Baekhyun wondered if he’d ever get a day like this again. Last night’s events led Mari into another sobbing fit where she cried for hours on end, Baekhyun’s shirt turning damp. He rubbed her back tirelessly the whole night until she’d slumped in his arms and weakened. Baekhyun took it as a sign that it was time for her to rest, so he carried her body all the way to his room and placed her on his bed.

She looked so small and comfortable tucked under his sheets like that. It left him baffled that such a vulnerable young woman quivered in her sleep from her nightmares, while the world unknowingly labeled her close to an empress.

Baekhyun pursed his lips. The world we see may not be what it really was, after all, and everything about Mari and Chanyeol’s environment were perfect examples of that. People like them wore dazzling clothes and flashed equally sparkling smiles in front of the media while the citizens adored them, envied them for living such a luxury that not even 1% of the country could afford. It didn’t help that both of them were bred to be leaders and elegant in everything they did, power and influence gifted as a birthright.

They were so beautiful—it hurt.

He didn’t know how long he stayed on the armchair beside his bed that night. All he knew was that Mari hogged the sheets until she made herself into a human burrito, whispering incomprehensible words in her sleep. Every now and then she’d whine before falling limp, and soon enough, sunlight peeked through the cracks of his window, contouring the slopes of Mari’s cheekbones.

Baekhyun wanted this moment to last forever. With him watching over like that and the fine particles of dust hanging still in the air, her soft breathing and her skin rustling against the linen material of his sheets playing in the background. She looked so comfortable in his bed he felt shameless enough to fantasize for a moment that perhaps, in a different reality, she could’ve been his.

But then her lips moved. She said something and the whole room grew even quieter—Baekhyun wondered if he’d really heard it at all.

Could it be?

His feet brought him towards the bed the next second, as if Mari’s soft sighs took control of every fibre of his being. Baekhyun gently coaxed Mari’s head into his lap where she snuggled into his thigh, a small smile making its way across her face. The small gesture affected him far greater than it should have. His heart skipped a beat from the comfortable silence in his room, and the delicate touch his calloused fingers brought danced to brush her bangs away from her eyes.

Suddenly, Baekhyun was brought back to when he was sixteen, sitting next to the window at the back of the class. The day felt warm and the air humid, the sun shining down on the hairs of his left arm while his English professor recited a poem. Baekhyun remembered looking away from the trees outside the school then, his whole attention caught by the honeyed words that left their lips.

It had already been years since he heard of that poem and Baekhyun doesn’t understand why he remembered it now all of a sudden, but the words came out naturally, as easily as loving an innocent child would be.

“I think of you in the morning before the sun rises, when in the still of the darkness my heart feels your presence. Your love, your tenderness, your slow rhythmic breathing as you sleep, and I am at peace,” he breathed out, the corners of his lips tilting into a smile. “I think of you when the first rays of sunlight spill like a waterfall between the blinds and settle in my eyes. I reach my hand, my foot, any body part will do, to touch you and breathe you in. It feeds my heart, my soul, my spirit, and I am at peace.”

Truly, he was at peace. His heart no longer hammered in his ribcage nor did he feel his skin was on fire. Rather, this moment edged itself away into his heart and cut deep like a knife, but instead of wounding him, Baekhyun found all of his fears and worries whispering away. He knew this moment would not last forever—but surely, it couldn’t be a sin to cherish it.

“Did you write that?” Mari mumbled from his thigh, “It’s beautiful.”

“It’s called ‘When Do I Think of You’ by Sherry Hilderbrand,” Baekhyun answered with a muted chuckle, his hand freezing mid-air from touching her hair before he placed it back on his sides. He heard Mari hum. “Have you been awake the whole time?”

“No...I had a dream.”

“What did you dream of?”

“I dreamt of you,” she said, and Baekhyun stilled. “I dreamt of us in Japan. I want to go back.”

“We can go back if you want to. One day...when you can be mine,” he breathed out, brows furrowing when Mari opened her eyes to look up at him. Her eyes were wide, expressive, and glassy—always holding that tinge of a dreamy gaze that stole his heart from the moment he met. Mustering all the courage he had left, he caught her eye and said, “I love you, too, Mari.”