Dé·jà vu
[ˌdāZHä ˈvo͞o/; English. A feeling of having already experienced the present situation]

The second time Kyungsoo visited his friends’ grave, there were five of them. It was one, bright, morning in the summer, almost a year after he left The Zone to return to his parents, and to find Kris.

For Kyungsoo, who had the ability to connect with the earth, locating Kris wasn’t exactly a hard feat. Somehow, he was the only one whose Mana could defy the restriction of The Zone. Perhaps, it was due to the fact that he had kept his Mana latent for so long, that its strength piled up, amplified his ability. All he needed to do was to voice out his request to the earth, allowing it to travel far, and waited until the earth responds.

Kris was now a man in his forties with a family of five, but that was all that changed in him. He was still the tall, handsome man with giant hands that easily wrapped Kyungsoo in an embrace upon recognition. It's been a while, he said. Kyungsoo—who flew all the way to Canada—honestly didn’t expect that he would be welcomed with open arms. Kris' eyes and voice were wet when he introduced him as ‘a boy from the island’, to the girl who was now his wife.

Kris was surprisingly compliant about the demand. It was probably due to his guilt, or how much he had yearned to return to the forest where he once lived. Kyungsoo himself thought that it was an equal part of both. They talked all night about what happened and Kris cried in the end. He was regretful. Amidst his tears, he told Kyungsoo that he wouldn’t have left if only he knew that everything would end up as it was. And somehow, Kyungsoo believed him. Kris was, after all, one of them. They flew back to Seoul together a week later, and soon, sailed to the island.

Baekhyun was the one who took Kris’ return the hardest; he refused to look at him, and made him stood as far away as he could.

“Your selfishness will taint their peaceful rest,” Baekhyun shot at him. Kris looked away and quietly wiped his tears, but he didn’t say anything. After all, he was the reason Baekhyun lost Jongin.

“Are you ready?” Kyungsoo called, there were murmurs of ‘yes’ behind him.

Kyungsoo closed his eyes, and concentrated his power to the earth beneath his feet. He felt a surge of energy flowing into him, filling him, and when it felt like each cell in his body was full of the spirit of the earth, he knelt down and forced his hands into the ground. The other four waited in full alert, ready when Kyungsoo would need them.

A moment later, the ground shook—Kyungsoo’s energy had created an earthquake on the small island. It was short, but the magnitude was strong enough to topple down a dozen of trees around the graveyard. And when the earth calmed down, they appeared; one by one, round, silvery spheres of Mana emerged from the ground, escaping the graves of their friends.

“Now!” Kyungsoo shouted as he fell on the ground, crouching, but not before he materialized his own Mana. The rest of them followed Kyungsoo’s example, and soon, there were twelve spheres that floated languidly in a spiral above them. They gravitated toward each other, drawing closer, and at a point they merged into a massive union of all the elements of the earth.

The process of releasing their Mana had taken too much of their powers. They had lived with Mana for so long, that when it was gone, they were left weak. In the end they fell down, one by one, but none of them touched the cracked ground. The last trace of the ancient earthly magic turned them instead, into crystalline dust. Gentle wind took them away from the place they used to call ‘home’, to a place where they would soon belong.

Kyungsoo woke up when he heard his mother cried. He opened his eyes and winced from the attack of morning sunshine. They were out at the meadow that separates Grandfather’s house with the forest. His father and uncle were running toward them from the house.

“Mom…” He stirred, his head heavy and throbbing. “What happened? Why are we here?”

“How could I know!” His mother choked with sob. “You just told me that you wanted to get some air after Grandfather’s funeral. I saw you left through the back door not even five minutes ago, and suddenly you were lying here out cold.”

If it wasn't due to his mother's sheer panic, Kyungsoo would have thought that she was joking. He honestly couldn’t recall anything, no memory of doing anything her mother said he did. The last thing he remembered was coming home from an exhausting day at the greenhouse, finishing his Genetic Modification report to earn his grade, and prepared for a long, vengeful sleep. He didn’t even remember traveling back to the island to attend his grandfather’s funeral—

“Wait—” He asked, his voice trembled when it sank in. “Grandfather’s...dead?”

“Oh Kyungsoo…” His mother cried harder and pulled him into her arms. “I know you’re sad. The two of you had always been so close. But please...we were really worried about you.”

Kyungsoo tried to absorb the information regarding his grandfather’s death. The old man had been battling against old age for years, but Kyungsoo always thought that he would have at least another few years with him. How could he not remember such thing? How could it have slipped his mind? Was it the shock that caused him to forget what happened?

“He’s in a better place, son,” his father, who squatted by his side, told him. “You know how unhappy he was since he couldn’t work outside.”

Kyungsoo nodded, although his confusion still had the most of him, and absentmindedly wiped the tears he didn’t know he cried. He stood up, his parents supporting him by his sides. “I’m okay,” he mumbled.

“No you’re not okay!” His mother scolded him. “Lying unconsciously like that...I thought you were dead because you wouldn’t answer. I thought that we…” She paused, and there was a muffled sob. She gasped, a hand over as she tried to hold in hysterical tears. “I thought that we would have to hold another funeral for you…”

“I’m sorry,” Kyungsoo said. He felt sincerely bad for making his mother cry like that.

They walked together back, taking small steps each time. He heard his parents talking about calling the doctor. Kyungsoo felt perfectly fine—albeit the extremely exhausted for a reason he did not know—he said nothing, if that would put his parents’ mind at ease.

The town’s doctor that was called to examine him told his parents that Kyungsoo was perfectly fine, much to his parents’ relief. There was not even a single scratch found on him, despite his parents’ words that they saw their son stumbled into the forest earlier that day. As for Kyungsoo’s failure to retrieve his memory for the past week, the doctor could only come up with a speculation that it was due to the shock of his Grandfather’s death. Although later, he also advised that Kyungsoo should see a neurosurgeon (which Kyungsoo quickly refused by reiterating what the doctor said--he was perfectly fine).

Sleep came early that night. As soon as he finished his dinner, which his mother insisted to bring to his bed, he felt the urge to sleep. Pulling his blanket, Kyungsoo glanced outside the window, to the forest at the distance. As he closed his eyes, he thought he saw silvery balls of light danced their way up from the top of the trees, and dispersed into the sky.





Kyungsoo was known among the students of the agricultural department as ‘the god’s hand’, and the nickname was not even a sarcastic one. Without knowing how, after the summer break on his second year, he suddenly became the star of the class, acing all of his agricultural classes with flying colors. It was unexpected because Kyungsoo was never known to be the brightest person but somehow, the plants that he grew in the `greenhouse always produced the best result. The fruits were superior in size and taste, and the flowers bloomed beautifully. No one bothered to ask him what his secret was, because everybody could see that Kyungsoo himself was equally clueless about it.





Chanyeol considered himself as an ordinary person. He was a welder in domestic car company, a well-earning blue collar job that he enjoyed. He was skilled and precise, better than his colleagues from technical schools. His workplace achievement was excellent that even without any proof of formal education, he rose faster than any other employees. The problem is, he didn’t know how he knew his way around the welder, or even how he could get the job at the first hand.





Whenever Kyungsoo were asked how he met Chanyeol, he would always end up deflating the question. It wasn’t that the story was something he should be ashamed of. Rather, he honestly had no memory of meeting him. Even his friends knew didn’t have the slightest idea who Chanyeol was before they started to date. It was as if one day Chanyeol just simply appeared in his life, and they were already madly, deeply, and irrevocably in love.

As easy as they were to adjust into the routine as a couple, there had been some problem with Kyungsoo’s parents. They were quite freaked out when one day, all of a sudden Kyungsoo brought home Park Chanyeol and introduced him as his boyfriend. They were not the one to blame; Kyungsoo hadn’t particularly showed any interest toward romance before, and in the one time that he did, it was toward a boy. Kyungsoo had done too many strange things recently, they said. They could barely recognize him as the quiet but kind boy, who were paving his path to be the world’s best farmer their son once was. Kyungsoo apologized, but he remained firm about his feeling for Chanyeol.

Chanyeol too, had bowed his head low to Kyungsoo’s parents. He admitted his inadequacy, giving his words that he would try to be a person that was suitable for Kyungsoo, while trying to convince them that he would never be the reason of Kyungsoo’s unhappiness. In the end, there was nothing that Kyungsoo’s parents could have said or done, but to let them be. The way they looked at each other, it was as if they would abandon eternity just to stay together even if only a day longer. If only they know…





Chanyeol also felt perfectly content with his roommates. Baekhyun, a stage technician who prefered to be called ‘light painter’, and Jongdae, a senior engineering student, were the best people he could have asked to share an apartment with. It was true that he couldn’t remember how he ended up living in in a three-bedroom apartment downtown, or how he shared it with two other guys. They were practically strangers in his life; none of them could recall any history where they encountered and got to know each other. It almost felt as if one day, the three of them woke up in the morning with a known reality that they were roommates. At the same time, they felt like they had spent an entire lifetime together, sharing a mutual affection that of blood brothers.

When Chanyeol brought Kyungsoo to their place, it took no time for the three of them to warm up and made Kyungsoo feel at home. How they assigned roles in their friendship was also special, like how Baekhyun naturally became the goddess of the group, Jongdae the comic relief, Kyungsoo the one with correct judgment, and Chanyeol the awkward one. They even only half-jokingly offered to help, if Kyungsoo wanted to move in with them the next day.

By each of their own, they often wondered how they felt utterly at ease when they were around each other. It felt like they had shared a very important chapter in their life, one that brought them together, but one that they couldn’t remember. However, it was like an unspoken rule that they would never try to bring up the topic among the four of them. It wasn’t that they never tried but when they felt rebellious enough to do it, they would always ended up suffering an overwhelming, traumatizing kind of pain in their heart. Such anguish was too much for all of them to handle, that in the end, they silently agreed that some truths were probably meant to be left unsaid.



After all, life is good. They were happy as they slowly, but steadily, walk together in their baby steps into their adulthood.


-fin-


Колыбельная
(Kolibel’naya; Russian), Lullaby
I listened to this beautiful song by Polina Gagarina (Sung by Aida Nikolaychuk in this video) for literally more than a hundred times when I wrote this fic. Its lyrics is somehow perfect to describe Kyungsoo's journey, hence the title.