"Your faded memories are scattered, and sometimes I'm lost in my thoughts, I can't meet my eyes in the mirror" — Day After Day, EXO 

“Oppa!” She cried out, eyebrows furrowed as she wiped the powdery flour from her fingers onto the material of her shirt. “Oppa! I n-need help!” Her tears fell like dripped honey as she looked at the ruins around her, smashed eggs running on the counter and loose sugar coating the bottom of her feet. She just wanted to surprise her brother–– she didn’t think it would be this hard. 

Her brother rounded the corner, his eyes widening at the sight before him, coming to land on her small figure as she frantically tried to brush off her soiled clothes. “And what is this?” He teased, reaching out to take her small fingers in his. “Cooking?” 

“Oppa…” her voice barely above an ashamed whisper, “I was making your favorite Christmas dessert, but I forgot how…” she trailed off, fixating her eyes on his feet. “I made a mess and now it won’t be a surprise.” 

Her brother’s thumb soothed away the beginnings of crocodile tears, his eyes alight like the comforting warmth of a candle. “How about this,” he proposed, “Oppa will help you write down the recipe so you don’t forget it and then we will make it together.”

“You and me?” She questioned like she didn’t quite believe him. 

“You and me,” he promised and watched as her smile bloomed back to life. 

“Ready to write it down?” She nodded her head animatedly, the pencil fitting like a foreign object in her grasp. “Okay, repeat after me, you’ll need flour.”

“I got flour.” She checked. 

“You’ll need sugar.”

“I got sugar, too.” 

“You’ll need two eggs, don’t forget that.”

“I won’t, eggs are easy to remember!” 

“What about honey and pine nuts? I bet you didn’t remember those.” 

Right, I muttered, I keep forgetting the pine nuts. Pine nuts and honey, pine nuts and honey, pine nuts and honey… but what else was there? My fingers tapped against the metal cart as I searched up and down the aisle. Sleigh Bells was playing through the store and the aisles wafted the warming scent of cinnamon and pie. 

My eyes drilled through the cart as if it could whisper to me what I wished to hear. I got flour, sugar, eggs, honey and pine nuts, but what else did he say? My next breath came out like a pent-up sigh and I found myself deciding to lean my weight onto the silent cart rather than beg it for anymore answers. Twenty years later and I still can’t remember. 

If I make them next week, I’ll break our yearly tradition— decorating the tree isn’t the same without snacks. Do I mind coming back to the store? My nose scrunched up as I figured the answer to that. 

My fingers inched towards my phone, my mouth going dry as I scrolled through my contacts to find his name. Oppa slid across the screen and then I was listening to the constant humming of the dial rings. My stomach was starting to feel queasy, but I ignored it as a small smile tugged on the corners of my lips; I know he’ll tease me for forgetting. At least I remembered pine nuts and syrup. I scoffed, no Haru, honey, honey, pine nuts and—

—It went to voicemail. 

I lowered the phone from my grasp, my hands beginning to tremor with a gut-wrenching plea. Why did I do that? My eyes blurred as I reluctantly brought the phone back to my ear and even though I knew what was coming, I couldn’t numb myself fast enough, or turn away like I know I should. 

And then it hit. His voice, like he never left me. 

“Shhh, I’m recording,” he had company that day, the boys in his room and me outside the door trying to weasel in. “Hi, I’m obviously busy with more important things, but you can try again if you really want to! No promises!” The recording cut off in the middle of that special open-mouthed laugh of his that made anyone in the room smile. I always thought his voicemail was ridiculous, especially when I was the one subject to being ignored in light of more important things, but now, I’d call sometimes just to hear it. 

Forgetting the recipe, that was one thing. To forget this, though? 

A small part of me whispered that I had known all along— maybe I had, but that thought was too much in of itself for me to grasp. That twisted kind of heart-in-your throat feeling fell onto me like burning coal and all I could hear was his gentle voice echoing in my mind. It wasn’t fair, none of this was fair. 

A warm tear strayed down my cheek, passing through a flurry of curses that I couldn’t seem to contain. it. 

I abandoned the sugar, the eggs and flour, the pine nuts and honey too. Bodies strolled by me, but I could no longer hear the jazz or smell the cinnamon and warm chocolate; his face filled my vision, and the time since I have last seen his smile felt infinitely isolated in a dream that always seems to evade me. Instead, the time that has passed haunts me with a warped jeer. 

Has it been a day? A week? A month? What is a year if it’s just a blur of days without him? 

I let myself believe that the entrance was the exit from these emotions; let me outside, then I can think of him in the way I wish to— smiling and making cookies in the mess of a kitchen that will always be his more than it will be mine.

The problem, though, was simply getting there.

I felt pulled back by myself, stumbling step-over-step. My legs were jelly, bending and pulling, forbidding. My body wanted me to stay, my body wanted relief, even if it was a simple moment of remembering him. I, however, wasn’t sure I could survive such a thing— for thoughts of him always conjured my last thoughts of him. Those were cold, iced over even. Those thoughts were buried ten feet below. 

My eyes focused on the setting sky, and I knew then that I was almost out and free from the shock and fear of what it meant to be so alone. But then I collided headfirst into what felt like a wall of warming wool and hard chest and that setting sky disappeared from around it. 

My body sighed in relief, but I exclaimed in shock, quickly pushing myself back from the tall male I had ran squarely into with a stream of apologies flying from my lips. 

“Oh god, I’m sorry! I wasn’t looking!” I quickly bowed and hurried away— I couldn’t even pull myself together enough to look at the said male as I feverishly brushed another tear from my cheek. All I wanted was out, get out, get out, get out. 

I blanked.

My hand was embraced by another’s and slowly I was drawn into an embrace so tight, so secure, that for a second, fear drained from me. Those same hands that grasped my own began to run soothing tracks down the narrow field that was my back. My muscles eased and a breath filled my lungs that smelled of fresh pine, light cologne, and something so familiar I didn’t think I was capable of forgetting it— that’s when I realized who was holding me.  

“Sehun?” 

Shhh, he calmed. “It’s me, just me.” 

“Sehun.” 

His response came in the form of a hum— to calm me or to calm himself, I wasn’t sure, but I clung to him nonetheless. Arms that hadn’t known touch in so long knitted themselves so tightly through the soft sweater he had on; My hands too, gripped the material like they were afraid to let go. 

Maybe I am afraid, maybe I have been for a long time. 

We pulled back from one another’s embrace after what felt like the opposite of a transient hour, apologetic nods made to the innocent bystanders trying to fit their groceries around us. But then I looked back and was taking in the pooling warmth of his endless brown gaze and the grip of his fingers winding back through mine. Those eyes of his, they were always so stormy, so conflicted, but never for me. 

I didn’t know what to say. Are there enough words to fill a year of silence? Enough to explain why he found me crying in a grocery store like some unstable ? Perhaps there were, but he didn’t seem to know what they would be either. 

“You look different,” was what I settled on before he could ask what was wrong. He ran a hand through his dyed blonde hair, an unsure gleam crossing his eyes. His sunset-like sweater contrasted nicely against it and he was even wearing a pair of glasses that were different from the boxy ones he wore in grade school. “It looks good, different, but good.” I added as a second thought. 

“Yeah?” He smiled one of those small Sehun smiles, the one where he’s actually really happy, but isn’t sure how to show it. There was a list shoved haphazardly in his pocket and instead of wearing his usual clean-cut loafers, slippers adorned his feet. I had the thought that the person inside was the same, but the person I was seeing was unfamiliar. “Jisung and I did it right before moving back.” 

My eyes stopped roaming what seemed like new terrain to land squarely on his. “Moving back?” 

His shoulders tensed and I could tell that he had things he needed to say, but from the set of his grimace, I wasn’t sure he would. “I’m sorry I didn’t call… We got in a week ago since my graduation was postponed a semester. I got your card in the mail too, I even bought a post card to send back but I never ended up writing it. Jisung kept bothering me about it, he was mad at me for not calling more often…” He trailed off, his voice caked with the word sorry.

I squeezed his finger, “It’s