I made Kai come with me to look for him.  We didn't search for very long.  Kai remembered which floor Baekhyun had gotten off on.  My mind was all over the place.  I generated a long list of questions that I wanted to ask him.  I had so much to tell him, so much.

Kai took one side of the hall, and I took the other.  We knocked on doors, apologizing when no one named Baekhyun was present or moving on when no one came to the door.  I reached the end of my side of the hall.  Baekhyun was not there.

I turned and called out, "Kai!"  Only to realize that he was having a conversation with whoever had answered the door.

"Chanyeol." He replied.  I brought myself to the doorway that he had paused at.

"Did you..." I glanced at the person that had answered the door.  He was short, pasty, and sporting black hair.  His lips kind of looked like... a heart.  "Who's this?"

Kai smiled; I knew exactly what that smile meant, "This is..." THE GUY.  IT WAS THE GUY THAT LADY HAD ATTEMPTED TO VIOLATE. (I read that from his eyes).

"Kyungsoo.  Do Kyungsoo." The man replied.  At least I knew what the guy Kai would be mooning over looked like.

"He's Lady's victim."  Kai said, embarrassment and shame drenched his voice.  He didn't need to tell me, I was fairly intuitive.

Anyhow, this was supposed to be about me.  "Oh... Well, we're looking for someone, so if he's not here..." I needed to see Baekhyun.  I just needed Baekhyun.

"Oh, who are you looking for?" Kyungsoo inquired.

"We're looking for my best friend." I knew it wasn't very helpful to say that, but the words had already slipped out of my mouth.

"Does he have a name?" My my, Kai's new crush had some sass in him.  It reminded me of Baekhyun, "I've met a few people on the floor..." He offered.

"Byun Baekhyun."

Kyungsoo turned around and called out, "Baek!"  That was confusing.  He walked further into his apartment, stopping at his couch.

I couldn't quite make out what he was saying.  Suddenly, a head popped into view.  His hands ran through his hair as he stood and made his way to the door, accompanied by Kyungsoo.

It took every ounce of will power that I possessed to stay still.  I had to stop myself from running to him and hugging him and telling him that I loved him.

He hadn't changed much, but his hair had been dyed blond.  He still outlined his eyes with kohl.  He looked fine.  He looked absolutely positively fine.  I don't what I expected him to look like when I found him again, but I thought he would be like me.  I thought that he wouldn't know how to function without me in his life.  I thought half of his heart would be missing with a little note stuck on the empty part that said 'waiting for Chanyeol'.

"Hi." He said simply.

My mind stopped working, I didn't know how to respond.  I could've just returned his salutation, but the words were stuck in my throat.

Kai saw me struggling, and stepped forward to hug Baekhyun.  I was a statue.  To my knowledge, Kai and Baek had never hugged before.  Perhaps it was because my hands were always on Kai in Baek's presence, or that Baek didn't like Kai because... he liked me.

Kai managed to say words before I found mine, "It's so great to see you." He tightened his grip a little before letting go.

"If you guys want to talk, we can catch up later." Baekhyun said.

I was not having any of that.  I just found him after six entire years of being deprived of my best friend.  "Let's catch up now." I pulled him by his wrist.  I didn't even know what I order I wanted to discuss things in.  I wasn't going to wait.

I took him outside of the building, into the freezing cold, snowy park area.

I should've told him to get his jacket. I was just in such a rush to find my words, to talk to him that common sense jumped out of the window.

He glared at me, as I looked him up and down.  It'd been so long, since... anything between us had happened. It was quiet and snow was floating down.  Baekhyun huffed, "Well this has been fun, but I'm going back inside now."

He whipped around to leave me. Again.  The picture was all to familiar, his back receding as I stood there heartbroken.  This wasn't going to happen again.

"Don't." I shouted at him.  Hoping that if I did it loudly enough, he'd understand every connotation of it.  Don't leave me.  Don't be in love with someone else.  Don't be over it, we didn't even have a chance to start.

He turned around furiously and yelled at me, "What is my motivation to stay out here with you, Chanyeol?  It's freezing, the snow is making my hair wet.  I'm going to get sick and so are you.  How on earth is going outside without a jacket on a good idea?  Who even catches up while they're outside during the winter?!"

I cold air into my lungs.  I needed to ask him something, so that I could find the perfect words to say.  So that I could confess everything.  "How are you?"

There were so many feelings loaded into those three words.  I wanted to know everything.  He was still my best friend, he never stopped being my best friend.  Did his heart hurt as much as mine?

Baekhyun laughed bitterly, "Over it."

With two words, two simple words, he shot my heart and hopes down.  I watched him walk away again.  It didn't even matter that I was cold.  I felt empty.

"I'm not." I told the air that had just borne witness to our moment.

The silence was suffocatingly quiet.  It was supposed to turn out differently.  This couldn't be how our story ended.  It was Baekhyun and me, not Baekhyun then me.  Hopes supply scripts for your dreams, at least they did for me.  Dreams of Baekhyun made me feel complete.  Wasn't it fate that brought me back together with Baekhyun?  It was excessively cruel to bring us face to face when there was no hope for us at all.

I sat in my bed that night and thought.  I thought about everything regarding Baekhyun.  Somehow the possibility of Baekhyun not being in love with me never even crossed my mind.  I don't know why I believed we could just pick up where we left off.  I would tell Baekhyun that I loved him, and he would still be in love with me.

There was no way to sever ties with him, it would be like cutting out my heart.  I needed that to function.  Thoughts of losing Baekhyun tortured me until the sun rose.

What the hell was I thinking?  I was not about to give up.  I could never quit Baekhyun.  Even if Baekhyun was over it, I wasn't and I was going to make that known.  Baekhyun wasn't going to leave me again.  I could live with it, live with Baekhyun moving on from what we never were but should've been.  I could live, even if I watched him fall in someone that wasn't me.

The snow had devolved into rain, eroding the winter wonderland outside.  I waited outside the building with an umbrella.  Baekhyun could never remember to carry his umbrella around.  When we were teens, his travel umbrella sat in his room, untouched and practically collecting dust.

It made me giggle to myself when he pushed his way out of the building only to be frozen in place.  He groaned with his body and voice, most likely mentally kicking himself for never carrying his umbrella. He didn't even notice me standing there, under the safety of a clear umbrella.

I cleared my throat.  Baekhyun's head turned and I noticed how puffy his eyes were.  "You never could remember to carry your umbrella."

Baekhyun looked at his feet before speaking, "You don't know me anymore."

"Why won't you let me?" The question slipped past my lips before I could retract it. "We're best friends forever."

"You can't say that.  We haven't spoken in six years." The smile on his face didn't reach his eyes.

"People say that best friends don't need to speak to each other everyday.  Best friends can stop speaking for a long time and pick it back up again like no time has passed at all."  I refrained from saying what I hoped.  Especially when just a few hours ago, he told me that his feelings had changed.

"Maybe we aren't best friends Chanyeol."

Maybe you're my soul mate.  "I'll buy you some ice cream." I walked up to him and offered a smile.

"It's raining right now, freezing rain.  Who says I want ice cream?"

I smiled even wider, showing my teeth and leaned in to whisper, "You're a very complicated person."  I began walking off in the direction of the nearest ice cream parlor.  I stopped to look back at Baekhyun who was standing still with a dumbfounded expression.

"Are you just gonna stand there, or do you want a little bit of protection from the freezing rain?"

I watched Baekhyun consider.  He pursed his lips and scrunched his nose before jogging up next to me under the umbrella.  "You're paying."

I nodded and wrapped my arm around his shoulder. Baekhyun stiffened at turned to look at me.  "Wouldn't want you to get wet."  I lied smoothly.  I just wanted to be to hold him.

a/n: I'm not annoying you guys am I?
SOOOO... (this is the first time Chanyeol has ever been ahead of Baekhyun is terms of story telling~) How'd you guys like it?

--> to the people that called this their favorite fanfic (atm): please marry me. I love you.