THE seven members frantically ran around the house to gather their things in their luggages. Felix stuffed one of his favorite shirts inside the luggage before turning to Minho, who looked up at the sound of the doorbell ringing.

"Who's at the door?" Minho yelled out, causing Jisung to shrug and hurry towards the door to open it.

When he did, however, he stopped in his tracks.

A strange girl with dyed-blonde hair, blue eyes and a tight, insincere smile chuckled darkly at him, making him gulp.

"G-Guys?"

But Felix was already by his side, shaking his head at the girl with a fearful expression.

"W-What are you doing here?"

She smirked.

"I'm here," she scoffed, "to say goodbye to my beloved boyfriend."

Felix shook his head in protest, "I'm not your-"

"Anyways," she interrupted him mid-sentence, "you know how I promised to send that beautiful picture to dear Mal yesterday?" She made an insincere sad, pouting face, "as it turns out, poor Jeongin saw the picture. Now he knows you all are alive, and he's heartbroken and feeling betrayed more than ever."

In the distance, Chan stopped as soon as he heard Jeongin's name, and began shaking his head while hearing the rest of the sentence, unsure what to say.

Octavia noticed.

"Oh, he's convinced y'all pretended to be dead so you can abandon him. Now he doesn't even want to see you."

Chan allowed a small tear to stream down his face, his heart aching.

"Why would you tell him that?" Chan asked in a broken tone, "you know that's not true!"

She giggled.

"Do you actually think I care? You would be a fool if you think I do! For all you need to know, I'm going to post this article on The Washington Post, and this will be the main photo."

She let out a polaroid picture from her Michael Kors purse and shoved it into Felix's face, and as soon as he saw what it contained, he let out a muffled sob and covered his mouth.

The very same picture she had already sent to Mal's phone. The picture that had Felix kissing her back for a mere second.

"No..." Felix began, "No, you can't do this!"

"Wanna bet?" She responded in a darker tone.

"Why are you doing this?" Jisung asked, his eyes glued to the picture before him.

"Because as soon as he left to America to seek shelter from your manager, I get dumped and humiliated by my peers from school, because he found someone better! I got bullied everyday because Felix, everyone's fucking angel, chose someone else over me! Guess who it is, the rich and powerful Mal!"

Felix could only allow himself to feel the dull ache in his heart as he heard the pain in her tone.

"Listen to me! I'm sorry you got bullied because of me, but it's not my fault! You don't have to ruin my life for it!"

She sent him a tight smirk.

"Oh, but I will. I will ruin your life for it, Felix. This is all your damn fault! I'm going to send her the link to that article and I'll make sure she sees it to know how you've all abandoned her and she's going to be heartbroken. Just like Yang Jeongin."

She then flipped her hair as she walked out of the door, leaving the members to stare at the place she once stood at, distress and pure confusion filling them up.

"What was that about?" Seungmin slowly asked after a few moments of silence.

"Jeongin thinks we abandoned him..." Chan whispered weakly, "and now Mal is going to think the same!"

"This is a fucking disaster! We can't lose our friends like this..." Minho retorted, "Chan, we have to fix this!"

"I know! We have to a plane to catch in two hours so please, pack your bags so we can go fix whatever bullshit we just put ourselves into."

They all nodded and frantically hurried to their bedrooms to pack their things.

☂︎

Jeongin tossed himself on his bed and sighed heavily, hearing the sound of dust being swept off the floor just outside his door. He knew he should've helped the family clean their house, but as soon as he tried to take hold of the broom, they told him to go rest and not to bother, which made him feel more guilty than before.

Staying in someone's completely safe, gigantic house for free was something, but not doing anything to help around was something else. Something he would surely feel guilty for.

"Why didn't you tell me they died?! I just wanna know why!" Rajwan yelled to his sister, his voice cracked with heartbreak.

"They didn't die," Jeongin immediately thought, "they abandoned us."

"Because I wasn't ready, that's why!" He heard the familiar voice of his older friend yell back, followed by a series of coughs as she inhaled the atoms of dust while sweeping, "you don't know how it made me feel! You would never know how I'm feeling!"

There was a pause that lasted for a good moment.

"You could've at least told me..." the slightly younger brother muttered in a broken tone, "you know how it made me feel when I know that he's not returning my texts because he's freaking dead?!"

Mal shook her head, her eyes tearful.

"I didn't want to make it true..." She coughed again, trying to catch her breath, "I lost the seven of them at once. Seungmin was my best friend, and I loved him too. But what they went through... It was enough and I didn't want to remember."

Hold on a damn minute.

Jeongin sat up in his seat as he was hit by the realization.

If the seven were still alive...

Why wasn't Seungmin returning his worried boyfriend's texts?

____________________