Chanyeol,

Happy one year! I know this probably wasn’t what you were expecting when I said I actually had a present for you. But don’t worry, I think you will like this. At least I hope you will. You’ve been asking me a certain question for a while now. In different forms, but always the same at the root of it. You’ve been asking me basically since we started dating and I’ve somehow managed to come all this way without giving you an actual answer. There is a reason for that. But we’ll get to that later. I decided to write you this letter as a way to finally answer you. The questions? Why I love you, what I love about you, and when I fell for you in the first place. It’s story time.

As you know, we have a pretty weird history and honestly, sometimes I forget just how far back we go. You know in June we’ll have known each other for four years already? It’s crazy. I don’t know how things seemed from your perspective, but for me, when I look back you had this weird ability of always being around. Always being there. I know I’ve mentioned that to you before, but somehow you managed to be a part of so many of my high school memories. Back then we were obviously nothing more than friends, and it’s crazy to me just how much you still managed to be a part of my life. It was all little things up until senior year. That’s when we really started to get closer and you being there for little things turned into you being there for the big moments, like prom and graduation. We might not have been in the same friend groups, but you were always there in the background. Coming up to say hi to me and take a picture at prom and even giving me your tassel from your graduation cap when I was upset about losing mine. You were always on the outskirts of my big memories.

The truth, the part about our past that I’ve never told you, is that I never quite knew how I was supposed to act around you or how I was supposed to treat you. You were my best friend’s boyfriend for a long time, which created some weird lines between us. Would it be weird for us to hangout, just the two of us without Kyungsoo? Was that allowed? But then suddenly you weren’t his boyfriend anymore. Instead of making things simpler everything just got more complicated. Suddenly there were even more lines not to be crossed and I was stuck in the middle of the two of you. Suddenly my best friend wasn’t who I thought he was all those years and I was caught trying to protect you from him. When he started losing control of himself and getting violent, I was there keeping him away and trying to keep him calm. I always did feel like I was responsible for him. Was I even allowed to talk to you? Lucky for you I’ve never been one to play games. You were still my friend, even if you two broke up and I was not about to let a bunch of bull friendship rules stop me from talking to you, even if it meant I wasn’t as loyal to my best friend as the world thought I should be.

Not long after, my best friend was gone, kicked out of school. Kyungsoo and I lost touch. And that left the two of us. Finally free to talk to each other without starting a war. Without him in the way we got even closer and you were always there for me. Back then I never understood why you always ate lunch in the same place I did. I knew you didn’t really talk to or even particularly like the people I sat with. Chen was too loud, Kris was too arrogant, Suho was too righteous, along with the rest of the bunch. I know now that you were there because of me, but I don’t think you realize that you being there was a huge reason why I even continued to eat there in the first place. You were the only one in the whole group that I found myself even wanting to talk to. We always just got along so well, our personalities just matching up so perfectly. And towards the end of the year, when my friendship with Luhan blew up and all I wanted to do was cry, all I could think about was how much I wanted lunch time to come because all I wanted was for you to hug me and comfort me. I didn’t want anyone else’s comfort. Just you. And one of your giant hugs. (Seriously why are you so much larger than me? It isn’t fair.)

Summer came and the countdown of how many days I had left before I left for college began. I felt like I was living my last days on Earth because I just knew that nothing was going to be the same once I left. I wouldn’t see the town I had grew up in for months and I wouldn’t be seeing much of my friends from that point on either. Your text came out of nowhere. I was leaving in a few days. You asked me if you were going to see me before I left, asked me if we could hang out. You didn’t know it, but I had been thinking we should hang out for years. All those lines never to be cros