“Your hands are so cold.”

Chanyeol’s head snapped right up at your remark, his round eyes clouded with a haphazard of emotions too mixed up to distinguish. His gaze was saying a million different things at the same time, like it always did when he was nervous. But you’ve never seen him this unsettled.

He was seated as you stood before him and fixed his hair, his hands planted so firmly on your waist that you could feel the icy tension from them seeping through the fabric of your dress.

“I’m just so nervous,” Chanyeol said, his voice rough and low. “I’m about to go crazy.”

You gave him a small smile. “Don’t be. Everything’s going to be okay. I made sure of it.”

Chanyeol only sighed at that and then pressed his forehead against your stomach like how a child would to their mother. You almost laughed at how silly Chanyeol was acting if it wasn’t for the way his chest was heaving that made it look like he was about to cry.

“Yeol, get off,” you gently said, not wanting to press the wrong button. “Your hair’s not easy to style, you know. And you’re gonna ruin my dress.”

He slowly let go and looked up at you. “What if—”

You immediately stopped his lips with your finger. “Don’t start with the what ifs. Trust me, if you start it now, you’re only going to make yourself even more nervous than you are right now.”

Chanyeol smiled for the first time today since you saw him, and it looked like he was calming down a bit.

“I was just thinking… What if things went our way?” He said with his tone b with nostalgia. “What if it was the two of us instead of you and Baekhyun or me and Joohyun? Doesn’t it cross your mind, how things would be very different if not for The Dream?”

Every single day, you wanted to say.

“It doesn’t matter now, Yeol,” you said decisively. “You shouldn’t even be thinking about that.”

Chanyeol stood up, and now it was your turn to look up at him. “Yeah, I know,” he whispered. “It’s just… what if.”

If the story of you and Chanyeol could be compressed into two meager words, what if was perfect. But at the same time, it was so much more than that. It was hard not to think of all that could have happened differently, especially now that a sense of irrevocability hung in the air because something about today was so… final.

But if there’s anything that you’ve learned from loving Chanyeol, it’s that sometimes, some things were better left to the imagination and that not all things need to have a conclusion. That was why Chanyeol would always be a part of you, no matter where you are and no matter who you’re with. He was just there, a comforting presence in the midst of unfamiliarity and a home to go back to whenever things got too much.

He was the best kind of friend you could ever ask for, and maybe that was what he was meant to be from the start. Nothing more, nothing less.

“When my kids ask me about my first love, I’ll tell them about you.”

“Well, I can’t wait to see the confusion on their faces,” you chuckled as you smoothed Chanyeol’s crisp white suit with your hands. You picked up the red rose corsage on the vanity table and pinned it to the left side of his coat. “There, all done. Now, let’s get my best friend married.”

Almost a year after Chanyeol met Joohyun, he came to your apartment unannounced one evening. It was Baekhyun who answered the door then, completely surprised that a breathless Chanyeol was standing in the doorway, holding a small, robin egg blue box in his hand.

Confused, Baekhyun called you from the kitchen as you were preparing dinner and it was when your eyes landed on the box that things began to make sense.

Chanyeol said that he ran all the way from the jeweler’s down to your apartment as soon as he bought the ring because he wanted his best friend to be the first to know and to be the first to slap some sense into him in case he was taking things too fast.

But all you ever said to him was, “Yeol, you wouldn’t have bought the ring if you weren’t serious about Joohyun.”

And that was all he needed to hear.

Now, seeing utter happiness in Chanyeol’s eyes as he watched Joohyun walking down the aisle made your heart feel like it was on fire, not in a negative way, but rather, in a way that made you feel like love could conquer everything.

You always felt that way about weddings. The love that exuded from the bride and groom’s eyes was enough to make you believe that love truly did move mountains and part seas, and it made you wonder how it would feel like if you were in the bride’s shoes, looking at the man that was the rest of your life. It was overwhelming, but at the same time, so gratifying.

Baekhyun slipped his hand in yours and squeezed it once as Chanyeol and Joohyun exchanged vows, like he was uttering a silent promise to you as well.

You stared at the ocean as it danced for the moon, burying your feet into the soft sand as the music from the reception slowly died down.

When the wave of guests began thinning, you slipped yourself out of the gazebo and made your way to the shore to have some time alone, but mostly just to take in the late night sea breeze because it wasn’t every day that you got the chance to go to the beach at night.

Familiar arms s around your waist and Baekhyun’s comforting musk wafted through your nose. He smelled like his perfume mixed with sweet wine, and though you hadn’t had a sip at the party, it was enough to intoxicate your senses.

“What are you doing here, babe?” He whispered, his soft lips just barely grazing your ear and sending shivers through your spine.

“I just wanted to look at the water,” you replied as you leaned in further in his embrace. “Baek, you’re not drunk, are you? I don’t want to haul your back to the room.”

“I’m not,” he promised, his nose scrunching as it always did when he laughed. He held your hand and spun you around so that you were now facing him with his hands on your curves and yours around his neck. “I only had one glass and then I washed it off with a ton of water. You know that alcohol and I don’t mix very well,” he said.

It was true. He never lasted very long when you and the other guys went out for drinks, and you’ve had your fair share of instances where you had to call Sehun to help bring him home. The morning after those nights usually entailed a fight between you and Baekhyun, but even so, all that Baekhyun needed to do was pout and whine about his hangover and you would drop everything just to take care of him.

It was crazy how much he meant to you.

Moments like this when the two of you just enjoyed each other’s presence while you got lost in the eyes of one another amplified your love for him that was already too much for your heart to begin with and made every single cell in your body sting with the desire to finally press your lips against his.

“I wish I was drunk right now,” you said.

“Why?”

“So I’d have the courage to kiss you.”

He stared at you for a few seconds, completely taken aback by your candor.

When he still didn’t say anything and just continued to look at you with surprise, you reiterated: “Baek, I’m literally telling you to kiss me right now.”

Baekhyun didn’t need to be told twice.

His lips were everything you imagined they would be: soft yet strong, gentle yet commanding, and kind yet ensnaring. You could still taste the wine off of them, and it made you slightly wonder if he was really being truthful about drinking just one glass.

But you couldn’t care less about the amount he had drank, not when you were finally kissing him like you’ve always thought and wanted. You couldn’t remember the last time you were high off of alcohol, but you were sure that Baekhyun’s lips had the same effect as liquor—suave at first until the punch hits you like a tidal wave that completely washes away all your inhibitions.

The next thing you knew you were back in your hotel room, peeling each other out of layer after layer in more ways than one while your mouths continued their push and pull like the other was oxygen that the two of you needed to survive.

And maybe it was a good thing that you took it slow with Baekhyun, because now that all the pent up lust and longing and desire have gushed out, it made everything more intense and vivid and scintillating that it almost made you forget who you were and how to breathe and what your life before Baekhyun felt like.

His hands painstakingly travelled over all your curves and crevices and every dive he made sent you over the moon, a symphony of moans and whimpers in between proclamations of love bouncing off the walls of the room with Baekhyun as the composer behind it all.

Soon, the two of you were nothing but breathless bodies and tangled limbs on top of the sheets. Baekhyun traced lines on your spine with his slender fingers and looked at you like you were everything that was good in the world. He looked beautiful like this, his hair disheveled and his skin flushed, as you gently brushed his swollen lips and the mole just right above it.

“I love you.”

It was the first time that you were the first to say it. You wanted to say so much more because I love you simply didn’t cover it, but all your years of teaching and writing Literature failed you because Baekhyun took all of your words the moment he took your heart, and no amount of pronouncements could ever perfectly capture the way he made you feel.

He kissed you again, his lips tasting sweeter than before.

Then, your vision shifted—quite literally—and one moment it was the best night of your life and the next you were back inside your worst nightmare.

Everything was in slow motion: the forward movement of your car as you attempted to cross the intersection, the eighteen-wheeler hurling at the passenger side, the spinning, the skidding, the cracking of glass and bones… It was the most vivid nightmare that you’ve ever had.

You remembered feeling weightless, like your skeleton was made of feathers and your skin made of paper, but at the same time, every single corner of your body hurt like you’ve been beaten from head to toe, the pain of that multiplied by so much that you should’ve passed out from the agony.

If it wasn’t for that voice…

“I need an ambulance right now,” he said, the words barely making out of his lips as his body shook so much that he almost looked like he was spasming. “A woman… I don’t know who she is. Then there was this truck… We’re at the town border, at the large intersection. No, I wasn’t the one that hit her! I was right behind her and I honked so hard to warn her but everything happened so fast…”

Your eyes were open and yet you could only look at the pastel colored sky, unable to move any muscle in your body. You could see and hear, but apart from that, you were completely frozen as you laid helpless on the asphalt.

The man suddenly came into view and you realized that he was looking over you. The color of his hair changed at his every movement, seemingly reflecting the hues induced by the sunset. Was his hair blonde? Platinum? Translucent, perhaps?

The serious part of your brain that was still surprisingly working told you that this wasn’t the time for guessing the real hair color of this mystery man, but you couldn’t help it. You wanted to focus on something, anything, other than the excruciating pain you were feeling. Even breathing was agonizing.

“Please be alive,” the man said over and over again like a chant, his downturned eyes slowly filling with tears.

Why are you crying for me? You wanted to ask him but all that probably came out of your mouth was a pathetic grunt.

The sirens then came. You recalled being carried off by people and put into an ambulance, and when the doors of the car closed, everything went black.

You returned to the present.

You were still in bed with Baekhyun, but now his eyes were shaking as he looked at you.

“Did you…”

“…see that?”

You finished each other’s sentences and then the two of you slowly nodded at your mutual question.

Minseok’s voice started playing in your mind: I call it The Vision. It’s when you know that you and your destined partner had The Dream at the same exact time. The magic of it is that the two of you would see the exact moment when you first met.

“It was you,” you managed to say despite the chill that just ran through you. “You were there. You were the car behind me.”

Baekhyun nodded again, but he didn’t look too surprised. It was like he was more stunned about The Vision the two of you just had instead of what you said. Perhaps…

“Did you know?” You asked him as your mind slowly began putting the pieces together. “Do you… remember me? From that day?”

Come to think of it, all the signs pointed to that possibility. At Chanyeol’s birthday party, when you were having a panic attack, Baekhyun looked too concerned about you than a stranger should be. When you casually ran into him at Mrs. Song’s café, he spoke to you like an old friend. The way he acted since you first met was so casual and natural, like he knew you from somewhere.

But of course he would know you.

He saved your life.

“I don’t forget a face,” Baekhyun said. “Especially not yours. That was the most horrifying day of my life as it was yours. I thought you were going to die.”

The intricacy of it all astounded you.

The man who saved your life was Baekhyun, and he turned out to be your soulmate. Not only that, but you met him at sunset, which was probably the reason why you’ve always had this weird connection to it, like it was a reminder of something important… like it was a reminder of someone important.

Minseok was right once again.

Baekhyun’s more special than you think he is.