“Eat.”

I shook my head.

“Just eat.”

“I said no!” I yelled and pushed the bowl away from my face.

It was now the second day I had gone without eating one bit of food. It was also the second day Jongin stayed in the ER. The operation had lasted longer than I thought it would. I knew that it was wistful to wish that he would wake up so soon with his chest injury, but I couldn’t just sit still.

“Sena, stop being so stubborn,” Sehun firmly reprimanded me. For a second, I saw a flash of annoyance in his eyes, “Don’t be a spoilt child! Do you think that Jongin will appreciate what you’re doing right now? For goodness’ sake, Sena! Jongin was just doing his job!”

I froze. Sehun was right. Jongin was just doing his job. He got injured because of his job. He betrayed me because of his job. Tears pooled up at my eyes as I gathered my courage and spoke to him, “I won’t eat because I can’t. I will just vomit it out in the toilet, anyway, so it’s a waste trying to convince me otherwise. If you think that I am doing this for Kim Jongin, then you are wrong.”

Sehun’s face changed from annoyance to repulsion to disgust, “I see. So we were all right about you, Yoon Sena. You are nothing but a monster. You don’t even have any humanity in you. Have you ever considered what we have sacrificed just to be your protector? No, you don’t. Because you live a perfect life, being a spoilt princess with dearest grandfather. All you’ve ever thought about is yourself!”

A perfect life? My eyes twitched. The regret, guilt and sadness I felt suddenly disappeared from my chest as I looked at Sehun angrily, “You are an ignorant bastard!” I didn’t bother to explain further as I stomped away from this place. Tears that were pooling in my eyes fell freely as I stormed out of the building.

Out of all the people, I would’ve never expected Sehun to scold me like that. He was right in some parts. I was not emphatic enough, not tolerant enough, and not mature enough. In short, I was just not enough. I fell onto the solid floor of parking ground as I sobbed hard, clutching onto my head tightly as I replayed my nightmares of a childhood over and over again.

I was eighteen.

Because I was eighteen, I was rash, impatient, selfish and demanding. And not to mention, spoilt. I was used to getting what I wanted, however it might be. I was used to people being fake and manipulative. I was used to using and being used, because that was how the world was.

Because I was eighteen, I shouldn’t have acted so selfishly. I didn’t have a reason to be so cold to my Elites, nor did they owe me anything just because I was the clan leader. I wasn’t the only one who had to sacrifice myself for this position; they, too, had to do this out of responsibilities. None of us wanted this.

“Sehun is reflecting,” A soft voice greeted me from my back. I didn’t turn around because Joonmyun had walked a circle and knelt down in front of me. He had that tender smile that always got my heart at the knees. “Come. I will pick you up to another room.”

“Not Jongin’s room,” I sniffed and rested my head on his shoulder. He scooped me up easily and very gently, put his arms around my thighs and back so that I would not fall. His scent had a mixture of sadness and longing, and I wondered why.

Kim Joonmyun was always like this. At times, he was soft. Sometimes impossibly stubborn and confident. He knew how to sweet talk me to an agreement, and when we talked for a long, sometimes sleepless hours, his words and mine molded together into a paragraph while our silence made a perfect poetry no one would ever read.

I knew Kim Joonmyun when I was fifteen – at the peak of my rebellion and so desperate for freedom. Grandfather tried to tame me by grounding me in Singapore, bringing the older Kim Joonmyun who was nineteen at that time to teach me what it was like to be a dignified future leader to our clan. Everybody knew Joonmyun to be a brilliant young man with an equally bright future ahead. It seemed that in no time, he would succeed the position of his father.

On the very first sight, or maybe second and third, and somewhere along the line of ‘I know you, you are Yoon Sena, that girl who set fire to her training ground’, I started liking him. Behind that closed door, Joonmyun was not the refined young man he appeared to be, but another teenager; free, wild and adventurous. It was the first time I had met someone who was like a reflection of my own self. We ended up coming undone for each other.

“How are you?” I asked as he set me down on the bed. He took me to an empty VIP room in the east wings, on the opposite of where the ER was. One nurse brought in a bowl of oatmeal and fruits and left soon after. Joonmyun finally sat down by my side and handed me the food.

“Eat this. You need energy if you want to stay awake after losing sleep for two continuous days,” He persisted and I caved in. I no longer felt nauseous about eating and only then did I realise how hungry I had been. “Easy there. You will get stomachache if you eat so quickly.”

“How are you?” I repeated again as I wiped the food from my lips and stared at his face. He didn’t have circles under his eyes, nor did he seem to be upset about anything. He was still like water, unpredictable like the wind. I wondered if his father would be an off-limit topic to him.

“The funeral is tomorrow,” He sighed and leaned onto the bedhead. “He wants to be cremated – he’d said so once, but the Elders wouldn’t let him have it. They are burying him on the ground like the previous leaders were.”

“My mother… has been cheating on him for a while now,” Joonmyun bitterly remarked. He didn’t show much emotion when he said that, but I knew this must have affected him somehow. “So now that my father is dead, she wants to move away from the clan and get married to her lover. It hasn’t even been a year yet and she wants to settle down so quickly.”

I couldn’t really reply to that because it wasn’t in my position to do so. I had lost my parents to car accident when I was born, only to find out later that my own Grandfather planned it that way to make their death seem accidental. Our families were messed up. I bet Joonmyun felt less for his father than his mother.

“And worse yet, her lover is my age,” Joonmyun finally flinched, “I just… Sena, I can’t look at her the same way anymore.”

Again, my tongue was tied. I didn’t know what to tell him. I should’ve said it was okay, but it really wasn’t. Nothing felt right at the moment. Joonmyun’s father’s funeral, Jongin’s injuries, Joonmyun’s mother’s younger lover, Minseok’s reign, Baekhyun’s declaration of war, Yifan’s unwillingness to participate, and now Sehun was mad at me, too.

“You still have me, you know?” I reached out and brushed his hair with my fingers. We were sitting so close to each other, face to face, and it reminded me of the Summer when I was fifteen, when I lost my first kiss to Joonmyun in a dark photography room. “Even when the whole world collapses, I will still stand there by your side. You know that, right?”

“If you come any closer, I will kiss your lips right away,” He smiled sadly and whispered to me. “But if you like me that way, you can back away. All I need is distraction from all this mess and the last thing I want to do is to hurt you.”

I smiled. He had no girlfriend at the moment, and I wouldn’t let him go back to that habit of going around different girls every night. Just the thoughts of it made me feel uncomfortable. I was sure I didn’t like him that way, so I sneaked my arms and wrapped it around his neck and dived right onto his mouth. We both needed distraction.

Joonmyun was a fantastic kisser. He had a way of sneakily sliding his tongue in. I had had kisses which were wet and downright uncomfortable because they were so sloppy. Luhan’s one was alright considering his inexperience in kissing. Joonmyun’s one, however, always managed to take my breath away. We kissed every now and then, but there was nothing serious about it. Most of the times, we just messed around each other because it felt so good.

“Good?” I whispered in-between our kisses and pulled away to look at his hazy hazel eyes. His red lips were parted in an inviting manner as he grabbed my waist and prevented me from moving away.

“More,” He drew a low growl and kissed me again.

We pulled away sometimes afterwards, breathless and hot. I got up from his lap and moved closer to the window to enjoy the wind blowing onto my flushed, flustered face.

“Better?” He asked.

“Better,” I nodded. My mind cleared up at the kiss, and I no longer felt like the whole world weighed in on me alone. I had got Joonmyun, Taeyong and Luhan on my side. I shouldn’t have been so pessimistic about everything. Sure, Sehun was right, but there was nothing that couldn’t be fixed.

“You know, Sehun was just worried about you. He means no harm,” Joonmyun touched my nose and pinched it. I yelped and hit his arms in return. “That boy cares about you. All of them do, actually. They just have a different way of showing it each.”

“Oh right, Mr. Genius. And how would you know about that?” I raised my eyebrow. He barely even interacted with them and he dared to make such a remark about my Elites. I once told him all my worries about not being able to trust them, so I guessed he did some background research on them.

“I know that boy, Taeyong, is always watching you when you are not looking,” Joonmyun smiled. “And when some girls talked about you, he would scold them and glare daggers. Even the boys are scared now because he has grown to be very protective of you. He is a good friend, Sena, and a keeper. Don’t lose him.”

“And Luhan, ah, where do I even begin with this man,” Joonmyun sighed and shook his head. He’d known Luhan for as long as he knew me, “I’m sure you are somehow aware of his feelings for you, are you not? He will go through literally anything just to protect you, Sena. He is quite the jealous type, isn’t he?” A chuckle escaped his pretty mouth, “A bit possessive, as well.”

That sounded just like Luhan.

“Sehun is a man of his words. But he isn’t as shallow as we think he is. This man could either be a dangerous enemy or an useful ally,” Joonmyun analysed Sehun quite correctly. Sehun was bottomless water. No one really knew what he meant. “From what I see, he might not show it, but he cares about you most. You are dense, so I’m quite sure you won’t notice these little details about them.”

“He just scolded me. Called me ignorant and all. Guess I deserve it,” I shrugged and picked up my bowl of oatmeal again. “I can’t be that dense, can I?”

Joonmyun chuckled, “Think about it. Is Sehun always like that? His personality isn’t that easy to guess. But he got mad at you for real. So if I were you, Sena, I would stop doubting his sincerity and start treating him better. You can trust him, believe me or not. This man wouldn’t let you down.”

“You sound like a matchmaker now. Are you trying to give me different options of men? Because if you do, it’s working wonder now,” I smirked as I chewed down a piece of papaya. “And Kim Jongin? What about this one?”

“Kim Jongin?” Joonmyun’s smile grew wider. “Oh, I wouldn’t know, Sena. You should’ve known better about him than I do.”

I raised my eyebrows. Of course I knew about Jongin more than anyone else. Behind that playful, teasing façade, was a coldhearted man with no heart and mercy. He loved to throw sarcasm and dirty jokes every now and then, but when he threatened me with those soulless eyes, I was so frightened I couldn’t sleep the whole night. Yet at the same time, all I could feel was pity, because something seemed to have changed him and forced him to be the man he was today.

Of course I knew Kim Jongin.

…perhaps a little too well.