*This is a double update!! Make sure you've read ch. 3!*

I approached my desk that night with apprehension. Something felt off about the whole day, but I swallowed the feeling down with a frozen dinner and some coffee.

The clock read 8:30 PM and I had a couple assignments to get under my belt, but most important was the music paper.

I opened up my laptop and double-clicked the word processor. I was just about to begin when I heard a commotion coming from outside. I whipped my head up and gasped at what I saw.

The men in neon jackets and reflective strips had come back tonight, except this time there were half a dozen work trucks with them at the edge of the forest. I recognized one as a bulldozer. Were they going to flatten the woods?

I watched the men scurry around for a bit before one of them shouted something at everyone. I couldn’t make out what he said, but all the workers seemed to freeze in their places before grabbing flashlights out of a main truck. 

I watched intently, curiosity biting my chest. The workers filed into the woods and after a few minutes, the only light and movement I could see was from the wind moving things around under the streetlamp and additional floodlights the workers had set up.

I waited, my breath caught in my throat, except I had no idea for what. 

Then suddenly, I had my answer. A very audible scream pierced my ears through the window and seconds later, a massive tree about a hundred yards into the forest came falling down. I gasped, and soon the workers were running out of the woods, screaming for their lives. Most of them had enough sanity to get in their trucks before speeding away, but some of them sprinted away on foot.

My jaw dropped. What the hell?

Moments of sheer silence passed before I saw another movement. 

A kid who could be no older than me waltzed casually across the street and glanced around at the construction site before entering the woods without a flashlight. 

I bit my lip, conscience wriggling around in my head and gut uncomfortably. There was no way that kid was safe by himself in those woods. After all, whatever was in there had knocked a tree over and scared away a dozen grown men in the process--not to mention that it was a huge ing tree. 

I shook my head. It wasn’t my business. Maybe he hadn’t gone in very far and was just taking a smoke break off campus or something. 

Or maybe, there hadn’t been a kid at all. It was just a figment of my imagination. Something my brain had made up out of the blue.

I looked down at my laptop screen again, cursor blinking as a reminder of the paper I had yet to even start. I had to work on this. The kid wasn’t my problem. 

So I typed, soon finding my mind occupied by thoughts of musical terms and how to describe them on paper. 

It was a assignment, really. Everyone knows you can’t really put the way music makes you feel into words--oh.

I grinned, erasing all my previous work, two and half paragraphs of bull, and began typing with glee. That was just it--everyone’s feelings about music were different. It depended on the song and the person and nothing else, no matter how fast, slow, complicated, or simple the score was. 

My fingers flew across the keyboard, and I found I had written five pages in no time. Well, three and a half hours, to be exact. 

I leaned back and stretched, the satisfying feeling of completing something creeping through my veins. I couldn’t wait to tell Chanyeol.

And then it hit me. 

Three and a half hours. I hadn’t been paying attention to what was happening outside my window for three and a half hours. Was the boy okay? Did he come back out? I would have seen something in my peripheral vision if he came out, right?

The guilt chewed away at me. 

I had to pinch myself a couple times. It was not my problem. It was just some stupid kid that went into the woods. 

But then again, there had to have been something out there that knocked over a tree and made those men run for their lives, right? And that kid might still be out there with that thing and I could warn him.

I ran my hands through my hear and groaned in frustration. This was asinine! Was I actually thinking of going out into those woods at--I glanced at my clock--12:02 in the morning? Just to warn some kid I’d never seen, that may or may not still be out there, about something that happened three and a half hours ago?

I flailed around in my seat hopelessly, the indecision beginning to wear me thin. I eyed the heavy-duty flashlight my parents had given me as a moving in present--it doubled as a weapon as well as a flashlight due to its weight and thick metal composition. I knew how to fight and how to use a weapon like that to my advantage. It wasn’t as if I was some weak, helpless girl. I could take care of myself if something bad happened out there, right?

Guilt and fear kneaded my stomach. On the one hand, there was a strong possibility of coming face to face with whatever was out there. On the other hand, there might be a defenseless kid out in those woods with a greater risk of getting mauled by whatever--or whomever--was out there.

I sighed, scrunching up my face in disgust. It would absolutely kill me if something happened to that kid and I could have done something to prevent it. 

I grabbed a hoodie, the flashlight, and my phone and headed out the door, telling Eun Ah I’d be back. Call me crazy, but I wasn’t about to stand by and let an innocent person get hurt.

***********

I reached the edge of the woods where the streetlamp, road, and grass all met, and glanced back up at my dorm building. I could see my room from here, my window stickers sticking out like a sore thumb. 

I s