And I would stumble and fall

I'm still learning to love

Just starting to crawl

====

May, 2009

It was the seventeenth birthday of Luhan’s cousin, Baekhyun, and they were at Baekhyun’s enormous house, cousins gathered on the garden at the back of the residence as the mothers and some of the girls worked on the foods preparation for the dinner. Since Luhan’s cousins were just a few, they called their friends to tag along, and by some kind of magic, all of their friends were connected to each other. Like how Baekhyun, brought his long-time neighbor and best dude Chanyeol and his other best dude Jongdae, who was the older brother of Jongin, who was the same-age dude of Sehun, who was brought by Luhan. He also brought Minseok, who was ironically a cousin of Jongin and Jongdae. Total of seven boys hanging out at the garden. Wait, Luhan inspected environment, silently counting the people around him in mind, six?

His brain immediately ordered his limbs to stand up. Minseok asked him where he was going, but Luhan just shrugged him off, saying he wanted to have some drink. He ignored Baekhyun’s yells of ‘can you snatch my tortilla chips along the way??’ as he went straight for the door to the kitchen, sniffing his clothes on it. He smelled like being sunburnt on school days. Ew.

There was Kyungsoo, his other cousin, who apparently didn’t joke when he said he was interested in culinary even at such young age because he was actually doing something useful for the mothers and the female cousins. Luhan was about to ask if Kyungsoo had seen his little sour pickle when he found the pickle himself, hovering against the marble surface of the mini bar table of the kitchen. He could only see the back of the thin boy (who had gained too much height in the span of two fu-nny years), thus he didn’t know what the boy was doing.

He, however, almost snorted as he found Sehun holding a triangle filling plastic filled with cake frosting, skillfully making a swirl over a huge fresh batch of chocolate cupcakes.

“Hi.” Sehun didn’t even look up to see but the boy knew that it was him.

“What, the fluff, are you doing?” Luhan chose his words wisely because his mother was around.

“Decorating cupcakes.”

“For real, dude?”

“Believe what you see.”

Luhan cringed as he watched Sehun being so immersed in his work. “I never thought you’d do this kind of stuff. Like, delicate stuffs that makes you frown all the time in order to concentrate.”

“Well, apparently this kind of stuff is a kind that doesn’t drain my heart to death, so.” Sehun shrugged, resting his arms for a while, not noticing how Luhan stiffened by his nonchalant words of his unfortunate state. (Sehun never noticed, Luhan never told him)

“You’re traumatized.” Luhan pinpointed. “The basketball incident was like, two years ago, Sehun.”

“Can you step back a bit? Your saliva is getting on the frostings.”

“You’re getting so much better these days because you did well on your therapies and treatments. Why don’t you reward yourself a little bit?” Luhan did step back. “You don’t need to go around running like the trio beagles outside. Look at Minseok, he’s just chilling under the sun. You don’t go out often, no wonder why you’re so pale like soy milk.”

“But I’m more productive like this, aren’t I.” Sehun always used advanced words, a little bit too advanced for a fifteen years old. “Just let me be, hyung, since when did you want me to go out this much?”

“Because I know you’re still beating yourself up for almost dying back then.” Luhan stated, and Sehun’s hands froze above the undecorated cupcakes. “You know, for someone who talks about his illness and his death day like they’re nothing, you’re being too scared of actually dying.”

“Luhan.” he heard his mother’s stern voice. Luhan rolled his eyes; nothing ever went past his mother’s ears.

“Not that it’s a bad thing, really. I’m happy that you take care of yourself so much but I just think – “

Sehun finally looked at him. He saw no such emotion in the kid’s eyes. Sehun has always been stoic; no one could easily see what he really feels. “Hyung.” he called him softly.

Luhan threw his hands in the air. “I’ll be gone in seconds, I swear.” he said as he finally scooted away from Sehun’s station. Baekhyun’s mother was already taking out another batch of cupcakes. “Just, come join us after you’re done.”

Nodding nonchalantly, Sehun got back to his work. Luhan could feel the glare his mother was giving him because no one shall ever hurt her precious little Sehun, but