; Moving Forward

the first mornings without you

today
when i woke up
the sun fell to the ground and rolled away
flowers beheaded themselves
all that's left alive here is me
and i barely feel like living.

-Rupi Kaur-

The hardest part yet greatest of every single day is waking up. When I first open my eyes and hear the birds, and the members bickering & talking non stop. I open my eyes and for seconds, sometimes even a minute, you are still alive; hypothetically, of course. Then I hit the peak and I am falling straight down, no warning, no hesitation. I go from waking up like it's every day to waking up in a world that you are no longer in.

We were supposed to be in this together. What happened to that?

"Good morning, Hyung. You better get moving," Dk peaked his head inside mine, and Mingyu's room, "Have you packed at all?"

Oh right, I thought, today is moving day.

"No."

"Hyung. We're leaving in a hour."

I look to the clock, shit, "I know."

He shakes his head at me and continues down the hall calling for Jeonghan and S.Coups Hyungs.

"Hyungs, Woozi-hyung is still in bed and he hasn't packed up anything."

"Jihoon! We leave in a hour! What are you doing?"Jeonghan shouts from across our dorm.

I don't answer. I sit up, swing my legs over the bed and let them dangle while I yawn and stretch. I take my time climbing down when S.Coups comes to my door way.

"Everyone's in charge of their own belongings but you're about to have us all on board packing your stuff cause you waited until the last second," he scolded, "the moving truck is getting here in one hour. What have you been doing?"

"Sleeping," I say with a straight face.

"Jihoon-ah please. Do not make this more stressful then it already is."

I frown, feeling a tiny sting of guilt.

"Sorry hyung."

S.Coups sighs without another word and leaves the room. I look at Mingyu's side, completely empty.

"I'm done Hyung I'll help you," Dino waltzed in, "What do you have left?"

"I haven't started."

He looks at me then around the room, "Oh. Okay, this is going to take more than a hour."

"Well it can't so let's get moving."

Soon everyone was packing my stuff, folding my clothes, taping up boxes, stacking them, moving them outside, taking my sheets off, searching the house for any left behind possessions of mine.

Around 10pm, 40 minutes behind schedule we are packed up and loading into cars to drive to our new, bigger dorm.

The dorm we owned now was huge, and when I say huge I don't think you'll be able to imagine how huge. There is 12 bedrooms, cause finding a place with a odd number of bedrooms that isn't 3 or 5 is practically impossible, we were grateful to get this though. I was relieved to have my own room, though we haven't decided who gets what room yet, there's no way I'm sharing a room.

"Jihoon-ah where are you going?"

As soon as everyone walked in they stopped and dropped their bags to play rock paper scissors, but I kept walking.

"Hyung we have to rock paper scissor our rooms. You don't just get to pick."

"Jihoon-ah!"

"You know how this works."

"Stop ignoring your hyungs."

I didn't answer, I started poking my heads in bedrooms before I picked one and dropped my stuff on the bed. There were 6 bedrooms on the first floor and I assumed the other 6 were on the second, I heard that each floor had a bathroom with two sinks, a tub and a shower. I didn't want to look around yet though. I had to process this first.

I look around my room. I have a queen sized bed, black sheets, and a white comforter, I have more furniture but it's too much to process or look at. I tried to sit down to figure out where I'm going to put everything. IU and Hara Noonas were going to be here soon to help me unpack, cause this is supposed to be hard. And it it. But I'm too numb for it to be hard. I'm too pained for it to be hard.

"Hey! Have you all picked rooms yet?"

I hear a higher pitched voice enter our dorm.

"Yeah it looks like Mingyu and Wonwoo are sharing the 12th room."

"Where's Woozi-ah?"

"I don't know he seemed to be pretty focused on picking a room first."

"Oh? Well I got you all coffees, I'll put them here and go find Woozi."

I stay sitting with my back leaning against the bed staring at the door way with the door wide open. And I wait. Hara enters seconds later, giving me a warm sad smile. She shuts the door and comes to sit next to me without hesitation, she doesn't take a glance at my room either. I grab the iced coffee she's shoving in front of me and take a sip.

"hi."

"hi Noona."

We're staring straight ahead at the now closed door in silence.

"are you okay?" she whispers.

I stay silent for a few seconds taking a big breath like I'm about to spew a thousand words at once, "no."

"That's okay," she reaches for my hand and squeezes it, "I'm not okay either."

"Is it always going to feel this way?"

"I don't know," she admits, "I hope not."

"Me too."

"Heechul got Goblin. Just for now until Nam Kyung is ready to adopt him. I'm going to go see him later today if you want to come."

I look over at her, "No I'm not ready to see him in person yet, but will you send me pictures?"

She nods.

I wait for her to speak and when she doesn't I continue, "Are you angry?"

She knew I wasn't talking about not being ready to see Goblin. She knew what I meant without even thinking about it.

"No. But it's okay with you are."

"I'm not. I don't think I am."

"It's okay with you are. Don't keep it inside if you are angry. It's not good for you."

"This is the first dorm that won't ever have Sulli Noona's presence."

"We can put pieces of her everywhere."

"I don't want pieces of her Noona. I want all of her."

We lock eyes, the room is filled to the brim with sadness and grief, and we're at the bottom.

"Me too," she says back, "we'll figure out a way to get as much of her here as possible."

We sit there for a little longer holding hands, just a little longer we sit in our grief and let our bodies soak it up like sponges. I let it hurt, and I let the grief crawl deep into my skin, I let it run through my veins, and begin to eat me up from the inside out.