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44. BREAKUP SONGS
分割曲

THE COOL BREEZE caused hodan's blue and pink floral scarf to flap behind her and pull back to reveal more of her hair. adjusting it for the umpteenth time, she sighed. "i swear i've aged ten years in the last two weeks." she remarked tiredly before pointing to visible curly black wisps. "look, i've started sprouting grey hairs."

the weather was getting cooler as fall slowly approached. with the sun peeking from behind pale clouds and the breeze drifting through, the park was a comfortable meeting place.

"tell me about it. i feel like i inherited a son." namjoon groaned, throwing his head forward. "jungkook's been staying over at our place for a while now. joon and i have barely gotten any sleep ever since." jimin drawled out tiredly, leaning back against the tree behind him.

"why? does he sob through the night too?" cathryn looked up with slightly reddened eyes. "i wish." namjoon scoffed. "i mean, i've heard him cry sometimes but he's always quiet so we don't hear him. him crying is not a problem."

"jungkook is more on the self-destructive path. he disappears all day and comes back a mess. yesterday, he said he was going to the gym and came back with his face covered in bruises and cuts with a black eye to bring the whole look together. he looked like shit. he insisted he got them from sparring." jimin expatiated, shutting his eyes with a heavy breath.

"from sparring? what kind of sparring is that?" kash's brows drew together in a frown. "the fuck? you sure he didn't get in a fight?" hodan blinked. "he didn't answer our questions. it's like raising a teenager going through a rebellious phase. i'm pretty sure i look twenty years older than i should. i feel like it too. the injuries are not even half of it." namjoon took a sip of his chocolate milkshake.

"first, he dyed his hair and we were like oh, he's handling this better than we thought and the peach colour actually suits him. ha! he was only warming up." his voice was full of dry humour.

"that's when he started disappearing to god knows where and not answering our calls or texts. i was seriously considering putting a tracking device on him." jimin sighed, fingers sifting through his hair. "and since he doesn't have lia to help put him to sleep anymore, he's been heavily relying on his sleeping pills."

"which brings us to problem number two." two of namjoon's long sleek fingers were held up. "the side effects of those goddamn sleeping pills." the boy sounded thoroughly frustrated.

"sometimes, he has terrible nightmares and i think a lot of them have to do with lia." jimin continued. "we've both nearly had heart attacks from his screams of horror. i don't even want to imagine what he sees." he shook his head, a bothered expression on his face.

"and don't get me started on the sleepwalking. that's our nightmare. the first night he walked out of our apartment in his sleep. we nearly went batshit the next morning when we found the front door wide open and he was gone." namjoon looked like he was just about ready to cry. "we found him passed out in the elevator minutes later."

"he nearly set the apartment on fire once, trying to cook. sat on the floor of the balcony with glassy eyes and was just randomly calling out stars and constellations. jump kicked joon when he tried to stop him from leaving the apartment again, near well broke his nose too." jimin listed off one by one.

the older boy grabbed his nose at the mention of the unfortunate incident. "and of course he remembers none of it in the morning. and then he just vanishes for the day. i'd kill him if he wasn't so heartbroken." he rubbed his nose, recalling the blinding pain he'd felt that night.

"yikes. you guys have the shorter end of the stick for sure." cathryn sported a look of horror. "i'll take the crying, cursing, binging on ice cream, bad dramas, the too loud breakup songs and erratic designing over that any day." kash cringed, visibly shivering. "i still can't get it must have been love out of my head."

"i never knew someone else's breakup could cause me so much suffering." hodan let out a heavy breath, shutting her eyes. "same." all four of them replied at the same time.

"jungkook is lia's first love and the heartbreak has turned her to a wreck. cheesecake has become the voldermort of our lives. poor apollo tried to make her feel better and bought her a raspberry cream cheesecake because he thought she'd like sweets. but she just broke down in tears. my poor baby was so confused." cathryn rested her cheek on her open palm, a sigh leaving her lips. "i don't know how she's going to handle being apart from everyone like this."

"technically, you two won't really be apart. both your schools are in manhattan after all." kash pointed out. "maybe, but like she said, we're attending different schools with different schedules. it may be hard to see each other. ailey is no joke. doesn't seem like sva is either. but weekends i can be on her ass like white on rice." cathryn nodded thoughtfully.

"right now, we have to think about how we can get them back together." hodan steered the topic back. "kook's easy. we just have to tell him he's a big fat assumptive idiot of legendary proportions and he'll go running back to lia." namjoon stated, taking another sip of his milkshake.

"the problem is if she'll take him back." cathryn brushed her hair back. "lord knows if apollo falsely accused me of cheating and made such a huge ruckus in public, i'll give him hell when he comes crawling back. a public and embarrassing heartbreak is not easy to come back from or forgive. and i am petty." she drew out the last word for emphasis.

"the truth is, there isn't much we can do on our end. lia's too devastated for us to try and convince her to take him back if he realises what he's done. it's all on jungkook to fix this." hodan stared ahead distractedly.

"and it's on joon and i to help him realise just how big of a mistake he's made." jimin sighed again as the wind blew blond silky tresses around.

kash pressed her lips together, eyes on the ground. "if this doesn't work, we'll have to watch our friends suffer needlessly." she mumbled. hodan glared at her soft yellow painted nails, before fisting her hand. "this has to fucking work."

☀️☀️☀️

so here it is! by (not so) popular demand! leave an inline comment next to the character you want to ask a question. btw this would close when the story is over and i start working on the q&a chapter. (now closed.)

🐻 aaliyah

🐻 jungkook

🐻 jimin

🐻 namjoon

🐻 hodan

🐻 cathryn

🐻 kash

🐻 apollo

🐻 kaleb

🐻 charlie

🐻 darryl

🐻 valeria

🐻 gillian

🐻 gabriel

🐻 me

damn i hope i'm not missing anyone. sorry if this chapter isn't as exciting.
but wow six more chapters. i'm going to start a countdown lmao.