"Inhale, in Hell there's heaven"

TW: homophobia, abuse and violence.

I took a step into the darkness, and the darkness took two steps towards me.

Almost as if light never broke on me, I disappeared right in front of my own eyes. But my heart didn’t ache this time around, not as much as it did when I realized everything I had left of you was myself. 

My first memory was pure chaos.

“What did you do to him?! How could you!” Somebody was screaming, moving frantically.

Loud heels on the ground, a pretty woman grabbed my face. The more she stared at me, the more her face grew horrified.

“We need to leave. Now.”

Indignation was the first thing I perceived from her, then sadness; She cried every time I wasn’t around.

“Jaehyun, is there something you would like to tell me about yourself?”

Ever since we met, she always seemed to know more about me than myself, starting from what was good for me, to whatever wasn’t - so how could I’ve ever told her more?

“..What would you like to know?”

“Anything. Do you perhaps know..What happened to you?”

I shook my head. All I could tell her was the truth I found inside my mind.

“I think..I was looking for something I lost.” 

A breeze moved her hair, making me close my eyes. Ah, there was that thing.

“I think I saw an angel once.” I immediately told her.

“He had golden eyes.”

Her expression changed drastically, she froze. I could see her feel a thousand things, and there was not one among them she could tell me about. Of course she wouldn’t believe me, what did I expect? 

I smiled faintly, taking a sip of that bitter tea she prepared.

“It’s okay, you don’t have to believe me.”

“No, wait.” She made sure to look me in the eyes when she said that, moving her hands so quickly, almost as if she wanted to stop any thought or misunderstandment plasming inside my mind.

“I believe you.” She grabbed my hands.

“I really do.”

I saw an angel once, but nobody else did. Perhaps my mother was right - God gives eyes to everybody, the sight to only a few.

Quite often, I dreamt of things I couldn’t distinguish from reality, then woke up and tried to connect every thought.

A street light in the middle of the night, rural patches of land that I recognized, or a simple building in the middle of a concrete jungle. A tall figure standing still; I suddenly found myself in front of him, but it took me a few more dreams for the image to get totally defined. 

In my dreams, we were 17. You waited for me a few meters from my parents’ house for 2 entire hours, until I finally showed up. I saw you under the street lights, you were staring at something in your hand. I froze in place as soon as I saw your eyes catching mine. I couldn’t breathe; as if someone had just poured warm water in my lungs, my chest started to hurt. 

I felt like I was looking at something much greater than myself. Like a tornado forcing its way in nature, destroying the latter and all manmade things, or a volcano erupting - Scared by the presence of something so uncontrollable; in pure awe in front of your existence, my sublime.

We sat down in a park nearby, my cross on your palm. It was quite the cinematography, the way the light of the streets made that silver pendant shine, outlining the perpendicular lines that shaped my life since the day I was born.

“I found it on my way home. I thought you’d be looking for it.” I flinched as soon as I realized I had actually lost it. Instinctively, I touched my neck and felt the absence of it.

How could I lose something that had always belonged to me?

It’s not right, nothing is right. Not you, not me, not you hand holding the very thing that makes you not right for me.

You touched my hand, held it tight. Neither of us said a word, because if our feelings ever came to the light, surely somebody would’ve seen them too. As soon as I realized the length of my heart’s devotion towards you, I fled. I went back to Korea to join the draft. 

When I came back, you had left for Vietnam. Our families met every now and then, our fathers being colleagues and us living in the same neighbourhood. I heard about you more times than I wanted; quite hypocritical of me. There was a part of me that wished to never see you again. Yet, in four years, there wasn’t a moment I didn’t think about you. I really thought that the less time I spent with you, the more my thoughts became pure. 

I blinked, and you became older.

It took me a while, but at the age of 22 I thought I finally healed. Until you showed up in front of my door alongside your parents. I didn’t even know you were back.

Your hair fixed perfectly, your suit tailored on that now much defined body of yours, but it was your eyes that matured the most. You saw Hell back there and told nobody. I felt my heart sink.

A hypocrite, that’s all I was. Afraid of your presence, but terrified of your absence.

You confronted the cowardly man I was without any violence, giving me chances over chances to choose you. You said you were adults now, so we could take care of ourselves even if we had to leave our families. But Lukas, I was just a tree in a great field of trees alike - leaving my family would’ve been the same as eradicating myself from the ground I was born in. I was meant to stay still, while life went by around me; I was never meant to leave.

For three years, there was not a day you didn’t smile at me. You went to live on your own exactly because you didn’t have the same obligations towards your family as me, in the house you asked me to choose for you. I decorated every single room just like you wanted me to, so ‘that the both of us could feel at home’. 

Like kids playing house, you gave me a choice to be happy every single time. When we kissed, you closed your eyes, I didn’t - I wanted to see you being, blindly, in love with me. I carved the shape of your brows in my mind, and never told you how afraid I was of losing you.

I wonder, when did it all change?

Was it when, on a simple and uneventful day, I opened the door of your house and found my parents and my uncles in front of me? Or was it when my family’s men left me on the ground, an inch from death?

“I know the dirty, sickening things you do in this house…With a man, at that!”

Mother, why are you crying? You told me that crying when somebody is discipling you only means you’re cleansing, sweating off your sins from your eyes. Now I was the filthiest in front of you.

You’re crying, I am not. How ironic; even though I’ve been basking in impure actions, I haven’t cried once ever since I chose that man, since I chose to live. He never gave me a reason to.

A deep breath, as my wounded body greedily longed for a cure, a fix, even though my heart felt unfelt. 

“If you don’t want his face wiped out of this world, go back to Korea.”

I did as he told me. Living in a house I could not go out of, constantly being watched by all the people he set up, I had no contacts with anybody outside. 

You were everywhere I went, even if you weren’t. I saw you inside my room, outside the window when the gardner was taking care of the freshly bloomed flowers, in front of me at dinner, before going to sleep, and even after.

One month had passed since I’d been imprisoned. All I could do was sleep, that was the only way I could reach you. We spoke, we laughed, we cried. I still remember that one time you had tears in your eyes while apologizing for every single thing. I cried as well, begging you to forgive me. 

I couldn’t tell anybody about you, so I only told God. 

I married the woman they wanted me to. I laid with her as many times as it felt obligated, only to find myself tearing up outside that room right after. 

The moment we became family was not when we got married. She’d been my wife for two years, but she became part of my life, my affection, only after one specific thing happened.

She stood up for me in front of the elders, even though she didn’t have to. Her mother brought up the question first at dinner. I couldn’t lie out of the respect I felt for her, she didn’t expect me to tell them I was the reason why we didn’t have a child yet. I started being demonized for not being man enough to give her a child by her relatives first, then mine. Compassion, sympathy, pity - I wondered which one of those made her stand up that night, head up and speak.

“It’s a matter between a wife and a husband.”

I think she realized it too, how uncomfortable I felt.

With her body inside my arms, I used to look for his scar on her shoulder.

It wouldn’t be the first time I saw you everywhere I could find you, whether it was other people or myself.

Six years had passed since I last saw you. I thought all of my love for you turned into prayers for your wellbeing and your happiness. 

Just when I adjusted to my new life, almost as if the universe thought of me as the foolest among the fools, I was told to go back to the States to finish off my now old man’s job on his behalf. I was taken back, wondering why my father chose to finally free me.

Ironically, we relocated exactly in front of your apartment, that sinful place I used to feel the most blessed. I always wondered why my father was never opposed to it. What if I took off and fled with you? It was a silly thought.

You had probably changed more than I did, your rage shaped by betrayal. I wouldn’t have forgiven myself either.

There wasn’t a night where I could see a light inside that apartment. As months went by, those lights never lit up. To justify the lack of life inside that place, I thought maybe you had left.

I went there after work one day, surprisingly finding your landlord opening up the house.

“He took over one day and hasn't shown his face ever since. I told myself I would throw away all of your belongings once somebody finally decided to rent the apartment, but some things happened and I always ended up postponing it. Now that I think about it, how about you help this old lady a bit?”

Nothing had changed. Scarily, it felt almost as if time had stopped inside that house.

Tears shed from my eyes like blood leaking from a deep wound.

I wish something really cut deep within me, I wish it bled, so I could understand where to start mending myself.

I sat in different places to look at that house from different perspectives to understand what I had forgotten.

Sitting on that balcony under the rain, the sun, the snow, the remorse, the regret, I thought about all the words I could’ve told you, until something deep within me told me I should find a reason to feel alive again.

The woman waiting for me at home was my only solace. We often spoke about you, she always asked me more.

I think I needed a friend more than anything. I just wanted to tell somebody about you, somebody that wasn’t just me.

She fell in love with somebody, a tall, blond, American man who worked as a police officer.

We didn’t get divorced and they weren’t in a hurry to get married. She was afraid of what could’ve happened to me if my family found out we took different paths. For seven years, we’d been nothing more than two souls living in the same house, found and bound by people to whom we belonged. Yet, we truly cared for each other.

I thought I should start looking for you, at least for an apology. Around the same time, my mother called me and told me my father was bedridden, to which I immediately left for Korea. I never thought I would find you in the same place I lost myself.

A month after I was forcefully taken back to my home country, you came to my parents’ house. My mother would’ve never imagined to find you in front of her own doorstep. I want to believe that letting you inside was probably the greatest act of love she’d ever shown me. To you, on the other hand, it was the most cruel gesture.

You found me sleeping in my room, heavily medicated and quickly wrapped me in your arms, determined to leave.

They say fortune favours the bold, so I wonder if you looked like a complete fool then, to the Heaven’s above.

The maids had already reported to my father, so you did not take a step out of that room with me.

The people inside that house dragged you outside, took off all of your clothes and turned your pale complexion to dark red, before burying you in our garden. Humiliation and violence didn’t leave space for mercy. 

My mother told me that the last thing you saw before your life was taken was the window of my room, as if you were hoping to see me one last time.

You stayed with me the whole time I was here. Six years, wondering if you’d found the strength to heal, I was unaware you found your demise a few meters from me.

What could I do now? My father was already on death bed. My mother, I reckon her guilt caught up at some point and she felt the need to free herself, that being the only reason I had found you.

I moved your body in a secluded, peaceful and isolated green land before I left for America. A proper burial, a few words of affection and my tears to nourish the grass above you. 

I came back to reality leaving you behind, taking back the memories I’d lost.

“Jaehyun, I made breakfast!”

Knocking on the door, a female voice. I rushed to open the door, she turned to me with a confused face.

“Misook..?” 

Her eyes widened, she took a step back. Vincent got up from the table.

“You..You’re Misook?” My breathing started to get heavier. 

“Jaehyun..”

“It doesn’t make any sense..This, this isn’t right. Why are you in his house?”

“Misook, hey, so I lost something, what was that? Something definitely is missing here..” 

She started to cry, while Vincent could do nothing but hold her, silent.

As soon as I realized what it was, I immediately touched my neck. 

“Where is my cross?”

“..What?” She seemed in disbelief.

“No, my cross, he found it in the street..Where is it?” I tried to explain, to justify, for so long I didn’t even hear her approach me.

“Actually, I saw an angel once..”

All I felt was a sharp pain on my cheek, then her teary, red eyes glaring at me.

“Stop!” She grabbed me by the collar.

“It’s not your faith you lost. Trying to be a good son, a good husband, did it do you any good?! It’s not your cross you lost!”

It was 1993 now. As my mind started to get clearer, the three of us left for Korea.

I heard that both of my parents died a long time ago and every asset had been taken by my relatives. After I went back to the United States, through money and connections, they found no better place than a run-down mental hospital for me. I’d been intoxicated by anything that could make your face fade, so it wasn’t difficult for them to take care of me. Funnily enough it was still there, my illness. 34 years of life and I’d spent more than half loving a man.

When Misook finally found me, two years had just passed. Still being my wife, she was the only one who had the legal authority to get me out of there.

A long flight, I couldn’t wait to see you again. A few steps behind me, until they were far enough, Misook and Vincent left me alone in the vast land we reached by car.

I could not give you anything else now. Not love, not words, not mistakes. So I gave you my name.

Even if I died in an unknown place, I at least wanted my name to be next to yours. We couldn’t get married, we couldn’t stay together; it was the only place where both of our names together made sense in the entire world.

My beloved, Lukas Xavier Brandt

Yours in life and death, Seo Jaehyun 

How fortunate - my heart stopped right in front of your grave that day.

As I lay my body next to you, I hear screaming and shouting, while two figures are running towards me.

I saw an angel once, but nobody believed me.

Holding your hand, I see what’s ahead and whisper - ‘I told the whole world about you.”