JIN MEANDERED DOWN the dank dormitory hallway toward his room, dragging his red Camp Gurid duffel bag with the broken strap in his wake. The walls here were the color of a dusty blackboard—and the whole place was strangely quiet, save for the dull hum of the yellow fluorescent lamps hanging from the water-stained drop-panel ceilings.

Mostly, Jin was surprised to see so many shut doors. Back at Dover, he’d always wished for more privacy, a break from the hallwide dorm parties that sprang up at all hours. You couldn’t walk to your room without tripping over a powwow of girls sitting cross-legged in matching jeans, or a lip-locked couple pressed against the wall.

But at Sword & Cross … well, either everyone was already getting started on their thirty-page term papers … or else the socializing here was of a much more behind-closed-doors variety.

Speaking of which, the closed doors themselves were a sight to be seen. If the students at Sword & Cross got resourceful with their dress code violations, they were downright ingenious when it came to personalizing their spaces. Already Jin had walked by one door frame with a beaded curtain, and another with a motion-detecting welcome mat that encouraged his to “move the hell on” when he passed it.

He came to a stop in front of the only blank door in the building. Room 63. Home bitter home. He fumbled for his key in the front pocket of his backpack, took a deep breath, and opened the door to his cell.

Except it wasn’t terrible. Or maybe it wasn’t as terrible as he’d been expecting. There was a decent-sized window that slid open to let in some less stifling night air. And past the steel bars, the view of the moonlit commons was actually sort of interesting, if he didn’t think too hard about the graveyard that lay beyond it. He had a closet and a little sink, a desk to do his work at—come to think of it, the saddest-looking thing in the room was the glimpse Jin caught of himself in the full-length mirror behind the door.

He quickly looked away, knowing all too well what he’d find in the reflection. His face looking pinched and tired. His brown eyes flecked with stress. His hair like his family’s hysterical toy poodle’s fur after a rainstorm. Ken’s sweater fit him quite perfectly. He was shivering. His afternoon classes had been no better than the morning’s, due mainly to the fact that his biggest fear had come to fruition: The whole school had already started calling him Meat Loaf. And unfortunately, much like its namesake, the moniker seemed like it was going to stick.

He wanted to unpack, to turn generic room 63 into his own place, where he could go when he needed to escape and feel okay. But he only got as far as ping his bag before he collapsed on the bare bed in defeat. He felt so far away from home. It only took twenty-two minutes by car to get from the loose-hinged whitewashed back door of his house to the rusty wrought iron entrance gates of Sword & Cross, but it might as well have been twenty-two years.

For the first half of the silent drive with his parents this morning, the neighborhoods had all looked pretty much the same: sleepy southern middle-class suburbia. But then the road had gone over the causeway toward the shore, and the terrain had grown more and more marshy. A swell of mangrove trees marked the entrance into the wetlands, but soon even those dwindled out. The last ten miles of road to Sword & Cross were dismal. Grayish brown, featureless, forsaken. Back home in Thunderbolt, people around town always joked about the strangely memorable moldering stench out here: You knew you were in the marshes when your car started to reek of pluff mud.

Even though Jin had grown up in Thunderbolt, he really wasn’t that familiar with the far eastern part of the county. As a kid, he’d always just assumed that was because there wasn’t any reason to come over here—all the stores, schools, and everyone his family knew were on the west side. The east side was just less developed. That was all.

He missed his parents, who’d stuck a Post-it on the T-shirt at the top of his bag—We love you! Kims never crash! He missed his bedroom, which looked out on his dad’s tomato vines. He missed Sandeul, who most certainly had sent him at least ten never-to-be-seen text messages already. He missed Yi Jung…

Or, well, that wasn’t exactly it. What he missed was the way life had felt when he’d first started talking to Yi Jung. When he had someone to think about if he couldn’t sleep at night, someone’s name to doodle dorkily inside his notebooks. The truth was, Jin and Yi Jung never really had the chance to get to know each other all that well. The only memento he had was the picture Sandeul had snapped covertly, from across the football field between two of his squat sets, when he and Jin had talked for fifteen seconds about … his squat sets. And the only date he’d ever gone on with him hadn’t even been a real date—just a stolen hour when Yi Jung had pulled him away from the rest of the party. An hour he’d regret for the rest of his life.

It had started out innocently enough, just two people going for a walk down by the lake, but it wasn’t long before Jin started to feel the shadows lurking overhead. Then Yi Jung’s lips touched his, and the heat coursed through his body, and his eyes turned white with terror … and seconds later, life as he’d known it had gone up in a blaze.

Jin rolled over and buried his face in the crook of an arm. He’d spent months mourning Yi Jung’s death, and now, lying in this strange room, with the metal bars digging into his skin through the thin mattress, he felt the selfish futility of it all. He hadn’t known Yi Jung any more than he knew … well, Jungkook.

A knock on his door made Jin shoot up from the bed. How would anyone know to find him here? He tiptoed to the door and pulled it open. Then he stuck his head into the very empty hallway. He hadn’t even heard footsteps outside, and there was no sign of anyone having just knocked.

Except the paper airplane pinned with a brass tack to the center of the corkboard next to his door. Jin smiled to see his name written in black marker along the wing, but when he unfolded the note, all that was written inside was a black arrow pointing straight down the hall.

Jimin had invited him over tonight, but that was before the incident with Yoongi in the cafeteria. Looking down the empty hallway, Jin wondered about following the cryptic arrow. Then he glanced back at his giant duffel bag, his pity party waiting to be unpacked. He shrugged, pulled his door shut, put his room key in his pocket, and started walking.

He stopped in front of a door on the other side of the hall to check out an oversized poster of Sonny Terry, a blind musician who he knew from his father’s scratchy record collection was an incredible blues harmonica player. He leaned forward to read the name on the corkboard and realized with a start that he was standing in front of Park Seo Joon’s room. Immediately, annoyingly, there was that little part of his brain that started calculating the odds that Seo Joon might be hanging out with Taehyung, with only a thin door separating them from Jin.

A mechanical buzzing sound made Jin jump. He looked straight into a surveillance camera drilled into the wall over Seo Joon’s door. The reds. Zooming in on his every move. He shrank away, embarrassed for reasons no camera would be able to discern. Anyway, he’d come here to see Jimin—whose room, he realized, just happened to be directly across the hall from Seo Joon.

In front of Jimin’s room, Jin felt a little stab of tenderness. The entire door was covered with bumper stickers—some printed, others obviously homemade. There were so many that they overlapped, each slogan half covering and often contradicting the one before it. Jin laughed under his breath as he imagined Jimin collecting the bumper stickers indiscriminately (MEAN PEOPLE RULE … MY SON IS AN F STUDENT AT SWORD & CROSS … VOTE NO ON PROP 666), then slapping them with a haphazard—but committed—focus onto his turf.

Jin could have kept himself entertained for an hour reading Jimin’s door, but soon he started to feel self-conscious about standing in front of a dorm room he was only half certain he’d actually been invited to. Then he saw the second paper airplane. He pulled it down from the corkboard and unfolded the message:

My Darling Jin,

If you actually showed up to hang out tonight, props! We’ll get along juuust fine.

If you bailed on me, then … get your claws off my private note, SEO JOON! How many times do I have to tell you? Jeez.

Anyhow: I know I said to swing by tonight, but I had to dash straight from R&R in the nurse’s station (the silver lining of my Taser treatment today) to a makeup biology review with Ms. Kang. Which is to say—rain check? 

Yours psychotically,

JM

Jin stood with the note in his hands, unsure about what to do next. He was relieved to read that Jimin was being taken care of, but he still wished he could see the boy in person. He wanted to hear the nonchalance in Jimin’s voice for himself, so that he’d know how to feel about what had happened in the cafeteria today. But standing there in the hallway, Jin was ever more uncertain how to process the day’s events. A quiet panic filled him when it finally registered that he was alone, after dark, at Sword & Cross.

Behind him, a door cracked open. A sliver of white light opened up on the floor beneath his feet. Jin heard music being played inside a room.

“Whatcha doin’?” It was Seo Joon, standing in his doorway in a torn white T-shirt and jeans holding a harmonica up next to his lips.

“I came to see Jimin,” Jin said, trying to keep himself from looking past him to see if anyone else was in the room. “We were supposed to—”

“Nobody’s home,” he said, cryptically. Jin didn’t know if he meant Jimin, or the rest of the kids in the dorm, or what. He played a few bars on the harmonica, keeping his eyes on him the whole time. Then he held open the door a little bit wider and raised his eyebrows. He couldn’t tell whether or not he was inviting him to come in.

“Well, I was just swinging by on my way to the library,” he lied quickly, turning back the way he’d come. “There’s a book I need to check out.”

“Jin,” Seo Joon called.

He turned around. They hadn’t officially met yet, and he hadn’t expected him to know his name. His eyes flashed a smile at him and he used the harmonica to point in the opposite direction. “Library’s that way,” he said. He crossed his arms over his chest. “Be sure to check out the special collections in the east wing. They’re really something.”

“Thanks,” Jin said, feeling truly grateful as he changed course. Seo Joon seemed so real right then, waving and playing a few parting slides on the harmonica as he left. Maybe he’d only made him nervous earlier because he thought of him as Taehyung’s friend. For all he knew, Seo Joon could be a really nice person. His mood lifted as he walked down the hallway. First Jimin’s note had been snappy and sarcastic, then he’d had a non-awkward encounter with Park Seo Joon; plus he really did want to check out the library. Things were looking up.

Near the end of the hall, where the dorm elbowed off toward the library wing, Jin passed the only cracked-open door on the floor. There was no decorative flair on this door, but someone had painted it all black. As he got closer, Jin could hear angry heavy metal music playing inside. He didn’t even have to pause to read the name on the door. It was Yoongi’s.

Jin quickened his steps. He didn’t realize he’d been holding his breath until he pushed through the wood-grained library doors and exhaled.

A warm feeling came over Jin as he looked around the library. He’d always loved the faintly sweet musty way that only a roomful of books smelled. He took comfort in the soft occasional sound of turning pages. The library at Dover had always been his escape, and Jin felt almost overwhelmed with relief as he realized that this one might offer him the same sense of sanctuary. He could hardly believe that this place belonged to Sword & Cross. It was almost … it was actually … inviting.

The walls were a deep mahogany and the ceilings were high. A fireplace with a brick hearth lay along one wall. There were long wooden tables lit by old-fashioned green lamps, and aisles of books that went on farther than he could see. The sound of his boots was hushed by a thick Persian carpet as Jin wandered past the entryway.

A few students were studying, none that Jin knew by name, but even the more punky-looking kids seemed less threatening with their heads bent over books. He neared the main circulation desk, which was a great round station at the center of the room. It was strewn with stacks of papers and books and had a homey academic messiness that reminded Jin of his parents’ house. The books were piled so high that Jin almost didn’t see the librarian seated behind them. He was rooting through some paperwork with the energy of someone panning for gold. His head popped up as Jin approached.

“Hello!” The man smiled—he actually smiled—at Jin. His hair was not gray but silver, with a kind of brilliance that sparkled even in the soft library light. His face looked old and young at the same time. He had pale, almost incandescent skin, bright black eyes, and a tiny nose. “Can I help you find something?” he asked in a happy whisper.

Jin felt instantly at ease with this man, and glanced down at the nameplate on his desk. Park Bogum. He wished he did have a library request. This man was the first authority figure he’d seen all day whose help he would actually have wanted to seek out. But he was just here wandering around … and then he remembered what Seo Joon had said.

“I’m new here,” he explained. “Kim Seokjin. Could you tell me where the east wing is?”

The man gave Jin a you-look-like-the-reading-sort smile that Jin had been getting from librarians all his life. “Right that way,” he said, pointing toward a row of tall windows on the other side of the room. “I’m Mr. Bogum, and if my roster’s correct, you’re in my religion seminar on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Oh, we’re going to have some fun!” He winked. “In the meantime, if you need anything else, I’m here. A pleasure to meet you, Jin.”

Jin smiled him thanks, told Mr. Bogum happily that he’d see him tomorrow in class, and started toward the windows. It was only after he’d left the librarian that he wondered about the strange, intimate way the man had called him by his nickname.

He’d just cleared the main study area and was passing through the tall, elegant book stacks when something dark and macabre passed over his head. He glanced up.

No. Not here. Please. Let me just have this one place.

When the shadows came and went, Jin was never sure exactly where they ended up—or how long they would be gone.

He couldn’t figure out what was happening now. Something was different. He was terrified, yes, but he didn’t feel cold. In fact, he felt a little bit flushed. The library was warm, but it wasn’t that warm. And then his eyes fell on Taehyung.

He was facing the window, his back to him, leaning over a podium that said SPECIAL COLLECTIONS in white letters. The sleeves of his worn leather jacket were pushed up around his elbows, and his blond hair glowed under the lights. His shoulders were hunched over, and yet again, Jin had an instinct to fold himself into them. He shook it from his head and stood on tiptoe to get a better look at him. From here, he couldn’t be certain, but he looked like he was drawing something.

As he watched the slight movement of Taehyung's body as he sketched, Jin’s insides felt like they were burning, like he’d swallowed something hot. He couldn’t figure out why, against all reason, he had this wild premonition that Taehyung was drawing him.

He shouldn’t go to him. After all, he didn’t even know him, had never actually spoken to him. Their only communication so far had included one middle finger and a couple of dirty looks. Yet for some reason, it felt very important to him that he find out what was on that sketchpad.

Then it hit him. The dream he’d had the night before. The briefest flash of it came back to him all of a sudden. In the dream, it had been late at night—damp and chilly. He leaned up against a curtained window in an unfamiliar room. The only other person there was a man … or a boy—Jin never got to see his face. He was sketching his likeness on a thick pad of paper. His hair. His neck. The precise outline of his profile. Jin stood behind him, too afraid to let him know he was watching, too intrigued to turn away.

Jin jerked forward as he felt something pinch the back of his shoulder, then float over his head. The shadow had resurfaced. It was black and as thick as a curtain.

The pounding of his heart grew so loud that it filled his ears, blocking out the dark rustle of the shadow, blocking out the sound of his footsteps. Taehyung glanced up from his work and seemed to raise his eyes to exactly where the shadow hovered, but he didn’t stared the way he had.

Of course, he couldn’t see them. His focus settled calmly outside the window.

The heat inside Jin grew stronger. He was close enough now that he felt like he must be able to feel it coming off his skin.

As quietly as he could, Jin tried to peer over his shoulder at his sketchpad. For just a second, his mind saw the curve of his own bare neck sketched in pencil on the page. But then he blinked, and when his eyes settled back on the paper, he had to swallow hard.

It was a landscape. Taehyung was drawing the view of the cemetery out the window in almost perfect detail. Jin had never seen anything that made him quite so sad.

He didn’t know why. It was crazy—even for him—to have expected his bizarre intuition to come true. There was no reason for Taehyung to draw him. He knew that. Just like he knew he’d had no reason to flip him off this morning. But he had.

“What are you doing over here?” Taehyung asked. He’d closed his sketchbook and was looking at him solemnly. His lips were set in a straight line and his blue eyes looked dull. He didn’t look angry, for a change; he looked exhausted. “I came to check out a book from Special Collections,” Jin said in a wobbly voice. But as he looked around, he quickly realized his mistake. Special Collections wasn’t a section of books—it was an open area in the library for an art display about the Civil War. He and Taehyung were standing in a tiny gallery of bronze busts of war heroes, glass cases filled with old promissory notes and Confederate maps. It was the only section of the library where there wasn’t a single book to check out.

“Good luck with that,” Taehyung said, opening up his sketchbook again, as if to say, preemptively, goodbye.

Jin was tongue-tied and embarrassed and what he would have liked to do was escape. But then, there were the shadows, still lurking nearby, and for some reason Jin felt better about them when he was next to Taehyung. It made no sense—like there was anything he could do to protect Jin from them.

He was stuck, rooted to his spot. He glanced up at him and sighed.

“Let me ask you, do you like being sneaked up on?”

Jin thought about the shadows and what they were doing to him right now. Without thinking, he shook his head roughly.

“Okay, that makes two of us.” He cleared his throat and stared at him, driving home the point that he was the intruder.

Maybe he could explain that he was feeling a little light-headed and just needed to sit down for a minute. He started to say, “Look, can I—”

But Taehyung picked up his sketchbook and got to his feet. “I came here to get away,” he said, cutting him off. “If you’re not going to leave, I will.”

He shoved his sketchbook into his backpack. When he pushed past, his shoulder brushed Jin's. Even as brief as the touch was, even through their layers of clothes, Jin felt a shock of static.

For a second, Taehyung stood still, too. They turned their heads to look back at each other, and Jin opened his mouth. But before he could speak, Taehyung had his heel and was walking quickly toward the door. Jin watched as the shadows crept over his head, swirled in a circle, then rushed out the window into the night.

He shivered in the chill of their wake, and for a long time after that, stood in the special collections area, touching his shoulder where Taehyung had, feeling the heat cool down.