mechanical | xiuchen

eleven.

He swore that his heart stopped beating.

No way. No way in hell.

His fingers accidentally let go of the red string as he reached down to carefully pinch around the corner of one of the little slips on the floor, looking closely at every detail and just trying to understand how, why, or even if he was looking at what he thought he was.

But no matter how hard he stared, or which way he inspected everything, it was exactly what it looked like, laid out right there in front of him. The answer he'd been searching for all this time had suddenly just served itself to him on a silver platter, and he had no clue what to think.

The small slips scattered at his feet were photographs. A lot of them. And although they looked as good as new, with no trace of folds at the corners and not a speck of dirt on their surfaces, the subjects of these photos would suggest that years had passed since they'd been taken.

Some of them were of Luhan. He wore a grin of absolute joy - something Jongdae wasn't sure he ever saw from him in any of the videos.

Most of them were of Minseok.

But for some strange reason, some reason that Jongdae was trying so hard to understand, Minseok's eyes were clearly shining a gorgeous shade of brown, complemented by sunlight and making him look more gentle and kind than Jongdae had ever seen him before.

That wasn't all. There was something in these pictures that Jongdae had never seen Minseok do before. Not once.

His lips were curled into the sweet curve of a genuine smile.

Jongdae tightened his fingers around the corners of the photo paper, afraid that if he didn't, he would drop it.

This just didn't make sense. Not at all. In fact, it was starting to make him feel kind of weird in his stomach, and suddenly, he really needed to sit down.

He backed up, feeling clumsily around for the edge of the bed and dropping onto it when it touched his fingertips. He laid the book and the photo he'd picked up beside him before taking a deep breath, cradling his head in the palms of his hands, starting to feel overwhelmed.

Human. All of the pictures pointed inevitably to the fact that at some point, Minseok was a human. Able to smile, able to laugh, able to cry. Able to love.

Jongdae shut the photo back into the back of the journal, not able to look at it any longer, though many others were spread across the wooden floor.

The whole thing bore a burning question into his mind.

If Minseok had existed as a human, what had happened to that version of him?

What had happened to the Minseok that could smile all on his own?

His head was spinning with the thought, and he almost wanted to go ask Minseok just what the hell all of this was and what it meant.

But most of him knew that that would be a terrible idea. After all, Minseok might not even know what happened, and now that he was learning to deal with emotions such as fear and sadness, to suddenly dump the fact that he used to be human on him would be crushing.

No. Jongdae was not going to do that. Definitely not. He was just going to carry on as if he'd never seen anything. His mission had not changed now that he knew this, even if he now strived to find out what had happened to his companion as well.