Archive of Our Own ^beta

Yuta thinks, bitterly, that he must be the most unfortunate person in the world. 

He only says "think," because he's not even sure if he counts as a person anymore. It's not like he can die. He doesn't age. It's as if he was a vampire, only vampires aren't real and he was never bitten by one.

He has no special abilities, unlike a vampire would, but he's seemingly immortal nonetheless. 

It's not even his fault, but...the universe must be punishing him for something he isn't knowledgeable of.

In the world, you are born with a square on your wrist. The square is either red, yellow, blue, purple or green, and inside of that square is a white number. That number is the years you have left to live. 

Each square colour has a meaning, telling you the way that you die. 

Reds are murdered, purples die of an illness or disease, greens die of freak accidents, yellows die of natural causes, and blues die of suicide.

There was never supposed to be a hierarchy based on these marks, but with the history of humans, it was inevitable, and by the time Yuta was born in 1995, one was already in place. 

The top of the hierarchy was yellows, who often would die much later in life than the other markings. Up there, right after them, were any reds, greens or purples with high numbers. After them came any reds, greens or purples with low numbers. Then came higher number blues. Finally, at the bottom of the chain was any other kind of blue. 

Blues were considered weak and pathetic, even if they weren't so. Blues were considered useless, the ones least hireable, lazy, unwanted. They were the ones who were doomed from the beginning to die at their own hands; they would feel unloved and alone.

If yellows were the people that were popular, blues were the people who were bullied, even for their death that they weren't even in control of. 

And everyone played their role. Yellows were successful and happy, pleased with their long lifespans and all they could achieve within them while everyone else lived within normal means and blues scraped by. 

Blues would be outcasts and near silent, playing someone who was on the verge of ending it all, even if they weren't to that point yet, and even if they were, it was pointless. 

Anti-Depressants were considered obsolete, if a blue called a hotline or a psychiatrist and said they were feeling suicidal, then they were told that nothing could be done. They were asked what their number said and if the poor blue choked out a zero...well then they were simply told to jump.

Nobody ever thought of dying before their time ran out, least of all yellows, reds and greens. It was just a thing, no matter how rough it got you waited for your arm to hit zero. 

Once it did, you were free to leave, but until then, you just had to wait it out. 

Well, nobody ever thought of it, but Yuta.

He was born with a number on his arm that read eighty-four and a yellow background. 

By all accounts, he was set up for a good life.

But it all felt like it was constantly derailing. 

His dad was also a yellow; he'd die at age ninety-two. His mom was a purple, she was set to die at age thirty-seven. 

She was twenty-six when Yuta was born.

His father, even with all his disdain for most other markings, had fallen in love with her when he was in college and maybe less conservative, but she was the only marking that wasn't a yellow that he held in his heart.

Yuta's older sister was three years older than him, a blue. 

His father used to tell him not to hang out with her, not to really go near her, that she wasn't good enough for him and to just let her bide her time until she eventually died, but he hung out with her anyway. 

Yuta cried his heart out on the day of his mom's death, she was in the hospital with terminal brain cancer and even though she no longer looked the same and was so much weaker, he loved her dearly. 

She was always polite to everyone, regardless of their mark and she loved her family with all her heart, even his sister which his father seemed to consider nothing more than a mistake. Yuta clung to her arm at eleven years old as she took her last breath, and it burned his chest. 

He was there at the funeral, a closed casket, muffling his sobs into his hand as friends and family spoke about her, static filling his mind. 

His father was already composed though, simply glaring at Yuta and telling him to stop crying so hard. 

He was acting too much like a blue.

From then on, things would spiral. It might've been the loss of his wife or maybe just the fact that she wasn't there to stop him, but his dad started to be both physically and mentally abusive. 

He wanted to take most of his anger out on his sister—after all, she was a blue—but Yuta would take the brunt instead. 

He'd insult her and call her names, berate her for just existing and tell her that he wished he got a yellow instead of her, and whenever Yuta would stick up for her then he would be targeted as well.

Home became a nightmare but he found comfort in his big sis even as he watched her number fall lower and he saw reality approaching.

She wasn't the same after their mom died, and then once his dad started being so cruel...he watched her close up on herself. 

He used to beg his dad to stop saying those things—she's a blue, can't he understand how much he's hurting her—but it didn't matter. All he was told was that he was clinging onto dead weight and that he needed to leave her alone, "let her be depressed in peace."

Yuta would find her in her room when he got back from school, laying on her bed and staring up at her ceiling with tears in her eyes. 

He'd sit there for hours with her, talking even if she wasn't really listening, trying to give her comfort that he knew wasn't enough. There was nothing for him to do.

Her number reached zero, and he knew that she would be leaving him soon but he didn't want to acknowledge it. 

He came home after school one day and walked to her room, but she wasn't there. 

He checked the living room, the kitchen, even the dining room and his dad's room. 

Then, he checked the bathroom. 

That was where he found her, her head submerged under bloody bathwater.

Red everywhere. 

He pulled her out and he felt the water semi-sticky, translucent red and when he laid her on the tile he called an ambulance as he did CPR. 

It was useless. Her mark was already nothing more than a black square with no number. She was gone. 

Yuta was hysterical. She was only seventeen and it wasn't fair that she was hurting so much and nobody cared or wanted to help her.

It wasn't fair that he lost the two family members he was closest to at age fourteen, and how dare they leave him alone with the man that Yuta could barely consider his father?

It felt terrible, there was no one to comfort him when his father hit him for showing simple compassion to someone of a different mark, teaching him all his bigotry and expecting Yuta to agree when he was forced to watch his mom and sister die. 

It's as if his dad didn't consider them people and didn't want him to either, and by all accounts, made Yuta miserable.

He wondered if the feeling of numbness and sadness at every moment he was awake was the same thing his sister felt before she died, and with each bruise it just got worse.

Worse and worse, enclosing his mind. He didn't want to see his father or live in the same house anymore. He just wanted to leave. 

But he was only sixteen. 

Yuta's mental health kept deteriorating, faster and faster, until he felt so utterly exhausted and hopeless that he'd honestly felt like he sunk to the same low his sister hit.

He found himself clawing at his wrist where his marking was; he wanted to rip it out and replace it with something that was only a year or two. 

He ended up on the floor of his bathroom—the bathroom he once shared with his sister—shaving blades in hand, raking them over his thighs. 

Yuta didn't really know what to do, he didn't know who to tell. Not his father, not a teacher or a student because either nothing would be done or they would just tell his father, a professional may not even give him one. 

As far as Yuta had even googled, he hadn't heard of a yellow seriously contemplating suicide decades before it was even close to their time. 

As if Yuta was the first. 

At age seventeen, the same day his sister died, he took a bunch of pills. He hoped he'd cheated death.

He woke up getting his stomach pumped, the eyes of his father glaring holes into him.

The nurses floated around. "Overdose...addiction...accident." he heard their words, like they never considered it attempted suicide, because he was a yellow teen who was supposed to die at age eighty-four and this wasn't something that happened.

"Well, I'd say I'm happy you lived, but we all knew you'd make it! You should have a long and healthy life in front of you!" the doctor told him. 

It made Yuta cry more. 

His father was so unbelievably angry when Yuta was released from the hospital. “I didn’t lose my suicidal blue of a daughter just to have my yellow turn out the same way! This is why I told you not to fucking talk to her!” he screamed. 

Yuta blinked on, wincing as the first hit came and then lying pliantly as more followed. He had no energy to protest, and he was right anyways. Yuta was a failure of a yellow, depressed and suicidal, making a desperate attempt to join the two people he loved more than anything in the afterlife.

Yuta tried to push on, even with all encompassing numbness surrounding him. Even when his mind was occupied with thoughts of death and ending his suffering. Even with his father hitting him and screaming at him, cursing at him for being born just as he once did to his sister. 

Yuta’s world was coloured black and white, just like the colour of her square when he found her in the bath, and he longed for his to do the same. 

It truly was bizarre, how Yuta could seemingly be the only yellow unhappy with life, wishing to die and yet held on by his destiny to do otherwise.

After high school ended, Yuta moved to college and away from his abusive excuse of a father, and yet nothing changed aside for that. It didn’t make him happier, like he hoped it would. It didn’t make him want to die any less.

At age seventeen Yuta made his first attempt to cheat fate, but not his last. 

He tried again at nineteen, and again at twenty-one, twenty-three and again at twenty four.

That was the one that sealed his fate.

He wonders what being cursed him; who cursed him to this fate, cursed him his entire life.

His mother died, his sister died, his father abused him, he attempted suicide five times and failed everytime, and then whatever deity was above him decided to punish him for it.

Yuta didn’t realise it until his twenty-fifth birthday came and slipped away, yet the date of when his square number should change never did. He thought it was strange, but he ignored it—even when he knew that something was wrong. He continued with his bleak life as normal, confused but nonetheless moving on, and when twenty-six flew away he saw the number stay unmoving again.

He watched his friends turn twenty-seven, then twenty-eight, and they all looked different from when they were twenty-four, yet he looked the same.

Yuta’s head screamed that something was wrong, wrong, wrong. Yet, he didn’t know what it was. 

Why wasn’t his square number changing?

Twenty-nine, thirty, thirty-one and most of them had a baby or a kid with a wife. Yuta still barely had anything together, and his mind at most moments was still consumed with thoughts of death and confusion as to why he still looked no different.

Everyone was growing older, and he was so confused. Terrified.

Yuta attempted suicide for the sixth time on the date that his number should’ve changed and yet still didn’t.

And he woke up on his floor, his number unchanged. 

That night was his mental breakdown, he sobbed as he called one of the friends that he still felt close to even as their life paths changed, and he cried like a child because the fear was all encompassing.

“I can’t keep doing this! It’s the sixth time I’ve tried to die and I still failed! My number hasn’t changed since I was twenty-four! I- I- What if I’m dead and just in some sort of torment?”

“What are you talking about, Yuta?”

“I don’t think I’ve aged since I attempted suicide at age twenty-four.”

“Yu…I think you need some urgent mental help. Do you want me to come get you? I can tell Sakura that I’m leaving.”

“You don’t believe me.” Yuta laughed. He wouldn’t believe someone if they told him either. He sounded insane.

“It’s not that I don’t believe you, I’m just worried for you. You’re a yellow you’re not—”

“Not supposed to want to die? Not supposed to be suicidal?”

“No.”

“How many times do you think it would take me to die?” Yuta asked, getting up from the floor to walk into his kitchen.

“Yuta. I can hear you moving. What are you doing?” they said. He could hear muffled yelling from the receiver as Ryoki pulled it away to yell at his wife that they needed to take their car.

“I’ve tried six times, surely if I reached ten or twenty it’d be enough?”

“Yuta, it’s going to be okay, please.”

“I mean, if I stabbed myself in the neck, surely that would be enough to kill me?”

“Yu, please, I’m only ten minutes away. Don’t do something drastic.”

“I’ve wanted to die since I was seventeen. I’m thirty-two, or at least I’m supposed to be. Am I supposed to stay like this until I’m eighty-four? I- I can’t.”

“Yuta, Yuta I’m close. We can talk about this together, we can get you some help, don’t do this Yu.”

“It hurts. Everything hurts. Living hurts. I don’t— I don’t know what to do. You think I’m fucking insane, I know but I can’t do this.”

He hung up the phone, and he held the knife to his neck. Dying didn’t scare him anymore, after trying so many ways. This one was more intimate but that was fine, as long as it held the potential of an end.

So he drove it through his neck, and his whole body was struck with overwhelming agony as pain worse than anything he’d felt before crashed through him. But he just hoped that nobody would arrive in time to save him.

He awoke in the hospital, IVs in his arms and a tube in his nose. 

“You’re awake, we must admit you gave us quite a scare, but you’re a yellow, so we knew you’d pull through.”

They sent him to a mental hospital after that. Maybe they thought it would help, but he was let out and still had no medication to stop his depression. His friends—the same ones that he already was no longer fitting in with—now looked at him strangely. They all knew.

They knew that he’d tried more than just a few times, and that recently he’d stabbed himself violently. Suddenly they weren’t bringing their little toddlers around him. He was weird, and strange, and the only yellow to keep doing what he was doing. 

They got older, and he stopped coming over as often. Mostly not at all. It was just awkward now, he was twenty-four and they were thirty-eight. They had kids and families and their shit put together and he was just…

It wasn’t like he was mentally the age that his body was stuck in, but it didn’t change it nonetheless, and at some point it just got weird. They could pretend that he was their age all that they wanted, but at some point it just felt like a fundamental issue. He was there when Ayaka was born and he watched her turn four this year while he stayed the same. 

Their paths diverged. 

It was strange, because he was alone again. Just like when he was eighteen and moving to college. 

Yuta’s mind remained bleak, and he continued working at the same job, moving up and getting promoted while his life never changed.

Every day felt exhausting, trying to make the most out of his life while the fact remained clear; for some reason, he wasn’t aging. 

It was one thing, continuing on with the knowledge that he was doomed to feel miserable for the foreseeable future, until he reached the ripe age of eighty-four, but it was something else to feel doomed forever.

He racked his mind, looking for something, anything, that he did wrong. He searched for anything that he could do to resume his aging process but there was nothing.

He stayed in the area until it no longer felt safe for him. He was forty-nine with the body of a twenty-four year old and even aging well couldn’t explain away how young he looked. 

He stopped back by his old friends houses, and Sakura opened the door. She was still pretty but undoubtedly older now, and she smiled at him. “Yuta, come in,” she beckoned. It felt like there should be a younger honorific on there, even if he was older than her. Time must’ve healed the awkwardness from the knowledge that he tried to stab himself to death seventeen years ago. 

Ayaka was sitting on the couch, and there was a little kid running up to him. Another one, a little older, stood by the stairs, looking at him. Ryoki came from the kitchen directly after. 

“Hey Yuta, I didn’t think you’d come back.”

“Daddy, is this our older brother?”

It made Yuta laugh, but it reminded him of his difference. He was what—nine years older than Ayaka now?

“No, this is one of Daddy’s old friends.”

“Old friends? He looks twenty-two?” Ayaka said him, staring at him suspiciously.

He was there when she was a new-born.

“I’m just here to say goodbye. I’m moving.”

“Oh. Why?” Ryoki asks, but the answer is obvious. 

“Can’t look twenty-four forever, I’m not convincing anymore. Somebody asked me if I was a vampire the other day.” Yuta replies, crouching down to say hi to the boy in front of him.

“What’s your name?”

“Akiri, and I-I’m four!” He held up five fingers.

“Oh wow! I’m Yuta and I’m...thirty-four.” He picked a random number that felt semi-accurate to his appearance.

“Oh! That’s a big number, I can count to thirty-four!”

“Wow, that’s so cool—” Yuta went to say, but he was cut off.

“No you can’t.” the boy from the couch yells

“Shut up, Akihiko!”

“Boys” Sakura said, her tone a warning, and they stopped.

“So, how have you been doing?” Ryoki asked him, and he didn’t know what to say.

“The same. Working and trying to survive.”

“That’s good, I’m glad.”

The conversation trails off again, and he looks down at the boy below him. This is why he left.

“Where are you moving?” Sakura asked.

“Kyoto.”

“That’s not too far,” she said.

But they all knew that he was not coming back again.

And he didn’t.

He moved to Kyoto, started over again at a new job from a decently high position and he keeps going.

He made a few new friends that he knew he’d eventually leave, all around his mental age. But to them, he was a twenty-four year old who was just impressively good at his job. He was their talented junior who was over half their age and at least with that relationship he wasn’t expected to be growing up around the same time as them and have kids and get married.

None of which would be happening. He wasn’t particularly interested in women to begin with, and even if he was, he’d just have to leave her and their kids—or uproot and move them. 

He stayed in Kyoto for a while, maybe twenty-five years. Thirteen at his first job and then he moved to a different one for twelve.

He was seventy-nine, and simultaneously still twenty four. In ten years his dad will die. In only five, he was supposed to. 

The number on his wrists haunts him.

But there is nothing he could do about it.

Yuta grows bored of Japan after Kyoto, and he uproots his own life to move to a new place.

Yuta headed to South Korea. 

He didn’t speak Korean that well, but he was ready for a change of scenery and going to get a masters degree in information tech, just to do it.

He had all the time to do it, and he had a good amount of money to spend on college anyway. 

It was there that he met Sicheng. 

Sicheng was getting a business administration masters, and Yuta met him in one of his classes. Sicheng was a foreigner, Chinese and he wasn’t really good with Korean just yet. That’s what they bonded over.

Sicheng was a green, twelve years left, but he’d coped with the idea of dying earlier than most already.

Sicheng also felt mature, unlike half the people there who were just doing it because they wanted an easy degree or needed to do it for their parents and were there just to party.

Sicheng was sweet and a little stuttery, but when Yuta got to know him he was bolder and very jokey, emblematic of a person who wanted to break out of their shell but was too awkward to do so. 

Yuta also didn’t feel out of place—aside from the language barrier—he was twenty-four (kind of) and the people in his class ranged from twenty-two to forty.

Yuta excelled in all his classes, and it was all his success within the business world that helped him. He and Sicheng worked together to learn Korean, and Yuta taught him some Japanese while Sicheng taught him a little Chinese.

Sicheng asked him if he wanted to share a dorm room the next year and Yuta just let him move into his apartment instead. He’d promised not to get attached to anyone while getting his masters, not when they’d leave—or he’d leave.

But Sicheng was different. When Sicheng came to him and told him with a blush on his face that he was gay, fiddling with his hands, Yuta told him that it was okay. He was too.

Sicheng turned redder, “I want you.”

“You want me?” Yuta asked, grinning. “You want me to cook dinner for us, or you want to fuck me?”

“No—well…I want to date you, and I do want to fuck you too but—”

Yuta knew he was playing a dangerous game, but it felt good to feel wanted. Sicheng felt like he turned Yuta’s black and white days a little lighter. Sicheng stopped him from deciding that he wanted drown himself in the bathtub on some days, and it was great.

Sicheng made Yuta feel like his physical age sometimes, rather than being a constant reminder that he was stuck immortally.

Sicheng really was his first love since he was in college for the first time.

Even when Yuta was finally open(ish), confessing that his mark as a yellow was inaccurate and that he’d attempted suicide more times than he could count on one hand, that he was really depressed at all times and that Sicheng cheered him up a little but couldn’t help all the way, Sicheng was accepting of him.

No repeated comments of how weird he was and how that shouldn’t happen. Just some sadness that Yuta experienced that, and asking if there was anything to be done about it. There wasn’t.

Their next year of college ended, and Yuta got another position at a firm and Sicheng did as well.

Life continued, just like always. Yuta and Sicheng continued their lives together.

The year later was when Yuta told him about the next thing. He was born in 1995, and was technically eighty two at this point. 

Sicheng was reasonably, very concerned. “You’re older than my grandparents.”

“Yeah. I guess.”

“You really stopped aging? Because you attempted suicide?”

Yuta nods. The conversation was awkward, but Sicheng believed him and they moved on. 

There were days that Yuta was down, more than one where a knife or razor blades were incredibly enticing, and he finally had somebody there to hold him and tell him it was okay.

Sicheng made his black days grey.

Sicheng and Yuta were an item, together until the day that Sicheng died.

Yuta was reaching the end of his point of staying in the same section of South Korea, eventually he’d have to move to a new place in South Korea.

It was sad. 

Sicheng had coped with the idea of death but when his number hit zero…it was undeniable that Sicheng grew sadder. It was the first time that death was unpredictable, but it was coming for him. Yuta held him then, just like Sicheng would do to him.

Then the police were at the door of his apartment, telling him that Sicheng was hit by a drunk driver and they regret—

Yuta’s heart hurt.

He could see the officer talking but he couldn’t hear him anymore, his knees hit the ground and he sobbed.

It was devastating. He knew it was coming, just like Sicheng did, but he wasn’t prepared for it to really happen. Sicheng was in many ways, his rock. The one thing that held him together and stopped him from trying to die again, and then he was gone.

His head spun and he couldn’t stop crying and he packed up all his pictures of him and Sicheng and put them in a box, taking them with him along with many of his clothes when he moved to Busan from Daegu.

He bought an apartment, but he didn’t really feel like living.

The black was blacker than it had been in years, and Sicheng wasn’t there.

He made his way up to the top of the apartment building that his place was in, and he jumped straight off. No hesitation, no thought. Nothing really mattered, even his decision.

It didn’t matter, because he woke up in the hospital.

A few IVs were hooked to his arms, but more notably, he'd broken a few limbs.

His ribs, his leg, three fingers. None of them mattered. Yuta wanted it to end and yet he failed again, that was all that mattered.

He stayed in Daegu longer than he'd usually stay in one place, but that only worked because he spent five of them floating around from job to job, not looking for anything too serious or closely related to business.

He mourned Sicheng even though he knew that it was for the best. He was lucky enough to avoid watching the people he loved die for the many years that he's been stuck this way. He left all his friends before they could, he lost his mother and sister before he was, his father was dying at some time in the next few months to two years—and even then, Yuta wouldn't mourn his loss—so Sicheng was the first. It was painful, and it hurt. Yuta loved Sicheng viscerally, overwhelmingly, and he knew that for as long as he would live to remember the earlier years of his lifespan, he would remember Sicheng.

But life moved on around Yuta, and as he began to cope better with the loss he got a new job and he tried to pull himself back together again the best he could. Even though he didn't really feel like it, even though his days were numb. Yuta just hoped that some of the emotion would return with time.

Yuta stayed in Daegu for a while, but he eventually decided to move again. 

This time it was Seoul. 

Seoul was bustling and busy, more so than anywhere else he'd been and once again, Yuta went back to college for another degree. This time he started over from the beginning. This time college was easy, and he used the time to try to live a little, even if he didn't really feel like it.

He went to a few house parties, a few clubs, and had sex with a few boys who were more comfortable with sharing their sexuality than Yuta could've ever imagined being when he was in college originally. 

Yuta told himself that he wouldn't do anything too serious, he was just having sex, but there was something so endearing about Doyoung.

Doyoung loved to challenge him in every way, playful and fun while simultaneously being incredibly serious—and he may not have been "mature" like Sicheng, he was the perfect balance of fun and serious. 

Doyoung and him met at a house party for a frat, and honestly, Yuta was miserable there. He was terribly introverted and this house was too loud, the drinks were far too alcoholic and it was too hot. He was really getting ready to leave when he stepped out onto the patio only to see some student on his phone with a cup in hand. 

He was pretty, and that's what made Yuta stop. 

"Are you enjoying the party?"

"If I was, don't you think I'd be in the party?"

"I don't know, maybe you were just taking a break."

"No, my stupid friend Donghyuck begged me to come. I hate parties and now I'm calling an autotaxi. What, you enjoying it?

"Nah, it's pretty trashy." 

Doyoung looked him up and down, "and you're not?"

"Ouch, I'm not even dressed trashy."

Doyoung laughed, "no, you just radiate fuckboy fratboy."

"I'm offended that you think that of me."

"Then you didn't come up to me because you wanted to fuck me?"

"No, I stopped because you were pretty but it didn't mean I needed to fuck you." Yuta usually was alone for years at a time, he could certainly handle being rejected and he didn't really need sex, unlike most of the boys there.

But that didn't really matter, because Doyoung grinned, knocked back some of his drink, and turned away some. 

"My name is Doyoung, Kim Doyoung."

"Nakamoto Yuta."

"You're a foreigner? Your Korean is perfect." 

I've been here for longer than you've been alive. 

"Thank you."

"If you can find me on campus, you can come speak to me again." Doyoung told him, and with that, he walked down the house steps and got into the backseat of the autotaxi, speeding away without any more words. 

Well, Yuta did.

Doyoung was a purple, like Yuta's mother. He had 30 years left when they first met.

Doyoung had more time than Sicheng did, but not nearly as long as Yuta himself did. 

Yuta still thought about Sicheng—he doubted he'd ever stop, really—but Sicheng was dead and he'd be happy that Yuta was finally moving on instead of staying stuck on him.

Sicheng would hold a place in his heart but Doyoung consumed one too. He and Yuta began dating and Doyoung would fight him on anything that he could, teasingly, and Yuta would do the same. 

While Doyoung also couldn't turn his world to colour, the black and white was a little fainter just as it was with Sicheng.

Doyoung and he moved out of college, and Yuta continued to go for his masters in engineering while Doyoung found an internship he liked and began looking for a job, and he and Yuta ended up moving in together after they got their BA's.

Just like how he did with Sicheng, Yuta revealed the truth about himself, and Doyoung was freaked out too, just like Sicheng was. But when it boiled down to its purest form, it didn’t matter to Doyoung that Yuta was a strangely immortal man, he loved Yuta regardless. 

He and Doyoung walked past the obstacles that came with their love hand in hand. Doyoung was fine when Yuta suggested moving a little bit more up north so that he wouldn’t draw suspicion, and Doyoung didn’t even care that it was a fresh restart somewhere else because he’d go anywhere with Yuta.

Then Doyoung got sick, and Yuta watched his partner lose weight and his skin turn pale white. He accompanied Doyoung to his doctors appointments and went out to get his medicine while they attempted to prolong the inevitable. 

Doyoung’s body would shiver even in the heat, and he couldn’t walk much before he needed to sit down again, he couldn’t stop coughing. Yuta would cry at night sometimes and hold Doyoung’s hand, rubbing his thumb over his white skin where his veins were visible.

Then, one day, Doyoung passed out, and Yuta took him to the hospital. He clung to Doyoung’s arm as his boyfriend took shuddery, shallow breaths, and trembled in the sheets.

“Doie, it will be okay,” he whispers, but the truth was that it wouldn’t be.

“I’m so…tired, Yuta.” Doyoung gasps, his eyes slipped closed.

“Doie, please—” Yuta chokes, tears welling up in his eyes.

“Don’t…Don’t get sentimental n-now.” 

“Baby, don’t leave.” The tears wouldn’t stop coming, even though he’s shed so many in the past few months.

“I l-love you, Yu…but I…am dying.”

“No, no, Doei, no—”

“It’s time, Yu”  

“I love you, please, please don’t—”

Doyoung squeezed his hand with the little strength that he had left, and Yuta heared the sound of the ekg machine turn to a constant beep. 

People from the hospital ran in to pull him out of the room and get to Doyoung but it’s too late because they wouldn’t resuscitate him anyway. His number was zero, it was his time. 

His time to leave Yuta, just like Sicheng.

Yuta packed up his pictures with Doyoung and put them in a box along with some of his most treasured items, and he slipped away to Jinju for a little while to clear his head. He only stayed there for two years, just a little bit of time to deal with how much it hurts. 

After, he went back across Korea, up to Chuncheon. 

He let time fade away.

Sicheng was dead, Doyoung was dead; Ryoki, Sakura and all of their kids were dead, his family was dead, Yuta himself was supposed to be gone.

He tried everything imaginable to get the number on his wrist to count down again, but nothing worked, and Yuta felt utterly hopeless. He was actually a good person, he did nothing wrong. He lived his life peacefully and donated to charity and tried to be kind to others and yet he was stuck living in hell. 

Every year with a partner made him feel a little more whole only to have them ripped away violently, and force him to begin the process over again. 

He could either live every day miserable and on the brink of a suicide attempt, or he could get a partner and feel better for a few years, only to crash into the dirt at full speed when they left.

No matter how much he begged, cried, even tried to pray, they always left him and he never grew older.

It took thirty years for Yuta to attempt another relationship, but Taeyong was so kind that he just couldn’t help it.

Yuta, with his BA in business administration, masters in information tech and one in engineering, was working at a local coffee shop when he met Taeyong. He was tired of working serious jobs about business and being around people dedicated to their money or their work and just wanted to do something calming.

Taeyong was a guy fresh out of college with a degree that he didn’t want—forced by strict parents who made him do something related to the medical field when he didn’t want to—and decided to rebel by choosing not to use it either. Their boss had hired him for his healing smile and wide doe-like eyes, saying that the customers would like him because he was pretty.

Which he was, Taeyong was gorgeous.

But Yuta was more drawn to how pure Taeyong was. He was so incredibly kind, the type of person to give the restaurant scraps to the animals he found in the alley out back and to pay out of his own pocket for food for those who couldn’t afford it.

He always tried to give everyone the benefit of the doubt, even if it was obvious they were lying, and he was so giggly. Taeyong could light up a whole room just by entering it.

Taeyong made Yuta feel like the twenty-four year old that his body said he was, bringing up some of the more impulsive desires that were characteristic of that age, the same ones that he’d lacked because he was too consumed with his depression and loneliness to feel them.

Taeyong was lovely and kind, and the customers loved him but so did Yuta. 

It was everything about him, the way he looked, the way he dressed, his kindness, the way he would blush when Yuta flirted with him, everything about Taeyong made Yuta weak.

But there was one thing that stood out about Taeyong, the little tie that he wore around his wrist. 

Taeyong refused to show his mark, and Yuta didn’t really get it, but he tried not to pry even with his curiosity. 

“Hey, Yuta-hyung, would you mind picking up my shift for the weekend? I don’t want to bother you, but I forgot I had a doctor’s appointment and it’s too late to reschedule it. It’s totally okay if you say no but—”

“No problem,” Yuta replies, wiping down the equipment.

He really doesn’t mind, he has all the time in the world…literally…

“Oh, thank you so much!”

“But don’t you think that you should give me something in return?”

“Uh, of course! Would you like a little bit extra for it or—”

“Would you like to go on a date?” Yuta turns to look at Taeyong as he drops his rag in shock and turns bright red.

“W-What? Are you serious?”

“You don’t have to say yes, I can pick up the shift either way, but I’m serious about the date part.”

Taeyong continues to gape at him like a fish out of water, but he nods anyway. “No, a date sounds nice! I just—I wasn’t expecting that?” 

“Just text me when you’re available,” Yuta grins, and Taeyong nods eagerly.

It was a good first date, some movie that was new that Yuta didn’t really care much about and he spent more of his time staring at Taeyong than the screen, resting his hand on top of Taeyong’s thigh and watching the way he shifted.

Taeyong was pretty and sweet, bubbly and excited. 

He and Yuta made a bit of a strange pair, Yuta with his mostly black wardrobe and his love for rock music, a little sarcastic and jaded from his long life, along with Taeyong’s pinks and pastels, his love for rap music and clashingly sweet personality.

But they didn’t really care much, and it was on their fourth date that Yuta finally asked Taeyong about the bandana tie around his wrist. 

He watched as Taeyong’s face fell quickly, and he toyed with the end of the tie. “It just makes me a little sad to look at,” he murmured, and Yuta dropped it after.

Taeyong was too happy to see sad.

So he didn’t ask for a while, and he and Taeyong enjoyed their time together, 

But Yuta caught it one day, a flash of red when Taeyong was adjusting the tie. It made his breath hitch, and he couldn’t help but wonder the number, wonder how soon Taeyong would leave him.

But more than anything, he wondered what sort of heartless bastard could kill Taeyong of all people, the most innocent person that Yuta’s met in his over a hundred years alive. 

But Taeyong doesn’t want to talk about it, and Yuta will wait until he is ready. 

That happens two months later, Yuta is lying in Taeyong’s bed, curled up beside him when Taeyong removes the little bandana around his wrist and holds Yuta’s pointer finger up to it, tracing the number.

Four.

Taeyong was going to be murdered in four years. 

“I didn’t want you to think less of me.” Taeyong whispers, but Yuta could never.

“It’s not your fault.”

“It’s why my parents and I kept fighting. I have so little time left, and they wanted me to do something I wasn’t happy with. They wanted me to get a nice job as a nurse and make some money but why should I? I wouldn’t get to enjoy it, or my life, if I spent it doing what they wanted for me. I went to college for them but I just…”

Yuta would be losing his newest love in only four years. 

“You should spend it doing what you enjoy.”

“Life is too short to be miserable during it, especially ones like mine. But every time I see my mark it reminds me of how soon I’m leaving. I sometimes dream about what it would be like to have a mark like yours, sixty instead of four.”

Yuta laughs on accident, the only thought in his head being “well I wish mine was like yours.” But he clamps a hand over his mouth.

Taeyong looks at him confused and hurt. “Why did you laugh at me?” he asks, Yuta swore he could see tears welling up in his eyes.

“I wish I could switch marks with you too. My mark is a curse, just like yours.”

“Why…why would you want to do that?”

“I’ve been at various levels of depressed since I was seventeen. I can’t get help for it because yellows aren’t supposed to be depressed. My yellow sixty keeps me stuck here when all I’ve wanted to do is leave.”

Taeyong’s eyes were wide and empathetic, and Yuta knew that Taeyong and he are two sides of the same coin.

“If I tell you something that sounds insane, would you hear me out?”

“Of course.”

“When my number still moved, I tried to commit suicide. I tried five times, and on the fifth time, when I was twenty-four, my number stopped moving. My number has said sixty since 2019. It’s like…some fucked up punishment for trying to thwart my “destiny” of living longer. I’m a yellow, and yellows don’t do that. I guess whoever decides the numbers was angry at me for it.”

Taeyong and he are two sides of the same curse; the curse of fate.

Yuta cherishes the time that he has with Taeyong, his boyfriend who can light up a room and just like Doyoung, and Sicheng so many years ago, turn his black and white days a light grey.

“If you’ve been alive for almost two hundred years, I’m sure the five you spend with me don’t feel like anything.” Taeyong told him.

But he was wrong, because it always meant more when he spent it with someone. The years with each of his partners were much stronger than the ones he’d spent alone, but Yuta didn’t know how to explain the difference to Taeyong.

Taeyong still covered his mark, even though Yuta knew, but it didn't stop them both from knowing that it went down to zero.

Yuta almost preferred it like this, suddenly. Doyoung was worse, because Yuta spent a full year knowing that the time was coming, watching him deteriorate in front of his eyes, but with Sicheng and Taeyong they could enjoy more of their time together.

It didn’t feel like a constant mourning, before they’re gone. It’s just the crushing feeling of an officer at his door, telling him that they’re gone. 

It was a bone-crushing feeling, to hear the words, "Lee Taeyong was murdered today, I am so sorry for your loss."

Taeyong, Yuta's lover who didn't even want to kill a spider in their home, had been murdered in cold-blood by some monster masquerading as a human; someone with no value for life, no conscience. 

Taeyong went downtown to stop by a few local businesses like the coffee shop that they worked at, he was big on supporting them, and there were two men that followed him around. When he went to get back in his car, they stabbed him, stole his wallet and keys, and sped off. 

Taeyong, wheezing and trembling, hit the emergency button on his phone, but it was useless.

He was dead by the time the police arrived; they stabbed a vital artery.

Taeyong didn't even get a chance, if he had, he would've given the two men everything willingly. He would've given up his car and wallet, even the shirt off his back just to prevent them from hurting him, but he couldn't. 

Because they stabbed him before he could even try.

A stranger, who couldn't possibly understand that Taeyong was so kind, had stolen him from Yuta in the blink of a second, and he couldn't even say goodbye . 

All he got to do was hold Taeyong's limp hand at his funeral, whispering tearful apologies that he couldn't have stopped what was destined to happen. 

Yuta cried for Taeyong, with his tears that seemingly never stopped pouring. 

Taeyong was light in a dark room, a drink of water in the desert, a piece of food when he was starving. 

Yuta went to a home improvement store and he bought a rope, and he spent a few seconds finding how to tie a slipknot, hung it from the ceiling fan, and then himself. 

But he woke up on his floor, just like always, and with that, Yuta had enough of Korea.

He sold all of his furniture and donated half of his clothes.

He packed up his memories with Taeyong, and put them in one of his many suitcases, along with the memories of Sicheng and Doyoung. 

He put his remaining possessions in another, and all his leftover clothes in two more. 

And he moved to Thailand. 

Yuta had begun to learn Thai a little over a year ago, on and off again. 

When Taeyong had asked him why, it was because he already knew, he was headed there after their time was over. 

Korea was great, as was Japan, but it was time for another chapter in his neverending story, and a new change of scenery came with it. 

Yuta wasn't good at Thai, his pronunciation was not the best, but he tried his best and they generally appreciated that. 

He continued to learn the language but they had technology that helped him to communicate even when he wasn't clear. 

The longer Yuta spent there though, the easier it got to get around. Eventually, submersed in the language, he could pick up the accents and inflections. 

Yuta didn't worry much about the years, in the grand scheme of things, they didn't matter. He just worked at a call centre, he just allowed life to pass. 

He would sit there and stare, run his hands over the now long old pictures of he and Sicheng, reminisce over Doyoung, and hold onto Taeyong's sweater. He would inhale the scent of Taeyong's body, surrounded by the memories of his past and cry because each one of his lovers could hold him together better than he could hold himself. 

Yuta lived passively, spending his days consumed in his work and his nights asleep, eating and sleeping and yet simultaneously feeling like he was barely breathing. 

Yuta didn't care much about whether those who worked at the call centre realised he didn't age. They usually didn't stick around anyways, the call centre was just a stepping stone for them to get to their better job. 

And Yuta didn't enjoy it much either, but it didn't really matter. 

He had plenty of time to find a job that he enjoyed if he felt like it, but he didn't.

Once he felt like he was good enough at pronunciation, Yuta abandoned the call centre and moved to Bangkok. 

Bangkok was full of life and bustling, much like Seoul.

And much like Seoul, where he met Doyoung, in Bangkok he met Ten. 

Ten was a dancer. He was one of the best ones that Yuta had ever seen, incredibly fluid and yet sharp, able to do any style in any pattern, freestyle or planned. Ten was amazing, good enough to be famous world-wide and yet Yuta found him dancing on the street with a jar in front of him for tips. 

Yuta could watch Ten dance for hours upon hours, studying his every moment and it still wouldn't be enough to unwrap the intricacies within every one of Ten's steps. 

Ten was more than just his dancing, though. He was very smart, though he chose not to show it, and he spoke more languages than Yuta did, even with years longer to learn. 

Ten knew Thai, English, Korean, Japanese and Mandarin. 

He wanted to learn even more, and it was a wonder how Ten managed to do so much in only twenty-six years of life. 

Ten would speak to Yuta in a mishmash of Thai, Korean and Japanese, flipping through the three of them with ease and using all of them almost equally, even if Japanese was Ten's fourth language. It was his effort to reach out to Yuta, in his own way.

Ten loved physical touch, but Yuta was never great with that and what Ten loved even more was doing whatever his partner loved. 

Ten too, was incredibly flamboyant and unashamed.

In the years that Yuta had been alive, he lived to see the LGBTQ+ community grow in acceptance, even within Asian countries and it was strange and heartwarming to see a gay couple walking down the street together with little shame, when he feared coming out to anybody when he was younger. 

Ten was lucky to grow up in a space where he felt accepted and cared for, despite his desires to dance and his sexuality, and that allows for him to embrace it fully. 

Ten was a flirt, more than even Yuta himself, always sexually teasing. A lip bite here, a heated kiss there, sexual comments, as if his personal goal was turn Yuta into a puddle. He had no shame about his desires, no need to keep quiet and Yuta admired his boldness. 

"You stop by and watch me everytime I'm out here, I don't know whether I should be scared or flattered." Ten said as he sauntered up to Yuta. His set for the day was finished. 

"Flattered. You're a fantastic dancer."

"That's it? Just a fantastic dancer? The way you look at me most times reminds me more of someone looking to fuck me stupid, rather than someone just watching s 'fantastic dancer'" 

Yuta chokes on his own spit, unprepared for such a bold comment to be thrown at him, in public no less.

"What makes you think that I want to fuck you, what if I was straight?"

Ten laughed. "Straight men don't dress that well, and they don't prod the inside of their mouth with their tongue as they look me up and down and eyefuck me."

"I guess that I wasn't as subtle as I thought," Yuta pouts, but it's fake and they both know it. 

"Such a shame, because all you do is feed my ego. I know I'm hot but you are too, yet you spend your time watching me."

"Well, you're so easy to look at."

Ten snorts. "You're a little cheesy, but I like it," he grins, and then he leans in a little further, "You're not Thai."

"I'm not."

"You look Japanese."

"I am. Name's Yuta. I'm Japanese, and I've lived in Korea as well, and now Thailand."

"Ooh, interesting. Well, I speak all three of those languages." Ten says, switching between all of them for the sentence. 

That's when Yuta knew that he wanted Ten.

Ten had a green with a forty on it, and it ensured that at least Yuta would have a while with him and wouldn't have to slowly watch him perish like Doyoung did. 

Ten was a flirt through and through, always pushing Yuta to fuck him and complimenting him, coaxing Yuta to stay a little bit later hone from work so that Ten could blow him under their sheets.

Ten was kind as well, but certainly not pure or innocent, and Yuta welcomed the change of pace just as he did with Taeyong. 

Ten was interesting and fun, spontaneous and energetic, and always down to do something new if Yuta would do it too.

Ten hated nature, but Yuta loved it, and that was enough to make him spend time out there. 

Yuta would drag him on long walks outside and Ten would lament getting a tan and complain about the heat but he would enjoy every second of it because it meant they he and Yuta spent time together. 

Ten would tangle them up in the sheets together and kiss him until Yuta forgot his name, show him off to all of his friends with a big smile, Ten was proud of Yuta for just existing and being with him and it made Yuta's heart pound in his chest. 

On those days where Yuta felt hopeless and sad, Ten was there with cuddles and their cat Leon, telling jokes to make him laugh and presenting him with food that he said he "made happen" because Ten couldn’t cook for shit, and the food that he "made" was really just brought to their door via drone. 

When Yuta told Ten of his curse, Ten giggled and asked him if he was a vampire. 

"You already suck my dick, do you want to suck my blood too?" he asked, leaning his head away to reveal a long stripe of neck. 

"I'm serious, I even have my original birth certificate to prove it!" Yuta whined, and Ten only laughed.

Ten had the amazing skill of being able to cheer up someone in a bad situation, he was the one to make someone sobbing hysterically laugh. Ten's jokes could lift a mood. 

But Ten wasn't there to lift his when the police officer was at his door again. "Chittaphon was hit by a car that ran a red light when crossing the street."

Just like that, it was over again. The life that he and Ten had built together was now reduced to nothing. 

He died on impact, at least he didn't have to suffer. Ten didn't deserve to suffer. 

Yuta walked around their quaint house, he slept in their bed and he'd roll over expecting to be met with Ten's sleeping body and his hand would fall through air to hit the bed.

Because Ten was dead and gone. Just like Sicheng, and Doyoung, and Taeyong. 

Yuta didn't want to be in Thailand any longer after Ten was gone. 

There was nothing there for him. 

So he sold their house with all the furniture and he put his memories of Ten in a box to keep with the others, and he went back to Japan.

He went back to where he used to live, walked up and down the streets that he called his first home, he looked around and everything was different. 

His apartment building, the places they used to hang out, Ryoki's house...all of it was gone. It was far more industrialised and automated, busy and nothing like what Yuta once knew. 

But of course, it'd been over two hundred years, things were bound to be different. 

While Yuta stayed the same, everything changed, and now whole places looked nothing like what they once did.

There was nothing left of his childhood, not the people nor the places and it served the bitter reminder that time would always pass Yuta on. 

This was torture. This was hell. This was his life. 

Yuta couldn't stay in Japan, not even for a year, and he didn't want to go back to Korea again. 

So Yuta moved to America. 

America was different than anywhere else he lived in the way that he felt more at peace and more isolated all at once.

While he didn't look like the people in Korea or Thailand, he was still at least Asian, but in America it was filled with people who were of different ethnicities than him.

Mostly white, African American and Hispanic, with a few Asian people dispersed among them. Yuta felt out of place and even more so because the English that he knew was from Ten.

He learned his English from another non-native speaker in an environment that wasn't educational and even if Yuta felt like he could get around he always worried that people were making fun of his accent or his grammar.

America was progressive and somehow regressive all at once, and Yuta bounced from the West to the East Coast before eventually ending up in Illinois. 

In their capital, Chicago. 

Johnny was a DJ at a gay club that Yuta entered, and even though he wasn't a big fan of the club scene, Yuta went for the experience.

Even in all the years that he'd been alive he'd never been to a club specifically made for people like him, America when it came to openness about sexuality was similar to Ten in the way that they just didn't care much. 

Yuta could go without feeling judged or scared that it would ruin his reputation within his city, and he could be in an environment that didn't induce stress when he found somebody he was interested in and had to play the’ do you think they are gay’ game before he approached them.

Whereas Ten was more effeminate, Johnny was far more masculine, and while they both were comfortable with showing off their bodies Johnny was broad and muscular white Ten was toned and thin from dance. 

Johnny and Ten were both flirty but in different ways, whereas Ten was all about teasing Yuta and enticing him, Johnny was always the one that took the lead in a more aggressive way. Pinning Yuta to a wall, digging his tongue into his sweet spots. 

Johnny was sexy and he made Yuta want to lick his abs, but he also made Yuta's heart melt when he would present him with little gifts just to show him that he cared.

When Yuta met Johnny in the gay bar, dripped out in black and glitter, the mutli-coloured lights flickered down to drown Johnny's red mark in blues and greens, creating a deeper contrast between the true red and the nine in the middle. 

Another single digit, just like Taeyong was, but that didn't matter much to Yuta when Johnny could so easily convince him that it didn't matter.

Johnny would speak to him in Korean because he was fluent in both, and he'd spend time each day helping Yuta with his English as well to help him gain confidence in his abilities. 

Johnny was like Yuta's own personal cheer team, drowning him in praises whenever he did something good and coating his head with uplifting words when he was down.

Johnny didn't go to college, he was cognisant of his mark and knew that he didn't want to spend four years doing more school when he could just do something fun.

Johnny DJed because it made money and counted as a job but also because it was just constant fun. Filled with women spilling the drama about their husbands, beer and messy stories, tons of pretty men to hit on.

Johnny was both a sweetheart and a self admitted player. He had no shame about the fact that he liked men and women and the fact that he regularly had them in his bed. 

Johnny however, was no cheater, and when he and Yuta got together he was plenty content to remain entirely monogamous, because Yuta did not want an open relationship.

Johnny was respectful of boundaries and not any of the red flags that DJs were so often claimed to be. 

Johnny and Yuta had a flame of passion between them, keeping them joined at the hip and Yuta loved spending his nights with Johnny when he DJed in clubs, pushing past his general distaste for the atmosphere because he was by Johnny's side.

Yuta loved Johnny but their time was gone within a blink, time passed for Yuta with speed and slowness depending on the years, and the ones with Johnny felt like they sped by quickly. 

He and Johnny lived it up while they could, and they spent their days with refusal to worry or think of it ending because they both knew that it would. 

Yuta knew that it would hurt, that it would be gut-wrenching, but he also knew that Johnny didn't want him to wallow within it. Not before he died, nor after. 

The night that Johnny didn't return home, Yuta was in his nightclothes. Johnny had a gig at the club and Yuta chose not to go with him, since he'd been to one earlier in the week, instead he was lounging at home.

That's when the knock on the door came.

Yuta didn't trust knocks on the door, they always brought bad news, and Yuta would be stupid to not realise that Johnny was late returning back home.

Yuta would be stupid to have not connected the dots, even before he opened the door, but when he did it was to the sight of another police officer.

"He's gone...isn't he?" Yuta asked, uncaring of how suspicious it sounded that he'd guessed that Johnny was dead before they'd told him, but the police officer simply nodded.

"There was an altercation at the club that turned violent, and a man pulled out a gun."

At least ten dead, many more injured. Johnny was one of the ones dead. Gone to a mass shooting.

Johnny wasn't pure and innocent like Taeyong, but even still, he was kind and polite. Johnny was no more deserving of his gruesome death than Taeyong was, and it was painful to know that once again, the world has lost someone who'd done nothing wrong, to the hands of someone who had. 

The shooting was all over the news when Yuta turned it on, both local and national. A picture of Yuta's partner was shown on live TV, the headline below reading 'Victims of the mass shooting at a club in Chicago, IL'

Johnny's funeral was a closed casket, but Yuta still attended in black, and gave a speech to the crowd. It wasn't just Johnny's friends and family there, it was many from the community. People that Yuta didn't know, couldn't remember ever meeting had walked up to him to tell them that they were sorry for his loss, and somehow the fact that Johnny's death struck the community so hard made the coping worse for Yuta.

Such a positive influence was gone. 

Johnny's death—and the publicity around the tragedy of it all—was enough to get Yuta to leave America. 

Yuta had enjoyed his time there, his time spent with Johnny, but much like Thailand after Ten, there wasn't much left for him. 

Yuta's pictures with Johnny went into the box and Yuta swallowed as he looked at his small collection. 

Yuta didn't care about any possessions he had. He had money to buy replacements for anything, he didn't care about the house that he lived in or the clothes at he wore or anything other than the boxes. 

The boxes were Yuta's life, both literally and figuratively. From the worn and dated pictures of he and Sicheng from over two hundred years ago to the months old pictures of he and Johnny. From Doyoung's little trinkets to Taeyong's sweater, to the videos of Ten dancing. This was all that would ever matter to Yuta, the memories of everyone that he held dear even after their deaths.

Because Johnny had left him, just like Sicheng, and Doyoung, and Taeyong, and Ten. Yet they were all bound to the same ties of fate. Johnny wouldn't have left him if he had the choice to stay for longer and neither would've the rest of them if they could. It was no more their fault for leaving than it was Yuta's for being cursed.

Their deaths always hurt Yuta but he was learning to cope and heal with more speed, to acknowledge the beauty within what they had instead of simply mourn the loss. It was the help of each lover that he had which blended together to mould both Yuta and his ever-changing perspective. 

Yuta moved up north after Johnny's passing, all the way up until he reached Ontario, Canada. 

Canada was never somewhere that Yuta envisioned himself living, much like Thailand was, but he'd grown interested in it. It also helped that heading to Canada allowed the same change of culture that moving to a new country did, but also meant that he didn't need to learn another language. 

As interesting as those were to Yuta, with four under his belt he felt no need to learn more, and learning more than five felt like too much of a kick to Ten, who would've loved the same opportunity had he not missed it. 

Canadian's were nice, but not in the way that Yuta had really expected, and he spent his time in Canada working back at a business firm for a while. He lost the urge to work in the business world years ago, but he didn't feel like doing another minimum wage job, nor did he feel like going back to college for another degree or staying unemployed. 

The firm was honestly miserable, but it kept Yuta busy and his mind off the darkness that even after three hundred years and five lovers had not left him.

Yuta could've sworn that time would've healed his broken and cracked heart, and yet it never had. He was still sad and overwhelmingly depressed even if it'd been centuries since his father had the opportunity to abuse him. Even with the source of his trauma years removed, Yuta still felt the after effects every single day. 

Yuta's time within the firm was spent speed running promotions as fast as possible, Yuta's motto being the same as all the other business people that he loathed, a question for how to make the most money. 

If he hated his job he might as well get paid incredibly well for it, was the reasoning behind it, but the money could never fill Yuta with the happiness he craved.

No, the only way he could get a semblance of it was with a partner, the ones that always turned his black and white to grey. 

He needed another partner, but he also needed a break. 

There were only so many times he could get his heart ripped out and shoved back into his chest repeatedly before he gave up and broke. 

Yuta spent his time at the firm, then he transferred to a different one, where he made his way up the ranks once again. He moved higher and higher until he was making six figures and even still Yuta felt numb and empty. All he wanted to do was feel whole, something that nobody—not even himself—was able to do. 

Yuta met Mark at the next place he moved to, after giving up on the firm and the six figures that did nothing for him, Toronto. 

Mark was funny and jovial. He was clumsy and a little awkward like Sicheng was, but he was also a flirt if he really wanted to be. 

Mark was hot and he knew it, even if he refused to show that he did, but it didn't deter him from being utterly obsessed with Yuta.

It was more of a mutual obsession, carnal want. Mark wouldn't let Yuta out of his sight, calling him oppa in an endearing way—that bordered on something more than that on many occasions, and Yuta would praise every little thing that Mark did. All he did was speak of Mark, as if it was all that he'd think about it and it almost felt as though it was.

Mark was twenty-seven when he and Yuta met, a yellow background on his wrist with a white fifty-eight in the centre.

Mark had a long life ahead of him that would involve a peaceful way to go, and it was another great thing for Yuta along with his other redeeming qualities because he couldn't take losing another lover within ten years of loving them, nor could he take another policeman at his doors, alerting him to the death of his partner.

Mark was a great listener as well, whether that be to his problems, his job, his feelings or just simply listening to Yuta ramble about something, Mark would listen to it all.

There was a time that Yuta spent two hours passionately detailing his dedication for an anime and explaining almost the entire thing to Mark, who listened with a smile on his face because seeing Yuta that passionate about something was all he cared about.

Mark was a gentle and sweet lover, one who felt like Yuta's perfect match. He was overly respectful of Yuta's boundaries that he drew and never made him feel ashamed for his trauma or his bad days, even before Yuta had given him the big reveal of his secret. 

Mark didn't judge him when he didn't want to be touched, and didn't tease him when he seemed overly clingy. He never once made Yuta feel less than even when Yuta felt that himself. 

When Mark had been so open to Yuta's admittance of his bad days, that's when he let the other shoe drop. 

He let Mark know of his previous attempted suicides and of the irrepearable damage that they'd caused. 

Mark's look turns sour, and Yuta begins to fret that he made the wrong choice for the first time in telling his secrets. 

Then Mark pulls him into the most heavy embrace and holds him. 

"I'm so sorry." Mark whispers.

Yuta's laugh is a little wobbly, but he replies anyways, "Why, it's not like you told me to do it? I made my own decisions."

Mark's hand rubs his back, "I am sorry that you've had to struggle for so long; that for hundreds of years there's been no option for you to receive help. I'm sorry that you've been living this way as punishment for something out of your own control. I didn't cause your circumstances, but neither did you, ultimately."

Yuta's eyes well up with tears that begin to spill onto Mark's shirt. 

"You asshole," he chokes. "Why do you always know what to say to make me cry?"

"Happy tears?" Mark asks him.

Yuta shakes his head, "Not happy, relieved. I didn't know that I needed that."

"I'll always be here if you need someone for that."

"You won't be." Yuta cries back, "You'll leave me too, but it's not your fault."

Mark shakes his head. "I'll either find a way to get your time moving again or I'll suspend mine with you. But we'll die together, Yu."

Yuta's tears become sobs, a blend of relief and sadness because there's no way that Mark can fix this.

Yuta's spent centuries trying to. 

"I'd have it that way, if you could."

After that conversation, Make truly did seem determined to help Yuta out, and really he did. 

Mark spent a collective of hours on the phone, speaking to doctors, therapists, mark specialists, psychologists and their health care provider to see if it was possible for a yellow to receive medication and therapy for mental health issues, even if it was previously unheard of. 

It was days upon days of back and forths, what-ifs and hypotheticals that weren't so hypothetical because it was Yuta's reality. 

Doctors and mark specialists flat out telling Mark that there was no need.

"No yellow has ever struggled with thoughts of suicide. It doesn't happen."

"But would they have access to it if they did?" Mark sighs, walking back through the same question that has asked over and over again.

"I don't see the need for the answer to a question that has not arisen—"

Yuta rips the phone out of Mark's hand, leaving his boyfriend in shock. 

"It does happen." It comes out as a growl. 

"I must be the fucking first, because I've not only thought about suicide, I've attempted it, repeatedly. And all you guys will say is that you will not give answers to hypotheticals, but it's not a hypothetical. I am a suicidal, constantly depressed, yellow. I am a high-yellow who wishes at many times that I am a low-blue. I am a person with the wrong mark and both my boyfriend and I am looking to finally find a solution to help!" 

The doctor sighs from behind the receiver. "We'll send a psychologist referral, see what they say and then let them direct you to therapy or medication."

Mark's time spent going back and forth with multiple different people is what ensured Yuta's space at the psychologist's office.

It was Mark's love and dedication that allowed him to leave the psychologist office with a recommendation letter to begin therapy and look into a treatment plan for severe high functioning depression, the diagnosis that Yuta had known fit him for so long yet never got a confirmed one for. 

Canada was the only country to provide medical care to yellows surrounding antidepressants and therapy. The door was open, it was just a hard one to walk through, and one that was never needed for anyone other than Yuta to begin with.

Every other place left a struggling yellow to their own devices, whatever the issue is, they'll work through it, but Canada provided an option for him to say otherwise, even if it was one of the few forms of healthcare not available for free within the country.

Yuta felt horrendously guilty for all the struggle that it caused, but Mark assured him adamantly that he didn't need to worry about it. 

"As long as it helps you," is all he would say. 

Yuta's therapy and antidepressants were expensive. They cost more than most of their other monthly expenses, just so Yuta didn't fantasise about dying occasionally. 

Therapy sessions would leave Yuta stepping out of an air taxi with exhaustion heavy in his face sometimes, and Mark would pause what he was doing to sympathetically rub his shoulder. "Hard time today?" he'd ask, and Yuta would nod.

It would drain him emotionally and sometimes he'd cry. Other times Mark would go to hold him and he'd recoil viscerally, memories too close to the surface and merging together to fuck with his head in a way that was too much for him to handle. 

The beginning weeks of his antidepressants left Yuta an emotional and physical wreck. He was nauseated, sweaty and irritated, dropping weight and his body disgusted him like never before. 

He couldn't find himself worthy of Mark's touch, the one freak yellow in the world who was immortal and the opposite of their mark, sweaty and sick.

Mark was a patient and kind lover, even when Yuta was at his worst in decades, holding him when he could and reassuring him of his worthiness to be his boyfriend. 

Mark was everything that Yuta could ask for, and as the months slipped past Yuta noticed that the black and white that clouded his days was hardly even grey. 

He was feeling, and not in the way that was even the same as when he had lovers in the past. 

A few months turned into a year, which brought the sudden realisation that the light grey was no more. 

Yuta's life was in colour. 

It hit him while he was speaking to Mark during dinner, zoning off in the middle of his sentence as it wacked into him full-force, and he almost choked on his food as he burst into tears. 

"Baby? What's going on, are you okay, are you hurt?" Mark asks, frantically, his fork clattering to his plate as he rushes up to hold Yuta's arm. 

"M-Mark...I'm happy." Yuta cries.

Mark's eyebrows furrow, "I'm glad, but why are you crying?"

"No, Mark, I'm happy. Like in the new way, the way that feels permanent. I feel like the way that I imagine I'm supposed to." Yuta smiles through his tears. 

Mark hugs him quickly, "I'm so glad, Yu. You deserve more happiness than the world could ever offer you."

Yuta's life with Mark was different than each of his previous partners, and it all fell down to the therapy and the medications, but they were a byproduct of Mark's love for him. 

The feeling he got, the adrenaline and the giddiness that he had with his other partners was still there with Mark, but that itself could never be enough to pull him out of the depths of the depression that he'd been trapped in for centuries. 

Sicheng, Doyoung, Taeyong, Ten and Johnny were all fantastic partners, they were loving and kind just as Mark was, but sometimes love was not enough to fix a person. 

Mark couldn't fix him either, but he helped.

He helped.

Yuta was in bed the morning after when the surprise was sprung on him.

Three years into their relationship and now Mark was twenty-nine, his square had a fifty-five in the centre of it.

Yuta's still had a big sixty in the centre, the same as it was ages ago. 

Yuta's still had a big sixty in the centre, until Mark's hand froze. 

Yuta's still had a big sixty in the centre, until Mark picked up his arm and held it with his mouth agape. 

Yuta had a fifty-nine.

He couldn't believe it. It felt like his mind was playing a cruel little trick on him, a haunting joke by the same gods who determined his punishment so many moons ago. 

Yuta pinched his wrist himself, he had Mark pinch him too, he rubbed his fingers back and forth as though he might erase the fake number and reveal the ever-unchanging sixty below it. 

But nothing happened, because it was real. 

Yuta didn't even cry that time, he grabbed Mark by the waist and yanked him in for the most passionate kiss he'd ever given. 

He couldn't stop smiling into the kiss even as he made out in bed with Mark, hand clinging to his own as if he believed that when he took it away the sixty would return. 

Yuta spent centuries figuring out what had happened to him and trying to right it. 

The secret all along was to achieve the happiness that he'd been missing his whole life; to fill the hole in his heart that made him attempt over and over .

He thanked Mark repeatedly for making it move, for freeing him of his curse, but Mark shook his head. 

"No, you did all the work. You spent the hours at therapy getting better and you diligently took your medicine. I was here for moral support and to help you get the help you needed."

One would think that Yuta would be sad that his immortality was coming to an end, and under any other circumstances Yuta was sure that he would be. 

If he was happy and able to make the most of the cards that he was delt with, then he probably could of enjoyed three hundred years of partying and fucking any of the pretty boys that he wanted with no consequences. 

If Yuta was in a better mental space, then he might've mourned the end of his immortality, but he was only filled with joy at the realisation that his mark was moving again. 

Not only did it symbolise the upturn that his mental health finally had taken, it meant that Yuta would no longer have to mourn the loss of another lover.

He would be dying with Mark. 

It felt strange, nonetheless, to see the changes of age on his body after so long of never seeing them change. 

He watched his body get older with age with nothing but joy in his heart, even if Mark watched his with the opposite. 

"Man, getting older sucks." Mark huffs, now forty and his knees popping as he gets up off the floor. 

Yuta giggles and Mark scowls at him. "Save it, your body is like five years younger, you're gonna feel it when you get to forty too."

"Hmm, maybe," Yuta hums, "But where will that put you, old man? In a wheelchair when my knees start popping?"

"Old man?" Mark yelps indignantly.

"You're five years older!"

"Then where are your honorifics, heathen? And if I recall correctly, you're three hundred and—"

"Ah, Ah, Ah, no need to get into specifics, all that matters is you and your weak old man body."

"You fucking brat, you're gonna get it!" Mark yells.

Yuta nearly collapses in laughter as he scrambles off the couch to start running, "You have to catch me first, grandpa!"

Yuta was content to spend the rest of his now limited lifespan in the arms of the man that he married, watching as the outside world changed and they did with it.

Yuta had never been happier, in fact. 

He worked each day and came home to an empty house, took a shower and came out to cook for himself and Mark when he arrived home. When Mark would finally arrive, he'd get kisses as he plated their food and spent dinner talking about their days, and Mark would do the dishes because Yuta cooked dinner and they felt at peace. 

Later on in their life, as they got older and their skin grew wrinkled and they both retired from their jobs, they'd spend their time relaxed together.

Yuta and Mark aged together beautifully, hand and hand as they took walks around their neighbourhood and sipped hot coffee. 

Yuta would breathe in the fresh air and enjoy how beautiful life was now that he finally felt free and happy.

Now that it was in colour; now that he could enjoy it.

When they were in their later seventies is when Yuta pulled out the boxes from beneath their bed to show Mark his memories. 

Mark held the pictures of Yuta and his past lovers in his hand, asking Yuta about the stories behind them, no tone of jealousy in his voice. 

Yuta would wistfully recall their time together, one hand intertwined with Marks and the other running over their faces, still just as sharp as the picture within his mind. 

He swore he'd never forget them even if he'd moved on, and he'd stuck to his promise. He still remembered Sicheng even if their time was long over, and the same could be said for each of his other partners.

Mark told him that they seemed wonderful, and Yuta nodded back, "They were."

He wondered if Sicheng, Doyoung, Taeyong, Johnny and Ten were watching him with smiles from the afterlife, seeing him finally achieving his one wish. 

When Yuta was eighty-three and less than a year from his one turning to a zero, he told Mark of his dying wish.

"When I was twenty-four, the attempt that froze my life...I'd run a bath, and I sunk myself into it. In my other hand I had my razor, the same one that I would always use to harm myself, and I pressed it into my wrists until I bled. It was the most bittersweet way that I tried to go. It was the way that my sister took her own life, and I hoped that if I did mine the same...then I would leave too." Yuta says, his voice wavering as he recalls distantly the times when he was so desperate for the end. 

Mark, sweet even when he's eighty-eight and incredibly tired at most times of the day, replies, "That really is bittersweet; the thought of ending it all in the same way she did, so you could both release your pain in the same way."

"I think, when my number hits zero and it turns grey, that it's the way I want to go. I know I should die of natural causes but once the mark turns grey it's no longer defying fate to do so."

Marks breath hitches, "Yu, are you feeling depressed? Do you need to speak to somebody?"

"No, it's not about depression. It's like a metaphor...it's putting my fate back in my hands, for so long I was trapped by my decisions, unable to free myself from the shackles placed on me. The day that my sister died in this way was the day that I truly felt alone and the first day of my spiral. The day that I tried to die in the same way was the day that solidified it. It's like taking back everything that was taken from me. It's...it's very complicated but it's the way I want to die. I also have control over it. I don't wish to watch the light leave your eyes, if I go this way, I won't have to."

Mark swallows, nods, is silent for a few minutes.

"This is a very weighted decision for you, Yu. I know you've thought about it, I know it is what you want, I will not stop you. But I'd like to know if I could join you?"

"There's no need!" Yuta rushes out. "This is something for me, I do not mean to drag you into it, to force you to commit suicide just because I long to go in the same way I tried to before."

"No, remember I told you that we would die together? I cannot stand to mourn you either, Yu. It would break me down and be unbearable. If we died at the same time, then I would not have to do that, nor would you, and I don't mind doing it as long as it is with you. It will happen either way."

Yuta wants to protest again, say that Mark doesn't need to do this just because Yuta wants to, but the more that he reasserts that he'd rather die with Yuta than make either of them suffer through the others death, the more that Yuta has nothing to say about it.

The day that Yuta's mark hit zero and faded to grey, Yuta wondered if it would hit him all at once, the fact that his life was really coming to a close. He worried that he would be hit with regret and sadness that the life he'd suffered as an immortal being was finally over. 

But no such thing happened. 

Yuta still felt nothing but relief, a plan in his head for how to go and happiness at doing so with the one that he loved most at the moment. 

It took two more weeks for Mark's one to turn to a zero, and though it was evident that he was more sad about his short life coming to a close than Yuta was, he shared the same sentiment about doing it with the one that he loved with all of his heart. 

The final day, Yuta and Mark spend the entire time in bed, holding each other and relishing in their time. 

Mark sat behind him as he turned on the tub and ran warm water, filling it up a little more than halfway. 

He had five of his pictures with Mark at different stages of their life sitting in front of the bath, along with one picture of him and each of his previous lovers. 

"Are you sure that you don't mind that I have them out?" Yuta asks for the fortieth time, and Mark shakes his head.

"You may be all I've known, but you were all they'd known too. These people were your partners, and maybe I should feel jealous that they are here with us, but I do not. They are a part of your life, integral to who you are, just like I am. I know that you love me, but you loved them too—and it's likely that you still do, even if that love has shifted. It would be wrong of me to tell you that you couldn't have pictures of them out too."

Yuta nodded. Mark was so calm about the whole process, about dying. It was a testament to both Mark's overwhelming trust in Yuta and to that promise that he'd made all those years ago. 

Yuta lowered Mark into the bath with much difficulty, and then followed suit, clinging to the handrail they'd put in their shower/tub hybrid. 

He reached out his hand and picked up the razor blade. Yuta's hand shook a little, as it did regularly, but he held it steady enough to drag it over his wrists and watch the red blossom on his pale skin. 

Mark did the same, tears now falling from his eyes but determined nonetheless. 

"I'm glad to die with you, Yuta. I'm happy it is you that I spent my life with." Mark said, his head resting against the shower wall. 

"I am glad that it is you too, Mark. I am so happy that I moved to Toronto, I am happy that I got therapy, and I am happy to finally have this opportunity." Yuta said, and it was true. 

Suicide was supposed to be sad, and in the past all of Yuta's attempts were. Now that the action was finally coming, now that the final attempt had arrived, it was anything but sad. 

"I love you...Yu." Mark told him, his eyes slipping closed.

"I love you too, Mark." Yuta replied, his own eyes drifting to the floor to stare at all the pictures in front of him.

His last sight was of his past and present, all together in front of him, and when his breathing finally stopped and his eyes fell closed, Yuta's two final thoughts were simple:

He hoped he'd finally see his sister and mother again in the afterlife.

He wondered if Sicheng, Doyoung, Taeyong, Johnny, Ten, Mark and Yuta could all meet up when they passed over. Maybe they all could be friends...that would be nice.