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Kihyun’s world goes dark. When they aren’t beside him, there is nothing but endless night stretching on, and on, and on in front of him. But sometimes he's right there beside them - there as they're thinking about him, missing him - and in those moments he is truly with them again.
“It wasn’t your fault,” he tells Minhyuk. And it wasn’t. Or, maybe it was, but it doesn't matter either way. Visions of the crash come and go. Sometimes it’s like he is watching the van roll down over the cliff in slow motion, and sometimes he lives it: the smell of burning rubber, the sound of Minhyuk’s pained voice, loud, begging with him to open his eyes.
He would give anything to have opened his eyes for Minhyuk – Minhyuk who he loved so much and so fiercely, who sleeps in the van alone now – but he couldn’t. He didn’t. And it’s too late, now.
All six of them miss him in varying degrees. He marvels at this, watching their faces closely, wondering why. He feels selfish for it, but part of him is scared that they’ll stop thinking about him at all.
--
Kihyun likes to spend time with Hyungwon, because Hyungwon’s grieving is quiet. He is the first of all of them to accept that Kihyun has left them behind: it comes one evening as he sits alone. Or, not alone – Kihyun is there with him, too. And he’s thinking about Kihyun and about the way things have changed since the crash. He is thinking about Minhyuk, who he hasn't seen in days. He is thinking about the ball of fire that is Jooheon’s anger and the rolling mist that is Hyunwoo’s. He is thinking about Hoseok’s sadness and Changkyun’s desperate attempts to lead them through it all from behind. The youngest of them, trying to stitch them back together again.
He thinks that Kihyun would be disappointed in them, but he’s wrong. Kihyun would never - could never - find disappointment in the way they choose to grieve. He’s just disappointed they have a reason to grieve at all.
If only he could have found the strength to open his eyes.
--
Sometimes Kihyun thinks Changkyun might truly know that he is still with them in his own secret way, because his vision is brightest when Changkyun is next to him.
So Kihyun lays a hand on his shoulder and allows Changkyun to lead him through the world he no longer really belongs to. Changkyun’s strides are confident, and Kihyun never stumbles if he stays beside him, and he is thankful - so thankful - for his company.
He tells him this, as they walk together, but Changkyun doesn’t hear him. Still, it’s nice to speak aloud, to use his voice, even if he is talking into the void that separates him from those he still loves.
(Who still love him.)
--
Hyunwoo is a connoisseur in the art of blaming himself. He always has been, ever since they began this journey. Every single flat tyre on the van, every storm and every scrape he's taken as his own responsibility. Hyunwoo has been simmering under the surface for years, blaming himself for all sorts of things beyond his control.
He can’t blame himself for Kihyun’s death, if only because Minhyuk has claimed that right so passionately, so Hyunwoo gives himself something else to blame himself for in the fresh blood on Minhyuk’s split lip.
And then he walks away and simmers some more.
Minhyuk says, “I enjoyed that,” to no one in particular as he sits down on the grass, even though Kihyun can almost feel the pain in his jaw from the other side, where he won’t feel his own pain ever again. Kihyun wants to scold him and tell him not to be so reckless, but it’s too late for that, so instead he holds him close and wipes the tears from his face. He kisses the blood from Minhyuk’s mouth and he is almost sure he can taste the metallic bite to it, but he can’t. He tastes nothing because there is nothing to taste – the blood remains on Minhyuk’s lips, unkissed.
Kihyun may still be there, but he isn’t present, not really.
(He couldn’t open his eyes.)
--
Hoseok mourns for a long time. Hoseok mourns Kihyun himself, but he also mourns the unity they once so strongly felt. The unity that was theirs and theirs only, the seven of them.
Six is an even number, Hoseok knows, but it feels odd. It feels wrong. He doesn’t like change, and he doesn’t like life without Kihyun, and he tells this to Hyungwon, as they drift towards sleep. Kihyun doesn’t mean to listen, but it’s what he is best at now, and he is sure they wouldn’t mind.
“I can’t believe he is gone,” Hoseok whispers carefully, so not to wake up Changkyun. “I try to believe it, but I can’t.”
Hyungwon shrugs. “Then try harder,” he says. And he isn’t being cruel or harsh or heartless, just honest. Kihyun appreciates it, and he can tell that Hoseok does too. “Now close your eyes and go to sleep.”
Kihyun smiles and pretends that Hyungwon is talking to him. And then he loses them all to the darkness for a while.
--
When he finds them again, he’s with Jooheon.
Jooheon who shouts until his throat is hoarse. Jooheon who brandishes razor edged words and points them at Minhyuk’s chest.
And Kihyun understands. He, too, is the owner of a sharp tongue, always his weapon of choice. “Minhyuk doesn’t stand a chance against you,” Jooheon told him once. “You’re too quick.”
Kihyun had laughed, proudly. “He’s a good sparring partner, sometimes,” he’d said. “But I always win.”
Minhyuk isn’t a good sparring partner now, because he doesn’t argue back. He doesn’t answer Jooheon’s “what” or his “how” or his “why didn't you save him?” and this only serves to make Jooheon ask more.
“You can’t demand answers from someone who doesn’t know themselves,” Kihyun tells him as they walk between the tallest trees. “And, anyway, answers won’t bring me back, will they?”
Jooheon thinks he is alone, of course he does, but he himself imagines conversations with Kihyun as he walks. Imagines asking, “Why shouldn’t we hate him?”
“Because he loves you all, just like I do,” Jooheon imagines Kihyun would reply. And he’d win the argument, as always, because it’s true.
--
Minhyuk returns to their fold slowly.
Jooheon stops asking questions. Hyunwoo extends his hand and not his fist. Changkyun guides them on their path and Hoseok starts to think of six as an even number after all, and then there is Hyungwon, who reminds them gently of the truth: Kihyun isn’t there anymore and nothing can take that back.
Kihyun sees them all less and less, now, but that is okay. They don’t need him so much. They need each other.
--
“Forgive yourself and they’ll forgive you,” Kihyun whispers to Minhyuk one night as he sleeps in the van by himself. He takes Minhyuk’s hand as he says it and is almost convinced that he can feel its warmth, the weight of it and the contrast he always loved between the soft, soft skin in the centre of his palm and the roughness of his fingertips.
It’s times like this that he misses being alive.
“Please open your eyes,” Minhyuk murmurs from somewhere inside a dream, and Kihyun wishes he could, wishes he’d found the strength to open his eyes that day so much that it hurts more than anything has before.
--
When Minhyuk moves back in with them, properly, Kihyun watches their tentative reunion with amusement.
They’re polite, and they’re quiet and it’s not them.
“We’re being so stupid. We’ve been so stupid,” Changkyun says, as Jooheon bites his lip nervously and Hoseok offers Minhyuk a tentative smile.
“If Kihyun was here right now, he’d be laughing at us,” their youngest continues with a shake of his head. He catches Kihyun’s eye for the briefest of moments, and Kihyun wonders if Changkyun really has been more aware of his presence than Kihyun even realised.
Collecting the lights takes them a long time, but Kihyun is patient, and when they do, when they’re arranged in their glorious formation, the forest alight with hope for their future, and for his, Kihyun knows that it’s time for him to leave them be.
He kisses Minhyuk one last time and wills only good memories of him to return to Minhyuk’s dreams - to all of their dreams, should they dream about him at all.
And then he takes a deep breath and opens his eyes, and he can see again: the earth and the water and the sky above them, and it’s perfect, just like them.