••••••••

            When he makes the turn into his childhood neighborhood, Kyungsoo’s car is waiting at the corner, still running and illuminating the road with its brights. Kyungsoo steps out, not bothering to switch it off. His usual look of annoyance crosses his face, but it’s nearly masked by an all-consuming fear. Sehun doesn’t know which one he prefers. He thinks the answer is neither.

            “What way did he run?” Sehun asks before he has even one foot out of the car. Kyungsoo points to what Sehun chooses to believe is the north, towards the forestry that Sehun has trekked through hundreds of times with smaller legs and a bigger mind. Sehun nods and goes to take off, but Kyungsoo grabs him by the shoulder before he can get anywhere.

            “Sehun,” he says seriously. “I don’t know what you told that kid. I don’t want to know. I don’t care. The only thing I care about is the way he cried and took off like a shot animal the second I brought it up. Do you understand what I’m trying to say here?”

            Sehun swallows and nods. “I know. I… I was going to tell him. Soon.”

            “You should never have had to ‘tell’ him anything in the first place.” Kyungsoo releases him, stepping back to let him take the lead. “Next time, don’t lie to people. And if you’re going to lie, make sure it’s to people you don’t plan on ever seeing again.”

            “I wasn’t planning on ever seeing him again when I first met him—”

            Kyungsoo silences him with a wave of his hand. “You and I both know that’s not true.”

            Sehun pauses mid-protest. Then, he reluctantly nods again. “Would have never pegged you for a guru, Kyungsoo. Can I adopt you as my Splint sensei?”

            “Now is not the time.” He pushes Sehun forward. “Go. I’ll be right behind you.”

            Beneath the wide-eyed alarm and permanent irritation, there’s a sudden flicker of concern in Kyungsoo’s face, too. It’s almost affectionate. Sehun instantaneously decides that that one is his favorite before he pulls himself away and starts jogging towards the woods, accelerating to a sprint when the criticality of the situation crashes down on him again.

            Sehun considers calling out for Luhan, but as much as he wants to believe that Luhan will come running at the sound of his voice like a lost puppy, he knows he’ll much more likely run farther. He doesn’t feel like his eyes pierce far enough into the dark, and all at once he’s cursing the black of night for walling him in from the front, for chasing him from the back and for blocking his peripherals from both sides, like a giant cage of hardened ink. He wishes the sun would rise and illuminate all the colors of the trees that have fallen into murky shades of onyx, of the ebony moss lined along fallen trunks the color of slate, of the raven leaves that crunch under his charcoal shoes that he knows should be red, bright red, scarlet and vermillion and crimson and rose. He wants the glow of pigments stretching his vision to the end of the earth because he knows that, in the light, Luhan will outshine every sharpened pencil in his Crayola box. In the light, he’ll be the easiest to find.

            Because in the light, Luhan will be the brightest, richest, most vivid color of them all, and no matter how many times Sehun will try to paint him in his memory, it’ll never be quite so beautiful as he is.

            It isn’t long before Sehun directs Kyungsoo to split up to take up the other half of the forest, promising that it isn’t far enough for him to get lost. Kyungsoo looks at him wearily, and Sehun wonders if he’s used to being on the receiving end of orders – he even bosses Junmyeon around at times, really – but he acquiesces, directing Sehun to keep his phone on him (probably to reassert his authority). He splinters off without another word otherwise, and within minutes, the woods have swallowed him whole.

            When he’s gone, Sehun feels inexplicably alone, surrounded on all sides by emptiness that serves as a constant reminder of all the places where Luhan is not. It’s been so long since Sehun’s been alone that the pang of isolation feels almost new and just as bloody as the first time, when he’d moved to his first home and a kid called him stupid because of his perpetually blank face.

            He’d missed Luhan a lot that night. He misses Luhan a lot right now, too.

            Everything is quiet – he can’t even hear Kyungsoo’s crunching footsteps anymore. He’s racing around in a frenzy, checking behind every tree and whirling around every handful of seconds to make sure Luhan isn’t escaping from behind him. Fifteen minutes pass. Thirty. Forty-five. He can’t find Kyungsoo anymore, let alone anyone else. Let alone Luhan.

            He stops to lean against a tree momentarily, catching the breath that he’s lost.

            He hears something underneath the sound of his ragged breaths. He holds them in an attempt to separate silence from the noise, but the sound of stuttering lungs doesn’t stop. He creeps forward and sees a figure, crouched and tense, with their head in their arms. The first thought he has is That’s not Kyungsoo. The second is of the worry lines on Luhan’s mom’s face.

            The third is of two hands, linked together at the fingers.

            “Luhan?” he calls timidly. He’s scared of sneaking up on him – scared that he’ll spook and run, and Sehun will never be able to catch up with him. The figure doesn’t move, doesn’t look back, doesn’t even twitch. Sehun creeps closer. “Luhan, is that you?”

            It isn’t until he’s close enough to ghost his fingers over the person’s sweater that they stir. Their head raises, eyes blinking dimly as they try and fail to take in the little light illuminating Sehun’s face. “Who are you?” he starts, before deciding better of it and closing his face back up in his arms. “Nevermind, I don’t care. Go away.”

            “Luhan,” Sehun tries, lingering a few steps away from Luhan’s curled body. He scuffs his shoes against a couple loose gravel rocks. He wonders how pebbles managed to travel so far into the forest, away from the neighborhood. Maybe Tao threw them out of his suitcase and they just never moved. “I want you to come back with me.”

            Luhan attempts to look up at him, squinting. “Colors,” he says, words slurred and sluggish against his tongue. “Your hair…”

            Sehun nearly breaks out in laughter. Twilight has managed to out the color of everything, the reds and blues and yellows and all their in-betweens, and Luhan can still tell the color of his hair. “Luhan, my hair is not important. Do you remember who I am? Do you know where you are?”

            “Your hair,” Luhan continues, as if he’d never been interrupted, “is the color of… Don’t tell me. It’s—” He squints harder, as if it’s some code to decipher. Sehun feels his fingers start to shake, like they always do when he’s under Luhan’s scrutiny. Luhan’s eyes widen, and he blurts, “It’s more than one! It’s—”

            “It’s the color of Ariel’s hair,” Sehun snaps, “and the color of Eric’s skin. It’s the color of the leaves on autumn trees, and it’s the color of a stupid white room that I never wanted to go to.” Tears claw at his vision, as if the shadows clinging to everything he sees isn’t enough. He blinks them away as fast as he can and takes a shuddering breath. “It’s the color of you, Luhan. Because the real world is unrealistic, and you’re the only thing that makes sense.”

            The sun may still be hours away from them, but it’s dawning in Luhan’s eyes, clearing out the clouds that freckle his vision. He stands slowly. Sehun can’t help but notice that the taller he gets, the farther he leans away, towards the edge of the woods that are opposite of him.

            “Kyungsoo,” he spits, and then shakes his head. Violently. “No. Not Kyungsoo. No, you were never Kyungsoo, were you?” He laughs, and it’s even worse than usual because there’s a sinister tone to it, a sound of absolute resentment. Sehun feels his gut twist. “When were you going to tell me you were him? When were you going to tell me that you were the person I’ve been looking for for ten years, huh?”

            “Luhan, it’s not what you think—” Sehun begins, but Luhan is way ahead of him. He takes a step back and points a slender finger.

            “No, I think it’s exactly what I think,” he says, voice bubbling in his throat. He shakes his head slowly. Sehun can’t see his tears, but he can hear them. “I think you left me. And I think you’re going to leave me again. Because that’s what you do is leave.”

            “I got taken, Luhan, it’s not the same thing—”

            “Leave me alone.”

            Sehun starts saying something else, something that sounds so much like a plea for life that he’s surprised he isn’t kneeling before a king, but it doesn’t matter. It’s Luhan who’s leaving, taking off as fast as his drunken legs will allow him. Sehun runs after him, but even inebriated Luhan is too fast, even with his shorter legs and his uneven gait, even with Sehun’s years of running from the bigger kids in his homes, running from his foster parents, running from Tao’s rocks and Jongdae’s fire and Jongin’s reptiles, even with all that, Sehun is about to lose him in the branches, in the roots, in the brushes, in the horrible shades of black—

            There’s a crack. Sehun thinks it’s himself, at first, and he stumbles to a stop. He hears Kyungsoo’s voice in the distance somewhere for the first time in an hour, screaming his name, and he wonders if the noise was really that loud. He looks forward, expecting to see Luhan disappearing into coal and soot.

            He instead sees him crumpled in a pile, completely still.

            Sehun catches up with Luhan for the first time in his life. He wonders first if it counts if he’s not moving.

            He wonders second whether his shoes are the same color as Luhan’s blood.

기억 – XIII

잊다 2014-2-19

“I found Luhan today.

…I think he’s forgotten.”