How had it escalated to this?

Jongdae's heart thumps painfully fast behind his ribcage. He feels as if he were internally suffocating and drowning at the same, swallowed up in his own blood. The skinny man trudges through an unknown forest through several feet of snow, panicked tears streaming down his face. 

Where did Xiumin go? Where did the house go? The fire?

It is midwinter, sometime past midnight, and the sky curdles around Jongdae in hellish black oil, trees looming out of the snow as shadowed foes disorienting him wherever he may look. He screams, screams Xiumin's name. A voice, Yixing's voice, speaks behind him in a terrified sob. 

"Xiumin isn't real! I'm real!" 

But when Jongdae spins around anticipating his friend's figure, he sees nothing. "Yixing?"

No, he doesn't want to see his tall caretaker, because Yixing would surely take him back to the hospital and Jongdae needs to find Xiumin. Needs to find the one that soothes his heart and makes him feel loved, even after his unexpected attempt to kill Jongdae. 

Jongdae needs Xiumin.

Snow begins to swirl around him, blowing him through the drifts. Jongdae tumbles into the cold mounds, hands bitterly frozen and limbs icing over. He wears nothing but a t-shirt and pants, one tennis shoe lost half a mile ago. Schizophrenia doesn't do this to people, he thinks. It isn't this cruel.

As Jongdae pulls himself up, sharp air searing his lungs, the snow suddenly turns into a sea of black oil. He cries out, backpedaling through the scene in an unknown direction. His mind struggles to comprehend what is happening. This isn't right.

And then it's snow again, and Jongdae can hardly move his lips as he tries to run from this nightmare. Blue, faraway beams of light silhouette his figure. An array of voices calling his name that appear to him as a barrage of alien forces chasing him down. 

His body runs now solely on adrenaline--drunken on panic. He stumbles away from the lights.

Yixing's shriek of pain is heard in the distance.

Jongdae's raspy breathes escalate as he rakes the landscape for his friend. "Yixing!"

Then an achingly familiar voice, one that once consoled Jongdae's schizophrenia with loving, cooing words and gentle gestures now seethes with venom behind him.

"Am I really as important as Yixing?"

Jongdae whirls around, and then he's in a burning house. It's small, one-roomed, void of doors and windows. The walls blaze around him and the man standing on the other side of the room. 

"Xiumin--" Jongdae steps toward his only comfort, this hallucination that has tortured him for years. Though his mind bends, flustered, between knowing Xiumin is an illusion and wanting to believe he is real so badly.

Soft lips breathe into Jongdae's ear. "I'm not real." Whispers Xiumin. The younger turns around but he's not there. Alarm jumps into his throat, he calls out for him.

"Xiumin! Xiumin please help me!"

"You're a tortured soul," the small man appears in the corner. "I thought you said you trusted me."

"But I do! No...no I don't. You lied to me!"

A finger taps Jongdae's shoulder, he screeches in painful anxiety as he comes face to face with Xiumin's picturesque image. "I never lied to you. I'm in your head," he flashes a wicked, belittling smile, "you lie to yourself."

"No, no you're real!" Jongdae grabs his head and sinks to the floor. His fingertips rake through his short locks and scratch across his scalp. "No you're not!"

"Not real?" Xiumin crouches beside Jongdae's shivering form, the fire creeps closer with every second. The flames dance in Xiumin's dark eyes. Smoke has started to inhabit Jongdae's lungs, he can hardly breathe. The smaller male looks onto him with hurt eyes. "What do you mean I'm not real?"

He's teasing him. Jongdae second-guesses himself. Xiumin is real.

No, he's not.

"Stop taunting me!" Jongdae sobs. Xiumin's small, silky hands make their way around the other's throat. 

"We have a bond, Jongdae. A special bond. You know it, you said it yourself," he says. Jongdae tries to throw his body off of him, but the other is much stronger. They start to exchange hits and fists, battling the black smog heavy in the air.

Images of Jongdae's past experiences with Xiumin filter through his mind. Eating breakfast together in the morning, Xiumin playfully stirring him from his studies, the two of them sitting close enfolded within each other's arms. 

But in all the scenes, one moment Xiumin is there and the next he isn't. Yixing appears in the images too, trying to get Jongdae to take his pills. The pills that would suppress his schizophrenic episodes. Jongdae throws them away behind the taller's back. 

Therapy sessions when his psychiatrist extracted from him descriptions of his relationship with Xiumin.

Like brothers?

"We're close, like brothers."

Are you in love with this...Xiumin?

"It's love, but it's not romance. It's...more than that. It's friendship, romance, and brothers all rolled into one. Sorry. I sound stupid."

How intimate are you with him?

"Er...very. But not like that! We just enjoy each other's company. Xiu isn't real emotional and all, we like to talk a lot.

Jongdae...you don't talk to Xiumin. He isn't real.

Xiumin's hands feel frighteningly real now against Jongdae's skin; those hands that once caressed him now scratch at him murderously while his warm voice recites petrifying phrases;

"You're just fooling yourself. I'm not real."

"How can you forget me? All those times we spent: are they not as real as Yixing?"

"Figure it out, Jongdae. Who's real and who isn't?"

Jongdae screams.

The fiery structure blinks in and out of focus, replaced by snow and blinding lights, unrecognizable figures approaching him with flashlights. Flickers of inky oceans swallowing him whole...

Then Xiumin is there again, arms wrapped around Jongdae's torso from behind, holding him down. 

Then it's not Xiumin, it's someone else. A faceless figure trying to suppress him.

Then it's Xiu's familiar face once again, his expression showing signs of love and murder simultaneously. Jongdae rips his throat raw, crying out hysterically.

"I've got him! Someone get the sedative!"

"You won't forget me, will you?" Tears well up in Xiumin's sharp eyes, gleaming with life.

"Kim Jongdae! Calm down!"

"Even though it's in your head, it's still real isn't it?" Xiumin's hold on the other is vicious, but on his round cheeks tears gleam in the fire. Fire so scorching that it's freezing against Jongdae's skin.

"Call an ambulance!"

Xiumin stares into Jongdae's horrified eyes. "You love me, don't you?"

Then the house, the fire, the smoke, Xiumin; all of it disappears. Jongdae finds himself spotlighted by snowmobile headlights, surrounded by foreign faces bundled up in winter gear. It's the police, following through on a missing person report that Yixing had filed hours earlier. One man behind him--where Xiumin was just seconds ago--has his arms bundled tightly around Jongdae's body, restricting him. 

Jongdae thrashes, screams, sobs. "Let go of me! Let go! Let go! Xiumin help!"

Hands grapple onto his limbs, but he fights his way out of the mess and pushes through the snow, a pitiful attempt to escape. The man grabs onto Jongdae's wrist and is responded to with a violent pull away.

In the light Jongdae's purple lips and blue skin is clear. Hypothermia hangs from his body in gaunt chains threatening to choke him, held at bay only by the fight-or-flight instinct buzzing in his muscles. 

With the help of another, the men succeed in wrestling him onto the ground among Jongdae's terrified screeches. None of the men present had ever heard such a sound; the young Korean's shrieks pour acid over the eardrums and send shivers down their spines. 

"Xiumin help me! I'm not crazy! I'm not!" His words are broken guffaws of despair. A third and fourth man appear to hold Jongdae down, but his body has become limp, immobile. 

"He's going into a mild hypothermic state. Where's that ambulance?"

"Out by the road, three miles away. Get him onto the skidoo, we've got a few minutes before he goes into post-traumatic shock. Go, go, go!"

Wet tears freeze on Jongdae's cheeks as they slip out of his eyes. He is lifted out of the snow drifts by the men that wrap him into heated blankets and place some sort of mask on his face. Jongdae pleas, fatigue overcoming him. 

"Please...please I'm not...I'm not crazy. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I'm sorry..."

"Hey, stay awake! Keep your eyes open and look at me! Kim Jongdae!"

But he can't respond, it isn't in his muscles anymore. His eyes drop closed and unconsciousness embalms him in a deep, uncomfortable silence. 

Kim Minseok and Kim Jongdae have never crossed paths. 

They have no reason to. Besides both being South Korean exchange students at the same college they have nothing in common. Jongdae studies Astrophysics and Minseok majors in Language Study and Filmmaking. 

Sure, they both showed up to the same party two years before, but they never conversed nor interacted. Or so they thought.

At the time Jongdae was oblivious, so unaware that he would see Kim Minseok's face every day without having even met him. He had no idea that this stranger would become so important in his daily life and not know his actual name. Xiumin may be a hallucination, but Kim Minseok is real.

There was one simple, unfortunate event. Minseok, while shooting a shortfilm for class, slipped on the winter ice that had formed this bitter season. From the fall he received a fractured elbow and a concussion and wound up in the hospital for several days in a still, heavy slumber. 

The room he is in has two beds though he only occupied one. Four days into his comatose a new patient is brought in: a young man suffering from hypothermia had been brought back from a considerable near-death frostbite. Jongdae's doctor insists on having him isolated in the psych ward, but others believe it unnecessary. A curtain is drawn between the two sleeping men: one in a coma and the other in hibernation. 

When Jongdae awakens he takes a slow minute to recall what had happened. The image sends an uncomfortable shiver down his spine. His eyelids feel glued to his dark orbs, and he feels like a stone sinking, rising, yet not moving all simultaneously. Perhaps the feeling is a result of his studying of physics: he wonders fleetingly if this is what it feels like to be in space, floating aimlessly with no particular purpose, displacement, or vector.  He groans and tries to raise his hand to his face, but his muscles won't respond.

I screwed up.

Jongdae isn't stupid. He knows what this will mean for him: isolation, medication, therapy. A depressing response to his elaborate relapse that will keep him in doctors' aim of fire and that will certainly send Yixing into a downward-spiral of distress. The young man takes a moment of silence to experience the sense of overwhelming guilt setting into his bones; he is the sick dog people try to stop from running into the road. 

He wishes he'd taken his pills. 

A nurse enters hurriedly, and moves about her business in a gentle efficiency. Jongdae is exhausted, and takes great effort to answer her questions. 

It may not seem so, but he really is down-to-earth. He isn't a paranoid schizophrenic...or, wasn't a paranoid schizophrenic. Trauma can do devastating wonders to people, and this recent episode checks all the boxes for possible PTSD and paranoia. Xiumin is the only hallucination to reoccur often. Other illusions his mind creates don't tempt or hurt him.

But Xiumin. 

He loves Xiumin. 

He didn't take the pills because if he did the one person that understood him would disappear. He denied the fact that Xiumin was a hallucination so often that he started to believe what he told himself: that Xiu really does exist. 

The nurse pumps some repressive drug into his blood and places a handful of pills and glass of water in front of him on a tray. 

"It's nice to see you awake Jongdae," she says, "these pills will help the pain go away."

No, he wants to retort, they make illusions go away. The heartbreak is still there.

Heartbreak. Xiumin isn't real. 

But he is, isn't he?

No. 

Yes. 

With a strained sigh Jongdae sits himself up and slowly forces the capsules down his throat. His limbs feel like sticks. He can hardly move. 

"What ha...happened?" He is shocked by his cragged, airy voice. 

"Don't speak, best to whisper. You injured your throat from screaming too much."

He his parched lips. "Screaming?"

The nurse pulls up a chair to face him, pity wallowing in her small eyes. Jongdae doesn't like her expression. "You had a severe schizophrenic episode six days ago. You had spent several hours in a hallucination, and escaped into a state park nearby. American police apprehended you just before you slipped into stage 5 hypothermia."

"Hy...hypothermia..."

She nods. "Do you know a man named Zhang Yixing?"

Jongdae's breath hitches and he closes his eyes. Yixing.

"He's my caretaker."

"He's the one that called the police. He'll be here at the hospital in a few minutes."

His chest tightens. I miss Yixing...

It is always the tall Chinese that brings Jongdae back to reality. He takes care of him, regulates him, and is the only person in the universe Jongdae can trust wholeheartedly. He wants nothing more now than to return home in Yixing's warm, mother-ly embrace. 

Behind the curtain to Jongdae's right side, there is a subtle stirring and a groan. The nurse's eye light up and a doctor enters the room, disappearing behind the divide. "Look at that," the nurse coos, "your roommate is awake!"

She slips around the curtain, and the Korean man settles back into the bed, reciting the same series of words in his head. 

Xiumin isn't real. 

Xiumin isn't real. 

Xiumin isn't real. 

Mumbling can be heard from the other side of the room. The nurse pokes her head around the edge of the curtains a few minutes later. 

"Jongdae? You wouldn't mind if we removed the curtains, would you?"

Honestly he would prefer the privacy. But, being the self-disregarding open-hearted person he is, he shakes his head. Maybe meeting someone new won't be too bad for his health--having physical connections with other people always helped.

The woman pulls back the fabric and Jongdae's eyes flit to the man on the bed beside his. 

In a sudden, tidal-wave force of realization Jongdae cries out and scrambles out from behind the covers. "Xiumin!"

His body is decrepit, and simply forcing himself out of bed causes him to wheeze. "Xiumin!" He screams at the other man, tears springing to his eyes. He scrambles for the other bed. 

Xiumin is here. 

Minseok gasps as his eyes widen, startled by the stranger's actions. He's just come out of a ten-day coma; loud noises aren't his friend today. The doctor and nurse gently hold the man back, not allowing him to come nearer. The man cries and calls for someone named Xiumin.

Is he bipolar? wonders the older of the two. The ghostly-looking man breaks free of the doctor and his assistant and flings his body on top of Minseok. 

"Xiumin! Xiumin I'm sorry...please, please help me!"

Minseok pushes himself further into the pillows to evade the man's grasp. "What are you doing?" He asks, frightened. 

"Xiu, I need help. I don't know what I'm doing anymore! Are you real or are you not?!" The man screams. 

"Who are you?!" Minseok exclaims. The man's head snaps up. 

"What do you mean?"

"I don't know who you are! Get off of me!"

"But Xiu--"

The doctor pulls the man off of him. "Jongdae, calm down--"

"It's me!" Jongdae cries. "What are you saying Xiu?"

The confused, frightened expression on his face pains Jongdae. What on earth is he doing? Why is he pretending?

Jongdae pulls out of the doctor's grasp and grapples at the other's body. "Get off!" The supposed-Xiumin cries.

The younger of them starts screaming at him. "What are you saying? Xiu I love you! You help me through every day of my life! You listen to my problems and speak to me when I'm lonely...you make me so happy Xiu! Stop preteding! Stop, stop stop stop stop!"

Arms weave their way around his body and haul him off of the post-coma boy in the bed. He thrashes, sobs. "Let go of me! Let go let go let--"

"Jongdae it's me!" The voice is familiar.

Yixing. 

"Jongdae, breathe."

It's Yixing. 

"It's me, I'm here."

Yixing is here. 

"Jongdae..."

The doctor, nurse, and caretaker guide the shivering patient out of the room. Jongdae collapses into the Chinese's arms, shuddering. Tears stream his swollen face. 

"Xiumin....Xiumin...he..."

"I'm here."

Jongdae encloses himself in the other's warmth. 

"Yixing..." 

He cries. He's a grown man, why is he crying? He scolds himself. Scolds himself for crying. For trusting in someone other than Yixing. For falling in love with someone who doesn't exist. For believing in love. 

I hate myself. 

Yixing doesn't leave Jongdae's side for the next few days. He's never seen his companion so shaken, so broken. He's a different person entirely.

Jongdae sleeps, isolated from all but Yixing in the psychiatric ward. He speaks with the nurse quietly injecting more drugs into the Korean's arm. 

"You said he was on medication."

"Pardon?" 

"When he...attacked...that other man he called him Xiumin."

The nurse nods. "Yes. We don't know what that means though."

"I do. Xiumin is a hallucination of his," Yixing glances at his friend, "the drugs can't be working, otherwise he wouldn't be seeing Xiumin anymore."

"I'll speak with his doctor about upping the dosage. Excuse me."

She takes her leave. Yixing watces Jongdae's careful rise and fall of breath resembling the thick ocean tide brushing slowly on and off of the shore. He'll be fine alone for a few minutes, right?

Yixing knocks on the door of Jongdae's previous room. The small man on the far bed looks up. 

"Excuse me, may I come in?" The Chinese inquires. 

The man nods carefully, recognition in his eyes. "You're with...that other man."

Yixing nods and bows. "Zhang Yixing."

The smaller nods. "Kim Minseok."

"Do you mind...?" Yixing gestures to the chair. 

"No, go ahead."

The tall man sits himself down, studying the other. 

He is small-built, only 5'8" it seems. His jaw is sculpturally crescent-shaped and he appears light and youthful. His face is impossibly and perfectly cat-like; slanted, dark orbs underneath sharp, seemingly crafted eyebrows, no eye folds, high cheekbones, small lips and nose.

Yixing purses his lips before continuing with regretful sorrow; like the looming feeling of being surrounded by shadowed trees in an empty forest. 

"I want to apologize for the incident the other day. I realize you'd just come out of a coma?"

Minseok nods. "Yes. I'd slipped and hit my head...I hadn't expected that I'd wake up to such a violent reaction." He chuckles lowly, awkwardly. "It was a bit terrifying really."

"Of course. That was a very unfortunate greeting...I want you to know I was hired by that man a year ago to take care of him, regulate his health and mentality. Clearly I've been doing a pretty poor job..." His voice rings with grievance, water droplets pittering and pattering with echoing melancholy in his soul. "Do you know what schizophrenia is Minseok?

The boy on the bed pauses before replying. "Abnormal social behavior and inability to decipher what is real and what isn't. People with schizophrenia can have hallucinations, right?"

Yixing hums in confirmation. "That man, he's schizophrenic and has been on a downward spiral for a few weeks now. May I ask you...do you know anyone named Xiumin? Are you affiliated with that title at all?"

Minseok shakes his head carefully, strands of his obsidian bangs sweeping across his eyes. "No."

"Have you ever met anyone named Kim Jongdae?"

"Kim Jongdae?" He calculates an answer after a moment. "No."

"Did that man seem familiar to you at all? In any way? Did you recognize him?"

"N-" Minseok's decline is unexpectedly halted on the end of his tongue. He sifts through his memory...is Kim Jongdae familiar?

Yixing watches him hopefully. "Minseok?"

"Actually...there was something about his face that was familiar. I'm sure I've never met him though. You know that feeling like maybe you passed someone on the street or saw them in the grocery store? That sort of feeling."

Yixing nods. "Another question: are you in college? Do you school anywhere in the area?"

Minseok lifts his archaically defined eyebrows. "Yes. A mile or two from here at the University. I major Filmmaking and Language Study."

The former furrows his eyebrows. "Oh...say Minseok, I know this is rather abrupt coming from a stranger, but I may have a favor to ask you. It involves Kim Jongdae."

Yixing slips into Jongdae's room. The young Korean--who sleeps on his stomach--has just begun his awakening, groggily shifting and peeking through his eyelids. Yixing sits next to the bed, extending his arm to warmly rub his friend's back. 

These particular hospital rooms in the psych ward are different than usual ones. They're more spacious, don't have any monitors or carts or whatnot, and resemble slightly more the likeness of a hotel room. Yixing was told Jongdae needed a calmer, more soothing atmosphere for therapy and such, and since he isn't in any physical un-health anymore they'd moved him to a more comfortable room for the endurance of his isolation. He also doesn't wear the usual hospital gown...instead he is adorned in loose, natural-colored pajamas. 

Upon feeling the other's touch, Jongdae's eyes open completely. They appear glossed over and distant as if he were in a daze. He sits up carefully and holds his hand up to Yixing, chewing his lips nervously as if he were a child about to admit defeat to a parent. 

"I-I'm so sorry Yixing." He says slowly, meekly, voice cracking mid sentence. Small tears illuminate his eyes. "I didn't mean to...I thought that I could...I didn't think I would...Xiumin-"

Yixing gently grasps Jongdae's hand. "Shh...I'm here. You're safe. The doctors are taking care of it."

An unexpected and unwilling sob escapes Jongdae's throat. "No! I-I-I..."

Before he finishes his sentence, Jongdae's attention seems to drift off to no where in particular, lips parting slightly and hand going slack. His dark orbs appear faraway and glazed, the young man seems distant. Yixing leans forward. 

"Jongdae?"

"Why can't I be a banana?"

"Huh?"

"They've got it so easy. Really." His brow furrows. "Little s."

Yixing can't help but allow a crescent to mold his lips. He'd never heard Jongdae swear before. The doctors had warned him this would happen; the medication would make his friend a bit ditzy and rather emotional. Jongdae suddenly gasps and grasps Yixing's hand. His eyes gleam with panic. 

"What if it was them, Yixing? The bananas."

"Uh..."

Jongdae jumps to his feet to stand on the bed, eyes searching the room. "It was! They did this to me! I would never hallucinate like that...oh no, I knew I shouldn't have been eating bananas for breakfast! What if--"

This time Yixing chuckles at the other before taking his hand and pulling him back down to a cross-legged position on top of the covers. "Calm down, Jongdae. I'll make sure the nurses don't serve you bananas." He pauses for a gentle moment deciding whether or not his next question should be in past or present tense before patting the shorter's knee. "Jongdae...what does Xiumin look like?"

Jongdae raises his eyebrows. "Xiumin...why do you want to know?"

"I'm curious. I want to know what you see."

Jongdae takes a moment to think, pinching his lips together and tilting his head before replying. "Well he's shorter than me, and has broad shoulders. Oh! And he looks kind of like a cat? A little feminine-ish too, if that makes sense..." He goes on to describe with avid detail Xiumin's physical appearance. Yixing listens calmly with unadulterated interest, his previous suspicions slowly coming to confirmation. When Jongdae finishes he looks down shyly. His voice is small and ashamed. "But he isn't real."

Yixing inhales deeply. Perhaps now is the time. "Jongdae, is this what Xiumin looks like...?"

He nods in the direction of the doorway where a pair of nervous eyes peek in the room. Following the eyes is a whole head and finally a fully body. Jongdae's jaw drops and his eyes enlarge, stunned into silence. A smile germinates on his face. "Xiu..."

He reaches out for the man's hand, and after a clear hesitation and questioning glance at Yixing, the stranger accepts Jongdae's hand. Yixing watches carefully, tense.

Jongdae's eyes suddenly harden. He leans back. "Yixing...can I ask you something?" The Chinese nods. "Is there another person in the room?"

Silence. 

Jongdae holds his breath. 

Silence. 













 

"Yes."










 

Jongdae stares at the man's face. 

Yes? How is that possible?

The small newcomer shifts uncomfortably under the former's incinerating gaze. Yixing pulled many strings in order to allow this meeting to happen; he won't let Jongdae botch it in his doozy state. He quickly motions for the man to sit down and the latter does so. "Er..."

Oh my god, Jongdae thinks, he sounds just like him.

"...I don't...know...who Xiumin is. My name is..." Another glance at Yixing. He seems afraid to meet Jongdae's eyes, as if simply by looking at him he would be dooming himself to a handful of regretful obligations. But he does eventually turn to Jongdae's teary eyes, absorbed by the stare of the man holding his hand. "My name is Kim Minseok."

"Minseok..." Jongdae repeats, rolling the name on his tongue and feeling it's weight in his mouth. He allows each vowel, consonant, syllable to saturate his tastebuds and fill his throat. He's never said the name before.

"I go to the same college as you, Jongdae. It's Jongdae, isn't it?" he inquires.

He said my name. It sounds...so nice coming from him. The young Korean nods. 

"Um, okay...are you friends with someone named Lu Han?" 

Jongdae bobs his head again. Lu Han has been a close friend of his for many years, since before college. They'd met in China. How would...Minseok know that?

"Jongdae did you by any chance go to Luhan's birthday party two years ago?"

The boy sitting on the bed smiles, medication doping up his memories. "Yeah..."

Minseok purses his lips before continuing with caution. "I was there too."

Jongdae his head. "You were?"

"I remember you. I saw you. You won the karaoke contest."

"Heehee...I did."

"And...I think you saw me too." Jongdae is silent, burning entire abysses into Minseok eyes with his intense stare. He doesn't believe he can take his eyes off of him, Xiumin just seems so real. The latter takes this chance to go on. "We never spoke, Jongdae. But do you think maybe, just maybe...you may have derived Xiumin from me?"

Jongdae turns his head, gaze never leaving the other man. "But you are Xiumin."

"Uh...well, no. I'm not." 

"Yes, you are." 

Both boys look suddenly to Yixing, eyes begging for help. Minseok has a fleeting moment of anger. He doesn't even know who Jongdae is. He attacked him and now some random Chinese man asks him to pretend to be his friend? Yixing's plan is ultimately to get Jongdae acclimated to Minseok, to rely on him as if he were Xiumin so that he wouldn't be afraid to take his pills. Because when Xiumin disappears Minseok could be there instead, encouraging Jongdae to take care of himself. 

But Minseok didn't subscribe to friendship or brotherhood. He slipped on the ice and fell, nothing more.

Whilst lost in his thoughts Minseok doesn't notice the arms snaking around him until Jongdae's head is buried into his chest, hugging him close. Minseok can feel him shivering, can feel his cold skin and smell the antioxidants in his hair.

"Don't leave me, Xiumin." Jongdae whispers, words quivering like poplars in the breeze.

This time, Minseok very precariously settles his arms around Jongdae's frame, caressing his body lightly with a small recognition of how well they fit in each others' arms. Jongdae immediately relaxes further into his embrace, breath hot on his chest. They both unconsciously smile. Minseok speaks softly.

"I may not be Xiumin, I may be different and perhaps not as likable. I know you'll miss Xiumin, of course we'll miss the ones we love...but perhaps...do you think you could learn to love me too?"

The words pop out of his mouth before he has any input as to what they are. Yixing, hands pressed together and held in front of his lips pensively, holds his breath. 

Jongdae inhales Minseok's fruity smell with a low grin. Xiumin is hugging him...for real. 

Real arms. 

Real scent. 

Real heartbeat. 

It may not be Xiumin really, but he could certainly get used to this. Maybe Kim Minseok won't be too bad. 

"Yeah. If you promise not to leave."

There is no hesitation. "I promise."

That's unrealistic. All three of them in the room know it. Minseok can't twist his life around for some schizophrenic he saw at a party two years ago. He has ambitions of of his own. But it sounds nice, it feels good in Jongdae's mouth. It's okay to lie to yourself sometimes, he decides, for the sake of the here and now. Jongdae doesn't want to let this moment go, doesn't want to let Xium--no, Minseok go. 

But he does. Jongdae sits back on his bed hastily wiping sad and happy tears from his cheeks. He holds out his hand. "It's nice to meet you, Minseok. I'm Jongdae."

The other takes it. "Likewise."

Yixing takes a deep breath and smiles. 

This is going to be interesting.