it's a double update. please make sure to read the previous chapter before you start with this one as it's gotten too big, so i had to split it in two.

though i'm sure pretty much everyone forgot the plot by this time and will have to reread^^; but i promised i'm going to finish this story as it would've been unfair to leave it discontinued. and i did. thank you for everyone who was reading and if there's still someone who was waiting for it - thank you♥

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Donghae struggled to write another letter.

There were so many things he wanted to say, but so many things that wouldn’t look right if he only tried to put them into words. He didn’t manage to do it that day and the next day, and the day after it…

And it’s gotten ridiculous at this point, the man almost got yet another panic attack because he suddenly realized – he was ruining everything once again. Although they didn’t promise to reply each other every day, he knew Hyukjae was waiting for it and their time here was about to end.

This holiday he booked and extended. It was going to its logical end.

Not too many days were left until he’ll have to go home.

Both of them. And Donghae was risking everything by not replying now because they won’t have as much time to solve everything once they go back.

The two had only one another while they were here. But, no matter how important they could be to each other, once they return to their hometown, it’ll change.

Work. Families. Things to do. They’ll get busy with all of that and won’t be thinking about each other as much.

So he had to do something now.

But what?

Donghae was pacing his living room, the one where he and Hyukjae were playing games the other day, thinking what to do.

His camera was in the man’s hands. He took it, knowing perfectly well he can’t go outside and take pictures because yes – the raining season didn’t want to stop. It was a bit ridiculous by now and dangerous too – the roads in the mountains became a true disaster and many flights got cancelled because of that.

He felt trapped. Looking at that mirror that was so wet and had dozens of droplets on it, Donghae suddenly thought that it looks like the window of his own cell in prison and, without thinking too much about it, snapped a shot, checking it on impulse.

The dark room as he didn’t turn the lights on. The dead flower on the windowsill. The one Hyukjae gave him when they were taking pictures in the model’s apartment. He kept it as a little sentimental detail. Nothing else could be seen because the light from the wooden window wasn’t enough to lit up more things, and the fact that everything looked grey as only sky made it to the picture gave the photo that tint of melancholy, sadness.

Of everything Donghae felt at the moment.

And, as weird as it was, although the picture was the most basic one – you literally could find dozens of similar ones on Pinterest – the ginger head… liked it.

He liked it and…

Ba-dump.

Ba-dump.

He did it.

He did what Hyukjae told him to do and…

Oh dear, he tried to take a picture that wasn’t the man’s, and he liked it. Loved it. It was him. It was him because it held the feelings he had. It could be meaningless to others, but for Donghae, that image carried so much sense that he…

He froze.

Froze in the middle of the room, looking at that picture, yet almost dropping the camera once the realization hit the man.

Feelings.

That was it.

The answer. The reason. The cause.

It’s hard to count how many times Donghae asked himself why his photos became like that, why he stopped liking them. Would be impossible to tell how often he tried to find out the reason. And definitely happened to be unreal to find the cause of it all.

Yet the explanation was so simple, he felt dumb for understanding it just now.

His photos lacked feelings. Because at some point, engulfed by all that misery and sadness, feeling the weight of those burdens and hardships that were haunting him, Donghae… became an empty jar. He did think he felt things, but… that wasn’t exactly that.

When you’re empty… it’s like a different way of being sad, but it’s yet to impossible to make yourself laugh by watching a comedy or stuff. When you’re empty… it’s as if you got hit by a car and can’t get up, and that’s how you find yourself every day.

This is what makes it hard to get up from the bed, that’s the reason why eating seems to be meaningless.

That’s… the cause of everything.

Donghae was an empty jar because there were so many feelings… that he actually stopped feeling them. And if he did, those were the bad ones only, and what was his way to deal with them?

The man’s fingers touched his wrist out of instinct, tracing down the scars he left on his skin himself.

Scissors. His way to deal with that was scissors. He didn’t let himself to live through those feelings – even when they were basically the only thing he could ‘feel’ still – he simply tried to kill them with another kind of pain.

And that’s how he became an empty jar.

His heart became a lifeless piece of muscles and whatever else was in it (anatomy wasn’t his forte anyway). If feelings were colors, then he was grey. Simply because you always struggle to tell what that color describes and if someone asked you to draw emptiness… you’d probably choose it out of all.

But ever since he met Hyukjae…

Since day one, his heart was getting more and more lively. Colors – they started making it back there. Those weren’t nice colors all the time – sometimes it was a color of extreme sadness, sometimes a color of helplessness – but there were so many of them.

And when Hyukjae started adding the nice colors…

That’s when his photos changed. Donghae never lost his ability to do his job, he lost the ability to feel it. He lost it because he lost all other feelings as well. And now, once he got them back… No, once Hyukjae helped his heart to gain the colors it lost before, his photos were nice again.

Feeling overwhelmed, Donghae rushed to his laptop just to upload the picture there as he thought he had to edit it, but then…

He posted it.

Just posted it without any filters, any brightness adjustment or whatever. He uploaded it with a caption:

A candid picture where you can see colors even if there are not many of them.

Thank you for making me able to take pictures again.

He didn’t turn the comments on for that post. For the first time. Simply because it was something a bit more personal than it usually happened to be on his Instagram, simply because no one could understand.

Apart from one person.

And that person left his comment less than an hour later, despite the heavy rain and the fact he had to deliver it under the photographer’s door.

Donghae’s heart almost dropped out of his chest when he heard the familiar sound of Hyukjae knocking onto his door.

And it almost stopped when he saw a note saying,

“Amazing shot! I’m so happy you managed to do it again.

And very, very proud.”

Inhaling the cold, rainy air, Donghae somehow felt like he could smell the warm fragrance of Hyukjae’s perfume still.

***

He couldn’t stop taking pictures. He was obsessed.

Like a man who was starving for weeks and now couldn’t let go of food, Donghae couldn’t let go of his camera and kept taking pictures as he now knew what exactly made them the way they were.

He kept doing it under the rain.

He got sick.

Of course he got sick and was glued to bed for the rest of his so-called holiday.

It was the only time in his life when he was happy to be sick during the holiday because of what caused him feeling this way.

***

Not only Hyukjae was the kindest, he also was the most understanding person on Earth as he didn’t rush Donghae in replying. The model knew he was preoccupied with taking pictures (and he was following his Instagram account too), so he didn’t rush the photographer to reply as he knew how important it was.

However, Hyukjae could feel their time there ending as well; there were less days until he has to go home and he already checked the time he had to go back.

Three days.

They only had three days.

The raven head kept convincing himself it wasn’t too bad. Kept telling himself he didn’t miss that man who kept talking about things he didn’t hear anyone else talking about.

Hyukjae kept convincing himself and Heechul it wasn’t much of a deal they were unable to see each other and he couldn’t get the man out of his head. He kept…

He kept talking about Donghae all the time.

He kept doing it so often that one day Heechul yelled, “Just call him already, no need to call me to tell how much you love him!”

The thing is, Hyukjae never told anyone he loved Donghae. Not even himself.

It would’ve been weird, right? To fall for someone when you barely ended the previous relationship