[COMPLETED]
✨Unexpected Roommates✨
Cookie and River, two best friends, excitedly move into their dream house, unaware that it has been sold to another group-Seonghwa, Hongjoong, Yunho, Yeosang, San, Mingi, Wooyoung, and Jongho. As the two groups nav...
Hongjoong sat so still that at first I thought he’d frozen, but the tears gave him away—quiet, relentless, tracking down his cheeks like rain running off a rooftop. His eyes wouldn’t quite meet mine. He just watched a spot on the blanket like it could explain everything.
“I’m sorry…” I whispered, the words catching on the way out.
He shook his head before the apology even finished, a small, stubborn motion. “Don’t be. It’s not your fault,” he said, voice soft and shaky, breaking apart on the last word.
I leaned in and brushed the tears from his face with my thumb, careful, the way you touch something too precious to risk. He drew closer, folding into me until his forehead rested against my belly, a tremor running through him as he breathed in. When he started to cry in earnest, he buried his face deeper, like he thought he could hide from all of it if he just pressed close enough. I threaded my fingers through his hair, slow and steady, combing the worry out of each strand. His breaths hiccupped, then stretched, then softened. Little by little, tears gave way to sleep. He went limp against me, eyelashes still damp, the weight of him warm and heavy.
I kept stroking his hair even after his breathing evened out. My own tears came quiet, uninvited, the kind that don’t splash—they just slide and soak into your shirt collar. I rubbed at my eyes and then rubbed at his head again, a rhythm I didn’t want to break. In that stillness, the house felt too big and too small at the same time—walls too close, ceiling too far. The clock ticked somewhere, a tiny metronome to everything we were afraid to say.
The front door flew open. Footsteps. A rush of voices caught at the threshold like a tide. Yunho, Yeosang, San, Mingi, Wooyoung, Jongho, River, and Seonghwa came in on the same breath, all the noise they’d been holding in spilling out at once—and then choking back when they saw us. The room went gentle. People knew where to sit without needing to be told.
Seonghwa crouched first, eyes flicking from my face to Hongjoong’s sleeping one. “How you feeling, Mamas???” he asked, soft as a blanket.
I let out a breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding. “I’ve been better,” I said with a shaky half-smile.
Yunho reached to lift Hongjoong so he could lay him down properly, but Hongjoong made a low sound—half-whine, half-plea—and grabbed at me, his fingers curling in my shirt with surprising strength. He didn’t wake, not fully. He just clung.
“Joong,” Seonghwa coaxed, one palm on his shoulder. “Share…” He tried to tease warmth into the word, like coaxing a child to pass the toy along.
Hongjoong blinked awake, eyes swollen and rimmed red. He lifted his face, breath catching when he saw everyone crowded around. “Maybe if I hug long enough,” he murmured, voice breaking as he forced a watery smile, “the tumors will go away, Hwa.”
The word hung in the air like a bell that wouldn’t stop ringing. My vision blurred. I swallowed hard.
Yeosang’s jaw tightened with worry, but his voice stayed calm. “Hyung… I’m not a doctor,” he said gently, “but I don’t think it works like that.”
“I… I… I’m trying,” Hongjoong said, and then the trying snapped in half. His face crumpled, and the tears came again, heavier. I rubbed circles between his shoulder blades and felt the shudder of each breath under my palm.
“Shh,” I whispered into his hair. “Everything’s going to be okay.” I didn’t know how. I just knew I had to keep saying it until we all believed it enough to stand up.
Everyone nodded, in that way people do when they’re agreeing to hope.
“I think it really upset him,” I said quietly, more to the room than to any one person. “He cried himself to sleep.”
San crouched beside the bed, his hand finding my knee like a steadying point. “He’s sensitive,” he said, eyes shining. “He probably thinks it’s his fault. I’m sorry this hurts you, Mamas.”
“It hurts a lot,” I admitted. “I’m scared that something will happen to me or this baby. I don’t want either. And I know it hurts all of you, and that… that hurts even more. We should all just be happy.” My voice cracked on “happy,” like it was a word made of glass.
Mingi moved closer, careful as if approaching a wild animal, and set his hand on the side of my belly, broad and warm. “We will be,” he said. “And we’ll do whatever it takes for each other and for this baby.”
I nodded. Under his hand, a tiny flutter nudged back like a secret answer, and Mingi’s eyes widened. The smallest smile tugged at the corner of his mouth before he masked it with a steady, grounded calm.
“Let’s just relax and pray,” Wooyoung said. “That’s all we can do right now.” His voice was soft but sure, like he was laying a path with the words.
Jongho, silent until then, shifted closer and took Hongjoong’s hand in both of his, thumb brushing over knuckles. River reached for mine, fingers threading between my own, cool and firm. San rested his forehead briefly against the bed, a quick anchor. Yunho positioned pillows, instinctively making a little harbor around us. Yeosang pulled the curtains just so, letting the light in but not the glare. Seonghwa brushed stray hair from my face with a touch that said a hundred steady things without making me carry a single one of them.
We didn’t make speeches. We didn’t promise miracles. We breathed. We held. We let the room settle around us until the floor felt stable again. Someone put a playlist on low; something piano and uncomplicated filled the spaces between our breaths.
Time slowed into the kind you don’t measure with minutes. Hongjoong’s tears eased into sleep once more, his hand still caught in mine. The baby kicked again, gentle and patient, and I pressed Mingi’s hand a little closer so he could feel it, too. He did, and for a heartbeat, joy rose like sunlight after rain.
We stayed like that—tucked into each other, watchful and warm—for the rest of the day. No big decisions. No right answers. Just a house full of hearts, choosing to keep beating together. And in that quiet, I let myself believe the words I’d whispered earlier, if only for a breath at a time: Everything’s going to be okay...
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