PRESENT DAY
2nd Of April, 2013

I am almost out of breath when Hyukjae stares at me with that smile, waiting for me to open my mouth after so long. But I’m only able to stutter some incoherent words.

“What are you…doing here?”

He scratches his neck, but then he takes a glance towards the car loading area, where behind a black sedan is an older woman looking at their way, her head tilted to the side while she holds the handle of her luggage. Hyukjae coughs and smiles towards me again. Like me he’s trying to say something, but it ends up as stuttering.

“I just… My mom... Her plane just arrived and—and I’m here to pick her up. And then I saw you and I wasn’t even sure if it was you or if it was just my imagination, and... It’s really you and you seemed so lost so I thought if you—if you needed a ride?”

My eyes widen a bit, and I try to open my mouth to say something, anything. But I'm out of words. And thinking, in front of my best friend for years, why don’t I know how to talk to him. Because I’ve never been the one not immediately having words to say. But today it feels like that Hyukjae’s mother is the one to save me from this embarrassing situation when she ends up jogging towards us, a wide, inviting smile on her lips while she squeaks my name through the entrance area. She makes me blush, because this is definitely not the way I thought I would return.

“Donghae! Oh! My sweet Donghae!”

“Mom…” Hyukjae whines, in a way that reminds me of the time we were teenagers and Hyukjae’s mother was about to embarrass her son with her accusations.

“Mrs. Lee,” I say, voice wavering when she’s the second one in a day, or actually in a long time, to hug me like she always did. She forces me to hunch down because she’s much shorter than me, but I find myself laying my jaw on her shoulder. She pushes me further, and looks at me like she’s going to scold me.

“What on earth, my son! You’re still allowed to call me ‘mom’ even if you’re a grown man already,” Mrs. Lee nags and pinches my cheeks, and it makes me feel like a kid again. She keeps looking at me, taking a good view of me. It’s clear that she would want to ask about everything I’ve done during the time I’ve been away. Then she ruffles my hair, giggling heartily while Hyukjae observes us, a soft, almost longing smile on his lips.

“What have you done to your hair? It was still long and brown when I last saw you. And you had the cute ponytail,” she jabbers, and I let her. “But look at you now. Still as handsome as ever,” the woman keeps going, and I can see how Hyukjae rolls his eyes in the background.

It’s the first time a genuine smile rises to my lips. A bit shy, but it’s still there. I don’t know why it was so hard after all.

“Mom,” Hyukjae starts, tapping her shoulder and trying to get her attention. “You both must be tired, right? Should we continue when we get home?”

I’m not sure if Hyukjae notices my lip biting, but he hastily opens his mouth again.

“I mean, if you don’t have any other plans, Donghae?”

Once again, it’s so hard to think clear. I don’t know why everything feels so out of place; why it feels as if all the things I left are thrown straight to my face, and I don’t have enough time to register any of it.

“I—I don’t… Have any,” I mumble. Before I even have a chance to think it through, Hyukjae’s mother is fast enough to decide that we would indeed take the same ride. And god knows what else. Because Mrs. Lee is fond of me to say the least. I can hardly ever say no to her.

“Well, shall we get going then?” she chirps, marching back towards the car, a BMW I take note, that most likely belongs to Hyukjae.

I can feel the weight of my backpack again, and Hyukjae shares a look with me. “Do you need help with that?”

“I can manage.” I cough and shift the weight on my shoulders. It's not the bag that disturbs me the most.

There’s one of Hyukjae’s typical smiles on his lips when he walk towards the car.

In a matter of minutes I am sitting on the backseat of Hyukjae's car, listening to his mother’s constant babbling. Wiggling on my seat, I notice Hyukjae looking at me through the rear view mirror. His gaze collides with mine, and although we both smile awkwardly, we are glad that we are here together. In the same boat forced to listen his mother's endless talking even when our thoughts are someplace else.

16th Of October, 2011

The little studio was relaxing even though he was about to do something that you could not erase afterwards. Lying on his back on the chair, Donghae found himself staring at the ceiling, waiting. He could hear the pouring rain outside through the opened windows. The drumming against the ground, the droplets dashing from the running water. Taking a long inhale, a woman sat on the bench next to him, giving him an encouragin smile. She leaned forward, eyeing his bare chest with narrowed eyes.

“It seems to have healed nicely,” she muttered, dunking the tip of a needle inside the tiny jar.

“Are you ready?”

Donghae nodded with a restless "Yeah", closing his eyes for a second as he heard the buzzing noise coming from the instrument on her hand. Soon, he felt the sting on his chest and everything else seemed to flow out of his mind. For a good ten minutes it was only the buzzing noise in the air, while the girl started coloring his tattoo which lines he had gotten done there a month ago.

“How you doing?”

“It’s uncomfortable enough,” he replied, but a little smirk clear on his lips.

“Good,” she acknowledged. “So, how do you like Thailand so far?”

“Warm,” Donghae said, “And wet.”

It was easy to talk to with a stranger because there weren’t attachments besides his tattoo.

She chuckled. “That’s what everyone says.”

“I guess.”

“Why did you decide to come here anyway? I mean, what pulled you here?” she wondered out loud.

Donghae was able to mute his hisses when the sharp tip swept over his collar bone. The skin just above the bone always hurt the most.

“I needed a change,” he replied, eyes telling a long story about memories that weren’t always so pleasant to remember. Although it was because of his own head and heart; the unsaid rules that weren’t fitting with his feelings.

“A change? Did something happen?” she asked, glancing at the younger male, who let out a deep sigh.

“No… Not really. I just wanted to get away… Get away from the things that were messing with my head.”

She hummed, dunking the tip of the tattooing machine in a reddish jar this time.

“Heartbreak, maybe?”

If it was that, heartbreak as she called it, he wasn’t sure. He still had so mixed feelings about it all.

“I’m… I’m not sure if it was exactly heartbreak,” Donghae sighed, wiping his brownish, quite long fringe out of his eyes. “It’s just… My best friend got engaged and… It started to feel like I was the only one remaining the same. I didn’t like my job as a bartender. My dad died two years ago and everything… It felt like I had a huge knot inside of me and I had to do something. To get away from it all. To try to ‘find myself’. Get somewhere else and... Clear my head for a while,” he ranted, at first not sure why he would he pour his heart out to a stranger. But all the words fled through his lips and he couldn’t seem to stop.

“He… My best friend… We were really… Really close and it just came out of nowhere that he was going to pop the question to his girlfriend soon, because… He thought he was in love.” Donghae took a shaky breath, not noticing the raised eyebrow of the woman. He swallowed. She saw right through him.

“I felt so alone and such an outsider, because I hadn’t expected it at all. Because it had always been the two of us against the world, you know?”

“You’ve known each other for a while, huh?”

“We went to the same elementary school, and we've been best friends since we were twelve.”

“That’s a long time. You have to be quite compatible to stand each other for so long, right?” she chuckled, so soft that Donghae felt a lump in his throat when he thought about him and Hyukjae.

“We are… Or were. I don’t even know anymore.”

“Are you still in touch?”

“Rarely… I’ve been… I’ve been quite distant towards him since I left. He calls me sometimes, but somehow it always ends up as awkward as hell because I don’t know how to talk to him. Me leaving wasn’t the most tranquil event between us,” Donghae murmured, sinking deeper into the thoughts, happenings and feelings around the time. He stayed silent for a while, not noticing when the tattooist wiped the leftover ink away from his collar bone.

“Can I ask you something, Donghae?” Curiosity radiated from her voice. Donghae could've sworn he knew the question that was coming. The one he didn’t want to answer.

“Go ahead,” he grunted, preparing himself to say it out loud. But the question wasn't exactly the one he had been waiting for.

“You said you drew this by yourself, right?”

There was a hum, and the woman took it as a permission to go on. “Does this mean something special for you? It’s quite a big piece for your first tattoo.”

Donghae bit the insides of his cheek, staring at the ceiling and thinking about the drawing that had taken time to complete before he had the courage to get it inked on his skin.

He could see the picture inside his head, and even if he knew he didn’t want anything else at this point so bad but the tattoo, he felt agitated. Because the piece meant so much, it held so many things for him. Also the things he didn’t want anyone else to know about. The drawing that was now being tattooed onto his chest held a picture of a skull in the middle, two reddish lotus flowers on the each sides of it, and wings coming from behind it all, ending up at his shoulders. It would cover his whole chest when it would get ready. If he thought what it symbolized for him, he actually had many different thoughts and aspects for it.

“The easiest way to describe it is as my life. It represents where I’m from; a broken home, which is my past. It reminds me about life and death. Where I am now. My father. How every piece of the puzzle has taught me something.” He took a long inhale before continuing.

“The reddish flowers… They are the better part of me. The lotuses are about my growth and they encourage me to change for better. They remind me of all the suffering, all the things I’ve gone through, which had also made me stronger. That even if it has been hard, I’ve gotten through it. And a part of them, especially the color red, is about all the good people in my life, keeping me on track.”

She nodded, a dark glint on her eyes, telling that she was listening although she kept working on the tattoo.

“And those wings…” Donghae said, a bit unsure, even if he knew all the reasons behind it all.

“It’s… It’s not so easy to talk about this. I somehow see my tattoo as my personal, private thing, but I…”

“It’s okay. You don’t have to if you don’t want to.”

Even if he felt uncertain, even embarrassed a bit, he decided to talk. She was a person he would most likely not see again. It was all professional. He sighed, ready to pour out the rest of it.

“I guess those wings are about everything I am. My dreams, thoughts, feelings, desires… I don’t know if it’s weird, but this all… Makes me feel safe. Like… Like Hyukjae did. And now, I’m here, without him, alone, but at least there’s something that tells me that it’s okay. That it’s okay to be messed up, to be scared… And that… It’s all okay to be me. Like there's still someone watching over me; taking care of me.”

Although she didn't say anything, he saw that she could understand. When a single tear escaped from the corner of his eye, he tried to wipe it away with the back of his hand.

After a while Donghae wasn’t sure if it had been minutes or hours, when the tattooist looked at him again

“Did you ever talk about your feelings? I mean, both of you,” she muttered, trying to make it sound nonchalant.

Donghae felt the bile up on his throat blazing.

“No.”

“Do you miss him?”

“Everyday.”

20th Of December, 2010

They had been playing with Hyukjae’s PlayStation2 for a while, and although it was already close to midnight, they still kept going.

Hyukjae had the white console, and Donghae the black, older one, and between them laid an emptied bowl of popcorn and on the floor a Coca Cola bottle. It was their usual kind of way to spend their evenings and nights if there was nothing else to do, and this wasn’t an exception, because they had already played Call of Duty for almost one and half hours and then switched to Gran Turismo. Even if they had started to get tired, they felt too determined to stop.

Donghae was the one to always move with the console when he was controlling the car, turning the console like it was the wheel and cursing when Hyukjae seemed to be winning again, a smirk evident on the corner of his lips. Donghae wasn’t a pro with racing games, after all.

“No! you. What did you do to me again!” Donghae shrieked, stomping his foot against the floor while he sat on the edge of the couch, a one big enough for them to sit comfortably on it.

Hyukjae snickered. “You just .”

“Go to hell. I’m not playing this anymore,” the younger one whined like a kid, an annoyed scowl on his face when he threw himself against the backrest in frustration.

Hyukjae put his controller on the table and raised his arms to a stretch. “It’s getting late anyway…”

“It’s not that late. Tomorrow’s Saturday,” the brunette with a ponytail on his occipital muttered and stood up from the couch. He turned towards the balcony and the wide window, looking at the reflection of himself from it. He had black, skinny ripped jeans and a gray, a bit too large hoodie on him. And he thought that he looked okay, although, nothing special.

He still had the baby-face whereas Hyukjae’s face had changed quite a lot since they were eighteen, letting his defined jawline make him manlier – and honestly, ier. Donghae sighed, pulling a cigarette from his kangaroo pocket and passing it between his lips, watching Hyukjae’s bored expression through the window when he opened the door to the Parisian style balcony.

“You know my mom doesn’t like it when you smoke here,” Hyukjae said, finally standing up and following his friend to lean against the cold iron railing next to him.

“Well, your mom is not here right now. And even if she would scold me about it, she will never really get me stop doing this.” The fire popped up from the lighter, and while inhaling the toxic inside his lungs, he looked at the tall buildings side by side in front and around them. This place, this part of the city was his home. He had ran through the same streets with Hyukjae for over 12 years already, and still, it didn’t feel like it had been enough.

They didn’t usually meet at Hyukjae’s own place. It was tiny and shabby, and there definitely wasn’t enough space to slack around. Most of the time, they still hung around at Hyukjae’s childhood home, the apartment he had always lived in for his 24 years long life with his mother and father, until his parents had divorced and his father had moved into another house. And like tonight, his mother had a night shift and she hadn’t been there since 7pm. They had the whole house for the two of them only.

It was the usual routine for Donghae to come to Hyukjae’s place after his day at work – if he wasn’t too tired – and his mother would make them dinner and they would talk about everything like a family. Sometimes they were at Donghae’s apartment too; it was at least a bit bigger than Hyukjae’s, but it didn’t really do the thing if it was as messy as it often was, as Hyukjae–the clean-freak he was–ended up cleaning the place from top to bottom. It drove Donghae crazy, so Hyukjae’s place it usually was.

Exhaling puffs of smoke in the freezing air, Donghae threw stealthy glances at Hyukjae. There was something a bit different from the ordinary with the latter, and it was making him restless. He could see that the almond-eyed man wanted to talk about something, but with teeth sinking into his lips, the man ended up keeping his mouth shut. Donghae knew Hyukjae wouldn't be able to kept the silence for long, so it didn't surprise him when the words finally fell down from his lips. But what did surprise him, were the words that felt like a knife stabbing through his skin.

“You know… I’ve been thinking about… Proposing Hyoyeon soon.” Hyukjae’s body seemed to tremble because of the cold wintery weather, but Donghae felt the lump in his throat getting bigger again.

Yeah, Hyukjae had a girlfriend. Somehow, he always forgot the fact. Or, who was he kidding; he intentionally buried the fact somewhere inside the back of his brain, into the darkest corner so he wouldn’t need to think about that. He didn’t want to think about that. It made the mess inside him even bigger and dirtier; darker, heavier. Wrong. And letting the mess take bigger control of himself, he couldn’t prevent the next words from coming before they were already said out loud.

“What the ?”

“What?” Hyukjae asked, the tone of his voice colder, demanding proper reason from the guy who was supposed to be his best friend.

“ the what. What the actual – are you serious Hyukjae?” he snapped, pressing the cigarette a bit too hard between his fingers. Since it was already short, it burned his index finger. With a cuss he threw it away.

Hyukjae's eyes passed at Donghae’s fingers, but the irritated expression didn’t go away, even if he looked like he wanted to ask something – like if that burn hurt too much – but he didn’t. He kept his mind, and didn’t want to let Donghae win. He had only wanted Donghae’s help and opinion, and maybe something that would encourage him to do that. And yet he had still somehow known that this answer was more like Donghae. It was the thing he had been so afraid of, because he wasn’t 100 percent sure. He had just needed that little push. But now, everything about him remined the same.

Uncertain.

Scared.

Lost.

Hyukjae scoffed. A bit forced and at the same time mad because of Donghae’s stupid reaction. And not the least because of his own.

“What if I am?” he hissed, pushing his hand through his black hair, eyes gazing anywhere else but Donghae. “We’ve been together over eight months… And I – I love her. I’m twenty-ing-four, isn’t it just something normal to do?”

“Eight months my . That’s just stupid. Are you going to marry her too, or have you even thought about that yet?”

They weren’t acting like their normal selves. Everything was tense staggering on the edge, pissed off.

“What’s wrong with you?” Hyukjae asked, gritting his teeth and not wanting to understand what Donghae was fretting about. He could see the panic in Donghae’s eyes, hidden very well under the anger – and it made him feel so bad. It made him question his thoughts all over again. Usually they could at least get some kind of mature conversation around the more serious things in their life. But something about this was... Different.

Donghae sneered, eyes cold. The hurt was so evident behind it all, but Hyukjae couldn't grasp why.

“Nothing. What does it have to do with me anyway? Just… Do what the hell you want.”

“Donghae…?” Hyukjae whimpered as he watched the other walking towards the hallway, slowly starting to put on his shoes.

Donghae bit his lips, trying not to break down. Not yet. Not here. Hyukjae couldn’t love that girl like that. Couldn’t. It was definitely irrational. Donghae wanted to punch something. He really wanted to punch the living daylights out of that stupid dip of his friend. Best friend. All he'd tried to bury were storming over the surface, and he wanted to forget it all once again. He wanted it to stop.

From the corner of his eye, Donghae saw Hyukjae taking a hesitant step after him. “What are you doing?”

“What does it look like?” Donghae hissed. Voice shaking, yet not breaking. But inside, he was all in pieces already.

Hyukjae didn’t get any words out of his mouth anymore. It killed him when he heard the slam of the door when Donghae left the apartment. The regret burned down on his stomach. He wished that he wouldn’t have said anything. Then Donghae would have stayed and everything would be the same as always. Everything would be alright. He wouldn’t need to stand there, alone, thinking if it was Hyoyeon he wanted to be with.

Or someone else. Someone, who knew him.