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What happens when we die? Well, Chan would have an answer for you. Destined to spin around in the endless chasm of space-time for eons has gotten pretty boring, especially when all you can really do is sit around and watch while other people get to live the life you missed out on. Sure there are some dead people he's met, one or two, but in the vastness of the universe, the chances of finding another human are unsurprisingly rare.
Chan usually kept to himself on his ventures in outer space, sometimes entertaining himself by watching stars collide and form new stars (a trial of patience and utter desensitization to time- which didn't matter much to him anymore). In the endless bounties of space, there were a million, billion, no trillion, things to keep him entertained in the afterlife. But there always seemed to be something missing.
Such is Chan's fate (one of loneliness and zooming from one galaxy to another) until he sees, from his perch on Saturn with his telescope-like eyesight (because death allows for terribly overpowered senses), a young man looking curiously up at the sky, sitting on a the edge of a building. Now, Chan isn't an idiot, centuries apart from the modern world doesn't really disengage you from human emotion- as much as his years away would like him to believe. So he zooms, like the little particle, or space dust, or whatever the hell he is, towards Earth, a place he'd vowed to keep away from.
He sits on the moon now, staring down at the man, closer to see the way starlight dances in his eyes. The man toys with a necklace around his neck, swinging his legs that hang off the building. He looks unbothered, humming a small tune to himself, one that even Chan's super hearing can't detect in the rush of the sounds around him. So much sound. From the emptiness of space, the quiet solitude that led rise to utter silence, this sound seemed like a reprieve.
Chan watches the man for a moment, or perhaps an hour, or who knows, maybe even decades, to Chan, time ebbs and flows, dances and falls, all around him. It's nothing and everything. In a moment he's spent eternity, and in eternity he's only spent mere seconds. And yet, when the man looks up, his eyes fixed at the spot on the moon where Chan sits- time stops.
His gaze is soft, contemplative as he stares at Chan, paralyzing him in a moment of utter weakness. Chan looks back, takes the moment to memorize every part of the man's face. To Chan, who's had forever to see things, to understand things, to know things with such detail and precision, when the man turns away, it feels like a crack has formed in the entirety of space itself.
Perhaps that's what leads him to zoom to Earth, to a spot behind the man. Chan takes the moment to feel, something he's long since forgotten to do. The slight breeze in the air, something he hadn't felt in years, the odd feeling of gravity holding you down, keeping your feet planted to the ground, there's only one way to fall. Chan lets his eyes leave the silhouette of the man in front of him, allows himself to look around at the light that blinds his eyes (after looking straight at stars, Chan should be immune to the puny LEDs, but alas, not everyone is invisible to modern technology).
"You're here," The man says and it drags Chan's attention back to him. Chan listens, waiting for the man to say more. "Well?" The man says again and Chan moves closer to him, feeling utterly too heavy. He knows how this works. His previous ventures on Earth eons before this have given him too much knowledge of his invisibility. Part of why he'd left and vowed never to come back. It's better to have no hope for attention than be the only one not getting it.
"I'm sure you have something to say," The man says again and for a hopeful moment, Chan thinks he's talking to him. Closer now, moving his heavy body up so he can sit next to the man, Chan turns his attention to the view in front of him. Breath catching. After sitting on planets and comets, sights like these should be mere child's play, but it was still breathtaking. Down below, cars fly by, little lights zooming away, there are ant-like people walking together in clumps- if Chan wanted too, he could look at each and every one of them individually, see their smiling faces. A little higher from the ground and his view is taken away by the large glass windows, little lights shining from the panes, more people. So many people. More than he'd seen in forever.
"Do you like it?" The man asks. Chan turns his head to look at the man, almost falling off the ledge as their eyes make contact. The man looks straight at him, too directly for Chan to brush it off as a coincidence. "I don't have all day." The man frowns at him, sharp nose inches away from Chan's own face.
Chan's throat itches, his mouth opens as he tries to form words he hasn't spoken since eternity. He can't speak, though noise leaves him, he doesn't even know what he'd say. He waits for the man to say something, "You're back here," he mutters, sounding angry at Chan. He scoffs, turns his attention to the scene in front of him, legs swinging faster now, "You're here after who knows how long, and you have nothing to say."
Chan's mind runs orbits, thinking hard as he tries to understand the man. "What?" he manages, voice as cocky as rust, but it's something.
The man chuckles, "How many years, Chan?" He turns to look at Chan again, soft smile on his face now, the mentions of anger that were there moments ago gone.
Chan tilts his head, forever since he's spoken, forever since he's heard his name on someone else's lips. At Chan's silence, once again, the man talks for him, "Gods, I can't even count it, I find myself in a million different bodies, at some point," he laughs again, sadly and Chan, for some reason, wants to envelope him in his warmth, feed him some of the burning flames he's touched. "Well, at some point, I guess, it ceased to matter."
Chan clears his throat, grating out, "What do you mean?"
The man closes his eyes, hands on the ledge, head tilting up towards the sky, "You promised me, however many years ago, 'To the moon and back', remember?"
Chan shakes his head, the phrase doesn't strike a chord in him, no sudden memory resurfaces. "No?" One word answers, basic sentences were the best he could give. It was unfair, that after longing to hold a conversation for years, this was the best he could get.
The man drops his head, turning so he could look at him, "So I'm forced to remember," he says, sighing, "And you have the luxury to forget."
Chan shakes his head, wondering what memories of his the other man had. "Give me your hand," the man holds his own out, palm small and fragile. Chan hesitantly reached his own hand, placing it on the man's; joy, confusion, anxiety reached him as their skin touched. One made of cells, sinew, blood, the other made of stardust and particles. The first touch Chan had had in years and it felt like it was made perfectly for it. It had been centuries since Chan considered something to be "home" but perhaps this was it.
"Do you trust me?" The man asks, Chan nods. An innate urge to trust. Something deep inside him, something that adhered to no laws of humanity, whispered that yes was the only answer. "Go wherever your heart takes you."
Chan tilts his head in confusion, he didn't have a traditional heart. Or so he believed. When you die, you leave those parts of you behind. When you die, well, you're nothing but matter in endless space. Still, at the other man's slight nod of assurance, Chan closed his eyes. Behind his eyelids, rose swirling galaxies, and endless blackholes, and dashes of a million colors. The feeling of the gentle breeze around them, the heart-pounding feeling of sitting miles above the ground dissipated.
The other man's laugh rings crystal clear in his ears and Chan opens his eyes, feet on solid ground. Their hands are intertwined, and the man doesn't let go as he drags Chan towards a wooden table, piled with knick-knacks and gizmos. Chan takes the moment, while the other man hesitantly touches the gadgets, to look around at where they were. A small dusty shack, made entirely of wood, so small that their presence shrunk the room a half.
"Do you remember this?" The man asks, turning back to Chan. The stars had seemingly found their way back in his eyes. They shimmered with curiosity as the man pointed at an old model of the solar system. Little balls of varying sizes and colors, set on sticks that, when the man pushed them, spun around in their own orbit.
"No," Chan confesses, staring at the spinning balls in wonder.
The man frowns, letting out a rough sigh, "Do you know where we are, at least?"
Chan shakes his head, reaching out his hand to spin the model once more, watching the spheres whizz around. "You never change," the man mutters, the annoyance in his voice contrasted with fondness.
"Channie," the man snatches his free hand, moving them so Chan was forced to look at him (forced being an overstatement because the man was perhaps the prettiest thing in the entire universe- much more interesting than the trash around them).
"Why did you bring us here?" The man asks, squeezing Chan's palms as if that would coax the answer out of him.
Chan swallows dry, forcing his mind to supply an answer, give him something, anything. "It's where my heart took us?" He says weakly, cracking a smile to make it obvious that was a joke- even if that was the only answer he had.
The man rolls his eyes, pulling a hand away from Chan's to curl it into a fist and tap it gently against Chan's head, "No, idiot," he says, waving his free hand around them, "Why here? You must know it's special to us. Why here?"
Chan swallows again, looking around once more, noting the dust particles flying around them, the heavy weights of the gadgets on the table, "Because..." Chan begins, finding scrolls buried under the tools, ink scrawled over them reading unintelligibly. A memory comes to him in an instant. Something small, nothing completely shattering. Just an image of the man, ink splattered across his cheek, writing on the parchment. Chan seems to be sitting right next to him, marveling at his features, his concentration as he furiously writes some findings.
The image disappears. "Something?" The man asks hesitantly, placing a hand on Chan's cheek, "Did you see something?"
Chan pushes away the feeling that arises when he feels a thumb caress his cheek, instead answering, "We used to work together."
The man chuckles, patting Chan's cheek, before bringing his hand up to run a hand through his hair, "Close," He mutters, "We used to live together. Here."
Chan allows himself to laugh. Going from vastness to the cramped space he was in now was a struggle, even if it was for just a couple minutes, living here? Well, that just seemed impossible.
"We enjoyed it," the man says, reading Chan's thoughts, "Just us and our little shack and our instruments that let us see the universe above us. Now you get to go and enjoy that all on your own, isn't that right?"
Chan shakes his head. He's still unable to comprehend what's going on. "When you'd died," The man says suddenly, voice somber. Chan looks at him, really looks. He sees wetness pooling in the bottom of the other man's eyes, sees him blink it away, "I had no idea what to do. I still don't. You died, and then I did, but then I woke up again."
Chan lets the man continue, his gaze never once leaving the man's crumpling face, "I woke up again and again and again, each time somewhere else, as someone else. And I thought- well, all our mythologies told me that you'd be waking up right there with me. So, I searched for so long. I kept on searching even when I knew you weren't there. And to find you again, to see you after I'd never given up hope..."
The man finally breaks, and sobs leave him in hiccups. Chan panics, he does the first thing that comes to mind, the easiest thing. He pulls the other man into a hug, crushing their chests together. Their heads fit perfectly in the dips of their shoulders and Chan thinks this is where he belongs, all the years searching for something in the universe, and here it was.
"I'm sorry," He mutters, soothing a hand over the other man's back.
"For what?" The man chokes out, bringing a coiled fist half-heartedly down to smack Chan's chest, "For leaving me for so many years? You better be."
Chan laughs, "For forgetting when you remember."
The man groans, "I take back what I said. It's worse for you to forget."
"Why?"
The man looks up, bringing his wet face off Chan's chest, "Because remembering is what kept me going, it sure hurt like a bitch, but it's what kept me going back to finding you."
Chan nods slowly, "Maybe you can help me remember?"
The man smiles, sniffles, and then frowns, "Do you even remember my name?"
Chan's breath catches, guilty as charged. He stumbles for an excuse, opening his mouth, but the name slips out easily, "Lee Minho."
The man, Minho, smiles, wide and brighter than all the stars. "Well, Channie, I might just take you up on that offer."