Jongin runs away in the morning. Chanyeol finds him huddled between bushes and a big oak tree. July is spent like this, hiding away in little corners, bringing home aching knees and sore backs.

  "I'm not real," Jongin says, behind the cover of his twined fingers. "Yeollie, I'm sad because I'm not real."

  "Don't spout nonsense," Chanyeol says. "You're every bit as real as me." He peels Jongin's fingers from their cage and presses their palms tightly together. The touch registers, travels up their arms and shoulders and neck, and explodes at the nerve endings in their head.

    But Jongin takes his hand away and curls it into his collar. "You are the only one that thinks that. I'm only real to you."

Because how can he be real if nobody misses him, even though he's stopped going out, stopping going to school? How can he be real when every taste he knows comes from Chanyeol, every sensation he remembers is delivered by Chanyeol, when not even his own family members see him at home? Whatever Jongin eats, Chanyeol has to eat it first before he can taste it; when they touch, it has to be Chanyeol that initiates it for it to register. The Sundae in the Sokcho of May suddenly feels like poison writhing around in his gut. Jongin knows now why he wakes precisely 20 minutes before Chanyeol knocks at his window and falls asleep 20 minutes after Chanyeol closes his eyes- because they live 20 minutes apart, and Chanyeol takes 20 minutes to fall asleep.

  "Ah, you'd say that to me? You'd say that to me, who has been your friend for so long? Are you saying that I've made friends with someone who isn't real?" Long arms wrap around him in a hug, and he knows it's meant to be reassuring, but all he feels like doing is crying.

  Jongin doesn't hug back this time. He doesn't say it but his friend gets it, probably, because they truly have been friends for such a long time- he doesn't remember how they've been friends.

  Chanyeol had always been just... there.

  There...

  Maybe they've never needed to meet each other. Because Chanyeol had always been there.

  In July, Jongin cries. And for the first time, Chanyeol doesn't know why.