Part Four: "Reflection"

Baekhyun was wafting in the oceans and tidal waves without a destination, he was just searching mindlessly. He knew he was going to find something, but he didn’t know what he was looking for. He was stuck in the same situation again. After Chanyeol, there was no one else to understand him. They passed each other in the halls, but Chanyeol was only looking lovingly into Sandara’s eyes, but she looked back just the same way so Baekhyun wasn’t mad. It was back to square one, strangers. But everyone starts out that way, it’s just up to that person to decide whether or not they want to remain as just that.

In Baekhyun’s case, he was forced out, he was forced back into that back abyss called depression. It was like dying, like drowning in those oceans and tidal waves, but everyone around you was swimming. It wasn’t like being invisible, no, it was like being more than visible, but one hundred percent ignored by the people that used to catch you when you fell. That is what Baekhyun was drowning in, it seemed Chanyeol forgot who Baekhyun was. It was as if he only knew his name and assumed he was okay again, assumed that he was always okay.

“Hey kid, this is the last stop. You’re gonna have to get out sooner or later.” The bus driver turned around from his seat to look at Baekhyun, the only occupant left on the vehicle.

“Oh, sorry.” Baekhyun had sat through hours of different bus stops, just taking whichever one’s he wanted to. “I’ll get off now then, thank you.” He stepped off the bus into the darkness of the night.

“Hey kid, are you sure you know where you’re even going?” The bus driver called out to Baekhyun, who was examining his surroundings with a lost expression plastered onto his face.

“Yeah, I do.” Byun Baekhyun was, and always will be a liar.

“Byun Baekhyun?” The teacher called out his name before looking up into the class full of quietly murmuring students. Everyone was looking at Baekhyun’s seat with curiosity their eyes. “He’s still not here? That’s the sixth day in a row.” Ms. Shin tapped her fingernails on her desk before asking, “Does anyone know where Baekhyun has been?”

At that moment, everyone looked at Chanyeol. Everyone knew that the two were best friends, they only hung out with each other, the outcasts. Well, that was until Chanyeol began to date Dara. Chanyeol only shrugged and everyone turned around, quickly dismissing Baekhyun’s absence. But Chanyeol’s eyes still wandering over that empty desk. “Where are you, Baek?”

Rumours passed around that Baekhyun was in some sort of gang and got shot in a drive by shooting, but other people said he moved without any notice. Chanyeol scoffed at all these accusations, they didn’t know him, they only knew his name. Baekhyun wasn’t in any gang, and his house still looked occupied by the same fancy cars on his driveway that no one seemed to drive. But the scariest theory for Baekhyun’s absence was that he had jumped off a bridge, Chanyeol knew Baekhyun, he knew that it could be very possible. And it scared him, that Baekhyun might not every be around again to go to the movies, to play videogames with, or to yell at the sky with. It was scary to know that his best friend had disappeared off the face of the Earth without a single word to anyone.

It was a fresh start for Byun Baekhyun.

“Baekhyun, my shift is over so I’m leaving. But Taemin said he’s going to be here soon, alright?” Amber took off her apron and hung it up on a wall hook just besides the counter.

“Okay, drive safely, it’s starting to get dark.” Baekhyun poured steaming coffee into a black mug as he spoke before he felt a pat on his back.

“Alright. See you in class tomorrow!” He looked up to see Amber already heading out of the door and he sighed. Everyone had places to be, places they belonged. The restaurant he worked in was located right next to a university, so it was quite popular with the students, including Baekhyun when he was off his shift.

He remembered when he was seventeen, and his friend asked him if he would ever run away. Baekhyun sadly smiled to himself, remembering when he still had someone to scream with and someone to sob with. No one knew him like Chanyeol knew him back then. Baekhyun still wore his mask, still putting on a show for all of the audience who was attending his horrifying play of false feelings and a false Byun Baekhyun. He didn’t want to depend on anyone else again, because everyone seemed to move on while he stayed behind. They only knew his name, and that was enough. Because whenever they learn his story, they begin to drift away into their own lives. No one is there to catch him when he falls, and there isn’t anyone left for him to catch either.

Technically, Baekhyun kept his word. He didn’t really run away. His parents approved, or just didn’t care about his decision to move to a different area and a different school. The only thing Baekhyun did admit to running away from was the people at school, he never regretted leaving without a word. He didn’t regret not saying goodbye to Chanyeol, teary goodbyes meant painful memories and a period of grieving. And who was Baekhyun to be a burden, to intrude on Chanyeol and Dara’s happy relationship? This was the way Baekhyun thought, it killed him to know he was yet again a burden, so he left.

The bell perched upon the restaurant door jingled, indicating another customer, but Baekhyun didn’t bother looking and only made his way over to where they sat. He placed the menus in front of the couple with a smile on his face.

“Baekhyun?” A deep voice interjected his thoughts and pierced through his heart. And for that second, the grin was wiped off his face as he looked over to the male with swished up hair and steady dark eyes. But Baekhyun quickly drew on the curve of his lips and the flash of his teeth again. He regained the look of normalcy, or whatever normal was portrayed as.

“Ah, yes. I’m your waiter, Baekhyun and I’ll be serving you tonight.” He said quickly with a desperate undertone to his voice as he looked over to Dara with a smile as well.

“How, Baekhyun where have you-”

“Are you two doing okay this fine evening? Can I start you off with an appetizers or a drink maybe?” Baekhyun pointed to the pictures on Dara’s menu and she gasped as how wonderful all the food looked. But Chanyeol only stared at Baekhyun, he hasn’t seen him since they were eighteen and now a twenty one year old Baekhyun stood before him in a white dress shirt, black pants and a small apron draped around his hips as he pointed at pictures for a fascinated Dara.

Baekhyun looked pale and skinny. He was no longer slim, he looked underweight with bags underneath his eyes and disheveled hair which oddly looked nice on him. But nevertheless, the Byun Baekhyun that had left felt exactly the same as he did now. Chanyeol could hear the strain in Baekhyun’s voice to not break, the odd way way Baekhyun smiled because he really wasn’t and the way that smile didn’t reach his eyes. This was the Baekhyun he had missed, this was his best friend.

“Baekhyun?”

“Yes, sir?” Chanyeol narrowed his eyes because Baekhyun kept on acting like Chanyeol was a stranger. But perhaps they were just that, strangers. At the time Dara excused herself to go to the bathroom so Chanyeol quickly took the opportunity.

“Are you okay?”

“Yes I am, thank you for asking.”

“Are you sure you’re not lying?” Chanyeol inquired, yet he instantly regretting asking such a question as he saw Baekhyun’s throat throb as he gulped hesitantly.

“And if I am?” Baekhyun distinctly remembered having this conversation the first time he met Park Chanyeol. It was painful, he didn’t want to lean on someone who was happy. It would only bring him misery again, Baekhyun wanted Chanyeol to be happy. He didn’t want to talk to Chanyeol because he realized that sorrow is contagious, and he didn’t want to infect Chanyeol.

“If you are, then I’m sorry.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means that I’m sorry that you’re not feeling all too well.”

“Don’t be sorry for something you haven’t done wrong.” Baekhyun scoffed at himself for saying that, he was such a hypocrite. If he could tell Chanyeol that, why couldn’t he take his own advice?

“But I have done everything wrong, Byun Baekhyun.” Chanyeol stared into Baekhyun’s eyes who threatened to spill over salty, unwanted tears.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Baekhyun choked back a few unmanly sobs with surprising amount of effort before whispering ever so quietly. “You don’t know that you’re talking about.” He doesn’t know what he did wrong, he only wants Sandara. So let them be happy, Baekhyun chanted in his head, they would all leave eventually. There was no need to hang on to someone who was out of reach.

“Sorry, I took a while, didn’t I?” Dara sat back down at the table and Baekhyun cast his eyes back down on the floor. “We’ll both have cokes for now.”

“Alright, I’ll be back with your drinks.” Baekhyun muttered quietly and Chanyeol watched him with pity and desperation as he disappeared into the kitchen.

“He doesn’t know what he’s talking about, he only know your name. He’s forgotten about you.” Baekhyun cried, constantly wiping his tears before taking off his apron and hanging it on a hook before escaping out the back exit just as Taemin arrived.

He walked into the cold night air, painfully remembering those days before he moved to Seoul from America, the days before he met Park Chanyeol. Those days were the ones he suffered most. People pushing him around and people handing him dirtied razors with a smug grin on their faces. They didn’t know, they would never know. Those kids would never know how it felt to sob yourself to sleep or how to lay in bed numb because you ran out of pathetic tears at the age of seventeen. It was horrible, living with a monster that consumed you from the inside out, having to hide it all even though everyone else knew.

They didn’t know Baekhyun. They didn’t know Chanyeol either.

Those ignorant people told Baekhyun so many kids had it worse, that there were people without any food or water that would kill to be in Baekhyun’s place. So Baekhyun wondered how he, himself, could be so selfish. How could he want to end his own life when other’s would kill for it? That’s how it all began, that’s how he began to hate himself. The very people that tried to help him killed him slowly. They didn’t know him, they only knew Byun Baekhyun.

That was before Chanyeol came, they both understood what it meant. They understood what it meant to wear those long sleeves and change damp pillow cases in the morning. They knew how it felt to be called those names, they knew what it meant to be a “freak of nature”, to be “ungrateful”, oh they knew it all. And Baekhyun thought it would be forever, he thought Chanyeol would stay forever. It’s funny how naive the human can be.

Baekhyun never came back with those drinks that night. Chanyeol came to the restaurant everyday for the next month, but Baekhyun never returned. Byun Baekhyun was gone, gone to put on a show for another audience.