After that cold Monday morning, Luhan came to hate words on paper. 

The letter that came in that cold Monday morning took him away from his parents, his warm house, his friends and generally everything that he had known until then.

Why was he needed in a mission of that content anyway? He was never good at sports, maybe expect basketball. He was afraid of the harsh face of nature: he cringed away at the sight of a mere bug, he didn't like it when it rained or when it was too cold or when it was too hot or too humid. The only thing that mattered to him was being stable and calm in all forms. His 22 years on the planet had not prepared him for what he was going to face.

His favorite ripped pair of jeans and pastel colored t-shirts got replaced with a khaki uniform. His favorite necklace got replaced with a dog tag ( "Just so they can identify my body after I die" Luhan had said to himself when he saw it) and his mp3 and headphones, items that he would never leave the house without, got replaced with a heavy machine gun that he would never truly master using. He learnt the hard way that it was another item that he should never leave the unit without.

Music was something that he was really interested in. He would always get lost when he was strumming his guitar, his sweet and sour voice accompanying the melody. Even if he was rather smart and his parents pressured him to follow a more sure career, singing and making music in general was his dream.

The army didn't allow any musical instruments in the camp, though. Or any other means of self-expressement whatsoever.

The routine was killing him slowly. Waking up before the sun creeped out behind the mountains, training until his legs couldn't carry his weight (which was slowly but steadily decreasing), then eating lunch (a title that Luhan thought as an overstatement for that one scoop of goo each one of them got), then exploring the unknown parts of the forest until the first hours of the next day and finally going back to the camp and sleeping for just few hours.

When the various TV programs started talking about how the army finally managed to enter the forest at the eastern part of the country, he found himself feeling proud over the achievement. They were trying to do that for more than ten years but the native people and creatures were fighting with all their might to keep their so loved, pure forest out of the civilized man's hands. That was rather admirable, too, if one thought that the army used high technological weapons and the natives used rocks and wooden sticks.

The forest kept more secrets than the generals estimated though, and the people in the army were not enough. Adding to this, there was also a minimum of five deaths per day, as the natives expressed their dislike towards the abrupt invasion. Thus, recruiting the younger males of the country was the only solution. If one was against going to the camp and helping his country, he was simply declared a deserter and was forced to leave the country.

Most of the guys in his unit were at the same age with him. Even if the lights were turned off right after they arrived back at the camp from the forest patrols and they were ordered to sleep immediately, they always found a way to chat for a while before they close their eyes to rest. This happened more frequently in the first few weeks that they started their service. As the weeks passed, one after another, they all found themselves caving under the extreme level of fatigue. 

Luhan got to know a lot of thing about them. One of the older guys there, barely 28 years old, was about to get married when his letter came. Another one got his letter on the day of his 21st birthday.Another one, got his on the day of his son's second birthday. Another one got his just a couple days after his father passed away.

It surely wasn't the best thing to do in a situation like that but he made good friends anyway. Shixun, although being very young, turned out to be a great listener. He must had it a lot worse than the rest of them, as his parents were not from that country. However, since he was born there he was seen as a normal citizen and he had to do whatever his rulers told him. Yixing was also a very good guy that turned out to be a great friend of his. He was carefree and a little absent minded most of the time, but he was completely harmless, a characteristic that Luhan considered as both bad and good (but mostly bad under the current situation).

The only bad thing with bonding with his fellow soldiers was that not all of them came back from the patrols. No one of them mourned for the lost ones but that didn't mean that he was apathetic over the fact that someone had just lost his life fighting for something he originally didn't want to fight for. Getting all worked up wouldn't be any help, though, and that's why no one ever voiced out their frustration.

The government didn't care about either them or the people they left behind. Each and every one of them had a future in front of him. Some of them had already started a family or had simply found the one who they want to spend the rest of their lives with. Some of them had sick parents to take care of. Some of them had dreams and plans of going to university to pursue their dream career. None of these mattered anymore though.

After every Friday lunchtime, Luhan came to hate words on paper more and more.

Friday was mail day and his mother didn't miss any of them. She would write to him, telling him how much she and his father missed him, how things weren't the same after his departure, how she hoped that all these would stop soon and she would be so happy to get him into her arms, how she prayed every night about his well being and health. 

He never replied to any of these letters. He didn't like imagining his mother being sad (probably even depressed) and crying because he had to serve his country by force. He knew that by not replying he was most probably making the whole situation worse but he just couldn't bring himself to raise his hand and write these reassuring words he so badly wanted to tell her. He didn't want to lie to her.

Hours turned into days, days turned into weeks, weeks turned into months and in the blink of an eye he found himself serving that stupid cause for a year and a half. Even after all that time, no one knew when they would be able to leave that god forgotten place.

He had to admit, though, that the forest was such a charming place. It seemed that every tree and flower had it's own story to tell. Every corner was full of surprises and he wanted to somehow experience each and every one of them. He wanted to stay there, in the pure and rough environment of the forest rather than go back to the unit.

The trees were tall. A lot taller than the trees that one would normally see around the rest of the country. Somehow the grass seemed greener and he could swear that there wasn't another place on the planet that had such a vast variety of colored flowers. They had every shade of blue, yellow, orange, red, pink, purple and the purest of white.

As the sun rays danced between the leaves and came into contact with the small water droplets, he would see small rainbows forming and a smile would always creep its way out of his firm and serious expression. The view was almost magical. Although it was a silly habit, whenever they were patrolling the forest, he would look around in hopes of seeing a fairy or some other kind of magical creature. He never quite saw one.

Sometimes, he caught himself thinking of how lucky he would be to die in a place like that. 

Ever since Yixing didn't come back after one of the patrols, he stopped thinking about dying once and for all.

And then he started thinking about living. Living to the fullest. Living with no regrets. Living because he earned it and he deserved it. Living because someone else depended on his heartbeat. Living because someone changed his point of view and made him realize that life is beautiful and a lot of people, like Yixing, didn't get the chance to enjoy it as much as they originally should.

His unit's free time was three hours every Sunday evening. Most of the soldiers chose to use that time to rest, charging up on days of precious, lost sleep, but Luhan didn't like spending a lot of time inside that small grey room. 

Their unit was the one closest ones to the fence that separated the civilized army base with the forest. Most of that fence was made out of concrete and it looked very stable and firm. Every few meters, though, there were small openings, covered with thick wire which had sharp edges, letting the soldiers look at the beautiful view but preventing them from coming in contact with it.

Every Sunday evening, on their free time, he would find a different opening in the fence and he would sit down on the hard ground, blindly staring at the small part of the forest that it revealed. He found it so peaceful, just sitting there while thinking about nothing, while having no worries about the things that would come or about the things that were long gone and forgotten.

On the fifth time he sat in front of an opening, his eyes met another pair on the other side of the fence, hiding among the tall plants. They were staring straight into his eyes. Their edges were sharp and their color was dark as the night. After a good minute of just focusing on the enchanting, small, black orbs , Luhan allowed his eyes to wander downwards. He saw a delicate nose decorated with freckles of all sizes, a pair of pink cheeks, a set of high cheekbones and full, plump lips slightly parted to show confusion.

That lovely face belonged to a girl. A native girl from the forest. A native girl from the forest that shouldn't be so close to the fence. A native girl from the forest that was in great danger for coming so close to the fence. He wanted to somehow make her go away, make her leave so she could be safe. However, he was so amazed by her appearance and courage that he couldn't bring himself to move. 

He had killed before. He had killed one of her kind. Only once. Only because his life was on the line. He had promised to himself that he wasn't going to do such thing again, even if it meant that he would be the one to die. His conscience was guilty about his actions, so he wanted to save her no matter what. Maybe that way he could feel a little better about himself.

She was standing straight behind a tall tree. Her small posture made her seem so vulnerable and petite, but the fact that she was in front of him showed of how brave she was. She was wearing just enough to cover her private parts and there were strange patterns drawn with some kind of paint all over her arms and legs. The wind was blowing her long, black hair away from her face and he could see clearly her smooth complexion.

Her stay there was caught short though, because a gunshot was heard and she ran off back into the forest. 

It would be an understatement to say that Luhan the least enchanted. Every night since their encounter, he would see her in his sleep,  just standing there behind the tree watching every move of his without making a single sound. He only told Shixun about what he saw but the younger male only laughed at him, telling him that it was only a trick of the eye.

On the next Sunday and the one after that and the one after that, Luhan sat at the same opening of the fence, the one on the furthest end of the camp, and she was there, looking at him without moving closer or further from her original spot behind the tree. He would study her posture, her moves, how her chest would rise and fall as she inhaled and exhaled, how her long lashes hugged her eyes as she blinked, how her lips always remained slightly open no matter how long she was standing there in front of him.

As the weeks passed, he started talking to her, his voice always not higher than a whisper, calling her to come closer. After the first time, he understood that she clearly didn't get the words he spoke so he started using body language to make her understand. She seemed reluctant to move at first but she took a step closer every time they met until she finally got at arm reach, if only there wasn't the fence.

Ever since that, she would always be positioned close to the fence before he got there. He tried talking to her some more but she only blinked at his words, showing him that she was not familiar with his language. On the other hand, she never tried talking to him in her language or mimicking the sounds that came out his mouth. The only thing he managed to teach her was his name and it took him more than three months to do so. He had to repeat his name a million times for her to grasp the feeling of it.

However, the moment she voiced out his name for the first time, he found himself caught in the spell of her voice. There were not enough words to describe how it sounded. All he could say for sure was that he would never be able to forget the sound of it. He slowly started getting more and more into that nameless, native girl from the forest and he somehow was more than okay with it.

Thoughts such as 'what will happen if one of the supervisors finds us here?' or 'what if we come face to face while I'm patrolling the forest and I'm ordered to kill her or capture her?' were torturing him during the rest six days of the week, but on Sundays he couldn't bring himself to think of the possible dangers that their encounters could bring.

She let him touch her hand after eight months of being around him. He added the tingling feeling to the list of things that he would never forget.

Two years after stepping his foot in the camp, Luhan came to love words on paper.

He would secretly take the paper they gave them for the letters and he would tear it apart into small pieces, writing his name onto every single one of them. In some of them he even wrote "我爱你" in the most clear characters he could manage.  Every time he met her, he would pass them to her over the fence. He wasn't sure about why he was doing that, but he found it comforting to watch her holding the small white shreds of paper in her hand. It looked like he mattered in her life and that she trusted him enough to let him guide her.

One rainy Sunday, he sat in front of the opening and after kissing the paper with a declaration of love on it, he passed it to her, hoping that just like every other time she would follow his lead and do the same. 

When the small piece came into contact with her fingers, she let it drop on the wet ground and ran like her life depended on it. 

Luhan was more than confused, but he couldn't bring himself to regret his actions. That was the way he felt and he wanted her to know. He wanted her to accept him the way he accepted her. Accept the fact that he loved her even though they would never be together, even though they had never had a proper converstaion, even though it was his kind that brought all the pain and disaster in her life.

She didn't come to opening for two more Sundays and he started worrying. Worrying more about her being dead or injured and in need for help and less about her being mad at him or offended by his actions. When she did come back to the opening, she had a huge bruise on her left cheek and a piece of white paper in her hands.

It was one of the rare times that Luhan had arrived at their secret meeting spot before her. She approached him with slow but steady steps and sat down in front of him in the same manner. After a few minutes of just staring at him, she raised the paper to and pressed her lips on it. She then proceeded to pass the paper to Luhan and after calling his name once, she got up and entered the forest, slowly, without turning her head to look at him as she was leaving. 

Immediately after taking the paper in his hands he pressed it on his mouth too, trying to imagine the feeling of her lips rather that the rough surface. He didn't know why but it felt a lot like a closure and he didn't quite like it. He wanted to scream, to call for her to not leave, to tell her how much he loved her, to ask her if he was the reason behind the purple and black colors on her cheek (even though he almost knew the answer to the last one).

Luhan died at age 25. He had served his country for three years, 8 months and 15 days before leaving his last breath on one of the cold hospital beds of the infirmary in the military camp. His friend Shixun (maybe his only living friend in the whole camp), was holding his hand, as he struggled to breathe, struggled getting the precious oxygen in his lungs. An arrow pierced in the right side of his torso, though, was making the usually easy and mindless action, a lot more difficult and after some time, completely impossible.

Through his blurred vision, he could see people wearing white robes, running back and forth, rushing and doing all they could to keep him alive. He wanted to tell them to stop. He was a lost cause and he would appreciate it if they just let him leave the world that had caused him so much pain.

A few moments before his heart stopped beating he thought of the ones he would leave behind. His parents and the rest of his family, the soldiers in the unit, Shixun, her. His mind stopped when he thought of her. Would she still be alive or would he meat her in heaven (if he ended up there anyway, he never really believed in God)? A small smile formed onto his lips and he closed his eyes, enjoying how light he felt as the clock counted backwards to the cease of his existence.

After his death, Luhan came to love words written on stone the most (even though his mother really hates them).