He panted for air, his chest rising and falling as the song drew to an end. It wasn’t perfect yet, and he doubted that he could ever see any of his original work as perfect, but it was getting there. He could tell. He could tell by the way that every time he danced, he could feel raw emotion that he had woven into the choreography.

The chair he practiced with was empty, but to finish the choreography, he knew someone had to been sitting in it. The person of the chair was the center of the routine, and its emptiness showed the hole in the choreography.

But still, it was his first time that he had completely created his own choreography, and he couldn’t help but feel some sort of satisfaction with himself.

His phone vibrated, and he checked the notification before heading out and jumping into the shower. The guys had been telling him to come hang out more and more often during break, and he wasn’t really sure why. They kept asking if he was okay for some reason, and at one point Jongin had said that he had never felt better.

That wasn’t necessarily true, but he found some kind of stability in himself without Chaeyeon. She had become so deeply engrained in his being that finding his sense of identity again was numbing, but it was worth it.

He slipped his hat backwards over his hair, combing back the silver strands before heading out to meet Baekhyun at a frequented café. He could remember it well. It was the same place that he and Chaeyeon had seen each other after she came back from Italy.

Baekhyun’s eyebrows a