hiding, lurking » pentagon

14

❝ F O U R T E E N ❞

━ will you shoot the messenger? or won't you?

Knocking on Yuto's door was the hardest thing Hongseok had ever done in his entire life. The wood felt alive under his skin just so it could remind him of the death that had happened behind it.

When Yuto's mother opened the door, Hongseok felt sick and Kino made a tiny noise like he'd been punched in the stomach.

Yuto's mother offered them a surprised greeting and they stepped inside, sitting in the living room. The clock over the fireplace ticked and baby pictures of Yuto stared at them from the walls. Knitting laid on the table, an empty coffee mug printing a ring upon the wood. It looked like everything was normal, like life was going on with no indication that it shouldn't. That for the Adachis' only son, it hadn't.

"Is there something I can do for you two?" Yuto's mom asked. Kino looked to Hongseok.

"We..." He started shakily, "we wanted to know if Yuto left - if Yuto left a note."

Mrs. Adachi's eyes flicked downward, perhaps to hide the sudden tears brimming in them. Years could pass and they'd still swim to the surface, but she suspected the grief would always take her by surprise. She folded her hands in her lap.

"He did. I wanted to wait until the right time to give it to you all. I didn't want you reading that so soon after - after his death." She took a breath and tried to compose herself. "I'll go get it for you."

After she left the room, Kino and Hongseok were very quiet, both staring at the pictures of Yuto. The clock ticked on between their silence, ticking away the seconds and adding dust to the thin layer on the pictures' protective glass.

Mrs. Adachi came back with an envelope in her hands. It was unopened, and addressed to "My Friends". She handed the letter to Hongseok, who thanked her through the lump in his throat.

"Is there anything else I can do for you?" She asked.

"This should be all, thank you," Hongseok said, and Kino echoed him. They both stood and Mrs. Adachi saw them out, eyes trailing them with remnants of sadness and empathy.

They got into Hongseok's car, but he hesitated to put it in reverse and leave the driveway. His hand hovered near the ignition.

"I'm afraid to read that note," Hongseok said.

Kino looked at him, at his arrested figure and terrified, paralyzed eyes.

"Me too," he said, and that was all he needed to say. They drove back to Kino's house in silence, a collective bad feeling weighing heavily in their stomachs like a mountain of stones.

When they closed the door of Kino's bedroom behind them, they saw that the photo of Yanan and Shinwon was still up on Kino's computer. Kino couldn't remember if it had been before they'd left, and a chill washed over him. Kino hastily turned off his computer, then sat down.

He held the note in his hand, trembling slightly. My Friends, it read. That struck Kino as odd, all of a sudden, and he wanted to drop the note, to throw it away, to leave it unopened and his questions unanswered. But -

"Open it," Hongseok said. Feeling bile in the back of his throat, Kino did. And gasped, starting like he'd been burned. A wispy black tendril curled from the envelope, swirling in the air, nearly snakelike and alive, before dissipating. The note fluttered to the floor, and Hongseok dove to pick it up, surprise and horror wiping his face of expression as his eyes scanned it.

To Whom It May Concern,

The suicide of your friend was not a suicide. It was an escape attempt - an attempt to escape from me. And one of you is next.

I propose a game, because I am always one for sport. We shall both have a goal: yours, to get rid of me, and mine, to get rid of all of you. And I will kill all of you if you do not succeed in time.

But who am I? I am occasionally intangible to the human eye, but I am prone to using your human eyes. So be careful of who you trust, and happy hunting.

P.S. I hope the apparent suicide of your friend did not hurt you all terribly. That would be quite unfortunate.

"What the fuck?" Hongseok said softly, unable to comprehend the words written on the paper in his hands.

All he knew was that his life would never be the same.

Hyojong felt like shit. His room stank. It was dark, it was dirty, and while Hongseok had seen the empty liquor bottles, he hadn't seen the lines of powder, the little baggies. Hyojong was kind of disappointed; he kept drinking himself to death and doing drugs to feel alive, to feel anything, really, because after Yuto killed himself and Yanan went crazy, he just couldn't. He felt numb and empty and scared because the entire world was too huge and uncaring for him to get out of bed and face it. And when Hongseok had yelled at him earlier, he'd felt something. He wished that something would make a reappearance, because he knew how bad it was that his little brother was watching cartoons in the living room while he slowly killed himself, and he knew it was even worse that he couldn't bring himself to care. His parents couldn't bring themselves to care; Hyojong wasn't even sure they knew. They were too invested in keeping their shouting matches quiet to notice their eldest son turning into a corpse, probably because he wasn't getting into trouble anymore.

When he was younger, he used to steal from stores and talk back to teachers so his parents would realize that they weren't the only people who had problems, that they weren't the only people in the entire world. He got worse in middle school, started hanging around older kids who taught him bad things, and then he met Hongseok in gym class after the boy purposely threw a dodgeball at him when he wasn't paying attention.

He met Hongseok, and then he met the rest of his friends, and he started to get better. He could talk to Hongseok or Hui or even Kino when his parents wouldn't fucking stop shouting. He could play video games with Shinwon and Wooseok when he didn't want to talk, and he could take comfort in everyone else whenever he needed to. His friends felt like the way a family was supposed to.

And now his friends were grieving, and he couldn't remember the right ways to deal with his emotions anymore, and being around them was just too hard because he didn't deserve to grieve like them, he didn't deserve to feel the pain and sadness.

His eyes were dry and prickly, and he felt tears trying to push their way out of his tear ducts but they turned to dust before they even escaped. He was turning to dust.

His phone rang.

It was Hongseok. He lurched gracelessly out of bed, legs weak and shaky, and answered it.

"If you're going to yell at me," he began, but Hongseok cut him off.

"Get to Kino's house now, I don't care what you're doing. Just get here," he said tonelessly.

"What -"

"It's important, so you better fucking show up."

Hongseok hung up, leaving Hyojong standing in the middle of his cave of a room, phone still against his ear.

Hyojong tossed it onto the bed and threw on the nearest, cleanest-looking clothes and left his house, a dark cloud of anxiety churning in his gut.

does someone wanna tell me why grammar and words suddenly dont make sense to me anymore??? please im begging u
anywhom, here we have angsty hyojong in his natural habitat and a spicy note (; uh idk what else to say bye hope u enjoyed
waiT peep that tendril 👀 remember him?