Minho is warm to the touch. He smells good. Like lemongrass, Jisung thinks. He can smell it in Minho's hair when he breathes.

The lights are still flickering. Less and less. It was nearly blinding when their rage was at its height. At least the windows didn't shatter, though they did rattle.

Sometimes the demon inside him stirs, whispering violent things in his ear. Each time he holds Minho tighter. Breathes. Counts backward from one hundred. He knows, if he lost control now, he would have no one left.

Nini is dead.

He'll never hear her voice again. She won't be here to talk him down. Or scold him. Or pitter-patter her feet while Grandpa plays his guitar. Or hang the laundry from the smallest socks to the biggest sheets.

Grandpa is dead too. It happened too early. If he had just held on a little longer, Jisung might have been able to keep him alive. But maybe that wouldn't have worked out either.

His grandparents had known each other all their lives, though they were married to other people. Once their partners had died, they made a life together. Grandpa became like family to Jisung. Nini called Jisung 'Little' because he was thin as a rake, but also because he tried to emulate Grandpa, everything down to his mannerisms, his hobbies, his calluses.

He wanted Jisung to graduate high school. Jisung doesn't know what difference it would have made. But he would have liked to see his grandfather in the crowd, wearing the suit he saved for special occasions. He would have liked his grandfather to be proud of him.

Jisung doesn't remember his mother. He's never missed her.

He doesn't remember anything before Nini. She used to say that he does remember, just not in memory. His body remembers. He carries his past with him. Sometimes he thinks it's bullshit. Sometimes he knows it's true. There are emotions in him that he can't understand, emotions too big for his body.

His father is alive. He's just not around. He left after Jisung's mother died — overdose, he thinks, though Nini wouldn't say — leaving Jisung, 18 months old, alone in a filthy apartment for a whole day and a whole night, until Nini came to collect him. She took care of him like a son from then on. After her real son abandoned them. He abandoned Jisung. Jisung thinks he hates him, even if he doesn't remember him.

Minho is warm.

Nini is dead.

Jisung is tired.

The lights go out after Minho leaves the house.

—

The guys from the funeral home take Nini away. He can't watch. He doesn't want his last memory of her to be cold and pale, though she didn't look much better when they said goodbye. (They barely said goodbye. They just held hands while he cried and she didn't.)

He stays in bed for the rest of the day. And the night, and the next day. Every so often he hears a knock at the front door. He thinks the neighbours are coming to offer condolences. That's what they did when Grandpa died. Nini didn't get the door back then, and he doesn't now either.

Jisung calls in sick to work. He can't eat. He can't sleep. He just rots in bed. He's never felt so alone, not even at two in the morning at the construction site, listening to rats rummage through the trash. Not downtown, an invisible man with a silent guitar. Not as a baby in an empty apartment, hungry and crying.

All he can do is scribble in his notebook. Endless revising. It's where he's most comfortable. Chasing perfection.

You're gone / gone as soon as you came
Fight the time / though it's a losing game
The seconds fly away / the clock's taken flight
Knew you'd leave me sleepless when I saw you that night

He won't let his dreams, his subconscious, the damned phantom inside him, ghostwrite for him anymore. He's sick of prophecy. He wants to write a love song. Lord knows he couldn't write a lament for Nini. Minho and him aren't okay, but at least Minho is alive.

Don't know diamonds / not Lucy in the sky
Been in love / been on drugs / never felt this high
Sand thru my fingers / trying to hold on
When the lights went out / I knew you were gone

He wants to write a love song, but nothing about this feels romantic. The last words he said to Minho were "I hate you." And he did in that moment. And then Minho hugged him and held him and had him, and Jisung knew he loved him. He is so in love with Lee Minho. Yet another emotion that brims and overflows, too strong for his weak body.

Show me dark / show me light
Not a man of my word / said 'I won't fall' but I might
Cut like a knife / leave me hanging by a thread
Tell me you love me / everyone else is

He puts his pen down. He kind of wants to puke. He should eat. Then if it comes back up, he'll be done with it.

He makes himself a plate of something and walks around the house. It's the same as it was yesterday, a week ago, a month ago. That's something he's learned about grief. It's a lens. The house hasn't changed and it won't change. It probably wouldn't even if he disappeared and never ever came back.

What would happen if he disappeared?

He makes another round through the dining room and kitchen. He remembers standing on a chair in front of the sink, filling it with bubbly water and playing until his fingers were wrinkled. He remembers Christmas in the living room, fishing for newspaper-wrapped gifts under a cheap silver tree. (He always got knitted things, socks and scarves and a family of button-eyed mice.) He remembers Grandpa teaching him to play guitar — big rough hands double the size of his, a pat on the head every time he played the right chord.

He's been thinking about his childhood. He didn't realize he missed it so much, didn't realize it's gone. Forever. And nothing has been the same since. Nini hasn't tied his shoelaces for him in 15 years. Grandpa hasn't played guitar with him since his first heart attack. He hasn't been happy. But the memories float to the surface in his mind, and he mourns the kind of oblivion that only exists in retrospect.

The house feels different now. Sometimes it's hard to breathe. It isn't the same wonderland of nooks and crannies and safety he remembers. He looks around and wonders, why don't I care about any of these things? Not the sink, though he played in it. Not the Christmas tree, which sits in the living room all year round. To find one material thing he actually cares for...

The guitar Minho gave him. He does care for that.

He can't rot in this house any longer. It's airless and stagnant. And the closer he gets to Nini's room, the farther he wants to run.

He needs someone to hear him. Even if they don't listen.

He probably looks like shit. He hasn't washed his hair. Years of night shifts are catching up to him all at once. He wanders around downtown for a while before landing in front of the grocery store, sitting on a piece of cardboard. He takes a breath and lets it out through the strings. He starts singing. His voice is froggy.

"Hey, guitar man."

He sees the gentleman with his tabby cat walking toward him. "Oh. Hi."

He settles down under the awning across the sidewalk. Jisung continues playing. The traffic swallows his voice. The air is tepid and muggy. He sings his dismal love song and the words ache on his tongue. He feels out of breath. God, I can't do this.

He slaps his notebook closed. And flips it open again, a random page. Lyrics prompted by a poem he heard in his dreams:

Fought with hands nails and teeth
Fought with hatred burning underneath
Birds of a feather / perished together
Gone without a trace / into mother's embrace

He shuts the book again. His voice is caught in his throat. His arms tighten around his guitar. His beautiful guitar. Someday, all it will be is a memory. All he'll have to prove it existed are calluses. Even his calluses will return to dirt.

He sinks into his hands, raking them back and forth through his hair.

"You okay, fella?"

Jisung shakes his head, hands still fisted in his hair.

"Ah, I see. Withdrawal's a nasty business. There's a garbage can over there if you need it."

Jisung lets his arms fall, head still hung. He wants to curl forward till he reaches the ground. "Do you ever realize you're alone? You're alone you're alone you're alone?"

The man laughs. "Obviously not. I've got Yebin."

"Who's Yebin?"

The cat in his lap hisses. The man coos over her. "You tell him, pretty girl."

Jisung sinks into his hands again.

"It's okay, son," the man says to him. "We all get a bit nutty once in a while. You won't feel alone forever."

"I will. Everyone in my family is dead. I have no one left."

"Oh... I see."

"I think I'm losing my mind. I look at things and I just don't care. Everything in my house, it just — it all feels like a burden."

"Even your fancy guitar there?"

He looks down at the guitar. The sleek wood and sensitive strings. What does it mean that he cares about it? Would it kill him to lose it?

He lost his parents. He's alive. He lost Grandpa. He's alive. He lost Nini. Somehow, he's alive.

This guitar is nothing in comparison. The only reason it means so much to him is because... oh.

Jisung pulls the strap carefully over his head. He meets the man's eyes. "It's important because someone I love gave it to me."

"Where's that person now?"

"Out there. Somewhere. We can't be together."

"Why's that?"

Jisung just shakes his head. "Circumstances."

"So you do have someone left. At least there's that, right?" He snaps his fingers. "Do these circumstances have to do with your woman troubles?"

"Guy troubles. I'm gay."

"I... see."

"I think he's the last person on earth who cares about me. I should just consider him dead. So I can... stop wanting him. It only hurts more and more."

"Well... isn't that it?"

"What?"

"You should be with him. He's what you want, go get him."

"What if it's not possible?"

"You can try. I mean, what've you got to lose?"

Jisung's shoulders fall. What have I got to lose?

He runs his fingertips over the bronze strings. He loves the sound, the zing, always has.

He picks himself up off the ground, and holds the guitar out to the gentleman. He stares up at Jisung, eyes wide.

"Take it," says Jisung.

He reaches up and gently takes the guitar. "Your lover gave you this. This is yours."

"This is what I have to lose. To give. I don't want it anymore."

Jisung crouches to pet the cat, then stands and walks away. He only stops to drop his notebook in a garbage can.