Not proofread at all

but I figured that you guys really deserved an update :) 

I’ve known Donghae for about eleven years now. He was six and I was seven at the time when Donghae came to live next to me, in the house of Mrs. Tuna – a woman that died a month earlier. She was nice but she liked tuna so much that she – and her house – always reeked of it, which was the reason why everyone called her that. I read somewhere that you can relive memories because of a scent, and I guess that is why I never forgot Mrs. Tuna because you could always smell her whenever my mother decided to make fish.

Anyway, Donghae came to live next to us. And because my mother is the kind of woman who is sticking her nose in everyone’s business, we had to visit them. So on a bright Sunday, my mom dragged me and my father out of bed to visit the Lees.

It already wasn’t a good start, maybe if we had visited them in the afternoon, my live would’ve been different but Donghae and I had the ‘pleasure’ to meet each other in the morning. I hate mornings, I hated it back then, I hate them now. I just never seem to be able to wake up in a good mood. So maybe it was a bit of that moody thing that I wasn’t enjoying to go to the neighbors but we were standing in front of their door anyway.

The morning was already bad, but the thing that opened the door was even worse. An ugly male was scratching his beer belly as he said: “What the hell are you doing here?!” It took him two minutes to say that sentence because he was drunk but I didn’t know that at the time. My parents don’t drink, well, my father drank one beer on his birthday and then he would fall asleep but that was such a small amount that I had practically never seen it in my life before because my father drank it past my bedtime.

“We’re here to introduce ourselves to you, we’re you’re neighbors, the Lees.” My mother said politely but I saw her scrunching her nose though I didn’t know if that was because of the smell that this man made or the tuna smell that still came out of the house.

“Wah…” It was the only sound that came out of the male’s mouth. My mother looked a bit uncertain at my father who just shrug. He probably wanted to get back to bed and didn’t care about the man’s behavior.

“And what’s your business here?” He demanded to know, the man seemed to have found his voice back. Afraid, I stepped a bit closer to my mom, this man wasn’t my idea of a child loving adult, and for the record my ideas are mostly correct.

“We were hoping that we could come inside for some coffee?” My mom politely asked, though it seemed to me that she became more reluctant to the idea as the seconds in front of the man passed. I couldn’t blame her… Oh wait, I could blame her because it was her idea to come here.

“You were hoping wro-” The man was cut off and I sulked, if he had finished his sentence this ordeal would’ve been over but there was a woman’s voice who interrupted him.

“Who’s there?”  An elegant woman walked down the stairs. Her hair was put up in a bun and she wore glasses making her seem like a teacher, a strict teacher.

“Ehm, hello. We are the Lees from next door. We wanted to introduce ourselves to you.” My mom made a quick but courteous bow to the woman on the stairs who was still descending.

“Hello…” The woman was hesitating for some kind of reason but still introduced herself as Mrs. Lee and the man next to her was Mr. Lee. Really it would become quite confusing if we only knew each other’s surnames but the adult weren’t really concerned about that.

She invited us in. My mother had to pull me along because I wasn’t comfortable with these strangers. I was even resisting but it was futile.

When we came inside the house, it seemed even stuffier than before with Mrs. Tuna. Where Mrs. Tuna had put all of her fishing trophies, the Lees had put junk. And I mean junk. Everywhere was dust and filth and believe it or not, I was already a neat freak back then so I was cringing at the sight of it.

Mrs. Lee turned to me, her slightly small eyes focusing on my small form. She made some kind of smacking sound with her lips before she actually talked, that probably was because she didn’t have enough saliva in to talk about anything. She is a prune from the inside out, I sarcastically thought back then.

“I have a son. He’s upstairs, you could go there if you want to.” She informed me but it seemed more like a demand with the tone that she used to me. I hesitated, I wanted to stay with my mother and father who were drinking the horrible, weak coffee that the neighbors had made for them. But my mother left me with no other choice when she told me to go and find him.

So I went upstairs, my mood had turned even more sore because I had to do something I really didn’t want to do at all. Who knew what this boy could be with a mother and a father like that. I was shivering, imagining a demanding and ugly boy but I went up anyway.

The staircase was old and creaked with every step I took. And back then all the walls were empty, there wasn’t a painting in sight. Only the dark, burgundy color of the wallpaper was present. I arrived at the first floor, there were three doors and all of them were closed. I became a bit nervous, what should I do, open all the doors or just wait until the boy comes out of the room.

And suddenly I knew the answer. I would knock on every door. I walked to the door across the staircase and knocked while congratulating myself for finding the correct solution. There was no answer from the first door so I moved to the second but after waiting for a couple of seconds, there was no answer there either. My heart began thumping in my ribcage and my palms became sweaty; I didn’t know what I should do if the third door didn’t open either. And my worst nightmare - I hadn’t had many nightmares at the age of seven, so yes my worst nightmare - became truth: there was no answer from door number three.

I was ready to go back crying to my mother when I heard footsteps coming from the upper floor. A pair of small feet were visible but their owner was nowhere in my sight.

I instantly forgot my plans to cry and walked towards the stairs that led to the attic. With my fears numbed by curiosity, I peeked upstairs.

“Yah!” A small and high-pitched voice screamed. “What do you think that you’re doing?!” I saw a little boy standing there, he was waving with his scrawny arms to keep me from climbing the stairs. “You’re not allowed to come here! This is my secret hideout!”

I rolled with my eyes, he had revealed his own secret place by saying it. This boy was obviously stupid! “It isn’t a secret if you tell me!” I yelled back, a bit offended that I couldn’t come into his hideout.

“I don’t care, you can’t come in!” Annoyed with the obviously younger boy, I stomped back downstairs. All my initial fears of the neighbors was all gone as I demanded my mother to let me go home. We eventually went home and maybe that was the biggest mistake of all. My mother had let our childlike feud become a serious war by taking me home and never making up. Though I couldn’t say for sure that I would’ve liked Donghae if we had started off on the right foot because he had become even more of an insufferable !

 It took a few years before Donghae let me into the attic and showed me his paintings. By that time his parents had gone off somewhere and he was all alone. Still I never pitied him or anything because he seemed to be just fine on his own. Even now, high up in a cage, Donghae seemed fine.

Donghae slowly turned his head sideways to look at us. He lazily looked up and down as if he was judging us.

“Took you long enough to get here.” He stated and leaned back against the bars, as if he was just waiting for an appointment that we had with each other. And again, he managed to get on my nerves the second I arrived into the house.

“Sorry, if I had known, I would’ve called that I would be a bit later.” I sarcastically told him. Donghae turned his head slightly and peeked through his eyelashes before dryly answering: “That would’ve been nice.”

“Argh!” It was the only sound I could answer that comment with. God, even high up in a cage with nowhere to go, he still managed to get me frustrated!

“Ehm, Hyuk. Who is this?” Tiffany pulled my hand a bit down to get my attention and I looked down at her. Tiffany wasn’t looking at me but all her attention was on Donghae. She seemed completely smitten with the guy who could not even pretend to be worried. That had to be some kind of strange girl thing, something that originated from the caveman days.

“That’s Lee Donghae, the only person I know who stays so stupidly calm when he’s hanging on the ceiling.” I introduced him. Tiffany absentmindedly nodded, as if what I said wasn’t important.

“Why shouldn’t I stay calm? If I stay calm, I can think of an idea to get out of here. But if I panic, I wouldn’t be able to think about anything except my panic.” Donghae stated and it wasn’t such a strange idea at all, but I would rather die than admit that to him. I already opened my mouth without even knowing what I wanted to say when Donghae interrupted my thoughts by saying: “And who is this lovely lady next to the ugly monster?”

“Hey!” I yelled at him, offended. But Tiffany, who normally would’ve told Donghae not to be mean to me, gaped at him before softly telling him: “I’m Hwang Tiffany.”

Donghae grinned and his grin became even wider when I yelled at him: “Don’t you think that you should be a bit nicer to me? Don’t you want to get out of this cage?!”

“Of course I want out but how are you planning to get me out?” Donghae ignored my first question, making me more frustrated. In the back of my mind, I knew that I was already losing the battle between us because I had lost my calm but I didn’t want to admit that.

“Who says that I still want to help you out of it. This is much more fun for me to see you dangle on the ceiling.” I teasingly told him and that was when Tiffany regained her senses: “Hyukjae, how can you say that to him?”

“He started it!” I pointed at Donghae with my finger making him hide his laughter behind his hand. He obviously found the whole situation very amusing. Honestly, it was beyond me how any person could tease another while he was completely helpless in a cage.

“Don’t be so childish, Hyukjae.” Tiffany scolded me. I pouted – which I only do in critical situations – while trying to hide my expression from Donghae who would make fun of it if he saw me doing it. Tiffany just shook her head when she saw it.

“So how do we get him out of this cage?” Tiffany asked me as I thoughtfully looked at the steel bars. It wouldn’t be easy. It would require strength that neither I nor Tiffany had. Maybe if Kyuhyun had been here, it would’ve worked but he was strolling somewhere around in this painting together with Ryeowook and Jessica. Well, at least that was what I assumed. It suddenly occurred to me that Tiffany and I had no way of knowing for sure if they were actually here or not. For all I knew they could still be sitting in Donghae’s attic, wondering how the hell Tiffany and I disappeared.

“Hello?!”