2/13
Junhui, Wonwoo, and Jihoon waited a while Jisoo. They knew that he was going to be late because he was only able to get out of the house an hour after they agreed to meet up, but they didn't think he was going to be so late. In fact, they were waiting for so long that they fell asleep in the shed and only woke up when the sun rose. Junhui stretched and woke up Wonwoo and Jihoon.
"Did Jisoo ever show up?" Wonwoo asked with a yawn.
"No..." Junhui shook his head.
"That's so weird. Maybe we should visit his place? Who knows if he even left the house last night. He's been such a chicken about all this disappearing shit," Jihoon stated.
The three of them went to visit Jisoo's house, but apparently he wasn't home. Junhui didn't want to assume that Jisoo also vanished, but it was starting to seem that way when the three of them went all over town to see if they could find him. They even went to Jeonghan's house and faced his mother's wrath. She yelled at them to go home and to send Jeonghan home if they found him because he was in for a lot of trouble.
"I think Jeonghan and Jisoo vanished last night," Wonwoo said what Junhui was hoping wouldn't be the case.
"Same. The fact that we can't find them anywhere in town basically means..." Jihoon trailed off; Junhui knew that the boy was not going to finish that sentiment.
"What are we going to do, then?" Junhui asked in a small voice.
The three boys were stumped. Not a single one of them seemed to have an idea of what to do. Junhui wanted to look around one more time— maybe Jeonghan and Jisoo were wandering around town looking for them, which meant that they probably kept missing each other. Junhui wanted that to be the case, but deep down inside, he knew that Jeonghan and Jisoo were probably gone.
Still, they all searched for their friends. If they were alive, then that would be amazing, but if they weren't, then the least they could do was find their friends' bodies. At that point, Junhui wasn't scared of anything anymore. All he wanted was to find his friends. Jihoon and Wonwoo wanted to figure out what was making their friends vanish, but not Junhui.
The sun started laughing as it was starting to set that day. The three boys looked up exhausted. They spent all day searching for traces of the boys that they lost.
"Hey, remember when I said that the sun hadn't laughed in years?" Wonwoo asked the boys.
"Yeah..."
"I think... I think that the sun has something to do with our friends disappearing."
"Why do you think that?" Junhui asked.
"Well, all this only started happening after the sun started laughing, yeah? Chan disappeared the night after the sun laughed and set. I think that whenever the sun laughs, one of us is going to die."
"Do you really think we're going to die?" Jihoon asked skeptically.
"Forget that, for a second. Why do you think it's only us that this is happening to? Why hasn't anyone else in town disappeared?" Junhui brought up.
"I mean, some people could be disappearing and we just don't know about it," Wonwoo tried.
"Wonwoo, we live in a town where everyone knows everyone. Do you really think we wouldn't know if someone else vanished?"
"Fair..."
"Whatever. We're not going to die. As far as we know, our friends are still alive. I think we should go home for now," Jihoon stated firmly.
The other two boys couldn't argue with that. They decided to split up and head to their homes. The sun was panting, but still laughing. Junhui looked at the sun and noticed that the sun was staring at him. If Wonwoo was right, and the sun really was a warning or the reason why everyone was just disappearing, did that mean he was next?
Unfortunately, Junhui lived on the outskirts of town, so he had quite a long walk. He considered running, but he knew that his lungs would in no way, shape, or form support him. By the time he got home, the sun was gone, and the moon was up. He thought he'd be able to get inside his home and just go to bed, but when he tried to enter his house, the door was locked. Whenever he left the house, Junhui's parents usually kept the house unlocked because they knew that he would come back. Junhui then realized his parents probably thought that he had also vanished because he didn't come back the night before, and he didn't even come home to tell them that he was still alive.
Junhui knocked loudly on the door, hoping that his loud knocks would wake someone up. The house was unmoving and dark. His knocks turned into bangs, and he started yelling for his parents to no avail. As he tried various ways to get into his house, he started to hear wind rush past his ears. The wind rang in his ears and to the depths of his soul. He thought it was just his heart racing because he was fearful of what lurked in the darkness, but after realizing that the rushing noise was not the blood flowing through his body but wind from outside, Junhui stopped. He felt an eerie presence behind him. He didn't dare look.
He looked up at the moon. The moon was grinning and barely laughing, its eyes locked right on Junhui. Junhui looked around for a rock— he had to get inside his house, and he was going to get in no matter what. He would much rather his parents yelled at him for breaking the door or a window than suffering the same fate as his poor friends.
However, that did not work out for the boy. As he searched for a way to break into his own home, the phantom approached him quickly and rid the world of his existence. The moon laughed and bled.
