Jungsoo rarely wishes for things, but when he does, he wishes that for once, he could be the one leaving—for leaving meant you had greater horizons to explore, greater roads to travel. Leaving meant you weren’t lonely; it meant you were eager to go. It meant you were steps ahead of everyone else and widening the distance with every second you were gone.

Jungsoo thinks that leaving must surely be less painful than being left behind.

On a sunny day, he waves goodbye to Kangin—watches as one strong, independent, raccoon-eyed man paddles his way through the unsteady waves that come crashing ashore. Kangin sways and flickers like a time ripple, becoming smaller and smaller until he blends in with the horizon.

And then ocean water dances and lands on Jungsoo’s eyelashes, blurring his vision and eliminating everything else that comes with it.

He bids farewell to Kibum, too, on a cloudy day—because if you love someone, let them go—then looks up and realizes it might start raining. Kibum slips on an aviator cap and goggles before snugly wrapping a scarf around his neck; he looks, Jungsoo thinks, like Amelia Earhart—or some like that.

When Kibum’s plane leaves the ground, it stirs up sand that lands on Jungsoo’s eyelashes and coaxes tiny pearls out of his eyes—but they disappear in the rain before Jungsoo can say anything.

Hankyung leaves him on a snowy day too cold for sentimental words—leaves in a rocket ship he’s built himself out of stardust and dirty seashells, a rocket that would normally be too fragile to launch, except Hankyung can make virtually anything fly.

Fire scorches the ground as Hankyung disappears—evaporates like a glass of water does, until you can no longer remember if there was any in the first place. The fire passes through Jungsoo’s eyes and burns everything inside until Jungsoo is falling over, and the snow around him is turning red—

It hurts, hurts, hurts.

He drowns himself in that pain, and in dizziness and cries of Teukie-hyung, and then he forces himself to awaken before he has to see Heechul fly away in a spaceship, sending constellations down to blind him.

And then Jungsoo turns into Leeteuk and puts off the inevitable for yet another day.