••••••••

            “Where the hell have you been?”

            Kyungsoo is livid, to no one’s surprise. Sehun walks in with his steaming coffee cup a week after finding Luhan for the first time, but he’s actually two minutes early that day, which Kyungsoo has blissfully ignored. Luhan’s presence has him all out of whack, no matter how quiet he is while he’s sleeping.

            Sehun shrugs, putting down his coffee cup on the counter that Kyungsoo has just buffed. Kyungsoo responds by snatching it up and glaring. “I had an unexpected visitor, so I took the week off to get him acclimated.”

            It wasn’t untrue, for once. Luhan slept through most of the days, but when he’d manage to drag himself out of bed, he would be buzzing with energy. It was almost as if he were twelve again, bouncing on and off the couch to look around Sehun’s tiny home and report back his findings, even though Sehun obviously already knew about all of them. (“Did you know you have rash cream in your cupboard? I thought only grandmas and babies still used that!” or “You have, like, thirty packs of beer under your bed. Aren’t you underage?” or “There’s twelve different bags of coffee in here. I counted! Do you have a caffeine addiction or something?”) Luhan was practically vibrating with questions, and every time Sehun provided an answer, he just asked more and more and more, about everything, about nothing at all, until Sehun felt like he was going to go into cardiac arrest trying to keep up with everything Luhan was saying.

            Near the middle of the week, to stop him from talking a blue streak, Sehun offered to take him to the grocery store and buy him some things he needed. Luhan had been using his finger to brush his teeth like a two-year-old and washing his briefs in the bathroom sink daily, and although Sehun liked to keep an abundance of snacks, they were almost completely depleted in the couple days Luhan had been there. Luhan had nodded eagerly and pranced to Sehun’s car like an overzealous deer, strapping himself in and babbling about wanting cookies and pepero and all sorts of other sweets. He didn’t stop talking throughout the entire trip, racing through the store and asking for enough candy to give a small child diabetes, and although Sehun initially accommodated, he eventually had to start saying no at the request of his panicked wallet. Luhan didn’t stomp around and throw tantrums like he used to with his mom, but he did jut out his lip in pleading before trudging back to the shelves he’d ripped all the food from. Sehun ended up buying more snacks than he did necessities (he forgot the toothbrush when Luhan dragged him out of the oral care aisle to show him the Valentines’ Day stuffed animals on the sales rack) and Luhan looked as though he wouldn’t have it any other way, cradling his giant bags of chips like a kid would his puppy. Sehun shook his head tiredly, and Luhan stuck his tongue out at that, but he smiled, anyways, and Sehun smiled, too, even though he felt like he shouldn’t.

            On the way back, Luhan had thrown a fit when he’d seen a park across from the grocery store. “It reminds me of a park I used to go to when I was young,” he mused, turning to Sehun with shining eyes. “Can you take me to my park?” Although Sehun initially refused on the basis of going back to work, Luhan had tugged on his sleeve until it was impossible to say no.

            By the time they’d gotten home, they’d planned a rendezvous for after Sehun's first day back to work. Sehun had been impossibly tired when they’d gotten home, and Luhan, impossibly smug.

            He guesses he’d had it coming for a long time for using Junmyeon so frequently.

            Kyungsoo has been talking for about ten minutes now, and he’s taken to snapping in Sehun’s face to wake him up from his own mind, looking even more peeved than usual. Sehun blinks, once, twice, then pretends to go to sleep on the sparkling countertop. Kyungsoo swats the back of his head and huffs, scurrying off to grab a towel and muttering something about nasty rainbow head germs and hairnets. Sehun picks himself up and makes his escape before he can return, breaking out his Gameboy mid-stride on his way to the bathroom. Even on weird days like this one, some things will never change.

            Sehun immediately regrets leaving his phone number in a note on the counter because even though Sehun is technically not allowed to respond, it doesn’t stop Luhan from sending picture after picture of all the little things he finds. He texts him a picture of Sehun’s stuffed animal stash at around one o’clock, accompanied by several laughing Japanese emojis that look way too similar to his actual face. He sends a picture of himself hugging the biggest one last, rubbing an eye and pretending to yawn as if he’d just gotten up (he probably had). There’s one of a little black thumbtack that he discovered on Sehun’s floor with the message “I almost stepped on this, you dummy!” attached beneath it. Another is of Sehun’s kitchen rug covered in Trix cereal and a text that reads, “ㅠ.ㅠ I spilled…”

            An hour after, Sehun receives a bundle of pictures all at once, filtered with outside light, and he realizes that they’re all of a tiny dandelion bud in a small patch of grass outside the apartment complex. Luhan sends six photos total of it taken from various angles and the word “white” in six different languages tacked on each one.

            Sehun thinks about the fact that the apartment’s owners have giant flower pots overflowing with budding petunias and roses and lilies lining every walkway on every floor. Luhan had to have bypassed every one of them.

            Sehun sneaks him a text back. “Our flower. 우리 꽃. Yeah?” Luhan responds with nothing but a smiley face. (That one looks more like Sehun’s actual face, this time.)

            Sehun receives the last picture a couple minutes before his shift is over. It’s a picture of his empty parking spot, which Luhan has somehow remembered and tracked down. Below it reads the words, “Hurry up, dandelion boy!”

            Sehun sends him a threat back on his way out. Kyungsoo throws him his usual sinister glance, but Sehun is too absorbed in his phone to notice. When Junmyeon tries to stop him for their usual after hours chat, Sehun quickly explains that he has somewhere to be and races out the door. Both Kyungsoo and Junmyeon look altogether puzzled, but Sehun is already in his car, turning the ignition until it cranks and flooring it out onto the main road. He doesn’t dip below sixty the entire way back home.

            Luhan is waiting in Sehun’s parking spot when he gets there. He doesn’t even give Sehun the chance to turn off the car before he’s hopping in and slamming the door, turning to him with excited eyes.

            “Are you ready?” he practically squeals. “I haven’t been to the park in ages, oh man, I wonder if they have pogo rides like they used to, do you think I’m too tall for the rock climb now—”

            “Luhan,” Sehun interrupts, laughing softly. “Have you been waiting this entire time?”

            “Not the entire time. Just, like, the past twenty minutes or so.”

            “Didn’t you have classes today?”

            “I did. I slept through them again.”

            “You know, a responsible parent doesn’t reward his kid for being a lazy bum.”

            Luhan sticks his tongue out. “I’m not a bum, and I’m not your kid. I’m your associate.”

            “Not even friends, are we?”

            Luhan scrunches his face in thought. “You did buy me candy, I guess…” He shrugs, face alight with a smile. “Fine. I accept your extension of friendship.”

            Sehun shifts the car into reverse. “I never extended my friendship.”

            “Ah, but that’s where you’re wrong, my friend. You extended friendship the second you extended your home.” He crosses his arms proudly. “It was just up to me to accept it!”

            Sehun pulls back out onto the main road without answering. It’s not like he can say much to that.

            He’s right, anyways.

기억 – V

상기하다 2001-6-7

“Mom, don’t.

Don’t look at me like you’re broken anymore,
like you don’t care,
or you can’t care.

I’m your son.

Don’t you remember?”