CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE
( Exit Music, For A Film )

CHA JAEHWA, DESPITE having known Ahn Suho the longest, does not get to be the bearer of bad news.

She is no anchor, no solace for a fragmented heart, no shoulder to cry on. She is not the first to know, nor is she the second.

Among those who knew Ahn Suho, Cha Jaehwa is the last to find him in that hospital bed.

She is the last to trace the wires of his undoing with her fragile fingers, gingerly, as though every line was a piece of Suho's torn strings. She is the last to bring flowers to his bedside, the last to brush strands of his hair away from his cemented eyes. Cha Jaehwa is the last person to hold Ahn Suho amidst his slumber, chained to the hospital walls like a prisoner.

She is the last; And yet, she is the first to break. Young-yi's anguish is silent. She weeps softly, burying her face in her hands, hiding herself away to avoid being perceived and pitied. Her grief is tangible, subdued only barely by Jaehwa's presence. Young-yi doesn't have to say anything through her tears for Jaehwa to understand the linings of her torment fester beyond the cold interior of the hospital room.

Yeon Si-eun is the anchor. His bitten lip quivers and bleeds when faced with the once-grand Ahn Suho, but he turns away and recollects himself. He tucks away his lament in the folds of his bleary eyes, but holds steadfast to the strap of his backpack as though it'll do him any good. Jaehwa's presence means nothing at that moment, and so she shifts away from him, a growing rift against the waves he emits.

Jaehwa, for all the lack of memories and all the grey and coffee-stained film stuck in the projector of her brain, is inexplicably devastated.

( What gives her the right? )

Her voice marrs the hallways of the hospital, guttural and agonizing, like a wounded animal begging to be put out of its misery. It echoes and fades into the cold tile floors before she can even step into the room, too afraid to see what lay beyond.

Every inch of space surrounding her reeks of an ill-fated home. A place where Cha Jaehwa seemingly gained a second life, and the very same place she would lose it.

Ahn Suho is untainted. If she steps in, she knows she will ruin him all over again. She will seep into the jagged lines of his knee and dig the shattered pieces deeper. She will claw open his appendages and sleep inside the cavity of his heart. Her soul will mingle against his, and they will only become a disgustingly disfigured thing amidst the beauty of their separation.

She is a pollutant, excavating the healthy soil of Ahn Suho's slumbering body.

Cha Jaehwa cannot hold Ahn Suho by the frayed strands of his strings. They are too thin to salvage. Jaehwa is too weak to hold on.

( His steady breaths echo: Inhale, exhale. On the first day, Cha Jaehwa runs away from what remains of her dying sun as it settles against the bleak horizon ).

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AMONG THOSE WHO knew him, Ahn Suho was grand. Past his daunting nature, and his violent tendencies, Ahn Suho was an unstoppable force.

At some point, Cha Jaehwa had been his immovable object. Her wit and her charm had salvaged Suho from the brink of savagery, away from the foamy-mouthed, violent-prone creatures that lingered the school halls.

It was inevitable, that Ahn Suho should fall for such a girl. That her charm would have irreversible effects on him, altering him forever. Suho's fingers lingered on the gun, but he was afraid to pull the trigger. He was afraid of what it meant to be more.

Cha Jaehwa can only describe Ahn Suho as what he is; Everything. He is the vivid film that replays against her head amidst tainted colors, he is so grand that putting it into words is an insult in itself.

Ahn Suho was everything.

He was the whispered summer breeze against Jaehwa's skin, warm and fresh and familiar. He was the molded couch seat in the far corner, dipped and solely his to sit on when he came over, his eyes alight as they fixed against the television screen. He was the only working record that replayed in Jaehwa's broken record player, the only memorable face that stuck in her cloudy mind.

Even before he was everything, Cha Jaehwa knew that he had to be something. She clawed her way to him regardless of doubt, towards the horizon, towards the light.

And she found Ahn Suho.

( Part of her wishes she hadn't ).

There is no moving on from grief. Jaehwa knows that her ache will never disappear. It will dull, its bite becoming no more than a toothless nibble, but it will still sting. Her tears won't dry.

The papers won't burn. Even when she tosses them away, sets them on fire, rips them apart, the grating smile that haunts her echoes against her mind like pond ripples. Ahn Suho lingers in every crevice of her home.

( Why is he the only one she can so vividly remember? )

Cha Jaehwa does not understand the rage that fills her. She doesn't understand the empty gaping wounds digging against her stomach, the heaviness to her chest and the squeeze against her throat.

It never makes sense. She erodes into a carcass of rotten flesh. There is no more Summer. There is no more Spring.

There is only a bleak, gutting reminder that Cha Jaehwa will never truly know who she mourns.

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WHEN JAEHWA STEPS into the cold interior of the hospital, she is brought back to the blinding fluorescent lights and the thin gowns that often fill her early subconscious.

Her skin crawls with minuscule pinpricks of dull frost, and she yearns for warmth. There is no one by her side to take her hand and tell her she'll be fine.

( Ahn Suho's warm eyes sear against her skull. She exhales a shuddering breath ).

Jaehwa tackles the hospital one step at a time, one foot in front of the other. She counts to one hundred to keep her mind off the visit, but inevitably it wanders back to the chambers of her guilt.

Ahn Suho. Ahn Suho. Ahn Suho.

"Ahn Suho." She recites when the nurse at the desk asks who she's visiting. The kind-faced woman gives her a smile as she hands Jaehwa a pen and a clipboard.

Part of her wants to leave. The other part of her wants to cry. Instead, she picks at the skin around her nails with one hand and takes the clipboard and pen with the other.

When asked about her relationship with the patient, tear marks stain the word, 'friend'. Jaehwa is disgustingly relieved to see her name is the only one on the sheet for the day.

Her footsteps are heavy, every bit of energy seemingly wasted on the effort it took to get out of bed. Jaehwa doesn't walk through the halls; She glides. Almost a ghost, fading into the grey wallpaper of the world around her, searching for a light that won't ever return.

The world did not end when Cha Jaehwa lost Ahn Suho. It kept going, shifting, changing.

And that is perhaps the worst part of it all.

There is no other way to describe her insides as she reaches for the door handle other than cold. Her body is blue, dull marine and old flesh. It hangs against her bones like stiff rags, and the pieces flutter off when the wind is too strong. Cha Jaehwa feels dead, and Ahn Suho is halfway there.

She opens the door slowly. Her eyes refuse to look up, and she counts to ten before stepping into the room. It feels more like a funeral than anything. Jaehwa is in between mourning and being upset at those who mourn.

( He's still here. You can't mourn someone who's still here ).

Each shuddering step feels like traipsing on a thin rope above lava. Every step closer to Ahn Suho feels like a crime. As though Jaehwa's presence sucks all the oxygen out of the air.

It dawns on her that she doesn't want to see Ahn Suho. Not like this. She has a clear image of him in her mind; Sweet, lopsided grin, bright eyes, alive.

If she looks at him now, will that image change?

She looks at him anyway. He has a new mouth; A clear, tubed mouth that overtakes his nose and digs into his face. Ahn Suho is so stiff. She reaches out to brush the hair out of his eyes. How will he see when his hair grows too long?

"Suho." Is what Jaehwa means to say. Instead, what comes out is choked cries and warm tears.

( She tries to push them back. Warmth is all she has left of Ahn Suho ).

The handles of his bed become Jaehwa's support. She sinks her knuckles into the metal so harshly they turn white, and she watches the blood rush back into them before repeating the same process.

When her tears run dry, she presses a kiss to Suho's temple and walks away without another word.

There's nothing she can say. Ahn Suho had always been the talkative one. She turns back three times, praying that when she looked, Ahn Suho would be waiting for her.

( He isn't. He won't be ).

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YEON SI-EUN LEAVES, too. His departure is bitter, blurred by tears that aren't Jaehwa's nor his.

He tells her everything. The fights, about Beomseok, his festering rage that brought about his leaving.

Jaehwa can't bring herself to care anymore. She frowns when Yeon Si-eun's arms find themselves against her shoulders, as he pours in what he can't say into words in his embrace.

There are no tears, but Jaehwa holds him just as tightly. He isn't moving far, he promises. But he's moving away regardless.

( Jaehwa often makes the mistake of knocking on his old apartment door, only for no one to answer ).

Moon Boram also comments one cold night over whether the family should move and find Jaehwa a better school.

She cries, then. She breaks a glass vase that sits against the coffee table, her tears muddling everything past the gash on her hand and the trip to the hospital.

And as her parents fill out the paperwork, drained and upset, Cha Jaehwa breaks down in Ahn Suho's hospital room, refusing to leave until her parents promise there will be no more changes.

That hospital room becomes both the beginning and the end.

Cha Jaehwa shifts into something non-seasonal after the accident. Something rigid, something boiling.

Something unable to understand.

But she knows when she speaks to Ahn Suho that he understands. She knows Yeon Si-eun understands.

But neither of them are there to tell her what to do, and so she sinks into the horizon, full of emotions that she can't process, a cavernous silence in her pounding head, and she mourns.

Cha Jaehwa will never move on. She will never forget.

( Just as the Moon orbits the Earth, and the Earth orbits the Sun, Cha Jaehwa, Yeon Si-eun, and Ahn Suho are cemented into a cycle of life and death, for better and for worse ).

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‎ ✧ VOLUME I ✧
( THE END )
04 . 27 . 25

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‎ ✧ AUTHOR'S NOTE !

and that's a wrap !!! finally finished vol 1 of moonchild how are we feeling

low key disappointed in the finale because i had so much deeper interactions and stuff planned but i couldn't get them across how i wanted so.. this is what we ended off with (a letdown ik😞😞) also really short and narrative-y which was kinda annoying but it is what it is i suppose

and ofc i had to end off the volume with yet another radiohead title ! expect a lot more of those in the upcoming chapters lol

but anyways thank you so so much to all of you who stuck around this far and especially to those who've been with me since moonchild was like in the trenches LMAO i love you all sososo much thank you for all the love and support on this story, it really means the world to me !!

despite my lackluster finale, i love this book so much in a way i can't even explain 😞 writing it has been so fun and having people interact with it means the world to me! i'm sorry if the ending wasn't up to my usual standards ,, i will def make it up to you all next volume !

and speaking of next volume, i've been thinking on how to incorporate jaehwa into the story (which will be surprisingly difficult) so it may take me a while to release vol 2 but trust guys it will be done !

also s2 of whc1 was AMAZING. while it didn't follow the webtoon like.. at all LMAO it was so good and i loved it regardless! was sad to see that a lot of characters weren't included and some of the plotline was changed but it was an amazing season and im sad that i finished it in 1 day 😢

as always, this chapter and all the rest are dedicated to all of u who continue to support this fic i love yall mwahhh 🤗 super special shout out to my three favorite commenters loverayz , hollxe1 , and jutdwaezz who have been supporting me since probably day 1 LMAO i love u guys ur the best

as always feedback would be very appreciated !! questions, advice, etc, anything goes!!!! i take criticism pretty well so dw ab hurting my feelings

anyway pls lmk if there are any mistakes in the spelling or anything so i can fix it !

also don't b afraid to vote or comment, i will probably (very likely) reply!!!! and if you don't understand something, plsplspls lmk!! i want yall to fully understand what's going on

happy reads, and until the next one !! love you !

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─── ANNIE