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It’s so quiet here,
Time seems to have stopped
Yukhei finds himself with the boy. It's not just any boy, it's the one that has been taking a hold of all his thoughts, has invaded his mind. They're walking and talking about this and that, it feels normal for the most part, it's like something they’ve done time and time again.
The boy walks forward and the afternoon sun shines in his face, turning his eyes golden, Yukhei's heart lurches like it's something that he's supposed to remember. Then the Sun turns to him and blinds him.
All he hears is silence. And suddenly, the waves.
I miss you.
The sky is like a palette:
Orange sunset and dark blue night.
I'm gonna draw you again.
The taste of the salt hits Yukhei's senses before he wakes up completely, the sound of the waves hitting the shore pulls him back to consciousness.
Yukhei wakes up and as he realizes that he doesn't recognize anything about the place he's currently in he tries not to panic. The soft breeze blowing through the sheer white curtains soothes his nerves a little, and tells him that this place is much too distant from the life he's used to.
Before he looks for his phone he notices that his window overlooks the bay. The sunlight reflects on the aqua blue sea, and the palms shake with the wind. There's a little path with steps that lead to the beach, and he wonders for a moment if he planned this down to the last detail or if everything happened out of coincidence.
His duffel bag is thrown in a corner, and his phone chimes from the bedside table. He notices the key with his room number is beside it, so he grabs both and heads out to find breakfast.
He spends the day disoriented, calmly trying to enjoy his vacation, as Kun called it. Talking to his friend and senior at work didn't do much to calm this feeling of being lost. But at least he reassured him that everything back at the firm was running smoothly despite him leaving.
He still doesn't understand why he's specifically there in the first place, and it's all the more confusing when he can't even recall the name of this little seaside town. It's all he can do to hold himself back from asking the lady that brings him his coffee that afternoon where exactly is he.
By night he has calmed down enough that he vaguely remembers asking for a week-long vacation at work, storming out before he even got confirmation for it, going back home to pick his bag up, and driving without a sense of where he was actually going for six straight hours. The sea talks to him not too long after he’s descended the steps to the beach, they tell him that it’s okay, that if he stays long enough the answer will be revealed to him.
It feels like there is no one else in the world but the two of us.
So quiet that we can hear our breathing.
All the stars of the world are in you.
Yukhei walks the hallways after school hours. There’s no club today, and he is left wandering aimlessly until his mother can pick him up. He turns a corner and he doesn’t expect the sight that beholds him. A boy bathed in the afternoon sun.
However, it’s not just any boy, it’s his crush, the bubbly boy just a grade younger than him that passes by him on his way to science class every single day. Yukhei's heart is captured every time he walks by, a perfume so sweet it could be deadly, entranced by his golden eyes that seem to never look at him.
The school is empty, suspended in time, the boy turns and smiles at Yukhei and suddenly he’s at the oceanfront.
Clouds loom over him in a predatory manner. The wind blows violently, splashing salt in his eyes and making him tear up. The waves are relentless as they crash into the sand around him.
Every time he closes his eyes there are images of someone walking through the sand, he can see instances of them pushing forward, walking with difficulty. Yukhei looks downward and he can see the end of his pants wet from where he stands in the water. His name is called over and over, and before he knows it, a pair of feet reaches his vision.
Yeah okay, yesterday
The page that I read had your name
Everything is clear
I still feel like then
It’s his third night at the beach, and by now he knows the name of the town that has welcomed him with open arms. He might have not found the answers yet, but there is a sense of purpose in his steps as he descends to the beach. There is intention as he stands in the sand, watching the Sun intently as it disappears into the ocean, making it glisten and shine, daring him to follow. But he stays rooted in his place with his hands in his pockets, and he closes his eyes once the Sun is gone.
There are instances where Yukhei remembers his dreams, vivid as they are they make him feel like he really lived through them. So real that he wakes up feeling like he revisited a long-lost memory instead of making images up in his brain.
There are other times, though, when he tries to actively remember if he ever had such an experience, and the images slip through his fingers much like sand, and he’s left grasping at only feelings.
Different night, same moon
Same memories and different feelings
Are you thinking of me too?
Or are you filled by something else
It’s much like how he finds himself in his current situation.
He supposes it all happened over the course of a year or so. It was nearing June when he started noticing that around this time the enormous void inside his chest would swell and physically hurt. He had to take time off work every year because the feeling of emptiness was more than a harsh reminder that someone in his life was missing. The first few years he brushed it off as a side effect of spring coming to an end, Nature was not subtle in her ways of letting him know that he was alone.
Somehow, somewhere in July he overheard a passerby mention the legend of the Son of the Moon, and Yukhei felt his life had come to an abrupt halt, much like him on his way to work. It wasn’t until days later when he found some time to properly research about the legend, that the world started to make sense again. He remembers dreaming of days where the moon would get up early to meet the last rays of sun. Of a smile so sweet it made the fire inside his heart grow from a spark to a raging fire. Of secrets only revealed to him, whispers of unashamed young love.
The ghost of a hand holding his keeps him strong enough to brave the cold of December. But the short days turn stressful as his deadlines come up, and the feeling makes his hands twitch, uncomfortable, shake with the stress of work.
May comes back again and he feels the dread of the coming end of spring once again, knowing Nature would leave him feeling like an empty carcass. But this time it doesn’t come.
His mom calls him one day from the other side of the world where it should be so late that she should have been sleeping. She tells him she found a photograph from when he was younger, and she fondly remembers the boy Yukhei stands with, a sunny boy who smiled brightly, and who was always tender and playful.
As Yukhei continues looking for answers, buried in books of myths and legends and everything extraordinary, he cries as memories of warm skin and tender touches flood him once again.
I could never lie to myself or to you.
I'm waiting for you to come back.
Place you in the waves
And so naturally bring you closer to me
(Stay by my side)
On his fifth night, he feels a bit desperate. He fears he’s running out of time. The Sun is cold as it stares him down. How dare he leave?
Really, how could he leave when this place was the only one in the world where everything made sense, even if he wasn’t sure how? But he has a job to show up for the next day at eight in the morning sharp. And it’s already past midnight, as he loads his bag and things into his car.
Can he really drive away as when the answers he has been looking for lie there, deep enough in the sand, like they will be revealed once he converses with every single grain of sand and memorizes the order in which the stars appear once the Sun has gone to the other side of the world?
Yukhei feels diminute and stupid as he sits in his car, bathed in complete darkness. He’s trapped himself in a timeless space, where his duties and responsibilities call back to him. Yet even with the sun gone, standing by the seaside seems like the brightest place in the universe.
He doesn’t know that he can come back, or even recall the way the sea talked to him, asked him infinite things, like they had all the time in the world to get to know each other. All the questions that felt familiar in a nostalgic type of way.
He grips the steering wheel until his knuckles turn white. He turns the key, the engine refusing to start for a few seconds before it gives way and the car comes back to life. The sound disturbs the peace he had made within himself, but he turns the headlights on and drives away.
Draw your vague silhouette
On the azure surface of the ocean.
Nothing has changed.
This is where you left your scent.
On the seventh night, the waves roll back and forth aggressively. Everyone has already left, including the tourists, fearing a storm might come true. But Yukhei knows it’s time.
He knows this is the moment, that what he was waiting for, who he was waiting for, will come. The sand grabs him, keeping him in place, but he doesn’t worry for he has nowhere else he needs to be but here. Waiting.
Kun always told Yukhei to stop thinking too much and just feel. Yukhei didn't know what any of that meant until now. Far away from the bustling city and the rush of people, too caught up in their routines to even try enjoying the life they work so hard for, he understood. Kun also assured this trip was good for him, because he saw the way his eyes shone when he demanded time off to look for who was missing in his life.
Later he would understand, because the same joy and belonging would be reflected in the eyes that would look back at him.
I remember once holding your hand.
So many emotions were reflected on your face then.
All the stars of the world are in your eyes.
Every night I’m singing,
Donghyuck only laments his position once he meets Yukhei. His abilities feel like a curse when he falls in love with him.
To be someone who people forget once they fall in love with you is not something to celebrate when you meet the person who might as well be your soulmate. They only come once in a lifetime, and even through centuries of flings and fleeting romances, no one has ever made Donghyuck feel like Yukhei did with just a glance.
In all honesty, he never expected anyone to show up and make him fall in love too. It made him desperate like he had never been before, and he did all he could to preserve their precious memories together, to see Yukhei everyday and remind him that he was someone that really existed. He fought so hard, yet in the end when Yukhei graduated and moved away suddenly there was just no way of keeping the cord that united them from snapping.
I wish you were here!
After all of these years,
I wish you were, wish you were here
And he begged. Donghyuck begged the Moon for an exception, to break the spell and grant him a mortal body to be with his beloved until the end of his days.
The Moon agreed but with the condition that Yukhei had to go to him. And it was practically impossible, what with the years that had passed and the memories that had evaporated into the clouds.
But Donghyuck has never given up since that day. And every night, on that shore, he stood and waited. Turning the moonlight into a silhouette that he himself starts to forget. With it slowly getting vaguer and vaguer as the days passed, his memories faded too, bleeding into the water every time he thought about Yukhei. As if each memory had only one lifetime.
Dawn comes trying to make my heart beat faster.
You seem to think of me too.
I hear that you're singing,
It’s dark but Donghyuck has never missed a day of walking down to the beach and drawing the figure that has already lost it’s name. He wonders if it would actually be the last time he draws from the images in his mind. He walks, avoiding the dread that builds at this thought, as well as the vines that tangle at his feet.
The moment his toes touch the sand, he abruptly stops and stumbles as he is hit with an intense sense of belonging. The memories come back in vivid colors, accompanied by the sound of a name.
All of the grains of sand vibrate with excitement, clearly something has changed. He shouldn’t, but Donghyuck is hopeful as he gets to his feet and runs, tugged by the wind in the direction of the part of the beach he was forbidden from ever reaching.
I wish you were here!
After all of these years,
I wish you were, wish you were here
Someone stands there, bracing against the force of everything moving around them.
And their eyes meet.
And Donghyuck watches him fall to his knees, as if he had been floating without purpose all along and had finally found epiphany.
The man stays there, no strength in his veins as he watches Donghyuck fall in front of him.
Donghyuck cries tears of moonlight that Yukhei can now see once they are close enough. The first one runs and falls into the sand and turns it a potent shade of black. The others turn dull and wet once Yukhei's hand reaches up and touches his cheeks. The answers to everything sits in front of him, and the memories come back with a force unexpected, and Yukhei cries in rhythm when he remembers just how over the moon he was when they shared their first kiss all those years back in an unforgettable summer, with the fireworks exploding above them.
It feels like there is no one else in the world but the two of us.
So quiet that we can hear our breathing.
All the stars of the world are in you.
Sunrise comes like that, each one holding the other so closely. Not out of fear of letting go, but making up for the years that escaped them. Each second that passes makes their promise of eternity more profound.
Love is such a trivial thing, nothing compared to all that Yukhei feels for the boy in his arms. It’s nothing compared to the emotions that go beyond words in the way Donghyuck looks at him.
They found each other, amidst cloudy nights and a void so powerful it could have broken them. They won in the end, despite everything.