There are no silver linings. Soojung would assert to anyone who says otherwise. In her world, everything is all gray area and uncertainty has been her companion for the longest time.

Lee Taemin and Kim Jongin saw something worthy in her--- what it was, she didn’t really know. Those two boys… they were such beautiful, odd creatures.

They knew her for barely half a day and took her under their wing with not even a protest or the slightest bit of contemplation. She fit right in almost as quickly.

They must have seen the broken in her in her eyes; of how empty they were. Or perhaps they saw it with the way she seems to be carrying the weight of the world in her delicate arms.

It didn’t take much for her to realize that they were just as broken as her.

Taemin was her warmth. To her, he shone the brightest amongst everyone else. Soojung has too much darkness, both in her past and in her thoughts. And when she is with him, she finds herself feeding off of his brightness. And for a little while she would glimmer too.

Jongin was a whole different story. He was quite the lone wolf. He and Taemin were nothing short of inseparable but all too often Soojung would find him staring far off into nothingness, deeply occupied by the poignant thoughts running through his head. They shared a darkness somehow, Jongin and her; something borne from seeing too much. Feeling too much. Thinking too much.

It is in Taemin’s arms where Soojung feels comfort. It is in Jongin’s words where she finds peace.

“You know what? In the end, we’re all nothing.” Soojung says, brushing away a loose eyelash from Taemin’s cheek. He settles his head comfortably on her lap, sleepily rubbing his cheek on the soft expanse of her thigh.

“What made you say that?” he asks her as he mindlessly runs his fingertips over the dewy blades of the grass.

Seeing his amused grin, Krystal decides that only Jongin would understand so instead she answers, “Nothing. It was nothing.”

At the back of her mind she could almost hear Jongin say, “In the end we’re all going to die and poof! We’re nothing at all.”

Soojung shrugs her thoughts away; the weight of Taemin’s head on her lap almost feels so comforting that she forgets the roughness of the tree bark where her back is leaned on and her eyes slowly shut for a nap.

Jongin likes to give