Seaside breezes swept through the wide open doors of a beach house, unusually active despite the late hour.

The sky was a midpoint between light and dark, a sort of grey haze that couldn't seem to decide whether or not it would rain shortly. Three boys sat on the large sofa in the central area of the vacation home, each as equally confused with themselves as the weather was outside.

The curly haired brunet who sat to the leftmost side of the couch took a long sip from a glass of water, occupied with his thoughts as the other pair in the room enthusiastically discussed a large pile of items sitting in front of the three on the coffee table.

"I think you're reading too much into it," Minho crossed his arms, interrupting a long and wild hypothesis Jisung had been rambling on about concerning one of the items on the table.

"Chan, back me up here!" Jisung said, reaching forward and picking the thing up— a small bottle of concealer, apparently, and about 70% empty at that.
"I know this is his. He always spends a shit ton of money on concealer to cover up his freckles."

Chan only let out a tired sigh as he set his glass down. After waking up at 6am that morning, after only an hour or so of sleep, he hadn't gotten a single chance to rest all day. School came first, followed immediately by the four hour drive to the beach house. And now, after the trio had scoured every inch of the place for clues and dragged a multitude of things downstairs to be examined?

It was amazing Chan was even still conscious, to be honest.

"It could be his," Chan reasoned, looking only briefly at the item.
"Lots of people use concealer, though. Minho, move on to the next thing you found."

"Right," Minho nodded, despite a scoff from Jisung in the background, and grabbed another item from off the table.

"Wow. A Tale of Two Cities. I'm sure a book is gonna be really helpful—" Jisung's voice dripped with sarcasm, yet he shut up instantly as Minho pried the book open to reveal its contents.

Little black-ink scrawls filled the margins of the pages, the text itself overflowing with highlights, underlines, and notes. Whoever had been reading this, Minho thought they must've been one hell of a literature nerd.

"Damn," Jisung seemed to change his mind in a millisecond. "Who has time to write all of this?" he leaned forward to get a closer look at the pages, reading a few of the comments scribbled out about different passages.

"Was Felix into this kind of thing?" Minho asked, turning to glance at Chan.

"Definitely not," Chan answered honestly. "He literally only reads manga."

"Yeah, well, it's not like people's hobbies can change or anything," Jisung remarked.

"Okay. Okay," Minho gestured for him to calm down. "Do either of you have a picture of what Felix's handwriting looks like?" 

Both Chan and Jisung sat in silence for a moment.

"Neither of you?!" Minho gave them an exasperated glare.

"I— I probably do!" Jisung spoke up, taking out his phone. "He's sent me his homework to copy off of before. Let me find it."

While Jisung was occupied with searching through his messages, Minho instead turned his attention to the novel. Although it may be a futile effort, Minho knew that words carried power— and something within him told him that reading through the book's countless scribbles along the margins had the potential to reveal something, whatever it may be.

A minute or two passed. Finally, Jisung triumphantly announced that he had found something by rather harshly and repeatedly slapping Chan's knee in excitement, the poor male wincing at the treatment.

"I've got it! Here's a couple paragraphs he wrote for our science course," Jisung brought up a picture of a document on his phone, displaying lines upon lines of handwritten answers.

The three sat Jisung's phone next to the pages of the book, and just... stared, for a while, comparing the two samples in their heads.

The conclusion? It was absolutely not the same handwriting.

"Fuck," Jisung said, setting his phone face-down on the table as if in defeat. "I should've known. I always made fun of Felix for his blocky ass textbook looking handwriting, and whoever wrote in the book writes way more naturally."

"Next item, I guess," Chan said, sifting through the pile on the table.

"Wait a sec," Minho spoke as he flipped through some pages of the book. "I'm gonna read over some of this. You guys keep going through the stuff."

So, Jisung and Chan got to work. Every trinket, container, and personal effect on the table was examined, with none really providing any concrete or usable evidence.

"I'm starting to think it might've been pointless actually coming here," Chan groaned, sinking down into the cushions of the sofa.

"We had to try," Jisung attempted to comfort him. "I'd rather us check and find nothing than miss out on actually finding something because we were lazy."

"True," Chan agreed reluctantly. "Although—"

"Guys," Minho cut him off, slapping the wooden table surface to get their attention.
"I fucking found something."

Jisung and Chan shared a quick look of suspicion, but Minho only gestured for them to lean in and observe what he was pointing to.

"Look here," Minho said, tapping the paper where a paragraph began. The words themselves regaled the physical description of a character in the book... a pretty girl, blonde haired, blue eyed, and overall a typical heroine for an older novel.
Yet, interestingly, that description was thickly underlined, and a crude arrow was drawn off to the side of the page where a written-out note was.

"Read that for me," Minho gestured towards the note, wanting the point to click in the other's minds.

"Okay...?" Jisung hesitated, yet took the job. "There's a smiley face drawn next to it, and it says: Basically just like Felix's hair. Use for reference?"

As if beat into silence by these words, none of the three dared to speak for a moment, the strange new clue almost taunting them.

"Well..." Jisung spoke after a moment, the only one in the room with enough nerve to. "That's... certainly something."

"Didn't—" Minho blurted out, snapping his fingers as if to jog his memory. "Fuck, what was it that I saw? Hold on, let me go check something," he announced, standing up abruptly from the couch and jogging off into what looked like the general direction of the kitchen.

Chan and Jisung simply sat, waiting, sharing a confused glance as they began to hear the sounds of items being moved, the rustling of a bag, and the boy in the kitchen obviously struggling to locate whatever he'd been talking about.

"This!" Minho yelled from the other room, a moment before striding back in, a crushed up box in his hands.

"Did you get that from the trash...?" Jisung asked, a slight cringe to his tone, but Minho completely ignored him, slamming the cardboard box down on the table.

"It's bleach," Minho declared as if the other two were both illiterate. "Someone went blonde in this house, and I can take a wild guess as to who it was."

"So that's why in the book..." Jisung realized, lost in his thoughts for a moment before a harsh realization seemed to pop into his head, and he furrowed his eyebrows in offense.
"Hey! This bitch dyed his hair without me?"

Minho stifled a laugh at the livid look on the youngest's face.
"That's what you're bothered about?"

"He never would dye his hair whenever I begged him to do it with me!" Jisung fake-sobbed, as if to emphasize how hurt he was by the idea.

"Jisung," Chan's stern voice made him immediately shut up. "We're all ignoring the most obvious thing this is telling us."

Jisung stared at him.
"Which is...?"

"Felix was with someone," Chan stated, tapping a finger to the pages of the book. "Unless he's managed to change his handwriting, and started talking about himself in the third person... then someone else was here. And knows him."

Minho pursed his lips at this.
"Was Felix involved with anyone?" he asked carefully. "Like, before he disappeared?"

"No," Jisung answered adamantly. "Not at all. The opposite of involved. He thought this guy in one of his classes was hot but had never talked to him."

Minho couldn't help but snicker at this.
"Which guy?"

"Seo Changbin," Chan recalled with a slight hint of distaste in his voice. "I never understood why Felix was so into him. The kid's nice, but friends with all the shitty popular people."

"Yeah, but you know how Felix is with the dark haired pretty boys," Jisung sighed.

"What?"

"Never mind. If you didn't already know, there's no point," the younger digressed. "Anyway, I know you just don't like him because you think he's not good enough for Felix or some shit. You're like a weird dad."

"It's not weird, it's true," Chan mumbled.

"Okayyy!" Minho cut the two off, tired of third wheeling this strange argument. "So he was single then. No romantic partner to run away with. Did he have any close enough friends?"

"Us," Chan said in a deadpan. "He had us."

"Yeah, no shit," Minho scoffed at the response. "So that leaves us with no lead. Great."

"Unless..." Jisung mused mostly to himself. "He could've been hiding a boyfriend from us. Did you ever notice anything weird about him, Chan?"

"He definitely was not," Chan insisted. "He's not capable of being that secretive."

"That's what you'd think," Jisung doubled down on the theory. "When you were at his house last, did you maybe see anything weird in his room?"

"I didn't even go in his room... I just had dinner with his parents and then left."

"His parents?" Minho raised an eyebrow.

"They're close," Jisung explained from the side, gently nudging Minho's shoulder with his own.

"They just invited me over and gave me some stuff I'd left behind, honestly," Chan elaborated on his story. "It wasn't much."

"Do you think you could get back into his room?"

A short pause took hold of the conversation, the sudden inquiry taking the two friends by surprise.

"For what reason...?" Chan asked, narrowing his eyes at the black haired boy next to him.

"Take a look around. See if there's anything off. Evidence of a boyfriend, a note, reasons he might've left, et cetera..."

"I— I mean," Chan swallowed nervously. "I definitely could. But that feels so..."

"There's no room for guilt here," Jisung urged him. "Do you want to have a chance at figuring out what happened to him or not?"

"I do," Chan stated, hands resting on his lap and gripping the fabric of his pants tightly.

"So let's go home," Minho decided. "Tomorrow, you find a way into Felix's house. Investigate his room, and we'll see what we find. Right?"

"Right," Jisung agreed. "Come on, Chan. You're the only one of us who can do this."

"Fine!" Chan gave in after a moment. "I'll do it. But you two have to help me out. Go snoop around you guys' classmates at school, try and see if maybe he really was hiding something."

"Deal," Minho gave a curt nod, before turning to Jisung.
"You're gonna help me with that."

"Me?" Jisung mumbled, but his words went unnoticed.

"Alright then," Chan's tone held a sort of finality to it. "I'll make a groupchat for us three. Whatever we find out, send it in there, and we'll choose a time to meet up and discuss it. Is that cool?"

Both of the others voiced their agreement, and Chan took out his phone, likely to get to work setting up everything.

Jisung shared a look with Minho, who seemed to just send the boy a sympathetic smile in return.

"We'll figure out everything soon enough," Minho spoke in a soft voice, sliding one of his hands on top of Jisung's.

With a slow exhale, the younger boy nodded.
"Yeah," he said. "I hope."

Jisung took the moment of peace to lie back against the couch, and lean his head on Minho's shoulder. It was late enough for him to feel tired, and neither of the others would have judged him for choosing to take a nap.

If he had known the circumstances of his best friend at the moment, Jisung would have likely laughed at their connectedness.

Felix, blonde as the sun and affected by the late night's influence, had given up on fighting the impulse to nap way earlier.

The residence of the Yang family always seemed to fall strikingly quiet at night. Perhaps for a city boy like Felix, it was the lack of cars, people, and activity outside his window that created a feeling of unusual stillness. He slept like the dead with the lack of noise to rouse him.

Fortunately for a certain someone, it was incredibly hard to wake the boy from his sleep unless one were to violently shake him.

Which meant that what was happening right now would probably go unnoticed.

Hwang Hyunjin, knelt on the bed of the half-lit bedroom—only one of the room's two bedside table lamps was switched on, that is—and was leaned down towards the figure who laid unconscious on the mattress next to him.

Blonde hair brushed against nimble fingers as Hyunjin narrowed his eyes to focus on what he was doing with his hands, his thumbs occasionally grazing against Felix's skin on accident.

Obnoxiously bright colored clips lay nestled in Felix's hair, some having become a slight bit tangled from the boy having fallen asleep wearing them. Hyunjin swore quietly to himself as he tried to free a pink clip from its blonde prison, working on pulling the item from his hair as gently as humanly possible.

After a while of tugging and maneuvering, finally the damn thing came free.
Relieved, Hyunjin placed it down onto the mattress, where a pile of identical clips sat, each one the victory of a prior minute's effort.

"Why the hell did I put so many...?" Hyunjin complained under his breath as he got to work on removing another clip— green, this time, which pinned a lock of hair back above Felix's ear.

One clip came free, followed by two, followed by ten. By the time Hyunjin ran out of clips to remove, it felt as if ages had passed. The pile next to him had grown exponentially in size, and he let out a deep breath, the stress of the undertaking leaving his body already.

With that done, he scooped the pile into his hands and dumped them onto the bedside table. He leaned back against his pillow. The air seemed colder tonight than usual.

A heavy blanket laid folded on the bed, and Hyunjin reached over to grab it. First over Felix, then himself, he absentmindedly draped the comforter, then laid on his side, facing the younger boy.

At night, Hyunjin almost felt it was too quiet.

Felix's hair was messy from the endeavor of removing the dozens of barrettes that had made home in it, although in the morning he would likely attribute it to mere bedhead. Despite this, Hyunjin carefully ran his fingers through the boy's hair, in an effort to calm it down.

It might've been a little too entertaining, staring at Felix's sleeping face like some sort of stalker. But as they say, people become more honest the later it gets... and Hyunjin definitely wasn't wanting to have any sort of moral crisis about his actions at this hour.

His hand drifted down from Felix's hair and came to rest upon his face, lightly sitting there, unmoving, and simply taking in the feeling of the younger's warm skin against his fingertips. He couldn't help but trace a thumb along those freckled cheeks that he held in his hands. That curved jawline.

Felix's pretty, heart shaped lips that were soft to the touch—

Hyunjin immediately recoiled, realizing what he was doing and pulling his hands away from Felix's face at the speed of light.
That wasn't going to happen. A mixed sense of shame and guilt flooded the boy's senses for not being able to keep his damn hands to himself for once.

He rolled over onto his stomach, the mattress' firmness bothering him just a slight bit. Burying his face deeply into a pillow, Hyunjin let out a muffled whine of pure agony and stress.

He needed a distraction, now.

Hyunjin sat bolt upright, deciding that just maybe, Felix's preferred method of absolutely evacuating any situation he didn't like might be effective after all.

Thus he climbed out of the bed, taking caution to be quiet, and padded over to the door of the room. Despite the creak of the floorboards beneath him and the hinge of the door as it opened, Hyunjin knew it wouldn't be enough to wake the younger, and he slipped into the hallway without notice.

A lack of direction encompassed him, the dark hallways not exactly the most inviting... but returning to the closed room behind him was not an option. He decided to amble over towards the bathroom down the hall, somewhere where he could lock himself in and be alone, at least.

Its lights were blindingly bright.

Hyunjin could only cringe at what felt like a camera flash to the face, and he struggled to lock the door behind him as his eyes adjusted to being ripped from the darkness. Despite the momentary blindness, he still managed to stumble over to the sink, and turn on the faucet.

"Fuck," Hyunjin cursed to himself in a whisper as he leaned on the counter, seeing his own messy hair and disheveled clothes. That's definitely attractive, he thought to himself bitterly, not even bothering to fix it at the moment.

The boy was uncomfortably aware of his own racing heart rate, a remnant from his surprise of a minute or two ago. Cold water flowing from the sink seemed to be the perfect solution, and thus Hyunjin leaned forward and splashed it in his own face, then taking a moment to bask in the cool feeling as the remaining droplets dripped down his chin.

Cold water to soothe his strangely warm face. Deep exhales and inhales to cease his unnaturally fast heartbeat. He knew these temporary solutions wouldn't solve much in the long run, but for now, they were all he had.

He dried off his damp hands on his shirt, lingering in holding the fabric for just a moment.
Physically, he really wanted to be back in bed. Mentally? Hyunjin knew his own impulses were his worst enemy, so he denied himself that gift.

He leaned against the closed door, still struggling to compose himself. God. Moments like these seemed to come more and more often as of late, and he'd be lying if he said he didn't know the reason why.

The hands that still gently held the fabric of his shirt tightened, gripping the cloth as if angry. Rather than calming down, as he'd intended, trying to drown out his own thoughts only seemed to drive him more and more mad.

So, he decided to allow himself to indulge a little. Letting himself sit down on the floor, he leaned back against the wall and closed his eyes.

What was it that he'd been doing earlier, again?

That's right... he had just been lying in bed. Both hands, (or was it only one?) had been cupping Felix's cheeks, the younger's face a mere few inches from his own.

This time, Felix was wide awake. It was Hyunjin's daydream, after all, so if that's what he imagined, then that would be what happened.

A soft smile rested upon Felix's face, the younger saying something, anything, as he held eye contact with Hyunjin. The words didn't even matter, because they were accompanied by the feeling of dainty hands slipping around to hold the back of Hyunjin's neck.

Talking was unimportant here. He simply liked thinking about the way Felix's eyes lit up whenever something excited him, and the knowledge that the tiny heart shaped freckle he bore on one cheek wasn't the only feature of his with such a quality...

And on that note, here came Hyunjin's absolute favorite part of the scene.

After a while of chatting, the proximity between the two would become noticeably closer. Hyunjin would feel the tip of his nose brush up against Felix's, (he could only guess what that felt like, of course). The talking would die down, and left with not even words in between them, the tension would rise, and—

Someone would go for it.
In his unplanned fantasizing, Hyunjin didn't exactly know who he imagined leaning in to close the gap first, but someone did.
After that, his mind was entirely blank. Nothing was present except the idea of Felix kissing him, with small hands gripping his shoulders, or back, or tugging at his hair.

In the real world, Hyunjin buried his face in his hands, the familiar pangs of guilt in his chest returning at his own mind.

He couldn't help that it was all he could think about.
He couldn't help that it was all he wanted to think about.

And he hated that, ever since he'd met that cheerful blonde, his patience for moving place to place had slowly withered away. Before, it was something he'd accepted as a simple truth; any time he needed to—without warning—leave his hotel, or house, or anywhere he'd been hiding out, he'd accepted it without question.

Yet with Felix in the picture, the idea of needing to pack up and leave all the time grew incredibly annoying. He loathed being on the run by now, to be completely honest. Not even because of how tedious it was, needing a place for two, or having twice as many items to move, or needing to steal more.

None of that mattered, in Hyunjin's eyes.
The problem? Having Felix around made him constantly forget the brutal reality of the world.

When he had the smaller boy in his arms, in bed, warm body up against his own, nothing else existed in the world at all. Felix just made him want to settle down for once... in more ways than one.

It was almost shameful to admit, but at certain points he found himself wishing he'd never left home in the first place. Wishing he'd gone to Minho's school and met Felix back in their hometown. Wishing that their arguments would be over the correct answers to a homework problem rather than the stress of keeping themselves alive.

By this point, it was clear that this short trip to the bathroom hadn't helped. Hyunjin couldn't physically run away from his own mind.

He knew as soon as he stood up, he would find himself wandering back over to the bedroom and slipping back into bed, and nothing would be able to stop him from burying his head into Felix's chest and hugging him tight. Because at this point? He didn't even care what the boy thought of him as long as he wouldn't leave him.

Truthfully, Felix was the only thing remotely close to being his right now.

And as he sluggishly stood up, pushing his hair out of his face, the only thought at the forefront of his mind was that he felt as if he'd do anything to freeze time, to keep things as they were now. That he wasn't scared of being alone, but now that he'd had just a taste of what companionship could feel like, he would do anything to hold onto that feeling.

With a sinking feeling, he turned the door handle, and stared into the abyss of the dark hallway once more.

And the clock kept ticking like a metronome.