A/N: Sorry for being on hiatus! I have so much homework now and barely any time to sleep and watch kdramas and kpop vids and practice piano and play volleyball and just asdfghjkl

Anyways, I'm putting my other on-going fics on hiatus and I'm going to focus only on this fic until I finish it.

One more chapter and an epilogue to go! Fighting!

Dear Baekhyun,

Are you really busy these days? How come you never write back to me?

Baekhyun tilted his head back against the headboard and sunk deeper into the sheets. He blinked furiously, trying to stop the tears from overflowing.

This was only the first two sentences of the fifth letter he opened that day but his hands were already shaking and his eyes glassy. He tried his best to control his tears, but in the middle of the second letter, where Chanyeol wrote, “I’ll be back like I promised,” a tear dripped onto the creamy paper and moistened the black ink.

When Chanyeol first left, he wrote letters to Baekhyun regularly, at least twice a month. It was only two months after he left when he sent the fifth letter that Baekhyun is reading now.

After taking a deep breath and feeling like his eyes had dried enough, Baekhyun looked at the paper in his hands and continued reading.

I really miss you… You’re always out when I go to your house. I know you have a busy schedule but don’t forget to take care of yourself since I’m not there to make sure you eat your meals on time. Don’t eat ramen because it’s not good for you. I know you will eat some though because it tastes good and I’m not there to scold you…

Baekhyun let out a shaky laugh and thought back to the lonely nights he wrapped himself in a thick blanket and sat in front of the TV with a bowl of ramen noodles in his hands. If only Chanyeol was there.

You’re getting more and more beautiful each day, Baekhyun. Trust me, I can see it on TV. But I bet you’re even more beautiful in real life… When can I see you again? I want to touch your cheeks just to make sure our ten years of friendship was real and not just a dream in my head.

Of course it was not a dream, idiot, Baekhyun thought in his head.

But guess what?? I got accepted into Cube Entertainment!!! I’m gonna become a star and shine next to you ^_^ Then nobody can stop us from being together <3 Just wait for me okay? I’ll try to debut as fast as I can! Wish me luck!

Cube Entertainment?

Baekhyun’s eyes grew wide in surprise. Chanyeol is a trainee now? He remembers how the giant used to boast about his dreams of becoming an idol when they were in high school, but then Chanyeol suddenly changed his mind and went into management instead. So how come Chanyeol wants to become an idol again?

As he continued reading the letters one by one, the guilt grew heavier and heavier in his chest, suffocating him. Chanyeol didn’t leave him after all. He was the one who left Chanyeol.

The morning faded into afternoon but Baekhyun remained in the same spot on his bed, opening and reading all the letters. He noticed from the dates when those letters were written that gradually, Chanyeol wrote to him less and less frequent as time passed by. In fact, the tenth month after Chanyeol left, the month before Baekhyun met Joohyuk, he didn’t write any letters at all.

Chanyeol poured out his struggles and despair in the form of black or blue ink onto the cream papers, so unguarded for Baekhyun to read. In the months he was training, he got a job and lived in a small apartment. There was barely enough time for him to write letters, and he spent days drenched in sweat and tears, in fear of not being able to debut.

Chanyeol felt hopeless, too.

As the hour ticked into 5pm and the room dipped into rays of warm orange seeping through the window, Baekhyun picked up the very last letter lying lonely in the now empty box.

His bed was scattered with pastel colored papers, neat letters running across them and sometimes a blurred blob of ink from the tears that he shed.

When Baekhyun tore open the envelope, a rectangular piece of hard, shiny blue paper fell out along with the usual type of paper Chanyeol wrote his letters on. A closer look at the shiny paper told him it was a ticket to Music Bank performance tomorrow.

Confused, Baekhyun picked up the letter and scanned through its short content, which was barely a paragraph long, but his eyes stopped at the line:

Tomorrow is my debut stage, come see me?

A boy with chestnut brown hair stared back at him, his anxious eyes lined with a dark ring of kohl while he nibbled on his once perfect fingernails. He was frowning so hard that Baekhyun almost didn’t recognize himself in the mirror.

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