At the age of nineteen, Huang Zi Tao was blessed with agelessness. There were no signs, no symptoms. When he was admitted to the hospital with a large gash on his head, having been beaten half-dead by the local thugs, they found out through tests that the somatic cells in his body were not functioning like normal cells would. They did not go through the same cell division like normal cells would. They did not age.

At first people thought it was a tumor. At first they thought he would die on the operation table. But he didn’t. Little did he know, some thirty years from now, or sixty years from now, he would stay the same. His strength, his looks, his youth,...would stay everlasting.

Huang Zi Tao was suicidal, but only to an extent.

He liked watching his father suffer, the father who mistreated his mother and abandoned her to die in that cold, broken down house. He smiled in amuse as the old man threw a fit because of his bad grades at school, his cutting class to join the local gang, his vandalising the city with the uneducated mass.

And when those in the rival gang would outnumber him in some alley and beat the hell out of him, Zi Tao wished he was dead instead of living a life like this one. It would be a glorious escape. It would rid him of all the sorrow, the misery. But after each one, Tao would find himself crawling out of the physical pains and going on living.

He only thought he was one that recovered fast. Little did he knew, the burdens of life would follow him into eternity.

 

The first time it happened, it was out of the blue. Tao was practicing his martial arts skills, slicing the air in one swift motion, when everything stopped. There was no sound that followed. The whole city fell into dead silence: no cars honking, no bird chirping, no leaves falling.

He blinked. Once. Twice. Then everything swirled into motion again. But there was something quite strange, something peculiar about his surroundings.

Tao was about to step out of the alleyway when he met him.

He was on the ground, shivering from the crisp autumn wind, clutching his thin piece of clothing for dear life. Must be a homeless kid, a high school dropout, trying to find a place in this gruesome world with his bare hands. And Zitao wondered, if the boy he was staring intently at had no purpose in life like he did too.
He crouched down beside the frail body of the younger, taking in the youth in his emotionless eyes. The boy was too skinny for his own goods, all bones and no strength in that vulnerable body. Zitao found himself coiling at the sight; at least he had the strength to move on.

“Hey, you,” Zitao called while shaking the boy vigorously. He didn’t know why he did what he did, but something inside of him just felt right at that moment.

A moment flew by without the other boy saying anything. Zitao was beginning to feel anxious. When he saw the trail of blood trickling down the side of the younger’s head, something just snapped inside of Zitao. He felt his blood boil, memories of the nights he spent beating up innocent people came back at full force and suddenly he felt sick. Of himself, mostly.

Zitao blinked. Once, twice. As the boy reached out to his surroundings, eyes out of focus and blood still oozing out of the cut on his head, Zitao felt realization struck him hard.

Blinking once again, he was back to his time.

The second time it happened, it was just practice. It was some two or three years later, that Zitao figured out how to cut class and then come back before the bell even rings to start the day. It was quite simple, really, to not miss out on anything despite too busy being two places at the same time.

By the time he could have reached twenty-three - though physically nineteen he was - the most Zitao could travel was three weeks into the past or two days into the future. He never really thinks about the boy whose lifeless eyes he can see every time he goes to sleep. But when his father slapped him in the face and threw him out into the streets, Zitao suddenly wanted to run away. Somewhere that man could never find him and throw insults at him again. So he went thirty years into the past, seeking those lifeless eyes with misery as much as his own.

ZItao stopped in front of a flower shop, not knowing how he could have landed on this random place. He seemed to be still in Seoul, but a really, really outdated and old-fashioned version of the city he had grown up in. People were staring at him intently, curious as to how strange his attires were. But Zitao shook them off and kept his eyes on one person.

He was stacking pots of flowers onto the shelves, colors too bright and flamboyant to ZItao’s eyes. Unconsciously, ZItao stepped into the shop but the boy didn’t seem to be aware of his presence.

It felt like hours, watching the boy tending to the flowers, youth radiating from his frame. Zitao wondered how happy he seemed since they last met in that alley. But when even ZItao was standing just inches from him, the younger boy still did not acknowledge the other. Zitao was growing anxious.

No matter what happened, he was not going to go back without knowing his name.

 

Sehun was his name, and he had lived in darkness for all his life.

Zitao knew by the way Sehun always looked at something behind his customers’ back while speaking to them, always had to feel and touch things in front of him to know where they were. Zitao almost felt a pang of guilt for being such a stalker.

“So...who are you?” Sehun said one day, out of the blue. Zitao jumped in surprise, hitting his head in the adjacent shelf. So he knows.

“I know you’re there,” He said, soft and gentle and sounding like soothing music to Zitao’s ears. Zitao finds himself melting into those deep brown eyes and milky skin all of a sudden, words not coming out of his throat.

“Umm...I...uh...”

“You’re not from around here.” Sehun remarked, turning away to wrap a bunch of red roses into a beautiful bouquet. Zitao blinked, not quite catching what the younger meant.

“How did you know?”

“I just know.”

And when Sehun smiled, Zitao found his world spinning out of control.

 

The third time it happened, it was intentional. Zitao couldn’t care less about the gang and the fights. He wanted to see the boy again, without reason, without purpose. He yearned to see that smile warming up his own irreparable heart. But when he stood at that flower shop, it was no longer there. In its place was a dance studio filled with high school drop outs trying to dance their way into the entertainment business.

And he ran. He searched all corners of the city where he was born but all seemed so foreign to him. The way people acted, the way people talked, the way people dressed. It was like he was in a different world, in a different universe, and Sehun was the only one who had something in common to him.

What was it really? What did they have in common? Or was it just an excuse to see him? Zitao was not so sure himself.

 

“My time is near, Zitao-ssi. I will have to leave this world soon.” Sehun said on a beautiful Monday morning, ten years before Zitao was born. And ZItao wondered if Sehun was sad, having such a limited time in his hands.

But he was smiling so bright, taking Zitao’s breath away with him. They were sitting in Sehun’s white-washed hospital room ,the pungent smell of antiseptic slapping a nauseous feeling into Zitao’s throat. He was trying to hold down his meal while watching Sehun’s everlasting beauty.

“That’s my wish. I want to go away from this world. I don’t want to live in this misery anymore.” ZItao said, eyes fixed on Sehun’s perfectly-shaped face and flawless lips and y collarbones.

But then Sehun started crying. ZItao felt his stomach burned with dread.

“Why are you crying?”

“Because I’m sad.”

ZItao hated it when Sehun kept giving him these kinds of answers. He was never specific about anything. A weird kid with no emotions in his eyes and no pain in his words. Zitao hated it when he loved Sehun but was never to read the younger.

“Why are you sad, then.” Zitao wished Sehun could see him frowning even though he knew so well that the younger never could.

“"Because I feel bad for you. Because you will not age. You will live watching the ones you love pass away. It's a pain more excruciating than death. My time is running out but it is nothing compared to your immortality."  

As Sehun continued sobbing hard, knees drawing to his chest, Zitao was reminded of his own victim on the verge of their death. He looked away, trying to shake the gory memories away even though he knew those blood stains could never be erased from his hands.

"Don't be such a weenie, Sehun. I have no one special to mourn for when they die." Zitao spat, words more rough than he intended them to be.

"But I do... Selfishly speaking, I hope it's the other way around as well..."

Zitao didn’t quite understand what the other was saying, but Sehun was dying and ZItao could never meet him on the other side. Not this year. Not next year. Not thirty years from now. Not ever.

 

The fourth time it happened, it was the last time it happened. ZItao went home to a blood bath. Everyone was killed. Everything was destroyed. It was a pain more excruciating than death. Every family member. Every relative. His father. Everything was in crimson red, stained with blood just like the times when he was out to take away lives of other people. It was his withdraw from the gang that trigger them to do this to him. He was a traitor, therefore they had to shut his mouth.

But Zitao couldn’t die. Even when there was three bullets deep in his heart. He would wake up the next day, looking like the nineteen year old boy he was ten years ago, having that energetic strength he used to have ten years ago. And no matter how many times he went back to that day in hopes of changing the future, it would always happen, each time more brutal than the last. It had played so many times before his eyes, the massacre that fell upon his family, that Zitao never bothered to go back anymore.

To tired and alone, Zitao seeked Sehun. He felt like a erted old man, already twenty-nine years of age, and still lust after a boy twelve years his junior. But doing the math, Sehun could have been fifty seven years old if he were alive.

It had been a week, Sehun’s time period, since they last met. Sehun was growing paler and paler, blending into the sheets. Zitao knew he couldn’t do this any longer, he just couldn’t live through these sad days again when Sehun die. He couldn’t go back and watched as the disease eat away the boy’s perfections.

“Sehuna,” he called, tears threatening to spill. After all these times, after all he had been through, Sehun was the only one who could bring him back onto his feet. A boy whose days were numbered and a boy who had all the time in this world. Sehun taught him the meaning of life.

“I love you.” Zitao croaked, choking on his own tears. The pain in his chest grew heavier as he wept for Sehun’s sufferings, and ZItao wondered if Sehun could see his tears. Those lifeless, sleepless eyes that have haunted him for the past ten years, now were filled with crystal tears as Sehun brought a hand to touch Zitao’s face. He traced the lines of Zitao’s rough angles, his hair, his ears, his lips. Sehun wiped the tears away.

“Shh...Don’t cry, hyung. It’s not worth it.”He cooed, his voice weak and barely above a whisper. “I’m not worth it.”

“That night, ZItao held Sehun in his arms. He wished that time would never pass so that he could treasure this moment. And he thought, maybe the Creator had given this gift to the wrong person. Zitao did not deserve immortality. Sehun did.

When his lips brushed against Sehun’s soft ones, time stopped.

 

Oh Se Hun, the boy who could foresee the death of other people, died of brain tumor on June 20th. The nation has lost its most treasured psychic, a boy who has found the resting place of thousands of soldiers whose bodies lost in the war. Having brought light to thousands of families, Sehun has lived in darkness all of his life. The nation mourns for his passing away, hoping he could have a so much better life on the other side...

 

At the age of nineteen, Huang Zi Tao was cursed with agelessness. There were no signs, no symptoms. He fell in love with a boy who left the world ten years before he was born. Love became addiction, but addiction did not last. And then one by one, he looked as those people he loved passed away while he stood there, the sand of time slipping through his fingers but not youth.

Youth was everlasting. But happiness wasn’t.

A/N: okay so you're probably mad at me right now for killing sehuna so I better go hide in the closet until you stop throwing rocks at me now so kaythanxbye TToTT