#Parallel universes | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

jilixthinker · 1 year ago

Text

blackholes

=͟͟͞♡ jisung × fem!reader

=͟͟͞♡ parallel universes au

word count: 7.4K

synopsis: you can delude yourself and wait for the paint to dry and take away the evil. but the only truth, unique and unchanging, is that pain only creates more pain. you can close your eyes and believe otherwise, imagine another ending. but when you wake up, jisung is still sick and his illness is eating him from the inside.

content warning: explicit sexual content, oral sex (f receiving), angst, depression, mention of suicide, drinking and smoking, sufference, eventual happy ending (?)

=͟͟͞♡ please, consider reblogging if you like my works!

A drop of crimson red paint is tapping on the ground at a regular rhythm. At first glance, to someone who is not trained to know how to observe, it might even look like blood. The fingertips from which the paint is dripping off are moving slowly over the paper, searching for the weak spot on the canvas. There is always one, where the fabric gives in and the color soaks deeper. The fingers probe its full extent until a small smile of intimate satisfaction appears in your face.

The breaking point is within the body portrayed on the canvas, right in the center of his forehead. It sparkles a little like an Indian diamond, and you dip the tip of your brush in the red paint that previously soiled your fingers. At the bottom corner to the right, near the tapered shape of the feet you have just finished painting, you trace a few words.

pain creates love.

The young man on the canvas is dazzlingly beautiful. His eyes are night onyx, deep as lagoons. His lips are the color of ripe cherries, swollen and tumid. He is portrayed nude, legs spread wide and arms outstretched toward the viewer. He exudes eroticism from every angle, yet he is far from vulgar. A few strands of inky hair hide the pale, flushed skin on his cheekbones. Slender, elegant fingers are stretched out to their full length as if to grasp the air. There is no background. The only foreign element to that body is the canopy on which the boy is slumped. The draped sheets caress his figure enhancing his nakedness without covering it. The only dissonant note in that marvelous sensual work, the only weak point, is the too-hinted blush on his forehead. It's almost not noticeable if you lose yourself in the full beauty of the portrait, but you see it, because you painted it and because it's part of the canvas, part of the subject. And it is singular, as him.

"It's a masterpiece".

The voice is off-screen, as if it's coming from another world. You don't turn to check who it belongs to, but you keep staring at your painting. The sound of small footsteps unravels in the air of the room. The parquet floor creaks at every inch.

"I am not fully satisfied with it".

You run the back of your hand over the fabric, as if the epidermis could erase the color and replace it with a different image. The voice approaches you from behind and blows a crystalline laugh as his shadow reflects off the picture, obscuring the white of the canopy.

"Don't be too hard on yourself. What's wrong with it?"

As you move your gaze from the painting to turn around, the exact copy of the boy portrayed on the canvas stands out in all his glory in front of you. His shower-wet hair frames his ephebic features like a wreath, and a tiny smile illuminates his face in a cascade of light.

"It's not like the original".

The boy shakes his head and time freezes. A few drops of water land on your neck.

"It doesn't have to be".

Sharpened fingers curl around the closed collar of your shirt and begin to loosen it. Button by button, the fabric slips off your figure and the young man in front of you kneels down to slip off your shirt and deposit hundreds of tiny kisses on your hands. When he stands up again, he approaches your body and touches it, appreciating every inch of it and covering it with attention. You lift you face and bite his cheek, losing yourself in the soothing smell of Sunday sex.

Pain creates love, you are quite certain of it. Loving someone who suffers means loving every single portion of their pain and making it your own. It is not easy to desire something so abstract, but there are people who try, with soul, body, bones and sweat. Some succeed, some fail, and some keep trying. You cannot identify yourself in any of these categories. You only knows that you love, unconditionally, without a specific goal. You love so much that the pain is now only the frame to a picture of yours, you love so much that the Indian diamond on the boy's forehead becomes almost invisible to your eyes. Almost.

You can delude yourself and wait for the paint to dry and take away the evil. But the only truth, unique and unchanging, is that pain only creates more pain. You can close your eyes and believe otherwise, imagine another ending. But when you wake up, Jisung is still sick and his illness is eating him from the inside.

+:★:+*━━━*+:★:+*━━━*+:★:+*

You meet Jisung in the twilight of his nineteen years, when he is just a little lump of insecurity and imagination. He clutches a vanilla coffee in his left hand and a briefcase in his right, crammed with story incipits that he will never finish. He dropped out of school to become one of those freelance writers you see on the covers of magazines for intellectuals, the ones who live in unpronounceable French towns and smoke mint cigarettes while sipping aged cognacs. It must not be bad, he thinks, to be envied while basking in your self admiration.

When Jisung sees you, he is leaving creative writing school, and you are leaving art school. You have a white palette under your arm, open apron smeared with oil paints, and nose sniffing the air. In fact, Jisung doesn't really have time to see you, because fate plans to make him trip over you, causing his vanilla coffee to spill all over your pants.

With his face on fire and the excuse of dry cleaning to repay for the damage, you two get acquainted. Jisung discovers that you smoke mint cigarettes, like French writers. No cognac though, you say. You prefer gin. It goes down faster and helps me come up with new ideas for painting.

Jisung asks to see one of your works, but your condition is of him posing as a model for your next portrait assignment, because you had been looking for a face like his for months. Jisung lets you beg for a while, but then he capitulates in front of another coffee.

You live alone in a loft on the fifth floor of a suburban building. The apartment is a hellish mess and it almost looks as if a tornado has swept through the living room, bathroom and kitchen, mixing the different furnishings together. You invite Jisung to sit wherever he wants, assuming he can find a seat.

You silently eat two bowls of instant ramen and then dangle awkwardly in front of each other, thinking about what to say. After a few minutes Jisung breaks the silence and asks you to see your portraits. You dig through the easels piled against the wall before handing him a few palettes.

The portraits are not refined. In fact, that's the reason you are going to art school. You cannot seem to maintain proper proportions between the various body parts you draw. In the first painting you show Jisung, the woman's hands on the canvas are too big and stubby, in the second the eyes are exaggeratedly spaced apart, and in the third the legs are so crooked that they almost seem to belong to two different people. In spite of everything, Jisung fails to give those mistakes the connotation of flaws, because there is something that compels him to stay looking at them without speaking.

While Jisung stares absently at the portraits, you flip through the half-told stories you found in his briefcase and reads fragments of disconnected sentences with a lazy smile on your lips. Jisung reflects for the time of three cigarettes before looking at you and stating that he is ready to be drawn.

When you get up to gather your brushes and paints, out of the corner of your eyes you see the boy becoming pale and widening his eyes. A split second later, the canvas slips from Jisung's hands, crashing to the floor with a reverberating noise.

You don't have time to process what happened because Jisung runs quickly toward the exit, almost crashing against the walls. He runs down the stairs as fast as he can, tripping over his feet, hitting the steps with each step and leaving you, alone in your apartment, one hand extended toward the door, clutching the rarefied air.

+:★:+*━━━*+:★:+*━━━*+:★:+*

"You remind me of someone I've seen before".

The second time you and Jisung met, he has the time to hide behind an alley, because it's easier not to be asked questions if you have something to hide. In this case, you happen to turn on that very alley and you find yourself in front of Jisung, curled in a quivering ball of shame. After assuring him more than once that you don't care if he broke the canvas and ruined the portrait, you convince him to have another cup of coffee together because you will never find a face like his for your painting.

You drink unsweetened black espresso, steaming hot to the limits of what is possible to drink. Jisung looks at you with an horrified look as he opens the third sugar packet and melts the grains inside his vanilla drink.

"Who?"

"I don't know, but I'm sure. Your hands".

Jisung glows and hides his flushed face behind his coffee.

"What's wrong with my hands?"

"They are vaguely erotic".

You lazily runs your fingers over Jisung's manicured nails.

"Thank you?"

"I'd like to paint those too. If you want to. You must promise not to run away and leave me alone like an idiot though".

Jisung stares out the coffee shop window and counts the drops that go condensed in the corners of the glass, Your voice is just a shade in the picture in front of him.

"Mh".

"Can I read something you wrote?"

"Didn't you already do that at your house a few weeks ago?"

"Jisung, come on, I want to read something serious".

"I'll pretend I didn't hear".

You smile andd curl your lips around your glass.

"You don't tell me that's all you wrote?"

"No. Of course not".

"Thank God. Those stories were really cheap".

You barely have time to shield your face behind your arms before Jisung's indigned look - along with his fists - dumps a shower of insults on you. It takes him a few minutes before he realizes that, hey I was just kidding, and he stops swearing.

You stand outside of the coffee shop shortly afterward, huddling under a horrible slime colored umbrella. You shove a mint cigarette between your lips and ask Jisung if he wants to try.

Jisung spends the next half hour coughing and cursing in all the languages of the world.

"You're not really suited to be a writer".

Jisung kicks you lightly and chuckles half offended as he watches you prance around on one foot yowling like a wounded puppy. Then you pull him by the hood of his jacket and smother your last words over his mouth. His comment on the kiss is anything but an insult. Jisung bites his lips and thinks that maybe you are right.

He doesn't tell you, though.

+:★:+*━━━*+:★:+*━━━*+:★:+*

"What happened the first time at my house?"

"What are you talking about? "

"The painting".

"I thought we had already talked about that".

"Indeed. I'm not interested in the painting itself".

"It slipped from my hands".

Jisung looks down and you don't believe him for a second. You finish brushing the bluish sky and wipe your hands on the apron. You watch the canvas, but it's useless. You weren't able to paint decently for months.

"It doesn't matter. I couldn't paint anything anyway".

Jisung barely nods and closes his eyes. He squeezes his thighs together and rocks in his chair, absorbing the faint winter rays of light on his skin.

"Do blind people dream?"

You watch Jisung tensing his back like a cat and stretching slowly, making his spine creak.

"It depends. If they are blind from birth maybe they only dream of sounds".

Jisung opens his eye and observes you, illuminated by the light. He looks almost like a beam of the whitest sun, his hair is tousled and his lips chapped by the wind.

"What do you think is worse, being born without sight or losing it over time?"

"Why are you asking me this?"

"I don't know".

You twist your mouth because Jisung tells that he doesn't know to a lot of things and you can never figure out if it's because he doesn't want to answer or because he really doesn't know. You pretend to be mad at it, but the facade doesn't even last two seconds. Jisung is like that anyway. You love his everything or you don't love anything at all.

"I think it's worse to never have the chance to see colors, or the sun".

He gets up from the stool and sits in your lap, staring at an indefinite spot on your face. You stand still for several minutes without speaking, then Jisung rubs his forehead against your cheek.

"If I couldn't see, what would you do?"

"I'd be painting with words".

Jisung kisses you and you end up flying outside the universe, navigating purple galaxies in the space constellation, running through the Milky Way and on a bridge leading to the end of the world.

+:★:+*━━━*+:★:+*━━━*+:★:+*

"I don't feel like playing anymore".

Jisung, sitting on the wooden chair, looks at the window in an absorbed manner. He crosses his ankles and wrinkles his nose as if to chase away an annoying thought.

"I am bored. I've been sitting in this position for almost two hours".

You let out a soft grunt as you pick up a multitude of dried up tubes of paint from a ceramic jar.

"You are just being bratty", you comment, resting the brush on the coffee table and rubbing your hands against each other to scrape off the remnants of color on your nails.

"What do you feel like doing?" you ask as you look up at him.

Jisung smiles and gets up from his small chair by sliding down part of the sheet that covered his hips.

"You are dirty", he says, beginning to absentmindedly touch his lower lip with his fingers.

"I will take a shower after this".

Jisung shakes his head slowly. He moistens his index and middle fingers with his pink tongue, sticking out of his mouth.

"I don't think so".

Another handful of small steps and he is in front of you, already crushed against the bones of you pelvis. With his hands he brings your neck close to his face and licks the skin exposed by your shirt, from your ear down to the collarbones. There he stops and sucks just enough to leave you with a red bruise.

"I'll clean you up", he moans, biting the patch of skin at the nape of your neck, near your hairline.

You scramble to the kitchen chair, pushed by Jisung's hands that are slipping off your shirt, and it's pointless to tell him that I can't be dirty there because he is wetting a path of bare skin down to your belly button. He sticks his tongue out and he swirls it slowly inside of it, then continues on the dimples above your hip bone.

You feel your leg muscles contracting and you clasp your hands around Jisung's shoulders, pushing him down and allowing him to curl up on the floor, a hungry expression on his face.

Jisung spreads his legs and you let your head loll against the wall behind you as he bites your skin and removes your pants. You feel a tender, raspy tongue lazily sucking on the inside of your thighs and nibbling at them slowly. His fingers cup your already sopping cunt and start moving, circling your entrance and smearing the slick on the skin around it.

Jisung's mouth is searing and his black eyes bottomless. His saliva seethes on your flesh as you tense your legs with tiny spasms each time you feel him biting closer and closer to your aching pussy. Maybe he is sucking away something else, buried deeper somewhere inside you as well, but you have no strength to think about it when Jisung finally makes up his mind and sucks your clit in between his lips.

You hold your breath and all of your blood drains from your brain to focus lower, warming where the other's mouth failed. The wet sound is obscenely filthy as his lips slide up and down along your drenching pussy, lapping at the thin, swollen skin of your lips.

Jisung alternates between spitting dribbles of saliva on your cunt and sliding his fingers inside of you, massaging your aching walls for a long time. When he harshly sucks your clit inside his mouth, he lets out a satisfied meow and closes his eyes, completely enraptured by his own ego, fulfilled while listening to your moans. His fingers grab the tender flesh of your butt and he sinks his nose into your cunt, sucking as vigorously as possible on your puffy clit.

When he feels the walls of your pussy contract around his fingers, he starts to thrust them slowly and takes his time to give kitten licks at your hardened nub, sucking only the tip of it with undulating motions.

You squint your eyes, press your hands on the back of Jisung's neck and you finally cum with a dull gasp. Jisung presses his thumb against his own lips, smearing your release on them. He stares at you with vicious eyes and swallows slowly, wiping his crimson lips with his fingertips.

"You are clean now".

You kiss him, biting hard on his lips and licking his chin and cheeks to remove all of the traces of your slick from his face. When you inhale the smell of his skin, you thank whoever is above or below for allowing you to possess him.

"You are my masterpiece".

+:★:+*━━━*+:★:+*━━━*+:★:+*

The spring of Jisung's twentieth year has the dull, bland taste of rain. It rains all the time, every day. Flowers fail to sprout and the few that succeed, eventually rot.

Jisung began to smoke, even though he gave up on his writing career. It wasn't really suitable, all things considered. He smokes your mint cigarettes and lets the fresh flavor fill his mouth before blowing away the residue. When he looks out from behind the window glass at the water drops tapping on the puddles, he sighs sadly.

You are splayed on the sofa with your legs curled on the floor. You snort, and your voice is hoarse as if you had just woken up.

"Would you like some tea?".

"Uh".

Jisung throws the cigarette in a jar filled with soil. He clicks his tongue against his palate and heads to the kitchen to boil tap water in the pot. He looks for the fruit tea filters behind the pantry doors when he stops all of a sudden, feeling the flesh under his skin instantly freezing. He tries to focus on something, anything. He stares at the wall, he opens his lips and, instead of a cry, what comes out is a whisper.

"Baby".

Jisung trembles and stretches a hand out in front of him. His eyes water and overflow like rain. He squeezes the air with his fingers and his veins swell on his wrists, pulsing his blood down.

"Baby", he slurs again.

You lift your head from the back of the sofa and look at your boyfriend's shoulders hunched forward.

"What's the matter?"

Jisung crinkles his eyes even more and doesn't hold back a tear that lines his cheeks and wrinkles his round chin. He squints, and thousands shades of colors disappear. His muscles relax involuntarily, and he hears the sound of shattering shards as if his brain had detached from his own skullcap to navigate inside of the the cerebral fluid.

"Baby, where am I?"

You sprint to your feet at lightning speed and you hold up Jisung before he can crash to the floor. His head, as an unconditional reflex, lunges forward and slams back against your forehead.

"Where are you?"

Jisung thrashes against your chest and continues to shake with convulsive spasms. He grits his teeth and tries to slip out of your tight embrace.

I love you say I love you and you see me I see you tell me.

"I am here. I am behind you. I won't leave you", you try to soothe him.

He turns around in deluded strength and fumbles with his fingers in search of you face. He taps lips, eyes, hair, cheekbones, squeezes knuckles and bites his own tongue.

"I don't see you".

Jisung's voice trembles. He opens his mouth two or three times, but his words dry up like a desert. A breath of wind, and he speaks feebly.

"I see nothing".

no no no no no no no

"The painting too. I couldn't see it anymore. It didn't slipped from my hands".

Jisung is gushing like a raging river and in a split second he becomes aware of herself, of you, of everything floating in his mind.

"It wasn't there".

say I'm there and you see me because I'm here and I won't leave you say that-.

"It was just a black hole".

please

"I lied to you".

I don't want to

"I never told you how my mother died".

"Jisung".

"No. You have to listen to me".

You feel your throat burning as if someone was smoking inside your stomach. You can feel the aftertaste of ash in the mouth of your esophagus and you try to swallow. But nothing goes down.

"Do you know what glaucoma is?"

"I don't think I want to know".

"It's a disease that affects eyesight. Your eyes accumulate water until the internal pressure is too much. You can't feel pain. That's why it is diagnosed too late. It's like your eyes are drowning in tears".

You die a little with each word, as if Jisung is spewing ink, and you are an inkwell collecting phantom waste.

"She couldn't stand the idea of not being able to see anymore".

"You could not have-"

"I have it".

You feel like falling. You stumble and fall. You fall for an endless time, and you fall into a dark well. You don't touch the bottom and keep falling into the cold. You try to scream but that requires oxygen, and your lungs contract, spitting out carbon dioxide because there is no more oxygen in you. So you cling to the walls, crawl your fingers and flay you skin. A cry rumbles out, but the voice is not yours.

+:★:+*━━━*+:★:+*━━━*+:★:+*

The first time you make love, Jisung feels broken. Not in the external sense of the act itself. He feels broken in a deeper place, where you cannot touch and where he didn't even know he could feel something. This is the reason why, in the middle of the intercourse, he starts crying and wets the sheets with salty tears. He cries so quietly that you don't even realize it.

"Paint me".

"What?"

Jisung rolls up between the covers and straddles you.

"I wish you would paint all the colors of the world on me".

He moans and rubs his nose against the protruding bones of your neck. Tears dry on the skin of his cheeks. When you taste the salt on your tongue, you softly bite his chin.

"Paint is bad for your skin, you know that?".

Jisung bursts out laughing, and you laugh too in response.

"I know, but I would like a sun on my stomach. Or on my back".

You clasp Jisung's hips in your hands, anchoring him to your waist.

"You are bright already".

"And a meadow, too, all over my arms. And light, everywhere. Beams of light all over my face. I want to shine in the night".

+:★:+*━━━*+:★:+*━━━*+:★:+*

"You'll be there right? After".

"Where?"

"On the other side".

You slide the brush over Jisung's shoulders, lying on the floor with goose bumps caused from the cold tiles.

"Don't move".

There are empty liquor bottles scattered on the floor, with a bittersweet smell lingering in the room and permeating the walls. No light. Many unlit cigarette everywhere, a few blood stains - or perhaps paint - on Jisung's feet. You keep painting without seeing where you are passing the brush.

"I will follow you everywhere, if I can".

"You know that it won't be possible for you".

"I know".

You kiss the colors on his skin and Jisung tastes like sweat and burnt wood.

"But maybe it's better this way".

Jisung reaches out his arm and tentatively finds the neck of a bottle, brings it to his lips and drinks the clear liquid, letting a few drops slide down his chin to his nodular neck. Jisung picks up the alcohol with his fingertips and brings it to his eyes, pressing a little. It stings at first, but then he begins to see stars in front of him, so close he thinks he can gather them in the palm of his hand.

"Do you want me to open the window?" you ask.

Jisung shakes his head and pushes you against him, causing the brushes to fall from your hands. He clings to your back and pet your hair, smelling it and tasting it with his tongue.

"Did you take your medicine?"

Jisung shakes his head and searches for cigarettes inside his pants. He manages to find one and places it between your lips.

"It won't be so bad".

You inhale the smoke and blow it out somewhere in the darkness of the room. You rest your lips on Jisung's without kissing him, the dry taste of tobacco invades his throat and he smiles with the corners of his mouth.

"I have to take you to the sea, near the cliffs. I can paint the waves on your cheeks. We can even jump from very high if you want. Or you can sleep on the sand and taste the water".

Jisung pulls the smoking stick from your fingers and takes a wide puff of smoke, holding it inside himself as much as possible, then pulls you against him and opens his mouth, breathing into you.

"It will be fine, Jisung".

Jisung laughs and feels his throat tighten in a thorny grip. He gasps and pushes the lit cigarette on the back of his hand. He grits his teeth.

"How come I'm not sure?"

You take his lips in between your fingers and squeeze them until they open wide, then you move closer and whisper everything to him. You whisper the world and the universe.

you are light you are white and red you are scarlet you are perfect you are alive alive alive you are not the rain because it keeps raining and I will always wait for you on the other side always because you are alive and you are here it will be okay

And it should be okay, it should be right. Jisung would have kissed you and said it's true, it's always okay when you're here. But no, he pushes you on the chest and shrugs, his eyes blazing and his lips frozen.

"Listen to me. Outside, somewhere in this infinite universe, there is a parallel world. I know for a fact that it exists, just as I know that in that world everything is right, as it should be here. There is a Jisung running across the grass on a sunny day, and you are chasing after him and falling down in an attempt to catch him. There's the two of us laughing and drinking until dawn, throwing ourselves on the ground and hugging each other so we don't get cold. We have flowers on the balcony and dew in our hair. It never rains. The sun always shines. This world really exists, and it's beautiful. But what you have to understand - what I want you to understand - is that this world, this one, it's not that. This is the reality that hurts, the one where you have to pay a price for your life. We can't run across a meadow here, because you picked me and adopted me out of pity. You even managed to fall in love with me, and that's the wrongest thing you could have done. Because you could really be bright, you could really shine, have flowers on the balcony and dew in your hair. But you chose me. And this is not the world in which everything is right. This is the world in which I am fading, the world in which I am losing the color that you are so desperately trying to put on me. But look what happen, look".

Jisung gets up and you can feel his small body clawing in the dark inside the room to open the balcony door and go outside. The apartment is suddenly pervaded with a gray light, reflecting the color of the sky. You look at Jisung, naked, stiff and trembling under the raindrops falling from above.

Jisung pulls his lips up in a distorted smile.

"See?"

Water runs down his back and the paint drips on the soles of his feet, sliding down to his short, pink nails.

"The color melts under the rain. It only lasts a few seconds before I come back to be as transparent as your canvas. And this is not the world where the sun shines. These are blackholes. Life, light, nature, they are all projections in my head. But you. You can still make it. You don't have to follow me. Don't follow my selfishness".

"Jisung, I have to".

Jisung trembles and the water rushes over him. The reality mocks him and everything he can love.

"No, you want to".

don't come with me you are my love

"Don't follow me to the other side. You will fade too".

You clench your fists and watch the drops wetting the ephebic figure in front of you. Jisung comes to you and blows desolate words into your face.

"When I ask you to paint me, don't. When I ask you to pity me, don't. When I beg you to come with me, please, don't".

"No. I must follow you. Everywhere. As long as there are black holes, I will be behind you. As long as this world sucks. As long as I breathe".

+:★:+*━━━*+:★:+*━━━*+:★:+*

One night you close your eyes and, instead of the sea, you see boundless steppes and barren grasslands. After what seems like miles and miles of dry lands, inside a small depression - almost a pit - you see Jisung, curled onto himself, all naked and with his limbs tangled together, hidden from the world. You don't ask yourself why you can see such a small body at such a distance, but your muscles set into autonomous motion and you find yourself running in that direction.

After endless minutes, you reach what seems to be the final destination, but the pit gradually moves away from you. However, for some reason, you can still see Jisung swinging himself with his face pressed into the dry earth.

You speed up your run and you begin to feel your throat tightening as the first drops of sweat make their way onto your forehead. Shadows cast themselves in the barren ground, but they are distorted by the shadow of your own body and of the dim, suffocating light of the sun. The image of Jisung blurs for a few seconds, and when it becomes clear again, those same shadows are catapulted onto him as well. You lift your head and you see dozens, hundreds, thousands of hawks flying in circles over Jisung's ditch, which tightens and lengthens as it becomes deeper.

The last steps of your run are slow, while the first hawk descends in slow motion on Jisung's soft face and begins to do something to his cheeks. You see Jisung's cheekbones become parched, almost to the point you fear that a gust of wind will blow them away. The second hawk glides beside the other, and you cannot get the soles of your feet off the dusty ground as it begins, slowly, as if it was foretasting a feast, to peck at Jisung's moist eyes.

Soft tears continue to gush, tiny raindrops that can nothing against the infecundity of the place where they stand. The thousands of hawks fly inside the pit and peck at the remnants of that dead body, tearing it apart with their hooked beaks. They chew the skin and swallow Jisung's life, paralyzed in his grave.

After what seems like centuries, they soar together in their cruel dance of farewell. Your feet finally unclench, but it's no longer necessary, because Jisung now stands in front of you, perfect. The tender, rosy flesh barely flushed on his cheeks and the slender, trembling body almost hairless, beautiful.

without

eyes.

+:★:+*━━━*+:★:+*━━━*+:★:+*

Jisung is tired. June is an agony of dampness spent under the sheets, and you spend countless nights hoping that Jisung's sobs will cease and he will finally sleep. July is no better. The heat is starting to get unbearable and Jisung wants to keep the windows closed, hooked shut, so that not a single draft of clean air can penetrate into the apartments. Along with that, he stops drinking.

You keep opening the windows, even if Jisung screams and cries like a baby, and you force his lips open with the help of your fingers, making him swallow some liquids. August is definitely a torture when he stops taking his painkillers and his stomach turns over, forcing him to vomit all day and all night.

There is no turning back now.

+:★:+*━━━*+:★:+*━━━*+:★:+*

"Tell me".

There is so much smoke inside the room that even if it wasn't that dark, it would be impossible to see more than an inch away from your face. You are lying half on the floor, half on Jisung's sticky thighs, smoking a cigarette that seems to be his only remaining foothold in his earthly existence.

"What?"

Jisung's voice is hoarse and distressing. It has changed exponentially in the past two weeks, since he refused to let you go outside to buy something to eat. You fighted against it, and he bit your hand viciously before starting to cry in shame.

"When you want to leave, tell me".

"You can't come with me. We've already discussed it".

"No, you have already discussed it. By yourself. You don't listen to what I say".

Jisung opens his lips and raises a graceful hand as if he was trying to slap you in the face. Eventually, the hand sags and the slap becomes a trembling caress.

"Jisung, please", you become pleading, tired and desperate. With your bandaged fingers you caress Jisung's thin knuckles, one by one.

"Just tell me. I won't follow you, I promise".

Jisung laughs. His head rests against the wall.

"You will follow me".

"Please".

Your lips meet in the compact darkness and they rub, dry, against each other in the memory of an old, worn-out passion.

"I love you, and you are a liar".

+:★:+*━━━*+:★:+*━━━*+:★:+*

When you manage to drag Jisung out of the house in September, you almost gave up. You don't know if it is because of the faint light or the clouds, but Jisung's once tan skin is now grayish, and it makes his figure looks unhealthy and contagious at the mere sight. You also brought out brushes, hundreds of them, and half-squeezed tubes of color.

"Why did you bring me here?"

The grass under Jisung's shoes rustles in response. You are in a park just outside the city, a destination for a few couples and students with nothing to do.

"You asked me to paint you".

"That was a long time ago".

You pick up the brushes from your bag and pull a forced smile between you lips.

"And you, quite a long time ago, told me you wanted to shine. Here, then".

The tube of yellow paint curls against the wooden palette and the brush bristles wet in contact.

"Lay down".

Jisung tries to deny it, but then he seems to see in you the edge of a precipice, and maybe he feels a rush of pity and compassion for both of you. He wonders how it is possible to have reached that point without someone having the heart to save you both. Or save at least you.

With an awkward movement he leans over the lawn and lies on his back, shivering from the drops of water trapped between the blades of grass. You kneel beside him and barely lift the edges of his shirt, uncovering his belly and round hips. Jisung closes his eyes and trembles when he feels your open mouth kissing the flesh near his navel. You begin to trace marks near that spot, dipping your brush occasionally into the color. When you finish that first step, you keep painting all around radially, as if the first object was the focal point of the entire image. With your fingers you caress his petite chest, the spots uncovered by the color, the skinny hips, and as much of Jisung as you can.

Once you are done, you lean forward. Jisung reaches out and gently touches your hair, entwining it between his index fingers and anchoring you to him. Jisung's entire chest is a cerulean expanse of sky. There is sky everywhere, interspersed with green tree foliage intertwining on the sides. Down, just above his pelvis, a clear sea joins the sky in a blue line of horizon. And in that small, hidden spot of the kiss, you painted a sun.

"Do you like it?"

Jisung opens his eyes and instead of your face he sees a black universe. He feels two tears sting and run down his cheeks, his chin and to his chest, wetting his lips folded into a smile.

"It's perfect".

+:★:+*━━━*+:★:+*━━━*+:★:+*

It's December when you think you feel Jisung moving on the bed and kicking off the covers. You also think you can feel his lips kissing you softly and his arms wrapping around your neck before sinking into the oblivion of sleep with his words in your mind.

remember you promised

But when you wake up, Jisung is not really there. The mattress is empty next to you and the sheets are tangled at the bottom of the bed. You snap to your feet, ignoring the dizziness and the fact that the room seems to be moving in circles around you.

"Jisung?"

You call him in a choked, shrill voice, a knot forming in your throat. You hear a ringing noise in you ears and you begin to search everywhere inside the apartment. You want to hope, you really do, that he just went out, but you cannot force yourself to believe in it because Jisung, by now, hasn't been out alone for months.

"Jisung?".

You look again, inside the shower stall, in the small balcony, under the couch, in the closet where you keep you painting canvas, inside the closet in the bedroom. But it's just when you are about to leave the house that you see it. On the living room table, between the keys and the fruit basket. A farewell letter.

You don't even understand how you actually got to pick it up, unfold it, and start reading it, that you tear it in two in your hands, teeth gritted and tears beginning to overflow from your eyes.

"Jisung".

You run outside without even closing the front door, engulfing the steps in trembling, messy strides. You reach the street and the only thing that you can think about is that I promised you, but you should have told me when you were about to go, you should have told me. You run on the road, crossing the roadway, risking getting run over, running on the sidewalks, running over people, running for hours. Until you see him.

For a moment you don't even notice him, caught up in the heat of your research. Yet it's him, standing in front of you. Perfect and naked, with a red dot on his forehead, like in your painting. Beautiful and full of life. As he has never been. As in an iconographic image branded in your head. And it's so perfect, and beautiful and full of life that you give in.

and yet you promised not to follow me

You close your eyes and take one step in his direction. Jisung smiles and spreads his arms wide, and so do you. An inch apart, and Jisung kisses you.

I love you.

You push back your tears.

"I am ready".

and you follow him.

+:★:+*━━━*+:★:+*━━━*+:★:+*

You are 23 years old when you die. You are found in your apartment, lying on the floor, completely naked and smeared with paint. That's suicide, it is obvious, but nobody take a guess on why you decided to end your life.

When they take your body away, a dirty brush of yellow paint slips from your hand and ends up stepped on by the coroner.

Nobody finds dozens and dozens of canvases depicting the same boy. Nobody finds intact packages of painkillers. Nobody finds mint cigarettes and bottles of gin. Nobody finds a shredded letter saying "I am going". Nobody.

"You said you wouldn't follow me".

"You knew I would".

"I love you, and you're a liar".

+:★:+*━━━*+:★:+*━━━*+:★:+*

Outside, somewhere in the infinite universe, there is a parallel world. There's a Jisung running on the grass on a sunny day, and you are running after him and falling down trying to catch him. There's the two of us laughing and drinking until dawn, throwing ourselves on the ground and hugging each other so we don't get cold. We have flowers on the balcony and dew in our hair. It never rains. The sun always shines. You could really shine, have flowers on the balcony and dew in your hair. But you chose me.

You chose me.

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