“Charlotte Ava Amelia, come back here right now!”

Out of breath, Felix ran after her as fast he could. She had taken off the second she saw him. That rascal. She always did that, she loved teasing him. Usually, he enjoyed chasing her almost as much as she did being chased, but today he didn't have time. His flight left in a couple of hours. Maybe she could sense he was leaving. It was not that he wanted to leave her, he just needed to do this for himself. He felt like he was abandoning her but his mother had promised to take extra good care of her while he was gone.

“Gotcha!”

Felix giggled and made a pouch out of his sweater, carefully putting the little kangaroo joey into it, hugging her tight whilst giving her a pat on the noggin. Their resident escape artist. They had tried everything to reinforce the kangaroo enclosure, but Lottie always found a way out. Truth be told, she was barely a joey anymore. It had been a while since they celebrated her first birthday, so she was old enough to go out on her own. They had tried introducing her to the pre-release enclosure, an imitation of the kangaroos' environment in the wild, but she repeatedly broke out and returned to Felix's side. He had raised her since she was just a few inches tall, after her mother had thrown her out of the pouch as bait to escape a predator. What a cruel way to start her little life. But she was a tough cookie and was fast becoming the ruling boss at their kangaroo sanctuary.

As he walked them back home, Lottie pulled his hand into her temporary sweater-pouch and curled up to it. A habit she had failed to grow out of.

“Aww, you'll always be my baby,” Felix said in a whisper.

On their way through the enclosure, he said a tearful goodbye to his pack of kangaroos, giving them belly scratches and head rubs.

“Bye, Cottonball.”

“Stay safe, Mittens.”

“See ya, Fighter.”

“Felix, honey, if you plan on giving everyone an individual goodbye, you're going to miss your plane,” his mother said, waving him over to the car.

He carefully put Lottie down and gave her a quick kiss on the head.

“Go be an awesome kangaroo, will ya. Don't miss me too much. I'll try to do the same,” he said and forced himself to walk away, his heart breaking a tiny bit with every step.

Something touched his leg.

“Ah, Lottie. I wish I could take you with me, but I don't think I'll be allowed on board with a sweater full of kangaroo. Come on, go join the others, make some friends, will ya.”

He nudged her to go back as he closed the gate. She clung to the fence, watching him leave. It took everything he had not to run back and hug her to pieces.

“Felix!! Wait!”

With one foot in the car, Felix froze in his tracks. He would recognize that compellingly friendly voice anywhere. Slowly, he turned around to face Chris's anxious, tear-filled eyes. He was sweating bullets after running all the way from the village.

“Phew. I thought I'd missed you. You weren't really going to leave without saying goodbye, were you?”

He was. He didn't have the confidence not to burst into tears as he left his best friend for the first time in his twenty years of life. As predicted, like dutiful soldiers, the tears lined up in the tear ducts, ready to sacrifice themselves for the cause. Chris grabbed the middle of his sweater and pulled him into his arms, giving him one of his signature bear hugs. Ah, how he loved those hugs. There was nothing warmer in this world than Chris' arms as he held him tight. The tears started flowing unhindered, gradually creating a puddle on Chris' shoulder. He would always be his 'what if'. But he had to move on, he couldn't spend his whole life in love with a straight guy.

“You're coming back before my wedding, right? You'll be my best man?”

Felix just nodded into Chris's wet shoulder. He wanted nothing more than to miss that wedding. It had been his original motivation for leaving, having a legitimate reason not to show up. But at the very last minute, when booking the tickets, he couldn't go through with it.

“I'm gonna miss you, buddy.”

Chris squeezed him one last time before releasing him. Felix's newfound freedom felt cold. He had to stop himself from crawling back into his arms and canceling the trip altogether. He gave Chris a tearful smile goodbye as his voice refused to form words of any kind. And then he took a deep breath, got into the car, and watched as Chris disappeared in the rearview mirror.

He had prepared for everything, except the part where he had to leave his whole life behind. He felt oddly empty inside as he watched miles and miles of bushland rush past. Saying goodbye to Chris was the hardest thing he had ever had to do. They had never been apart for longer than a couple of days. How was he going to survive without his bright, positive energy for six long months? Who was going to pull him out, when he got stuck inside his head, overthinking everything? Who was going to tell him it was all going to be alright?

This was it. He was standing in front of the gate, his mother watching him with puffy eyes after having cried the whole way to the airport. And if he didn't know better, he would have sworn his father's eyes got a tiny bit misty as they said their goodbyes. His tough, emotionally unavailable Aussie farmer dad threw his arms around him. Felix disappeared into his big, burly arms. That moment would forever be edged into the lining of his heart. It was inexplicably meaningful to all three of them. The invisible bond between them that had always just naturally been there and they had taken for granted, was being tested for the first time. And it was even stronger than they could have imagined.

Boarding the plane, he got the weirdest feeling. A mix of 'push and pull'. He wished he had the ability to stay in more than one place at once. He dreaded leaving the only place he had ever known, leaving behind everyone he loved and who loved him. But there was something inside him that kept pushing him forward, into the unknown. Felix had never really understood what fueled adventurers and explorers, finding them reckless and out of touch with reality. Little did he know he was one of them.

After entering the intimidatingly huge plane, he played a challenging game of human Tetris on an unnecessarily narrow aisle while trying to squeeze past an alarmingly high number of people who were not bothered at all by the fact that they were holding up a whole planeload of passengers waiting to board.

Sitting down in his assigned seat, Felix felt as if they had already taken off, the feeling of weightlessness in his tummy was so strong. His insides were twisted into a knot, surrounded by a thousand fluttering butterflies. This was really happening. He was going to fly over half the world, where he had no idea what would greet him. He felt like this was a deciding moment in his life, like he would never be the same again.

“Korea, here I come.”