“Please stop crying…”

“You’ll get over it, you’ll see.”

“You’re better off without him.  You’re too good for him anyway.”

Baro sat perfectly still on the sofa, his eyes trained on the television, staring but not really seeing anything. He winced every now and then as Mi Ra’s sobs reached his ears. He could hear the others, mostly Jinyoung and Shinwoo, murmur gentle, comforting words. He wanted to join them too. He wanted to hug Mi Ra and tell that everything will be okay. He wanted to wipe her tears and make her smile again, but he couldn’t bring himself to cross the distance that separated him from the girl who was still crying in the kitchen. He wanted to comfort her, make sure she was okay but he couldn’t.

Not when he wasn’t sure he was okay himself.

Mi Ra had come home crying more than two hours ago. She refused to tell them at first, but Sandeul’s incessant questions and Gongchan’s fail-proof aegyo finally did her in, and she told them what had happened.

Her jerk of a boyfriend, that good-for-nothing Min Jun, dumped her. The guy had switched schools about a month ago, and hadn’t contacted her since. Mi Ra only saw him by accident. Apparently he and his friends were heading to a bar. He had another girl with him. Min Jun dumped her in public, saying she was boring and too uptight.

It made Baro want to hit something. Or, more specifically, someone.

It had been almost two months ago, when he first realized he was starting to have emotions—human emotions. He realized it when Mi Ra took him shopping, just the two of them. It was the first time that he got to spend more than an hour with her without anyone else butting in.