They had been right. This autumn everything would change. Everything Chanyeol thought he knew about anything was thrown upside down. He learned new things he never wanted to know about, like how a drowned body will float to the surface after a couple of days, before it will sink down again, forever this time.

He wasn’t allowed in the forest, wasn’t allowed to follow the people searching the pond and guarding it, waiting for a body to appear.

It never did.

When frost ate the last couple of leaves, people stopped waiting for a miracle. Nothing but birches surrounded the ice-covered pond until warm rays of sun told of spring and people moved on. In May, young boys and girls dressed up in their nicest suits and dresses and kneeled in front of the priest in a ceremony marking the end of childhood and beginning of the real life. Chanyeol did to, everyone his age did.

Over the winter, Chanyeol had learnt many more things. Most people forgot awfully fast, a knowledge that hurt, because he himself could still remember the earthy smell of sludgy water if he closed his eyes. He remembered how it felt when mud dried on his back on warm summer’s days. He remembered how long it took for rings in water to even out and quite often, he woke up in the middle of the night, haunted by a panicked sob.

Those who didn’t forget, they talked. Gossip had been a part of his life for months, stories about him, them. Chanyeol hated everything about it. He hated being called a killer or a betrayer. People didn’t know about what had happened. It hurt like crazy. Because if you looked at it like that, it was the truth being told. He was the reason Baekhyun was no longer around.

Chanyeol flee. He had to get out of the village, away from grass and trees. He needed to live a place where he could walk for hours and not see a single waterlily. A friend of his family took him in. In a big city by the sea, far away from everything familiar, he found the peace he needed to study and start living again. At least that was what he told himself.

A shattered heart is hard to put back together. It is easy to lose a piece or ten in the process, leaving an open spot with sharp edges. You could always try to refill it, and believe me he tried. Still, at the age of 25, with a Law school diploma in hand, he still remembered his very first kiss, and how beautifully those blue eyes sparkled after.

Going back was needed. It was like a inner compass telling him it was time. Time to go home, time to move on. In June, he packed all of his belongings and a box filled with old books. They were books that had become a part of his life over the past 10 years. Storybooks, fairy tales, books about myths and facts. They told of mysteries and about white horses, had thought him everything he knew about magical creatures, and how they lived their lives.

The knowledge of a missing boy in the village on the other side of the forest was part of the reason too. Lay, a boy his age, had been out in the snow, collecting timber with his horse. The horse came back, the boy never did.

Chanyeol was done running, he was moving back home.