Try To Remember (6/7)
Dec. 20th, 2013 09:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sparklepox It feels like a long time, though it's probably less than thirty seconds, before Lu Han gets himself under control. He still feels overwhelmed by all the information and emotion that's been dumped on him, not to mention incredibly confused about what all this means, but at least he can stand on his own two feet and pay attention to the world around him. "Sorry," he manages to say, his voice sounding shaky and strange. "I don't know what happened."
He's guided over to the couch and some of his friends want to take him to the hospital, but he insists that he's fine. "I just got dizzy for a second," he lies. "I'm okay. I probably didn't eat enough today or something."
It takes some insisting, but finally his friends accept that he's okay, and after they've forced some juice on him, he finally gets to be introduced to Minseok. "Sorry," Lu Han says. "I'm not usually like this." It's hard, looking Minseok in the eye and pretending his mind isn't bursting with memories of him, and resisting the urge to pull him in a tight hug because it feels like he's missed him terribly even though they've never met before.
"Don't worry about it," Minseok says. His accent is strong and he speaks slowly, thinking his way through the sentence, but he's understandable. "It'll make you..." He stops, searching for the word. "Memorable?"
"Memorable is right," Yixing says with a smile.
Lu Han is glad when they start the movie so he can sit quietly and process everything he has in his head right now. Even after years of dreams, covering so many versions of himself and Minseok in so many different situations, it still feels like he's had a huge amount of new information dumped on him. Even the parts that are familiar feel different now, with Minseok just at the other end of the couch from him, flesh and blood and real and exactly how Lu Han remembers him even though they've never met.
He manages, somehow, to keep from telling Minseok or anyone else what's in his head, and if he's acting weird, his friends just shrug it off, saying he's always a little strange. Minseok doesn't seem bothered, smiling a little shyly when Lu Han talks to him and doing his best to answer. It's good to see him, really good, but also confusing and kind of scary, so Lu Han's relieved when it's time for him to head home.
Back in his own apartment, he lies on his bed and stares at the ceiling for hours, sorting through his memories and feelings and trying to make sense of the fact that Minseok, who he's dreamed about for so many years, really exists. Though all his instincts told him that was the case, there's a part of Lu Han that always doubted it, that thought maybe he was just delusional. Now he knows he's not, but that only raises a million new questions.
He doesn't come to any conclusions that night, about what this means or about what to do, and life isn't going to wait for him to do that, so he just muddles on. Minseok continues to join in a lot of his friends group's activities, and Lu Han is glad to have an excuse to see him but also frustrated. It's hard, not acting overly familiar with Minseok, not talking about the memories Lu Han has of him or expecting him to remember things that didn't happen in this life.
And it's clear, soon enough, that Minseok doesn't remember, unless he's extremely good at pretending. He's friendly to Lu Han, but no more than he is to the rest of the group, no more than would be expected of a new friend. No matter how much Lu Han tries to talk himself out of it, it hurts, meeting the eyes of the person he's been half in love with for years (and even more so now) and seeing nothing special there.
He doesn't know what to do. He can't avoid Minseok now that they hang out with the same people, and he doesn't want to anyway, not really. But it's hard to be around him, and Lu Han isn't that good at pretending so he's afraid it's only a matter of time before he slips and makes not only Minseok but all his university friends think he's nuts. It's tiring, worrying about that, and he wishes he could just be a normal guy.
And he does slip, though it's only little things at first. Smiling at Minseok and expecting him to understand a reference or inside joke that he doesn't. Mentioning an experience he hasn't had in this life. Those can be brushed off easily enough, because Minseok's Mandarin is still basic enough that he often doesn't understand things, and none of Lu Han's friends here know everything about his life before university.
But then one day, after not even a month, he has one drink too many and slips up badly. He's sitting next to Minseok, coincidentally, and they're all laughing and having a good time. Minseok turns in his direction, probably for no particular reason, and they share a smile, and then before Lu Han can remind himself that things aren't like that between them, he's leaned forward and pressed his lips to Minseok's.
He remembers, a few seconds too late, and pulls away so fast he falls off the couch, but there's no way to take it back. Minseok is staring at him, shocked and confused. All of Lu Han's friends are staring at him too.
"I, um..." he starts. It doesn't have to give everything away. That he likes men sometimes, yes, and that he likes Minseok, but given that some of his friends don't look all that surprised, maybe they already suspected that. But what comes out of his mouth is, "I'm sorry. I forgot."
"Forgot?" Minseok echoes, and Lu Han isn't sure if he doesn't understand the word or if he doesn't understand why Lu Han is using it when it makes no sense.
"What did you forget," Yifan asks, "that it's weird to suddenly kiss a guy friend like it's nothing?"
"No," Lu Han says. "Wait, yes." He's all mixed up and not nearly sober enough to explain himself well, which is to say to come up with a good lie. "I didn't mean to."
"You didn't mean to what, exactly?"
He looks around at his friends' faces and he can see the judgment, and that hurts a lot more than it hurt to pretend. "I..." he tries. And maybe he slips again, or maybe he's just been holding too much in for too long, but suddenly he finds himself saying, "I have these dreams. I see you, all the time. I saw you, long before I ever met you, over and over again. That's why I recognized you the first time, and today, I just...I forgot, that it's not real, that I never kissed you here before."
He's talking to Minseok, only to Minseok, even with everybody else around, but he's also talking too fast, his words tumbling out almost on top of each other, and Minseok obviously can't keep up. Everyone else in the room can, though, and they're looking at Lu Han the way he's always feared people would, like there's something wrong with him.
"What do you mean you recognized him?" Yixing asks. "You said you used to know a guy with that name: you don't mean you met Minseok before?"
"I, well..." Maybe he could lie, say that's what he meant, but Minseok is frowning and he's likely to deny it if Lu Han tries. Besides, when would he have met Minseok before? He's never been to Korea in this life, and this is Minseok's first time in China.
"You said...dreams?" Minseok asks slowly, frowning. "About me?"
Lu Han is caught, unable to look away from his questioning gaze. He doesn't look disturbed yet, but he looks confused, and it's only a matter of time. "Yes," Lu Han admits, feeling helpless. "Since I was a kid."
"That doesn't make sense. We've never met. Right?"
"No," Lu Han agrees. He finally tears his eyes away from Minseok's and looks down at the ground.
"You're not making any sense," Yifan cuts in impatiently. "You had dreams about Minseok since you were a kid even though you've never met him and because of those dreams, you thought it was okay to kiss him now? What, were you guys madly in love in your dreams?"
Yes, Lu Han thinks miserably. Not always, not exactly, but they were, and this time everything is going wrong.
"Are you joking?" Yifan presses. "Because it's not funny."
"I'm not joking," Lu Han snaps, misery suddenly turning to anger. He gets to his feet and meets Minseok's eyes again, defiant. "You can think I'm crazy, and maybe I am, but I remember you, and a lot more, and I love you. I've already loved you many times over. And even though you don't remember me, if you got to know me better, I know you could love me too."
And then he turns on his heel and runs out of the apartment, ignoring the voices calling after him.
The next day, Lu Han turns off his phone and hides in his apartment. He has classes the next day, but he keeps hiding, afraid of what will happen if he stops. The third day, when he's thinking he'll have to venture outside for food if nothing else, someone bangs on his door in the afternoon. When he doesn't answer, a voice he recognizes as Yifan's yells, "Open the door, Lu Han! You can't hide in there forever."
"Yes, I can," Lu Han says, but not loud enough to be heard outside his apartment.
Yifan bangs on the door again, even more emphatically, and against his better judgment, Lu Han gets up and opens the door. He's alone, which is a relief. One person is easier to face, and at least it's not the person he least wants to see. He's afraid to find out how Minseok would look at him now that he's probably had what Lu Han said explained to him.
He awkwardly invites him in, and they sit down before Yifan says, "What was that all about? The dreams and being in love with a guy you barely even know. Since when are you even into guys?"
"Since..." Lu Han frowns. He doesn't know how to explain, when clearly his dreams and memories are something no one else understands. "For as long as I can remember."
"But you had a girlfriend," Yifan points out, like that's the most important thing here.
"Yeah." It'll only be digging the hole deeper, but there doesn't seem to be a point in pretending to be normal anymore, so Lu Han says, "You won't get it and you probably won't believe me, but I've been in love with Minseok for as long as I can remember, even before I knew his name and his face."
"You're right," Yifan says bluntly. "I don't get it."
"Maybe I am crazy," Lu Han says, "or some kind of freak, but I'm telling you, I know him. Not here, not like this, but I've known him before and I've been in love with him every time."
"What do you mean every time? There's only here."
The worst part is that Lu Han can't explain it because he doesn't understand either. He doesn't know where his dreams come from. He doesn't know if those lives he remembers really happened or not. All he knows is that somehow, impossibly, inexplicably, he knew Minseok before he met him, and he has these feelings he can't explain for him.
"I've had dreams," he starts. "Since I was a kid. Weird dreams, about all kinds of places and things. And there's a person, in almost all of those dreams, and I never knew who it was until last year. Then I finally figured out a name and a face and it was Minseok. You saw how I reacted the first time I saw him, and when Yixing first mentioned his name too."
"I thought you were just messing around." Yifan is frowning now too, or maybe just making that vaguely-displeased face that's his natural expression.
"I wasn't. What kind of weird joke would that be?"
Yifan's frown deepens. "But that's not possible."
"Tell me about it." Lu Han almost laughs, except that talking to someone about this is terrifying. Even when he told his teacher, he didn't talk about Minseok, about the feelings that went with his apparent memories. "I don't know how or why or anything. All I know is what's in my head and I'm not making it up."
It's obvious Yifan doesn't know what to do with this, and Lu Han can't blame him. He's had a lot longer to get used to the idea and he's still lost. "You really freaked Minseok out," he says, settling on something simpler to talk about. "First you kiss him out of the blue, then you start going on about how you know him and you're madly in love with him. He didn't really understand it all, but we explained it after and it was really awkward."
"I'm sorry," Lu Han tells his feet.
"I told Yixing it's probably better not to bring him around when we all get together for a while," Yifan continues, and something about that strikes Lu Han as odd.
"Wait, what?" When Yifan shoots him a confused look, he adds, "You mean you don't...shouldn't it be me you don't want around?"
Yifan flashes him a small smile. "We talked about it," he says. "And we decided that even if you're a total weirdo, you're our friend, and we shouldn't drop you just like that. I like Minseok and I'll be happy to hang out with him, but we're not going to start leaving you out because you make him uncomfortable." Then, after a moment's thought, he adds, "You're not going to start saying you know me, are you? Or you're in love with me?"
When he thinks about it, he does have a vague feeling of familiarity, like Yifan is somewhere in the huge pile of memories in his head, but he can't put a finger on it, and it's nothing like with Minseok. "It's just him," Lu Han assures him. "There are other people in my dreams, but it's only Minseok that's so...strong, I guess. And there's no one else that I feel like that about." He thinks about his girlfriend, about his high school crush and the people he slept with, and it's entirely truthful to add, "There never has been."
"I really don't get it," Yifan says. "I probably never will. And...honestly, I think you should get your head checked out some time. But we've all got weird things about us, right?"
Lu Han can't help the relieved smile that breaks over his face, even though it makes Yifan look embarrassed. It's such a relief. "Thank you," he says fervently, and doesn't care when Yifan rolls his eyes.
Some of Lu Han's friends are more uncomfortable with what happened than others, and in time the group somewhat fragments because of it, but the important thing is that Lu Han doesn't lose all his friends, that there are still people who are willing to be his friends even though he talks what they think is nonsense when it comes to Minseok. He's very grateful for that.
On the other hand, Minseok no longer comes to hang out with them when Lu Han is around. Lu Han feels guilty for driving him away, and hurt and sad and a lot of other things he tries to keep to himself, though he's not always good at it. He knows he has no right or reason to expect anything from Minseok, but it's still hard sometimes to remember that.
He does his best to respect Minseok's feelings, to stay away until such time as he decides he's okay with being around Lu Han again, if he ever does. But Minseok's only there for one semester, and all too soon, the end of that time approaches. He's going to be going back to Korea and maybe Lu Han will never have another chance to see him. He was willing to be patient as he waited to meet Minseok, but it's quite another thing to accept that his chance is gone and he'll have nothing but his memories for the rest of his life.
He doesn't say anything about it, but two weeks before the end of the semester, Yixing mentions to Lu Han that he and Minseok will be in a dance showcase, in a casual-but-really-not sort of tone. "I can get you a ticket, if you want," he offers.
Lu Han ends up going, only a week before the semester ends, with Yifan as a buffer and to tell him he's being an idiot when he gets too freaked out (though he says he's just there to see Yixing perform). He hardly sees the performances, though he keeps his eyes pointed in the direction of the stage, except when Minseok comes out and Lu Han sees him and no one else. He's a good dancer; Lu Han remembers that he is, and not because Yixing told him.
At the end, Lu Han is tempted to run away, but Yifan insists that they should go say hi. "This might be your last chance," he says. "Assuming you even have a chance, but are you going to pass that up?"
The dancers are coming out a side door, and they only have to wait a few minutes before Yixing emerges. He greets them enthusiastically and Yifan tells him he did well as if he knows the first thing about dancing, but Lu Han can't really focus for the painfully long minute or two before Minseok appears in the door. He comes over to them, only hesitating for a moment when he sees Lu Han there.
"Nice job tonight," Yifan tells him.
"You were great," Lu Han adds. His voice doesn't shake, but it comes out very small and he feels pathetic.
"Thanks for coming!" Minseok smiles at Yifan, and very briefly at Lu Han, who flinches and looks away. He'd hoped, maybe, that it would be easier to see Minseok now, but time apart has only made it harder to deal with everything he feels.
"You've only got a week left here, right?" Yifan asks. "Are you glad you came?"
"Yeah, I had a really good time." His Mandarin has gotten a lot better, Lu Han notes, and he sounds comfortable talking to Yifan.
"Don't leave without saying goodbye, okay?" Yifan says, and Minseok nods.
There's a few beats of silence and Lu Han tells himself it's now or never. "Are..." he starts, forcing himself to look at Minseok, but the answer to any question he could ask is obvious in the way Minseok won't meet his eyes. "Enjoy your last week in Beijing," he manages to squeeze out.
"Thanks," Minseok says, and at least it sounds genuine.
A guy Lu Han doesn't recognize calls Yixing's name, and he waves at him before telling Lu Han and Yifan, "We're going to get dinner with some of the guys. I'll see you around?"
"Sure thing," Yifan says.
Yixing and Minseok turn to go, and this is it, but Lu Han finds himself saying, "Wait!" They stop and turn back, and he says, "Just...one minute. Please." He doesn't look at Minseok, but they all know who he's talking to.
"Okay," Minseok says. He nods at Yifan and Yixing, who fall aside to let them have a moment alone.
"If I..." Lu Han starts, struggling to get words out. "If I hadn't done it like that, if we'd gotten to know each other instead of me kissing you out of the blue and then spouting crazy talk...would I have had a chance?" He doesn't know which answer will hurt less, but he needs to know, one way or another. It's looking like this is all the closure he's going to get.
"I have a girlfriend," Minseok says, almost apologetic but not quite. Why should he be? He doesn't owe Lu Han anything. "Back in Korea. She's been waiting for me."
And there it is. Even if he'd been patient and taken his time to get to know Minseok, this Minseok, and to let Minseok get to know him, even if he'd kept his mouth shut about his dreams and everything that comes with them, nothing would've happened because he never had a chance in the first place. It hurts like a punch to the stomach, but the truth is, as much as he loves Minseok in his memories, he also remembers losing him again and again. Maybe he should've seen it coming. "Oh," is all he can find to say.
"I have to go," Minseok tells him. "Everyone's waiting for me."
"Right," Lu Han says. "I, um...see you around?" Except that while Yixing meant it, he doesn't really, and he's sure Minseok doesn't either when he replies, "See you," before heading off to join his friends.
Yixing goes with him, and Yifan comes back over to Lu Han. He doesn't say anything, but there's a question in his eyes, so Lu Han says, "He has a girlfriend in Korea. He had someone this whole time so I never had a chance."
Yifan looks over at where Minseok and the others are disappearing into the distance, and then back at Lu Han. "I get that he's the man of your dreams, literally, but there are a lot of people in the world. It's not like this is it for you. It'll be better, finding someone you can start out on equal footing with, so you can fall in love together. Right?"
"Sure," Lu Han agrees without meaning it. He does remember others, vaguely, but it's always Minseok at the center, and this time, especially, when he's spent so many years dreaming of finding his soulmate, how can he settle for second best?
It takes twelve years and a lot of ups and downs, but Lu Han does eventually find second best. She's not Minseok, and as much as he'd like to he can never entirely forget that, but he does love her, he thinks, and with her sleeping beside him, he doesn't dream much anymore.
19
Since he was too young to even begin to understand, Lu Han has remembered lives he's never lived. That's what everyone tells him they are, anyway, because it shouldn't, can't be possible that he truly lived through everything he remembers. They're not even past lives, because he's almost always still Lu Han, even if he's sometimes a very different Lu Han.
When he's a kid, his parents and other adults smile tolerantly and say what a vivid imagination he has, and Lu Han doesn't think it's strange, but the older he gets, the more he understands that he's not supposed to be like this.
It's a hard thing to realize. He's fifteen when he asks his mother, "Am I crazy?" for the first (but not the last) time. He doesn't feel crazy, but his memories are so vivid, so real, and everyone insists that it's not possible that they are. If that's the case, then doesn't that mean there's something wrong with him?
"You're not crazy," his mom reassures him. "You just need to always remember what's real and what isn't."
He tries. He really does. He tells himself that he's Lu Han and no one else, that he was born in Beijing and has lived here for fifteen years, no more and no less. He's never died, never seen someone else die. He's never been in love and never had his heart broken, and the person he thinks he loved (and still loves and will always love) has never existed.
(He searches the internet for "Kim Minseok" sometimes, in every language and with every spelling variation he can think of, and several people come up, but none of them are his Minseok. It's probably that more than anything else that makes him think he really must be crazy, because how can he love someone who isn't even real?)
He learns to fake it, more than anything else. He learns to keep straight what was in this life and what wasn't and never mention anything that happened only in his impossible memories, to never talk about things he isn't supposed to know. And he learns to pretend to be a normal young man interested in normal relationships even though he's sure he'll never be able to give his heart to anyone when it feels like it's belonged to someone else for uncountable years.
It works, for a while. He gets good at pretending, so good he almost manages to convince himself that he's normal sometimes. But he's not and never has been, and sometimes the weight of all those memories seems like too much for any one person to carry, especially since he can't talk to anyone about them. There's so much pain in his memories, and there's joy too, but even that is too much sometimes, too intense.
When he's twenty-six, it finally overwhelms him. He's been holding too much in and his mind cracks under the strain. He stops going to work and sits in his apartment and cries his eyes out. After three days of that, two friends from work come to check on him, and he's too exhausted to care about them seeing him like this as he tells them in a broken voice that he just wants to die so it'll all go away.
That's how he ends up in the mental health facility with people who hear voices or see things that aren't there or have tried to kill themselves. "It's for your own good," his parents say, and they're probably right since he can barely function right now, but he doesn't know what this place can do for him. No one's been able to fit a mental health diagnosis to him before, or find a way to fix him.
At first, they're mostly concerned with making sure that he eats and showers and doesn't try to kill himself, but as soon as he's a little more stable, they start trying to fix him. "I don't understand," he tells the therapist the first time. "I know it's impossible that my memories are real, but they're so detailed and they feel as real as any of my actual memories. I remember things I've never seen clearly, the way they really are, and I know things there's no way I could know. How is that possible?"
The conclusion the professionals come to is that he's built an elaborate delusion, taking information he found online or learned from other people and convincing himself it comes from firsthand experience. Lu Han doesn't buy it. As far back into his childhood as his memory goes, he had these memories. That would be a very elaborate delusion for a three year old. And yet he has no better explanation of his own, except that it's real, and he doesn't see how it can be.
He's been there for a week when he sees an unfamiliar nurse at dinner and everything else disappears into white noise because he'd know that face anywhere. He rubs his eyes, wondering if he really is going crazy, but the face doesn't change. He's a little chubbier than last time, his hair a natural black instead of reddish brown, but it's him, no question.
"Who's that?" he asks the man next to him (Yifan, who's lucky to only have a broken ankle after jumping out of a tree thinking he could fly).
"That's Jin Xiumin," Yifan tells him like this should mean something to him. "You've never seen him before?"
The name throws him. "He's Chinese?"
Yifan shrugs. "I guess so. He doesn't have an accent."
"And you're sure that's his name?" Lu Han presses, which earns him a strange look from Yifan.
"I'm pretty sure. Why?"
"Never mind," Lu Han says. He doesn't even want to begin trying to explain himself to Yifan.
He stares at Xiumin, trying to understand. The likeness is so perfect it can't be a coincidence. Maybe this is why he could never find the right Kim Minseok, because this time he's Chinese with a name to match.
He's still staring when dinner time ends, so Xiumin comes over to him. Lu Han's heart is trying to beat it's way out of his chest as he asks, "Are you okay?" The voice too sounds so incredibly, painfully familiar, even though he's speaking flawless Mandarin for the first time in Lu Han's memory.
"Have we met?" Lu Han blurts out.
"I don't think so," Xiumin says, surprised. "Why do you ask?"
"We've never met outside? Maybe a long time ago?" If they met as children, even briefly, he could have incorporated Xiumin into his supposed delusion. That would make sense, almost.
"I only moved here from Shanghai two years ago," Xiumin tells him in a tolerant, patient nurse voice. "Have you ever been to Shanghai?"
"No." Lu Han's voice comes out shaky. The man standing in front of him, talking to him, is the spitting image of the person he's been in love with for his entire life, reality crashing hard into his supposed delusions. He doesn't have a clue how to make sense of this.
"Then I guess this is our first time meeting. My name is Jin Xiumin, and as you can see, I'm a nurse here." He gestures at his name tag, and Lu Han realizes that he even has two out of three characters in common with Minseok's name.
"Lu Han," he says. "I'm sorry. I must have confused you with someone else." He wants to explain, but how can he when he doesn't understand it himself? Xiumin will just think he's crazy, even more than he probably already does since Lu Han wouldn't be here if there wasn't something wrong with him.
"That's okay," Xiumin says brightly, and his familiar smile makes Lu Han feel better for a fraction of a second. "Now why don't you get back to your room, Lu Han? Dinner is over now."
He doesn't mention Xiumin to anyone. They already think he's crazy enough without him claiming to be madly in love with one of the nurses. But he sees him everywhere now and he doesn't know if he should be happy about it or miserable.
On the one hand, Xiumin has walked right out of his so-called delusions and into reality, so maybe he's not crazy after all. On the other hand, Xiumin clearly doesn't know him, so everything Lu Han remembers, everything he feels, he feels alone. What is he supposed to do with that?
He watches Xiumin all the time, and loves and hates the way it makes him feel. For the first time in his life, he feels love for someone real, someone flesh and blood in front of him. But that person doesn't love him back, hardly even knows he exists, and also thinks he's crazy. How can they have a chance at anything when Lu Han feels so much already, even though they're nothing to each other in this life?
It weighs him down again, keeping this inside, and his therapist notices that he doesn't want to talk, afraid of what he'll say without thinking and too lost in his own thoughts. "Did something change?" he asks. "You were so cooperative at first and now I can't seem to get anything out of you."
"It's nothing," Lu Han says, as convincingly as he can manage. "I'm just frustrated because I don't see how talking will help." It's not a lie, just not all or even most of the truth.
"Maybe it won't," his therapist says, which isn't really the response Lu Han is expecting. "But I think the reason you broke down the way you did is because you were keeping everything to yourself. Doesn't it feel better to share what you're thinking and feeling?"
It does, except that no one believes him and he's still not at all sure that he believes himself. "I don't know what I feel," he says. "I've felt so much that it all bleeds together." He catches himself and adds, "I mean, it seems like I've felt so much. Even though it's not real."
"You can talk about those feelings too," his therapist presses. "Just talk."
But he doesn't, until the end of his second week when he runs into Xiumin in the hallway on his way to the bathroom. "Lu Han, right?" the nurse asks. "How are you doing? You don't look too happy."
No, I'm not happy because seeing you and have you feel nothing at all for me feels like a knife twisting in my heart, he thinks, not caring how melodramatic that is. "I'm okay," is what he actually says.
"Are you really?" Xiumin's stance shifts, like he's prepared to stay where he is instead of hurrying on to whatever he was doing, an implicit invitation to talk.
"No," Lu Han says before he can stop himself. "I'm not."
"What's the matter?" Xiumin's voice is gentle and it just makes the knife in Lu Han's heart twist that much more.
"I remember so many things that couldn't have happened. Everyone keeps telling me I'm delusional, but I don't think I am. But doesn't everyone who hears and sees and thinks things that aren't true feel like that? How do I know if I'm really crazy?"
Xiumin studies him thoughtfully, and their eyes meet for just a second before Lu Han has to look away. "Does it matter?" he says after a moment. "If they're real, that is. What matters is what's real in this life, and you know that, don't you? You can learn from your memories, real or not, but ultimately you have to live only what's happening now."
He has a point, surprising for someone who doesn't know anything about Lu Han's situation (although maybe he does, since he is a nurse and would have access to his files), but it's more complicated than that. "But what if...what if those memories make me feel things that I shouldn't feel? Events that I remember don't matter if they didn't happen here, but feelings don't disappear the same way."
"There's no should or shouldn't when it comes to feelings," Xiumin says firmly. "You just have to figure out a way to work what you feel into the life you're living." Then he laughs. "Here I am giving advice like some kind of doctor."
"No, it's...that's good," Lu Han tells him. It's the best advice he's gotten since he came here, quite honestly, probably because it doesn't hinge upon the belief that he's delusional. There will probably never be any way for him to prove that his memories are real, or for the doctors to prove that they aren't. What he needs is a way to live with that ambiguity, and this is the first time anyone's offered him a reasonable suggestion of how to do that.
"Glad I could help, then," Xiumin says, and for once Lu Han doesn't mind too much the way that smile hurts him.
The next time Lu Han has therapy, he says, without being prompted, "I've been thinking that maybe I should worry less about where these memories came from and whether they're real and just figure out how to live my life with them. I was doing okay, for a while. Maybe if I just don't keep everything bottled up inside, I'll be okay again."
"You make a good point," the therapist says. "I'm glad you've been thinking about it."
It's not until the end of the session that his therapist comments, "It's good that you came to that decision about how you want to deal with things. It's much better than me trying to push you into something."
"To tell you the truth," Lu Han says, because he's feeling good and letting his guard down, "It wasn't my idea. I had a little talk with one of the nurses, Xiumin, and he gave me some good advice."
"Xiumin?" the therapist repeats. "I don't know the name. A man?" He's frowning and a feeling of dread builds in Lu Han's stomach without him understanding why.
"Yes," he says slowly.
"We don't have any male nurses on the ward right now," his therapist says. "I'm in charge of the paperwork for transfers so I'd know if we did. Are you sure he was a nurse?"
"Yes." It comes out small, scared. Lu Han feels like the floor has dropped out from under him and he's falling, waiting for that inevitable crash when he hits the bottom.
"That's strange." His frown deepens and he writes something in his notes. "Could you wait here for a moment? I need to make a call."
He steps out of the room, leaving the door cracked open, and Lu Han hears his hushed whispers, but then he forgets to listen because Nurse Xiumin, the man who doesn't exist, is sitting in the therapist's chair. "And here you thought you knew what was real in this life," he says. His lips curve into a twisted smirk, the likes of which Lu Han hasn't seen on Minseok's face in all the lifetimes he can remember.
"But...Yifan told me your name," Lu Han says, remembering. "So you have to be real."
The smirk twists into something more and more disturbing. "Yifan told you the name of the security guard at the door behind me. A funny coincidence, isn't it, him having such a similar name?"
"Please leave me alone," Lu Han begs. He can't look at Xiumin (not Xiumin, just a nameless figment of his imagination), covering his face with his hands. "I'm not crazy."
"That's the best part," the figment that isn't Xiumin and isn't his Minseok either says. "You weren't crazy before. You were always right that your memories couldn't be just a delusion. But your poor little human brain just couldn't take all of this and it broke, started throwing things that never were, never will be and never could be real at you."
"No!" Lu Han yells, and he realizes he's crying when he chokes on a sob. "I'm not crazy! I'm not!"
He hears laughter, and then someone else, his therapist, is saying calming words that sound like gibberish and putting a hand on his shoulder, and then something sharp pricks his arm and quickly everything goes dark.
He wakes up in a bed, and realizes with a start that there are restraints at his wrists and ankles. "I'm sorry about this," says a nurse, a female nurse he's seen before who's probably real, gesturing toward one of his wrists. "Once the sedative wore off enough you started thrashing around and we were afraid you'd hurt yourself."
"What happened?" Lu Han asks. His voice is scratchy, and he does remember, but he's hoping she'll tell him it didn't really happen.
"You were at therapy and you got very agitated so we had to give you a sedative," the nurse says gently. "Are you feeling better now?"
"Yes," Lu Han says, but it's a lie because there's someone else in the room now, someone whose smile isn't gentle because he's just Lu Han's imagination come alive to torment him.
"Think of it this way," says not Xiumin, not Minseok, not anyone, not real. "You'd be so lonely in this life where Minseok doesn't exist, so far gone over someone you'll never meet no matter how hard you look for him. But now you have me, and we can be together forever, or at least until the next time..."
20
When Lu Han is a baby, he never sleeps through the night. It drives his parents to distraction, makes them think they're doing something wrong, that their child who is safe and healthy and loved can't sleep soundly. Once he's old enough to explain himself, he complains of terrible nightmares, inexplicable for a boy who's never experienced anything nightmare-inducing. His mother tries everything to make the dreams stop, but nothing works until he turns three and goes to preschool.
Two months after Lu Han starts, another boy comes to the preschool. He's from Korea, living in Beijing now because his father got transferred, and Lu Han knows before the teacher introduces him that his name is Kim Minseok. He feels scared when he sees Minseok and he doesn't understand why, even though he does remember, because three is too young to process everything he has in his head.
He avoids Minseok as much as he can (which isn't as hard as it might be since it's a big preschool), but after a week, he's playing with a ball and drops it and it bounces right into Minseok's hands. Lu Han tries to run away, hiding behind one of the bigger boys, but Minseok walks over and gives him an uncertain smile as he offers him the ball.
It's the smile that does it. It's shy and sweet and young and innocent and he knows that this is not the scary Minseok he dreams about but the right Minseok, the real Minseok, his Minseok, even if he doesn't understand yet what that means. "Thank you," he says, taking the ball. Then, "Want to play together?"
Minseok cocks his head in confusion, so Lu Han mimes throwing the ball to him. The response is a wider smile and a word Lu Han doesn't understand that probably means yes. They become fast friends after that, Minseok picking up three year-old Mandarin quickly and both of them making up the difference in hand gestures and games that don't require words.
It's not always smooth. Lu Han gets mixed up sometimes, gets scared of Minseok and refuses to go near him, to the confusion of Minseok and all the adults around them. He can't explain it in a way that makes sense to anyone and gets hysterical if pushed, sobbing out something about "fake Xiumin and his smile." He recovers quickly enough, usually, mood shifting quickly and seemingly inexplicably as tends to happen with small children, and no one wants to upset him by asking for more answers when he's not already in a mood.
But the older he gets and the more time he spends with Minseok, the less that happens, the more he can keep his friend separate from the recurring character in his nightmares.
The nightmares, too, don't disappear all at once, and sometimes they're bad, but gradually they become more and more rare until they seem like nothing more than the dreams most people experience.
They're eight the first time Lu Han tells Minseok about his dreams. "There's a man who looks like you, an adult, but he's not you because he's scary," he explains. "And he's always laughing at me, or smiling like he knows something I don't. It's really creepy."
Minseok laughs about it, a little uncomfortably, uncertainly. "How could you dream about me before we met?" he asks. "And you don't even know what I'll look like when I grow up. You probably just had a freaky dream and when you met me I got put into it."
"Probably," Lu Han agrees, but he doesn't really think so. It's hard to explain, and something tells him that it's a bad idea to tell anyone, even Minseok or his parents, but it's not just in his nightmares that he sees Minseok. He's everywhere in Lu Han's mind, always a little different, but still somehow himself. It can't be real, all the things he remembers about himself and Minseok, but it feels like it, so much so that it's hard for Lu Han to convince himself otherwise.
They're twelve when Lu Han realizes that however real or not real his memories of other Minseoks are, he likes Minseok, this Minseok, the way some of his friends are starting to have crushes on girls. More, probably, because even if he's too young to understand love, he remembers what it feels like. But he remembers loss too, and rejection, and a man who looks like Minseok but with a terrifying smile telling him that he'll never get it right, never have his happy ending. Thinking of that, he can't bring himself to confess his feelings.
They're fourteen (and still in school together, against the odds) when a girl in their class gives Minseok a love letter. He's too embarrassed to read it so Lu Han reads it out loud, making fun of the girl's words to cover how jealous he is that she can do something he's still not brave enough to do. He's even more jealous when he asks Minseok what he'll do about it and Minseok smiles shyly and says, "She's nice, right? It could be fun."
They're still fourteen, though closer to fifteen now, and Minseok is still dating that girl, in a juvenile sort of way where he probably touches Lu Han more than he does her, when Minseok comes over to Lu Han's house and tells him, with a deep frown on his face, "My dad's getting transferred back to Korea. We're leaving at the end of the school year."
"What?" Lu Han asks, too loud and too shocked, but he can't help it. Minseok has been by his side for more than ten years (much more, if only in Lu Han's head). How can he leave?
"I told him I don't want to go," Minseok says miserably. "My sister too. I barely even remember Korea and she doesn't at all. If we stayed until I finish high school, it wouldn't matter to me, but it's now or maybe never. My parents have always wanted to go back, so they're not willing to give up the chance."
"But..." Lu Han can't formulate an objection beyond "I don't want you to go," and if Minseok and his sister not wanting to leave isn't enough for his parents, his best friend wanting him here isn't going to make a difference.
And Minseok still has a girlfriend, but suddenly he surges forward and kisses Lu Han full on the mouth. Lu Han freezes, unable to believe this is really happening, and soon Minseok pulls back. "I, um, uh, that is, sorry, I didn't, um, sorry," he mumbles, barely intelligible.
"But..." Lu Han repeats, completely at a loss now.
"Nevermind," Minseok says, more coherent but still mumbling. "Forget I did that."
"But..." Lu Han tries a third time, and this time he manages to say, "But I love you."
"You what?"
"I like you," he amends, hoping Minseok will ignore the slip. "Don't be sorry."
Minseok has a girlfriend and he's leaving the country in a few months, but that doesn't stop Lu Han from leaning forward to kiss him. He's been waiting three years for this, maybe longer, maybe a lot longer. He's not about to miss his chance. And Minseok kisses him back, so it seems he feels the same.
Minseok breaks up with his girlfriend by the end of the week, making some excuse about how he's leaving soon and she's better off not getting any more attached, and she doesn't protest too much. "Are you going to say the same thing to me?" Lu Han teases later when Minseok tells him about it.
"I think you're already way too attached to me," Minseok says, and even though he laughs, it's the truth. Lu Han tries not to think about it.
He does a surprisingly good job of not thinking about it, enjoying his remaining time with Minseok without dwelling constantly on how they'll be separated soon. It's not easy to forget, since they've been together for so long that he can't really imagine Minseok being gone, and besides, Minseok is very good at distracting him from it.
But as the end of the school year approaches, Lu Han can't fail to notice the way Minseok's family is packing up their things, preparing to leave, or the pages of illegible (to Lu Han's eyes) Korean squiggles that Minseok pores over at lunchtime, groaning about how unprepared he is for high school in Korea. He tries not to make a fuss, because Minseok made him promise not to the first time he caught Lu Han watching him with a miserable expression on his face, but it gets harder and harder to forget how limited their time together is.
The worst of it is that Lu Han remembers this, too many times, losing Minseok to bad luck and death and distance and outside pressures, and sometimes his own mistakes. For every time he's loved Minseok (if it's real, but does it matter?), he's lost him, and the fear of that happening again gets its grip on him.
"You won't forget me when you move away, will you?" he asks pathetically, clinging a little too tight to Minseok.
"How could I forget you?" Minseok says dismissively. "You're my best friend." But they've been best friends before, and a lot more, and Lu Han doesn't know how to explain it, the way those memories of loss pile on top of each other until it feels like the fear of it happening again will crush him.
"Just promise me," Lu Han insists, not caring if he sounds pitiful. "Promise me you won't forget."
"I won't. Geez, Lu Han, you're needier than any girlfriend." Lu Han hits him for that, and they laugh, but it's only enough to make him forget a little bit now.
The day before Minseok leaves, he pulls Lu Han into his bedroom and says, "I want to talk to you. About, you know, this." He gestures between himself and Lu Han.
"Okay." Lu Han's throat goes dry, his hands clenching unconsciously into fists.
"I really like you. I do. But even if I decide to come back here for university, that's three years that we probably won't see each other."
"What are you saying?" Lu Han asks, but he thinks he already knows.
"I promise to e-mail and talk online and all that, but...that's okay for friends. For dating, or whatever we're doing, it's not going to be enough."
And there it is, the way Lu Han's heart sinks familiar even though he's probably never really experienced it before. "So you want to break up?"
At least Minseok looks like he feels bad about it, though if he's anywhere near as upset as Lu Han is, he's hiding it well. "I don't want to. But I think it's better." Noticing Lu Han's expression, he adds, "I'm not saying it's the end forever. But we shouldn't tie ourselves down for three years. If it's supposed to happen, it can happen later, right?"
But that's not how it works, Lu Han thinks. It never does. Or else we're just never supposed to happen.
"Don't get all mopey," Minseok says, poking Lu Han's cheek and trying to laugh off the awkward moment. "I'll call you all the time. You won't have a chance to miss me. I promised I wouldn't forget about you, remember?"
"I remember," Lu Han says, but it's hard to believe it.
He kisses Minseok goodbye that night, but when Lu Han and his parents see off the whole family the next morning, they only hug. "Don't be sad," Minseok says, voice low by Lu Han's ear. "Korea's not so far away."
And it's not, really, but of course it's not the same. They talk a lot at first, when Minseok is lonely and frustrated with trying to readjust to a homeland he barely remembers, but less once he starts to make friends, and even less as time passes. It's always the same, when they do, both of them laughing as they catch up on each other's lives, but Lu Han feels the distance more and more each year.
And when Minseok cheerfully tells him he's going to go to university in Korea, Lu Han knows that's it, not for their friendship, but for anything else. He wants to have hope, but it's too hard. At least Minseok is his friend, he thinks, and alive and happy, looking forward to his future even though Lu Han only has a small part in it. That'll have to be enough this time.
He doesn't know if he believes that what he remembers is real, the good and the painful, the happy and the terrifying. But if it is, then maybe he'll get another chance. Maybe someday, a lot farther away than the three years he's waited for Minseok here, he'll finally get that happy ending.
Part 7
He's guided over to the couch and some of his friends want to take him to the hospital, but he insists that he's fine. "I just got dizzy for a second," he lies. "I'm okay. I probably didn't eat enough today or something."
It takes some insisting, but finally his friends accept that he's okay, and after they've forced some juice on him, he finally gets to be introduced to Minseok. "Sorry," Lu Han says. "I'm not usually like this." It's hard, looking Minseok in the eye and pretending his mind isn't bursting with memories of him, and resisting the urge to pull him in a tight hug because it feels like he's missed him terribly even though they've never met before.
"Don't worry about it," Minseok says. His accent is strong and he speaks slowly, thinking his way through the sentence, but he's understandable. "It'll make you..." He stops, searching for the word. "Memorable?"
"Memorable is right," Yixing says with a smile.
Lu Han is glad when they start the movie so he can sit quietly and process everything he has in his head right now. Even after years of dreams, covering so many versions of himself and Minseok in so many different situations, it still feels like he's had a huge amount of new information dumped on him. Even the parts that are familiar feel different now, with Minseok just at the other end of the couch from him, flesh and blood and real and exactly how Lu Han remembers him even though they've never met.
He manages, somehow, to keep from telling Minseok or anyone else what's in his head, and if he's acting weird, his friends just shrug it off, saying he's always a little strange. Minseok doesn't seem bothered, smiling a little shyly when Lu Han talks to him and doing his best to answer. It's good to see him, really good, but also confusing and kind of scary, so Lu Han's relieved when it's time for him to head home.
Back in his own apartment, he lies on his bed and stares at the ceiling for hours, sorting through his memories and feelings and trying to make sense of the fact that Minseok, who he's dreamed about for so many years, really exists. Though all his instincts told him that was the case, there's a part of Lu Han that always doubted it, that thought maybe he was just delusional. Now he knows he's not, but that only raises a million new questions.
He doesn't come to any conclusions that night, about what this means or about what to do, and life isn't going to wait for him to do that, so he just muddles on. Minseok continues to join in a lot of his friends group's activities, and Lu Han is glad to have an excuse to see him but also frustrated. It's hard, not acting overly familiar with Minseok, not talking about the memories Lu Han has of him or expecting him to remember things that didn't happen in this life.
And it's clear, soon enough, that Minseok doesn't remember, unless he's extremely good at pretending. He's friendly to Lu Han, but no more than he is to the rest of the group, no more than would be expected of a new friend. No matter how much Lu Han tries to talk himself out of it, it hurts, meeting the eyes of the person he's been half in love with for years (and even more so now) and seeing nothing special there.
He doesn't know what to do. He can't avoid Minseok now that they hang out with the same people, and he doesn't want to anyway, not really. But it's hard to be around him, and Lu Han isn't that good at pretending so he's afraid it's only a matter of time before he slips and makes not only Minseok but all his university friends think he's nuts. It's tiring, worrying about that, and he wishes he could just be a normal guy.
And he does slip, though it's only little things at first. Smiling at Minseok and expecting him to understand a reference or inside joke that he doesn't. Mentioning an experience he hasn't had in this life. Those can be brushed off easily enough, because Minseok's Mandarin is still basic enough that he often doesn't understand things, and none of Lu Han's friends here know everything about his life before university.
But then one day, after not even a month, he has one drink too many and slips up badly. He's sitting next to Minseok, coincidentally, and they're all laughing and having a good time. Minseok turns in his direction, probably for no particular reason, and they share a smile, and then before Lu Han can remind himself that things aren't like that between them, he's leaned forward and pressed his lips to Minseok's.
He remembers, a few seconds too late, and pulls away so fast he falls off the couch, but there's no way to take it back. Minseok is staring at him, shocked and confused. All of Lu Han's friends are staring at him too.
"I, um..." he starts. It doesn't have to give everything away. That he likes men sometimes, yes, and that he likes Minseok, but given that some of his friends don't look all that surprised, maybe they already suspected that. But what comes out of his mouth is, "I'm sorry. I forgot."
"Forgot?" Minseok echoes, and Lu Han isn't sure if he doesn't understand the word or if he doesn't understand why Lu Han is using it when it makes no sense.
"What did you forget," Yifan asks, "that it's weird to suddenly kiss a guy friend like it's nothing?"
"No," Lu Han says. "Wait, yes." He's all mixed up and not nearly sober enough to explain himself well, which is to say to come up with a good lie. "I didn't mean to."
"You didn't mean to what, exactly?"
He looks around at his friends' faces and he can see the judgment, and that hurts a lot more than it hurt to pretend. "I..." he tries. And maybe he slips again, or maybe he's just been holding too much in for too long, but suddenly he finds himself saying, "I have these dreams. I see you, all the time. I saw you, long before I ever met you, over and over again. That's why I recognized you the first time, and today, I just...I forgot, that it's not real, that I never kissed you here before."
He's talking to Minseok, only to Minseok, even with everybody else around, but he's also talking too fast, his words tumbling out almost on top of each other, and Minseok obviously can't keep up. Everyone else in the room can, though, and they're looking at Lu Han the way he's always feared people would, like there's something wrong with him.
"What do you mean you recognized him?" Yixing asks. "You said you used to know a guy with that name: you don't mean you met Minseok before?"
"I, well..." Maybe he could lie, say that's what he meant, but Minseok is frowning and he's likely to deny it if Lu Han tries. Besides, when would he have met Minseok before? He's never been to Korea in this life, and this is Minseok's first time in China.
"You said...dreams?" Minseok asks slowly, frowning. "About me?"
Lu Han is caught, unable to look away from his questioning gaze. He doesn't look disturbed yet, but he looks confused, and it's only a matter of time. "Yes," Lu Han admits, feeling helpless. "Since I was a kid."
"That doesn't make sense. We've never met. Right?"
"No," Lu Han agrees. He finally tears his eyes away from Minseok's and looks down at the ground.
"You're not making any sense," Yifan cuts in impatiently. "You had dreams about Minseok since you were a kid even though you've never met him and because of those dreams, you thought it was okay to kiss him now? What, were you guys madly in love in your dreams?"
Yes, Lu Han thinks miserably. Not always, not exactly, but they were, and this time everything is going wrong.
"Are you joking?" Yifan presses. "Because it's not funny."
"I'm not joking," Lu Han snaps, misery suddenly turning to anger. He gets to his feet and meets Minseok's eyes again, defiant. "You can think I'm crazy, and maybe I am, but I remember you, and a lot more, and I love you. I've already loved you many times over. And even though you don't remember me, if you got to know me better, I know you could love me too."
And then he turns on his heel and runs out of the apartment, ignoring the voices calling after him.
The next day, Lu Han turns off his phone and hides in his apartment. He has classes the next day, but he keeps hiding, afraid of what will happen if he stops. The third day, when he's thinking he'll have to venture outside for food if nothing else, someone bangs on his door in the afternoon. When he doesn't answer, a voice he recognizes as Yifan's yells, "Open the door, Lu Han! You can't hide in there forever."
"Yes, I can," Lu Han says, but not loud enough to be heard outside his apartment.
Yifan bangs on the door again, even more emphatically, and against his better judgment, Lu Han gets up and opens the door. He's alone, which is a relief. One person is easier to face, and at least it's not the person he least wants to see. He's afraid to find out how Minseok would look at him now that he's probably had what Lu Han said explained to him.
He awkwardly invites him in, and they sit down before Yifan says, "What was that all about? The dreams and being in love with a guy you barely even know. Since when are you even into guys?"
"Since..." Lu Han frowns. He doesn't know how to explain, when clearly his dreams and memories are something no one else understands. "For as long as I can remember."
"But you had a girlfriend," Yifan points out, like that's the most important thing here.
"Yeah." It'll only be digging the hole deeper, but there doesn't seem to be a point in pretending to be normal anymore, so Lu Han says, "You won't get it and you probably won't believe me, but I've been in love with Minseok for as long as I can remember, even before I knew his name and his face."
"You're right," Yifan says bluntly. "I don't get it."
"Maybe I am crazy," Lu Han says, "or some kind of freak, but I'm telling you, I know him. Not here, not like this, but I've known him before and I've been in love with him every time."
"What do you mean every time? There's only here."
The worst part is that Lu Han can't explain it because he doesn't understand either. He doesn't know where his dreams come from. He doesn't know if those lives he remembers really happened or not. All he knows is that somehow, impossibly, inexplicably, he knew Minseok before he met him, and he has these feelings he can't explain for him.
"I've had dreams," he starts. "Since I was a kid. Weird dreams, about all kinds of places and things. And there's a person, in almost all of those dreams, and I never knew who it was until last year. Then I finally figured out a name and a face and it was Minseok. You saw how I reacted the first time I saw him, and when Yixing first mentioned his name too."
"I thought you were just messing around." Yifan is frowning now too, or maybe just making that vaguely-displeased face that's his natural expression.
"I wasn't. What kind of weird joke would that be?"
Yifan's frown deepens. "But that's not possible."
"Tell me about it." Lu Han almost laughs, except that talking to someone about this is terrifying. Even when he told his teacher, he didn't talk about Minseok, about the feelings that went with his apparent memories. "I don't know how or why or anything. All I know is what's in my head and I'm not making it up."
It's obvious Yifan doesn't know what to do with this, and Lu Han can't blame him. He's had a lot longer to get used to the idea and he's still lost. "You really freaked Minseok out," he says, settling on something simpler to talk about. "First you kiss him out of the blue, then you start going on about how you know him and you're madly in love with him. He didn't really understand it all, but we explained it after and it was really awkward."
"I'm sorry," Lu Han tells his feet.
"I told Yixing it's probably better not to bring him around when we all get together for a while," Yifan continues, and something about that strikes Lu Han as odd.
"Wait, what?" When Yifan shoots him a confused look, he adds, "You mean you don't...shouldn't it be me you don't want around?"
Yifan flashes him a small smile. "We talked about it," he says. "And we decided that even if you're a total weirdo, you're our friend, and we shouldn't drop you just like that. I like Minseok and I'll be happy to hang out with him, but we're not going to start leaving you out because you make him uncomfortable." Then, after a moment's thought, he adds, "You're not going to start saying you know me, are you? Or you're in love with me?"
When he thinks about it, he does have a vague feeling of familiarity, like Yifan is somewhere in the huge pile of memories in his head, but he can't put a finger on it, and it's nothing like with Minseok. "It's just him," Lu Han assures him. "There are other people in my dreams, but it's only Minseok that's so...strong, I guess. And there's no one else that I feel like that about." He thinks about his girlfriend, about his high school crush and the people he slept with, and it's entirely truthful to add, "There never has been."
"I really don't get it," Yifan says. "I probably never will. And...honestly, I think you should get your head checked out some time. But we've all got weird things about us, right?"
Lu Han can't help the relieved smile that breaks over his face, even though it makes Yifan look embarrassed. It's such a relief. "Thank you," he says fervently, and doesn't care when Yifan rolls his eyes.
Some of Lu Han's friends are more uncomfortable with what happened than others, and in time the group somewhat fragments because of it, but the important thing is that Lu Han doesn't lose all his friends, that there are still people who are willing to be his friends even though he talks what they think is nonsense when it comes to Minseok. He's very grateful for that.
On the other hand, Minseok no longer comes to hang out with them when Lu Han is around. Lu Han feels guilty for driving him away, and hurt and sad and a lot of other things he tries to keep to himself, though he's not always good at it. He knows he has no right or reason to expect anything from Minseok, but it's still hard sometimes to remember that.
He does his best to respect Minseok's feelings, to stay away until such time as he decides he's okay with being around Lu Han again, if he ever does. But Minseok's only there for one semester, and all too soon, the end of that time approaches. He's going to be going back to Korea and maybe Lu Han will never have another chance to see him. He was willing to be patient as he waited to meet Minseok, but it's quite another thing to accept that his chance is gone and he'll have nothing but his memories for the rest of his life.
He doesn't say anything about it, but two weeks before the end of the semester, Yixing mentions to Lu Han that he and Minseok will be in a dance showcase, in a casual-but-really-not sort of tone. "I can get you a ticket, if you want," he offers.
Lu Han ends up going, only a week before the semester ends, with Yifan as a buffer and to tell him he's being an idiot when he gets too freaked out (though he says he's just there to see Yixing perform). He hardly sees the performances, though he keeps his eyes pointed in the direction of the stage, except when Minseok comes out and Lu Han sees him and no one else. He's a good dancer; Lu Han remembers that he is, and not because Yixing told him.
At the end, Lu Han is tempted to run away, but Yifan insists that they should go say hi. "This might be your last chance," he says. "Assuming you even have a chance, but are you going to pass that up?"
The dancers are coming out a side door, and they only have to wait a few minutes before Yixing emerges. He greets them enthusiastically and Yifan tells him he did well as if he knows the first thing about dancing, but Lu Han can't really focus for the painfully long minute or two before Minseok appears in the door. He comes over to them, only hesitating for a moment when he sees Lu Han there.
"Nice job tonight," Yifan tells him.
"You were great," Lu Han adds. His voice doesn't shake, but it comes out very small and he feels pathetic.
"Thanks for coming!" Minseok smiles at Yifan, and very briefly at Lu Han, who flinches and looks away. He'd hoped, maybe, that it would be easier to see Minseok now, but time apart has only made it harder to deal with everything he feels.
"You've only got a week left here, right?" Yifan asks. "Are you glad you came?"
"Yeah, I had a really good time." His Mandarin has gotten a lot better, Lu Han notes, and he sounds comfortable talking to Yifan.
"Don't leave without saying goodbye, okay?" Yifan says, and Minseok nods.
There's a few beats of silence and Lu Han tells himself it's now or never. "Are..." he starts, forcing himself to look at Minseok, but the answer to any question he could ask is obvious in the way Minseok won't meet his eyes. "Enjoy your last week in Beijing," he manages to squeeze out.
"Thanks," Minseok says, and at least it sounds genuine.
A guy Lu Han doesn't recognize calls Yixing's name, and he waves at him before telling Lu Han and Yifan, "We're going to get dinner with some of the guys. I'll see you around?"
"Sure thing," Yifan says.
Yixing and Minseok turn to go, and this is it, but Lu Han finds himself saying, "Wait!" They stop and turn back, and he says, "Just...one minute. Please." He doesn't look at Minseok, but they all know who he's talking to.
"Okay," Minseok says. He nods at Yifan and Yixing, who fall aside to let them have a moment alone.
"If I..." Lu Han starts, struggling to get words out. "If I hadn't done it like that, if we'd gotten to know each other instead of me kissing you out of the blue and then spouting crazy talk...would I have had a chance?" He doesn't know which answer will hurt less, but he needs to know, one way or another. It's looking like this is all the closure he's going to get.
"I have a girlfriend," Minseok says, almost apologetic but not quite. Why should he be? He doesn't owe Lu Han anything. "Back in Korea. She's been waiting for me."
And there it is. Even if he'd been patient and taken his time to get to know Minseok, this Minseok, and to let Minseok get to know him, even if he'd kept his mouth shut about his dreams and everything that comes with them, nothing would've happened because he never had a chance in the first place. It hurts like a punch to the stomach, but the truth is, as much as he loves Minseok in his memories, he also remembers losing him again and again. Maybe he should've seen it coming. "Oh," is all he can find to say.
"I have to go," Minseok tells him. "Everyone's waiting for me."
"Right," Lu Han says. "I, um...see you around?" Except that while Yixing meant it, he doesn't really, and he's sure Minseok doesn't either when he replies, "See you," before heading off to join his friends.
Yixing goes with him, and Yifan comes back over to Lu Han. He doesn't say anything, but there's a question in his eyes, so Lu Han says, "He has a girlfriend in Korea. He had someone this whole time so I never had a chance."
Yifan looks over at where Minseok and the others are disappearing into the distance, and then back at Lu Han. "I get that he's the man of your dreams, literally, but there are a lot of people in the world. It's not like this is it for you. It'll be better, finding someone you can start out on equal footing with, so you can fall in love together. Right?"
"Sure," Lu Han agrees without meaning it. He does remember others, vaguely, but it's always Minseok at the center, and this time, especially, when he's spent so many years dreaming of finding his soulmate, how can he settle for second best?
It takes twelve years and a lot of ups and downs, but Lu Han does eventually find second best. She's not Minseok, and as much as he'd like to he can never entirely forget that, but he does love her, he thinks, and with her sleeping beside him, he doesn't dream much anymore.
19
Since he was too young to even begin to understand, Lu Han has remembered lives he's never lived. That's what everyone tells him they are, anyway, because it shouldn't, can't be possible that he truly lived through everything he remembers. They're not even past lives, because he's almost always still Lu Han, even if he's sometimes a very different Lu Han.
When he's a kid, his parents and other adults smile tolerantly and say what a vivid imagination he has, and Lu Han doesn't think it's strange, but the older he gets, the more he understands that he's not supposed to be like this.
It's a hard thing to realize. He's fifteen when he asks his mother, "Am I crazy?" for the first (but not the last) time. He doesn't feel crazy, but his memories are so vivid, so real, and everyone insists that it's not possible that they are. If that's the case, then doesn't that mean there's something wrong with him?
"You're not crazy," his mom reassures him. "You just need to always remember what's real and what isn't."
He tries. He really does. He tells himself that he's Lu Han and no one else, that he was born in Beijing and has lived here for fifteen years, no more and no less. He's never died, never seen someone else die. He's never been in love and never had his heart broken, and the person he thinks he loved (and still loves and will always love) has never existed.
(He searches the internet for "Kim Minseok" sometimes, in every language and with every spelling variation he can think of, and several people come up, but none of them are his Minseok. It's probably that more than anything else that makes him think he really must be crazy, because how can he love someone who isn't even real?)
He learns to fake it, more than anything else. He learns to keep straight what was in this life and what wasn't and never mention anything that happened only in his impossible memories, to never talk about things he isn't supposed to know. And he learns to pretend to be a normal young man interested in normal relationships even though he's sure he'll never be able to give his heart to anyone when it feels like it's belonged to someone else for uncountable years.
It works, for a while. He gets good at pretending, so good he almost manages to convince himself that he's normal sometimes. But he's not and never has been, and sometimes the weight of all those memories seems like too much for any one person to carry, especially since he can't talk to anyone about them. There's so much pain in his memories, and there's joy too, but even that is too much sometimes, too intense.
When he's twenty-six, it finally overwhelms him. He's been holding too much in and his mind cracks under the strain. He stops going to work and sits in his apartment and cries his eyes out. After three days of that, two friends from work come to check on him, and he's too exhausted to care about them seeing him like this as he tells them in a broken voice that he just wants to die so it'll all go away.
That's how he ends up in the mental health facility with people who hear voices or see things that aren't there or have tried to kill themselves. "It's for your own good," his parents say, and they're probably right since he can barely function right now, but he doesn't know what this place can do for him. No one's been able to fit a mental health diagnosis to him before, or find a way to fix him.
At first, they're mostly concerned with making sure that he eats and showers and doesn't try to kill himself, but as soon as he's a little more stable, they start trying to fix him. "I don't understand," he tells the therapist the first time. "I know it's impossible that my memories are real, but they're so detailed and they feel as real as any of my actual memories. I remember things I've never seen clearly, the way they really are, and I know things there's no way I could know. How is that possible?"
The conclusion the professionals come to is that he's built an elaborate delusion, taking information he found online or learned from other people and convincing himself it comes from firsthand experience. Lu Han doesn't buy it. As far back into his childhood as his memory goes, he had these memories. That would be a very elaborate delusion for a three year old. And yet he has no better explanation of his own, except that it's real, and he doesn't see how it can be.
He's been there for a week when he sees an unfamiliar nurse at dinner and everything else disappears into white noise because he'd know that face anywhere. He rubs his eyes, wondering if he really is going crazy, but the face doesn't change. He's a little chubbier than last time, his hair a natural black instead of reddish brown, but it's him, no question.
"Who's that?" he asks the man next to him (Yifan, who's lucky to only have a broken ankle after jumping out of a tree thinking he could fly).
"That's Jin Xiumin," Yifan tells him like this should mean something to him. "You've never seen him before?"
The name throws him. "He's Chinese?"
Yifan shrugs. "I guess so. He doesn't have an accent."
"And you're sure that's his name?" Lu Han presses, which earns him a strange look from Yifan.
"I'm pretty sure. Why?"
"Never mind," Lu Han says. He doesn't even want to begin trying to explain himself to Yifan.
He stares at Xiumin, trying to understand. The likeness is so perfect it can't be a coincidence. Maybe this is why he could never find the right Kim Minseok, because this time he's Chinese with a name to match.
He's still staring when dinner time ends, so Xiumin comes over to him. Lu Han's heart is trying to beat it's way out of his chest as he asks, "Are you okay?" The voice too sounds so incredibly, painfully familiar, even though he's speaking flawless Mandarin for the first time in Lu Han's memory.
"Have we met?" Lu Han blurts out.
"I don't think so," Xiumin says, surprised. "Why do you ask?"
"We've never met outside? Maybe a long time ago?" If they met as children, even briefly, he could have incorporated Xiumin into his supposed delusion. That would make sense, almost.
"I only moved here from Shanghai two years ago," Xiumin tells him in a tolerant, patient nurse voice. "Have you ever been to Shanghai?"
"No." Lu Han's voice comes out shaky. The man standing in front of him, talking to him, is the spitting image of the person he's been in love with for his entire life, reality crashing hard into his supposed delusions. He doesn't have a clue how to make sense of this.
"Then I guess this is our first time meeting. My name is Jin Xiumin, and as you can see, I'm a nurse here." He gestures at his name tag, and Lu Han realizes that he even has two out of three characters in common with Minseok's name.
"Lu Han," he says. "I'm sorry. I must have confused you with someone else." He wants to explain, but how can he when he doesn't understand it himself? Xiumin will just think he's crazy, even more than he probably already does since Lu Han wouldn't be here if there wasn't something wrong with him.
"That's okay," Xiumin says brightly, and his familiar smile makes Lu Han feel better for a fraction of a second. "Now why don't you get back to your room, Lu Han? Dinner is over now."
He doesn't mention Xiumin to anyone. They already think he's crazy enough without him claiming to be madly in love with one of the nurses. But he sees him everywhere now and he doesn't know if he should be happy about it or miserable.
On the one hand, Xiumin has walked right out of his so-called delusions and into reality, so maybe he's not crazy after all. On the other hand, Xiumin clearly doesn't know him, so everything Lu Han remembers, everything he feels, he feels alone. What is he supposed to do with that?
He watches Xiumin all the time, and loves and hates the way it makes him feel. For the first time in his life, he feels love for someone real, someone flesh and blood in front of him. But that person doesn't love him back, hardly even knows he exists, and also thinks he's crazy. How can they have a chance at anything when Lu Han feels so much already, even though they're nothing to each other in this life?
It weighs him down again, keeping this inside, and his therapist notices that he doesn't want to talk, afraid of what he'll say without thinking and too lost in his own thoughts. "Did something change?" he asks. "You were so cooperative at first and now I can't seem to get anything out of you."
"It's nothing," Lu Han says, as convincingly as he can manage. "I'm just frustrated because I don't see how talking will help." It's not a lie, just not all or even most of the truth.
"Maybe it won't," his therapist says, which isn't really the response Lu Han is expecting. "But I think the reason you broke down the way you did is because you were keeping everything to yourself. Doesn't it feel better to share what you're thinking and feeling?"
It does, except that no one believes him and he's still not at all sure that he believes himself. "I don't know what I feel," he says. "I've felt so much that it all bleeds together." He catches himself and adds, "I mean, it seems like I've felt so much. Even though it's not real."
"You can talk about those feelings too," his therapist presses. "Just talk."
But he doesn't, until the end of his second week when he runs into Xiumin in the hallway on his way to the bathroom. "Lu Han, right?" the nurse asks. "How are you doing? You don't look too happy."
No, I'm not happy because seeing you and have you feel nothing at all for me feels like a knife twisting in my heart, he thinks, not caring how melodramatic that is. "I'm okay," is what he actually says.
"Are you really?" Xiumin's stance shifts, like he's prepared to stay where he is instead of hurrying on to whatever he was doing, an implicit invitation to talk.
"No," Lu Han says before he can stop himself. "I'm not."
"What's the matter?" Xiumin's voice is gentle and it just makes the knife in Lu Han's heart twist that much more.
"I remember so many things that couldn't have happened. Everyone keeps telling me I'm delusional, but I don't think I am. But doesn't everyone who hears and sees and thinks things that aren't true feel like that? How do I know if I'm really crazy?"
Xiumin studies him thoughtfully, and their eyes meet for just a second before Lu Han has to look away. "Does it matter?" he says after a moment. "If they're real, that is. What matters is what's real in this life, and you know that, don't you? You can learn from your memories, real or not, but ultimately you have to live only what's happening now."
He has a point, surprising for someone who doesn't know anything about Lu Han's situation (although maybe he does, since he is a nurse and would have access to his files), but it's more complicated than that. "But what if...what if those memories make me feel things that I shouldn't feel? Events that I remember don't matter if they didn't happen here, but feelings don't disappear the same way."
"There's no should or shouldn't when it comes to feelings," Xiumin says firmly. "You just have to figure out a way to work what you feel into the life you're living." Then he laughs. "Here I am giving advice like some kind of doctor."
"No, it's...that's good," Lu Han tells him. It's the best advice he's gotten since he came here, quite honestly, probably because it doesn't hinge upon the belief that he's delusional. There will probably never be any way for him to prove that his memories are real, or for the doctors to prove that they aren't. What he needs is a way to live with that ambiguity, and this is the first time anyone's offered him a reasonable suggestion of how to do that.
"Glad I could help, then," Xiumin says, and for once Lu Han doesn't mind too much the way that smile hurts him.
The next time Lu Han has therapy, he says, without being prompted, "I've been thinking that maybe I should worry less about where these memories came from and whether they're real and just figure out how to live my life with them. I was doing okay, for a while. Maybe if I just don't keep everything bottled up inside, I'll be okay again."
"You make a good point," the therapist says. "I'm glad you've been thinking about it."
It's not until the end of the session that his therapist comments, "It's good that you came to that decision about how you want to deal with things. It's much better than me trying to push you into something."
"To tell you the truth," Lu Han says, because he's feeling good and letting his guard down, "It wasn't my idea. I had a little talk with one of the nurses, Xiumin, and he gave me some good advice."
"Xiumin?" the therapist repeats. "I don't know the name. A man?" He's frowning and a feeling of dread builds in Lu Han's stomach without him understanding why.
"Yes," he says slowly.
"We don't have any male nurses on the ward right now," his therapist says. "I'm in charge of the paperwork for transfers so I'd know if we did. Are you sure he was a nurse?"
"Yes." It comes out small, scared. Lu Han feels like the floor has dropped out from under him and he's falling, waiting for that inevitable crash when he hits the bottom.
"That's strange." His frown deepens and he writes something in his notes. "Could you wait here for a moment? I need to make a call."
He steps out of the room, leaving the door cracked open, and Lu Han hears his hushed whispers, but then he forgets to listen because Nurse Xiumin, the man who doesn't exist, is sitting in the therapist's chair. "And here you thought you knew what was real in this life," he says. His lips curve into a twisted smirk, the likes of which Lu Han hasn't seen on Minseok's face in all the lifetimes he can remember.
"But...Yifan told me your name," Lu Han says, remembering. "So you have to be real."
The smirk twists into something more and more disturbing. "Yifan told you the name of the security guard at the door behind me. A funny coincidence, isn't it, him having such a similar name?"
"Please leave me alone," Lu Han begs. He can't look at Xiumin (not Xiumin, just a nameless figment of his imagination), covering his face with his hands. "I'm not crazy."
"That's the best part," the figment that isn't Xiumin and isn't his Minseok either says. "You weren't crazy before. You were always right that your memories couldn't be just a delusion. But your poor little human brain just couldn't take all of this and it broke, started throwing things that never were, never will be and never could be real at you."
"No!" Lu Han yells, and he realizes he's crying when he chokes on a sob. "I'm not crazy! I'm not!"
He hears laughter, and then someone else, his therapist, is saying calming words that sound like gibberish and putting a hand on his shoulder, and then something sharp pricks his arm and quickly everything goes dark.
He wakes up in a bed, and realizes with a start that there are restraints at his wrists and ankles. "I'm sorry about this," says a nurse, a female nurse he's seen before who's probably real, gesturing toward one of his wrists. "Once the sedative wore off enough you started thrashing around and we were afraid you'd hurt yourself."
"What happened?" Lu Han asks. His voice is scratchy, and he does remember, but he's hoping she'll tell him it didn't really happen.
"You were at therapy and you got very agitated so we had to give you a sedative," the nurse says gently. "Are you feeling better now?"
"Yes," Lu Han says, but it's a lie because there's someone else in the room now, someone whose smile isn't gentle because he's just Lu Han's imagination come alive to torment him.
"Think of it this way," says not Xiumin, not Minseok, not anyone, not real. "You'd be so lonely in this life where Minseok doesn't exist, so far gone over someone you'll never meet no matter how hard you look for him. But now you have me, and we can be together forever, or at least until the next time..."
20
When Lu Han is a baby, he never sleeps through the night. It drives his parents to distraction, makes them think they're doing something wrong, that their child who is safe and healthy and loved can't sleep soundly. Once he's old enough to explain himself, he complains of terrible nightmares, inexplicable for a boy who's never experienced anything nightmare-inducing. His mother tries everything to make the dreams stop, but nothing works until he turns three and goes to preschool.
Two months after Lu Han starts, another boy comes to the preschool. He's from Korea, living in Beijing now because his father got transferred, and Lu Han knows before the teacher introduces him that his name is Kim Minseok. He feels scared when he sees Minseok and he doesn't understand why, even though he does remember, because three is too young to process everything he has in his head.
He avoids Minseok as much as he can (which isn't as hard as it might be since it's a big preschool), but after a week, he's playing with a ball and drops it and it bounces right into Minseok's hands. Lu Han tries to run away, hiding behind one of the bigger boys, but Minseok walks over and gives him an uncertain smile as he offers him the ball.
It's the smile that does it. It's shy and sweet and young and innocent and he knows that this is not the scary Minseok he dreams about but the right Minseok, the real Minseok, his Minseok, even if he doesn't understand yet what that means. "Thank you," he says, taking the ball. Then, "Want to play together?"
Minseok cocks his head in confusion, so Lu Han mimes throwing the ball to him. The response is a wider smile and a word Lu Han doesn't understand that probably means yes. They become fast friends after that, Minseok picking up three year-old Mandarin quickly and both of them making up the difference in hand gestures and games that don't require words.
It's not always smooth. Lu Han gets mixed up sometimes, gets scared of Minseok and refuses to go near him, to the confusion of Minseok and all the adults around them. He can't explain it in a way that makes sense to anyone and gets hysterical if pushed, sobbing out something about "fake Xiumin and his smile." He recovers quickly enough, usually, mood shifting quickly and seemingly inexplicably as tends to happen with small children, and no one wants to upset him by asking for more answers when he's not already in a mood.
But the older he gets and the more time he spends with Minseok, the less that happens, the more he can keep his friend separate from the recurring character in his nightmares.
The nightmares, too, don't disappear all at once, and sometimes they're bad, but gradually they become more and more rare until they seem like nothing more than the dreams most people experience.
They're eight the first time Lu Han tells Minseok about his dreams. "There's a man who looks like you, an adult, but he's not you because he's scary," he explains. "And he's always laughing at me, or smiling like he knows something I don't. It's really creepy."
Minseok laughs about it, a little uncomfortably, uncertainly. "How could you dream about me before we met?" he asks. "And you don't even know what I'll look like when I grow up. You probably just had a freaky dream and when you met me I got put into it."
"Probably," Lu Han agrees, but he doesn't really think so. It's hard to explain, and something tells him that it's a bad idea to tell anyone, even Minseok or his parents, but it's not just in his nightmares that he sees Minseok. He's everywhere in Lu Han's mind, always a little different, but still somehow himself. It can't be real, all the things he remembers about himself and Minseok, but it feels like it, so much so that it's hard for Lu Han to convince himself otherwise.
They're twelve when Lu Han realizes that however real or not real his memories of other Minseoks are, he likes Minseok, this Minseok, the way some of his friends are starting to have crushes on girls. More, probably, because even if he's too young to understand love, he remembers what it feels like. But he remembers loss too, and rejection, and a man who looks like Minseok but with a terrifying smile telling him that he'll never get it right, never have his happy ending. Thinking of that, he can't bring himself to confess his feelings.
They're fourteen (and still in school together, against the odds) when a girl in their class gives Minseok a love letter. He's too embarrassed to read it so Lu Han reads it out loud, making fun of the girl's words to cover how jealous he is that she can do something he's still not brave enough to do. He's even more jealous when he asks Minseok what he'll do about it and Minseok smiles shyly and says, "She's nice, right? It could be fun."
They're still fourteen, though closer to fifteen now, and Minseok is still dating that girl, in a juvenile sort of way where he probably touches Lu Han more than he does her, when Minseok comes over to Lu Han's house and tells him, with a deep frown on his face, "My dad's getting transferred back to Korea. We're leaving at the end of the school year."
"What?" Lu Han asks, too loud and too shocked, but he can't help it. Minseok has been by his side for more than ten years (much more, if only in Lu Han's head). How can he leave?
"I told him I don't want to go," Minseok says miserably. "My sister too. I barely even remember Korea and she doesn't at all. If we stayed until I finish high school, it wouldn't matter to me, but it's now or maybe never. My parents have always wanted to go back, so they're not willing to give up the chance."
"But..." Lu Han can't formulate an objection beyond "I don't want you to go," and if Minseok and his sister not wanting to leave isn't enough for his parents, his best friend wanting him here isn't going to make a difference.
And Minseok still has a girlfriend, but suddenly he surges forward and kisses Lu Han full on the mouth. Lu Han freezes, unable to believe this is really happening, and soon Minseok pulls back. "I, um, uh, that is, sorry, I didn't, um, sorry," he mumbles, barely intelligible.
"But..." Lu Han repeats, completely at a loss now.
"Nevermind," Minseok says, more coherent but still mumbling. "Forget I did that."
"But..." Lu Han tries a third time, and this time he manages to say, "But I love you."
"You what?"
"I like you," he amends, hoping Minseok will ignore the slip. "Don't be sorry."
Minseok has a girlfriend and he's leaving the country in a few months, but that doesn't stop Lu Han from leaning forward to kiss him. He's been waiting three years for this, maybe longer, maybe a lot longer. He's not about to miss his chance. And Minseok kisses him back, so it seems he feels the same.
Minseok breaks up with his girlfriend by the end of the week, making some excuse about how he's leaving soon and she's better off not getting any more attached, and she doesn't protest too much. "Are you going to say the same thing to me?" Lu Han teases later when Minseok tells him about it.
"I think you're already way too attached to me," Minseok says, and even though he laughs, it's the truth. Lu Han tries not to think about it.
He does a surprisingly good job of not thinking about it, enjoying his remaining time with Minseok without dwelling constantly on how they'll be separated soon. It's not easy to forget, since they've been together for so long that he can't really imagine Minseok being gone, and besides, Minseok is very good at distracting him from it.
But as the end of the school year approaches, Lu Han can't fail to notice the way Minseok's family is packing up their things, preparing to leave, or the pages of illegible (to Lu Han's eyes) Korean squiggles that Minseok pores over at lunchtime, groaning about how unprepared he is for high school in Korea. He tries not to make a fuss, because Minseok made him promise not to the first time he caught Lu Han watching him with a miserable expression on his face, but it gets harder and harder to forget how limited their time together is.
The worst of it is that Lu Han remembers this, too many times, losing Minseok to bad luck and death and distance and outside pressures, and sometimes his own mistakes. For every time he's loved Minseok (if it's real, but does it matter?), he's lost him, and the fear of that happening again gets its grip on him.
"You won't forget me when you move away, will you?" he asks pathetically, clinging a little too tight to Minseok.
"How could I forget you?" Minseok says dismissively. "You're my best friend." But they've been best friends before, and a lot more, and Lu Han doesn't know how to explain it, the way those memories of loss pile on top of each other until it feels like the fear of it happening again will crush him.
"Just promise me," Lu Han insists, not caring if he sounds pitiful. "Promise me you won't forget."
"I won't. Geez, Lu Han, you're needier than any girlfriend." Lu Han hits him for that, and they laugh, but it's only enough to make him forget a little bit now.
The day before Minseok leaves, he pulls Lu Han into his bedroom and says, "I want to talk to you. About, you know, this." He gestures between himself and Lu Han.
"Okay." Lu Han's throat goes dry, his hands clenching unconsciously into fists.
"I really like you. I do. But even if I decide to come back here for university, that's three years that we probably won't see each other."
"What are you saying?" Lu Han asks, but he thinks he already knows.
"I promise to e-mail and talk online and all that, but...that's okay for friends. For dating, or whatever we're doing, it's not going to be enough."
And there it is, the way Lu Han's heart sinks familiar even though he's probably never really experienced it before. "So you want to break up?"
At least Minseok looks like he feels bad about it, though if he's anywhere near as upset as Lu Han is, he's hiding it well. "I don't want to. But I think it's better." Noticing Lu Han's expression, he adds, "I'm not saying it's the end forever. But we shouldn't tie ourselves down for three years. If it's supposed to happen, it can happen later, right?"
But that's not how it works, Lu Han thinks. It never does. Or else we're just never supposed to happen.
"Don't get all mopey," Minseok says, poking Lu Han's cheek and trying to laugh off the awkward moment. "I'll call you all the time. You won't have a chance to miss me. I promised I wouldn't forget about you, remember?"
"I remember," Lu Han says, but it's hard to believe it.
He kisses Minseok goodbye that night, but when Lu Han and his parents see off the whole family the next morning, they only hug. "Don't be sad," Minseok says, voice low by Lu Han's ear. "Korea's not so far away."
And it's not, really, but of course it's not the same. They talk a lot at first, when Minseok is lonely and frustrated with trying to readjust to a homeland he barely remembers, but less once he starts to make friends, and even less as time passes. It's always the same, when they do, both of them laughing as they catch up on each other's lives, but Lu Han feels the distance more and more each year.
And when Minseok cheerfully tells him he's going to go to university in Korea, Lu Han knows that's it, not for their friendship, but for anything else. He wants to have hope, but it's too hard. At least Minseok is his friend, he thinks, and alive and happy, looking forward to his future even though Lu Han only has a small part in it. That'll have to be enough this time.
He doesn't know if he believes that what he remembers is real, the good and the painful, the happy and the terrifying. But if it is, then maybe he'll get another chance. Maybe someday, a lot farther away than the three years he's waited for Minseok here, he'll finally get that happy ending.
Part 7
