[A/N] As I had promised, here's the Chapter 4! ^^ Though I haven't finished with my Chapter 6 yet but I really hope I can finish it by tomorrow so I wouldn't think so much about it these coming weekdays. Anyways, I hope you'll enjoy this! ^^ 

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Beaming slits cut from the rays of the sun seeping through the windows lash my eyes awake. I squint at the persistent rays, searching for my vision in between the sunbeams. When I feel like I’m going to lose my eyesight if I won’t turn my eyes away, I roll over my stomach and reach out my phone vibrating in demands of unanswered calls and texts. I turn it on, the artificial light of my phone illuminating my face, and notifications start taking up the screen.

12 texts messages. 4 missed calls.

I forgot to turn off the WiFi of the phone that it automatically connects to our home network, giving way for Twitter, IG, and Facebook notificiations to file in. All coming from the Seventeen official account which I wasn’t able to log out of.

A Kakaotalk notification doesn’t pop in. I wait for few minutes before pulling myself up from bed, but nothing comes. Well, what do I expect? It was obvious and Jeonghan didn’t even intend to hide it from me that he was up in his arms the whole time since I told him that I’m going to take a hiatus from the group for a year or so. He pulled a long face at me after knowing the decision is final and irrevocable, and pulled a longer one when he thought my reason isn’t substantial enough for him to consider it.

“I don’t think I’m in a right track, Jeonghan. Things are confusing me lately.”

We are at the aisle between the two decks, sitting like an Indian on the floor. We lock the doors, even close the window in case the silly buffoons might think of walking on the roof outside and eavesdrop on the conversation by the window.

“What are the things confusing you lately? You can tell me about them, Josh. You know I’m always ready to help you, whatever it takes.”

I look at him and his eyes are filled with concern but mine feels so sorry because he can’t do anything and so guilty because it is only unless I can tell him which I can’t, “You won’t understand.”

He heave out a sigh in disbelief, “Why do you think I won’t understand? You haven’t even told me yet.”

I become silent for a moment but my mind is bustling, busily rephrasing the words and thinking of a method on how to tell him in a way that won’t knock his socks off and enrage him but I can’t seem to take the plunge. Fear steals a march on me before I can even find my own courage to tell him.

“Joshua, what? What was it? Why are you confused?”

He’s getting itchy to have the answer while I’m gradually shrinking in every time he pushes me to tell him.

I shake my head. Lift it up. Glance at the ceiling. Hang it low. Shake again. “I don’t know.”

“Fine.” He exhales deeply for he already has enough of my mullishness to tell him everything he have to know.  “You don’t want to tell me, then don’t.”

He stands and walks away, and all I can do is watch because I’m too scared to say anything.  

The memory of our last proper and private conversation haunts me every morning, filling me with a sense of loss that somehow, contrastingly, makes me feel empty. Walking away is something I can’t blame him to do when he was already sick of cajoling me over and over to consult to him about my worries and confusion, and he even tried to pull me out from being chained up by my own cowardice. He did what he can do with all the effort he had because I am the best among his friends, his emotional pillar, so he would do what he had to do to help me when I’m in my lowest points like how I’d also help him at such times, but I was too stubborn to let him in and take part of healing myself when we were supposed to heal each other. I built walls because I didn’t trust him enough to enter and to not ruin the walls to escape from me after knowing the ugly truth the walls are meant to protect. Because walking away is something he would do after knowing the truth, right? I just saved him the time he would waste in standing next to me as my solace. He would eventually go away once he’d know it, and by the time he would not be there anymore is the very time I would badly need him. Might as well train myself as earlier as possible to deal with this alone, than fall from the edge in an instant after a long time of leaning on everyone and wouldn’t be able to get up because the shock of the fall paralyzes me. And no one would be even there to save me.

I get out of bed at 7:30 even when I plan to lie there for another 30 minutes, but I reckon it will only make me recall the conversation again, replaying in my head over and over like a broken video tape, and make me overthink about distressing events that haven’t even happened yet, which would wallow me into darkness, as if there is a pitch-black abyss beneath my bed.

I slip my feet into a pair of slippers and slog my way to the bathroom. I stop by the sink and wanly bring my face up to look at myself in the mirror.

I scan the familiar face I have looked at in mirrors for years. 

Tangled dark brown hair as dark as the chocolate-brown eyes staring back at me. Sun-kissed skin for growing up under the heat of Los Angeles which, surprisingly, is retained after domiciliating in a temperate country like South Korea for five years. I count three dark tiny freckles just below my eyes, like someone had dotted a dark brown color pen on my skin while I was asleep. Only few people had seen those freckles for I always go around wearing make up, concealing my little facial imperfections.

I spend more or less fifteen minutes studying my face, silently agreeing to people who say I have a handsome one, that I am good-looking. A look of a prince. An embodiment of a prince. As what people around me compliment, what most female fans look upon, and what my co-members and the other members of the male species is envious of.

But this prince is in love with another prince.

I can imagine people shaking their heads in disbelief and grumbling “What a waste of his looks”, “What a pity”, and whatever statements that would articulate how ridiculous of me to give up my ethereal looks for a boy I fell in love with. 

I shake my head weakly before bending down to the sink, turn the faucet around, and wash my face with the cold morning water. After three splashes, I brace my hands on the edge of the sink and look at myself again in the mirror. My face dripping wet, my eyes pin on my own reflection while battling whether to be disgusted of it or determined by it. 

And I see a boy who is close to giving up everything he had just to make the boy he loves understand what he feels. I see a boy who is desperate to lose all – his family, his stardom, his career – just for that one boy. But my capacity to let go of those things depends if the other boy is willing to let go of his hold from those and takes my hand.

I think I’m ready to see this world fall apart to make a path for us but I doubt if he also is. I haven’t even started telling him the truth. It only adds up to my heap of doubts whether he would really accept me or walk away again if I tell him, and the latter scares me to a point that I’d rather look at him from afar than watch him fade away.

Mom’s voice interrupt the flow of my thoughts before they can consume in. Fortunately.

“Josh. Someone wants to see you downstairs.”

I turn to the door to see Mom but only catch a glimpse of her hair gliding through the door before she completely disappears. It happened in a blink of an eye that I wonder if she actually did call me or it was just an hallucination.

As my Mom’s message starts to sink in, I sense something strange when the words start to arrange themselves in my mind. I frown at the floor and my head. Someone wants to see me. Who could it be?

Troubled that the visit might be something urgent and significant, I don’t hesitate coming downstairs as quick as possible. Thankfully, I had washed my face already and dried it with a towel which would make it less haggard and bloated. When I arrive at the living room, I look around briefly to find Mom but don’t get any chance to see her so I shrug off the hope. I open the door to meet the visitor of mine and is appalled when I see the girl I’d met last night standing at the doorway of my house.  My house.  And how did she know this is where I live?

I almost slam the door shut from the scampering fear that she might be a stalker. An obsessed fan. Sasaeng in the Korean vocabulary. Such fans are popular in Korea and most of them are fans of popular groups. Considering that Seventeen is growing, gradually carrying its name to the top, it’d be no wonder if we find out we have sasaengs.

But I hold myself back. I can’t act rash without hearing her out, however unwholesome I’m feeling towards this unexpected visit from a total stranger.

“Hi!”

Her voice sounds shrill. Then, she smiles sheepishly, like she herself is ashamed of it, and there  goes her golden freckles zooming closer to her eyes, they could fly over her lashes like pixie dusts. 

Stop.

Though I find myself faintly blushing inwardly, I maintain an askance look in my face which is already there since I opened the door. I also think I sounded indecisive when I said, “Hello…..”

“You told me last night you live around here---"

​​​​"How did you know I live exactly here, in this house?”

I know I sound cold, far from the gentle voice I always use, but what’s been happening between the two of us just sounds too suspicious for me not to have a suspecting tone when I deal with her.  

“I’ve always known you live here….” Suddenly, her eyes perk up like she remembers something. In a frightful hurry, she extends her arms in the space between us, hands up, palms facing to me, and waves them.  “Wait! It’s not what you think, okay? I’m not a stalker as what you might be currently assuming. I just know a lot about this neighborhood since I like strolling around.”

She let out an awkward chuckle and a weird grin, like that of a clown, paints itself on her face. The awkward expression she puts on only lasts for a minute before she falls silent and gets shamefaced. Cautiously, she clasps her hands on her stomach and looks up at me meekly.

“I think I have to be sorry for being suspicious, like showing up by your door though you don’t know me.”

And for being peculiar like calling my name though I can’t remember I told you about it.

I was about to say that but thought it would be unnecessarily rude if I do.

I nod, accepting her apology, “So what brings you here?”

“My umbrella.”

“Oh, right. Wait, let me get it for you.”

I realize it isn’t nice to leave her outside, though it’s not freezing but the sun is burning down the Earth and all its inhabitants, so I invite her to come inside.

 She waves her hand, “No no no! Really, I’ll be fine. And I’m still a stranger…so I don’t think I have a reliable access to go inside.”

I chuckle at her giving emphasis to the word ‘stranger’ and shakes my head, “Now,  why won’t you tell me your name? So you wouldn’t be a stranger anymore."

She lifts her head up to look at me, and it dawns me that she is actually a petite girl. She’s roughly six or seven inches shorter than me, making her five-flat in my predictive calculations.

“Alisha.”

My mind is busy trying to find an answer on why she didn’t look that short in my eyes last night that my thinking process falters on its way to let what she just said to me sink in.

“Hm?” I my head to the side, unsure how to respond.

“Alisha, is my name.”

“Oh!” It’s like I bump into a boulder and it reminds me to be mindful of the path before me. “Yes, Alisha. Nice to meet you. And mine is -”

“Joshua. I know.”

Of course, she knows. Wait, why did she know?

Finally, the moment feels like the great time to ask her about how she magically just know my name so I ask, “How did you know?”

She starts chewing her bottom lip and instead of looking straight to me, her gaze wavers and it falls short at the floor under my feet, but she lifts her head up again abruptly and hides her arms behind her back.

“Because…you know, I like strolling around!” She peeps, rocking on her balls nervously and stretching that weird grin of a clown across her face again. She continues and utters the words coming out in a hurry, “I’m sorry but I have to get my umbrella now because I still have somewhere to go. I’m afraid I’m running late.”

Her fidgety movements and the nervous feel it brings draw my eyebrows into a frown but I decide to spare her from the trouble of pertinaciously asking her why because I also want to spare myself from the botheration of her weirdness, so I give in, “Sure! I’ll go get it.”

And I’m back with her umbrella in a jiffy.

She seizes the umbrella from my hand in a split second before I can even hold it out to her. She mutters a ‘Thank You’ too fast that it drowns under her breath and walks away quickly, leaving me stunned like a statue, unable to move or speak, because of the precipitation of her actions.

I am left by the doorway watching her turn to the right and run along the roadside without looking back. Initially she was comfortable leisurely talking with me, but when I asked her about why did she know the things she shouldn’t have known not unless I told her, she suddenly went antsy and dreadful to skirt the questions. 

Weird.

How did she know that here is where I lived, because I don’t believe her when she excused that she likes strolling around, much more when she reasoned out the same statement when I asked how did she know my name, suggesting that’s how she gets such information about me. Maybe it could be applied, since I am always away from home which won’t guarantee me to flex an assurance that I know what’s going on around here. She might also had had developed curiosity about me when somehow, the smalltown news about the 17-year-old boy casted into a Korean entertainment agency and would debut a star in her mother’s home country got into her ears. Maybe, she is just a curious and adventurous girl who likes to explore anything around her, even the neighborhood which merely attracts curiosity from others. I can take those as excuses of her strange attitude, but it’s still strange and I know there’s more into it. There’s more to her that meets the eye and has something to do with me.

I heave a sigh to pass off exasperation and shock out my system and close the door. I look around the living room and the place is so still and extremely quiet, I can almost hear the rush of my blood flow along the blood vessels inside my body. The furnitures look so fragile too, like one step I will make right now will knock them down and break the tiled floor. I don’t see anything moving, even the curtains which are drawn down don’t move an inch but it brings out a gloomy atmosphere in the whole room. The lights aren’t even on which only worsen the gloominess.

 And I haven’t seen Mom since this morning. I don’t think seeing a glimpse of her hair counts as seeing her. Perhaps, being aware of her presence, it would count on that.

 I heave another sigh again. I thought I can’t sign any more than I had been this month but the heaviness building inside me, a dystopian city made out of platinum, steel, and all the heavy metals existing on Earth, is recently dwelling in my body and haven’t been destroyed yet, and all I can do with it is exhale the poisonous gases they’ve been emitting as metals are continually forged inside me to build more buildings heavy with metals. I don’t think there’s even a way to destroy the city. Polluted, cold and melancholic city.

Sometimes, it feels like the city is getting wider, that it stretches out from my system and I am living in it now, than it had lived in me.

I want to talk to Mom about what I’d told her yesterday. The only necessary thing to do is to talk to her about it. I don’t want to elude anymore. I don’t want to run away from this. And since I have told her already, I am going to make her tell me what to do with this or if it can’t be undone, I’m going to convince her to accept it. Accept me, so I’ll be able to accept myself at the same time. Love me for what I am, so I can love myself at the same time.

I decide to ascend the stairs for if Mom is in the house, there’s only one place where she locks herself up to be with solitude and that is her room.

There’s no turning back. No running away. No evading. I have to move now, and move forward. Up and forward.

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[A/N] Soooooo, what do you think??? I hope I'm giving justice to the time you spent in reading this. I hope that, so far, I'm doing fine with the story. Feel free to comment anything below! I'd love to know what you think about it and what you can contribute to its improvement. Thank you so much~ And I wish you're still with me along the ride! ;)