0/13
To be perfectly honest, Jihoon was living in denial. He refused to believe that his friends were no longer in town. He really thought that it was an elaborate plank they were playing on him for being angry with them all the time. That had to be it.
Because he was so heavily in denial, Jihoon decided to live his life normally. He usually would have to go to school, but school was still canceled because of his friends disappearing, so he did chores for his family. His family grew fruits in their orchard, so Jihoon took it upon himself to deliver them to the market where his mother worked.
On his way back from the market, Jihoon decided to walk the bicycle back to the orchard. The sun was laughing as per usual, but Jihoon couldn't give a tiny rat's ass about that. He ignored the sun, but that did not deter the sun from laughing even more. As he walked along the dusty dirt path, Jihoon saw something sitting on the ground. He approached the object and saw two things: a brown leather notebook of sorts, and a pair of glasses. He picked both up and looked at the glasses— they were familiar. He closed his eyes and thought back, finally realizing that the glasses were Wonwoo's.
Jihoon's blood ran cold. He stared at the glasses in his possession. Did Wonwoo disappear too? Jihoon shook his head. No. There was no way. Everything was fine.
Along his walk, Jihoon decided to open up the diary. He read the first page and immediately closed it. The first page detailed some girl's experience with an ex-lover. He wondered what Wonwoo was doing with a book like that with a snort of derision before clearing his mind to the best of his ability until he got home.
Jihoon's mother returned home as the sun was setting, and he and his parents had a quiet dinner, the laughter of the sun and then the moon faintly echoing through the silent town and into the silent house. Jihoon finished his dinner first and went to his bedroom to sleep. He felt like an emotionless robot, but how else was he expected to process that all of his friends were gone?
Jihoon tossed and turned all night. He couldn't bring himself to go to bed, nor could he empty his mind. With a huff, Jihoon sat up in his bed and looked out the window. That damned moon was still laughing. There was enough moonlight into his room, though, that he navigated his way through the room. He considered working out to tire himself out, but he didn't want to work out. He looked around his room trying to find ways to make him sleepy enough when he spotted the brown leather diary. Jihoon was skeptical, but he gave it a shot— maybe the antics of a teenage girl would bore him to sleep.
The first twenty pages were just the girl complaining about the boy she liked, her friends, her family, and so on. While her tale did bore Jihoon greatly, he was still very much awake and thinking about his friends. He flipped through the diary more to see if he could find better passages to read when his eyes briefly glimpsed the words "sun laughed". Jihoon flipped back to those pages. He read the entry.
'Grandma told me about the sun today. She told me that when she was a little girl, the sun laughed, and people in town started mysteriously vanishing. Apparently her friends' and her friends' brothers were disappearing one by one, and it was only ever boys. The town thought it was a cougar or bear or something, but there were never any remains of the boys found, only their glasses or books or whatever. She said it didn't happen ever since, and I don't think it's going to happen again.'
'Grandma told me about the moon today. She was looking out the window one night and saw the moon laughing and bleeding. The next day, the neighbor kid disappeared. She looked out the window again the next night, and the moon was laughing and bleeding again. She looked out the window more and saw this dark shadowy figure and some glowing white light in the distance. I'm starting to think she just dreamt all of this and none of it really happened. Grandpa doesn't know because he wasn't from here.'
'Grandma started telling me more about the sun and moon laughing. She said that the boys who disappeared were all friends. I think she's senile. Grandpa agrees with me.'
Jihoon searched frantically for more passages about the sun and the moon, but he couldn't find anything. He heard the moon laugh even louder, and all he wanted to do in that moment was take a rock and chuck it at the moon or something. He wanted the moon to just shut up. So, he opened the window and told the moon to do so.
"Shut up!" he screamed at the moon.
His words echoed into the night, and the moon only laughed more. Irritation seeped out of Jihoon's pores. He searched for something in his room to throw at the moon, but as he turned to do so, he saw something creeping in the orchard out of the corner of his eye. He slowly turned to look at the thing, and he saw what the book seemed to describe. It was a shifting, dark figure, and the figure had three white lines that Jihoon could only assume were eyes.
Jihoon shook his head and rubbed his eyes. He looked at it again. It was closer this time. With every heartbeat, Jihoon saw the figure get closer and closer. He retreated into his room and attempted to close the windows, but they flew open again. Wind howled in his ears as the phantom got closer, and before he could scream and run away, the phantom went through the windows and got to him before leaving as quickly as it arrived. The windows squeaked to a stop as the wind died down, and the moon's laughter seized as a final, thick trail of blood poured out of its grinning face.
After the thirteen young boys vanished, records show that the sun stopped laughing. Maybe it will be another two hundred years before it starts laughing again, but only time will tell. All that is certain is that those thirteen boys exist no longer.
—
creeping is finally done, and i cannot believe it took me 6 years to finish it. but hey, i did it! thank you for reading i appreciate you <3 — bro
