Miyeon's POV:
I'm so riddled right now. Why the frickity frackity is Seungchol here with a rose bouquet? And what's with the babe thing?
My eyes are wandering from Jeonghan to Seungchol, Seungchol to Jeonghan. "I thought she was sleeping in her room?" Seungchol knits his eyebrows together, throwing his head at our direction. He's expecting either me or Jeonghan to answer.
None of us do, because I'm too traumatized by what came flying from Seungchol's mouth like a jet plane and Jeonghan on the other hand is too devastated by my reaction.
"Mimi the thing is...well...I don't have a girlfriend. I have him." Looking nowhere but at his feets with his cheeks and ears flushed scarlet, he points a finger at the other bulky man. "Are you mad? I know I shouldn't have had lied to you about my relationship. I thought you'll hate me for being you know...gay."
He shoots me a desensitized look. "Do you hate me? Are you ashamed of me?"
"Freak are you freaking kidding me right now? Are you out of your mind?" There's a big fat invisible question mark on his face. He actually looks uproarious with that. Except that I can't laugh during this nerve wracking situation.
"Oh God Jeonghan I love you so much. You're the one person I'm indisputably proud of. I'm so so happy for you!!" My heart cries out at the circumstance that Jeonghan thinks I'll hate him and be ashamed of him just because he chose to spend his life with someone who is as the same gender as him.
How can a sister ever bring herself to practically hate or be mad at her only brother for excuse me being gay?
"Thank you." He exhales in relief, a blissful smile of satisfaction twitching it's way up to his lips as he paces forward to hug me.
"So umm should I leave you two alone then? To do your thingy mingy?"
"Yes it'll be nice if you-"
"NO YOU ARE STAYING HERE MIMI YOU AIN'T GOING ANYWHERE." Jeonghan fiercely cuts him off, shaking his head dismissively. I laugh sheepishly at the hysterical sight of a furiously embarrassed Jeonghan and a disappointed over bitter rejection Seungchol.
They're so cute omygosh I wanna squeeze them fit inside my pocket.
"I'll get going then. Goodnight you two." He leaves the bouquet on the night stand and shuts the door. I feel bad for him. Seungchol probably blames me for not being able to spend the night with him.
Jeonghan stares at me like he's expecting me to say something. Unlucky for him because I'm not going to say anything. I'm going to morph into direction action.
You're dead meat big bro.
"Ouchhhhhh- ouch ahhh hey hey why are you hitting me so hard? What did I do?" Wincing dramatically, he wraps his arms around himself. He tries to shield his body by hiding behind Timtim the teddy bear, as I begin to batter him to death with a pillow and my mighty legs.
"Idiot why did you say no? He was legit sad when you turned him down."
He exhales with a chuckle. His dumb ass was probably thinking that I was going charge him for lying to me. He stops laughing and suddenly shifts to being serious.
"I can't let you sleep alone. I can't let you stay out of my sight even for a moment because I'm scared. I'm scared you'll leave again and never come back."
I'm taken aback by the deluged emotions in each of his words. I kept thinking how inconvenient and awkward it is to have a person watch over you and stick to you like superglue for straight 24/7. It's not even one person for me, it's twelve.
All this time, I kept thinking about myself only. I never thought from their perspective, what they're feeling about it.
I'm such a horrible person.
"I'm sorry...I never knew you felt this way."
"You don't have to say sorry. There are other reasons too." What other reasons might there be? Luckily, I don't have to voice out my inquiry because he's already elucidating the first portion of his 'reasons'.
"One of the reason is, if you don't stay with me then Seungchol will crash here every night. He snoors and talks nonsense during sleep. He's this huge, taking over the whole bed like it's his private land and I'm this small, struggling to adjust at a small corner of the bed." Well now that's pretty bad.
"Another reason is there's a thief on the loose. He or she is stealing different stuffs from different houses in the neighbourhood. That thief is stealing foods from our house, mainly cheerios." Now I know why Dokyeom was addressing me as cheerios thief earlier.
Who steals cheerios out of all things by the way?
"We aren't able to catch the thief, he or she is escaping right under our nose everytime. So just in case, it's better not to stay alone. You know you can robbed." I give a small nod of acknowledgment as response.
"Speaking of burglars, do you know where the broomstick is? I'm pretty sure we left it in my room when we ran..."
Crap the darn broomstick.
He seems to be really concerned about it like it's his irreplaceable other half or something. How am I suppose to tell him that I burnt it in our very own backyard out of aggression and vengeance?
"I-I don't know where it is. I didn't notice. But seriously, what's it with you guys and the broomstick?" I reckon him to laugh but he doesn't. He becomes ten times more serious and all sentimental in lieu of sarcastic.
"That broomstick is a lucky charm. It saved our life more than once." He says, rubbing out some fake imaginary tears. I ask him how can a wooden hell besom perchancely save someone's life while it almost took mine.
"Once upon a time, I was showering alone."
Oh my god this is going to be long tiring story.
"Suddenly, a huge creepy lizard emerged out the drain and slowly slithered towards me with glowing eyes and dark evil deeds." He describes the lizard with much vulnerability, as if it is the most vicious creature on this planet.
Like seriously, who fears a lizard at his age?
"The only weapon I had to protect my sanity was that broomstick. If it weren't for it, I would be in pages of the history by now." I'm starting to wonder if he's on any kind of drugs. "After that, we barely see any lizard in this house. We also chased a wild cat with it the other day. Big time. Lucky charm don't you think?"
I nod silently at his nearly-making-any-sense stories. But internally, I am screaming. If they somehow find out that I burned their precious so called lucky charm, they'll one hundred percent declare domestic war against me. Even if they don't, there's still high chances that they will set up a gigantic bonfire and throw me into it.
If I think mathematically, the ashes of that besom probably got dissolved with the soil. So there's no evidence. Means I'm safe. I guess. Until someone digs it's grave up.
RIP broomstick.
"I wonder where it is." He mumbles, putting a finger under his chin. Keep wondering bro. Don't ever find out.
"By the way, you and Coups look good together." His pupils start wandering. He tosses his head to the opposite side, probably trying to hide his redden cheeks. Although he's not directly facing me, I can see a shy grin creeping on to his face.
I'm glad. Moreover relieved about the fact that he finally has someone to take care of him, someone who can lean on when he's having a hard time beside me.
What makes me more pleased is, that someone is none other than our very own fluffball Choi Seungchol.
Third Person's POV:
The older lulls the younger to sleep as night falls. Grimacing, he looks at the box of medicines he regularly feeds her, despite her contradictions.
"How long do I have to keep lying to you Mimi?"
A spark of self condemnation surfaces inside Jeonghan, but he instantaneously shrugs it off. "I'm doing this for her sake. I'm doing this to keep her safe, I can't let her go through a heart break. I can't. I won't. I'm protecting my sister, I'm doing nothing wrong." He says to himself, glimpsing at the peaceful sleeping figure of his loving sister.
Soon enough, the elder sibling joins the younger one into the deep slumber.
Little did he know, Miyeon didn't take the medicines today. She faked the act of taking it. She discovers this morning that these aren't any vitamins as she was told.
These are sleeping pills.
Miyeon's POV:
Though my eyes are closed, I can feel it is past midnight. I'm mystified and irked, why on earth is he forcing me to take sleeping pills and dissembling it?
I never had problems with my sleep. I'm basically a sloth. If no one tells me to wake up, then I can pretty much sleep till the next day and even a day after after that. He knows it, then why?
What happens at night?
***
I'm hearing a voice, it's vauge but a very familiar one. I'm not sure if I'm dreaming right now. I didn't take the pills and I'm in my conscious mind. Which means, I'm not dreaming. I'm hearing it for real. It is getting pretty loud in contrast to the sound of Jeonghan's sustained snoring.
I roughly hypothesize why he is giving me sleeping pills.
He doesn't want me to hear the sounds I'm hearing now, perhaps.
Warily, I remove the comforter from me and get down from the bed. I tiptoe towards the source of the sound, silent and onguard.
I halt on my movements immediately.
Because, I'm now this close to his room.
Wasn't I convinced that he wasn't home and his room was locked away?
It's explicit that the deep booming sound is reverberating around from behind the doors of Mingyu's room.
I want to pace forward and find out what's really going on inside there, but I'm scared.
I'm scared to find out if they were actually lying to me the whole time.
I turn back on my heels, I don't have the guts to look back again. I lack the audacity to stay on my ground longer because the closer I get, the more distinguishable the sound becomes.
I discover that there are voices, not only one voice.
It is altogether dominant and burgeoning.
One of them I recognize, I crave for and I miss the most.
Another is unknown to me, a female voice.
They are expostulating over something. I don't really get what they're saying because I'm too concentrated on the male's voice.
It's deep, gravelly and calm as a millpond.
On the other hand, the female's voice is high pitched, it is shrilling to the point where the tympanic membrane of my ears begin to sting.
I shudder as I hear something made out of glass shatter into pieces abruptly, the sound of it falling appears precipitous and penetrating to my ears. What amuses me is that not a single breathing soul in this domicile is bothered by it, as if it's an accustomed occurrence and they're already immune to it.
When I hear the woman growl, I walk away pusillanimously. My mind is bombarded with questions regarding what I heard and saw. I can't think straight, only one thought is thwacking the insides of me.
Jeonghan and the others are hiding something really big and vital from me.
It'll be a bloodbath tomorrow.
***
"You're exceptionally early today." Jeonghan glances over his shoulders as he neatly folds the bedsheets and places them inside the almirah.
"Care to explain why you are giving me sleeping pills in name of vitamins?" He freezes, an obvious hint of nervousness is emanating from him like luminous floodlight as he directly faces me for a tête-à-tête.
"I-I can explain. There are lot of noises at night that I thought might disturb your sleep. You wouldn't take those if you knew they were sleeping pills. That's why-" I harshly cut him off. "And what kind of noises exactly?"
"Well umm...construction noises and stuff."
I can feel my face contouring into a grunt, vexation over the fact that he's feeding me with lies over and over again is cleaving onto the walls of my mind like a comanche on a mustang. The more he tells, the tighter it becomes.
"Cut the crap. When will you stop lying?" I say in between my gritted teeth. As I tighten my knuckles, I feel my fingernails dugging deep inside the skin of my palm like an injection callously piercing in. "I'm fed up with your lies. I want the truth. About Mingyu."
"What do you mean?"
"Don't act like you have no clue about what I'm saying. I heard voices coming out of his room which I'm certain is his. You told me he took the keys with him when he left. Then how are you planing to explain what I saw and heard? I saw shadows moving from beneath the door gaps of his room, two people were arguing and breaking stuffs in there. Yet you say there's no one."
"Whenever I'm asking you guys about him you shut me down. You guys ignore me. As if Mingyu never existed in the first place. Why? Tell me please. I'm not buying your excuses anymore. I want the truth this time."
He lets out a long debilitated sigh, averting his gaze from me. "I don't know how to tell you this..." His tone is raspy and scarcely audiable. His words come out in shaky murmur.
He sighs once again.
"He is gone. Mingyu is gone."