i finally managed to finish this and omg i just noticed it took a goddamn year. still, i did pretty well considering i had a mess of a life the past half year. the only part that's left of this is the epilogue, which is way too cute in my opinion. i'll be posting it tomorrow so yay!

Utopia
n.
From the Greek word ουτοπία meaning:
An imagined or state of things in which everything is perfect

Chapter Eight

Luhan wasn’t sure why he was so frozen when he came face to face with Jongin the following time. He wasn’t even sure why there were tears at the ends of his eyes and when Jongin questioned him, he just brought his fist up to hit him. But Jongin was fast and caught him and before Luhan could aim his other fist at him, he was bounded. His jaws were harshly pressed against one another and he only let a small whine when he was pulled into a hug.

He wanted to hit Jongin for everything—for pulling Kris in this. He knew it was pathetic of him to be like this when the dinner had went decently the previous night, but he still hated it. He hated how he had to sit and talk with Kris—Yifan, or whatever—and try to understand his side of the story. But there was no side of the story different from what had happened, and nothing in the world would make was happened acceptable.

Yes, he may have found his happy ending, but it wasn’t the same with Jongin. He had so many other paths to take that’d lead him to the right one. And Luhan knew he wasn’t the perfect one for him.

“Stop crying, Luhan. Everything’s going to be alright.”

But he’d heard it before and he knew that it was a matter of a couple days until Jongin’s parents came up with something new. They couldn’t escape. His apartment might have been clean again, but the next target could be he himself, and he was already a mess without their help.

No need to make it worse, when it was much easier to put an end to everything.

“No, it won’t.” Luhan pulled himself away but the grip on his wrist remained and he fought it a bit only to give up. “Let me go.”

Jongin offered a light-hearted laugh; “Since when have you turned so moody?” Luhan wasn’t amused to say the least and the laugh died fast. Jongin quickly wiped his tears away with his free hand. “Don’t be so stressed. Everything will be alright.”

“Repeating it won’t change a thing, Jongin,” Luhan hissed as his eyes glared at a shocked Jongin. He used that opportunity to slip a step back from him. “We both know that going against your parents will do nothing. You should better go abroad and forget this.”

“I have sent Yifan to talk them out of it. It’s—“

“And you expect that to help at all, Jongin?” Luhan glared some more before he sighed. “You should start thinking like an adult.”

“Maybe you should stop being so dramatic over everything.”

Luhan’s heart skipped a beat and Jongin moved to get a hold of him only to be ignored. That wasn’t what he wanted to happen, that wasn’t something he wanted to say.

“Maybe,” Luhan started, slowly and quiet as ever, “This should be your sign.”

“What—?”

“It’ll be better if we put an end to this,” Luhan swallowed a lump, hiding tears from Jongin’s eyes as they searched his face in hopes of this being a joke. “Before it’s too late and we both start to regret we even met each other.”

***

It was a couple days after their last talk that Luhan noticed how exactly empty and monotonous his life actually was. Working the morning shift at the diner left him with a good portion of the day empty, and being him, he didn’t have anywhere to put his mind on.

As soon as he was free off work, he’d take a walk around the streets, wandering like a lost soul, until the afternoon when he’d go by a shop and get takeaway food before returning home. It was always dark, a bit unwelcoming and far too quiet after being used to having Jongin walk around, complain or just talk. Frankly, he was feeling the loneliness when he’s open his door and have no one welcome him in or ask how his day was, or have someone to snuggle against under a blanket on the couch. Or eat unhealthily with, or cuddle on the bed before sleep.

The silence started angering him so he would just plop on the couch, munch on fast food and watch some action movie, of fantasy even, to pull his mind away from reality. He’d find himself fall asleep in the living room, lulled by the voices coming from the television. It left him sore when he woke up in the early morning, but he would just ignore the pain and go along his routine.

It was irritating, the way Jongin had subconsciously pushed him into a more eventful life. How he’d gotten used to movement and noise and the talking. He’d hated how he couldn’t go back to his previous life now that he’d tasted the taste of a normal life. But he knew that he was beyond normal. He led a life that would have been the same if Jongin’s persuasion, patience and purse hadn’t pushed him out of it.

So much so, that he would groan when the clock reached three at noon and he had to leave. He’d asked his boss for double shifts but he was refused because apparently Chanyeol and Baekhyun had improved enough to keep up with the work. So he was left with nothing to do again.

Two weeks passed like that, quietly and uneventfully. Up until one Monday morning a familiar person walked through the front door.

Luhan felt his hands tremble, his heartbeat echoing harshly against the skin behind his ears. He wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do, run and hide, focus on something else and appear too busy, or to tug on his hair because he felt so frustrated already.

But he did none of them. He couldn’t rip his body out of the trance he fell in, and his eyes finally locked with the woman’s, who plainly sat at one of the small booths for two by the window in a corner in his section. Baekhyun had taken up the busy part of the diner today—for a change, one that Luhan blamed to be unfortunate for him—and thus he couldn’t ask him to tend for that table as well. Not when he was only two, of which one was the woman herself.

Swallowing his anxiety, he slowly made his way to the woman, forcing his face into a smile but he was sure was more of a grimace than anything else.

“Sit, Luan. I am here only to talk to you,” the woman motioned for him to sit across of her and Luhan glanced over his shoulder to check for his boss before slowly slipping into the seat. He didn't bother to correct her about his name, he couldn't find his voice anyway.

“I didn’t want to come here at all, but things happened so here I am.” The woman waved her hand away dismissivel