Music: Hello - Adele

Luhan stares out the window and wonders why he’s here.

Outside, everything is familiar and not the same at the same time, night smudging the surroundings in shadows that are deep plum and dark blue.

Streetlights flash by, brief interludes of light in the darkness.

In those lights Luhan sees two boys running down an empty street, hand in hand. 

Luhan stares out the window and wonders why he’s here. 

“Jongin, hurry up, we’re going to miss it,” Luhan calls over his shoulder, little legs pumping as he runs, tiny fists clenched as his arms cut through the air, moving him forward.

He can hear Jongin just behind him, the five-year-old breathing heavily as he struggles to keep up.

Luhan slows down just the barest bit because he’d decided it was his personal responsibility a long time ago, having two whole years on Jongin, to never leave his best friend behind.

At the decreased pace, Jongin manages to catch up, slipping his fingers into Luhan’s, and Luhan can’t keep from grinning at how red the younger’s cheeks are, flushed with exertion, whipped by the strong winds blowing along the streets.

Jongin tilts his head towards Luhan as they run, grinning back.

The hotel room is small, cramped, smells like cheap laundry detergent and lingering cigarette smoke.

Luhan doesn’t bother turning on the light, just walks over to the one window and pushes back the heavy curtains, stares out at his view of the parking lot below, a dimly lit convenience store across the street.

He tries to see the sea he knows lies just beyond it, but it’s too dark.

Maybe he’ll be able to see it in the morning.

Luhan takes one last look at the cracked pavement outside and lets the curtains fall closed.

It’s odd, Luhan thinks as he lies back against the warm sand, the tide rushing in to spread through his hair, cold, leaving goosebumps down his neck and salt stained into the collar of his shirt.

It’s odd that he never feels like this with anyone else.

Jongin lies beside him, their arms pressed together, fingers digging into wet sand, dark hair plastered to his forehead, eyes closed, lips pressed into a gentle smile.

It’s odd and it’s terrifying, and Luhan doesn’t know what to tell his seventeen-year-old self.

So he doesn’t say anything at all.

Instead he closes his eyes, lets the roar of the sea drown all of his thoughts, thinks about how his hair will be stiff with seawater when he and Jongin finally get up and trudge home, the sun disappearing below the horizon in a flash of gold and pink.

For now, Luhan keeps his thoughts to himself.

The sea is the same.

It looks the same, makes the same sounds, leaves Luhan’s hair rough and frizzy.

It doesn’t matter that he’ll be thirty-five in a few months, doesn’t matter that the few people that are out on the beach with him, faces he doesn’t recognize, are looking at him in simultaneous confusion and disapproval.

Luhan lies down with his feet towards the town, head pointing out across the waves, and lets the tide rush forward through his hair, cold, leaving goosebumps down his neck and salt stained into the collar of his shirt.

He curls his fingers into the empty space at his side and blames the salt on his cheeks on the sea spray.

Jongin kisses like the ocean, surging forward, pushing and pulling, and Luhan is lost in the waves.

Luhan kicks the aluminum can in front of him across the sidewalk, listens to the rattling it makes until it stops bouncing and rolls to rest against the side of a building.

Unlike the sea, the town has changed.

Yet, Luhan can close his eyes and almost, almost see it as it was before, can see the streets and alleys he had explored every day after school, can see his house with the peeling paint, weathered by the winds that blew off the sea at night, can see the hallway at school he and Jongin always sprinted down w