XIX

Remember

Baekhyun is soaked, head to toe, when he arrives at the hospital. He’s breathing hard from running, the flowers are gone, and the umbrella has been abandoned somewhere along the street but he doesn’t care. He bursts into the hospital out of breath, and Jongdae is already there.

His eyes are red, his fingers are wrapped around his phone so tight that they’re scarily white. He looks as if he’s bitten his lips so hard that they’ve begun to bleed.

The whole world seems to stop. Jongdae is still, unspeaking, but his eyes say everything.

Baekhyun can’t feel the cold of the rain, the wetness of it, or anything else. He can’t speak, but the thorn lodged in his chest seems to twist so much that he’s afraid something inside him will all just snap.

“Operation room,” Jongdae says in a barely-audible voice. “But…”

He doesn’t say the rest of the sentence. And then, silently like always, Jongdae brings his sleeves to his eyes.

Baekhyun’s too numb to do anything. It’s not possible. It’s too early. Not yet. One more week. One more day. Another hour. I want to see her again.

All those are wishful thoughts. Jongdae still has his face covered, his whole body is trembling, and Baekhyun just stands still. The whole world is frozen. Even though Jonghui wasn’t speaking much when he left to get flowers, there’s no way that, in such a short span of time… the word itself is too horrendous to think of, much less say.

“Jonghui,” he manages, but there are no other words he can think of to say.

The white of the hospital feels blinding. Outside, the rain batters at the last of the colorful leaves, and they’re all sent tumbling to the ground, whether they’re red, orange, yellow, green or brown.

***

It’s a solemn affair, but for some reason, so quiet, too. Simple.  

Nothing physically feels different when they drive home late that night. Jongdae’s eyes are puffy from crying, and his hands are shaking around the wheel. He stares straight ahead, unspeaking, as if he’s completely concentrated on driving and driving only. They won’t be returning to the hospital the next day.

And Baekhyun hates it that everything seems to be the same. The world is still spinning, people still walk the streets, drive pass in their cars, go to work and return to their families. It feels wrong that everything is so normal when it’s so different. And what he hates the most is that he still feels the same, everything looks the same, and they’re still doing the same things. Even though she’s gone. It’s all… so normal.

“What are you going to do now?” It’s Jongdae who breaks the silence. “Were you just staying for her?”

On the backseat of the car, there’s a bunch of Jonghui’s belongings. Her silver laptop, a huge pile of books that took a couple back and forths to carry, and more miscellaneous things. The worse part of it all, though, is that she isn’t there. Her belongings are. She isn’t.

“I don’t know,” Baekhyun says, and it’s the only thing he can be certain about. I don’t know. Am I going back? To an angel? Can I really just go like this? Is there any point to even go back? If I can’t go back, what am I supposed to do?

“You don’t know,” Jongdae echoes, though his tone is flat and there’s no emotion in his voice. “I suppose it’s easier for you. All of us have to just go on with our everyday lives like nothing’s different—” His voice breaks there. “—but you don’t know. I envy you.”

“Why should you envy me?” Jongdae’s turning down the now-familiar road, to where the apartment is. The streetlights are on, now that it’s dark, and the neighborhood is oddly silent. The rain has stopped, but part of Baekhyun wishes that it was still raining. The rain gives him an odd sense of comfort, however small. “There’s nothing to envy. You know what to do, but I have absolutely no idea what I’m going to do now.”

“Do you really think it’s easier for me?” The car stops under a tree. The rain has battered most of the leaves to the ground, and they spread out, a soaked carpet of things once-colorful. The ones that still cling to the tree are hanging by a string. “In a couple of days, I’ll be back at work. Next month I have to go to Beijing again. I’m going to plan the funeral before all of that happens, but after that, it’s the same things that I do on an everyday basis. My colleagues will comfort me. People who know will offer their condolences. But in a week or so, they’ll have forgotten about it and they’ll expect me to be doing what I normally do. It’s the same routine even though she’s not here anymore, and that…” His voice breaks. “That’s the worst part.”

There’s silence for a long moment, and neither he nor Jongdae say anything of move. Baekhyun can see the red-rimmed eyes, a layer of unshed tears.

“Here,” Jongdae says, beginning to pull something out of his pocket. “This was for you. And here’s the keys. You go inside. I want to be alone for a while.”

He hands Baekhyun a slip of paper, folded neatly, and Baekhyun can see writing on the other side. He barely manages to catch the keys.

Jongdae doesn’t look like he’s in the mood to say anything else, so Baekhyun opens the car door and steps out. The moment he closes it behind him and steps back, Jongdae turns on the engine and in a couple of seconds, he’s off and disappearing down the road, turning into nothing but a pair of glowing headlights.

Baekhyun stands by himself for a couple of long moments, staring listlessly at the road, a chilly wind beginning to blow all around him. The piece of paper he has in his hands feel cold, and he’s almost scared to open it.

For the first time ever, he walks the steps up the apartment building alone. On his way there, he passes the alleyway where he first met Jonghui. He can remember what it was like back then clearly, oddly vivid for a memory that seemed like such a long time ago. The flickering light, her umbrella, the quiet way she spoke. I don’t need help from a human, he’d said to her back then.

It’s not raining this time when Baekhyun steps back into the alley. The flickering light is no longer flickering — it’s burned out altogether so that the whole place is darker than it should’ve been. He’s the only one standing there, and there’s no girl under an umbrella that shows up near the entrance and shields the rain for him. But it’s not raining anyways, and the umbrella had been dropped all the way back at the hospital.

Baekhyun isn’t sure how much time has passed when he finally turns to go back to the apartment. He can see his hands trembling in his line of vision as he opens the door numbly, enters the elevator alone and hits the floor number, a routine-like action that’s strangely hard to do because he’s alone. When he unlocks the door to the apartment, it’s dark inside.

Exhausted and spent, he reaches over and flicks on the light in the entry hall. Even though the room is brighter, the light is a whitish color and it’s just so lonely that he can’t even think about it without his head hurting. His clothing still feels damp from being in the rain, but he doesn’t have the heart to do anything about it. On the desk that Jonghui used to work at lies the calendar, untouched with unmarked months and days starting from somewhere in July.

Baekhyun sets the keys down on the table, where Jongdae can see it when it comes back, and then he goes back to his room, still clenching the paper from that Jongdae had given him before he got out of the car. He hasn’t seen Jonghui’s handwriting too many times, but he knows it well enough to know that the paper is from Jonghui.

He’s terrified to open it. With the door shut behind him, the curtains drawn, his back against the door, it feels as if the room is the only thing that exists. Opening the letter from Jonghui is almost like a confirmation that she really is gone. Like it’s forcing him to believe it even though he’d rather not.

Almost like it’s against his own will, Baekhyun opens the letter slowly. He unfolds it once, twice, three times, four, before it’s finally at it’s full size. The writing is small, squished, and there’s a lot on the paper. He can barely breathe when he scans the paper, the familiarity of the writing hitting him. The way she writes sounds so like how she talks that he can almost hear it in her voice.

I told you I’m not good with summaries, she wrote, I couldn’t sum up my story, so I don’t really know how I’m supposed to sum up everything I want to say to you on just one sheet of paper.

Baekhyun can’t stand any longer. Slowly, he sits down, the paper shaking before his eyes as he tries to steady his breathing and his hands.

You know, Baekhyun, when I first met you, I thought you were honestly insufferable. I never told you about it because I thought I should be nice to everyone and it wasn’t a lie when I said I wanted a friend and I assumed you were just being cautious because you didn’t trust me and that was understandable, but still, at times I wanted to clock you in the head with my frying pan. I don’t know when it was that I noticed you were changing — maybe it’s when you offered to carry the groceries for me when I came back with my arms full, or maybe when you got the chicken soup for me because I was too short, or maybe it’s when you hugged me for my birthday even though it was extremely awkward. You’re really different from when you first came here, but you probably know that.  

I’ve been thinking about it a lot — that story you told me about the angel boy who lost his memories and had to relearn what it was like to be a human. You said a friend told it to you, but you sounded like you knew the story so well when you told it. Even though it was vague, it seemed like it was from personal experience.

It was you, right? Maybe I’m just tired when I’m writing this or I’m looking too deeply into it, but that’s the only explanation I can come up with why you’re here, the scars on your back, the way you acted in the beginning. I still can’t figure everything out and maybe I never will, but that’s just a guess.

I’m really glad you came. Whether that story was really about you, or if you were in a gang and that was why you had those wounds down your back — whatever it is, I don’t care. I tried to spend my days doing things that I wanted to do so I could do everything I wanted before I left because regrets were the last thing I wanted. It was so hard because there was so little time and an endless list of wanted to do. I wanted to finish this story. Write another. Visit places with my brother. The list really doesn’t end, but for some reason, I feel content with everything I’ve done with you.

I really do wish I could spend more time with you, because five months wasn’t near enough. But I’m happy with it too, because five months was what we were given and I think we made good use of it.

Anyways, that’s about it. Remember, though. If my brother is mean to you, tell him. Don’t let him boss you around because he’s that kind of person. If he says something to you in Chinese and tells you what it means, he’s probably lying. Smile more. You look so bright when you smile. It takes less muscles than frowning, and even though having a neutral face requires the least muscles, smiling makes everyone around you happier too.

You asked me about memories, once. There’s pain there, but maybe that’s the beautiful thing about memories. They’ll always be there if you want them. Even when time passes and you think you’ll forget them, you won’t really because it’s still there. The laughter, the joy, the pain, the sadness. It’s never really gone.

One last thing. White is a lonely color when you look at it, but it’s also a color that can be dyed easily. Add a bit of red and it’s pink. It doesn’t take much to change white, and I really love that about white. When something is added to it, it can be warm, it can be cold, it can be ugly, it can be beautiful.

So let yourself be like white, but don't let yourself be tainted by the ugly colours. 

There’s no ending to it. No signature of her name, nothing else. It just ends on that note. Baekhyun doesn’t even realize that he’s crying until something splatters onto the black ink of the paper, smearing it, and then there’s another drop and he hastily puts the paper aside and wipes his eyes.  

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