“I don’t understand her,” Seokmin said to Wonwoo after he witnessed Vernon kissing her cheek, “he’s playing with her, and she’s letting him.”

Wonwoo felt it too. It pestered him to see someone like Jin being toyed with like this by someone like Vernon. It made him feel… no, no, no, Wonwoo thought. I’m not jealous. Just protective.

“Should I go confront him about it?” Seokmin considered.

“I’m pretty sure Jin would not appreciate that,” Wonwoo said. “She seems to hate that we’re interfering. I think we should just leave her alone for now.”

“We’re just going to let this happen then?” Seokmin said.

Wonwoo shrugged. He really wanted to do something to stop this, but he didn’t know how to get through to her.

“She’s doing this because of me and Sena, isn’t she? Not because she actually likes that .”

Wonwoo shrugged. Of course he hadn’t told Seokmin that Jin had outright admitted to him that this was why she was doing it; Jin would not have liked that. Seokmin still guessed pretty easily; he knew her well.

“Talk to Sena for me,” Seokmin requested from Wonwoo, “tell her what Jin is doing.”

“You talk to her,” Wonwoo said.

“She isn’t even looking at me let alone talking to me,” Seokmin said sadly. His face fell as he remembered her, “I don’t know what’s wrong with her.”

Wonwoo looked at Seokmin sympathetically. Seokmin had been so upset lately because of Sena, and Sena had just been quiet and weird. Wonwoo had tried talking to her a couple of times, and she would just tell him that she needed to go and run off. According Jin, Sena wasn’t staying much in her dorm either. In classes, when Seokmin tried to say anything to her, she answered in as little words as possible.

Something was very wrong with her, Wonwoo thought. He was determined to find out what.

The next time he saw her, she was sitting in the hallways with some of her female friends. He hated approaching her when she was with those friends, but this time, he went up to her and told her to come talk to him.

Sena complied.

“What?” she asked when they walked away from the hearing distance of her friends.

“Did you know Jin is going to go out with Vernon?” Wonwoo asked her.

Sena raised an eyebrow, “Vernon?”

“Yes.”

“Why?” Sena asked; she looked kind of triggered by it. Her body froze and her voice wavered as she waited for Wonwoo to answer.

“Why do you think?” Wonwoo asked. “Sena, cut the bull and go back to Seokmin…”

Sena rubbed her forehead for a moment before letting her hand fall over her face to cover it. Her hands lingered there over her eyes for a moment, and Wonwoo knew that she was crying. Wonwoo felt unsettled; tears always unsettled him.

Passer-bys were staring, and so Wonwoo put his hand on her shoulders as he led her way from the halls to somewhere more private. He sat her down on a bench and let her cry for a moment.

“What’s wrong, Sena?” Wonwoo asked her sympathetically when she stopped.

“So much is wrong,” Sena told him, as she wiped her face and tried to regain her composure.

“Talk to Jin.”

“She doesn’t want me to."

“She does, But she doesn’t even see you anymore to be able to talk to you.”

Sena fell quiet. A silence lingered between them for a while, and within that silence, Wonwoo’s eyes caught onto something in Sena’s open bag that surprised him. The logo was all too familiar, haunting almost, bringing back memories of his parents' disappointment and the evil corrective psychologists he was forced to see.

He reached into Sena’s bag and took it out, just to be sure that he was seeing right. Prozac. Anti-depressants.

Sena snatched the bottle from his hand and stuffed it in her bag, holding the bag close to her chest protectively.

“Sena…” Wonwoo managed over his shock, “why…”

“Please don’t tell Jin or Seokmin," she said frantically. "Please I’m begging you. I don’t want them to worry.”

“You should tell us these things,” Wonwoo scolded, at a loss for what else to say to her.

“Don’t tell them! Promise you won’t tell them!” she said, glaring at him with a fire in her eyes.

Wonwoo eventually conceded and nodded; he understood why she didn’t want to tell them: “I won’t, but you have to talk to me about it.”

“There’s nothing to talk about,” she said, gulping in what seemed to be the weight of all the pain she had been going through, “I’m just in a really bad place right now.”

“Because of the fight with Jin?”

“No,” Sena assured confidently.

“Then what is it?” Wonwoo asked her.

Sena shrugged, and Wonwoo didn’t ask any further. He had been through it. He knew exactly what it felt like, how sometimes you can’t really pinpoint the source of it, and how it’s so hard to talk about. He was sympathetic and wished he could do more than lay a supportive hand on hers.

“I was there once,” Wonwoo revealed to her quietly.

She turned her head and curiously watched him. She had not known; Wonwoo had not told anyone. Even Seokmin didn’t know about it and Seokmin was with him when he experienced it. It was a dark phase, one that Wonwoo wished to never revisit and so he never talked about it. But he decided to revisit it this once for Sena’s sake.

“It was hard. I understand, and I wish I could do more than just tell you that I support you.”

Sena forced a smile on her face, but Wonwoo could see that there was so much more pain behind that smile than she was trying to let on. “I didn’t know that you…”

“It gets better,” Wonwoo reassured her.

“I hope so.”

-

Wonwoo sighed heavily. He didn’t know what to do, but he felt like he needed to do something.

He couldn’t tell Seokmin and Jin; he had promised her that he wouldn’t, and he would keep that promise because he understood exactly how Sena felt and why she wanted to keep it from them.

You are talking to Sena TONIGHT, he texted Jin as soon as Sena had to leave to go to her class. No more delays.

J: If I see her. I want to, but she’s never around.

W: This time, she will be. Wonwoo had made Sena promise to be back at their dorm early that night, and Sena agreed with no protest. He figured that if they made up, it might help. At least Sena would have a close friend to talk to again. Even if Sena insisted that Jin was not the reason for the depression that Sena was experiencing, Wonwoo knew that it had something to do with it.

W: please make up with her, Wonwoo added a minute later.

-

Wonwoo was to report from 5:00 PM until midnight for the magazine shoot for which he had signed the contract for earlier. He was in too much of a bad mood to be excited about the getting remuneration for it. Maybe it was seeing Jin with Vernon and getting his feelings all confused again. Probably it was learning what he learned about Sena. Even finding out that Mingyu would be doing the shoot with him didn’t cheer him up.

Wonwoo felt like he shouldn’t be doing the shoot to begin with. One of his friends was experiencing what he thought was one of the worst things that any human being could possibly experience, and it just felt wrong to just let her off without doing anything. He hoped that Jin would help. He told her that he wanted her to text him as soon as the two of them spoke. If they made up, maybe he would feel just a little reassured.

He met Mingyu at the bus stop like they had planned, who looked as bright and as handsome as ever. The sight of him helped alleviate some of the heaviness that past events had made him feel. Mingyu just always made him smile.

When they arrived at the location of the shoot, they were immediately checked in and led to the changing rooms.

“Are you ready for this?” Mingyu asked him before they entered.

“Not really,” Wonwoo responded. He was warned of all that would happen in the shoot. He wasn’t used to having hands around him fixing his makeup, doing his hair, adjusting his outfit. He was so certain that he would feel misplaced and awkward, but he was glad to be warned of it before by Mingyu. He also wished he were in a better mood.

“What’s wrong?” Mingyu asked him as they waited for the coordi-noonas to prepare the outfits. “It looks like something is bothering you.”

“Friend problems,” Wonwoo answered Mingyu honestly.

“I see,” Mingyu responded, “did you fight or…”

“No, not really. I just found out something about one particular friend that’s troubling me.”

“Jin?” Mingyu asked, “I saw her with Vernon today.”

“That’s not what I was thinking, but that the fact she’s going out with him is troubling as well.”

“Why is it troubling?” Mingyu asked curiously.

“Because it’s Vernon,” Wonwoo responded like it was the most obvious thing in the world, “and you know what he’s like.”

“I’m pretty sure she does too,” Mingyu replied to him, “but she still decided to date him. There must be some reason. I think it’s actually kind of cute.”

“Cute? How is it cute?”

“Well, he read her diary. He must know a lot about her. Despite all that he knows, he doesn’t or anything. I think he actually cares about her too. I don’t know if you know this, but when I confessed to her, Vernon actually rejected me on her behalf. I could tell she appreciated it, and I could also tell that he had no bad intentions when he did it. He tried to help her.”

Wonwoo did not even know that Vernon was involved with what happened between Mingyu and Jin. He also didn’t know that Mingyu even knew about Vernon reading her diary, but then he remembered that this was how Mingyu and Jin met: Mingyu helped her find it.

Jin had told Wonwoo that Vernon read her diary, but he never thought about what that meant beyond the fact that Vernon knew he was gay. He never considered that it meant that Vernon knew so much more about her than Wonwoo ever did. Vernon read her deepest, innermost thoughts, and it’s true that he never took advantage of them, at least as far as Wonwoo knew. Maybe Jin and Vernon were a lot closer than Wonwoo had originally thought.

“You’re probably right,” Wonwoo told Mingyu, “but I’m still afraid…”

“Are you sure you’re gay?” Mingyu asked him jokingly, which was less of a joke to Wonwoo than it was for Mingyu.

Wonwoo shrugged, “I think I am.”

“Think?” Mingyu raised an eyebrow. “Do you have feelings for her or something?”

“I thought I did, yes,” Wonwoo admitted to Mingyu with surprising ease. “Maybe I still do,” he added, “but after hearing what you said, I think I’ll just let it go and move on.”

“What I said?”

“Maybe he won’t hurt her, and maybe he does like her. I never considered that until you brought it up,” Wonwoo explained. If Vernon likes her, then Vernon could actually make her happy. And really, that was all that Wonwoo wanted in the end.

“So did I make you feel better?” Mingyu asked him playfully.

“Yes,” Wonwoo replied, “you always do.”

A/N: SEVENTEEN WAS FILMING THEIR MV WITH “A NEW CONCEPT” AND APPARENTLY DK HAS A PERM.

I still haven’t recovered from NU’EST what is Pledis doing to me???

PREPARE YOURSELF FOR SLAYAGE AND TEARS (idk about you but I cry a lot during comebacks lol)