Baekhyun sat silently on the sidewalk-quite mindlessly in fact-beside a glowing streelight above him. Knees bent up to his chest, and elbows cocked upon his knees. One leg was slightly awkward, maybe from the screws in his ankle, the metal against his bone. It had healed long ago, after the damned cast had been removed, but still it held the evidence of its existence. Rather unsightly...possibly crooked.

Lights from the diner behind him created an outline of his figure, like the silver lining of the cloud. The brick path beneath him grew cold. Cars rushed by and people spoke of the coming rain the forecast had predicted that morning.

And he sat.

As expected, the rain came. First in drops that pricked his fingers with ice, then in torrents that made his black clothes cling to his body, and his shaggy hair drip onto his cheeks. The passersby watched with intrigued concern, children pointing their fingers out from the shelter of the umbrellas to point out the strange man, drenched in rainwater with blank eyes looking no where in particular. Their parents did what any parents would do, scold them for being rude, glance at him with confusion and fightened eyes, and then tug their children away. 'We don't associate with strangers' 

"Are you alright?" 

Baekhyun looked up at the high pitched voice. It was a child no older than seven, adorned in all yellow from her rubber boots to her broad umbrella. Her black hair was tied neatly in shorts braids that barely reached her shoulders. 

He smiled, the rain water seeping into his teeth, "I'm okay."

She looked him up and down, "Aren't you cold?"

He shook his head, "I've been worse."

The child huffed and pursed her lips, "why don't you have a jacket?"

"I had one," he recalled, "must've left it at the hospital."

"Are you sick?"

"No."

"Is your friend sick?"

He thought for the moment, scanned the wet streets, "no."

Suddenly excited, the girl propped her umbrella on her shoulder, "Are you a bad guy?"

He smiled weakly, "Maybe. I'd like to think I'm not."

"Then are you a secret agent?" her tiny braids bounced as she rocked on her heels with excitement, "did you ever kill somebody?"

With eyes centered on something only he could see, his mouth barely moved, "yes."

"Nana!" A woman on the street, bent over and panting with a matching yellow umbrella shouted, "Nana where'd you run off to!"

Nana stared at Baekhyun wordlessly, then turned around and ran to her mother. 

"Nana!" the woman held her arms out and scooped up the tiny girl. 

Baekhyun watched in silence, then at last muttered:

"Must be nice."

Byun Daeri, as always, was surrounded by her lavish friends in her lavish mansion talking about lavish things. The women clad in pearls and diamonds, the wives of the elite, gathered in her pure white living room amongst the feather pillows and chandeliers. With champagne glasses in their clawed hands, only talk of which million dollar estate was bought, how the last golf tournament had gone, and the latest gossip dripped from their forked tongues. The oldest son sat on the staircase and watched the drunken women boast and argue and slur their luxurious words. Deep in his pocket, his phone began to vibrate. 

"Hello?" 

The sound of gaudy voices and champagne giggles resounded in the background.

"Baekbeom?"

His eyes lit up at the voice, "Miyoung?"

"Yes, it's Miyoung."

"Are you okay? I heard about the accident, Baekhyun hasn't come home in days, I was getting worried--"

"I'm sorry," she breathed on the other end, "I...I think made a mistake."

Baekbeom furrowed his eyebrows, "Not sure what you're talking about, but okay..."

"I'm sorry I called you, I didn't know what else to do."

"What's wrong? What do you need?"

"Do you know where Byun Baekhyun is?"

"Baekhyun?...Wasn't he with you at the hospital? He hardly leaves your side these days,"

Miyoung interrupted Baekbeom'slaugh, "Where is he?"

Baekbeom leaned back on the marble stairs and shrugged, "I'm sorry, but I don't know. Why don't you try giving him a call?"

For a while only emtpy static could be heard on the line. 

"Okay. Thanks. Bye."

Miyoung swiped her finger across her phone to end the call. The air had grown colder and colder since she had reached the front of her apartment. The sound of rain pattered against the rooftop and slushed down the drains. With a deep breath she pressed Baekhyun's name in her contacts. 

"Hello."

"Baekhyun?"

A momentary pause.

"3rd street. In front of Twenty-two, a restaurant or something," the words came out automatically.

click. 

The phone slipped from Baekhyun's drenched hand, clattering to the shining street. 

Come. He clenched his teeth. Please just come.

Seconds passed. Then minutes. Maybe hours. People passed, the rain didn't stop. He began to feel cold. 

And then footsteps. At first light and distant, then growing heavier and thicker with each passing moment, creating rings in the puddles that gathered at Baekhyun's feet. 

He shut his eyes, and felt nothing. The numb tingle of rain hitting his face and the backs of his hands had vanished. 

When he opened his eyes, her face was no more than a foot away, crouched and holding an umbrella above his head. Something writhed beneath her eyes, a strange sadness that seemed to fight with her distrust. 

"What are you doing," she whispered. 

Baekhyun raised his head and offered a weak smile, "waiting for you."

"How long were you planning on waiting, idiot? You're going to die like this!" she barked, forgetting for just a moment that she didn't know this strange man; that he was the ert in her room yesterday morning. 

"It's fine," he explained with a dry laugh, "you see, getting wet is awful, but once you're soaked it's not so bad. It's just another part of living."

Miyoung's eyes flickered back and forth over his, and at last with decisiveness, she muttered, "It's okat."

"What?"

"I don't know who you are, or what you're going through," she stumbled through the words, avoiding his eyes because they were too uncannily familiar, too warm and sickening, "But you'll be okay. It'll be okay--"

Miyoung stared blankly as he shook his head slowly with a weak smile.

"It's not okay," he said in a quiet voice, using every bit of his strength to keep himself from breaking down, "I'm so sorry. For all of it. I was a coward. I was scared you couldn't forgive me for my mistakes, scared that I'd be alone again when I finally wasn't after all these years. It was selfish, and I'm selfish. That's just how I am. But I made a promise to someone to protect you, and I haven't been keeping that promise."

He in another deep and ragged breath, and finished with one short exhale and wet eyes, "And I love you."

"B-Baekhyun..I..."

"I know. It looks like you forgot me. That's okay. That's good, actually. Then you won't remember what I've done. Just like before."

Then he tilted his head back, letting the rain water streak down his face like tears. Slowly he lowered his head to meet her eyes, and a frail smile crossed his lips.

"That's good."

"What?" Miyoung watched the rain seep into his hair and trickle off the ends. 

"That's all I needed to say," he stood up and shook the rain water out of his hair, eyes watching the ground, "It's time I kept my promise."

"What are you talking about?" Miyoung demanded, her fist tightened around the umbrella's handle.

Baekhyun took a deep breath and watched her for a minute, and then pressed something into her hand.

"I hope you have a beautiful life, Jin Miyoung. Without me in it."

After watching his tattered, soaked form disappear into the night, she looked into her hand. 

It was a little black box.

"You got your memories back??" Kai's voice shrieked in Miyoung's ear on the other line.

Miyoung held her phone away from her ear, "Yes, yes, they're back--now be quiet!"

"God I missed you," Kai shouted away, "I was so freaked out when you couldn't remember me, I thought you'd never get them back!"

"How's Miss Kim?"

"You saw her just last week, don't tell me you forgot that too? The old cow's the same as ever."

A voice in the background: "Who are you calling an old cow, Kim Jongin!?"

"Nobody!" he called back. 

"I see she's well," Miyoung laughed.

"So how are you? What have you been doing for the past four years that I didn't know about?"

"A bit of this and that." 

Suho.

"That's not very specific."

"It doesn't need to be."

I was with Suho.

The air was filled with the quiet buzz from the phone. At last, Kai spoke.

"So how's Baekhyun?"
"He's..." a soaking wet black t shirt flashed in her mind, and she stared at her hands in her lap, "he's fine," she breathed.

"He would be, right?" Kai laughed nervously.

"Um, Kai?"

"Yeah?"

"Do you remember Suho?"

"Suho..." Kai mumbled, "Nah, doesn't ring a bell. Who's that?"

"Nobody really," Miyoung chewed her nail, "just...a friend of mine."

"Sorry, I don't remember. But what is this about him?"

"He died."

"wow," Kai breathed, "I'm sorry for your loss."

Miyoung tilted her head up and looked at the apartment ceiling, blinking the tears away.

"Actually," she closed her eyes, "he was killed in an accident."

Kai was silent.

"He was killed by someone important to me. And I can't forgive that person for what he did. It was his fault that a life was lost, and he doesn't deserve forgiveness."

After a moment of empty static, Kai began to speak.

"...Are you sure?"

Miyoung blinked, and furrowed her eyebrows, "What do you mean?"

"Just the way you're saying this," Kai explained, "makes it sound like you already forgave him."

Click.

"Hello?....Miyoung?"

Baekbeom paced in his room with frustration painted on his face. Back and forth, back and forth, getting no where. He had to face his father, he'd made his decision. So why was he chickening out now? He groaned in frustration and ruffled his hair. He was so close.

Baekbeom froze when he heard the front door shut, followed by wet footsteps and dripping on tile floor. Carefully opening his door just a crack he caught sight of a man in black. He stopped in the hallway and pressed his back against the wall. Water ran down the loose strands of hair and into his eyes. His chest rose with a heavy breath and he slid to the floor, where his shoes had already saturated the carpet. 

"What happened to you?" Baekbeom stepped outside.

Baekhyun noticed him and turned his head slowly, looking at his brother with lifeless eyes.

"Hey, hyung?"

"What?"

"Do you remember the butterflies that used to be in the garden when we were kids?"

"There are still butterflies in the garden," Baekbeom frowned.

Baekhyun ignored him, "do you remember?"

Baekbeom sighed, "I remember."

"Then you remember that time you killed the butterfly I caught?"

Baekbeom's eyes dropped to the floor, and his voice grew quiet, "yeah."

Baekhyun let his head fall against the wall, tears b in his eyes, "that must've been when it started. When I realized the world doesn't give a about me, so why should I give a about the world? Not like all these efforts ever got me anywhere. I let myself be a monster, because it's not like anyone was gonna stop me," Baekhyun in a ragged breath, "I just wanted someone to stop me."

"I was happy, you know. So damn happy that I didn't care I was a monster, I didn't care that I was lying. I wanted to lie more. I would have lied forever if I could. I couldn't even talk, but you know what's funny? Listening is so much better. You hear so much more and learn so much more when you keep your mouth shut. But it all broke, like I knew it would. And it's my fault. So I had to end it before I lost all the courage to do so."

A tear rolled down his cheek and he quickly rubbed it off with his still damp sleeve. 

"And now I have nothing," he laughed through clenched teeth as another tear rolled down, "what the hell am I supposed to do?"

Baekbeom watched his brother lower his head, the tears on his cheeks mixing with damp skin. He had never seen his brother cry. Not since that first moment at the hospital when he came out as a red-faced doll wrapped in a flowered blanket, screeching and wavy his tiny hands to tell the world he was here. Not since their mother set the tiny baby in Baekbeom's hands and told him it was his to watch over. A tiny baby brother who cried when Baekbeom touched him, and fell asleep in his arms moments later. And now that brother sat tear soaked once again, brought into a new world of harsh lights and loud sounds for the first time, left out in the open to fend for himself. 

Baekhyun choked on his tears and looked up when he felt something on his head. 

Baekbeom smiled softly and his brother's wet hair, "It's okay. You're a good kid."

Miyoung sat on the floor of her apartment, all of Suho's things gathered before her, along with a little black box. She couldn't bear to look at them, couldn't even bear sitting in that room, and yet there she was. Just that morning she had gone to the hospital, desperately seeking answers. Yet none were to be found. According to them there was no other person in the car, Just ashes and burnt metal. Not even a hair remained of the man she thought she'd spend her life with. Both her and Baekhyun completely unconcious when the ambulance arrived, splayed on the grass beside one another. Baekhyun was the one who called it in, the last one to see the destruction. He even mentioned a man, the doctor said, but they thought it must've been a mistake because he was in so much shock. There was no other man. There was no Suho. 

It all felt numb. Looking at the photos and mementos of a human who vanished into thin air, Miyoung didn't know what to feel. That box was Suho's, no doubt. And that ring was her's. So why did Baekhyun have it? Why did all her questions and clues always lead back to him?

Miyoung pulled out her phone and opened to the photos. Maybe there would be some kind of evidence there as to what was real and what wasn't. If this was the phone she'd had the past months, there must be evidence of some sort. When the screen had finally finished loading, Miyoung's heart stopped. Photo upon photo upon photo of herself and the man named Baekhyun.

And it all came back.

The moments flooded into her head. They were smiling with matching knit hats, laughing and singing in a silver car with the windows rolled down, dancing to a familiar piano melody, crying together, or sleeping hand in hand. He was the boy in the coffee shop and the stranger in the hospital. He was the one who had filled the spot in her heart reserved for someone else; the one who apologized in the rain. It was all him. 

And Miyoung cried. She cried for the one she had lost, and the one who took him away from her. She cried because she couldn't see a tomorrow without one of them in it, and because she couldn't bear the fact that her heart wavered when it shouldn't have, when she didn't not want it to. And for the first time in her life she wondered if it was possible to love two people at once.

The sunrise was beautiful. The kind of beauty that makes you in a breath and forget to let it out. The yellow rim peaked out from the green hills, illuminating the sky in soft pastel hues of orange and purple, painting a shimmering line around the fat clouds. The wind was poetry, the heartbeat in your father's chest, a warm kiss from a smiling child. Miyoung climbed the hill with a bouquet in one hand and a silver box in the other. An old oak tree stood at the top, a faithful grandmother watching the city as it awoke, dreaming of her better days. Miyoung sat on the ground beside the thick trunk, and watched the skyscrapers pierce the sun with their needle-point peaks. 

"You are my sunshine," she began to sing, closing her eyes, "you are my sunshine."

"You make me happy, when skies are grey," Suho sang at the top of his lungs, screeching out the high notes and shouting the low ones. 

"Shh!" Miyoung slapped his shoulder, "what if someone hears you??"

"No one can hear me from here!" he explained, "I come here to say whatever it is that I need to say."

"Things you need to say?"

"Everybody has something. We all tuck these words into the back of our hearts and minds and think they'll just go away. They never do, though. They just get bigger and bigger until there's no more space left and our hearts grow heavy and cramped. It makes it hard to breathe. So say whatever you need to say, scream and cry until there's nothing left unsaid."

"What if saying the words hurts more than keeping them in?"

Suho smiled that smile that looked like he knew something she didn't and shouted at the top of his lungs into the sky, "then all the more need to say it!!"

With one last laugh he broke back into song, "you never know dear, how much I love you,"

Miyoung picked at the flower petals in her bouquet, "please don't take my sunshine away."

She set the flowers down in the green grass beside the oak tree, the place where an angel once sat and sang and shouted with all his heart. 

"I don't know what to do!" she screamed into the open air, "help me!! You can't just leave me here! You promised you'd always be there," she choked on the words as tears greeted her skin, "so tell me what to do! After all this time this is all I ask!!"

A great gust of wind rose over the tired city, cutting through Miyoung's hair and circling around the tree. Something shuffled from within the ancient bark.

"W-what?" Miyoung sniffled, and started towards the tree. The closer she grew, she began to see a dark hole in the side.

"Don't tell me the only thing you left behind was a freaking prank," she laughed and sniffled, "there better not be any bugs inside this thing."

She stuck her hand inside the hole, and the sound of crinkling paper met her ears. Carefully she pulled out the dirt covered piece of folded notebook paper and opened it up.

Dearest Miyoung,

I'm a bit shy to say this myself, but I've been told this is a good place to let words out. 

The truth is I love you, and I'm sure you know that, but you don't know to what extent I love you.

I love you that even if we live to be a hundred I'll admire your wrinkled face like

that of a goddess.

I'll hold your wrinkled hands for the hundredth time as if it were the first

with the fluttering heart of a fourteen year old, and I hope you'll ignore

my clammy old man hands. 

I love looking at you more than looking at the stars, and I love listening to

you more than listening to music. 

And this is a horribly cheesy and soppily romantic letter, but I mean every word of it. 

If some day I can't be beside you I know that there will be someone else who loves

you every ounce as much as me, and I would gladly hand your heart to him so that

you can live happily, even if it's without me.

I know I will make mistakes, everyone does. But I ask you to be forgiving, and put

the past behind you. Let's move forward side by side. 

Now and always.

Will you be my wife?

"Thank you," Miyoung closed her eyes and let the tears roll down her cheeks. She bent down and picked up the silver box containing two blossom bell charms, and tucked them inside the hole, along with a single daisy from the bouquet. 

"I'll always be with you, and I know you're with me, wherever you are. I know you're watching with a smile, and laughing at me for being an idiot. You were never angry, were you? Even after all the things I've done, or the horrible person I was, you forgave me. 

And you forgave him too, didn't you?"

Hello once again! 

I am so sorry it took so long to get this chapter out.

I had a Japanese exchange student for a month and after she went home I was extremely busy preparing for school and applying to study abroad.

I'll probably edit these chapters later so that flows more smoothly haha.

The next few chapters will be leading up to the end of this fic, and though it never gained any real notable attention I thank you so much for reading this. I put a lot of effort into writing this, more than I usually do. I never knew I would come this far as to actually finish a decently long story, and I really appreciate all the support I received. I'm going to edit some of the chapters so if you see that a chapter says edited, please read it again if you'd like (:

Don't forget to comment and subscribe!

Love to all,

Violet