The weather in Seoul has not improved for the past few days. It’s the coldest season of the year and the snow is falling heavier each day. The coldness is different. He is inside the warmth of his house but he still feels cold. It’s like... the coldness is coming from within him and shatters his very being.

Baekhyun shivers as he rubs his hands on the cotton fabric of his sweater by his arm.

He waits patiently as he watches his mug get filled at the brim with hot chocolate. He doesn’t like drinking coffee, it makes him jittery. He doesn’t like tea either, it’s too bitter for his taste. Chocolate is just perfect. He likes the sweetness it leaves on his tongue and what more perfect way to spend a cold day but snuggling cozily with a delicious mug of hot chocolate in your hand?

He was thinking of the weather and why he should be thankful because classes are suspended but something feels amiss. Something is bothering him. Something is making him feel him uncomfortable down at the pit of his stomach.

He blames it on the weather.

This distracts him from his task at hand. He moves in fast, resolved motions, he turns off the hot chocolate machine before he ends up spilling it as the mug is already filled to the brim. With careful steady hands, he places the tip of the mug to his lips and slowly sips the hot liquid without realizing that it would burn his tongue. It was too late when he does as he ends up yelping in pain and placing the mug on the counter.

Damn it.

What’s wrong with him? Why is he so absent minded today?

It’s the 28^th day of the month which means the first month of the year is soon ending but the coldness of the winter doesn't subside. The coldness of falling snow seeps into his sweater but he doesn’t budge as he continues to stare at a distant place. The snow is blowing in his room through the window where he is perched at but he was too preoccupied with his thoughts to notice. Baekhyun always likes it when it snows. He likes playing with the snow, watching the white fluffy condensations falling onto the ground in silence. But today he feels particularly nostalgic and he couldn’t explain the uneasiness he is feeling deep inside. His chest is tightening and somehow, it feels like something bad is going to happen or has happened. He feels sad, so sad that he had to clench his chest as tears start to flow down his cheeks.

But what could it be? What could he be sad about?

Baekhyun doesn’t know, yet the tears flowing down his cheeks never seem to want to stop. So he closes his eyes, inhales the cold breeze, and tries to collect himself.

The doorbell ringing pulls him out of his reverie and he turns his head towards the sound as if he can see through the wall and to his front door.

He wonders who could be visiting him at this moment when there’s a blizzard beginning to start outside. In a slow pace, while still contemplating who it could be, he makes his way outside his room and towards the main door of his apartment.

**

“Kai…” he speaks softly as he looks up at the man wrapped in a thick black coat.

He doesn’t expect Kai, of all people, to be visiting him in weather like this. Whatever it is, it must have been urgent and important. Kai does not really talk to him a lot ever since they got in different sections in class.

Kai only talks to him nowadays when he needs him. This day must be one of those days.

But there’s one thing different between those days he would usually ask for favor and this day. Kai’s face looks crestfallen. The usual cheeky and a bit shy smile he sports when he’s asking for a favor isn’t present as well. Instead, he sees a very tired looking young man with darkening circles and bloodshot eyes. Kai is known for being one of those students who are addicted to computer games. It got even worse now that there’s no Kyungsoo to nag him to study and quit playing video games.

The man continued being silent so Baekhyun decides to speak again.

“How may I help you?”

Kai doesn’t speak again. Instead, he visibly shivers and that’s when Baekhyun realizes he is being rude for not inviting an old friend inside the warmth of his home.

“Oh I’m sorry. Please come in. It’s cold outside, let’s talk inside. I’ll make you a coffee.”

He steps aside, opening the door wider for his old friend to step in. His brows creased when Kai slowly lifts a foot, as if hesitating, and plants it back down on the door rug.

“No, actually, I’m in a hurry.”

“Oh”, was all Baekhyun could say.

“I came here to give you this.”

Kai stretches his hands towards Baekhyun with something wrapped in red cloth in hand. Baekhyun slowly takes what is being handed to him and was surprised when the other immediately lets go of it as if it contains a diseaseand he couldn’t wait to pass it to someone else. Baekhyun didn’t even have the time to check what it is that is wrapped in the red cloth that Kai handed to him when the latter speaks in a hurried manner before walking away, almost running.

“I’m sorry. Bye.”

Baekhyun was left puzzled. He thinks Kai was being weird but then Kai has always been weird especially since he is friends with a weirder person. But this....this is an unusual kind of weird-weird.

Baekhyun watches from a far as Kai disappears from his sight. After a few seconds of staring at the direction Kai disappears to, Baekhyun steps back and closes the door.

He doesn’t realize he is freezing until he closes the door and steps inside his living room, and sits on his cotton cushioned sofa.

He stares at the red notebook. It looks familiar. Is it a notebook he owns that Kai forgot to return? He runs the palm of his hand on the surface of the notebook. It has a rough texture as if the cover is made slightly of sandpaper but of course it isn’t because that would be stupid, Baekhyun thought. Still puzzled, he flips the notebook open and there, written in bold cursive, are the words that make him laugh.

“My College Life Memoir”, Baekhyun reads aloud as if he has an audience. He snorts right after that, his face breaking into a goofy smile.

This is the notebook that first year students in their university receive on their school orientation before they start the classes. It’s the idea of the guidance counselor’s office. They said it would help the students express themselves more—especially if they feel left out and new in their college life. It was three years ago when Baekhyun received his own red notebook. He never really tried to write anything on it because he doesn’t think there were events in his first year of university life that was worth remembering and writing down on his ‘red notebook’. He already forgot about its existence and only now, when Kai presented it to him, does he remember about it. He doesn’t understand how Kai got his red notebook but he doesn’t question that. It was useless to him from the very beginning anyway.

He flips it again to the next page. There wasn’t any name written on it. No identification for him to know who really owns the notebook. But the handwriting—the very familiar handwriting and that one word written on it makes Baekhyun’s heart skip a beat and he knew right there and then that the red notebook isn’t his.

Baekhyun stares at the words written on the page for about a minute—or maybe even more than that. He then breaks into a hearty laugh, eyes forming into little crescents and cheeks turning into a tint of pink.

It’s been so long since the last time he saw this handwriting.

“Does he really have to write like this…” he says again as he traces his hand over the swollen paper because of the pressure applied by the person who owns the notebook. The word ‘bacon’ was written on the paper on capital letters.

Chanyeol likes writing in capital letters because he believes his penmanship looks ugly in small letters. No matter how many times Baekhyun tries to convince him how much he thinks his penmanship in small letters looks just fine, the latter still refuses to write as normal as everyone does.

Chanyeol likes being different.

He wonders why Kai handed him the notebook owned by his best friend. Maybe Kai wanted him to hand it to Chanyeol? But Kai sees Chanyeol more often than he does now.

Baekhyun dismisses the thought as he reaches out for his phone on the coffee table to text Chanyeol about the notebook. That’s when something falls off the leather notebook he is holding. Momentarily forgetting about his phone, Baekhyun bends down to pick up the piece of cut-out paper. Holding the white glossy paper that was obviously cut from a magazine, he wonders again why his giant friend would have a magazine paper cut into a shape of a bacon. He flips the paper to the other side and that’s when he sees it. A photo of him glued to a photo of baconwith a caption ‘The most perfect Bacon to annoy”.

He laughs. He laughs because he always gets annoyed by this when the giant friend of his teases him and because the memories of them teasing each other are beautiful memories that will always keep him laughing.

He flips the notebook open in its middle part to place back the piece of paper and was about to close it when he notices something. His name was written on the notebook in bold and capital letters, as if the one who wrote it kept on writing the name again and again.

Curiosity kills the cat and before he knows it, his hands have already reached for the notebook and he starts reading. Maybe he shouldn’t have.

He really shouldn’t have.

Because the words he saw and everything that was written on the notebook makes him clutch his chest in pain, in guilt. Tears sprawl down his eyes as he flips one page to another, hands continuously wiping the tears away and trying hard to still keep on reading against his blurred vision.

At the end of the day, he has made a decision.

“Tomorrow. Tomorrow I’ll tell him.”

He hugs the notebook tightly to his chest as if his life depended on it, eyes closed tight and dried tears still lined his cheeks.

Baekhyun doesn’t have to repeat to himself that he cares for his giant friend, misses him, and wants to be there all the time. But Baekhyun looks at life in a practical way. He knows what he wants and what he needs. Or rather, what life would make him want and need in the future; what everyone expects from him. Getting involved too much with someone won’t help him in achieving the future everyone expects him to have.

 He cares for Chanyeol, but caring for him will have to wait. He has his priorities and as much as he loathes it, right now, Chanyeol isn’t one of them.

His heart tells him not to waste his time and look for the man he’s been worried about while his mind tells him that no, Chanyeol isn’t going away. Checking up on him can be postponed for next time. These tests will cost him lots of points so he needs to get the highest marks he can.

It took him a lot of self-control to stop himself from sprinting out to look for Chanyeol but he is able to. He promised himself that when he’s done with his major tests, he can go meet with the owner of the notebook in his grasp.

This is what makes him hate himself more. The types of people he hates the most are those hypocrites. He happens to be one of them. He continues to torture himself and do the exact opposite, say the exact opposite of what his heart tells him to.

He spent the rest of the day studying for his major test the next day, pushing the thoughts about Chanyeol at the back of his head and completely ignoring the blinking of his phone’s LED.