Chapter Text
Kim Seungmin: 25 years old, Korean
Seo Rin: 27 years old, English
Seo Changbin: 26 years old, Korean
Bang Chan: 28 years old, Korean-Austrailian
Lee Minho: 27 years old, Korean
Han Jisung: 25 years old, Korean
Hwang Hyunjin: 26 years old, Korean
Felix: 25 years old, Korean-Austrailian
I.N: 25 years old, Korean
3rd person:
The rain didn't care that it was ruining everything.
It came down hard and fast the way London rain always did — no warning, no apology — soaking through jackets and pooling in the cracks of old cobblestone streets. The kind of rain that made the city lights blur into watercolour smears of gold and white.
She was laughing.
Even now, even in the memory that would follow him for years, that was the thing that stayed. Not the cold. Not the way his hoodie was completely soaked through. Just Rin — 17 years old and completely unbothered — head tilted back, dark hair plastered to her cheeks, laughing at the sky like the rain had personally offended her and she found it hilarious anyway. Her scent was still there. Even the rain couldn't wash her scent off.
"Seungmin, come one we have to go."
But he didn't go. He stopped right there on the pavement outside the little bookshop on Marylebone High Street — the one with the green door they'd been walking past since they were ten — and he looked at her.
She turned around when she realized he wasn't following. Her smile faded just slightly at the edges — that soft confusion she always got when he went quiet on her. She took one step toward him. Then another.
"Hey," she said softly. "What's wrong?"
He shook his head. Fifteen years old and completely incapable of saying what he actually meant.
Nothing. Everything. You. The fact that in three weeks I'll be on a plane and you'll be standing exactly here without me.
Instead he closed the distance between them in two steps, and before either of them could think too hard about it. Before the rain could get worse or the moment could pass he kissed her.
Soft. Clumsy. In the way that only first kiss is.
She went still for just a second. Then she kissed him back.
Around them London kept moving — taxis splashing through puddles, someone across the street yelling into a phone. The whole city utterly indifferent to the fact that Kim Seungmin had just kissed his best friend in the rain and nothing would ever be quite the same again.
When they pulled apart her eyes were wide. Cheeks flushed red.
"Seungmin-"
"I know," he said quietly. "I know. I'm sorry."
"Don't you dare apologize."
He almost smiled at that. Almost.
She reached up and pushed the wet hair out of his eyes a gesture so familiar it made his chest ache and for one perfect, terrible moment the whole world was just the two of them standing in the rain outside a bookshop with a green door.
Then her phone buzzed in her pocket.
Then his did too.
And just like that, the moment cracked.
_________________________
Her scent. The thing her remembered. Even after 10 years
And even 10 years later, he still hadn't found the right words.
He wasn't sure he ever would.
- END OF PROLOGUE -