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“Excuse me, may I sit here?”
Saeyoung glanced up, then quickly back down at his lap, his face hot as he tried to remember how to breathe. He’s seen this girl before; from what he could tell, they were around the same age. She came to mass every Sunday with her parents, and usually sat with them near the front. A stark contrast to him, who came alone and sat all the way in the back.
He fidgeted in place, glancing around to try and see where V had gone, but there were too many people up and about, milling around before the mass began. And the girl was still standing there, patiently waiting for his answer. He finally nodded, his gaze still fixed straight ahead.
“Thank you!” She sat down beside him, close enough that he could feel her warmth but not so close that they touched. That in itself was a relief, but Saeyoung couldn’t hide his nervousness. He squirmed in his seat, kicked his feet back and forth, gripped his hands tightly together as he continued searching the faces in the assembly, trying in vain to find V. He wasn’t entirely certain what the older boy could do for him, but surely he could at least relieve some of the tension in Saeyoung’s stomach. V would know what to say to this pretty girl in the white dress.
He had never talked to anyone at mass before, aside from V. In fact, he rarely spoke to anyone at all. Maybe his mother’s paranoia had rubbed off on him, or maybe he was just naturally shy. Whatever the case may be, he never joined the other children he saw playing together at church. They seemed like they lived in another world to Saeyoung, like stars that were too far for him to reach.
This girl had caught his eye from the very beginning, though. If the other children at church were stars, she was the sun. The sun was a star too, after all, and she was by far the brightest of them all. He would watch from his spot in the back as she flitted from one child to another, joking and laughing and speaking with ease to everyone around her.
Aside from one or two curious glances, no one spared Saeyoung and his dirty clothes and disheveled hair much attention.
Except for her.
From his first Sunday in church, she had noticed him, and had given him more than just a single look. In fact, she had watched him steadily, so much so that every time Saeyoung had snuck a peek up at her, he had been shocked to find her already staring back at him. Once, their eyes caught and held, and she had smiled at him so brightly, it had stolen his breath away.
After that, Saeyoung was careful to only look at her when he was absolutely certain she was distracted. He spent a lot of his time on Sundays glancing between the pastor and the back of her head. And after mass, he was always the first one out the door, scared of both his mother’s wrath should he take too long to reappear, and those warm brown eyes watching him retreat.
But now, she was sitting beside him, and he had no idea what to do. So he waited for her to make the first move, to speak up or do or say something, anything, before he exploded.
She must have heard his wish, because she finally broke the tense silence between them.
“My name is Mimi, what’s your’s?”
And Saeyoung, in all his young, awkward glory, flinched at her soft voice, actually jumping in his seat as he turned to face her. He immediately regretted it. She had the sweetest brown eyes he had ever seen in his life, and her gaze made his entire body feel like it was going to melt on the spot. Melting sounded pretty good right now, actually. It was preferable to her laughing at him for being such a scaredy-cat, jumping out of his skin like a coward. He fixed his eyes back on the floor again, his heart thumping too loud in his chest as he waited for the laughter… but it never came.
Instead, she continued talking, as if she hadn’t just watched him make a complete fool of himself. “Well, it’s actually my nickname, ‘cause I don’t like my full name or my baptismal name, so I decided to just give myself my own name!” She sounded so proud of herself, and Saeyoung wondered if she was smiling at him. He didn’t dare look up to check.
Another silence blanketed itself around them, as Saeyoung tried desperately to speak around the lump in his throat. He swallowed, opened his mouth, cleared his throat, then tried again. “Saeyoung…” He paused, holding his breath before continuing, slowly, “My name is Saeyoung.”
“Saeyoung?” He nodded, staring hard at his shoes as his heart beat too loudly in his ears. “That’s a pretty name, I like it! It’s nice to meet you, Saeyoung!”
The organ began to play, filling the church with music, and the people around them filed into the pews, taking their seats with rustles of clothing and murmurs of fading conversations. Saeyoung steeled himself, then tore his eyes away from the floor, his gaze locking with her’s yet again. His heart was in his stomach, his nails biting crescent moons into the palms of his hands, as he almost whispered in reply, “It’s nice to meet you too.” And for the first time, Saeyoung tried on a smile, a feeble and weak attempt at being friendly, but a small smile nonetheless.
The smile she gave him in return couldn’t possibly have been meant for him. He had half a mind to turn around and see who was behind him, because there was no way in hell that she was smiling at him like that. Surely, surely, she had to be the sun, because in that moment, Saeyoung swore she could have parted storm clouds and chased away the night.
And God said, let there be light.
-
“Saeyoung~ guess who?”
Despite the hands covering his eyes and the heavily accented voice, Saeyoung knew who it was. Of course he did; he would recognize her anywhere. But still, he played along anyway, tapping his chin with his finger as he frowned in thought. “Hmm… could it be… maybe… is it Saint Paul?”
“Wrong~!”
“Is it… Saint Thomas?”
“Nope~!”
“Saint Peter?”
“No!”
“Then it must be… Minnie Mouse!”
His answer was rewarded with a twinkling laugh, and finally the small hands were pulled away from his eyes. He turned around in his seat to face her, arms resting against the top of the pew as he grinned into her smiling face. “Correct!” She sing-songed, beaming at him with such utter delight Saeyoung felt his heart squeeze with the knowledge that he was the cause.
“Are you ever going to settle on a name?” He asked, his voice fond and his chin resting on his hands as he watched her giggle.
“Never ever,” She replied, sticking her tongue out at him before ducking out of sight, apparently to pick her bag up off the floor. Before Saeyoung could lean over to see what she had brought with her, she was running around the pews to join him in their usual seats. She plopped into her spot beside him with a wide smile, so that Saeyoung could clearly see the gap where one of her teeth had fallen out.
“Eww, you lost another one? You’re going to end up looking like a granny.”
She stuck her tongue out at him again, a pout on her lips. “And if you talk to girls like that you’re going to die an unmarried man!” She shot back, grinning wickedly as he placed both his hands over his heart in mock hurt.
“You wound me, Minnie,” he replied solemnly, to which she replied with a giggle.
“Then let me make it up to you!” She finally pulled her purse up off the floor by it’s strap, Minnie Mouse’s face smiling up at him as she zipped open the head. She paused, waving her hand over the opening and muttering “Abracadabra!” under her breath before finally pulling out her spoils. She handed him a bag of carp bread, another bag of candy, and a big, thick book.
Saeyoung carefully placed the bread in his own bag, planning to give it to Saeran when he got home. The candy he kept for himself, to eat during mass. The book, though…
He placed his hand on the cover tentatively, as if afraid it would break under his touch. Carefully, he traced the title with the tip of his finger, his eyes wide at the gift his friend had managed to bring for him.
“I did pretty good, huh?” She asked, a hint of pride in her voice as she leaned in closer. “I asked the librarian to extend the due date, so you’ll have plenty of time to read it. I don’t know how you can understand this stuff, Saeyoung. I tried reading it, and it just made my head hurt-”
With the book balanced on his lap, he reached out to pull her into a tight hug, holding on to her with all the strength in his body. She squeaked in surprise, to which Saeyoung couldn’t help but laugh a little. He pulled away to look at her, his face hurting from how hard he was smiling.
“Thank you.” He tried so, so hard to put all his feelings into those simple words. How grateful he was to have her as a friend. That she reached her hand out to him, and invited him into her wonderful, bright world. That she smiled at him, went out of her way to sit with him every Sunday and bring him food and books. V and Rika did the same, too, but it was different.
To Saeyoung, V and Rika were like parents.
But she… she was like the sun.
She tilted her head at him, a strange expression on her face that made Saeyoung feel self-conscious. But then she smiled again, so softly and with so much warmth in her eyes that all of his growing unease was immediately swept away. “Of course, Saeyoung.” She hugged him back, then pulled away so that she could ruffle his already messy hair. “You better remember me when you’re rich!”
Saeyoung swatted her hand away, trying in vain to flatten his hair back down with little to no success. “Yeah yeah,” he grumbled, smiling despite himself as she turned away to wave at someone who had just walked by. “I could never forget you,” he muttered under his breath, his face growing hot with embarrassment as he ducked his head to shove the book into his bag.
“What’d you say?” She asked curiously, turning back to face him, to which Saeyoung replied by pulling another book out and handing it to her wordlessly. “Oh good, you remembered!”
“Of course I remembered,” he huffed, an indignant little frown on his face as she took the book out of his hands. It was a collection of fairy tales written in English, that Saeyoung had used as practice to better acquaint himself with the language. “I haven’t forgotten to return a single book to you yet.”
“Yet,” she pointed out with a smirk, wiggling her eyebrows at him as she opened the book to the table of contents. “Which one was your favorite? I really like Beauty and the Beast.”
“Hmm, I didn’t… really like any of them,” Saeyoung admitted sheepishly, an almost apologetic tone in his voice at the look she gave him.
“What? Why?” She asked, eyes wide as she stared at him in shock. Saeyoung found he couldn’t meet her gaze anymore, so he looked down, fiddling with the frayed edges of his hoodie as he pieced together what he wanted to say. Why hadn’t he liked any of them…?
He nibbled at his bottom lip, before slowly, hesitantly, putting his thoughts into words. “They just… weren’t realistic to me. All of those stories had happy endings, but that’s… not how it always works, in real life.” His mind turned to his drunken mother and sick little brother waiting for him at home, and he felt his stomach lurch. “Sometimes, no matter what you do or how hard you try, you just… don’t get to have a happy ending.”
For a long while, neither of them spoke, and suddenly Saeyoung felt his old nervousness come back tenfold. Did he say the wrong thing? He opened his mouth to backtrack, to apologize, to ask her to forget he ever said anything, except she spoke up first.
“Of course it’s unrealistic, it’s a fairy tale.” She began turning the pages, leafing through the stories. Cinderella, Rapunzel, Thumbelina… one by one, she leafed through each of their tales, pausing at the illustrations of their happily ever after. She stopped when she got to Beauty and the Beast, at the part where the Beauty thought that the Beast was dead.
“You might not think that you can achieve a happy ending, or that you deserve one, but you do.” She finally looked up at him, a worried frown on her face but a gentle smile on her lips. “Everyone deserves to be happy. It might be hard, and take a long time, and… and sometimes, you might not think you’ll ever reach the end. But you’ll get a happy ending, Saeyoung.” She reached out to take his hand in her own, and squeezed it. “I know you will. Trust me.”
It was like his mouth was full of sawdust. He couldn’t breathe or speak or do anything. His vision blurred, and he wondered, vaguely, if his glasses had fogged up- it wasn’t until he felt the tear tracking down his cheek that he realized that he was crying. Saeyoung wrenched his hand out of her’s, scrubbing fiercely at his eyes in mortification. She was going to laugh at him for being such a baby.
Organ music filled the church hall, as her arms wrapped around him in another tight hug. She rubbed his back and spoke to him in a soothing voice, murmuring over and over again, “I believe in you, Saeyoung.”
I believe in you.
-
“Merry Christmas!”
Saeyoung glanced up from the book he was reading and smiled. “Merry Christmas,” he replied, as she sat down next to him with a sigh.
“It feels like forever since I last saw you, I haven’t seen you in weeks! How are you? V told me that you were alright, but still, is everything… okay, at home?” She asked, uncertainly, in that way she did whenever she asked about his home life. They had come to a mutual understanding early on in their friendship that Saeyoung didn’t like talking about his life outside of church, and she respected that.
But sometimes, her curiosity got the better of her, and this time, he supposed she had the right to ask. He bit the inside of his cheek before replying, slowly, “Things… could be better, but they’re fine now. Promise,” he added at the frown she gave him, smiling slightly at her. “I missed you.”
The words were out of his mouth before his brain could process what he had said. By the time he realized what he had done, it was too late. He could feel the blood rushing to his face even as her eyes widened with delight and she beamed at him.
“I missed you too!” She exclaimed happily, throwing her arms around his neck in a hug so enthusiastic it knocked his book to the floor. Saeyoung couldn’t bring himself to mind too much, though. He smiled faintly and hugged her back, as a fist squeezed around his heart.
She broke away from the hug to smile at him again, then reached for the purse at her hip, while Saeyoung picked his book back up. "I brought us some snacks to eat during mass, and plenty for you to take home with you.” She held the brown paper bag out to him, and Saeyoung stuck his hand in without bothering to look first. He felt around, then tugged out a carp bread that he promptly stuck in his mouth.
“Saeyoung! You’re eating it wrong!”
Saeyoung continued lazily munching on the head of the fish, savoring the sweet red bean paste as his teeth finally sank into the middle. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see her with her hands on her hips, frowning at him like he had just committed a heinous crime. He grinned at her as he took the pastry out of his mouth, teeth stained red as he said, humbly, “Then please teach me how to properly eat carp bread, master.”
She huffed and wagged a finger at him. “I’m in a good mood, so I’ll show you just this once. Pay attention, my pupil!” She pulled out a fish of her own, then viciously bit into it’s stomach. She sucked out all the paste, then turned to grin at him, triumphantly holding up her now empty carp bread. “See? That’s how it’s done!”
“That was gross! Why do you eat it like that?” He asked, laughing, as he took another bite out of his fish.
She shrugged and reached into the bag for another pastry. “The guts are the yummiest part of the fish, so it makes sense to eat it first.” Saeyoung nodded sagely at her words of wisdom, as he continued to eat up. The pair sat in comfortable quiet for a time, just enjoying each other’s company and the food shared between them, as the church filled slowly with it’s Christmas congregation.
For once, Saeyoung was the one to break the silence, as he asked, between bites of his bread, “Have you settled on a name yet?”
“Nope, I’m still deciding! I’m going by Mia for now.” At the inquisitive look he shot at her, she held up her fist next to her face and flicked her wrist. “You know, cause it sounds like the sound a cat makes!”
He laughed at that, shaking his head with an affectionate smile. “You’re so weird.”
“Like you’re one to talk.”
They went back to their easy silence, even as Saeyoung struggled with what he wanted to say next. His heart was coal in his chest as he fumbled with his thoughts, trying and failing to think of the best way to say what he needed to say.
Because it had been hard, staying away from the church over the last few weeks, unable to talk to her himself.
It was going to be even harder completely abandoning his life, his brother, and her.
The plans had been finalized, and he was finally ready to leave his life as Saeyoung behind. Soon, he would just be Luciel. He would be a secret agent with no past, no family, no friends, and no way for his father to find him or Saeran. He would get to go to college, do whatever he wanted, and become rich like he had always dreamed… now, all that was left was to say good bye.
He took a deep breath.
This was a lot harder than he thought.
“Hey.”
He was startled out of his thoughts by a hand on his arm and a warm voice, and scrambled to remember where he was. And what he needed to do. “Are you okay, Saeyoung?”
Was he okay? No. He found that he couldn’t look her in the eye anymore, couldn’t even look at her face to catch her change of expression. So he stared at the floor and talked to his shoes, like he had once upon a time, such a long time ago.
“Can you… Will you, please, remember me?”
Saeyoung couldn’t breathe. His heart felt like it had stopped beating, and yet it was only growing louder and louder in his ears. He wanted to cry. He wanted to reach out for her hand, hold on to her and never let go. But he couldn’t.
He had to let go.
“I… I have to go away. For a really, really long time. I… probably won’t be coming back.” He gripped his hands together, as if in prayer. His voice trembled as he continued to speak. He hated this. “So please, don’t forget me. Remember me forever. I don’t want to disappear. I really don’t, but I have to, or else someone I love could get really hurt. But as long as you remember me, I’ll never fully disappear. So please remember me. Please.”
Everything went still for a very, very long time after that. Saeyoung waited, his lungs burning, until a soft, warm hand reached out for his own. She pried his hands apart, then intertwined their fingers together, squeezing gently to let him know that she was there. He felt something pressed between their palms, but didn't dare ask what it was.
"I'll remember you. For as long as I live, I will always remember you, Saeyoung." She pulled her hand out of his, and immediately, Saeyoung missed her warmth. She had left something behind, though, and when he finally looked down to see what it was, he felt his heart skip a beat. It was a cross necklace. He looked up at her, stunned, and found her smiling at him. "I got it for you as a Christmas present, but... it can be a going away present too, I guess." She reached out for his hand, and curled his fingers around the cross, her eyes never leaving his as she said, her words carving themselves into his heart and mind and soul, "You have to promise you won't forget me either. Okay?"
Saeyoung could only nod, his eyes brimming with tears as he gripped the cross too tight in his hand.
I could never forget you.