?”

No voice of Junghwan came to visit and offer any solution at first. But Jihoon could feel Junghwan’s hand on his back, rubbing it slowly.

“You’ll be fine,” he said. And Jihoon, realizing that the only thing he need for now was that sentence, started to let everything bursting out of his shaking emotion walls. “Allah’s not going to abandon you, because you love Him so, and it’s enough. You’ll be fine.”

It’s not weird to find that on the next day, Hanjin started avoiding him.

Hanjin sat at the other corner of the hall during their morning Halaqah, nose kept sticking to his small old mushaf. They exchanged glances unintentionally while lining up for breakfast, but Hanjin quickly brought his sight away, clearly not able to cover the panic inside his eyes. Jihoon tried to keep his sight on the whiteboard, yet his eyes still instinctively look for Hanjin who sat some tables in front of him. No next glances at lunch, nor at dinner and at the evening Halaqah.

The entire whispering campaign that has been happening behind both of them for so long started to be into something that is so much more than ordinary gossip sessions lately and being the headline of it all alone is frustrating enough, but Jihoon would rather throw himself off a steep cliff to the deep ocean than let himself drag Hanjin down with him. So he silently said yes to the nonverbal agreement to keep the silence between their relationship lingers.

Maybe Hanjin had noticed everything, Jihoon repeated that idea inside his mind over and over. This distance is made for the best.

Then the distance began to be unbearable. Something inside his body longs for Hanjin’s existence. It loathed Jihoon for being such a coward. Jihoon kept telling it that he himself doesn’t want this, but it keep writhing in anger and pushing him to do something.

That thing remained to be unknown and unnamed until he saw Hanjin again, standing straight between two bed sheets clamped to the clothesline on the rooftop of the dormitory building. Black silky hair whirled by the movement of the dawn wind, eyes seemed so away while his head facing the sky, letting the orange-ish color of the horizon washed every other colors on his face. The moment they met eyes the world answered all his questions in instant.

The said thing was ‘love’.

He loves Hanjin, and that’s why it felt so painful to be away from him. He loves Hanjin, and that’s why he kept looking for Hanjin in every room and among every crowd. He loves Hanjin, and that’s why him agreeing to destroy their friendship make him feel like he was betrayed by himself. 

This time, neither him nor Hanjin ran away.

“… You have something to tell me,” Hanjin started, and his words surprisingly didn’t sound like a question. The arms he held together behind his torso were visibly trembling, but his gaze remained steady, saw through all the things Jihoon has always kept and locked inside his heart. 

Jihoon hates it when someone makes him feel exposed. But if it’s Hanjin—oh, if it’s Hanjin—his heart even told him to offer everything under his skin to be seen by him. He wanted Hanjin to exposed him entirely. Ruined him completely. And the strong wish started to make him felt nauseous.

“Don’t you think I’m disgusting?”

A breath of silence. Hanjin’s expression softened—so soft that it looks like sorrow haunted every inch of his face.

“I think you’re beautiful.”

How much emotions that is possible to be seen in only one pair of eyes? Every crinkles around the eyes Hanjin has narrowed to dam up his tears told a hundred stories. Every shades of black inside his irises shown a bunch of feelings. Every tip of each eyelashes, every glimpse of shine, every throbs the pupils got—they all seemed to worship Jihoon’s filthy soul. And for the very first time, the ugly feeling caged up by his ribs bloomed itself out and looked up to the sun like a spring flower. 

He felt Hanjin’s cold knuckles brushing against his cheek to wipe away beads of warm tears on it—the movement was slow and deliberate. The gaze they kept at each other were never torn apart and Jihoon began to see his own reflection on Hanjin’s glimmering eyes. Oh, I really am in love with him, Jihoon bit his tongue hard, I love him so much that it started to feel right to love him this much.

Yet every time he tried to open his mouth to bring those words to the tip of his tongue, no voice came out at all. He swallowed a mouth of oxygen, choked by his own sobs, and every attempts ended in failure. I love you. I love you. I love you. It was only three short words, eight letters—How easy it is to say that behind his lips—why does the words refused to be spelled out loud? So he looked at Hanjin, eyes hot with tears and both lips trembling heavily, only to be replied by a nod. A knowing, thin smile and a single nod.

“I know.”

All his fingers crawled on Jihoon’s back slowly, stroking all the wrinkles on the back of his white shirt before pulling Jihoon with leaden steps into his embrace. Jihoon’s breathe hitched while the same hand slowly pushing his head to slip into the crook of Hanjin’s neck and a tender, weak traces of fragrance enters his nostrils.

“I know.”

At last, Hanjin’s voice faltered.

“I do, too.”

He didn’t say ‘i love you’, too. As if the existence of word ‘love’ has vanished from the surface of the earth. But Jihoon didn’t have the wish to ask for more.

Hanjin’s thin arms wrapped tightly around him was enough. Hanjin’s tears falling down onto his wavering shoulder was enough. The scent of faint musk on the skin of Hanjin’s neck was enough. Hanjin willing to carry the same sin he has been shouldered alone for a long time was enough.

Hanjin and their unspeakable love was enough.

—

The glances exchanges remained. Yet now, before turning their head away, they would always make sure to cast an almost invisible, affectionate smile to each other.

In some beautiful chances Hanjin would leave a floating touch on one of Jihoon’s finger when the corridor was filled with a hundred of students walking out of their classes to the dining room. And Jihoon would be too flabbergasted to say anything, but the finger that Hanjin touched would be throbbing as fast as his heart for hours. In front of their classmates, they tried their best to not to be seen together during breakfast and lunch—but in the short spare time between Ashar and dinner, they would see each other on the rooftop to talk and laugh about some friends who fell asleep during the morning halaqah or interesting books from the library they read at the break time.

“What are you going to do this holiday?” Hanjin asked one time, when they finally got tired of the two earlier topics. While pondering the question, Jihoon let out a long humming and looked up to see the white cloud drifting slowly above their heads.

“My family usually will visit my grandparents’ house in Bogor to celebrate Eid al-Fitr with them. Maybe I’ll hang out around the city with my cousins…” he answered, glancing towards Hanjin and finding him leaning his body to the rim of the rooftop railings, eyes pinned on Jihoon. “What about you?” 

Jihoon saw a flicker of alarmed expression on Hanjin’s face before he shrugged slightly, gave Jihoon his usual sorrowful, thin smile, “We’re going to go on Umrah. Me and my family.”

The answer got Jihoon turned his head to Hanjin in instant with glimmered, excited eyes, “That’s cool! You’re first one, right?”

“Mhm. It’ll be so crowded there during the last week of Ramadan, though. And piercingly hot.”

“Stay hydrated and you’ll be okay. Will you buy me some chocolates?”

Hanjin huffed a soft chuckles—all the worries that was written so clearly on his face slowly drifted away. “I will. What kind of chocolate do you like?”

Instead of giving a straight answer, Jihoon chose to turned his face away and muttered, “That smile suits you better than the one you wore earlier.”

His voice was so low that he was surprised Hanjin’s hearing still able to caught it. From the corner of his eyes he saw red tints crawling up his neck and face, before Hanjin answered the sentence with another murmur, “You really sound like a womanizer.”

“… Do you not feel happy to be able to go on Umrah?”

“… It’s not like that,” Hanjin shook his head heavily, fidgeting his fingers in front of his chin and staring at them with such a careful gaze. “I just… Well, even I have my own problem, you know. It’s not that easy—”

“Then do tell me about it,” Jihoon delicately reach his hand to grip Hanjin’s sweaty palms, voice almost as quite as the breeze. “You know you have me, Hanjin.”

For several minutes Hanjin stay still, seemed hesitant about both looking at Jihoon’s eyes and bursting his heart out to Jihoon. But then he lifted his face, bit his own lower lip before letting out a weak question.

“Don’t you feel uncomfortable to pray to Allah if I crossed your mind?”

The hand Jihoon used to stroke Hanjin’s fingers had to be stopped by the earlier words that came from his lover. They met eyes again, while this time nobody was putting a smile on their faces—the face they both saw in each other seemed like someone just stripped all their clothes and skin, leaving only raw meat and naked bones.

“… Sometimes. Yeah.”

“Except you’d always choose Him over me,” once again Hanjin gave him the same annoyingly downhearted smile, getting Jihoon’s hand away from his. “I… I’m not like you. I’m not as faithful to Him as you are. If you feel guilty by touching me like this—” he bring Jihoon’s hand to his face while Jihoon instantly widened his two eyes in shock, “—I’d feel… angry of Him for not letting me being touched by you. I want you to touch me, Jihoon—I long for your touch day and night. But it feels selfish, because if I do that then I’ll be forcing you to choose between Him and me—”

His rambles stopped once Jihoon eroded the distance between them and pressed his lips on Hanjin’s.

Jihoon could see Hanjin’s eyes grew wider for some seconds between his own fluttering eyelashes. But he goes on—realizing that something is so wrong inside his head for doing that but feeling like kissing Hanjin was the best thing he could do at that exact time. He doesn’t know how to properly kiss anybody, but Hanjin’s lips were just fit his like they were created to be kissed by him. And he felt extremely, dangerously thrilled and giddy that he felt sorry. For Hanjin. For God. For himself.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered between the kisses, as his left hand move up, trailed Hanjin’s spine from the bottom to the top and the right one slowly brought the hair that covered Hanjin’s face to the back of Hanjin’s ear. Yet he couldn’t help to drift out the words, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”

The kiss never break off; not even until he sensed Hanjin’s cheeks were wet by tears.

“—And if any of you made a great mistake in our life, such as disobeying Him or, naudzubillah min zaliik, disbelieving Him, the great, eternal hellfire will be your friend after the end of the world…”

Eternal hellfire. Jihoon glanced away from the class to see someone standing in the school’s backyard, burning a mount of garbages. The flame looked enormous and orange-ish. He pressed his swollen lips lightly, licking the fresh blood he drew by biting them for an hour long. Eternal pain.

How does it feel to be burned alive?

He will be no longer alive the moment God sent him to hell, though—but he will be conscious. He will be able to see the flame devours his body from his toes to his head until it was only his ashes left, then God will give the body back to him and the flame will eats him up again and he will be ashes again and his body will returned again—nobody will be able to discover what ending awaits after it all. It certainly will be so painful. But how painful?

Jihoon’s dark brown eyes moved again to the chair Hanjin usually sat on, always wearing a thick glasses and a deep frown towards the whiteboard while aggressively writing notes down on his notebook. The chair was empty today—Hanjin, once again, had to stay in the infirmary for a day long to watch over the sick students because the school was just too lazy to look for a new proper nurse and enslaving students is every school’s favorite hobby.

“I won’t be able to eat my lunch or dinner in the dining room today, so just go without me,” Hanjin said that morning before they parted ways after walking back from the morning halaqah to dormitory. The slightly older boy waved his hand at him with a sweet smile on his sleepy face. “I’ll copy your notes later.”

Then, in the end, Jihoon’s sight fell on the blank paper under his elbow.

The class ended early. Every student got up abruptly from their seats and the sounds of chatter getting mixed with the squeaky sound of all the chairs being pushed to the back choked Jihoon’s ears for some minutes. When the class was almost totally fell quiet, he stood up on his feet and peeped again through the class’ window. The fire in the backyard is still dancing slowly like an elegant ballerina. He packed all his things and walked slowly against the flow of people running to the upstair for lunch.

There was no trace of other people visiting the backyard at lunch time. The flame was big—probably as tall as Jihoon’s shoulder and would burned his whole body if he walked into it and shrank his body a little. That day the sun was almost covered by gray clouds and being near the fire keeps him away from the cold. And he thought that maybe the pain of being burned alive would not be as bad as people always described it.

So then he stretched his arm slowly until he felt a great sting bites his hand straight away.

Sounds of a window being opened hastily and someone shouted, “What are you doing?!” startled him enough to take the burned hand away from the fire. Once the cool air kissed the throbbing burnt wound the pain become even more terrific that Jihoon started to felt dizzy and having this weird urge to push himself into the flame entirely, but a hand stopped his nonsense plan—grabbed his arm so hard that he almost fell over to the wet grass.

The grip felt comforting. When he looked up to see the person that just jumped out of the infirmary window, his chest felt tightened and for a solid minute he lost his ability to breathe. It was clearly the horror on Hanjin’s ashen face that forced his throat to hold every oxygen and words to move. Sunlight leaked through every gap of the body of his savior. Panting heavily with his black hair sticked to his forehead by the beads of his sweat like that… Hanjin looked like an angel.

“What…” he repeated, voice thick of tears, “What are you doing…?”

The weak, bewildered question that fled from Hanjin’s pursed mouth did not call any answer from Jihoon whose brain had stopped working. Then he felt the same frail fingers reached out to touch Jihoon’s burnt palm. They traced around the scars in the most careful way before Hanjin let out another whisper.

“We should treat this,” he said, worried gaze lingered around Jihoon’s face. “Come on. I’ll bring you to the infirmary.”

While leading Jihoon to walk away from the fire, Hanjin kept his head down while his wrist move to the corner of his eyes several times as if trying to brush something aside.

Until they reached the empty infirmary, or until the scars slowly calmed itself down under the pouring tap water, or even until the whole part of Jihoon’s right hand being covered by bandages, Jihoon couldn’t bring himself to lift his face and look Hanjin at the eyes knowing that they would be filled with wet tears and a gaze shaped by shock and disappointments. They remained inside the silence for a long time; as Jihoon looked down at his hand and stroked the bandages and Hanjin threw his sight at the wall as if it’s moving rapidly. The silence was dreadfully loud that even the hiss of the old air conditioner started to sounds like a kind, embracing lullaby. At the end, Hanjin slowly let out a sigh and stood up.

“I’ll tell Pak Nanda you won’t be able to attend the afternoon class.”

He left Jihoon with the noiseless infirmary for some minutes. When later Jihoon heard his steps approaching the door again, he was ready to hold his breathe and stay silent again—but Hanjin locked the door up and stomped his feet when he took away the gap between him and the bed Jihoon was seating on—and harshly, very not Hanjin-ly, he seized Jihoon by the collar of his uniform to make him totally face the anger on Hanjin’s expression that almost seemed unreal, “For God’s sake, say SOMETHING!”

Jihoon’s eyes widened and his tongue fell stiff. He felt his body trembling heavily, but the tremor on the hand that just grabbed his shirt was so much harder. All the tears Hanjin has been holding behind the skin around his eyes started to fell to Jihoon’s cheek and chest, burning his whole soul in a way that no flame could ever do.

“… It’s not like how it seemed to be—”

“Yeah? Then you should’ve not having your hand being bandaged like this! Have you gone mad? What would you do if I didn’t saw you earlier? What would happened to you? You could’ve fucking DIE!”

“Hanjin,” Jihoon heard his own voice pathetically cracked while his left hand trying to held Hanjin’s wrist, “I’m really sorry—but that’s not what I’m trying to do—”

“So what? What were you trying to do?”

The anger inside Hanjin’s glistened eyes were unbearable to be witnessed. Jihoon felt the guilt started to burned himself from the inside part of his body while he muttered honest answer and felt so foolish.

“I… I wanted to know how hurt it will be to live in hell.”

A second eroded by Hanjin changing all the color on his face to be a color of shock. The next time Jihoon saw them again every inch of Hanjin’s face has showered by a terrible color of grief.

“… Hurting yourself intentionally is also a sin,” he stated slowly. At last, Jihoon looked up and formed a small smile for the response of that sentence.

“I know.”

“You shouldn’t do that. You—you…”

“I know,” his quiet repetition overlapped with the sobs Hanjin let out carefully while letting his body getting grasped into Jihoon’s mindful embrace. Hanjin gripped his back as if he was scared that if he let him go, Jihoon would break into uncountable pieces. “I know. But I just—I want to—I’m sorry. It was stupid—I was stupid.”

Something in Hanjin’s shaky breathing left Jihoon with a great ache inside his chest.

“I hate you,” Hanjin whispered, only to tightened the hug even more as if it was possible. “I hate you so much. I don’t know what to do with myself whenever you’re hurt.”

“… I’m sorry.”

Minutes after Jihoon’s last apologize, slowly yet surely all the fingers that cling to his body loosen themselves, and Hanjin pull his head away from Jihoon’s neck to lean his forehead on Jihoon’s; so that both of them, in such a short distance, could see every tints of color that mixed up on each other’s face. Yet the only thing Jihoon could see in the dark eyes that usually shines as bright as the moon was fading lights and hurtful glistening tears.

“Jihoon.”

Hanjin called his name like he was reciting a prayer.

“Do you still see me as a sin?”

The question Hanjin worded in the tip of his dry lips was low. It was not louder than a whisper. Yet Jihoon could feel his blood runs cold inside his windpipe until there is no space left for air to enter the body. 

“We are a sin, Hanjin.”

Hanjin opened his lips. No voice came out of them except a single choked sob.

“But I see you more than just a part of us and our sin,” Jihoon continued, mouth only moving so little that if Hanjin drew his eyelids down he wouldn’t believe it was Jihoon who just let the words hanging around the warm infirmary air. His hand crawled up to one side of Hanjin’s face, caressed it as if Hanjin was a gift the heaven directly sent to him. “You’re the greatest thing I’ve ever laid my heart on.”

I would endure the eternal hellfire if it means I can feel your breath kissing my face for another minute.

Jihoon has always known that everything won’t last long.

It was always like that in his life—something or someone he loves so much will someday faded away from the storyline and left Jihoon only with a sickening, biting silence. And Hanjin was—even before they realized about the love they locked tightly inside their own hearts—the most beautiful thing among every flowers that has bloomed throughout his life. Jihoon had tried drawing his life without Hanjin shining like a sun in it inside his head, and the only thing he could see was pitch black darkness. Sometimes he saw the same darkness in his restless sleep; then he would be jolted awake with trails of tears on his face.

He thought it wouldn’t be that bad. Losing everything he ever had was just something that keep happening and nobody can’t stop it, not even himself. It was all written inside the book of fate.

Yet he still found himself praying to the God who glanced at him only from the corner of His eyes to be with Hanjin forever.

It was a chilly morning in the middle of April when in the middle of his prayer, his Mudabbir approached him while every other roommates of them was still fast asleep on their own bed. Junghwan bent down his body to level their faces when he say something very carefully right beside Jihoon’s ears, hand grasping Jihoon’s shoulder almost fatherly.

“The dormitory supervisors want to see you.”

Jihoon raised his eyebrows as a questioning expression. “This early?”

The smile Junghwan gave to him was tight and bitter. “Don’t get provoked. Just keep calm and you’ll be fine.”

Those sentences gave birth to a writhing nausea inside Jihoon’s stomach. He nodded once, folded up his prayer rug and swallowed his saliva to reduce the unbearably loud heartbeat behind the skin of his chest.

He kept pressing his chest with this trembling hand on his way to the dormitory office as Junghwan walking a step in front of him. Every inch of his neck felt hot. Probably waking up too early had made his head being hit by a great dizziness. He regretted not taking a chance to drink a gulp of water before slipping out of his dorm. All the things inside and around his body felt wrong.

Maybe he was scared.

Scared of all the disappointed faces of his parents that haunts his mind. Scared of being away from all the comfort that he has now. Scared of getting expelled. Scared of the punishments he would received. Scared of the anger of God. Scared of being away from Hanjin, of all the things mentioned.

When they finally set foot right in front of the office door, Junghwan dropped another pressing on Jihoon shoulder and opened the door slowly. The piercingly cold air of the office bit Jihoon’s cheek and neck in instant. The cold never runs out and almost freeze him entirely the moment his eyes landed on a familiar back sitting in one of the two chairs in front of the head of dormitory’s table, straight and still.

“Ustadz? They’re here.”

Hanjin didn’t turned his face away from the book collection across the table when Jihoon slowly walked towards the other chair, or when their knees brushed against each other, or when another familiar figure, a middle-aged man with cold lines on his expression came out of the other corner of the room. But intentionally or unintentionally, when the man dismissed Junghwan and take a seat on the big chair across the table, Jihoon who kept his eyes pinned on his own hands caught another hand, slim and fragile, move towards his and gave them a quick grip before Hanjin immediately pull his hand back again.

“I think both of you know what we’re going to talk about,” the man started in a slow, frigid tone. He took some papers from the desk of his table and pushed them all towards Jihoon and Hanjin who didn’t give any response. “I will be straightforward right now. Answer every questions that I will ask you with honesty—God is looking at us right now.”

Jihoon cracked his knuckles in the silence. He wanted to throw up.

“Were both of you hanging out alone on the rooftop last evening? Just the two of you?”

He heard Hanjin’s weak voice drifting to the air as an answer, “Yes, sir.”

“What were you two doing up there?”

For a solid minute, nobody decided to raise their tongue to give a reply. The memories of the moment that they spent together on the rooftop yesterday being played in Jihoon’s mind like a recorded TV show, blurry and has lost its contrast colors. Yet nothing weird happened, if he remembers them perfectly. They talked about a movie Hanjin would love to watch during the holiday and some places Jihoon wants to visit in his hometown. Do they kiss? Once or twice? Jihoon remembered going to bed with the familiar filthy feelings surrounded his body. It still happens a lot.

“We were just chatting,” it was him who took the responsibility to raise his voice this time. The head of dormitory narrowed his eyes in suspicion towards Jihoon.

“Chatting. That’s all?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about—”

“What I’m talking about is, Han Jihoon,” interrupted the man firmly, “Are you two involved in an illicit homosexual relationship?”

That was the first time in that morning they finally met eyes for almost half a second. Something inside him bursted and the pieces were scattered all over the place. Hanjin’s gaze was incredibly shaky, yet nonetheless he kept his eyes on Jihoon like his life was depended on him. His hands were clutching each other desperately in front of his torso. He was praying. Not to the God they believed were watching them, but to every slice of love inside Jihoon’s chest.

So Jihoon licked his own lips again and speak braver than before, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

But then welcoming him a great, ringing silence.

And Hanjin’s enraged cry.

And burning sensation in one side of his cheek.

He tried to touch it. His face felt even hotter than the fire he absentmindedly tried to touch a month ago. Hanjin’s arms were all around his shoulder. From his blurry sight, he saw Hanjin’s wet eyes looking at the older man with furious look.

“You don’t have any right to lay your hand on a student!” he shouted.

“Oh, I do have it,” the head of dormitory flapped the hand he used to slapped Jihoon’s face as if a dirt from Jihoon’s body was clinging onto it like a naughty mud, “Our prophet himself said that it is forbidden for us Moslems to be a follower of the Sodoms and if any of us do what they did, we are allowed to kill them. But you’re still so young, Hanjin, and Allah will always accept a genuine repentance—”

His sentence was ended halfway by Hanjin’s low hiss, “I don’t need to repent to anyone for loving someone.”

The man looked at him in the eyes, expression turned even more stiff and sharper, “We’ve called someone to perform a ruqya for both of you. You will be staying in the private room the dormitory has prepared for you until Dhuhr—”

“I am NOT possessed!” the anger inside Hanjin had started to blinded him as he turned to face the head of dormitory entirely and pounded the table with his frail arms so hard that Jihoon was so terrified to see them broke into pieces, yet Hanjin stood still—chin high, face red and eyes as strong as his voice—and it probably surprised the head of dormitory even more than it did to Jihoon. “Stop treating us like we were sick. You and everyone in this dormitory were the ones who got an incurable illness inside your heads. The only thing that is different between us is that I understand the love that YOU will never do—”

But then the door was bursted open by a group of teachers with panic eyes as the head of dormitory once again struck Hanjin across his face. Someone grabbed Jihoon off from Hanjin when he stood up and tried to calm him down. The Subuh Adhan came through the slightly ajar office window from the mosque. Hanjin’s screams were muffled by the same ringing voice whispering beside Jihoon’s ears.

“Suspension.” The middle-aged man say in low, dangerous voice. “Two months. Both of you. Pack all your things, your parents will pick you up tonight.”

All the lights were shutting down. Slowly. And Hanjin were taken away from his embrace. Slowly.

“So they really are gay.”

“I mean, isn’t it clear?”

“I never knew Hanjin was such a whore.”

Jihoon couldn’t remember who was the one who started to lashed their hands first, but the earlier words was the fuel of all. He dropped every single clothes that he took from his drawer and walked across the room. Some third year students who was whispering to each other in the corner of their dormitory room stopped giggling when one of them getting grabbed in the collar by Jihoon’s firm hand.

“… What do you want, you homo?”

The eyes he was looking at was filled with disgust. For the first time in his life the nausea inside him makes Jihoon felt burned by anger, and not guilt.

Jihoon had spent his whole life being away from fights. He was a disobedient kid sometimes, indeed—but he was never violent. Anger is an emotion that still feels foreign to him even until now. So as his own hand raised itself to the air and threw a loud, knocking punch to the face in front of him, he himself was swallowed by an enormous shock.

Then there comes the response, hitting him right on his nose. His eyes felt extremely hot. Something red and thick runs out of his nostril. The other seniors huffed chuckles in union, move forwards while Jihoon looked down to his bloody sleeve to take the sweet chance to gave him more slams on his torso.

Nobody stepped down from their bunk beds to drag him away from the attack and he was certain why. Some juniors do, only to shouted some slurs towards him that he couldn’t totally caught while his head getting banged to the cold floor.

“Gross,” one of them showed him a big, satisfied snickers, “What were you going to do earlier? Punch everyone in this dorm to death and elope with your poor, filthy Cinderella? Don’t you know that wherever you go God will always see you?”

“People like you bring bad luck to the society,” the other continued, kicking Jihoon’s side stomach with his naked foot that Jihoon could feel his bones like a group of thorns, “Hypocrite. Why do you even stay all night long to do Tahajuds if you’re still fucking another man?”

Jihoon coughed in pain, “I never—”

“Or did you provoke us on purpose? Are you faggots have some kind of those weird fetishes? Do being beaten up to death can turn you on?”

“Hey, try kicking his cock!”

“Ew, disgusting! Is he hard yet???”

Jihoon felt lightheaded. He brought his arms to cover his head because surprisingly every punches that landed on his face sting more than the others. His jaw throbbed madly and the pain sent a signal to create a blaring noise to his ears that he slowly stopped hearing every insults that were flying around the air, buzzing like a cicadas’ cries. Every inch of his body was bitten by a very sharp ache.

For the first time in his whole life, despite being in such a great pain, he didn’t think of his God.

He thinks of how good it will be to just end it all and die.

Yet when someone grabbed his hair from the back and face his body towards the door, through the warm tears he kept behind his lower eyelids, he saw a blinding light. The view forced his whole body to stop consuming enough oxygen for a whole minute and he thought he really was going to be taken away by Death. Once his tears slowly slid down agains the wound on his upper cheek and his sight become clearer, a terrified expression of Hanjin’s beautiful face was the first thing that grew solid in the middle of that blurry world.

Ah. Do I hurt you by being such a coward again?

“Stop,” he could hear Hanjin’s shaky mutters so much clearer than the laughters that came from all his roommates, who were all seemed to be so amused by Hanjin’s presence. They pushed Jihoon’s fatigue body towards Hanjin’s feet and quickly held Hanjin’s body back before he even got a chance to bend his own body down to check on Jihoon. When Jihoon started to sense another kicks landed on his body the same trembling voice came back, “No—stop! Why do you—Jihoon—stop, you’re hurting him!!!”

Between his heavy pants Jihoon heard the third year student with red tint on one of his cheek—the one Jihoon punched earlier—huffed a light chuckle, “Beg. We will stop if you can do that kindly.”

A flicker of irritation came across Hanjin’s face, “I will report this—”

“You will not report this to anyone,” the same foot that has been kicking every side of Jihoon’s body was lifted to be right over Jihoon’s neck, pressing it slightly closer to the floor that it started to be so difficult for Jihoon to breathe, “Nobody would listen to both of you anymore here.”

The wrath that was painted thickly inside the gaze that Hanjin throw to him faded as a great horror replaced it when he saw the third-year student pulling out a lighter from his pocket. He lifted his chin up towards the door, non-verbally told him to close it in instant.

“Well?”

“… I don’t—”

“I mean, if you’re okay with your boyfriend getting some burn scars as our souvenir before they send you both to go back home—”

“No, I’m sorry—” Hanjin cut the sentence with quick and restless tone; his eyes were opened wide, some beads of cold sweat were visible on his exposed forehead. “Please. Just—just let him go—I’ll do anything—”

“Anything?” drawing his smirk even wider, that senior move his foot to—to Jihoon’s absolute surprise—the tip of his lower part. Jihoon started to trembling heavily while his gaze moved towards Hanjin’s helpless figure, “Give him a blowjob. In front of us.”

As if an invisible hand grabbed his heart and seized it away from its initial place, Jihoon felt nothing was beating inside his chest for a solid moment. Hearing the earlier words Hanjin seemed as shock as Jihoon was, body shrank in the middle of the other boys who exchange disgusted glances.

“It’s supposed to be easy for you, right?” the third-year raised his eyebrows to Hanjin, “You probably have done it several times before. Come on.”

Maybe the placement of that foot was really intended to prevent Jihoon from voicing out his protest because he, despite the banging urge to scream inside his mind, couldn’t even utter the shortest word ever. His curled up body shivered hard in anxiety and fear while his head couldn’t think straight. But if there was someone between both of them that was going to be humiliated by this condition, it would be—

“I’ll do it.”

Shockingly, Hanjin sounded firm. And that fact enraged Jihoon so much that while the others whispering in loud voices about how disgusting the two of them and Hanjin slowly freed himself to approach Jihoon, he forced his face to turned away from Hanjin.

The shaky breath of his lover almost killed him.

“I’m sorry,” Hanjin muttered while his body landed right beside Jihoon’s limbs. The frail fingers touched Jihoon’s knees as if trying to assure him that ‘everything will be fine,’ as at the same time every shadows of the people who have degraded Hanjin in front of Jihoon before crossed his memories while his sight started to get darkened, “I’m so—”

Hanjin’s last apology was muffled by an ear-splitting sound of his own back getting slammed to the drawer behind him.

Witnessing the shock lines appeared on his pained face was too suffocating for Jihoon before he realized it was his own hands that just pushed Hanjin’s body away instinctively. Nobody among the two of them have enough courage or sense to speak. At last, Jihoon’s eyes landed on his palms. They were soaked by tears and blood and cold sweat—quivering as hard as his consciousness.

Suddenly, everything fell into a total darkness.

He couldn’t even see Hanjin and his radiating glow anymore.

“Let’s end this.”

The voices inside his head was right all along. Everything about them was never the right thing from the beginning, because when Hanjin told Jihoon about how falling in love felt like a spring, Jihoon could catch the shadow of Hanjin running around a flower field with a beautiful, small-figured girl who have a bright smile instead of with another man. And because every time they unintentionally touched each other’s arms in the morning Jihoon would had this weird desire to peel off his own skin and replaced it with another one. And because—because now he—Hanjin had to be wounded by his own hand—

Do you even call this thing love? When one of you started to hurt each other? When being together brought so many tragedies to the other?

Hanjin lifted his head away from Jihoon’s bruised belly only to be welcomed by one side of Jihoon’s face. The slow movement of his hand smearing some ointments on every wounds that Jihoon had stopped for a while. His dry, bleeding lips getting pursed in an uncomfortable thin line before he speak, “Why?”

Absentmindedly, Jihoon let out a mocking chuckle for the response. “Why?” he repeated, never realized how angry he was at that time. “I’ll just ask you that—why did you agree to do it?”

“Jihoon, I’ve told you that I too don’t want to do that to you—”

“You know what people called you now? A whore.” The hand Hanjin had stretched out to touch Jihoon’s cheek got brushed aside immediately. Jihoon spat the word out like he meant it. “You just—you were degrading yourself for this—”

“So what? They were beating you up, and that was the only way to get you out of it—” 

“I don’t need you to get me out of it—”

“Oh, look at yourself! They were never intended to stop before you die—and you still care more about me getting a new nickname?!”

It’s not just a nickname, Jihoon wanted to scream—yet Hanjin’s teary eyes, looking at him like he was someone else, forced him to shut his mouth so tightly. I can’t hear that word being put beside your name and not feeling furious. Because to me you’re so much dearer than any other concept of heavens. You are the heaven itself. Yet I keep dragging you to the bottom of the hell pit with me and everything feels so wrong. 

Yet nothing comes out besides the words, “Let’s—let’s just end this all. I’m—please.”

“No. No—why?” While Jihoon got up and quickly grabbed his suitcase without caring about every pain that sting when he landed his feet on the ground, Hanjin stood up too, tried his hard to seized Jihoon’s arm and blocked his way to walk out of the infirmary. “You—I still—why do we have to care so much about what people say? You have me and I have you, Jihoon—”

There it comes again, the disgusted feeling every time his skin brushed against Hanjin’s. The voices that said that someone so dirty like him does not have any place beside where Hanjin stand or inside his tender heart. So he now slowly let his arm free from Hanjin’s strong grip—and the look of indignation that Hanjin painted on his face slowly fading, replaced by a great sorrow.

“I don’t want to see you doing anything like that for me anymore.”

Jihoon always found so many things behind Hanjin’s dark irises. But at that time, the only thing he could see in it was his own reflection, shattered and so miserable.

“We—God, Hanjin, maybe we’re really not meant to be together.”

This time, when he slowly walked away, Hanjin didn’t grasp for his back. Hanjin didn’t beg for him to stay. And Hanjin didn’t bid any goodbye or any last ‘I love you’ that Jihoon would sell his own soul to hear.

From the window of the private room he had to stay on, Jihoon saw Hanjin’s mother pushing her own son to the wet surface of the dormitory yard while rain was pouring heavily. He couldn’t hear what she said to Hanjin even though she was clearly shouting. As if he, too, had lost his ability to hear, Hanjin looked down at his scratched limbs and said nothing. The rain didn’t stop until a car picked them up and Hanjin’s mother’s long black veil vanished from Jihoon’s head.

In fact, the rain didn’t stop even until night fell to the city.

“Your father is still working out of town,” his mother’s voice sounds cold and so away from the speaker of the dormitory’s phone. “We can’t pick you up tonight. I’ve talked about it to the dormitory. They will let you stay for one last night.”

She gave Jihoon no chance to reply and hung up the phone immediately. Jihoon turned his head to face the window again, almost bursted into a laughter to see how the world pity him so much that the dark cloudy sky didn’t get any clearer at all.

He dreamt of Hanjin again that night.

But throughout the dream, he was asleep. Laying his weak body on the thin mattress of the private room, trying to avoid meeting the bruises to the surface of the bed. The door—Jihoon was sure he locked it before going to bed—being pushed open from outside. Then he heard a slow and soft padding of footsteps getting closer to his bed. The lower part of the bed shrank down and Jihoon, despite being away from his sense, could caught a familiar musk scent from the unknown guest. The guest reached out to Jihoon’s face, slipping every strands of his hair away from his face to caress Jihoon’s cheek without any distraction.

“I keep throwing away every chance to say all the words I wanted to say to you,” his tender voice melted in the silence of the night, almost inaudible. “I am a much greater coward than you are. So for once I will be brave. For you. For us.”

He eroded the distance between their faces slowly. His fingers—the frail, slim fingers that Jihoon knew better than his own—wipe the tears on the corner of Jihoon’s closed eyes. A long, loving kiss landed on his forehead.

“I left a letter under your pillow. If you don’t want to read it, just burn it for me.”

Jihoon woke up with fresh tears burning against his face. Alone.

“Jihoon? Jihoon, are you there?”

He caught a shaky whisper from the outside of the room accompanied by some knocks on the door. When he immediately jump off his bed to open the door, he saw in the darkness of chilly rainy morning a face of Shin Junghwan being haunted by shock and grief. Jihoon felt his own heart stopped the moment Junghwan saw thorugh his eyes and speak. Not for a while. But forever.

"Hanjin—he's dead. Hanjin is dead."

They found Hanjin laying on his own bed at home, no longer breathing, fingers entwined around an empty medicine bottle. The death time was 03.28 in the morning.

His prayer rug laid on the floor, waiting its owner to do the Subuh prayer. He was, according to the officers, writing something—a pen without its cap was sleeping beside him, yet nobody could find the paper that supposed to be the vessel of his last words. Yet he seemed okay with it. They said he—his corpse, his dead body—was smiling. Maybe he was finally away from pain, Junghwan assumed.

Ashamed of their son had done something that totally crossed one big rule in their religion, his parents hold the funeral in private. No one from the school was allowed to attend. Especially not Jihoon. So he spend the next days curling up on his bed with guilt embracing him and Hanjin’s smiling face haunting his dreams.

There was never any letter under his pillow.

My beloved Jihoon,

I know that you’re doing well over there because God will always be with you. Yet I still pray for more of your happiness and for your heart to be lighter because I’ve always known how heavy your heart has become since the moment you realized that you’re in love with me. I was selfish, I know, for keep wanting more of you—more of your laughter, your cries, your loving words, your beautiful smiles, your frustrated vents… Your happiness and anger and sadness, every inch of your body and soul. I was selfish for taking you away from God. But loving you feels like breathing for me. And I’m okay with doing it from afar, but if you ask me to stop, it will torture me to death.

I hope I will never see your face again because you deserve a place—a world—that is so much kinder than the place I would be sent to after this life. I wish you the highest heaven. Carry my love in your heart and it will be enough for me.

Jihoon, know that I will always love—

END.

Sincerely,
AG, Ekigawa Ruri