Six-year old Byun Baekhyun skips home happily after his day at kindergarten. Bounding into the kitchen, he smiles widely and hands his mom a piece of printed white paper, slightly crumpled by his tiny hands in his excitement.

 

“Please let me go please let me go!” Baekhyun makes what he hopes are puppy eyes at her.

 

Baekhyun’s mother pats him on the head and reads the letter.

 

It is a consent form for a field trip with his class to a funfair. His mother signs the form, asking him whom his partner for the trip is.

 

Baekhyun pouts, “I don’t know, but I hope it’s anyone but Park Chanyeol. He seems creepy.”

 

“You shouldn’t do that, try to be his friend first.” His mother gently tells him, but Baekhyun stubbornly refuses.

 

 

 

 

 

As luck would have it, on the day of the trip, Baekhyun’s partner Joonmyun falls sick. Baekhyun stays in a corner of the classroom while he watches the other kids pair up and hold hands in line.

 

“Baekhyun-ah, where is your partner?” His teacher bends down and asks him.

 

“I don’t have one.” Baekhyun frowns.

 

“It’s okay! You can partner up with Chanyeol here.” His teacher pulls a slightly taller boy over to Baekhyun.

 

Chanyeol has a mess of curly blonde hair and a wide smile that takes up half his face. To say that Baekhyun is slightly apprehensive about this arrangement would be an understatement, but he is determined not to let it spoil his long-awaited field trip. He figures that he can run away when Chanyeol is not looking, and wander on his own to eat cotton candy instead.

 

Chanyeol turns to Baekhyun. “Hi! I’m Chanyeol. Your name is Baekhyun right?” Baekhyun nods and smiles tentatively. Chanyeol responds with a smile of his own, teeth showing.

 

Baekhyun blinks because Chanyeol’s smile is so bright and overwhelmingly happy and he doesn’t know what to do in response.

 

 

 

 

 

On the bus, Chanyeol is overly friendly, talking to Baekhyun about anything and everything. Baekhyun smiles and nods occasionally. He looks around at the other kids around him.

 

Jongin is busy poking Kyungsoo’s sides, making him squirm and laugh while the smaller boy attempts to keep him from doing so. Sehun and Luhan are dozing off in the front; with Sehun’s mop of hair pillowed on Luhan’s shoulder and Luhan’s blonde head on Sehun’s. Their colours of their hair mixed together make a rather pretty blend, Baekhyun thinks. He tunes back in to Chanyeol’s babbling, which has turned to the topic of the cute ferret he saw on the way back home yesterday.

 

“Baekhyun, are you listening to me? It was so furry and cute and I just had to pet it. Do you like ferrets too? I mean, how can you not?” Chanyeol continues in his monologue.

 

When they reach the funfair, their teacher hands them a few dollars each and brings them to the games corner, where they are allowed to spend the money on.

 

“Come on! I know how to play this really well, we can get toys!” Chanyeol grabs Baekhyun’s hand and laces their fingers together, pulling him to try to throw the hoop over the bottle.

 

Despite Baekhyun’s doubts, Chanyeol is surprisingly good at it, and he wins a small green stuffed dinosaur. He passes it to Baekhyun.

 

“Friends?” Chanyeol looks many shades of hopeful, and apparently Baekhyun has a secret liking for stuffed dinosaurs, so he smiles shyly at Chanyeol and nods, his eyes curving into crescents of happiness.

 

 

 

 

 

As the day passes on, Baekhyun discovers that he and Chanyeol have plenty in common. They both love stripes and have a dislike for green apples because they tend to be sour, that they both love popcorn and sticky candies.

 

One thing they cannot agree on, though, is their favourite flavour of ice cream. Baekhyun insists that strawberry is the best; while Chanyeol stubbornly refuses to agree and holds his stand that chocolate is best.

 

Chanyeol drags Baekhyun along to different stalls where they get matching balloon hats, and Baekhyun laughs loudly when Chanyeol’s curls get stuck in the balloon. Chanyeol whines and winces, and smacks Baekhyun for laughing. He’s still smiling, though, when he finally frees his curls from the balloon.

 

Baekhyun starts to doubt his initial sentiments about Chanyeol.

 

 

 

 

 

They wander around the funfair, stopping at the Ferris wheel where they spot Sehun attempting to drag Luhan to join the queue.

 

“Hyung, take the Ferris wheel with me pleaaaaase?”

 

“No–”

 

“Hyuuuuuung….” Sehun whines.

 

“No, Sehunnie, I don’t like high places.”

 

“Pretty pleaaaaase?” Sehun pouts.

 

“No – Wah!”

 

Sehun pushes him into the capsule anyway and gets their teacher to ride with them.

 

Baekhyun and Chanyeol watch as the three of them go up, up, up in the capsule with Luhan clutching onto their teacher tightly and Sehun peeping out of the window, waving down to them below. They laugh and wave back, with Chanyeol making faces at Sehun and Sehun making equally weird faces back.

 

When they have risen too high for Baekhyun and Chanyeol to see their faces anymore, they start exchanging friendly banter again as they make their way towards the carousel.

 

 

 

 

 

Chanyeol has little difficulty getting onto the colourful metal horse, but the same couldn’t be said for Baekhyun.

 

“Why are you so tall? It’s not fair!” Baekhyun complains.

 

“Just hold onto the pole and swing your leg over! It’s easy!” Chanyeol calls over from his horse in front of Baekhyun.

 

“I can’t!” Baekhyun tries again, and this time he finally succeeds. He looks up to see Chanyeol’s thumbs-up and smiles sheepishly, looking down at his lap.

 

The carousel starts in a flurry of music and stationary animals coming to life with the touch of a button, and Baekhyun wonders when the last time he rode a carousel was.

 

“Baekhyun-ah!” Baekhyun snaps out of his reverie and looks up. Chanyeol is sitting backwards on the horse and tips his balloon hat forward, pretending to be a stunt artist.

 

“Your hat might drop off!” Baekhyun shouts over the rush of the wind blowing by.

 

“No it won’t! It’s fun, you should do it too!”

 

Baekhyun takes his hat off and puts his new stuffed dinosaur inside, stretching his hand out as far as he can. Chanyeol cheekily grabs the dinosaur out of the hat, and ignores Baekhyun’s yelp of indignation.

 

“Park Chanyeol! Give it back!” he yells, but Chanyeol just smiles that blindingly wide smile at him and waves the dinosaur in the air like a trophy.

 

 

 

 

 

This time, it is Baekhyun who pulls Chanyeol, to get cotton candy. Sadly, though, their money left is enough for only one.

 

Baekhyun frowns, “How are we supposed to get cotton candy like this?”

 

Chanyeol just orders one anyway, and hands it to Baekhyun.

 

“Don’t you like cotton candy?” Baekhyun is thoroughly surprised, because how can one not love cotton candy?

 

Chanyeol turns to look at Baekhyun. “Of course I do. But we should share cause everything’s sweeter when you share it!”

 

 “I guess so,” Baekhyun cannot argue, and plucks a huge portion of cotton candy to stuff into his mouth. Chanyeol just smiles that wide smile of his and reaches over to take some too.

 

 

 

 

 

On the bus ride back, Chanyeol is as talkative as ever, but Baekhyun feels quite drowsy. He allows himself to close his eyes as Chanyeol continues telling Baekhyun about a story his sister told him.

 

“My noona said that the twelve of them each have powers! Isn’t that cool? Ah, let me try to remember the powers.... There’s water, fire, earth and light, ice and that funny power that makes you disappear and reappear somewhere else, and there’s one that can fly! I think the fire one is the coolest though, if I was one of them I’d want to control fire…. I even look like him! We both have curly hair, haha….”

 

Baekhyun’s head unconsciously falls onto Chanyeol’s shoulder. Chanyeol does not stop talking though, so Baekhyun shifts slightly to make himself comfortable and hums drowsily.

 

As Baekhyun drifts in and out of slumber, he barely hears Chanyeol say, “I think if you were to be an alien too, you’d be the one controlling light. You look like him, both of you have brown hair…. and when you smile it looks as bright as light.” Baekhyun feels a hand on his hair, lightly ruffling it. He smiles through the thick fog of sleep and thinks that maybe he could be friends with Chanyeol after all.