“Hyung.” Tao muttered. “I think I need to ask you something.”

Kris looked at the latter, and he could sense that he was going to ask something serious. Before he could say anything, he inhaled deeply and glanced at the sparkling river which lies wide in front of them. He put a smile on his face and gazed at Tao.

“Alright, what is it?”

“Well,” Tao said and stopped. “Do you mind having a friend like me?”

Kris laughed. “What are you talking about? Being your friend is the best thing ever happened in my life.”

“Tch,” Tao chuckled, and then he lowered his head, looking at his shoes as he was kicking the dust off his shoes. And then he chuckled again, looking back at Kris.

“You know,” Tao stopped again and looked away. “I’m a chicken. I’m afraid of everything like darkness, cockroaches, mice...”

“Is that really matter?” Kris quickly cut into his words, laughing.

“I’m too emotional. I can’t control anger. I could cry easily...”

“Please stop. Like, seriously? Why would I unfriend you when you’re afraid of everything, or when you’re an emotional freak? Even if you’re mentally abnormal, I still can’t see any reason why I shouldn’t be your friend,” Kris uttered again, and then he felt that it was so exaggerating that he should take back his words.

Tao laughed. And then he looked at Kris again.

“Kevin hyung,” and then he exhaled softly. “Kris; he said that he left me because I’m a coward, an emotional freak, and I’m afraid that you will leave me for the same reason,” he said.

“Well then, he’s a bastard,” Kris suddenly uttered, and Tao just glared at him.

Tao apparently was shocked but then he chuckled; “That's harsh, but he indeed was,” Tao said. Kris kept looking at him while. A while after, Tao chuckled and looked away.

“I know why he did that, but I’d really prefer if he would say he’s sick,” and Tao’s voice was getting low. “I mean, could he not lie to me? Could he speak the truth?” Tao uttered with exasperation, and then his shoulder dropped lower and he buried his face on his palms.

“I just miss him so much. Until today I still can’t accept the way he left, the way how it had ended. I know that he just didn’t want to make me worry, but hurting me that way was kind of...”

“Too much?” Kris continued.

“Yeah,” Tao sighed. And then he averted his sight away.

Kris paused. He was thinking; of how bad he was in the past, of the rationality of his decisions. Of how hurt he was to leave him, how hurt he was when he needed to be alone and fight cancer. He realized that everything happened for a reason, but he needs to figure that out.

The reason for his departure. The reason why he came back.

“Kris is now dead. He’s in your past.” Kris uttered softly. He didn’t plan it but it uttered out his mouth instantly.

“You’re right,” Tao sighed. “He was indeed my best buddy, though. I won’t forget him for my entire life,” he said.

“Of course! When I’m exactly looked like him,” Kris cracked a joke and laughed. And the atmosphere changed from completely tense. Tao laughed gradually after.

“Right,” Tao laughed while saying, and soon after that he stopped.

“Tao, I wonder, do you have someone else like Kris?” Kris asked after that and it was quite unplanned.

“No, I have not,” he said.

Kris nodded his head, but then Tao immediately continued, “But I do actually have a best friend, and actually, I remember I was much closer to him than Kris,” he said like he just remembered something deep in his mind, something from far behind the past.

Kris cringed his brows. “Really?” he uttered loudly, but after that he covered his mouth with his palm surreptitiously, afraid that he could behave so emotionally. Afraid that his secrets will be revealed right at the moment because he was careless.

“Because he was my schoolmate, since kindergarten, but it wasn’t all because of that,” Tao smiled while reminiscing.

“We shared the same height and weight. We played together every single day went to school together. Sometimes my mom would pack him food and so his mom did to me. And, we used to like the same girl in school,” he stopped and chuckled.

“Well, that’s quite hilarious,” Kris uttered. Actually he felt a bit cheated, or maybe the best word to describe it was jealous.

Tao why didn’t you tell me about this friend of yours? I thought that best friends supposed to have no secret between? I thought that I was your best friend ever? You did tell me that.

Kris was quite disappointed, but then he realised that he did the same thing; keeping a secret. And it was even worse than that.

“But our friendship couldn’t last long,” Tao sighed. “My father was a Wushu teacher; he wanted me to study in China when I was about 15 so that I could enroll into a Wushu school, so we went back to my hometown in Qingdao. And that friend of mine was a music prodigy, so his father sent him abroad to study music.”

“Where to?” Kris asked, and at times he felt funny that he paid too much interest about this friend of Tao.

“My friends said that it was somewhere in Europe. And after college I went back to South Korea, I really hoped that I could meet him, but I don’t know where to start. It has been years though, and I’m not sure how do he looked like,” he continued. “I’ve done so many things, like, went for auditions so that I would become an actor, because I’ve expected that he could have became an artist. But I couldn’t find him. So I have to learn living alone, when it was really hard for me, and then I found Kris.”

“Oh,” Kris uttered and smiled. And then both of them looked at the river which lies wide in front. “Then he was, some kind of... a saviour?”

“Haha, you’ve said the right thing.”

Kris was overly excited that he couldn’t put away a wide grin that had spread across his face.

“Hyung, I wonder where you have been before,” Tao mumbled. The words that have just come out of his mouth made Kris froze. Because he didn’t know if it was a question or not, and if it was, he didn’t know what kind of answer he would give to him.

“Why?” Kris laughed.

“I mean, how can two people could be so alike?”

And again, all Kris could do was looking away. Tao discerned that he had made the other silenced, so he spoke again.

“It was my father, the one who made me feel like I have a reason to live. Sometimes it felt like, the goal of my existence was to be like my father and be with him through anything in this world. Until the day he passed away,” Tao sighed. Kris put his hand on his shoulder and he continued.

“The first time I saw Kris playing basketball, I felt the same feeling when I saw my father holding his sword every time he performed on stage. It felt like a call. It felt like I have another reason to live; that I need to be as great as my father. That I need to be as great as Kris playing basketball.”

And then Tao silenced like he was put into a silent mode. Kris swallowed hard.

That was why you kept on looking at me everytime I was playing? I thought you’re a sasaeng fan. That really freaked me out.  

Kris really wished that he could say that. He was smiling while looking at the other.

“Tch,” Tao chuckled. “Why are you laughing?”

“No, I’m not,” Kris laughed, ironically. “Just continue your story.”

Tao chuckled, “Alright,” and then he averted his eyes towards the river. “And then he disappeared for a week. I thought that he perhaps thought I was a freak or a fanatic or something.”

Of course I was. But not after the day that you saved my life. The day that you took me to your apartment, remember? The day when I had a heart attack. And then I was in Canada for a week because I have a medical check up.

“Of course he would think that you’re crazy because you kept on stalking like that,” Kris uttered to avoid him from being suspicious.

“Well, probably, but then he went back and we became really close to each other,” he stopped. “Until he left.”

Kris put his arm around his shoulder. “Nah, that doesn’t matter anymore. There’s no point on regretting. Look ahead. I’m here, anyway.”

“Right,” Tao smiled and he tapped on Kris’s shoulder. Suddenly Kris’s phone rang, so he pulled his phone out of his pocket. A message popped out when he slide his fingers on his phone.

“Come to a coffee shop near the river bank we have been to earlier today. Now,” Kris was reading the message and then he stopped.

“Who?”

“Minseok hyung.” And then another message came. Six letters popped on the screen and they both looked at it.

URGENT

Kris and Tao looked at each other.

* * *

They were at the coffee shop where Minseok and Luhan went into for coffee. The table was rectangular in shape, while Luhan was sitting at the end, sitting like the leader of a family during a family gathering.

Luhan banged on the table loudly for the third time and the last couple who sat at the corner of the cafe find their way out of the building immediately. And then no sound was audible, as if things around them just scared to produce any noise.

“Would you like to take an order, Sir?” a waiter asked him.

“Get out,” Luhan uttered. The wimpy waiter was too, took off his apron and left through the door.

Well, the analogy that said earlier wasn’t so precise. That was completely not like a leader of a family during a family gathering, instead he was like a yakuza having a meeting with his gangsters or anything similar. The silence went on and on.

Kyungsoo suddenly laughed, breaking into silence, “Haha, why so serious? This is a big misunderstanding,” and then he started to laugh out loud.

Luhan was glaring at him and he cringed, so he immediately covered his mouth, at the same time he moaned in pain for he just remembered that his face was as hit by a truck. Perhaps it had already bruising, he thought. And then he stared at his palm, at the cake of dried blood which fell off from his lips.

Luhan was the one who hit him.

“I think we should call the police,” Minseok suggested to Luhan.

“The police can’t handle this kind of crime,” Luhan uttered while emitting a kind of aura that could penetrate the wall of the building when he glared at Kyungsoo once again. “They should be punished more.”

And Kyungsoo who was sitting just next to him really wished that he could run through the wall or hide beneath the table or vaporise into thin air.

“Sir, there was a huge misunderstanding. We don’t mean any offense,” Chanyeol, who was sitting beside Kyungsoo was speaking to Luhan. Minseok, Jongdae and Yixing respectively sitting at the other side, facing Kyungsoo and Chanyeol.

“Don’t lie. We all knew that you’ve kidnapped Selena Gomez,” Jongdae immediately voiced out.

“What?” Chanyeol was shocked as he was being accused of kidnapping a superstar who he had wished he could do so.

“We heard you talking just behind the garbage bin,” Yixing said while averting his eyes from looking at Kyungsoo as he was still haunted by his face.

“The heck? Selena Gomez is his freaking stupid guitar!” Kyungsoo started to speak louder. “Hyung I’ve told you not to give your guitar a stupid name! Urgh,” and then he hit Chanyeol on his shoulder, right at the place where it was kicked by Luhan.

“Aaaaarrghhhhh,” he grunted loudly.

“Okay, shut up,” Minseok then voiced out. “So, you guys aren’t bad guys?”

“ing yes,” Kyungsoo stressed out. “I mean no.”

Jongdae and Yixing looked at each other again, puzzled and still, frightened if they’re indeed bad guys because they thought that they’re talking to a couple of psychics. Yixing kept imagining that those guys were trying to kidnap him, kept thinking that talking to them was such a bad idea. But Luhan insisted to investigate things out.

“Urgh. I mean we’re not bad guys, get it?” Kyungsoo uttered again.

Tao and Kris barged through the door and they were surprised to see that no one was there except for the boys, and two strangers they haven’t met before.

“Luhan, since when you’re here?” Kris immediately asked when he discerned his presence.

“This morning,” Luhan replied. Kris didn’t realize that the latter who was standing beside his now froze like a statue, until Chanyeol made a sudden move. He stood up.

“Chan?” Tao muttered, seemed extremely excited.

“Yes, it’s me, Panda. It’s been a long time,” Chanyeol smiled widely, and soon his eyes started to hold tears.

PARK CHANYEOL WAS HUANG ZITAO'S LONG LOST FRIEND.

It has been freaking more than ten years since the last meeting. It was as they were given a breath each after been dead for ten years. Both of them hugged and squeezed against each other while shedding tears of both happiness and sadness. Everyone was looking but silence still went on and on.

“Huang Zitao? Kris Wu? Oh my God! Can I have your autograph please?” Kyungsoo squealed like crazy, breaking the serenity.

While Chanyeol felt like he wanted to squeeze him into a wine bottle and throw him into the deep Caribbean Sea.

* * *

So good that I have time writing this last night, so here it is! Thank you for reading darlings!