A/N: I love you guys.  Okay?  Just remember that.

I awoke from a dreamless sleep with a smile.  Opening my eyes, I saw that Jin wasn’t on top of me anymore, or next to me.  I felt a little upset at that realization.  I had always thought that the best part of a night together with someone was the morning after, waking up next to them, embracing, whispering sweet nothings to each other.  Just like a real romantic relationship.

But this wasn’t a typical relationship.  Heck, this wasn’t even a relationship at all!  Before Jin kissed me 2 nights ago, I was confused if I should label us “friends,” “acquaintances,” or “roommates.”  Now that last night happened, I was even more confused about what were were.  “Friends With Benefits”?  “One Night Stand”?  Or in the best case scenario, “Boyfriend/Girlfriend”?

I shoved the thought far away, but not without blushing first.  Did I want to be something with him?  Was I even going to stay with him?  Just 12 hours ago, I was so hooked on the idea of leaving that I got myself into this situation in the first place!  But he kept me from leaving.  Why?  Does he feel the same way about me?

I closed my eyes and let go for a moment.  My mind flickered back to last night.

“I need you to stay with me.”

“You’re not leaving me.”

“I’m not letting you go.”

My eyes flew open, dispersing all my thoughts: images of his body, his scent all over me, his electrifying touch, his kisses on my skin, and his smooth, tender words.  I was faced with the question: Does Jin like me?  Would he have done all this for me, gone through all this trouble to protect me, said all of those tender words to me, if he didn’t?  This would be quite an act if he didn’t like me.  I don’t want to get in over my head asking a step further with the other L-word, so I’ll settle for this.

I wanted to talk to him, ask him how he felt.  I wanted him to embrace me, kiss my forehead, and erase all my doubts about him.  But he wasn’t here.  Sitting up in his bed and looking around, I had never yearned for someone’s touch or presence so much before.  I looked at the clock on his nightstand.  I had a lot of time before I had to leave for work.

I decided that I would go look for him.  I pulled my underwear and my shirt on, before padding to my room and changing into some house clothes.  I started my search for Jin in the kitchen, hoping to see him making breakfast for us so I could hug him from behind.  But it was empty.  I frowned at that.  There was no note or anything that said he was going out, and it wasn’t late enough in the day yet that he would have gone out for work or something, considering that he was always home when I left.

I padded back towards the hall of rooms again and thought of the office. Maybe he was working on something there?  I took a quick glance in the bathroom as I walked by, but it was vacant as well.  When I got to his office door, it was slightly cracked open.  Hesitating, I pushed the door open, only to be met with emptiness.  I huffed in frustration.  Where the hell could he be?

I turned to leave, but stopped short when something caught my eye.  I turned back towards the desk, slowly walking towards it.  Sitting on top of the messy pile of papers was a photograph of me.  But I was well unaware that it was being taken.  I was walking out of the coffee house after work.  I turned the photograph around.  The date, scrawled in messy black ink, was the day before I went to the club with Yeri.

What the hell was this?

Panic shot through me.  I threw the photo aside and sifted through the rest of the papers messily laid out on his desk.  I found a manila envelope under the mess, and a sheet of looseleaf paper was dragged along with it.  Inside the envelope were more candid photos of me, on different days before I started living here.  Was he stalking me?!

I read the looseleaf paper in my hands, written in the same black ink and handwriting as on the back of the photo.  I could barely feel my heart beating faster as I read it.  The name at the bottom was signed by someone by the name of Yoongi.

At the bottom of the page was the address to the club that Yeri and I went to that night.  Yoongi…  That was one of the names I’d heard thrown around with that group of boys that came here.  Pieces of a puzzle were floating through my head, trying to find how the related to each other.  Those boys are Jin’s gang friends.

My heart was pounding as my mind pieced together the only conclusion that I could, but I pushed it away.  No, no, no!  I searched around for something else to disprove my theory, anything.  I found a notebook at the very bottom of all the scattered papers.  I flipped through, realizing that it was Jin’s journal.  I flipped frantically to the date of the clubbing day.  Tears were streaming down my face as I finished reading the entry; I was silently sobbing without realizing.  This wasn’t what I wanted to see.  I couldn’t bear to read more, not that I could with my eyes wet with tears.  This wasn’t happening.  Why did I have to be right for once?

“Ara.”

I couldn’t face him after what I found, but judging by his tone, I had no choice.  His voice was no longer tender like last night, nor his normal blank tone.  No, in that clipped word was scorn, mirroring the darkness in his eyes as he stared at me from the doorway.

I held up his journal in my shaking hands.  “What is this?” I asked quietly, afraid that if I spoke louder my voice would crack.  “What were you planning?”

His gaze was steady as he stared me down.  “Considering I’ve succeeded and you’re here already, I’ve already finished executing my plan,” he clarified with that same hateful tone.  It shot daggers into my heart and sent chills down my spine.  I was more afraid of him now than the day I came back late, the fear being amplified by the betrayal I felt.

“I told you that I’m an ex-member of the gang that killed your father.  Well, I lied.  I am a member of that gang.”  His brown eyes seemed black as they bore into mine, his words setting in.  “We’re the children of all those people you killed and injured in that fire.  The house fire that my dad was killed in that I told you about?  That fire killed him,” he spat as he took a step closer to me.  I took a step back, but I had no place to go with the desk behind me.  “I’d never wanted revenge for anything other than for the life of my father and all the other men that your beloved gang killed and wounded.  But we were only children at the time, all of us were 2nd gens.  It wasn’t until a few years ago starting in the summer I graduated high school that we started our plan, the 7 of us.  One by one, we picked off each member of your father’s gang.

“When we started our killing spree, the remaining members of yours that had stayed under the radar wanted revenge on us.  That’s when they came after the last remaining member of my family: my mother.”  He let that sink in as he shot me accusing stares.  “I saw with my own eyes that your dad was the one to kill her.  It was from there that we decided to go after all the children of your gang when we finished the adults.  That way, we could wipe out any other means of vengeance and be done with you and your gang.  I decided that I wanted to take care of you last myself.  But I could do something first in the meantime.  Remember the accident you dad was in?” he smirked thoughtfully, looking me square in the eye.  “I was the one that personally ran over your dad.  It was a Spring Break celebration of mine in my Junior Year of college.”

My breath caught as if it wasn’t hard enough to breath already.  My lungs were constricting on me.  The tears welled up in my eyes.  No...  Dad!

“We took care of the rest of the adult members and then moved onto their kids until we got to you.  You were tough to find since you had a squeaky clean record.  The other kids had at least one infraction in the crime system.  Time went by and I still couldn’t find you.  I was getting frustrated, I was prepared to leave the country to find you.  By some miracle, Yoongi stumbled upon you.  He followed you for a while to figure out your schedule until I thought it was time to make my move.  So I lured you in.  We called up one of our buddies outside the gang and asked him to drug you and act like a douche, so I could swoop in and act like the hero.  I had to gain your trust before I could kill you.  So I pretended to be the good guy and let you into my home.”  He chuckled darkly.  “Your guard fell apart so easily in front of me.”

Under normal circumstances, I would have blushed at that statement.  But given the context, all I could do was curse myself for not catching it sooner.

“I had many opportunities to kill you, but I didn’t because none of them were the right timing.  The boys were getting restless as I dragged this along.  But today, I have the perfect opportunity in front of me while you’re so vulnerable and in front of me.”

He chuckled at his own joke before he pulled out a gun from under his shirt and pointed it at me.  “I’ve been waiting for this moment.  You’re here, and you found out my secret.  There’s no point in keeping you alive anymore.”

I felt so ashamed.  He was right, I believed him so easily, ate up his act so stupidly, and look where that’s gotten me.  Tears were streaming down my face as I eyed the barrel of the gun.  “Why?” I choked out.  “You not only made me trust me as a friend, but you made me trust you as a lover too.”

“I had to get you to believe in me,” he said without missing a beat.

I felt like an idiot.  I was sinking lower and lower into despair.  “So everything you told me...was a lie?  Every gesture, every smile, every word you ever told me...was a lie?”

Jin eyed me carefully and nodded.  I let out a sob.  He was still holding the gun up to my chest, never moving it off target.  Out of everything he did, the one thing that made me hurt the most was the fact that I could not see any remorse in his eyes whatsoever.  He didn’t regret anything.  There was no rethinking this because I was completely sure of this at least: he didn’t care about me at all.

I sobbed one last time.  “Did you ever, even for a moment, love me?”

One heartbeat.

“No.”

And he pulled the trigger.

I fell to my knees, tears still streaming down my face.  My vision was hazed by them.  The blood seeped out of my chest.  It was getting harder for me to breath between the bullet wound and my sobs.  I crumpled to the floor as life gushed out of me in the form of red plasma.  I continued crying.  The physical pain was immeasurable in comparison to the emotional pain my heart was suffering.  After all of that pretending, he still never loved me, even down to the day he took my virtue.  He didn’t care.  He just wanted me broken and bruised and black on the inside so I could be red and bleeding on the outside.

I welcomed death.  There was no one to go back to, no one would care about me.  No one might even know, since I don’t have Yeri’s friendship anymore.  I thought I would only need Jin.  I trusted him.  Would he even feel guilty if I told him now?  A part me of doubted it.

My sobs died down as my vision blurred.  I felt my life leaving me.

“But I loved you,” I breathed my dying breath.

A/N: THE ENDDD~~~ Just kidding there's an epilogue too.  Sorrryyyyyy~~ Actually no, I'm not.  Well, maybe a little.  I'm sorry because you guys were probably expecting a fluffy, happy ending.  And now you guys all hate me.  But to be honest, angst isn't truly angst without a sad ending, and this would be the first time that I ever completely put my foot down and did a sad ending.  In another Jin story I wrote, I had 3 different endings because there were possible ways to end it happy, sadly, and then so-so.  But for this story, there was only one tragic ending that would fit the story and it was a sad one.

Like I said, I'm really sorry if I let you down so bad that you don't even want to read this anymore and you don't even want to read the epilogue.  I understand.  Thank you for giving me your time and for reading it up until this point.  It was a ride that I hope you at least enjoyed for the journey here.  I still love you all.

But for those of you that are staying with me a little longer before you decide to throw tomatoes at me, first of all thank you for still giving me a chance.  Second of all, I'm not quite sure when I'm going to post the epilogue.  It'll probably take up to a week to do because I still have summer homework that I can't believe I waited until the last minute to do, so that's gonna take up my days along with other things.  That leaves me with only the nighttime to write until my eyes feel like busting out of my sockets froom being tired.  So look forward to it~  I'll see you guys for the epilogue!

Once again everyone, thanks for reading thus far and have a great day/night/afternoon~