Breaking Rules

RULE # 34: CLOSE YOUR EYES

Let Me

The girls asked to be left alone and Ji couldn't do anything about it.

After the meeting with Teddy, they lost all drive to practice and decided to go back to their apartment. They ate together but did not discuss what was going to happen.

He boldly took a seat beside Dara and didn't give a care whether the others saw how he piled her with food and kept looking at her eating.

Ji knew that, despite her hearty appetite, she had crumbled inside already – just like Minji, Bom, and CL who ate mechanically.

After lunch, the girls had a concensus to go to their room and asked everyone to leave them alone for the whole day. Ji wanted to tell them that they needed their sunbaes now more than any other time but saw the sadness etched in their eyes.

He wanted to hug each of them and assure them that they were going to work out something but knew that that was a hard promise to make. A hand squeezing his heart, he agreed to let them go and put a hand on Seung-ri's shoulder who was going after the girls.

"Hyung!" the maknae reacted but he shook his head.

"They need this" he told Seung-ri "As of the moment, we can't do anything for them yet."

"This is unfair!" Daesung screamed to the walls of Ji's apartment.

"We can still do something about this" Seung-ri said aloud "the club has a lot of patrons and I'm sure that they will not allow this."

"You have to also see it from where Teddy is standing" T.O.P. answered "We might defy them but as they said, they'll make sure that Teddy will sink so low he'd never emerge again. And these men have that capability. He's choosing the best way to protect the girls and protect us too."

"But what will they be doing now? If they can't even be allowed to work again at the club even as part of the crew, they'd have to look for jobs elsewhere and we all know it's the recession. Finding a job is really really difficult. And we won't even be able to see them just as much as we want to. They'll be going away just when I've become used to having them around."

Seung-ri was breathing hard after the speech to which YB patted him on the back "They've grown on you haven't they?"

"Am I alone in feeling that?" Seung-ri retorted.

"No" YB answered "We all feel the same way but... T.O.P.-hyung has a point. We need to help the girls with a solution but we also have to open ourselves to the idea that that solution might not involve them going back to the club anymore."

***

Thorns

They hugged one another and cried.

It was one of the saddest days of Dara's life.

"How are we going to start over?" Minji asked weakly "Where are we going to begin?"

"We'll find jobs" Bom answered "We'll... we'll find another job that we also love."

"But what if I don't get to work with you guys anymore?" the maknae asked, her voice breaking.

"Ow don't think that!" CL told her, trying to lighten up the mood "We'll find a job where we will still be together. We can't work apart coz you all know that you need me. Nobody else can control Dara like me so I always have to look after her. And Bomtori needs someone who'll also look out after her, most specially with what she eats. And you need me to make sure everything's going to be ok."