Something was chasing him. Something larger than him... something evil, something with sinister breath that felt like frost as it slipped down his neck and the cold sweat on his shoulder blades. He wasn't sure what it was but he knew that he had to run from it, knew that if he slowed down it would catch him and swallow him into the darkness, the same exact way he'd seen it swallow his father, his sister, his friends, his classmates. Whatever it was, it would find him if he tried to hide from it. So he kept running despite the sand that his feet fell deeper into with every step he took, the deafening silence of the darkness around him striking the drums of his ears with the beat of his own heart; he thought his mouth opened to yell, but he could hear nothing except for what he thought might have been the sound of an approaching siren as the sand began to rise higher. It pulled at his waist, then soon pulled his shoulders down as he grappled blindly for something to pull him back out. His hands found nothing, not even as he opened his mouth to cry out to the siren one last time. 

The sea of sand closed over his head.
5:00AM.

Seunghyun sat up with a gasp, wrenching himself free of the sand and darkness to the sound of his alarm clock droning away. Away bled the darkness--reality began to fade back into view. His breathing began to calm and he wiped the film of clammy sweat from his forehead, taking a slow look around. Morning. Friday. School. 

Ugh, school. 

His mouth was pressed into a hard line as he climbed out of bed, a sour taste different from morning breath already forming in his mouth at the thought of returning to those classrooms, the students and the teachers that he struggled to make himself fit into. It was like the entire system was a triangular hole, and he was a square peg. It didn't work--it never had, no matter how hard he tried--but he was still expected to show up and make it work somehow. 

Seunghyun didn't want to be triangle-shaped. He didn't want to be burdened with the difficulty of trying to play by the stupid rules that some stupid adults had whipped up at some faculty meeting where they passed out ty donuts and coffee. They wanted him to be something, and you know what? He just really didn't ing want to be anything. He didn't want to be good at math, or history. He didn't care about making friends with his classmates, and he didn't care about playing sports with them, either. Some days he didn't even want to be Seunghyun, almost 16 and too tall, too heavy, too stubborn, too... too everything. Too much of everything, in fact, that he wished he were someone else--just for a little while. Other days he didn't want to be a person at all. All he really wanted was to be left alone in his room, where he could listen to his favorite CDs and watch VHS tapes with his favorite rappers on them.

When he looked at them, he thought that they were cool. Gold jewelry, tattoos, girls, cars... every night, their videos played on his television screen like the visions of a distant dream. He wanted to be more like them--and therefore less like Seunghyun... As he looked into the bathroom mirror he thought about Jiyong, that kid at his school who was training to be a rapper with a big company. He'd seen him on TV a few times, and he featured on one of the CDs that Seunghyun had sitting on his shelf--2001 Korea HipHopFlex. How could a kid like that be a rapper? He didn't look anything like the guys that he watched rap in underground clubs--but when he'd run into him last night, he was dressed just like them... Seunghyun couldn't wrap his head around it. Maybe Jiyong was living a double-life. He wanted to find out.

His mother knocked on his bedroom door as he was finishing putting on his uniform. She straightened his tie for him and his cheek, asked him to try to stay at school for the whole day again. After he'd left she sat back down to her cup of coffee with troubled eyes, and silently began to wonder where her treasured son was drifting away to.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

When he got to class, Seunghyun settled into a seat near the back. His friend Donghoon hurriedly sat down next to him and pulled a folded-up piece of paper from his pocket, doing his best to smooth the creases out of it before he passed it to him. "Turn it over," he insisted as he was given a confused glance about why he was passing his homework around. Seunghyun let out a chuckle as he flipped it over, realizing the other side of the paper was filled with lyrics.

"I hit the jackpot, right?" Donghoon asked him as he watched him read, eagerly waiting for his reaction. Seunghyun nodded, reaching up to rub his eyes as he passed the paper back before folding his arms on the desk and putting his head down. He hadn't even had a chance to close his eyes before he felt Donghoon nudge him with an elbow, leaning close to his ear. "Hey, look, across the room..." Seunghyun lifted his head, glancing around for a second before he realized what he was supposed to see.

Jiyong, who at some point must have crept into the classroom as silently as a cat, glowered at them from a few desks away as he dug his papers out from his bag. He stared back, bewildered, until Jiyong finally finished collecting his notes and turned his back to him. Seunghyun probably could have felt the chill of his cold shoulder from a mile away; he merely exchanged a 'what's his deal?' type of glance with Donghoon before putting his head back down to attempt to sleep through his classes until at least lunchtime. Just yesterday they'd had a pretty nice conversation--or at least he thought so--so why he was glaring at him now, he had no idea...

He didn't last until lunchtime. Only a few hours later, Seunghyun abruptly slung his bag strap over his shoulder and walked out. Donghoon was unsurprised; Seunghyun didn't catch the way that Jiyong's sharp gaze followed him as he left.