Until the end of winter
Please stay with me a little longer

-spring day, bts

"Is Shownu alright?" There was a look of worry marred on Haneul's face, only then I remembered I had not told her about the incident, and I did not have the right too, though she was there to witness at least some of it.

The name caused me pain, Shownu's melancholic smile visited my hazy thoughts, some of those warm memories I had made with Shownu washed me over, yet I fell in gloom.

Wonho said that we would be together- all of us, forever, under the starry sky when winter snow glazed over us but our hearts were blazing in warmth for our eternal friendship.

Where were they now?

Where was this forever?

"Shownu had to move away somewhere, or so I have heard." The lie blossomed from my mouth and the pang of pain hit me in the chest when I saw Haneul's glum face.

"That's good then... I hope he's happy, wherever he is."

Would he be happy? Just like our despondent days were running with regret I knew Shownu was feeling it too, perhaps, way more pain than any of us.

And there was no way to know.

"Did Jooheon come to class today?" I asked Haneul and she nodded a yes. Minhyuk, Hyungwon, Jooheon, and Changkyun were out of sight, I hadn't seen them in the university for a while. I hadn't seen any of them.

The place where I'd first met them, the English club had its activities held temporarily, I did not know what amount of time this temporary meant.

The clan club was already gone with the wind, so were Wonho, Kihyun, and Shownu. All of it felt like a distant memory now, all of them.

"I thought something was going on between you and Kihyun, is he-"

"He moved away too, Haneul," I stopped her before the words could cause more pain. "Nothing really was going between him and me." Another damned lie. "Could Jooheon still be in your department room right now?"

"I think so, I think I saw him sitting outside before I left." She looked a bit shocked for my abrupt behavior. As a friend, she did deserve some kind of answer, but I wasn't the one to fill in her on that.

Jooheon was indeed alone, sitting by the glass wall of the fourth floor where the Korean Literature department was situated. It was noon and even in the midst of winter the scorching sun was reflecting on the glass and falling on his face. I had never really seen him alone on the campus before, without Changkyun or Shownu by his side.

"Jooheon." When I called him by his name he flinched from his slumped position, startled eyes looking up at me and immediately he let his guard down again.

I took in a breath, my fists clenched inside my coat's pocket. "Can we go and see Ryujoon?"

For a moment it was silent. The hallway wasn't buzzing with students, the noon at this hour could be as lonely as midnight. Jooheon did not have any change in his facial expression, though he looked like he was pondering over my sudden suggestion.

"I thought you'd ask for Shownu hyung," slowly he said, "But he is still in the hospital recovering and he would not see anyone no matter what."

Just as I had thought, Shownu was suffering alone. Pushing everyone away, and bearing the burden on his shoulders in self-isolation. I might have cried again but it was enough crying for me. Though suppressing myself was just as hard.

"Are you sure you want to go where he's held?" Jooheon stood up anyway. "It takes three hours by car. The detention center is far from Seoul."

I nodded a yes and there was a vague enthusiasm on his face before he walked up to me. "If we take the bus now we can get there before evening."

Days of doldrums certainly seemed like it had taken a toll on Jooheon. When before our every day was filled with happiness, maybe not all the time, but together, life was better.

Together was happiness in itself.

The months I spent with Jooheon I had come to know he was a very talkative person, a chatterbox, a blabbermouth- whatever it was, but it was a glue that kept the boys together. Every one of them had different personalities contradicting each other. Yet they were like vibrant and divergent colors that somehow mixed well together like a rainbow.

The Jooheon that sat beside me on the bus was different. He no longer felt vibrant, silently he just sat by my side with his eyes closed and arms crossed over his chest.

Looking at the view outside, I had my vision becoming blurry again, for the millionth time. Here I had thought it was enough crying for me. It wasn't.

Just like the mist that enveloped the outskirts of the city, no signs of vegetation in the empty and deserted road. The bleak winter felt like it was never-ending.

Would there be a time when we would be happy and together again?

Three hours passed excruciatingly slow but with the distance becoming smaller, the anticipation was growing on me, clawing on the inside of my guts.

Was I ready to face a killer? Was I ready to face the one who started and ended all this? I wanted some form of closure; answers but the questions were making me think otherwise.

The detention center was made in the deserted place, tall building looming in the wintery fog that spread across the horizon.

Jooheon made the arrangements for me alone. I was given ten minutes to meet Kim Ryujoon. Everything happened in a haze, I was growing anxious and nauseated. Barely had I made out Jooheon mouthing a 'stay strong' to me.

I needed to stay strong but it seemed like Jooheon needed those words more than me. His face was as pale as chalk, surely he was not ready to face whom I was facing.

I met Ryujoon behind a thin wall of glass that separated the small world of the confined people from those like me who were free. His outfit was ashen gray just like the paint that was coating the whole building, and just like the desert that was outside. His hair was cut in a buzzed line, making his cheek scar more visible and prominent.

There was another thing that was prominent on his face, and that was regret.

I knew because for the past few weeks, regret was the only thing I had been dealing with.

I picked up the phone that was given for me to talk to him and he mirrored my action, pressing the telephone against his ears. The hatred I had for him at that moment was diminishing, I did not really know what to feel when I saw his stone face with eyes filled with unexplainable sorrow.

The questions I had in my mind were out of reach, I did not know what to say anymore.

"Why did you do that?" Do what? He had done so much wrong but my question was vast.

Ryujoon looked like he expected that. He breathed out, the sound distant coming through the chord that connected us. Then he spoke against the phone, "Shownu's father was hurting him. The bad deeds he was committing were affecting Shownu."

He thought I had asked why he killed Shownu's father. Suddenly the hatred sparked inside me again. The man in front of me was a murderer, a cruel killer masked under a normal vessel and hiding behind sick excuses. He loved Shownu, he seemed like he adored him but murdering his father could not be the solution. Murder could never be a solution.

I had seen Shownu talking about his father, his face sad and his tone depressed. No matter what, he still loved his father. The death impacted him and his mother so much that he did something none of us ever expected from him.

"Why did you hurt Shownu then? Why did you stab his arm?" I spat the next questions with rage. Ryujoon's lips quivered and he looked away from me quickly, I could see him clutching on the telephone so tightly as if he would break it with his hand alone.

"I did not mean to... he had the gun. He was going to shoot me and I..., I acted on instinct. It was an accident."

He choked on his last words, the guard behind him approaching seeing him breaking down. How could an accident be so fatal? Before I acted more on impulse I slammed the phone down and stormed out of the room.

Outside I balled my fist and let go, I kept repeating as I took steady and long breaths to calm myself down. There was anger boiling inside me, anger I had seemingly inherited from someone and now it had latched onto me.

But the anger would not get me anywhere, because what happened, had happened. The time I spent on researching how to control explosive anger seemed like it was working. Soon I had calmed down, not entirely at peace but more stable than before.

Evening had engulfed the grim desert outside and the sea blue sky had cascaded down to earth itself. Jooheon sat on a bench with a paper cup in his hand, steam emanating from the coffee that he had forgotten to take a taste of.

Silently I went and sat by him, staring into the void, nothingness while night quickly approached like a predator hunting down its prey.

Then I slumped my shoulders, too tired of sitting uptight, too tired of the old memories haunting me every second of the day. "How's the rest?"

"Changkyun does not come out of his room. Hyungwon sleeps all day and does not talk. They need..." A short pause before Jooheon uttered the word, "Time."

Would time really make everything better?

"Kihyun, Wonho, and Minhyuk left to Japan," he said, looking down at his black coffee that had gotten cold with the below zero temperature.

Puffs of fog were coming out of his mouth with every word, the night was cold and it was numbing my skin. My emotions were numbed too, because I couldn't even be surprised hearing that Minhyuk had left with them.

"I think Minhyuk hyung will come back, after some time. He's torn. He does not know which one of us needs him more now. The ones that had left, or us that need to stay."

I did not know if Minhyuk would come back, maybe he would. And if he would I would be there for him. He was running around to aid the rest but he needed someone too.

No matter what I could not get his pallid face out of my mind from the last time I had seen him. Minhyuk definitely was broken.

"What about you?" When I asked and turned to Jooheon I was surprised to see his cheeks wet, tears streaming down his face and falling on his lap, and in his cup of coffee.

"I don't even know how to feel, I just..." He choked up and let out a sigh, refusing to look up at me. More tears rushed down his face and I could feel my heart breaking into shards. "I don't know. Shownu hyung never even harmed a fly, how in edge must have he been to attempt something like that?"

I scooted closer as he kept trembling in his position. I couldn't be there for any of them, but I wanted to be there for him, I wanted to be there for the ones that had to stay.

Carefully, I placed a hand on his back, and I placed another on his front. From the side, I engulfed him in a hug.

For a moment he tensed up, then he melted into my arms. He let his body fall to the side and he put his face on the crook of my neck, his tears wetting my shoulder and muffled whimpers close to my ear.

"I just miss Shownu, I miss him putting on glasses at night, and no matter how much I'd nag he wouldn't hang outside anymore, like a dad. I miss Wonho, I miss him ordering a lot of food at the middle of the night and wake everyone up to share, I miss Kihyun scrubbing the refrigerator as soon as we would come back from a trip, I miss his constant nagging, I miss Minhyuk bullying me and the rest nonstop, I miss Hyungwon smiling despite the physical pain we caused him some time, I miss Changkyun's obsession with flirting with us, I..., I miss myself. I miss us together."

As if Jooheon's mouth was taped shut all this time and when the seal was off he could not but keep rambling on and on. I could feel my eyes welling up again, these guys had spent years together. For me, it was months, yet they had become my everything in those months.

"Now Shownu hyung will be in jail, at least the gun was licensed, at least we have proof that we did not partake in our parent's activities. Still, he will get a few months if he's lucky and after that? Will he be the same again? Will any of us?"

He was afraid of the exact thing that I was, that nothing would ever be the same again. Despite the crippling fear, I stopped him abruptly by holding his shoulder blades and distanced himself from me, make him look straight into my eyes.

"Someday, it will be okay again. It isn't over until it's over." I did not know where the sudden strength came from, I was never really good with words when it came to speaking. "We need to stay strong for ourselves, and them. We can work on the English club in the meantime. When things are better again we will be together, and we will take back what is rightfully ours."

I was dubious in my words. Where was this determination coming from? Maybe it was the anger that I was turning into determination.

"We are all still under the same sky, this could not be the goodbye from everything we have worked for, Jooheon."

My voice was strange to my own ears, full of courage unlike it had ever been. Even Jooheon was watching me with awe. Then he sobbed again and rubbed his eye with a hand. "Okay...," he said.

The puzzle couldn't be completed without all of its pieces.

The pieces were missing, they were scattered all over but at least they were there somewhere. Maybe they were crooked now, maybe they were not in the same shape like before, but they were still important and they still held their true meaning.

Someday the puzzle had to be completed, and someday this cruel winter had to end.

Even though I was met with the same cursed fate as my mom, I still had someone left by my side, like my mom had me.

They needed me just like I needed them. And I trusted them enough to hope they would come back someday.

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A/n: this book will be ending this week! Please look forward.

Also my wonho fanfiction, "until the end of time" is out. If you'd like to read please add it to your private library so you won't miss an update.