There is never a time or place for falling in love; it’s never planned, never something you can force - it happens all at once, in a breathless instance of time, and it hits you with an intensity that makes your head spin and your mind go dizzy.

Sometimes you don’t realise it hits you straight away - there are times when you see the one you never knew you were in love with, and you feel your heart jump a little, skip a few beats, and it’s already too late by the time you realise you’re actually in love.

And in that moment, he feels like he’s debunked every saying about Cupid looking for love with his mind; for in this throbbing instant, he knows that Cupid had closed both his eyes and his mind when he had shot this arrow - in this heart-racing passing of time, he grows to understand that he had taken a leap without his vision or his right mind about him.

He hates the feeling. He wants to reach up, dig his nails into his skin and attempt to rip it off in some vain attempt of managing to reach his heart to command it to stop being so stupid. He hates that he allowed his heart to shut the doors on both his eyes and mind, he hates that he allowed his emotions to run too free, too far from the cellar that they were supposed to be shut tightly in - and now they wander unfamiliar roads day and night, the distance between them and their once so tight captivity growing further and further.

And now - he swallows thickly, feeling the bile burn the back of his throat, feeling the frustration well up in every inch of his mind. Now, they run along the roads with far less constraint, run the risks of the outside, and the intention to return back is too far gone now.

What have I done?

His heart hammers against his sternum. For the first time in a long time, he feels a panic coming over him, the type to blur his senses and mess up all the once so neatly organised thoughts in his head. A million berations flow through his mind all at once, and all he can do is clench his jaw helplessly, looking at the man who stands still before him, almost as if his feet were held tight by thick, relentless roots of a tree.

The first movement he notes is the upward twitch of Jungsoo’s lips. “I never thought that I would hear that from you one day,” he comments, “I always thought your only motivation was to kill me and get it over and done with.” He dares to move one small, shuffling step forward, and Heechul hates the way vulnerability courses through his veins.

Not pure vulnerability, he’d say - not the annoying weak-kneed kind that renders high school students all helpless in front of their long-time crushes; more of a what do I do now? moment, in which it strikes him, a little too clearly, that when it comes to anything outside of quiet blood rains and cold polished metal, his knowledge is close to zero.

He hates not knowing what to do.

“Don’t think that I harbour any special feelings towards you,” and he hates the way his voice falters ever-so-slightly, “I’ll figure this feeling out over time. Just because my company is gone now, it doesn’t mean that the job is no longer on my hands.”

Jungsoo smiles, heartwarmingly so, and nods his head. “Okay.”

Why are you so willing to come with me, knowing that I might kill you at any time?

Why am I so willing to go with you, knowing that you might kill me at any time?

He follows either way; his feet move, almost instinctively, as Heechul turns his back and begins to walk again. He’s annoyed at the way his heart flutters like a butterfly caught in a spider’s web, annoyed at the smile that tugs incessantly at the corners of his lips.

He never thought that the assassin would ever admit to not wanting to lose him - is that a hint of him having some form of feelings towards me, at the very least? - and he never thought that he would be here, smiling blindly like some happily confused teenager falling in love for the first time.

Not in love, he corrects his analogy, But more of a puzzled wonderment.

He’s annoyed at Heechul, a little - but more so annoyed at himself.

Heechul is annoying. How could someone come into your life in the dead of the night, shatter your entire universe into a trillion tiny shards before forcing you to gather them up bit by bit to form an incomplete world - with him inside? How could someone somehow, someway or another, unknowingly worm his way into another person’s heart after breaking it to the point of no repair? How could someone stubbornly position himself as a permanent star in another’s skies - shining so bright at times, completely gone at others - without ever intending for himself to? How could someone destroy everything on purpose, yet manage to crawl into the pieces of another person’s heart purely on accident?

He, too - he is the most annoying, the most confusing. He can no longer understand himself; now that he no longer lives the mechanical, routine-bound lifestyle that he was so used to - now that his limbs have stopped aching after walking long distances, now that the sound of metal against metal no longer makes him cower and hide and pray for everything