✎ t//w: mentions of suicide

"want a puff?"

after approximately two hours of just wandering around, visiting shops and watching street performances, ella & heeseung have finally set themselves down in danube river's bank, having purchased another round of beers & ruffles from a different convenience store and watching the boats sail by with their feet dangling off the stairs.

the sun's already setting behind the line of trees on the opposite side, its golden disk melting like peach ice cream and painting the sky in light hues of orange and soft pink. small, fluffy clouds in shades of purple are hanging above them, and every now and then, a flock of birds flies by, the little feather balls singing their own song.

heeseung has pulled out a marlboro packet, taking a stick out & letting it balance on his dry lips. ella watches his every move like a curious toddler, mindlessly munching on a salty chip that scratches down her throat and makes her lips itch ─ two bags of salt chips is like voluntarily signing up for torture.

"i've never smoked." she admits and takes a sip from her beer ─ kaiser, of course. a small smile creeps up on her face at heeseung's look of shock. "but i guess one time won't hurt. a cigarette never harmed a lad."

"it's harmed many lads, young lady." he laughs, the cigarette bouncing on his lips. he flicks his lighter and a tiny flame sparks to life. he leans his head forward & lets the tip of the stick lick the small fire, a dull orange burning bright for a split second before it dies down. he sucks in a long breath and unlatches the cigarette from his lips, rolling his head back and blowing the smoke out of his mouth. ella clearly remembers never finding smoking to be this attractive ─ and that says a lot for a woman who has dated a heavy smoker in the past.

"you sound just like my mom."

heeseung laughs, tapping the stick & watching the burnt parts fall off and land on the water's surface. he feels her eyes on him and decides to look up, meeting their brown color & the expectancy hidden underneath. they mirror the resplendent sky above them, and he can feel himself getting sucked in them every beat he spends staring at them. "what's it?"

"i wanna try it."

"i can't let you do that." he shakes his head and takes another drag, turning his head to the front and blowing the smoke out.

"why?" she asks like a kid throwing a tantrum at his parent for refusing to buy them candy.

"it's bad for your health."

"but you do it nonetheless."

heeseung sighs and she kicks her legs in satisfaction when he passes her the stick. "don't worry, i'm not going to get addicted by a single puff." she muses with a laugh, bringing it to her lips.

heeseung's breath gets caught up to his throat at the sight of the cigarette, that was previously on his lips, sitting on her pair of plump, soft ones. with a slow drag, ella feels the smoke travel down her throat, making her panic for a moment. heeseung catches wind of the fear in her eyes & places a hand on her shoulder. "hold it in, then let it out through your mouth."

ella fights the urge to cough it all out along with her embarrassment, giving heeseung a small nod as she pulls the stick off her lips. her eyes water and her cheeks burn with heat, but she focuses on blowing the smoke out as carefully as she can.

a white cloud escapes her puckered lips like a sigh of relief and heeseung is left staring at it dissolving in the air. he then looks at ella, one corner of his lips curling in a sly smirk. "so?"

a moment of silence. "ew!" she shrieks and practically throws the cigarette in his open palm, grabbing her beer and taking a long, long sip; there's a strong taste of cement that still lingers in her tongue even after downing half of her drink. she sets her can down with a wince and turns to look at him, then at the stick between his fingers.

she points at it. "never in my life will i ever touch that stinky stick of poison in my life... never!"

he throws his head back in a laugh that echoes all throughout the place. "satisfied?"

"does it seem like it?"

"fair enough." he chuckles again and takes another puff, blowing the smoke out through his nose while staring off at the waters darkening beneath their feet, the sun's last dying rays painting the town red and orange. the people walking down the stretch of the bank become lesser and lesser as the street lights switch on and the day gives its place to a promising night.

"how long have you been smoking?" ella asks as she brings her hands on her lap and starts swinging her legs back and forth, her cardigan draped over her shoulders.

heeseung hums, nodding to himself while counting in his head. "three... four years? i was sixteen when i first smoked, but it wasn't that serious."

"sixteen?" the woman shrieks, eyes blown wide in surprise. "wow. why? was it peer pressure? a sort of coping mechanism? curiosity?"

heeseung finds her will to learn more about him funny and, in a sense, a bit heartwarming. his shoulders however feel heavy upon watching her smile drop at his reasoning, and he's not sure if he should be feeling ashamed or compunctious.

"for attention."

ella goes tight-lipped, inhaling sharply through her nostrils. "i..." she trails & seems hesitant to continue, but does it nonetheless. "there are healthier ways to get someone's attention, heeseung."

he knows that it's not the best of time to be thinking about this, but the way his name rolls off her tongue, the way the pronunciation is so on-point and the way her lips curl into a small, ever so playful smirk after she finishes her sentence... it's hard not to.

he takes one more long draw before he throws the cigarette in the water, watching the little orange dot of the flame shine bright for a brief moment before it completely dies down.

"i tried."

"hmm?"

heeseung pauses to take a sip of his now lukewarm beer. "i tried to get it with good grades and distinctions... i tried to get it through class president and team captain positions... i tried it all, ella."

he lifts his gaze to meet her perplexed one. "my parents never acknowledged any of it though."

his parents... he wanted to grab their attention, but why? curiosity's eating her up from within, but she's scared to ask ─ you never know how people will react to the parents topic.

she doesn't have to ask him, though, because he himself takes the initiative to speak about it. "they were putting so much pressure on me, to the point that i had enough. i thought i would be able to handle it, because i─it's like a normal thing for asian parents to be like this, you know? and all i had to do was be a good son for them & not disappoint them. i thought it'd be an easy thing to do, since i have always been good in everything i did & they were never disappointed."

he grabs a handful of chips & shoves it in his mouth ─ and the sight would've been comical if it weren't for the topic at hand. he munches on it for a while, before he continues. "i've a brother. he's a few years older than me. by the time i went to middle school, he had left home for college. throughout the entirety of elementary school, i was a straight a student & the best in every sports team i was a part of. now you'll say it's elementary school, rightfully so... but i'd taken up so many classes & extracurricular activities, that it didn't feel like it. i didn't even have the time to play or hang out with my friends!"

ella winces. that hit close to home.

"in middle school, i didn't really have difficulty with any of the subjects and i was doing pretty decent. my parents, however, thought that i needed extra hours of tutoring so that i'd do better." he shakes his head with a bitter laugh and chugs half of his beer in one go. "and that's when it all went south."

"they started comparing me to heedo and they'd continuously tell me how he was always doing better than me, which made no sense since he was never top of his class & i never scored lower than 96 on my exams. still, they insisted that he was the better son."

"truth is..." he sucks in a deep breath and releases it through his nose. "i... i never wanted to study abroad. it was what my parents wanted since i was young & i just went with it, desperate to please them. i didn't even complain when they had randomly moved me schools mid-year and enrolled me in the most prestigious english school."

"it was a big shock for me since it wasn't your usual type of school ─ they're stricter, more pressuring and they had the worst punishments for the students that were slacking. it... it was like prison." his voice breaks and a sob goes past his quivering lips, that he attempts to conceal with a cough.

"most of my classmates weren't able to take it... some harmed themselves, some gave up and some... committed."

"oh my god!" ella exclaims & covers her mouth with her sweaty palms, a squeaky cry escaping her. "that's..." awful. inhuman. absolutely deranged. there are a million words that could perfectly describe this school-prison's situation, yet all ella could do was tear up more and feel her heart crack little by little.

heeseung catches a tear rolling down his cheek before she can notice it and takes a deep breath. "when... i came back home for vacation, i'd changed ─ at least that's how mom put it. but she didn't sound happy or elated. she was disgusted." his face twists in pain and hurt. "she said i was distant & always looked like i was in the verge of going batshit crazy. and i was, but she didn't have to know that. i wanted to prove that i can be better than heedo, even if it meant going insane."

"heeseung, that's not okay."

"and who said it was okay?" he finally looks at her & ella takes notice of his glossy, bloodshot eyes and stray tears trickling their ways down his flushed cheeks. the sticky paths they'd leave behind them glowed underneath the bloody red light of the sunset, and in that moment, it felt like nature was in perfect harmony with his heart and mind ─ a strong chaos of emotions that filled him up with boiling rage.

"no one." she breathes out, her voice barely above a whisper. "no one." she repeats, louder this time, making his brows stitch in a pained frown.

"that's when i... i started doing things to get their attention, to s─show them that i'm not okay. i smoked a cigarette down the street that a jock gave me & came back home, making sure that i smell like smoke from head to toe. but all dad said was 'stop hanging out with bastards & focus on school'. and i did it again and again and again, i came back stinking and they'd reprimand me for the friends i had, when i didn't even have friends! after i left my old school, no one cared to contact me or even care for my whereabouts, and i didn't even bother with making any new ones."

"then it just... became a habit. i gave up on basketball cause it became too hard for me to keep up with the rest of the team ─ which they didn't like, but i didn't need basketball to become a doctor, so it didn't really matter."

silence settles between the two, in which they process what'd just went down. ella felt like she'd tripped over a cliff after tip-toeing on its edge and was now falling to her death, while heeseung's insides burned with guilt for opening up. he'd asked her to join him so that they can have a fun time, but emotions took the best of him when he was least expecting it ─ or he's been on the edge far too long & finally felt comfortable enough to let it all out. either way, venting to ella was a mistake. they didn't even know each other on a basic level to be able to speak about such stuff freely, but there he was, wearing his heart on his sleeve like an attention-seeker and offering a piece of him, that he had managed to hide for so long, to some stranger.

he's unhinged.

"i'm sorry for ruining the mood." he speaks up first, filling the silence with his awkward laugh & his quiet voice. ella looks at him, a wave of electricity ringing through her entire body when she finds him fiddling nervously with his fingers, looking like a kid caught in the act of cheating during an exam. he looks embarrassed, vulnerable and very much regretful. only thing is, he should not be feeling those things ─ especially after all that stuff he just told her. he didn't cheat in an exam, he didn't do anything that requires her to punish him.

"don't be." she mumbles, coughing to clear her throat when it comes out a bit hoarse. "i'm glad you could speak about it and... i hope that it helped lift some weight off your heart."

"no one deserves to suffer in silence."

even her, but she's yet to find the one to feel okay with venting to. she has always been the "therapy friend", the one who would always listen and give advice but would never be listened to and be given advise about stuff. she'd decided to stop that for the sake of her sanity & cut out any people that'd use her as a psychologist.

tonight, though, she wanted to take up that role again and help heeseung out ─ if he felt like it'd help him out, then she was eager enough to listen to him for hours to come.

if it meant that she'd get to listen to his beautiful voice, he might as well go on forever.