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Hands in the dirt, Mingyu was struggling to remember what it was all about.
At five years old, he told his mother it was about love. At twelve, his father took him fishing and he changed it to food. At twenty six, he wrote back to his sister telling her it was duty.
One year shy of thirty and he thought he might be making his way back to love.
He pulled his hands back out, dusted the soil off the carrots. They were so vibrantly, miraculously orange it almost brought him to tears. It got so easy these days—some sunlight, a gentle touch, an old melody, and it was enough to make him cry.
Except, when Minghao emerged from the dirt path leading out of the woods, duffel bag slung over his shoulder, Seungcheol was the one who broke first. Mingyu had his knees in the earth and a basket of vegetables by his side as he thought again of, food, duty, love.
"Hey," Seungcheol was saying, face pressed into the skin of Minghao's neck, "Myungho." His voice shook. He had one arm wrapped around the back of Minghao's waist.
Minghao's hair had grown longer in the back. Mingyu forgot it was possible to be surprised by him, to not know everything, to not be under his skin and in his lungs. The distance butchered them. He still couldn't understand what Minghao meant that day when he said I need space. By then, he was already past the point of knowing Minghao's every first, second, third thought.
He turned and looked up at the sun until his eyes stung. Minghao entered his life feather by feather, wingbeat by wingbeat. When he left, he left birdlike—quick and easy.
It was unfair that Mingyu was made the cage. Minghao walked over to him finally, bending over to place a palm against his cheek like he knew it too. "Mingyu," he said, and his voice, the way the affection carried over the syllables, was exactly the same. "I'm home."
Migration cycles. The birds always came back.
Mingyu started crying. Minghao brushed the tears away, thumbs at the edge of his eyes. Seungcheol's was rubbing over his hip.
It had never stopped being about love.
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They found him on the beach, bare feet in the sand, watching the workers in their uniforms hauling up chunks of toxicity out of the sea. An echo of Minghao's voice said 'it's over,' but his lips weren't moving. Mingyu wondered if one day he'd stop hearing Minghao altogether.
It scared him so much he reached out for Minghao's hand, lacing their fingers together. Minghao didn't turn to look at him, but he squeezed back. Talk, Mingyu thought. Tell me you can hear me.
Seungcheol stood on Minghao's other side, shoulder to shoulder, eyes set on the horizon. The sky seemed bluer than it had ever been. Look back, Mingyu thought. Look at me.
"I got this house." Mingyu had to break the silence first, even as the fear crawled up his throat, threatened to spill out his mouth. "This place in the middle of nowhere. We could start our own garden, eat all the food we plant. We could get a dog."
Minghao didn't say anything. Mingyu closed his eyes and felt the fire searing the edge of his suit, the smell of steel melting, the sound of everything splitting open.
He was a lot more certain of everything when he thought the world was still ending.
Somewhere not too far away, people were yelling. Cheering. Minghao was listening with his mouth in a hard line. Seungcheol looked away. Mingyu felt the rubber band tightening like it was his own shame. Talk, Mingyu thought again. Make it right.
But Minghao kept his lips shut, kept his eyes on the horizon, and for one horrible moment, Mingyu thought he heard the sound of him taking flight.
He grasped Minghao's hand tighter. Minghao didn't pay any mind to the pressure. Seungcheol was the one who broke the quiet next.
"Do you think someone will remember us?"
Minghao was eighteen when he told his parents he was going to fight for them. Twenty one when he couldn't do anything but watch as Haicheng was blotted out with blood. Twenty four when he met Mingyu and Seungcheol for the first time, and realised the only way out was with the three of them. Twenty eight when they faltered just short of the finish line.
Maybe history would forget. Maybe time would erase the look in Minghao's eyes. No one left to remember what he fought for except for the two of them.
Mingyu wanted to ask isn't that enough?
Finally, Minghao exhaled, loud and a little too forceful out his mouth. "Let's go back," he said.
Mingyu smiled with relief. He didn't hear the goodbye tucked underneath those words.
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Seungcheol used to prefer the cream over the peaches. Then Minghao came, and in-between the flashes of orange-pink, tart-sweet memories, passed on his fondness for peaches from his hand to Seungcheol's mouth.
Now there was always a bowl of peaches in the kitchen. Even long after Minghao's own tastes for peaches had faded, Seungcheol's hadn't. He bit into one, soft and sweet, and Mingyu felt for a second as if it was in his own hand, the juices dripping down his fingers. The sugar on his tongue.
Minghao did nothing but watch for a while, like he too had forgotten that they needed words now to understand each other. Mingyu brought his vegetables to the sink, counted the harvest for the day, and thought of how they once constructed this house in their daydreams.
Mingyu built the kitchen, picked out the colour of the tiles, the placement of the windows. Seungcheol did the bedroom, meticulously picked out the amount of pillows they would need, what kind of curtains they'd put over the windows. Minghao decorated the living room, filled the walls with pictures and art pieces, lined up their shoes by the entryway with just the right amount of care.
Did they still remember? Mingyu worried sometimes that those memories were now buried under all the struggle, under all the fighting. That he was the only one left with the good parts, the sweet parts. Some mornings Seungcheol still woke up aching, clutching at a phantom wound.
A hand reached out, grasping Mingyu's fingers under the spray of the tap. Minghao was still long and slender in all the places that counted.
"Let me tell you where I went," he said, like he was making a request. Like he knew Mingyu didn't want to hear it.
He didn't want that hole filled, that space where Mingyu and Seungcheol should've been but Minghao had left empty instead. Minghao squeezed his hand. Mingyu slipped free of Minghao's hold, shut the tap off, and gestured for him to continue.
Minghao had to take a moment to piece it together, to find the right words to explain. He began with Hong Kong, remnants of the last stand, where it ended and where it all had to start again. He walked the streets, picking up debris, learning bits and pieces of Cantonese until he could understand the jokes. Then he packed up and went to Anshan.
He went to his parents' graves and realised while he was there, telling them about how he didn't save the world, that he regretted leaving Mingyu and Seungcheol behind. That he should've asked them to go with him. But he didn't know how to ask for it, took for granted how little they needed to say to each other before, how much more they needed to communicate to make up for it after.
But he still didn't go back. He went to Australia, watched that part of the world rebuild itself, then finally stopped off at Alaska. He stayed three nights in Anchorage, under the roof of the people who stopped the world from ending, and thought the whole time about how stupid it was to be upset that it wasn't the three of them instead.
Seungcheol winced. Mingyu thought of the way his face paled right before he went down, knee first, red on his arm. How there was no blame from Minghao, just the sharp sting of disappointment.
"I never apologised for that, did I?" Minghao took the peach pit from Seungcheol's hand, kissed the sweetness off the tips of his fingers. "I'm sorry." Seungcheol shifted to put more weight on his good leg, his eyes red. Mingyu felt it in his throat, choking up on the taste of Minghao's guilt, Seungcheol's regret. "It's enough that we're here, that we're together."
Minghao turned and looked at Mingyu then. "You left," Mingyu pointed out. Minghao did not look away. "You left us." He used to get so angry, but only half of it was ever directed at Minghao. He used to agonise over his last words, how he should've went down on his knees, how he should've begged. He'd never been able to point a knife at Minghao that wasn't double-edged.
"I'm sorry," Minghao said again, hand stretched out towards Mingyu. He wished he could say it was too late, that it didn't matter anymore. "But I had to go." Mingyu thought that was probably true. He stepped forward to take Minghao's hand, hating how it felt like giving in, and how it also felt like coming home. "If I went straight to settling down and starting over with the two of you here, I would've been so… lost. So furious still."
He remembered. Right before the connection splintered—the bright, surging anger like a fire at the centre of his chest. The grief that surrounded it, the loss of something so strong it threatened to break him apart.
It wasn't that Mingyu didn't understand, he just didn't want to. He wanted them together more than he wanted the truth. He longed for the daydream, to stand at the front door of that beautiful happily ever after.
"I was always going to come back."
Some of the tension bled out of Mingyu's shoulders.
Hadn't he always known that? Hadn't that always been the case? You can step out of the drift, but some bridges, once they're formed, can't be unmade.
Seungcheol stepped closer, knocking at both their shoulders before grabbing the backs of their necks and bringing their heads forward. The three of them met in the middle a little too hard, the impact of their foreheads clacking together echoing across the kitchen.
"It doesn't matter," Seungcheol concluded. "None of it fucking matters." Minghao started to laugh. "We're here, aren't we?"
Mingyu's head was throbbing. He was struggling to keep from grinning. He told Minghao, "welcome home."
Minghao too, was more prone to tears than he used to be.