Yifan's body is the same as it was for the past four years, unresponsive and yet at the same time, still breathing. Joonmyeon hates coming back only to see that Yifan's eyes had yet to open and he reaches out to take Yifan's limp hand in his own. A sigh escapes his lips, and his lips quirk into the same frown they take up whenever he's visiting his 'former' best friend.

Of course, there's nothing former about his best friend. Joonmyeon still loves the guy and cherishes every memory they'd made together, it's just different now that Yifan's on a hospital bed and not walking on his very long legs intimidating others with the straight face that hid all sorts of mischief.

The nurses had already told him it was time to leave, but it was the only time Joonmyeon could afford to visit Yifan without running into any of the others. They'd all agreed when Yifan fell into a coma that they'd never be the same.

"Why can't you just wake up, Fan?" Joonmyun mutters, and it's not the first time he's spoken to an unresponsive Yifan throughout the four years. Joonmyeon is a frequent visitor of the patient in room 1209, and most of the nurses and Yifan's doctor know him fairly well. They also noticed that Joonmyeon never failed to show up on the current date every year. Unknown to everyone including the others, April 8th marked the date these two best friends first met, and it was his perfect chance to see his best friend. "Happy anniversary, big boy." he whispers quietly, wiping away the tears forming in his eyes.

For a moment, the monitor next to Yifan flickers, and his heart rate spikes, but before Joonmyun could inspect it, because that's obviously not normal, the nurse comes in and whisks him away. Joonmyun sighs, hands tucked into his pockets on his way out of the hospital. Another year's passed, and while Joonmyun's personal life is striving in success due to his new job at a local accounting firm, it's not the same without Yifan.

He stops where he is, just a few feet away from the hospital at a crosswalk and his head turns in the direction of Yifan's room. He had wanted to buy things and place them in Yifan's room in case he was to wake up, but his room was already filled with gifts and mementos and Yifan was still under comatose.

Then, rain starts to fall, and Joonmyun regrets not driving to the hospital but not as much as he regrets leaving his umbrella in Yifan's room. In his defense, the nurse didn't really give him much time to gather his belongings.

He sighs again, his hair already sticking to his forehead and his shoulders slouched forward as he crosses the street on his way home. He wonders about the others, if any of them had gone to see Yifan recently. He knows that at least one of them did based on the description given to him by some nurses taking care of Yifan, although they never seemed to bump into each other whenever he came to visit. Unknowingly, his feet pause where they are again and his head turns back to where the hospital is, and though he's too far to see anything properly, he could swear that at the windowsill to Yifan's room, a shadow is moving.

Telling himself that he's just going insane, Joonmyun turns around and his foot raises off the ground, only to freeze mid-step. There in front of him, holding up Joonmyun's ratty old umbrella is Yifan himself, tall with a blonde head of hair swept to the side, his lips pursed the way they always were four years back.

Joonmyun doesn't stop to think about how strange it is for Yifan to suddenly appear before him looking completely healthy in jeans and a tee shirt with a jacket over his shoulders. He doesn't stop to wonder how Yifan was so quick in finding him. The only thing he did is run and latch himself onto Yifan's tall and lean frame.

Startled, Yifan laughs and the umbrella falls out of his grip, slowly rolling away in the wind as Yifan's arms wind around Joonmyun instead. Joonmyun doesn't care, he can just get another umbrella. He's also already wet to begin with. He cries openly, his arms squeezing the tall man's back even though he knows that Yifan's been on bed rest for four years and shouldn't be walking so suddenly.

"Hey now, we've always told you about how ugly you look when you cry."

His voice causes for Joonmyun to release a fresh burst of tears and his fist knocks against Yifan's back because he heard that thank you, and because he doesn't want Yifan to see his ugly face, buries it further into Yifan's chest.

"Idiot, we all thought you were dead!"

Yifan smiles at him and ruffles his hair like he used to. "Idiot, I'm right here."

This story is dedicated to my amazing co-author, RawChicken. Thanks for coming up with such an awesome plot and letting me write it ❤

Started on 18.07.2016

Completed on 02.10.2016

[edit] Do check out ALJ's 'sister story' written by RawChicken, Living at Large

Warnings:

• Very slow updates because my laptop is dead and I can only write when I'm free and in campus.
• I will try to keep this story as short as possible. Lengthy stories mean longer time to update and complete the story.
• You can have your own opinions but please be respectful. Beware: there might be spoilers in the comments so try not to read the comments.
• NO TRANSLATIONS ALLOWED!! DO NOT REPOST OR SAVE OFFLINE COPIES! THIS STORY IS 100% AND ORIGINALLY MINE.
• 
  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Credits:

Poster: ETHEREAL。gs.

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