“Here’s how things are going to go. You ready?”
“Enlighten me.”
“You’re going to teach me how to figure skate while you’re here, and in turn I will keep your diary on my highest shelf out of sight and out of mind. I won’t read a word. That’s, of course, if you teach me how to skate by the end of your stay.”
He arched a brow. “And how do I know that you truly will not read it?”
“Well. You’re just going to have to take my word for it,” I assured him.
“And how will I be certain that is any good?”
“You aren’t.”
“Ah. I see.” He nodded slowly, walking towards the window, the moonlight shining on his hair highlighting the single strand of silver, it almost seemed to glitter under its spell. He had his back turned to me.
“You don’t have to agree, I could always just crack open the diary and read—”
“Deal,” he responded, interrupting me, turning around.
Oh my god.Oh my god?
“Oh?” I smirked, folding my arms. “You’re giving it up that easy?”
“Nothing about any of this is easy,” he clarifies, “but I’ll do what I must.”
“Didn’t they ever tell you not to strike deals with the devil, Kwon?” I warned with a slight laugh.
“You are no devil, Soh.” He brushed past me, carrying the scent of vanilla and a rain long since poured. “No matter how much you’ve always believed yourself to be.”
And at that his words carved themselves into me, branding themselves onto my skin.
“What do you even know, hm?” I responded, feeling my breath knocked out of me.
He shook his head, pressing his tongue to his cheek, almost as if he knew something I didn’t, saw something I didn’t, the way he always did. Like he was so much older and wiser and…more than me.
He began to leave the room I quickly stopped him grabbing his arm as a thought crossed my mind that I couldn’t grasp in time to stop it from slipping past my lips. “Wait!”
“What is it?” he said, still not facing me.
“You might grow to despise me at the end of this,” I warned him in advance, I felt the need to.
“Despise you?” he repeated as if it were the most ludicrous statement he’d ever heard a day in his life. “Despise you…”
“Goodnight,” I concluded, taking my bag with me and quickly leaving.
Truly. What did he even know? He might hate me someday, maybe I would too.
9
The First Entry
Sunday 12th June, Summer 13
WYNTER’S POV
Dear diary,
I was born underwater, beneath the crashing blues, and as a consequence, the cold is of a second nature to me.
