Baekhyun had been something constant since karaoke night.

He always hung around Chanyeol, which meant that you often saw him as well. He somewhat became an unofficial member of your circle, always present whenever you, Chanyeol, Jongin, and Kyungsoo went out.

Jongin and Kyungsoo seemed to like him, and you could understand why. Baekhyun was a mood maker—he always knew what to say to make people laugh and he was extremely great at making conversations, among other things. His bright personality made it impossible not to like him; it was impossible for you not to like him.

As the days rolled by, you could feel your heart growing fonder for Baekhyun and it was kind of getting difficult to not make it obvious, not with Kyungsoo giving you a knowing look and a smirk whenever Baekhyun did or said something that flustered you and made you blush.

A perfect example was when Chanyeol was being annoying, showing Baekhyun some video clips from when you played volleyball in college that he somehow dug up from the internet.

“Yeol, put that ing video away or I swear to God I’m gonna fling your phone against the wall,” you said as you buried your face in your hands from embarrassment. “How did you even find a video from four years ago?”

“You’re such a buzzkill,” he complained, rolling his eyes. “What are you so ashamed about? You were an amazing athlete. You almost made it to the national team—” You shot him a look and he stopped. He backtracked, “You were good. Am I not allowed to hype my best friend?”

“I looked ugly back in college,” you glared at him.

Baekhyun snorted. “What the hell are you talking about? If this is your definition of ugly then I don’t know what I was in college,” he said as he leaned in closer to Chanyeol’s phone. “I ing wish I looked this fine.”

Your face burned red after that comment as Kyungsoo kicked you from under the table, a stupid smile plastered on his face.

While remarks like that seemed harmless, it was hard not to think anything of it, especially since it came from Baekhyun. You didn’t want to assume things and think that he was hitting on you, but it was tough to put those thoughts aside because you knew that he wasn’t just someone.

He was your soulmate.

You tried countless times to bring it up to him, to say that you were literally meant for each other, but every single time that even just a sliver of courage would course through you, anxiety replaced it almost immediately.

It didn’t help that your nightmares came back, waking you up in cold sweat every night and making you cry until you couldn’t breathe. You grew more and more restless as the days went on and you weren’t sure until when you could handle this.

But for now, you had to suppress everything that you were feeling because today, you were mentoring Sehun to prepare him for the essay writing contest that he finally agreed to join after weeks of urging him to do it.

“Hi,” Sehun greeted as he opened the front door of his home. A concerned frown replaced his smile as he must have noticed the dark circles under your eyes. “Are you feeling okay?”

“Yes,” you managed a weak smile. “I’m just swamped with work lately,” you lied.

“We could postpone training to another day so you could rest—” He began, but you shook your head immediately.

“I’m completely fine. I just didn’t sleep well last night, but I’m okay.”

Sehun pursed his lips, not entirely convinced. He hesitated for a few moments but eventually let you in, instructing you to leave your shoes at the base of the small stairs that led further into the house and to use the house slippers before going in.

“Are your parents home?”

“Um… no,” he replied. “My older brother’s here but I asked him to leave us alone. We can work in the dining room so I could write on a better table. Can I get you anything, like coffee? You seem more like a tea person, though. How about juice? My brother’s obsessed with healthy juices lately, I could steal you some,” he rambled, and you could tell that he was nervous.

You laughed softly. “I’m okay with water. And I don’t think your brother would appreciate it if you stole some of his juice.”

“Nah, he’ll live with it. He eats my chocolate all the time,” Sehun said with a hint of annoyance, but it was obvious that he had a good relationship with his brother.

Your eyes roamed around the living room, falling on a shelf stocked with family photos. When you were about to examine them more closely, Sehun calls you from the dining room. You tore your eyes away from the picture frames, shaking away the idea that a man in the photos looked vaguely familiar, and you were sure that it wasn’t Sehun.

You started off the training with easy writing exercises, giving Sehun two prompt words and making him write an essay about them based on whatever that crossed his mind. Writing wasn’t the easiest thing to do especially when it was asked to be done on the spot, but Sehun started working on the piece after just a few minutes of brainstorming.

He finished in an amazing time, and as usual, the essay came out great despite the few flaws that you noticed in it. You then gave him harder topics to write about like politics, religion, and philosophy, and after about four writing exercises, you decided that it was time to catch a break.

“Okay, let’s stop here,” you said after complimenting him on another essay. “Let’s take a break for about an hour and then I’ll brief you on how these competitions work, give you some pointers that will help on the contest day, and we’ll run through the things you missed in the essays you just wrote.”

“Finally,” Sehun exhaled as he stretched his arms over his head, obviously tired from writing.

“Go play some video games or something,” you smiled at him as you took out your laptop from your bag. “I’ll catch up on some work in the meantime.”

Sehun’s eyes gleamed at your mention of video games. “Really?”

“Yeah,” you laughed. “But be back here in an hour, okay?”

He was gone faster than you could say, ‘Kids these days.’

It was when you were on the thirty-third slide of the presentation you were preparing for one of your lectures next week that you heard it—the unmistakable sound of a piano playing.

Your hands froze above your laptop’s keyboard, a hundred percent certain that you have heard the melody before. The tune was faint, but it was loud enough for you to hear it in the dining room from wherever it was being played.

You wondered if it was Sehun who was playing, but you never heard of him being musically-inclined, and things like that often traveled fast around school. Out of curiosity, you stood up from where you were sitting and followed the source of the distinctive song.

It was rude to snoop around someone else’s home, but you couldn’t stop your feet from moving to where the music came from because surprisingly, you knew this song. You had to figure out who was behind the piano keys.

The melody led your body to a small corridor. The door at the end of the hall was ajar, light pouring out from the opening, and the tune was now louder and clearer from where you stood. Slowly, you made your way towards it, stopping just in front of the half-open door to peek at whoever was responsible for the beautiful music.

He sat in front of the piano with his eyes closed, his hands traveling across the keyboard and his long, slender fingers skillfully pressing on the black and white keys. He looked utterly blissed and absorbed in the song he was playing, and judging from the way he knew where every note was even with closed eyes, it was obvious that he had played this song countless times.

A change in key in the song somewhat woke you up from the melody’s trance, your brain finally realizing why you knew this song and who you were looking at.

This was the song Moonlight was humming in The Dream.

The pianist was Baekhyun.

But what was he doing here in Sehun’s house?

You slowly entered the room. “B—Baekhyun?” your voice cut through the air like a dull knife, breaking the melody.

His fingers halted as his eyes snapped open, his dark brown irises focusing on you immediately after your voice disrupted the music that filled the room.

The two of you just stared at each other for a few silent seconds, both of you probably confused at the entire situation. Why was Baekhyun here? What was he to Sehun? Baekhyun was most likely asking the same questions in his head right now.

“What—”

“Why—”

You spoke at the same time.

The silence that followed after was ruined by Sehun shouting from the hall. He probably went to the dining room, saw that you weren’t there, and started looking for you. His voice grew closer and closer and soon he found you and Baekhyun looking at each other.

“Oh, great,” Sehun mumbled. “You found my brother.”

—

Luckily, Baekhyun wasn’t always at home when you trained Sehun.

As far as you knew, he worked regular hours at the radio station, but when you asked Sehun, he said that his brother also had a lot of work on the side—a music consultant for a couple of independent artists, a sound designer at the theater company where Jongin and Kyungsoo worked, and he sometimes sang at The Constrictor, the most famous pub in town as he was good friends with its owner.

But when Baekhyun was at home, you constantly found yourself having dinner at his house, as he never took no for an answer. The first time that happened was unbelievably awkward.

“So, you’re Sehun’s Literature teacher,” Baekhyun said.

“Yes.”

“Interesting,” he said with a smirk on his lips as he threw knowing glances at his brother. “Sehun has told me so much about you.”

“Now would be a fantastic time to shut up, Baek,” Sehun spoke up for the first time throughout the whole meal. He glared at Baekhyun while making holes in his mashed potatoes with his fork.

“Why?” Baekhyun smiled. “You don’t want your teacher to know about your little crush on her?”

Sehun sort of distanced himself from you after that crazy incident, probably from embarrassment. Like the adult you were, you talked to him about it and said that crushes are perfectly normal, but it was kind of inappropriate between students and their teachers.

“Of course I know that,” Sehun rolled his eyes. “It’s not a crush crush. It’s not that deep, Baekhyun just likes being overdramatic. It’s more like I naturally admire you because I like to write and you’re my Literature teacher.”

“Okay, okay,” you couldn’t help but laugh. “You know, I know a few of your classmates who like you. Maybe you can tell me who you like and we’ll work something out.”

“I don’t really like anyone in school. Most people there are stupid, even some of the teachers. Uh, no offense.”

“None taken,” you smiled.

As training progressed, so did Sehun, and you were positive that he would be a serious contender in the contest. You also grew closer to him because of that, and he kind of became the younger sibling you never had. You were sad that this would be the last year you would get to see him in school, but at the same time, you were excited for him to improve further in college.

Baekhyun, on the other hand, you actively tried to avoid.

On days when any of your friends would ask you out to eat and you knew that Baekhyun would be coming, you made up excuses like being stacked with work just to elude him. When you were at his house for Sehun’s training, you would leave as soon as you heard him come home or when you were done for the day to avoid being asked to stay for dinner again.

Unfortunately, Baekhyun wasn’t stupid, so of course, he caught on.

Chanyeol, Kyungsoo, and Jongin, kept asking you if you were mad at Baekhyun because he had been bugging them nonstop to ask you if he did something wrong. You often played it stupid with a laugh and a ‘What are you guys talking about?’ before diverting the topic to something else. Even Sehun surprised you by saying out of the blue that he thinks you were avoiding his brother during one of your writing exercises in training.

There were reasons why you were avoiding him, but you weren’t sure if they were valid or you were just making them up.

Firstly, you didn’t want your relationship with him to affect the way you treated Sehun in class. Yes, you weren’t anywhere close to dating, but still, it felt weird that one of your students had your soulmate as his brother and legal guardian. That was like a watered down equivalent of dating your students’ parents.

Also, the longer you spend with Baekhyun in person, the more you feel the urge to blurt out The Dream and ask him if he already had it, and all it did was make you feel anxious because you never became brave enough to actually go and do it. At least when you didn’t see him, other things took up space in your brain.

Out of sight, out of mind.

Well, that lasted for about two weeks until you saw Baekhyun standing outside the high school building.

You stopped in your tracks and a million questions started flooding through your head like if he came to see you because it looked like he was waiting for you or was it Sehun he was waiting for and how did he know that your work ended at this time and why would he go here today of all days?

You swallowed down your nervousness and walked up to him.

“Hi, Baek! Are you looking for Sehun? I’m pretty sure he already went home and—”

“Actually, I was waiting for you.”

You froze. “Why me?”

“I wanted to ask if you were mad at me,” Baekhyun said, his gaze falling to the ground. “You’ve been avoiding me lately.”

“What? No—”

“Stop it,” he cut you off. “Everyone with two eyes can see that you’ve been avoiding me so please. Please stop denying it and just tell me what I did wrong so I can apologize for it and you don’t have to avoid me anymore.”

“You didn’t do anything. I’m not mad at you,” you replied in a small voice, embarrassed at the entire situation.

You didn’t realize that Baekhyun would go this far, that he would be so bothered at you distancing yourself from him that he would apologize for something he didn’t even do.

“Then why are you avoiding me?”

You didn’t know how to answer this, so you just stood there stupidly and looked at your feet. You could feel Baekhyun’s eyes on you, and you were scared to look up at him and see what he was feeling burning through his stare.

You felt something piercing in your chest, a feeling that you haven’t experienced in a long time.

Guilt.

“Look,” Baekhyun began, but you kept your head down. “If you really hate me that much, then fine, don’t talk to me forever. But I need to know what I did so I could at least apologize for it, so I could finally sleep at night.”

You didn’t know if he said that last part for dramatic effect or if he was being serious about not being able to sleep because you were ignoring him.

He continued, “Just… please tell me, okay? This is driving me crazy and I know that if I ask our friends and my brother one more time to ask you what I did for you to avoid me, they’re really gonna smack me in the head so please just tell me yourself and then I’ll leave you alone. I promise.”

You finally looked up, and—was he… pouting? Baekhyun, a grown- man, is actually pouting like a little kid?

“You really didn’t do anything, Baek. I already told you.”

“So why have you been avoiding me like the plague?” You opened your mouth to lie that you weren’t, that it was all just some weird coincidence when Baekhyun beat you to it. “And don’t tell me that you haven’t been avoiding me and it’s all just some weird coincidence because this conversation will just go in circles again and again and I don’t care because I can do this all day until you tell me what it is.”

“What’s it to you if we don’t see each other that often?” You asked, trying to sound tough despite your insides churning and your knees turning into jelly. “We’re adults, Baek. We work, we get busy, and we don’t see some people that much. That’s really all there is to it, I don’t know what you’re—”

Baekhyun rolled his eyes. “You’re really dense, aren’t you?”

“What?”

“She’s really making me ing do this,” he muttered to himself, probably unaware that everything was audible from where you were standing. “I like you, okay? Like, like you like you. That kind of like. Oh my god, I sound like some stupid high school kid. This is so embarrassing.”

You would’ve laughed if the world didn’t stop spinning, the air didn’t get knocked out of your lungs, and your mind didn’t go blank.

“I’m pretty sure my stupid little crush has been pathetically obvious so I don’t even know why I’m telling you this upfront because I know you’re damn smart,” he said. “Please don’t stare at me like I grew another nose. Say something.”

“I don’t… I’m not sure what to say.”

Baekhyun exhaled. “Well then you need to figure out something quickly because I’m not planning on disappearing anytime soon because this isn’t some dumb fling people have before The Dream comes to them. The Dream already came to me. You came to me.”