Author's Note: 

I was checking my tumblr and accidently (or rather purposely) went to Taoris thread. Godammit. I'm just so sad suddenly. The news are already old and I'm not trying to bring up any bad sentiment to anyone. Writing have always been my channel to let my emotion so, here's a (try-hard) angsty-not-so-angsty drabble for my own pleasure. I'm glad that Tao is smiling in recent gifs.

Tao glance out the window, his penetrating eyes follow the track of fallen snowflakes before they touched the white carpet of a dreadful winter. He blocks out the noise of fans cluttering to take pictures of him and their squealing since he wasn’t quite feeling himself to look up and smile at those lenses. It felt like he is lying to himself if he smiled at the moment. Everything just felt so dreadful and void and hanging out in a café he love didn’t help him to feel better.

He is drowning in the emptiness.

How much time has passed already since their departure?

When the first lawsuit news arrived, it was too much of a shock. Ten head subconsciously whipped to his direction and their gaze muttered the words they didn’t muster enough courage to actually speak, ‘Does Zitao know about this?’

Only that, he didn’t know. He did not know that Kris is leaving.

His duizhang who protects him and listen to him and always there for him, is leaving.

Then, the second lawsuit came to light but the shock had never worn out. Nine head, including him, turns to Minseok in explanation but the latter only let out a gurgling noise in exasperation.

That time, he could only imagine what would happen to them.

Suddenly, a moving object disrupt his reverie. A girl took one step to the side of his table and Tao bite the urge to shoo her away. She was small, both height and size, and her face is swallowed by a red-checker scarf and large getup to brace from the cold. Suddenly, she slip a note, give him a reassuring smile and scurried away out of the café while glancing at her watch.

Tao didn’t read it. He left soon after, walking back to the dorm in the opposite direction the girl had sprinted off earlier. In the middle of the way, the cold and lack of view made him unrumpled her note in his large, calloused hand.

It was a receipt.

At the back of it is a note written in messy scribble, making it harder for Tao to decipher. His Korean wasn’t really at a top-notch condition. Since he is too lazy to overexert his brain today, Tao shoved it in his winter coat in hope that someone could translate it for him.

Sehun did the translation later that night when he drop by at the EXO M’s dorm and the words clogged both of them with so much sadness. The younger male wrapped his arm around the other and proceed for an uncertain hug to comfort both Tao and himself.

‘When someone you care left, doesn’t mean they stop remembering you’. That girl had wrote it down.