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WOOSHIK'S POV

A tragic love- I never asked my life to be perfect or a fairytale. I have always been au courant with my disorderly, chaotic life. I knew that I was a chaos. But all that I wanted was...

I do not know what I can do now with so much pain. My arms hurt because I can't feel you in my embrace. My eyes hurt because I am crying- didn't I tell you I never cry? My lips hurt since I miss those moments when they developed into a beam just by one sight of you. My whole body hurts. This is not first time something painful has happened to me, then why is it hurting me so much? Why is it hurting me more than anything has ever hurt me before? Maybe that is the saddest thing about love, right? That it could not last forever- "till death do us part", which basically means that the convictions of us not departing from each other is too brittle, whether by other means or by death.

You were, but a poison to me- a poison which I love to drink often. Now that my heart is in a million shards, I realise that a broken heart in books and fiction isn't half as dreadful as it is in reality; poisonous.

"It must have caused you a lot of pain when you looked into my eyes, and I looked away, right?"

Fate is a funny abstraction- you never know what it could be stowing away from your eyesight. After I closed the door, the world became nothing more than a handful of void to me, that is how I feel without you- I feel the emptiness devouring me. I feel achromic like your eyes. I feel insipid.

My own afflictions could never pain me this much, how much the unequivocal thought of seeing tears in your eyes scared me- before I had to be received by the vision, I ran away from that realm, indeed to evade it. I know that I am an escapist, I am a coward who doesn't know how to submit to his own desires-

But that is what love does to you, anyway.

-

Jihyo's luxury sedan came to rest, after he had corroborated the 'dearth' of anyone outside the retreat Daeseong was lodging in.

"We are here, cutie! Shall I drop you off to your room too?" Jihyo's jest initiated to get onto Daeseong's nerves all at once. He pressed the red button on the seat belt receptacle, unbuckling it-

"You know that you are weirdo??" Louring his face at the elder, Daeseong voiced those words as his last, before opening the door and scooting off, thrusting an orange loofah under his arms, Jihyo awarded him with.

Jihyo's voice kept echoing, "Of course I know that! That is my specialty after all!!" Following his chortle of mirth.

Daeseong probed into his pocket to earn their replicate house keys, ignoring all of Jihyo's rambling with detestation. The door to Daeseong's repository opened, he groaned as quietly as he could, propping his elbow towards the helve of their door-

Surreptitiously, Daeseong had a look in the direction of Jihyo.

"What? Missing me already?" Resting his elbow on the steering wheel, Jihyo winked.

Swaying the older man that Daeseong was not yielding his look to Jihyo, rather to the darkness behind him, he lip synced the only word, "Disgusting!"

Jihyo patiently bided his time.

Daeseong, unsteady took a step beyond the door sill- only to turn around and walk back to Jihyo's windshield.

Jihyo wiggled wagged eyebrows, the stealthy smile still lingering.

"Well...." Daeseong cleared his throat, "Uhm...give me a call, after you reach home safely!" Saying that he hurriedly disappeared into his hideaway, securing the door from inside as precipitously as he could.

Jihyo bowed his noddle, pinching his lips in as the blush earned the man in its grasp- he poked his inner cheek with his tongue, trying to subduing the smile, although failing horribly, which in case pinkened his face and neck.

Alternatively, Daeseong strayed from his brogues.

"I went to...meet my girlfriend."

Daeseong's stomach twisted, his gaze briskly being bound for the inciter, nervously- his heart wrenched on seeing Sehun feeling so lost, so despondent and so hurt by those preceding words.

"Oh no..." Daeseong's worries shifted from sentimentality to a configuration of rationality- on that occasion in time Daeseong knew he had no time then to weigh up the risks of whatever just happened.

Not frittering away, Daeseong, putting away the loofah to somewhere else, availed himself to be the brown headed younger's emotional reassurance, at least for a moment, "Eve?" He advanced closer to their pitted divan, landing an abiding palm on Sehun's shoulder.

Sehun had not fallen asleep yet- relaxing his facial muscles those felt too contracted from all the sobbing he did, the bloke got up from being a slug, trim, moving his eyes around and blinking back the tears to prevent them from spilling any farther, all while facing away,

"Oh! Daeseong hyung? When did you come?" He snuffled, hiding half of his mien for Daeseong to not get a slightest hint, "You said you will be making breakf-"

"Eve!" Daeseong shushed him, holding Sehun by his intricate shoulders, "I...I have seen everything. It's...it's okay, really!" He pulled the younger's face by his chin,

"It's totally okay," the black barnets said in a hushed practice. He spread his arms, agape enough to welcome the multiverse. "I know that you're too strong but it's okay to be weak sometimes, Eve. It is okay. Crying is okay. Being weak is okay, believe me! Now let yourself be a little vulnerable just for a while."

"D- Daeseong hyung," Sehun did not show a peny-pinching attitude in plummeting into Daeseong's arms, breaking down from all the exhaustion, hiccoughs ornamenting his sobs.

"I- I th- thought these feelings were ours. I thought these moments were supposed to be ours. But turns out, they were only my thoughts..." his tears bogged down in an interminable resolution.

Daeseong held Sehun in silence, draping his left arm over the other's shoulder, patting it languidly.

"Daeseong hyung?" Sehun effaced the tears with both his arms, mumbling while being buried in Daeseong's chest, "When you adore someone and that person loves somebody else...can there be any worse feeling than it in the world? Is there really anything worse than the admission of unrequited love?"

Daeseong released a snide simper,

"Who would know that any better than me?"

While Daeseong's gaze was aloft, it delved at Minhyuk who was standing, putting his presence out of everyone's sight, by the spandrel, beneath their understair doors- wretched and sniveling.

The brown stranded head rumpled Sehun's thin, streaky, brown hairs,

"We all are fighting our own battles."

-

CHRIS'S POV

Spending hours after primping in front of her mother to look ghastly, deranged and disorderly, Kiara ultimately did not turn me down, she turned up- to end everything which were there between us once and for all.

I was anticipating her, I knew she would come. I had waited for two hours there, if it took some more hours I would have waited that too- because I knew she would come. Because I knew she did have feelings for me, such feeling which I had for her, those I have for her. And that she wouldn't keep me waiting for too long.

My mind keeps backtracking to our doomed morning-

"I asked you to meet me at the woods because in the alleyway behind June-Way is my manager's building, in case you were wondering. If she, by any chance caught us, I don't know about you but I would need to do a lot of explaining. Honestly speaking, I don't want to drain all my energy in explaining things that I was forced into," Kiara buttressed her jaws in, crossing her arms,

"Please get over with whatever bullshit you have to tell me! I don't have enough time with me!!"

"Kiara!!" Chris was dumbfounded, he was cheated out of his stern trust, "Why are you being so rude to me? The Kiara I knew, she was not so discourteous!!"

"Listen here Chris Velasco," Kiara ran a hand through her black ringlets, before pointing a finger at the man, "You might be unemployed, your life might be purposeless or fruitless but I am so sorry to say that I am quite the opposite, polar opposite in fact. I have loads of work to do, I'm serious about earning for myself, or winning the bread for my family. Thus, please don't waste my time, hm?" She flattened her face.

"Fine! I won't waste much of your time, then," Chris gulped the lump forming in his throat, "What have I done wrong to you? Why are you avoiding me, huh?"

"Well, about that..." Kiara inhaled acutely, "I just...don't want to associate myself with some man who does not have a uniform income, in fact a uniform or secure future. I have to be worried about my security," she shrugged, "So I think I deserve someone much better than you. A man who is responsible and who can take care of me, unlike you who only 'serves' others. Understood? Now don't bother me any further," the woman put on her Vincent sunglasses, crossing her arms almost as if she did not have a rue about her talking.

"Kiara..."

"I hope you have got your answer, I shall leave then," she walked away, her heels rattling against the street.

But I believe that was not the truth- she kept stacked in herself more, than what she had told me. And I, Chris Velasco, will not give up on the one lady that I love with all my heart, Kiara Kim, until I get to the bottom of her drastic variation.

-

Minhyuk slammed the door upstairs, storming inside, his nostrils ruddy and flaring. Hot tears streamed through his skin- the tears of resentment, the tears of jealousy.

"Where is Captain, huh???" He roared, "They thought just because I had earplugs on, I was listening to shits that I cared nothing about?" His laughter was uncanny, to a degree psychotic, "Right when Eve was in front of me? They thought I would listen to some other stupid noise apart from my Eve's voice??? Fools!!!"

The man's eyes hardened and narrowed into slits as he watched the earplugs lying on the floor, stepping on them and squadging the expensive lavish pair's performance.

"Lee Wooshik?" Minhyuk stood, his fist clenched by his sides, glaring at the door, "You think you can steal him from me?" He willed his hand to stop shaking,

"I. Will. Never. Let. That. Happen." He put emphasis on each of the words too absurdly.

His face was put unter the spell of wide grin transpired from a wicked joy and downturned eyebrows, which worked its way to a laughter- a laughter of malicious intent that betrayed all of Minhyuk's innocence,

"Just wait..."

"...and watch!"

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