The breakup hurt.
That was basically where Yeosang was at.
They hadn't even been together for that long, but the months of history they'd had was what had ended up leaving him with the most agony.
It was simple: He'd thought Jongho would never do something to hurt him like that... Least of all cheat on him.
But the world would continue to spin, and life would continue to move on, and the last thing Yeosang wanted, was for him to get left behind.
'Sang-ah... Are you sure you want to go to work?' Wooyoung asked gently.
Perched atop his bed, the blonde was watching him get ready for his shift, and had not been too shy to vocalise how much he disliked the idea of him leaving the house.
But it was time. His pain wasn't going anywhere just yet, and something to take his mind off of his pain felt like a blessing.
'Yes, hun, I'm sure~.' Wandering up to his brother, he reached out and rubbed his thumbs against his cheeks, trying to cheer him up. 'I know you think I'm super super sad, and I am, but I'm not going to let a boy keep me from going to work. Don't you remember how hard the journey was for me to actually go back to work?'
Wooyoung pouted, shimmying his shoulders in a tiny, cute tantrum. 'But Hyung-ah~h~h~h...'
'I'm fine, sweetie. I promise. A breakup is not the end of the world.'
'No but it feels like it. I should know. I've been through enough, and I didn't even like them as much as you like Jongh-'
'I don't need a man to make my life full, Woo,' he interrupted, putting a knee up on the bed and pulling his brother into his arms. 'I have my work, and I have my beautiful, beautiful family, and I don't need anything else. It hurts, but I'm happy, just like this. Okay?'
Pouting, Wooyoung sighed, nodding before he reacted around him and pulled him in close. 'Okay... But you can call me... Right? If you need hugs, I will come to that hospital as if it's the last thing I do,' he said with conviction. 'You'll have never seen me storm so deliberately into a building before.'
Yeosang chuckled, pressing a kiss into the top of his head.
'I love you, Woo.'
The boy nuzzled his cheek into his chest.
'I love you too, Hyung.'
~~~
'Yunho darling! Dinner's ready! Come down and eat!'
The sound of his mother's voice floated up to his room, pulling him from his thoughts. For the past hour, he'd been sitting on his office chair at his desk, staring out his window. He had watched the sun set, and the dark fall, and it felt weird to be sitting next to a bookcase full of textbooks, and not studying a thing.
Instead, he had spent the time contemplating the events of his day.
After travelling with Mingi to uni and handing in the last of their written papers, they had completed their four hour pathophysiology exam and headed for the biomedical sciences office.
He had already filled out the unenrollment papers, and had had them sitting in his locker ready for any time he had a breakdown. But it felt strange to be finally handing them in...
Saddening.
But with Mingi by his side, and their arms pressing together, although he was hurting, he found the strength to push forth. He knew he had to leave... But he truly believed that the only reason he could part with those forms, tearily handing them over to the reception lady, was because Mingi was right beside him.
The moment the paper had left his hands, the reality of the situation really hit him.
This is it.
One more placement shift, and I will never practice med as a doctor ever again...
☁️ ☁️ ☁️
Stepping outside of the office, it felt like something inside Yunho snapped. Parting with the documents was agonising - as though he was walking away from the one thing he'd spent his life being familiar with, and into the unknown.
Tears welled up in his eyes immediately, and his chest felt empty...
'Yun-ah...'
A gentle hand pressed against his back, and as he turned towards the soft voice, he saw Mingi step up beside him. His face was painted with concern and empathy, and it was the only thing that kept him from breaking down entirely.
'Yun, this doesn't have to be forever, hmm? You're only deferring. You can come back-'
'I won't.' And it was true. As much as it hurt, he could feel it in his bones that he would not return to the love/hate relationship he had with the profession.
But that didn't stop his tears.
Letting his head fall, eyes blinking tears that fell down onto the pavement, he let Mingi wrap him up in his arms, right there in the middle of the pathway. Crying into his shoulder, he let the boy flip up his collar to shroud out the world, and run his warm, kind hands over his back...
He made him feel safe...
And he made him feel supported...
☁️☁️☁️
'Yunho?! Are you coming down?'
Closing his eyes and exhaling in defeat, Yunho stood up, setting aside his thoughts. 'Coming,' he replied, perhaps not loud enough to be heard from the kitchen.
Heading downstairs, he was met with the scene of his parents once again sitting at each end of the table. Not yet having started eating, they waited for him to join them. There was a plate set in his usual spot, with pristine cutlery arranged perfectly as per usual. For once, he wished that his fork would be crooked next to the plate...
Sitting down at the table, he didn't really look at either his mother or father. They hadn't spoken since he'd left the hospital, with the brief exception of him saying hello when he'd returned home from uni.
Seeing his father pick up his cutlery and begin eating, Yunho followed suit, stabbing a piece of pasta with his fork.
'How was your day darling?' His mother asked, not a hint of irritation from the night before.
He tensed his jaw, already feeling under the pump. Shit. My day was shit... 'Fine. And yours? How was the clinic?'
He readied himself for the usual. "Quite busy," or "not too bad," followed by, "we had a blah patient who came in with blah. It was really quite interesting, you should study up on it."
'Darling, do you want to tell us a little more about your day?'
Shocked into silence, he glanced up at her, gauging her expression. 'I-I guess...' He trailed off, unfamiliar with the certain colour to her voice that sounded different to usual. Tonight, it sounded like she was asking, whereas most other nights, sharing was non-optional.
'What about it made it fine?' she asked, before picking up her glass of water and taking a sip.
Yunho glanced between her and his father before he gulped. 'Well... It wasn't... really... fine.....'
'Whatever happened?' she asked, resting her eyes upon him.
He was almost scared to say the truth... '... I haven't thought about how I was going to tell you both yet... I guess I'm still trying to process...'
'Yunho son, there is no need for prior thought. We are a family, and all matters under this roof can be discussed in confidence that this is a safe space.'
He looked at his father, feeling that he had no idea how far from a safe space it felt like under this roof...
'Yunho honey, what your father means to say, is that you can talk to us.'
He sighed, realising that his little hope that maybe things would be different tonight, was just a mirage. Sharing, was still non-optional.
'I dropped out of uni today.'
...
...
...
...
...
Dead.
Silence.
...
...
...
...
...
Not a word was spoken under the safe roof, and as Yunho closed his eyes, taking a deep breath, he just knew that he had just about disowned himself in their eyes.
'I know that you have both given me everything to pursue med, and I know you both helped me so much, but I- I... I'm lost...'
His mother suddenly shook her head, putting down her cutlery and turning her entire body to face him. 'Yunho, you're just going through a phase. You're emotional and you've been exerting a lot of anger lately, and all of this is just a part of growing up-'
'Mother I am grown up,' he gritted through his teeth. 'I don't mean-'
'Yes I know you're grown up, darling, but I mean emotionally, you're going through some times-'
'This has nothing to do with the times I'm going throug-'
'You need to go to university tomorrow and take back those papers, okay? You need to go in and tell them you made a mistake. You-'
'Mother!' Yunho suddenly snapped. Fed up with being told how he felt, and how he should act, he had gone too far to stop now. 'Mother, can you please just, listen to me? I really need you to listen to me, as my mother. Please, for once, will you just listen?'
He watched as she was stunned into silence, sitting back in her chair and staring at him like she'd received a wake-up-call slap to the face. He glanced across the table at his father, who looked somewhere halfway between angry at him for snapping at her, and surprised, and it was not a look he was used to seeing upon his face...
'I feel claustrophobic in my own life,' he suddenly said, interrupting the silence at the table. His voice was small... broken...
'I am struggling, and I have been, for a long time.' His voice turned unsteady, wavering as his turbulent emotions began to bubble to the surface once anew.
'I don't know what I want...
I know I love healthcare... I have so many memories of you both doing your miracle work when I was just young, and I always knew I wanted to do that too...
But since I started this degree, I've come to learn that I don't think I can do it...' He felt tears well up in his eyes... His beloved dreams that belonged to him since he was just a boy, of him becoming a doctor like his parents, all being shattered at once.
'I just can't handle the politics, and the bullshit. It's never ending, and I feel like I'm going back and forth between loving it and detesting it...
I don't want that violent emotional turbulence for the rest of my life. I don't want to suffer, just so that fifty percent of the time, I can love what I'm doing. There must be something out there that I can do, that I love more than half the time...'
His voice trailed off as he choked up, feeling pain bubble to the surface, and overflow in the form of tears spilling down his cheeks. He reached up and wiped them away. 'See?!' he choked, almost spiteful. 'See? I'm crying, because it hurts. I didn't want to let go of those deferral papers. I really didn't...
B-but...'
More tears spilled, and as his nose became more blocked, and his voice refused to work normally, when he spoke, he sounded so incredibly raw and pained, that it hurt even him to hear...
'But no matter how much I love it... I don't think I can do it... I know, I can't do it.'
Swallowing the lump in his throat, he tried not to let his tears become streams, and his breathing to become plagued with hiccups... He didn't even feel comfortable shedding mere tears in front of his parents, let alone full blown melting down...
Coughing, he had to breathe through his mouth to get a deep enough breath to feed his starving lungs.
'I know that this is a lot of I's, but I need this to be about me... What I feel, and what I want... Not what you feel, or what you want, for me.
I need you to understand that I need to find my own way... and that maybe, it's not the same way you chose...'
A long silence drew out between them, and not one Yunho knew how to read. He had finally told them the truth...
But whether that had just dug him his own grave for them to push him into or not... He had no clue...
And so he did what he'd done his entire life... Push down his emotions, and suffer in silence.
Wiping away his tears, he breathed deeply in an attempt to calm himself down, and sat up straighter, swallowing the lump in his throat.
'I took the job at the laboratory. I start in two weeks.'
...
...
...
...
...
His mother leant forward and picked up her fork nodding. 'Will they orientate you to the facility before your start date?'
What? That's it? Will they orientate you to the facility before your start date?
Yunho didn't know whether to laugh, or to cry.
'Early next week they will. I have to pick up my security tags and do a safety induction.'
She nodded. Picking up her fork, she stirred her pasta for a moment, before she looked up at him, letting her eyes fall upon him.
And her next words shocked him to his core, leaving him rattled, and raw...
'Yunho darling, if myself or your father ever gave you the impression that we were forcing you to pursue medicine, then you have our sincerest apologies. It was never our intention to force you to follow in our footsteps. It would obviously be a wise life choice to pursue your doctorate, however that is not to say that there aren't other pathways that you can explore.'
He stared at her, before he let his stunned gaze slip to his father at the other end of the table...
And he nodded.
You're telling me, I suffered for two years, voluntarily?
'You are old enough to make your own decisions,' his mother said, drawing his attention back to her. 'But just know that the decisions you make hold weight. Choose wisely, darling.'
Yunho gulped.
Mainly because those words of wisdom, could be applied to more than one facet of his life.
~~~