Stigma Love's Algorithm [ A BTS x Reader Poly ]

Chapter 110: A Thousand Unsaid Things

I don't stop by the living room.
Don't cross into the light.

I just slip out the side door to the wraparound side porch and let the night wrap around me like a blanket I don't deserve.

The swing creaks beneath me as I sit, shoulders slumping forward, arms resting on my thighs.

I keep my feet bare, pressing them into the warm wood like I can ground myself that way.

Above me, the stars are impossibly bright. A whole galaxy spilled like silver dust across the sky.

I close my eyes.
Breathe.

Let the ache sit in my chest like an old friend who overstayed.

"I didn't mean to hurt her," I whisper.

It's the first thing I've said in hours that felt true.

Wacha pads quietly around the porch corner, tail flicking as she jumps into one of the deck chairs like she owns the place.

Which-of course-she does.

Tannie trails after her, snuffling the porch planks before flopping down at my feet with a sigh that's somehow more human than dog.

"She looked at me," I murmur to the stars, not really to them, not really to anyone,

"like I'd betrayed her."

I rub my palms together.

They still feel warm from the tension earlier, from holding in words I didn't know how to shape right.

"She just wants to fight for something that matters." I exhale slowly.

"And so do I. That's the cruel part. We're on the same side, but somehow we're hurting each other anyway."

The porch swing creaks.
The air smells like rain's coming.

I remember the way noona's shoulders stiffened when I pushed too far.

The way she bit her lip, like keeping herself from saying something she couldn't take back.

The flicker of hurt in her eyes that she masked with stubbornness.

And I-fool that I am-matched her silence with pride.

Because I was afraid.
Not of her. Never of her.

But of what her proposal could mean.
Of what he might do if he found out.
Of what happened last time love outshone caution.

I dig my nails into my thighs.
Jin hyung almost lost everything.

I almost lost Jin.

And now I've found him again.
Found all of them.

Yoongi hyung, who never says he's worried but clutches tension in his jaw like a secret he can't spit out.