Chapter 41

I know it's gon' be lonely, 'cause everyone keeps turning me down

For a single second, there was utter silence. Time had grown cold and frozen over, and I could revel in that last moment before everything crashed down into ruin.

And then it was over, and a thousand words rushed to my lips and died on my tongue.

You can't.

But why?

It isn't fair.

You can't.

It isn't—

"I will give you all privacy."

JYP. That was JYP's voice. And the creak of the chair as it was pushed back, the three pairs of footsteps heading towards the door—those were his as well, unfamiliar sounds and noises that didn't belong in this dorm, this home.

The sound of him leaving found my ears, but the words he'd said and the devastation he'd wrecked did not go with him.

Come back, I wanted to scream. You can't leave those words here, rotting in our air like a putrid smell.

But he was gone, and he'd left them to crumble.

Them. Stray Kids. The members.

Chan.

Changbin.

Darkness folded around my vision, bringing me to another place, another room, another time. Changbin's voice, cracking with desperation, scratchy over the phone. Telling me of his worst fear that was threatening to become reality.

His worst fear that was becoming a reality right now, right before his eyes and mine.

I blinked, and blinked again, until the shadows cleared from my vision like cobweb memories. I was sitting on the chair, just like I had been before. JYP must have just left.

I stood, shakily, turning towards the members, towards my brother. "Bin...?"

He met my eyes, and I knew the last ten minutes had been real as the anguish written plainly on his face slid a thick blade up between my ribs, cutting off my breath.

"Bin," I whispered, and then he was reaching for me, and I tucked his head against my shoulder like when we were children and he wouldn't stop crying and I didn't know what else to do. He was broken softness and fragile memories and living nightmares in my arms and I clung to him like he was the last thing in the world, because however much this was hurting me, it was hurting him a thousand times worse.

My voice broke the silence over the members, and though my eyes were squeezed shut, I heard Jeongin say Chan's name, his voice small.

"I'm sorry," Chan said, and it sounded wrong again, his voice—like the wall behind his eyes had been demolished, but when he spoke he kept tripping over the rubble, trying to piece it back together and offer comfort at the same time.

Changbin let go of me slightly, and I pulled back, looking to the others. Their faces were all ashen, shards of ice.

"It'll be okay," Chan said, putting his arm over Jeongin's shoulders. The maknae fell into him, his breathing loud and unsteady. "It'll all be okay."

I wondered if even he could hear the hollowness of his words.

-

Two hours.

That's how long it had been since the world had forever tilted off-balance. I only knew the time because I'd checked my watch sometime when JYP had been at the dorm. 

It felt like two minutes.

It felt like forever.

No one was full-on crying, yet. I could see they were all in too much shock to do much of anything except hold each other.

We'd stayed in the living room, but most of the members had moved to the floor—the chairs were too normalized, the couch where JYP had sat too raw.

Jisung and Minho had found each other, now sitting together close on the floor—closer than they should be. I guessed secrecy was pointless now, when they had such little time left.

Changbin was sitting with me, curled against my body like we used to be, tears drying in neat lines on his cheeks like raindrops on windows. Hyunjin sat on the floor, rocking slightly. Every few seconds, his gaze would slip over to Felix, and his expression would morph into a look so completely agonized I had to look away myself. I didn't think Felix noticed; his eyes were fixed on a point on the far wall, and for once, his hands were to himself rather than reaching for the members, folded primly in his lap.

I had no words. What can anyone say to something like this?

-

The last time I saw people breaking around me like this was my first memory.

I remember it so clearly, but when people ask me, what's your earliest memory? I am always careful to say it is of picking up my baby brother, or falling and cutting my arm. I know not to tell them about this moment my small, four-year old brain had seared into my memory, vivid and sharp enough around the edges I felt like I was bleeding whenever I thought about it. What's your earliest memory? is a light question, a conversation starter. If people knew mine was of a funeral, they wouldn't ever ask again.

I remember ... I remember being oddly fascinated by it, the breaking. I watched their faces shatter, watched their voices die in their throats, watched them crumble like burning bridges with confusion and curiosity. But what I remember most is turning to my mother and seeing it on her face too.

Whatever I was going to say had vanished from my mind. I'd never seen her broken before. I hadn't realized she could break at all. Where everyone else was delicate glass, thin porcelain, fragile ceramic, my mother had always been steel. Powerful, imposing, and blank. 

But it seems that even steel has a breaking point.

What's wrong, omma? I asked her, small and afraid, and she looked down at me, blinking like she'd forgotten I was there. I was scared. I'd been expecting stability, security, from my mother—relying on it. Now I didn't know what to rely on. 

Her gaze was empty, fractured and unseeing, as she told me flatly, Halmeoni is gone.

I didn't understand. How could I? I was four. I did not yet know death, did not yet know what lung cancer was, did not yet know how it could take grandmothers who you only knew barely and never return them. When is she coming back?

My mother's face shattered a little bit more, and she looked away.

I was struck by shock, the kind of shock that penetrated the warm, golden-flowered world in my head that only a child's mind can build. I'd done that—my words had broken her like that, crushed the wall behind her eyes another inch lower. I was scared of myself, scared of doing that to her again, scared of all these things I didn't understand in this pale new world with all its ice and stone.

So for the rest of my life, I did everything I could to make it right. I tried as hard as I possibly could to repair the brokenness behind my mother's eyes, because I felt responsible and because I was afraid of not having her to hold on to. I became a dutiful daughter, following her wishes and hanging on to her scraps of love like they were the only thing left in the world, even as it slowly began to break me too, even as I began to drown in it.

And it was never enough.

She never recovered from my grandmother—her mother's—death. Never fixed that brokenness inside her. No matter how much I tried to do it for her.

It was a long time before I was finally able to shake the mantra in my head of maybe if I had just tried harder, it would have been enough.

It was never on me to bring my mother back from her grief, because I'd never understood it; I'd never been close to halmeoni. And although my grandmother had never been much to me, it was her hands that had shaped the clay of my mother into something hard and bitter, her spiteful words that had formed my mother's withered perception of the world, her death that had shaken my mother so badly she forgot all her promises to never raise me the way she had been raised---all her defiance and ambitions and intent to give me the childhood she'd wished for, one where I didn't have to bear a mother's bruises on my skin from harsh words and raised fists.

She tried so hard to be different. To break the cycle. To learn how to be a mother that loved instead of bruised.

Maybe if she had just tried harder, it would have been enough.

But love cannot be self-taught. And it because of that, our love has always been dirty, and stained, and tainted like rotten fruit. No matter how many times she tried and failed to forgive me for my grandmother's death, like her mother had never forgave her for the death of her father. No matter how many times she vowed to hold me tenderly, never make me flinch from her touch like she had with her mother's. No matter how many times she attempted to teach herself how to love me, because the only thing she'd ever called love was my grandmother's cruelty. It was my grandmother's rotten love that my mother drowned in and spilled into me. Her dirty, tainted love that bruised my mother's flesh and heart, broke her into pieces of shattered glass, and reforged her as steel. 

My mother tried to break the cycle, but in the end, the cycle broke her.

Maybe that was the truth, that I never understood. Steel is not powerful, or imposing. Steel is what glass turns into after it shatters. 

And shattered glass, just like rotten love, can make you bleed.

-

Four hours.

It must have been past dinnertime, but I wasn't hungry, and even if I had been I wouldn't have felt like eating.

The photos were still on the coffee table; JYP had left them for us. He probably had his own copies. I couldn't stop staring at them. Two little pictures that had done so much damage.

"I'm sorry," I said roughly, and even that made me feel guilty as my words grated against the frozen silence coating the dorm, some of the members flinching at the sudden noise. "Jeongin. I—I should have been more careful. Everything he said ... the photos..."

"It's not your fault, Yeji," Jeongin said quietly, not looking up. "Fans think whatever they want to think. We can't change it."

We can't change it. Four new words that struck four new blows over my chest. Four new words I instantly hated.

"He's right," said Chan, voice toneless. His eyes flicked to me, but I got the sense that he wasn't really seeing me. "It's not your fault," he continued. "It's mine."

I frowned. Right and wrong didn't hold the same weight they used to, but I knew—even in my muddled, underwater brain—that was wrong.

"Chan," I said, my voice awkward, rough with disuse. I let go of Changbin and stood unsteadily, wincing as the joints in my knees popped. "Can I talk to you?"

Chan blinked at me, his eyes slowly focusing, and nodded mutely. I gave Bin's hand one last squeeze before leading Chan into his room.

The door clicked shut, the sound breaking through numb, icy demeanor of the living room. I said, my throat clenching, "Chan."

"Don't," Chan said in a strained voice, emotions ripping over his features for the first time in hours. "The members can say what they want to me, Yeji, but not you. Don't try to make me feel better."

I walked closer, touching his arm. "It's not your fault."

"Bullshit," he snapped, wrenching his arm away; I flinched. "Bullshit it's not my fault. I'm supposed to lead them—I'm supposed to lead them—" he cut himself off, going over to brace his hands on his desk. I bit my lip, wanting to reach out but also fearing him a little bit. This side of him he was showing now, the one he devoted to the members—the one that led Talk Time and caught Jeongin when he fell and was serious and sensible ... it was now burning to ash behind his eyes, and it frightened me a little even as my heart wrenched for him. 

The line of his shoulders tightened, his breath rattling in the air; his head lifted, and then, with sudden fury, he was grabbing the blanket on the wall above him, tearing it off, ripping at the post-its and threads like he was attacking them, hurling it all onto his bed, burning and burning—

And that secret wall, that hidden landscape of words and lyrics and dreams...

That wall was now destroyed. Scattered Post-its dotted the floor like neon stars, only a few still hanging on to the wall, even more messy than before. The order of it used to make sense to Chan—all the random scrawls and oddly-placed notes had simply been a different language to him, one he could read with ease. But now ... now, I doubted even he could make sense of this.

Chan gazed down at the scattered remains of the wall, shoulders slumping. "I'm the leader," he said quietly, not bothering to turn to face me. "It's no one else's fault but mine."

I stepped forward, banishing my fear, and wrapped my arms around his back, willing him not to pull away again. He didn't—let me hug him instead, tightly enough to hurt.

"I don't know how to fix this, Yeji," he whispered, tired and heavy. "I failed them. Overworking myself; Jeongin collapsing; not being there for Jisung when he needed me; and now—now this. I failed them." He swallowed hard, voice catching. "Maybe ... maybe if I had—had tried harder, it would have been enough."

My eyes burned, and something about those words fixed themselves against the back of my throat, cutting hotly like shards of glass, or stone, or maybe even steel. "We'll fix it," I told him, knotting my fingers in the back of his shirt. "We'll find a way. I promise. I swear, we'll fix it." My fingers were tapping again, and I didn't have the strength to make them stop. Pointer finger, middle finger, ring finger.

After a while—minutes or hours, I had no way to tell—Chan drew in a shuddering breath, pulling back. "Okay," he whispered, dragging a hand through his hair. "Okay."

He stepped out of the room, and I followed.

The members looked up as we walked in. Chan met their eyes, his shoulders square. "I'm going to talk to JYP tomorrow," he told them. "Get more information—find a way to reason with him. He's gone back on final decisions before. 

"And even if he doesn't..." Chan's voice cracked, and he swallowed. "It would have been worth it, okay? Even if we—even if we disband. These years ... it would have been worth it, for me."

Minho nodded, his eyes glittering; Changbin met Chan's eyes. Seungmin swallowed but said nothing, his eyes fixed on the floor.

"I just want you all to know—" Chan stopped, fighting to keep his voice calm. "I just want you all to know that I love you," he said, and that was when they broke.

I'd seen the members cry before. I'd seen them sad, seen their faces wrought with it; but this was different. This was a new kind of despair, the kind that came with goodbyes, the kind of helplessness of losing something so quickly without being able to stop it, and I knew then that the looks on their faces—the utter brokenness—was something that would live on in my memory, until the day I died and after. I was seeing Stray Kids broken, Stray Kids shattered, and all I could do was watch it happen.

No.

Felix was curled in himself, trying to stop his body from shaking. Chan went over to him, face grim, and held Felix so tightly it couldn't have been comfortable, like if he just held him tight enough, he could keep his group together.

No.

My fingers were tapping again, but this time there was no rhythm, no pattern. It was hectic, uncoordinated, my hand trembling in between beats. Not this. Not them.

Jeongin kept turning his head this way and that, looking from one member to the next like a child who'd lost their parent at the supermarket, seeking guidance. He found none. He swallowed tightly, face closing off like a door being shut, his gaze falling to the ground. His hyungs couldn't reassure him, couldn't ruffle his hair and make it better. Not anymore. Seungmin and Changbin were together by the chairs, my brother touching his friend's face like they'd used to, when Seungmin was lying on the couch and Changbin had laid down on the floor under him. Now the moment was sullied with the sadness in the air; rather than being sleepy and playful, each touch had a ring of finality. Changbin touched Seungmin's cheek like that touch was his last.

I can't watch this. I can't just sit here with a fucking front-row seat and witness this. I won't.

Minho—Minho was crying, whatever hold he usually kept on his emotions gone—and not the quiet crying Hyunjin was doing, sitting with his hands curled over his knees and his tears soaking his jeans, but loud, ugly crying. Minho wiped his arm on his sleeve to muffle his sniffles, looking like he'd be embarrassed if he wasn't so distraught. Jisung sat next to Minho, wordlessly rubbing Hyunjin's back in comfort, the duo that was usually so full of energy now silent and subdued.

And Jisung, Jisung who needed someone else to physically stop him from moving, Jisung who got so anxious he would fall over because his legs were shaking so bad, was finally, utterly, irrevocably still.

He wasn't even blinking.

No.

My mind was spinning, twisting and turning on its axis, so much that I felt dizzy. The scene before me, the members' faces—it shook in time to the battering of my heart against my chest, and my throat dried. I could see where this road led, as clearly as if it was happening now.

The images came to me, unbidden.

Felix beaten and broken, missing home.

Jeongin slipping and falling.

Minho quitting dancing.

Seungmin believing that his father had been right about him.

Hyunjin put on display in a gilded cage.

Jisung forever chasing the lights, always just a hair away.

Changbin, my brother, reliving his worst nightmare.

And Chan—Chan, who had always been there for them, had always given everything to hold them together—losing control. Feeling their hands ripped out of his, feeling the promise he'd made so long ago cleaving in two: that he would protect them, each and every one.

Claire—STAY—waiting for the people that had given them a home. Waiting forever.

My breath rattled through my lungs like a hurricane.

I failed them. Overworking myself; Jeongin collapsing; not being there for Jisung when he needed me; and now—now this. I failed them. 

Maybe ... maybe if I had—had tried harder, it would have been enough.

Maybe if I had just tried harder, it would have been enough.

That was what did me, in the end. That was the moment—with their futures spread out to me like some sick tapestry on show—that I realized I saw far too much of myself in them. Jisung's ambition, Seungmin's fear of not living up to his parents, Hyunjin's insecurities of being defined by other people's assumptions, Felix's secrecy, Chan's creativity, Minho's protectiveness, Jeongin's wisdom, Changbin's love—they were all me, except better, wholer, greater, and there was nothing I wouldn't do for them—these people who had somehow managed to own my heart so completely I felt like it was as shattered as they were. There was no length I would not go to protect them.

And this—they might be safe now, but they weren't okay. Not remotely. They were broken, broken at the thought of being torn apart. I could see it in each one of their faces.

What would I do to make them smile again?

That was when I finally understood the answer.

Anything.

-

In the safety of my bedroom, I picked up my phone and dialed the number I told myself I would never call.

She picked up on the first ring.

"Yes, Yeji?" said my mother.