Chapter Text
The autumn shade of leaves ripple beneath the pool of water that has collected in the incessant downpour of the past few days. A couple trenches have formed in the uneven grounds of the graveyard. Baku keeps count of them, a mere three trenches filled with maple-orange leaves and rainwater, reflecting Baku’s face in half, as the leaf takes over his other half. He keeps looking at it, his reflection. It is a bizarre thing, how he has started pulling eye wrinkles and smile lines even though he is never completely happy at all. His eyes are striking and beautiful, people say . He has lots of recurrent customers as a part-time barista and full-time student. Who would have thought he would be studying Physical Education in college, when his father used to drone about him being nothing more than a chicken shop worker. But Sieunnie had helped. And so had Gotak, Juntae and even Suho.
Another ripple, Baku’s face distorts, the visage looking akin to a smile in the reflection. Baku is brought out of his reverie as he places a bundle of white lilies on Baekjin’s grave. Tender, soft, and a sweet smell clinging to them; something that Baku had imagined Baekjin smelled like, sitting in his little Union office, a couple of math sheets strewn about.
His eyes blur, tears fighting to linger at the rim of his eyes, because if they leave, more would follow, falling into the trench, damaging his half-hidden visage with more ripples, a testament to how his true feelings are locked in that pond and in Baku’s mind. A constricting feeling chokes his throat, but he wills to keep it inside. It's been years, he tells himself, but foolishly or even childishly, he cannot let go. This pain that takes over, only shown through half-escaped whimpers and silent tears, a sign of begging, a plea to anything to bring
him
back.
No, Baku does not care if it is impossible, because this is the only thought that keeps him going further, the unrealistic imagination of a world with him in it, by his side, in his couch, his bed, at the far corner of the coffee shop he works at, by the river on a bench as his hair splays in the wind accompanied by the sound of leaves rustling. There is a saying, distance makes the heart grow fonder and maybe Baku gets it, because why? Why does he still carry Baekjin with him wherever he goes, at the corner of his mind? Why does he seem more vivid as time passes? Baku doesn’t know, he feels a longing, and also sometimes loved by this apparition in his mind.
He is cruel to say this, but he wants to cling to this apparition and not the tombstone in front of him. His mind shamefully refuses to accept the truth in front of him, a mere monument in place of an alive and breathing boy that Baku grew up with.
In the past five years since the incident, his feelings have grown from heartbreak, desperate, pleading to longing, reminiscing, and ………even loving .