an ode to the loveless

by halfthemoon

Summary:

After all, you’re still you. All you have is a new body. But you’re still you at the end of the day.

Notes:

content warning: references to depression and suicide. grief.

i've been really lost and upset and i couldn't put it into words. i've tried many many times. but i think this is finally close enough. maybe i just wish for understanding. because i couldn't say it out loud. but this is how i feel

if you've been reading my fics for a while, i'm letting you know this is probably the last fic i will ever write here. i hope you read the end notes because i have something to say. ily always

They give you an hour to process it.

To say goodbye. To hold the dead body’s hand. To look at it for the last time. Yeonjun has met people who only take two minutes. They simply stare at their dead body for a beat, and then they look away. Move on from their previous life. These people consider The Transfer as another chance. A piece of hibernation and waking up when seasons passed. Maybe he understands it a little bit. After all, you’re still you. All you have is a new body. But you’re still you at the end of the day.

They take your memories away too. They warn it as a side effect. The Transfer is a complex procedure and through an unintentional process, you will lose previous memories as a result. This is not curable.

As Yeonjun stares at his dead body, he can’t remember why he’s here. Why did he choose to do The Transfer? Was he sick? Was he happy? Is that why he wants another chance? To extend that joy?

Or was he miserable?

And he needed a clean slate?

This room, no matter what they call it, is a morgue. It’s big but enclosing like a casket. It smells like new air and disinfectant. Like phantom skin and a made-up mouth.

Yeonjun stares at his dead body. He is holding his hand gently. It’s so cold. It doesn’t hold him back. The version of him that is dead on this metal slat is motionless, still, a concrete. He watches him closely – eerie and also comforting that it doesn’t move. That he doesn’t move. His face is expessionless, his eyes are shut, so devoid of everything. Yeonjun stares at himself and feel a longing of a grief he doesn’t understand, of a death he doesn’t remember.

Did he die of sickness?

Did he die peacefully?

Was he in agony

or was he at rest?

He grasps the dead body’s fingers tighter. He wants to ask him: is it okay if I let you go? Can you still feel me? Will you allow me to move on? Does it hurt that I’m here and you will always be dead and alone?

Were you always dead and alone?

even before you were dead and alone

His tears drop to the metal. The dead body doesn’t react. It cannot feel anything anymore. It is lifeless, and therefore, it cannot feel pain.

Yeonjun cries.

It’s like he’s losing another lung. The dead body isn’t him. He has a new body now. They made it special for him. And yet it feels like he’s lying there too, his spine on the cold metal, the lightbulb hitting his face. Right here, he is both of them. The dead and the alive

but he doesn't feel alive.

He just feels dead.

He cries for a long time. He doesn’t let go of the dead body’s hand. It’s cold but it’s him. It’s cold but it’s his.

He is pleading to nothing.

“You have five minutes left.”

Yeonjun holds the corpse’s face, cradling its jaw with his palm. Slowly, he brushes its hair out of its forehead and feel it twice.

He’s alive.

But he died.

And he will always be the boy that died once.

No matter what they say.

Have another shot at life, they say.

But his dead body is here in his palm.

*

Yeonjun walks out of the morgue. This new body is heavy. His skin is wrong. His mouth is a different shape and his bones are bendable, fragile, and also the strongest in the world. Everyone is looking at him. The doctors and nurses nod their heads, and it’s hard to distinguish what it means – if it is sympathy, a display of glory, or grief in the face of a new life.

He nods back. But he doesn’t understand what he means by it either.

At the parking lot, he sees his friends. He remembers their names. Kang Taehyun and Huening Kai jog over to him.

“Hey,” Taehyun says.

“Hey.”

“How was it?” Kai asks.

“Weird. Transformative,” he says, cracking a smile when Kai does. He knows these people even though he doesn’t know who they are. Their laughs are polygraph and a flat line.

He’s heard them somewhere before.

“Where’s your mark?”

Yeonjun shows them his forefinger. A red, bleeding 2. Because this is his second chance at living.

“You want to go home?”

Yeonjun glances at the sky. Today is cloudy and blue. It’s open and invasive like a grave. Everywhere he goes.

Everywhere he goes he would have died once.

Even here, as his heart beats in his chest, he knows that he died.

Wherever he is in this world

he will always be dead.

“Yeah,” he says, even though he doesn’t where it is. His home is the morgue. His home is where his dead body lies - alone and guiltless and faultless.

Yeonjun wants it back.

They walk to the car. Two men are waiting for them. Choi Beomyu gives him a hug. He giggles in his ear.

“You look brand new,” he says to him.

Yeonjun doesn’t know how to tell him that he’s not. He’s still the dead friend they knew from his first life.

I am still your dead friend, he tells him.

“Aren’t I?” Yeonjun smiles. There are knives when he talks. His veins aren’t veins. They are roots and they are not his.

The other man’s gaze falls on him. He’s tall. His eyes are claws and stars.

Something is familiar about him.

Familiar in the way that he knows his molars.

Familiar in the way that his tongue meets cavities.

Familiar in the way the body knows,

because the body remembers.

“Did you say goodbye?” he asks.

His name is Choi Soobin. Yeonjun knows it in his ribs and in his gums. He knows it because his heart is new but it recognizes this man like an artery.

“I couldn’t,” Yeonjun whispers.

Soobin presses his lips together; long and deep in thoughts. Something about that look is archaic and a little wild. Yeonjun has seen it before. Many centuries ago. He’s met him and he’s known him. That affection is blood.

“It's okay,” Soobin says kindly. “Not everyone gets a goodbye. It is not a testament of how much they love you.”

In the car, Yeonjun sits in the passenger seat. His friends are talking and making plans: how about we go to the beach? Watch the sunset. Play with the sand, just like we used to. You love it the most.

“Do I?” Yeonjun says.

“You do,” Soobin answers from the driver’s seat. His voice is faraway. He hasn’t turned the engine. They are all sitting in the silence. In the unspoken. In the unbearable.

Did you grieve? he wants to ask them. Did you have a funeral for me? What did you say to me when I died?

Did you love me?

Did I love you?

Did the love kill all of us?

Did it hurt because we love?

Did the loss hurt because of that?

“How long was I gone?” he asks.

Taehyun looks at him from the rearview mirror. Yeonjun notices how dark his eyebags are. He hasn’t been sleeping.

“A while,” Taehyun says.

This doesn’t feel like anything he knows. Death touches him and now he’s here again. He doesn’t understand.

There was a hole in his chest.

There is a hole in his chest.

He traces his 2 mark. It’s still fresh like a wound. He can feel the stitches.

“Was I in pain?”

No one answers.

“Did I ask for The Transfer?”

Kai nods. “You’ve always wanted it. You’ve always wanted more time.”

Time.

It ticks in his ear.

Time.

How long was he dead?

And how long did he stay dead?

“Why?”

Beomgyu shifts in his seat. He looks uncomfortable. And slightly blue. “Because you didn’t have much of it.”

Time.

He is not here.

He is at the morgue. Alone. The lightbulb overhead hitting his face.

He is at the funeral he never saw.

And yet he’s also here - in the car with his friends, and they’re all talking about the beach.

“So I wanted to be here,” he says.

Soobin's lips are a straight line. “You wanted peace and quiet.”

He is looking at him again. Yeonjun knows nothing about him. He knows everything about him. The curve of his eyes is a memory he cannot stomach.

They are talking silently.

A lifetime between them but he doesn’t remember.

But he does remember.

A bed. Gilded sheets.

Kitchen lights. Tiles.

Rings. Cupboard.

A car.

A car.

Traffic lights.

A car.

A car.

Time.

Time that was forever.

Time that wasn’t forever.

Time that is forever and ever and ever.

“Did I love you?” Yeonjun asks.

Soobin is silent for a moment. An expression unpainted, unmalleable. “I think you did.”

“Did you love me?”

“Maybe ardently so.”

Soobin opens his left palm. There is a 2 mark on his forefinger.

It is as fresh as his.

*

Notes:

hii guys. how are you? it's crazy to think that i've been writing nonstop for three years as halfthemoon. i had such incredible fun and i was honored and thankful that i had it for a long time. but i am overwhelmingly burnt out :( i've tried everything to enjoy it fully again but i struggled a lot and my love will always be love but it is now also a little bit exhausting and draining too. i am no longer in a state of my life where i can write constantly as i used to and i do not have the time or energy (physically or mentally) to invest in writing fics anymore. it is very sad for me because writing is my whole life my heart my soul my everything but i am so so so tired

all of my fics are the labour of my love. most of them are actual pieces of my past and my heartbreak. that's how i've been coping with it: i write about it. so thank you for everything. thank you for listening to me. i wish i could say just how much it means to me that you were here to listen to me as i bared everything. but i think i am at the point where my sadness has far passed my ability to write about it. because i'm so sad. sorry this is so raw and honest. but it's the truth - i'm just so sad and i cannot write about it anymore because it's no longer something that i can bear. not like this

so i'm trying to move on. i need to move on.

maybe i'll write again one day. and i do plan to finish velvet so maybe i'll come by once in a while. maybe i'll keep writing these short stories. but i won't promise that i will.

once again thank you for all the love. i keep it very close to my heart and i carry it everywhere i go

i hope all is well for you. and i love you

don't forget to drink your water :]