“You lift me up, take my feet off the ground~”

An airplane took off into the sky. You could only imagine where it was going and which kind of people there could be on board; there could be married couples with children who were traveling by plane for the first time, there could be young people who were going to experience the world on their own, or maybe were going to study abroad away from home, or maybe there could be business men on board, who were going to reunite with their families after having been separated for a longer time because of a business trip.

The opportunities were endless and all you could do was to stand there on the ground and imagine them, while the plane disappeared behind a cloud.

Jonghyun looked at the cloud for a bit longer, before looking down and pulling his headphones off to let them rest around his neck. A sigh escaped his lips as he raised his left arm to take a look at his watch, noting that his drive in matter of fact was too late. He sighed a second time then; he was tired. His head was heavy, and he was feeling dazed because of lack of sleep. He had been traveling for over 15 hours, but he had been awake at least for twice as long as it had taken him to get from Seoul to Los Angeles, because he constantly suffered from insomnia.

In the middle of his own fatigue, he had even been shamelessly flirting with some strange Korean guy at Starbucks, who he probably never would get the chances to meet ever again – not that it mattered of course, Jonghyun just had to acknowledge that the guy was looking very much attractive with his feline features and contemporary clothing.

He was brought back into reality as a red Dodge suddenly drove up in front of him and parked only a foot away from him. The driver of the red Dodge briefly honked its horn at him once, as the passenger window opened. “Do you need a ride, perhaps?”  

Bending down so he was in eye-level with the person, he took a meaningful look through the window. A wide smile appeared on his face, as his eyes were met with a very familiar face of the only girl he had ever loved. He picked up his big, brown leather bag, which was filled with the only few things he had bothered to bring with him home, before opening the front door and entering the red car. “I do, in matter of fact.”

“It’s so good to see you again,” Jonghyun barely got to throw his luggage onto the backseat, before he was dragged into a massive embrace, and for a moment he almost thought he was about to get suffocated, by the amount of strength she decided to use.

“Good to see you too, sis, I was starting to think that you would never show up,” he replied and slipped out of her hold, expressively glancing towards the car clock, to indicate how late she had been.  

Sodam just shrugged and turned her side to him, in favor of starting the car, so they would be able to go home today. It was a somewhat old car from the nineties and sometimes it would be a little bit rebellious when you tried to get the motor up running. “I was a little bit late, and so what?”

Luckily for both of them, the Dodge decided to work perfectly fine at first try, and soon they had left the airport and were heading with the high way to their parents’ home.

“Yeah, and so what?” Jonghyun teasingly parroted her, snorting out loud while he buckled his seatbelt. “I mean it’s not like I have just returned home from Seoul after a year and a half, or something.”

He had only been home one time while staying abroad. It had been at New Year and he had only been studying in Seoul for half a year, at that point. It had been great to be home and to spend some time with his beloved family, but it had also been incredible hard to leave again: Almost harder than it had been the first time, which was why he decided not to bother with traveling home again – before now.

To be honest Jonghyun sometimes felt like he was stuck between two worlds. He really enjoyed staying in Seoul. It was the city he was born, as well as raised in, until he turned 12 years and his parents decided to move them all to California. He had never really learned to get settled there and if he sincerely had to choose, he would at any time pick Seoul before Long Beach. But he had always been very family oriented, though; as a kid he hated when his dad would have to go on a business trip, for example, and foolish as he had been, he would always try to do everything to make him stay at home by his family. That was probably also one of the main reasons as to why he had decided to take a gap year, before his last year of university – to spend some time with his family and to figure what he wanted to do with his life, once he was done studying songwriting in Korea.

“Jonghyun?”

“Huh?” Jonghyun was shocked by his sister’s voice. He habitually flipped his brown bangs out of his wide eyes, as he turned his head to send her a questioning look. “I’m sorry; did you say anything just now?”

“Yeah, I asked you since when you had gotten so sarcastic,” Sodam replied, briefly taking her eyes of the road, just to send him a crooked eyebrow, as well as a thoughtful look. He wasn’t sure if it was because she was worried about him, or if it was because she just thought he was going crazy – but seeing that she was his sister, he wouldn’t get surprised if it was the last.

“Oh,” Jonghyun just turned his head to look out of the windshield. He knew he had to answer something else, but he could feel his brain pulsing inside his head and it was really disturbing. He sighed deeply and leaned back into the seat before lifting his hand and combing it through his hair. “I’m sorry. I’m just really tired right now. I feel like I easily could sleep for the rest of the week.”

“Well, too bad you can’t,” Jonghyun felt his eyes widen once again. He knew that tone and it had never done anything good for him. Sodam obviously didn’t think it was ‘too bad’ at all, and in a moment she would probably tell him about all the plans ‘they’ had made already, even though he never had agreed on any of them, not to forget mention, never heard about them, in the first place. “We already got a lot of things planned out.”

He honestly knew his sister too well.

“We?”

Sodam ignored his question and started talking about all the stuff they seemingly had to do this week. “Friday we’re going to have dinner with another Korean family, whom dad and mom have met. They live in our neighborhood and they’re really sweet. They have a son too, who just has come home after studying abroad—”

“Wow, what are the chances?” Jonghyun cut her off, with the most enthusiastic voice he could possibly manage at that time. His sister could talk a lot when she got started and he felt like she really hadn’t understood that he just had been traveling from one side of the Earth to the other side, and that he was death tired from the impact.

“I know right?” was her only short and uncaring reply, before she continued her never-ending stream of talk: “They want you guys to meet each other; you probably have a lot in common and since both of you have been gone for such a long time, it’s probably a good thing to have someone to talk to who can relate to some of the same stuff. Don’t you think?”

He hummed as a response.

“And we have to go shopping before that, because mom have thrown a lot of your clothes out and you need a new evening outfit, at least…” he then decided to zone out. He really couldn’t care less about all that right now. All he wanted was to go home, greet his parents, because that seemed like something mandatory to do, and then hopefully get some needed sleep. Then tomorrow he could bother with the fact that his mother apparently had thrown a lot of his beloved clothes out.

Sodam kept talking for the rest of the trip, pretty much – something about that she had to show him all the great new places in the city and whatever. He really couldn’t focus on everything she said and he think he might ended up falling into a restless sleep a couple of times during the drive, but he wasn’t really aware of it, until he felt the car still beneath him and someone in the distance told him to wake up now, because they had arrived home.

He opened his eyes and was met with the familiar view of his parents’ house. He couldn’t prevent the smile that grew on his face, as he noticed his mom came running out of the front door with nothing but slippers on her feet, too eager to wait for him to come inside, now that they finally were in hugging-distance, after all this time of being apart.

He decided not to let her wait for any longer and slowly opened the car door; readying himself for the next year that was to come.

- Written by Legende

Author's note:

Hey guys!

The first two chapters are obviously just introductions to Key and Jonghyun's background, so not much has happened so far. We do hope that you have enjoyed reading them after all, though, as well as we hope that you will enjoy the chapters that are to come in the future.

We really appreciate every single comment we get; that's what motivate us to keep writing and to actually do an effort about it. So please, if you like what you read, feel free to leave a comment and let us know about it. And if you don't like what you read, still feel free to leave a comment and let us know about it; just make sure that it's constructive criticism, of course, please :)