After In-su left, Soo-ah, Soo-jin and I decided to watch the band perform when Ju-kyung—finally—arrived. "Ah! ImJjoo!" Soo-ah links arms with her too. "Where should we watch from? The back or the front?"
"I'm tired and I really want to-" Ju-kyung started.
"Don't you dare say you'll leave first," Soo-ah pouted, "Why would you go home when the highlight is about to start?"
"She's right," Soo-jin nods.
"Stay and watch the show with us!" I add.
"Let's go sit over there!" Soo-ah nods and begins leading us to the wood bleachers. The four of us sit together—Soo-jin then Soo-ah then me then Ju-kyung—and we listen to the band perform. I raise my arms and slowly wave with everyone else when I notice Jjoo looking a bit sad. "Jjoo, cheer up, Soo-ah told me the highlight is huge," I smile and she tries to smile back. "You want me to sing for you?" She shakes her head quickly, I do it anyway, 'Cheer up, baby, cheer up, baby," I whisper-sing horribly and Jjoo covers my mouth quickly but she's finally smiling.
"This song isn't widely known, but it's one by the late singer Jeong Se-yeon who I was a big fan of," The main singer tells us and starts singing.
"Jeong Se-yeon? Isn't he the one who committed suicide last year?" The girls in front of us say.
"Why did it have to be this song of all songs?" Soo-jin wonders out loud, "Han Seo-jun might start with Su-ho again,"
"Why? Is there a history between them?" I ask.
"They were close, Lee Su-ho, Han Seo-jun and Jeong Se-yeon." Soo-jin nods, "Didn't Su-ho tell you?" She asks.
"What?" Ju-kyung leans past me.
"Right, of course, I think I remember that," Soo-ah nods, Ju-kyung and I look at each other in confusion. As the song continues I search up 'Jeong Se-yeon' on my phone and look through the latest articles. My heart breaks a little as I see that he committed due to hate from fans and how he was depressed long before that. I'm not that caught up on idol culture since I never lived here but the toxicity of the fans irks me so much, because even on these articles where they were just hoping he was happier in heaven there were hate comments lurking. I shake my head and turn off my phone, people could be so mean without reason. "I'll get going first," Ju-kyung touches my hand and I nod.
✦•················•✦
I hear the doorbell ring immediately after I walk into the kitchen and I groan, who was here at this hour? I walk to the door and look out the peephole and see a very distressed looking Han Seo-jun. I immediately pull the door open and he falls inside. I close the door behind him and take his face in my hands, there are slow tears falling from his eyes, "Seo-jun? Are you okay?" Dumb question, clearly he's not. He shakes his head slowly and falls into my shoulder. I pat his back as he cries into my shoulder.
"Shhh," I whisper, "It's okay, you're okay, Seo-jun-ah, what happened?" He just continues crying, "Shh, you can tell me, it's okay, we're gonna sit down, okay?" He shakes his head and hugs me tighter. My heart hurts as I listen to him cry, the sobs filling the echoey room.
"Please tell me what's wrong so I can help you, please let me help you," I whisper, I take his hands into mine and lead him to the couch where he immediately starts crying into my shoulder again. My heart clenches tightly like someone just reached into my body and started twisting it.
"I don't know what to do," He cries harder, "I feel so sorry for everyone,"
"Do you need anything?" I whisper, wiping his tears with my thumbs, "Do you want me to get you anything? Water? Food?" He just shakes his head and lays down on my lap.
"Just let me lay here,"
"Of course," I run my fingers through his hair, trying to comfort him as more silent tears run down the side of his face and fall onto my thighs. "Do you want to talk about it?"
"I don't know how to start,"
"That's okay, you only have to talk about it if you want to, I promise I'll just sit here and listen,"
He hiccups slightly, "I just feel so... bad... I don't think I realized... that I wasn't the only one to feel pain... and when... he... died... I blamed it all on him... and now I might lose him too..." He starts crying again and my heart starts twisting again.
"It's okay to feel like that and it's okay to blame people once in a while, we're all human, you know? Everyone makes mistakes and we learn from them, you can still fix things, you can still change things. You're not a bad person, Seo-jun-ah, you could never be a bad person, your heart's too big," He sniffles and closes his eyes and I continue running my fingers through his hair. I could get a pretty good idea about what he was talking about but I wasn't gonna dig deeper until he was willing to tell me, prying never gets you anything except people mad at you.
I sigh and start moving, keeping his head elevated so he doesn't realize, I put a pillow under his head and crouch down beside him. I move his bangs out of his eye and smile sadly, "Please realize, Seo-jun-ah, your soul's so beautiful," I stand up, put a blanket over him and order some food making a special request that they don't ring the doorbell and wake Seo-jun up. I grab the food and reheat it in the microwave and put it out on the island. I check the time and see that it's almost 10 pm and he's been asleep for an hour and a half. Seo-jun probably hasn't eaten anything since lunch so he's probably hungry. I really don't want to wake him up but he has to eat or he'll get sick. I walk over to the couch, crouch down in front of him and tap his shoulder, "Seo-jun-ah, it's time to eat," I say quietly. He groans and opens his eyes slightly then closes them again, shaking his head.
I laugh softly when his stomach rumbles, "If you don't eat, you'll get sick, Seo-jun-ah," He opens his eyes fully now and stares at me for a few seconds.
"I don't think I can stomach ramyeon right now,"
"Don't worry, I ordered take out from this nice ajumma who runs a homemade food restaurant down the road, it's really good," I laugh, he nods and sits up, stretching. He stands and follows me to the island, sitting on the stool next to mine.
"You got bulgogi?!" He claps. "I love bulgogi!" I grin and he immediately starts eating.
"Mmm, this is so good," He moans, "I was so hungry,"
"I know," I watch him and smile.
"Aren't you gonna eat?" He points at the food.
"Nah, I ate before,"
"You want me to eat all this by myself?" He asks, shocked.
"Just eat as much as you can, I'll put the rest in the fridge for my brother tomorrow," He nods and continues eating, he finishes almost all of it and sits on the stool as I clean up and pack things in containers to put in the fridge.
"I wanna watch a drama but I'm not in drama watching attire," He pouts.
"It's fine, you can watch dramas fine in anything,"
"But it's more comfy like that," He groans, "You're not in drama watching attire either,"
"I wasn't planning on watching dramas today,"
"What were you planning on doing?"
"I was just gonna call my friends from America,"
"You can call them, I'll just sit in your room and go on my phone,"
"Alright, sure, but won't your mom be worried?"
"Are you trying to get rid of me?"
"No, I wouldn't dream of it," I fake offense, "I'm just wondering,"
"Nah, she's fine with it, I told her I'd be late today,"
"You wanna sleep over?" I ask, it's really late and I'm not sure if he'll have a mental breakdown again so I don't really want him to hop in a cab and drive home.
"Yeah!" He jumps up and follows me to my room. I called Tay and Mari for a while and Seo-jun did exactly what he said he would, he sat on my bed and scrolled on his phone. I got off the call and sat next to him. "What're you doing?" I lean over and look. He shows me a random post about dogs on Stargram. "Do you like dogs better than cats?"
"Yeah, of course,"
"I used to have a dog back home,"
"Really? What was its name?"
"Her name was Star," I pulled out a phone and showed him a picture of my white poodle.
"I want a dog, but my mom's allergic so I plan on getting one when I'm older," He turns off his phone, "What were you guys talking about? I caught a few words but you guys talk too fast,"
"They were just telling me about their school's drama that I missed out on,"
"I beat our school's drama is better,"
"You'd be surprised," I snort and check the clock, "You wanna sleep now? It's almost midnight and we have to go to school tomorrow,"
"I don't have a change of clothes," Oh right, he was still in his uniform.
"You can wear my brother's," I led him to my brother's room and picked out some gray sweatpants—it might have been intentional but a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do—and a plain white shirt and I threw them at him. "You can change in that washroom but come back to my room after," my brother would have a fit if he realized someone was in his room. I go to my bathroom, do my skin care, change into PJs and when I'm out Seo-jun's already sitting on my bed on his phone again. "Are you looking at dogs again?" I laugh.
He shakes his head and shows me Ju-kyung's Stargram, my heart droops a bit—for some weird reason—but I just smile and sit next to him. "You want me to sleep on the floor?" He asks.
"You can sleep up here, I don't bite," I scoff and roll my eyes. He smiles and snuggles under the covers. I turn off the lights and turn over.
"Good night, Ha-eun-ah, thank you," Is the last thing I hear before I fall asleep.
✦•················•✦
I wake up at my alarm and I shut it off. I groan and feel an arm lazily draped along my waist, I carefully move it so I don't wake Seo-jun up and go to get freshened up and put on my uniform in the bathroom. I'm doing my makeup by the time Seo-jun wakes up. "What're you doing?" He groans.
"Go get ready, we have school," I say back and he just groans again in return. I sigh and stand up, walking to the bed. "Wake- up-," I hit his head lightly.
"Alright alright, you're such a cranky old ajumma," He whines.
"Did you just call me an ajumma?" I glare.
He sticks out his tongue and I go to hit him again but he jumps out of my bed, grabs his uniform from the back of my chair and runs into the bathroom, locking the door. "You're dead when you get out of there, ajussi!" I yell at him and I hear his laughs through the door.
guys so basically ik in the og plot seo-jun was js fine after the whole thing but i kinda wanted to change it cuz we witness such a big milestone in ju-kyung n su-ho's relationship so i js wanted a bit milestone for seo-jun n ha-eun too also i feel like after something like that seo-jun would show a bit more emotion then js i feel bad for ju-kyung cuz like even tho he 'hates' su-ho he was still bsfs w him at one point n like u dont lose that connection that easily n seo-jun prob has trauma from the whole thing too so
also writing this chapter made me cry cuz whenever i wrote abt se-yeon i was reminded of jonghyun n moonbin and then i decided cuz im stupid to go back on their insta accounts n js look through n then i started crying like- i need to stop torturing myself
qotc: whats ur fav subject in school
mine: ela its an easy a (for me)
thanks for reading, see u guys next chapter, mwah
- lise