Luhan’s wish was to be cremated, but nonetheless, Junmyeon still decided to hold a memorial service at their house.

It’s been three days since his passing, and Noeul didn’t mull over it. Actually, more specifically, she didn’t let herself do that. Noeul slept the entire day after Luhan died. When she woke up, it was already the next day, so she spent it doing the school work that she missed. She went back to sleep—purposefully missing the cremation service.

Then, when Junmyeon told her that they would hold a memorial service, she got straight to busying herself with cleaning tasks. She threw away the empty takeout and food containers. She did heaps of laundry. She scrubbed at the floors. The walls. The toilets. But she never stepped foot in Luhan’s room.

More like she couldn’t bear to. If she even stepped one foot in, all of this bravado would melt right off. Noeul wouldn’t be able to keep her sanity if she smelled him or saw his things.

So, she stayed away from his room—instead, cleaning every other room until every square inch was sparklingly clean.

Junmyeon had been quieter than usual and more withdrawn so he didn’t pay any attention to Noeul filling her free time up to the brim. Then, there was Sehun who cried for hours straight on her shoulders. On the other hand, Baekhyun also busied himself with his life. He had to finish his school work as well. Half of the time, Noeul didn’t see him when he left the house in the morning until the sun sank.

She didn’t speak a word to him—sometimes until he would quietly slip under the covers right beside her. They let the silence do the speaking. They let their bodies comfort each other.

Sometimes, she would wake up in the middle of the night to feel him the side of her face or thread his hand through her hair.

Sometimes, she would trace his moles and find a way to entertain herself if only to not remember what truly had happened.

Then, the day of the service came, and their house was jam-packed with neighbors, Junmyeon’s colleagues, Sehun's acquaintances and friends from work, and their classmates.

Noeul and Baekhyun stood in the back as the service went on. They were approached by different classmates and offered condolences, but none—absolutely none of the apologies felt genuine.

Half of these people didn’t know Luhan personally. They didn’t try to talk to him at all. Didn’t see him as more than a classmate.

Noeul felt her empty chest gurgle with something. She couldn’t quite put her hand on it in the beginning. It was a strange feeling like a weird rash or indigestion.

She tried to breathe, but each time, more people came up and touched her without her permission. On her arms. Or sometimes a hug.

Noeul felt angry. She wondered what made her feel so much resentment towards these people. Was it possessiveness? Was it losing someone which meant—she was no longer needed by him?

Bianca came by. Noeul hadn’t seen her since that outburst in the hallway. Bianca, seeing Noeul across the room, makes a beeline straight toward her. Noeul tries to find a way out of this. She was the last person Noeul wants to talk to.

She tries to hide the wince that she feels coming down, but her face gives it away. Somehow, her filter has lost itself somewhere along that day when Luhan died.

Bianca doesn’t comment on it if she does notice. Instead, she anchors her gaze straight at the girl and asks, “how are you doing?”

“Fine,” Noeul says, feeling resigned at this point. Luhan’s death had been an eye-opener for her. The grudges that she held in the past felt stupid and immature. Some people may have deserved it, but it was exhausting for Noeul to hold onto it.

Bianca shakes her head. “Noeul, I’m sorry about your loss.”

“Thank you,” she murmurs, trying to end this conversation.

But Bianca takes her hand, and Noeul just lets her. “He was more like a sibling to you than I was. You don’t have to forgive me, Noeul. But I want you to know that there hasn’t been a day that I haven’t regretted what I did to you.”

“Okay,” Noeul releases. Her own words feel foreign to her ears. God. What was this? Growing up? This felt ty. “How far along are you?”

Bianca’s eyes glimmer with excitement as she runs a hand over her swollen belly. She looks like she’s about to pop and crackle. “Seven.”

“Almost there,” Noeul murmurs half-heartedly.

“Yeah, we’re really excited for him to come out.”

We’re

The word makes Noeul feel sick. She didn’t know why the universe was set on playing cruel jokes on her. She shakes her head, feeling a lot like she was going to hurl out her small breakfast.

“Sorry, I can’t,” Noeul interrupts as Bianca is in the middle of chattering about her pregnancy. Noeul was telling the truth. It didn’t matter if it hurt other people. She couldn’t lie anymore. She couldn’t put on a smile and feign that everything was peachy.

Because everything was not peachy. Her half-sister was impregnated by an abuser. Her best friend just died three days ago. And she was in love with someone she shouldn’t love.

Noeul pushes past everybody, dashing toward the nearest exit. this. She wouldn’t be here. She wouldn’t cry or be vulnerable in front of any of these people. them.

She didn't get very far, stopping when she felt a hand on her back. She bends over dry heaving and emptying all of her stomach contents. She feels somebody else holding back the strands of her hair, loosely pulling it away from her face. Noeul straightens and looks at the person holding her hair. And in some magical way, it's him, the person that she wanted to see the most during this entire event standing right in front of her as he held her hair back.

“Do you remember what you told me in front of the school parking lot?” She asks.

Baekhyun looks into her eyes, understanding blooming in his. “Where would you like to go?”

Noeul smiles, feeling warmth erupt in her lower belly. “Anywhere but here.”

They take his bike, which was previously covered with tarp in the back of the garage.

Noeul laughs, feeling the wind on her face. The craziness of the strands that fly around her head. She tightens her arms around Baekhyun’s waist until her nose brushes the back of his nape, inhaling. She hadn’t felt this free in days. Like a storm came over, blowing everything in its path. The damage was still there, but the days following the ravaging storm were serene.

She relishes this freedom. The feeling of not being restrained by a single thought. The feeling of temporarily letting go.

In this moment, Noeul isn’t so damaged, and Baekhyun is just a boy. A boy that she likes. Today isn’t her best friend’s memorial service.

When they finally stop after zipping through evening traffic and old buildings. Noeul gets off the bike, handing Baekhyun her helmet. She blinks at the shop in front of her. The flashing red neon sign that reads The Tat Bat. It’s a tattoo parlor, specifically what Noeul told him.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Baekhyun reiterates. He didn’t fight with her the first time. Certainly not now, but he did seem nervous. Like Noeul somehow lost a few screws, and he worried she would regret making a rash decision such as getting something inked permanently on her skin.

Noeul smiles in response. “Yeah, I think so.”

Baekhyun looks skeptical, but he doesn’t argue. Instead, he opens the door for her. “Come on, then.”

The tattoo parlor is clean with only a single chair in the back. There’s art hanging on the walls. Some containing either charcoal or pencil sketches. It all follows one common theme: gray.

She wonders if there’s a deeper meaning there, or if it’s simply for aesthetics.

“I got mine done here,” Baekhyun tells her as they wait in the front. “The owner used to work in the animation industry until she got cancer. She recovered and decided to open up a tattoo parlor. She was reluctant to do mine because I was only sixteen, but once I told her the reason why I wanted to get it done—she gave in.”

A woman in her mid-thirties comes out from the back, a door closing promptly behind her. She wears a scarf around her ponytail, and she’s all easy smiles when she sees them.

A second later, recognization lights in her expression when she looks to Baekhyun.

“Hey, kiddo,” she squeaks. “How’s everything going?”

“Keir,” he acknowledges with a grin of his own. “It’s—“ Baekhyun pauses. “It’s going,” he decides to say and then turns to Noeul. “She’s thinking of a tattoo. Are you busy right now?”

Keir sends Noeul a happy smile. “Of course, what are you thinking of?”

Noeul’s mind blanks. “I don’t know. I guess I just had the thought of getting one, but I didn’t think that far ahead.”

Keir laughs. “I have a little book if you want to see it?”

Noeul glances at Baekhyun who waits diligently. She shakes her head. “Actually, will you give the book to him? I think I want to be surprised.”

Baekhyun’s eyebrows raise in concern. He looks a little shaken by her casualness.

Keir glances between the two of them, waiting.

He nods reluctantly. “Thanks, Keir.”

She directs a brighter smile, waving her hand. “Don’t worry about it, honey.” When she comes back with her book, she mouths to Baekhyun I like her.

This makes him laugh delightfully, the corner of his eyes wrinkling upward and tugging her heartstrings along with the action.

Noeul gets situated on the seat, turning the opposite way of her right wrist where she insisted on getting the tattoo. Baekhyun pulls a chair from somewhere, sitting directly in front of her.

“You ready?” Keir asks.

Noeul cranes her neck, nodding eagerly.

The pain isn’t too bad. Maybe because physical pain isn’t that bad compared to the pain she’d been feeling these couple of days.

Noeul finds it cute that Baekhyun is watching the process so intently, so focused, and unlike him. He must be nervous, maybe scared that she may not like it.

But Noeul knows whatever he chose, she’ll love it. Because, in this entire world, there is no one who knows her better than he does. It’s a stretch. But it’s true. Sometimes, she felt like he knew more about her than herself.

Almost an hour later, the sky is dark outside, and the buzzing of the tattoo machine stops. She hears Baekhyun snapping a couple of pictures of her wrist before Keir closes it with a bandage.

Noeul hops out of the chair to pay, and Baekhyun heads to the restroom. When she approaches the front, Keir has a fond smile on her face.

Noeul’s expression must be filled with confusion because Keir finds the need to explain herself.

“I saw him when he was just a sixteen-year-old boy,” she says with a nostalgic smile. “I think of him from time to time because he was one of the first people that I broke my rule for. There was a fire in his eyes, and he had this determination that struck something inside of me.” She points to Noeul. “I see that he found his match.”

Noeul blinks. “Oh. We’re not—“

“Not yet?” Keir asks, emphasizing on the yet.

Noeul is quiet when she pays. She’s quiet when Keir bids the two of them goodbye and thanks them for their business. She’s quiet when they’re outside her shop, back into the chilling night.

Baekhyun turns to check on her. “Are you okay?”

“I’m not sure,” she tells him.

His eyes caress over her face as he does his thing. As he tries to read her. Like he always does. In silence. Then, he asks, “do you wanna see?”

He’s referring to her tattoo.

Noeul nods when he pulls out his phone. She has to get closer to him to see his phone screen. It’s dark out, and the glare from the light above them makes it hard to see.

Her heart flutters violently in her chest. It does leaps and jumps off of a cliff. On her wrist are a tiny, delicate single flower off to the side and two intertwining branches of flowers with the same delicacy.

Wildflowers.

She immediately understood why he chose it, but Noeul wanted to hear it directly from him.

A gentle smile curves at the corner of his lips as he says, “as soon as I saw them, they reminded me of you. They’re non-conforming blooms that grow on their own terms. They may not have been intentionally planted or seeded—certainly not cared for or tended to. But they’re just like you. Resilient. Understated. Pretty.”

Noeul doesn’t know if anyone’s ever reacted to a surprise this way, but she believes that she may be the first. At least, she hopes that she is.

The girl pushes onto her tip-toes, cupping both his cheeks with her palms and pressing a kiss to his lips.

It takes him by surprise, of course. Nothing better than giving back what was given. Baekhyun eventually stirs from his surprise and responds with an urgency of his own.

He tears into her, devouring her very soul. Like he needed her. It’s been months since Noeul has felt anything remotely like this. It blinds her. Absolutely wrecks her inside and out.

But she pushes back, kissing him with fervor. It’s a silent thank you. It’s an I miss you. It’s the four-letter word that begins with an L and ends with -ove. It’s the ing truth laid bare.

Feeling him pressed against her like this. The warmth of his chest under her fingertips. The soft tickle of his hair when she grazes her fingers against them.

It feels like an earthquake, rippling through her tranquility. It uproots her, yet keeps her planted. It’s paradoxical, but Noeul knows. It feels a lot like knowing the secret of the universe.

But Noeul comes to her senses just as quickly, pulling back. She can still taste him. She can smell him like her own. Her heart beats fast, racing and begging for her to do it again. To forget for a second longer.

But he also knows. Her spontaneity comes with a price, and Baekhyun knows far too well of the consequences. So, instead of addressing it, he leans in again, whispering, “one more. One more, and I let you go.”

Noeul feels tears push at the back of her eyes, burning as a reminder. She closes her eyes nonetheless, answering him with another searing kiss. The clock ticks, but right now, at this moment, it slows.

It aids their lies, coveted deceits, and everything else in between.

It’s pretending that this kiss won’t lead anywhere. It’s pretending that their best friend is still alive somewhere. It’s pretending that these feelings will magically go away.

It’s a fantasy that Noeul desperately wants to cling to. But at least she isn’t alone. Because there’s one more person who’s doing the same, and he’s on the receiving end.

[a/n] i love reading your comments. i'm sorry for making you guys cry so much since the beginning. i'm kind of sad to say that his story is ending next chapter. i will be releasing an epilogue, so check back for it. i'm trying not to rush the ending. but this entire story has been building, so it feels right for it to be drastic. you'll see what i mean. but anyway. i went off on the prose above. like i was reading over it, and i was like um who wrote this?

i'm gonna miss noeul and baekhyun. they were so different from the characters that i usually write. baekhyun feels so real yk. or maybe that's just me. lmk of your thoughts on this chapter. i appreciate all of you for reading through the pain.