Time Cannot Boil Love

Everyone was talking about it. 

Wu Yi Fan’s OST, the song apparently known under the name “Time Boils The Rain”, was about to be released in a few hours, and both the waiting and the actual release of the song caught different reactions from everyone who knew the ex-EXO member, from everyone in EXO itself. 

Two months into the scandal already, Kris’ new activity as a soloist, an actor, whatever he couldn’t be under SM Entertainment, was about to actually begin and no one, not ever Kris himself, was ready to face it. 

And yet, that song had been registered. 

In Seoul, in the usually loud and noisy EXO dorm, precisely, the song came out in a tense atmosphere. There were people like Minseok and Sehun, who immediately claimed they didn’t want to listen to even one note of that song. Their anger, for how different in reasons, was similar in intensity. There were people like Baekhyun and Tao, already crying even before their headphones could let the beginning reach their ears; there were people like Jongin and Chanyeol, crying silently, away from everyone, while their old - maybe lost - friend, sang angelically that intense, sad song for them.

Luhan was not like any of them. 

Luhan sat on his bed, where he had been lying since the previous night, with closed windows and closed stomach. Everything was closed, even his heart, his mind was blank. He knew nothing of that day, he didn’t even know if it was raining outside, if there was a bright sun, maybe some cloud here and there. 

He just knew it was that day.

He found himself downloading that song on his phone without even realizing it. That was how blank he was feeling, then. He found himself staring at the photo of Kris appearing on the screen, posing for the camera as perfectly as he had always done. 

He hadn’t changed, Kris. On the outside, at least, he was still the man Luhan used to know. 

What had changed was something far more important, for his heart, his past, his memories, his hopes toward the future. 

Kris had changed on the inside, changing Luhan as well because it didn’t matter how much it seemed like the opposite, it had always been Luhan depending on him like the rain with his cloud. 

His cloud, though, had been leaving all the while, and the rain hadn’t realized it until everything was over, until it was a lost drop on the dirt street of some cold city already. 

Luhan couldn’t stop feeling that.

It took him twenty days to find the strength, the courage, to find whatever he was needing to listen to that song. Kris and him, had met at twenty years old. 

He had been ignoring online comments, he had refused to listen to any of his bandmates’ opinions, he had refused to listen even to himself.

Listening to himself, in the past, hadn’t made Kris stay. 

When Luhan found himself on the roof of their apartment building, phone in trembling hands, headphones gently set over his head, it was late July, but it was raining. The sky was grey and cloudy, the wind impossibly strong to be summer. Everything seemed to be ready to tell him, nothing was going to be alright. 

And it wasn’t. 

Luhan felt his heart coming back to life again after too long, as soon as that song started playing, but it felt like the last breath before the death, to him. He felt trapped, breathless. 

The music was intense.

And then, his voice. 

It was nothing like Luhan ever felt before. Not in his previous 24 years of life, not in his last two months of hell. 

It was like listening to his death sentence, spoken out by his only angel. 

Raindrops are blown into flowers by wind

Flowing time cannot catch up with the white galloping horse

Silly words written on your palms

Do you still hold them tightly?

It ached. His voice, it ached like not even a knife could. Luhan couldn’t see the sky properly already, eyes filled with the tears he had been taking inside since that faithful 15th of May, like Kris leaving them - him - hadn’t affected him in any way. 

Those sentences, those words, that voice, could just show him why he couldn’t feel anything anymore, before going to bed, while waking up. Luhan had fooled himself all time long thinking he was just angry. 

Clouds rolling up and down in the summer

Tears are evaporated by flowing time

All of us along the way

Anyone got lost?

Such an awful, ironic song it was, Luhan felt like throwing up. His breath felt caught up in his lungs and it was as bad as watching your loved one dying under your harmless eyes. 

We promised not to leave each other 

Must always be together

Even though we had to fight against time 

Even though the whole world turned its back to us

He wasn’t sure how could still feel, hear that song, despite his loud ‘no’, despite his hard breathing. Despite him shaking his head as trying to let those heavy tears fall down on his face. Luhan exploded into the loudest, most broken cry his body, mind, heart and soul had ever felt. 

The notes, like the horizon, became blurred and insignificant, because Luhan could not feel anything like he should had. 

His eyes were so glassy that the whole world could be reflected into the water they had become, while a sense of pure desperation got so strong into him, the rest of Kris’ words arrived as mere whispers, useless, cruel.

Showflakes are blown into shining pieces by wind

Our hair is whitened 

We said that we would venture into the world together

Do you still remember it?

“ Do you still remember it? “

Luhan returned, crying out his pain, the pain he had taken inside until that very own moment, it exploded like a beast. He took off his headphones and let them fall down on the floor together with his phone, because he couldn’t listen anymore. 

That song, that awful, beautiful song, was everything he had lost.

It was Kris.

It was Kris’s life.

It was kris’ new life.

It was their promises breaking up like crystal.

It was their past slipping away like a beast running away from a crime.

“ You are a ing ! “

And when Luhan cried, cried out his hatred toward a world he couldn’t recognize anymore, that world itself cried with him. Like raindrops, his tears started wetting the dirt floor, soon followed by a hot, dirt, summer rain. 

Luhan curled up, down there, hugging himself like he knew he wouldn’t have allowed anyone anymore. 

Why, it was the only thing he could think of as desperation and resignation started flowing in the veins of a boy who had never lost his hopes, until then. 

Now Luhan does not have hopes anymore.

The things he had found and loved, they were not there anymore.

Kris was not there anymore, he wouldn’t have showed up saving him for a death of his soul, nor from the rain wetting him like an abandoned puppy.

Luhan had been abandoned, by the only man he was sure he would have ever loved, and Luhan couldn’t hate him for that.

Luhan hated himself, for not having understood, his loved one was not happy there. 

Luhan hated himself because he couldn’t understand Kris was dying inside, in that place.

But the reason why Luhan should hate himself more, is that another man, at the other end of the world, is crying under the same rain, listening to the same song, wondering what bad had they ever done to deserve such an awful, ironic song for their farewell. 

The reason why Luhan should hate himself more, is the same reason why Kris hates himself more, and will never stop. 

Because they have left the world separate them, killing them so slow and soft, that just a song was needed, to see the end coming through. 

Just a song was needed, to cry like they had ever done, over a love that unlike rain, time could have ever boiled.