Chapter Text
VERNON
The wide plain, barren and filled with eolic towers, was his hiding spot. With his bag on his shoulder and a black compass between his fingers, Hansol kept on walking.
Physically, he knew where he was. He had came back to the United States half a year ago. His family decided to stay in Korea and he didn’t wanted to ask them to join him. The fact that he lost his life there didn’t mean that they lost theirs too and Hansol didn’t had the heart to take them away from all of what became their home.
Even when his mother insisted in going with him, because she didn’t wanted to see him alone in the country that watched her grow up, she was retained by her husband and daughter who weren’t going.
And Hansol thanked them so much. He needed to be alone.
The brunet laughed. What he least wanted was to be alone, lost and adrift. But that was all he knew since Seventeen disbanded. It was stupid, of course, because they were the ones who started arguing more and more, sunk in the anger and stress that fame –what they chased desperately –was making them feel. They were problematic and nobody wanted to work with them anymore, because the schedules always ended being interrupted by their fights and even some of them leaving the set.
It all ended when their CEO threw them out of the company. Seventeen wasn’t the heartwarming group that once debuted, and he was sick of cleaning the mess they left behind everywhere they went. And when he picked up all his stuff from the apartment and went to his parents’ house, the tight pressure in his chest became unbearable. He had made the worst decision of his life and it was too late to fix it up.
That’s why he decided to plant thousands of miles between him and the members, those twelve man who were the protagonist of the most warm memories of his youth. With them, he left behind who he once was; burying Vernon in his father’s land.
Now he answered by the name of Harry. It was the closest one to Hansol, and the name his mother confessed of wanting to call him.
He was Harry Choi. And he had never felt so empty before.
Hansol closed his eyes, letting the strong bursts of wind deafen his ears. Dreaming with an alternate reality, he squeezed the compass in his hands and saw the figure of Jihoon walking towards him, making him feel as safe as when the vocal unit leader was around.
He gave a quick glance to the object on his right hand and then threw it to the older, who catched it with ease.
Guide me again, Jihoon-hyung.
I’m begging you.