My dearest,

I already know that once I'm done writing this letter, I'll be too afraid to send it to you. I'll most likely just throw it away or burn it, or something like it, but I need to get it out. Because I have these thoughts, these burning thoughts that I wish I could share with you, but you're not mine to share them with. I have this aching desire in my bones that makes me want to reach out to you, but you're not mine to touch. It's hard.

Do you know how hard it is? How there is a fire in my lungs every time I inhale with you near me, and how my hands betray me every time I talk to you, with the way my fingers can't stop shaking at the thought of you.

You're everywhere I go, you're all I see and all I think of, and I mean that quite literally as well because you’re always there with me, lately. The only moments where you're actually out of sight are when I go to bed at night, but it is pointless because even then you haunt me in my dreams.

I don't remember what it feels like not love you. Don't know who I was before I figured out my feelings, or which thoughts occupied my mind before you entered it like a tidal wave. You came and unknowingly settled down in my chest, growing your roots until they were tangled around my veins, and then you decided your heart would rather be somewhere else.

And you're not aware, I know you're not, of those roots that are still so tightly wrapped around my veins, and with every tug where you try to escape, they wind around me a little firmer. It slows down my heartbeat a bit more every time, and I know that one day it will stop beating, because there is simply no way you'll come running back to save me from choking.

You don't even know it, do you? All the songs I've written with you on my mind, all the times I felt so hopeless that I poured my everything into the words and melodies I create. You've complimented them, told me how raw the emotion felt from the lyrics alone, said it seemed as if I was actually going through it.

You don't know about the way I feel about you, but that's okay. There's no need for me to burden your light and happy heart with all my suffering. It won't do either of us any good. I will not kill the fluttering of yours with the dull beat of my own.

But unknowingly and without your intention, you lured me in. As if I was stuck in a forest with two paths to choose: to love you or let you be, and although there was an easy road to walk, with grass comfortable underneath my feet and sunlight to light the way, which was the one where I’d blissfully ignore the butterflies in my stomach, I still chose the darker path. The path covered in thorns, in a dark twilight where the road would be ever unsure, troubled at times too. And all because this tiny light had caught my eye, far, far away from the thorns, and it had captivated me.

But the thorns now feel like they are endless, like the light had been nothing but a hallucination to make the path seem more appealing. It had felt as if there was a treasure at the end, waiting to be taken, but that’s not the reality I live with now.

I was stupid to pick that path, but once I chose it there was no going back. There was only forward, with the thorns at my back pushing me on along with the hope alive in my chest that this was nothing but a phase. That those thorns, they were a test to see how far I was willing to go to reach the light.

The longer this drags on though, the longer your smile is directed at someone else, the easier it is to think that maybe it was nothing but a trap, a cruel joke assuring that I will be walking here forever, cutting myself occasionally, with that light always appearing to be in reach, when in reality it was as far away as ever.

Anyway, I've strayed from the point I was trying to make. Although, what point exactly am I trying to make? I only sat down to write this because I cut myself on another thorn watching you kiss her like no one else was in the room. Why do you do that? Oh, right, you don't know how I feel at all.

It would probably be laughable, me giving you this letter.

Sometimes I wonder what the look on your face would be like. If you'd be surprised or not at all, if you'd make fun of me or would be too embarrassed to speak. Would you cut me off, uncomfortable with the thought that whenever I look at you all I see is how you're everything? Or would you take pity on me, watch me with guilt in your eyes as you make sure she lets go of your hand when you're around.

I want none of those things. I'm okay with how things are right now, I'm fine being just your friend. Maybe one day, if your heart decided it no longer wants to be with her, you can settle back and release that tight hold on your roots. Maybe then, when I know how to breathe again, I'll find the courage to tell you all of this.

Until then, if we will ever get there at all, I will just stick to admiring you from where I am right now. Second place. I'll stick to writing you songs that I'll never explain and letters that I'll never send.

Until then, I'll keep all of you in the palm of my hand to love whenever I'm alone, and I'll let you slow down the beating of my heart if being with her is what brings you happiness.

Because that's how much I love you.

Chanyeol

~

A/N: This wasn't an excerpt from the story, but something extra I wrote to set the mood and tease you a little bit with what to expect. It's supposed to be a little all over the place, because I was trying to imagine an upset Yeol writing it all off in a letter to his Baek. 

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