Everything seems begin with Sehun........

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The first time I met him was at a late night on the bus, after my shift ended. Though there were plenty of empty chairs, he still approached my seat, which was on the last row and sat down gently. I stole a quick glance at him before my superior imagination started to function, sending chill shiver down to my spine.

What is he?.... Robber?

T-shirt plus jeans….Hmmm, doesn’t seem like one…

Or …e?

Another glance

Do pedos happen to look handsome like that?

…………

Aishhh, you’re thinking too much Sehun! Let’s get out of here.

Silently, I unplugged my earphone and moved to some rows ahead, tried to stay away from what I defined “danger” as far as possible. But after stayed put few minutes, I couldn’t resist the urge to know what was going on behind my back. That was kind of my thing, curiosity never failed to beat up my conscience.

I pretended to hold up the phone in the way my friends always did when they wanted to take selcas, shifted in my seat to find the right angle until his reflection was seen clearly. The stony gaze he was locking on me almost made me jump out of my skin. Something sad….or disappointed lingered in his eyes, I don’t know. But it’s enough to hang on my mind few days afterwards.

The second time I met him was close to the closing time of the café shop where I was working. There were only two couples enjoying their drinks while whispering sweet words into each other ears. Their lovey-dovey moments made me jealous sometimes. “You’d better get used to it” said Baekhyun as he caught me staring at them one day behind the counter and I had to say, it’s not that easy, especially when you’re a twenty-one-year-old single one.

I was cleaning at the back of mixing drinks area when a ringing bell jolted me back.

Who would come at this time?

I recognized those eyes immediately when I saw him walking toward me, smiling. In a second, I found myself stepped back a bit as if he was going to attack me just with his smile. There something about him made me want to put a shield up although he looked like an angel without wings. That was so strange because never before did I pay too much attention on a random guy like this.

“Can I have a cappuccino please?”

He ordered after scanning the menu for a while, pointing the image of a cup of coffee on the front page.

I was startled as my observation time was up but quickly covered it by bending down to write on the order paper and rushed to the coffee machine. He had accent in his voice but it didn’t matter at all because that even made him sound like an angel too.

“How long have you been working here…” he narrowed his brows to see the name tag tugged on my shirt when I handed him his drink “…umm, Sehun?”

I wasn’t expecting for a conversation. My eyes were busy with searching for the right spot on the computer’s screen to print out the receipt.

You’ve done this hundreds times, why it takes you so long now?

 A voice in my head kept screaming. It happened a lot lately and I wondered whether it was a result of being alone for a long time.

“Not long ago. About two months. Yours is 3000 won, please.”

I guessed it was just a pointless question to kill time because after that, he didn’t say anything else, just bidding a goodbye and left the store. I stood there for a quite long minute until his silhouette disappeared at the bus stop. But then with a simple shrug, I wiped any thought about him away and turned back to my on-going task like nothing really happened. Again, I assumed it was the consequence of being single from those passing years.

The third time I met him, I started to believe that it was fate, that God brought him and threw at me.

It was a Sunday. Normally, I would spend my only off day in a week on staying in bed until noon, then having breakfast (lunch to be correct). After that, I had two options. One was meeting up with my gang, playing games or partying. Two was practicing some dance moves till I couldn’t feel my legs and then of course, still phoned my friends but with another reason which was in order to bring me back home safely.

But today was different. I forced myself wake up super early, taking a bus to the outskirt of Seoul to take part in a charity activity. My boss was a best friend with a person who ran this orphanage so he encouraged the staff to support and help people here. All the money they earned at the end of the day would be used to remodel the house for the kids.

I made a mistake to agree on playing plane game with a little boy and somehow there were more five of them bouncing up and down asking me to play with them too. I was about to shush them and told them to stand in a line when I saw him approached me from afar, waved a hand at me vigorously.

“Hi. What a coincidence!”

And I was dazed in my position for few seconds.

He helped the elder women here and there, volunteered to carry heavy stuffs, bought souvenirs and contributed some money for the orphanage. We didn’t talk much the whole time but I caught him staring at me several times with strange expression on his face.

“I…I like girl.”

I stuttered when he asked me my number, promised to call me for a drink or something. I don’t know why I said that or why my ears were burning in heat. It just came out of my mouth uncontrollably.

His face was filled with surprise but then it turned into an endless laughter.

“It’s not like I’m asking you on a date.”

Yeah, it’s true. But in my head many theories of what was going to happen if I gave him my number were formed and I couldn’t help but hesitated a bit when he handed me his phone. It took me a moment to remember my own number because his laughing was so distracting at that time.

He held out the screen, smiling big.

Sehunnie – was my ID in his phone list.

 

The tenth time I met him was a month from the day we had our first date at the QQ bubble tea. He asked me out for a movie. I didn’t hold back my grin as I read the text he sent me.

From: Xiaolu ge
Is it normal for two young men going to the cinema together?

Is it normal? I suddenly asked myself the same question. Jongin and I usually went to dancing club together and people seemed be okay with that. D.O hyung and I once registered to a cooking class because no one cared enough to go with him and he was too shy to come alone so being a good dongsaeng, I raised my hand.

If those things were normal then a movie wouldn’t a problem right?

To: Xiaolu ge
If you are paying for that then nothing matters n_n

I chuckled when my phone vibrated almost instantly, but didn’t dare to read it at once because I felt a cold gaze was on my forehead and it belonged to no one but Ms. Park, my Musical History professor. I was lucky enough that she already removed her stare from me to another victim a second after that.

 
From: Xiaolu
It’s fine by me. But the bubble tea afterwards is on you. *-*

That sounded so Luhan. Even though at the end, he always fought with me over the pay check.

I thought the fact that we went for a movie after all was okay but if it was a love movie then it was a big deal.
He didn’t leave me any chance to protest, said that he already bought the tickets and pulled me in without looking back. It was the occasion when the cinema broadcasted some old famous movies. He once told me about “Love actually”, the one that he really loved and there was no difficult to see it was true by the excited expression on his face the whole time.
The movie was good, I had to admit it but all of the emotion I saw in his eyes was something giving my heart a twist.

That night, he sent me the “Beautiful” of Bosson along with a goodnight text. I kept replaying that song until I drown into my dreamland.

With him.
 

*********

I stopped counting the times I met him because apparently seeing him everyday was an evident fact, like eating when you’re hungry or drinking when you’re thirsty. Instead I counted our first times.

The first time he held my hand was a late night when he walked me home after waiting a long hour for my shift to end. I didn’t know what in me was interested him enough to spend such a period of time just sitting at the corner, watching me working and smiling whenever our eyes met. It made me look like an idiot too but what could I say, he’s like an angel and didn’t normal people always turned into a fool for a beautiful creature like that?

I was freezed at the coldness early snow sent down to my spine, rubbing my hands against each other continuously. He gently took my hand, lacing our fingers together and put them into his coat pocket with a loving smile. I blushed but just let my hand stay there because the warmth from his was too comfortable to resist.

The first time he gave me a tight embrace was when we were in a snow ball fight. His hunger for success sent me the same amount of aggressiveness. And a simple truth was that when you lost your self control, you didn’t even bother to look where you went.

The moment I felt my body was tripped, it was like a slow motion movie. I shut my eyes tight, waiting for the pain when my handsome face hit the ground but after five seconds, I wondered why the ground was so soft and smelled that good.

My face was buried into his chest as he caught me in time, causing his back was on the snow-covered surface. I was about to spin up when he pulled me down again, his arms wrapped around me and whispered.

“Just stay…a little longer.”

The first time he kissed me was also the time I found out about his state of illness.
It was one of the early of December, the weather was getting a lot colder than ever. Even so, as a stubborn immature twenty-one-year-old kid as I was, I forced him to stop by a small convenient shop to buy me ice cream.

The chocolate flavor melting in my mouth made me grin from ear to ear, didn’t notice he was watching me the entire time with amusement on his face. He pulled me closer and placed a soft kiss on my lips before the ice cream left at the corner of my mouth. I was frozen, like rooted into the ground with eyes opened in double sizes.

He chuckled, messing up my already untidy brown red hair.
“It tastes delicious!”
My face was reddened as a tomato for sure at this time. It’s not like I never kissed before but why I had the feeling of a teenager girl who had just been kissed by her forever crush.

Without a warning, I hit his chest with my fist to cover my shyness. He was surprised to my reaction, suddenly held his chest in pain. I gave him a sideways look, crossed my arms as if telling him I was not gonna fall for his trick again. But after ten seconds, I knew it wasn’t a joke. Really.
We quickly hailed a cab to the nearest hospital and he decidedly told me to wait outside while the doctor did the checking on him.

We seemed to fall into a dead silence on the way back home. He looked everywhere but me until I had enough of that and pulled him under eaves of a closing shop, narrowed my eyes worrying.

“Are you hiding something from me?”

Though the answer was quite obvious, I patiently waited for him to spit it out. He glued his eyes on the ground, didn’t have the gut to look straight into mine. This was the first time I saw him so nervous.

“I don’t know where to begin.”

He slowly looked up. The agony in those eyes made my heart squeezed. I swallowed the sticky lump down my throat, tried hard to not tremble.

“Tell me what I don’t know.”

He let out a long sigh, sat down on the flight of steps, started to tell his story.

“When I was seven, my heart was in trouble. The doctor said it was aged faster than normal. I had to go through many of treatment but nothing came in good result. I was so scared to think that my life was determined to be ended so soon.” 

He stopped in the middle, examined my facial expression before continued

“When I was twenty, I decided to put an end to all the treatment, to face the fact that I can’t live pass the age of 25. I started working for living, saving and traveling around.”

His voice was so slight and angelic, like everything happened to him was evident, but when it came to me, I felt like my heart was cut into piece. I wanted to question him why he didn’t say anything from the beginning, why he being so selfish for keeping it as a secret, why made me love him crazily and then hurt me like this. But none of those came out of my mouth. I was speechless with bitterness lingered at the top of my tongue.

I didn’t know I was crying until his thumbs brushing my trailing tears away, his lips touched my blurry eyes tenderly.

“I’m sorry…”

And I burst out crying like a baby in his embrace.

Days after that I tried to wipe away those thoughts on my mind, tried to flash a cheerful smile whenever I was with him but I guessed I just made things worse.

“Don’t be like that.” He reached out, lifted my chin when seeing me poking into my plate without appetite “Don’t make me worry when I was gone.”

I realized he never said he loved me for once, never used the word “date” when he asked me out, never asked me to be his boyfriend. He just simply kept me close enough so that those memories of us wouldn’t weigh me down when we’re apart.

“Why do we have to name a relationship?”, he shrugged, answered to my question “What are we to each other?”

Because he knew he couldn’t be with me till the end. Because he knew some days I would be alone in this world and if defining what we had together, I wouldn’t be strong enough to carry on.

I nodded my head, rubbing my teary eyes with the back of my hand and told myself this would be the last time I cried for his leaving.

 

He’s gone a week after the winter holiday, peacefully. His parents wanted to bring him back to his homeland, Beijing, so I couldn’t make it to the funeral.

A week after that I received a package….from him. I found my knees on the ground as I read my name and address written by him on the small box. He sent me a letter and a scarf, his favorite one.

I burst into tears in the half way of the letter and dug my face into the scarf when I finished it, the subtle perfume he used made my voice choked in emotion.

“I love you too, Luhan.”