5.1
(epilogue - the story on his side)
(Hanbin)
We first met when I was fifteen, and he was sixteen. I was so intimidating, that he called me hyung for at least another month before realizing that I was in fact a year younger.
People might assume that he was dumb. Sure, he was never book smart, and if you used a mathematical problem to assess him, then you might never find out how crazily confident he was on one hand, and how surprisingly gentle he could be on the other hand. He never seemed to be the most diligent person in the room, or the sharpest tool in the shed, but the moment you got to look into his eyes, or listened to what he had to say, he would instantly blow your mind, with his charming smile and an amazingly sharp wit.
That was how I instantly knew, the very moment I laid my eyes on him, that he was gonna be someone I wanted to stick around with for a long, long time.
I used to be so prideful with my pseudonym on stage, B.I, be I, a name reminding me to never forget who I originally came from. Yet he never really called me B.I. He might scream on the top of his lung, "Kim Hanbin!!!", when he needed to wake me up. He might whisper ever so softly, "Hanbinnie", when he wanted to calm my tantrum down. He might just blurt out, "Hanbin ah", when we were busy sitting in silence for hours side by side. I guessed I was always Hanbin in his eyes. And if I had to be completely honest? I never minded that he called me Hanbin. It made me feel somewhat weaker, knowing that my greatest facade wouldn't work with him. Yet somehow, it made me so much stronger, knowing that no matter how intimidating I was to the world, at the end of the day, in his eyes, I might just be as endearing as the way he pronounced my name, "Hanbin".
We used to be kids with empty pockets. We used to have nothing on hands, yet with a pen, a stack of notes with crazily messy handwritings of ours and the smallest corner in the largest building on the street, the great big world suddenly belonged to just the two of us. I could never remember exactly how we filled up dozens of stacks of paper together during those days, but I was certain that it was of the very few things I missed about being young and reckless.
He was only a year older than me, I didn't address him as a hyung so often and we could have easily become friends instead. But he always treated me as though I was at least five years younger than him. If he only had one dollar in his pocket and I told him I was hungry, he would actually spend his last dollar on me and bring me an energy bar in less than fifteen minutes. He never had to, but he always tried to give me everything that he had, even though that meant leaving himself with nothing. I never understood how his mind worked and how he could be so selfless, yet I was too busy enjoying the love and care he showered me with to even once question his kindness.
We lived together, for a good four years, and then on this one fine day, I suddenly realized that I prefered his smile to the rest of the world. He didn't have a dimple on his cheek, nor were his eyes twinkling when he smiled. Heck, sometimes I couldn't even see his eyes when he smiled, but that was never a problem. The moment a grin started to spread across his face, the rest of the world instantly faded away, and only the twinkling happiness in his eyes could radiate through my soul. There was always something so soothing yet intoxicating about the way he looked at me and smiled. One moment, I felt like I was in the safest place in the world, that was, right beside him. The next, my heart was beating like crazy as if it were hanging on the edge of a cliff.
It never took me that long to admit that I fell for him. There was not one good enough reason for me to put myself through the trouble of denying my feelings. So what? I liked a boy, it was no big deal. Instead of stumbling away from the one person I wanted the most, why couldn't I just indulge myself a tad bit longer in his warm embrace? Maybe, maybe if I didn't try so hard to fight back my feelings, all the things I had ever felt for him might eventually turn out to be nothing.
Or so I thought.
I went on one more year, yet another year, and still, I couldn't force myself to get fed up of him. Months after months and years after years but still, he was my most favourite person on Earth. I thought that it was only because I was too lonely, with too many teenage hormones and he just happened to be right there whenever I needed him the most, being overwhelmingly gorgeous, that I couldn't help myself. I thought that if I let loose of myself and interlace our fingers for as long as I wished, eventually our hands would become too sweaty and we would get too tired of seeing each other's face that we stopped wanting to hold on any second longer. But that never happened. It was never the case. I must always put on a tough act because that was what the world expected from me, but only in his arm did I feel like I needn't be strong all the time, and it was okay for me to run away from the rest of the world.
Yet I could never run away from the idea of him.
As the flashlights became brighter and brighter wherever we went, his eyes on me grew colder and colder. I partly knew why, but I never found enough courage to come around with it. He meant well, yes he did, but I couldn't bring myself to believe that he would actually refuse a spot next to me just because the lights were on and more than just a few people were watching. I shouldn't have got mad at him, because he still tried to make small talks to me everyday, either in person or on the phone, and he still held my hand so tightly whenever it was just the two of us. But I was so so mad at him that I didn't even want to pick up his call. I made myself a fool in front of everyone because of him, and he never really once went out of his way to reciprocate my loving gaze. I was both so mad and so embarrassed, that I didn't bother to ask him why, nor did I think any reason would justify his change of heart.
And then I thought to myself, my love was not to be taken for granted, and if I could fall in love, I could definitely fall out of love. I was B.I, and I was unstoppable. If distancing myself from him was what it took for the two of us to end up at happier places in our lives, I would do it, no matter how much it might pain me not to fight for his smile anymore. After all, I loved him so much that I should respect his space. It was not so much about me taking a revenge on the person I loved for not loving me as much, because let's be real: Love never works that way. You may crumble and crawl and go to the end of the world just to make that one particular person happy, but if their definition of happiness does not have enough space to write your name, none of your effort matters, because you enter a battle that you are meant to lose.
I guessed that we never existed in each other's happy ending, but that was fine, I couldn't care less. Once when I was nineteen, he looked at me as though I was the most precious thing he had ever had, and I just knew for certain, that even if it was just for a split second, together we were something so much greater than just a little nothing.
I found out later on that his smile was not necessarily the most gorgeous smile in the world. I started to see better. I started to know better. Jaewon hyung's smile was deadly charming when he told me with a faint hint of pink creeping up his cheeks how much he liked us spending time together. Kim Jiwon, the actress in my favourite drama, had so stunning a smile that could get anyone to drop whatever they were doing. There were countless of other gorgeous smiles for me to choose to fall head over heels for. More than a thousand smiles that could make my heart skip a beat. I was an artist, can you really blame me? My heart always got shaky at pure beauty, whether from the blue blue sky over my head or the dazzling smile of a stranger on a street. It was just the way I was. Yet at the end of the day, I couldn't lie to myself and say that it wasn't his simple, guileless smile that got my heart shaken up the most, over and over again, out of the millions of pretty flawless smiles out there I would have easily fallen for if I could.
I thought I had done a great job at giving him enough space from me to be somewhat happier. I got myself into this whirlwind of multiple projects all at once, I spent days and nights in the same recording studio pouring my mess of untangled thoughts into songs I secretly imagined the two of us singing together one day, and I didn't even have time to check my phone to see if he had called. Sometimes I still caught him in the hallway walking the opposite direction. He still said hi, showing off his signature bunny teeth smile. I still greeted him warmly, and asked if he was doing okay. We still sometimes sat side by side, and talked about how a rap should fit into a verse of a song. But whenever he thought I wasn't paying attention, he would glance at me, so subtly yet so sadly, and the painful look in his eyes almost tore my heart into halves. I couldn't bear to see him in pain. I might have been angry at him, but all I ever wanted was for him to be happy. I did all that he had ever asked from me, just so that the two of us could end up escaping the constant gloom we always carried behind the cheerful smiles we put up against one another, yet there he was, sitting so quietly at a kept distance from me, looking as if it was me who was cruel enough to rip his heart apart.
He was so confusing, I didn't know what to do. If only he would stop looking at me so longingly at one moment and telling me he hated my touch at the next. If only he had said what he meant and meant what he said. I wouldn't have to stop myself from once again reaching out to interlace our fingers. I wouldn't have to pretend that I wasn't stealing a glance at his face. Everything would have been so much easier.
Then again, as little as I knew about love, maybe, love is never supposed to be easy. All the pain that love may put you through, rather than put you off, makes your heart race in excitement. That couldn't be any more true: the mere thought of getting my heart broken by him ignited sparks in my soul, sparks I thought I would never be able to find in this life - the sparks of sacrificing my feeble heart to the one person who could crush it into dust within a blink of his eyes, with an idiotic yet unwavering hope that he wouldn't. If everyone were to get their heart broken at least once in a lifetime, I would always choose him, over and over and over again. I knew all he had ever done was to try and protect me from the crazy mad world outside, and that little fact alone made the idea of being hurt by him oddly fascinating. The one who was the least willing to break me, had the greatest power of breaking me. All I could do was to wait until it happened. He might do it someday, or he might not. But the thought of hopelessly anticipating something that could pain me entirely and permanently felt somewhat enchanting. Sure, I would be scarred, but the marks that he might leave on my heart one day would be the strongest evidence of a love so beautiful like flames that both burst and dwindle - a love that was never meant to be in the first place yet it meant so so much for just one fleeting moment that the rest of the world suddenly all became nothing but smouldering ashes.
Because of him, I was so so ready to be left with nothing but ashes, until one day, he suddenly came around, after all the clumsy hellos and needless hidings, as though he was trying to say, that love doesn't always have to be that hard, and it doesn't always end with at least a person bleeding. He never answered all the questions I would have asked him, he never knew about all the doubts he had put me through, nor did he attempt to clear up any confusion there was between us; but on that one day, just from a long intense look we shared because I insisted so desperately, he finally opened up. He asked me multiple questions, and I couldn't quite recall all of them. However, from what I remembered, I knew he was just as much baffled as I was. He didn't know what to do about us. But on top of everything, he asked me, as though it was the truest truth of the universe, whether or not I knew that he had always liked me differently than any other after all this time. And suddenly, it all made sense. His secretive glances to check on me every once in awhile, his awkward arm always hanging around my shoulders, and the fact that he never knocked although I could easily recognize his shadow outside of my studio. Everything came together so perfectly, like the last piece of the puzzle I had been working on for months, or even years. It all became so simple. He liked me just as much as I liked him that it wouldn't be me burning myself for him but rather the two of us burning ourselves to keep the other warm. He would still spend his last dollar on me any day even if I now could pay for myself. We didn't have to end at a place where one of us would be left with nothing but smouldering ashes. In fact, we never had to end. The flames that stayed between us, despite sometimes roaring and sometimes flickering, never had to die out. Not all love has to end with ashes and at least a wounded heart. That doesn't always have to be the case, at least not for the two of us: We would never have our story end with anything other than the image of Jiwon hyung and me laying perfectly entwined in each other's arm.
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A/N: Helloooo! This is rather a surprise update, ain't it? It seems a bit unplanned and random, but it really is the last part I will update on this story. Don't know if you guys are still around haha, but if you really are, thank you! Feel free to leave any comments if you want (as always, be kind!), and remember to vote for our boys in the upcoming awards!! x
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