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Yeonjun felt the broken spring in his mattress prod into his spine.His eyes were fixed on the stain on the ceiling that had been there since he was a child. A consequence of a leak in the roof his parents hadn’t bothered to fix until it created a matching stain on the wooden floorboards on the left side of Yeonjun’s bed. His room had fifty-two floorboards. The stain on the floor was covered by five magazines, two books, three cd cases.One cd case was currently empty, the disk inserted into his walkman, which was resting on his chest. The blaring sonance of Slowdive’s Souvlaki Space Station coming through his headphones was almost loud enough to drown out his father screaming at his mother in the kitchen. Almost. A warm summer breeze entered through his window, ruffling the faded posters on the sage walls and blowing some of the scattered papers off his desk. He pushed himself up on his elbows, watching the white rectangles filled with messy scribbles float down and land onto the floor. Statistics.His eyes narrowed at the memory of his father finding out about his failing grade. His cheek still stung when he remembered how hard his hand had landed against it. He had two more weeks to study for his summer exam. A lot depended on him passing it, since it was his last year of high school. If he passed, he’d graduate and he would finally be able to skip this wretched place. His hollow hometown that had always felt so foreign to him. People’s meddlesome ways, their judgemental eyes, the low whispers covered by callused hands. So far, he had studied a grand total of two pages. There was always an excuse as to why he couldn’t seem to focus whenever he sat behind his desk. The fighting in the background. The sweltering heat. His own thoughts being too loud. His clothes not fitting his body right. His stomach rumbling. The numbers getting all jumbled up in his head. It all looked like an alien language to him. It made him feel hopeless.Sighing, the dark haired boy took off his walkman and pushed himself out of bed. He went to pick up the pages, not bothering to sort them in the correct order as he placed them back on his desk. Downstairs, his mother screamed something back at his dad. Something about him being an absent prick. About how he was never around for his son and how it had lead to him becoming so fucked up. Yeonjun’s eyes trailed from his papers to a dusty picture frame of him as a child, sitting on his mother’s lap. He had no pictures of all three of them together. His gaze moved to the boxes of pills on the corner of his desk. How long had it been since he’d taken his meds? His brain failed to remember. The days seemed to blend into one another. They felt useless to him, anyway. The little pills that were supposed to fix him, make his existence more bearable. It was his mother who had taken him to the doctor because he went mute last summer. Started seeing things, hearing things, his eyes moving as he watched something that wasn’t there. He had to go to a psychiatrist, but his father found out after only two appointments. His mother spent days begging and crying to stop his father from throwing out the pills. A lost effort, as they sat untouched on his desk.
“Marrying you was a mistake. That useless kid was a mistake, too!”
His father’s voice rumbled through the house. Yeonjun knew he meant those words. Somehow, it no longer hurt. He accepted it long ago. It still made him wish he was never born at all, though.The screaming decreased in volume and Yeonjun figured his parents had moved into another room to argue. The soft whirring of his fish tank and the muffled tones coming from his headphones on his bed now filled up the room, alongside the soft rustling of the trees outside.The boy walked over to his window, opening it fully. He fished a lighter and a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket before pulling himself up onto his windowsill, his back against the frame offering stability. He placed a cigarette between his lips and lit it, taking a long drag. His eyes fixated on the road though the smoke he exhaled, wondering what it would feel like to go down that road for the last time. What it would feel like to leave everything behind and go anywhere but here. That’s when he noticed the four figures strolling down the road, heading into his direction. When they came closer, he recognised a tall boy with dark hair, a boy with blonde hair in a colorful shirt, a gray-haired boy and a thin boy wearing a beanie. They were laughing and chattering happily, giving each other playful nudges as they walked.A smile spread across Yeonjun’s lips as he watched them draw near. Maybe his day would be salvaged after all.His cigarette was left forgotten in the ashtray on his windowsill, the smoke dissolving into the balmy summer air.