December 1st, 2015

The city is alight, shining with fairy lights and all of December’s glory.

However, the picturesque metropolitan is tainted by the masses milling around, the streets swamped with thick coats and open umbrellas. Because, along with the 20 metre tall Christmas trees and festive decorations, December also brings bone chilling miserable weather. Even though peak hour has barely begun, everyone is pushing and shoving to catch the next train or bus and escape the freezing nightmare that is Seoul.

Unfortunately, Lu Han is caught in that current.

Apparently ten years of soccer is not nearly enough to develop the strength to overpower the aggressive mob of middle-aged businessmen he is currently drowning in. After a brutal elbow to the nose, Lu Han finally decides it was a bad idea to study in the library until night fell.

He pushes his way out of the crowd and finds himself in front of a gold-rimmed revolving door. The cosy atmosphere past the looking glass seems like a safe haven compared to the traumatic environment he was just in, so he jumps into one of the enclosures just as he hears the heavens open up and the rain come down in torrents.

The slacking worker at the entrance looks up lazily from his phone and drawls, “Welcome to the Kim Art Gallery, how may I–” before noticing Lu Han’s state and gasps with wide eyes, “your nose is bleeding!”

As if on cue, the blood drips onto his lips and Lu Han screams at the metallic taste, turning heads across the entire gallery. He’s never been too fond of blood, much to his parent’s dismay, and would faint at the sight of it, destroying any potential for a future in medicine.

A hand muffles his screams and Lu Han feels himself being dragged towards the bathroom. Like the rest of the gallery, the bathroom is opulent to say the least, fit with authentic marble walls – not that cheap veneer – and a mirror that stretches across all of the seven golden taps and sinks.

“The owner of this gallery really goes all out,” Lu Han comments as the worker cleans the blood from nose.

“Yeah, Jongin’s a flashy guy,” he replies, “his parents gave him this gallery for his 18th.”

Lu Han nods, “Flashy and rich. Nice.” He realises now that he never properly looked at the worker in front of him and observes the brunet, feeling a pang of familiarity from the way his hair falls into his eyes and the prominence of his Adam’s apple. “Do I know you from somewhere?”

“I’m in your Art History class,” he says, “My name’s Oh Sehun.”

“Lu Han.”

“Last but not least, this is my favourite collection,” Sehun brings him to a wall lined with gold framed artworks across the centre of the gallery. “Jongin commissioned the paintings himself.”

Sehun had ended up showing Lu Han around the gallery after he heard about the terror that was occurring in the streets outside. And Lu Han definitely hadn’t minded because the heating was cranked up tenfold inside, even though it probably shouldn’t have been because it might have damaged the fragile artworks. He comes to the conclusion that Jongin is flashy, rich, and gives little to zero s.

Lu Han squints at the plaque hanging beside the first painting and reads: “Ligaments. (2015)” There’s no description below the title so he looks up at Sehun curiously for an explanation.

“They’re fragments of a story that Jongin has recurring dreams about,” he explains. “It’s about these two people who love each other but circumstances never allow them to be happy and so the universe keeps giving them second chances. Something like that.”

The first painting depicts a man being hung above a crowd. The second, a boy dying in someone else’s arms. Another one shows a patient lying in a hospital bed, his hand being gripped by a visitor. The identities of all the subjects in the paintings are ambiguous except for the third one, which shows a soldier shooting an imprisoned soldier from the other army.

It’s the one that he can’t tear his eyes off. He tries to ignore the familiarity of the prisoner but can’t help himself from eyeing the protruding collarbones and the slender fingers of the soldier holding the gun. Something in him leaps.

Lu Han turns to Sehun and points at the painting, “Hey, don’t you think the guy with the gun in the painting kind of looks like you?”

He wants to take back the comment as soon as it leaves his mouth. There were many times people found his sense of humour off-putting, so even though Lu Han meant it as light-hearted joke initially, the way Sehun’s eyes widen a fraction makes Lu Han wary of his words. The last thing he wants is for Sehun to be offended, and so he opens his mouth to apologise, but he’s interrupted before he even speaks.

“Lu Han, do you believe in reincarnation?”

 

 

 

January 18th, 1550

Snow is sinking further into his shoes with every step.

He’s been sent on an errand by his father and has spent the past 20 minutes walking up and down the street and going around in circles to find an address that, at the moment, doesn’t seem to exist. So Sehun decides that he’s had enough and pushes open the entrance of the next store to save his toes from freezing off.

The room he ends up in is significantly darker than outside and disappointingly not much warmer. Just as Sehun is beginning to feel weirded out by the eerie darkness and lack of humans in the place, a boy emerges from the shadows in front of him.

“I’m Jongin,” the boy extends his hand for a handshake. “Do you have an appointment with our dressmaker?”

Sehun realises that normal people probably don’t just show up in stores randomly without a reason so he just shakes the boy’s hand sheepishly and goes along with the charade. “Um yeah...I have a...rip in my shirt.” He didn’t know if that was a legitimate issue but Jongin nods and for a second, Sehun feels really proud of himself for thinking on his feet.

“Lu Han!” he calls to the back. “There’s some weird person here who wants you to fix a rip in their shirt.” The pride disappears.

There’s a yelp and a crash and Jongin winces. After a few minutes, a young man enters the main room where Sehun is waiting. Despite the poor lighting, he can make out Lu Han’s shiny eyes and the way his hair falls softly against his face. Sehun is about to extend a hand when the dressmaker gasps.

“Jongin,” Lu Han hisses, his faces transforms from sweet and elegant to someone who could probably kill you in your sleep. “He is not ‘some weird person’, he’s the son of our mayor.”

“Oh,” is all boy says and shrugs indifferently.

Lu Han turns back to Sehun and proceeds to apologise profusely, “I beg for your pardon. He’s usually very well-mannered and courteous.”

Sehun waves it off but when the dressmaker asks how he can atone for his worker’s disrespect, the mayor’s son does ask for a fire. And very hot soup.

He doesn’t know why, but Sehun finds that he keeps going back to visit Lu Han’s store over the course of the next 5 years. About 4 months in, something sparks within him.

One day, as he laughs in front of the fireplace with porridge and his newfound friend sitting across him, he realises that he’s never felt more comfortable with anyone before and he knows it’s wrong but there’s nothing he wants more than to hold Lu Han close to him.

So he does.

Before he knows it, they begin to hide in the back storeroom and kiss until their lips are swollen and Lu Han will have to pretend he doesn’t notice his own collars are flipped up in the store the next day.

He spends his time writing poetry and buying gifts for Lu Han, visiting him almost every day. Sehun doesn’t think he’s ever been so happy in the 17 years of his life.

But he can only ever stay so long before he has to return for another dinner with his fiancée, return to his father for a future with expectations to fulfil. He can only make so many excuses of having a broken sole or a torn seam at the hem of his pants.

And Sehun is reminded of this reality so harshly in winter of 1555, as he steps into Lu Han’s store quietly and shakes the snow away as he takes off his scarf, wearing a grim expression.

“He knows. My father knows.”

After that, Sehun doesn't dare to step anywhere within a mile of the shop front. Instead, they meet in dark alleyways in heavy raincoats and scarves to hide their faces. Because he is naive enough to think that his father will drop the threats and leave them alone if there’s no evidence of them together.

“I think it was Jongin,” says Lu Han during one particular encounter.

Sehun punches the grey brick wall next to him and his fist bruises, swelling into sickening shades of purple and red.

He knows that grown men shouldn’t be crying but he’s been holding everything in and it’s raining anyway so he sinks down and let’s everything pour out. Lu Han smiles as he always does, bending down and wrapping an arm around him. And somehow, the warmth from Lu Han’s embrace chases away all the cold that has been hovering around him for the past weeks.

Later, they end up in the back room of Lu Han’s store and the he carefully bandages Sehun’s hand.

“He’s just scared,” Lu Han says as he wraps Sehun’s fingers in gauze. His own fingers might be rough and callous from his work but his grasp is delicate, and he is careful not to hurt the injured hand further. “Please don’t be angry at him.”

There’s a long pause and it’s all quiet other than the sound of rain hitting the roof and an occasional crash of thunder.

“You’re too kind,” Sehun finally says. When he lifts his head, Lu Han can’t see where his pupils blur into his irises. His eyes are dead. “But I’m not like you.”

As he watches Sehun rise from his stool, Lu Han suddenly remembers the time the man stumbled into the store with blood covering his clothes and the same lifeless eyes he held now. It took close to 5 months for Sehun to fully recover from what he had done. Lu Han doesn’t want him to experience it again.

“No!” he cries out and reaches for Sehun’s hand. But he’s too far away.

He can no longer hear Lu Han’s pleas or see the desperation etched into every part of his pale face. Fear runs through his veins as he sees Sehun slam the door and march out into the violent storm.

“Please don’t do anything stupid,” he whispers.

Though as he looks back on it now, Sehun’s passive rage and the gaze that harboured murderous intent shouldn’t have been his biggest concern. He had forgotten about the mayor’s agents stationed around his store, waiting for the opportunity to collect evidence and persecute Lu Han.

They storm in just as he finishes patching up the tear in his client’s gown.

He’s been expecting them.

“We have an arrest warrant,” one of the soldiers pulls out a piece of parchment paper with tiny details scrawled all over it. “You’ve been arrested for illicit activities.”

There’s a sad smile on Lu Han’s face because he knows that no matter how hard he tries to play dumb or innocent, he will still be arrested. If he’s lucky, they’ll throw him in a dark jail to rot. So he puts down the dress that he’s working on and places out his hands so they can shackle him.

“Hey Jongin,” he turns to his apprentice. “Please take care of Sehun for me.”

One of the soldiers cough in disgust.

With that, he lets himself be shoved out of the store that he prided himself in for close to 8 years. Once all the soldiers file out, Jongin finds himself alone and the room that he had experienced so much joy in quickly turns dark and cold.

His fingers shake.

What have I done?

From miles away, at the edge of the crowd that has gathered at the town square to witness the execution, Sehun sees Lu Han’s eyelids flutter shut and a limp smile hanging from his lips. The townspeople cheer as he is lifted into the air and Sehun wants to vomit. He wants everyone to shut up because they didn’t know Lu Han. They didn’t know the doe-eyed dressmaker who lived in a one bedroom flat above his store that he poured his entire being into; who pricked his fingers every night and ran on 2 hours of sleep but still gave the widest smile to all the passerbys.

But most of all, he wants to disappear.

There is pain pulsing through his veins and his lungs feel like they are about to burst from the pressure. His father might keep a stone cold gaze at him from the raised podium but Sehun knows that inwardly he is having trouble suppressing his smile that once again he has asserted his authority and beaten his son.

A hand grasps his elbow all of a sudden and pulls him out of his reverie. He turns around and sees a boy with dark circles under his bloodshot eyes and hollowed cheekbones. It’s Jongin.

Sehun once told himself that if he ever saw Jongin again, he would beat him until his vision blurred out into a lifeless black and until he coughed blood in deep shades of crimson. And even then, he would not stop. But seeing the state that Jongin was in and the honest agony in his eyes, makes the anger in him subdue and instead propels him to ruffle the boy’s hair.

“I didn’t know it was going to be like this,” cries Jongin. “If I knew, I wouldn’t have said anything.”

“I know,” is all Sehun says.

In the years that proceed, they find comfort in each other’s company and eventually become best friends. Jongin takes over Lu Han’s store and Sehun makes sure to visit every second he can, and they bond over terrible cooking and the ridiculous requests of the customers.

But sometimes Sehun will look over at the dark storeroom and remember running his fingers through Lu Han’s hair and the friction between their skin. Jongin will walk into his stoic figure and swallow the lump building in his throat before he steers them both away.

On those days, he will feel particularly lonely. Because even though he spends long days at Lu Han’s grave talking to him and leaving a bouquet of his favourite carnations every year, there is a hollow space that has been carved out of him. Because despite Jongin’s jokes that distract him, he still misses the boy he loved when he was 17.

On those days, Sehun doesn’t think he’ll ever forget.

 

 

 

August 30th, 1855

Silence has never rung so loud in his ears before.

As he watches his grandmother’s burial, the eerie absence of sound, he realises, is something he has never experienced in his 21 years of life. His childhood was always filled with the sizzling of his mother’s cooking and the laughter of his friends as they’d roll around in the dirt.

Even in high school he would hear the ticking of the clock loud and clear as he frantically tried to finish his exam before time caught up to him.

But now time has caught up to his mayor, his old Maths teacher, his cousin, and his grandmother.

He’s attended more funerals than he can count in the past three weeks, but during none of them had he become so aware of the silence surrounding him. It’s only now that he sees his family weeping around him does he notice that he isn’t hearing anything. He can’t focus on anything but his grandmother’s swollen lifeless body. Death is quiet. Death is stagnant. Death is final.

It scares him.

Lu Han finds him after the funeral and slides their hands together, hiding them behind the flurry of clothes. Sehun finds it funny because he’s normally the one taking risks for them and Lu Han is always slapping his hand away, sweat prickling at the back of his neck as he surveys the area for anyone who may have seen them.

A month ago, Sehun would’ve made a joke, held it against him as blackmail. But right now, no one can smile. Not when families are separated and isolated from each other to prevent spreading the disease. Not when everyone is sleeping in constant fear of waking to a purple bubo and counting down the days until they die.

“Epidemic,” they called it. There had been an influx of letters right from other doctors across the province right before disease flooded their village. They all included accounts of deadly sickness that starts like any other fever, and eventually progresses to muscle cramps and seizures. But the most telltale symptom is the appearance of swollen lymph nodes, and at that point, there is the sinking reality that death will soon take the infected away.

“You guys are being a bit obvious, don’t you think?” Jongin comes and squeezes between them, looping an arm around both of their necks. There’s a wide grin spread across his face.

Sehun knows that it’s in his best friend’s character to always be optimistic, and even though it’s a breath of fresh air in the current gloom and doom permeating the village folk, he just can’t find the strength to smile back. Before his grandmother’s funeral, all he felt was numb, watching corpse after corpse be buried, but now there is silent unease crawling from his toes and spreading all across his body.

“Stop it,” mutters Lu Han, who can sense Sehun’s distress and elbows the oblivious Jongin in the ribs. He feigns hurt and offence, doubling over and grasping his stomach.

“I just came to deliver a message,” he says. “Your father says that he’s treating another patient tonight so he won’t be home.”

“Thanks,” Lu Han worries his lip as he watches Sehun. He has his eyes planted on the dusty path as he walks, his footsteps heavy. So Lu Han asks Jongin instead. “Can I stay with you tonight then?”

The boy beside him nods before leaving as quick as he appeared.

Doctors are always the most prone to the disease.

Call him ignorant, but Sehun doesn’t quite understand why they try so hard to save the dying patients when all it brings is misfortune to themselves. Maybe that’s why he doesn’t understand the current situation at all.

For the past 2 weeks, Lu Han’s father has been working through the night almost every single day, standing too close to the diseased and marking red crosses on the doors. And although his son doesn’t show it, the absence of his father in his life has been taking a toll on him. He’s stayed up sitting against the wall at night, unable to sleep because of that budding worry that his father might lose the luck that has been keeping him alive.

One day, he does.

There comes news that Lu Han’s father is taking a break and resting for the day. Sehun doesn’t think he’s ever seen Lu Han so elated in his life before, and he can’t help smiling for him. But it all falls apart when they enter his house and find his father collapsed by the front door, temperature rising like a burning fire.

For a minute, his son just stands there in shock and panic. It’s Sehun who acts fast, dragging the doctor to the nearest bed and preparing cool water and cloths. He strips the man of his clothes and that’s when he sees that Lu Han’s father is already beyond saving.

“He has them,” Sehun whispers. But he wishes he hadn’t. It’s selfish he knows, but he wants to take back those words that now have him witnessing Lu Han fall apart bit by bit. And slowly, after all the light has been away from his eyes, he stands up to move beside the bed.

His movements are static, almost robotic, as he drags a chair along behind him and pulls it in place. A harsh sound erupts from the legs scraping against the floor but Sehun finds he can’t focus on anything but the ruin that Lu Han has become. It’s so silent again, and that feeling of impending death starts to creep from his toes.

Lu Han will die.

“You have to leave,” he cries frantically. “He’s infected.”

He’s in tears, tugging desperately at Lu Han’s sleeve. But the doctor’s son pays no attention to Sehun, remaining paralysed as he sits by his bedridden father and changes the wet cloth on his forehead over and over again in a fruitless attempt to cool the feverish body.

It’s a long, long time before Lu Han gains the strength to speak again.

“Sehun, I can’t,” Lu Han shakes Sehun off and glances at him with bloodshot eyes. “Would you leave your mother if she was dying?”

I wouldn’t, he doesn’t say. Instead, Sehun lets his fingers fall limp away from Lu Han’s sleeve and wordlessly slinks away and shuts the door.

 

 

He knows locking himself inside his tiny room will amount to nothing, but he does it anyway. For the past five days, Sehun has only opened the door to pull in the little rations that his mother leaves for him every day. Food is becoming scarce as the epidemic takes away the farmers who grow the produce and soon, the villagers will probably be able to count the grains of rice in their bowl on one hand.

Together with the food, his mother knocks on his door for a good ten minutes to coax him out. Sometimes she scold him for being immature, other times she will lean against the door and tell her about everything that has happened that day. She tells him about the death of the shopkeeper down the road or the red ‘X’ drawn across her cousin’s door. What she never talks to him about is the condition of Lu Han’s father.

Today, there is a pounding on the door that won’t stop.

At first, he thought that if he just ignored his mother as always, she would eventually go away. But it’s been well over ten minutes and frankly, Sehun is starting to get a headache.

“Go away!” he shouts, covering his ears even though he knows that it won’t stop the oncoming migraine.

“It’s important,” a voice that is definitely too low to be his mother’s replies. It’s Jongin outside his door. “I wouldn’t be doing this if it wasn’t. You have to come out, Sehun.”

“Leave me alone.”

Jongin finally stops attempting to break down his door and Sehun’s acute hearing picks up whispering outside. Blood is rushing in his ears and the air is thick. Every second passes agonising slowly as he swallows the dry lump in his throat, waiting for his friend to leave.

He doesn’t.

“Lu Han’s father has passed,” he murmurs instead.

 

 

Everything is white in his peripheral vision as the rows of houses blur into a single dull streak.

The Lu house has been a second home to him for majority of his life, but it feels so foreign as the quaint structure stares back at him with bright red staining the wooden door. Sehun lets his fingers run across the door and takes several deep breaths to calm himself down. Then he pushes the door open and turns the corner, all the while chanting, Lu Han needs me. I need to be strong. Lu Han needs–

Someone starts screaming.

He doesn’t register that it’s himself until Jongin grasps his arm and yells bloody murder at him. But then he too notices the sight in the room and his knees buckle.

Sehun rushes over to Lu Han’s body collapsed on the floor and cradles him into his lap. Lu Han is lighter than he remembers, and too pale. His bones seem to jut out at every angle, and the skin clings to hollow spaces like his cheeks until he is so beautiful he’s ugly.

“These are the painkillers that his father usually gives to his patients.” Jongin has since gotten onto his feet and gone to investigate the bottle of pills that have spilled across the table. “Do you think…?”

“He wouldn’t live without his father,” Sehun whispers.

He pulls up Lu Han’s sleeves and presses his fingers to the thin wrist. He bends down to hover his ears next to the boy’s mouth. There’s nothing. No breath, no pulse. Sehun’s heart stops and specks of black start to cloud his vision.

In those few seconds, every moment that he has ever regretted comes flooding towards him.

Leaving.

Slamming the door.

Locking himself away.

His fingers only clench the lifeless body tighter, and the people that have gathered into the house know not to disturb him. Because as much as Sehun and Lu Han wanted to be covert and hide, the villagers knew everything anyway. Everyone saw the way they looked at each other, and the pain they both suffered when the other one was hurting, and if it wasn’t love then they didn’t know what was.

Jongin pries Sehun’s fingers away and cover his eyes. That deathly silence fills his ears again.

Lu Han rolls off his lap.

Death is final.

 

 

 

November 6th, 1950

It smells of blood and tears and sweat.

Between the tents of injured soldiers and nurses, Major Oh finds himself staring at the man responsible for the bandage compressing his thigh.

“By the looks of his insignia,” Baekhyun examines the uniform closely, “Same as me, Jongin, he’s a Lieutenant Colonel.”

Jongin, the Colonel, reaches out and tilts their prisoner’s chin forward, “Hey pretty, that means you’re below me. Have you never been taught respect?”

He spits at Jongin, which earns him several gasps from around the room and a blow to the cheek. Their faces are mirrored by the same crimson, one out of pain and another out of raging fury. The Colonel spins on his heel and storms out of the tent after failing to glare the blond prisoner down.

The rest of the soldiers positioned around the tent follow suit in his footsteps, but Sehun stays behind. Partly because he’s interested in what the captured man might have to say, but mostly because he can’t move comfortably in his bandaged injury.

It takes a while for the blond to notice the Major’s lingering presence and his frown deepens when he looks at him.

“What do you want?” he demands with narrowed eyes. Sehun is taken aback by the fluency of his Korean and the accuracy of his pronunciation, albeit the slight accent. He was fully expecting broken incoherent Korean from the Chinese soldier.

“You gave me this,” Sehun hits his injured thigh (and immediately regrets it) and smiles weakly. “So I thought it would be fair to give you some payback.” He sees the man flinch and screw his eyes closed. “What’s your name?”

There’s a full five minutes of silence as the prisoner blinks again and again. Just as Sehun wants to save the awkward silence and apologise for ever bothering him, he answers, “Lu Han. That’s my name.”

“Major Oh Sehun. Nice to meet you,” he says before sitting down on the dusty ground in front of Lu Han. Pain sears through his leg and he winces. Lu Han holds a worried face as he watches Sehun.

“Does it hurt that much?” he asks with furrowed brows. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine, I’m not that wimpy.”

But his reply doesn’t release Lu Han’s guilt. “I didn’t do it intentionally,” he says. “I don’t enjoy hurting people if that’s what you think.”

“Other soldiers have it much worse,” says Sehun. “I should be thanking you that you only shot my leg.”

Despite how grim the situation is, Lu Han laughs at his words, baring all his pearly white teeth. Maybe that’s when it started.

Maybe it started with his smile, a single carnation in a field of withering poppies.

 

 

2 days later, Jongin starts.

He begins with the simple ones. Many of the soldiers who have recovered from their injuries gather in the tent to watch Jongin repeatedly slap and kick the Chinese prisoner. Occasionally, he brings out his favourite leather whip to flog Lu Han as well.

When physical attacks fail to work, he begins to use sleep deprivation and confinement in a cramped space. Lu Han stays standing up continuously for over 72 hours with his hands shackled above his head, all the while being hit.

At first, Sehun shows up just out of duty. But then he finds himself returning day and night to witness Lu Han’s tenacity. He finds himself beginning to respect the soldier. And although he winces every time the prisoner receives another slap or is shoved into another narrow box, he thinks that he can manage to stay silent in front of the Colonel.

But then he begins to use waterboarding.

“I will ask you again,” Jongin bites, “what is your next move?”

When the prisoner doesn’t reply, the Colonel nods at Baekhyun and Chanyeol who heave another bucket filled with cold water and pour it over Lu Han’s clothed mouth. Sehun loses count after they’ve done it seven times. Every gasp, gurgle and writhe from Lu Han makes him more uncomfortable with the sight and Sehun just wants to yell at Jongin to make it stop.

It’s almost like a routine. Jongin will become impatient with his prisoner’s silence and lack of answers, and Baekhyun and Chanyeol will grimace and pour water to simulate drowning. Some soldiers begin to get restless from the show when nothing happens.

In that moment, Lu Han screams.

The gruesome sound rattles through the cracks of Sehun’s bones and spreads across his whole body and he’s moving before he even processes anything. He grabs Jongin’s shoulder and pulls him back. The Colonel’s eyes are painted with rage and somewhere in those indignant brown eyes, Sehun can see a hint of thrill.

“Don’t you think that’s enough for today?” he manages to squeeze out. Jongin stares hard at Sehun for several minutes, and there isn’t a single breath in the tent that can be heard in.

“Baekhyun, Chanyeol, you can stop now,” he says before he pushes Sehun away and leaves.

As soon as Jongin steps outside the tent, Baekhyun and Chanyeol drop the buckets, breathing heavily, and avoid everyone else’s silent gaze as they walk out. No one else moves. They’re all looking at Sehun, some in fear and others in amazement at his audacity. The entire army knows not to mess with Colonel Kim.

“You can leave now,” he shouts. They do as he says.

Major Oh rushes over to where Lu Han is strapped on the table and undoes the buckles. When he pulls off the cloth over his mouth, Lu Han sits upright with a gasp. He grabs onto Sehun and breathes heavily before trying to stand.

“I think you should just sit down,” Sehun says as Lu Han’s feet wobble on the ground.

The tent is quiet for a long time, and they can hear all the footsteps and voices, the crackling of fires and the sound of coughing.

“Thank you,” Lu Han whispers to break the silence. “I thought I was going to go crazy. The army- they train us to be tenacious and I tried, but I was drowning. I couldn't breathe, I felt like I was going to die, I–”

“Shh,” Sehun shakes his head and rubs Lu Han’s back slowly. “I won’t let you die.” He can feel the prisoner’s breathing becoming less ragged.

For the first time, Sehun takes a proper look at Lu Han.

He has thin fingers and his hair is sleek even after battle and days of being kept captive. Sehun can tell that Lu Han is from a privileged family. His life is probably picture perfect, with dinner parties and a promise of marriage to a beautiful, elegant girl awaiting his return. With a wry smile, Sehun understands that the soldier was never meant for war.

But then again, neither were any of them.

 

 

“I’m ashamed of myself,” Baekhyun says to him that night in their shared tent. “I don’t want to do this anymore.” He snuggles further into his sleeping bag and whispers with wide eyes, “He’s the same age as us, Sehun.”

“You’re lucky, Sehun.” Chanyeol tells him. “You don’t have to do what we do.”

You don’t have to either, he wants to say, but he knows what they’ll say. They don’t have choices in the war, they only have orders. And everyone knows better than to disobey them, because the orders come from Jongin. And Jongin is absolute.

Life used to be simpler.

It seems like an eternity ago, but at the ripe age of 23, they reminisce their high school days where they spent their lunch breaks playing soccer and evading detention. They remember buying lollipops with the measly amounts of pocket money they each received and laughing all the way home. Back then, their biggest problems were making another crack in a classroom window from where the ball hit it or returning home with mud covered uniforms.

No one says it, but Sehun knows both Baekhyun and Chanyeol miss those days. They all miss the Jongin with the shy smile, who was too nervous to stand within ten feet of girls. He dreamt big, and encouraged all their friends to up and leave the small town they came from.

But somewhere between drafting for military conscription and the outbreak of war, the four of them changed. They who wielded sticks as swords and fought with smiles were given guns too heavy for their hands and orders too brutal for their hearts. And before any of them realised, they had already become murderers.

“Excuse me,” someone clears his throat outside their tent. “Major Oh, Colonel Kim has requested your presence.”

Somehow, they had all expecting it. His two friends look at each other and shake their heads.

“Come back alive,” Baekhyun says. Sehun shrugs before he lifts away the split in the tent and ducks out.

He arrives at Jongin’s tent right as an American Lieutenant Colonel is leaving. As they pass each other, Sehun bows at him and the superior soldier nods. It’s not like they can say anything more with their language barrier.

The tent is a mess. A table sitting in the centre has been flipped over and the map that was most likely being used to plan strategy is disregarded beside it. All sorts of other utensils are strewn across the floor.

“Those American troops are bloody useless!” Jongin is pacing around the room.

“I know you didn’t ask me to come here so we could discuss our next plan of action,” Sehun says. He moves to pick up the table and place it upright again.

“Why did you pull that stunt today, Sehun?” It’s clear that he isn’t asking a question when he continues to talk. “I’ve been thinking about it all day. To humiliate me? There are better ways to do that. To be rebellious? There are still better ways to do that. Then I realised.” Jongin stops and his head to the side. “You feel sorry for him.”

Sehun manages to keep a level stare right back at Jongin, but inside, his heartbeat is loud and fast. His stomach is churning and the lump in throat is growing. Something in him twitches at Jongin’s words.

“No, you’re wrong,” he says. “I’m saving you.”

Jongin almost lets his surprise show, and for a second, Sehun thinks that his old best friend might still be in there somewhere, but then the Colonel starts to laugh. He clutches his stomach in amusement. There are tears in his eyes from laughing so hard. Sehun feels the need to justify himself and get rid of that incredulous look painted all over the man’s face.

“Jongin,” Sehun starts slowly. “This isn’t you; this man who tortures people ruthlessly isn’t you. But if you keep going down this road, he will become you. I don’t want that to happen. So please, just stop,” he hesitates. “For me.”

There is a grin that keeps growing wider and wider on Jongin’s face, and Sehun doesn’t like it. It’s nothing like his old smile – shy and sweet – this one is brazen and condescending and ugly. The sight makes Sehun sad.

“But Sehun,” Jongin’s eyes are ablaze with passion. “This is me.”

At this point, tears are burning at the back of Sehun’s eyes. He doesn’t know if it’s the build up of everything in the past week, of witnessing comrades die in front of him, seeing Lu Han hurting, and thinking back on their lives just 5 years ago, or the finality of accepting the loss of his best friend. But one thing he does know is that the Colonel in front of him is a stranger, and it’s so, so painful.

“You used to dream of becoming a premier danseur,” Sehun whispers shakily. “What happened?”

Jongin laughs bitterly, “I grew up. This is the reality, Sehun, it’s the survival of the fittest. Life is war.”

“We were so close.” Sehun shakes his head. He doesn’t want to believe it, he doesn’t want to know this person.

“And we still could be if you would just listen,” says Jongin. His patience is running thin from all this nostalgic talk.

“I don’t even know who you are anymore,” says Sehun. “The Jongin I know would never hurt a fly.”

“The Jongin that you know was gone a long, long time ago.”

Sehun has fooled himself all along. The light in his eyes had dimmed far before this conversation. He should have noticed.

 

 

Jongin stops torturing Lu Han for a few days as the army move their camp to prepare an attack on the Chinese.

Sehun visits the prisoner everyday in his tent. He sits down and tells him stories of when he used to try to climb fruit trees, but he’d always fall and break his arm. With tired eyes, he decides to leave out the part where Jongin would pick out the apples and oranges for him instead.

Then Lu Han tells him about his dreams.

“There was one where I was a dressmaker in the 1500s,” Lu Han laughs at Sehun’s expression. “Just wait till you hear the rest. You were in it too, as the mayor’s son.”

“Well, I’m just the son of a baker,” Sehun smiles.

When Luhan is in his company, he almost starts to forget the war and all the blood around them. In the little tent, on the ground, he focuses on nothing but the way Lu Han recounts his dreams vividly and his laugh. Their conversations remind him of youth and of the simpler times, and he starts to wish that they hadn’t met under these circumstances. He knows that his high school friends would’ve loved him.

The bliss ends all too soon when Jongin marches back into the tent on the morning of the 24th with Baekhyun and Chanyeol behind him and a whole load of buckets filled with water. It’s clear that Lu Han is taken by surprise when his eyes are unable to hide his fear.

Baekhyun mumbles an apology in Sehun’s ear when he walks past because he’s been watching them over last few days and he knows that, even if the Major might himself not, Lu Han is important to him.

Sehun looks at Lu Han in the eye and shakes his head, and the prisoner just smiles at him and jerks his head towards the exit.

I’ll be fine.

But he isn’t. He’s weaker than last time. Even from seven tents away, the sounds of his screams are so loud it makes him shudder. No amount of closed eyes or hands covering his ears can block out the horrifying sound.

Late at night, Sehun finds Lu Han lying on the ground with his eyes open. His pupils are blown wide and his gaze is far away.

“You know you guys are probably going to lose the next phase of our attack,” Lu Han says, aware of the new presence in the room. “All your Colonel has been doing is trying to get information out of me. He’s been wasting his time.”

When Sehun says nothing, he continues, “You’ll all die by the time he comes to his senses.”

“He won’t,” Sehun says quietly. “And he won’t stop torturing you until you speak.”

Lu Han sits up and laughs dryly, “You think I don’t know that? Why do you think he’s let me off tonight?”

It’s true. Sehun found it weird earlier when he noticed that Lu Han was in his tent without soldiers whipping him through the night.

“What did you say?”

“Nothing important enough to let your army win.” Lu Han waves it off. Then his eyes darken. “I need you to do me a favour. Get out your gun.”

Sehun’s brows furrow but he does it anyway.

“When I was first captured, I was expecting much worse,” he says. “But you were nice to me even though I shot you and I don’t really know why but maybe you’ve been keeping me sane this whole time. I don’t think any of my comrades have ever had a friend from the South Korean army.” Lu Han smiles, but something is wrong. “You probably don’t know yet, but our friendship was a long time coming.”

“What are you doing?” Sehun hisses as he watches Lu Han pull the barrel into his own mouth and aim it down his throat. Realisation clicks and his heart starts beating faster. “I’m not going to do this, Lu Han.” The Major tries to yank the gun out of his mouth but Lu Han’s grip is too strong.

“I’ve realised something. This isn’t the first time we’ve met, and it’s not the last time either,” Lu Han says. Something dangerous is flashing in his eyes.

“You don’t know that,” Sehun tries to reason. “Your dreams are just pure coincidences.”

But Lu Han won’t listen.

“Please, Sehun,” he has tears falling out of his eyes. “Save me.” They shine with despair and something akin to respect.

He knows that every soldier will end up receiving the wrath of Jongin if he commits this crime. But Sehun is willing to sacrifice himself, and the possibility of never seeing his friends again for Lu Han. Something in him clicks, and with a sad smile, Sehun wonders if it’s possible to fall in love with someone in just 18 days when he whispers, “I’m sorry.”

He pulls the trigger.

 

 

 

March 11th, 1995

There’s a crash and Lu Han wakes with a jolt.

Sehun is standing at the base of his bed with the eyes of a child who has just been caught stealing a cookie from the jar. The floor is covered with broken shards of glass and littered with silk flowers in soft hues of pink and violet. His hands are frozen in mid-air where he should’ve been carrying the crystal vase towards table drawers perched beside the bed.

The colour in his face drains as he looks at the shattered mess on the ground and shakily whispers, “That was Swarovski. Your mother is going to murder me.”

Lu Han laughs, “Just explain to her that you tripped, she’ll understand, she’s reasonable.”

“I don’t think you understand,” Sehun says, “she already hates me for ruining her golden boy.” He runs out of the room to grab a dustpan and broom so he can clean the mess up.

Lu Han is drenched in sweat again. It’s the fourth time he’s had the same dream, being an imprisoned soldier in the Korean War and shot to death. Every time it progresses a little further and becomes a little more surreal, but Lu Han can never see clearly the person behind the trigger.

The first time he’d ever had the dream, he talked about it with Doctor Kim. But that was the last he ever saw his oncologist.

After a week of asking every passing nurse about his doctor’s absence, one of them finally cracked and told him that Doctor Kim had suicided. They found his body in his car beneath a cliff. From that point on, Lu Han never told anyone about his dream. Not even Sehun.

The dream leaves him alone for a while. But nine days later, it returns stronger than ever. During the fifth time, he sees the brown eyes of Sehun just as he is blasted through the head, and cries through the night alone in his hospital room. He has trouble sleeping and eating for the rest of the week.

Sehun notices but he doesn’t press.

Soon, other dreams also begin to recur. There’s one set in the 16th century where he and Sehun are persecuted, and another one where he swallows too many painkillers after watching his father die. The heat from his sickly father’s burning forehead lingers in his fingertips long after his dream ends.

He has a fever the next morning. His family surrounds his bed and concern is plastered all over their faces, but Sehun is nowhere to be seen.

His mother kicks all the other overbearing relatives out of the room and reprimands Lu Han for not taking care of himself. The dreams replay in his head as he half-heartedly nods at the words his mother throws at him. He makes an excuse about feeling tired and she his face with a thin smile before leaving. It’s only then does he realise how much his mother has aged since his hospitalisation. Too much.

Sehun slips in quietly five minutes later, careful not to disturb Lu Han. He pulls a chair up to the bedside and sits down, flicking through a thick book that Lu Han knows he’s not actually reading.

“You don't have to pretend that you’re doing something productive,” says Lu Han.

“I thought I’d look a little obsessive if I just sat here,” Sehun shrugs.

Lu Han looks at the wisps of blond hair that fall in front of Sehun’s chocolate brown eyes, and thinks about the freshman he first fell in love with all those years ago. His limbs were long and gangly, and his head always stuck out amongst the crowd. Back then, Lu Han himself didn’t know what he saw in Sehun’s awkwardness, but he knows in hindsight that it was bound to happen.

“I remember,” is all he says to break the silence.

Sehun places his book down carefully on the bedside table and looks at him questioningly.

“Who we used to be,” the frail boy smiles painfully, “the war, the plague, the hanging. All of it.”

He grabs Sehun’s hands and murmurs an apology for remembering too late and they hold each other tightly and cry through the night. They scream for the life that could’ve been, but deep down, they know it could never have existed.

After that, Lu Han asks him not to visit for a while. He says that the nurses told his mother about the situation the night before and she’s angry that Sehun has disrupted his rest again. Wary about the consequences of showing his face in front of the woman, he hesitantly complies. Lu Han is ambiguous about how long it would take for his mother to calm down, so Sehun waits a painful week.

When he comes back to visit the next time, the bed is empty. A flurry of wrinkled sheets and blankets from someone who hurried to leave. To die. The white walls have always shone to bright, but now they close onto him inside the room, the breath out of his lungs and blatantly pressing that Lu Han left without a goodbye.

Maybe he’s too blinded to feel anything, but the moment a nurse touches his shoulder, reality hits him in the face. The empty bed hits him in the face. The flowers perched on the bedside table hits him the face.

There’s a bouquet of fresh azaleas sitting in the crystal vase. It must’ve taken a lot of persuasion from Lu Han to have live flowers brought in, but Sehun frowns at the meaning of them.

“Take care of yourself for me.”

Sehun wants to feel angry because Lu Han has no right to be leaving him flowers and cryptic messages because he’s the one who chose to leave. Again.

But he remembers the way Lu Han would run his pale fingers down Sehun’s arm and they would talk about running away from the bleak grey of the hospital and opening up a florist in a small town far away. They would grow old and spend nights on the verandah trying to count all the stars in the skies. He remembers counting the number of crinkles Lu Han had beside his eye when he laughed and watching the sunset with interlocked hands.

The memories play one after another like a film reel and he collapses in misery. He just wants it all to stop.

Somewhere between his pain and the numbness of crying, Lu Han’s mother comes to sit with him on the floor and cradles him in his arms like Sehun is her own son.

Maybe he would’ve been.

The funeral takes place a month later, and Sehun attends it alone in the back row. He keeps his eyes on the floor the entire time and blinks away the tears that prickle his eyes. All he can thinks is how his suit no longer fits him after weeks of having a poor appetite and that no one will be there to fix his crooked tie ever again.

As he leaves, the nurses that attended the funeral give him a note that dates the day before Lu Han died.

Sehun-ah, this wasn’t our last chance.

He balls it up and tosses it into the bin.

 

 

 

December 25th, 2015

They argue between going to see The Nutcracker and ice-skating.

“It’s a tradition to see the ballet at Christmas!” Lu Han exclaims. He won’t let Sehun have the satisfaction of knowing that the main reason he is so against ice-skating is because he doesn’t know how to skate in the first place.

Sehun rolls his eyes at this and he almost gives in to watching a couple of people dance on stage and submit himself into boredom just to make Lu Han maybe, but then he manages to trick the boy into thinking that the tickets are already sold out.

That’s how they – begrudgingly on Lu Han’s behalf – end up on the Seoul Plaza Ice Skating Rink under the inky black sky of Christmas night.

As Lu Han tries to catch up to Sehun in front of him, he falls for the umpteenth time and whines with a frown, “We could be watching The Nutcracker right now! In warmth! And I wouldn’t be bruising.” He swats away Sehun’s hand when he offers it and stands up with indignation while rubbing his sore tailbone.

The air frosts as Sehun laughs, “Do you want to take a break?”

It’s a bit embarrassing how eager Lu Han is when he hears the suggestion. He nods hurriedly and tugs his grey beanie down to cover his pinked ears and rubs his gloved hands together. They sit on a nearby bench and look at the other people skating on the ice rink.

Lu Han quickly finds out that he’s the worst one there.

So when Sehun asks to return to skating, Lu Han adamantly glues his bottom to the seat and crosses his arms. He shakes his head with a firm “Not happening.”

After fives minutes, Sehun gives up trying to persuade Lu Han and instead goes down to the cafe across the street. He comes back with two hot cups of steaming coffee and Lu Han holds it gratefully in his hands and sighs when he begins to feel the blood circulating in his fingers again.

He takes a sip and smiles as the heat runs from his throat to his stomach and starts to warm his entire body.

“I guess you still like your vanilla tea lattes with three sugars,” says Sehun.

“And you, black?”

There’s a smile ghosting Sehun’s lips as he downs his coffee and tosses it in the rubbish bin. He comes down to sit next to Lu Han on the bench.

“I’m surprised you remember,” he says.

“I’ve been remembering a lot of things these past three weeks,” Lu Han says. And it’s true. He has dreams every night about the past.

Sometimes he’ll see the thick rope of his execution, and other times he’ll watch the way a boy barely 19 overdoses on painkillers and falls to the ground with a dull thud. On especially bad days, he’ll feel water trickling down his lungs and wake up breathing heavily in a desperate attempt to gulp oxygen he doesn’t need. His sheets will be drenched in sweat and he will get out of bed to do the laundry at midnight, pulse racing. Sometimes when he walks past the train station he’ll suddenly remember the time he first collapsed in 1995, reaching out for Sehun’s arms as his vision faded into black.

In all of the lives that he has lived, Lu Han has given up every single time. There was nothing in his life that was important enough for him to endure the suffering, and he realises now that his actions must have hurt Sehun.

“I’m sorry,” he says suddenly. In the background, there are loud squeals and laughter from people on the ice-rink, but the merriment sounds distant, the two of them having fallen into a still silence. When Sehun raises his eyebrows in confusion, Lu Han smiles sadly and wraps his gloved hands around Sehun’s. “I won’t leave anymore.”

The grip tightens around Lu Han’s hand and that’s how he knows that Sehun understands. He stands up and pulls Lu Han towards the ice-rink with a wide grin and eyes that rival the city’s shine.

Lu Han follows.

 

fin.

---

A/N: Inspired by this amv :)

I want to apologise for any inaccurate historical detailing (at one point I just became too lazy to do thorough research) and all the heavy themes. Also, just a disclaimer that I own nothing but the story. This is a work of fiction and I don’t mean to disrespect or offend anyone.