Lay all but runs to the meadow the moment he arrives home. He wants him to be the first to hear him speak. He can speak.
"Suho?" he tries tentatively.
No answer.
"Suho?"
He had promised to wait for him. He had promised. Where is he?
Lay walks in the direction of Suho's cottage round the edge of the meadow, his feet still remembering the unmarked path even after two years. He cannot seem to shake off that sense of foreboding, and his footsteps slow down as he nears his cottage.
Or what used to be his cottage.
Most of the house has been blown away, and what is left of the house--- if you could still call it a house--- is only a wall with a fireplace that has long since gone cold, the edges crumbling, weathered by nature, worn down by time.
Lay stumbles in, still in shock at the sight of Suho's cottage. Even with almost everything gone, he can still see the house at its finest, the cosy rooms lit up with sunshine no longer warm, no longer bright, ghosts of maple-coloured furniture that no longer exist. He remembers the bed at the corner where he woke up the first time he was there; he recalls Suho's favourite chair at the table in front of the fire, how he liked to sit with one arm resting on the rest and dangling out of the chair. How he would play his guitar and Suho would sing with that heavenly, angelic voice of his. Where in the world is his angel?
Memories flood Lay and he breaks down, sobbing. Something terrible has happened to Suho, and given the circumstances of the world he lived in, Lay suspects the worst.
He suddenly recollects Suho putting away their conversations into an iron box when they had filled a whole piece of paper, hidden behind the fireplace. Lay scrabbles at the decaying bricks, their colours faded to grey, and an especially loose brick falls out and crumbles into dust. He s for something, anything, in the hole and his fingers hit metal. Hands shaking, he pulls out a black iron box, dented and covered with dust and mold. There is no lock, only artistic swirls engraved at the sides, just how he remembers it. He holds his breath and eases open the lid to see a stack of yellowed papers.
Gingerly, yet impatiently, he takes the stack out and starts to read the first page.

Sometimes you liked to sneak out to the secret meadow behind her house. Escape from reality, with nothing but your guitar. Because like the sunshine-flooded meadow, hidden within the winding paths and dark, unwelcoming trees, your guitar was one of the few things that you could rely on when life took a turn for the worse.
Sometimes you would play songs you know, songs that, coincidentally, match perfectly with your current situation.
Other times, when no song in existence could express your feelings, you would compose a song off the top of your head, so spontaneously that you would never remember how the song went after you left the meadow.
Music was your soul, and it was the music that came from you and you alone that echoed so hauntingly beautiful all around the forest.
Sometimes you would just lie there, guitar by your side, bathed in warm sunshine, with the wild grass and flowers surrounding you. Cut off from reality, the meadow had become your only reverie, your only shelter, where you could just be yourself.
On the nights that you spent in the meadow, not going back to the cold house they called home, you would curl up next to your guitar and every time, you slept better than on the expensive bed with down pillows.
Maybe you just didn't know, but the meadow was magical. Still is. Millennia ago, an angel died there, out of love, sacrificed herself so that her human lover could live. Her blood flowed and turned everything it touched magical, until her body dissolved into the earth. Her silver blood turned the meadow into a crossroad of time, a timeless haven. Not everyone could find it, but whoever /could/ was perpetually blessed.
My cottage was just at the edge of the meadow, just out of reach of the magic. I didn't know of its existence until that fated day when I heard the enchanting notes float through the air. The music was pulling me to the meadow.
To you.
I didn't want to interrupt your music. Didn't dare. So every time I heard your music, I crept up the tree behind you and just sat there, for hours at a time, just listening. You couldn't hear me, but I could hear you.
Sometimes I would sing along softly. I didn't know the words to your songs but somehow, the words I made up each time I heard a new song matched flawlessly with your melody. I wanted you to see me, to hear how my voice and your music mixed so well, but I didn't have the courage to show myself.
Then one day, you fainted in the middle of a song.
I couldn't just leave you there, no matter how safe the meadow was. You fainted and I was worried, worried that something might be terribly wrong with you. I picked you up in my arms and carried you to my little house, took care of you until you woke up.
Only to find that you were mute! Not a word, not a sound you could produce! The only method of communication was ink and paper, and you were unaccustomed to my version of a pen. My name is Suho, I told you. What's yours?
Your name was Lay, you wrote. You lived in a grand mansion near the forest. You came from the year 2012.
I came from 1912.
I was older than you by a century, yet I felt drawn to you. Perhaps it was the way you looked at me so trustingly, even though I was a stranger. Perhaps it was your songs still echoing inside my head. Whatever the reason, what I felt for you was much more than a man should feel for a fellow man, and unnatural as it was supposed to be, somehow, to me, it was as natural as breathing.
But I was scared; scared that you would reject me, that you would be disgusted by me. So I kept quiet.
We never knew why you fainted that day. When you woke up you were right as rain and I was glad. You went back, but you would return almost every single day. And we would spend hours in the meadow together until you had to go back. Sometimes we would just lie there, enjoying each other's company. Sometimes we would share our love of music, with me singing along to your melodies. Those songs would reverberate within my mind for the rest of the day and I took up the habit of writing down the words so that I wouldn't forget. It was a pity I never learned to read or write music.
Other times, we would go to my house and talk. Well, strictly speaking, we wrote. Writing a sentence and passing each other the piece of paper. I grew used to this silent mode of communication and I kept every single piece of paper we wrote on in a little black box behind the fireplace. I liked to re-read our conversations, how you described the advanced technology of the 21st century, how you told me about your family, your life in the mansion across the woods. How your parents lost all hope on you when they realised you were mute, how they gave up on you because you weren't the perfect child they wanted and refused to spend money on treatment. How they deemed you unworthy of inheritance, unworthy of their attention, and only kept you there simply because they wanted to avoid a commotion. And the more you told me, the more I realised just how much I wanted you to stay with me forever. I would take care of you, make you feel loved and important. But I never got the courage to tell you this.
And how much I regretted it.
A year passed, and one day you came to me, eyes shining, signalling to me you wanted paper. You told me you found an institution that could help you, that your own personal savings could finally afford to pay for the treatment. That you have finally turned eighteen and your parents no longer have control over you, and anyway they wanted you gone.
That you were leaving the very next day and you came to say goodbye.
You would be back in a year, you reassured me. I smiled and told you I would wait. I was happy for you.
And like the idiot--- no, like the coward I was, I couldn't muster up the courage to say 'I love you', not even at the end. Three simple words, yet so difficult to utter.
I'm afraid I'll never get the chance to say it now.
About a year after you left, the Great War started. The enemy started to bomb England and I'm scared. There have been reports of towns ripped apart by the bombs, tense and hundreds of people dying. Some of them were so close I could hear the faint sounds of the bombs exploding.
I'm afraid I will be bombed. I'm not afraid of dying; I'm afraid of not being able to see you again. And every day, I wake up regretting not confessing to you, and every night I go to bed with the possibility of death looming over my bed.
But I'm staying here. I'm staying here. It's been a year already and you'll be back any day. I will wait for you. I will.
And when you return, I shall say the three words I never got to say.
I love you.
 

Lay's hands are shaking as he reads the last sentence, tears streaming down his face. He shifts through the pile of crackling papers, searching desperately for the next page, or perhaps a newer entry--- but all he finds are their conversations Suho kept so lovingly and the lyrics he jotted down.
The lyrics.
Lay reads them, and the memories come back loud and clear, as if Suho is singing right next to him. A lump forms in his throat and he puts the papers gently back into the box in case his tears make them wet.
He wipes away his tears roughly. It was all his fault. He is indirectly responsible for Suho's death. He should have told him about the First World War. He should have told him he was--- is--- in love with him. He should have known that Suho wouldn't dare voice out his gayness, that he should have made the first move instead of Suho. It was so obvious. He just didn't dare ask in case he was terribly wrong. But he should have.
He should have, he should have. So much guilt, so much regret.
The only reason Lay went for speech therapy wasn't because he wanted to fit in, something all the therapists thought. He went for speech therapy because he wanted to be able to converse more easier with Suho. His plan was to come back, no longer mute, and live with Suho for the rest of their lives in the 20th century, in the little cottage by the meadow. After all, no one would miss him.
Too late.
Lay clutches the box to his chest, stumbling out of the ruins. He is never going to speak again. Why should he, when speaking no longer has its meaning?
Shadows stretch across the grass as the sun sets and the crickets start their music. He is never going to play his guitar again. His music will never be complete with Suho's heavenly voice.
Dandelions wave at his feet as he crosses the meadow. He is never coming back. Not when it contains so many painfully bittersweet memories. Not when the magic, for him, is gone.
A soft thud behind him, as if someone just jumped down from a tree. Lay stops and turns slowly, hoping against hope.
"Su-Suho?" he chokes.
Suho smiles.