My eyes idly watch the wood burning in my hands. The flames flicker through the air, moving closer and closer to the tips of my fingers. For a moment, I wonder what would happen if I allowed the fire to reach my skin. Would it really hurt?

“Hey. Stop that.” Dev knocks the marshmallow skewer out of my hands. The thin stick falls to the sand, immediately extinguishing. A soft sigh leaves my lips.

“Sorry,” I murmur. “I’m being a buzzkill.”

Jin flings an arm around my shoulders. “Don’t apologize. We’re the ones who dragged you here.”

As Dev and Jin chatter away, trying to fill the air with conversation that will distract me, I find my eyes unfocusing like they do so frequently these days. Our classmates surround us, laughing boisterously and dancing in the sunset and shotgunning Whiteclaws by the ocean. They’re still giddy from the thrill of graduation. In three months, we’ll be off to our respective universities- onto the next stage of our lives.

I figured I should be happy, too, figuring that I've made it to graduation and I'm still alive.

“Joohyun Jung! What’s good?” Peter Chen yells behind me.

He’s wearing that goofy grin on his face that’s so kind that I can’t help but like him. A sheepish-looking Tom stands behind him, two beers in hand.

I force my lips up in a smile that doesn’t quite make it to my eyes. “Hey, Peter.”

“That’s my fellow Bear!” Peter cheers, playfully ruffling my hair. Judging from the unsteady way he sways in the sand, he must be more than tipsy right now.

“Hey, ease up,” Tom says softly, pulling back Peter’s arm.

Peter plants a loud kiss on Tom’s cheek that makes his face turn bright red. “Baby, chill. I’m just saying hi to my fellow incoming Berkeley freshman! We’re gonna tear it up in California! Am I right, Dev?”

Dev chuckles. “Hell yeah. Although I’ll be all the way down in boring Palo Alto.”

“Yeah, at Stanford! You’re a total coding genius, dude. You’re going to be famous some day!”

“You’re too kind,” Dev says, looking more than pleased at Peter’s drunken exuberance.

My gaze turns back to the bonfire in front of me.

“They’re so loud,” an exasperated voice says next to me.

I whip around, my eyes wide.

Lucy is sitting to my left, her eyes rolling in exasperation. Her long black hair hangs loose around her shoulders.

“That’s my swimsuit,” she snorts, snapping the strap of my baby blue bikini top.

I stammer out, “You haven’t been home in a year. No one was using the stuff in your closet.”

“That’s fair. God, remember the time Taehyung threw out all your clothes? That was ridiculous.”

I do remember. Lucy drove to my house at 6 AM the following morning and dropped off duffel bags full of clothes for me to use.

“Where have you been?” I breathe. “Lucy, how could you just disappear like that? I’ve been so ing worried about you.”

She laughs. “Can you believe half these idiots are drunk right now? I’m tempted to try some beer myself.”

“I haven’t gotten a proper night of sleep in a year. I almost flunked out of senior year-,”

“What else do they have? Party Punch? Ugh, I don’t even want to ask what’s in that.”

“I’m begging you- please, I feel so ing empty all the time-,”

Lucy leans in close, the flames of the bonfire causing her brown eyes to glow a luminous red. “Have you ever had your entire life stolen from you, Joo?”

“Joo. Joo. Joo!”

I topple into the sand, tears threatening to spill from my eyes. Tom, Dev, Jin, and Peter are gaping down at me, startled concern on their faces. A few onlookers peek curiously at me. I can practically read their expressions. My head snaps back to the side; Lucy's gone.

It’s just Joo being Joo again.

It feels like I’m drowning, like I’ve plunged headfirst into the choppy waters of the ocean beside us. I hurriedly pick myself up, a lump in my throat bobbing up and down.

“I’m going to take a walk,” I manage to choke out.

I make it 50 yards away from the bonfire before I allow the tears to come.

Despite the humidity in the June air, my body won’t stop trembling. Every single moment of the last year comes flooding back into my brain.

Lucy regaining her memories last March. The disastrous night last April she tried to challenge Jimin to a deathmatch in the middle of the forest.

Our realization that, while she had been the most powerful sorcerer in her class, Jimin had had two years of intense training to shoot to dizzying heights of talent. He had paralyzed her in mid-air and sent her body hurtling towards the ground without even looking at her. The sickening crack! of her bones echoed through the air.

The last time I saw her was when she was lying unconscious in a cot at Windsong General Hospital.

She’d disappeared by the next morning.

Jimin didn’t even bother asking about her.

I sink to the sand, my chest aching unbearably.

I wish I could let the waves wash me out to sea, take me away from all this forever. I wish I could stop being so weak. I wish I wasn’t such a burden on my friends.

Every time I close my eyes, the only thing I can feel is terror.

“I should erase your memories,” Jungkook muses behind me.

I narrow my eyes, twisting around to face him. He’s looking down at me with his signature sneer, clad in only a pair of swim trunks. His right hand is curled around a thick wooden cane that sinks down into the sand.

“ off,” I growl.

“No, seriously. This whole depression thing is getting super old."

“I know you called suicide watch on me, you ing dickhead.”

The sneer fades of Jungkook’s face. He stares at me for a long moment. I glare back at him, unrelenting.

Finally, a sigh leaves his lips. With mild difficulty, he lowers himself to sit beside me.

“I know this is my fault,” Jungkook says in a quiet voice.

“Yeah. It is.”

I know it’s not completely. Before Lucy left, I was merely sprinting away from the life-threatening horrors I’d faced in Windsong. Jungkook’s power play and Lucy’s disappearance were merely the tipping points. Everything had finally caught up to me.

“I wanted you to get help,” he tells me.

“Yeah, like I can talk to a therapist about this . Hi, I have PTSD from the million times when I thought I was going to get murdered in my sleep by sorcerers. God, do you know how embarrassing it was sitting in the office as the principal called my ing mom-,”

“We have Kado-specialized therapists-,”

My eyes are hard with anger. “I don’t want anything to do with the Kado ever again.”

Jungkook is silent. His fingers fiddle with the top of his cane. My eyes drift to his legs.

The sheer pressure of absorbing Lucy’s power was something Jungkook’s physical body was unprepared for. Half the bones in Jungkook’s legs had shattered that day; on top of that, the strain of the chi had caused his muscles to knot and tear. If it hadn’t been for magical remedies, he would be dead.

Now, he simply cannot walk without secondary assistance. His days of playing lacrosse and intensive fighting are over- along with his dreams of obtaining the Junior Vice Captaincy. Jungkook’s spent his senior year practically alone after all his Kado friends left for college.

Perhaps his punishment has been crueler than mine.

“I didn’t just find you to chat,” he tells me. “I have a warning.”

“I hope it kills me,” I say sarcastically.

He doesn’t laugh. “They’re back from college.”

The smirk is wiped clean off my face.

“I just wanted to let you know, so you weren’t blindsided if you ran into them.”

I don’t know what to say. I have no coherent response. An overwhelming sense of dread sinks into me.

“Does Jin know?”

Jungkook shakes his head. “Jin’s... obviously not on speaking terms with any of them.”

I shoot up.

“We have to go tell them,” I breathe, grabbing Jungkook’s hand. He looks down at our intertwined fingers in surprise. “Like, now.”

“Uh, okay. I mean, what’s the hurry?” he says as we speedwalk back to the bonfire. The sun is slowly sinking down past the ocean, leaving the last few golden-pink tendrils illuminating the sky in brilliant streaks.

“They have to know their hallucinations are real,” I murmur.

“What? Joo, have you been having hallucinations-,”

Both of us stop dead in our tracks.

Namjoon, Evan, and Hoseok are hanging off the side of a red Jeep Wrangler, their half-ed linen shirts rippling in the wind. Laila sits perched in Yoongi’s lap, her bronzed skin glowing in the light. Jimin laughs boisterously as Ina Thurgard, Mackenzie Zales, and Courtney Perez fawn over him. The bonfire seems like it has been electrified by the presence of these legendary Windsong alumni.

And in the middle of it all, lying amidst the doting seniors and enraptured athletes and giggling girls, with a blunt hanging from his fingers, is

Taehyung Kim.

I hear Dev before I see him.

“I’m going to ing kill them,” he hisses from the drinks table across the bonfire, stalking over to the crowd. The red Solo cup in his hand has been thoroughly crushed. “I’m going to obliterate them-,”

“Dev, stop,” Jin and Tom exclaim, hurriedly pulling Dev back. Peter stares at them in confusion. I see him mouth something to Tom, who quickly shakes his head.

The commotion has garnered the attention of the upperclassmen. They look over at Dev, Tom, Jin, and Peter. Jimin continues speaking to the girls, but a lazy smirk appears on his face. Dev looks even more enraged.

Jin finally spots me and Jungkook standing on the other side of the party. I’m clutching onto Jungkook’s hand so hard my knuckles are white.

“Hey,” Jungkook says carefully, tugging me back. My back hits his chest with a start.

Dev and Tom see me staring at Jin. Tom says something to Peter, but I can’t tell what.

“,” Jungkook suddenly swears.

I glance back to see what he’s looking at.

Every sorcerer at the party is staring at me and Jungkook. Their expressions range from casual uneasiness to contemptuous disgust to outright hatred.

Taehyung’s eyes are half-lidded. His expression is utterly blank- , how high is he? I watch as he takes a drag of his blunt and slowly blows smoke out his lips.

His gaze moves down to my hand in Jungkook’s- the closeness of our bodies.

I blink. In the next moment, I twist away from Jungkook and started for the parking lot.

“Joo,” Tom calls after me. I don’t stop walking.

My friends find me crouched up behind an Audi A5 emptying the contents of my stomach onto the hot black cement.

A/N: HI omg................ I missed y'all so much, holy crap. this story has been at the back of my mind since feb 2019. i've always wanted to finish it, obviously, but i just didn't know how. plus, i had really terrible writer's block for almost all of college. but I graduated back in may and i'm not incredibly depressed anymore, so :'^)

i randomly had an idea on how to continue this story a few days ago and just cranked this all out in a night. i'm really excited to continue this story :^) I hope y'all like the direction I decide to take it hahahaha, but no worries if not. this sounds dumb but if there are even a handful of people still following this story, I hope I give y'all a satisfying, proper ending. I love y'all so much :'^)