INSIDE [jaeyong]

[1]

Johnny laughed, "Fair enough."

Downloading the Tor browser was a lot easier than Taeyong thought it would be. He didn't know what he expected; maybe a few hacks and weaseling through surveys and authentication codes at the very least. But oddly enough, all it was was a click away, and bam — you had access to the deep web and all its wonders.

The young boy stared at the purple, spiral logo on his homepage that popped drastically out against the cotton candy pink clouds Taeyong set his background as, and it made him grumble a little because it completely ruined his aesthetic — not only for the color, but for whatever dark evil shit was on there as well.

"Okay," the petite boy drew the word out senselessly, blinking slowly at his monitor. He flickered his gaze nervously back to Johnny. "I'm clicking on it, alright?"

"Calm down Taeyong, nothing's going to happen. Just open it."

Taeyong drew in a deep breath of stuffy air, his chest puffing up as his cursor double tapped on the ugly logo. He flinched once it opened, his hands hovering over his eyes dramatically to only see what it was — a web browser with a search bar. His hands fell from his face, a pout masking his lips. Taeyong noticed the bold yellow warning at the top of the website's screen; it was hard to miss, really.

Maximizing Tor Browser can allow websites to determine your monitor size, which can be used to track you. We recommend that you leave Tor Browser windows in their original default size.

Taeyong's pupils enlarged and his jaw dropped. Nah, this was far too real for him. "Johnny! What the fuck, look at the fucking warning at the top of the screen," he gawked, immediately minimizing the window as it requested.

"I can't, airhead. But I know what you're talking about. Don't worry about it as long as you keep the window small," Johnny started to laugh again like this was some funny joke.

Taeyong was not impressed.

"There's probably qualified hackers swarming here! Someone's gonna put a fucking virus on my computer!" Taeyong exasperated, accentuating his words as if he was trying to pound it into the tall man's thick skull.

"There's a very small chance of that happening."

"I highly doubt that."

Johnny rolled his eyes until they reached the back of his head. "Trust me you dweeb. You've stuck with me for this long without anything bad happening, right? Remember when we were kids and I told you to jump out of that tree? What happened?" the American asked, cocking his head to the side.

Taeyong huffed out a deep breath before stating hesitantly, "You caught me."

"Exactly!"

Taeyong rested his chin in his palm, saying sarcastically, "And I don't know how, but we both ended up on the grass with a sprained wrist and ankle."

Johnny smiled a little, the tall male reminiscing on those silly times a bit before directing Taeyong back to the task at hand. "Anyway, so the reason why—"

"Yeah, I'd sure like to know why you're trying to create me into some sort of creep on the dark web."

Johnny rolled his eyes before continuing, accentuating his words loudly, "The reason why I want you on here is because—" he did a dorky drumroll on the edge of his desk; Taeyong was unimpressed "—of a book club." Only the right corner of his lips turned upwards as Taeyong raised his eyebrows. "I'd like you to join it."

"This is so dumb."

"I'm not joking! I'll tell you what to search and you can join for free! I thought you'd be interested."

"So this is some sick joke."

Johnny may or may not have started to laugh. The laughter quickly died down like a club would at the early stages of the morning when Taeyong reached to shut his monitor off. "Stop! Stop, I'm sorry Tae, even though I'm laughing I really want you to meet some of the people on there. They're actually really nice and I think — if you can't make friends in real life — that maybe you should make some online friends. Please just join and read some of the threads. They have a lot of stuff you like and a lot of writing prompts."

Taeyong harshly bit his thin bottom lip before inquiring blandly, "Why the deep web though? Why not the surface web?"

The older was swift to explain. "The community on that particular book club is a lot tighter than the ones I could find on any other website; there's only like twenty members. Everyone seems to know each other, but with one exception — most members don't know each other's names. They have like nicknames I suppose that they call one another. But that's the only weird thing, I swear! Come on, I really think you'd enjoy it whenever you're feeling uninspired and bored—" Johnny paused for a second before adding, "and lonely."

Taeyong empathized the heavy sigh that released from his chest. "Jesus god... Fine."