here always

chapter twelve

"Give it back!"

"I just want to take a look at it!"

"I already told you about it?"

"But Seungminnie, where is the 'Dear diary, today I had the most splendid day' written?"

"I don't write diaries like that." Seungmin growled as he snatched back his journal.

"Then that explains why it looks so much like your chemistry running notes." Hyunjin remarked at the perfectly neat handwriting and underlining of the log book.

Seungmin sighed. "I just jot down whatever comes to my mind at that moment. I don't sit and write an autobiography. Sometimes I write a sentence, other times a paragraph. It depends."

Seungmin himself was flipping through the pages idly with an obnoxiously loud Hyunjin by his side.

"Oh was this when you prepared for my birthday!"

"A little louder and the polar bears of the tundra would be able to hear you."

Hyunjin pretended not to hear and continued to screech near Seungmin's ear.

"I know this! You told me about disliking Minho but damn, you must really detest him to dedicate three whole pages for him."

"I am not deaf but keep wailing like that and I will be."

They were going through the last pages when Seungmin stopped at a page to rip it off its binder. Hyunjin looked at Seungmin.

"Too bad memories?"

"Too bad memories." Seungmin nodded gravely.

He crumpled up the paper right beside Hyunjin's ear, watching in glee and the older one winced at the sound.

"Why Kim Seungmin you dev-"

Seungmin's loud laughter cut him through as Hyunjin joined him.

It wasn't even funny. But laughing with Seungmin with nothing to worry about felt like home.

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

Hyunjin looked back at when he was going through Seungmin's diary and noticed the ripped out page. He didn't think of it much. Both when he saw Seungmin tearing the page and when he saw the frayed edges in the book, he didn't suspect anything.

If Seungmin was comfortable with showing his entire diary with Hyunjin, then it didn't matter if he stopped Hyunjin from seeing a few pages.

But it was right there, below all the other sheets, with the date on top.

Hyunjin was able to make excuses for the other evidence, passing them off as fake and even as a figment of his imagination.

But when the torn diary page was in front of his eyes and he knew that Seungmin himself tore it, he couldn't keep lying to himself.

Hyunjin panicked.

If Seungmin had his diary, which he wrote in the 1990s, then was Hyunjin all this time fraternizing with a ghost of some sort?

Hyunjin thought that ,even for him, this was way too far-fetched. Maybe he should take a deep breath and try to think rationally?

No. All Hyunjin knows is to get alarmed so he aggressively grabbed the paper.

The already old piece of ruled sheet was delicate and frail.

Bringing it to eye-level, Hyunjin read:

It's very tiring. All I do is study, study and study more. I don't even want to make Dad happy anymore. I try, I always did. But he is never happy at anything I do.

Someday, I will leave them behind. Leave the study, leave the company, leave it all. Then I can do what I want.

All I want to do is to find a friend.

Someone who I can call my soulmate.