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Gentle little drops of rain fall against tender cheeks and misty eyelashes.
Donghyuck hurries down the flight of stairs away from the downpour and into the underground metro just in time to catch the almost midnight train.
Taking a seat and staring out the glass window that stares back at him, melancholy hits delicately like the night that holds the after hours of the city he calls his own, but has not been home to for the past couple of years.
And like black and white pictures, the memories play like an old film inside Donghyuck’s head that takes him back to places he once was.
Five minutes. Four years. Three seconds. Two broken hearts. One hundred fixes for a dozen mistakes and non-mistakes, plus one reason.
Sitting under dark hollow tunnels blurring past windows and vacant seats alone, there’s nothing here that can assure Donghyuck he’s going to be just fine.
There are no lampposts that he can hold on to, no brick walls to keep him steady, and no traffic lights to remind him of the time that passes by.
Five minutes.
There’s a lot that can happen in five minutes.
In five minutes, Donghyuck could have done a lot of things.
In five minutes, Donghyuck could have been a lot of things.
In five minutes, someone’s meal could still be cooking—the meat would still be raw, undercooked, and not yet ready to be served.
Love took those five minutes away.
It didn’t come to Donghyuck fast, but it knocked on his door for five minutes.
And in that time, Donghyuck debated with himself to just ignore it and go back to sleep—sleep that he really needs to mentally prepare himself for the move he’s going to make the day after for another chance of trying to get his life back together, his bags already packed.
But he gets up and opens the door anyway.
“Oh, thank god. Hi,” the stranger says as soon as it opens.
“I’m very sorry to disturb you but I really just need help. I've been trying to take my boxes up to my room since I just moved in but apparently the elevator’s broken so I have no other choice but to bring them up the stairs. But I can’t do it alone and no one else answered their doors until you.” He says the rest all in one breath.
Donghyuck’s sure he’s been following what he’s been saying but he has also been distractedly staring at the biggest and brightest eyes he’s ever seen.
“I’m Mark, by the way,” he follows up when Donghyuck continues to stare and say nothing.
“I really need your help. I promise to make it up to you,” Mark smiles and offers his hand for a handshake.
Donghyuck finds himself smiling back as he takes Mark’s hand to shake.
“I’m Donghyuck. Sure, I’ll help you.”
It was weird, meeting someone like that.
Two sets of feet moving back and forth stairs and arms carrying boxes along with a life’s worth of stories told to each other with each ascent and descent.
When the last of the boxes finally joins the others after an hour that feels so much more, Donghyuck knows Mark more than anyone else he’s ever known in his entire life.
Mark thanks him and walks him back to his door.
“Do you want to meet up for coffee tomorrow? My treat,” Mark offers, all sweet smiles and big bright eyes.
“I’d love to.”
Another day.
He will be postponing life-fixing for another day.
But that was not the last time Mark knocked on his door.
Strangers turn into friends made of easy conversations, countless pizza boxes, and daily movie nights.
Donghyuck feels his broken bones mending just a little bit.
He wonders if it’s the feeling of being silently understood or if it’s being with someone who looks at him in a fresh new light, but he has never felt this comfortable and so at ease.
It’s a week and a couple of postponements later when Donghyuck speaks about it.
They’re both lying in the dark on Mark’s carpeted floor, sharing a blanket and one pillow while a movie plays in front of them about ghosts and monsters of the past.
Donghyuck has his leg over Mark’s and Mark has his arms under his head.
“I’m dark and twisted,” Donghyuck says so casually over jump-scares and ominous music, his voice can barely be heard over the actor’s screams.
Mark hears it anyway and shifts his whole body to look at him, staring at the side of face. “Aren’t we all?”
And the words feel so right, so fitting, that Donghyuck opens his heart up just a little bit more to someone of a week-long friendship but a lifetime of feelings.
“What would you do?” Donghyuck looks up at the ceiling like he’s asking it, feeling Mark’s gaze never once leaving him as he patiently waits for Donghyuck to pour everything out.
“What would you do when you know that although love waits for you at home—the one from family and the one from friends, but your heart still breaks as you sit in a room full of other people?”
The question makes Donghyuck’s bones shatter and his flesh to rip apart.
“What am I supposed to do when I get told I’m beautiful but still hate my reflection in the mirror?” This time, Donghyuck directs the question to the listening air, hoping it has an answer from all the other million questions thrown at it by the other broken souls.
“What am I supposed to do when I know I have everything I want and need, but it still isn’t enough and will never be enough?”
A shift and then Mark’s cold fingers gently guide Donghyuck's cheek towards him, making him look him in the eyes, the biggest and brightest he has ever seen.
“You try your best to find the answers for yourself,” he says softly.
Donghyuck’s broken bones mend just a little bit more.
Friends turn into best friends made of outstretched hands, tight hugs, and shoulders to cry on.
Donghyuck feels his mending bones turn into warm belly flutters.
It was months and a hundred postponements later, when Mark sees him crumble in on himself.
Donghyuck’s having one of his breakdowns.
It’s one of those days where he feels normal waking up, excited and hopeful even, for the whole day to play out only to come home to a dark room made of broken cries coming out of bruised hearts and aching flesh and bones that tears at his lonely heart.
Donghyuck didn’t really hear his door opening until warm arms were around him that came with an equally warm voice whispering, “I got you, you’re gonna be alright.”
Mark holds Donghyuck through all his sobs and silent screams, making him match his breaths with him as he soothes his back.
“I’m sorry you had to see this.” Donghyuck sobs.
“Mark, I’m dark and twisted.”
Even the warmest hug feels like more shattering bones.
Mark softly shushes him as he gently takes Donghyuck’s hand, placing it against his chest.
Donghyuck can vividly feel every beat of Mark’s heart, beating just a little too fast. “Feel that? That’s a beating heart and each beat can feel like agony or joy or nothing at all. You feel because you’re alive and you don’t have to feel sorry for living.”
And that was not the first time Mark has held Donghyuck with his hand against his chest, reminding him that it’s okay to feel.
Mark is an outstretched hand that Donghyuck grabs on fallen bruised knees, bringing him back to his feet and patching his wounds.
But some wounds, Mark just cannot see.
Best friends turn into so much more along with mouths that taste sweet and touches that burn against skin.
Donghyuck feels his mending bones breaking under its weight.
It was a year and a thousand postponements later when Mark asked him a question.
“Can you just please let me love you?” Mark says on the other side of Donghyuck’s closed door during a night filled with denials and words that speak of you deserve better than someone like me. “Allow yourself to be loved, Hyuck.”
Breathing per breathing, Donghyuck knows that just like him, Mark is also sitting on the floor with his back against the door.
Who was Donghyuck to deny himself of love?
Donghyuck opens it, feeling his bones crushing beneath his feet.
Four years.
Four years ago Donghyuck fell in love and it was the best and the worst thing that has ever happened to him.
Donghyuck constantly crashes.
Donghyuck stumbles.
Donghyuck falls.
But it’s okay because there are arms ready to catch him.
Donghyuck breaks apart but it’s okay because love is there to glue him back together.
Right?
“You’re gonna be okay. I love you. Shh. Breathe with me, baby. Just breathe. I got you, love. Okay? I’m right here. It’s gonna be okay,” one of the other times Mark has had to say the exact same lines to Donghyuck, over and over again until he believes it.
He’s going to be okay.
Right?
Falling in love with Mark was deep breathing and strong comforting arms that felt like salvation and home.
And there is no place Donghyuck would rather be than sunny mornings, lazy afternoons, and cozy nights that will always be far from perfect, but at least he’s not all alone to suffer through all the unknown terrors that may jump out of it.
It’s the love of unmade beds and eating dinner on the floor even if the table is just an arm’s length away.
It’s the love of piggyback rides during swollen feet and dining table dancing.
It’s the love of finishing each other’s food and Sunday morning haircuts.
It’s the love that builds a fortress and a sanctuary.
Donghyuck feels like loving Mark is like waking up in the middle of the night afraid and worried about deadlines and responsibilities but realizing he already did those beforehand and falling asleep knowing he’s free to sleep in and wake up late the next day.
Loving Mark makes him feel just a little bit stronger and ready to take on soft rains and tamed thunder but he also knows that his bones can take a rest because he knows that even if rain and thunder comes, Mark is there to shelter him.
“I’m sorry that the world hurts and that I can’t take away the pain,” Mark whispers to him one night when he thought Donghyuck was sleeping, but the thoughts always plaguing his mind just won’t let him.
So he lays there, silent and unmoving, holding his breath with Mark’s arms wrapped around his stomach and aches. “Stop saying you’re broken, love. You’re not. You’re human. But if you really are, I’ll spend my whole life putting you back together.”
Donghyuck silently cries, because how can love be like this?
Donghyuck mourns for what’s become of their love because he’s not a malfunctioning machine that can be fixed with just a few parts and new screws.
Donghyuck is not a puzzle piece that can be put together once the missing piece is found.
But as Mark’s arms wrap around him tighter, he believes him anyway.
And for that, falling in love with Mark was hatred and jealousy.
“You just don’t understand me!” Donghyuck screams.
“You can’t just tell me not to be dramatic, Mark,” he says, frustration and rage deep within his bones. “You can’t just tell me everything will be okay!”
Just once in their relationship, Mark forgot to pick him up on time when he said he would.
Just once, but Donghyuck stood outside for an hour until Mark came.
Just once, but Donghyuck felt judging stares from strangers.
Just once, but Donghyuck wanted to run away.
Insignificant, forgotten, and unimportant.
Donghyuck felt small.
“Baby, I’m sorry. I just really forgot to check the time,” Marks says, still calm but there’s a hint of apprehension, no, fear, behind his eyes.
And Donghyuck shrinks in on himself a little bit more because of that.
Donghyuck realizes Mark’s afraid of his reaction.
Donghyuck thinks maybe Mark’s thinking he’s too much. He points his finger at him.
“You wouldn’t understand because you’re so perfect! So perfect, Mark! Maybe that’s why you’re constantly feeling sorry for me,” Donghyuck accuses him.
“You always know the right things to say, right? You always do the right things! Why are you so perfect? Why are you not breaking like me? Why are there people like me who’s fucked in the head and then there’s people like you?”
Donghyuck says the last part in a shaky voice. “Why are you not in pain like me?”
Donghyuck hasn’t noticed that Mark was holding him until he feels a kiss land on his temple.
“I’m sorry,” Mark whispers gently. “I wish it was me hurting instead of you. I’m sorry, Hyuck. I’m sorry it hurts. I’m sorry. I love you so much. I’m sorry I couldn’t patch all your invisible wounds.”
Donghyuck feels Mark’s tears landing on his cheek. “But can you please hold on to me for just a little bit more?”
Donghyuck sobs and holds onto Mark’s arm wrapped around his waist like it’s his lifeline.
Three seconds.
It took three seconds to say goodbye for the first time.
Space just broke Donghyuck more, the alcohol bottles and the unwashed laundry a clear proof of it.
Mark says it’s for the both of them, but what does he know?
What does he know when Donghyuck craves him so much it’s the kind of hunger that nothing can sate except for Mark?
What does he know when Donghyuck falls apart everyday and there’s no one to catch him when he does?
What does he know about what’s best?
What does he know about what’s right?
And maybe Mark wonders too, when he came knocking on Donghyuck’s door three days later.
“I’ll be strong enough for the both of us,” Mark says before kissing Donghyuck like he needs him.
Mark kisses him like it pains him.
And maybe it does because Mark holds him like he’s afraid of letting him go.
Mark holds him like Donghyuck is his lifeline, too.
But maybe it’s true, what they say about tragedies.
They say that one of the worst tragedies in life is when two people who love each other just can’t seem to make it work.
Maybe it’s true.
Two broken hearts.
They’re sitting on the floor opposite each other with their backs against each wall of the small hallway. Mark’s looking away and Donghyuck’s staring at him without really seeing anything.
The whole apartment is dark.
Just twenty minutes ago there was screaming.
Just ten minutes ago there was crying.
It was vile and it hurt, but nothing beats the pain this silence brings.
“It’s my fault for giving you everything I had without first making sure that you wanted it,” Mark breaks the silence, breaking along with it Donghyuck’s already breaking heart.
And it’s Mark’s way of saying that he’s just as empty and broken as Donghyuck is.
Donghyuck thinks there are more sorrys said in their relationship than I love yous.
“What did we do wrong?” Donghyuck asks the silhouette of the man he can barely recognize from the tears streaming down his face.
“Everything,” Mark simply replies.
“Then what did we do right?”
Mark’s voice breaks when he answers, “Everything.”
“Do you think the universe hates us?” Donghyuck tries asking.
“Do you think it hates people like me and people like you who love people like me?”
This time, Mark finally looks at him, eyes shining with the universe Donghyuck loves so much, but finds he doesn’t belong in. Not now.
“Because it’s just so cruel. Bringing two people who think they need each other just to break them apart,” Donghyuck wipes his tears away.
“Just how much can a person break over and over again?”
Mark stands, feet softly walking towards Donghyuck.
He crouches down and meets his eyes and Donghyuck stares at the biggest and brightest eyes he’s ever seen and he falls apart some more.
“We have to do this, Hyuck,” he says gently, like he’s really speaking and seeing face to face with Donghyuck’s wretched heart. “We need to let each other go.”
“Okay,” Donghyuck agrees, because he loves Mark and he wants to love himself, too. “But how do I say goodbye when my heart still aches to be with you?”
Mark smiles at him, wiping the stray tear falling down his right eye.
“You don’t,” tender and delicate like their first kiss, Mark kisses both of his eyes hoping it would stop shedding tears.
Donghyuck thinks it’s impossible.
He will always cry.
“You try to get better and meet up to say hello again.”
One hundred fixes for a dozen mistakes and non-mistakes.
Donghyuck and those five minutes.
“I always keep thinking that maybe if I say the right words or do the right things, maybe I can still save us.”
Mark gives him a small, sad smile before turning his back on him. “You and I, we never seem to know what’s right,” he says, his knuckles white as he grips the door knob hard.
Donghyuck could only watch Mark’s back.
“We only knew the wrongs and tried so hard to make them right.”
“But why did it feel so right with you?”
“I know,” Mark turns his head to the side, the ghost of his half smile the only thing Donghyuck can hold on to for all the running maybes going through his head.
“So, do the right people with all the wrong timings ever get a second chance?”
“Maybe,” Mark says as he steps out of the place they once called home, the sound of a door shutting close and the immediate silence after it the only thing he leaves behind.
Donghyuck is finally left all alone.
For five minutes.
A gentle knock on the door gets his feet moving the fastest they’ve ever been.
He opens it to Mark crashing his lips on his before joining their foreheads together.
Are they here again?
Will this never stop?
Will they always try to make it work this way?
But thankfully, Mark proves him wrong.
Between the two of them, he’s always been the stronger one. Donghyuck’s love. Donghyuck’s rock. Donghyuck’s salvation. Donghyuck’s doom.
“Come back to me,” Mark breathes against his mouth. “When all your invisible wounds heal and when you look in the mirror and you hear my voice telling you you’re the most beautiful thing I have ever laid my eyes on and you believe it, come back to me,” Mark’s crying again.
“Come back to me, when you yourself did those for you and no one else.”
Donghyuck presses his lips to Mark’s before hugging him tight, holding on to him just like how Mark has held him through all these years.
“I will.”
“I will be waiting for you, Hyuck.”
Donghyuck will take back those five minutes he lost.
Plus one reason.
“Don’t make the feelings that hurt you fragile, sharpen and strengthen them, so that you will also be determined to be strong enough to fight against them.”
The words still ring in Donghyuck’s ear and he thanks his therapist for that.
“Thanks to pain, there’s healing,” the woman old enough to be Donghyuck’s grandmother says to him during their weekly sessions.
“Thanks to healing you can overcome pain,” she sincerely tells Donghyuck. “There will never be one without the other, remember that.”
One thing Donghyuck really learned is that time does heal, but how it manages to do that is really all up to you.
There won’t be any healing if there’s no will to heal. Trying is healing’s companion and time is its result. Some wounds take time to heal and some wounds are just there, never healing at all but never hurting, too.
Donghyuck accepts that he will always be broken and it’s the kind of brokenness that doesn’t need fixing.
And he wouldn’t have realized this without getting help, without Mark inspiring him to seek help, without his broken flesh and bones pushing him to help himself, without having learned that life is not meant for perfects, that there are no perfects, and that life is not perfect.
And thanks to that, he’s now on the train bound for home.
The silence seems so intrigued and so it asks, “Why did you guys break up?”
Donghyuck feels compelled to answer it.
“Because when they tell you to love yourself first and the rest will follow, but you already have the rest before even fully loving yourself, what would you do when love knocks on your door and you let it in?”
Donghyuck lets the question linger in the listening air, hoping it now has an answer from the million other questions thrown at it by the other broken hearts.
But it still doesn’t.
“You fall in love, of course,” Donghyuck answers instead, hoping the wind will carry it.
Donghyuck knows it was the same love that broke them up, the one that came in the wrong sequence, the wrong time, and the wrong five minutes.
It’s one of the classics—right person, right place, right love, and all the wrongs.
The one that they speak about in books of the past and the present, written and also sung about.
And maybe that’s why pages are burned and music is stopped.
It happens and it’s true because love does not follow time and that’s why there are rights and wrongs.
Sequences and rights, why does life not come with a manual?
What was he supposed to do?
What was he supposed to do when he secretly pinches himself during conversations about dreams and goals and aspirations?
What was he supposed to do when he gets told he’s beautiful but still hates his reflection in the mirror?
What was he supposed to do when he cries himself to sleep at night while the arms that love him are wrapped around his stomach and aches?
What was he supposed to do when he knows he has everything he wants and needs, but it still isn’t enough and will never be?
What was he supposed to do when all he wants is to be left alone but still crave for love at the same time?
But that would be the old questions he asked himself some years ago.
And he dares the silence to ask him one more time.
So it does, once again.
“Why did you guys break up?”
This time, he lets the question sink in.
Donghyuck takes his time to answer it.
“So I could come back to him at the right time for the both of us.”
And he thanks whoever is responsible—the gods, the deities, the heavens, the seas, the earth, or the universe—that life doesn’t come with a manual.
Donghyuck’s heart will constantly break into pieces and he will always try to find something to steady him and that was something he needed to learn.
Because there are some things you just really need to figure out in order to understand and accept the need for all the hows, the whys, the whats, the wheres, the whens, and the what-would-you-dos.
The reality of life is that time stops for no one.
It doesn’t matter if what you’re doing is wrong or right, it will not dictate anything you wish to do as long as you’ll be responsible for the consequences that come with it.
Donghyuck will always be broken and it’s the kind of brokenness that doesn’t need fixing.
The clock will run out of battery.
The sky will always turn dark.
The rain will always come.
The train finally comes to a stop.
He hopes the silence is contented with his answers, wishing it the best of luck as it goes about its way to torment yet another peacefully broken soul.
Donghyuck stands up and slowly walks his way over to the door, patiently waiting for it to open.
There is no hurry, no rush this time.
No shortcuts.
The anticipation he feels as the train gets ready to open is comparable to the turning of a new page in a book a reader couldn’t put down no matter how much it hurts and no matter how tempting it is to jump to the last page but still chooses to sit through just a few hundred more words away from a happy ending. Or if not, even a hopeful one.
And when the door does open, slowly, like it’s unraveling a new chapter the reader missed in the haste of finding out what happens next, Donghyuck tenderly steps foot outside the train and into the platform.
Donghyuck looks up to meet the biggest and the brightest eyes he’s ever seen, patiently waiting for him to arrive.
Donghyuck checks his watch.
11:59 P.M.
One minute to the start of a new day.
He’s just right on time.
Donghyuck laughs and waves his hand in return.
Mark meets him halfway and it feels like no time has ever passed even though time did—even though it’s been three years since they last saw each other.
But Donghyuck still loves Mark the same.
Although different too, because it’s the love of overcoming pain and accepting brokenness.
It’s the love that’s a product of being brave enough to let go and strong enough to come back.
It’s the love that comes back from battle, bruised and wounded, but it was a battle worth fighting for.
It’s the love that’s just right on time.