My little Youngjae

Thrive

"Hey!" He didn't mind his pants getting louder by the second. His thoughts were thoroughly locked on catching up with that surprisingly good runner of an old man.

"Stop! I need to talk to you!"
His endeavors failed so horribly as his voice had been turned at with a completely deafened ear.
And it had horridly felt like the distance was only getting bigger, the more he ran.

"Please! Hear me out!"
Daehyun doesn't know how long he's been chasing the guy or how far they've ran, he sort of lost track of everything. He was just so determined on catching up with him. This one man could be that one anomaly he failed to approach. Not that he had any means of approaching the others that probably exist anyway.

"I know you know something about Youngjae! Just hear me out! Please!" He didn't mean to sound too desperate.. but as sad and pitiful as it seemed, he really was.

Daehyun was going to release yet another plea but his momentum was knocked over to its demise when he had accidentally tripped over an elevated surface he missed seeing and fell forward. And when he had looked up, the older man was out of sight.

"Gahhhhhhhhh!!!" He roared in anger.

"I was so close!!" He kicked at the ground.

If he could just have a word with that man, he would bring himself one more step towards finding Youngjae. He could feel it. It was like an itchy feeling in the back of his mind that refused to go ignored.

But he was faced with a wall yet again. As per usual. When were these walls going to stop coming at him as if he were heavy enough to actually 'gravitate' them toward him?

He crankily stood back up on his two feet and took a good view at where he was.
He wasn't familiar with the area but he's sure he's been here before. Maybe once. That one night when he went out to find Youngjae. He was definitely here. He was an earshot distance from where he broken down that night, where he had screamed the question he still asks to this very day.

"Where are you, Youngjae?" He asked with a tired whisper.

He was so tired of all of this.
Believe him when he says he's in the brink of giving up.
In the brink. Not at the point. Because he just can't stop yet. No, he can't do that.

It would be just as cruel as those people who refused to file a missing report for that six year old little boy.
Fortunately, he had a bestfriend whose family cared enough to look for him as well.

Choi Junhong and Moon Jongup.
Both of them went missing.

What if it were like that with him and Youngjae. What if he went missing too? What if he was just there for him?

Everything would've been better that way. He didn't mind going missing with his best friend if that meant he didn't need to suffer an indelibly painful, clueless future without him. And to add to that: 'restlessness', because he couldn't stay put knowing he was capable of doing  something.

Seething from both tiredness and anger, he opened his backpack and dipped his hand inside, delicately handling the device. He was previliged enough to have one. Well mostly everyone in his last school in Seoul had one anyway.

'Click' he decided on just taking pictures of places for now and cross them out if deemed not a possibility. He still had many parts of the neighborhood he needed to go to. They weren't that many, but by foot, by his tiredness and by the time he had left before it gets dark and before his mother decides to file a report herself for a 192 month old 'baby', they seemed reasonably many. That wild goose chase from before chewed on his time like pacman with the ghosts, all for naught.