love, me | gyuricky

eight.

Gyuvin spent the rest of the day out and about; first he went to the gym, then he stopped by a cafe on campus to get croissants and iced coffee for himself and Jiwoong, then he met Zhanghao and the others for dinner downtown. It was past midnight when he got back to his room. Jiwoong was still out. It was rare considering that man had the sleep schedule of a grandfather, which was to say most days Gyuvin had to fall asleep to the background noise of droning snores, but he figured Jiwoong would be back anytime now. Neither of them were the type to like to stay out too late.

He checked his phone. It was a quarter past twelve, and there were no new emails in his inbox. He frowned, setting his phone down before going to shower. Weird. "He" usually sent multiple emails a day. Gyuvin's email from ten in the morning was still unanswered.

He awoke the next morning purely because he needed to pee, but as he got off the bed he could feel that achy sluggishness that lingered when one slept a little too long. It was past eleven, which meant he'd slept for more than ten hours. By the time he was coherent enough to consider himself awake, he'd spent ten minutes sitting in his chair watching the dust motes spin in the mid-morning light.

Gyuvin flipped open his Macbook.

No new emails.

"Still?" he said out loud, to no one in particular. It was weird. They hadn't gone a single day without talking since his birthday, the day he received the first email.

Somehow, every single email he'd received from "him" had disappeared from his inbox. Even his own email replies had vanished, which meant he could no longer send any more emails to "him". It was like overnight, everything they'd shared had just been wiped from existence.

What was that supposed to mean? If something in the timeline had changed so that "he" never contacted Gyuvin at all, did it mean his plan to prevent Gyuvin from untimely death had worked? After all, if Gyuvin had never died, then "he" would never have had to write to him in the first place.

Or was it that he'd, unknowingly, done something so different from the original timeline that he'd changed the ending all on his own?

Had it all been a dream?

He could spend the rest of his life trying to fathom his way out of this labyrinth, but he would never know the answer.

Gyuvin spent the next week in a daze. Eventually, after a month of being so down his friends came by the dorm to check on him every day, he moved on. Whatever they'd had, whatever he'd shared with "him", was nothing more than a fever dream. Who was he to believe in prophecies and time travel and nonsense like that? He wondered if he should check himself into a psych ward to get himself medically examined. But as time went on and the semester began and he was thrown back into the rigor of his schoolwork, Gyuvin put all of it behind him. There was nothing he could to do chase down his lover from the future who'd disappeared from his life like smoke into the night sky. He had more important things to do now. At the end of the day, he still had a life to live.