After Dark 》Minsung

13 》Eating Cake With A Spoon

"You should explain what your condition is to him. Just, tell him about the episode ataxia, say it's a genetic thing and the whole messed up cerebellum thing, and he can't get it unless his parents had the gene, tell him that you loose your coordination during the episodes, tell him it might progress, explain it. If you like him, he's going to be in your life, he's going to find about your ataxia episodes. He's going to find out what it is, the type you have, explain it. It's okay."

"Every time they find out, they leave me. I know Chan and Changbin make fun of me for being flaky in relationships but..."

Minho allowed his words to die off in his throat.

Swallowing them down along with the sweet taste of the dessert, drying his mouth and his body, leaving him as nothing but a soaked-up well preoccupied with muddy grounds at the cracking bottom. Each bite another struggle to force down his throat. Each breath another choke to surrender himself to in his esophagus. A consuming swell in his gut nibbling into him as it flourished and spread up his spine, a feeling like sirens alarming him to oncoming dangers. Alerting the back of his mind, the picturesque view in his eyes of the sink he was eating over instead of sitting like a proper person drowning out to the wince that built up. The pinch in his chest spreading throughout him at the sourness haunting his tastebuds.

Sourness that haunted his memories. Faint ghosts that crawled along his back and chained him to the checkered game floor he dared to play. Again and again, despite knowing how the board would tip against his favor at the end. Each, and every, time. Those matches were finished before he could make a second move.

A shadow jumped onto the counter next to him.

Furry head bumping into his leaned shoulder as the cat tried to grab his attention.

He kept his head precariously balanced on his fist, the other stretching out to scratch the cat's chin to find a comfort in her presence.

"But everytime someone knows, they leave. I know," Felix hummed softly over the headphones. Words dimming as his voice came quieter than before in a soothing lull, low tide peaks that brushed in a gentle ebb and flow, "And you run off to hide your attacks because you don't want them to find out. I know."

"I'm positive those two would think I'm a freak if they knew about me, Lix. I know them," Minho murmured back to him. He unfurled his hand, still occupied with petting the animal in order to keep the mischievous eyes and outstretching paws away from his cake, the other going to scrape at the bottom of the container. Collecting up the chunks of frosting and fallen cake  "People get freaked out. They think something is wrong with me. Which, there is, but it's not their business, so? Fuck off?"

His brother sighed over the headphones, "Minho, you know that's not true. There's nothing wrong with you. It's not something you have control over. And you're not... You..."

Felix trailed off.

Minho kept scraping at the bottom of the container, sweeping as much as he could into the crescent of his spoon.

Then spun the spoon around to hungrily devour what he managed to find.

Before doing back to scraping at the sides of the container, collecting as much frosting as he was able too off the sides, the bottom, the top of the cake, Minho had always been more partial to the shitty taste of cheap frosting rather than the battered stacks of fluff that cake actually was. He would've bought one of those bucketed portions of pure icing or frosting people typically used for decorating to eat all of it plain, if that was considered socially acceptable. Which, it wasn't. Which, meant he didn't, so he had to resort to buying an entire cake he didn't particularly want to eat beside the frosting. And he couldn't, considering his body had the habit of freaking out whenever he nibble even a little too much of sugar. Alcohol included. No drinking, no drugs, no icing, no fun.