FIFTH

His heart was pounding frantically in his chest and he wondered if he’d ever even make it to Busan alive. He had left the house early in the morning, asked Donghyun to cover for him if his parents would ask him where he was (“Just say I’m in the library to work on my calculus in silence, Donghyun.”), and with nervous and excited feet, he had biked to the train station.

Taehyun was entirely convinced he had lost it, because who in his right mind actually takes a five-hour train ride to the other side of the country just to maybe meet the guy that vandalised a book you just so happen to have bought online? Not even to scold or to demand money from, but actually just to say hi?

The instant the train had left, he started to regret his decision. Perhaps it wasn’t such a solid plan after all. What was he even going to say when he got there? “Hey, hello, I bought this book where you wrote your deepest and darkest secrets in and I kind of started to feel close to you despite us never even having met, or you even knowing of my existence?” Yeah, that wouldn’t sound creepy at all.

So the first three hours consisted of Taehyun multiple times wondering if he should just get off at the next train stop and just go home again. Yet every time they neared a next station, he stayed still as if he were glued to his seat.

In the end he simply gave in, realising his heart obviously knew better what it wanted than his head did, and that he’d figure out what to say when he’d get there.

Once entirely settled with his own situation, he looked down at his lap where the book was. Slowly, and carefully, he let his fingers glide over the cover. It’s something he must have done a million times by now, but it still felt as mysterious as it did the first time. “Who are you, Seungyoon?” He muttered longingly. “And are you okay?”

Opening the book had become such a normal thing to do and it felt as if he’d been doing it for whole his life already. He almost couldn’t remember what his life was before he first got the book, and he doubted he even wanted to remember. A smile tugged the corner of his lips when his gaze fell on the note. He still couldn’t entirely believe he was actually on his way to meet Seungyoon.

Seungyoon; the boy that had taken over the book, his thoughts, and had captured his heart in the progress.

With an anxious sigh, he willed himself to skim through the last pages of the book. After that one line where Seungyoon had mentioned wanting to jump, he hadn’t found any other writings. The pages following that were blank. Well, blank in Taehyun’s eyes, for the printed text no longer counted.

He had been feeling restless all the time, and he hadn’t been able to bring himself to turn those final pages in fear that there would be no more words to come. But now, he felt like he just had to know.

So he flipped a page, and another, and another. He kept turning over blank pages until the very last.

He felt overwhelmed. Completely, and painfully overwhelmed by Seungyoon’s final words. Taehyun wanted to scream, shout, break something, anything. But most of all, he wanted the train to speed the hell up because obviously he needed to see Seungyoon more than ever.

The words were echoing tauntingly through his head. And every time the wor