“Don’t worry and just head home first, okay?” Minho smiles and gives Seunghoon as last wave before walking up the paved pathway. The cold has everything be covered in a sparkly cover of frost and the sun is hiding behind a faint haze. Minho is wearing a black suit under his dark coat, has a small bouquet of flowers in his hands and has spent hours to get ready.  Seunghoon, his boyfriend, has always wondered why he makes such effort, also wonders why Minho never lets him come along to these strange visits of him, but he is never told exactly why. It just doesn’t seem right, doesn’t seem fair. Even after almost four years of dating, he doesn’t know everything. If they do last longer, maybe one day Minho will tell him why, once a year he goes out to the outskirts of Seoul on his own, always made up nicely and with a little bouquet of flowers. One day.

But it isn’t this year either. Least of all this year since it marks the tenth year since it happened. Shivering a bit in the cold, Minho hurries up his pace and hurries inside of the white, formal looking building. The reception holds a small café, some extra flowers and there are more people in black. There is always a special feel when comes there, like there is something in the air that makes it extra heavy.

Without even thinking, Minho takes the stairs up to the second level, walks through room after room until he comes to the right one. As always there is no one there at this time, but fresh flowers witnesses that someone has already been there to pay their respect. Donghyun, he thinks and his lips curl up in a faint smile as he leaves his own flowers on the right shelf; fifth from the floor, ten rows from the right. The sight alone makes his eyes sting and his hand brushes over the glass with a tenderness that seems almost uncharacteristic for his looks.

“Taehyun… did you miss me?” Minho’s voice is nothing but a whisper when he speaks, but it still bounces off the walls in the empty room and come off as louder than they really are. “I… I had my boyfriend drive me again today. I think you’d like him. He’s… he’s nothing like you.” Tears burned already and his dark eyes fell on the small, framed picture that stood on the shelf together with the simple urn. A picture of him, ten years younger, smiling and an arm around Taehyun’s shoulder. Two smiles frozen in time, one he would never ever see again.

“I still miss you.”

Ten years have passed since the winter he and Seungyoon smuggled Taehyun out of the hospital. Ten years since the last couple of weeks spent in Minho’s small apartment, ten years since the happiest and saddest weeks of his life. Ten years was such a long time, but he could still, with perfect clarity, remember one of the last conversations he and Taehyun had shared.

--

“Minho hyung…” Taehyun rolled over on his side where he lay on the sofa and looked towards Minho who was standing by the kitchen counter and preparing two light meals for them. Not that Taehyun ate much anymore, but he did try to eat just a little when he could.

“Hmm?” Minho finishes cutting up the cucumber, puts it in the salad and mixes it up a bit with a fork.

“When I’m gone…”

“Please don’t start every conversation like that,” Minho groans, trying to sound as if he is more tired of it than sad. Everything is sad, even if they are happy, they are sad. Conversations like these are especially sad.

“No, but this is different!” Taehyun protests, pushing himself up ever just a little. “This is important. Can’t you just hear me out? Please?”

After putting two glasses of water on the tray together with the salad, Minho brings it over to the sofa and leaves it on the table before sitting down on the floor by the sofa. “…fine. But you promised this morning that you wouldn’t cry today. So no sad stories?”

Taehyun nods again and reaches out a hand for Minho’s. “I was thinking-“

“Always a dangerous thing,” Minho chuckles and gives a little wink before reaching out too to take Taehyun’s

“Shut up and listen, won’t you? I… Promise me that when I’m gone… promise me you will move on?” It was obvious it hurt Taehyun to bring up something like this, but there was a determined wrinkle between his eyes that witnessed that he had thought a whole lot about this before bringing it up. “I want more than anything for you to be happy, so… promise me you will move on? You are such a great person, you… you deserve someone to love you like you’ve loved me.”

Whatever it was Minho had expected Taehyun to say, this was the last thing he had expected. Tears burned in his eyes and he leaned in to place a soft kiss on Taehyun’s lips. “What are you saying?” he croaked, bringing the other’s cold, thing hand to his lips to kiss it. “How can you ask me to forget you? How can I love someone like I love you? You can’t… Can’t expect me to make such a promise!”

There is a redness to Taehyun’s eyes too now, and it is obvious he his working hard to keep his the promise he made not to cry. “Don’t-… don’t forget me! I… I want you at least to remember, but… but don’t spend the rest of your life on your own just because of that. Someone will come along, someone will reach out their hand and at that time I don’t want you to feel like you shouldn’t take it because of me. That’s not what I want. I want you to be happy. Always.”

At one point in-between the tears, Minho had ended up making the promise. Somewhere in-between the heart breaking sobs he had managed to give Taehyun the “I promise” he seemed to have wanted so much.

--

Two days later Taehyun fell asleep on the sofa as usual, only this time to never open his eyes ever again. It was Seungyoon who made all the calls, who helped prepare everything for the funeral together with Donghyun. It was Seungyoon who had found Minho curled up in the bathroom, crying so hard his whole body was shaking. The sight had made him take Minho’s phone and make all the calls before he helped his best friend down to his car and drove him to his own apartment.

Minho never could remember much of the following days, only short glimpses here and there through the medication-induced sleep and the never-ending tears. Actually, that whole first year was blurry and he remembered very little from it. The second year had been a little better, but he still had certain places he couldn’t go or things he couldn’t see without the loss burning another hole through his heart.

Another year went by and Minho started working again, slowly, and ever so slowly, falling back into the daily routine. He watched Seungyoon become a doctor, talked to Donghyun maybe once or twice a year just to keep updated and finally moved out of Seungyoon’s place and into his own apartment. Only then did he remember the promise he made to Taehyun, and only then, five years later, was he really ready to move on with the compromise to himself that he would still be allowed to keep Taehyun in his heart still.

He never had much hope or put in much effort to try to find someone knew, but through a strange set of coincident, Seunghoon was the one to find him.  On a New Year’s party hosted by Seungyoon, both of them had been invited, and through the crowd and noise Seunghoon had found Minho standing alone in a corner. That was how it started, a new year, a new start. When one year ended Minho had still been alone and unsure of his future, but when morning came of the New Year he wasn’t quite that alone, had a phone number scribbled down on a note in his pocket and a promise of going for a coffee the next weekend.

--

“Maybe next year… I will bring him here. Would that be okay? He isn’t you, but… I am happy. Just like I promised, I’ve found someone who truly cares about me and… and I care about him too.” Minho dried the tears from his cheeks and smiled wider at the picture of him and Taehyun. He would never forget, and maybe it would never make any sense how fast he had fallen. That year of his life felt like a different place and a different time. Like he had been Alice, falling down a rabbit hole to Wonderland to meet one of the most fantastic people he would ever come to meet.

End.

Author's Note(s): Wow! One year, 46 pages and 22 2221 words later this whole thing is finally done. For those of you who have followed along the road, thank you all for your suppor and comments! That's what makes an author want to write on. There's been long and small gaps between chapters, but thank you for sticking with me, and thank you for not giving up on me along the way. This was my second fic ever to write, and to really think I ventured into unsteady ground as real angst still amuse me, but I like to believe that I rounded it up well enough. Thank you!