Happily Ever After?

Chapter 20

Hey look. Twenty chapters. And a story that has spiraled well beyond what I thought it would.

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San's POV

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SecretARMY378: Hey. Sorry I haven't been replying to you lately. I've been swamped with work. I picked up so many hours to cover this holiday rush we have going on. My boss has kept me plenty busy. And... I need the won. I spent the last of mine getting a special gift. Do I regret that though? Absolutely not. I know the outcome will be worth it.

Do you have any plans for the holidays? I really don't. Mom and dad have stopped so far, so I'm hoping my family lasts through Christmas. Guess we'll see. I plan on playing games, and binging as much fanfiction as I can. Yours are still my favorite though.

I guess that's all I got this time. I'm sorry I couldn't be there in person, but... I doubt you'd want me there anyway. I'm not that interesting. See you around BangtanBadBoi.

I hit the send before I could second guess myself. I hadn't meant to ignore him on Wattpad. Not really. But I could barely talk to him without bile clawing at my throat. How could I pretend to be so nice to him on here when in real life I was so vile? One thing was for sure though, he'd never look at me the same way again if I told him who I was. So he couldn't know.

I was trying to fix this. Really, I was. I knew what I'd done was bad. I'd always known it. It wasn't fair. It wasn't nice. He didn't deserve it. I knew all of that. But right now it seemed the damage had been irreversibly done. Wooyoung wouldn't even look in my direction anymore. How could I fix this without breaking him further? That's all I did to him. I broke him. Then I broke him some more until his pieces were so indistinguishable that it was hard to believe they'd ever fit together again.

"Hey." I barely looked up as Mingi sat at the end of my bed. It was so commonplace for them to show up around here. It never seemed weird to me until very recently. Maybe they shouldn't have had such easy access to my house. But right now I didn't care. Not when it felt like an abyss would swallow me whole. "Did you hear?" he asked, shattering my silence. I shot him a curious look. "About Hongjoong and Seonghwa hyung?" he elaborated.

"No?" I said, sitting a bit straighter. Mingi's face pinched, and all at once I realized what he meant. "Oh." I flopped back against the headboard. "Oh wow. When..." I left the question stretched between the two of us. Mingi lifted one shoulder in a half-hearted shrug, lips drooping in a pout. I briefly pondered what could be running through his head. "I'm happy for them," I added as a kind of afterthought, musing this quietly to myself. "If anyone deserves happiness, it's them."

"I guess," Mingi huffed. Now I sat up again, tilting my head to the side. "What if they get so wrapped up in each other they forget about us entirely?" he blurted. I blinked slowly. That definitely wasn't the question I was expecting. "It's probably why they never visited us until now. What, suddenly we aren't good enough for them? Did... Did they ever need us?"

"Mingi, come on now." I tried to sound as reassuring as possible. But what he said... It made twisted sense. "That's not it at all. They're just busy. They've spent every day with us since getting back. Do you think they'd just forget about us like that?" I forced out a chuckle. But Mingi bit his lip and glanced at a point on the wall opposite him.

"Yeah, they could," he whispered. "They've got their own lives. Why would they want to be friends with us any longer?" He finally turned to me. "Would you want to be friends with us after what we've done?" I fell silent at that, guilt coursing through my entire body. No, I wouldn't. "Have you talked to Yeosang or Wooyoung?" Mingi asked suddenly. I flinched, thinking back to my encounter with the two of them a few days ago.