After Dark 》Minsung

32》The Cat That Loved the Moon

The typical fear that came with being faced with an unknown, uneducated and puzzled by another world which wasn't understood. The typical disgust that he was given by the people who had loved him, felt him, touched him underneath their hands, the upturning of their noses when they came to know he wasn't a crystal pure individual. He wasn't perfect, in any regard, in any sense. He wasn't an angelic being, a divine deity as he often regarded Jisung to be, the clean silk of a woven garb to be draped delicately beside tapestry to be admired. He wasn't any of that. He was a crumbled mess with impurities shown on twisted hands for everyone to see, a sinner with little to no regard for the golden paradise he was promised before his greed grew too big, a jackalope with pointed horns and a voice which spoke in the dark. And once people knew that's who he was, he was met with distain.

So, he readied himself. Building up glass walls reinforced with cellphone wrapping to keep himself from breaking with the words he would be given next. Disgust, disappointment, distain, harsh words, critical words, insults shot to his ears, to his family which didn't have a choice, silent glares and scowls that proved their hesitance to who he was, he's heard it all. He's experienced every response that could be given to him. He's heard it, and he expected it.

What he didn't expect,

Was for Jisung to relax.

A soft, yet shaky breath leaving him as he managed to quirk his lips up to Minho, "Oh, yeah, I know you have ataxia. I know what it is."

Minho blinked at him.

He knows?

Looking back to a sudden softness in the younger's eyes that smiled weakly through his tears.

He knows??????

The dread he once felt drowned away to a confusion that grabbed hold of him.

HE KNOWS???????

And realizing he was at a loss for words when he choked a strangled, "Qué?"

"Minho, your brother is Felix. We tell each other everything in way too much detail. Didn't we establish that when he walked in on you and said I told him about you? I tell him everything, he tells me everything," Jisung explained to him, maintaining that faint smile tugging his lips up as he came to wipe his tears. Breaking away from the clutch the frozen ice statue of Minho held him within as he hushed down the remaining blubbers from the pour assault, "You have type 2 episodic ataxia, it's a nervous system condition, it's hereditary, you got it from your Dad, it may progress later in your life."

He knows?

"You..." Minho tried to speak, words tangling up to a knitted ball inside the strangling channel of his throat as he looked the camboy over again. Checking him up and down, combing through his body as he let the weak jelly which used to be functioning hands fall to Jisung's lap. Those bastards. Abandoning him to nothing but the rough surface of the floor below he knew for certain would leave bruises up and down his knees the longer he was crouched on top of the carpets. Flopping down to those delicate legs, the thighs he could prop those forgotten joints atop, as he was able to force out the questions which lodged themselves inside him, "You know? How long have you known?"

With a huffed breath, Jisung took up Minho's hands within his own. Warm to the touch, the cracks of those hands which were stained with the scalding boil of the salty tears he had tried to clear himself of. Tangling up their fingers as if they were meant to interlace with one another, as if they were meant to be held by the camboy's Elysian marble. Puzzle pieces which slotted together so perfectly, carved to be pressed together as two halfs of an incomplete statue. An incomplete characature of what love should be, what love could be, but not understood until that masterpiece was fit together. Jisung started to fiddle with his hands, rubbing the joints of his fingers between his fingerpads while he uttered, "Since we figured out you're Felix's brother. I always knew Felix's older brother had episodic ataxia, so, when everything clicked into place, that did too."