He always liked the skies. One thing I remembered from him was his usual visit to the rooftop of the school building at 4 in the afternoon until downfall; he loved it when the skies turned from light blue to combination of dark hues of blue and violet with shades of orange. It had been fascinating, he once told me, to see the beauty of the skies with your own eyes; just like watching a worm that then formed a cocoon and soon turned into a beautiful butterfly, and we could witness it break free and fly away to flaunt its beauty to the whole world. But eventually, butterflies die. They don’t last long; their beauty soon withers and they land on the surface they wish to die before finally closing their wings, ending their journey. The twilight skies, too, soon faltered and darkened; the remaining of their beauty disappeared before they turned into dark shades of blue or purple, oftentimes grey or black.

I, even until now, don’t understand why he told me that story. I don’t understand either why he thought of the skies complicatedly; he was neither a philosopher nor a poet. He was just someone who could draw a tad bit better than average people and soon majored in art, and he was even considered weird when we were still in high school. Why were there such poetic thoughts in the head of a weirdo like him?

You think too simply, Kris hyung, once he said in our usual visit to the school rooftop. He might have been right, though. And that might be the sole reason of why I was enamored of him from the first place; his complicatedness filled life of the simple-minded me. His mysteriousness enticed someone whose mind was like an open book, someone like me. He had so much yet showed so little, itching something inside me to reveal his true self just in front of me. He was an enigma, alluring curious minds to get closer just to trap them inside his cage.

There was almost no drama between us. My proposal to him was just plain: I asked him to go out with me when we were on the rooftop, and he said yes. That was it. There was no intention or anything when I was asking him; just pure curiosity and a try out, whether or not he would accept it if I asked him out. And I didn’t know why he said yes, either. We just went out together, without any spark ignited between us; at least that was what I felt at those times.

When I was with him, nothing much I could learn in him. If anything, it was his habit to draw the skies every Wednesday. I asked him why, and he just answered me with “because it is the day when I was born”. He didn’t immediately reply, though, since he wouldn’t even budge when he was fully immersed in his drawings. I spent my time sitting beside him to study his feature: his soft brown locks that I never dared to caress, his pale cheeks that I had brushed lightly just twice or thrice, and his long thin fingers that were holding a pencil. Of all his body parts that I had seen, his fingers were my favorite. They were so slender and pretty just like women’s, if not prettier. When we walked together, I always took his hand and intertwined our fingers; I was amazed by the fact that his fingers matched the spaces between my fingers, just like matched puzzle pieces. And it was comfortable to hold his hand because it was small but not tiny, just fine size to be held by my big palms. And his palms were unexpectedly soft too, as if he never did any dirty works in his life; not that I knew about it, though, since we hardly talked about our personal life.

He did tell me about his private matters, actually. Once. Or twice, I didn’t really notice. He told me that he was from a well-off family. I never got a chance to come to his house, so that was a surprise for me. Well, that explained his soft palms, I thought at that time. He said that he didn’t really have to worry about his future because he had all money to reach anything, so he became himself. I asked him what he wanted to be, and he just said that he wanted to draw the skies. Why skies? I asked again. For him, the sky is the symbol of hope. If he looked at the blue sky he felt like he could reach anything. Even though he liked blue skies, twilight was his favorite moment in the whole day. Then he told me again the story about butterflies that flaunt their beauty before they die. He wanted to capture the twilights as much as he could do; so, he drew them.

I could help him with my camera, I said; because it was so absurd for me, his obsession to put the beauty of twilights into his sketch book and canvas. The twilight is just the same every day, isn’t it? But he shook his head, rejecting my offer. He didn’t only capture the colors of the sky, but also the 느낌, the feelings in it. And no, the skies are different every day, in his opinion. Sometimes it is light blue and almost white, sometimes it is real blue. Sometimes when it is downfall the skies are completely dark, sometimes there is more shades of orange than any other day. The feelings are different, too, he told me with final tone. I didn’t dig further, since he looked away from me and to the sky, which at that time was the perfect mixture of blue and orange, and quickly brushed the water paint on the sketch book sheet with similar hues.

~*~
 

We finally parted after we graduated from college; I got hired by a research company in Seoul, and he was just disappeared after that. There was no goodbye or a contact, as if he just vanished in Gyeonggi’s morning mist. The only sign that he indeed had left was his missing clothes, toiletries, and his other belongings. I was slightly hurt at that time because, well, couldn’t he at least inform me that he was going to leave? We both knew, in heart, that our relationship was based on nothing, but that didn’t mean that he could come and go out of my life as he pleased, did it?

But just after that I realized his position in my life. He wasn’t someone essential in my life, I’m being honest here, but he wasn’t replaceable either. Oftentimes I unconsciously got up to the rooftop of my office building at 4 in the afternoon. I watched the skies there, but they weren’t as beautiful as how I had seen before with him. It might be because skies are different depends on the area below them. Gyeonggi’s air was much healthier than Seoul’s, and that might be the cause of it, I thought. But watching skies wasn’t as enjoyable as before.

He came back to my life half a year after I settled down in Seoul. It was a chilly morning on November when I woke up and got out of my bedroom only to kick a small box on the floor that I was sure hadn’t been there before I went to sleep. Curious, I picked it up and opened it, and found a CD inside a transparent case.

Eh, for Kris hyung’s birthday? What should I… eh, you’re recording already?

After 5 seconds of blankness, Kyungsoo’s figure suddenly appeared in my TV screen when I was playing the CD. He was sitting on a couch in what seemed like his own dorm. My junior didn’t look different from the last time I met him. He cleared his throat and smiled nervously, waving his hand to the camera.

Hi, hyung! Uh, I don’t really know what to say since we haven’t met for quite long, but… how have you been doing? Ahahaha this is so lame! First of all, I didn’t really expect Baekhyunnie hyung to show up in front of my dorm in the morning so my mind is still kinda blank right now. But I really wish you a happy birthday! Don’t frown too much if you don’t want to scare people away, instead try to smile more. Don’t mind what that bastard Jongin had said about your face became like a horse when you smiled, because that isn’t true okay? Please try smiling more than 5 times a day! And I hope we can meet again soon, I hear that there are more music classes there than in Gyeonggi? Anyway, happy birthday! Wish you all the best!

After Kyungsoo, my friend from Chemistry major, Joonmyun, got into the shoot. From the background it was clear that he wasn’t in Korea; later he said that he was currently in Shanghai for a summit. I eventually realized that all of my close friends were recorded in the video, regardless their current domicile; Chanyeol in New York preparing for his first jazz recital, Jongin in Seoul practicing for a ballet show, Yixing in his hometown Chansa, Minseok in Jeju Island getting some tea tree sample, Luhan in Bangkok, Jongdae in his private recording studio in L.A, Tao in Suwon for a competition, and the last was Sehun, my stepbrother, who was preparing for university admission in my hometown Vancouver. After Sehun waved his hand and bid his goodbye, the video went blank for a moment before he appeared in the screen. He, who I hadn’t seen for over 6 months, was smiling and his small eyes formed crescent moon shapes. He was sitting on a chair in a balcony; he seemed to use tripod to record himself.

Hi, Kris hyung. I hope you aren’t mad at me anymore because I left you with no clue at all. Well, you know that I hate farewells, right? Remember that I didn’t come to the airport when Chanyeol departed to New York? I hate saying goodbye, so… uhmm… I’m sorry. You don’t need to worry about me anymore because you see now I’m doing fine. Right now I’m in… uh, should I tell you? I’m currently at a place perfect for an artist like me. I won’t tell you where. Anyway, have you seen the videos? Happy birthday, hyung. I want to tell you personally, but… I can’t. That’s a shame. I really hope you’ll do well in whatever you are doing right now. Are you doing fine in Seoul? The skies there, are they pretty? Please keep healthy and… keep smiling. See you again someday.

And the video ended.

I strolled around, expecting him somewhere in my apartment; but, of course, he wasn’t there. I headed to the front door and found a small post-it attached on the handle.

~*~
 

It was Christmas Eve when the doorbell of my apartment rang. I opened the door and found him standing with a big green suitcase behind his tail; still a head shorter than me, brown soft locks peeking under black beanie, petite shivering figure, pale skin, chapped lips due to cold weather, long lithe fingers gripping the end of his muffler. He tilted his head and smiled a bit, as if expecting me to say something upon his sudden appearance.

“Baekhyun-ah,” I breathed out his name, and stepped back to allow him coming in. He dragged along his suitcase and settled it in the living room. He plopped down on the couch when I was making warm drinks for two. He took the mug from my hand rather gratefully, as he blew the hot chocolate to make it less hot with his lips still smiling.

Later he asked me whether or not it was okay if he stayed at my place, and I nodded. We shared bed for the first time, which was considerably ridiculous since we had had a year long relationship yet we hadn’t done anything more than holding hands and cuddling; we had been an awkward couple, once Chanyeol dubbed, and it was kind of true. He tugged my hand under the comforter and asked if it was okay for him to hug me, and I made a move first to circle my arm around his small waist and pulled him closer. I wondered if it was too much for him since I could hear his hitched breath, but then his stiff body slowly relaxed and he snuggled closer to my chest before drifting away to slumber.

The tasks in my office sometimes didn’t require much time and when I got home early one day, I found him sitting on the floor on the balcony at 4 in the afternoon. He was looking up to the sky when I approached him, but nothing much he could see since we lived on the 10th floor out of 25 levels in the apartment complex. There was a gym and an open pool on the 23rd floor so I asked him to go there, but he rejected it, saying that it was enough here on our balcony. I joined him sitting on the floor and he soon laid his head on my thigh. I caressed his locks, it was my first time since I had never dared to, and it was indeed so soft just like I had imagined.

“What is the difference between me and the sky?” he suddenly looked up, stared straight to my eyes, and asked me. I was slightly taken aback with that question and I didn’t immediately reply because, actually, I didn’t have any proper answer for that.

“The difference,” I said, after a few minutes of silence, “Is that when you are close to me, I forget about the sky.”

He didn’t react at first, just closing his eyes as if he was feeling my fingers running through his hair softly. He opened his eyes again and whispered, “And if I’m not with you, will you remember the sky again?”

Upon remembering past times when I absent-mindedly took the stairs up to the rooftop just to watch the sky darkened, I mouthed a yes. He just nodded idly and closed his eyes again, feeling soft wind breezed past us. For a moment, we didn’t really bother looking up to the sky and watching it turned into shades of purple and orange.

The next time I walked back home early, there was a commotion at the front of my apartment building. I couldn’t look at what they were seeing, so I walked past them to get to the front row of their object of attention. He was there, lying on the ground, eyes stilled to the blue sky upon us; I would’ve thought he was just looking up watching the sky as usual if he wasn’t drown in his own pool of blood.

Countless police officers asked me unnecessary questions to which I hastily replied with angry tone. Couldn’t they see that I just saw my lover died? They finally got into conclusion that it was an accident; he went to the open pool on the 23rd floor, stood too close to the railing and fell. They let me go, but they didn’t understand. I knew that it was not an accident from the first place; he planned it since long ago. He wanted to disappear and never came back. He wanted to forget about the sky.

They called his family and left his belongings to me; there was a spare key of our apartment and a wallet. I opened the leathered thing and found a picture of the two of us, taken by Yixing with a Polaroid camera. I took it out of the pocket and flipped it, and there was a sentence written by him.

~*~
 

The funeral was quiet. There were a lot of people coming to his house to give their last words to him, and it was slightly shocking for me. I met his mother and she immediately recognized me as her son’s boyfriend, although we had never met before. She told me to follow her to her room and after I complied, she closed the door. She asked me to sit on the couch beside her. She told me everything: her son’s health condition, his runaway from the house, his world trip after graduation. He had been sick since child and diagnosed by their family’s private doctor that he wouldn’t reach old age. He had been told to seek for hope, and since then he was infatuated by the sky. He left the house when he enrolled the high school, telling his mom not to worry about him anymore since he had been doing fine. He travelled around the world right after graduating because he wanted to find ‘the perfect sky’. But when he came back after 9 months, everybody could see that his condition was getting worse. Not only that, his mom could see disappointment in his eyes. A few days later, he left the house again and didn’t give her any news until the police informed his death.

After swallowing all the information, I finally dared to speak up. “How do you know that I’m his lover?”

She smiled and stood up to get something on her desk; it was a photo album. “He sent me pictures of people who knew him and took care of him, along with their contact numbers. It was his way to tell me not to worry about him again. Can you see here? Your photo was the first one he sent me after he left the house.”

I looked up to the small album and indeed my picture was on the first page. Under the picture there was a small paper attached, and I could recognize it as his penmanship.

~*~

I look up to the sky, which is now colored of the mixture of blue, orange, and purple. The perfect sky, does that kind of thing exist? Did he realize, through his journey, that he had been seeking something absurd and imaginary? Did he realize that there is nothing called perfection? And was it the reason why he gave up for life, because he had been holding a false hope?

I lean my back to the railing. If there is no perfection, then what are we looking for in this life? Happiness? Or love? What is there beyond them? What is left to us, if the source of them is taken away?

What is left for me?

I lean and lean, until my feet don’t touch the ground again and my body is up in the air and slowly falling. I look at the sky, which is still in the shades of blue, orange, and purple.

Aren’t all the skies perfect enough for you?