”The tard left and the only thing he did was writing us a note!?” is what Hansol exclaims when they’re all seated around the dining table at Hansol’s house the next morning; except Jaehyun since he’s frying some eggs to put on their toasts. Even if they all love eating in the barn, nothing beats the smell of fresh toast and freshly brewed coffee an early morning in Busan.

Of course, Taeyong wanted to help Jaehyun with their breakfast and decided for himself to be in charge of making the toast in Hansol’s ancient toaster. You know it’s old when you got to keep an eye on it to make sure it’s not burning. Or well, either it’s old or home made. The second wouldn’t surprise Taeyong the slightest.

Hansol aggressively flails in the air with the hand holding the Post-it note that Yuta left. His face is flushed, much like the tomatoes in his garden.

”Wow, just when you think you know someone and want to spend the rest of your life with him, it appears that he just wanted your house and your food and your alcohol,” he continues, ends his sentence with a frustrated sigh. ”I feel so used.”

”Oh Hansol hyung,” Ten grins. ”I didn’t know you fell so hard for my little Yuta.”

” off and give me his number, how dare he leave he’s not even done cleaning.”

When the two of them busies themselves with what Hansol has to pay to get Yuta’s number, Taeyong glances at Inhye. She’s quietly sipping from her tea, not really getting into the discussion Kun and Johnny are having on the left side of her. Taeyong chews his lower lip anxiously. They need to talk. So badly. About everything. Not a single detail being left out. He’s not going to beat around the bush the slightest, he’s going to be honest and answer every question Inhye asks him.

”Hyung,” Jaehyun’s soft voice suddenly disturbs Taeyong’s thoughts. ”The bread... The bread is burning.”

Taeyong quickly looks down onto the toaster; sees smoke coming from it and shrieks. ”! Sorry.”

Taeyong pulls out the now black toasts. They’re so burnt that they almost pulverised between his fingers. Jaehyun sighs, pouts. Goddamnit his love for food is so extreme that he’s feeling empathic to some toast.

”Hyung... You can sit down. Let... Let me take care of the food from now on.”

Taeyong playfully slaps his lower back. ”Don’t be so cocky, kid,” he grins before sitting down, taking the seat next to Inhye. Well, actually it’s Jaehyun’s seat, but that doesn’t matter anymore. Since Jaehyun is the chef. Now it’s Taeyong’s seat. For God’s sake, the kid is almost youngest here and acts as if he’s the smartest. Taeyong kinda likes it. But he also wants to slap him with kimchi at times.

”Hey,” he says when he sits down.

Inhye blinks, as if she was deep down in her own thoughts. Which she probably was. ”Hey,” she smiles mildly.

Taeyong smiles back. Then he leans a little closer. Quietly he speaks. ”Stay and do the dishes with me, I think we need to talk.”

Inhye stiffens visibly, but then nods.

It takes an hour of jokes and laughter until Taeyong and Inhye volunteers to do the dishes.

”Hansollie hyung,” Ten groans. ”Don’t force us to clean while they’re doing the dishes, can’t we play a game instead?”

Hansol sighs. ”Alright, only this once. Let’s go to the barn and choose game there.”

”Yay!”

Then the kitchen is finally empty, silence filling the room instead of 10 voices at the same time.

”What did you wanna-”

”Let’s do the dishes first,” Taeyong interrupts Inhye. ”How about I do the scrubbing and you the drying and putting the stuff back into the cabinets?”

”Sounds perfect.”

At first it all started out calmly, but after a while it started to become a competition. Taeyong tried to wash the dishes as quickly as possibly and Inhye dry them and putting them back. Somehow it ended up with laughter filling the room again.

”I win,” Taeyong says when the final plate is clean.

”Hey, that’s unfair since I have to dry it for me to be done!”

Taeyong shrugs. ”Life isn’t always fair.”

”I need to call my lawyer for this matter.”

”Fortunately, mine is already here.”

”Yeah, you’re one lucky kid.”

Taeyong smiles, and it’s only when he’s smiling because of Inhye that he understands the concept of smiling from your heart. His whole body is smiling, not only his mouth. Smiling with Inhye makes it feel like his previous smiles didn’t even matter, since they definitely didn’t make him feel this way.

”Let’s take a walk,” he says and pulls off his apron. ”In Seoul we always took walks, how come we haven’t had our walk in Busan yet?”

Inhye nods. ”I agree. We’ve been cleaning and dealing with Ten and Johnny so much that we forgot our origins. Let’s take a walk.”

Outside of the house, they take the path between the paddocks, between all the animals and almost down all the way to the beach instead of the path up into the forest. Taeyong likes it better this way.

Inhye too, since she stops every fifth meter to feed some grass to the horses, then gently petting them as they eat. She looks so peaceful.

”Wish Hansol had taken us out horse riding just once,” she sighs.

”... Do you really want Ten and Johnny to sit on 600 kilograms heavy animals?”

”Alright, maybe not,” Inhye gives the horse a sad eye as it walks away, back to the other horses in the paddock. ”What about a 380 kilogram horse?”

Taeyong laughs, lays down in the grass between two paddocks. The grass is the perfect shade of green with a texture not too moist, but yet not too stiff. As he looks up to the sky, he realises that the only clouds visible are white, very puffy ones. This could all be in a painting from a children’s book. ”This is so relaxing.”

”It is,” Inhye agrees. ”So... what did you want to talk about?”

Taeyong shuts his eyes, takes a deep breath. He’s quiet for a while, thinking of his words thoroughly. He doesn’t want to say anything wrong. Not even the tiniest word. He’s terrified of it, he’s terrified of speaking up. But he knows it, he knows it’s the only right thing to do. For his sake, for Inhye’s sake. God, just the image of how she broke down crying yesterday is enough for him. He can’t have her attached to him like this anymore.

”Everything, but we have to start somewhere. I... Think I need to tell you about my case, about the murder and my high school life. All of it. Not skipping the tiniest detail.”

Inhye is taken aback, not really expecting those words from Taeyong right now. So much have happened out here, she was certain that he’d want to speak about that. Since out here in Busan, they have said that she’s not Lee Taeyong’s lawyer anymore. No, she’s Kim Inhye. A 19 years old, a liar, a coward. She’s a lot of things, but still not a lawyer. So why?

”I thought I wasn’t supposed to be your lawyer here in Busan?”

”... Think of it as me speaking up to someone I really trust, then.”

Taeyong continues speaking before Inhye gets the chance to say anything. ”You know how it is to be in school... There’s a constant competition between students. Especially of the best ranks in studying, or looks. Or best clothes. Anything. It’s always something. Anyways, in school you’re either bullied, or you’re bullying. The loners are the lucky ones, I’d say.” He sighs, hoping Inhye doesn’t see his shaking hands that he tries to hide in the grass so dearly. ”In my class, I was first in rank after almost every test, effortlessly. I’m a fast learner, I could play games when I got home instead of studying like the rest and still got the best grades. Kids envy you, so there was this guy who always came right behind me in the ranks... He bullied me so much, said that I don’t need good grades because I’d end up using my looks for a job in the end. I don’t know really, he just said that I wouldn’t become anything anyways and shouldn’t waste my time. And because one started, everyone ended up bullying me. Someone just needs the courage to start bullying. Somehow I got so scared of going to school that I deliberately let my rank drop. For I don’t know how long I tried to stay as low as possible. There’s five names I remember from high school, and God I hate that it’s theirs, but... What can I do about it? Anyways, one day I decided that I can’t get bullied anymore. That guy from earlier, I hit him right across the face. And then I took back my rank. It felt great, pushing that name down under me again; Kim Inseong.”

Inhye’s breath is caught in . How old is Taeyong? He’s 20. Inseong’s age. But what’s the probability of that just mentioned Kim Inseong being her older brother Kim Inseong? Like, Korea is full of Kim Inseong’s. Kim Inseong’s that are obsessed with studying. Right?

”After that I somehow became labeled as a bully. People didn’t bully me anymore because of that, since my statement ‘bullied or bullying’ stays. But that applied to me too; if I didn’t want to get bullied anymore, I felt like I had to bully people. I know that wasn’t the only, neither the best, solution, but that’s what I did. There’s Kim Doyeon, she used to pour her lunch milk into my locker. Now suddenly she started following me like a puppy. I... Did some horrible things to her. God, you’re never going to look at me the same way again after all of this. I was such a douche.”

Inhye shakes her head. ”Please, speak.” Her voice is shaking, but not because of Taeyong’s story. Kim Doyeon. One of Inseong’s closest friends from High School. It has to be a scary coincidence, it has to.

Taeyong nods. ”There’s this second girl; Na Haeryung. She used to be the school’s most popular girl. She was pretty, she was smart; all the boys wanted her. Damn, even I couldn’t resist her charm. She wasn’t in my class, but still used to talk about me, one day I heard that she crushed on me and I got mad; ‘why did she bully me when I was kind but now that I’m a bully myself she suddenly crushes on me?’. So I agreed to date her, dated her for a few months until I made out with Doyeon in school. I had just used both of them to ruin them. Because they used to bully me and I wanted to bully them. To cut this short; it somehow became a thing that Haeryung got cheated on and suddenly she wasn’t as popular as before anymore. She got the label as ‘someone so easy that you can even cheat on her’, and Doyeon of course got the worst blow out of the incident. God, she didn’t show up to school for months. Then there’s this guy...”

Inhye prays to God that it’s not the name she thinks it is.

”Nam Soohyun,” Inhye almost broke down crying by Taeyong saying that. ”A sporty guy. He was a really kind guy, but he was so attached to Inseong so he just did what he did. He used to smash my locker at my fingers, take my pocket money, basically was in charge of the physical bullying. One day, Soohyun came to sit with me instead of Inseong. I got him expelled... He graduated a year after us because he got expelled for such a long time. Somehow I got my hands onto some cigarettes and made him think that it’s a cool thing to do. One day when he was smoking behind the building with a bunch of freshmen, I told some teachers about it. They caught him and... Yeah.”

That explains why Soohyun always smells like cigarettes, it must’ve been an addiction since early age, Inhye thinks, chewing her bottom lip. She still has a hard time believing all this, she’s waiting for Taeyong to just break out laughing and telling her that this is all just her big brother’s prank. He doesn’t break out laughing, and a frown in growing between his eyebrows. Inhye has met these four people, but Min Dabin...

”What about Min Dabin?” Inhye finally asks, since it felt like Taeyong was waiting for the question.

Taeyong groans. ”She used to get bullied as well, but as soon as they started bullying me she joined them. She wanted the popularity. She just... I thought she was going to stand up for me since she had experienced the same, but she turned into a bully. Now I understand her, since I did the same; went from getting bullied to bullying, but back then I didn’t. However, when everyone else stopped bullying me she stopped as well, and later she confessed her feelings to me. I got mad, so I just accepted her feelings. I dated her for a long while, made her feel loved and then told her that I was just using her for my own good. ‘Why would I ever date someone like you?’. God, I regret everything but what can I do? The girl is dead. I can’t even apologise properly.”

”She’s dead, but you didn’t kill her?” Inhye couldn’t stop that question from leaving her lips. She’s dying of curiosity.

”God, no! Of course I didn’t! I went to the roof and saw her fall. I seriously ran to catch her but couldn’t.”

”Did you just randomly go up to the roof and saw someone commit suicide? According to your case file, she was strangled too. There’s marks of that.”

”Do you think I just by coincidence walked up to the roof? Of course not. I had gotten a text from her that she’s going to jump from the school roof, so I ran up and saw her there, over the ceiling. As soon as I opened the door to the roof I saw her fall and really though she had committed suicide because of me. I felt really bad for it, God I cried my self to sleep until... Until I got framed for murder. Strangled? I didn’t even touch her! I honestly wanted to save her, I’m not a bad person I didn’t bully people because I liked it I was just scared. I swear, those four; Kim Inseong, Kim Doyeon, Nam Soohyun and Na Haeryung are the ones that sued me. I know it.”

”But...”

”For God’s sake, Inhye! They didn’t even investigate the case properly. They said that yes; Min Dabin was strangled but the family didn’t want to undergo autopsy so they don’t know if she had been drugged before or anything. And they didn’t find any fingerprints on her neck. They just assumed that those hands were mine. This whole case is messed up and no one is believing me.”

Inhye reaches out for Taeyong’s hand, noticing how badly it’s shaking. ”Calm down, I believe you.”

Everything is falling to pieces. Why Inseong wanted her to become Taeyong’s lawyer, why Inseong forced her to constantly keep and eye on him, why Inseong is acting like he is.

”Those heads didn’t sue me until after the graduation, but that’s only because they wanted me to serve in prison as an adult, not teenager. The prison penalty for adults are much longer. They tried to be smart, but since the crime was committed by a teenager they gave me the penalty as a teenager.”

”Why didn’t you counter-sue them immediately?”

”You know the saying; the one’s who asks ‘who did it?’ are the ones that actually did it.”

”... So what you’re saying is that they killed her?” Taeyong nods and Inhye feels her stomach turn inside out. God, it can’t be... She’s known Inseong her whole life, he’s her big brother, for Christ’s sake. He’s always been the only one she can turn to when their parents gave her a hard time. ”Taeyong...” Inhye speaks slowly. ”I... I think I can prove you as innocent.”

”You can?” Taeyong failed to hide the tint of happiness in his voice. ”How?”

Inhye shakes her head. ”Just... Believe in me this once. I know I’m a newbie, but I’m serious. I won’t let them put you behind bars again.”

Uuuuuh I've been stuck on this chapter for a year like I've even written many chapters after this one so YEAH idk if it turned out alright, maybe not worth one yEAR's hitaus BUT i'm BACK and I WILL go DOWN with this story. Hell yeah. Thanks to all of you who've been with me since the beginning aND if you happened to find this story NOW you're on of the lucky ones who won't have to suffer a years hiatus. Congrats.

Well as "usual" (if I can even call it usual since it's once a year); comment, up-vote, subscribe and most importantly !!!!!! Enojy ♥️