wander [ hyunlix ]

27

Locked doors.
Items scattered across the room. Three boys sat on the carpeted floor of a bedroom, talking in low voices.

Lee Minho kneeled, with one hand shoving an emptied suitcase to the side as carefully as he could. This was his bedroom, and he'd sent his maids away for the night, hoping and praying that no one would come to bother him.

Across from him sat two other boys: one being Han Jisung, who nervously pulled items from a second suitcase sat in front of him. The second boy, unfamiliar with the house around him, went by the name of Chan— and although Minho knew him not, he'd felt obligated to invite him over anyway for a certain reason.

That reason, of course, was the strange Polaroid photo of the pair he'd obtained.

"I haven't found anything in this one yet," Jisung commented to the others as he dragged items of clothing out of the suitcase. The boy had been rudely awakened in the middle of the night by a text and subsequent phone call from Minho, demanding that he come over and bring Chan with him.

Without even understanding why, he reluctantly obeyed, and Minho only began providing the two with a brief rundown of his reasonings after the two had arrived.

"So none of the clothes are yours?" Minho asked, beginning to unzip the side pockets on his case for further inspection.

"No," Jisung answered. "You said you actually found a picture of me in this suitcase?" he asked.

Minho nodded in return.

"Why would I be carrying around a picture of myself?"

"I don't know. He's in it too," Minho pointed briefly at Chan, who sat silently to the side, watching the pair unpack the items.

"Wouldn't it help to show us the photo?" Chan commented. "Let me take a look at it. I only know a few people who have that kind of camera, so maybe I could narrow the search down."

Minho hummed in agreement to the idea, and reached in his pocket, pulling out the slip of thick paper and passing it off to the curly haired boy.

Chan held it up, narrowing his eyes as he inspected the photo.
"I've definitely seen this," he decided after a moment, his tone serious. "Jisung, doesn't this look familiar to you?" he gently hit the boy's shoulder to get his attention.

Jisung carefully took the picture from him and held it up.
"It does," he inspected it. "Wait, this was..." he paused for a moment, staring at himself in the picture.

"Right!" he snapped his fingers to jog his memory. "I remember the night this is from— It was on my birthday last year!"

"Your birthday last year?" Minho repeated, and the younger boy nodded avidly.

"Yeah, we were out messing around and rollerskating around midnight. I remember posing for this photo, because Felix was so excited that I gave him a—"

A heavy silence fell over the room as Jisung's words failed him, memories of that night resurfacing in a bittersweet whirlwind.
He was wrong. That picture had been taken after midnight, which meant it was Felix's birthday.

And Jisung had bought him a little Polaroid camera as a gift.

He slowly turned, making eye contact with Chan, whose face carried only an unreadable expression.
"Felix took that picture?" he asked, hesitant as if he'd heard wrong.