Grief jumps out at you when you’re least expecting it.

Dominic Cooper

i.

When Luhan had sat them down in the living room with Yixing knew nothing good was going to come of it. The look on his face was too sad, too tired, too still for Luhan.

“I’m leaving.”

Yixing stared, because he was sure that he had misheard that. Sure that Luhan didn’t mean it. And he looked to the others for reassurance, hoping to see in their eyes the disbelief he felt. All he saw was sadness. Even Chanyeol looked like he might cry. And the silence stretched on and on and Yixing wanted to scream and cry and beg Luhan not to go. But instead he sat while the other members stood and hugged Luhan, while they whispered comforting messages in his ear, Yixing sat. Because his world was crumbling around him and he was just trying to hold the pieces together.

ii.

The night Luhan left was soft and small. The next day all hell broke lose. The company representatives instructing them not to speak to anybody about Luhan, the fans screaming for answers. Through it all Yixing sat quiet and pale. Because Luhan was gone. And he realized he had never needed Luhan more then when he left. The irony made him want to cry.

iii.

Yixing was numb. When he was thirteen he saw a butcher at the market cut off the tip of his index finger. He remembered he had stood frozen and horrified as blood poured out of the wound and the butcher had kept on slicing, unaware of what he had done. Yixing had asked his father later why the man hadn’t felt anything. His father had told him that sometimes your brain can’t process what has happened, so you don’t feel any pain at all. Yixing had never understood that until Luhan left. He realized now that some wounds are too deep to be felt.

iiii.

Luhan was like a hurricane. Because Luhan had been there one day and gone the next and he had torn apart Yixing’s life in the going. And through it all Yixing was silent. Because he had never expected this, and now that he was left to pick up the pieces he wasn’t sure he knew how.