+ qu'hier - que demain
title: + qu'hier - que demain
pairing: Kris/Chanyeol
rating: PG-13
beta: bunnyxing aand ms. sasha (gurl i don't know your lj uname so yeah? :\)
a/n jsyk this is practically word-vomit or some sort. i just wanted to write something and this came out (though it was written like last year? or the 2 years ago? kei forgot)
a/n i know the plot is really reaaaally really illogical but can we put it aside? yes i mean just forget about the logical gaps here because please? (i think i read too much murakami stuff)
“One day,” he grinned, holding the hand of the person who was sitting beside him.
“One day, I’ll be a star. I’ll shine even brighter than all the stars that you’ve ever seen.”
The person beside him smiled and pat his back lightly.
“I’m serious. Just see, I’ll make it big and go to Hollywood. I’ll be the greatest actor in the world! Everyone will swoon when they see me walking. And by then, you’ll be beside me. I promise you.”
The other chuckled as an answer and kissed his forehead, making him blush profusely.
“I’ll wait for it.”
***
He woke up with a start. He looked at the surroundings and quickly realized that it was only a dream. A dream that was so strange but yet so familiar in his mind. It wasn’t like any other dream that he had before; it felt more like a memory. Of a distant past yet it seemed so near in his heart.
He got up and walked to the wall across of his former position. There, pasted multiple pictures of him and his friends, old friends he had never met anymore. He looked at them one by one and tried to memorize their name. But still, he felt that something was missing. Something big was missing from the compilation of pictures and memories.
It had been years since the doctors said that he had a kind of disease that made him forget about things gradually. He was told that he had to keep track of things or else it would diminish from his mind in no time. Chuckling, he walked out of his bedroom, thinking, that if he forgot about things, it was worth forgotten.
He never felt a problem with it anyway.
***
He was sitting on a chair in between the set. He looked around and saw the faces of his fellow actors and actresses, along with their own makeup artists and crew. It all felt so familiar yet so strange for him. Familiar, since it was his daily life ever since some years ago; and strange, because he didn’t recall living in a world like that.
It was weird. Being an actor and living in a world in between sets had been the only thing he remembered, but why did he feel like he used to have another life? A life he didn’t even realized he had.
His mind drifted to the pictures he pasted on his wall. He knew that they were his old friends; they were the people he used to hang out with before he moved on with his life. They were the people from his other life he didn’t know he had.
Was the person from his dream one of them?
***
“I got the part,” he wasn’t talking anymore. It was closer to breathing rather than talking for the amount of air that came out was more than his voice. He found himself grinning so hard it could reach his ears, his heart swelled of happiness.
He still couldn’t believe it himself, that a simple video of him acting in a mere school play could land him a part in a Hollywood movie. It wasn’t a big part, but still, he was a step closer to his dream.
His life was perfect at that moment. His dream was going to come true, he had his significant other by his side, and his friends were all rooting for him. But there was one flaw that could ruin everything.
He had forgotten that there was nothing called perfection. That sooner of later, it would shatter into pieces.
***
He woke up on the king-sized bed that occupied half of his room, mouth gaping and eyes opened wide. It was another excerpt of his long lost memory that crept into the form of a dream. It wasn’t frightening, it really wasn’t, but it was just…weird.
He could remember it, the excitement that bubbled up in his chest when he found out that he got a part in that movie; the movie which actually helped him find a name in the industry, for because of it he was who he was now, the biggest Asian star in the whole wide world.
He was brilliant, people said after they watched his first movie. He didn’t play a big part in that, he was just playing as a friend of a friend of the main character; but he caught the spotlight. He wasn’t sure as well which factor made him oh-so famous that numerous directors actually asked him directly to play in their movies. Christopher Nolan, Quentin Tarantino, Tim Burton, name them all and he might have had played in one of their movies.
“Park Chanyeol is a prodigy,” he once heard in an interview. “Give him a role and he won’t play as it, he will be it. And when he does, no one could tear his or her eyes off him. He’s brilliant in his own way.”
He sighed slightly and leaned to the headboard of his bed, mind wandering to the previous dreams he had for some days. He already fulfilled the promise he made to the other person; he was now the biggest star and no one would bat an eyelash if you say that you’re a fan of Park Chanyeol, because everyone was. But he still felt empty. Was it because of that person?
“And by then, you’ll be beside me.”
He bit his lower lip and closed his eyes.
There was no one beside him.
He was alone on the top of the world.
***
He walked through the airport, in between oceans of fans and flashlights. One by one, his bodyguards came to protect him from the wandering hands that tried to touch any part of his body. He chuckled bitterly; everyone always wanted a part of him.
After what felt like years, he walked out of the door and into the car that would be his ride for as long as his stay in the country. His heart was racing like he was just running in a 10k marathon instead of the short walk from the arrival gate to the car. It felt weird.
His phone rang not a minute later. It was from his mother.
“Yes?”
“I heard that you’re going home?” the familiar voice said, her tone sounded like she was shocked. She might be though, since he didn’t even tell her that he was going back. He wasn’t planning on telling anyone, like he wasn’t even planning on coming back home. It was done in an impulse. One second he was laughing with his fellow actor friends in the States then one second later he found himself booking a flight ticket to Korea because he needed to be there.
“Yes, mom. I just arrived.”
His mother hummed lightly. Chanyeol leaned back on his seat and unbuttoned the first button of his shirt. It felt suffocating. Like a breath was taken away from him, and then another, and he was left in the condition with no air surrounding him.
“Where are you staying?”
He didn’t have any answer for that question. He hadn’t thought much about it. He could go to any hotel he wanted to and stayed there for however long he wanted. It had been years since he went back home anyway, for each time he stepped back in Korea; he always stayed in a hotel. He never felt the need to go back home, but this time.
“Home.”
***
“What’s this?”
The other chuckled and motioned for him to open the red velvet box. He opened it and blinked slightly as he saw a piece of white small Saturn, a cross on top of it. Beside it, he saw a folded link of silver chains.
“A necklace?”
The other smiled and takes both the pendant and the chain from inside the box. He put the chain into the hole and hung it in front of Chanyeol’s face. “A present.”
Chanyeol rolled his eyes slightly and pursed his lips. “Okay, but what for? My birthday is like six months away and Valentine’s Day had passed. Oh and Christmas is seven months away.”
“Do I need a reason to give you a present? I just feel like it.”
He took the necklace and inspects it closely. “The hell with that. You must have something going on under your sleeves.” He could hear the other’s sigh as he yapped on and on, eyes still scanning the pendant that is nothing other than beautiful. It was adorned with some red and green crystals while the surface is of silver so fair it was almost white.
“It’s beautiful though. Thank you.”
The other seemed taken aback for a while before he smiled. Yet, his smile looked a little bit sad.
***
He woke up abruptly. Sweat soaking his back and his hair was sticking onto his temple. His breathing was irregular and he felt weird.
Once he had calmed down enough, he took a deep breath and swept his fingers through his hair. His breathing had starting to become regular again but the weird feeling was still there, embed deep inside his chest.
He sat up on the bed, his head somehow filled with a fog that won’t clear itself. Looking around, he finally went to a realization that he wasn’t in his bedroom. Bookshelf, desk, and a small wardrobe substituting cabinet, TVs and the massive dressing table he usually saw. Even the bedside tables weren’t on their places. His bed seemed like it was cut into two and he was sitting on one of the halves.
It took some more minutes for him to realize that he was back in Korea, in his parents’ house.
The fog in his head finally cleared a bit. Yet, the weird feeling was still there, making his stomach churn. He couldn’t figure out what the weird feeling was and it was bothering him. It felt like a little bit of yearning, a little bit of emptiness. It felt like there was a part of him being stolen away.
He stood up, thoughts of going back to sleep had already gone from his mind. He was about to go out of the room when something familiar caught his eyes.
Slowly, he walked to his desk. The desk he used to study on all those years he stayed in Korea. It was still filled with some books and papers, thick layers of dust covering them. And in midst of it all, he saw a somehow familiar red velvet box.
He reached his hand to it and brought it with him onto the bed. His head was throbbing and his heart racing; it looked exactly the same with what he saw in his dream. It might be the same box. And it could be a clue for him to find out what was that feeling that had been haunting him all these while.
His fingers played nimbly near the opening of the box and finally he found the courage to push it open. And there was, in all its glory, the same pendant that he had seen in his dream.
He took it onto his fingers and brought it close to his eyes to inspect it clearly. It didn’t look any different from the one in his dream. Even after years of being kept, it didn’t lose its shine. The red and green crystal stood out in the expanse of white.
He strokes all over its surface and accidentally clicked on a bump, which opened the pendant in half. A locket? He looked at what was inside it and found nothing. He was about to close the locket again when he found a heart shaped inscription with graving imprinted on it.
“+ qu'hier - que demain”
He didn’t understand what it meant, but maybe, maybe, his heart did. For less than a second after he recited it, a single tear fell down his face.
***
He was sitting on a cafe in the corner of the street near Hongik University. Some of his friends had called his mother when they found out that he was back in Korea and not for a business matter. They had missed him, they said; which is normal seeing that they hadn’t met nor did any interactions these past years he was in the States. His busy schedule as an actor didn’t allow him to do the luxury of leisure.
Or maybe, it wasn’t because of my schedule, he mused. Maybe it was me who didn’t want to contact them.
“Chanyeol!!!”
He looked to his side to find Minseok, one of his closest friends in high school. Or so he thought. He was in most of the pictures Chanyeol kept, so it might be the case, right?
The older guy looked a lot different from the one he saw in the pictures that he had stuck on the wall of his bedroom back in the States. He had lost the entire baby fat he had on his cheeks and his hair was no longer as long as it used to be. Oh well, years had passed since it was taken after all. People changed, it was normal. Just like he did himself.
Chanyeol stood up and shook his hand slightly before he sat back onto his seat. The guy in front of him was smiling, showing rows of disorganized teeth, while he himself was just smiling as though he met someone new. A stranger. Which might be proper for the current situation, seeing that he had forgotten almost everything about him over these years. Minseok was practically a stranger for him.
“It’s good to see you back again. How long has it been?”
He shrugged lightly. “I don’t know. 9? 10 years maybe?”
Minseok’s smile faltered slightly. “Ah, yeah,” he replied. “It had been so long.”
The air in their surrounding shifted slightly, the condition seemed to change. The slight warmth that he had felt when Minseok first came somehow changed to a cold one that pierced through his skin onto the joints of his spine, making him shiver.
“So,” Minseok’s voice pierced the silence. Chanyeol looked up to see the older guy smiling awkwardly at him. “How was life there? Is it fun?”
Chanyeol shrugged slightly before leaning back onto his chair. He decided to act as though they were close friend, silently hoping that he was right at reenacting his old self. He had forgotten how he used to be. “It is. I mean- I got to meet new friends and do what I like. A bit tiring at times, but yeah.” Both of them laughed at his words.
The ice that was surrounding them seemed to be cracked since then on and they started to talk like old friends, like how it was supposed to be from the very start. They exchanged a lot of stories, of how some of their friends were doing now, of how some of their friends should’ve arrived already by now because without Chanyeol knowing, Minseok had invited their old friends to join them.
“Some of them might not make it though since it was in such a short notice. But Kris and Baekhyun said they would come. They were your best friends after all.”
His heart skipped a beat, and then it started to beat faster, faster, and faster. The beat started to get louder to the point that he could hear them and he was almost sure that Minseok could hear it too from across of him. “Kris and…Baekhyun?” His head started to pound.
“Yes, Kris and Baekhyun. Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten about them!” he laughed as he said those words. Right, Chanyeol didn’t tell him, or anyone actually, about his disease.
Chanyeol’s head started to pound even faster, making a rhythmic sound alongside his heart. It was dizzying and he felt as though the world had spun faster, making him lost his balance even though he was sitting.
“Oh, here they are,” Minseok stood up and waved his hand. “Kris! Baekhyun! We’re here!”
Chanyeol turned to see the newcomers and was met by a couple of guys holding each other’s hand tight. I know them, his eyes widened before everything went black.
***
“Chanyeol!”
He smiled lightly as he heard the cheerful voice from the other side of the line. It was midnight and truthfully, he felt very tired, so tired he could sleep three whole days if he was permitted. Unfortunately he was in a shooting period for a movie, and the short time didn’t allow him to have the luxury of even taking a straight 8-hours sleep.
“Yes?”
He tried his best to sound excited and not sounding as though he hadn’t been sleeping for days, which he was. He knew that the other had had some good things happen to him and wanted to tell him all the details. It was always like that with Baekhyun, his little best friend who acted like a puppy at times. Each time something happened to him, he would right away run to Chanyeol and tell him the full story, even though it might take 3 or 4 hours. It was normal.
“I got a boyfriend!” his ears perked up slightly as he heard about it. He had known that for the past 5 or 6 years, Baekhyun had had a crush on someone who he didn’t want to disclose. Was it that same person? “I confessed to him last month and he asked me to wait. Then, this morning he went to my house to say that he wanted to be my boyfriend. Oh my God I still can’t believe it!
He’s still out there in the living room!”
“Oh Baekhyun! It’s good news then! Congratulations!” his friend replied with a short laugh and a ‘thank you’. He could hear how giddy the other was. He must be so happy, seeing that he had had a crush on that person for years already.
Somehow it reminded him of himself and Kris. He had known Kris for the past 7 years thanks to him joining the theater club during their junior high days. The other was a transfer student from China and he didn’t know anyone at that time, Chanyeol helped him to adapt with Korea. They had been inseparable ever since, until the time he moved to the States.
If there was one thing he regretted for moving to the States, it was for not telling Kris about his feelings. Yes, he had a crush on him. Or rather, he had fallen in love with him. He didn’t know how it started; he just knew it, that his heart beat faster when the older guy was near, that the butterfly residing in his stomach started to fly around when the other did as simple as touching his hand.
He didn’t have the courage to tell him. Maybe if he had, they could’ve been dating. Just like Baekhyun and his current boyfriend. Maybe they could-
“Chanyeol?” he was startled. He had forgotten that he was still on the phone with Baekhyun and he had spaced out. What the lack of sleep did to him. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. “Chanyeol-ah? What’s wrong? Do I call you at a wrong time? Are you alright?”
He chuckled slightly as he heard the other’s worried tone. “I’m alright,” he assured. He felt silly somehow. “I just got distracted.” Baekhyun hummed in response. “Anyhow, you haven’t told me who your boyfriend is. Since you’re now dating him, I think I should be introduced. I’m your best friend after all.”
Baekhyun was silent for a moment. He blinked for a while, wondering if he had said something wrong, because Baekhyun and silence was never a good thing.
After what seemed like minutes, Baekhyun finally spoke. “You know him, Chanyeol.”
THUMP.
“I know him?”
Another silence came from the other side of the line. Chanyeol’s heart started to beat faster that it seemed, like a bad omen. He tried to remember all of his friends one by one, Kris, Minseok, Kris, Sehun, Jongin, Kris. He couldn’t get his mind past Kris. God, please, please, don’t let it be Kris. I’ve never asked for something like this before, so please grant me this wish…
He heard a voice of someone calling for Baekhyun from afar. It was a familiar voice. He knew that voice. It belonged to someone he knew better than anyone else. He began to suffocate.
“Yes, Kris hyung? Wait for a while!” Baekhyun’s voice came as muffled.
A tear fell from Chanyeol’s eyes.
***
Chanyeol felt like the whole world had turned black and the ground beneath his feet had caved in and swallowed him whole. He couldn’t feel anything, just numbness. His heart felt like it was torn into pieces, so hard until it didn’t even feel hurt anymore.
He cried. He cried so hard he was sure that each and every one of his neighbors would hear him. He cursed so loudly and he didn’t care eventhough people would hear him like that. It wasn’t as if they would understand him. It wasn’t as if they would understand the anguish he felt.
His best friend was dating the person he had a crush on, no, the person he loved. It couldn’t be anymore funny as it was.
He took the pendant that he had been wearing ever since he got it from the other man and threw it to the floor, hard. And it got opened with a soft click sound.
…A locket?
Slowly, he walked closer and crouched down to the locket. A small folded paper fell out of it, taking its place in midst of broken frames and torn photos. He took it and unfolded it, revealing a short letter.
I know that doing it like this is not gentleman-like at all. I know. But I just can’t tell it to you directly…
I love you.
I’m not expecting you to answer me directly. Don’t worry; I’m willing to wait for you.
I’ll wait for you, no matter how long it takes. Until I get tired of waiting, which might take long.
Kris
p.s: + qu'hier - que demain (i love you) more than yesterday, less than tomorrow.
soooo what you think? comment here or contact me on my twitter @812addiction xoxo
pairing: Kris/Chanyeol
rating: PG-13
beta: bunnyxing aand ms. sasha (gurl i don't know your lj uname so yeah? :\)
a/n jsyk this is practically word-vomit or some sort. i just wanted to write something and this came out (though it was written like last year? or the 2 years ago? kei forgot)
a/n i know the plot is really reaaaally really illogical but can we put it aside? yes i mean just forget about the logical gaps here because please? (i think i read too much murakami stuff)
“One day,” he grinned, holding the hand of the person who was sitting beside him.
“One day, I’ll be a star. I’ll shine even brighter than all the stars that you’ve ever seen.”
The person beside him smiled and pat his back lightly.
“I’m serious. Just see, I’ll make it big and go to Hollywood. I’ll be the greatest actor in the world! Everyone will swoon when they see me walking. And by then, you’ll be beside me. I promise you.”
The other chuckled as an answer and kissed his forehead, making him blush profusely.
“I’ll wait for it.”
***
He woke up with a start. He looked at the surroundings and quickly realized that it was only a dream. A dream that was so strange but yet so familiar in his mind. It wasn’t like any other dream that he had before; it felt more like a memory. Of a distant past yet it seemed so near in his heart.
He got up and walked to the wall across of his former position. There, pasted multiple pictures of him and his friends, old friends he had never met anymore. He looked at them one by one and tried to memorize their name. But still, he felt that something was missing. Something big was missing from the compilation of pictures and memories.
It had been years since the doctors said that he had a kind of disease that made him forget about things gradually. He was told that he had to keep track of things or else it would diminish from his mind in no time. Chuckling, he walked out of his bedroom, thinking, that if he forgot about things, it was worth forgotten.
He never felt a problem with it anyway.
***
He was sitting on a chair in between the set. He looked around and saw the faces of his fellow actors and actresses, along with their own makeup artists and crew. It all felt so familiar yet so strange for him. Familiar, since it was his daily life ever since some years ago; and strange, because he didn’t recall living in a world like that.
It was weird. Being an actor and living in a world in between sets had been the only thing he remembered, but why did he feel like he used to have another life? A life he didn’t even realized he had.
His mind drifted to the pictures he pasted on his wall. He knew that they were his old friends; they were the people he used to hang out with before he moved on with his life. They were the people from his other life he didn’t know he had.
Was the person from his dream one of them?
***
“I got the part,” he wasn’t talking anymore. It was closer to breathing rather than talking for the amount of air that came out was more than his voice. He found himself grinning so hard it could reach his ears, his heart swelled of happiness.
He still couldn’t believe it himself, that a simple video of him acting in a mere school play could land him a part in a Hollywood movie. It wasn’t a big part, but still, he was a step closer to his dream.
His life was perfect at that moment. His dream was going to come true, he had his significant other by his side, and his friends were all rooting for him. But there was one flaw that could ruin everything.
He had forgotten that there was nothing called perfection. That sooner of later, it would shatter into pieces.
***
He woke up on the king-sized bed that occupied half of his room, mouth gaping and eyes opened wide. It was another excerpt of his long lost memory that crept into the form of a dream. It wasn’t frightening, it really wasn’t, but it was just…weird.
He could remember it, the excitement that bubbled up in his chest when he found out that he got a part in that movie; the movie which actually helped him find a name in the industry, for because of it he was who he was now, the biggest Asian star in the whole wide world.
He was brilliant, people said after they watched his first movie. He didn’t play a big part in that, he was just playing as a friend of a friend of the main character; but he caught the spotlight. He wasn’t sure as well which factor made him oh-so famous that numerous directors actually asked him directly to play in their movies. Christopher Nolan, Quentin Tarantino, Tim Burton, name them all and he might have had played in one of their movies.
“Park Chanyeol is a prodigy,” he once heard in an interview. “Give him a role and he won’t play as it, he will be it. And when he does, no one could tear his or her eyes off him. He’s brilliant in his own way.”
He sighed slightly and leaned to the headboard of his bed, mind wandering to the previous dreams he had for some days. He already fulfilled the promise he made to the other person; he was now the biggest star and no one would bat an eyelash if you say that you’re a fan of Park Chanyeol, because everyone was. But he still felt empty. Was it because of that person?
“And by then, you’ll be beside me.”
He bit his lower lip and closed his eyes.
There was no one beside him.
He was alone on the top of the world.
***
He walked through the airport, in between oceans of fans and flashlights. One by one, his bodyguards came to protect him from the wandering hands that tried to touch any part of his body. He chuckled bitterly; everyone always wanted a part of him.
After what felt like years, he walked out of the door and into the car that would be his ride for as long as his stay in the country. His heart was racing like he was just running in a 10k marathon instead of the short walk from the arrival gate to the car. It felt weird.
His phone rang not a minute later. It was from his mother.
“Yes?”
“I heard that you’re going home?” the familiar voice said, her tone sounded like she was shocked. She might be though, since he didn’t even tell her that he was going back. He wasn’t planning on telling anyone, like he wasn’t even planning on coming back home. It was done in an impulse. One second he was laughing with his fellow actor friends in the States then one second later he found himself booking a flight ticket to Korea because he needed to be there.
“Yes, mom. I just arrived.”
His mother hummed lightly. Chanyeol leaned back on his seat and unbuttoned the first button of his shirt. It felt suffocating. Like a breath was taken away from him, and then another, and he was left in the condition with no air surrounding him.
“Where are you staying?”
He didn’t have any answer for that question. He hadn’t thought much about it. He could go to any hotel he wanted to and stayed there for however long he wanted. It had been years since he went back home anyway, for each time he stepped back in Korea; he always stayed in a hotel. He never felt the need to go back home, but this time.
“Home.”
***
“What’s this?”
The other chuckled and motioned for him to open the red velvet box. He opened it and blinked slightly as he saw a piece of white small Saturn, a cross on top of it. Beside it, he saw a folded link of silver chains.
“A necklace?”
The other smiled and takes both the pendant and the chain from inside the box. He put the chain into the hole and hung it in front of Chanyeol’s face. “A present.”
Chanyeol rolled his eyes slightly and pursed his lips. “Okay, but what for? My birthday is like six months away and Valentine’s Day had passed. Oh and Christmas is seven months away.”
“Do I need a reason to give you a present? I just feel like it.”
He took the necklace and inspects it closely. “The hell with that. You must have something going on under your sleeves.” He could hear the other’s sigh as he yapped on and on, eyes still scanning the pendant that is nothing other than beautiful. It was adorned with some red and green crystals while the surface is of silver so fair it was almost white.
“It’s beautiful though. Thank you.”
The other seemed taken aback for a while before he smiled. Yet, his smile looked a little bit sad.
***
He woke up abruptly. Sweat soaking his back and his hair was sticking onto his temple. His breathing was irregular and he felt weird.
Once he had calmed down enough, he took a deep breath and swept his fingers through his hair. His breathing had starting to become regular again but the weird feeling was still there, embed deep inside his chest.
He sat up on the bed, his head somehow filled with a fog that won’t clear itself. Looking around, he finally went to a realization that he wasn’t in his bedroom. Bookshelf, desk, and a small wardrobe substituting cabinet, TVs and the massive dressing table he usually saw. Even the bedside tables weren’t on their places. His bed seemed like it was cut into two and he was sitting on one of the halves.
It took some more minutes for him to realize that he was back in Korea, in his parents’ house.
The fog in his head finally cleared a bit. Yet, the weird feeling was still there, making his stomach churn. He couldn’t figure out what the weird feeling was and it was bothering him. It felt like a little bit of yearning, a little bit of emptiness. It felt like there was a part of him being stolen away.
He stood up, thoughts of going back to sleep had already gone from his mind. He was about to go out of the room when something familiar caught his eyes.
Slowly, he walked to his desk. The desk he used to study on all those years he stayed in Korea. It was still filled with some books and papers, thick layers of dust covering them. And in midst of it all, he saw a somehow familiar red velvet box.
He reached his hand to it and brought it with him onto the bed. His head was throbbing and his heart racing; it looked exactly the same with what he saw in his dream. It might be the same box. And it could be a clue for him to find out what was that feeling that had been haunting him all these while.
His fingers played nimbly near the opening of the box and finally he found the courage to push it open. And there was, in all its glory, the same pendant that he had seen in his dream.
He took it onto his fingers and brought it close to his eyes to inspect it clearly. It didn’t look any different from the one in his dream. Even after years of being kept, it didn’t lose its shine. The red and green crystal stood out in the expanse of white.
He strokes all over its surface and accidentally clicked on a bump, which opened the pendant in half. A locket? He looked at what was inside it and found nothing. He was about to close the locket again when he found a heart shaped inscription with graving imprinted on it.
“+ qu'hier - que demain”
He didn’t understand what it meant, but maybe, maybe, his heart did. For less than a second after he recited it, a single tear fell down his face.
***
He was sitting on a cafe in the corner of the street near Hongik University. Some of his friends had called his mother when they found out that he was back in Korea and not for a business matter. They had missed him, they said; which is normal seeing that they hadn’t met nor did any interactions these past years he was in the States. His busy schedule as an actor didn’t allow him to do the luxury of leisure.
Or maybe, it wasn’t because of my schedule, he mused. Maybe it was me who didn’t want to contact them.
“Chanyeol!!!”
He looked to his side to find Minseok, one of his closest friends in high school. Or so he thought. He was in most of the pictures Chanyeol kept, so it might be the case, right?
The older guy looked a lot different from the one he saw in the pictures that he had stuck on the wall of his bedroom back in the States. He had lost the entire baby fat he had on his cheeks and his hair was no longer as long as it used to be. Oh well, years had passed since it was taken after all. People changed, it was normal. Just like he did himself.
Chanyeol stood up and shook his hand slightly before he sat back onto his seat. The guy in front of him was smiling, showing rows of disorganized teeth, while he himself was just smiling as though he met someone new. A stranger. Which might be proper for the current situation, seeing that he had forgotten almost everything about him over these years. Minseok was practically a stranger for him.
“It’s good to see you back again. How long has it been?”
He shrugged lightly. “I don’t know. 9? 10 years maybe?”
Minseok’s smile faltered slightly. “Ah, yeah,” he replied. “It had been so long.”
The air in their surrounding shifted slightly, the condition seemed to change. The slight warmth that he had felt when Minseok first came somehow changed to a cold one that pierced through his skin onto the joints of his spine, making him shiver.
“So,” Minseok’s voice pierced the silence. Chanyeol looked up to see the older guy smiling awkwardly at him. “How was life there? Is it fun?”
Chanyeol shrugged slightly before leaning back onto his chair. He decided to act as though they were close friend, silently hoping that he was right at reenacting his old self. He had forgotten how he used to be. “It is. I mean- I got to meet new friends and do what I like. A bit tiring at times, but yeah.” Both of them laughed at his words.
The ice that was surrounding them seemed to be cracked since then on and they started to talk like old friends, like how it was supposed to be from the very start. They exchanged a lot of stories, of how some of their friends were doing now, of how some of their friends should’ve arrived already by now because without Chanyeol knowing, Minseok had invited their old friends to join them.
“Some of them might not make it though since it was in such a short notice. But Kris and Baekhyun said they would come. They were your best friends after all.”
His heart skipped a beat, and then it started to beat faster, faster, and faster. The beat started to get louder to the point that he could hear them and he was almost sure that Minseok could hear it too from across of him. “Kris and…Baekhyun?” His head started to pound.
“Yes, Kris and Baekhyun. Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten about them!” he laughed as he said those words. Right, Chanyeol didn’t tell him, or anyone actually, about his disease.
Chanyeol’s head started to pound even faster, making a rhythmic sound alongside his heart. It was dizzying and he felt as though the world had spun faster, making him lost his balance even though he was sitting.
“Oh, here they are,” Minseok stood up and waved his hand. “Kris! Baekhyun! We’re here!”
Chanyeol turned to see the newcomers and was met by a couple of guys holding each other’s hand tight. I know them, his eyes widened before everything went black.
***
“Chanyeol!”
He smiled lightly as he heard the cheerful voice from the other side of the line. It was midnight and truthfully, he felt very tired, so tired he could sleep three whole days if he was permitted. Unfortunately he was in a shooting period for a movie, and the short time didn’t allow him to have the luxury of even taking a straight 8-hours sleep.
“Yes?”
He tried his best to sound excited and not sounding as though he hadn’t been sleeping for days, which he was. He knew that the other had had some good things happen to him and wanted to tell him all the details. It was always like that with Baekhyun, his little best friend who acted like a puppy at times. Each time something happened to him, he would right away run to Chanyeol and tell him the full story, even though it might take 3 or 4 hours. It was normal.
“I got a boyfriend!” his ears perked up slightly as he heard about it. He had known that for the past 5 or 6 years, Baekhyun had had a crush on someone who he didn’t want to disclose. Was it that same person? “I confessed to him last month and he asked me to wait. Then, this morning he went to my house to say that he wanted to be my boyfriend. Oh my God I still can’t believe it!
He’s still out there in the living room!”
“Oh Baekhyun! It’s good news then! Congratulations!” his friend replied with a short laugh and a ‘thank you’. He could hear how giddy the other was. He must be so happy, seeing that he had had a crush on that person for years already.
Somehow it reminded him of himself and Kris. He had known Kris for the past 7 years thanks to him joining the theater club during their junior high days. The other was a transfer student from China and he didn’t know anyone at that time, Chanyeol helped him to adapt with Korea. They had been inseparable ever since, until the time he moved to the States.
If there was one thing he regretted for moving to the States, it was for not telling Kris about his feelings. Yes, he had a crush on him. Or rather, he had fallen in love with him. He didn’t know how it started; he just knew it, that his heart beat faster when the older guy was near, that the butterfly residing in his stomach started to fly around when the other did as simple as touching his hand.
He didn’t have the courage to tell him. Maybe if he had, they could’ve been dating. Just like Baekhyun and his current boyfriend. Maybe they could-
“Chanyeol?” he was startled. He had forgotten that he was still on the phone with Baekhyun and he had spaced out. What the lack of sleep did to him. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. “Chanyeol-ah? What’s wrong? Do I call you at a wrong time? Are you alright?”
He chuckled slightly as he heard the other’s worried tone. “I’m alright,” he assured. He felt silly somehow. “I just got distracted.” Baekhyun hummed in response. “Anyhow, you haven’t told me who your boyfriend is. Since you’re now dating him, I think I should be introduced. I’m your best friend after all.”
Baekhyun was silent for a moment. He blinked for a while, wondering if he had said something wrong, because Baekhyun and silence was never a good thing.
After what seemed like minutes, Baekhyun finally spoke. “You know him, Chanyeol.”
THUMP.
“I know him?”
Another silence came from the other side of the line. Chanyeol’s heart started to beat faster that it seemed, like a bad omen. He tried to remember all of his friends one by one, Kris, Minseok, Kris, Sehun, Jongin, Kris. He couldn’t get his mind past Kris. God, please, please, don’t let it be Kris. I’ve never asked for something like this before, so please grant me this wish…
He heard a voice of someone calling for Baekhyun from afar. It was a familiar voice. He knew that voice. It belonged to someone he knew better than anyone else. He began to suffocate.
“Yes, Kris hyung? Wait for a while!” Baekhyun’s voice came as muffled.
A tear fell from Chanyeol’s eyes.
***
Chanyeol felt like the whole world had turned black and the ground beneath his feet had caved in and swallowed him whole. He couldn’t feel anything, just numbness. His heart felt like it was torn into pieces, so hard until it didn’t even feel hurt anymore.
He cried. He cried so hard he was sure that each and every one of his neighbors would hear him. He cursed so loudly and he didn’t care eventhough people would hear him like that. It wasn’t as if they would understand him. It wasn’t as if they would understand the anguish he felt.
His best friend was dating the person he had a crush on, no, the person he loved. It couldn’t be anymore funny as it was.
He took the pendant that he had been wearing ever since he got it from the other man and threw it to the floor, hard. And it got opened with a soft click sound.
…A locket?
Slowly, he walked closer and crouched down to the locket. A small folded paper fell out of it, taking its place in midst of broken frames and torn photos. He took it and unfolded it, revealing a short letter.
I know that doing it like this is not gentleman-like at all. I know. But I just can’t tell it to you directly…
I love you.
I’m not expecting you to answer me directly. Don’t worry; I’m willing to wait for you.
I’ll wait for you, no matter how long it takes. Until I get tired of waiting, which might take long.
Kris
p.s: + qu'hier - que demain (i love you) more than yesterday, less than tomorrow.
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