Chapter 2 (1/1)

--CHAPTER 2Baekhyun grew up not associating himself with people. Though he did go to public school, he didn’t bother to interact with those around him. He felt it’d be too much of a hassle to always get his writing pad out and write down what he had to say when he wanted to talk to people, and he highly doubted that he’d find anyone who knew sign language.One could consider his childhood to have been lonely, but Baekhyun did feel that he filled that void with the books he read. Who needed to make lousy friends that possibly had cooties and other strange oddities when he could have been reading about marvelous heroes who took the world on and made it better? Baekhyun was quite content with this lifestyle seeing also as to how his kind parents didn’t question him on it much, but that soon changed because a certain someone continued to show up when Baekhyun would sit down outside to read…*~*~*~*“Hey, Baekhyun. Whatcha doing?”Baekhyun tilted his head up from his book to meet eyes with the same kid that had been bothering him for the past few days. “Reading,” he said to Chanyeol like it was so blatantly obvious. It truly was, though—the book was right there in his hands.Chanyeol plopped himself down on the grass in front of Baekhyun and put his bare feet just before the reading boy’s folded up legs.Quietly, Baekhyun looked at Chanyeol’s dirtied toes and then went back to his reading—he was now reading a novel about dragons and their feistiness. At this point, Baekhyun wasn’t surprised by the sound of his own voice seeing as how it had been a few days now that Chanyeol had been coming to pester him. Whenever Chanyeol was around, Baekhyun knew that’s when his own voice would be too.Since he was being ignored now (though it took him some moments to realize it), Chanyeol began to grow restless once more and he stared pretentiously at Baekhyun’s concentrating face. “Baek,” he addressed the other boy, deciding then and there that would be a good nickname for Baekhyun.Baekhyun continued to read—not saying anything.“Baek,” Chanyeol said once more, though this time more firmly. Since Baekhyun wasn’t replying to his calls, Chanyeol decided to take more physical of actions. Using his hands to push himself forward—digging his digits in the topsoil and scooting his bottom just a bit—Chanyeol pointed his legs upward and began to rub his toes and feet against Baekhyun’s knees. “Baaaaaaekhyuuuun,” he moaned in desperation that was fit for a child and his dirty, bare toes were leaving smudges on Baekhyun’s little pink knees.At the feeling of cold toes against his own skin, Baekhyun quickly set his book down and looked with annoyed eyes at the soiling and fondling that was going on to his own bodily hinges. “Get your toes off me!” he yelped.Chanyeol chuckled and leaned his head back. “Nah, not if you’re not going to listen to me.”“Okay! Okay! I’ll listen to you!” quickly Baekhyun put his hands on top of Chanyeol’s feet and threw them off his own knees, causing Chanyeol to flop over onto the ground slightly like a fish.“You will listen to me, Baek?” Chanyeol pursed his lips and looked over his own chest up toward Baekhyun.Baekhyun nodded. “I will,” he replied firmly.Chanyeol cheered to himself—clapping his hands over his lying down body. “You’ll listen to anything I have to say?”“I will! I will!” by now, Baekhyun was overly bothered by the fact that toes had been on his lovely skin and he was rubbing his small fingers against the roundness of his bent knees.“That’s good,” Chanyeol sighed out wistfully. His wide eyes gazed upward at the leaves in the willow tree that tumbled in the few breezes that would skim by the two boys. “I wanted to listen to anything you had to say, too. You know that, Baek?” his head tilted to the side so the grass pressed on his pudgy cheek and skimmed the corner of his eye.That was funny. For as long as Baekhyun knew, no one wanted to hear what he had to say. Since he was born mute, Baekhyun noticed that many people automatically assumed that he had nothing to say. That was so very contrary to the truth. Baekhyun looked away a bit taken aback by Chanyeol’s sincerity. Where had someone like Chanyeol been for Baekhyun all this time? He wondered and then he assumed that Chanyeol coming up out of nowhere must have been some sort of blessing. “Well, what did you have to say, Chanyeol?” he asked, deciding not to seem bashful.Chanyeol sat up from his lying down position and smiled quite widely to Baekhyun—showing his adolescent teeth. “If I tell you that we’re going to go somewhere cool, would you trust me?”Baekhyun bit his lip and after a moment of thinking, he nodded.“Great!” Chanyeol yelped with glee and immediately in a flash that was strange for Baekhyun to look at since it went by so swiftly, he stood on his feet and twirled in a small circle. “Then let’s go!” he reached his hands out to Baekhyun who eyed them warily—noticing that they were now covered by dirt and grass stains. How was this kid so messy? Gently, Baekhyun closed the book in his lap and set it on the ground next to him and placed his own hands within Chanyeol’s, allowing the other male to pull him up from the grass. “Come on, Baek,” Chanyeol let go of Baekhyun’s left hand and held him by his right and turned him around so they were facing the direction behind the willow tree.When Baekhyun looked that way, his eyes widened along with his pupils which seemed to dilate in a slightly unnatural way. What he saw beyond the tree was not the rest of his house’s front yard, and beyond that, more suburban households, but something that looked like a dark forest which was shaded in dark shades of purples and blues rather than dreary black and darkness. The trees parted into a walkway that was lined by ferns and different shrubberies of the smaller variation. Chanyeol pulled Baekhyun along to this unknown place, and Baekhyun willingly allowed himself to go.When Baekhyun’s sandaled feet touched the ground of the unfamiliar forest, he felt a softness under his step that he had never known from anywhere before—not even from what he had known to be a soft place like when he would jump on his bed and later be reprimanded for it. The ground was pink, but not too bright or dark, but a nice shade of pink for Baekhyun to look at. When he glanced at Chanyeol who was still holding him by his slender wrist, he noticed that Chanyeol looked ahead willfully with a concentration he had not yet seen on the boy’s face before. Then he looked behind himself and only saw a darkness behind him like the path in the forest they had been walking on went on for forever.There were no sounds besides the sound of their feet pressing into the cushion of the ground, and then that soon stopped when Chanyeol had paused his steps in a fork in the road. They could either go left or right, but unfortunately for their cause, there were no signs to advise them of which direction they should take.“Which way would it be?” Chanyeol mumbled to himself with his lips puffed out.“Where are we?” Baekhyun finally decided to ask after looking around once more and finally landing his eyes on Chanyeol.Chanyeol continued to look like he was in a state of concentration and he scratched the back of his neck. “Ah, you know… Somewhere cool.” He then reached his right hand into the pocket of his brown cut off pants which went down to his knees and from the pocket he produced what looked like a compass. It only looked like a compass, but as Baekhyun eyed it more curiously, he noticed that it was only a carved piece of wood which was smoothed, rounded, and stained. On this piece of wood was a piece of paper that was taped onto it—literally just taped, not even bothered to be glued or secured more productively—with a very childish drawing of a compass pointing north that Baekhyun could only assume was drawn by Chanyeol.While pushing his fingers onto the wood and paper, moving it around a few times in the palms of his hands as well, Chanyeol finally gasped and held the “compass” up above himself. “Yes! Here we go!” He began to run toward the fork in the road, though it looked like he was picking neither left or right. Baekhyun was sure this weirdo was going to run into a tree… “Follow me!” he called back to Baekhyun, still holding the object above his head as he ran.Hesitantly, Baekhyun followed Chanyeol, though he didn’t want to be the one to run into a tree instead. As he started to jog forth, though, he noticed that just as Chanyeol reached the trees that were in between the two parts in the road, his body seemed to simply phase through the tree trunk and he was soon out of sight.“Chanyeol!” Baekhyun cried out in slight fear. He had no idea what he had just seen, but he figured that since he was already here, he might as well try it out for himself. Baekhyun ran straightforward with full force, expecting not to have the same effect as Chanyeol and actually face plant into the tree. But as he encountered the bark, he felt nothing and suddenly he saw somewhere new, along with a satisfied looking Chanyeol.“Good old compasses, right? They always take you the right way,” Chanyeol stated matter-of-factly while holding his shoulders proudly. He slipped the wood piece back into his pocket and looked over at Baekhyun who looked back at him with wide eyes. He looked scared. “I thought you said you would listen to everything I had to say, Baek.”Baekhyun breathed in sharply and nodded.“Then when I said ‘follow me,’ you shouldn’t have worried. Okay?”“Okay…”Now that they were past the pink lane and trees of a purple-ish forest, Baekhyun noticed that the place they were in was misty with a green fog that sparkled whenever it caught Baekhyun’s eye. It was quite mesmerizing to look at and Baekhyun could have sworn that when he listened carefully, he could hear songs being played in each dew drop that composed the mist as it whirred by his ears.“Where are we now?” Baekhyun tilted his head and asked a bit heatedly. He wanted an answer.Chanyeol shook his head, causing his messy hair to bounce back and forth over his forehead. “I thought the compass would work…”“Didn’t you just say that it did?” Baekhyun folded his arms over his chest.“About that…” Chanyeol looked to the foggy ground and then to Baekhyun. “Maybe I should have bought a compass instead of trying to make my own…”Good lord, this Chanyeol was really one of a kind. Baekhyun never expected anyone on this planet to be that eccentric. Baekhyun rocked back and forth on his small heels—his sandals folding in and out as he would move back and forth. “Are we lost?” he asked plainly.Chanyeol looked away emptily. “You can’t really be lost here…” he said in a spacey sounding tone and his lips hung open after his words were finished. He looked like he was pondering many options at once, or maybe thinking about several issues at one time, but either way he was captivated in his own train of thought. Just as Baekhyun was about to sigh in irritation, the two of them heard a large rumbling in the distance. Both of their young faces turned in that direction and they stared with equally intent eyes, but Chanyeol’s were open just a bit wider.Another rumbling commenced, though this time it sounded closer, but the two still stood there, not bothering to move.“What was that?” Baekhyun asked, turning slightly toward Chanyeol.Chanyeol breathed in through his teeth and made an expression of something like a child being caught in an act they shouldn’t have committed. “Maybe I should have listened to him…” he murmured and then shook where he stood. At each of his words, a rumble would occur and each time it was closer, causing more fear in the two. One couldn’t even express how loud these rumbles were through simple words, but just as a human might know, it amounted to hearing the sound of thunder nearby, but maybe a thousand times over. And each louder rumble expressed something coming closer which Chanyeol appeared to have a vague idea of what it was but Baekhyun was absolutely clueless as to what had been coming toward him. He’d read many books about valiant heroes who fought the largest of creatures that would make laud noises as they stepped, but he never imagined it to be of this caliber.“Should we… run?” Baekhyun softly asked, but he noticed that Chanyeol was at a standstill staring straight ahead and where he looked, the shape of a large creature began to manifest in the overcast of the mist. Only a silhouette showed, but the silhouette was so vast that one would not even need to see the actual form of the unknown creature to feel fear.“Are you ready for this?” Chanyeol peeped out, darting his eyes over toward Baekhyun.What was it that he needed to be ready for? Baekhyun only knew these kinds of eventful situations from the books he’s read, and for the most part, the characters that faced them were prepared and were aware of whatever was coming.  Baekhyun had none of that on his side, so instead he stood still with a look of uncertainty like no one had ever seen. He felt a rush of a cold wind run over him, making his brown hair fly over his face and head and causing his shoulders to tense and knees to quake. Baekhyun closed his eyes tightly and pressed his tender lips into a line that gently puffed his cheeks.The beast came closer and closer, but Baekhyun didn’t dare open his eyes to look at it. He was so scared—but for no real reason, he realized, since he didn’t actually know what it was—and due to this fear, Baekhyun simply couldn’t bring himself to face the creature now looming above him.“If you don’t look, you won’t make it,” Chanyeol said quite loudly, though it sounded like it came from much more of a distance from where Baekhyun had known him to be standing at before. What did he mean? Had Chanyeol brought Baekhyun to this unknown place just to challenge him on something that was completely unknown to Baekhyun—yet he willfully went along with it?Well, I want to make it, Baekhyun told himself, though he wasn’t sure why. But he simply couldn’t bring himself to open his eyes, let alone to control his small body from shaking like a limp leaf in the wind. What was he so fearful of all of a sudden?Just then, Baekhyun could have sworn that he heard Chanyeol say something ever-so quietly like, “That’s too bad,” and he thought for a time that there was a beast’s mouth enclosing around his body—the warmth of the exhale of the unknown creature crept around Baekhyun’s limbs and in his ears he hear the ringing of the insides churning and working ferociously as Baekhyun might imagine a large creature’s insides to be. He knew then that he was about to be eaten and as he prepared to feel the sharpness of fangs tear into his skin and flesh, Baekhyun felt the creep of a breeze on his legs. Everything was quiet now and he didn’t hear the sound of a the vast pit of a beast’s entrails that sounded like gears grinding in a dangerous work of machinery nor did he hear Chanyeol’s call to him beckoning him to come along or face a monster that came from nowhereGently, Baekhyun opened his eyes and saw where he was now. He was sitting under his willow tree just how he had been before Chanyeol ever walked up to him—he had his knees close to his chest with a book pried open in his lap. His head turned back and forth as he looked around, and he placed his hand on the ground and leaned his body backwards to see if the forest still lied there, but it was gone. When he tried to ask himself what had happened, his lips only lifted open, but no words spilled through. His voice was gone yet again. Along with Chanyeol, he came to see. Baekhyun hung his head low. What had just happened? In fact—he wondered further—did it even happen at all?The tree blew softly in the wind and Baekhyun felt his brown locks of hair wisp over his forehead. His round eyes held their eyelids halfway over his orbs that gazed down at his open book. Baekhyun read the lines of his novel that his eyes fell on first:“The dragon held its claws out in a pompous way, pointing to the hero facetiously with no remorse whatsoever. ‘I dare you,’ it said as its claw came closer and closer to the hero. ‘I dare you to find it in yourself to actually face your fears.’And with that, the hero took his sword and slayed the dragon. But once the deed was done, he wasn’t sure if he was satisfied at all with the task. Did he truly have the courage or was it that he was never truly able to find himself on his journey to make this escapade worthwhile? As he slinked away wearily from the dead dragon’s body, the hero told himself: “Maybe I should have taken the time to be myself instead of living up to what I thought everyone else thought I was.”Baekhyun breathed out emptily and then rested his head in his hands. He hoped that Chanyeol would come back soon to explain to him just what in the world it was they were doing in that forest with the soft ground that felt like clouds when he walked upon it. What he didn’t expect was never to see Chanyeol again—at least not for a very long time.