“What do you mean, Yeonsoo and Jeonghan aren’t together anymore?” Jihoon snarls, his voice lower than I have ever heard it.

“Exactly that,” my brother answers rather matter- of- factly, except that his tone is significantly quieter than usual. “They’ve broken up.”

I hear a slam and a curse, and I assume that Jihoon has punched the table.

“And no one thought to inform me of this?” he asks, infuriated. “How long have they been apart?”

“Jihoon,” Jimin intercedes, his own tone placating.

“Hyung, did you know too?” Jihoon asks, eerily calm this time.

“Yeah,” is all Jimin answers. “I knew.”

“Jesus ing Christ,” Jihoon grits out. “How long?”

“I don’t know what you mean.” But Yoongi clearly knows what Jihoon’s referring to.

“How long ago did they break up?!”

There’s a long pause before Yoongi admits, “Three months.”

“Since our debut!?”

There’s an affirmative “mhm,” before Jihoon blows his top again.

“Don’t ing mhm me, hyung. This is serious! How could you keep this from me? I’ve made so many little comments about them! And- Wait.” He laughs. “Hyung, you absolute er. I can’t believe that you made them break up.”

“I didn’t,” Yoongi responds immediately, defensive.

Jihoon’s snort is derisive. “Please, hyung. Don’t lie.”

I bite my lip, rubbing circles into the bottoms of my feet with my thumbs, and end up spreading fallen tears all over my soles.

Yoongi’s calm, collected, and blunt. “Believe what you will, but I never once told him to break up with her, or hinted in any way that he should. I know she doesn’t believe it either, hence why she’s been extremely pissy with me, but I actually don’t want her to be all angsty or whatever.”

It’s clearly directed at me too.

But I can’t feel anything except a painful hollowness that’s spreading from my stomach to all over my body.

Jihoon barks. “Then why couldn’t I know? For that matter, why didn’t manager hyung tell me either? I’ve been friends with Namjoon hyung longer than you have.”

Yoongi’s monotonous when he says, “Because you guys failing would just break Yeonsoo even more.”

Jihoon’s quiet.

But my phone is not.

I look down to see that I have a phone call, and accept, wiping my eyes and clearing my throat. “Hey,” I croak.

“Are you sick? You sound like death,” my other cousin informs me in a worried sort of way.

“A bit,” I lie, sniffling. “I think your brother rubbed his cooties on me when I was sleeping.”

Chaelin laughs. “Jihoon’s the master of cooties, baby.”

I plow on. “This is actually perfect, though. I woke up with frazzled pink hair this morning, courtesy of our respective idiotic brothers.”

It takes Chaelin a good fifteen seconds to quiet down from raucous laughter. “Come to my salon. I’ll fix it for you. But are you sure that you’re just sick? You usually sound more hoarse when you’re sick. You’re not thinking about…” She trails off, somber.

“Yeah,” I say awkwardly. “I’m not being emo.”

I totally am.

“But I still can’t believe that you’d just not tell me for three months!” Jihoon shouts from nowhere.

“Oh boy,” Chaelin sighs. “So he’s found out about it too? Rhetorical question, by the way.”

I say nothing, as per her expectation.

“Anyway, just come in in a few days. Maybe in three? I’ll see what I can do. But I have to go now,” she apologizes. “I just wanted to check in.”

“Okay,” I tell her. “I will. Thanks.”

“Love you, baby cousin,” she says, finishing with a huge smooching sound.

“I love you too, unni,” I reply, before she hangs up.

I flop backwards onto my bed so that I am positioned like a starfish and staring at the ceiling.

It’s not long before Jihoon opens my door and strides to my bed - without my permission.

“Hey,” he says uncertainly.

I grunt.

He takes it as a cue to sit on my bed and skootch over so that he’s cross legged with my head resting in his lap.

He my hair. “You’re puffy,” he states.

I grunt again.

He heaves a sigh. “Can’t you trust me, baby cousin?”

I emit no response to his use of his and Chaelin’s childhood pet name for me, even though I haven’t heard it come from Jihoon’s mouth in well over three years. Instead, I turn my head, burying half of my face in his shin.

I feel nothing.

I feel the way he tries to comfort me, by playing with my hair, and I feel how his toe is poking uncomfortably into my rib, but I don’t feel them.

It is as if as soon as Yoon Jeonghan was mentioned, all of the nerve receptors in my brain decided to go to sleep.

“Baby cousin,” Jihoon cooes, and I halfheartedly search for my pillow one handedly to whack him with.

~

I push open the door to Chaelin’s shop, shaking off my umbrella and wiping off my shoes on the mat as I step inside.

The first thing that she says to me is, “Don’t even think about putting up a facade. It’ll just exhaust you.”

I nod.

The second thing she says is, “You weren’t kidding when you mentioned that Yoongi fried your hair. You wanted me to fix it, right?” She gives me a once over. “I’ll have to give you a collagen treatment. Your bangs need t too.”

I shake my head. “Let them grow out. I need a change.”

She snorts. “You’ve already got the change. Keep the bangs. You look more… kempt with them.”

My response is a shrug.

~

A boy with grass tipped bangs is rubbing some serum thing into my slightly damp hair, his minty breath only just noticeable.

“Are you new here?” I find myself asking towards the end of the process.

“Is that a pickup line?” he jokes without pausing. “And yeah. I just transferred schools from a small university in Daegu, my hometown, and got this part time job.”

“Huh. I’m in university too. Seoul National. Chaelin-unni’s my cousin,” meaning that: 1) I’m also from Daegu, and 2) if he somehow screws up, she’ll murder him less than if he was working with a regular customer.

His eyes widen ever so slightly, but then he moves to the back of my head to perform whatever miracles he’s trying to perform on the hair there too. “I’m going there too, now. For my third year. Majoring in film, with a focus in premed.”

Strange combination. “I’ll be in my third year too. But I’m majoring in law.”

“That’s really cool,” he tells me. “Lawyers are super cool.”

I grunt. “Maybe.”

“V, you done?” Chaelin asks as I feel her hands on the back of my neck. They’re cold and slightly damp, which means she either just washed her hands or she went outside.

“Just this one more lock of hair, and then she’s all set for drying, Boss CL,” the boy whom I now know as V answers. “And… Done,” he finishes, backing away so she can take over.

~

Chaelin sends me home eighty thousand won lighter, having given me a box in a bag of some fancy hair “essence” or whatever bullsh*t it is, and managed to make my hair seem less dead.

She also refused to dye my hair back to black, or even some natural brown color, because apparently I “need some color in my life” or I’m going to end up wallowing in my misery for god knows how long.

Like how I’m currently wallowing in the rain.

The rain is pooling in the petals of the flowers around me, creating small mirrors of water tension framed by chlorophyll and cell walls. They're full to the brim, ready to spill over any minute now.

Just like me, I suppose.

I want nothing more than to hide in the corner of my closet, hugging my knees to my chest, bury my face in my knees and behind a curtain of hair, and cry. But I've already cried this week. I… I can't cry any more.

~

I’m near to passing the flower shop when I decide to go in.

Something about the brightly lit shop in the wet rain gives it a glow, and draws me in for the third time. It could also have something to do with the quaint architecture, its floor to ceiling french windows with matching, equally french curtains, and exterior red brick walls, the flowers draped on the outside of the windows to match the shape of the curtains inside.

The doorbells jingle when I walk inside, alerting Mr. Hoseok of my arrival.

He’s at the back table, chatting comfortably with a boy who I assume from his matching apron, is an employee.

I stand at the front for a few seconds before Mr. Hoseok makes it over to me, eyes red and sniffling slightly.

“Oh,” I croak out. “Are you sick?”

He laughs. “Oh, no. Don’t worry.”

“Allergic to the flowers?” I have no idea what brought me to that conclusion, but I say it anyways.

He looks sheepish, though, when he replies, “yeah. I forgot to take my meds this morning.”

A giggle bubbles out of me softly, although it probably sounds like a frog’s ribbit due to the hoarseness. “That’s silly,” I tell him.

The other boy places his hand on Mr. Hoseok’s shoulder, and agrees: “Yeah. Hoseok-hyung doesn’t think sometimes.”

The two stand at the same height.

“Jungkook,” the new boy offers, extending a hand. “Hyung told me that I have to talk to all of the clients, even if they’re girls.” His face takes on a baby pink hue.

“Nice to meet you, Mister Jungkook,” I answer.

“Mister?” he says, taken aback. “I’m only twenty-one.”

Oh, I mouth in surprise.

“Anyways, miss, what brings you here today?” Mister Hoseok interjects.

I give him a blank look. “Flowers.”

“Well, yeah, but what kind?”

Oh, I mouth again, continuing with an indifferent, “I don’t know. I’ve had a pretty awful day, so maybe something yellow? Nineteen of them?”

“That ,” Mister Hoseok nods. “And that’s perfectly doable. Any in particular?”

I shake my head. I don’t want to think any more about anything.

~

I leave with ten roses and nine tulips, holding the bouquet in the same hand as the bag on my elbow.

Wow I disappeared for a hella long time