“Hi. I’m Jongin.”

Jongin reached out a hand to the younger boy who hid behind his father’s leg. Nervous eyes stared back at him, curious yet terrified. Jongin thought it was kind of cute.

“S-s-Thehun.”

The boy says with the most adorable lisp he’s ever heard. Jongin chuckles as warmth began to permeate the air around him. He was a splitting image of his father who was smiling like an angel and speaking like one, too. Jongin thought there should be a halo above Suho Ahjussi’s head and fluffy wings sprouting from the sides of his shoulders.

“Sehuna, don’t be scared. Jongin will play with you a lot from now on.”

The young boy with jet black hair and coal black eyes his lips and Jongin caught sight of the mischievous pinkish tongue darting out of his mouth.  

And that’s how it began.

“Here, I’ll show you how to write this.” Jongin had his right hand curled around Sehun’s little one as they sat on the living room floor at the coffee table, guiding the younger’s handwriting. Sehun messed up more than often, and every time he mistook the ya for the yeo, he whined like a little kitty, eyebrows scrunched into a thin line. Jongin laughed like he never did before.

“But hyungggg let’s watch a movie!” Sehun drew his words and frankly, Jongin didn’t know where the younger learnt this, but it was working on him.

“No! You have to finish this hangul chart or we’re watching nothing!”

“Andwaeyo! Movie now!”

“Hangul chart!”

“Movie!”

“Hangul chart!”

“Movie!”

“Hangul chart!”

“Aaah! I hate you hyung. I like SHINee hyungdeul moreeee!”

After two years or so tending to the little one like a shadow, Jongin realized that Sehun probably had more aegyo than he should. Jongin was trapped in a spell, a binding, mesmerizing spell that was Oh Se Hun.

Not that he minded.

“Jongin hyung, what does “mariage” mean?”

Sehun asked him one day. Jongin looked back at the younger boy with sparkly eyes. Should he tell Sehun? Would Sehun question where his ‘father’ is?

“Ahh, Sehun. You’re too young to know this!”

“I am ten years old! I’m not a child!” Sehun threw a handful of popcorns at his head. Jongin dodged it skillfully, but the carpet couldn’t be saved.

“It’s when two people love each other and they promise to stay together forever. That’s when they marry each other!” Jongin laughed as he lunged at Sehun and began tickling his stomach. They were sprawled on the living room floor, forehead glistening with sweat in the heat of the summer.

“Heol...”

“What’s that, Sehunnie?”

“That’s no fun!” Sehun whined, puffing out his cheeks like a blowfish. Jongin felt his heart beating faster and faster while the seconds stopped and he stood, deadpanned at the thirteen-year-old before him.

“When Jongin hyung grows up, who are you gonna marry?”

Jongin thought for a while. Sehun’s eyes shone with hope.

“Well, of course I’m gonna marry Sehunnie!”

“Jincha?”

“Of course!

“Aah. don’t lie. How can you marry me? I’m not a girl!”

“Well you don’t have to be a girl to marry me. I like you just the way you are.”

“You won’t choose a book over me, right hyung?”

“No. never.”

Little did he know, that ten years from that day, he would be going against his words, against this very promise.

---

The hospital halls are cold and grieving.

Luhan shouldn’t be surprised.

In this very hospital, people die everyday. Poor souls are reaped, poor lives are taken. To the extent that everyone is seen wearing a straight, emotionless face, carrying with them the mindset made of steel.

After all these years, Luhan thought he was rid of all emotions, right?

Wrong.

After his little “episode” with Suho hyung, or, whom he should start calling Omoni now, Yifan had people sedate him and put him into sleep like a wild animal. His father owned the goddamn place, but that didn’t give him the permission to do as he pleased. Days later, Luhan storms out of the hospital room, wide awake, tears streaming down his face as he crumbles the DNA test results and tears it into pieces.

How else should he react, then? What else can he do?

Should he be really happy to know that he’s sharing his genes with another person? A person who has lived in his mother’s love and embrace for seventeen years of his life while Luhan suffers in that cold room, all by himself, long neglected by his own father?

Luhan stops before Sehun’s room. Through the glass he can see the lifeless body of the younger, barely breathing on the sick bed. His skin is so pale that he almost blends in with the white sheets, if not for the polka-dotted hospital gown that is too big for his body. . Various tubes stick out of his skin, connected to beeping machines that indicated the smallest signs of life. The sight is eerie, almost pathetic to look at. Luhan almost had this sick thought of yanking the oxygen mask from the boy’s mouth, but laughed it off and punched the door with a heart-wrenching thud.

Sehun doesn’t even stir.

If only you could see how weak you look right now, Sehun...So weak, so pathetic. I almost feel sorry for you...But that is to be expected, seeing that you’re always cherished and pampered by your omma, right? While I rot and stand up for myself in that house, in that dog-eat-dog world...

“Can I come in?”

A low voice interrupts his train of thoughts. Luhan unclenches his fist and turns around, only to be greeted by the mass of chestnut hair and wide grin that are unique to the hallyu star Park Chan Yeol. Chanyeol carries with him a huge guitar case. Luhan doesn’t know if it’s against the hospital’s policy but he couldn’t care less.

“I don’t care if you come in or not, Park Chan Yeol. It doesn’t concern me..” Luhan answers coldly and leaves before Chanyeol can even mutter a ‘thank you’ under his breath.

Cocking his eyebrow, Chanyeol pushes the door open. The smell of antiseptic that floods his nostrils feels nauseous to his stomach. But he holds it in and watches the peaceful look on Sehun’s face as he sleeps soundly on the bed. The weak beeping of the machine struck Chanyeol hard.

“Sehunnie, why are you like this? You have to wake up. You have to have faith. Don’t give up.” Chanyeol sits down beside the bed, admiring how beautiful Sehun looks despite his sickly pale skin.

Sehun looks like an angel.

After confessing that he loves him and he wants to leave EXO in front of thousands of fans, Chanyeol got beat up by his own manager. He was threatened with so many scary things and made to pay back the money he owes the company, but...but it’s all worth it now. Sehun’s smile is worth a thousand times more than the thrill of being on stage, seeing his name in the crowd of screaming fangirls.

Take this sinking boat and point it home

We’ve still got time~

Chanyeol’s fingers press on the strings of his beloved guitar. He sings with his heart.

Tears unconsciously streams down his face when Sehun doesn’t open his eyes.

It’s been too long. Chanyeol has been coming here every day for the past week, hoping that he will be the first person Sehun sees when he wakes up. Sometimes Baekhyun joins him, insisting that he does it for a fellow classmate (whom Baekhyun has never talked to, yeah right). And sometimes he just sees Luhan outside the door with rage in his eyes and clenched fists on his sides. Luhan never smiles or stays with the younger. He just stands there, looking into space.

But Sehun wouldn’t wake up. His chest heaves up and down with much difficulty, deep in slumber.

When Chanyeol finishes the song, he swears he sees the younger’s fingers twitch. Just slightly, like his body is reacting to the soft music coming from Chanyeol’s guitar.

One.

Two..

Three...

Sehun’s eyes snap open.

Chanyeol jumps before pushing the call button with more force than necessary. Joy fills the empty space in his heart as Sehun stares back at him with confused eyes. Almost like a deer caught in headlights, Sehun starts to look around his room in alert, thrashing against the intravenous tubes that are pricking his skin.

“Nurse! Doctors! Anyone!” Chanyeol yells as he runs out of the room in panic. People wearing white flood in and they begin to check Sehun’s pulse, pupils and heart rate. Chanyeol sighs in relief.

So he really is the first person Sehun sees when he wakes up.

It feels kind of...

...nice.

///

Yifan and Luhan comes hours later, so Chanyeol has Sehun all to himself until then.

They didn’t talk much. It felt like an endless staring contest with Chanyeol occasionnally stopping Sehun from yanking off the bandage around his head. Sehun didn’t seem to remember him - and yes, it did hurt a little - but Chanyeol soon got over it and instead focused more on making Sehun feel secure around him. It’s going well. Sehun doesn’t like it when the doctors come. But when Chanyeol’s around, the sharp look in the younger’s eyes soften.

It is when Wu Yi Fan and his son steps into the room that Sehun tenses.

Chanyeol almost misses the wariness in Sehun’s eyes and the occasional tremble of his lips when Yifan crouches down next him. Yifan smiles. Sehun sinks back into the mattress.

“Who are you?” Sehun almost screams. Chanyeol has never seen the younger that angry. It is almost as if Yifan has inflicted so much pain the younger that Sehun feels this way about him even when he’s lost his memories. Either way. Sehun doesn’t seem to trust the tall man before him.

“Don’t you remember me? I’m your father. Wu Yi Fan.” Yifan smiles, and Chanyeol immediately sees how fake it looks. He has never seen Sehun’s father before, but they sure looks like splitting images of each other. WIth Luhan, whom Chanyeol presumed to be Sehun’s brother, around, the trio can pass off as triplets any day.

“I-I don’t know you. Stay away!”

Both Yifan and Luhan are taken aback by Sehun’s reactions.

“Sehun, be nice,” Chanyeol ruffles the younger’s lustrous hair. It is then that he remembers it, the man he saw with Sehun the other day at school. After Luhan punched Sehun and sent the younger into a hyperventilating fit, Chanyeol had carried Sehun into the nurse’s office until he recovered. Chanyeol remembers that Sehun’s father is a short, petite man, and nowhere near the smiling giant in front of him.

And if Luhan is really Sehun’s brother, why did he punch him in the face?

“This is your twin brother, Luhan. He’s your hyung,” Wu Yifan says with a sweet smile. He lifts a hand to caress Sehun’s cheek, but the boy arches away from the touch.

“What’s a...twin brother?” Sehun looks back at Chanyeol and enquires. Chanyeol can’t help but die a little bit on the inside at how innocent Sehun looks.

“Sehun...I know you’re scared, but that’s completely normal. You were hit by a bus and lost a part of your memory. That’s okay. Appa will help you. You will be discharged today. You can go home today. Isn’t that great?” Yifan looks into Sehun’s eyes with makeshift happiness.

Is it great, he ask?

Is it great to find out one day that you have absolutely no memories? Unable to discern between the truth and the lies, unable to know who’s who in your life?

Chanyeol is not so sure, but he can see how furious Luhan has become behind their backs, fuming with inexplicable rage. He doesn’t have a younger brother, but he knows fully well that one doesn’t get angry when one’s sibling wakes up from a seven-day coma.

And he’s not so sure he wants to be part of this mess.

a/n: i've never spent more than two hours writing a chapter before (becuz AP Government and AP English homework can be a pain in the ), but apparently this chapter happened.

poor baby Luhan, now the father he's always wanted to notice him, gives all the attention to Sehunnie TvvvvT

oh if you dont remember the time Luhan punched Sehun and Chanyeol came to the rescue like the prince charming that he is, please refer to chapter 6.

funfact: Chanyeol sang "Falling Slowly" to Sehun in this chapter. Why this song? Because he sang this live at EXO artist session at KCON 2013. Yes i am still hyperventilating from the good memories. My heart gets jittery jittery feelings and I curse the girl who knocked my phone off at the concert -.- urgh. rude. 

so yeah...um...

i will post character analysis by the end of chapter 30. i feel like there must be some sort of deep study on the characters in order to engage in them more? it will be fun, guys, and will include Behind the scenes *evil laugh x10000* u guys dont know what i have in store for you *smirk* 

next chapter (SPOILER DO NOT READ IF YOUR FEELS ARE NOT READY): fast forward to their lives 4 years later. yifan is on a search for his beloved wifeu $uho, leaving Luhan the position of CEO of his company. Kai returns and meets Sehun in a quite...awkward situation.