2014: the yellow suitcase (for eonians)
For: eonians
From: ANONYMOUS until December 30, 2014
Title: the yellow suitcase
Rating: PG
Pairing(s)/Focus: Baekhyun/Lu Han, Suho/Lu Han
Length: 8,223 words
Summary: While trying to run away from his life, Luhan gives a ride to Baekhyun, a chirpy hitchhiker who never shuts up, never stops smiling and never lets him have a moment of peace. Unknowingly, Luhan begins to appreciate his presence in the passenger seat of his car.
Notes:
- very loosely based on cecelia ahern’s novel if you could see me now. i only took the general concept and changed a lot of things, but even so, if you haven’t read the book, please don’t look it up before reading this fic!
- thanks to the amazing two who always help me get up when i hit the absolute rock bottom of desperation and writer’s block
- to my recipient: i sincerely loved all of your prompts, thank you so much for them!
today
Joonmyun thinks that it’s possible to know an artist’s life story just by taking a look at their works.
At this exhibition, the works have been arranged in chronological order, which makes the whole exhibition feel even more like an autobiography. Joonmyun walks through the first room slowly, stopping in front of each painting, and studies the works with pursed lips, full of curiosity. He takes in the seemingly random splashes of jet-black paint on intriguing, impressionistic landscape paintings that this artist in question is famous for. In some paintings, the black paint drips down from the sky or tree trunks or buildings like trickles of blood, in some it looks more like clouds, in some it looks like the painter just splashed the paint on the canvas out of sheer frustration.
As he walks further, however, he is almost startled to see the large painting that hangs on a wall next to the door to another room. The painting looks out of place with its vivid, lively colors nearly bursting out and spilling into the room. It is so gorgeously out of place in a room full of dull colors and splashes of jet-black on monochrome background. Joonmyun is drawn to it, approaching the painting as if spellbound. He has seen pictures of the painting on magazines and blogs, but none of those do the piece any justice. It’s quite possibly this artist’s most famous piece, and for a very good reason.
It portrays a beautiful summer day by the sea. The water glimmers, reflecting the clear turquoise sky and the bright sun. In the background, a few dark blue shadows of mountains or islands can be seen. Still, none of that catches Joonmyun’s eyelike the person in the middle of the painting. He is captured in mid-movement as he plays in the water, his arms flailing and mouth stretched out in such a wide smile that Joonmyun can almost hear the peals of his laughter echoing in the room.
“Hey, you came!”
Joonmyun turns around to see Luhan, the artist himself, approaching with a happy smile stretched across his face. Joonmyun mirrors his smile and gives him a small wave of his hand. “Of course I did,” he replies. “And not only because as your boyfriend I felt obliged to attend your first big exhibition, but also because I would have come to see this even if I’d never met you. I am an art blogger after all, and you just so happen to be one of this country’s most promising rising stars.”
He turns back to the painting when Luhan has walked up to him. He finds it interesting how the person is portrayed in such detail, almost like a photograph, while everything else is a more simplified and blurry. Joonmyun glances at the name tag next to the painting and reads the name. A Sunny Day.
“This painting’s really different from everything else in this room,” Joonmyun points out. “Why the sudden change in style? Did you get tired of black?”
Luhan’s eyes travel across the expanse of the canvas. Joonmyun could swear he stops to look at the smiling figure for a fleeting moment. “It’s because that person was someone important. Someone special,” Luhan says, sounding a little distant. His use of past tense doesn’t go unnoticed by Joonmyun. “I just couldn’t paint a person like him the way I used to paint everything. It wouldn’t have felt right.”
Joonmyun would like to ask who that person was and what happened to him, but he decides not to, even though Luhan’s lips are smiling once again and that air of wistfulness is gone. “Do you want me to give you a special tour with exclusive commentary from the artist himself?” he asks, grinning a little. Joonmyun swallows his questions and accepts the offer.
<<
that summer three years ago
Baekhyun enter and his yellow suitcase enter Luhan’s life very suddenly. One moment he’s not in it, and the second, he’s everywhere with his rectangular grin, like the sun appearing for the first time after a long, cold but snowless winter.
It’s a warm and particularly sunny day in July, and Luhan is lonelier and sadder than he cares to admit. The voice on the radio says it’s two minutes past three in the afternoon, which means that Luhan has been driving for two hours without a destination in mind. When he left Seoul, the only thought on his mind was that he wanted to get away, as far away as possible, so now he’s headed down the Seohaean Expressway, gradually approaching Mokpo. He knows that he most likely isn’t going to stop there. He’s going to keep driving like he is now, without any plan whatsoever.
The radio host, a young-sounding female with a chirpy voice, starts to talk about a guest she’s invited. She sounds very eager to have a chat with the said celebrity, but Luhan switches the channel. He isn’t in the mood to listen to people talking - what he wants is music. He turns up the volume, enjoying the way he can only understand bits and pieces of the English lyrics, and lets the heavy bass lull his mind into a trance of some kind. His thoughts dissolve into the music, and the road in front of him is all he has to focus on. The world feels quiet, finally, even though the electric beat of the song fills his ears.
If someone were to ask Luhan what it is that he’s running from, what it is that’s making him so anxious that he can’t bear thinking about ever going back, he wouldn’t be able to come up with an answer. All he could say is that his mind has become a loud place, a loud place full of thoughts and fears and anxiety, and all of that makes him sick to his stomach. At the same time he feels like his life is going by too fast, there’s too much to do and too many responsibilities, yet every now and then (nowadays more often than ever), he just wakes up and realizes that he has no idea where he’s headed in his life. He’s been in such a hurry all his life, so busy running from one goal to another that it wasn’t until very recently that he realized that he doesn’t even know what it is that he wants from his life. What is the reason he gets out of bed every morning? For some reason not knowing anything terrifies him, especially when there are so many people he owes answers to, answers he’s never had.
He’s usually the kind of person who makes a safe plan and sticks to it without taking much risks or setting too high goals for himself. He studied marketing instead of art to minimize the risk of unemployment, and he did land a good job at a nice company some time after his graduation. His plan worked out for him just fine until he was laid off three months ago. He still hasn’t found a new job, nor has he told his parents about losing the old one. Only Yixing, his roommate and best friend, knows, and that’s the way Luhan intends on keeping things.
The truth is, he doesn’t need a fancy calling, he doesn’t need to be told that he’s going to find a way to stop climate change, get rid of poverty, find a foolproof and painless cure to cancer or a way to stop toasts from falling butter-side first. Even though he’s more or less a painter, he doesn’t even need to be reassured that he’s going to be the next Van Gogh, Rembrandt or Picasso. He doesn’t need to make it big as a painter if that’s not meant to be. What he wants is to simply feel like there’s a reason why he exists, and that reason doesn’t have to be an impressive one. Call it existential angst or whatever, he just wishes that he knew how it feels to truly belong somewhere, or what it’s like to feel that there’s something he was meant to do. He wishes he were like Yixing who crawls into his bed at four am, naps for a few hours and heads back to the practice studio and never complains because he has a dream and he’s willing to do anything it takes to make it come true. Luhan has nothing except a sketchbook full of things he doesn’t have the courage to turn into paintings, and a bedroom full of paintings he doesn’t have the confidence to be proud of.
Luhan is just a leaf in the wind. No home, no goal, no nothing. He has Yixing, though, and for a long time that was good enough. Now that he fears that Yixing might get swept away by his own dreams at any moment, Luhan isn’t so sure anymore. The world spins around, people in his life move on and leave him behind, and Luhan’s still stuck in one place although he keeps running. Like quicksand, the more he tries to escape, the deeper he sinks.
He wishes he knew where all those feelings of anxiety and insecurity come from. Is it because he grew up in a house that was always empty, heating up leftovers and instant meals for dinner from Monday to Friday and chasing away the monsters under his bed all alone? Or is it because he was uprooted when he was only nine years old and forced to move to a strange country where everybody spoke a language he couldn’t understand? Or maybe it’s just the way he is, maybe it’s in his DNA. Maybe his own personality is the root of all his problems. It could also be that there’s no particular reason for his anxiety; it might be just one of those things in life that just happen, for no reason at all. He doesn’t know. The only thing he knows is that he feels misplaced no matter what he does.
He snaps back into reality when he notices that the low fuel indicator has lit up. He keeps driving, guessing that there must be a gas station somewhere along the highway, and hoping that he’ll find one before the motor stops running. He’s lucky, because only a few minutes later he spots a rest area and decides to make his pit stop there.
He fills the tank and has a quick cup of instant noodles at the convenience store, wanting to continue his destinationless journey as quickly as possible. However, as he walks to his car, he sees someone approaching him from the corner of his eye.
“Hey, you! Wait a bit!”
Luhan turns around, startled, and sees a young man with black, fluffy hair dragging a yellow suitcase as he rushes through the half empty parking lot. When Luhan’s eyes meet his, the man breaks into an impossibly large grin and waves his hand, picking up his pace to get to Luhan faster. Luhan is sure he’s never seen this person before, so he finds the happy reaction strange, to say the least. When the man finally catches up to him, he’s still smiling.
“Hi,” Yellow Suitcase says and brushes a few strands of sweaty hair off his forehead. It’s a pretty sweltering afternoon so it’s no wonder running across a parking lot with such a heavy-looking suitcase made him break a sweat. “Where are you going, if I may ask?”
Luhan furrows his brows in confusion. “Nowhere in particular,” he answers anyway. If possible, his reply only makes Yellow Suitcase smile even wider.
“Could I get a ride?” he asks.
Needless to say, the thought of sitting in a car with a complete stranger (and a particularly strange stranger at that) doesn’t sound very inviting to Luhan at first, but he doesn't know how to say it without being too rude. “I don't even know you,” he ends up pointing out. “Where are you even going?”
“I'm a hitchhiker, my name is Baekhyun, and I’m going anywhere,” Yellow Suitcase retorts, cheekily sticking up his thumb for added emphasis. “I’m not the traditional kind of hitchhiker, though. I prefer ambushing people at gas stations to standing by the road looking like an idiot. I also find this method more effective.”
Luhan considers telling Baekhyun that he doesn’t like strangers and he especially doesn’t like hitchhikers, but then he pauses to think. Why not? Baekhyun looks pretty harmless, and to be honest, Luhan has never been very good at saying no to people asking help. Besides, one of the many reasons he’s driving around without any destination whatsoever is because he is in desperate need for distraction. Baekhyun, with his wide grin and glaringly bright suitcase, seems like someone who could have ‘distraction skills’ listed as one of his personal talents.
“Okay, fine,” he says, hoping he’s not going to regret it later on. “Get in the car.”
Baekhyun beams, and that’s how he becomes a part of Luhan’s everything.
*
Luhan realizes right away that Baekhyun is a very talkative young man, and there’s no denying the fact that at first his complete inability to sit still and be quiet drives Luhan insane and makes him seriously consider kicking the hitchhiker out of the moving car. However, by the time they arrive in Mokpo, Luhan finds himself laughing at Baekhyun’s stupid jokes and even more stupid voice imitations. With Baekhyun around, silent moments are few and far between, and against all odds, Luhan realizes he quite likes that. When Baekhyun just talks, talks and talks, going on and on about everything and anything, all Luhan has to do is listen and let the hitchhiker’s voice fill his head and push the unpleasant thoughts to the background. Distracted by Baekhyun pointing out cool cars or pretty sceneries or whatever, Luhan has no time to remember that he has so many things he'd rather forget everything about.
“Are you always this boring?” Baekhyun asks with a pout when Luhan rejects his suggestion to play car color bingo with him. Luhan insists that he has to focus on driving, but Baekhyun clearly doesn’t find that excuse good enough.
“Are you always this annoying?” Luhan shoots back, not really meaning it, because he’s actually gotten over the phase where he wanted to throw Baekhyun out of the car faster than expected.
Baekhyun doesn’t seem to mind being called annoying, but he does scoff and cross his arms across his chest, pretending to mope. “My preferred adjectives are ‘lively’, ‘cheerful’ and ‘fun’, but I guess that’s a matter of perspective. To a person who has lived in darkness for his all life, even candlelight could be blindingly bright.”
Luhan chooses to ignore the comment. It hits a little too close to home. “Where are you really going?” he asks instead. “Or where do you want me to drop you off?”
“Don’t worry about me. I’ll take care of myself and let you know when I’ve reached my destination,” Baekhyun says easily. “Besides, you haven’t told me where you’re going either.”
“That’s because I don’t know yet. I’m just driving,” Luhan says. Baekhyun hums in acknowledgement.
“Well, it’s the same for me. I don’t know where I’m going, but I’m open to all options.”
Luhan steals a look at him through the rearview mirror. Baekhyun has opened the window and stuck his hand out of it, feeling the wind that grazes his fingers. There’s a strange, distant look in his eyes, as if he were sucked up in nostalgia of some kind. The air that pours in through the window messes up his brown hair and tugs at the collar of his white and blue striped T-shirt. In the background, Luhan can see the glimmering sea and the blue sky. It reminds him of a movie scene.
Maybe all of this could be a movie. Luhan could be the tired and lonely main character, a painter who’d rather paint the world than live in it, and Baekhyun… Baekhyun could be the other main character: free-spirited yet rootless, a young man with a hummingbird heart, a pulse so quick that it makes him restless, and too anxious to stay still or settle down. They may be different, but at the same time, they do seem to have the same destination. After all, there’s only a slight difference between being headed nowhere and anywhere.
“How does that bingo thing work?” Luhan asks. Baekhyun perks up in his seat and immediately begins to explain the rules, as if this whole time he’d been waiting for Luhan to cave in. Luhan realizes that he doesn’t even mind it.
*
They decide to call it a day in some small town by the highway, the name of which went unnoticed by them both. For dinner they get pretty crappy but cheap pizza, and park the car at a parking lot next to a beach. Baekhyun tries to convince Luhan to go swimming with him, but the latter one declines, saying he doesn’t want to get his clothes wet, and also threatens not to let Baekhyun back in the car if he goes in the water. “I don’t want you to ruin the seats,” he explains when Baekhyun accuses him of being a killjoy.
“You’re so boring,” Baekhyun complains for the nth time since he first got in Luhan’s car, but Luhan stands his ground, so Baekhyun can only cross his arms and sink in his seat. It’s easy to see how hard he tries to stay quiet and listen to the radio, but his self-control wears thin only a couple of minutes later, and soon he’s already flinging the door open and running towards the sea. The initial frown on Luhan’s face fades away the second he sees Baekhyun tripping on his own feet and falling gracelessly into the water.
Luhan gets out of the car and walks to the shoreline. Baekhyun can be seen swimming some meters off, and for once, he’s quiet. There’s a serene beauty to the whole scene, the kind that earlier today Luhan would have never thought to associate with Baekhyun. The full moon is bright and particularly large tonight, the sky is clear and the stars twinkle everywhere, and Luhan feels inexplicably calm as he listens to the sounds of Baekhyun swimming. His head is empty, in a good way, and the familiar tension in his muscles seems to slowly melt away into the quiet night. It’s been ages since the last time he felt so… quiet. So quiet on the inside.
He supposes the feeling is partially thanks to being so far away from home and his life, and partially to Baekhyun who’s just so different from all the other people in Luhan’s life. In just one day Luhan has gathered that Baekhyun is loud, obnoxious, easily bored but just as easily amused, shameless and frank, and while those qualities should equal to the very last person Luhan would like to be stuck inside a small car with, it’s actually quite the opposite. There’s something curiously comforting about being with a person who says and does whatever they please, as if they only had one day to live. That kind of attitude is highly infective.
“Come play with me! Surprise yourself and live a little!” Baekhyun calls out to him, having now stood up. He waves his arms at Luhan, a grin plastered across his face, and something about it makes Luhan go against his better judgement, take off his shoes and shirt and join the other man in the waves.
*
Baekhyun shows no signs of leaving. At first it annoys Luhan a little, then it confuses him, and finally, it relieves him.
There’s something about Baekhyun's presence that puts Luhan at ease. He is somehow everywhere: whenever Luhan turns his head, he sees Baekhyun. When they go shopping for food, Baekhyun follows a few steps behind Luhan, constantly talking or going through their shopping list out loud, and every now and then tosses random things in their shopping basket. When Luhan sits down somewhere and tries to draw something, Baekhyun pops up right next to him, either asking what it is that he’s drawing or cheekily offering to be his model. When they drive, Baekhyun either sings to the songs on the radio or tells stories that he heard from a friend of a friend, or tries to engage Luhan in some game he has come up with.
Baekhyun doesn’t show any intention of parting ways with Luhan any time soon, and Luhan doesn’t really mind that. They drive to Busan, to Naju, back towards Mokpo, making decisions on a whim. After three nights of sleeping in the car and using gas station restrooms, they are both in dire need for a proper shower and an actual bed, so they book a cheap motel room with single beds in Pohang.
That night, Baekhyun starts a pillow war, and Luhan joins in without hesitating. That’s the most alive he has felt in a long time.
>>
today
Before leading Joonmyun out of the room, Luhan stops to look at the painting, at the colors and the brush strokes, and the smiling face captured on canvas. And he remembers. He remembers too much yet not enough.
The painting is based on a sketch he made on a sunny summer morning three years ago. He remembers sitting in the sand with his sketchbook, trying to draw the sea and the horizon and ignore the person who was ruining both the scenery and the peaceful atmosphere. Despite his best efforts to focus on the sea and the sea only, his focus soon shifted without him even registering it, and he began drawing a person instead of a landscape.
He completed the same piece four times because the first three didn’t feel right. The first one was an accurate portrayal of his state of mind two weeks after he’d been left alone. It was a seemingly haphazard and frantic mess of black and white, the silhouette of the person playing in the water only barely there. Luhan still can’t look at it without feeling like he’s being choked. He still has the painting somewhere in his studio, hidden away but still there. When he completed the painting, he named it Despair.
When he began painting the second one, he was no longer as distressed - only sad. He started painting because the face of someone on his mind was still so detailed in his mind and he didn’t want to forget it. Relying on both the original sketch and his memory, he painted the person down to the very last detail, trying to turn the painting into a black and white photograph. He named the painting Yearning.
He never thought he’d paint another version until some months later when he woke up in the middle of a cold night and couldn’t go back to sleep. He recalled having dreamt of the person in the sketch, and without even thinking, he began to paint, only relying on his memory. He painted the scene as he remembered it, tried to capture the colors like they were in his memory, and refused to look at the sketch or his previous versions for reference. As a result, he was left with a painting of a blurry, dream-like figure. The realization that he could no longer paint the face accurately was like a slap from reality, and Luhan nearly smashed the painting many times in the process of painting it. This piece he named Time.
The last one, the very painting that art critics call this exhibition’s crowd-puller, is the fourth and the final version. He painted it in summer two years ago, on the exact same beach where the original sketch had been born. Originally the painting was called Nostalgia, but after a few weeks Luhan changed the name, and that’s how it became A Sunny Day.
Despair. Yearning. Time. Nostalgia and A Sunny Day. Those were Luhan’s five stages of loss.
“Luhan? Are you coming, or would you like another moment to admire your own masterpiece?” Joonmyun asks playfully, pulling Luhan out of his daze.
“No, I’m done. Let’s go.”
<<
that summer three years ago
Luhan sits on the beach near their motel, sketchbook in his lap as he paints the sunrise he’s come to the beach to see. He starts by drawing the broader picture, the background colors and the large sun, and then moves on to details, such as capturing the exact way the sea glimmers and the way the yellow and blue stripes of the horizon blend together. He doesn’t hear Baekhyun arrive until the said male slumps down into the sand next to him, wrapped up in a huge sweater that appears to be Luhan’s. Since Baekhyun looks like he only just crawled out of bed, his hair sticks in every possible direction and his eyes are barely open, Luhan chooses not to call him out on borrowing other people’s things without a permission.
“You watched the sunrise?” Baekhyun asks, or more like mumbles. His voice sounds like its still asleep. He rubs his eyes with his fists and yawns. “You should have woken me up. I wanted to see it too.”
Luhan raises a brow at him. “You really think you would have gotten yourself out of the bed two hours ago?”
“I could have tried at least,” Baekhyun huffs, though his reply is interrupted by another yawn. “Tomorrow, I will.”
Luhan lets out an amused hum, knowing Baekhyun is anything but an early bird.
“What are those black things?” Baekhyun asks, nodding at Luhan’s sketch. Luhan stops drawing and looks at the unfinished picture of the sunrise and the random patches of black pencil that have caught Baekhyun’s eye. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but there’s not a single black thing in sight.”
“Yeah, there isn’t,” Luhan agrees. “Splashes of black paint are just my trademark.” To have a trademark one should first be notable enough to have one, and Luhan obviously isn’t. He doesn’t voice that thought.
“Why draw something that isn’t there?” Baekhyun keeps asking, seeming a little less tired now that he has something to keep him occupied.
“Painting and drawing aren’t about just painting the exact thing you see. It’s more like… showing what you feel, or how you perceive something,” Luhan says, not knowing how else to explain it. Baekhyun purses his lips thoughtfully.
“So what you feel are random black spots covering a gorgeous sunrise?” Baekhyun asks. There’s no pity or judgement in his voice, and he doesn’t wait for Luhan’s reply before continuing, this time using a slightly gentler tone: “I think that’s a little sad. I think you’re a little sad. And realizing that makes me a little sad too.”
Luhan doesn’t have anything to say to that, so he doesn’t even try to speak. Even Baekhyun remains quiet for a long time, so long that he eventually falls asleep.
*
The next morning it’s Baekhyun who wakes Luhan up, pretending so hard not to be sleepy that it’s endearing. “Draw it,” Baekhyun tells him when they get to the beach, and tosses Luhan’s sketchbook in his lap. Luhan gives him a strange look.
“I already drew the sunrise yesterday. I don’t need two sketches of the same thing,” he protests.
“Yeah, but I want you to draw me one. Without even touching the black pencil,” Baekhyun says with a lazy grin. “Take it as a challenge.”
They manage to watch the sunrise, but soon after that, Baekhyun dozes off, his head falling to rest on Luhan’s shoulder.
*
One night Baekhyun steals Luhan’s sketchbook and starts to doodle a stick figure on the first blank page he finds. “See, let me draw a picture of you,” Baekhyun says, and draws some kind of a sleigh behind the figure. Luhan peers over Baekhyun’s shoulder as he fills the sleigh with ambiguous shapes that look like rubbish bags and a few angry-looking stick figures. He also draws ropes that are tied to the sleigh and around the stick figure’s ankles and waist. Baekhyun finalizes the masterpiece by drawing a sad face on the poor stick figure. “That’s you right there,” he says, tapping at the sad stick figure with the pencil. Luhan frowns.
“A human reindeer? Pulling a sleigh full of garbage, evil elves and angry Santa?”
Baekhyun disregards Luhan’s comment entirely. “The point is, the reason you’re here with me, far from home and avoiding calls from everyone you know, is because you’re just like the poor guy in this picture,” Baekhyun explains. “It’s like you’re dragging this gigantic load of weight with you wherever you go. No wonder you feel like you aren’t getting anywhere in your life.”
“It does feel a little like that,” Luhan has to admit.
Baekhyun hums. “The good news is, there’s a way to change that. You could walk freely if you want to.”
Before Luhan can ask anything, Baekhyun has already drawn a tremendous pair of scissors on the paper. “Cut the ropes, Luhan. Get rid of the extra weight and leave the past behind,” he says and draws a smiling sun on the sky.
*
As the weeks pass and the two of them travel from town to town, Baekhyun finds his way into Luhan’s sketchbook and his smile becomes a part of every scenery Luhan draws. At the same time, he also crawls into Luhan’s heart and his thoughts. Baekhyun becomes the last and the first thing Luhan thinks of every day, and his presence fills every moment in between.
Luhan has fallen before he even realizes that it might be possible.
Maybe it happens because of Baekhyun’s smile, that rectangular grin that makes his eyes disappear. That smile makes Luhan stop thinking about what a complicated thing life is. Baekhyun’s smile is like a series of possibilities, and it liberates Luhan. When Baekhyun laughs at a childish joke on TV, grins wide when Luhan presents him a sketch completely void of black, or smiles in his sleep, curled up against Luhan’s side because he’s clingy like that, Luhan feels lighter. Just Baekhyun’s presence alone brightens up not only his world but also his mind, that dark space full of complicated thoughts bundled up in tight knots. And when he kisses Baekhyun, the knots begin to unravel.
Baekhyun manages to convince him that it’s okay not to have a clear destination in mind when wandering through life. Sometimes it’s alright just to drift and float and let the current decide the direction. Baekhyun makes so many things possible for Luhan, he opens so many doors just by sitting next to Luhan in the car and singing to Teenage Dream so loud that Katy Perry becomes nothing more than a back-up vocalist. All his life Luhan has been trying to be something, but Baekhyun makes him realize that maybe he already is, or at the very least he has potential to be, if only he gives himself a chance.
Baekhyun fixes Luhan without the latter one even realizing it. He never thought that the damage caused by years and years of self-doubt and insecurity could be washed away by one person in just one summer, but Baekhyun has a way of making Luhan believe in himself again. Wounds like that need more time to disappear completely, but at least now, for the first time ever, Luhan realizes that it is possible for them to heal if he stops ripping them open over and over again. He gains enough courage to call his parents and tell them about losing his job, he secretly looks into possibilities of going back to school to study what he really loves, and sends Yixing a postcard from Jeju, along with an apology for having been so distant. He feels like his steps are finally getting a little lighter, and he only has Baekhyun to thank for it.
*
Baekhyun is the kind of person who never does anything without putting his heart in it. He doesn’t seem to think too much of anything, and always jumps head-first into everything. He takes every chance he is offered on their journey through South Korea, and most of the time he drags Luhan into every adventure and trouble he dives into. “Life’s short so one should at the very least use it right,” Baekhyun explains when he tries to talk Luhan into a bungee jump, and succeeds.
There’s a certain paradoxical mixture of urgency and never-ending patience with which Baekhyun regards Luhan. He’s passionate but only in the gentlest ways, encouraging but never pushy. Luhan figures it comes from his seemingly innate need to make the most out of everything without wasting a single moment. Sometimes Luhan stops to wonder where that comes from, what it is that makes Baekhyun so determined to seize the moment so effectively, but whenever he asks about it, Baekhyun says it’s just the way he’s wired.
Sometimes, though, Luhan feels like there might be more to it. It’s a shame he never gets around to voicing his concern.
*
“I probably should be returning to Seoul soon,” Luhan says. They’re in Daegu, walking the well-lit streets with their hands full of street food. Baekhyun hums, but doesn’t give a verbal reply. He seems deep in thought, but Luhan has no idea what it is that’s keeping him so preoccupied.
“Don’t you have anywhere to be?” he asks hesitantly. It’s been weeks, but not once has Baekhyun ever mentioned a family, a home or a friend. It hasn’t bothered Luhan before, but now it does.
“I do,” Baekhyun says after a moment of silence. Luhan waits for him to elaborate, which he does, after another lengthy pause. “I’m right where I should be. For now.”
He has a strange look on his face, and Luhan decides he doesn’t like the presence of ‘for now’ at the end of Baekhyun’s reply. “If you don’t have anywhere else to go, you could come to Seoul with me,” he suggests carefully. He’s afraid of rejection, just like he’s always been. The main reason why he has left so many chances untaken in his life is because it’s easier to fake indifference than it is to face disappointment. This time too it would be so much safer to pretend he’s fully ready to let Baekhyun and their unlikely summer romance go when it’s time, but with Baekhyun, the risk feels like one worth taking.
Fortunately to Luhan, Baekhyun doesn’t reject him. He does pause in his tracks, looking a tiny bit troubled as he glances at Luhan’s face, uncharacteristically lost for words for a brief moment. Then, however, he breaks into a wide smile and nods. “You can’t take that back later, okay?” he says, nudging Luhan’s side lightly.
Letting out a sigh of relief, Luhan completely misses the fact that Baekhyun’s smile never climbs all the way up to his eyes.
*
Over the weeks they’ve spent together, Luhan has noticed that Baekhyun never unpacks. The yellow suitcase remains shut and packed by the door in every motel they go to, patiently waiting for the roadtrip to continue. Luhan on the other hand takes full advantage of the wardrobes and drawers in the rooms whenever he knows that they are going to stay there for a couple of days or longer. He folds his clothes in the wardrobes, puts his toothbrush in the cabinet next to the bathroom sink and lays his pencils on the desk. Baekhyun only takes out the things he needs, and puts them back when he’s done. Even when they stayed in Pohang, Baekhyun’s suitcase remained fully packed.
“Unpacking makes me feel uneasy,” Baekhyun confesses. He’s sitting on the bed in their motel room in Daegu, watching as Luhan once again folds clothes into his small suitcase. “I’m not very good at settling down. I guess I’ve never really gotten the chance to practice it.”
“What do you mean?”
Baekhyun falls silent, looking torn. It’s like he wants to say something, but in the end he settles for flashing Luhan an easy smile. “That’s just the way I’m wired,” he says once again. Luhan has already gotten used to Baekhyun’s playful half-answers, so he doesn’t even expect him to continue. This time, however, Baekhyun makes an exception.
“I’m the type that can’t stay long in one place even when I really want to,” he explains quickly, as though he wants to get the words out before he changes his mind.
“What does that even mean?” Luhan asks, not liking the way Baekhyun’s words sound to him.
Baekhyun looks him straight in the eye, hesitates for a moment, and forces a smile. The moment is over, and the half-answers are back. “Nothing,” he laughs. “I’m just being melodramatic, and now I’m hungry. Should I order something?”
*
Baekhyun leaves Luhan’s life like he entered it: without a warning on a beautiful sunny day.
They leave for Seoul early in the morning. Baekhyun is even more cheerful than usual, suspiciously so, but he says it’s just because he’s excited to go, and Luhan buys the explanation. They are only an hour or two from Seoul when the low fuel indicator lights up and they are forced to stop at the next gas station. It’s almost like a déjà vu.
Luhan unbuckles his seatbelt to get out of the car when Baekhyun grabs his wrist and stops him, looking oddly serious. The strange silence lasts for a couple of seconds before Baekhyun leans in to kiss Luhan gently.
“Thanks for this amazing summer. And congratulations for learning the art of living,” he speaks against Luhan’s lips, and Luhan can feel him smiling. “You’ve made this teacher very proud.”
“Why the sudden cheesiness?” Luhan asks, laughing. Baekhyun shrugs and plants another kiss on his lips.
“I just felt like it,” he says. “I want you to know that you’ve come a long way and you should never let yourself fall back into the same old patterns. I’ll be very pissed if you do. Training you was hard work.”
“I won’t,” Luhan promises. “But why are you being like this? Are we filming Titanic?”
Baekhyun sticks out his tongue and punches Luhan’s arm. “Go, and don’t take forever. You know I don’t like waiting. Oh, and go get me some ice cream while you’re at it.”
Luhan rolls his eyes and gets out of the car, first heading to buy the requested ice cream. While he’s paying, he gets a call from Yixing, who’s already excited to have his friend back home. He’s in the middle of preparing a feast to celebrate Luhan’s return, his diet be damned, and Luhan laughs at the mental image of Yixing rushing back and forth in their ridiculously tiny kitchen. “Make sure to cook enough for three. I’m bringing a guest,” Luhan tells him, smiling as he turns around to look in Baekhyun’s direction. The car is empty.
At first Luhan doesn’t think much of it, assuming Baekhyun’s just skipping around the parking lot and letting out some extra energy, but when he ends the call and walks out of the store, he realizes that he can’t see Baekhyun anywhere. A horrible thought comes to his mind when he recalls what Baekhyun said to him in the car just a few minutes earlier. It sounded an awful lot like a goodbye.
Baekhyun is nowhere to be seen. On the driver’s seat Luhan finds a napkin with a message written on it in letters that seem to fade away right in front of his eyes. I’m sorry. I love you.
Luhan turns around in his seat slowly, a cold, sinking feeling in his stomach. The back seat is empty. The yellow suitcase is gone.
>>
today
“I didn’t peg you as an art enthusiast,” Kyungsoo comments when Baekhyun pulls him into an art gallery. Baekhyun ignores him and continues his way through the crowd. He can tell that Kyungsoo’s still following him by the sound of his annoyed grumbling.
“Seriously, what are we doing here? We’re supposed to meet our next People in an hour, and you decide this is the time to appreciate art?” Kyungsoo says next. Baekhyun is just about to turn around and give him some kind of a snarky reply when he sees the big, colorful painting right in front of him and stops dead in his tracks. That causes Kyungsoo to walk straight into his back, but Baekhyun barely feels that nor hears the miffed huff that follows.
Kyungsoo doesn’t shut up until he follows the direction of Baekhyun’s gaze and realizes what has left Baekhyun dumbstruck. Baekhyun hears him gasp, and feels a thick lump in his own throat. A Sunny Day.
“Is that you?” Kyungsoo asks, his voice now softer and gentler. It’s a question that doesn’t need to be answered because it’s obvious that the person laughing in the painting is indeed Baekhyun. Kyungsoo puts his hand on Baekhyun’s shoulder and gives it a small squeeze. Baekhyun bites his lip hard and almost wishes he hadn’t come to this exhibition at all.
“Is this that Luhan’s exhibition?” Kyungsoo asks. Baekhyun nods.
“It was a stupid idea to come here,” he says, forcing out a chuckle. “I just… I really wanted to see that he’s doing okay. I need to see him and then we can go, okay? I promise it won’t take long.”
Kyungsoo purses his lips but doesn’t stop Baekhyun from walking into the next exhibition room to look for Luhan. Baekhyun scans the crowd with his eyes as he searches room after room, but finding anyone in such a maze-like place is very difficult especially when he’s invisible to everyone except Kyungsoo. Maybe Luhan isn’t even there. Baekhyun is preparing to accept his defeat and go back to Kyungsoo when a familiar voice reaches his ears.
“I’m surprised so many people came to see this. I honestly didn’t expect a crowd this big,” Luhan says. Baekhyun finds himself drawn to the voice like a moth to light and follows it until he can finally see its owner.
Luhan looks much better now. He’s wearing nice, stylish clothes and his now blonde hair glows under the lights like it’s being kissed by the sun. There are no dark circles around his eyes and his skin looks healthy. The biggest change, however, is the way his eyes shine and his whole face smiles along with his lips. He looks less reserved, easily greeting everyone who stops to say hi to him. He catches eyes, and his light laughter rings in the air in a way that brings a bittersweet smile to Baekhyun’s lips. Life has been good to Luhan.
“I bet half of these people are here just to see A Sunny Day. No matter which art blog I browse, that always pops up,” the man next to Luhan says. He’s a little shorter than the artist, and he has a gentle face and a friendly smile. He seems like a nice person. “It’s no wonder, though. That painting radiates with the kind of warmth and happiness that people love. You can practically feel the sunshine on your face simply by looking at the piece.”
Baekhyun walks closer, wanting to get a better look at Luhan’s face. He tries to stay out of his line of sight just in case, even though he knows Luhan shouldn’t be able to see him because he no longer needs to. That’s the way Friends work.
Most people would call Baekhyun an imaginary friend, but that term is misleading because there’s nothing imaginary about him. He’s completely real, just like any other person in the world, but only when he’s needed. When someone is going through a rough time, people like Baekhyun and Kyungsoo are sent out to help them. When they meet up with their assigned Person, they become a temporary part of the world, and when they’ve served their purpose and their Person no longer needs them, they go back to being invisible. As soon as their assigned person stops seeing them, everyone else forgets they ever existed. If Luhan mentioned Baekhyun to Yixing now, the dancer wouldn’t recognize the name although Baekhyun knows Yixing knew his name that summer. Luhan, and the other people Baekhyun has helped over the years, are the only people who know that a person named Baekhyun does exist somewhere, somehow.
It’s an important job, but also a very lonely and sad one. Saying goodbyes never gets easy, but the day when Baekhyun witnessed Luhan looking straight through him was by far the hardest one in his entire life. He knows that he should have known better than to fall in love, and Luhan falling in love with him was the absolute last thing he should have let happen. He made a mistake and he’s paying for it now, but fortunately Luhan seems to be doing better. That’s all that matters to him anyway.
“Do you think I’ll ever get to meet that muse of yours who inspired you to paint your career-defining masterpiece?” Luhan’s friend asks him, catching Baekhyun’s attention. Baekhyun clocks the tiniest twitch in Luhan’s smile.
“I wish you could, but I don’t think it’s possible. Even I don’t know where he is now,” Luhan replies. “Besides, that whole summer feels like a dream to me, so it could be that this person never existed at all. Maybe he was just an imaginary friend my mind created when I really needed someone.”
Baekhyun swallows thickly as he feels tears pricking at his eyes, and decides it’s time for him to go. He returns to the place where he last saw Kyungsoo, in front of A Sunny Day, but his friend is nowhere to be seen. Instead of looking for him, Baekhyun decides to take a moment to calm down and turns to take another look at the painting that seems to have made Luhan famous.
A few minutes pass. The exhibition is slowly coming to an end, and the gallery is gradually emptying of people. Baekhyun stares at the painting and lets the memories of that beautiful summer fill his mind. He can still remember the precise taste of Luhan’s lips and the scent of his hair, and he can remember what Luhan’s voice sounded like when he was talking in his sleep. He wishes nothing more than to go back to where it all started and relive every single moment.
He snaps out of his nostalgia when someone stops to stand beside him, their arms almost touching. Luhan. Baekhyun’s breath hitches, and a wave of foolish, blinding hope crashes through him. Maybe, maybe, maybe…
But Luhan doesn’t see him, of course he doesn’t. Baekhyun tells himself not to be disappointed, and turns to look at the painting. Seconds crawl by as the two of them look at the same painting side by side, seemingly close yet separated by the cloak of invisibility that keeps Baekhyun from being a part of Luhan’s world.
“Hey, Baek. Wherever you are, I hope you’re doing okay,” Baekhyun suddenly hears Luhan mutter so quietly that the other visitors around them can’t possibly hear it. Luhan’s not really talking to him, his words are addressed to the Baekhyun in the painting, but that doesn’t stop Baekhyun from pretending otherwise.
“I hope you’re doing okay too,” Baekhyun replies, and forces himself to smile. “You have no idea how happy I am to see you so happy. And hey, thanks for painting me so nicely. I’d say I look better in that than I do in real life. You’re free to consider that an impressive achievement.”
“I wish you’d given me the chance to thank you properly, at the very least,” Luhan continues. Although he sounds sad, he speaks with his lips curved upwards. “I owe you so much, and honestly? I really miss you. As much as I hate to admit it, I really do.”
The smile stays on even as Baekhyun wipes the corner of his eye. “I miss you too.”
“Goodbye, Baekhyun,” Luhan says to the painting just as his friend calls him from the doorway. Baekhyun watches as Luhan walks up to the man, smiling with his entire face, and laces their fingers together. Somehow it brings to his mind the summer day when Luhan looked right through him with panic in his eyes.
“Goodbye, Luhan,” Baekhyun whispers.
As if he had heard the words, Luhan spins around on his heels, his head turning in Baekhyun’s direction. For a second seems like Luhan is looking straight at him, but the moment passes as quickly as it came. Luhan follows the shorter man out of the gallery, and Baekhyun stays behind.
“Are you alright?” Kyungsoo asks carefully, appearing seemingly out of nowhere. Baekhyun clears his throat and wipes his eyes with the sleeve of his shirt. There’s no reason to cry.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” he says and hooks his arm around Kyungsoo’s. “Let’s go. We shouldn’t keep our new friends waiting.”
Before leaving the gallery, he turns around to take one last look at the painting. I hope the future has many even sunnier days in store for you, Luhan. I wish you all the best.
From: ANONYMOUS until December 30, 2014
Title: the yellow suitcase
Rating: PG
Pairing(s)/Focus: Baekhyun/Lu Han, Suho/Lu Han
Length: 8,223 words
Summary: While trying to run away from his life, Luhan gives a ride to Baekhyun, a chirpy hitchhiker who never shuts up, never stops smiling and never lets him have a moment of peace. Unknowingly, Luhan begins to appreciate his presence in the passenger seat of his car.
Notes:
- very loosely based on cecelia ahern’s novel if you could see me now. i only took the general concept and changed a lot of things, but even so, if you haven’t read the book, please don’t look it up before reading this fic!
- thanks to the amazing two who always help me get up when i hit the absolute rock bottom of desperation and writer’s block
- to my recipient: i sincerely loved all of your prompts, thank you so much for them!
today
Joonmyun thinks that it’s possible to know an artist’s life story just by taking a look at their works.
At this exhibition, the works have been arranged in chronological order, which makes the whole exhibition feel even more like an autobiography. Joonmyun walks through the first room slowly, stopping in front of each painting, and studies the works with pursed lips, full of curiosity. He takes in the seemingly random splashes of jet-black paint on intriguing, impressionistic landscape paintings that this artist in question is famous for. In some paintings, the black paint drips down from the sky or tree trunks or buildings like trickles of blood, in some it looks more like clouds, in some it looks like the painter just splashed the paint on the canvas out of sheer frustration.
As he walks further, however, he is almost startled to see the large painting that hangs on a wall next to the door to another room. The painting looks out of place with its vivid, lively colors nearly bursting out and spilling into the room. It is so gorgeously out of place in a room full of dull colors and splashes of jet-black on monochrome background. Joonmyun is drawn to it, approaching the painting as if spellbound. He has seen pictures of the painting on magazines and blogs, but none of those do the piece any justice. It’s quite possibly this artist’s most famous piece, and for a very good reason.
It portrays a beautiful summer day by the sea. The water glimmers, reflecting the clear turquoise sky and the bright sun. In the background, a few dark blue shadows of mountains or islands can be seen. Still, none of that catches Joonmyun’s eyelike the person in the middle of the painting. He is captured in mid-movement as he plays in the water, his arms flailing and mouth stretched out in such a wide smile that Joonmyun can almost hear the peals of his laughter echoing in the room.
“Hey, you came!”
Joonmyun turns around to see Luhan, the artist himself, approaching with a happy smile stretched across his face. Joonmyun mirrors his smile and gives him a small wave of his hand. “Of course I did,” he replies. “And not only because as your boyfriend I felt obliged to attend your first big exhibition, but also because I would have come to see this even if I’d never met you. I am an art blogger after all, and you just so happen to be one of this country’s most promising rising stars.”
He turns back to the painting when Luhan has walked up to him. He finds it interesting how the person is portrayed in such detail, almost like a photograph, while everything else is a more simplified and blurry. Joonmyun glances at the name tag next to the painting and reads the name. A Sunny Day.
“This painting’s really different from everything else in this room,” Joonmyun points out. “Why the sudden change in style? Did you get tired of black?”
Luhan’s eyes travel across the expanse of the canvas. Joonmyun could swear he stops to look at the smiling figure for a fleeting moment. “It’s because that person was someone important. Someone special,” Luhan says, sounding a little distant. His use of past tense doesn’t go unnoticed by Joonmyun. “I just couldn’t paint a person like him the way I used to paint everything. It wouldn’t have felt right.”
Joonmyun would like to ask who that person was and what happened to him, but he decides not to, even though Luhan’s lips are smiling once again and that air of wistfulness is gone. “Do you want me to give you a special tour with exclusive commentary from the artist himself?” he asks, grinning a little. Joonmyun swallows his questions and accepts the offer.
<<
that summer three years ago
Baekhyun enter and his yellow suitcase enter Luhan’s life very suddenly. One moment he’s not in it, and the second, he’s everywhere with his rectangular grin, like the sun appearing for the first time after a long, cold but snowless winter.
It’s a warm and particularly sunny day in July, and Luhan is lonelier and sadder than he cares to admit. The voice on the radio says it’s two minutes past three in the afternoon, which means that Luhan has been driving for two hours without a destination in mind. When he left Seoul, the only thought on his mind was that he wanted to get away, as far away as possible, so now he’s headed down the Seohaean Expressway, gradually approaching Mokpo. He knows that he most likely isn’t going to stop there. He’s going to keep driving like he is now, without any plan whatsoever.
The radio host, a young-sounding female with a chirpy voice, starts to talk about a guest she’s invited. She sounds very eager to have a chat with the said celebrity, but Luhan switches the channel. He isn’t in the mood to listen to people talking - what he wants is music. He turns up the volume, enjoying the way he can only understand bits and pieces of the English lyrics, and lets the heavy bass lull his mind into a trance of some kind. His thoughts dissolve into the music, and the road in front of him is all he has to focus on. The world feels quiet, finally, even though the electric beat of the song fills his ears.
If someone were to ask Luhan what it is that he’s running from, what it is that’s making him so anxious that he can’t bear thinking about ever going back, he wouldn’t be able to come up with an answer. All he could say is that his mind has become a loud place, a loud place full of thoughts and fears and anxiety, and all of that makes him sick to his stomach. At the same time he feels like his life is going by too fast, there’s too much to do and too many responsibilities, yet every now and then (nowadays more often than ever), he just wakes up and realizes that he has no idea where he’s headed in his life. He’s been in such a hurry all his life, so busy running from one goal to another that it wasn’t until very recently that he realized that he doesn’t even know what it is that he wants from his life. What is the reason he gets out of bed every morning? For some reason not knowing anything terrifies him, especially when there are so many people he owes answers to, answers he’s never had.
He’s usually the kind of person who makes a safe plan and sticks to it without taking much risks or setting too high goals for himself. He studied marketing instead of art to minimize the risk of unemployment, and he did land a good job at a nice company some time after his graduation. His plan worked out for him just fine until he was laid off three months ago. He still hasn’t found a new job, nor has he told his parents about losing the old one. Only Yixing, his roommate and best friend, knows, and that’s the way Luhan intends on keeping things.
The truth is, he doesn’t need a fancy calling, he doesn’t need to be told that he’s going to find a way to stop climate change, get rid of poverty, find a foolproof and painless cure to cancer or a way to stop toasts from falling butter-side first. Even though he’s more or less a painter, he doesn’t even need to be reassured that he’s going to be the next Van Gogh, Rembrandt or Picasso. He doesn’t need to make it big as a painter if that’s not meant to be. What he wants is to simply feel like there’s a reason why he exists, and that reason doesn’t have to be an impressive one. Call it existential angst or whatever, he just wishes that he knew how it feels to truly belong somewhere, or what it’s like to feel that there’s something he was meant to do. He wishes he were like Yixing who crawls into his bed at four am, naps for a few hours and heads back to the practice studio and never complains because he has a dream and he’s willing to do anything it takes to make it come true. Luhan has nothing except a sketchbook full of things he doesn’t have the courage to turn into paintings, and a bedroom full of paintings he doesn’t have the confidence to be proud of.
Luhan is just a leaf in the wind. No home, no goal, no nothing. He has Yixing, though, and for a long time that was good enough. Now that he fears that Yixing might get swept away by his own dreams at any moment, Luhan isn’t so sure anymore. The world spins around, people in his life move on and leave him behind, and Luhan’s still stuck in one place although he keeps running. Like quicksand, the more he tries to escape, the deeper he sinks.
He wishes he knew where all those feelings of anxiety and insecurity come from. Is it because he grew up in a house that was always empty, heating up leftovers and instant meals for dinner from Monday to Friday and chasing away the monsters under his bed all alone? Or is it because he was uprooted when he was only nine years old and forced to move to a strange country where everybody spoke a language he couldn’t understand? Or maybe it’s just the way he is, maybe it’s in his DNA. Maybe his own personality is the root of all his problems. It could also be that there’s no particular reason for his anxiety; it might be just one of those things in life that just happen, for no reason at all. He doesn’t know. The only thing he knows is that he feels misplaced no matter what he does.
He snaps back into reality when he notices that the low fuel indicator has lit up. He keeps driving, guessing that there must be a gas station somewhere along the highway, and hoping that he’ll find one before the motor stops running. He’s lucky, because only a few minutes later he spots a rest area and decides to make his pit stop there.
He fills the tank and has a quick cup of instant noodles at the convenience store, wanting to continue his destinationless journey as quickly as possible. However, as he walks to his car, he sees someone approaching him from the corner of his eye.
“Hey, you! Wait a bit!”
Luhan turns around, startled, and sees a young man with black, fluffy hair dragging a yellow suitcase as he rushes through the half empty parking lot. When Luhan’s eyes meet his, the man breaks into an impossibly large grin and waves his hand, picking up his pace to get to Luhan faster. Luhan is sure he’s never seen this person before, so he finds the happy reaction strange, to say the least. When the man finally catches up to him, he’s still smiling.
“Hi,” Yellow Suitcase says and brushes a few strands of sweaty hair off his forehead. It’s a pretty sweltering afternoon so it’s no wonder running across a parking lot with such a heavy-looking suitcase made him break a sweat. “Where are you going, if I may ask?”
Luhan furrows his brows in confusion. “Nowhere in particular,” he answers anyway. If possible, his reply only makes Yellow Suitcase smile even wider.
“Could I get a ride?” he asks.
Needless to say, the thought of sitting in a car with a complete stranger (and a particularly strange stranger at that) doesn’t sound very inviting to Luhan at first, but he doesn't know how to say it without being too rude. “I don't even know you,” he ends up pointing out. “Where are you even going?”
“I'm a hitchhiker, my name is Baekhyun, and I’m going anywhere,” Yellow Suitcase retorts, cheekily sticking up his thumb for added emphasis. “I’m not the traditional kind of hitchhiker, though. I prefer ambushing people at gas stations to standing by the road looking like an idiot. I also find this method more effective.”
Luhan considers telling Baekhyun that he doesn’t like strangers and he especially doesn’t like hitchhikers, but then he pauses to think. Why not? Baekhyun looks pretty harmless, and to be honest, Luhan has never been very good at saying no to people asking help. Besides, one of the many reasons he’s driving around without any destination whatsoever is because he is in desperate need for distraction. Baekhyun, with his wide grin and glaringly bright suitcase, seems like someone who could have ‘distraction skills’ listed as one of his personal talents.
“Okay, fine,” he says, hoping he’s not going to regret it later on. “Get in the car.”
Baekhyun beams, and that’s how he becomes a part of Luhan’s everything.
*
Luhan realizes right away that Baekhyun is a very talkative young man, and there’s no denying the fact that at first his complete inability to sit still and be quiet drives Luhan insane and makes him seriously consider kicking the hitchhiker out of the moving car. However, by the time they arrive in Mokpo, Luhan finds himself laughing at Baekhyun’s stupid jokes and even more stupid voice imitations. With Baekhyun around, silent moments are few and far between, and against all odds, Luhan realizes he quite likes that. When Baekhyun just talks, talks and talks, going on and on about everything and anything, all Luhan has to do is listen and let the hitchhiker’s voice fill his head and push the unpleasant thoughts to the background. Distracted by Baekhyun pointing out cool cars or pretty sceneries or whatever, Luhan has no time to remember that he has so many things he'd rather forget everything about.
“Are you always this boring?” Baekhyun asks with a pout when Luhan rejects his suggestion to play car color bingo with him. Luhan insists that he has to focus on driving, but Baekhyun clearly doesn’t find that excuse good enough.
“Are you always this annoying?” Luhan shoots back, not really meaning it, because he’s actually gotten over the phase where he wanted to throw Baekhyun out of the car faster than expected.
Baekhyun doesn’t seem to mind being called annoying, but he does scoff and cross his arms across his chest, pretending to mope. “My preferred adjectives are ‘lively’, ‘cheerful’ and ‘fun’, but I guess that’s a matter of perspective. To a person who has lived in darkness for his all life, even candlelight could be blindingly bright.”
Luhan chooses to ignore the comment. It hits a little too close to home. “Where are you really going?” he asks instead. “Or where do you want me to drop you off?”
“Don’t worry about me. I’ll take care of myself and let you know when I’ve reached my destination,” Baekhyun says easily. “Besides, you haven’t told me where you’re going either.”
“That’s because I don’t know yet. I’m just driving,” Luhan says. Baekhyun hums in acknowledgement.
“Well, it’s the same for me. I don’t know where I’m going, but I’m open to all options.”
Luhan steals a look at him through the rearview mirror. Baekhyun has opened the window and stuck his hand out of it, feeling the wind that grazes his fingers. There’s a strange, distant look in his eyes, as if he were sucked up in nostalgia of some kind. The air that pours in through the window messes up his brown hair and tugs at the collar of his white and blue striped T-shirt. In the background, Luhan can see the glimmering sea and the blue sky. It reminds him of a movie scene.
Maybe all of this could be a movie. Luhan could be the tired and lonely main character, a painter who’d rather paint the world than live in it, and Baekhyun… Baekhyun could be the other main character: free-spirited yet rootless, a young man with a hummingbird heart, a pulse so quick that it makes him restless, and too anxious to stay still or settle down. They may be different, but at the same time, they do seem to have the same destination. After all, there’s only a slight difference between being headed nowhere and anywhere.
“How does that bingo thing work?” Luhan asks. Baekhyun perks up in his seat and immediately begins to explain the rules, as if this whole time he’d been waiting for Luhan to cave in. Luhan realizes that he doesn’t even mind it.
*
They decide to call it a day in some small town by the highway, the name of which went unnoticed by them both. For dinner they get pretty crappy but cheap pizza, and park the car at a parking lot next to a beach. Baekhyun tries to convince Luhan to go swimming with him, but the latter one declines, saying he doesn’t want to get his clothes wet, and also threatens not to let Baekhyun back in the car if he goes in the water. “I don’t want you to ruin the seats,” he explains when Baekhyun accuses him of being a killjoy.
“You’re so boring,” Baekhyun complains for the nth time since he first got in Luhan’s car, but Luhan stands his ground, so Baekhyun can only cross his arms and sink in his seat. It’s easy to see how hard he tries to stay quiet and listen to the radio, but his self-control wears thin only a couple of minutes later, and soon he’s already flinging the door open and running towards the sea. The initial frown on Luhan’s face fades away the second he sees Baekhyun tripping on his own feet and falling gracelessly into the water.
Luhan gets out of the car and walks to the shoreline. Baekhyun can be seen swimming some meters off, and for once, he’s quiet. There’s a serene beauty to the whole scene, the kind that earlier today Luhan would have never thought to associate with Baekhyun. The full moon is bright and particularly large tonight, the sky is clear and the stars twinkle everywhere, and Luhan feels inexplicably calm as he listens to the sounds of Baekhyun swimming. His head is empty, in a good way, and the familiar tension in his muscles seems to slowly melt away into the quiet night. It’s been ages since the last time he felt so… quiet. So quiet on the inside.
He supposes the feeling is partially thanks to being so far away from home and his life, and partially to Baekhyun who’s just so different from all the other people in Luhan’s life. In just one day Luhan has gathered that Baekhyun is loud, obnoxious, easily bored but just as easily amused, shameless and frank, and while those qualities should equal to the very last person Luhan would like to be stuck inside a small car with, it’s actually quite the opposite. There’s something curiously comforting about being with a person who says and does whatever they please, as if they only had one day to live. That kind of attitude is highly infective.
“Come play with me! Surprise yourself and live a little!” Baekhyun calls out to him, having now stood up. He waves his arms at Luhan, a grin plastered across his face, and something about it makes Luhan go against his better judgement, take off his shoes and shirt and join the other man in the waves.
*
Baekhyun shows no signs of leaving. At first it annoys Luhan a little, then it confuses him, and finally, it relieves him.
There’s something about Baekhyun's presence that puts Luhan at ease. He is somehow everywhere: whenever Luhan turns his head, he sees Baekhyun. When they go shopping for food, Baekhyun follows a few steps behind Luhan, constantly talking or going through their shopping list out loud, and every now and then tosses random things in their shopping basket. When Luhan sits down somewhere and tries to draw something, Baekhyun pops up right next to him, either asking what it is that he’s drawing or cheekily offering to be his model. When they drive, Baekhyun either sings to the songs on the radio or tells stories that he heard from a friend of a friend, or tries to engage Luhan in some game he has come up with.
Baekhyun doesn’t show any intention of parting ways with Luhan any time soon, and Luhan doesn’t really mind that. They drive to Busan, to Naju, back towards Mokpo, making decisions on a whim. After three nights of sleeping in the car and using gas station restrooms, they are both in dire need for a proper shower and an actual bed, so they book a cheap motel room with single beds in Pohang.
That night, Baekhyun starts a pillow war, and Luhan joins in without hesitating. That’s the most alive he has felt in a long time.
>>
today
Before leading Joonmyun out of the room, Luhan stops to look at the painting, at the colors and the brush strokes, and the smiling face captured on canvas. And he remembers. He remembers too much yet not enough.
The painting is based on a sketch he made on a sunny summer morning three years ago. He remembers sitting in the sand with his sketchbook, trying to draw the sea and the horizon and ignore the person who was ruining both the scenery and the peaceful atmosphere. Despite his best efforts to focus on the sea and the sea only, his focus soon shifted without him even registering it, and he began drawing a person instead of a landscape.
He completed the same piece four times because the first three didn’t feel right. The first one was an accurate portrayal of his state of mind two weeks after he’d been left alone. It was a seemingly haphazard and frantic mess of black and white, the silhouette of the person playing in the water only barely there. Luhan still can’t look at it without feeling like he’s being choked. He still has the painting somewhere in his studio, hidden away but still there. When he completed the painting, he named it Despair.
When he began painting the second one, he was no longer as distressed - only sad. He started painting because the face of someone on his mind was still so detailed in his mind and he didn’t want to forget it. Relying on both the original sketch and his memory, he painted the person down to the very last detail, trying to turn the painting into a black and white photograph. He named the painting Yearning.
He never thought he’d paint another version until some months later when he woke up in the middle of a cold night and couldn’t go back to sleep. He recalled having dreamt of the person in the sketch, and without even thinking, he began to paint, only relying on his memory. He painted the scene as he remembered it, tried to capture the colors like they were in his memory, and refused to look at the sketch or his previous versions for reference. As a result, he was left with a painting of a blurry, dream-like figure. The realization that he could no longer paint the face accurately was like a slap from reality, and Luhan nearly smashed the painting many times in the process of painting it. This piece he named Time.
The last one, the very painting that art critics call this exhibition’s crowd-puller, is the fourth and the final version. He painted it in summer two years ago, on the exact same beach where the original sketch had been born. Originally the painting was called Nostalgia, but after a few weeks Luhan changed the name, and that’s how it became A Sunny Day.
Despair. Yearning. Time. Nostalgia and A Sunny Day. Those were Luhan’s five stages of loss.
“Luhan? Are you coming, or would you like another moment to admire your own masterpiece?” Joonmyun asks playfully, pulling Luhan out of his daze.
“No, I’m done. Let’s go.”
<<
that summer three years ago
Luhan sits on the beach near their motel, sketchbook in his lap as he paints the sunrise he’s come to the beach to see. He starts by drawing the broader picture, the background colors and the large sun, and then moves on to details, such as capturing the exact way the sea glimmers and the way the yellow and blue stripes of the horizon blend together. He doesn’t hear Baekhyun arrive until the said male slumps down into the sand next to him, wrapped up in a huge sweater that appears to be Luhan’s. Since Baekhyun looks like he only just crawled out of bed, his hair sticks in every possible direction and his eyes are barely open, Luhan chooses not to call him out on borrowing other people’s things without a permission.
“You watched the sunrise?” Baekhyun asks, or more like mumbles. His voice sounds like its still asleep. He rubs his eyes with his fists and yawns. “You should have woken me up. I wanted to see it too.”
Luhan raises a brow at him. “You really think you would have gotten yourself out of the bed two hours ago?”
“I could have tried at least,” Baekhyun huffs, though his reply is interrupted by another yawn. “Tomorrow, I will.”
Luhan lets out an amused hum, knowing Baekhyun is anything but an early bird.
“What are those black things?” Baekhyun asks, nodding at Luhan’s sketch. Luhan stops drawing and looks at the unfinished picture of the sunrise and the random patches of black pencil that have caught Baekhyun’s eye. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but there’s not a single black thing in sight.”
“Yeah, there isn’t,” Luhan agrees. “Splashes of black paint are just my trademark.” To have a trademark one should first be notable enough to have one, and Luhan obviously isn’t. He doesn’t voice that thought.
“Why draw something that isn’t there?” Baekhyun keeps asking, seeming a little less tired now that he has something to keep him occupied.
“Painting and drawing aren’t about just painting the exact thing you see. It’s more like… showing what you feel, or how you perceive something,” Luhan says, not knowing how else to explain it. Baekhyun purses his lips thoughtfully.
“So what you feel are random black spots covering a gorgeous sunrise?” Baekhyun asks. There’s no pity or judgement in his voice, and he doesn’t wait for Luhan’s reply before continuing, this time using a slightly gentler tone: “I think that’s a little sad. I think you’re a little sad. And realizing that makes me a little sad too.”
Luhan doesn’t have anything to say to that, so he doesn’t even try to speak. Even Baekhyun remains quiet for a long time, so long that he eventually falls asleep.
*
The next morning it’s Baekhyun who wakes Luhan up, pretending so hard not to be sleepy that it’s endearing. “Draw it,” Baekhyun tells him when they get to the beach, and tosses Luhan’s sketchbook in his lap. Luhan gives him a strange look.
“I already drew the sunrise yesterday. I don’t need two sketches of the same thing,” he protests.
“Yeah, but I want you to draw me one. Without even touching the black pencil,” Baekhyun says with a lazy grin. “Take it as a challenge.”
They manage to watch the sunrise, but soon after that, Baekhyun dozes off, his head falling to rest on Luhan’s shoulder.
*
One night Baekhyun steals Luhan’s sketchbook and starts to doodle a stick figure on the first blank page he finds. “See, let me draw a picture of you,” Baekhyun says, and draws some kind of a sleigh behind the figure. Luhan peers over Baekhyun’s shoulder as he fills the sleigh with ambiguous shapes that look like rubbish bags and a few angry-looking stick figures. He also draws ropes that are tied to the sleigh and around the stick figure’s ankles and waist. Baekhyun finalizes the masterpiece by drawing a sad face on the poor stick figure. “That’s you right there,” he says, tapping at the sad stick figure with the pencil. Luhan frowns.
“A human reindeer? Pulling a sleigh full of garbage, evil elves and angry Santa?”
Baekhyun disregards Luhan’s comment entirely. “The point is, the reason you’re here with me, far from home and avoiding calls from everyone you know, is because you’re just like the poor guy in this picture,” Baekhyun explains. “It’s like you’re dragging this gigantic load of weight with you wherever you go. No wonder you feel like you aren’t getting anywhere in your life.”
“It does feel a little like that,” Luhan has to admit.
Baekhyun hums. “The good news is, there’s a way to change that. You could walk freely if you want to.”
Before Luhan can ask anything, Baekhyun has already drawn a tremendous pair of scissors on the paper. “Cut the ropes, Luhan. Get rid of the extra weight and leave the past behind,” he says and draws a smiling sun on the sky.
*
As the weeks pass and the two of them travel from town to town, Baekhyun finds his way into Luhan’s sketchbook and his smile becomes a part of every scenery Luhan draws. At the same time, he also crawls into Luhan’s heart and his thoughts. Baekhyun becomes the last and the first thing Luhan thinks of every day, and his presence fills every moment in between.
Luhan has fallen before he even realizes that it might be possible.
Maybe it happens because of Baekhyun’s smile, that rectangular grin that makes his eyes disappear. That smile makes Luhan stop thinking about what a complicated thing life is. Baekhyun’s smile is like a series of possibilities, and it liberates Luhan. When Baekhyun laughs at a childish joke on TV, grins wide when Luhan presents him a sketch completely void of black, or smiles in his sleep, curled up against Luhan’s side because he’s clingy like that, Luhan feels lighter. Just Baekhyun’s presence alone brightens up not only his world but also his mind, that dark space full of complicated thoughts bundled up in tight knots. And when he kisses Baekhyun, the knots begin to unravel.
Baekhyun manages to convince him that it’s okay not to have a clear destination in mind when wandering through life. Sometimes it’s alright just to drift and float and let the current decide the direction. Baekhyun makes so many things possible for Luhan, he opens so many doors just by sitting next to Luhan in the car and singing to Teenage Dream so loud that Katy Perry becomes nothing more than a back-up vocalist. All his life Luhan has been trying to be something, but Baekhyun makes him realize that maybe he already is, or at the very least he has potential to be, if only he gives himself a chance.
Baekhyun fixes Luhan without the latter one even realizing it. He never thought that the damage caused by years and years of self-doubt and insecurity could be washed away by one person in just one summer, but Baekhyun has a way of making Luhan believe in himself again. Wounds like that need more time to disappear completely, but at least now, for the first time ever, Luhan realizes that it is possible for them to heal if he stops ripping them open over and over again. He gains enough courage to call his parents and tell them about losing his job, he secretly looks into possibilities of going back to school to study what he really loves, and sends Yixing a postcard from Jeju, along with an apology for having been so distant. He feels like his steps are finally getting a little lighter, and he only has Baekhyun to thank for it.
*
Baekhyun is the kind of person who never does anything without putting his heart in it. He doesn’t seem to think too much of anything, and always jumps head-first into everything. He takes every chance he is offered on their journey through South Korea, and most of the time he drags Luhan into every adventure and trouble he dives into. “Life’s short so one should at the very least use it right,” Baekhyun explains when he tries to talk Luhan into a bungee jump, and succeeds.
There’s a certain paradoxical mixture of urgency and never-ending patience with which Baekhyun regards Luhan. He’s passionate but only in the gentlest ways, encouraging but never pushy. Luhan figures it comes from his seemingly innate need to make the most out of everything without wasting a single moment. Sometimes Luhan stops to wonder where that comes from, what it is that makes Baekhyun so determined to seize the moment so effectively, but whenever he asks about it, Baekhyun says it’s just the way he’s wired.
Sometimes, though, Luhan feels like there might be more to it. It’s a shame he never gets around to voicing his concern.
*
“I probably should be returning to Seoul soon,” Luhan says. They’re in Daegu, walking the well-lit streets with their hands full of street food. Baekhyun hums, but doesn’t give a verbal reply. He seems deep in thought, but Luhan has no idea what it is that’s keeping him so preoccupied.
“Don’t you have anywhere to be?” he asks hesitantly. It’s been weeks, but not once has Baekhyun ever mentioned a family, a home or a friend. It hasn’t bothered Luhan before, but now it does.
“I do,” Baekhyun says after a moment of silence. Luhan waits for him to elaborate, which he does, after another lengthy pause. “I’m right where I should be. For now.”
He has a strange look on his face, and Luhan decides he doesn’t like the presence of ‘for now’ at the end of Baekhyun’s reply. “If you don’t have anywhere else to go, you could come to Seoul with me,” he suggests carefully. He’s afraid of rejection, just like he’s always been. The main reason why he has left so many chances untaken in his life is because it’s easier to fake indifference than it is to face disappointment. This time too it would be so much safer to pretend he’s fully ready to let Baekhyun and their unlikely summer romance go when it’s time, but with Baekhyun, the risk feels like one worth taking.
Fortunately to Luhan, Baekhyun doesn’t reject him. He does pause in his tracks, looking a tiny bit troubled as he glances at Luhan’s face, uncharacteristically lost for words for a brief moment. Then, however, he breaks into a wide smile and nods. “You can’t take that back later, okay?” he says, nudging Luhan’s side lightly.
Letting out a sigh of relief, Luhan completely misses the fact that Baekhyun’s smile never climbs all the way up to his eyes.
*
Over the weeks they’ve spent together, Luhan has noticed that Baekhyun never unpacks. The yellow suitcase remains shut and packed by the door in every motel they go to, patiently waiting for the roadtrip to continue. Luhan on the other hand takes full advantage of the wardrobes and drawers in the rooms whenever he knows that they are going to stay there for a couple of days or longer. He folds his clothes in the wardrobes, puts his toothbrush in the cabinet next to the bathroom sink and lays his pencils on the desk. Baekhyun only takes out the things he needs, and puts them back when he’s done. Even when they stayed in Pohang, Baekhyun’s suitcase remained fully packed.
“Unpacking makes me feel uneasy,” Baekhyun confesses. He’s sitting on the bed in their motel room in Daegu, watching as Luhan once again folds clothes into his small suitcase. “I’m not very good at settling down. I guess I’ve never really gotten the chance to practice it.”
“What do you mean?”
Baekhyun falls silent, looking torn. It’s like he wants to say something, but in the end he settles for flashing Luhan an easy smile. “That’s just the way I’m wired,” he says once again. Luhan has already gotten used to Baekhyun’s playful half-answers, so he doesn’t even expect him to continue. This time, however, Baekhyun makes an exception.
“I’m the type that can’t stay long in one place even when I really want to,” he explains quickly, as though he wants to get the words out before he changes his mind.
“What does that even mean?” Luhan asks, not liking the way Baekhyun’s words sound to him.
Baekhyun looks him straight in the eye, hesitates for a moment, and forces a smile. The moment is over, and the half-answers are back. “Nothing,” he laughs. “I’m just being melodramatic, and now I’m hungry. Should I order something?”
*
Baekhyun leaves Luhan’s life like he entered it: without a warning on a beautiful sunny day.
They leave for Seoul early in the morning. Baekhyun is even more cheerful than usual, suspiciously so, but he says it’s just because he’s excited to go, and Luhan buys the explanation. They are only an hour or two from Seoul when the low fuel indicator lights up and they are forced to stop at the next gas station. It’s almost like a déjà vu.
Luhan unbuckles his seatbelt to get out of the car when Baekhyun grabs his wrist and stops him, looking oddly serious. The strange silence lasts for a couple of seconds before Baekhyun leans in to kiss Luhan gently.
“Thanks for this amazing summer. And congratulations for learning the art of living,” he speaks against Luhan’s lips, and Luhan can feel him smiling. “You’ve made this teacher very proud.”
“Why the sudden cheesiness?” Luhan asks, laughing. Baekhyun shrugs and plants another kiss on his lips.
“I just felt like it,” he says. “I want you to know that you’ve come a long way and you should never let yourself fall back into the same old patterns. I’ll be very pissed if you do. Training you was hard work.”
“I won’t,” Luhan promises. “But why are you being like this? Are we filming Titanic?”
Baekhyun sticks out his tongue and punches Luhan’s arm. “Go, and don’t take forever. You know I don’t like waiting. Oh, and go get me some ice cream while you’re at it.”
Luhan rolls his eyes and gets out of the car, first heading to buy the requested ice cream. While he’s paying, he gets a call from Yixing, who’s already excited to have his friend back home. He’s in the middle of preparing a feast to celebrate Luhan’s return, his diet be damned, and Luhan laughs at the mental image of Yixing rushing back and forth in their ridiculously tiny kitchen. “Make sure to cook enough for three. I’m bringing a guest,” Luhan tells him, smiling as he turns around to look in Baekhyun’s direction. The car is empty.
At first Luhan doesn’t think much of it, assuming Baekhyun’s just skipping around the parking lot and letting out some extra energy, but when he ends the call and walks out of the store, he realizes that he can’t see Baekhyun anywhere. A horrible thought comes to his mind when he recalls what Baekhyun said to him in the car just a few minutes earlier. It sounded an awful lot like a goodbye.
Baekhyun is nowhere to be seen. On the driver’s seat Luhan finds a napkin with a message written on it in letters that seem to fade away right in front of his eyes. I’m sorry. I love you.
Luhan turns around in his seat slowly, a cold, sinking feeling in his stomach. The back seat is empty. The yellow suitcase is gone.
>>
today
“I didn’t peg you as an art enthusiast,” Kyungsoo comments when Baekhyun pulls him into an art gallery. Baekhyun ignores him and continues his way through the crowd. He can tell that Kyungsoo’s still following him by the sound of his annoyed grumbling.
“Seriously, what are we doing here? We’re supposed to meet our next People in an hour, and you decide this is the time to appreciate art?” Kyungsoo says next. Baekhyun is just about to turn around and give him some kind of a snarky reply when he sees the big, colorful painting right in front of him and stops dead in his tracks. That causes Kyungsoo to walk straight into his back, but Baekhyun barely feels that nor hears the miffed huff that follows.
Kyungsoo doesn’t shut up until he follows the direction of Baekhyun’s gaze and realizes what has left Baekhyun dumbstruck. Baekhyun hears him gasp, and feels a thick lump in his own throat. A Sunny Day.
“Is that you?” Kyungsoo asks, his voice now softer and gentler. It’s a question that doesn’t need to be answered because it’s obvious that the person laughing in the painting is indeed Baekhyun. Kyungsoo puts his hand on Baekhyun’s shoulder and gives it a small squeeze. Baekhyun bites his lip hard and almost wishes he hadn’t come to this exhibition at all.
“Is this that Luhan’s exhibition?” Kyungsoo asks. Baekhyun nods.
“It was a stupid idea to come here,” he says, forcing out a chuckle. “I just… I really wanted to see that he’s doing okay. I need to see him and then we can go, okay? I promise it won’t take long.”
Kyungsoo purses his lips but doesn’t stop Baekhyun from walking into the next exhibition room to look for Luhan. Baekhyun scans the crowd with his eyes as he searches room after room, but finding anyone in such a maze-like place is very difficult especially when he’s invisible to everyone except Kyungsoo. Maybe Luhan isn’t even there. Baekhyun is preparing to accept his defeat and go back to Kyungsoo when a familiar voice reaches his ears.
“I’m surprised so many people came to see this. I honestly didn’t expect a crowd this big,” Luhan says. Baekhyun finds himself drawn to the voice like a moth to light and follows it until he can finally see its owner.
Luhan looks much better now. He’s wearing nice, stylish clothes and his now blonde hair glows under the lights like it’s being kissed by the sun. There are no dark circles around his eyes and his skin looks healthy. The biggest change, however, is the way his eyes shine and his whole face smiles along with his lips. He looks less reserved, easily greeting everyone who stops to say hi to him. He catches eyes, and his light laughter rings in the air in a way that brings a bittersweet smile to Baekhyun’s lips. Life has been good to Luhan.
“I bet half of these people are here just to see A Sunny Day. No matter which art blog I browse, that always pops up,” the man next to Luhan says. He’s a little shorter than the artist, and he has a gentle face and a friendly smile. He seems like a nice person. “It’s no wonder, though. That painting radiates with the kind of warmth and happiness that people love. You can practically feel the sunshine on your face simply by looking at the piece.”
Baekhyun walks closer, wanting to get a better look at Luhan’s face. He tries to stay out of his line of sight just in case, even though he knows Luhan shouldn’t be able to see him because he no longer needs to. That’s the way Friends work.
Most people would call Baekhyun an imaginary friend, but that term is misleading because there’s nothing imaginary about him. He’s completely real, just like any other person in the world, but only when he’s needed. When someone is going through a rough time, people like Baekhyun and Kyungsoo are sent out to help them. When they meet up with their assigned Person, they become a temporary part of the world, and when they’ve served their purpose and their Person no longer needs them, they go back to being invisible. As soon as their assigned person stops seeing them, everyone else forgets they ever existed. If Luhan mentioned Baekhyun to Yixing now, the dancer wouldn’t recognize the name although Baekhyun knows Yixing knew his name that summer. Luhan, and the other people Baekhyun has helped over the years, are the only people who know that a person named Baekhyun does exist somewhere, somehow.
It’s an important job, but also a very lonely and sad one. Saying goodbyes never gets easy, but the day when Baekhyun witnessed Luhan looking straight through him was by far the hardest one in his entire life. He knows that he should have known better than to fall in love, and Luhan falling in love with him was the absolute last thing he should have let happen. He made a mistake and he’s paying for it now, but fortunately Luhan seems to be doing better. That’s all that matters to him anyway.
“Do you think I’ll ever get to meet that muse of yours who inspired you to paint your career-defining masterpiece?” Luhan’s friend asks him, catching Baekhyun’s attention. Baekhyun clocks the tiniest twitch in Luhan’s smile.
“I wish you could, but I don’t think it’s possible. Even I don’t know where he is now,” Luhan replies. “Besides, that whole summer feels like a dream to me, so it could be that this person never existed at all. Maybe he was just an imaginary friend my mind created when I really needed someone.”
Baekhyun swallows thickly as he feels tears pricking at his eyes, and decides it’s time for him to go. He returns to the place where he last saw Kyungsoo, in front of A Sunny Day, but his friend is nowhere to be seen. Instead of looking for him, Baekhyun decides to take a moment to calm down and turns to take another look at the painting that seems to have made Luhan famous.
A few minutes pass. The exhibition is slowly coming to an end, and the gallery is gradually emptying of people. Baekhyun stares at the painting and lets the memories of that beautiful summer fill his mind. He can still remember the precise taste of Luhan’s lips and the scent of his hair, and he can remember what Luhan’s voice sounded like when he was talking in his sleep. He wishes nothing more than to go back to where it all started and relive every single moment.
He snaps out of his nostalgia when someone stops to stand beside him, their arms almost touching. Luhan. Baekhyun’s breath hitches, and a wave of foolish, blinding hope crashes through him. Maybe, maybe, maybe…
But Luhan doesn’t see him, of course he doesn’t. Baekhyun tells himself not to be disappointed, and turns to look at the painting. Seconds crawl by as the two of them look at the same painting side by side, seemingly close yet separated by the cloak of invisibility that keeps Baekhyun from being a part of Luhan’s world.
“Hey, Baek. Wherever you are, I hope you’re doing okay,” Baekhyun suddenly hears Luhan mutter so quietly that the other visitors around them can’t possibly hear it. Luhan’s not really talking to him, his words are addressed to the Baekhyun in the painting, but that doesn’t stop Baekhyun from pretending otherwise.
“I hope you’re doing okay too,” Baekhyun replies, and forces himself to smile. “You have no idea how happy I am to see you so happy. And hey, thanks for painting me so nicely. I’d say I look better in that than I do in real life. You’re free to consider that an impressive achievement.”
“I wish you’d given me the chance to thank you properly, at the very least,” Luhan continues. Although he sounds sad, he speaks with his lips curved upwards. “I owe you so much, and honestly? I really miss you. As much as I hate to admit it, I really do.”
The smile stays on even as Baekhyun wipes the corner of his eye. “I miss you too.”
“Goodbye, Baekhyun,” Luhan says to the painting just as his friend calls him from the doorway. Baekhyun watches as Luhan walks up to the man, smiling with his entire face, and laces their fingers together. Somehow it brings to his mind the summer day when Luhan looked right through him with panic in his eyes.
“Goodbye, Luhan,” Baekhyun whispers.
As if he had heard the words, Luhan spins around on his heels, his head turning in Baekhyun’s direction. For a second seems like Luhan is looking straight at him, but the moment passes as quickly as it came. Luhan follows the shorter man out of the gallery, and Baekhyun stays behind.
“Are you alright?” Kyungsoo asks carefully, appearing seemingly out of nowhere. Baekhyun clears his throat and wipes his eyes with the sleeve of his shirt. There’s no reason to cry.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” he says and hooks his arm around Kyungsoo’s. “Let’s go. We shouldn’t keep our new friends waiting.”
Before leaving the gallery, he turns around to take one last look at the painting. I hope the future has many even sunnier days in store for you, Luhan. I wish you all the best.