This is How We Fall Apart → ENHYPEN

1

None of them were prepared for him to die.

In retrospect, no one was really ever fully prepared for a loved one to die, even if it had been laid out for them in advance. However, none of them could've predicted K's death. Not his parents, not his brother, not his friends or their families. The call suddenly came late one night, flipping the world that they knew upside down.

Ni-ki didn't cry once at his funeral. Not because of any feelings he'd had towards K; after all, he was the kind of brother that spoiled his younger brother, giving Ni-ki all of the things he couldn't have. No, Ni-ki didn't cry because he didn't believe it. He secretly waited for K to walk through the door and tell them all it was some kind of elaborate prank. He waited for K to wake him up and tell him this was all some kind of twisted dream. In his mind, K couldn't be dead. Not his brother who lived life with a light in his eyes that couldn't be extinguished, not even when their parents lived paycheck to paycheck. Not his brother who talked about his dreams for the future, about the house he'd buy their family once he gained financial stability.

As he watched the crowds of people come in and out, he waited. Since K was rather popular, there were swarms of people walking in. Some were people Ni-ki recognized, the ones who hugged him and told him how much K loved him. Others were people he didn't know, but they spoke sadly about how amazing his brother had been. It was easy to tell who came out of formality and who came because they needed to be there. How well some of his classmates had known K, if even at all. Perhaps he should've been grateful they'd come, but instead, he was bitter. How come none of them brought K with them?

Yet, his brother didn't come to the funeral. He didn't sneak up behind them when they buried his casket. He didn't show up in the time after when his parents cried with each other when they thought Ni-ki wasn't looking. He didn't show up when their whole family didn't have the strength to do anything other than lay around his room and wonder why he had died so soon. Why him, when he'd done everything right? He'd matched with the University of Pennsylvania through QuestBridge and secured a job at a financial firm nearly impossible to obtain straight out of college. He worked in New York City but managed to get transportation back to their home in the Philadelphia suburbs every weekend to spend meal times as a family. He had a lot of friends and helped out at the food pantry in their town they used to rely on after church on Sundays. So why did the world snatch him away from them? Why was he taken at the ripe age of 25, before his life truly began?

None of it seemed real. Not the call his dad answered at 2 am on a Friday from Sunoo's mom, a family friend and surgeon at a hospital in North Jersey. Ni-ki didn't know the full scope of what had happened initially. If he wasn't awake playing video games, his parents probably wouldn't have taken him to the hospital at all. If this was a normal night, they'd probably take away his computer for staying up so late on it. Yet, this was not a normal night. That night, his dad nearly grabbed him by the collar of his shirt, speaking so fast that Ni-ki couldn't understand him. However, he saw the tears in his parents' eyes and knew that the best course of action was to shut his mouth. Ni-ki drove that night, given his parents were too riled up to think clearly. If he had known what had happened, he probably wouldn't have been able to drive either. Yet, he didn't know, so he tried to make sense of the tense silence for the two-hour drive.

It didn't feel real when they got there, and he heard what the doctors were saying. It still didn't feel real when he saw K's body resting on the hospital bed, covered in bandages and bruises. It didn't register when he saw the machine flat-line and the nurses rushed over to do CPR, pushing him out of the room. It didn't feel real when Sunoo's mom held her head low and apologized for K's death, even when there was nothing more the doctors and nurses could do. No, none of it felt real. Ni-ki couldn't believe it was real, even as the hours stretched to days.