*Chapter 22;

Baekhyun waited nearly a month for Chanyeol's envelope to arrive, often waiting nearly half an hour in front of his mailbox for the postman to hand-deliver the morning's haul to him. The postman knew what he was waiting for, though, and made it a habit to shake his head and tell him "sorry, kid" when there was nothing but bills to hand to Baekhyun.

A month had never felt so long for him, waiting hours and hours for a single envelope that probably meant nothing but a piece of paper to someone else.

Baekhyun's mother had gotten herself a stable job as a secretary, so she worked late hours and often came home to Baekhyun sulking in the living room. She would ask "no envelope?" and try to reassure her son that Chanyeol was probably busy, or the institution had run out of postage stamps. (Baekhyun thought that was bull.)

When the month bled into months and weeks, Baekhyun finally mustered up the courage to call the facility himself and was frustrated within seconds because the automated receiver couldn't connect him to an employee until nearly twenty minutes later. He asked for Park Chanyeol in the calmest, most dignified way possible, but his polite attempts at negotiating were turned down with an earful of terms and conditions he needed to follow before making personal requests. Eventually, he got tired of arguing and gave up.

He sent another letter to Chanyeol asking how he was doing, belatedly considering the fact that his first letter could have gotten lost in the post office. It could have happened. It was a very likely possibility. He hoped that was the case, but it wasn't. The second letter disappeared as well, so Baekhyun visited the post office himself to track the whereabouts of his envelope and discovered it had been received.

Why wasn't Chanyeol sending him anything, then?

He tossed and turned brainstorming ideas and drawing hasty conclusions as to why Chanyeol wasn't responding to his letters. Could it be something he had written to him? Did Chanyeol have no time for him anymore? Had he already been replaced? The weirdest, randomest thoughts clouded Baekhyun's thoughts until he couldn't wait anymore.

He decided to go to Seoul himself.

On Saturday, Baekhyun packed a few of Chanyeol's favorite crackers in a bag and bought a bus ticket to Seoul, which was very costly considering it took hours to get from one major city to another. He ended up spending nearly half of his pocket money, but Baekhyun didn't really care about the cost at that point. He knew if Chanyeol was in some kind of trouble, he'd sell the clothes on his body and his house to get him out of it.

The bus ride to Seoul was bumpy and tedious. Baekhyun ended up getting motion sickness during the first hour and vomited into his bag because he had nowhere else to hurl in. So much for the snacks.

When he got off the charter bus, he was in a fairly remote part of the city that he hadn't imagined it to be like. He had imagined Seoul to be filled with glittering lights and packed with busy people always rushing somewhere, but he was dropped off near some dingy town that looked like the aftermath of some zombie apocalypse.

Baekhyun decided to follow the directions on his map and came to a small park with a water fountain he washed his vomit-stained bag at (the stench lingered, but the bag itself was more or less clean).

After walking a few more miles down some cherry grove and nearly getting run over by a motorcycle, he found the welcoming statue and then the clean, polished gates. He thought there would be a machine to keep it locked or guards nearby, but Baekhyun just nudged the thing and the iron gates swung open.

He straightened his posture a bit when he walked into the courtyard, realizing that there were actual patients out in the garden with a few employees in blue assisting them.

They looked docile for the most part, Baekhyun noted, and smiled as he saw the rows of rose bushes and flower arrangements in the garden. Chanyeol would have felt a little more at ease having flowers around him, at least. He passed by a lady dressed from head to toe in white, who grabbed his arm so suddenly that Baekhyun almost screamed.

"How did you get in?" she asked and Baekhyun was petrified when he noticed both of her eyes were blue.

"I, um, there." he said, pointing behind him at the gates.

She released him with a chuckle. "How will you get out?" The psychotic grin on her face creeped him out so much that he quickly jogged ahead, but he still felt her gaze burning into the back of his head.

The rude lady was pushed to the recesses of his mind when he entered the main lobby and walked right up to the receptionist desk, clearly proud of himself that he had made the journey thus far to face the same people who had given him such a hard time over the phone. He pushed some paperwork he had salvaged from his bag prior to throwing up in it and spoke to the woman who welcomed him with a tacky smile.

"I'm looking for Park Chanyeol?" he chuckled softly to ease his own nerves, "I sent him a letter a month ago, but I haven't gotten anything back from him."

"Oh, our postal service is closed for the holidays, sir. You'll be able to receive personal letters from him in February."

"February?" Baekhyun gaped. "That's another month! Holidays don't last that long. Christmas was a month ago and we couldn't bring Chanyeol home because you guys denied our request! How long am I supposed to wait?"

"Sir," the woman said, "This is our policy. We can't make changes to it."

They were as stubborn as they were on the phone. Baekhyun sighed and glanced over to the two men standing in front of the main door probably leading to all the patient rooms. If he was a movie character, he could have torn past those two guards and ransacked the entire place in order to rescue Chanyeol, but he knew he had to be realistic. There was no way he could do anything for him now without getting his kicked out sooner than he could say Park Chanyeol.

"May I visit him, at least?"

"You'll have to make an appointment twenty-four hours before the date with consent of the legal guardian, sir."

Baekhyun sighed through his nostrils and finally waved the white flag. "All right." he mumbled dryly, then snatched a business card from the marble countertop, once again calculating his chances of getting past the door if he made a sprint for it now. Unfortunately, his calculations pointed to him getting carried out or arrested.

So, he hauled his bag over his shoulder and left the building, wondering how on earth he had managed to get so close but so far from seeing Chanyeol.

He pulled out his cellphone from his backpocket and dialed Jongin who was probably with Soojung at this hour, doing who-knows-what in the daylight. As expected, he heard the rustle of clothes, a zipper being pulled up, and Jongin's deep breath fogging up the mouthpiece. Baekhyun had to hold the phone an inch away from his ear because it sounded like Jongin was grunting in his ear or something.

"Gross." Baekhyun muttered.

"I was changing after practice, man. What's up?"

"I'm in Seoul, I tried getting them to let me in, but I guess I'll have to bring a lawyer with me next time," he said, suddenly interested in his cuticles as he walked across the courtyard. "I should have made a break for it."

He stopped and held his cellphone lower while Jongin was talking because he saw two employees mending some big lock on the gate he hadn't seen from the outside. They were also installing some new spikes over the top, making the entrance look like some fortress instead of a medical facility, but then again, Baekhyun considered the two like peas in a pod.

He wasn't really interested in what they were doing, per se, but the conversation the two men were having piqued his interest. When he heard one of them describe a patient as the one with "curly hair and big eyes," he knew they were talking about Chanyeol.

"He climbed right over the other fence and ran like the wind," one man said to the other.

"Was he crazy?"

"Of course he was! They're trying to keep his disappearance on the down-low with the police since he ran away two days ago."

The two men stopped chattering amongst themselves when they saw Baekhyun, who stood there with his gaze glued on the gate and Jongin still yelling into his unresponsive phone.

Baekhyun knew he should have turned around and demanded an answer from the facility, but then he considered the idea that if Chanyeol had escaped, he could still be out there, lost, starving, and cold. If he was still out there, where would he go? Baekhyun walked out of the open gates with his mind in a blur and looked around.

There were miles and miles of foliage and empty roads with no form of civilization beyond the facility, and even if there was, Baekhyun doubted Chanyeol could have asked for help.

Baekhyun couldn't run. His legs failed him the moment he needed them the most, because everything was suddenly crashing down on him. Sure, he didn't really know if there was some other patient with "curly hair and big eyes" at the facility, but it all made sense to Baekhyun now. Everything did, and the weight of every piece coming together in his head was so heavy that Baekhyun fell to his knees.

Baekhyun imagined Chanyeol lost somewhere, unable to find his way home. There was no way he could just grab a bus, nor any other form of public transportation. If he had any access to a telephone, he would have called him. He should have.

He picked himself up on wobbly legs and wondered who he should call first. If he called the police, there was no doubt they would turn him back to the facility and things would get too complicated. If he called his friends, they would have to take hours coming to Seoul and it would be nightfall before then.

Baekhyun walked around aimlessly, calling out Chanyeol's name here and there in hopes than an echo might carry his voice farther away.

If I were Chanyeol, where would I go first?

All of a sudden, everything blurred in his line of vision and only one road was crisp and clear. It was a smaller road that cars couldn't travel on, but Baekhyun knew he had to trust his instincts. He walked for miles and miles until his stamina had been depleted completely. The sun was blistering hot and there were so many mosquitoes buzzing around that he had to constantly slap his neck so they wouldn't leave marks.

He was so thirsty that he started following the sight of smoke, assuming that there would be people nearby who would have a source of water.

The area was not very much like the city he imagined it to be. It looked exactly like the countryside, but he considered the fact that Seoul was very large and there were small neighborhoods within it that were probably not as "modernized" as the mainland.

Just as he expected, the area he stumbled into was small and there were only a few houses that looked like they were built ages ago with dingy roofs and poor gates.

No sign of Chanyeol.

Baekhyun sighed and hung his head, his vision starting to get really blurry from exhaustion. The next thing he knew, he was knocked against the ground, but Baekhyun barely registered the pain before the stranger who shoved past him helped him up again.

"I'm so sorry," the man said, "I was in such a hurry, I didn't see you there."

The stranger dusted Baekhyun off and Baekhyun said it was all right, wondering why the man looked like he was in such a hurry. Thankfully, the man answered him when there were a few more people rushing in the same direction.

"There's a boy who was found in the back woods. The neighbors are saying he's the crazy man that escaped."

Baekhyun's eyes widened and he ran after the man towards the small house billowing with smoke. When he burst through the front gates of the house, he saw a small crowd of people surrounding the boy laid out on the front porch. There was no mistaking that the boy was Park Chanyeol.

"Chanyeol!" Baekhyun screamed, tearing through the mass of people and falling beside him. He grabbed his hand and yelled at Chanyeol although his brother's hand was limp and cold between his own. Chanyeol's face was marred with nicks and scratches and there was a purple blemish around his left eye.

"It's all right," an old lady sitting on the porch told him, "He's just unconscious."

Baekhyun leaned his forehead against the back of Chanyeol's hand, filtering out the sound of people gossiping around them that Chanyeol was crazy, that Chanyeol needed to be reported to the police...

"He's not crazy!" he yelled at them, "Please! Leave him alone! Just leave him alone, he hasn't done anything wrong to any of you... He's not crazy..."

When tears started streaming down his cheeks, people went silent and most of them left the yard. Baekhyun felt so sorry for Chanyeol because he never would have guessed this was how they would reunite. He thought they would open presents at Christmas together and play at the arcades...

"Do you know him?" the old lady asked, kindly placing another wet towel on Chanyeol's forehead.

Baekhyun sniffed and nodded after a prolonged pause.

Why, Chanyeol? Why won't you wake up?

I'm here now...

I'm here...