vingt-deux

Renjun is nineteen and a quarter when the world grinds to a halt.

The sun blinds him each morning, his dormmates' whispers deafen him, and the thought of food alone is too bitter to swallow.

"I'm not going to break," Renjun mutters one morning over breakfast. He's pushing soggy cornflakes around a bowl and simply watching them drown, wishing it were him. "Stop tiptoeing around me."

Donghyuck turns to him. Renjun doesn't look up, afraid that the fear in his eyes will give away his own uncertainty. He doesn't even believe that statement himself. It sure feels likes he's milliseconds from shattering. Even if he did shatter, would he feel it? Would he even realise?

Would he even care?

He goes shopping with Chenle at the weekend. It's never been a favourite pastime of his, but he lets himself be dragged around every single shop and gives into a giant hot chocolate at an overpriced café. The sweetness tingles across his tongue but it's not a bad sensation, just comforting in a way that makes his eyes sting and his heart feel a tiny glimpse of something.

He observes the crowds. Smiles, intertwined hands, happiness. Renjun lifts a finger, wanting to reach out and touch the scene, but they're in a different world. He's in a different world; a paralysing storm of rage, disappointment and fear. Emotions trap him and drown out Chenle's chatter that he knows is supposed to serve as a sweet distraction, but he's worried he'll look at his friend to see him leaving, too.

It's been three days since Mark was rushed to hospital. Three days since Renjun has spoken more than a few threaded words, since he felt anything towards anything. He's alone in a dark world. Unlike the bustling colours and excitement of the shops, his world doesn't move. Nothing shifts in the darkness. There's no light, only the struggling stutter of his heart and the cavern of his thoughts.

Now Renjun knows what it means to be someone's soulmate. Mark never leaves his mind. Mark will never leave his heart. Being so suddenly wrenched apart has scarred him with a horrid burn, and it stings to no end. Pure agony. There's no other word to describe the pain.

Dropping another marshmallow into his drink, Renjun clears his throat. When he goes to speak, Chenle is already poised, waiting and ready to listen. It makes the elder falter, eyes lowering, until he just shakes his head and opens his mouth anyway. "Do you think... do you think Mark will ever be able to love me back?"

Chenle folds the paper case of his chocolate muffin. "What makes you think Mark doesn't love you already?"

Renjun winces, then shrugs. Chenle stares hard, lips turned into a faint smile that Renjun can't bring himself to read, but he knows he asked a stupid question. He's dizzy from thinking too hard, and so tired from the hours of tossing and turning in bed, his pillow a stranger where Mark was familiar and warm.

"I meant..." Renjun trails off. He doesn't know what he meant. "I'm just scared." The chatter in the café has Chenle leaning forward to hear the whisper. "He's alive, but..." Renjun stops to glance at Chenle to confirm that his statement is still true, that he isn't just fantasising that is soulmate is alive. "Mark is alive and I'm still being so selfish."

The realisation aches in his chest.

"I know Mark loves me back, but my heart just wants things to settle. It's so, so painful," Renjun says. His fingers curl into his jumper at the reminder of the ache that never leaves. "Sometimes I still wish soulmates weren't a thing."

"Really?" Chenle wastes no time, and the older furrows his eyebrows. The younger's smile grows to a grin. Renjun shifts in his seat, then cups his mug just to leach off its warmth without any intention to drink. "I remember you thinking that when you first met Mark and your dust changed."

This time, Renjun drinks. But he can't swallow the memory nor deny how he seems to have gone full circle just when he thought there was light.

"You've met your soulmate," Chenle continues. "Mark is amazing. And he loves you. We don't need some stupid dust to love someone. Think of the things Mark has done for you."

So Renjun thinks.

Cheering him up with rambles about books and clouds, hugging him close all through the darkest of nights, sitting by his side in the art room to dry his tears when the latest painting is another disappointment. Mark has done it all. And expected nothing in return. Renjun grinds his teeth and lets his gaze blur as his thoughts suck him in once more.

"I'm so selfish. And Mark is probably the most fucking... selfless person I know," Renjun says. His voice is tight, each word forced through gritted teeth and a chest of anger.

"I'd say your reaction to all this is perfectly normal and human," Chenle says. The elder doesn't know how he stays so composed as he brushes his bangs off his forehead as though they were discussing the weather. Renjun wants to shut him up, but for once lets him talk. "Maybe use this time to decide what you want from Mark? How you want things to work?"

"Since when were you so wise?" Renjun asks, unable to not smile along with his friend.

"Who gave you Mark's contact details?" Chenle replies, smug.

Renjun kicks his foot under the table and bathes in the brief minutes of happiness. They're just two friends in a café, spending the day browsing shops like anyone their age might want to do to pass the weekend. Pretending is surprisingly easy when he has someone teach him to smile.

Renjun comes home empty-handed besides a small notebook he had his eyes on, so of course Chenle bought it for him. He shook his head and pushed it away, trying to convince the younger that it's overpriced and that he doesn't have a use for it, but now he sits at his desk and opens it as soon as the door shuts.

A journal. That's what he wants to turn the pocket-sized yellow notebook into. He traces his forefinger over the bumblebee stitched into the corner, then across the shiny leather before reaching for a pen. His pause is brief, then words flow and he can't stop them even if he were to try, not even when Jeno knocks to tell him Jaemin's cooked dinner. He accepts the warm bowl of food and carries it back to his room to keep writing.

He writes about Mark: how they met and how they grew closer. All the ways in which Mark loves Renjun, then all the ways in which Renjun is now realising he loves Mark back. Seeing the words on paper creates order in his mind. It's cathartic. His eyes droop, but he keeps going, filling page after page with raw emotions and, when the ink smudges from tears, he simply flicks to the next page and opens the floodgates wider, emotions pouring out of him as he manipulates the ink in a new form. The novelty offers endless possibilities and it's all too easy to sink in. He's sure he'll read it back in a week or two and cringe, yet that doesn't stop his honesty. Maybe he could show it to Mark when things are brighter, to be honest to him, too.

Once, Mark shared a little verse of poetry he'd written. Renjun marvelled over the words in the same way Mark marvelled over his art, both wishing to possess the talent of the other.

Nonetheless, art steals him back. In place of attending a final seminar for the wretched psychology module, he draws the curtains and lets a candle guide his paintbrush across the paper. He dips into the blue first to mix a deep shade of purple, but the orange proves too enticing, still stained by traces from Mark's painting, the flowers engrained in Renjun's memory well enough for him to recreate them now. The strokes are mechanical, so he tries to be gentle. He coaxes the pigment across the paper, giving it a slight nudge with some extra water where needed or a dab with his sleeve. When his mother phones, he ignores the call entirely and uses the surge of adrenaline to be more adventurous, moulding the pattern of flowers into a crown to sit atop a boy's head.

"Still painting him?" Chenle says when he lets himself in the room. His eyes are unfocussed in the way they always are after a long day of classes, fingers still beating out the rhythm of the latest piano sonata he's learning, but he still manages to smile. Renjun wishes he could always smile like Chenle, no matter the situation.

Renjun sighs instead, shoulders deflating as he drops the brush into the mug of water. "I can't help it."

"Your project's due tomorrow, right?" Chenle asks.

"Don't remind me."

Chenle falls quiet, allowing Renjun's mind to retrace the angst he's poured into the paintings that he's still not satisfied with. He'll never be satisfied, and he thinks he's at least come to peace with that, even if he knows he'll be handing over his sketchbook with teary eyes and shamed cheeks the next morning.

"And then we get a break," Chenle says.

"And then it's exams," Renjun bites back. He hears the younger sigh, hears the mattress creak when he lays back with a huff.

"Don't be so negative. We're in this together."

"I don't even have Mark to remind me that there's no point in getting stressed because first year exams are the easiest. Second year seems even more hellish," Renjun says. Then, quieter. "I don't want to do it."

"But you have us." And Renjun can hear the pout in Chenle's voice.

His stomach turns to stone and a breeze breaches the curtains to scratch his neck in the most uncomfortable way. It's not all about Mark, even if it really seems that Mark is all his world revolves around these days. "Sorry," he mutters.

"Just promise you won't rip up this painting? It's pretty, and I'm sure Mark would love to see it."

Renjun bites his lip and looks between his friend and the mess of colours beaming back at him.

"I promise." It stings his tongue and, after Chenle leaves, Renjun curls his knees to his chest and stares at the page for a while before it's dry enough to slot the page into his sketchbook.

The next morning, he tumbles out of bed half an hour late when Jeno bangs on his door to tell him the alarm has been going off for far too long, and his calves burn by the time he all but staggers into the art department. People turn to stare. The professor stares the hardest, pupils dark with irritation through her thick glasses, grey hair scraped into a messy bun that's already falling apart when she shakes her head, the paintbrush poked through it about to fall.

"Late again," she remarks, voice nasally with disapproval.

Renjun knows to keep his mouth shut while she collects their books. He doesn't look her in the eye when she approaches to take his. When he leaves the room, it feels like he's handed a part of himself over. He's glad to be done with the module, but his heart shudders in anger. There's no logic behind his ideas. The pages are far from masterpieces, and it jumps from one design to the next with only a few rushed annotations that are unlikely to score any marks. If anything, he'll be hanging onto what little drop of sympathy she might possibly have for someone like him.

The pages tell the story of him and Mark. Starting with a few innocent sketches of a cute boy with glasses and his nose buried in a book, the drawings turn more sinister, full of dying hearts and dying flowers. There isn't really a final piece. Just four blank pages before he taped in the watercolour of Mark from the previous night. His soulmate and the orange flowers from his grandmother's garden. His world and soul poured onto paper.

It drained him enough to not care if he fails the class.

He yet again skips the next lecture to take the scenic route back home. His bag is eerily light without his sketchbook. Plucking a daisy from the grass in the park, he hopes it might be because he finally let go of a weight in handing over his art book. It's done. It doesn't matter what grade he gets – not really – and he has other assignments he can finally get onto, deciding that maybe they could distract him from everything else.

But before that, he sits on the grass and finds another daisy, weaving them together into a chain, and eventually a crown.

𓆩♡𓆪

I apologise for the long wait >.< I didn't even realise it had been almost a month since my last update :c If anyone's still reading please drop a vote and/or a comment to say hi uwu

I love you guys as always <3 I hope you're doing wonderfully

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