“I miss him” Mina said with a sniffle as she took another sip of her soup.

Baekhyun reflected the action, taking a bite of his own bowl as he scrunched up his face.

“Then just go get him” He replied quite simply.

Mina made a face, “It’s not that easy. He’s spending the night over there”

Baekhyun rolled his eyes and adjusted his laptop so that she could see him more clearly from her end. He leaned forward into the camera and watched her for a moment.

“He’s a dog, he’s hanging out with his doggy friend and having a little doggy sleepover. You’re acting like you’re never going to see him again!”

“He’s only barely two years old! I bet he misses me” Mina said quietly.

“I bet he doesn’t, dangle a treat in front of that white little fur ball and he forgets all about everything” He teased, finishing up his bowl in what had become their weekly tradition.

Aside from the phone calls, messages and the occasional in person visits, they had settled on a dinner tradition. Every Friday night they would pick a dish they would both cook (or buy) at home, set up the webcam, and pretend that they were eating dinner with each other. It was unnecessary, the 2 and something hour drive for either of them wasn’t too extraordinary, but as Baekhyun had taken hold of the company, his free time grew shorter and shorter and by the time he would arrive to see her, he’d be too exhausted for conversation. So this was their solution, dinner together weekly, over webcam.

It wasn’t perfect, but it worked.

“So the reason we pushed the timing of this to 6 is…?” He asked.

She grinned, “I’m going out tonight”

“Wow… don’t tell me Mina is going out clubbing? Are there actually clubs out in the village?”

Mina gave him an eye roll of her own as she finished up her own bowl.

“First of all, I’m not in a village, jeez, it’s just a smaller city, but it does have a club. Secondly, Seohyun finally wore me down, she said in the two years that she’s known me all she sees me do is obsess about my dog”

Baekhyun smirked, “Well, is she wrong?”

Mina coughed lightly, “Not really, so tonight I’m going out”

“I don’t know if I trust this Seohyun to take you to clubs”

“She’s great Baekhyun, if you’re my very best friend, she’s a close second”

“I’m sorry, after everything we’ve been through, she’s a close second?!” He asked, feigning outrage that only masked his happiness at her description of her friends.

Every day he heard a little bit about them and it wasn’t until she started sending pictures of herself with these friends that Baekhyun had begun to see the life Mina had steadily built for herself. It wasn’t a glamorous life, no fancy fundraisers or dinners to go to, but he had never seen her so happy. Had never see her so full of life and genuinely happy to be alive.

She went on to jokingly apologize and assure him that it wasn’t the case, a close second was still miles away from number 1, but Baekhyun couldn’t help but laugh at the girl he saw now. Someone so different from the first time he had laid eyes on Mina. Someone so vibrant and full of life, that her happiness was infectious. It wasn’t like this the first couple of weeks when she had left, her happiness felt like a show for him, something genuine, but not something that went very deep. He had walked past Nuni a few months in and on impulse had decided to buy him.

He wondered if it was appropriate to give him to her so for the first few days he spent a lot of time having far too deep conversations with a puppy who only really stared at him when he had a treat in his hands and after asking the small animal to please make her a little more cheery, to keep her company since he couldn’t, something in the dog must have understood what he was saying because it was like love at first sight, the way he sprinted into the arms of his new owner who wore the biggest smile he had seen so far.

She had named him Nuni, a variation of snow because he reminded her so much of it and that was that. She focused on raising the small dog and it focused on keeping her happy. Baekhyun liked to pat himself on the back because secretly, he believed the dog was actually list