Jongin crouches down, head between his knees. He waits for the dizziness to clear away. Baekhyun rubs soothing circles on his back, fingers occasionally playing hopscotch in the shallow ridges between the knobs of his spine. The noises around them — of the radio blaring classical music and the pitter patter of feet outside the door — slowly fade off too. When there's only pin-drop silence left, Baekhyun drops a kiss on Jongin's temple.

"Are you okay?"

It's a stupid question. Jongin's head is still spinning, and Baekhyun knows the aftereffects better than maybe Jongin would himself. "No," he answers honestly. It's almost too much. His eyes start to water involuntarily again.

Baekhyun looks like he's about to laugh at him for crying, but instead he just kisses Jongin some more as if it could make the pain go away somehow. "Awww, you're such a baby," he mutters under his breath. "You're my crybaby." He lands a huge, wet smack in the middle of Jongin's forehead as a finale. "There," he declares. "Fixed it."

It certainly isn't, but Baekhyun's concerned, and that's all that really matters to Jongin. He sniffles a little. "What do you suppose I won't remember anymore tomorrow?"

He gets a shrug in response, Baekhyun avoiding his gaze by busying himself with the frayed sheath of Jongin's silver cord. He knows that Baekhyun's trying to look nonchalant about it when in reality he's wracked with guilt for having dragged Jongin into this in the first place.

"Do you think," Jongin soldiers on, "that I'll forget bits of her this time?" Worry bubbles in his guts. He searches Baekhyun's face for an answer, anxiety tripling when he sees an apprehensive affirmative. "But Baekhyun," he chokes out. "I don't want to."

When he thinks about it now, it's all so stupid.

He had been extra petulant that day. The suitcase was opened on the floor, stuff thrown in haphazardly into it as Jongin whooshed through his room for some last-minute packing. His dance apparel were strewn all over, one of his lucky competition ballet slippers missing. As he searched for it under his bed, a small knock came on his door.

Jongin groaned. He knew it was his mother. "Honey," she called out after getting no replies. "Are you almost done? Do you need help?"

"No," he answered sharply. "I'll be ready in a minute."

".....okay. I'll wait for you in the car."

He lugged everything he needed towards the elevator and down to the carpark after a few minutes, tossed them into the trunk of his mother's Hyundai. Got into the backseat, shoved his earphones in before his mother could get a single word out.

She gave him an exasperated look and turned back around. Jongin heard the hurt in her drawn-out sigh as she turned the ignition and drove out into the main road. It wasn't the first time he'd blatantly ignored his mother, and he was certain then that it wouldn't be the last.

"Jongin-ah," his mother said. "Do you really have to go?"

He pretended not to be listening, but the truth was he didn't have any music playing in his ear then. He resolutely kept staring out of the window and into Han River.

"I know I haven't been the best mother to you. But I'm trying, I really am."

Yeah, okay, Jongin thought sarcastically.

"I've been getting help. It's not that bad anymore. I could actually handle classes nowadays, rather than let Yoojin handle everything."

Now that she'd pointed it out, Jongin agreed that she did look healthier, the healthiest she'd looked in years. Yoojin-noona, in between their coaching sessions, had told him as much. The imploration in her voice when she did didn't go undetected. It said be nicer to your mother. She's trying so hard for you, she deserves as much in return too.

"But all of a sudden you're leaving. I feel like I don't have the right to tell you this because I haven't.... been there for you in spirit for so long, but honey, I need you here to get even better."

Jongin remained silent as they pass through the tollgates into the expressway. The slight tremble in her voice stung, the weight in her words even more so. But within his silly teenaged head they also reaffirmed the excuses he had for treating her in such a way in the first place.

"It's probably too late and I can't change your mind anymore," she continued. "But you'll be gone for so long. And New York, too. You'll be so far away."

He finally turned to look at his mother, saw how streaks of tears were already marring her cheeks.

She didn't notice him staring at her. "Do you remember when you first started dancing" she said dreamily, as if caught in a trance, "and you twisted your ankle after your third lesson?"

Jongin nodded subconsciously in answer. Of course he does.

"You've never cried so hard before. I thought it was because.... you got hurt, yes, but also because it was usually your dad who used to patch you right up. I thought you missed him and wanted him instead of me."

The road merged into Incheon bridge. This was it. The last long stretch of road before they reach the airport. Jongin was itching to say something, knew that he should.

His mother talked through the silence before he could. "You hugged me then, so tight. My sweet Jongin," she said, the lump at the base of obvious. Jongin felt one growing in his own. "You told me it wasn't because of your dad. It was because you were scared that you'd never be able to dance anymore to keep me happy."

Jongin swallowed to keep his eyes from clouding over. It didn't work.

"I told you that you shouldn't take on such a responsibility. It was mine to be happy for you. And I promised you that I would. I didn't hold on to it, and I became this.... person who disappoints you over and over again." She'd stopped crying, but the heavy sadness remained there in her eyes the way it never left them once since Jongin could remember. "When you started to withdraw yourself from me it was such a slap in the face.... but I understood why you did. "

No, he'd wanted to say then. I really shouldn't have been the brat that I was to you.

"Perhaps it is best that I let you go. When you come back, maybe we would have things worked out," his mother said, exhaling a long shaky breath. "Eventhough..... the next four years would be hard for me without you around. But I hope while you're away you could find it in you to forgive me and give me another chance." She chanced a glance at Jongin, a hopeful smile on her lips. "We could be a family again, promise."

Before anything else could be said, a number of events occurred nearly simultaneously. A lamp post, newly installed the day before but poorly screwed in, began teetering down towards the road. An SUV, going way above the speed limit, swerved violently to avoid ramming into the pole, deviating into the right lane. Jongin's mother didn't catch on quickly enough. She steered joltingly into the left, unaware of the obstruction awaiting ahead.

And though Jongin's heart may have also thawed in that split second, a yes, I would love that sitting on his tongue waiting to leap, he only recalled his mother's scream amidst the sounds of crushing metal, and the excruciating pain invading his waist and leg before the world goes black.

When he woke up, she was already gone.

He felt numb when he was told the news, number still when informed that he might never be able to dance anymore. He was on autopilot throughout her wake. His father had refused to attend, friends replacing him as a support basis. But for Jongin they might as well had not been there. His body was throbbing as the feeling returned to his limbs, agony pulsing through every vein, but his heart was gaining ice once more.

His mother had broken her promise again, he'd thought irrationally then. All she had left him with is the remnants of her grief and resentment. And for someone like Jongin who's never been good at coping with such emotions, it wasn't long before they consumed him whole.

There were many times when he was younger where Jongin dreamed that he'd remained with his father instead. This, despite the fact that he barely knew him anymore. And this, despite the fact that he knew how much of a bastard he really was. But teenagers are at best irrational in their spite, and Jongin had been a particularly difficult one. He wished cruelly then that his mother would disappear, fantasizing about how much better his life would have been if he'd never chosen her.

Now that such a twisted wish might be granted, he couldn't bear it.

Lost in his own thought, Jongin doesn't register being pulled into Baekhyun's lap, legs draped over one of his thighs. "I'm so sorry Jongin," Baekhyun says, arm tightening around the span of Jongin's chest, "but you know what I told you about the planes and the houses, and how they connect to your memories?" When Jongin shakes his head, Baekhyun continues. "The first time I brought you here, it was your father's mansion. Huge and grand. Then it was that palace in Moscow. Magnificent, yes. But both are superficial. The way your attachment to the memories they held had been."

He weaves his fingers gently through Jongin's hair when he sees confusion taking over his expressions, tries to ease it out. Of course Jongin wouldn't know what he's talking about. He doesn't have those memories anymore to recollect. The planes have done its job well. "You thought that they meant more to you, but they don't. You didn't lose much of yourself when you let them go," Baekhyun soldiers on anyway. He has to make Jongin hear what he has to say.

"But this place," he gestures around the trodden-down manor, "doesn't seem to be significant, does it? It's old, and it's rotten, as much as it is beautiful." He pauses, free hand absentmindedly drawing patterns into Jongin's ribs as he tries to formulate the best way to articulate the thoughts ravaging through his mind. "It's also forgotten. That memory, of your mother, when she was last happy, or at least made an effort to be..... it's precious to you, but you don't notice it. Because that was also the last time you made an effort for her."

Jongin gulps, a little queasy as he stays still in his spot.

"Then you started blaming her for everything. Jongin-ah. For leaving your dad, for her depression, for yours. You were angry and disappointed. You gave up on her." Baekhyun nuzzles his nose into the juncture where Jongin's ear meets his jaw to soften the venom of his words, but it doesn't help. It hits Jongin like an arrow through his heart.

".....I didn't mean to."

"I'm not saying you did. People do stupid things, and you were so young." He arranges them around so that he could look straight into Jongin's eyes as he says, "but it affected every little thing in you do afterwards, didn't it? Your career, your decisions, your relationships. How you dealt with the accident. All of them."

When he catches on to what the other is trying to say, Jongin jolts away from the warmth of Baekhyun's hands cupping his cheeks. "You mean I might wake up in the morning not remembering anything at all?"

"I don't know, Jongin-ah," Baekhyun says, tears welling up in his eyes now. "I'm so sorry. I didn't want this for you."

Jongin feels oddly at peace despite the gravity of this revelation. He's much more worried because Baekhyun looks so sad, and that's not something that should ever happen. As he hugs him calm, he realizes that maybe he's always known it'd come to this, from that moment when he let Baekhyun whisk him away to the planes a second time around.

He became a shell of himself, Yixing's voice resonates in his head. One day he never came back.

Then again, why does it matter, he thinks, thumbing the tears away from Baekhyun's cheeks, when he's stopped truly going back for a while now. "It's not your fault," Jongin whispers gently. "You tried to make me stay away, didn't you?"

"I didn't really try at all—"

"Baekhyun, stop. As long as I remember you, I'm good. I won't forget you, would I? I started projecting to save myself, not for my mother, not to please anyone else."

"Jongin—"

Baekhyun shuts up when Jongin kisses him, soft but forceful, as if pressing his lips against Baekhyun's could push the message through. "As long as I know you'll always be there whenever I shut my eyes close, I'll be okay," Jongin mumbles into his mouth. "I'll be fine."

He had thought about it once, twice.

How it would be to opt out. To take control of your own life by simply tossing it away.

The first time had come sooner than he thought it would. He had been on a solitary hike, his physio-coach having taken the day off. Usually, Luhan would be loud enough for the both of them, making up for Jongin's silent pensiveness with his chatty banter throughout their session.

It had been different that day. The mountain was eerily quiet. Scarcely did Jongin encounter another person on the paths. He surpassed the little cafe on the way uphill, but not without much difficulty. The rigidity of the metal rod inside his leg constrained his movements greatly. Jongin could have pulled his hair out in frustration, but quietly surged through anyway, heading straight for the summit.

Standing on the observation deck looking down at greater Seoul, he couldn't help but feel so small. He wondered briefly what would happen if he climbed over the barrier and just kept on going until there was no ground underneath his feet, only air and weightlessness surrounding him before it all ends. The idea was there one second, and then it wasn't. He snapped out of it quickly. Get a grip, Kim Jongin, he'd berated himself. He descended the hill on shaky legs, the negative voices blaring in his head more prominent then than they have ever been.

They only grew more vicious as time went by, but eventually tapered out due to the load of assery hurled his way soon after. Inoccupation is the devils's playground after all, and college had afforded no such thing. Jongin became one of those odd ones who actually asked for extra assignments, preferring to toil away as they kept his demons at bay. He thinks something good must have happened to him around then as well. He vaguely recalls being truly happy, at least for a while. Reconnecting the now missing pieces of his memory, Jongin reckons that this something had been a someone instead. Chanyeol, the guy from the bar.

But the end of their relationship must have thrown Jongin out of his loop once more.

He found his way to Naksan one day, alone. It was late evening, nary a person left on the beach. Jongin's never been keen on swimming, but the water had looked especially inviting. It was cold, so cold. His heart worked overtime, trying to pump warmth through him to compensate. He didn't care. He only wanted fast relief. He waded out, eyes focused on nothing and everything.

The sting of salt rushing into his nostrils and down his throat returned him to reality. Jongin swum back, waist protesting at every . Washing ashore, oxygen burning his lungs again, Jongin began sobbing. He couldn't see how he would be able to go on from there, and yet he couldn't bring himself to walk out through the gaping exit door either.

Holding Baekhyun close now, Jongin wonders if that had been his rock bottom. Yes, he decides as he breathes in Baekhyun's sea-scented hair. It most certainly has.

"How did you get here anyway?" Baekhyun murmurs, temporarily putting a stop to his nibbling at Jongin's ear.

They're sprawled on the floor of the studio, Baekhyun leaning over him, panting heavily from too much kissing and not enough breathing. The sun outside has almost set, only its top curve still visible over the horizon. This means that Jongin only has a few more moments with Baekhyun before the sun rises in his real world, and he has to wake up.

Jongin whines as Baekhyun moves to get off him, ends up receiving an annoyed look in return. "Fine," he sighs. He turns to his side to face Baekhyun head on as the guy props his head on an arm. If he wants to talk they'll talk. "It was pretty easy. There's not a lot of info on Naver, so I googled it."

Baekhyun blinks at him like he's talking gibberish. "What the hell is a Naver and a google?"

"You don't know?" Jongin realizes that there's still so much to Baekhyun's mystery that he has yet to uncover. "How long have you been here again?"

"I told you," Baekhyun snipes. "It's been too long. It feels like forever." He moves to snuggle into Jongin's chest. "I'm mad at you. You didn't listen to me when I told you to not come around here anymore," he lies. "But thanks for finding a way back to me."

Jongin hopes Baekhyun doesn't go deaf over the sound of his heart trying to thump right out of his chest. "Actually," he talks loudly, as if it would somewhat tamper with the racing of his heartbeat. "I just needed to lie down in a circle in the middle of the floor and light candles around me. So no biggie."

Baekhyun laughs but that doesn't stop him from throwing a punch into Jongin's guts either. "That's all you did?"

"Well, sort of," Jongin frowns. He fiddles with Baekhyun's cord as he tries to recall what exactly he went through right before he found himself in the planes again. It's a solid gray already, Jongin marvels absentmindedly, eyes trailing to where the cord ends. And so long. "Took me a few tries to get it right. But after I concentrated on what I really wanted, it worked."

"And what was that?"

Jongin nearly rolls his eyes. Shouldn't the answer be obvious? "Of course it was you," he says, kissing the apple of Baekhyun's cheek. "Why do you think I keep coming back here? I love you. I'll always want to see you—"

"—don't say that, it's like you forgot what I'm doing to you—"

"—no. Baekhyun," Jongin croaks out. Suddenly there's something lodged in his throat and a heavy weight at the bottom of his stomach and he thinks if he doesn't say everything he has to he might throw up. "This is something you must hear." He kisses Baekhyun again, like it would help steady himself before he speaks. "You were wrong about something. You said that there were no such things as happy memories because they all end badly. How could that be right when you've been nothing but exactly that for me? You're the only memory I need Baek—"

There's a flash of panic in his eyes before Baekhyun shushes Jongin with his fingers. "Don't jinx it," he says, then proceeds to shut Jongin up with his mouth instead.

The words left on his tongue turn into a whimper when Baekhyun on his bottom lip, canines grazing the sensitive skin just beneath it. Baekhyun regains his previous position, thighs straddling Jongin's narrow waist as he bites down hard enough to hurt. When Jongin lets outs a little sound of protest from the sting, he chuckles, the sore spot and breathes a sorry into his mouth, fingertips running softly right above the quickening of Jongin's pulse.

He wants to do so much more. Jongin wants to take Baekhyun out for a date, to a movie he would scoff at and an expensive dinner he would reprimand Jongin for making him eat, when they could have ten better meals at a pojangmacha somewhere. Jongin wants to dance with Baekhyun whenever they please, without time constraints. He wants to introduce Baekhyun to his friends, watch him win them over too. Or not.

And yes, Jongin wants to do this too, stick his hand down Baekhyun's pants, but the other retreats before he could. He follows Baekhyun's gaze out of the window to see the last vestiges of the sun disappear into the swell of the mountains in the distance.

"You have to go now."

"No, no, not yet," he protests even as he feels the tug that'd bring him back to reality around his waist, fingers grasping Baekhyun's shirt to wrench him down.

Baekhyun disentangles them gently, swoops in for a final lingering kiss. "I'll do the same for you too, you know," he whispers, forehead resting against Jongin's. "I'll always try to find my way back to you." When he pulls away slightly, Jongin catches his own reflection in Baekhyun's eyes. They're a little too shiny, on the verge of spilling tears. Jongin opens his mouth to ask why, but Baekhyun's already telling him to go.

"I'll be here next time. Now leave," he orders.

"That's a promise, right? I'll hold you to that," Jongin says, grasp still tight around Baekhyun's slender hands. "You're not lying to me again, are you," he half- jokes.

There's a short pregnant pause where there were no answers said, and then Baekhyun breaks into a weak smile. "Of course I'm not. And Jongin-ah.... I love you. So much."

Jongin's drifting off too quickly for him to notice tear rolling down Baekhyun's cheek, but he could never have missed the last words Baekhyun had uttered right into his ear before his body reclaims his soul.

"That will never be a lie."

Consciousness invades slowly, at a snail's pace at best. The shapes and slopes on Baekhyun's face, assembled from billions of pixels floating around in the darkness of his tightly shut eyes, puts a dopey smile on Jongin's mouth, even as the picture disappears once he opens them to let light enter.

Jongin lies there staring at the ceiling for a while. A foreign sort of weight crawls over his chest. It's heavy and light at the same time; heavy enough to tell him that there's nothing he needs to be chasing, and light enough to tell him to be carefree to attempt whatever he wants to today. He thinks it might just be contentment.

He drags himself off the floor, wax puddling around the melted candles caking into its wooden surface. The shower is cold when he gets under it, the freezing temperature knocking the drowsiness right out of him. Baekhyun's voice resound again and again in his head as he becomes fully awake, that I love you pushing him into a lovesick daze throughout a breakfast of dry toast.

It's after he has stepped out of his apartment that something felt off.

Before he knows what he's doing, Jongin finds himself looking up at a tall building in the middle of downtown Seoul. He doesn't know how he got there and why. Isn't he supposed to be at the dance studio? People heading in notice him gawking, gives him a quizzical look as if to say are you just gonna stand there and not go in? Some throw a nod his way. He nods back to be polite. He has no idea who they are. He backs away slowly, treading off in the opposite direction wanting to get away.

The pain catches him off guard.

It begins with pricks at the base of his left foot, like a swarm of red ants are digging into the skin there. Then Jongin realizes the sharp searing pain zapping through the leg and constricting his waist. It's too strong too unexpectedly. Jongin feels like he's being cut in half by a thread tied around his waist, so fine the force under it becomes all the more prominent.

His vision blurs from the overload on his senses, the sidewalk disintegrating into a mass of putrid gray. He tries to keep on walking, but the impertinent throb of a pulse against his temple and everywhere that hurts becomes too much after a while. He drops to the ground.

"Jongin?" A voice cuts through the thick haze of his mind. An old lady's peering down at him, concerned. "Is that really you? What are you doing, are you okay?"

Her face is a familiar one, albeit more aged than what Jongin remembers. She's an ajumma he knew as a child who has the unit several doors down. "My head hurts," he answers.

"Oh dear," she exclaims. "Who should I call to help you—"

"Can you just get my mo—"

"You haven't been here in years—"

"Huh—"

"Where do you live now? Should I get someone to send you back?"

He looks around. To say he's confused is an understatement. Isn't this where they live?

"Since your mother..... well, since that accident, I haven't heard a peep about you."

And it hurts so much, too much, the good feelings from this morning completely gone. But suddenly he registers that he isn't where he'd started off from this morning, that he hasn't lived in this neighbourhood for ages, that it's ridiculous to ask for his mother because—

Jongin stands back up abruptly. He sprints away despite the ajumma yelling at him to come back. He goes whichever way his legs dictate him to. They move on autopilot, the mode Jongin has been in all day. It's a miracle that he manages to, but eventually he reaches home. He slumps back onto bed, head dizzy and spinning off its center.

Days after the planes have never hit him this hard. Usually it's mild, like an incessant ticking of a clock against his skull. But today it's horrible, a million toy monkeys banging their cymbals together within. He thinks he has forgotten a tonne. Whatever memory the planes had taken from him must be monumental.

His phone is vibrating against the ridged surface of the side table. He grapples for it, reading through the messages, eyes bleary through the brightness of the screen.

Jesus. He has had sixteen messages. Most are from Taemin, the rest from Sehun. They all seem to run on a similar theme, asking him why their calls have gone unanswered. Jongin lets his hand go lax, the phone slipping out and tumbling down onto the carpeted floor below. The throbbing of his head resumes with a vengeance because try as he might he has no clue who the these people are.

It's frustrating, and he's scared. He curls into himself, knees tucked against chest, willing Baekhyun to just appear and kiss the pain away in that way only he is able to. But Baekhyun isn't here, could never be.

He needs to go back to the planes. He needs to go now.

The clock on the wall says it's barely 4 o'clock. Outside the late summer sun is still high up in the sky, sweltering the city in a searing heat.

It might be too early. He doesn't care.

As he settles into the roughly-drawn circle of his astral projection ritual, eyes closing around an image of Baekhyun behind his eyelids, Jongin wills himself to be wherever the other is.

Maybe this time he doesn't ever have to wake up again.

Jongin grabs the rope dangling from a one of the house's wooden stilts, hauls himself up onto the raised platform. He sighs in relief the second his foot frees of the sludge below. Decaying matter sticks to his hand when he braces a hand against the stilt for leverage to stand up, observing the ripples he had left behind in the tar settling and solidifying right before his eyes. That doesn't stop him from feeling almost giddy as he turns around to head for the door. Baekhyun's waiting for me, he surmises, grinning from ear to ear like the idiot he's become.

Yet he couldn't ignore that niggling feeling that this was the most brutal the planes have been.

He had projected into the planes neck-deep in the foul stuff. It surprised him so much he had dunked his head under, the slime filling his nostrils and slithering down to his throat. It tasted as rotten as it looked. But the more he fought back, the more viscous the substance became. Jongin surfaced slowly, wiped his face clean, saw the house standing afloat on the sea of black some distance ahead.

It took him ages. The wade was slow. His body cuts through the sludge, but with every step he takes the thick liquid gels around him, the force encasing his body compressing his lungs enough to make it hard for him to breathe.

And it should have served as a warning to Jongin, that whatever's awaiting him may not be worth the struggle. The thing about the planes is that it is cruel, but only to those who choose to play its game. These tricks it plays is not to hinder from the reaping of a reward. It's to deter from the makings of a mistake. Maybe the darkness around him symbolizes what lies in store for him should he choose to grit through.

But if love is oxygen, trust is nitrogen. Together they're nitrous oxide, laughing gas, lulling a person into misplaced sense of security. For someone like Jongin who is already too strung up on it, it's all the worse.

By the time he opened the door to find a sandy beach underneath his feet, it was already too late.

Baekhyun didn't lie. He kept his promise.

He was there watching as the very last piece of Jongin is taken away. Stood in the corner, helplessly looking on as the door of the dingy house — a resplendent villa once — is pulled ajar, and a harried if not enthusiastic Jongin entered.

The wind picked up the fine sand beneath their feet, blowing some across Jongin's confused face.

It started then.

A child, maybe eight, the beginnings of handsome already etched into his features, gingerly skips along the beach, a ballet step or two in between. He is alone. A lady some distance down keeps an eye over him, but she seemed much further away, lost in her own thoughts.

"Ouch," the boy shouts, clutching his foot. He stepped on a rock. It is blunt, but it hurt anyway. He thinks he might cry, but chooses to be angry instead, bending down to pick it up so that he could hurl it into the depths of the ocean.

But as he does, he realizes that it's not just one rock. It's a trail of them. He follows them out of curiosity, like Hansel and Gretel through a trail of pebbles.

And then he finds a haven.

The shale is small, enclosed by a large rock, concave and overhanging, as if meticulously carved out by years of crashing waves. Many smaller ones are scattered within, large enough for the boy to sit on. It's so quiet here. Just him, the sounds of the sea, and his thoughts. Nobody seemed to have been here. There are no traces of human inhabitation anywhere, unlike the open beach just a few steps and jumps away.

Little Jongin hopes in his little heart that he'll never have to share it with anyone.

It was difficult for Baekhyun to look at his Jongin then, the Jongin standing in stupor near the door. Baekhyun could see the realization dawning on his beautiful face, that he'll lose this, all of it. It washes over him like a tidal wave, the thought that he would forget nearly everything about this place and all it encompasses in the morning, save for wisps of remembrance that never amounts to anything. The happy, sad, lonely, desperate times. Those nights he had spent with Baekhyun on him and around him and clouding his senses so much there is only utter bliss surrounding him.

Baekhyun wrenches his gaze away as Jongin breaks down, a complete mess. He couldn't bring himself to hear the anguished screams and sobs, couldn't watch Jongin in pain because of what he's inflicted upon him, couldn't bear to think what would happen to him from tomorrow onwards.

So he turns around, the silver cord around him burning through his skin as he feels that subtle tug around his waist. He lets his soul be dragged to wherever, only one thing left on his mind.

He'll spend all his life trying to make it up to Jongin, even if it kills him.

Time is but a non-entity for him, but Jongin's tired of it. He has been wandering for far too long.

He has seen things up here in the planes. Different realms have different purposes, but they all share one thing in common: they play with human emotion. One thrives off of fear. Another eventuates the deepest desires of men. There are those that toy with hope and lust and grief, amongst others that manipulates shame and anticipation.

For all that he knows, the one he belongs to is by far the most sinister. Jongin has seen, as he looked on whenever one of the others like him catches onto a prey, that it plays on every point of the emotions spectrum. Here memories are returned to the person temporarily, before they are completely stripped off of it. Memories make a person. To reminisce about them is to keep a sense of being — losing even one means losing a part of your self.

Most suffer from the very beginning, at the lowest tier. They know nothing good will ever come of it. These are those who end up never making a second trip. Jongin knows that they are the wise ones, and to a greater extent, the lucky ones. The rest are travelers, dreamers, already too broken at the starting line to find the suffering the planes offer them off-putting. These are the ones who relish in the reprieve the relinquishing of a memory gives them. Every time they do, a part of their soul escapes too. But they keep on coming back anyway, until eventually they're left with none.

It is heartless. But it is out of need that his kind do what they do.

Rebirth is definitely not the route most of them would accept. Having to live again is never supposed to be the choice, not when the reason they got here was exactly because they had been so tired of living.

That had been the case for Jongin too. He barely remembers the details of his past life, but whenever he tries to the heaviest weight drops over his heart, engulfing it in the deepest black of dark. He never thought he would ever yearn to be alive again. And yet years of being stuck between the astral world and the planes changes that. It's the only way out, Jongin thinks.

He has valiantly resisted his occupation for so long, spent years bypassing countless travelers and deviating them away from a despicable fate. But lately even he is warming up to the idea. He knows he's getting weaker, could feel it in his bones, despite his efforts at conserving his energy by avoiding descent into the astral world below until very recently.

The past few nights have been unfruitful, however. Seldom does he encounter anyone in any of the locales he's been drawn to. There wasn't a single soul along the mountain paths, nor were there unassuming travelers roaming the streets of this foreign-looking city he has been unconsciously frequenting.

Jongin thinks he ought to give up after several nights of failing to latch on to a potential victim. The sole traveler he'd seen entering the dance studio didn't feel quite right. He'd been too... alive, and these are never the type to fall for the ploys of his kind. They're too well armored, secure in the real world, just projecting for kicks. Not lost and without an anchor like those who are most vulnerable.

Might as well, he figures. Maybe this is the way it's meant to be.

Waves breaking onto the beach push sand in between his toes. This is his favourite place to be. He couldn't explain why he has such an attachment to it. Especially when, if he just wastes his time away here, perched upon this lichen covered rock he's claimed as his own, he wouldn't be accomplishing any of his goals at all. No one ever comes by.

Here is as lonely as lonely gets. The solitude is a welcomed friend, even as he could feel the palpable draining of his being with every sunrise he watches over the emerald green sea. His days are numbered. What comes next is anybody's guess, but he reckons he's as ready as he'll ever be.

Maybe hell or whatever would be best.

"Hello."

Jongin nearly jumps out of his skin from surprise, hands scrambling for purchase on the slippery rock.

"I'm sorry. Did I scare you?"

He's pretty sure he's gaping quite unbecomingly at the boy. Jongin does what he's been told to do by the elders of his kind; he scrutinizes the cord around the traveler's waist first. It's silver and gleaming under the pearlescent moonlight, the end nowhere in sight, a stark contrast to his own black and stubbed cord. He's alive, Jongin marvels, then asks stupidly, "you can see me?"

The boy rolls his eyes but laughs all the same. "What do you think?" He chuckles again, tinkly and light. He takes a step forward. "I'm Baekhyun."

And it stabs Jongin's non-existent heart in a savage way, but not just because the night's tiny lights seem to converge to hang around him. It's that name. It throws Jongin off the rocker for some goddamn reason, knocks him out dizzy. He shakes the outstretched hand anyway in his daze. "Jongin."

This Baekhyun doesn't let go of Jongin's hand once it goes lax. Instead he holds on to it gently, a smile gentler still on his lips. He mutters something under his breath Jongin can't quite catch, but he thinks it was an I know. He opens his mouth to ask, probably a what do you mean, but Baekhyun beats him to it. "Do you come around here a lot?"

"Isn't that what I should ask you?" says Jongin snappily, regaining his ability to speak. He may have been too harsh. Baekhyun retrieves his hand away. Jongin's fingers flex involuntarily then, as if wanting to capture it back. He shakes his head to clear that thought out. "How did you know this place?"

Baekhyun just stares at him, the ghost of his smile from before still there on his pretty face. Jongin would have shaken his head again then because he reckons he's ing losing it, if Baekhyun hadn't chosen that moment to move nearer. "Some places you never forget, someone told me. Or rather," he says quietly, voice nothing more than a whisper, "I think I heard it from somewhere." Two more steps forward and they'll be chest to chest.

"What are you doing," Jongin blurts when Baekhyun touches the frayed end of the black cord around his waist. The nerve in this one, Jongin screams in his head. Baekhyun keeps on twirling the finer threads of the severed rope between the pads of his fingers, oblivious to the other's furious disbelief. "Stop that," Jongin warns. He grips the boy's slender wrist tightly. "Don't you know who I am?"

There is a split second where Jongin thinks he has done it. He's definitely scared this traveler off too, if the fearful frown forming between his eyebrows is any indication. It isn't that difficult. Jongin has had plenty of experience. The sight of his vermillion eyes flashing usually does the job, easy peasy.

But he must have misconstrued the whole situation completely, because Baekhyun just encroaches further into Jongin's personal space, imprisoned hand moving up to splay across his chest. "You do know, that it's so easy to tell.... what you are." Baekhyun is so close now. Jongin could feel his light breathing fanning across his cheeks as he speaks. "Apart from the obvious." He runs an index through the cord again to prove a point, brings his free hand up to cup Jongin's cheek.

It is such a tentative touch, almost as if he's afraid that Jongin would break, or as if Jongin's a projection that would dissipate if approached too carelessly. It surprises Jongin, because Baekhyun has been nothing but overconfident since his hello. What throws him off even more is that when he looks, really looks into the boy's eyes, it's teary. The grip he has around Baekhyun's wrist slacks open. Baekhyun has his other hand fluttering up to trace similar touches on Jongin's face in an instant. Jongin doesn't understand why Baekhyun's gaze is so... fond. He also doesn't understand why he feels as if he's been in this position before and with this very same person?

"The other thing is you have this look on your face."

This conversation too.

"Like I'm meant to find you."

And again, he doesn't understand why he isn't already running away from this odd traveler, because he's definitely.... heard this before. Oh gods. What if this boy is a demon?

But then again, he thinks, as Baekhyun says his name. His eyes have not left Jongin's once, even as tears spill out of their corners. "I missed you," he murmurs.

Maybe I don't want to understand.

"So Jongin-ah," Baekhyun repeats, almost in a sob around his words. "What if you let me help you remember?"