How terribly cliché, Jongin 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 Lu Han promised he won’t ever leave him, but now Jongin is all alone.

But perhaps that’s it. Perhaps that’s why. Perhaps Lu Han 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 Jongin 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 had exclaimed, startling Jongin who was about to unknowingly place a foot into a puddle of rainwater.

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

Stunning Doe Eyes also happened to own a very attractive pair of pink lips, but right now Jongin could not see it because a hand was 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?”

Jongin would have bragged about his Italian leather shoes, but then the stranger bit on his lower lip and Jongin 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 Jongin ’s defense, it was kind of hard not to. Not when the stranger had these cute wrinkles around his eyes when his lips pulled up in a smile. The wrinkles could have been out of place, what with the stranger’s baby face; but they seemed to have merely added to his appeal.

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 inJongin ’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 Jongin 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 Jongin’s mind, like a movie of collected memories was somehow playing in front of him right now.

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

“Don’t worry, Jongin-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 Lu Han had started to pull Jongin closer to him each time he whipped out his umbrella. How Jongin would look beside him and always find the same pair of Really Stunning Doe Eyes, and hear the same promise, and feel the warmth slowly becoming more familiar.

Clearly, he also remembers the first time Lu Han 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—Lu Han had pulled Jongin’s hand and urged both of them to dance underneath the pouring rain.

Jongin was the dancer, but it felt good to let Lu Han 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 Lu Han had spent hours blow-drying Jongin’s shoes ("Baby, they might get ruined!") and repeatedly towel-drying Jongin’s hair and basically fussing over how his boyfriend might get sick. But it was worth all the trouble, Jongin reckons, because in the midst of them laughing and squinting eyes as raindrops had pounded on their faces, Lu Han had instituted a new promise—to always make Jongin 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 tasted weird too. It had been better when Lu Han made it. For all his inability to cook, Lu Han made the world’s best hot