Wednesday, November 10^th, 1954

I hate school. Have I ever said that before? Not in here, I guess, but I do. I really ing do. I hate how I know nothing and I’m not even trying and I’ve given up and I just don’t ing care anymore I HATE IT. I’m not even ing doing anything to change and I ing HATE myself.

As if screaming about it is going to change anything?? I’m ing useless. I don’t want to die but I don’t want to deal with this either. I don’t know what I want from life anymore. I’m not good at anything. Going to ing major in liberal arts.

I just sat here for ten minutes staring into the void, thinking about nothing. Wow I ing hate myself. It’s 3:30 and I have to get up at 6:50 tomorrow. What even is life anymore? I’m disgusted with myself. In more ways than just one.

***

Saturday, May 10^th, 2004

Hongki’s heart skips a beat when he realizes that he left the journal outside last night. He’s not worried about any humans finding it, but what if some animal took it away? What if a raccoon ripped it up? All morning, thoughts of the journal occupy his mind, and when his mother finally leaves at noon to visit his grandmother, Hongki doesn’t waste a single second.

He no longer has his phone, but it’s not like he had service anyway. Hongki’s breath comes quick and short as he races through the field. He needs that journal. He doesn’t even know he cares so much; maybe it’s a spiritual connection to the boy who once occupied his room, or maybe it’s just his only source of entertainment. In any case, he can’t bear to lose it.

Even from a distance away, Hongki can see the figure of a boy. He seems to be holding something flat in his hand, and Hongki panics. He speeds up, snatching the journal from the boy, whoever he is, and collapses to the ground, gasping for breath.

“Are you okay?” the boy asks, dropping to his knees as well. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know it was yours. I hope you’re okay?”

It takes Hongki a while to regain the ability to talk. It takes slightly longer for him to stand up without falling back down. “I’m fine.”

He turns his back on the strange boy and starts his journey back to the house, but unfortunately for him, the boy follows, trotting along beside him.

“Hey, I haven’t seen you around before!” he says cheerfully, as if Hongki hadn’t just nearly died before him. “Are you the new kid? You must be, I saw the mover trucks yesterday!”

Hongki doesn’t reply, and the boy keeps talking.

“Where do you even live? There aren’t that many empty houses here.” Unwittingly, Hongki looks towards the big house looming on the horizon, and the boy’s eyes widen. “The old Song house?”

His voice has dropped an octave, and Hongki has never been one to suppress his curiosity. “Was that their name?” he asks, looking down at the journal. “The landlord didn’t say anything about it.”

“No one’s lived there in, like, fifty years.” The boy glances down at the journal too. “I think someone died in it, and everyone who knew anything is either dead or gone. Or just really old.” The boy shakes his head once. “They don’t talk about the house or anything to do with it. Everyone says it’s haunted.”

Hongki halts in his tracks, spinning around to face him. “What if it is?” He steps closer to the boy, who backs away. “What if I’m the ghost? What if I’m possessed? What if I’m here to find a human sacrifice?”

To his surprise the boy laughs and touches his arm briefly. “I don’t believe in ghosts, my friend.”

Hongki turns away. “We’re not friends.”

“If you say so.” The boy pulls out a phone from his back pocket and checks the time. “Well, I have to go. You’ll be starting school on Monday, right?” Hongki doesn’t answer. “If you ever decide that you do need a friend, just ask for Lee Jaejin. Everyone knows me.”

He runs off with a quick wave, and Hongki is alone in the field again.

Finally, some peace and quiet. But for some reason, the wind feels cold today. The sun hides behind thick clouds, and Hongki shivers. Maybe Jaejin was telling the truth after all. Maybe the house really is haunted, the journal possessed by the vengeful spirit of a boy who committed suicide.

No, impossible. Lee Hongki doesn’t believe in ghosts, and in any case, he wouldn’t mind being possessed. Hongki shakes his head and opens the journal. The boy had skipped a few days, and the entry is short and condensed, filled to the brim with self-loathing and hatred. It sounds like something that Hongki could have written, if he had kept a journal.

Hongki feels for the boy. It’s a terrible thing, to feel incompetent and unwanted, especially at such a young age. He can speak from experience; it seems like they’re the same age at this point, and the coincidence shocks him.

He hopes that the boy didn’t commit suicide when he was eighteen. He would have had his entire life in front of him, and Hongki can’t imagine being so hopeless as to considering death his only option. He must have suffered extreme trauma, to have chosen to end.

That, or he was a dramatic as .

By the time Hongki steps back inside the house, his father is awake and smoking on the couch.

“Where’ve you been?” he demands, eyes staring blankly at the TV. Hongki hides the book behind his back.

“Out.” His answer is as dismissive as the question. “As if you care.”

If his father replied, Hongki doesn’t hear it. He dashes up the staircase, as quickly as he can without making too much noise, and stuffs the journal back into the closet. Right in time, it turns out, as his father pushes open the door.

“Go see your grandmother.” He glances around the room, taking in its sparse and decayed state, and leaves again with a grunt. Hongki lets out the breath he hadn’t known he was holding and slumps against the wall.

No insults this time, and no yelling. His heart races still, and Hongki presses his hand against his chest, attempting to calm its furious stuttering. Just one moment, just one second to himself, before he visits his grandmother.

She lives in the middle of the village. The path leading down the hill is overgrown with weeds and brambles, but surprisingly, he enjoys picking his way through them. It feels like an adventure, and Lee Hongki lives for adventure. He leaps over a particularly thorny bush and laughs out loud, throwing his head back.

Maybe living here isn’t so bad after all.

“Oh, Hongki, honey, you look so thin!” His grandmother engulfs him in a huge hug as soon as she opens the door. “You just missed your mother, she went to town to buy groceries.”

“It’s fine.” He doesn’t want to deal with her bull today. “You’ve been well?”

“As always,” she reassures him, but he can hear the thinness in her voice, see the fragility in her stance, and a shard of pain pierces his heart. He’s never been close to any of his grandparents, but watching them waste away in illness is an excruciating experience. He can almost understand his mother now, why she wanted to move here.

“Well, that’s good.” He sits down on the flowered couch, at a loss for what to say. “Doesn’t it get boring here?”

“Not if you’re an old woman like me.” She sets down a tray of tea and cookies, taking his hands in hers. “Tell me, grandson, how have you been? How is school? Ah, you really need to eat more.”

“I’m okay.” He retracts his hands. Hers are soft and wrinkled, and it makes him slightly uncomfortable. “School is… I don’t know. It was fine, but then we moved here.”

“Ah, of course.” She stuffs a cookie into his hand. “Well, don’t worry. The children here are nice. You’ll get along well. Ah, my stew.”

Left alone in the living room, Hongki glances around. She doesn’t have many decorations, just a few framed pictures of the family. There’s his aunt, uncle, cousin, himself, his mother…

Suddenly, a glass paperweight in front of one of the pictures catches Hongki’s eye, and he approaches the cabinet to further examine it. It’s tinted yellow, shaped like a rose, and filled with air bubbles. It’s beautiful, and Hongki picks it up, turning it over in his hands.

“That was the Song boy’s.”

Hongki curses, nearly dropping the glass ornament. His grandmother clucks her tongue and points to the picture. “That was him, in the middle. Handsome boy, never knew why he went and…”

And killed himself. Hongki peers at the picture. The boy was handsome, tall and slim with a high forehead and prominent cheekbones. His eyes twinkle with mischief, and his untucked shirt flies up to reveal just a flash of skin. Hongki bites back a smile. Like him, this boy didn’t care for school rules.  

“What was his name?” he asks, setting the paperweight down. His grandmother shakes her head.

“Don’t remember. It’s been too long. His friend was called Min-something, I think.”

“Minhwan,” he murmurs automatically, then clamps his mouth shut. , that was from the journal.

“Yes, something like that.” She sighs, picking up a pair of knitting needles. “They were so close, the town troublemakers. We used to call them the fairies, flutter here and flutter there…”

Minhwan is slightly shorter than the Song boy, stockier and more mature. His bangs cover his eyes, much like Hongki’s own hairstyle, and his shirt is neatly tucked into his pants. It’s clear that he cared more about school than his friend did.

Suddenly, the full weight of the journal entry hits Hongki like a bomb. He didn’t know what he wanted to do with his life. He wanted to go to college with his best friend but couldn’t bear to leave his family behind. He lost his way in the great vastness of life, and in the end, it killed him.

Hongki doesn’t want to be like that. He doesn’t want to die, has too much he wants to do. The Song boy… he was so young…

His throat closes, and he chokes out something about needing to go. He can’t bear to think about this anymore. The air is cold, and even the sun hides its face. Clouds gather above, gray and low, and thunder rolls in the distance. Hongki runs, but the rain pours down before he makes it back to the house.

The Song house, where the Song boy died way too young. Hongki stands on the porch, soaked to the bone, breath coming shallowly, and watches the rain. The sky cries today, for the Song boy. The sky cries so that Hongki will not have to.

A smiling face flashes through his mind, and Hongki clutches his head in agony. He doesn’t want to think about him, doesn’t want to cry for him today, not today.

“Hongki, is that you?”

He turns to his mother, standing in the doorway, peering out at the land. “Wow, it’s raining.” She steps out, and though she doesn’t seem to be mad, Hongki takes a step away. “Did you get caught?”

“Yeah.” He wrings out his shirt. “I’m going to change.”

He doesn’t change. Instead, Hongki peels off his wet clothes, dumps them in a pile, and curls up underneath the covers. He’s asleep within seconds, and no one wakes him up for dinner.

very much unbetaed. this is the tiest thing i've written all day, considering especially it was the only thing i've written all day.

i, by the way, personally despise epithets. but 'the song boy' just seems so right.

also, i watched their 2015 weekly idol episode and this ship be SAILING

hongki got his hand on seunghyun's leg for half the episode

and damn song seunghyun's legs are so thin that hongki's hand covers his entire thigh

can i be that thin too???