BRIDGES. － a.yt + j.ws

－09

Wooseok found his feet to be walking embarrassingly quickly to the tree the following night, barely hearing their constant drag and tap over the rushing of the river and the raging wind against his ears.

He didn't believe in signs from forces outside of his perception, but the chill brought his jaw to chatter and his fingers to quiver, his nose stinging red and his scalp prickling with ice, as though the world were telling him to squash this desire to see what each letter held and return home, where everything was warm and known.

When his milk-dipped fingertips took hold of the envelope that brashly flapped in the wind, he let out a breath, the cloud that formed and faded just as soon, mimicking his relief that dissipated into tension.

dear stranger,
if you're going to keep reading my private letters then at least tell me your name.
_y

Wooseok supposed it was about time － he'd come prepared, after all. And so, skittishly extracting the pencil he'd tucked into his coat's pocket, he turned the piece of paper over, pressed it against the tree's rough bark and wrote:

they're not so private if you keep taping them to a random tree in the town park, honestly.
call me [w]

From that note on, they're conversation flowed down the steady passage of rising moons and falling suns, nights surpassing one another yet leaving a trail of scribbled words by different hands.

dear w,

The next letter began, causing a curl to force its way onto Wooseok's bitten lips and to jumpstart his tepid heart.

you make a fair point, but considering people's lack of interest in things around them, nobody had bothered reading my letters for the past year until you.
_y

He had previously decided that the short, nicked pencil would always be on his person so that he could respond to the letters that were then being addressed to him rather than the moon. He idly wondered if he had taken the place of something so far and luminous, but was resignatedly quite certain he could only be equivalent to a comet, fleeting and hardly present enough to leave any trace.

your letters always looked lonely
[w]

》》》

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