Jimmy's Bar. Dead end.
Snake Lounge. Dead end.
Club Eclipse. Dead end.
Your old house. Dead end.
Super 180 Motel. Dead end.
The papers and the envelope. Both dead ends.
You finally got to your apartment after hours of running through the underground streets. You rubbed your nose against your sweater paw and frowned a bit at the shiny line of snot, which made you wipe the sleeve off on your pants.
Reaching the top of you apartment stairs, you dragged your feet to the front of your door. The sides and edges of the envelope were worn out from your hopeful grip and sweat. While you fumbled around your pocket to feel for your keys you noticed that wet droplets were falling onto the package.
A pipe leak? You thought to yourself as you looked up at the ceiling roof that stretched out and stopped above the railing. There was a crack in the filthy white plaster of the ceiling roofs material, and the same dead bugs caught in the webs surrounding the single light above your apartment door. But no water.
Shrugging it off you look back and tiredly pushed your keys into the door knob. Sniffling again you wiped your nose with your sleeve, but your fingers brushed against your cheeks feeling a sudden wetness. Hesitantly tracing your fingers up till you stopped right under your eye you realize it wasn't a leak getting the packet wet.
You were crying. And you didn't feel it or noticed it, until now.
Suddenly feeling weight drop onto your body you hugged the envelope tightly as you dropped down onto your knees. Your lip kept trembling even as you bit it. Lowering your head down to curl up a bit while holding the package, as if you were trying to protect it. Or protect yourself from the countless disappointments it actually held. You sniff again as you watch more tears fill your vision before falling onto the ground in front of you.
Small cries still escape your mouth, making you bit into your bottom lip harder. You didn't know why you were crying. Maybe your body is trying to tell you physically that it's throwing in the towel. Or maybe it's the fear that all the work, time, and effort you're spending to risk your life to find answers; will just keep disappointing you. It could also be the crushing pressuring thoughts from the back of your head that keeps telling you to give up. There's a million reasons to explain your unexpected cry fest, or break down.
Finally able to overpower your body's sudden weigh down, you unlocked your door and sluggishly pushed yourself inside. Leaning back against the door you used your own weight to close it shut after taking the key out. Wiping off the streaks of tears that stained your face, you shuffled your feet as you kicked your shoes off. Walking down the hall you tossed the envelope packet onto the kitchen counter. You were relieved when you noticed the night lights were on, illuminating your apartment as you went to your room.
You fell onto your bed with your right side sinking into the used mattress, as soon as your shins gently tapped against the side. Closing your eyes after fighting your heavy lids for the past hours, you curled up onto the bed. You pulled a pillow into you arms and wrapped your arms around it tightly. Pressing your face into the people, you kept replaying your wild goose chase in your head. Your hands curled up into fists thinking about all the dead ends after dead ends. But you weren't ready to give up, if it was the other way around you knew dad would look for the truth. Look for the real killer. At least that's what you kept telling yourself.
Relaxing your tense laying position you exhaled loudly before you felt yourself drift off. Until your body shot straight up, making you sit on the edge of the bed from your alarm clock. Which sounded like world war 2, due to it's warped out parts. Squinting to read the clock in the dark you grumbled, 'fuck', before getting up and putting on your school uniform.
You felt sweaty and gross, like your blazer suddenly became too small and hot for you to wear. Slowly you took off your school blazer, it was mid September so you didn't know why your body felt like it was in the middle of a heat storm. Quickly brushing out your hair, you put your glasses on while coughing.
You cleared your throat because it felt like slime has been building up in the back of your throat for the past hours. You rubbed your cheeks a bit before grabbing your blazer and heading out. You looked over at the spotty lighting of your cold empty apartment before leaving. You were use to being alone, but it never meant you liked being alone.
------------
When you finally got to school, you noticed that the maknaes weren't creating chaos at the lockers in the morning like they usually do. As you changed shoes you saw something run by out if the corner of your eye. Quickly looking over you saw the back of a girl run off to class while reading a workbook. You check the time and realized you were roughly an hour late, rubbing out the creases in your forehead confused, you were sure you left early.
Feeling heated up again out of no where, you undid the top button on your shirt before gripping the front to fan yourself. Every minute you stayed at school you could feel your energy giving out. You took at least five different cold medicines before you left but you still felt sluggish and heated as hell.
Twisting your foot a bit until you felt the heel of your school shoe slip on, you went off to class but stopped in front of a poster. Looking at the newish tape that's peeling of the white painted walls, you read the large bold text.
'Students who fail any subject finals will have to do mandatory tutoring and retakes during fall break.'
Now it hit you why they wanted to study out of nowhere. You wouldn't want to get stuck here over break, but you never even failed a practice test so you were confident without studying. Before you could head off to class someone stopped you by grabbing the back of your shirt. Looking over you met eyes with Suga, or at least Ms. Yoongi.
"You look like shit." He said after his eyes traced over every detail of your face.
"I do not want to hear that from someone dressed in high school drag." You replied with while tiredly hitting his arm away making him let go of you. You fixed the front of your shirt since he pull on it from the back.
"You say it like I like dressing up like this." He gestured to the uniform and blew the wig hairs out of his face. Reaching into your blazer pocket that you had tied around your waist, you gave him a hair tie. He cocked an eyebrow at you then at the hair tie you held out. Annoyed with him taking his sweet time on staring you shook your head in annoyance while stepping onto your tippy toes.
His naturally tired eyes widen at you when you suddenly wrapped your arms around his neck. Pressing your chest against his you stared into his eyes with your noses being just a few centimeters. The amount of padding he was using made you fight the urge to grab his fake tiddy.
His onyx eyes darted around as they looked into your [E/C] orbs to figure out what you were thinking. Suddenly his eyes brown furrowed down, like he came back to his sense. You expected him to cuss you out or make snarky comments about how he thinks your trying to get everyone under your finger.
"You're hot, [Y/N]." He said breathlessly. That was not one of the two options I thought of. You thought to yourself as you finished tying his hair into a low pony tail. Stepping back to put more space between you and his now smushed fake boobs. He slowly reached up touching the back of his neck then traced his hand up along his pony tail.
"I already have Jimin trying to climb into my pants, so hard pass." You told him as you fanned yourself with your hand along your neck.
"Don't flatter yourself [Y/N], you're hardly my type." Suga made a sassy comeback as he tucked back some loose hair strands behind his ear.
"Do you even know what a type is?" You finally gathered up enough energy to be a little shit, which you'll regret later on, but you thought 'eh fuck it'. Shifting your weight onto one him you raised your eyebrows at him as you crossed your arms.
"Yes, I do. And it's not you. Either way, I meant you're hot as in," He suddenly cupped the side of your face, "you're about to burst into flames kind of hot." You slide back away from his touch. Suga flinched as if he realized what he was doing, and awkwardly put his hand down. "You have a fever."
"It's a cold. And since when did you start giving a shit about me?" You snapped a bit at him unintentionally, you turned your head away so he couldn't see the faint regret you showed on your face. After an awkwardly tense pause squeezed itself between the two of you he walked past you. Passive aggressively hitting his shoulder against yours as he stormed past, you snapped your head to head as you glared at the back of his head.
"I never started, and I don't." Was all he declared as his school loafers clicked against the wooden floors. You were going to yell back at him, but something got caught in your throat causing you to have coughing fit. Rubbing the skin over your neck a bit you started walking to class again. The arm that had your blazer draped over it, was fanning yourself by grapping the front of your shirt. Ironically enough it made your face feel warmer.
-----------------------
"I'm coming around to collect the tests now. If you left any questions blank or you didn't finish in the given time, it will effect your overall score." The teacher repeated in his tired monotone voice as if he was the one testing for the past three hours. You pulled your sleeve over the heel of your palm and patted along your forehead from the sweat that started to build up under your bangs.
Most of the time you'd breeze through a test in math. But this time you felt like just writing 'I don't know, this will never be relevant or important in the future' for every answer space. Maybe it was because you were starting to feel sweaty, gross, and overheated but you just powered through the test; which took more energy out of you than you'd like to admit. You just kept pushing yourself while thinking that after English you can go home and sleep off the cold.
After the teacher took your test booklet, Tae instantly appeared on top of your desk. "Hey hey, [Y/N]. What did you get for number 12?" He asked anxiously while tapping his nails out of rhythm against your desk. "I overheard other students arguing between 27 or 81 for the answers."
You pressed your fingers against your temples and rubbed them a bit before saying, "I got 81."
"Shit.. I got 27." Tae said getting off your desk. Tae turned his attention else where and asked, "What did you get Jiminie?" You glanced over at him, noticing how he looked disappointedly sad like he just found out someone ate his leftovers, but they still left the box in the fridge giving him false hope.
"Um..." Jimin swallowed a bit and scratched his cheek before mumbling through his pout, "I got -2."
You and Tae both held a moment of silence for Jimin's math grade.
"Whatever, as long as I don't fail I won't get stuck here over break." Jimin grumbles leaning his chair onto it's back two legs.
"Can't Namjoon or Hobi just, I don't know, pay off and or threaten the teachers to make sure you guys pass? Because I assume if they got you all enrolled here overnight, then changing your test scores shouldn't be a problem." You asked, genuinely because a part of you thought they wouldn't even bothered showing up for testing week. Mostly because you knew who they really were really behind their carefree high school boy acts. Or at least as far as you knew who they were.
"Namjoon hyung offered, but we all agreed we wanted to actually do our best in school since we've never gone to high school." Tae answered.
"Except Yoongi hyung, he told Hoseok hyung just to make sure he would pass without drawing attention." Jimin added to Tae's statement.
You would laugh at the irony in what Jimin said, but your throat felt sore as if you've been yelling for the past hour. "So you guys are actually serious about school?"
"Of course, I've always wanted to wear a high school uniform!" Tae beamed with a signature boxy smile while proudly patting the front of his blazer.
"We also figured this might be the only opportunity we'd ever get at being close normal high schoolers. Well normal high schoolers tasked with watching you from time to time." Jimin explained further when he saw your eyebrow raise at Tae's response to you. Suddenly overcome by a coughing fit you nodded before coughing your throat out into your elbow.
Tae peered at you closely squinting, causing you to move away to keep space between the two of you. Not because you didn't like your space being invaded, but because you were use to it at this point, with Tae at least. But because you knew if they got sick Namjoon would get pissy about it or something just as equally stupid as that. "You don't look good." He mumbled as he was examining you with his eyes.
"Maybe you should go to the nurse's, you look like you're burning up." Tae told you, his eyes furrowing with concern.
"It's just a cold, I don't need some underpaid nurse to give me a sticker and tell me to lay down." Was all you said, but it seemed like Tae refuse to budge on your decision. Before he could argue with you the school bell rang out, causing most of your classmates to dart out to lunch like they haven't seen the sun in years. To be fair school was like a prison, even more so during testing week.
You turned away from the two and stood up while picking up your backpack, slinging it over one shoulder. "Seriously [Y/N], or at least just go home. You look like you're pushing yourself too much." Tae stepped next to you to block your way a bit, as if you couldn't just walk the other way around the desk.
I'm not pushing myself hard enough. You thought faster than you could say. Jimin sighed and grabbed Tae's arm before dragging him out of the class. "She's too stubborn, don't bother arguing with her." He told Tae in blunt honesty, which made Tae reluctantly follow him out. Before they stepped out of the room, Tae shot you one more worried look before getting swept away into the crowd of students.
As you headed to the door, you stopped yourself in the doorway. Your vision started to blur and distort itself, causing you to hold onto the doorframe a bit. You swayed and shook your head to yourself before following the traffic of the other students as they bee lined to their lunch spots.