Before I'm Gone | Stray Kids FF

Disappearing

Jisung POV

"Hyung." Hyunjin said beside me to our new friend. "Where are you off to?"

"Oh, I'm going to a training session." He said, picking up some things casually.

"You're a trainee?" I asked as we grabbed our own things.

He nodded. "I'm debuting soon."

"Really?" Felix asked as he put his backpack on. "How come we've never heard of this?"

"Oh, our group isn't too popular." He chuckled. "Moonbin is in the group with me too."

I looked at Seungmin who was listening quietly. "Can we come?" I blurted out.

He chuckled. "I don't see why not." He looked at his phone. "Come on, let's go."

We headed out of the library and followed him to a building. I looked at the company name on the building, recognizing it when I saw it. Fantagio it said. We headed inside and found ourselves in a dance practice room with a few other people in it. Awkwardly, the four of us bowed as we greeted the five others in the room. Our friend on the other hand, casually went over and said hello.

"Who are these guys, Minhyuk?" The one who seemed to be the leader asked.

"Hi, the name's Jisung." I greeted them. "We tagged along after a study period at the library."

"You're in the same grade?" A tall one asked.

"O-oh, no." Felix shook his head. "But he's helping us understand concepts."

"I see." Another guy said with a bright smile. "Well, let us practice, you can watch, okay?"

"Okay." Seungmin nodded and we all found a spot on the ground to watch them perform in front of us.

~*~

Hyunjin POV

Comfortably, I sat on the ground of Chan's house. All the guys were over today. We were all hanging around like we would every year for the holidays. Though the break had not officially started yet, we still hung out quite a bit. Yeah, we had homework and projects to do, but that could wait. Today, we were relaxing.

"Why does it feel different?" Jeongin mumbled beside me.

"Hm?" I turned to him, everyone else turning their attention to him too.

"It just feels different without Areum and Haneul." He shrugged, picking up his phone to get himself out of the conversation. The others agreed, going on into their own conversations about how she was distant. Just as I was drifting off into my own world, a knock came at the door. Chan rose from where he was and walked to the door, opening it slowly.

"We're looking for Areum, have you seen her?" A voice I recognized asked.

"No... why?" Chan rose a brow, letting her and her companion in.

"We went to her house but we couldn't find her. We thought she would be with you guys." The boy said. "We haven't seen her in a really long time."

"Have any of you seen her?" Everyone was silent at the question.

After a while, Minho spoke up. "I saw her walking off with Moonbin and Haneul." Minho looked at the two new arrivals. "They were headed kinda far off."

"Did you bother to ask where she was off to?" I suddenly blurted out.

"Of course I did, idiot." He glared at me.

"Excuse me?" I raised a brow. "I'm not the one who last saw her and didn't bother to make sure she was safe."

"Well for the record, I wanted to follow, she didn't let me." He huffed. "And I'm not the one-"

"Now is not the time for fighting!" Chan pinched the bridge of his nose. "We need to find her. Everyone, get ready to go out and if you can, text her to see if she'll respond."

We all got up and got our coats and put on our shoes while texting all three of them at the same time. Since I was one of the firsts done, I decided to try and text everyone in Moonbin's friend group. All of them replied saying they had not seen them. Other than Minhyuk who said they had seen each other when school ended but had parted ways. I checked the texts that I had sent Moonbin, Haneul and Areum. All of them were on read.

"Guys we have to go now." Jeongin said urgently as he started to rush out the door. "I know where they are."

~*~

Felix POV

We hurried after Jeongin who was running surprisingly fast. None of us spared a moment to say anything, all we wanted was to find everyone. As we ran, I thought about what was going on. What could be happening to them right now? How did Jeongin know where they were? What was going on? Eventually, we made our way into a place where there were some shops. Jeongin slowed his pace and told us to look into every alley and look for everyone.

"Areum?" I said under my breath as I slowed my pace, nearing one of the alleys.

"Felix, what is it?" Changbin came up behind me and put a hand on my shoulder.

"Is that her?" I pointed into the shadows.

"Let's check." He and I walked towards the shadows. As we got a clear view of what it was, my heart dropped. I crouched and put a hand on the being in the shadows.

"Bin, get Chan." He nodded and went to go find Chan. In a few minutes, Chan and Bora had come by. Chan questioningly looked at me and headed towards the shadow, gasping at the sight.

"Oh my goodness." He said, crouching as well to pick up the girl. "What happened?"

I stood and put an arm on his shoulder before leaving him to the girl, knowing that I would be of more use looking for Areum. As we went around, I headed towards Jeongin, asking how he knew they were here. He explained that it was his friend who saw them being taken away to this part of the city and warned him. Just as we were about to go ahead to some other alleys down the street, I saw Jihoon run into an alley, worry all over his face. Both I and Jeongin followed quickly behind him. He was about to go into a crowd of people, both of us took hold of his shoulders and pulled him back.

"Hey!" He pulled away to look at us. "Areum could be in there!"

"Are you crazy?" Jeongin shook his head. "You could get hurt going through that crowd. At least let us come with."

Jihoon nodded and headed towards the crowd. We pushed our way through to the source of the crowd. When we saw who was in the center of it all, Jeongin cried out.

"Eunji!"

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So oml here we go again.

1. Yes, I just had to include Astro, I'm sorry, but I needed more characters and didn't have enough ideas to create ocs so I used them.

2. DOUBLE KNOT was amazing. If you see on my insta, I spammed about it on my story haha. I woke up at 3 for it and tbh, no regrets. Do you guys think it was Jisung's era? Cause that's what I feel like it was...

3. I want to say thank you to lovelydancer47 because you have been notably supporting this book and I really appreciate it.

4. Also, this week, results for TFA came out (a contest that was held here on wattpad.) and I got 2nd place!!! I am so happy! I never thought I would get anything, I really only entered the contest for feedback, not thinking I would win.

5. Last, and final thing. Guys, I'm sorry to turn this serious but I am going through some things right now. I don't have much going for me. Now, this doesn't mean that I won't update or something, but if you see inactivity on my account(s) or a sad mood in the afterwords, you will know why. I hope that this doesn't disappoint you or make you want to stop reading, but I hope you understand.

Thank you for your support and everything!