After turning her room inside out and still had not found her diary, she quickly ran out of her room in her pajamas to the library where she thought she’d left it. It was so cold outside, and she was in light pajamas and her hair was still wet from her shower. She was chilled to the bone, and she just knew she was going to get sick after this. But that didn’t matter now. She needed to find her diary before anyone else did.

When she finally arrived, she felt instantly bothered to see that it wasn’t on the table where she had sat. She looked around the area, on the floor, in the shelves. She asked the librarian if anyone had turned in a lost item recently. She went to the lost and found. She asked security. It was nowhere to be found.

She went back to the area where she wrote her last entry: that list, that stupid list. She looked again and again, hoping that it just magically appears. She felt the frustration well and she just wanted to cry. The thought of losing her diary was extremely distressing.

“Are you looking for something?” a voice asked from behind. Jin turned around to see who it was.

“Umm, yes,” Jin responded to Mingyu, who was looking onto her with such concern.

“What is it?”

“A notebook,” Jin said, feeling the breathless desperation in her voice. She looked and sounded ridiculous, “it was here, and now I lost it.”

“When did you lose it?” he asked her.

“A few hours ago,” Jin responded, gulping and feeling the unwelcome tears threaten to reveal themselves to this kind-of stranger.

“There was a guy studying here like 20 minutes ago. He may have picked it up,” Mingyu told her reassuringly.

“Guy? Who?”

Mingyu narrowed his eyes as he tried to recall, “I don’t know his name. But I vaguely remember what he looks like. If I see him again, I’ll ask him for you,” Mingyu said to her.

“Thank you,” she responded and bowed to him, “I will be forever in your debt if you find it.”

“Don’t worry about,” Mingyu responded. He then grabbed his own notebook from the table at which he was studying and wrote down something. He tore the paper and handed it to her, “here’s my number. Just send me a Kakao message to telling me you’re the girl who lost her notebook so that I have a way to contact you if I find it.”

She took the piece of paper and bowed. “Thank you,” she said again, not knowing what else to say. She was too overwhelmed to say anything else. It took ever ounce of power in her to keep from breaking into tears.

“Don’t worry,” Mingyu said, reaching out to hold her shoulder, “we’ll find it.”

“Thank you,” she repeated for the third time. She looked ridiculous to him and she new it. Wet hair, in pajamas, almost crying and frantically searching for a notebook, “I’ll go look in my room again,” she told him, bowing.

“Okay. I hope you find it. Let me know if you do,” he said to her with a sympathetic smile.

She nodded, and just as she was about to turn her head, he looked over her shoulder and said, “wait! That’s the guy!”

He pointed at someone far away who had just left the library. Jin couldn’t make out who it was, but she followed when Mingyu dashed towards the suspect. When they made it out of the library, and Jin had a clear view of who it was, she felt like she wanted to just disappear.

It was literally the last person in the world she wanted to see.

“Hey,” Mingyu called out to him politely, “excuse me.”

Vernon turned around and faced Mingyu and almost instantly noticed Jin behind him. A grin appeared on his face, a grin that gave Jin shivers.

Mingyu politely bowed to Vernon and said: “you were sitting on the table where this young lady had lost a notebook. Did you by any chance…”

“What’s your name?” Vernon asked Mingyu, still grinning.

“My name?”

“I want to see if it’s on the list,” he told Mingyu, side-eying Jin

Jin felt like bursting. She wanted to die in that very spot and just stop existing. He had it. Vernon had her diary, and he read it. He read it. He read it.

“Give it to me!” Jin stuttered, feeling her entire body quaver at that anger and the distress that was engulfing her body.

“He’s probably on the list,” Vernon teased looking at Mingyu.

Jin covered her face. She wanted to run away. She wanted to disappear. She wanted to live in a cave and never see the light of another day.

“Are you Hoshi? Actually you don’t look like a Hoshi. Maybe Seungkwan?”

“Stop!” she managed to yell at him, “give it back.”

Vernon looked back at Mingyu.“What’s your name?”

Mingyu frowned at Vernon, “give her back the notebook. This is called bullying, what you’re doing.”

Vernon reached into his bag and took out her diary. Jin quickly grabbed it from him and quickly walked as far away from the two of them as possible, back towards where her room is. She held her diary close to her chest, and let herself cry.

She heard footsteps behind her. She didn’t know if it was Vernon or Mingyu. She hoped that it wasn’t Vernon. She did not want to deal with him.

“Hey,” she heard Mingyu’s voice call out from behind her. She stopped dead in her tracks even though she wanted to keep moving. But after what he had done for her, she didn’t want to be rude.

He circled around to face her and noticed she was crying. He paused for a bit, not knowing what to do.

“Do you want me to leave?” he managed to ask her.

She nodded as tears strolled down her cheeks.

“Okay,” he said, “don’t beat yourself up over that bully.” He bowed and left her, and she continued rushing towards her room.

When she finally arrived at her room, she was relieved to see that Sena was asleep. She didn’t need to explain why she was crying and why she went out in the cold of winter with wet hair and pajamas, and why she was hold on to her diary like her life depended on it.

She sat down next to the heater and took a moment to defrost, silently crying. She opened her diary and wrote an entry to let it all out.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Dear Diary,

Vernon read you.

You betrayed me. You weren’t supposed to reveal you secrets to anyone but me. You weren’t supposed to run away. You weren’t supposed to be seen by anyone else.

I feel like I just want to die. I want to drop out of college and just never see anyone here ever again. I want to be reborn as someone else and just forget everything to do with being Jin.

I want Vernon to disappear too. Is it bad that I’m kind of wishing he just dies so that all of my secrets die with him? It is bad, but I don’t care. He’s the biggest in the entire universe and I don’t think it would be a loss to mankind if he dies. Just disappear. I wish I never see that cocky face of his ever again.

I hate him so much.

I hate him in a way I never hated anyone before.

He’s going to use it all against me. He’s going to humiliate me. He’s going to make college absolute hell for me. I might as well just kill myself.

I hate him so much.

What does he know? How much has he read? He read the list for sure, and so he knows I have feelings for Seokmin, that Wonwoo is gay, that Wonwoo likes Mingyu…

Vernon also would have seen that he himself is on that list.

UGHHHHH what the hell was I thinking when I put him on the list???

If he reads my previous entries, then he probably knows about my jealousy for Sena, about my missed birthday, about Seokmin’s feelings for Sena… about everything basically. The thought of him knowing more about me than any of my close friends do drives me insane.

And he wants revenge against me. This means he might reveal it all.

He might tell Seokmin about my feelings. He might tell Sena that I am jealous of her. He might make a scandal out of Wonwoo’s preferences. He might tell all the other guys on the list that I like them.

Maybe he isn’t that much of a ? Maybe he’ll keep it a secret? Maybe he’ll just not mention it again?

No. He won’t keep it a secret. He almost told Mingyu about it, of course he won’t keep it a secret. He’d sooner publish on the school website before keeping it a secret. He probably already made an SNS post about me, telling everyone about what a loser I am.

I hate him so much. I didn’t think my life could get any worse, but now it it’s the worst it has ever been, and I know it’s going to get worse.

A/N: This chapter is dedicated to all the lovely people who commented on the last chapter. I was having a bad day, but your comments had really turned it around. Anyways, I hope you enjoyed this chapter :)