[epilogue]

It’s a common spring morning: students are walking up and down in their new uniforms – white shirts and Scottish skirts and pants –, whining about the upcoming lessons and whispering juicy gossips under a rain of cherry petals – the wind moving trees slightly, but strong enough to make their branches tremble and the flowers dance on their way down to the ground.
You are walking too, slowly, in order to fully appreciate the beautiful wonders of that newly born spring. You have a mask on and a baseball cap so that you won’t be asked for a picture or an autograph every two steps. You have a leather jacket on, one hand hiding in its pocket, the other squeezing the hand of the person walking next to you, long brown hair and big hazel eyes looking up at you from time to time among the speeches and jokes. She has a genuine smile on while admiring with you the way the city changes from one season to the other, snow melting into blossoms, nature coming to life under the now warmer sunrays.
It’s a nice day: the temperature has come up several degrees since the past few weeks and it has finally stopped raining. You’re going to a small cafè that has just opened near the Han river, in a relatively secluded spot from crowds and crazy fans. You squeeze her hand some more thinking about why you’re going there, about the news you’re about to share. You’ve always considered yourself a pretty lucky person, but never in your life did you ever think you could have met someone like her, someone you came to love so much and by whom you felt so loved it makes your heart tight with happiness. In your pocket you hold a promise of forever, a promise you’re scared and excited to make at the same time, but which you have no doubt you want to make.

You stop on your feet when you’re almost there, the outline of the small cafè now more defined, but still far enough not to be recognized from there. She stops too and looks up at you with a confused expression as if wondering why you suddenly stopped, nothing in particular catching her attention. But there is something indeed, and you smile nodding towards what you saw.
There’s someone just in front of the door, waiting, blonde hair covering part of his face, cheeks red from the sudden breeze. He fidgets on his feet and you can see he’s nervous even from the distance. But then someone else arrives too, brown hair and a loud voice, coming into the picture like a warm wave of energy, and you see the two of them talking and bickering with one another, the past uneasiness now completely gone.
You can’t help but smile at their sight and you see her smiling beside you too, understanding, before she passes you the white polaroid she had hiding in her bag and you capture the scene on the translucent piece of paper. You’ve beginning to do that a lot: capture moments in time. You like the idea of having them somewhere, permanent, colors and lights and shadows trapped in pictures that remind you of old days. Sometimes time changes things and your mind plays tricks with the memories in your head, that’s why you’ve started to bring the small polaroid around. And she knows it and she knows you would’ve wanted to have this encounter printed down in order to be able to look at it later on and think that you’ve finally made it.

You look at them for some more seconds, eyes lingering on the way Jaejoong seems to blush under Yunho’s constant gaze, on how Yunho says something – a joke probably – and Jaejoong punches him lightly on the chest and somehow you feel taken back to so many years ago in a small practice room on a very early winter morning.
But there’s something different that wakes you up from your wide-awake dreams, a wise maturity, the knowledge of how much it took to be here, in this moment, and to be here together, that pushes you towards them, a smile on your lips for the love that brought you up and brought you here, and the love of your life beside you.

When they see you coming, they stop reconnecting – or whatever it was they were doing: talking, playing, fighting, caring – and you see them looking at you, at both of you, with fond knowing eyes and big smiles stamped over their faces that with no words tell you how proud they do are.

You sit down on the table the waitress just addressed you to, right in front of the river, a picturesque scenery all around you, and you find yourself thinking how much you love this new routine that has no demands, no claims, but that comes so natural and that gives you back so much.
You see Jaejoong asking her how she is, how she’s been, if you’re being nice to her, and he gets mad when Yunho tells him not to fill her with so many questions, not to overflow her like he usually does, and there you see it again, that innate need to care that he’ll never loose, no matter what happens. Jaejoong freezes Yunho with a side glance and keep on talking and asking, his curious mind never stopping, and you see her smiling too, sharing things and asking back, and looking up at you with warm eyes.
And so you drink a sip of your juice, and you smile feeling that old warmth back with all its power and you’re happy, for real, after so many years: you’ve all gone on and finally you’re writing new pages instead of re-reading the same old ones over and over.

[the end]

Author's note:

If you managed to arrive here after more than two years, well then thank you very much for reading this story! I hope you enjoyed it and i hope you liked it, as much as I have writing it - even though sometimes i was really about to throw it all away.

Stay safe!