#yohan handles grief terribly: a series

[fourth-quartet]

Grief is a funny fickle thing. It manifests differently for people; in tears and pain and longing, in cold anger and a fire that burns icy hot, in silence that settles like a thick layer of dust over an empty room with plastic-covered furniture.

Yohan watches it manifest as Elijah grows up, in a lack of understanding, to clinging to all she has left of her parents, to refusing to talk about them. He watches her go from denial to depression to acceptance and he wonders, clinically, when he will reach a destination other than the cold anger that consumes him every time he thinks of the fire. It’s a calculated anger, a distant pang of his stomach to devour, to become the flame that devoured all he had. Even after ten years, there is nothing but the empty promise of revenge buried deep in the aches in his back and shoulders, the silent prayer of his name whispered across a burning floor.

Switzerland is beautiful, Yohan can’t help but think when they land, beautiful because it is a new place, without the people they lost. There is no grief to be buried under. It’s a new start, a place to start anew. Elijah blooms, blossoms, and Yohan watches her grow up before his eyes once again. She doesn’t hide from him; their house is small, small enough that they can’t lock themselves away in empty halls and avoid each other.

And yet, there’s something he can’t quite place, something just on the tip of his tongue, unfamiliar and bitter.

Gaon would like it here.

The words echo in the most inconvenient of times, in a voice that sounds far too much like Elijah’s than Yohan would care to admit, in the back of his head. Yohan wishes he could strangle that voice sometimes, the voice that has only started to exist since Kim Gaon made himself at home in their house, turning a house—their house— into a home—their home.

I could convince him, Yohan thinks sometimes in the silence of the living room, when Elijah is off in therapy or studying on calls with her classmates abroad. I could convince Gaon to come, if only I called him.

He always blinks into focus with his phone in his hand, Gaon’s contact open in front of him, his thumb hovering over the button. He never calls.

It takes him too long to place it; denial. Denial of his actions, of the consequences of his actions, of his place, or lack thereof, in Kim Gaon’s life now. K compared him once, offhandedly, to a season’s storm, dangerous in the present but forgotten quickly once blown through. Yohan wants to be remembered, for better or worse, by Kim Gaon.

The fog that settles soon after burns. He’s struggled with finding something fun to do for a while, with finding something outside of his one-player chess games that evolve until he is playing against himself in his head, keeping track of the pieces in some ridiculous mental imagery that leaves him staring blankly at walls for hours. Even that grows tiring, though, and Yohan finds himself without reasons to pull himself out of bed. He goes through the motions every day: waking up, going for a run, breakfast for himself and Elijah, driving Elijah where she needs to, smiling and teasing her in return, like clockwork, he functions. In the silence, he can hear the rust forming on the cogs of his clock, feels how tiring it is to keep going as though nothing is wrong.

He wakes from a nightmare in tears. It’s been a long time since he’s woken this upset, this exhausted, restless. Elijah’s concern is obvious but Yohan shakes it off, convincing her as badly as he convinces himself that it’s fine. That it’s all fine.

He’s fine.

You’re not fine, the voice that sounds like Gaon whispers in the darkness of his room. The room that masquerades as normal, filled with books and dirty clothes that have missed his attempts to toss them into the hamper from across the room, and the sheets pulled back, fussed, where he never sleeps but pretends to.

“You’re depressed, Yohan.” Elijah finally rolls her eyes and slams her hands down onto the table, startling him. He looks at her, brow furrowed, baffled, and Elijah crosses her arms over her chest. “You should see a therapist.”

“Absolutely not,” Yohan dismisses the thought before it’s even fully out of her mouth, shaking his head. He spends the day seated outside in the backyard, watching the world go by and wishing he knew his path in it.

Elijah jokingly suggests he should go back to school, and Yohan is desperate enough for something to do that he considers it. The thought of going back to school isn’t quite appealing, not in the slightest, but it gives him something to do. It’s still near impossible to drag himself out of bed before noon most days, and even the littlest things leave him exhausted. He pretends he doesn’t see Elijah’s concerned glances in his direction.

He gets sick the following winter. It’s a surprise he’s gone that long without getting sick; Yohan has been known to catch any illness that goes around, though he’s usually just as quick to check into a hospital to deal with the worst of it and pretend nothing is wrong the rest of the time. His fever is high, high enough that Yohan curls up in the bed he doesn’t sleep in, shirtless and curls into one of the cold pillows he hasn’t put his head on, struggling to keep from crying, from letting his breathing be anything but even. He barely sleeps; by the third day without sleep, Elijah takes pity on him and brings a handheld fan to his room, setting it up to blow directly on his face. The fan helps; Yohan drifts in and out of a haze, not quite asleep but not quite awake.

“How long has he been like this?” someone asks in that haze, in the fog of the room Yohan doesn’t want to look at. His brain, offhandedly, registers the words as Korean, and the language is like music to his ears, after so long struggling to match Elijah’s English.

“Almost a full week,” Elijah’s voice replies, and she’s speaking informally. Yohan can’t quite pull himself out of his sluggish state to think of who she might speak to so informally when a cool hand presses to his forehead and he, without any thinking, leans into the touch desperately.

“Hyungnim,” the voice murmurs, soft and melodic and beautiful; like a flower blooming in early spring, like the dew clinging to blades of grass in the morning. He doesn’t realize he’s spoken aloud until the voice chuckles, warm, and brushes his hair back from his forehead. “Go to sleep, hyungnim.”

His tongue feels heavy, dry, in his mouth, and he isn’t quite sure he’s coherent, but he replies regardless. Okay, Gaon-ah. For you.

Yohan wakes with his fever broken and aching, dizzy and with his head pounding. A cup of tea and a water bottle, unopened, are by his bedside, and the note written in Elijah’s familiar handwriting, tells him to drink, that he’s dehydrated, that she’s gone out but she’ll be home soon.

Elijah isn’t alone when she returns home, and Yohan is startled, in his hoodie only half-zipped up and sweatpants, looking young in his misery, to find that Kim Gaon is standing in the doorway of his house, kicking his shoes off and smiling.

Three years have gone by without word from Korea. Yohan hasn’t reached out. Neither has Gaon. The weather outside is cold but sunny. And Kim Gaon is standing in the doorway of his house, kicking off his shoes, and chatting with Elijah like nothing has happened. Like the axis on which Yohan’s world sits hasn’t shifted dramatically. Like Yohan isn’t stood staring at them.

“Hyungnim, you’re awake.” Gaon sees him first and gives him a smile and a wave. Yohan could live off of that smile, that warmth, that genuineness that flows like a creek in Gaon’s everything.

For the first time in a long time, Yohan takes a deep breath and feels like he isn’t lifting the weight of the world alone on his shoulders.

For the first time in a long time, Yohan returns the smile and doesn’t feel like he’s trying.