Our Secret Letters (Hyungwonho)

Our Secret Letters

The scratching of the pen on paper was much more prominent in his mind than he remembered it ever being before, drilling into the very back of his head and with it a small headache. Hoseok was a seventeen year old student with the dream of an author, yet there he was unable to string together a few simple words and sentences to fill more than a single line on the card. He would tap his pen occasionally, the ink running dry every now and then and he swore it was to spite him.

He would find everything wrong with the small note over and over again, all trivial things to use as an excuse to crumble the letter up in his fists and toss it away. He adjusted his own handwriting multiple times during the weeks he spent trying to put his feelings down into words on paper, but it seemed like the whole world was against him and he cursed it every chance he got.

He wrote many short stories before when sleep just wouldn't come to him, he would be up all night under the dim, pathetic light the lamp on the desk beside his bed provided and jotting down all the emotions of the people in his head, giving them stories and a world and a smile, and he would bring them all to life with just a few strokes of his pen and a few pages of paper. But there he sat at his desk, trying to write down his own feelings and he just couldn't. He felt lost. It felt like there were no words to explain how he feels. How his world is so full of colour, shining every hue at once and every shade imaginable whenever he was even near to him. To Chae Hyungwon.

Hoseok felt a little cliché and maybe a little pathetic that he was trying to write a love letter when he passed by the student every day, and he has several times before. He's spent lunch with him before as well. And every time he's near to him Hoseok swore that everything else would slow down, that time itself would count down the seconds slower just to give them more time together. And Hoseok was certain that nothing in the world glowed as beautifully and as brightly as Hyungwon's eyes. He felt sick sometimes at how he saw Hyungwon because every time he thinks of the future, it terrifies him to see it without Hyungwon. He didn't want to leave Hyungwon, he didn't want someone else at his side. He figured time would heal that just has it does everything else, but he's scared to have to go through that at all.

Everything he wanted to say was in his head, it was there on the tip of his tongue and even the tips of his fingers. It was all there in the way he moved and flicked his wrist as he guided the pen over the paper, but it was never there in the ink on the paper. It was never enough and it was never right.

Hoseok could be talking with Hyungwon, he could be watching how his lips moved and how he smiled and how his eyes just seemed to light up as he would study all his medical books every second he could spare. And in those moments Hoseok knew he could sit there, staring at him, and he could pour out everything he felt and how his whole body just seems so light yet his chest would tighten whenever he was with Hyungwon. He could string together every word so perfectly and he could get it all across, and he could sit there for hours telling Hyungwon everything that is perfect about him and he could hope Hyungwon would do the same. That Hyungwon would stop him mid sentence just tell him his writing is perfect, that he would become an author one day and that just looking in his eyes could make Hyungwon's day better.

But when he's at his desk, doing what he did best and writing what he wrote best, Hoseok just couldn't do it. He could describe how Hyungwon makes him feel, so why can't he on paper?

---

It took him months, snow falling on his shoulders and his mouth buried behind a pink scarf and his hands tucked in the pockets of his coat, fingers delicately holding the folded piece of paper so it wouldn't crease yet his grasp was tight and even had some desperation behind it. It took him months of writing until he felt he had perfected it, and then it took another month for him to gain the courage to neatly fold it over twice and stuff it in his pocket, strolling down the streets to Hyungwon's house.