Boy Next Door ✔

Chapter 13

From the pounding head, vomit taste in his mouth and dehydrated feeling, Soo Yun figured he must have been drinking heavily last night. His throat felt like sandpaper. It hurt to move. It was like the flu only self-inflicted, which meant he'd get no sympathy from anyone. 

At least the curtains were still closed, he was always adverse to bright light when he was hungover. Maybe he could sleep it off. He curled under the duvet and closed his eyes. He wanted to be nineteen again when he didn't get hangovers, now with each passing year they got worse. This must be why so many older folks didn't get drunk anymore, they'd learnt the hard way.

He fumbled out of the couch and sat on the floor.  With his brain still struggling to recover from the previous night's abuse he had very few options. Reading would be impossible, the TV too garish and he had been off social media for a while. So instead he elected to feed himself and dragged his heavy limbs into the kitchen to make a fry up. Eggs, bacon, sausages, perfect for a hangover.

The rich aroma and the sizzling of the fats made his stomach complain from hunger. As soon as he bit into the sausages though, he complained for real. "How does someone fuck up something so simple?" He asked himself. "I'm hopeless."

He unfortunately had to behave well because he was the one who cooked after all. He sat down and didn't complain about it anymore, he happily consumed it even if it tasted rough and unpleasant against his throat.

As he was downing that terrible food, he remembered Soo Beom and how he always made him breakfast. His older brother truly had spoiled him, giving him everything and doing everything for him. He woke up thirty minutes before Soo Yun always. To make sure the cooks got his breakfast just right and his towel was warmed for when he left the shower.

He always dropped him off at school, had lunch with him and picked him up after classes. When he was hanging out with his friends, he insisted they let Soo Yun into the group or he wouldn't hang out. When other kids made fun of Soo Yun for being too delicate Soo Beom would beat them up for him.

His brother was one for surprises too, each day a multitude of tiny things... how they made him smile from toe to lips. Which hand was his cookie in? Which way would they walk to school? Would they be splashing in puddles or leaping over? Would they dance their special jig if they saw a cat? 

It was so fun, all those everyday adventures... He smiled, still feeling Soo Beom's excitement at seeing a simple flower or the way the light played upon the path. In a life so ordinary it was his that was extraordinary, not because he was given so much, yet because he made it that way. As the baker turned flour and water to bread, as God turned seed and water to flower, Soo Beom turned the mundane into fascination and love; he was Soo Yun's heaven, his superhero.

He decided to visit his brother's grave after breakfast. He cleared the sink once he was done and went upstairs for a shower, cold, to jolt him awake and get rid of his hangover. He got dressed and wore a yellow knotted sweater as an afterthought. His brother had knitted it for him on Christmas, he'd enlisted the help of their mother and spent three whole months on it.

He locked his door and walked to the elevator, pausing to look at Kris Lu's door. "I hope he's okay." He mumbled.

On the way he bought his brother's favorite strawberry yogurt and a burger.

The cemetery was cool and there was dew on the grass. The air was fresh and, unlike the unloved graves further away, Soo Beom's was covered in bright blooms.  In that mid-morning light under a cloudless sky, the air fragrant with pine-needles, it felt more like the park on a Sunday afternoon.

He knelt beside the grave and placed the things he'd bought on it. "I brought you your favorite." He chuckled lightly, opening the burger wrap and sticking a straw in the strawberry milk. 

He knelt there for a long while, not saying anything else. Reminiscing and thinking of  their childhood. After a while, he got off his knees and sat down. "I owe you more than I give brother." He wiped the tears from his face and sniffed loudly. 

"I will learn to be more like you. I was broken and you picked me up, kissed me, as brothers do. I was shattered and you put the pieces back together with tender love, as brothers do. I curled into you, felt your protection, as a younger sibling does."

He stood up and wiped the dirt from his jeans, "Let me grow strong dear brother. Strong enough to live the life you wanted me to and without letting our parents down."

He paid his respects and walked back to his apartment. He was a man on mission, starting to get a feel for who he really was at his core. These days of more calmness, now that he had settled things with his parents, or was at least beginning to, and mastered the art of having a clear brain, during the day the serenity of feeling his own intelligence rather than tiring himself with unresolved thoughts, he could see far more clearly, yet rather through his senses than his eyes, a sort of thinking without words. He still couldn't control his nights and the nightmares they brought but at least he looked forward to each morning.

And what came to him were new thoughts, a sort of poetry he never realized he was capable of. The avenue was breathing, living, through the trees and the people, as if they were in a strange conversation of sorts, one of the emotions. It was as if the colors and the sounds, the bustle and the quiet space, were a million weaved moments both transient and real.

He greeted the old doorman and asked after his wife as usual, then up the elevator and to his door. He glanced at Kris Lu's door again, before unlocking his and he stood rooted at the door. There was a pair of boots on his doormat, a few sizes too big for him.

He clenched his fists. His baseball bat was all the way in the shoe cabinet on the hallway, he had no way to protect himself. 

What bugler takes off their shoes first? 

He made sure to leave the door open and slowly walked into the apartment. One step, then two, fists still clenched, down the stairs and into the living room. Coming face to face with a red eyed red nosed Kris Lu.