Kyungsoo heads back to the building, he walks in an exceptionally slow pace, stalling time, he reluctantly places one foot after the other. He came to realize that he is walking too fast when he faces the all too familiar wooden door.

On the other side of it, he left an angry Jongin and Kyungsoo is anxious of what Jongin might decide to do to him.

He thinks of going back to his own apartment. It is his after all. 

But just by thinking of Baekhyun and Chanyeol being flagrante delicto, frightened Kyungsoo.

The two do not have the slightest idea what subtleness means, or if it even exists for that matter.

Kyungsoo slips in; the place is dead silent, heavy with darkness.

He finds his way to the couch, trailing the slice of moonlight that manages to bleed through the curtains across the room.

Kyungsoo sinks into the leather sofa, he is drenching in silence and darkness but he had always found it reassuring. This time it  is no different.

The faucet dripping interrupts the stillness and Kyungsoo realizes that he is not alone. He sees another light bleeding beneath the bathroom door and he decides to sleep on the couch.

 When Jongin sees Kyungsoo sleeping in the couch, he feels the familiar tugging; he grows acquainted to the incessant tune made by his thumping heartbeat.

He finally decides to stop chasing Kyungsoo and here he is, guards down, tempting to be claimed.

There is no hint in Kyungsoo’s face that he would refuse, it’s as if he is welcoming him.

How is he so unreachable and unattainable if he is awake, but when he is not, he is just a single blink away?

A conscious Kyungsoo repels him, he wonders if maybe, just maybe, beneath the entire stratum, unconsciously he is a magnet to Kyungsoo too.

Maybe if Kyungsoo’s thoughts would be unfiltered, there is this tiny voice is his unconscious mind that whispers to him to run towards Kim Jongin.

Jongin doesn’t have the patience to wait for Kyungsoo to sort it out, if there is even anything to sort out.

Jongin always gets what he wants, he wants instant gratification.

He is Kim Jongin.

Damn Kyungsoo’s heart shaped lips.

Damn his infinitely shocked eyes.

His cute button nose.

The way he looks so fragile as if even a chary touch could shatter him.

Damn everything that is Do Kyungsoo.

“I liked you. It has been ten years and you still haven’t catch it. I can unlike you”, Jongin laughs. “That sounded like facebook”. Jongin walks to his room, untangling himself from the haywire that the doe –eyed boy had securely knotted him.

Kyungsoo hears it all, all the words and the sighs. He could almost picture his soliloquy under his eyelids.

He pretends he doesn’t because that is what he does when he is unsure.

One word attempts to escape his lips, but he lets it die in his throat. He cuts it off halfway out, he clamps his mouth shut then swallows it. He forces it to become a mere thought, unspoken because  it scares him. “Don’t”.

Kyungsoo wakes up alone and he knows that he is Jongin-free.

Krystal becomes a new noise to Kyungsoo’s life, she forces her way in and Kyungsoo lets her be.

That is why he meets Oh Sehun, half as annoying as his cousin Krystal.

Kyungsoo later finds out that Oh Sehun is a never-ending train of words, designed to poke Kyungsoo’s heart, he is a maze of sentences, of pick up lines on a mission to lure him into a labyrinth that is Sehun’s soul.

Because Kyungsoo sees words as spells.

Sehun knows this for he is just like Kyungsoo.

One day Baekhyun complains to him “You spend a lot of time with him Kyungie, you aren’t even halfway through reading Insurgent, Tris and Four are getting jealous. Hell I’m jealous.”

“Didn’t you want me to socialize Baek?”Kyungsoo finds interest in Baekhyun’s flip of heart.

“Yes but when I said it, I was rooting for a specific person, one who does not have a polychromatic hair, who does not have a pale skin and what on earth is Yehet Ohorat? Neologism is a manifesto of a psychotic person Soo. He could be schizophrenic for all we know,”Baekhyun says. 

“Speak for yourself. Kkaebsong really?”Kyungsoo questions him.

“We are discussing how Sehun deprives you of your own time, of your time for us. We are discussing how Sehun doesn’t have a cheeky smirk, or a sharp jaw or a delicious olive skin. We are discussing how he isn’t Kai”, BaekHyun says.

Jongin’s nickname rings in Kyungsoo’s ears.

He hasn’t heard it for weeks yet it feels like he heard it every day, the kind of repetition that doesn’t grow old.

An adage void of a scrape.

“Speaking of the Psycho with a rainbow hair”, BaekHyun says as he sees Sehun marching towards him and Kyungsoo. Krystal is walking beside him.

Why don’t they just be together? BaekHyun thinks to himself.

might become a norm, like everything else.

“Hyung?”, Sehun appears behind Kyungsoo while in line for a bubble tea.

“What?”, Kyungsoo asks.

“You are in my fear landscape.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m afraid of losing you”.  

“You’re in that chapter already?”

“Yeah, you really have a good taste in books, in men too.”

“What are you talking about? Are you guys official?  You didn’t tell me Kyungsoo!”, BaekHyun exclaimed.

“We’re not, Baek. Tell him Sehun!”, Kyungsoo says.

“But I took madam Pomfrey’s Divination class. I saw you in my future hyung!”, Sehun says.

“Excuse me while I go puke this bubble tea”, Baekhyun says as he left to meet up with Chanyeol. Krystal follows him who said “Ditto” before she went to the bathroom.

There is hardly a dead air whenever Kyungsoo and Sehun are together. They can talk about books, up coming movies, random things like going green for hours. Others would be left out if they find company with the two. Unknowingly they have secluded themselves; they have established their own world, because of words that are so beautifully strung together.

Kyungsoo is never the one who is good with words. He could score an A on essays but flunk on oral exams.

Attention slowly kills Kyungsoo but when he is with Sehun, he kind of likes it.

It has always been natural to interact with Sehun, he warmed up to him rather quickly.

It took months before he opened up to BaekHyun when the two first met in first year college.

Why is Sehun so different?

What makes him so?

Kyungsoo thinks that maybe it’s because they share the same interest, or it has something to do with Sehun’s warm smile.

The way he hugs Kyungsoo from behind, wrapping his hands around his waist, then drops his chin in Kyungsoo’s right shoulder (it’s always the right. The right shoulder is taller he once said, earning a punch from the older guy).

He would whisper to Kyungsoo’s ear how good he smells, the latter would try to shrug Sehun off but he would just hug him even tighter.

 “And who the hell are you?”Kyungsoo and Sehun stares up to Jongin.

“You’re Kai”, Sehun says.

“So you know me. Who are you? And what are you in Kyungsoo’s life?”

“His future boyfriend”

“Delusional”

“And you would know that because?”

“Because Do Kyungsoo is mine.  Past. Present.  Future.”

A/N : No more Exo showtime on fridays. :(

I mentioned the book Insurgent. The main characters are TRIS and FOUR. A fear landscape is a simulation exercise where in you are tested to face your fears.