It was a long walk up to my mum’s grave which was located at the top of a hill that she used to love when she was growing up. When I had pointed out the hill to Sehun, his jaw had dropped a little but he never uttered a single word of complaint despite how much I had seen him complain in school about P.E.

The morning was a cold one, so at least Sehun’s jumpers had come in handy for him in the end. My grandparents had gone up before dawn, and were heading to the market when Sehun and I got up, so would not be coming up with us this morning. And from the suggestive winks and nods they sent my way, it wasn’t hard to guess the reason. Honestly, you’d think they’d be a little more conservative.

“Is this the top?” Sehun puffed as the ground once again levelled off. There was a sort of desperation in his voice. We had probably been walking for about an hour uphill now and he, thanks to his manly pride, had insisted on carrying all our food and supplies on his own. As he hoisted the bag yet again with a pained expression, I knew he was regretting his decision. But he never once verbally complained the whole way up.

“This is it,” I announced, also catching my breath a little.

Sehun’s face lifted immediately. “Really? We’re here? We actually reached it?”

I laughed at his clear delight and he removed his backpack and fell onto his back, arm slung over his face as he tried to catch his breath.

“You should take part in P.E more,” I commented as I extended my hand to help him up.

Swinging his arm away from his face, he scowled at me. “I’ll have you know my participation in P.E is exemplary.”

I scoffed. “You? Exemplary in P.E? Maybe in being lazy . . .”

His face scrunched up. “I’m giving the rest of you a chance to match my physique,” he said as he motioned to his body.

Raising an eyebrow, I shook my head. “How you are so popular I’ll never know . . .”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Ignoring him, I shook my hand out to him again. “You want help up or are you happy to just lie there like a dying hippo?”

Taking my hand, he did very little to help me help him. If anything, he may have been leaning backwards.

There was a smug smile on his face as he did this. “Oh, look who needs P.E now?”

I scowled at him before using all my strength to lift him just enough to then let him fall back to the ground with a thud.

“Ow!” he cried out, rolling onto his side.

“Oh, if only you had been helping me lift your massive hippo body then you wouldn’t be in such pain right now.”

“Whatever,” he grumbled, shoving his arm out again.

I raised an eyebrow at it.

“Help me,” he whined, wiggling his arm like a child.

“And risk putting my back out? Don’t think so.”

He pouted. “But I’ll do it properly this time.”

With a resigned sigh, I held my hand out to him which he took with a victorious smirk and I helped him to his feet – although I’m sure he was more than capable of doing so on his own.

“Seriously though, take your P.E participation a little more seriously,” I told him as I picked up our supplies, a little surprised by how heavy it actually was, and pointed to a singled tree about one hundred metres away. “She’s just there.”

My mum’s grave was very simple, as I’m sure she would have wanted. It had a simple tombstone sitting under a small tree with her name and dates carved on it.

When I walked up to it, I felt myself slowing a little. Although she died a long time ago, it didn’t really make it any less strange to know that it was my mother that was buried there. Normally I was fine and didn’t get emotional about it, but whenever I come here it's a little different. I really did miss her.

“Hi Mum,” I began, swallowing the small lump in my throat. “Happy birthday! I brought you some lilies, I know how you like them.” Reaching into the backpack, I got out the pink flowers and placed them on the base of the tombstone. “I . . . miss you.”

Sehun had not come all the way up to the tombstone with me, not initially at least. He allowed me time to speak to my mum. I already knew before we arrived here that he would let me do this. After all, he knew exactly what this felt like.

“Mum,” I motioned for Sehun to come forward with my hand. He did, entwining his fingers with mine with a nervous squeeze. “This is my friend, Sehun. I took him to meet you because he said he wanted to. And . . . I really think you’d like him a lot.”

Sehun smiled a little whilst listening to my words before bowing before the tombstone. “Hello, I’m Sehun. Your daughter told me all about you. And I want to thank you for raising Mira so well. She really is a very special person.”

This time it was my turn to smile. With a slight blush, I turned back to the tombstone, “He also knows how to flatter, right, mum?”

Letting out a gentle chuckle, Sehun squeezed my hand again a little. I hadn’t ever been here with anyone other than my grandparents before but it was nice - it was really nice. Letting someone like Sehun come here felt good. It was here, as I stood in front of my mother with Sehun’s warm and comforting hand stretched around my own that I realised I didn’t want this feeling to leave me. Not because of my position. Not because of my father’s business plans. Or even my father himself. And not because of me - least of all because of me.

“Sehun,” hesitantly I began.

Looking down to my face, he quietly replied, “Mm?”

I swallowed, not really sure what I wanted to say. All of this was very foreign to me and the words were not easy to find nor say. “Will you . . . always be here?”

He pointed to the ground, “Here?” It looked like he didn’t know what I meant.

Shaking my head softly, I squeezed his hand. “Here.”

His eyes widened a little as he understood. I quickly looked away, embarrassed with myself for being so clingy. It was so unlike me, and yet it felt like the most important question in the world to ask him at that moment.

“Look up,” he whispered after a moment.

Biting down hard on my lip, I felt my cheeks burning. Why did I have to open my big fat mouth?

“Look up,” he repeated in the same whisper, still no sense of urgency in it.

This time though, I obeyed. Flicking my eyes to his, I saw that his were glistening and wide, but soft. They were so soft. He was neither smiling nor frowning, and yet he looked so relaxed and contented.

Squeezing my hand, his lip tucked up on one side. Again, so softly. “For as long as you want me here, I’ll be here.”

I felt like my heart had just collapsed. Those were the words I wanted to hear so badly, yet thought he never would.

“Please remember you said that.”

“I will. I always will.”

I smiled. That had to be enough.

After eating our lunch on the top of the hill, Sehun and I began back down again. Unlike the way up, this time we had to try to slow ourselves down because of the steep gradient. Also unlike the way up, we shared the load on the way down.

“Mira,” Sehun hesitantly began, arm brushing against my own. “How did your mum die? If you don’t mind me asking . . .”

Quickly swallowing, I replied, “When we lived in America she was in a car accident. She was on her way home one day from the store and a drunk driver hit her.”

Sehun didn’t speak for a moment and nor did I.

“Is that why you don’t drink alcohol?” he finally asked.

“Yeah. To me, it’s just something unnecessary that causes people to do stupid or reckless things that either hurts themselves or others. The man who hit my mum, he doesn’t even remember it.”

“How doesn’t he remember it?”

“He was so completely drunk that he doesn’t remember it at all.”

Sehun cursed under his breath.

“What about your mum? How did she die?”

Glancing at Sehun, I saw him visibly swallow. “She was ill. But I didn't even know at the time. Apparently there was a problem with her lungs, she’d always had it, but then it just got worse. She . . . sort of faded away slowly. My father lied always lied to me about it.”

My heart ached at Sehun’s words; the way his face ghosted over as he said them. I didn’t know how I would have coped watching my mum fade away slowly and painfully, or for no one to have offered me an explaination as to why. It made me uncomfortable to even think about it.

“My father doesn’t come here,” I told him, trying to distract him from the pain he was clearly feeling. “He hasn’t been up there even once. My grandparents won’t let him.”

It seemed to work as a distraction when Sehun turned his head to me. “Why don’t they let him visit?”

“I know they seem batty and a little jolly, but they did lose their eldest daughter, and they think my father is responsible and doesn't care at all. Right before my mum died, my parents had a big fight with each other because my mum wanted to move back here. I guess she wanted to be close to her family, but my father said he wanted to move to Korea instead. My mum didn’t want to because she couldn’t speak a word of Korean and neither could I. She was close with her parents, so she told them about it. As I’m sure you can imagine, they weren’t keen on the idea either.

“After the accident, my father allowed my mum’s body to be flown back to her family to be buried in the place she was once so happy. And then, without a word, he disappeared to Korea with me after the funeral. My grandparents were furious, and worried for me. But when my father never tried to visit my mum, they said he wasn’t welcome here anymore; that he didn’t deserve to be.” I didn’t know if the last part was my personal opinion or not, but I imagined we all felt that way.

“Was it scary moving to Korea without a word of Korean?”

“It was terrifying. I’d just lost my mother and I was suddenly in this unfamiliar country where I couldn’t speak the language or know any of the customs. I hated my father for doing that to me, I honestly did.” My eyes suddenly felt moist as I spilt out everything I had never said. These were things I had never told to anyone before, and it definitely wasn’t easy to say them.

“But,” I wiped my cheek with the side of my sleeve, getting rid of any moisture that may have escaped without my knowing. “My grandparents have mellowed out so much since all that. I even think that, if my father were to come here, they would let him now.” I shook my head. “But he doesn’t seem to want to.” A little sob finally escaped my lips despite my trying to prevent it. Quickly composing myself again, I cleared my throat with an awkward laugh. “Cold out here, isn’t it?”

Sehun didn’t reply.

I cleared my throat again, another unnatural and humourless laugh coming from my lips. “I definitely should have taken another scarf-” My voice broke a little on the word ‘scarf’. I instantly turned my head away from Sehun, worried about what sort of faucet I had just opened up.

My walking stopped as I took a moment to try to collect my breathing together. This was so unlike me that it had me shaking my head at myself.

Without my realising it, Sehun had walked around in front of me and was now staring intently at my face. I made to turn away but his hands had found their way to my shoulders, securing me gently in place.

I wriggled a little, trying to free myself but with no real desire to get away from him, or his comforting grip. I felt something soft run against my cheek and I squinted down to see that it was the edge of his thumb, brushing away the only tear that had actually managed to escape. Sehun then moved his hand back to my shoulder and gave it a little squeeze. Finally meeting his gaze, I saw that his eyes were intently fixated on my face, running all over it with concern. His brows were lifted into a troubled frown.

Slowly, very slowly, he took a step forwards until our bodies were almost touching. Then – again, very slowly – he wound his arms around my back and took the final step so that I was now wrapped into his arms; his breathing a little ragged and his heart beating fast. One of his hands moved up to cradle the back of my head, supporting it there, whilst the other moved to the small of my back where it ran small soothing circles.

“If you want to cry,” he whispered so quietly into the top of my head that even if someone had been standing with us, they wouldn’t have been able to hear it. “Do it here.”

Inhaling deeply, I think I surprised both Sehun and myself when I didn’t cry anymore, only stood there. Sehun had once again offered me comfort I didn’t know existed, not anymore. And all I could think about was how I wanted him to always do this for me. As I moved my head a little, I felt his warm breath stir the hair as he put his lips on the top of my head, pressing there with a little buzz of added warmth. I didn’t dare move for fear of him moving or stopping what he was doing.

A gruff call from the side broke us apart, “Jessie, fetch it now! Good girl!”

I pulled my head away from Sehun a little to see an elderly man walking towards us up the hill with his border collie and a Frisbee. To give the man his dues, he was doing a better job of climbing the hill than Sehun and I had done despite his superior age. Pulling back almost all the way as the man got closer, Sehun allowed me to move away from him but kept his hand against the small of my back with his thumb gently drawing a circle on it.

As the man walked past us with his dog, he greeted us in a heavily accented voice before collecting the Frisbee from his dog. In a very loud and almost encouraging voice, he smiled at the pair of us before calling to his dog, “Young love at its finest there, Jessie.”

Love?

I don’t know where my grandparents had been this morning, but when they returned in the late evening, it seemed very clear that it had not just been to the local market or my mum’s grave. They were laughing to themselves as the entered the cottage, my grandfather walking into the coat pegs which caused an even greater explosion of comical laughter.

Sehun and I just stared at them until they sobered up a little. “Oh, spud, those flowers you popped up to your mum are just gorgeous,” my grandma cooed, patting my arm gently once she regained her composure. “She would have just loved them.”

My grandpa clapped Sehun on the back, “I’m sure Sean had something to do with it.”

“Dear, his name is Sehun,” my grandma corrected, as she took off her coat and hung it up.

“Isn’t that what I said?” my grandpa looked genuinely confused. It seemed that he really had believed he called Sehun