He doesn’t know how long he’s been sitting there, sobbing occasionally. The rain has long stopped, but Baekhyun doesn’t have the heart to stand up and walk away just yet. He brings his knees closer to his chest as he leans against the gate, unsure of the time, unsure whether the sky turned dark or he’s still in the afternoon. His hair is wet, his shirt drenched, his heart washed away by the rain. Just when he tries to warm himself with his palms, he hears the gate opening slightly with a creaking sound. There’s a thick piece of fabric draped over his trembling body, and Baekhyun, despite being surprised, caves into the warmth like moth to light.

“Oh dear…” Baekhyun hears a familiar voice sigh. His mother’s hands adjust the blanket on his shoulders before Baekhyun, afraid of being rejected again, backs away in panic. She stops him with a hush as he feels her pulling him into her embrace. “It is okay, Baekhyun. It’s okay now.”

“M… Mom,” Baekhyun croaks out. His hands shake in her hold. “Mom…”

“I’m sorry, son,” she says, voice on the verge of crying. “I’m sorry I couldn’t protect you from your father… I-I didn’t know what to do, this was so sudden, and I was too shocked to see you… You… After five years…”

Baekhyun shakes his head and tries to smile, wanting to show her that he’s thankful enough that someone still had faith in him. His arms tighten around her plump waist like a pathetic way to prove how sorry he was for abandoning his own mother to leave with his lover. “No, mom, I’m sorry… I left and never came back—I… I was selfish and stubborn, please forgive me…”

“Shh, it’s okay,” she rubs his back soothingly before she helps him to stand up. She then hands him his walking stick with a light caress of her hands on his palms. “Come, let’s go inside. Your father is taking a nap, so we’ll enter the house quietly, yes?”

Baekhyun swallows the lump in his throat, stopping. “Does he… hate me?”

His mother turns quiet for a moment, and Baekhyun knows this silence all too well as it mirrors the strangling silence in his own house as well. It is hesitance, heavy on her lips, preventing her to say something that she’s afraid might hurt him. “It’s okay if he hates me, mom. I deserve it.”

“No, no, honey, he doesn’t hate you. Don’t say that,” she sighs. “He’s just very upset. His son left him for five years without a word, didn’t invite him to his own wedding and never called or visited. He was overwhelmed when he saw you earlier, I suppose… He needs the time to warm up to you.”

Baekhyun feels his chest constricting, slammed with the realization of how cruel he was to his parents. His dad is right; he abandoned them for another man and he didn’t even invite his own parents to his wedding. Now, as his marriage crumbles, he tries to crawl back into his parents’ home, uninvited. It isn’t such a wonder if his parents would end up despising their one and only son. He feels so ashamed that he wants to turn around and run away, but running away again wouldn’t solve anything. Instead, he grips onto his walking stick and nods. “I understand.”

He could sense the warm smile blooming on his forgiving mother’s face as she tugs onto his sleeve, inviting him into the house he grew up in.

—

It’s still raining.

He’s not very sure how long it has been raining. It seems like the rain will never stop. Makes it difficult to see especially when one is driving. The man on the radio is murmuring about a lost child and Chanyeol twists the volume button into complete silence because it’s hard for him to concentrate. He doesn’t have time to think about the rain, the road or a lost child. Not when he’s not even sure where he is heading to. The wedding band on his finger glistens when Chanyeol drives to the side in order to pull over. Wasn’t it kept on the dresser? In his pockets? He doesn’t remember when he’d put it back on.

Driving gets difficult when you’re heading towards the past.

He can still remember it vividly, so clear in his mind that he can actually describe it word by word. How the accident happened five years ago. How he had one hand on the steering wheel and the other on his husband’s lap. How he glanced to his husband and actually saw the vehicle coming towards them. It brought him to tears every time he thought about it, but now, as he leans against the driver’s seat, staring at his wedding ring, Chanyeol wonders what would happen if Baekhyun had been the one driving and he was the one on the passenger seat, with Baekhyun’s hand placed on his lap.

There’s something unpleasant settling deep in his gut.

The rain, the road, the lost child.

The broken home, the fiancée, the husband.

Chanyeol forces himself to burst into a fit of loud laughter, alone in his car, wedding band in his hands and rain against his window. He laughs, and laughs, until he can’t take it anymore, well aware of the tears in his eyes and on his cheeks. He’s not someone’s fiancée. He’s not a good husband. He has never been a great son, he’s a corrupted lawyer and a bad friend.

If the hit-and-run that happened five years ago turned out differently, he thinks as he laughs. If he had been the one in the passenger seat, grinning at Baekhyun who was driving, would the other man glance at him and notice the other car speeding up towards them? If so, Baekhyun would’ve been fine. Chanyeol would’ve turned blind. He would’ve stayed useless and pathetic in their home for years, seen as a burden. Unaware of a cheating husband and a lying caretaker. Baekhyun had his piano, but Chanyeol? If Chanyeol was the one who turned blind, what would he have? Greed. Ego. Lust?

The laughter dies out. The inside of his brand-new car only occupied with his cries as Chanyeol brings his head into his hands. He doesn’t know what he has done. He doesn’t know how to fix the mess he made. As Chanyeol sits alone in his car, crying, he feels as if he’s a child. Deep under this successful, egoistic lawyer façade, the old him who only had Baekhyun in his mind is still there.

The law student boy who was head over heels for Byun Baekhyun – the one who cheered with joy when Baekhyun accepted his confession. Palms always full of flowers for the only boy who occupied his head. Baekhyun, who snuck out of his house at night to help Chanyeol revise his notes for his bar exam. Baekhyun, who paid for lunch when Chanyeol was just a poor law student who could barely afford a drink. Baekhyun, who became his husband and turned blind. Baekhyun, who eventually became a burden. A barrier between Chanyeol and his newfound love-story with another woman.

He stares at his reflection in the rear-view mirror. Cheeks red, splotched with tears. It’s like he can’t recognize himself an