jongin knows he will always be followed. it’s inescapable—the life of a model thrives on it. and so he learns to hide in the shadows of himself, head down and feet quick. quick enough to outpace the flashing cameras and shutters clicking, but not fast enough to escape himself. 

never fast enough to escape himself.

it feels like just yesterday when he looked up from his flat’s balcony in central london to see the lunar eclipse and looked down to realize he didn’t recognize the city he was in. the streets bled into each other, crossing in unfamiliar patterns, and unrecognizable voices shouted things in a language he did not understand. he had looked behind him when he thought he heard his name being called and found himself back on his flat’s balcony, a disgruntled manager banging on his door. blindly, he was swept into a studio, a coffee shoved in his hands and cologne spritzed behind his ears and on his wrists, stylists adjusting his clothes and arranging his hair until he hardly recognized his own reflection, but the smells of that strange place had stayed with him even when everything else washed away at the end of the day.

for once, the city is dry, rain clouds having passed them for now, and jongin contemplates this as he shakes sand out of his boots (left from his latest spread, featuring an artificial beach that left grains of sand everywhere). not many days in london are spent without rain, and even fewer also happen to be days when he’s off work. before he leaves his flat, he grabs a black wool coat in case the weather goes south. 

his restless feet take him down into the underground subways, where he pays for a ticket with loose change in his coat pocket. he keeps his head down as he waits for his train, partly because he doesn’t want to be recognized and partly because he’s being followed. he wonders if it’s an amateur—the shutter clicking was a dead giveaway. 

when the train comes he folds himself into the afternoon lunch rush and disappears.  

he wonders if it will ever happen again. if he’ll ever wake up in a different city, open a door and walk into a room he’s never seen before, or step onto a train and not understand the hushed conversations around him. the more he wonders, the more he realizes that he wishes for it to happen again, even if it’s just once more. 

the limelight is nice, but jongin wants to bask in a different kind of light. he wants the sun to kiss his skin until he feels like himself again, and he wants to go anywhere the wind takes him. 

but everything happens for a reason, and there’s no reason for jongin to throw away everything he has now for something he knows nothing about. 

the wind rakes through his honey brown hair as he stands on the ledge built off a hill and he tugs his coat around himself tighter even though it’s already snug around his shoulders. a flock of crows escape from a nearby tree and the city rushes below him, noisy and familiar. out of habit he reaches into his pocket for a phone to check the time. 

15:01, and there’s a missed text from his manager. he deletes it. 

he lets his eyes flutter shut, breathing in the sharp london air. it pierces his lungs, sending the pain straight to his heart, and it might just be his mind unraveling but jongin swears he hears the all too familiar sound of a shutter clicking before the air around him changes and he snaps his eyes open to a different view. 

he doesn’t recognize any of his surroundings and it’s exhilarating. someone pushes past him and he stumbles back into the sidewalk as he registers the cars in front of him. there’s no wind here, he notices, and pushes his hair back with his hand. 

there’s a billboard towering over him, and a model lounges on the beach, sunglasses lowered to show off a suggestive wink. in shining letters, the board proclaims, “BARCELONA!” with a string of numbers underneath. 

jongin doesn’t know what the ad is for and he doesn’t know what he’s going to do from now on or what’s going to happen to him, but what he does know is that everything happens for a reason. 

so he types up a message to the number and slides his phone back into his pocket before tucking himself into the afternoon lunch rush again, wondering if the papers tomorrow will say, “Upcoming Model “KAI” Mysteriously Disappears! Sources Claim He Vanished Into Thin Air…” 

from: me
to: xxx-xxx-xxxx

I am here. BARCELONA. 10:10.