By some miracle, the managers had given them an extra day off.  Minseok, for one, was making full use of it.

Around the rather stocky male were cardboard boxes of various shapes and sizes into which he sorted things he wanted to keep, give away, throw or take along with him back to the EXO dorm.  No one entertained the thought of interrupting him during one of these cleaning frenzies, so he was getting along steadily, and gradually the room took on the air of quiet retirement.

Minseok had left the bookshelves for the last.  In any case, there weren’t many books to deal with – he never was a reading kind of person.

Taking the single stack of all his books, Minseok gingerly picked his way through the maze of haphazardness and was just congratulating himself as he slowly lowered them into an empty box when a volume fell off, squarely hitting his toes.

“, damnit,” he cursed, dropping the rest in favour of nursing his foot.  Once he was sure nothing had been broken, the 24 year old picked the fallen paperback up. 

It was Haruki Murakami’s Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, a gift from a girl he would much prefer to have forgotten.  As Minseok casually flipped through the yellowed pages, a receipt so old the ink had long since faded away helpfully brought his attention to a startlingly bright quote highlighted.

What was lost was lost.  There was no retrieving it, however you schemed, no returning to how things were, no going back.

When did that happen?  Minseok could not answer.  Too much time had passed.

The quote was like an old friend – no, not quite a friend, per se, but more of a person with whom one had never been sure about.  A bittersweet relationship.  The quote asked him, What have you lost?

And in turn, the memory of the present-giver invaded his mind.  Yet it was not her he had lost; it was love he had been robbed of.  Love he used underhanded means to snatch back.  Of course, it didn’t succeed.

In the end, like the quote said, it never returned to him:  being in love.