Chapter Text
[ Unseen letter from Sunghoon's archive ]
✉
Time is finite. No matter how much we want to grasp forever in our yearning, time is very limited. Even a lifetime doesn't feel like forever, even if it does, I know I'd be selfish and beg for more time. Now, I live and breathe for my present with you. I live for the moment that I feel closest to you, skin to skin, heartbeat to heartbeat. Loving you is the easiest thing I've ever done, and the hardest part of loving you was leaving. I couldn't let myself lose you again if I tried, I will break myself in half before I ever give up on you. Even if the earth stood still, even if the gods may have held their breath everytime we were together. I've always thought that loving you means being in love with every fragment that created you. Or were our fragments always made from the same atoms, making it so easy to be completely in love with you?
We've been through trials and tribulations, heavens and hells, we were broken and forced to breathe with stabbed lungs, none that we could prepare ourselves for—none we'd have known we'd survive from. Perhaps these uncertainties in life have taught me to appreciate everything that is certain, such as the truth that I'll always come home to you and the sound of you telling me "I love you" is enough to hush voices in my head (as is the way you always look better in my clothes than I do).
I've paid the price of my honesty. As it turned out, miracle is just another word for sacrifice. Regardless, I will win you from every time and every night, from the place of your birth to the place where we'll die. I stopped making promises a long time ago because your existence itself is a promise—a promise that wherever we are, whatever hell we're going through, we will be fine.
You've survived the vile words uttered by your own flesh and blood, you've survived the pressure of societal demands, you've survived your world shattering all around. Does aging another year burden your shoulders, or does it set you free for a while? Knowing you, it's probably the former. But knowing you again, you'll find me, and I will ease the burden of loving yourself because I know your birthday is the hardest time of the year. You might think you're a mess sometimes, but I worship you no less. You're here with me and it's enough. It's a testament that your heart still can love the way it did when you were young… to allow yourself to be loved is to allow yourself to be saved.
Listen to this playlist when you're coming home from a long day at work, when your heart feels heavy it's hard to breath, when you need to know how much you're needed, when you forget that you matter to someone, when there's no one who understands, when five years feel like a long time, when you want to find us all over again in the fading memories. Listen to this playlist when you need to remember who you are to me.
Life goes on, perhaps forever and it won't get easier, but there's this little tune and one little house. You weren't ready before, but now you are, for the love you seek, it's here. I am here, at the dining table we share and in the bed we sleep in, with my head in your lap and your fingers in my hair, and we will be happy.
I love you. Thank you for loving me.
I found you again;
Happy birthday, Sunoo. My little pursuit of happiness.
Always, always been yours,
Sunghoon
✉