Catch The Stars

Chapter 30

If I'm losing a piece of me, maybe I don't want heaven:

"Joohyun!"

Jennie sucks in a breath and stops walking, glancing at Y/n who momentarily stopped walking too, hearing the woman's agonized voice calling for her daughter.

"It's okay," Y/n mumbles, shooting her a look over her shoulders. Her hand twitches, like it wants to reach for Jennie's. "Come on. Just follow my lead."

And with one look into Y/n's dark eyes, the anxiety that has Jennie hunching up her shoulders ebbs away, eases the tension like a twisted drug taking away the pain.

She nods and starts walking up the steep hill leading to Joohyun's house.

The village feels strange this morning. It's empty and quiet, like something's not quite right.

The sky has cleared up, no more dark clouds looming above them. It's a beautiful day, the prettiest one so far this week.

There are puddles on the ground, yellow pollen swimming on the surface from the rain washing it down over the past few days. Birds are chirping happily, the by now familiar chime of the cows' bells in the distance making this seem like any other morning in the small village.

But it's not.

Joohyun is gone.

Jennie feels like there's a heavy stone pressing down on her chest.

"Please calm down. We will find her-"

"Joohyun! My daughter- My beautiful daughter! She's gone!"

"Auntie please-"

They arrive at Joohyun's house at that moment; walk through the gate to the small garden where days prior Jennie watched Y/n fight Joohyun's cousin, bloody and bruised. Y/n stops Jennie, the back of her hand gently knocking against her stomach, and Jennie stays put behind her, peering over her shoulder to watch what's going on.

She kind of wishes she didn't look.

Joohyun's mother is kneeling on the ground, crying, a crumpled piece of paper on her lap. Another women is trying to calm her down, trying to help her get up and sit down on a chair instead, but the woman is inconsolable.

She's sobbing, loud and unrestrained, repeating Joohyun's name like a mantra.

Some men are shouting inside the house and by now, the commotion has attracted the attention of the other villagers, who arrive with confused expressions on their faces, gasping loudly when other whisper to them about what happened that night.

"Joohyun ran away."

"Minhyuk's daughter, Seulgi, she's gone, too."

"They ran away together? What is the meaning of this?"

"Let's pray it doesn't mean what we think it means."

"What a disgrace. Bringing shame to her family like that."

Jennie feels her blood boil at all the hushed words that are being exchanged around her. A part of her wants to turn around and yell at them to shut the hell up.

To stop worrying about their religion for once and worry about Joohyun and Seulgi who had to leave in the dead of the night and go to a foreign city where god knows what could happen to them.

No one's worried about that, though, are they?

They don't even fucking care about Joohyun.

She'll forever be known as the selfish girl that ran away and left her parents to clean up her mess.