"I just couldn't resist."
"Only sacred things deserve to be messed with."
It all ended with a dead kid near the train tracks.
Six years later, the story repeats itself and two long-forgotten friends might find out that when death tries to play match...
- If this is heaven, I don't know what it's for, if I can't find you there I don't care -
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Taehyung doesn't move, peering at me under long eyelashes as I kneel on the ground and look through the hole. I shiver when he kneels beside me. Neither of us can see in there further than a meter, but I know it must be a long tunnel because I can hear the echo of water drops falling on the concrete, streaming on the walls, sounding like it's coming from far and deep within.
"What's in there?" I ask, narrowing my eyes to try to see.
"Nothing. It's just a tunnel."
"Where does it lead to?"
"The magical land of Narnia."
"And he makes jokes," I assert with a tinge of sarcasm.
Silence welcomes my thoughts before he finally speaks again.
"You used to laugh at my stupid jokes."
For some reason, his comment makes me sad, especially because he was never that funny. Back then, I was just laughing because my laugh made him laugh. His humor was kind of absurd, but he always looked very proud of himself for getting a reaction out of me.
"Well, I used to be a dumb kid," I reply, shaking my head.
My tone is sharp, and I want him to change the subject. Talking about the past makes a weird nostalgia rise in my chest and I don't know why, I feel suffocated. However, he doesn't seem to get the hint.
"Sage, you were never dumb," he declares, "It was kind of ridiculous how smarter than everyone else you were."
"Yeah, yeah, child prodigy and all. I'm over it."
I skipped a grade when I was in elementary school. I don't know why writing and reading made just so much sense to me when all the other kids were still struggling to differentiate cursives from detached letters. The head-start didn't help for very long and when I started middle school, my grades were pretty much average and it kind of sucked that I was younger than everyone else.
Taehyung's phone suddenly rings and he digs in his jeans pocket to pick it up.
"Hello?"
"Dude! You won't believe where this shit ends!"
The voice at the other end is muffled but I'm pretty sure it's either Jimin or Yoongi, and his excitement is palpable.
"You're in a church basement, right?"
"How – How did you know?"
"I asked around and this used to be a priest's house."
"There is some creepy-ass stuff right here! Old statues, gravestones, a rocking chair! I'm sure it's haunted! You need to come!"
Taehyung gazes at me, then at the tunnel, and he seems to hesitate for a second.
"You want to come too?" he asks, and my heart skips a beat.
