part of a series of drabbles based on a friendship of mine and its eventual decline (and, hopefully, the final part.)

When you were young, as all children were, you believed in people.

You believed that people were good, and people were nice, like the lady at the grocery store who smiled at you when you went with your mom to buy eggs or the kid next door who played with you on the weekends.

But as time went on, you began to see more and more about the world.

Don’t answer the door for anyone, your mother would caution before leaving you alone in the house, and for a long time, you didn’t understand why. Didn’t your mother always open the door when people knocked?

But, good as you were, you followed her rules, never questioning why.

Until one day you overheard your parents watching the news while they thought you were asleep—the word ‘kidnapping’ unfamiliar to your young mind. Wasn’t that just a kid sleeping? What was wrong with that?

It was only months later that you learned that a child two towns over had been snatched up while walking to the park.

As time passed, you grew more and more wary of the world around you—always finding it difficult to remain friends, and even when you thought you’d found someone to trust, they’d betray and abandon you soon after, leaving you not wanting to ever make new friends.

That was, until Baekhyun.

When you first met Baekhyun, you were confused. Of course, in p