I stuck with EXO through their comeback, during concerts and music shows counting the seconds until I could drive home and steal a few moments with Luhan in the front passenger seat smiling at his fingers on his lap. Then I said good-bye and finally went back to school, a move which I had debated for so long but for which I’d never had the courage until someone else (Luhan) agreed it was the right thing to do. After months of poring over test prep books and video-chatting my favorite dongsaengs I passed my high school equivalency test and went on to college.

While applying I had a hard time deciding what the major in, because for all of my hopes and expectations for myself I had no concrete ideas of what I actually wanted to succeed at. I spent weeks agonizing over my career path until a degree in music production caught my eye. It didn’t really matter what I did because all I wanted to do was work towards something, have a goal to strive towards, but with a degree like that I could probably get a job in SM again.

So I took out student loans and after my meager savings ran out I got a job at a local salon to pay the bills. I rarely had time to talk with the boys after that, but I tried to make time to keep up with their comebacks so I could know when to contact them. As for Luhan, maintaining a long-distance relationship with both parties so busy was hard, but idols rarely have time for personal lives anyway, so we kept up through text messages and phone calls.

I was happy with it, because even though I rarely got more than four hours of sleep and I couldn’t afford new things anymore, I was finally getting on with my life and doing something. And that’s all I had really wanted all along, not success or accolade, just the feeling of working towards some goal, no matter how distant or obscure. In that way my college years were like Luhan’s trainee ones--we both were working for something unsure, but if we made it we would remember those times fondly, recognize them as simpler and purer, in a way.

I graduated from college a year early by cramming my schedule and begging the dean, and with a lot of wheedling on Luhan’s part I got a job in SM’s music production department. Now I’m satisfied with helping produce the songs that set hearts racing and raise goosebumps on shoulders when sung from lips I’ve helped paint, and know that I’m a part of something bigger.

Sometimes I tag along on EXO’s promotions and help brush concealer over the small blemishes that prevent someone from being perfect. I joke with the boys and take selcas that will be deleted moments later because they’re unflattering. I exchange feather-light kisses with Luhan before he goes onstage and let him pat my head in greeting when he comes in to look at EXO’s new song. I’m content to live my life and forget about promises for a glory too far away to be sure it’s what I want, to be sure it’s not a mirage. I just savor the small things, like the way Luhan’s kisses taste like bubble tea or the way he punctuates every text message with an emoticon or the way that new shirt fits just right on my body as I admire my reflection in the mirror. I remember that I have time to waste as well as invest, years of it stretching before me and a kid whose name is Luhan but whose grins are no longer so childish, whose kisses grow more and more experienced, whose whispers aren’t complaints anymore, but words of thanks for what we share.