You again. Again you crossed my mind. For the nth time in the day, I can't help but wonder what you're doing, what you're thinking. Are you going on like nothing's happened, or are you refusing to eat? Are you crying hot tears, even though you know it won't change anything and I'm still gone, away from you, hurting and confused, trying to escape the looming darkness that's advancing, slowly devouring you and utterly obliterating any remaining minuscule shreds of your sanity, the pain prickling up your back, and crawling through your lungs and asphyixiating you? 

Because that's what I'm doing. 

I know it seems so dramatic, but I don't know how to explain this. It's crazy. Without a word of lie, I've never felt this way. I don't know what I'm doing. But I can't come back. I've come here for a purpose. I don't know that purpose, but I think my mission is to find it. The thing is, I miss you, the members, and the feeling of home. All the memories we gathered, all the bouncy, peppery moments. I don't know if I miss home itself. What do I call home anyway? The dorm? The SM building? My home? This place? I don't know, Chanyeol. I don't know anymore. I need to be hugged again. I need that familiar warmth, that... something that I felt around you. I need you. Where are you? Aren't you supposed to rescue me by now? Bring me home, Chanyeol. Find me and bring me home.

I made a big mistake. I took the idea of us for granted. I thought I could live just one-sidedly loving you, and you didn't have to feel anything in response and everything would be okay. I've done that for so long, that I'm unsusceptible of you. It's not that it doesn't hurt or I haven't noticed it. I just handle it better because I like pain. I acted like it didn't bother me, but it was slowly killing me. I always feel a quiet numbness inside me whenever I think about you. My silence is another cry of pain, gradually increasing. Why does this always strike me so suddenly? The fact that you don't love me the way I do, or never will see me the way I look at you, always pounds me, again and again and again, to the point where crying seems pointless. Still, that's the only thing I can do. My tears express more than my words. 

"Boys can't love boys!" said Seohyun, when I apprehensively told her that I found you handsome, a fortnight after my 17th birthday. I playfully pushed her and said that it was a simple compliment, that friends did these things to keep each others' spirits high and generally maintain their friendship, and told her not to blow things out of proportion- I didn't love you, and not in that way. Never have I felt more wrongly about one of the statements I made in the 23 years of my existence. 

I detest denying the truth. I may wriggle out of admitting it, but I will never make a false claim again. I love you, no matter what they say. I'm not going to conceal it. Contradictary to popular belief, no, it doesn't feel better confessing. Not like this. It doesn't feel better getting out the fact that I love you, especially when you don't feel the same way. I've written this so many times that I'm getting sick of it. I laugh at this queer situation. You really don't know what you're doing to me, do you? My thoughts always manage to end up sitting in your lap, all of them; every little bubble that tears itself away from my mind floats toward you. I'm not surprised, because it's hard to forget someone that gave me so much to remember. Remember that drama that we watched? Remember how Lee Jong Suk shouted into the humid spring air, "Only fools fall in love!", and I snorted at his idiocy? Well, I guess I'm one of them now. How ironic.

I never told you all this because I was insecure of my flaws. You're far too beautiful a creature, and you can't lend your heart to someone like me. I'm incomplete, pieces of me are strewn across unexplored, barren lands. I'm imperfect, and there's always a hole in me, somewhere or the other. I'm foolish, disorganised, stubborn, but when I'm not, I'm reckless and uncontrollable. In these 16 days, since I left, I conjured a hundred reasons as to why I'd never feel your embrace again. Now I realise, all I really wanted was for you to complete me. To fill my holes, to pick me up and hold my hand, and make me walk again. You're the missing piece to the puzzle that is me, my undiscovered better half.

There's this invisible fence around me. It's immeasureably high. It, apparently, doesn't let me feel much apart from pain. And then a quick sensation of pleasure, of course, because of my strange, reflex-like condition. My days are extremely uneventful, even though I wash clothes, dishes and serve the three or four customers that pay a visit to this restaurant, once a week. Yet I feel like I'm not doing much, like I'm frozen plastic, like a living mannequin. Whenever I close my eyes, there's a familiar cold image that invades my mind. And you don't need to think long enough about what that picture is. 

What were you doing last night, Chanyeol? Did you go for practice? Did you visit your favourite cafe? Did Zhoumi force you to go shopping again? Did you go bowling with Jonghyun? Perhaps playing arcade games with Yeri? Or were you in search of me? Wasn't it you last night? The tall, lumbering silhouette who stared at me whilst I destroyed the beast I had created on paper, and looked like an angel in the shafts of moonlight gently scattered across his face, witnessing a soundless crime, was that you? I couldn't form words to tell you. What was I supposed to say, anyway? You've come and gone so many times, glanced at me and left. Why should I have intervened this time? You looked so peacefully broken, so beautifully wrecked. Your deep eyes, round and big, but lacking the usual glimmer, with an unseen, profound sadness were the reason why I was breathless. Why were you so close, yet so far? 

Here we go again. For the third time. Another waste of my words, dissolved into paper, that ends up in torn bits, cast into an abyss of darkness. I've done this before, and I'll continue doing so. 

Do you remember? 

The eyes that are too late, the eyes that lost you,

One pair of remaining eyes, eyes that have lost its way...