A/n: Another 2am update. This chapter is a bit shorter (the chapters of this fic are gonna be short) and focuses more around Kyungsoo/Jongin than the newspaper team. Next update will probably be focused on the team again, and I might alternate it like that. I don't know. In contrast to the previous chapter that was basically all laughs, this chapter will basically be all sads. (Without the team, Soo is just sad apparently. That makes it sound so terrible ㅋ) I'll probably alternate this too. Anyway, yeah. Enjoy :)

Kyungsoo’s life hated him, he had realized. Ever since he had met Kim Jongin, every shred of good things had decided to abandon him, which at first Kyungsoo had thought was okay. He had considered it a sacrifice for his love, and figured once he got closer to Jongin, the younger would appreciate everything he’d given up for them, and this would only make him love Kyungsoo more. This was all fine and good, except he hadn’t gotten closer to Jongin, so his sacrifice had been of no use for him. All he’d gotten from it was a lot of misery in place of the good life he’d given up.

A lot of things happened that week. Tuesday morning, Kyungsoo saw Jongin in the halls, talking to a girl he had never seen around before – the girl Sehun and Luhan had been talking about in their meeting the day before, Kyungsoo guessed, because she was definitely new, and definitely a foreigner. Her blonde hair was enough to tell him that. He didn’t see her face until he went into class after lunch – and found out she was an older student who would be the teacher’s helper that period for the rest of the semester – and was surprised to find she was Korean. Kyungsoo wasn’t sure whether he felt better or worse about that.

Because he hated the way Jongin looked at her. His eyes got all dark and… seductive, and the way he smirked at her… It was something Kyungsoo dreamed about, and it felt like little critters were clawing away inside his chest and stomach whenever he thought about it, or her. He was grateful he hadn’t caught her name when she introduced herself to his class.

Even before she happened, Kyungsoo’s morning got off to an interesting start. Waking up late, he had to rush to school that morning, but still got to class just a minute after the bell had rung, earning a lot of looks. After he’d sat down, he saw Jongin pass a note to Sehun, and couldn’t help glancing over Sehun’s shoulder to read it. He wished he hadn’t.

“Guess since he’s already done all this before, he can just show up whenever he wants.”

He made it through the class half-feeling like crying (though he didn’t), and then at break was tested further when he had seen Jongin and the new girl. (Kyungsoo almost cried then too, but managed to keep it together.) After this, he went off to find Joonmyun, needing to give him everyone’s stories for the paper. Not actually knowing where Joonmyun’s locker was or anything, Kyungsoo just sort of planned on going to the senior classes and peaking in, hopefully finding him quickly and not having to embarrass himself too much. However, he was saved from having to do so when he caught sight of Joonmyun in the hall, standing in front of a locker Kyungsoo only assumed belonged to him.

“Joonmyun!”

The older’s head turned quickly, eyes widening as he spotted Kyungsoo approaching. He was already flushing by the time Kyungsoo reached him.

“Hey, what’s up Kyungsoo?” he said, sounding like he was trying very hard to be calm. (At least today his voice didn’t crack. Kyungsoo really did feel bad about the guy’s crush; he sort of felt bad that he didn’t like Joonmyun. The older would probably be a better option than Jongin.)

“I brought you all the stuff from yesterday,” Kyungsoo said, holding up the small stack of pages and the envelope Jongin had given him. “Sorry about them, by the way,” he added on his friend’s behalf, and Jongin’s. Not that he had any responsibility for Jongin, but he felt guilty about how his secret crush had acted.

“Oh no, that’s okay,” Joonmyun assured him hurriedly, turning a bit redder. “I was just – very frustrated. That Jongin… he’s really a lot to handle sometimes.”

“Mhm,” Kyungsoo nodded, and he felt a tiny wave of sadness. It’s even worse when you like him. And when he doesn’t like you back. “Anyway…” He held out the papers again, and Joonmyun took them off his hands, flipping through them briefly before pausing on the envelope.

“What’s this?” he asked curiously, glancing up at Kyungsoo.

“Oh, I dunno,” Kyungsoo shrugged. “Jongin said it’s his story. I figured he just – I don’t even know, honestly. It’s better not to think too much about anything he does.”

“No kidding,” Joonmyun nodded. “But he already gave me his story.” Kyungsoo raised an eyebrow in confusion. But Jongin had said… “This morning; he just sort of gave it to me and didn’t say anything else this morning before class. I figured he just hadn’t given it to you.” He eyed the envelope suspiciously. “There’s no way this is a story. I bet it’s some prank thing that’ll explode in my face when I open it.”

Oh. Kyungsoo hadn’t really thought of that, but now that Joonmyun mentioned it, it… well, it definitely wasn’t out of the cards, knowing who it was from. “Sorry, I hadn’t even thought about it-”

“No, no, it’s cool Kyungsoo-yah,” Joonmyun said quickly, before blushing further. Kyungsoo-yah. I wonder if he thinks of me as that, but is always too shy to say it. Kyungsoo just gave him a smile, at which Joonmyun looked very relieved. “You’re in his class though, right? Would you give it back to him? Tell him I don’t want whatever it is.”

“Um, sure,” Kyungsoo nodded slowly. An excuse to talk to Jongin? No thanks. A year ago, he would’ve jumped on it, but now it just seemed like a lot of extra pain. It was bad enough just being in his class, and having the boy constantly sneering at him and writing notes and just… Why? Kyungsoo sighed internally.

On his way back to class, though, he thought about it. This mystery envelope. It probably was just a prank, like Joonmyun had said, but Kyungsoo was kind of curious. Why would Jongin give that to him and then turn around and give Joonmyun his story the next morning? Did he really think Joonmyun wouldn’t get suspicious of it? If so… maybe the, the – whatever it was – was for Kyungsoo. And if that was the case…

But there was no way Jongin could’ve known Kyungsoo would take all their stories yesterday. Even if he had planned to get Joonmyun to leave, the editor by no means would have guaranteed to put Kyungsoo in charge; he could’ve just cancelled the meeting for the day. Then again, maybe that was just a convenient excuse for Jongin to give the thing to Kyungsoo; maybe he’d already been looking for a reason, and he had jumped on that yesterday. So was it a prank for Kyungsoo?

A tiny part of that idea made Kyungsoo feel kind of special.

(Which really was awful, because if it was some… thing that was going to blow up if he opened it, that was hardly a good thing. It didn’t exactly signal that Jongin had any nice feelings for him.)

Kyungsoo over-analyzed it so much that he couldn’t give it back to Jongin. He had to keep it, and check it out himself before he gave it back (assuming there was anything to give back, if he ended up doing so). So instead of taking it to class, he put it in his locker and went back to the classroom, wondering exactly what he was setting himself up for.

Throughout the course of the day, what with the new girl coming into their class – and then of course staying in their class, and spending almost all her time with Jongin (who called her over so often that she eventually just pulled up a chair at his desk; and their teacher didn’t say anything because really, Jongin was half of all the trouble in their class, and the man could handle all the other students if Jongin was taken care of) – Kyungsoo managed to forget about the envelope and the plans he had for it. However, at the end of the day, it was still waiting for him, and he packed it into his bag before hurrying home.

Out of concern, he decided to open it in his bathroom, in case it made a mess that he would have to clean up. (And cleaning up tile was easier than carpet, so Kyungsoo figured it was a safe precaution.) When he got home, he took it out of his backpack and headed to the safety room, holding it over the bathtub and cautiously ripping open the end. Nothing happened, but Kyungsoo was hardly relieved. If anything, he felt more nervous, and he couldn’t pluck up the nerve to look inside the envelope. Instead he put it down in his tub and carefully lifted the unopened end, allowing its contents to slide out.

It was a book, after all. How anticlimactic, Kyungsoo thought, feeling a little disappointed. It was just a black book, that sort of looked like a journal. Maybe it’s got something inside. Carefully, he flipped open the cover, anticipating a snake or something to be writhing around, the pages cut out so it could encase the thing. But no. No snakes, no creatures of any kind. Just a front page, that was blank.

Am I missing something here? Kyungsoo picked up the book and shook it to see if anything would fall out of the pages, but nothing did. He even checked in the envelope, but it was empty now. What the heck?

Kyungsoo looked back to the book, frowning and ruling out the idea that there was some sort of joke involved here. So what, then? He opened it again, flipping past the front page to the next, and finding writing covering the page. What was this? Kyungsoo went vaguely through the pages, finding them all written on, before returning to the first again.

What had Jongin told him when he’d given Kyungsoo the envelope?

That’s my story.

Was this… Jongin’s journal? Kyungsoo had to stop himself from reading it for a moment, contemplating whether he dared to look through it. Could he really handle reading Kim Jongin’s journal? There might be things in here that he didn’t want to know, didn’t want to find out. But – what if there were things about him in there? Maybe… maybe good things? Was that why Jongin had given this to him – was the way he treated Kyungsoo just an act, to hide his real feelings? (Kyungsoo had thought about this kind of thing a lot before, when he was in denial and still hopeful that maybe he was wrong about the way Jongin was with him.) It seemed dangerous to have any hope that would be true.

Deciding that he could at least check the first page, Kyungsoo read it over.

Hi, my name is Jongin.

Hi, my name is Kai.

Hi, my name is Kai.

Hi, my name is Kai.

Hi, my name is Kai.

Hi, my name is Kai.

Hi, my name is Kai.

Hi, my name is Kai.

Hi, my name is Kai.

Kai is my name, hi.

Kai is name my hi.

Ih, ym eman si Iak.

Iaksiemanymih.

Iseyi aimmh kan.

Miky nimhi aesa.

Ik am an im ih es y.

Eksh ymma na iii.

Kammanish yei I.

Memani kiyashi.

Aaehiiikmmnsy.

Shak mei nih iam yi.

Kysmehanimiai.

Jongin is dead now.

Kyungsoo stared for a long time, vaguely wondering what he had just read. That was… kind of eerie, particularly the ending (but also the beginning and middle and just all of it). It wasn’t exactly news to him that Jongin wrote weird stuff – Kyungsoo read the weather every week, and it never actually made any sense – but, well, he’d been expecting his journal to be… well, not that. Who was Kai? Was it Jongin’s evil twin brother or something? (Or a demon that had possessed Jongin? Okay, maybe not, but you never know; it was kind of a nice thought anyway. That way, if Kyungsoo could exorcise him or something, Jongin would think of him as his hero and maybe then he would actually like him. Hm. This demon idea was actually pretty tempting.) Kyungsoo wasn’t really sure he could keep reading if the book was all like this. He could handle weird, but that was just creepy.

Seemingly for dramatic effect, there were dark reddish-brown drops on the page that looked an awful lot like blood. (It wouldn’t actually be blood of course; it was probably just to scare anyone who read it. Kyungsoo wondered what it really was. Ketchup, maybe.) Kyungsoo was afraid to turn the next page, wondering how much worse it would be; but at the same time, he was eager to read on, curious what exactly would happen. Jongin had wrote this, these were his thoughts (unless Kyungsoo followed his whole demon theory); what exactly did Jongin think about?

The next few pages weren’t nearly as concerning. Mostly a bunch of unintelligible rambling about lord knows what, it wasn’t really any different from the things Jongin wrote in his weather section. So maybe the first page was intended to frighten people away, so they wouldn’t get a sneak peak at what Jongin had written (since he was always so secretive about his weather). Kyungsoo read on for a few pages, but he really couldn’t make sense of any of it, and just ended up closing it in disappointment, promising to at least read a page every day for Jongin’s sake. The poor guy had gone through all the effort to write it, it was only fair that someone should take the time to read it.

With that, Kyungsoo finally left the bathroom – feeling a bit silly that he’d been so worried over that – and headed to his room, tossing the journal (if that’s what it was) onto his desk and taking out his homework, letting his life resort back to its norm.

The rest of the week was more or less usual, minus having to get used to seeing Jongin and that girl every day after lunch together. Their teacher even let the two of them move to the back of the class so they could work together while he taught the other students (which was good because then Kyungsoo didn’t have to see her, but bad because Kyungsoo didn’t get to see Jongin either). So everything was more or less fine, until Friday.

Every other Friday, of course, the boy’s newspaper was released (and on alternate Fridays the girl’s edition came out, but Kyungsoo didn’t care about that). The writing team were all obligated to get a copy of the paper, and so Kyungsoo picked his up Friday morning and took it into class, reading it over. Their paper wasn’t long or anything, just four double-sided pages; Baekhyun and Chanyeol’s story, as they covered general school events, was on the front; then Minseok got a page to himself for the sports; followed by Kyungsoo’s academic section, half a page, shared with Jongin’s weather below it; Tao and Jongdae shared the next page, then Yixing and Kris, and Joonmyun had a page or two to himself for answering Letters to the Editor. Most of the time he just apologized to everyone there (and today was no exception).

Mostly, Kyungsoo just liked to read the weather, and the nice thing about sharing a page with Jongin was that it never seemed suspicious when he flipped the paper open to their page and looked it over, because it could easily look like he was simply reviewing his own writing. When he was done being confused by what Jongin had written this week – and admiring the forecast; apparently there would be sandstorms for three days straight next week, which Kyungsoo looked forward to – he skimmed the rest of the stories vaguely, admiring Jongdae’s comics for this week and reading over his horoscope (though he knew it wasn’t actually accurate; Tao always made them up).

Just as he was moving onto the next page, there was a cry in their class.

“Yah!”

Kyungsoo looked around in concern to see Kim Jongin staring his way – not at him, just past him. At Kyungsoo’s side, Sehun started snickering. Glaring hard, Jongin snapped, “What the hell are you writing about me, you jerk?! I told you you’re not allowed to write crap about me in your stupid stories!”

“It’s not you specifically,” Sehun returned, cackling. Confused, Kyungsoo glanced over Sehun’s story; hadn’t he been writing about that new girl? It looked like it. So why was Jongin bothered?

“My name is literally written on there!”

Kyungsoo read down to the bottom of the page, where he did indeed find Jongin’s name; he froze, stunned and slightly terrified.

“Stay tuned for the next edition where we reveal all the details about Kim Jongin’s secret admirer!”

Oh no.

“Relax, the story’s about someone who likes you, not about you,” Sehun cooed teasingly. Kyungsoo gulped, a terrible feeling sinking in his stomach, and he did his best to glance subtly at Sehun. The younger was paying him no attention, eyes on Jongin. “I’m not sharing any details about your oh-so-exciting life, trust me.”

“I don’t have a secret admirer,” Jongin grumbled, ripping out the page and crumpling it up before whipping it at Sehun. It hit the younger square in the face and landed on Kyungsoo’s, and Jongin snorted. Kyungsoo just took it and tossed it casually into the recycling bin, surprised when it actually landed in the blue box. Apparently Jongin saw, because Kyungsoo heard him muttering, “Lucky shot.”

Kyungsoo’s pride in the accomplishment faded quickly after that.

He spent most of the rest of his day wondering if Sehun had somehow found out Kyungsoo liked Jongin. No one even knew about it though, except Jongdae now. Jongdae… Had Sehun overheard his conversation with Jongdae? Oh no. No, no. No. That can’t have happened. But it could have.

Of all the people in the world to find out Kyungsoo’s secret, Sehun was probably the last person Kyungsoo would want it to be – besides Jongin himself. Because Sehun would write about it, for the whole world to read.

Please let me be wrong about this. Please don’t let Oh Sehun tell the world about my stupid feelings for Jongin.

In their class following lunch, Kyungsoo was working away as best as he could to keep himself distracted from these thoughts when he heard a quiet snap! beside him, followed by a much louder “oops”. Sehun pushed away from his desk and headed to the back of the room where the pencil sharpener was. More importantly (at least to Kyungsoo), that was where Jongin now was, with that new blonde girl.

Immediately, Kyungsoo’s heart started pounding, assuming Sehun had read his mind and was going over there to drop his secret.

“Hey, did you read the newspaper today?” Kyungsoo heard Sehun asking – and it must’ve been directed at the girl, because Jongin had obviously read it.

“Um, yeah,” the girl replied a bit awkwardly. “There was like, a whole page about me.”

“Yep.” Kyungsoo could hear Sehun’s smirk. “Did you like it?”

“Not really?” she answered, sounding bothered. Kyungsoo would probably be bothered too. And I might find out in the next edition… He prayed he wouldn’t. “It was kind of creepy, and really inaccurate.”

“Don’t worry noona,” Jongin told her softly, sounding grumpy (though this was likely a result of Sehun; Kyungsoo always wondered how the two were even friends, when they seemed to hate each other more than they liked one another). “No one actually believes that crap. They know it’s all made up.”

“Oh, well that’s good to know then.” She only sounded slightly relieved when she said so. Kyungsoo hoped that, if Sehun did reveal him as Jongin’s “secret admirer”, Jongin wouldn’t believe that either.

“So did Jongin tell you he writes for the paper?” Sehun wondered loudly, sounding innocent, but Kyungsoo got the feeling his question was far from. Kyungsoo couldn’t help looking back then, and he found Jongin giving the girl a slightly embarrassed look before shrugging it off.

“Really? I don’t remember seeing your name in there,” she said, smiling a bit teasingly, but it was the playful kind of teasing, not the stuff Sehun liked to do. Jongin just shrugged again, looking down at his work to avoid the subject going further. Before he could bring her attention back to it though, Sehun was speaking up again.

“He prefers to write anonymously,” Sehun explained. “But everyone knows it’s him anyway. He writes the weather.”

The girl let out a quiet giggle, and Jongin turned to shoot Sehun a glare. Having sharpened his pencil, Sehun grinned and returned to his seat, and Kyungsoo turned back around, focusing on his work again. But he heard the two talking in the back after a moment, and couldn’t help but listen.

“So, sandstorms huh?” she asked Jongin lightly. There was a moment of silence, and Kyungsoo wished he could see Jongin’s reaction; he imagined it was cute and embarrassed. “I don’t really know how to prepare for weather like that. Should I bring an umbrella?”

“Don’t worry,” Jongin replied quietly. “I’ll protect you.”

And, sweet as it was, Kyungsoo’s heart sunk. He would never hear Jongin say anything like that to him.

As promised, Kyungsoo went through Jongin’s book (he didn’t like to think of it as a journal; it was more like a sketchbook, but instead of drawings it had weird… stories and poems and stuff) every day, and everyday found himself very confused by what he read. It only made things worse when he tried to sort out why Jongin would want to give him this. Maybe it really had been for Joonmyun, just lots of things for him to publish in the future in case Jongin left the team. But it didn’t make sense, that Jongin gave Joonmyun his story the next day. Kyungsoo really wished he could understand – for Jongin’s sake as much as his own aching mind’s – but he just didn’t know what this book was supposed to convey, if anything.

Maybe Kyungsoo should have given it to a psychiatrist.

(He did end up looking up if there were any known demons named Kai, but found nothing, fortunately.)

On the weekend, Kyungsoo found a drawing on one of the pages. Well, not a drawing exactly, but a very basic map – just three lines, labelled with street names (none of which Kyungsoo had ever heard of) and a red X in a circle. Above the map, it read, “This is where I like to go.”

Below the map, it said, “This is where I’d like to die.”

Kyungsoo wasn’t sure how he felt about that. Maybe it was a really great clothing store or restaurant that Jongin liked so much he wanted to die there. But after reading all the sometimes-eerie nonsense that he had so far, Kyungsoo didn’t like the feeling this page gave him, either.

He closed the book, and didn’t read anymore that weekend.

A/n: This fic will be a mix between the crack that is the team and slightly angsty sads that is Kaisoo. Let me know if you guys want me to post some excerpts from Jongin's "journal", if you're curious about some of the things Kyungsoo is reading in there ㅋㅋ

Also, look out for the next edition of their newspaper :o Will Sehun (and Luhan; they're a team after all) reveal Soo's love for Jongin and ruin his life further? What will Jongin do? Will I ever tell you the girl's name, or will she just be the girl forever? (Have I mentioned her name in any other fics? I don't think I have :o We'll see if this one is the first.) Suspense, suspense. Look forward to it.