Ball's in Yourt Court 🌞 MarkHyuck [⏹]

Must've gone home by now

Mark had not seen Haechan since the final bell rang.

The school, now a hollow shell of echoing footsteps and slamming lockers, offered no sign of the boy who had been inseparable from him just hours before. Mark had asked—teachers, teammates, even the janitor with the lazy eye. All had offered the same answer. I haven’t seen him.

He reached into his back pocket and pulled out his phone. Dead. Of course. He hadn’t charged it all day.

The moment it powered on, the screen exploded with notifications. Twenty-seven messages. All from Haechan.

Mark’s pulse quickened.

He scrolled through them, each message a breadcrumb scattered in digital code:

“Where are you?”

“I’ve been looking everywhere.”

“Answer me, Mark. Seriously.”

“This isn’t funny.”

They kept coming, each more frantic than the last. But while the messages were emotionally charged, none of them offered coordinates. No context. No hint of a destination. Just static emotion without direction.

Damn it, Haechan. Where are you?

Mark dialed.

One ring. Two. Then—voicemail.

Haechan’s voice came through the speaker, soft and familiar, but distant now. It felt like a closed door.

A knot tightened in Mark’s stomach.

It didn’t make sense. Haechan had been obsessive. Relentless. The type to chase a text left on “read” like it was a matter of life and death. And now, silence?

Mark stared down the hallway—the shadows now stretching long across the floor like fingers reaching for him.

Could Haechan be punishing him? Could he be ... hiding?

Lee Donghyuck was impulsive. Emotional to the point of recklessness. Mark knew that. He’d fallen in love with that volatility, and now it might be the thing unraveling everything.

“He must’ve gone home,” Mark whispered, more to himself than anyone else. His voice cracked slightly. Alone, echoing against the lockers.

But even as he said it, he didn’t believe it.

And as he slipped the phone back into his pocket, a single thought kept clawing its way to the surface,

Or maybe he didn’t go home at all.