locked [chanbaek and kaisoo]

Chapter 26

"What?" Baekhyun breathed out incredously into the phone. "T-They-- they know...?"

No. No. They can't know.

Chanyeol. Chanyeol can't know.

"They do. I know it's hard, but you have to try to find Chanyeol now, Baekhyun," Jongin told him, sounding broken, tired, and desperate. "Find him, and explain everything before he learns it from somebody else. That's the last thing we can do and... and then we only can hope for the best. That Chanyeol will understand everything."

Although he listened to Jongin speak as though he was calm, inside Baekhyun felt like he was suffocating. His chest was contracting so painfully, and there was not enough air in his lungs no matter how hard he tried to inhale deeply. His head was getting dizzier and dizzier with every second. Somewhere in his chest, Baekhyun could feel his heart starting to hammer like crazy, panic instantly surging through his veins, as his body itself was getting ready to run, to get away from here, to get away from whatever it was that caused this awful fear in Baekhyun. But the source of that fear, the danger his body was preparing for wasn't here.

It was with Chanyeol. And Baekhyun couldn't escape it. He could just hope to outrun it.

Baekhyun didn't even throw a second glance at the coffees he just bought. He jumped up and rushed out of the coffee shop. Although his body was going crazy, and his head was still dizzy from shock, his mind was working faster than ever, putting all the details together like puzzle pieces.

The talk in Jongin's office, Baekhyun remembered as he ran. Somebody must have overheard it. That sound, that strange sound... it wasn't nothing.

There was someone there.

And the missing notebook. The notebook must have been taken, too.

It had to be the same person. The person who heard him talk to Jongin had to be the same person who took his notebook. After hearing that conversation, he probably went through Baekhyun's things in the office, specifically to find something, to find some proof of what he had heard. And that notebook was proof. It was proof of what he and Jongin had started months ago, and Baekhyun knew - if Chanyeol sees it before he or Jongin talks to him, and explains why they did what they did, everything they had with Chanyeol could crumble to pieces.

The notebook was scaring Baekhyun the most. It was the same notebook he had filled in on the first days he and Chanyeol met. The same notebook where he wrote down the details of Chanyeol's personality, the things he had heard from other employees and from Jongin. There were also his notes there, his plans how to change this or that, in order to achieve the goal – the goal of getting Chanyeol out of this prison he himself created.

But the worst was the way it was written. Baekhyun began writing in that notebook before Chanyeol became somebody more significant in his life. Baekhyun hadn't written much after he realized he had started to like Chanyeol. Maybe because all his plans were breaking apart anyways, with the scandal and everything, or maybe because deep down, he knew that now that he was inlove, plans weren't going to work either way. This love wasn't in his plans, either, but it changed everything. It changed him, Baekhyun, and it changed Chanyeol too.

But nobody could know that, if they only saw the notebook, and didn't ask Baekhyun to tell the truth. Because to somebody else, the writings in that notebook would seem like that was all Chanyeol ever was to him – a project. No one important. Just another job, just another person.

And that was not true. God, how fucking untrue that was.

Baekhyun ran and ran, with his heart beating wildly in his chest, and his breaths short. He just hoped, desperately wished he would make it on time.