Suho remembers every Christmas night with firm dexterity and faded words—the time he met Baekhyun and Chanyeol in their small apartment in Detroit, the time he visited Kris and his wife in Canada, the time he cheered for Luhan at his soccer finals.

He’s constructed a world of nothing more than supporting his fellow members in their pursuit of a new future. Even if that meant a soulless future for himself. And maybe, in all his foolish actions, there was really no one who believed he would do it—that he would even think of giving himself up for the lives of the other EXO members.

And surely enough, they were shocked—frightened almost—to find Suho, in all his wrinkled and shaky words, smiling at them, hugging and talking like there was really no gap between EXO and the present. Like EXO never broke up in the first place.

Suho knew it, though. He knew, more than anyone else, that there would never be another EXO moment that the twelve of them would share. That, in the ten years of split dreams, there was never a day when the twelve of them had met as one—spent the time catching up on each other’s lives and vivid stories.

And this Christmas night, he wasn’t allowed to visit Kyungsoo in person—because the doctors didn’t want to trigger any more violent and unstable behaviours (memories). So Suho had to send a present instead.

Jongin was a different case altogether. He was much too calm (empty) to find any emotion in seeing Suho after ten dead years.

Or so Suho thought.

When Suho finds Jongin standing in the middle of that paved street, his forehead leaning against the remains of EXO’s last poster, he almost weeps and screams and throws his arms around the younger in that one fated second.

But he doesn’t because Jongin doesn’t like to be caught in an emotional moment, a relapse of time and memory or simply a real laugh is enough to send Jongin withering away into his husk of a soul.

And Suho doesn’t want to destroy Jongin’s nostalgia. Because Suho has been driven all his ageing life by nostalgia. And it has led him to this day, ten years later, on the same street where they had signed their last autographs on that cold Christmas night—full moon, of course. It was there that they promised that EXO would live forever as one.

And maybe they were never really ‘one’. But still, EXO was never dead. And tonight, Jongin’s mere presence proves that the twelve young boys still exist.

As Suho watches Jongin look up at the moon one last time, sparkling brown eyes and his all-too-familiar smirk (no tears, because the Kai he knew would never cry), limping into the depths of snow and darkness, he knows that somehow, they are all still together.

All around the globe, spread out across sheets and maps of other countries, Suho knows that they are all still bound to the memories of their youth—youth spent dancing and singing and crying under one dorm roof.

Suho looks up at the full moon and this time, he knows that EXO is looking up at that moon too.