In all honesty, I couldn’t directly remember when the last time was I had shared a bed with someone. To feel the weight of another body pressing down onto the mattress was a familiar, yet nearly nostalgic experience. Who had been the last to share a bed with me?

Ah yes, how could I have forgotten? Cold winter nights at my apartment. Cheesy movies and looking at the snowstorm outside.

I don’t think I can make it home tonight, Soo.

I know.

We had a wonderful time together. His hands which caressed my sides. His words that told me not to be afraid. His lips that swallowed my moans with every kiss he gave me.  

I had missed him so much when he’d left.

But there was no snow when I opened my eyes. Instead, the grey sun of an autumn morning shone through the windows and lit the room.

Everything was still in place, exactly as I’d left it the night I had died. Was I still dead?

Had I even died at all?

The answer came once I decided to roll over to see who my bed partner was. He lays on his stomach, the sheets covering half of his . His skin was so impeccably fair that I had to suppress the urge to touch him and risk waking him. He seemed so peaceful, eyes closed as his mouth hung a little open. Carefully, I pushed some of the ginger wisps from his eyes.

He opened his eyes, and a large grin appeared on his face as he sat up.

“Good morning.”

It had not been a dream.

He stretched, and I couldn’t help myself but to check out his muscles that tensed at the movement. “You slept for quite a bit. I thought you’d died.”

He grinned again. I rolled my eyes at the terrible joke, getting the feeling that this was only a taste of what was to come.

“Gabriel, was it... right?”  I asked. I still couldn’t believe this manboy was the archangel I’d read about in bibleschool, back when my mother had still forced me to go.

He shrugged.

“Pretty much.”

“How do you mean ‘pretty much’?”

He sat closer and grinned, flipping his reddish hair out of his face.

“I can be whoever you want me to be.”

I frowned, not really sure if this was a weird attempt to hit on me.

He chuckled at the sight of my expression.

“I mean that what you see here, this face, it’s what you want me to be. I am that which makes you most comfortable. So yes, I am Gabriel, but if you want, I can be someone else.”

I nodded, biting my lip for a moment. I looked at his face. Apparently these large, bulging eyes and the nearly freakish grin were supposed to make me feel comfortable but at that moment, they did exactly the opposite for me.

“Well then.. Can I call you something else?” I asked hesitantly. He grinned and nodded.

“Sure.”

I thought of every name I could possibly imagine. Every scribble on nametags I’d encountered in my life. It took me a moment, causing him to start picking at the bedsheets out of boredom.

I remembered a boy in my class back in middle school. He’d been small, smaller than me even, but with eyes as large as mine and a grin that seemed to light up rooms. A prankster, a bit of a pest even, but always able to get out of trouble just in time. He made me smile whenever I’d looked at him and I always knew I’d wanted to be his friend. But I was a shy kid, hiding behind the friends I’d already made.

Then one day he disappeared.

Kidnapped, they said.

School rules became extremely strict. None of us were allowed to walk home without supervision. None of us had any idea how to react to this. A kidnapping wasn’t something that happened in real life. It was something bad guys did to rich people on TV. Not something that happened to just a kid in your neighbourhood.

I could still remember the picture frame on his desk, the lily withering slowly as it sat in the bright sun all day. I didn’t understand how it had come to be this way.

I looked at him, sprawled out on the white bedsheets. He looked back at me and I realised why I’d made him look this way.
I had imagined him to be like this if he were my age now. The friend I was never able to make.

“Chanyeol.”

“Eh?”

“Chanyeol. Park Chanyeol. That’s your name.” I insisted, nodding to myself.

He sat up and smiled at me.

“I love it.”