Downpour

INSTRUCTIONS ON HOW TO FLY

There's an elbow in his side, digging under his ribs. It's uncomfortable, but Chan's too tired to move and push the elbow-owner away. Instead, he tries to make his discomfort known by groaning, hoping that whoever it is will get the message.

For a few seconds, it works.

The elbow is removed, and sleep almost takes him back into its sweet embrace, before his head is suddenly soaked in ice cold water.

He sits up immediately, the water dripping down his neck and soaking into the collar of his t-shirt. It's freezing, enough to raise goosebumps down his arms.

Rubbing at his hand eyes, he goes to glare at whoever decided it would be a good idea to wake him up with cold water but freezes.

He's not in the field.

For a second, there still seems to be grass beneath him, but it's gone as soon as it appeared, and his heart leaps as he realises that he's in a bedroom that's way too modern to be in the castle.

The joy doesn't last long.

Although the curtains are the same shade of off-white, the carpet equally as stained, sheets of paper littered around the bed, it's not his bedroom. The bedsheets are too dark, the walls are covered in pictures of him smiling with other people - people he doesn't even know, the worn rabbit toy he's had since he was five isn't there.

The happiness he felt when he first woke has completely disappeared. He's not in the castle, and he's not home, so where is he? Though the rational part of his mind had told him not to get his hopes up, he'd still believed that maybe he'd wake up and it would all have been a bad dream.

He's never had a dream that felt this real.

And even if there was the slightest chance that he was home, just somehow his room had been redesigned, there was something incredibly wrong that couldn't be fixed.

"Channie? Are you okay?" Seungkwan sets the empty glass down, and waves his hand in front of Chan's vacant eyes.

The motion reminds him to move, and his brain kick-starts. He splutters, mouth half a second behind his mind, "Seungkwan?"

Any concern that the older had disappears, and instead he laughs. "Channie, what's up with you today? You're acting strange."

"Nothing." Mutters Chan, mind reeling. He's not at the castle, and he's not home. Is it possible that he's somehow somewhere entirely new?

As much as he doesn't want that to be true, the tone that Seungkwan speaks in shows that they've been friends for a while. A quick scan of the photo wall gives him an idea of how long. Almost half the photos are of them in stupid poses, although in the most recent ones, Hansol has joined their duo.

There's something unsettling about the photos, Chan thinks, looking closer, but his heart plummets as he realises what it is.

In the photos, he looks happy.

It's only a tiny difference, but his smile is wide and genuine, not the fake one he plasters over his face when Mingming asks him if he's okay.

Chan can't remember the last time he smiled properly, yet in the photos it seems to be a regular occurrence.

Seungkwan raises a cynical eyebrow, "I can tell that's a lie because you're a rubbish liar, but I'm going to ignore it since otherwise you'll get annoyed and refuse to go out even though we've been planning this for weeks."