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The Letter 37
Chapter 37
A Damsel
Chanyeol was unsatisfied with the corner that Baekhyun had forced him to stand behind. He had valid reasons as to why, too. The stupid position was two hundred fucking meters from where Baekhyun and Lay were! If anything were to happen that Chanyeol didn’t like, he would have to run like a crazed bitch just to reach the two in time. But, Chanyeol didn’t feel like arguing with Baekhyun on the issue. He was standing on thin ice when it came to Lay, who he knew Baekhyun considered as a “friend”.
It wasn’t long after supervising that someone came up from behind Chanyeol and kicked him lightly at the heel of his right foot. Chanyeol jumped and whipped around. “Don’t fucking do that to me right now.”
Suho shrugged. “Okay. What’re you doing?” He arched his neck to see what Chanyeol was looking at. He couldn’t see anything so he moved a bit, out from the corner.
Chanyeol pulled him back. “Don’t stand there!” he said. Chanyeol motioned a hand. “If you wanna watch or see what I’m watching, stay between here to here. You can’t be out there, for fuck’s sake.”
Suho raised a brow. “Are you playing Spy?”
“More like Assassin,” Chanyeol mumbled, moving and positioning himself as he was before.
Carefully, Suho peeked around the corner. “Assassin? Who’re trying to kill?”
“Your responsibility—if he does anything wrong.”
Suho frowned. “What’s that bitch doing now?”
Watching the two distinctive people from afar, Suho and Chanyeol tried to figure out what positions they wanted. Both of them wanted a clear view. Eventually they established perfect placement and watched in content anticipation.
After all the greetings and questions about how their day was going, Baekhyun only took a moment before jumping into the subject of his love letter’s kidnapping. He turned his body position to face Lay, turning away from where he knew Chanyeol was.
“Lay, I wanted to ask you about something,” Baekhyun said, nervously fidgeting with his fingers. “Remember that day I wanted to put that envelope in Chanyeol’s locker?”
Lay nodded. “What about it?” He glanced at Baekhyun’s hand. “Are you nervous about something? Should I be nervous, too?” he joked.
“Ah, I’m just—I just don’t want to bring this up, but I kind of have to…” Baekhyun admitted. “Anyways, that day, did you really put that letter in Chanyeol’s locker like I asked?”
Lay blinked, but then he sighed, putting his hands behind his head. “I’m gonna be honest with you, Byun. No. I didn’t.”
Baekhyun was taken aback from Lay's response. It came as a shock, though he already kind of figured that that was the answer that he was going to get. He guessed that it was different being told by another person that Lay had done this crime than it was for Lay to actually tell him himself. “Why?” Baekhyun asked. It was the only thing he could get out of his mouth at the time.
“I didn’t want him to have you,” Lay said, eyeing Baekhyun.
Speechless, Baekhyun’s mouth hung open for a second. “W-What’re you—”
Lay smirked. “I think it’d be better if I tell you everything from the start. Wouldn’t you agree?” Being unable to make a verbal response, Baekhyun nodded. “Okay, let’s start off with this: Park and I aren’t on friendly terms.”
“I know,” Baekhyun croaked out, surprising himself that he found his voice. “He told me. You used to be friends, but then he said that you started to drift off and—”
“Well, that’s his side of the story,” Lay said, stopping Baekhyun. “We used to be friends, yeah, but then things changed.” Lay leaned back on the bench, crossing his arms and his legs. “It used to just be us two, but when we got older, he began to be more of a social butterfly. We always hung out, but then, oh, what do you know? Kris comes transferring in from China. It was fine at first. We were kind of like a trio, but really, I always felt excluded from then on. Adding Kai into the mix in our second year of middle school didn’t help.”
Baekhyun looked down. “So you felt left out.”
“Yeah,” Lay said, cocking his head to the right. “It wasn’t just those two, though. Sehun was always in our classes, but we never really paid much attention to him. I forgot how he wormed his way in the group. I don’t know.” He sighed. “Then, puberty hit. It’s funny how I say it, but the way everyone started flocking to him was annoying. The more people he was surrounded by, the more I felt like I was being pushed back.”
Lay paused for a second before continuing. “Then one year, I was dating this girl. She was my first girlfriend, actually, so I was pretty psyched. She was really pretty and she even had a nice voice. I did everything for her.” Lay laughed. “I don’t understand why I did those things for her. Now, if a girl asked me to do errands and tasks like she did, I’d probably tell the girl to go fuck off, but I wasn’t the same as I was back then…Anyways, I thought she really liked me, even though I’d ponder here and there as to why she did like me. It was about two and a half months into that relationship that I found out she was just using me as a stepping stone to get to Park.”
Baekhyun winced. Was his boyfriend that…desirable? He knew that he was supposed to be angry at Lay for having caused so much shit, but Lay’s story was effectively gaining him sympathy. “I’m sorry.”
Lay gave him a grin. “What for?” he asked, chuckling. “I was stupid. I let it go, though. I thought I could find another girl that was different, but I don’t know what the hell I kept doing wrong because they all ended up using me to get to Park—if not him, then Kris, or Kai. I got tired of it, so I just stopped hanging around with them.”
“And got new friends.”
“Is that what Park told you?” Lay asked, glancing at Baekhyun before turning his head towards the back of the school building. “They weren’t friends, Byun. I partied with them, sure, because it was easier to feel like a third wheel with strangers than it was to feel like a third wheel to people that I’ve known for most of my life.” Lay paused. “But, even though I separated from them, people still recognized me as one of them. Even the other partners that I had that weren’t interested in Park in the first place ended up trying to get me to introduce them.”
Lay fixed his position and stopped slouching. He turned to Baekhyun. “So then I retaliated. I’d try to take his interests away from him. I was successful ninety-nine point ninety-nine percent of the time, but Park would drop them faster than he picked them up so I wouldn’t even get the chance.”
“What about that point zero one other percent?” Baekhyun asked.
“Well, that would be you, Baek,” Lay said. The look on Baekhyun’s face told Lay a whole bunch of things. “Now that I’ve kind of covered the past, let’s cover the more recent times. When I told you I liked you the first time we met, I was lying.”
Baekhyun raised a brow. It kind of hurt to be lied to. Other than that, he felt embarrassed by the way he acted back then. “Oh…”
“Then, when I told you that Park would drop you the moment you started liking him back, I was lying about that, too.” Lay nodded. “Usually, under other circumstances, he probably would have, but everyone saw the way he’d look at you, so I figured that that specific scenario was not fit to happen in your case.”
Baekhyun didn’t reply. He just inhaled and nodded slightly. He was going to let Lay say everything he needed to say first before speaking and letting his own thoughts fly.
“Everything I did to tear you from him didn’t really work out,” Lay said, letting out a small laugh at his words. “Now, during that day when you wanted me to slip that envelope in, I was going to put it in, but you turned around and gave me the advantage. So, I took it.” He sighed. “I did it to spite Park, obviously. At this time, you were kind of growing on me, Byun. I started to like you, actually.”
Fucking hell…Baekhyun didn’t know which way to sway when it came to how he felt about Lay. Here he was, sympathizing him one moment, then hating the fuck out him, and now, he’s getting warm feelings from the fact that Lay said he actually started to like him.
“And then we get to that theme park—” Lay sighed “—and I heard you laugh and I saw you smile.” Lay gave Baekhyun a smirk. “So, I may or may not have developed feelings for you and I may or may not be trying to take you from Chanyeol for real this time.”
The whole world stopped. “What…”
Lay shrugged and leaned a bit in toward Baekhyun. “I’m pretty sure your perfect little ears heard me, Byun,” he said, grinning. “And I’m being serious. By the way,” Lay whispered, leaning more, “excuse me for being too forward, but what would happen if I were to kiss you right now?
The more Lay leaned forward, the more quickly Baekhyun’s heart raced. Just before he got too close, Baekhyun broke from his frozen state and leaned back, putting a hand in between them. “I-I wouldn’t want that.”
Lay grinned as he moved Baekhyun’s hand. “For what reason?”
“That’d be cheating on Chanyeol,” Baekhyun blurted out.
“If that’s all, then—”
“—And I don’t want to do that…” Baekhyun added softly.
Lay blinked as he pulled back. “Byun, that day, I saw you smile and laugh. Not once since I’ve seen you with Park have you’ve looked that way.” Baekhyun didn’t answer. “Isn’t safe to imply that you’d be happier with me than with that idiot, who—” Lay looked past Baekhyun and groaned “—who is making his royal way on over here—accompanied by Suho, the warden.”
Baekhyun turned around and saw that Chanyeol was indeed making his way over to them. The look on his face wasn’t too pleasant. As for Suho, he looked just as dissatisfied as Chanyeol. He turned back to Lay.
“Lay, I like you, too, but as a friend.” Baekhyun talked quickly and efficiently. “I love Chanyeol, but I’ll be damned if I admit that to him with a straight face without looking away. He’s an idiot. He’s stupid. He’s embarrassing. But in the end, he’s mine, just as much as it is vice versa in his eyes. And...and I don’t smile that big and bright with him because it’s just embarrassing to be bursting out like that in front of someone like him. I have to keep face, you know.”
“With me you don’t have to keep face,” Lay said.
“But Lay, I still don’t—”
Baekhyun ran out of time and didn’t get to finish quite yet. Chanyeol got to them and yanked Baekhyun on his feet, putting him as far from Lay as he could. Lay raised a brow, intertwined his fingers, and threw a sarcastic look up at Chanyeol. “Oh, Park, what’re you doing interrupting other people’s conversation?”
Chanyeol scoffed. “What the fuck are you doing trying to take what belongs to someone else?”
Lay shrugged. “I was just telling Byun what kind of life he’d have with me.”
“Like I’m gonna fucking let that ‘life’ happen.”
“Well, I guess we’ll just have to see about that.”
Chanyeol’s eyes flickered and his mouth opened to reply with a snarky response, but Baekhyun didn’t want anymore arguing between them. He tugged on Chanyeol’s arm. “Chanyeol, let it go and let’s leave. Please.” Chanyeol was about to ignore Baekhyun’s request, but Baekhyun gripped his arm even more. “Chanyeol,” he said more adamantly.
Chanyeol scowled one last look at Lay, who remained sarcastic in looks, then turned, took a hold on Baekhyun and began to move them away from the place, leaving Lay with Suho. “I told you I didn’t like the idea of ‘talking’ to him,” Chanyeol growled lowly as they were walking away. His hold on Baekhyun’s shoulder was tight enough to make Baekhyun squirm.
“What’d you tell him?”
Lay gave Suho an indifferent look. “Everything. What’s it to you, warden?”
“Leave him alone, Lay,” Suho said.
“Why?” Lay sighed and got up off the bench. “Shouldn't one follow the person that they’re interested in?”
“Shut up,” Suho said, glaring at Lay. “We both know that you’re just doing this to spite Chanyeol.”
“Eh.” Lay shrugged. “It might’ve been that way in the beginning, but I think things are a little different now.”
“What are y—Are you fucking kidding me right now!?” Suho cried. He flailed his arms, exasperated. “Don’t tell me that you—”
“May or may not like him?” Lay shrugged once again. “I don’t know.”
Suddenly, beyond Lay’s comprehension, when he tried to walk past Suho, Suho lifted a leg and kicked him square in the chest, making Lay stumble back on the bench. “What? Are you some sort of knight off to save a damsel, who you think is in some sort of fucking distress!?”
Lay raised a brow. Suho was cursing. It was beyond the norm. “What if I am? What’s wrong with trying to get myself a princess?”
“Princess? Princess?” Suho let out a laugh. “Lay, quit settling for less.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Lay said, squinting his eyes at the male towering over his sitting body.
“Why settle for a princess when you can have the fucking queen?”
A Damsel
Chanyeol was unsatisfied with the corner that Baekhyun had forced him to stand behind. He had valid reasons as to why, too. The stupid position was two hundred fucking meters from where Baekhyun and Lay were! If anything were to happen that Chanyeol didn’t like, he would have to run like a crazed bitch just to reach the two in time. But, Chanyeol didn’t feel like arguing with Baekhyun on the issue. He was standing on thin ice when it came to Lay, who he knew Baekhyun considered as a “friend”.
It wasn’t long after supervising that someone came up from behind Chanyeol and kicked him lightly at the heel of his right foot. Chanyeol jumped and whipped around. “Don’t fucking do that to me right now.”
Suho shrugged. “Okay. What’re you doing?” He arched his neck to see what Chanyeol was looking at. He couldn’t see anything so he moved a bit, out from the corner.
Chanyeol pulled him back. “Don’t stand there!” he said. Chanyeol motioned a hand. “If you wanna watch or see what I’m watching, stay between here to here. You can’t be out there, for fuck’s sake.”
Suho raised a brow. “Are you playing Spy?”
“More like Assassin,” Chanyeol mumbled, moving and positioning himself as he was before.
Carefully, Suho peeked around the corner. “Assassin? Who’re trying to kill?”
“Your responsibility—if he does anything wrong.”
Suho frowned. “What’s that bitch doing now?”
Watching the two distinctive people from afar, Suho and Chanyeol tried to figure out what positions they wanted. Both of them wanted a clear view. Eventually they established perfect placement and watched in content anticipation.
After all the greetings and questions about how their day was going, Baekhyun only took a moment before jumping into the subject of his love letter’s kidnapping. He turned his body position to face Lay, turning away from where he knew Chanyeol was.
“Lay, I wanted to ask you about something,” Baekhyun said, nervously fidgeting with his fingers. “Remember that day I wanted to put that envelope in Chanyeol’s locker?”
Lay nodded. “What about it?” He glanced at Baekhyun’s hand. “Are you nervous about something? Should I be nervous, too?” he joked.
“Ah, I’m just—I just don’t want to bring this up, but I kind of have to…” Baekhyun admitted. “Anyways, that day, did you really put that letter in Chanyeol’s locker like I asked?”
Lay blinked, but then he sighed, putting his hands behind his head. “I’m gonna be honest with you, Byun. No. I didn’t.”
Baekhyun was taken aback from Lay's response. It came as a shock, though he already kind of figured that that was the answer that he was going to get. He guessed that it was different being told by another person that Lay had done this crime than it was for Lay to actually tell him himself. “Why?” Baekhyun asked. It was the only thing he could get out of his mouth at the time.
“I didn’t want him to have you,” Lay said, eyeing Baekhyun.
Speechless, Baekhyun’s mouth hung open for a second. “W-What’re you—”
Lay smirked. “I think it’d be better if I tell you everything from the start. Wouldn’t you agree?” Being unable to make a verbal response, Baekhyun nodded. “Okay, let’s start off with this: Park and I aren’t on friendly terms.”
“I know,” Baekhyun croaked out, surprising himself that he found his voice. “He told me. You used to be friends, but then he said that you started to drift off and—”
“Well, that’s his side of the story,” Lay said, stopping Baekhyun. “We used to be friends, yeah, but then things changed.” Lay leaned back on the bench, crossing his arms and his legs. “It used to just be us two, but when we got older, he began to be more of a social butterfly. We always hung out, but then, oh, what do you know? Kris comes transferring in from China. It was fine at first. We were kind of like a trio, but really, I always felt excluded from then on. Adding Kai into the mix in our second year of middle school didn’t help.”
Baekhyun looked down. “So you felt left out.”
“Yeah,” Lay said, cocking his head to the right. “It wasn’t just those two, though. Sehun was always in our classes, but we never really paid much attention to him. I forgot how he wormed his way in the group. I don’t know.” He sighed. “Then, puberty hit. It’s funny how I say it, but the way everyone started flocking to him was annoying. The more people he was surrounded by, the more I felt like I was being pushed back.”
Lay paused for a second before continuing. “Then one year, I was dating this girl. She was my first girlfriend, actually, so I was pretty psyched. She was really pretty and she even had a nice voice. I did everything for her.” Lay laughed. “I don’t understand why I did those things for her. Now, if a girl asked me to do errands and tasks like she did, I’d probably tell the girl to go fuck off, but I wasn’t the same as I was back then…Anyways, I thought she really liked me, even though I’d ponder here and there as to why she did like me. It was about two and a half months into that relationship that I found out she was just using me as a stepping stone to get to Park.”
Baekhyun winced. Was his boyfriend that…desirable? He knew that he was supposed to be angry at Lay for having caused so much shit, but Lay’s story was effectively gaining him sympathy. “I’m sorry.”
Lay gave him a grin. “What for?” he asked, chuckling. “I was stupid. I let it go, though. I thought I could find another girl that was different, but I don’t know what the hell I kept doing wrong because they all ended up using me to get to Park—if not him, then Kris, or Kai. I got tired of it, so I just stopped hanging around with them.”
“And got new friends.”
“Is that what Park told you?” Lay asked, glancing at Baekhyun before turning his head towards the back of the school building. “They weren’t friends, Byun. I partied with them, sure, because it was easier to feel like a third wheel with strangers than it was to feel like a third wheel to people that I’ve known for most of my life.” Lay paused. “But, even though I separated from them, people still recognized me as one of them. Even the other partners that I had that weren’t interested in Park in the first place ended up trying to get me to introduce them.”
Lay fixed his position and stopped slouching. He turned to Baekhyun. “So then I retaliated. I’d try to take his interests away from him. I was successful ninety-nine point ninety-nine percent of the time, but Park would drop them faster than he picked them up so I wouldn’t even get the chance.”
“What about that point zero one other percent?” Baekhyun asked.
“Well, that would be you, Baek,” Lay said. The look on Baekhyun’s face told Lay a whole bunch of things. “Now that I’ve kind of covered the past, let’s cover the more recent times. When I told you I liked you the first time we met, I was lying.”
Baekhyun raised a brow. It kind of hurt to be lied to. Other than that, he felt embarrassed by the way he acted back then. “Oh…”
“Then, when I told you that Park would drop you the moment you started liking him back, I was lying about that, too.” Lay nodded. “Usually, under other circumstances, he probably would have, but everyone saw the way he’d look at you, so I figured that that specific scenario was not fit to happen in your case.”
Baekhyun didn’t reply. He just inhaled and nodded slightly. He was going to let Lay say everything he needed to say first before speaking and letting his own thoughts fly.
“Everything I did to tear you from him didn’t really work out,” Lay said, letting out a small laugh at his words. “Now, during that day when you wanted me to slip that envelope in, I was going to put it in, but you turned around and gave me the advantage. So, I took it.” He sighed. “I did it to spite Park, obviously. At this time, you were kind of growing on me, Byun. I started to like you, actually.”
Fucking hell…Baekhyun didn’t know which way to sway when it came to how he felt about Lay. Here he was, sympathizing him one moment, then hating the fuck out him, and now, he’s getting warm feelings from the fact that Lay said he actually started to like him.
“And then we get to that theme park—” Lay sighed “—and I heard you laugh and I saw you smile.” Lay gave Baekhyun a smirk. “So, I may or may not have developed feelings for you and I may or may not be trying to take you from Chanyeol for real this time.”
The whole world stopped. “What…”
Lay shrugged and leaned a bit in toward Baekhyun. “I’m pretty sure your perfect little ears heard me, Byun,” he said, grinning. “And I’m being serious. By the way,” Lay whispered, leaning more, “excuse me for being too forward, but what would happen if I were to kiss you right now?
The more Lay leaned forward, the more quickly Baekhyun’s heart raced. Just before he got too close, Baekhyun broke from his frozen state and leaned back, putting a hand in between them. “I-I wouldn’t want that.”
Lay grinned as he moved Baekhyun’s hand. “For what reason?”
“That’d be cheating on Chanyeol,” Baekhyun blurted out.
“If that’s all, then—”
“—And I don’t want to do that…” Baekhyun added softly.
Lay blinked as he pulled back. “Byun, that day, I saw you smile and laugh. Not once since I’ve seen you with Park have you’ve looked that way.” Baekhyun didn’t answer. “Isn’t safe to imply that you’d be happier with me than with that idiot, who—” Lay looked past Baekhyun and groaned “—who is making his royal way on over here—accompanied by Suho, the warden.”
Baekhyun turned around and saw that Chanyeol was indeed making his way over to them. The look on his face wasn’t too pleasant. As for Suho, he looked just as dissatisfied as Chanyeol. He turned back to Lay.
“Lay, I like you, too, but as a friend.” Baekhyun talked quickly and efficiently. “I love Chanyeol, but I’ll be damned if I admit that to him with a straight face without looking away. He’s an idiot. He’s stupid. He’s embarrassing. But in the end, he’s mine, just as much as it is vice versa in his eyes. And...and I don’t smile that big and bright with him because it’s just embarrassing to be bursting out like that in front of someone like him. I have to keep face, you know.”
“With me you don’t have to keep face,” Lay said.
“But Lay, I still don’t—”
Baekhyun ran out of time and didn’t get to finish quite yet. Chanyeol got to them and yanked Baekhyun on his feet, putting him as far from Lay as he could. Lay raised a brow, intertwined his fingers, and threw a sarcastic look up at Chanyeol. “Oh, Park, what’re you doing interrupting other people’s conversation?”
Chanyeol scoffed. “What the fuck are you doing trying to take what belongs to someone else?”
Lay shrugged. “I was just telling Byun what kind of life he’d have with me.”
“Like I’m gonna fucking let that ‘life’ happen.”
“Well, I guess we’ll just have to see about that.”
Chanyeol’s eyes flickered and his mouth opened to reply with a snarky response, but Baekhyun didn’t want anymore arguing between them. He tugged on Chanyeol’s arm. “Chanyeol, let it go and let’s leave. Please.” Chanyeol was about to ignore Baekhyun’s request, but Baekhyun gripped his arm even more. “Chanyeol,” he said more adamantly.
Chanyeol scowled one last look at Lay, who remained sarcastic in looks, then turned, took a hold on Baekhyun and began to move them away from the place, leaving Lay with Suho. “I told you I didn’t like the idea of ‘talking’ to him,” Chanyeol growled lowly as they were walking away. His hold on Baekhyun’s shoulder was tight enough to make Baekhyun squirm.
“What’d you tell him?”
Lay gave Suho an indifferent look. “Everything. What’s it to you, warden?”
“Leave him alone, Lay,” Suho said.
“Why?” Lay sighed and got up off the bench. “Shouldn't one follow the person that they’re interested in?”
“Shut up,” Suho said, glaring at Lay. “We both know that you’re just doing this to spite Chanyeol.”
“Eh.” Lay shrugged. “It might’ve been that way in the beginning, but I think things are a little different now.”
“What are y—Are you fucking kidding me right now!?” Suho cried. He flailed his arms, exasperated. “Don’t tell me that you—”
“May or may not like him?” Lay shrugged once again. “I don’t know.”
Suddenly, beyond Lay’s comprehension, when he tried to walk past Suho, Suho lifted a leg and kicked him square in the chest, making Lay stumble back on the bench. “What? Are you some sort of knight off to save a damsel, who you think is in some sort of fucking distress!?”
Lay raised a brow. Suho was cursing. It was beyond the norm. “What if I am? What’s wrong with trying to get myself a princess?”
“Princess? Princess?” Suho let out a laugh. “Lay, quit settling for less.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Lay said, squinting his eyes at the male towering over his sitting body.
“Why settle for a princess when you can have the fucking queen?”
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