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Choi sat with Namgyu in a roof garden with both of their backs leaning against a brick-tiled ledge. The air was cool over their skin that night, but not uncomfortably so. Muffled music played a floor or two below, but it wasn’t blaring. A lot of it was cushioned by the distant traffic that seemed to consume the city, even at this hour.
Choi exhaled a cloud of smoke and let out a self-loathing scoff. He blinked up to the night sky, taking on a wistful sort of tone, “You know, this might be about as high as I’ll ever get.”
Namgyu blinked in response but he didn’t understand what he was going on about. He simply just tilted his head to the side and tapped some ashes from his joint. “Huh?”
“Just with everything,” Choi bitterly continued, “I’m as high as a kite right now and that’s higher than I’ve ever gotten in life. Shit. All my dreams are buried. My fucking career. Maybe that’s where I should be aiming instead.”
Namgyu tried again to digest the nonsense that Choi had been spewing but with little to no success. “Dude,” he could only say. “What the fuck are you even talking about?”
Choi shrugged and didn’t reply to him, taking another hit.
An unsettling thought passed through Namgyu’s mind. Choi never made sense when he tried to talk during a high, but there was something different about this time. It was as if the air felt charged. A big change was about to happen, but he couldn’t have been sure as to what. Whatever it was, it couldn’t have been anything good.
“Should we get off this stuff?” he proposed instead, wondering if it was the weed rotting his brain.
“Nah,” Choi replied, waving a dismissive hand in response. He then pushed himself up so that he was back on his feet and turned around to oversee the city.
What a beautiful sight, he thought to himself. How strange that he was only noticing it now. He never cared about these things before.
“I’m fine…” he trailed off, just taking in the view. Everything felt so beautiful and surreal like it all made sense after years of blindly navigating in the dark.
It was the clarity that made him feel alive.
Such a realisation made him scoff out a laugh.
The irony of it all was comedic, almost.
“What are you doing?” Namgyu was quick to ask, not liking the shift in the air. It was like he could tell what was going on, but there was no way that Choi would follow through with something like that.
“I…” Choi started, quickly glancing down at Namgyu. “I really appreciate you, man. You really made my whole miserable life feel okay sometimes.”
Namgyu stiffened. No way.
“Hey—“
He wasn’t able to act fast enough.
“What are you—“
Merely watching as he took a step.
“—Do—“
His heart dropped faster than Choi could meet with the cold ground.
“—ing?”
For a moment, it felt like time went still and just one second later, it all connected. One second Choi was standing there with him and the next, a crack could be heard, swallowed up by the vastness of the still-bustling city.
He stumbled back as he seemed to understand exactly what Choi was talking about now before racing downstairs. He grabbed his phone as quickly as he could, dialling for an ambulance, just in case there was a chance that he could still make it.
However, when he reunited with him on the street just outside, he dropped to his knees and let go of his phone in the process.
“What the fuck?” he could only choke out, taking in the bloody spectacle that lay before him. Choi looked like he was in so much pain and yet he was smiling. Namgyu couldn’t understand at all what he was seeing and yet, he resonated with it all so perfectly well. “Stay with me,” he started to chant, “you’re fine, you’re all good, you’re—“
Choi however just smiled wider, his voice subdued and somehow dopey. “It’s going to be okay.”
Namgyu wasn’t having it though, not like this.
“Shut the fuck up,” he snapped before clenching his fists. He tried so hard to dampen his reaction, but as the tears fell from his eyes, he couldn’t hold anything back anymore. “Wha—what about me?” he demanded. “What—why—you’re leaving me, man.”
Though, only silence replied to him next.
For Choi could no longer speak.
His body went limp and his eyes zoned out.
Namgyu simply couldn’t function for a moment after that. He tried to speak, but no words came out. He kept trying to force something, anything, but his voice kept coming out as choked.
Finally, he was able to on autopilot at the very least, disclose the address to his now cracked phone before hanging up.
“You motherfucker,” he then managed. “You’re actually fucking serious.”
He let out a deep exhale.
“You’re leaving me all alone,” he added, “in this actual fucking hell.”
Namgyu paused for a moment, blinking up to the rooftop that Choi jumped from. For a moment, he had the idea to race back up to the rooftop and then jump too, maybe following him wherever he was now, but he didn’t follow through. Something in his mind didn’t let him. If he were to die too, then Choi would for sure be forgotten, wouldn’t he?
Nobody else knew them and they weren’t doing anything important enough in life to be remembered well.
He supposed that he could make the memory of him count by living a decent life, so at least one of them had made it, but he hated that this revelation was only accomplished through his death.
He sighed and leaned back to kiss the cool pavement. For the remainder of the time that he had before the ambulance got here, he could pretend that it was still fine.
He would have his last smoke and pretend that Choi was there with him too, because that was one way he could still somehow say goodbye.
(Even if it was too late to even try.)