After that confrontation, Taemin and Minho still talked every now and then. Although, Minho always felt a tinge of jealousy whenever he knew Taemin was Onew, he decided to move on with his life. He no longer turned back to his journal; he kept it hidden under piles of old albums in a box in the back corner of his old closet at his parent’s house. He decided that he won’t try to reshape his future anymore, that he’ll start it by changing it now. The first step to his new progress in life was quitting his job and getting a teacher’s degree, of course, he didn’t think he would be fit to be a teacher but he would try his best to share his knowledge of his experience, plus he also wanted to be a soccer coach for a high school.

            Things in Minho’s life seemed to be looking brighter again but feelings of love would never rekindle unless it was him…

            After half a year of his new life breezed by, he came back to his home-town to visit his family for the holidays. In his old room, he unpacked his suitcase and placed it into his closet, finding the box which buried his journal… Curious to know how it worked, he decided to dig it out again, just to see…

            Looking at the slick black cover of his journal, his fingers itched to flip it open, but his conscious managed to weasel him out of it. He was afraid that he might wanted to change it, so he went outside and placed in a trashcan, he didn’t need this journal anymore… He’ll write a whole new chapter of his life in another journal. Taking out the lighter, he flicked the flame and slowly heated the corner of his black book. The flames gradually engulfed the edges of the journal and he watched it burn in the crimson embers. Strange how the golden crimson glow of the fire seemed so familiar, Minho mused to himself, almost as if…

            Fear struck fast into his eyes as he felt his whole body being thrown back into a black, spiraling abyss. As he awakened, he appeared in the same position he had been whenever he returned back to the day of August 27^th, was this nightmare about to repeat again? Minho had finally begun to change his new page in life for better, now is he going to have repeat everything again? Perhaps everything was just one long dream, it must be. He looked at the clock, the same time he had always woke up, 1:11 PM. He looked at his phone, no contact of Taemin… Meeting his parents downstairs, they repeated their usual conversation of inviting his old friends over even though he had just met them yesterday. But this time, he actually did call over Key and Jonghyun.

            “So… I drank a lot yesterday?” Minho questioned. Kibum slouched into the couch and nodded, while Jonghyun agreed. “Yeah, I’m surprised that you don’t have a hang-over,” the small, dinosaur-looking man chuckled.

            “I’m a heavy drinker and it’s probably the pain medicine that’s helping, my head was throbbing earlier…” Minho somehow let out a sigh of relief, he was probably hallucinating a whole bunch of crap when he was drunk, and now he can assume that it was the longest dream he had ever had. “Key said you were drinking because you were disappointed that Taemin didn’t show up,” Jonghyun nudged the taller male’s side. “I made a bet with him saying that it wasn’t it, right?”

            “Well… yeah, I mean… He’s my first love and all,” he muttered bashfully.

            “Wow, talk about a farce,” Kibum smirked. “You got drunk for nothing because he really did come in the end, but you were passed out. He even rushed to the party all the way from his work, tsk, tsk.”

            Minho looked at Key with the biggest eyes ever, the expression of disbelief was written all over his face. Wait… then that dream of Taemin from the beginning… was it real? “Wh-where is he now?”

            Key crossed his arms and shrugged his shoulders. “Who knows, I mean, there’s so many places to begin, like where should I even start? I don’t know, I would try retracing my footsteps to where it all began.”

            Key didn’t need to say anymore, Minho already had a place in mind and was already sprinting out the door. He ran down the sidewalks, not even sure if Taemin would even be there, but he just felt like it—like he would be there for some reason. The words that Taemin confessed the week before graduation, Minho wasn’t sure if it was just a dream that he wished came true, or if it really happened, but he wanted to believe those words. Even if it wasn’t a promise, he just wanted to believe because he felt the exact same way. As he ran, he quickly made a turn to get around the corner of the wooden fence that surrounded the park, and he collided into someone, of course, that someone happened to be Taemin. A moment of silence filled the atmosphere as they looked at each other, amazed.

            A relieved smile, Minho got up and stuck his hand out to assist the fallen one, and murmured the only single word he could think would restart everything again… “hello.”

Five years later…

            “And that my dear nephew is pretty much the end of the story,” Minho concluded calmly, resting his chin on top of the toddler’s wavy haired head.

“Hullo,” his nephew placed in the adult’s lap repeated idly as he cuddled against Minho. Yoo Geun’s attention wasn’t even focused on what his uncle was saying, he just tugged on the wavy locks of hair that travelled along Minho’s neck.

            “Yes, hello… So don’t regret anything when you grow up, okay? The guy in the story was lucky enough to start back from square one, he still has a long way to go, you know, so that’s why the rest is still unwritten.” The door of the small play room opened  and a voice, the only sweet voice that Minho would recognize in a crowd filled with chattering people, announced “dinner is ready.”

            The tiny hands slammed against the short colorful table in front of him, springing from his seat as he heard the news, Yoo Geun’s feet pitter pattered out the door, excited as he smelt the delectable aroma of food down the halls.

            Minho glanced up at the red head, smiling for no reason like an idiot, it caused the other to make his face tint with red and averting his eyes. “Telling Yoo Geun that story again? You know he doesn’t understand it, he’s too young.”

            “Ha-ha, I’ll repeat it as many times as I have to until he does.”

            Taemin began to turn around to walk out the door but he stopped midway, without looking at Minho, he extended his arm out with his palm open in the direction of the brown-haired male. Without a second’s delay, Minho gently wrapped his hand into his, giving it a soft affectionate squeeze as he got up. Shutting the door behind them hand in hand, the window blew in the late autumn’s breeze. The gust of the cool wind picked up the pages of the charred journal, its pages flapping loudly, bringing it to a close. And the worn burnt notebook lay still at the center of the small, colorful floor table.

a/n: my ending is umm... rushed much? Oh well, hope you enjoyed nonetheless.