How terribly cliché, Yixing reckons, that the most heartbreaking thing in his life should occur on a rainy day.

He has half the mind to laugh—break down in hysteric fits, even—as the movie-likeness of his situation sinks in. It’s absolutely absurd. Of course, it is.

It’s utterly ludicrous, because Baekhyun promised he won’t ever leave him, but now Yixing is all alone.

But perhaps that’s it. Perhaps that’s why. Perhaps Baekhyun left because his body got tired of keeping all the promises his lips had made. If only those promises are not dangled from every corner Yixing looked at. He’s sure reminders of those promises will come to haunt him, like ghosts in the darkness, except they also come in the light.

The reminders start with the rain, then, like how the promises had started with the rain.

“Oh!” someone exclaimed, startling Yixing who was about to unknowingly place a foot into a puddle of rainwater.

Yixing whipped his head to the side, only to get a second helping of being startled, when his gaze landed on the most stunning pair of eyes he had ever seen in his life.

Stunning Pair of Eyes also happened to own a very attractive pair of pink lips, but right now Yixing could not see it because a hand is clamped to the person’s mouth out of sheepishness.

“Sorry,” the person—a man—said hesitantly. “I just noticed that your shoes look really good. You don’t want them to get soaked in rainwater, do you?”

Yixing would have bragged about his Italian leather shoes, but then the stranger bit on his lower lip and Yixing thought, Uh, no, my shoes don’t look good because your eyes look good and your mouth too, and oh, just the entirety of your face looks good.

He must have been staring; in Yixing’s defense, it was kind of hard not to. Not when the stranger had this rectangular shape his lips took on when he smiled and bared two rows of teeth. It looked weird; yet Yixing was fascinated by it.

The sound of the incessant drumming of raindrops hitting the pavement had become like a soundtrack to the shift in the air, or at least a shift in Yixing’s mood.

For almost an hour now, he had been exasperated at the brewing storm—at himself too, for not bringing an umbrella when it had been forecasted that the days would be clothed in constant downpour. But now he could only look on as the stranger had opened his big- black umbrella and positioned himself beside Yixing to share.

It’s supposed to be hazy recollection, because the distance between now and that memory is a span of four years—a long time. Unfortunately, the details of that incident are quite lucid in Yixing’s mind, like a movie of collected memories is somehow playing in front of him right now.

He remembers the way the stranger had said his name was Byun Baekhyun, and how he smiled disarmingly, rendering Yixing mute for an extra ten seconds until he was able to gush out his own name. Remembers how Baekhyun had pulled Yixing underneath his umbrella and made him avoid all sorts of rain puddles as they walked.

“Don’t worry, Yixing-ah, I won’t let you get wet. Your shoes too! I promise.”

Cue quote.

I promise…

End quote.

He remembers the following days, too, how Baekhyun had started to pull Yixing closer to him each time he whipped out his umbrella. How Yixing would look beside him and always find the same pair of Really Stunning Eyes, and hear the same promise, and feel the warmth slowly becoming more familiar.

Clearly, he also remembers the first time Baekhyun had forgotten to bring his umbrella. What started out to be a sunshiny day suddenly turned into a gloomy dusk of medium rainfall. Yet instead of worrying about how they would get soaked to the bones by the rapidly increasing precipitation—like how he normally did—Baekhyun had pulled Yixing’s hand and urged both of them to dance underneath the pouring rain.

Yixing was the dancer, but it felt good to let Baekhyun lead for once, even though his moves were sloppy and uncoordinated and felt like his limbs were merely flailing akimbo.

It was silly, totally silly, because they’d gone home wearing water instead of clothes, and Baekhyun spent hours blow-drying Yixing’s shoes ("Baby, they might get ruined!") and repeatedly towel-drying Yixing’s hair and basically fussing over how his boyfriend might get sick. But it was worth all the trouble, Yixing reckons, because in the midst of them laughing and squinting eyes as raindrops had pounded on their faces, Baekhyun instituted a new promise—to always make Yixing happy like that.

It keeps raining. It feels weird now to be sad amidst the rain. Yesterday, the cup of hot cocoa he had made himself taste