𝐓𝐄𝐄𝐍 𝐀𝐒𝐒𝐀𝐒𝐒𝐈𝐍 | 𝐛𝐭𝐬

SIXTEEN (Part I)

2 YEARS + 1 MONTH AGO

2016

(y/n) – 14| Rosé – 18

Rosé's P.O.V

(y/n)'s in my room. She's been avoiding me for so long, but lately she's here all the time. It makes me happy.

And sad. Because it's different. She's quiet. She almost never laughs anymore. I wish she could laugh and it could be easy between us, that Jisoo could come over when (y/n)'s here and we could all three just hand out.

I'm using braille display on my new laptop. I've had speech-to-text technology for a while, but this way I can read everything instead of waiting for the computer to read it for me. This is one of the things I tried to get the public school system to bring in, but they never had the budget to aid one blind student. Now all I have to do is find the products and technology I want to try, tell CL about them, and within a week they're here.

My fingers fly through websites for research on my senior project, an examination of adaptations of the Cassandra myth from ancient Greece.

"This display is freaky cool, (y/n)."

"Mmm hmm."

"You're doing homework?"

"Nope."

"What are you doing?"

"Wondering if a fourteen-year-old who is an accessory to murder can be tried as an adult."

My fingers stop midword. "What? Why would you wonder about that?"

"Just something to think about. It seems like for most crimes your won't get tried as an adult, but for murder they push the age pretty low."

I frown. "Is this for class?" Only Jisoo is left from her age group. Kids leave the school a lot for other programs run by the foundation or get kicked out because the curriculum isn't working for them. I'm so relieved it's never happened to us. Aunt Jiwon hasn't even written to us in two years. I worry about (y/n) getting kicked out—I literally have no idea what we would do. What I would do.

"Class? Oh, I never go to class. Why would I go to class?"

I knock the braille display over as I whip around to face her. "What do you mean, you aren't going to class?"

"Class comes to me. I read a lot. Sleep a lot. Nobody cares."

"That's terrible! I can't believe this. What kind of curriculum do they have you on? I understand that they're flexible, but that's unacceptable." I pause, not wanting to ask, needing to ask. "Are they . . . are you doing those weird self-defense things again?"

"Mostly running and strength training. You never know when you'll need to sprint three miles. Besides, we're focused on breaking and entering now. Also there's this kid in our class called Kim Namjoon? I'm pretty sure I heard a few calling him RM or something, too. Anyway, he's the ace of the class, at the moment."

"That's not funny."

"It really isn't, is it?"

I stand and walk over to my bed, feel for her. Her head is hanging off the edge, upside down. Her hair has gotten long, longer than it was when I saw her in the vision on the beach. I wonder how else she's changed.

"You aren't happy, are you?" I had been hoping she'd adapt, that whatever weird things were going on with her, whatever strange dynamic she had here would change. I swallow hard. I am a terrible person. I know she's not happy. She hasn't been happy in months. Years. But I keep waiting and hoping. Not because I thought she'd change, because I needed her to be happy so I could keep being happy here.