IF YOU HURT

He had to watch her today.

He had to watch her stutter her way through awkward exchanges between the two of them, how her once impenetrable confidence had gotten so broken that she couldn’t even look him in the eyes as they stumbled their way through a ditzy conversation.

Jiyong couldn’t remember when was the last time he had a proper conversation with her – one that was uninterrupted by her band members or his, by Teddy or the other producers. He couldn’t remember what made them so distant, though they used to be as thick as thieves, with her being one of the first female trainees for YG.

He could remember, though, how she used to be before everything blew up in her face, scarring her for life.

And it hurt him.

As a friend, he should’ve been there for her. As someone who had a similar scandal with hers, he should’ve stayed by her side and watched over her, helped her through it.

But he didn’t.

Instead, now he watched over a broken glass, one so petrified of the world around her that he was afraid to even touch her, frightened that he might jostle her into sheer panic. He could see her wringing her wrists together, quietly discussing her ideas for an album he knew she didn’t have the guts to make after all that’s happened.

“I don’t think it’s worth it,” she whispered, her therapeutic voice now low and desolate. “I don’t think it’s going to work.”

He broke himself then because he knew, and she knew, had it been under different circumstances, she would’ve taken this into stride. She would have loved the notion of making a solo album, filled with songs that suited her perfectly, that encompasses who she was as a person.

But now she was a broken toy and Jiyong didn’t know how he could help her.

“Take it slowly, noona,” he advised after a while, when it was quiet. “You don’t have to rush it.”

It was in her eyes, when she looked into his, that Jiyong knew he had always loved her. Even as time passed and his little crush on her faded, he knew it would always come back to her.

Minzy had been a refreshing change in what was a company filled with hormonal, teenage boys. But when she came in with her powerful vocals and strong attitude, her face unlike anything Jiyong had ever seen for it quite literally took his breath away, he knew he had fallen for her.

And when he heard her voice for the first time, he just knew he was in for it.

But years pass and eventually crushes turn into life lessons that people don’t always get what they want. He never had the courage to ask her out, and she was so determined on making it that he thought it would only hinder her from her true goal if he tried to pursue her.

Time was a , one so deadly that it managed to sever his ties with her completely. Soon, he began dating, and memories of her became forgotten and got replaced by hot kisses and touches, flowers and ‘I-love-you’s.

And then her scandal happened and he watched as she turned from one of the country’s most well-loved vocalists to the most hated woman in the whole of South Korea.

By then it was too late.

He’d stopped talking to her, for whatever reason he couldn’t remember, and these news about her was the first since he last spoke with her.

She burned and burned, to the extent where people began sending death threats to her and her family. She was different – had it been Chaerin, she would’ve shrugged it off easily and remarked sassily, defending herself all the while. But she was Park Bom, and she was sensitive, emotional, kind-hearted and grounded; the finest example of an angel descended from heaven.

Jiyong thought nothing could ever destroy this noona of his, that much he was certain.

But he was proven wrong when Chaerin called him up, in the middle of a recording session with s, panic and desperation etching across her habitually calm voice.

“Oppa, she’s thinking of leaving! Unnie is thinking of leaving!” She sobbed. “Stop her, please! She told me she’d already sent her resignation to sajangnim! Oppa, please!”

He was out the door in a flash, leaving the members staring confusedly at each other.

She was nowhere to be found on that day. Not in their dorms, not in her parent’s house nor her sister’s apartment or hers.

Jiyong was going insane looking for her that day, and when she was finally found, it wasn’t by him.

Chaerin told him later on that YG had found her back in their old building, the one that they had to upgrade from, the very same place where he and s had been trainees in. She had been curled up in the corner of their old dance room, the lights off with only the sound of her own crying when their sajangnim found her.

She told him that YG wouldn’t tell her anything else, just that he would be doing his very best to protect her and that he expected the rest of them to do the same.

Months later, with no news from her – she was an enigma even during the YG Family concerts they had together – and Jiyong was called forward to help produce her new album.

He could see she wasn’t ready.

“Please, Jiyong,” she pleaded. “Don’t make me do this. I can’t. Tell sajangnim that I can’t.”

He was torn.

He wanted to protect her; all his life, all he ever wanted was to see her reach her goal. He figured, once she did, maybe then he could even think about pursuing her properly. And when he failed at that, when he let her go and walk away from him, he decided then and there that she was better off not knowing.

You never really get over your first love, and Jiyong learned that in the hardest way possible.

But she needed this, needed to show the public that what they were saying about her was wrong. She had no right to be treated this way, a so-called criminal who deserved to be put in jail for a crime that seemed ridiculous as much as crime could go.

You were only protecting yourself, noona! He’d wanted to scream at her. You were sick, and you needed as much help as you could get!

But he knew nothing he could ever say would get into her head, now that she was broken beyond belief.

“Let’s just keep working, noona,” he gripped her shoulder, feeling a slight rush as he did so. “Let’s keep working.”

And so they did.

It was painstaking.

He had to pick up the little pieces she dropped, those fragments of her that scattered around her being. Sometimes he cut himself, sometimes he didn’t. Sometimes, if she was feeling better, she would help him. Other times – and this happened more often than not – she would break even further when she accidentally receives another hate mail delivered to her by a thoughtless delivery man.

But he was patient, gentle with her.

He treated her as if she was a fine piece of china, one that had been pushed over its display and shattered into a million pieces. Painfully, carefully, he patched her back.

He could see his music creating a different atmosphere around her, healing the wounds so deeply etched into her heart. He could see the relevance of his music mending her delicately, so much so that when their company president dropped in to visit, he was awed at how much stronger she had grown.

“Thank you, Jiyong-ah. Thank you.” YG was never one to express himself. Jiyong knew how important she was to him, being almost akin to a daughter he never really knew he wanted till he found her.

Then he had his group’s comeback, and everything went to hell.

He couldn’t see her any longer, couldn’t have any private recording sessions with her. Teddy took over his position as her producer, and he was left to promote and fulfil a world tour he just knew would drain all the energy he had from his system.

As much as he loved performing, he only realized just how much he had depended on her in those months they spent together, alone, in the studio with just music. He relied on her as much as she did to him, and he was afraid that whatever he had accomplished with her would be completely decimated when he got back.

He called constantly, sending texts filled with encouragement and advice. Youngbae grew wary of him, warning that she was still fragile and that if he hurt her, even in the slightest way, he would ensure he would find some way to hurt him back tenfold.

He couldn’t blame him, given his reputation as a man who almost always ended it first. Even Kiko, the girl with whom he thought he had a proper shot at a life he had always dreamed of having, he had left.

The months healing Bom only served to mock him about his cowardice, how he was an idiot who let his first love go without so much as a goodbye. He had let her drift away from him, thinking that if it occurred naturally, it wouldn’t hurt as much.

But it did, and now he paid the price.

“I made this today; my own composition and lyrics. Teddy-oppa thought it would be good to include it in the new album. I think so, too. What about you?”

It was a text he didn’t receive till much later, when he was back in his hotel room after a concert and all he wanted to do was sleep. But even if he was exhausted, even if his entire body screamed at him to rest, he still pressed on the file and relaxed against the bed, closing his eyes as he got lost in the melody.

He could hear her pain.

Her longing.

Her sorrow.

Her regret.

He could hear her soul, the very essence of her. The rawness of her voice taking his breath away. He could see her in the lyrics she belted out in a voice he never knew she possessed, surprising him so much that he ached to be with her in that moment.

Whatever she wrote, how she wrote it . . . Jiyong didn’t want to share it with anyone else. He could hear her so clearly, pouring her entire being into this one song that clawed at his chest. The emotions that only she could convey broke through every single word, every syllable that she sang.

By the time she had finished singing, Jiyong was already dialling her number.

“Noona, it’s beautiful.”

She was quiet.

“Noona?”

“I’m so sorry, Jiyong.” And she hung up.

He tried calling her back, multiple times. He even fell asleep with her dial tone ringing in his left ear.

When he woke, it was to Seungri’s hands gently waking him. He jolted awake, yawning slightly before he groggily looked up.

He startled, feeling his heart plummet a billion stories down when he caught sight of his maknae’s expression. The last time he had this face on was during Daesung’s scandal, and even then it wasn’t as bad as this was. He looked around and caught sight of the other members, huddled around his bed, crying freely.

“What happened?”

They couldn’t reply; all of them choked up with their own tears as Seungri shoved his phone roughly towards Jiyong’s numb hands.

He couldn’t believe it at first.

He thought he was still dreaming.

It felt so stupid, so ridiculous. Surreal, even.

And then he blinked and everything came crashing down on him.

2NE1’s Park Bom found dead in her apartment.

He couldn’t remember anything else that occurred then.

Most would say he lost it, tossing the phone angrily against the wall and screaming and yelling his pain, ripping apart the arms that restrained him as he viciously usurped all the furniture in the decadent hotel room. He screamed till he had no more voice, and even then the pain he felt still burned through every cell in his body.

Their tour was put on hiatus, with them immediately flying back to Korea to attend the funeral.

He felt so numb, completely detached from the world. He was standing in a room filled with people who mourned his noona’s death, and he couldn’t find it in him to cry; he had done enough of that in the prison of his own apartment, which became a wretched mess following his many rampages on the nights after her death was announced.

Even if he wanted to cry, he had no more tears left to shed.

He could see Chaerin and the others in complete grief, ceaselessly crying along with her family. They had loved her so much, dedicated most of their lives together working towards their shared dream. Off to the side he could see s, stoically looking over the procession with so much anger on their faces, furious at the absurdity of it all.

Her cause of death was suicide.

And Jiyong knew very well what had conspired, though he refused to be told of it.

She had finally been wholly broken.

The words that cut into her so deeply broke what flimsy barrier he had helped her put up in defence. The threats and spiteful criticisms had taken a toll on her, feeding the demons who still roamed within her with so much self-disgust and loathe that they finally consumed her.

She had given up the fight, exhausted from all the hate sent towards her, and took her life thinking that she was hated. She gave what the public had begged her to do, fulfilling their request for her to kill herself.

The ironic thing was how they now mourned over her death.

Thousands upon thousands of apologetic letters were sent. People were even turning themselves in to the police. Her parents, seeking justice for the death of their beautiful, once perfect daughter, decided to file a case against the remaining perpetrators who had sent her all the hate, the malicious keyboard warriors who caused their daughter’s downfall and eventual death.

When the funeral was over they all went back to their dorms, seeking the solace of their fellow members in the midst of her tragic death. He had locked himself in his old room, inhaling the scent of dust and old books.

She was gone.

Just like that, she was gone.

He could hear them crying outside his door, the reality of her death finally sinking in now that she had been buried. He could feel the immeasurable pain in his chest just clawing through every bit of his being, dying to be expressed.

In his mind, he could still see her. He could see her smile, when she was still whole and thriving. He could see her crinkled eyes, filled with laughter and mischief. He could see her cheeks, often flushed with either exhaustion or embarrassment.  

He could hear her voice, too, if he listened carefully. He could hear their quiet conversations in the aftermath of her scandal. He could hear the songs they made, etched so deeply within his soul that he yearned to have her by his side for a little longer so he could tell her just how much he loved listening to her sing.

He should’ve told her he loved her. From the beginning, he should’ve told her how he felt, and maybe things would have been different.

Even as YG released Bom’s self-written and composed track, promoting it selflessly through multiple tribute videos, even as it went on to receive countless awards, recognition and love, even as the people responsible for making derogatory remarks about her became imprisoned . . . Jiyong couldn’t, and probably wouldn’t, ever heal.

Kwon Jiyong regrets many things.

He regrets leaving when he should have stayed. He regrets having been too busy to have seen her text. He regrets the nights he spent without her, the days he spent with her for they only helped to further tear into his already bleeding heart.

Now he regrets many more.

A/N: So this bugged me while I was writing new chapters for my other story, Into The Blue, and wouldn't shut up till I typed it down. That, and my GBOM feels got triggered. Thanks for reading! :)