Music abruptly stopped when slender fingers stopped dancing across the piano keys. Impatient, Jiyong fished his phone out of his jeans pocket and looked at the time on the screen. Ten minutes before four. They promised to meet here at four and that bastard was still nowhere to be seen. You’d better not be late, he grunted inwardly, but he was all smile. Because he knew where the bastard was, oh he knew him too well.

A short fit of giggles resonated across the spacious practice room when the scene early that day invaded his mind, how that bastard squirmed beside him, giving lame excuses that he’d had plans for lunch so he can only meet him at four, he can’t even look Jiyong in the eye. He’s always been a terrible liar, but that only made Jiyong love him more.

The sound of a commotion outside the room brought him back from cherishing yet another sweet memory of theirs, the emergency alarm going off right after. Poking his head out the door, he saw people pushing their ways through each other and down the hallway to the staircase. He grabbed hold of a girl screaming at the top of her lungs when she ran by the practice room. “What’s with everyone?”

“Fire… there’s a… fire…out—” the terrified girl gasped between pants, “—outbreak in…the building…”

“In here?!”

“Yes,” she struggled, tried to take her arm back from the man’s steely grip. “It’s coming from the ground floor, but it’s spreading fast.” She nudged him when he stayed rooted to the spot. “What’re you waiting for? Run!”

Jiyong’s left foot started to move, but retreated back into the room to the piano when he remembered something. “I just need to get my stuff.” The girl gave him one last worried glance before turning away and running down the hallway.

How can I forget this, he reprimanded himself, picking up the photograph he put on the music rack of the piano before started practicing. Securing it in his front pocket, he ran for his life.

As he barrelled down the stairs, he hoped the bastard was still pacing back and forth in the shop, picking his birthday gift.

He ran past a group of whom he recognized as those frat boys and despite the screaming and yelling around them, he heard one of them say, “Shouldn’t we at least warn him? He probably won’t know a thing.” And another, a bigger and taller guy snorted and said, “That can run faster than you and me, you should worry about your own .”

Jiyong stopped at the bottom of the stairs, looking at their backs as they pushed their ways through the crowds towards the exit. His eyes roamed around, anxiously searching for a sign that somebody was left in the building; an arm flew up to cover his nose and mouth—the toxic fumes had started to irritate his lungs.

He tried the nearest room. Banging on the door, he shouted, “Anyone in there? Open up! There’s a fire outbreak and they’re evacuating the building!” He banged on every door he came across with his fists, repeating the same sentence over. Smoke had blurred his visions and tears were pricking his eyes and it’s getting worse because he was approaching the source of fire. It’s from the janitor room at the farthest end in the building, he could see seething tongues of fire shooting towards the ceiling, swallowing the janitorial room’s door whole and extending its fiery hands along the wall.

“For god’s sake, if anybody’s in there,” he punctuates his sentence with loud stomps of his now hurting fist on the door, “open… the ing… door!” 

“Jiyong-sunbaenim?” a low voice whispered, and Jiyong snapped his head in the direction of the voice. It’s two doors down from the janitorial room.

“Taehyun?” He knew this guy, he’d helped him with his Music Theory assignment last semester. A freshman with a sweet voice, and great passion in music, but didn’t have luck with those frat boys. Jiyong empa