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The rain knocks dull against the windows as he stands over the kitchen sink, tracing raindrops with his eyes and almost reaching out to follow the same clear path to the paint-chipped window sill with his finger. Soonyoung wouldn't mind opening his windows and welcoming the rain into his home. His entire apartment sinks in gray, anyway. He pulls on a loose string from the sleeve of his sweatshirt, a tangled blue line springing straight out of his wrist. He twirls it, rips it right out of the fabric, between his thumb and forefinger until he's no longer playing with the string but with the dry pad of his thumb.
He looks down, past his white socks bright against dimmed floors and crouches to look for the string, but it blends right onto the hardwood. He figures, at this moment, that he forgot to turn the lights on when he first stepped into the kitchen.
When a rumble of a storm starts to settle across the city, he leaves the string be and heads for the living room, turns on the television. Static lights up the room like a slow match from the corner. Simple, traditional Canon in D Major lulls into the walls as if the song lives here. He sets the mug of coffee that looks like it just absorbed the darkness of the room on the wooden table. Black of an audience fading right into the white of the middle aisle whirs across the screen.
He watched this so many times before; he actually lost count.
He remembers it all--from the ten rows of guests on each side of the aisle, to the white-pink offshoots of hybrid tea roses that deepen at petal edges, matching light blue dress shirts from a group of men at the front rows of the entire ceremony, the rises and descends of piano rolls over clicking steps of the soon-to-be-wed couple's family members and close friends, asking the other guests besides them if they can take this seat or that bench, the chandelier at the very end of it all beginning to brighten up the podium.
He watches the wedding, even waits for the guests to finish finding their seats instead of fast-forwarding past the entire dragging sight, and his eyes start to burn harder than the punch at his chest.
It's all so beautiful like the first time he saw it.
His lips form all the right words leaving the screen, from the parents of the couple preparing to marry and even from the pastor. The flower girl catches his eyes every time he watches this, with her light blue dress flitting down to her toes and the pearly white basket of light pink petals in her hand.
He whispers, "Sua," her name, "so pretty, like always," as she starts to sprinkle the flower petals all over the aisle and smiles when she swings the basket too high and a spew of petals dump onto the floor. It leaves just three-quarters of the petals left in the basket, but she continues on.
He even gets the timing right, when his own words follow the groom's, "You look so beautiful," with his hands crossed over his waist.
He never mimics the next part; sometimes, he forgets the exact words in the middle of it all.
They're the most important words in every wedding that escapes the pastor's lips, but Soonyoung never bothered to memorize it. "Do you, Kwon Soonyoung, take this man, Lee Seokmin, to be your lawfully-wedded husband, to have and to hold, in sickness and in health, to love, to honor and obey, in good times and woe, for richer or poorer as long as you both shall live?"
His eyelids crush together as he tries to keep watching the entire ceremony. He can barely hear himself promise, "I do," from the screen over his own cries, voice already tipping down into something closer to sorrow, desperation instead of the joy and celebration of the wedding.
The "I do" from Soonyoung's lips drowns hollow through the speakers and into the empty room.
The "I do" from his throat scalds and fogs glass of the screen.
The "I miss you so much, Seokmin," robs a lungful from his chest.
"I really do," pierces through the tight clutch of his hands on the frame of the television.