Pastel colours flutter on a cloudless day—silver ribbons taped to their ends and tied to Kyungsoo’s wrists.

“They will keep you safe,” Jongin says.

Yes, because Kyungsoo’s path is now lit with an array of helium balloons floating above his head and stinging his eyes with their rubber skins.

Everything is a dream—the air blown against his hair, the breeze entangled in the clumps of his fringe, the twist of strings cutting into his arms.

So the afternoon is stretched across trees and birds and sunlight and the creases of Kyungsoo’s palm. He drags himself across acres of fields to find a stone-tiled floor—his bare feet warm under the cracks and chips of surface.

Kyungsoo tries to convince himself that he doesn’t feel lonely anymore, when he watches the silver ribbons and pastel colours drift into abyss, when he lets the wind engulf his balloons in dry contempt, when he unties the strings wrapped around his wrists.

But really, the wind carries his balloons away—they hover against Kyungsoo’s aching pulse and tearing thoughts—before it stops, sudden and brisk.

And then a storm of balloons will ing fall.