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MAY 14
A warm breeze pulled gently at Minho's hair as he shut off the air conditioning and rolled the windows down after getting a sufficient distance away from the university.
He felt... free. Freer than he ever had. Somehow he ended up smiling— so wide that his cheeks hurt— though nothing happened, so he thought he would've looked like an idiot had there been anyone there to see him. But totally alone in the car and far from anyone who knew him, he drank in summer sunlight and fresh, green-feeling air and felt like it didn't matter if some random people on the road thought he looked like an idiot when they saw him for a few insignificant seconds. Had he ever smiled like this before?
He turned on music, too. And eventually sang— actually sang, instead of just humming along quietly (as had been his habit whenever the music was loud enough to completely cover up the sound). That's something he hadn't really done in who knows how long, not since he started to feel uncomfortable letting his voice out so indiscriminately. It'd been years, anyway.
How long had it been since he enjoyed being alone, not because he was too tired and afraid to be with other people, but because he felt free on his own? Because he could be anything, when he was on his own, now that he wasn't forcing himself to uphold an image, deluding himself into believing that that image, that icy mold, was what truly he was and wanted to be.
He felt a burning, bursting warmth inside him, different, but similar to the feeling that would bubble up in his chest and in his stomach when Jisung touched him. He felt alive. Overwhelmingly so— like he was a seed that had finally sprouted out of wintry, thawing ground. He let his left hand hang over the door of his open-windowed car; spread out his fingers to let the wind flow between them.
Three hours felt a lot shorter today than it possibly ever had. Way, way too short. By the time Minho started to recognize his surroundings, the warmth mellowed out, and so did he. He returned to humming softly along with the music as he pulled his hand back to the wheel to maneuver familiar turns. Humming turned into tapping his thumb on the wheel rhythmically as he pulled into his neighborhood, and finally, after months, he was back home. Too soon.
Needlessly, he wondered, as he parked, if he even wanted to be here.
Struggling to fiddle the keys into the right position and turn them in the lock when his hands were full of boxes, he opened the door and stepped inside and felt the remnants of the warmth in his chest go out like a candle as his pleasant, freeing solitude vanished. He hadn't even seen a single soul yet, and still, he felt an oppressive silence creep over him as his smile faded. Quiet was good in seclusion but here, it was suspense. He held his breath. A chill ran down his spine, ice cold sweeping over him as he shut out the sunny, near-eighty-degree weather with a click of the door.
Unlike last time, when he returned home, there wasn't even any relief from returning to a familiar place.
It just felt... strange. To be here. Now that everything had been figured out; now that he knew exactly what the years spent in this house had done to him. And he was the only one that knew, wasn't he?
Memories of Jisung and him, here at the front door— the panic, the desperation, the absolute humiliation— flooded in, and they felt so distant. Was that really him, in those memories? Had it really happened, right here? Had he ever been so clueless about himself?
Stiffly, he closed the door behind him, willing himself not to act weird. What would it be like to see the faces of the people who showed him how to build the shell he spent over half his life in (and who encouraged him to stay inside it), now that he knew what they did to him? Before, all he knew was that they made him wildly uncomfortable, but now? How was he supposed to act politely, normally, when suddenly faced with the people he knew had burned him? Or, maybe it was better to say, the ones who had put him out and left him out in the cold, not noticing when his body wracked with shivers; turning a blind eye as he succumbed to frostbite?
just act normal, Minho told himself. but wait— he thought, kicking off his shoes, drifting towards the kitchen with a leaning stack of boxes piled to his chin— what is normal?
His mother was there at the table. And his father stood nearby... almost as if they were actually waiting anxiously for him to get home. That might have been what it looked like, but no, all his mother did was glance up at him and wave; she said a quick hello, didn't get up. It felt indifferent, almost.
His father didn't say hello, but instead offered to take a few boxes off of the left-leaning, slowly sliding stack in Minho's arms. Minho quickly, maybe a little too quickly, turned him down, because in doing so, he'd come far too close to him and Minho just knew he'd end up brushing against him somehow. ...Because he was anxious to show that he didn't want anyone to touch him.
(Besides the fact that he didn't want his father helping him in any sort of way.)
He felt fourteen again. And it made him want to die.
the old feelings— the ones i thought were gone forever— hit me like a tidal wave.
i don't wanna be here.
my frostbitten skin aches.
don't look at me, please no one look. in my mind, when i imagined this, i kinda thought i'd be proud of myself, but now that i'm here i'm just...
i'm just scared. my weakness, my need for help, my desperation for love— the things that i've caved to and allowed to take me over almost completely for the last few months... i feel like they'll be able to see them all on me, written on my face. just one glance at me and they'll be able to tell that i've been doing things that no one here would ever do. please don't look, nobody look.
Guess what. Everybody looked. Worst of all, his sister looked.
Mom and Dad were one thing (there'd always been such a disconnect that he'd never cared nearly as much what they thought of him), but his sisters... the ones who really knew what a weak, sniveling little crybaby he'd been— nothing scared him more than letting them see what he'd gone and done. It was fucking disappointing.
When she looked at him, she did it with a tiny, half-smile rising on her face. Just a twitch of the corners of her lips, really. Something dropped in the pit of Minho's stomach— so powerfully that for a split second he'd thought he dropped one of the boxes. What was he supposed to make of that face? ...It felt mocking. She could see, couldn't she?
Truth was, he'd loosened up so much as he spent time with Jisung and the others, and he'd really (mostly) believed, as Jisung was always telling him, that it was a good thing. Life was getting better. Before leaving college, he'd thought, from time to time, about what his family would think of him now, and felt some pretty satisfying spite, knowing that no matter how much they belittled him, he was the one starting to actually enjoy his life now, while they all seemed so bland and colorless; uptight and unhappy... just as he had been. So how was it that, with his sister looking at him now, he felt a need to shrink down, feeling shame, as if she could see that he'd crumbled, with just one look at him— that he'd lost.
He knew he was better off this way, he knew he didn't care what they thought of him anymore, didn't even want their approval, so why did the thought of them knowing he'd done anything they'd consider weak or weird still petrify him?
Why did this look on his sister's face scare the living daylights out of him?
Like when he came home from Christmas break, Minho anxiously headed straight for his room. Not like there was any reason for him to hang around out there anyway— it wasn't like his family was waiting to heap piles of questions on him about how his second semester had been or anything. They didn't expect him to talk, and he didn't expect them to, either.
Hurrying to let his boxes spill over the floor and shutting the door, Minho sunk down onto his bed and pressed his face into it, just now realizing how wiped he was. It must have been from the total 180 his mood did just then, as if someone flipped a switch in his brain— because unlike you'd expect, the three-hour drive home had been energizing, if anything.
But now he was in his room, he could just relax; it was all okay.
Except that it wasn't.
...Even his room, now, wasn't where he really wanted to be. Before, this had been the only place in the world where he felt like he could get any real, peaceful rest. This had been (and he would've never called it that, but) his safe space. But now it felt... tainted. Colored blue and grey just like the rest of this stuffy, unhappy old house. And lacking. Its appeal had come from its isolation; its seclusion, making it an oasis in a desert of too-many-people-looking-at-him. Now there was somewhere else he could get rest even more real, even more peaceful— or rather, someone he could get it from.
With a sigh, muffled into his mattress, he thought of Jisung.
. a few hours ago .
Eventually, after Minho finished his packing and Jisung was left with nothing to do but start his packing, Felix appeared, finally ready to pack as well, so Jisung headed to his own room, and Minho gathered up his backpack, his boxes, the suitcase he haphazardly stuffed full of random things he'd want quick, easy access to once he got back, and carried it down to the parking lot in two trips.
On his way back up from the first trip, he passed by Chan, who was (unsurprisingly) working, but hurried out from behind the counter when he saw Minho, and stopped him to give him a hug goodbye.
Taking a detour before starting his second trip, he passed Jeongin, who was heading to his own room from Seungmin's, in the hallway, and each of them nodded silently at each other. Minho waved, said, "See ya, Jeongin."
Jeongin replied similarly, tacking on a, "Soon, I hope."
So Minho smiled (in a way that sort of meant a lot), then slipped into Jilix's room... which was a disaster.
"Road trip: Part Two!" Felix exclaimed, taping up his last box. "Except it's just me and Sungster this time."
Jisung just laughed at the nickname. "Yeah, I wish we could all go together again."
"You're going home in Felix's car?" Minho asked, head tilted.
"Yep. Surprise! I don't have a car."
His head tilted further. "Who brought you to college, then?" Yes, they all knew each other beforehand, but as Jisung and Felix had only gotten close after becoming roommates, so would Felix really have done it back then?
"My mom!" He smiled, as if just at the mention of her name. Minho couldn't imagine feeling that way about a parent. "I felt really bad about making her drive so far, though, so Felix is taking me back." "Hey, speaking of my mom, do you want to meet her? You might like her."
Caught off guard, Minho raised his eyebrows just so and shrugged. "Uh, sure." Perhaps he was curious to see just what kind of woman raised a son so vibrant and... well... everything that Jisung was. That indescribable aura of warmth and comfort, of acceptance and simplicity. What kind of woman was a parent worth smiling about like that? Foreign to a sense of maternal fondness, perhaps Minho was simply intrigued.
"I'll text you when we get back; you can come over."
"Okay." And, with that, Minho started downstairs, on his second and last trip to the parking lot with the remnants of his luggage: backpack shrugged on, pillow in hand, and suitcase dragging behind him.
Minho didn't hug Jisung, because they weren't saying goodbye.
. .
By the time he got that text, telling him to head over, since Jisung and Felix were only five minutes away, Minho's cats were already walking all over him and his room (which did make him feel better, because he loved his cats so much and he'd missed them, but still, it wasn't Jisung).
He hadn't realized that Jisung expected him to just... walk in with him as he returned home; to be there with him as he saw his mother (who he clearly adored) for the first time in months, to meet her at the very same time. The thought was somehow a little daunting, but Minho just wanted an excuse to get out of his house as soon as possible, so he pulled himself off his bed and threw on his shoes within thirty seconds of receiving the text, avoiding stares as he weaved through the kitchen to the door and stepped out into a warm summer evening.
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i actually like this one
why do always i gotta be posting at the wrong time of year,, like... i was posting the christmas chapters of hold me in may, now im posting may chapters at christmas time, what the heck