Chapter 30

'Ah... He must not be home...' N thought when the door remained shut. He had been hanging around the hall for hours and he had not at least heard a single noise from the other side of the door. There was also the possibility that his lifelong friend was simply ignoring him, but N tried to rule out that particular thought away. Deciding that waiting outside Leo's door for more than 4 hours was enough, N stood up from the floor and promised himself that he would just come back at another day to visit him.

Once he was out of the complex building, using the spare phone that Jaehwan lent him, he notified the idol that he will wait for him at Leo's campus. N knew that Jaehwan was busy with his schedules so he did not really expect him to send a reply or to pick him up early. Besides, he did not have a problem with staying for a little while anyway since there seemed to be an ongoing event at Leo's campus. N trusted that it would keep him preoccupied while he waits. There were loads of stalls and many students that were dressed up in costumes or uniformed t-shirts. N even heard that there would be fireworks later on. If Jaehwan were to arrive just in time, he imagined them watching the display together. 'Maybe with Leo too if Ken could contact him...' He thought wistfully. 

At first it was only the games that caught N's attention. But as time went on, he grew to like how there were some students giving away free food tasters along the way. They were good indeed, but because N did not really have that much money in his pockets, he was left with whatever he could buy – dumplings. At some point, he checked his wristwatch and discovered that 2 hours had already gone by and Jaehwan still had not informed him if he was coming or not. 'He's busy... He's busy,' N repeated on his head. Still, he updated Jaehwan with his whereabouts in the campus and allowed himself 30 more minutes to check out the other stalls that he had yet encountered. If by then Jaehwan still had not contacted him, he would tell him that he would just travel back to his dorm by himself.  

Following his daily routine, Leo checked his mailbox first before anything else. As per usual, he chucked out the junk mail at the nearby bin and found that there was no relevant mail for him to take with him. When he heard a yelp behind him, he glared at Wonsik for getting in his way and for allowing himself to be stepped on. The latter then gave way for him, deciding to just follow behind him quietly. Wonsik kept his eyes peeled like he normally would and kept glancing from left to right as they walked to Leo's complex building. Once they got on the elevator, he thought that he could finally rest and focus on how could strike a conversation with Leo. But again, he found himself wrong when someone suddenly stuck their foot in between the elevator doors to prevent them from closing. 

"Oh hey, Taekwoon!" One of Leo's neighbours greeted him, hopping on the elevator with them with a grin. "You're coming home late today so I guess that you don't know... There was a strange guy waiting by your door earlier." He looked over at where Leo was standing and he almost pouted his lips. Leo seemed uninterested about the whole conversation and he was not at least a little bit discreet about it. It almost made him feel like it was pointless to even bother telling him –

"What does he look like?" Wonsik interrupted their conversation, more intrigued than the actual owner of the apartment, "Did he have a big nose like you know... That guy who is always on the TV these days? Or did he have dimples? Or maybe he was tall? Like around my height or something?"

Leo's neighbour turned to him and greeted him as Wonsik was already well known in Leo's building as 'that high schooler.' "He wasn't really tall," he admitted, looking up as he tried to recall the details, "He's only a little bit shorter than you two and a tad bit taller than me. It's not really his height that stood out, though? It's his skin colour. He was tanned and –"

Wonsik's eyes widened and his heart also missed a beat. Leo, too, who was originally apathetic now had his full attention to his neighbour. "What?" He asked, voice stern all of a sudden.

"Erm..." His neighbour took a careful step back just in case. "The guy who's been waiting for you for hours had tanned skin and he spoke with a slight dialect. Other than that, he was polite and insisted on waiting for you –" He did not even get to finish what he was saying as Leo slammed his hand on the next level's button. As soon as the elevator's doors opened on the following floor, he rushed out to use the stairs.

Wonsik followed after him too, shouting his hyung's name over and over and louder each time. "Hyung! It's not him! It's not N-hyung!" Wonsik cried, speeding up on rushing down the flight of stairs to catch up with Leo's pace. "N-hyung is missing, right? And even if it was him, it's dangerous! Hyung! Listen to me!" Wonsik shouted, not caring if the other occupants of the building heard him. But as he already knew, his words were futile with Leo. Never had the latter listened to a word that he said. It made him slightly upset, but the one thing that he was concerned more about was preventing Leo from meeting with N again.

All Leo heard was the pounding of his heart as he ran. He, himself, did not know where his feet were taking him and why he was allowing them to lead him. Why was he wasting his breath to look for N when he was not even confident that it was N that his neighbour just described? What if it was just a mistake? What if it was just one of the people from his old school? Or someone he knew before? Or someone he absolutely have no knowledge of? Leo did not really know the answers, but he just tried to convince himself that he would not gain the explanations that he was seeking if he does not look for them and confirm his hunches himself.

So he searched high and low for his lifelong friend – or anyone that seemed to fit his neighbour's vague description. Leo did this in spite of the sea of students that were blocking his way and as well as Wonsik's useless pleas for him to stop. Somewhere along the way, he also lost him and reached the end of where the stalls for the event were. Leo was out of breath, sweating and exhausted from all the running that he did. He was not even certain that whoever visited him was still in his campus.

Letting out an exasperated sigh, Leo decided that he was going to go back to his apartment. But suddenly, he caught sight of a familiar smiling face in the crowd of people, his heart skipping a beat. Without any hesitation, he squeezed himself through the suffocating sea of students as he tried to track down the owner of the smile that he briefly saw. Leo's chest was heaving and his heart would not stop thudding inside his chest. He was short of breath and his patience was also growing thinner and thinner with each passing second. It also was not helping that his field of vision was full of red strings everywhere that he looked as everyone else had them – all except Cha Hakyeon.

The next time that Leo halted was when the person that he was trailing also stopped walking. He was about to go ahead and reach out to the person, but the fireworks starte