Chapter 2: 4:07

 

Baekhyun sits up in his bed, feeling a sensation of appall. But even before he could react any further, the phone rings once again in the exact pattern as before. His hands dutch towards the phone quickly, fingers clutching so hard they turn a simple hue of violet. He pulls the phone back onto his ear and dials the on button hastily, heartbeat aching.

 

It’s the same as before with white on the line as well as a sense of static. The horror isn’t on the call itself or how it manages to only connect to his line but on the fact that he knows it isn’t a mistake. Baekhyun knows that there’s someone on the other line, on the other end, and on the other border despite their chante conversation. And he knows with a certainty, that there’s someone calling him for a reason. Even though he can’t pinpoint why.

 

“Who is this?” he manages to say again. It feels like an apparition but even so, he knows that it isn’t. It’s a breathing human. And fear, not guilt, is primal now. He senses a myriad puncture of horror decapitate across his room, across his chest, and across his guts.

 

There’s no answer again and his breathing becomes with a little bit more trembling. There’s a small snap out the window and his reaction is quick to nothing. It was just a twig. He shakes a bit, seeing a branch sway in a slow dance. The phone goes dead again, a solid tone across the minor scale roaming for a millennium, knowing no where to go. There’s no ending.

 

With small courage, Baekhyun drops the phone, slithers out of his bed and quickly runs towards the window, knocking the books with no care out of its position. Some flew out the door and some flew in but he pays no attention to and instead, slams the window with a loud boom onto its sill. He feels a bit better but still feels terrorized. His home is now stripped of its purpose. He closes the curtains and swiftly dips back under the covers. A few seconds later, he hears the phone ring again but he fails to pick it up.

 

And underneath those safe covers, he’s oblivious to the stranger standing on the other side of the adjacent wall, breathing haughtily as he cuts off the house phone lines.

 

--

 

“You look a mess,” Suho says with a grief-stricken expression painted all over his face. The President takes notice of the heavy bags underneath Baekhyun’s eyes. But also, he takes notice of the small shivers and quivers from any small movement ranging from a flick of the eyes or a passing movement of a shady child.

 

Like underneath those bedsheets, Baekhyun still feels unsafe, despite Chanyeol’s warm smells of waterfalls and pine trees and his gruff breathing on lints of hair and his borderline of comfort and his sanitary states and his ability to give apposite privacy. He lays his head onto the giant’s shoulders and closes his eyes, hoping that he would wake up somewhere else. He doesn’t know why he feels like this but he manages to stutter out, “Rough night studying. Didn’t really get any sleep.”

 

Chanyeol peers down at the auburn in his presence and he can’t help but feel worthless. There’s nothing he can do. “Hey, I’m sorry for your rough night, Baek. If you need anything, just tell me, okay?--”

 

“Sleep. I need sleep, Yeol.”

 

“You shouldn’t really stay up so late these days, Baekhyun. It’s unhealthy plus it’s not doing you any good on studying if you’re so stressed,” Kyungsoo says before uncapping his water bottle and taking a small sip. He perches his lips and leans in towards Baekhyun to outstretch his eyes, only to have Baekhyun retaliate back with a small hit.

 

“Yeah, simple case of high school finals syndrome for you. It’s a pain in the but you’re not the only on the boat. Just ease off for a bit. Read a book, go out with friends, just relax.”

 

Relax.

 

--

 

“It’s nice weather, don’t you think?” Suho asks Baekhyun as they walk down the similar pathway of broken cracks embedded in between several square-figured sidewalks.

 

“No,” Baekhyun says wearily. His jacket isn’t around his waist today but instead, actually on the small figure. Suho doesn’t know what to say upon the jurisdiction but he decides to leave on it alone.

 

Suho stops midway between a crack of two square perches, breaking all the rules they committed to for walking ever since primary school. Baekhyun then stops after a few steps and takes a look back, eyes seeming to be lost somewhere in maybe oceans or maybe deserts but not an oasis. Never together.

 

“I know something’s wrong, Baekhyun,” Suho says with a grimace. It’s almost too easy how he can tell but after several years of elongated friendship and sarcastic courtships, everything is like a manual. “I know something’s going on and it’s not your studying because if it’s anything I know about you, it’s that I know you have better techniques at studying than just staying up all night and being tired.”

 

The auburn still remains silent. His answer though, is unacceptable in Suho’s terms.

 

“Baek, talk to me. What happened yesterday? Is there a problem with Chanyeol and you? Are you going through family issues? Economical debate losses or sociality casualties? You have to tell me.”

 

It’s comical how serious sounding his best friend is but Baekhyun shrugs anyway and continues walking, this time his glances not being averted back towards the panicked friend.

 

The authoritative boy sighs and lets his hand fall down. He’s done. “I give up. If you don’t want to tell me what’s going on, then don’t--”

 

“I got a phone call, Joonmyun.” Baekhyun says quietly from above, still not looking back. His words jump off a small force that reflects off of nothing. And, he only uses Joonmyun whenever it’s that time. “A phone call at four in the morning, I remember. It was seven minutes after the hour and it wasn’t a regular phone call.”

 

Suho stays quiet for once, unable to comprehend the following thoughts quickly. He jumps immediately to the most realistic compromise, “It’s obviously a prank, Baekhyun. You know how kids are these days, all delusional and abhorrent. They’ll get nowhere in life--”

 

“No. This phone call was only connected to the house-phone in my room. In my room, Suho. In my ing room--”

 

“I heard you the first time,” Suho interjects.  

 

The same wind from last night is back, taunting Baekhyun and driving him closer to a door that’s the gateway to insanity. He feels entrapped again but it’s an empty street in a neighborhood. The sky is grey for some reason and everything’s like a cinema. Black-and-white.

 

Baekhyun stands there, hands cold enough to be wrapped into the cloths of his dark jeans. He finally turns around to face the shorter. He knows his own eyes can’t meet with the other pair of brown eyes. It feels wrong. “Well then, is it really a prank? Because I don’t know how you manage to get a call to only my phone in the house and not anyone else.”

 

They both remain astonished, Baekhyun still not fully recovered from the past night of endless wrathing.

 

“Maybe,” Suho starts out. “Maybe, you’re just hallucinating. Maybe it’s just the lack of sleep from all that studying. There’s no possible way that all of that could be real, Baek.”

 

Hallucinating is the answer now, huh? Baekhyun doesn’t believe it but it’s his mere salvation for knowing that he wasn’t in danger. He shrugs and continues walking, still feeling voided of safety and he begs to walk faster, hoping that Suho would vanish from the narrow sidewalk.

 

He’s lived in this neighborhood for years, ever since his birth. He’s been to the park daily and the local coffee shop. He’s known the usual flutterings of butterflies every year on the edges of March and he’s known the neighbors ever since he could remember but now, it feels like he’s walking into an abyss of dismay and clouds of nothing. It begins to rain and it rains until he gets home, until he gets to his room, and until he closes his eyes and hopes that Death would be his friend. He feels betrayed once Death says no but he feels more betrayed after remembering the divided trust between him and Joonmyun. The President is no longer worthy of a name.

 

Or maybe he’s just feeling too guilted. Or, he really is just hallucinating. He doesn’t know what to believe.

 

--

 

It’s late at night and rain is an enemy again, splattering guts against windowsills and panes. Suho’s at his mahogany desk in his isolated room, writing a forum letter to the school principal on the conditions of an inquiry on school environments. He usually enjoys his job dearly and wouldn’t trade anything within the universe for another position but tonight, it feels more tensed and stressful.

 

Halfway through the letter, he makes a spelling error and he dismissively brushes away the mistake with the cap of his pencil eraser. Minutes later, he makes another spelling error and he feels a little irritated but nevertheless, he erases the error again. Minutes later though, he finds himself falling into more errors and more erasing and more irritation and soon enough, he’s ripped his paper accidentally. Anger surges through his right arm and he slams his pencil down, letting point seven graphite fall onto the paper like sprinkles of smoke. He pushes the paper away forcefully against the computer screen. You would think that’s the end but no, he crumbles up it into a wad of paper and merely throws it into the trashcan, throwing away hours and hours of perfect calligraphy and perfect structure.

 

Beneath the piles of textbooks he’s uncovered though, he sees something hang out a little bit, just on the parcels and on the edges of the letter. He questions it, pushing the book out slightly enough to reveal small penmanship on the tan letter. After snuggling the letter out of its stance, he reads over the front. There’s nothing. It looks wrinkled and there’s stains of something crimson on the edges. It’s too thin to be blood, he supposes in his mind. It’s questionable but he has nothing to lose anyway so he takes the nearest knife on his pencil holder and he tears it with little to no care.  

 

There’s a sheet inside--no. Just a half-sheet. It looks like oldened paper that’s been left outside from the rain. It smells of rain too, furthering on its appearance theory. Maybe it was just sent to him today after it began raining this late afternoon. But it’s empty on the front paper so he flips it onto the other side, where the corners have something that looks more thick and is still red. Maybe this is blood but he laughs his off, knowing how someone would never put blood on a letter.

 

But again, his eyes widen in aghast and terror once he sees the one single sentence that’s only plastered onto the top of the letter. It’s font looks like a typewriter. One that’s been used for centuries for sending letters of death from war soldiers to wives and children or ransom notes for millions of dollars. He freezes but in more news, he evaluates the line with slow analysis.

 

“i know what u did to get that”

 

There’s no return address or sender or anything else that shows sign of captivity or even human relation. He feels that something is off and because of that, he fails to notice the stranger who’s questionably wearing a mask that’s looking through his rainy window. Perhaps the fog had saved him from notice. But most likely, Suho was just too shocked to see him.

 

It’s seven past four a.m.

 

--

 

It’s the next night, late at night as well and it’s more of a pitch black day. The moon’s hiding again, who knows from what this time. Maybe it’s been abducted from it’s life, stolen of security, and robbed of care. No one keeps in touch with it though, since there’s lights already on the lands of humankind. It’s practically been replaced.

 

Kyungsoo’s been staying up, working on college courses applications. He likes to be on task, always being early on everything whether it’s assignments, interviews, extra credit. Anything and everything. He’s the prodigy of his school. The proudest in purest form. Never has he been a downfall and his parents are proud of that. He doesn’t plan on letting anyone down either.

 

An e-mail notification pops up on his computer, startling the boy from his current tab of vocabulary definitions for higher standard words. He crashes back onto his swivelled chair, squinting at the e-mail notification in the corner. Lack of sleep causes him to do this. He moves the cursor over to the box and clicks on it, slowly becoming impatient as seconds tick on by with the browser loading.

 

Eventually, it leads to an e-mail that has a picture attached to it. He becomes skeptical, wondering now if this is a joke or whether it was a virus. But something, something small inside just causes him to click on the download button and he waits. When it’s done transferring, he loads up the image and is baffled immediately at the sudden abrupt. It’s a large picture of a wall but on this specific wall, there’s a framed picture. There’s blood stains, or as he assumes, on certain spots of this mural. He zooms in onto the small framed poem and reads it but as soon as he reaches the first sentence, his heart clogs up to his throat.  

 

You’ve robbed of my art.

And tis it’s time to part.

I’m watching you starting now.

And for certain you will die, I vow.

Your blood will stain my hands.

And with that, comes my final stand.

Take this as a warning, you stealing freak.

Because once I’m done with you, you’ll merely be a bloody streak.

 

The town clock chimes at an unusual time of seven past four but Kyungsoo fails to notice it. He also fails to notice the stranger whose standing outside his front door, standing with a weapon in his hands and a mask disguising his face.

 

Inside, Kyungsoo eyes dart around his surroundings within his bedroom for any unusual activities. There’s nothing. He rushes towards the closet doors and pry them open but there’s nothing. He turns towards the window shades but once he peers outside, there’s no one near his front door. Anymore, at least. He peeks out his bedroom door and looks down the hallway. There’s nothing to see and absolutely nothing to hear. His heart scampers once more but he has enough comprehension to dawdle back to his computer. There’s an arc separating him from everyone else now. It has to be some sort of prank, he thinks to himself but there’s always a little side that asks, what if it isn’t?

 

He goes back to the e-mail background information and he checks the sender but, there wasn’t any. It’s a blank. There’s no sender or no other address. And in that sync of time, the lights in his room go out as well, leaving himself and the world in an asylum of deceased visions with only the tiny star outside matching along his line of vision but even so, it dies out after a few seconds, leaving him in an ultimatum night of endless screaming for someone who’s dead.

 

Supposedly.

 

--

 

There’s a chair that sits up at the grandest hill of all and at the edges of it’s polished ends, there’s always dripping blood for the most oblivious and for the most delusional. From their windows, they might not be able to see the stool but from within the mind, it’ll always be there no matter what. Maybe it’s an omen. Maybe it’s a premonition. Maybe is just another feeling of oblivion. Oblivion to the truth and oblivion to each other’s feelings.

 

Guilt, once again.

 

Or maybe.

 

--