Do Kyungsoo loved Kim Minseok.

He really did.

They’d been friends since they were fourteen, back when Kyungsoo had frosted tips and horn-rimmed glasses and Minseok was that chubby kid who loved Yu-Gi-Oh more than any boy should. They looked out for each other, protected each other, inflated each other’s egos when they got rejected by girls and thrown into trash cans by taller boys with lots of body hair. They both at sports and so during gym class, they hid under the bleachers and worked on an original graphic novel about crime-fighting robots. On prom night, while everyone else drank and got laid, Kyungsoo and Minseok went to an all-you-can-eat barbeque joint and ate ribs until they got their pictures put up on the wall of fame.

At the end of the day, they weren’t just best friends.

They were brothers.

And so when Kyungsoo was on Minseok’s porch, pounding his fist violently against the front door and screaming at the top of his lungs, it was done with the purest of intentions.

It was done with love.

“Kim ing Minseok! If you don’t get your skinny out here, I’m tying you to the bumper of my car and driving into a ing lake!” He knocked with both hands, rapidly and aggressively, trying to make as much as noise as he could on the off chance that his friend, a notoriously heavy sleeper, was dozing in his bedroom at the back of the house.

It had been over a week since Kyungsoo had heard from the boy he usually called Xiumin and it was the longest they’d ever gone without speaking. They hadn’t had a fight, there was no conflict or animosity and neither had gotten exceptionally busy at work.

For all Kyungsoo knew, Xiumin had fallen off the face of the earth.

The wind picked up and Kyungsoo shivered, cupping his hands around his mouth and exhaling roughly to warm his fingers. The sky above him was pale grey and endless and the icy chill of early January was burning his ears.

“Xiumin, come on, man. It’s cold out here!”

He went back to knocking, suddenly glad that Xiumin’s house was isolated at the end of a long, quiet street. There were no neighbors around to shout at Kyungsoo, no one whose peace could be disturbed, and so he raised his voice just a little bit louder.

“That’s it, ! I’m breaking in!”

Momentarily forgetting how small he was, Kyungsoo threw himself against the door, shoulder-first, and was met with absolutely zero give. The wood hadn’t so much as creaked against his efforts. He tried it once more, taking a bit of a running start and using his other shoulder this time, and cursed when he was met with the same fate and the realization that he just wasn’t strong enough to break down a door.

“I have to start working out,” he mumbled harshly, jogging down the porch steps and heading around the back of the house. He knew Xiumin well enough to know that he left the living room window cracked even in the dead of winter and if he could just get the right angle, he could pry it open and climb inside.

The right angle, as it turned out, required Kyungsoo to stand on a trashcan and slice the window’s screen with the hunting knife he kept in the front pocket of his jacket. Folding it back up, he sent a small prayer of silent gratitude to his older brother, Seong-soo. That knife had been the greatest Christmas gift of all time when Kyungsoo was thirteen and it was still coming in handy years later.

Though open just slightly, the window seemed to be jammed on something and Kyungsoo went to great lengths to tap and jar the glass, opening and closing the window millimeters at a time until it finally came loose. Because he had to squat, the normally unused muscles in Kyungsoo’s thighs whined and burned with unexpected exertion. It was a little awkward, Kyungsoo needing to bend, twist and shimmy for a good minute and a half before he was able to slide through the window and onto the loveseat with a clamor, and he almost kicked over Xiumin’s favorite Steelers lamp in the process.

“I’ll reimburse you for the screen,” Kyungsoo grunted, scrambling to his feet, “right after I kick your .” He dusted himself off, shook out his legs and closed the storm window behind him in an attempt to shut out the harsh winds of winter on the east coast.

Kyungsoo and Minseok had grown up in a big city but as soon as they were old enough and financially secure enough to leave, they did, relocating to a small suburbia outside the city limits. Briefly, they considered moving into together, thinking that being roommates would be easier on their hearts and wallets, but the idea was struck down before it was even officially proposed.

In spite of their bond, the boys were loners and they needed their space.

Kyungsoo moved to a reasonably-priced apartment close to the county college where he studied food science and Xiumin managed to find a quaint little two-story in a cozy neighborhood where he could soak in all the peace and quiet he needed.

And they were happy.

They were still best friends, still two peas in a pod, but they were independent and mature. They didn’t need to spend every waking moment together anymore, confident enough to face the world without someone watching their back. Though Kyungsoo wasn’t sure when it happened or how, they’d become men. Kyungsoo had just turned twenty-three and his birthday party had been the last time he’d actually seen Minseok.

It had been a busy night filled with beer, football and chili fries, all of Kyungsoo’s friends from work and school coming to celebrate at his favorite sports bar. With so many rowdy friends taking shots and placing bets, it was almost hard to notice Minseok.

The older boy was tucked away in a back booth, keeping to himself and keeping his head down as he nursed a single bottle of beer. He didn’t order any food (something Kyungsoo noticed immediately) and he didn’t talk to anyone. He didn’t even make eye contact or glance up at the game. In the back of his mind, Kyungsoo wondered if Xiumin was mad at him, if he’d done something to offend his friend and had forgotten about it, but towards the middle of the night, Xiumin approached him and gave him his birthday card.

“I’m gonna head out,” he’d said quietly and Kyungsoo couldn’t help but notice how Minseok he seemed. Xiumin had always been just a little bit lighter-skinned than Kyungsoo but that night, he was white as a sheet and looked exhausted.

“Already?” Kyungsoo had asked, pulling Xiumin close to the restrooms where he could actually hear his friend speak. “It’s so early.” Xiumin was fidgeting, his eyes darting to all corners of the bar as he rocked his weight back and forth on the balls of his feet. In the dim light of the bar, it had been hard to get a good glimpse of him but in the bright light of the hallway, Kyungsoo could see, clear as day, that something was up. His cheeks seemed hollow and colorless while his eyes were dark and sunken in like he hadn’t slept in days. “Are you alright?”

“I’m just not feeling well,” Xiumin mumbled, rubbing the back of his neck. Winter was in full-swing and yet Kim Minseok was sweating bullets and looking uncomfortable in his jacket.

“Do you have a fever?” Kyungsoo asked, reaching out the back of his hand to feel Xiumin’s forehead. Unexpectedly, the older boy recoiled, jerking out of Kyungsoo’s reach and flinching.

“Maybe I do,” Xiumin said, mostly to himself. “Look, Soo, I gotta go. But I’ll make it up to you, okay? We’ll celebrate when I’m feeling better.” Without allowing Kyungsoo to respond, Xiumin stepped forward and hugged him tightly. The embrace was over just as quickly as it had begun and Xiumin spun on his heel and bolted out the door with nothing more than a hastily murmured, “Happy birthday.”

Kyungsoo had gone back to his party with a spinning head. His best friend was acting like a complete stranger but he had other people to entertain and a tied football game to watch. He promised himself he’d call Xiumin in the morning and stop by with chicken soup if he was still feeling under the weather but when the Patriots pulled ahead with a field goal and everyone started cheering, Kyungsoo’s mind left Minseok completely.

That had been nine days ago. Kyungsoo had called Minseok the next morning but he was rushed off the phone before he could even start a conversation. He’d asked if Xiumin wanted him to stop by but his friend was adamant.

“No!” he’d barked. “Don’t worry about it. I’m fine. I just need sleep. I’ll call you, okay?”

Kyungsoo opened his mouth to ask about thirty different questions but Xiumin had already hung up. His attempts at calling back were sent straight to voicemail and all of his subsequent texts went unanswered.

It was immediately clear to Kyungsoo that something was wrong but Xiumin was a very private person who liked to deal with things by himself and on his own emotional schedule. If he needed to be left alone while he sorted things out, Kyungsoo would respect that.

Still, to be sure, he sent out one last text message.

I’m here for you, hyung. Reach out if you need me.

Eight days had passed without a single word from Minseok and Kyungsoo had officially started to climb the walls with worry. He’d been doing okay until their boss called and asked Kyungsoo if he knew where Xiumin had been, a question that had turned his blood to ice.

“What do you mean?” he’d asked, clutching his phone so hard that he feared he might break it.

“Minseok has missed his last six shifts and he isn’t answering his phone,” said Cho Kyuhyun, the owner of the Red Lion Bar and Grill where Kyungsoo was an overworked cook and Xiumin tended bar.

“Xiumin never misses work,” Kyungsoo said, surprised.

On the other line, Kyuhyun sighed dramatically.

“Yeah, I’m aware of that, Kyungsoo,” Kyuhyun said dryly. “That’s kind of why I’m calling.” There was a clattering and Kyungsoo figured that Kyuhyun was covering Xiumin’s shift, something he sometimes did when his employees went AWOL. “Look, Kyungsoo, I like Minseok a lot and he’s a good worker but if he doesn’t get his back here soon, I’m gonna have to let him go.”

“Don’t do anything rash,” Kyungsoo said lightly, fighting through the knot in his chest to keep the conversation casual. He had no idea what was going on with Minseok so why worry Kyuhyun? “You know Xiumin loves you and he’d never screw with the bar on purpose. Besides, where will you ever find a bartender that’s so good with the ladies and the gentlemen?”

“Whatever, Soo,” Kyuhyun huffed and Kyungsoo could tell just from those two words that he’d bought Minseok some time. “If you hear from him, tell him to call me, okay? ASAP. I mean it, Kyungsoo. His is grass if he doesn’t contact me in the next three days.”

“Three days,” Kyungsoo repeated back blankly, his hand on his forehead. His mind was already gone from the conversation and dreaming up a million different horrible things that could’ve happened to Xiumin. “I’ll tell him.”

That was all it had taken for Kyungsoo to drive to Minseok’s house and attempt to break down his front door. In the end, the window had been much more effective and as Kyungsoo stood in Minseok’s living room, shivering, a stray thought crossed his mind.

Why the hell was it so cold inside the house?

The window had, indeed, been cracked but it felt as cold inside as it did on the porch. Xiumin always kept his house a little on the cool side but still, the temperature should have been comfortable, not teeth-chattering. When Kyungsoo exhaled, he could see his breath.

Tripping over the ottoman on his way to the wall, Kyungsoo found the wall thermometer and isolated the problem – the heat wasn’t even on.

“Jesus, Xiumin!” Kyungsoo hollered, his frozen fingers jamming buttons until the panel’s screen turned green and the furnace clicked on. “You’re going to freeze to death in here!”

Comfortable in the knowledge that the house would soon be warm, Kyungsoo headed towards the kitchen, half-expecting to find Xiumin at the table, headphones on, halfway-through a meat lover’s pizza while he watched Adventure Time on his phone.

But all Kyungsoo found was a mess.

Dirty dishes filled the sink in sloppy, slimy piles. The garbage was overflowing and being orbited by a small army of flies. On the table, two apples and a banana lay rotting in a plastic bowl. A cluster of empty, partially-crushed water bottles cluttered the counter and pots and pans littered the stovetop.
The door to the fridge, empty aside from a few yogurt cups and foil takeout containers, had been left ajar.

The whole room reeked of spoiled food and Kyungsoo stifled a gag.

Too surprised to even curse, Kyungsoo made an executive decision to open the kitchen windows. He could deal with the chill but he couldn’t tolerate the smell. To his surprise, though, both windows had been locked and twin pieces of plywood had been fashioned as a makeshift deadbolt, leaning between the top of the window and the edge of the sill to keep the window from being opened from the outside.

Dumbstruck, Kyungsoo doubled back to the living room, checking the area around the loveseat. As he’d expected, a piece of scrap wood matching those found in the kitchen was underneath the end table. That was what had been jamming the window and Kyungsoo had managed to knock it free.

From the jumble of queries that enveloped Kyungsoo’s mind like a noxious cloud, one question seemed to stand out – who the was it that Xiumin was trying to keep out with locked doors and reinforced windows?

Wanting to cover all his bases, and, perhaps, trying to stall the inevitable, Kyungsoo returned to the kitchen, this time with his nose tucked into his shirt. He emptied the existing trash into a new bag, chasing it with the fruit from the table and the rotten food from the fridge. He gathered the water bottles against his chest and took everything to the bins in Xiumin’s driveway, feeling marginally better now that his friend’s kitchen was no longer a biohazard.

It was weighing on him, though. Kyungsoo was a notorious neat freak but Xiumin wasn’t a whole lot better. Sure, he was a twenty-three-year-old man. There was a certain level of filth that was to be expected. But Xiumin never left dishes in the sink. He hated bugs and would never, ever have let a swarm of flies accumulate like that. He ate like a high school linebacker and never wasted a single morsel.

Kyungsoo felt the bile rise in his throat as it occurred to him that if Xiumin’s kitchen was in such disarray, there was as good chance that Xiumin hadn’t been home in days.

A new question took the top spot in his panicked psyche.

If he hadn’t been home, where the hell was he?

Still, Kyungsoo fought his nature and tried to be optimistic. He told himself that he wasn’t going to really worry until he had a reason. Until that point, he was just wasting his energy. Returning to the kitchen one more time, Kyungsoo shooed all the bugs out the side door and rummaged through Xiumin’s stock of cleaning supplies until he found a can of pine-scented air freshener. Once the kitchen smelled like a Christmas wonderland and the house felt slightly warmer, Kyungsoo released a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding.

Maybe, he thought, Xiumin had gone on a spontaneous trip. He did that sometimes. He wasn’t just a loner and an anime nerd – Xiumin was a free spirit. He liked to travel. Maybe wanderlust had gotten the best of him. Maybe he’d taken off for Atlanta or Toronto or Chicago.

Smiling for the first time all day, Kyungsoo remembered the time he’d called Xiumin a few days after graduation to learn that his best friend had gone on an impromptu day-trip to Graceland with just a backpack full of clothes and his beat-up old Chevy.

His heart sinking like a rock, Kyungsoo thought of the Chevy and the smile fell from his face and shattered on the kitchen floor.

He hadn’t even thought to check the garage.

Breaking into a run, Kyungsoo scolded himself for not thinking to check for Xiumin’s truck sooner. If Xiumin had taken off, if he’d gone somewhere of his own volition, if he’d decided to take some sort of impulsive vacation, he’d done so in his truck. The old Silverado, the one Xiumin had named Shelia, was his pride and joy.

Wherever Xiumin was, Sheila was parked right outside.

When he got to the door at the end of the hall that led to the one-car garage, Kyungsoo hesitated, his eyes falling to the chipped white paint and silver doorknob. With a shaky exhale, he turned the knob and threw open the door, the cold air hitting him a half-second before the smell of wood and paint.

And then, Kyungsoo actually whimpered.

Because right there, parked in the center of the garage, which sometimes doubled as Xiumin’s craft station, was Shelia the green Silverado.

Kyungsoo could actually feel the optimism being from his body as any hope he might’ve had was quickly replaced with the crushing weight of reality.

Shelia was here and Minseok wasn’t.

And that meant that something was horribly, horribly wrong.

In a fit of terrified anxiety, Kyungsoo bolted back inside to check every room on the first floor. Minseok obviously wasn’t in the kitchen or living room but Kyungsoo had to make sure he wasn’t in the bathroom, the laundry room or the hall closet. When his search came up expectedly empty, Kyungsoo charged up the stairs with renewed purpose.

The second floor of Xiumin’s house was a straight shot – a narrow hallway with two doors on each side. At the end of the hall was a double window and Kyungsoo was completely taken aback to see that it had been covered by a navy blue bedsheet. Someone – presumably Minseok – had pinned it to the top of the frame, blocking both the view and the sun. Just in front of the window was a telescope, something Kyungsoo didn’t even know his best friend owned because, really, what the hell did Xiumin need with a telescope?

Still, it was the least of Kyungsoo’s worries.

He ignored the sheet and the telescope in favor of searching the rest of the rooms, starting with the upstairs bathroom (empty) and moving onto the guest bedroom (empty), the office (empty) and, finally, Xiumin’s bedroom. Once again, Kyungsoo’s hand hovered over the knob, his chest thick and tight with apprehension and fear.

What would he find on the other side of the door and whatever it was, would it lead him to his best friend? Was Xiumin actually inside, hurt or sick or somehow incapacitated and unable to call for help? Had he been lying in wait this whole time, cold and scared, while Kyungsoo ed around with air freshener and fruit flies?

Unfortunately, there was only one way to find out.

Kyungsoo took a breath so deep that his chest hurt and then, carefully, he opened the door.

The first thing he noticed was that Xiumin’s room smelled like… Xiumin. After the smells of wood and paint and pine trees and spoiled food, this sudden change was such a comfort that Kyungsoo that his shoulders slacked.

But then his eyes adjusted to the dim lighting and Kyungsoo nearly fell to his knees.

Like the one in the hall, the windows of Xiumin’s bedroom had been covered by blankets and garbage bags. Clothes were in sloppy piles on the floor, the drawers to his dresser open and askew like Xiumin had pulled them out in haste and dug around inside. On his desk, beside his laptop, was a pile of dishes, covered in crumbs, and a stack of empty cups filled with used silverware.

It was, by far, the messiest he’d ever seen Xiumin’s room but the worst part – and Kyungsoo couldn’t even fully understand what he was looking at until he forced his shaky legs to walk across the room and tear the sheets from the windows – was what was all over the walls.

All four walls of Xiumin’s bedroom were covered in pictures. Because of their size, Kyungsoo deduced that they’d been printed from his computer rather than developed at whatever pharmacy still handled film. The pictures were all nondescript snapshots of parks and streets and forests and trails. Random spots had been circled in black with arrows pointing to… nothing. Kyungsoo picked a few at random and looked closely, moving closer to the widow to get a better look at what the photos were trying to capture.

As far as Kyungsoo could tell, the circles and scratches weren’t indicating anything at all. Maybe if he squinted, he could see a shadow or dark smudge but whatever it was that his best friend’s room had been dedicated to, Kyungsoo couldn’t see it. As he stood in the center of the room, spinning slowly so that his eyes could scan the scene as a whole, he realized that Xiumin had been marking a whole lot more than just circles and arrows.

The wall that ran parallel to Xiumin’s bed, the one against which his dresser was set, held the most photos. Almost all of them were of wooded areas, of trees and shrubs and branches and dirt paths. A lot of them were in black and white and there were so many that a lot of them clustered together and overlapped.

But the thing that stuck out to Kyungsoo wasn’t the number of photos or the color of the prints.

It was that there were words written on this wall. Some of the phrases were written so big that they spanned multiple photos. Others were written small enough to fit in the corner, above a tree or across bits of frozen sky.

But two things were true about each collection of words – they were all written in red ink (a dark red that reminded Kyungsoo of something awful) and they were all so cryptic that Kyungsoo didn’t even understand what he was reading. They hit his eyes like a foreign language, like something completely out of his scope of understanding.

They’d been written in English, written fairly legibly, and still, Kyungsoo struggled to read what it was that Xiumin had written.

On trembling legs, Kyungsoo stepped closer, squinting to focus his vision and confirm that he was really seeing what he thought he was seeing. It seemed so unlikely, so disturbing, so wrong. Nothing about his afternoon had made sense – not the locked windows, not the filthy kitchen, not Shelia in the garage and certainly not this.

HE SEES ME

It was the first phrase that Kyungsoo had been able to comprehend, and it had his entire body breaking out into a cold sweat. It was written across a photo of a lake and each letter had been traced over repeatedly, making it seem almost frantic.

LEAVE ME ALONE

This was printed across a long-distance shot of a trail leading into the woods. There was nothing special about the woods, no signs or landmarks that could help Kyungsoo identify them. For all he knew, those woods could have been in Alabama or Seoul. These words, too, had been traced over more than once and the sloppy pronunciation of the letters reminded Kyungsoo of something a kindergartener might write when they were learning the shapes of the alphabet.

CAN’T RUN

Written rather largely on a black and white photo of a playground. Kyungsoo felt sick. In a moment of clarity, he asked his digestive system, very politely, not to throw up in Xiumin’s room.

ALWAYS WATCHES – NO EYES

It was in that moment that Kyungsoo realized he was gripping the edge of Xiumin’s dresser so tightly that his knuckles were white. It was about the only thing keeping him upright and if he’d let go, he would’ve hit the floor, surely landing in a pile of his best friend’s clothes.

These four phrases were repeated multiple times and each was written over and over with the same sort of intense agitation. But it was the fifth and final phrase that had Kyungsoo’s tired, unsteady body wanting to run for his car and never look back.

DON’T LOOK OR IT TAKES YOU

It was written only once and in the largest, most frenzied lettering on the entire wall. The angle of the words somehow seemed off to Kyungsoo and he wondered if Xiumin had held the marker differently or stood in a different position when he’d written it. Come to think of it, Kyungsoo had a lotof questions. What were all these pictures? What did these phrases mean? Who did Minseok think was watching him? And was that who he was so afraid of? Is that why the doors were locked and the windows were reinforced? Was someone stalking Minseok? Was someone trying to hurt him?

Had this person hurt him already?

Kyungsoo took several, increasingly weak steps backwards until the backs of his knees connected with Xiumin’s bed and he was forced to sit down. The only sound Kyungsoo could hear, besides the blood rushing through his ears, was the ticking of the furnace and suddenly, he felt completely alone. There was no one in the house. There was no one outside. There was no one in the city, no one in the state, no one in the whole wide world.

Minseok was gone and Kyungsoo was alone and all he had to show for it was a spinning head, a churning stomach and the faint smell of pine on his hands.

Some time passed, though Kyungsoo couldn’t tell whether it had been minutes or hours, and he knew that he couldn’t just curl up in defeat. Giving up on this horrific puzzle meant giving up on Kim Minseok and Kyungsoo would never, ever leave his best friend in the dust.

If someone had been watching Xiumin, it stood to reason that they could be watching Kyungsoo, too. If someone had eyes on Xiumin’s house, they knew that Kyungsoo was inside and they probably knew he was snooping. That thought was enough to send a wave of chills all the way to Kyungsoo’s muscles and bones.

But however frightening, however sickening, however complicated, Kyungsoo had to see this through. Kyungsoo had to fight through the fear and the nausea and the worry and piece it all together, whatever it meant. He had to be willing to risk everything because to him, Minseok waseverything.

Though he was still shaking like a leaf, Kyungsoo forced himself to stand up. He took a few steadying breaths and walked back to the wall, his fingers tracing tentatively over the deep red lettering. He closed his eyes, just for a moment, and tried to see Xiumin. Standing where Minseok had been, he tried to feel his beloved hyung, tried to feel his fear. Something had been horribly, horribly wrong and Kyungsoo had missed it. And with his hand pressed against what could only be described as his best friend’s frantic project, Kyungsoo could feel nothing but his own regret.

He didn’t know what any of it meant. He didn’t know what had been going through his best friend’s head when he’s hung these pictures or written these words. But it was clear to Kyungsoo that whatever had happened, Xiumin had been truly and deeply afraid. Wherever Xiumin was now, he was probably just as scared.

And so, as Kyungsoo opened his eyes and resigned himself to examine each and every photo that hung in Xiumin’s room, he nodded just once. It was a pledge to himself, a new purpose lit by a new fire. No matter what happened, no matter what came next, no matter what any of this meant, no matter what was out there, Kyungsoo would find Minseok.

He would risk everything for Xiumin because he knew Xiumin would risk everything for him.

Mindlessly, Kyungsoo migrated towards the window, his eyes falling to Xiumin’s empty front lawn and the vacant street that led to his house. His eyes darted to every corner of the yard, looking for any indication of life or malevolence.

And then, even though he hadn’t see anything out of the ordinary, Kyungsoo waved. He smiled and he waved because he wanted to make it clear to anyone that might be hiding in the shadows that he would do whatever he needed to do to find his best friend.

And Kyungsoo didn’t give a damn who was watching.