It might be overstepping unstated boundaries, but Chanyeol really can’t help himself. He finds himself at Baekhyun’s front door one evening, flashlight in one hand and a little slip of paper with Baekhyun’s address on the other – given to him by a friend of his mothers, who just so happens to be a regular customer of Baekhyun’s grandfather. It takes a while for someone to answer after he knocks, and it’s a frail old woman with wispy grey hair who opens the door, someone Chanyeol’s only ever seen around but never spoken to.

“Hi, I’m here to see Baekhyun, if he’s in, I—” He’s cut short as she puts up a finger and then disappears into the house. He waits, awkwardly rocking back and forth on his feet until he hears light footsteps thudding closer, and quickly Baekhyun materializes in front of him, out of breath and wide-eyed as he rakes his eyes over Chanyeol’s entire being. “Hi,” Chanyeol greets, lamely. “I’m not a stalker I promise, I just really wanted to show you something so I asked a few people about you, and…” He holds up his flashlight and Baekhyun bites down on his lip as he eyes it suspiciously.

“Just trust me?” He tries.

Baekhyun sighs. He leans back into the house, gestures with his hands to someone Chanyeol can’t see – probably the old lady from before. It takes Chanyeol a few slow moments to realize that Baekhyun’s not just flailing around; he’s signing, his mouth moving soundlessly to words Chanyeol can’t make out. He stands there, dumbfounded, until Baekhyun beams up at him and nods that he can go.

“But this doesn’t make sense,” he eventually manages to say, once Baekhyun has gotten his shoes and coat on, and they’re making their way across the grass field that leads them to the elementary school. “You can’t be deaf, you hear me all the time. And you can’t be mute because I know you can speak. You introduced yourself to my uncle. That’s how I know you’re Baekhyun.”

There’s a hitch in Baekhyun’s breath and that’s the only response Chanyeol gets, and he frowns, not sure what else he can say in order to figure out his new friend. “Where are you from, anyway?” He tries, not really expecting an answer but it’s something he’s naturally curious about and figures it’s worth a shot. “When did you come here? Why? You live with your grandparents, right?”

He coughs when Baekhyun places a hand on his arm—the boy has a surprisingly strong grip. He slows to a stop and allows Baekhyun to tug the flashlight from his fingers. He has a tiny smile on his lips as he peers up at Chanyeol through his messy bangs.

“Let’s go,” He says in a tiny voice, and it stuns Chanyeol to the point where he can’t actually move. Baekhyun lets out a frustrated noise that can only really be related to a growl before he gets his grip on Chanyeol’s forearm again and tugs him across the gravelled playground towards the firefly coop.

“I researched fireflies, you know,” Chanyeol says pointedly once he gets over his shock. He really wants to hear Baekhyun speak again; actually have a chance to really listen to his voice. “At my university I found a few books in the library. My friend Jongin also lent me his computer but I couldn’t figure out how to make the internet work. He said there’s a button, but, haha,” he scratches the back of his neck uncomfortably when he realizes how pathetic he must sound. “Anyway, I found out that the larvae even glow so… I wondered if you had seen it before, because if not, I really wanted to show you and…”

“I have,” Baekhyun whispers. They slow to a stop at the edge of the little wooden table and lean over it, sharing matching grins when they see the little larvae swimming about as usual, except this time, occasionally emitting glows out of their lower halves. “They say it’s to warn off predators, but I’ve always wondered if they only do it if they feel threatened, or…”

“I think they glow no matter what, right?” Chanyeol says. “It’s because they’re poisonous. They’re just being thoughtful, really.”

“I don’t think they have the brainpower to control their own glow, much less be thoughtful,” Baekhyun sounds amused, and Chanyeol notices, for the first time, that his voice is a little too mature for such a boyish face. “You’re really weird.”

“No, no,” Chanyeol shakes his head. “I was just taught to always assume the best of people and things. And I’d like to think the fireflies don’t want to hurt anything by accident so they take all necessary precautions.”

“Okay, Chanyeol,” Baekhyun chuckles, and Chanyeol can’t figure out what he likes more; the way Baekhyun says his name or the sound of his laughter. “Are you happy now that you’ve seen them glow?”

Chanyeol glances down at the table one last time before nodding, pleased. “Should we go back already?”

Baekhyun shakes his head and pushes the flashlight into Chanyeol’s hands so he can grab the two empty feeding buckets and turn them upside down. He perches himself onto one and Chanyeol takes a seat on the other, completely unable to fight his smile at this point. His mom might be a little frustrated at him for going home late, but Chanyeol thinks it’s worth it if he gets to spend more time with his new friend.

-

Spring is quickly dissolving and the summer heat hits the village like a heavy, relentless rock. Chanyeol hears somewhere over the radio that this one has brought along some of the hottest temperatures they’d seen in over a hundred years, and as much as he’d like to use this as a perfect excuse to stay inside for his entire summer vacation with his desk fan pointed at his bed while he lazes there for eternity, he knows he can’t. The summer, while not particularly different to the spring when it comes to caring for the larvae, is incredibly important, since Baekhyun wants to utilize the extra time Chanyeol has to tackle the river itself—get it clean enough that the larvae can sustain life over the winter so they can mature into pupa by the spring.

When the car factory had been built, the villagers had stopped caring about keeping the river clean, so Chanyeol knows it’ll be a lot of hard work—over ten years of garbage has collected there, discarded wrappers lining the banks, even a few shopping carts lodged between the larger rocks.

They work diligently, spending morning after morning meeting far earlier than Chanyeol would like to, utilizing the long, hot days with the sun beating painfully down on their backs by collecting the trash and throwing it into the large bags they’d brought along from their homes. Baekhyun opens up a little bit sometimes during the long days they spend together, sometimes chuckling cutely behind his hands as Chanyeol slips and falls in the mud for the umpteenth time that summer, and sometimes even mumbling under his breath about how incredibly hot it is, and how he wishes summer could end so he could go back to not feeling like he lives in a volcano. Chanyeol always has to bite back a retort, because he thinks Baekhyun probably already knows that it would feel a million times cooler if he’d just take that gigantic navy blue jacket off and wore just a t-shirt or something. He even brings his polariod out with him sometimes, sneaking it from his bag when he knows Baekhyun isn't looking and snapping shots of his friend in the most opportune of moments--when he's rubbing sleep out of his eyes in the early morning, yawning cutely behind his spare hand, or while he's bent over to collect trash and there just so happens to be a plant positioned so perfectly behind him that it looks like he has a sprout growing out of his head. 

Chanyeol comes to learn that Baekhyun’s words, though he seemed to speak them so freely that night in the spring, are something precious—a luxury that Chanyeol can only indulge in on the rarest of occasions. And over the summer months he teaches himself to pay attention every single second they spend together, because he can’t think of anything worse than missing out on one of the instances that Baekhyun has something to say to him.  

And he knows it’s nothing personal, even though it hurts sometimes when he tells Baekhyun everything of himself, only to have his questions met with silence as they lay back on the grass after a hard day’s work, Chanyeol fixing his eyes on the pinkish orange of the evening sky, trying not to allow his disappointment to show through too easily. However, the pain quickly disappears one evening in the last week of break, when he turns his head and sees that Baekhyun is staring at him and not the sky, his lips curved around his perfectly straight, white teeth in a stunning smile. One meant for him and only him.

Looking back on it, Chanyeol thinks this is when he really started falling in love.

-

ahhh I'm tired >< so busy, but it'll all be over on Sunday. I can finally relax ah, do you know how nice that will be?

I was in the newspaper yesterday hahaha. It's weird that something that started as a small idea is becoming something so huge.

If you're from Toronto, come to HallyuCon, okay?