PRESENT IS PRESENT

He remembers the month being August, maybe somewhere in the middle of the month when he had first dreamt of the man with the strawberry blond hair, cute pink lips and almond eyes. In his dream, the sunlight passes through the glass wall of the café and through its interior.

The man is focused on his coffee, which he doesn’t clearly remember what type of coffee it is, his hair falls down through his eyes and Minseok sits two tables across him, they are alone, only the both of them occupying the small and homey café when the man looks up with a bright smile on his countenance.

The bewildering, charming smile which he thinks is a figment of his imagination sends Minseok awake with a jolt, much to his dismay, he finds himself lying face first on the wooden floor of his bedroom and his nose hurts, a lot, he expects to find blood when he touches it but fortunately, his nose is still intact and free of blood.

He pushes himself up with a grunt and forgets about the dream ten minutes into making his breakfast with much difficulty. He considers buying lots of instant noodles next time.

***

When he sits on the edge his bed and his laptop is perched on his lap on a Friday night, working on computations yet again about materials coming into their company as sources, he starts to think of the dream he has been having.

He looks into a distance (which isn’t saying much since he is in his room, hence, he only looks across his bedroom where a lone painting is hanging from his wall.) with a sigh and a furrow of his brows. He tries really hard to recollect the contents of his dream but with a resigned sigh, he stops with only the vague memory of a café.

***

August draws to an end when Sehun invites him to drink bubble tea with him after work since they almost haven’t talked in so long. Sehun says he misses his favourite hyung and Minseok agrees with a snort.

“Minseok, hey! Minseok, hyung!” Sehun calls him out and shakes him by the shoulders. He blinks up at Sehun and innocently plays with the straw of his bubble tea, responding with a curious hum.

“Were you even listening?” Sehun asks with a raise of his brow and a sip of his bubble tea, Sehun chews on a pearl and Minseok bites his lower lip because clearly, he hasn’t been listening for the past ten minutes Sehun was talking.

Sehun slaps him on the arm with a playful smile. “You’re so occupied? So… is it a guy or a girl?~” Sehun teases, linking his arms with him and Minseok feels his heart skip a beat. Because what was he thinking about honestly? He forgets things easily these days and he thinks he needs to get this checked up on.

“It’s nothing, really, so what were you talking about?” Minseok urges Sehun to continue and then there is this glare that Sehun gives to everyone before rolling his eyes and continuing on his blabber about this new guy in the marketing department and how he’ll be working with him sooner or later. Minseok just smiles and listens just in case Sehun gets pissed off.

Nobody wants Sehun pissed off.

***

On the first night of September, Minseok finds himself a table at the corner of a new restaurant down the street. It’s nice, he thinks. The restaurant has a friendly ambiance, a welcoming-feel. Perhaps it was the smiles of the waiters or the soft murmurs of customers in their seats, the cheap but great food is also the best part. Minseok considers having dinner in this place every time instead of the sappy noodles or junk foods he stuffs himself with.

Two tables down across him, somebody with blonde hair that peeks out of his beanie, pulls out a chair and settles down, facing him because the two tables separating them is unoccupied. The man with the blonde hair under the beanie looks at him, making direct and uncomfortable eye contact, smiles.

Minseok blinks for a while, lips parted in shock because he thinks he has seen him before but he wasn’t so sure. He bows his head a little with politeness and smiles back a little. The man diverts his attention on the menu and the cardboard hides his face away from Minseok.

There is something weird in Minseok’s head and heart and it frustrates him how he can’t place his tongue on it.

Somehow, he starts to think of his dream this morning.

He finishes dinner with a content smile, the stranger two tables down leaves before him and he forgets about the stranger with the blonde hair under a beanie when he’s called about work on his way back to his apartment.

**

Apparently there’s a new tenant one the apartment next to his, apparently he’s from another part of Asia but Minseok isn't in the right mood to barely care and pay attention to the chatter of the old land lady with her friend in the elevator.

He woke up late today and he is really irritated by this, because he was far too immersed into his subconscious thoughts that his alarm clock barely woke him up. When he’s stepped off his door, he completely forgets about the dream and brushes his shoulder against a stranger with a beanie.

The stranger mutters an apology and Minseok bows with a scowl.

He is running late for work.

***

It isn’t until two in the morning that he realizes that he can’t sleep. Though he doesn’t know why, maybe it’s because of the fact that he has a project to work on in the next two weeks and it’s a big project, a huge burden to his shoulders. He doesn’t mind that though, he surely shouldn’t mind that because it’s his job to count and recount after all.

Plus, the earnings from this project will surely feed his bank account.

Minseok lives a normal life as a wholesome adult, maybe he’s missing out on the part where he’s supposed to be finding love right about now—but he doesn’t care, at least not now, he still has the rest of his life for that.

For now, he is settled on working for his own future.

Minseok thinks of the future a lot and finds this stressing him out. Present is present, as Yifan would always say to him, one of his bosses (and friend) who is actually a few months younger than him but maybe being the son of the actual CEO gives him more credit. Nevertheless, he doesn’t belittle Yifan’s skills of course.

Present is present. But he can’t stop worrying about the future and how he can make his future an actual present. Minseok shifts uncomfortably on his bed, his sheets are long since thrown on the floor carelessly with his legs.

He can’t sleep.

His room feels too hot and he’s sure that the airconditioning is fine the way it is but he just can’t sleep and he knows that this is bad for him because when the sun rises and his alarm clock rings, he has to face a new day full of numbers and papers.

Figuring out that he can’t fall asleep just by staring at his dull ceiling with dust and possible cobwebs sitting on it, he pushes himself off his bed and shakes his head, his brown hair flicking from side to side and he hasn’t realized the perspiration on his forehead.

He walks to the kitchen to pour himself a glass of milk, and he remembers buying a new box just a week ago, hence, he opens the fridge, expecting a box of milk but is shocked to see not a thing inside his fridge… except for eggs, a few more bags of chips and bottles of water.

He heaves a resigned sigh and settles for a bottle of water instead of his wanted milk, he makes a mental note to himself to buy milk tomorrow.

Minseok walks to his living room and turns to the door, hearing loud laughter and music emitting from outside his door, he guesses that it’s the new guy, being noisy in the middle of the night. What a bad impression. He thinks and rolls his eyes before gurgling down the bottle of water until it’s half-empty, feeling the water fill his body and run through his system, he slowly feels sleep get into him.

He sleeps on the couch that night, somehow he fits perfectly in the small couch and he falls asleep just after somebody yells, “ you, Lu Han!”

***

The sun is bright and the grass is wet with dew under his bare feet and Minseok is talking to the man with blonde hair who has been appearing in his dreams a lot but he tends to forget. He only remembers when he’s half-awake and his eyes feel like they’ll drop any moment. Now the guy looks like a nymph with his hair pushed back and a gold band is around his forehead, glistening under the morning sun.

Minseok smiles at him as the nymph walks beside him, hands animatedly swinging on his sides. He thinks that in this view, he looks so beautiful, like ethereal and he wonders if he’s real. Minseok’s hand reached out to hold his hand but a loud screaming spreads throughout their field and sends Minseok awake with a scowl.

This dream is the dream that Minseok remembers throughout the day, when he’s typing numbers into his office computer, his fingers hover over the keyboard and a stupid smile spreads through his face because he finally remembers even at least fifty percent of the details, though that is not saying much as the dream only consisted of them walking together, maybe they held hands.

There is a pat on his back and he looks up, meeting Joonmyun, whose eyes are in half-crescents like they always are, sometimes, Minseok wonders if Joonmyun’s cheeks already hurt from smiling too much. He never seems to frown. “Yes?” He asks and minimizes the tab of his spreadsheet.

“Nothing, you just seem to be in a good mood today.” Joonmyun says and strides towards his cubicle next to Minseok’s. Minseok shakes his head with a smile. It’s nothing really, it’s just that he finally remembers his dreams.

Minseok looks up at Joonmyun with a hopeful smile as an idea had gotten into his mind. “Joonmyun, do you remember your dreams?” He blurts out and then he wants to dig himself under the ground and never come back up when Joonmyun looks at him with confused eyes.

“N-Nothing.” He looks away shyly and Joonmyun dismisses him with a chuckle.

He guesses that asking the internet is much better than actually questioning people in real life.

**

There is a café, not nearby but not too far from his workplace and he stumbles upon it on a Wednesday night after a long painful day of numbers and ticking keyboards, yells from the other side of the room to another, papers stacking on his desk more and he just wants to have a break from this life.

He trudges inside the café and is shocked to see that there are pouffes instead of the usual wooden chairs, the café’s color scheme appeared to be warm with the pale orange that looks identical to the color of the sky every sunset and sunrise, pale red wallpaper covering the walls and it feels just right when he sinks down into one of the pouffes.

He taps his fingers against the wooden table, painted with swirls orange and white, not neon orange that hurt his eyes but nice and appealing orange. And then, two tables away from him, the table near the door, a man with blonde hair slicked up sinks down into one of the pouffes too, he sits across Minseok, facing him directly and a sliver of recognition etches slowly into the stranger’s face when he locks eyes with Minseok.

Minseok feels he’s seen him before, maybe a little too often at times.

But he smiles back and doesn’t share anymore eye contact because he finds it weird, how a stranger recognizes him but he doesn’t recognize the stranger.

He can’t deny a fact though, the stranger is indeed attractive, from his table, he steals secret glances towards the blonde and find him so… appealing, beautiful even. The waiter arrives at his table and asks for his order.

He orders bitter coffee and sweet chocolate cake.

The waiter leaves and heads to the next occupied table, which is the stranger’s table. Accidentally (or not) he locks eyes with the stranger again and both share shy smiles.

When the waiter leaves the blonde’s table and goes back to the counter, when the stranger is into his phone, flicking through its screen, Minseok realizes that maybe he has seen the stranger before but he can’t quite put his tongue on it. Again.

Maybe he has seen him somewhere before, his face is just really too familiar for him to forget.

But he forgets anyways, when Joonmyun calls him about matters from work which stresses him out more. He thinks that maybe he needs to loosen up a bit.

The stranger is just a fleeting little thing that doesn’t need to occupy a lot of his mind anyways.

***

He names him August now, because he remembers vaguely that he starts having dreams about ‘August’ in the middle of August, though he isn’t clearly sure which day, he knows that it’s August, in his heart, he knows that it’s August.

Now is October, it has been a little over than two months and his dreams about August are still recurring. They last longer and are more vivid, he remembers the things he does with him in his dreams, holding hands, laughing, talking, going on roadtrips, getting stuck on an island, fighting dragons, riding horses, being medieval villagers and fighting witches… all kinds of dreams, but August’s face is blurry in his memory when he wakes up.

“His name is Lu Han,” Sehun starts, the prongs of his fork resting idly on his lips. Minseok looks up from his own slice of cake and quirks a brow at Sehun who has his furrowed at him.

“You aren’t listening again, hyung.”

Minseok gulps. “No, no I was listening, so Lu Han right? The new guy? But not really since he has been working with you guys for two months now? Right?”

“Right…” Sehun drags on his syllable before continuing on his story about the guy named Lu Han. Apparently he’s annoying to Sehun and Minseok doesn’t know why—Lu Han sounds like a good person from Sehun’s stories and Minseok knows Sehun all too well to know that he’s just making Lu Han seem unlikeable.

An idea pops into his mind and a smirk creeps its way into his lips. “You like this Lu Han dude?”

Sehun almost drops his fork at Minseok’s word, his mouth his parted in surprise, brows far too above his forehead that his pale blonde hair hides it. “What—Hyung, I’m seeing Zitao…?” Sehun tilts his head to the side and when Minseok realizes his mistake, he lets out a nervous laugh.

“Oh yeah right… Zitao… wait… what ‘bout Yifan? I thought they’d end up toget—“

Sehun kicks Minseok’s leg under the table and Minseok laughs, holding out a peace sign with his fingers. “Hyung, you seriously forget a lot of things. I’ve told you about Zitao and I… Yifan and Zitao’s relationship are kind of like a brother relationship. Have you forgotten? Yifan has the hots for Yixing.”

And then, Minseok is dumbfounded.

He surely is missing out a lot with his friends. “So, tell me about Lu Han.”

“You’re too into work, loosen up a bit sometimes, hyung.”

“Tell me about Lu Han.”

“Fine.”

***

Lu Han is Chinese and he thinks he stumbles upon a guy that looks like Lu Han on his way back to his apartment. His meeting with Sehun ended with laughter as Minseok forgets (again) how Zitao and Sehun ended up together. Sehun playfully punched his shoulder, telling him that he’s worse than Yixing now. In the end, Sehun doesn’t tell him about his story with Zitao, insisting that it’s a story for another day.

Minseok bumps into him when he is fiddling with his keys on the way to the elevator and Lu Han is sent down on his to the carpeted floor. Minseok looks down at him before muttering a soft sorry, the tone of his voice is a little higher than he meant it to be when he offers out a hand and the stranger gladly accepts.

“It’s alright, it was my fault after all.” The stranger smiles and by the way how his eyes crinkle, his pink lips tug up, his dirty blonde hair, he thinks that he has seen him before. And Minseok musters all the remnants of his courage at the pit of his stomach to ask the stranger a question—

“I have to go now, see you around!” The stranger turns away from him but before that, he bows, a full ninety degree bow then he’s off, out of the building.

Minseok stands in awe for a while, because his blurry vision of August looks exactly like him.

***

Two tables down in the same café, with warm coloured-pouffes as chairs, August sits across him and that was when he finally patches things up. He thinks that Lu Han is the guy that looks like August, hence he’s referring to him as August in his head now. He thinks that he’s also the guy from the restaurant, he thinks that he’s also his floormate. He thinks that Lu Han-look alike guy is August.

He is really focused into stirring his bitter coffee with furrowed brows and pursed lips that he doesn’t notice it when somebody comes to his table, settling his own cup of coffee on his table. “Hello?” The voice asks and Minseok deems it familiar so his head jerks up, only to see August staring at him with a slight smile on his face.

“Have we met before?” Minseok claps a hand against his lips, staring wide eyed at the stranger a.k.a. August a.k.a. Lu Han. He can’t believe he just blurted out those words carelessly. Stupid stupid Minseok.

The guy laughs, a hearty one before flashing that breath-taking (as Minseok describes dream-August’s smile in his head) smile at him. “Frankly, I think so.”

***

They’ve met before, quite a lot as Lu Han said to him moments ago. They met on the subway on Minseok’s way to work, they chatted for a while, Lu Han had explained. They met on the bus for the second time and Minseok didn’t recognize him, Lu Han had told him this. They locked gazes on the restaurant and Lu Han thought he had recognized him then. They smiled at each other on the café and Lu Han though he knew of him then. They bumped against each other on the hallways and Lu Han thought (or hoped) that a sliver of recognition would appear on his face, sadly, not.

“I’m sorry.” Minseok apologizes with an embarrassed, asymmetrical smile on his lips, his hand reaching out to scratch the back of his ear.

Lu Han laughs, soft and warm as his voice wafts through Minseok’s ears. “It’s alright, I’m just a little fleeting thing that doesn’t matter anyways.” Lu Han shrugs and sips on his coffee, which Minseok figures out as Iced Americano. There is something deeper in Lu Han’s voice but he can’t figure that out.

“Last time, my friend and I were being noisy. I’m sorry about that.” Lu Han apologizes this time and brings the cup down to the table. Minseok releases a small ‘oh’ and nods, a smile spreading through his lips.

“It’s alright, I couldn’t sleep that night anyways.” He confesses and when he looks up from his coffee, his eyes meet Lu Han’s for a few seconds before Lu Han smiles at him, the sides of his eyes crinkling up so cutely.

“You look like August—“ Minseok’s wide eyes go even wider with the words he just blurt out to Lu Han. Lu Han tilts his head to the side and hums curiously in response.

“August?” He asks, stirring his coffee with the straw. Minseok can see the friendly and genuinely curious glint in Lu Han’s eyes and something inside him pushes him to tell him about the dreams bugging him for the past few months.

Adjusting his collar, Minseok speaks. “Well I’ve been dreaming a lot—“

Minseok tells him all about August, spills his heart’s content to Lu Han, speaks of his worries to a stranger he just formally met and introduced himself to for more than ten minutes. But Lu Han, for Minseok, is trustworthy.

“You’ve been dreaming of a guy with strawberry blonde hair? For the past two months—straight?” Lu Han confirms and Minseok assures him with a nod.

“Cool,” Lu Han sips on his coffee and silence reigns in their atmosphere. Half of Minseok feels stupid and regrets telling Lu Han the things he hasn’t even told Sehun or any of his friends about, he feels so little and so stupid for spilling his heart to a stranger.

“Maybe because we’ve been meeting a lot—and your brain when you’re awake forgets me, quite a lot too,” Lu Han chuckles, “but then your subconscious remembers me which is why I look like August, hence, you dream about me.” There is an impeccable smug smirk on Lu Han’s lips, Minseok notices this.

Minseok ignores that though and sighs, it feels like he has the answers to his questions. Who is August? Why is he dreaming of an unfamiliar face? All of them are answered all thanks to Lu Han—who apparently is also the August in his dreams. “Really? Is that it?”

Lu Han shrugs. “Not really sure about it. But it’s nice to think that somebody is dreaming about me.” There is that cocky, arrogant smile on his lips which undeniably looks good on his lips. Minseok feels his cheeks heat up and he shifts uncomfortably on his seat, clearing his throat a little.

“But it’s my subconscious!” He retorts and Lu Han smiles kindly at him, quite like an understanding smile but Minseok knows that Lu Han still thinks proudly of himself because Minseok dreams of him. But he doesn’t feel offended whatsoever, he feels nice actually, that he finally has the answer to his questions.

“If you don’t mind, Minseok, I’d want to be more than just a fleeting memory your conscious brain will forget.” Lu Han leans in, flicks Minseok’s forehead with a chuckle before sinking back on his own pouffe.

Minseok raises a brow at him, not minding the slight pain caused by Lu Han on his forehead. “What?” He asks, rubbing the spot where Lu Han had flicked with the pads of his fingers.

Lu Han gulps then his lips, leaning closer again and uses his index finger to call Minseok forward. Minseok complies, curious about Lu Han’s words. “Are you free this Sunday?”

And then Minseok feels his heart skip a beat, a flush running up his neck to his cheeks, even looking at Lu Han makes him feel embarrassed but he nods.

“Yeah,”

“Alright, I’ll knock at your door at six o’clock, see you.”

Minseok needs to pinch himself when Lu Han walks out of the café with a small wave towards him to make sure that he isn’t dreaming at all.

August is real and he is Lu Han.

It hurts and he smiles.

***

 “You’re dating Lu Han?” Sehun asks with bewilderment in his voice from the other line.

“Yup,” Minseok says proudly as he looks over at his boyfriend who is sitting cross-legged on the floor by the couch, completely engrossed in the film he’s watching. He throws his legs on Lu Han’s shoulders since he is sitting on the couch and leans down, wrapping his arm around his neck.

“Why haven’t you told me?!” Sehun whines and Minseok hears the interrobang in his voice.

“I forgot.”

“Hyung… you’re worse than Yixing hyung.”

Lu Han looks up at him with wide doe eyes, his hands on Minseok’s shins, massaging them a little and Minseok smiles back at him. “Later Sehun-ah.” Minseok drops the calls and lets his phone fall on his side as he leans in towards Lu Han’s lips and kisses him.

Their position is a little uncomfortable with Minseok needing to bend down, but Minseok feels at ease with Lu Han’s lips pressed and moving languidly and perfectly against his, as if they’re made for each other, as if they are meant to be.

Lu Han secures himself a position in Minseok’s heart and brain, Minseok lets him plant himself into his memory and into his heart happily. Because surely, Lu Han is something more than a memory that he will never let fleet away.

Lu Han is his present.