crack in the mirror | gayeon 🪞

-14-

About a week had passed since learning about the abusers and having killed a man.

Nothing much has changed since that night, except for the fact that Jooyeon had locked himself in his room a few days later with a typewriter, a pile of white sheets and a joint in his hand.

He was sure he would move on with his book, so he typed aggressively with his fingers everything about what he had felt during that murder and he noted in his head to make sure to hide these paper pages under his bed later—somewhere no one would figure out—because what if the police found his trail and would want to question him about everything. He couldn't let anyone find it.

Then he moved straight to the book; looking at the file with the plot, he hoped he would start writing again that day. After all, he had experienced everything first hand—right on his skin with his own hands. He had to know what to do next.

Letting the first line tap out of his fingers, he slowly wrote a few paragraphs, smiling very broadly to himself.

He had to tell Jiseok later, he thought giggling quietly as his hands didn't stop running on the keyboard for even a second.

If he could call it that way; he was on fire with inspiration, as if the words had been accumulating inside him all this time of not writing and now finally burst, creating every scene.

At some point, he took the stack of papers he had previously written. His eyes slowly traced every line and he felt like reliving everything that had happened a few nights ago with vivid details. Of course, his head started spinning at this thought, but what mattered was that he was finally moving on. He couldn't stop now—not when the words arranged themselves so beautifully, as if they were asking Jooyeon to be shown to the public.

He furrowed his brows slightly, staring once at the file with 'truth', and once at the laptop with a slowly unfolding story. If anyone were to discover the truth, probing him with questions and suspicions, he would be dead. He couldn't let anyone ever find it. Not now and not ever.

And as he pushed the stack of paper to the side, he glued his eyes to the laptop, this time feeling himself slipping into some trance; as if everything around him suddenly blurred and the sounds got mixed with colours.

It was so easy to write; he couldn't tell if it was because of having killed that man or because he missed writing this book so much.

He lost track of time. He felt intoxicated.

Then, out of sudden, the whole aura disappeared, he could finally tell if the ticking of a cricket was a sound, not the colour yellow, and that the 'truth' continued to churn under his hands.

He heard a voice calling him by his name, he bit his lower lip, and turned around, trying his best to hide the stack of white sheets with his broad shoulders. Right in front of him, Jungsu materialised, smiling at him quite concerningly.

"Am I here at the right time, or should I go now?" He asked, feeling visibly out of pocket. He placed a hand on top of Jooyeon's head, ruffling his hair with a quiet chuckle, as the boy didn't even move an inch. "You are writing, I guess."

"Oh, I'm trying to," he replied. And in his head, sentences were still creating as quickly as if he were actually reading a finished book. He rubbed his eyes, as staring at Jungsu half in the darkness was rather a tough and unpleasant task. Of course, the matter was only the lack of light, and his eyes that weren't accustomed to the dark, and not Jungsu—he was utterly beautiful as always. "I haven't written in a long time."

They stared at each other for a few seconds in silence; Jooyeon tapping the desk monotonously with his fingernails and Jungsu just shifting his weight from his left leg to the right one.