Yerin’s POV

I clutched the warm coffee cup and tried to finally stop my fingers from trembling as I sat on the couch in our living room. I didn’t remember how many cups of coffee I drank in the last few hours. I didn’t even remember how many hours had passed since Sojung-unnie had left our dorm to head towards her parents’ house. It felt as if I was having a nightmare. Nothing seemed real. Or maybe I just hoped with everything I had that this was only a nightmare. That I would wake up and everything would be fine.

Abeonim...

Tears clouded my vision and I blinked rapidly to keep them from falling. I had no right to cry. Not when Sojung-unnie had been so strong.

She had indeed followed me after a few moments, just like she had promised. She had taken both of my hands into her own and we had taken a seat on her bed. It must have cost her every little bit of self-control to look as calm as she had done at that moment. Even with something like this, she had put my well-being and feelings before her own.

I took a deep breath and tightly shut my eyes. It was not fair. Life was not fair. Why abeonim? Why him?

His smiling face appeared in my mind and the sound of his laughter that could light up every room filled my ears from memory. Of course, we had known that he had been sick for a while. Our members and our parents were all close. Our parents even started to meet up on their own. Incredible friendships had formed over the years.

And now one person of their tight group was going to leave this world forever.

“Unnie? What are you doing up already? Do you have a schedule?”

I opened my eyes again and looked at Yewon who had just come into the living room. It was no surprise that our maknae was the first member to wake up. “No, no. I just couldn’t sleep anymore. What about you? Still having trouble?”

Yewon frowned and I could tell that she knew something was wrong. Nothing got past our youngest. “I slept fine, I’m just an early riser, I guess. Are you okay, Unnie? You look exhausted.”

“We need to send you to bed earlier on our days off,” I thought out loud. “Did you try meditation before going to sleep? And kept away from your phone?”

“Yes and yes. My body got probably used to less hours of sleep.” Yewon shrugged and let herself fall down on the seat beside me. I felt her head resting against my shoulder and put an arm around her. “What’s going on, Unnie? I can tell something is wrong. You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to, but…”

I let out a deep sigh and took a small sip of the now lukewarm coffee. Would it be better to tell them all at once or one-on-one? I preferred the first option because that meant I would not have to repeat the awful message four times. But was that the best option for the others?

This was probably what Sojung faced multiple times a day as the leader of our group. Sojung-unnie… I turned my eyes back to the window where the first rays of sunshine made its way into the room. I knew I had to step up as the responsible unnie in the next few weeks to come, especially in the next few days without her presence. Sojung had made it clear that I was taking over her role as the leader as long as she was not there. And I was not going to disappoint her.

A loud bang kept me from making a decision as curses and laughter echoed throughout the dorm. Yewon and I glanced at each other before turning our heads simultaneously towards the room of our vocal line, the 97ers. The door of the maknaes’ bedroom opened as well and a bleary-eyed Hwang Eunbi stuck her head out.

“I heard an explosion..?” she muttered, her voice laced with sleep. Yewon snorted beside me. “Earthquake?”

“No explosion or earthquake, SinB-ya,” I answered and watched as she shook her head before she looked at me. “Probably just Yuna being… Yuna.”

SinB scratched her head and frowned. “Why are you awake? Do we have a schedule? I could have sworn it’s an off day..?”

“It is.” I set the cup on the table and pushed my slipping glasses back up. Now that everyone was awake, I could tell them at once. They would soon notice Sojung’s absence anyway since it would be unusual for her not to check up on us after this commotion. “SinB-ya, could you come here for a moment? I’ll get Yuna and Eunha, we need to talk.”

Standing up, I noticed that the maknaes were staring at me intensely. SinB had lost any tiredness from just a second before and was fully alert. It was no wonder. Sudden meetings so early on an off-day were highly unusual.

“Do you want me to wake Sojung-unnie?” Yewon asked and glanced towards our room. “She must be incredibly tired that she’s still sleeping through all of this.”

“No need for that,” I said and walked to the other bedroom where Eunha was still giggling loudly.

It broke my heart that soon her good mood would disappear as quickly as ice in the desert. Taking a deep breath, I tried my best to compose myself and knocked on the door. Only a few seconds later it was opened by a still smiling Eunha.

“Unnie? We are so sorry, we didn’t mean to wake you up,” she started to apologize, unable to wipe the grin off her face, although she tried. “Yuna-ya, we woke up Yerin-unnie!”

“You woke up the whole dorm!” SinB shouted from behind me and Eunha blushed.

“I am so, so sorry!” Yuna appeared behind her, looking as if she had just survived a tornado. “It was my fault, I was – I don’t know exactly what I was doing, but I –”

“Could you two come with me to the living room, please? We need to talk.” Eunha’s smile faded and Yuna looked like a deer caught in the headlights. “I promise, you’re not in trouble. It’s not about waking the others up. Accidents happen.”

“Yes, of course.” Yuna nodded. “What is going on? Did anything happen?”

Without giving her an answer, I turned around and headed back. SinB was drinking the rest of the coffee I had left on the table and whispered with Yewon, but they both stopped as I came closer.

“Where’s Sojung-unnie?” Eunha asked confused as she spotted the other occupants in the room. “Isn’t this a group meeting?”

“It is.”

I motioned towards the couch and waited until everyone had taken a seat. I was standing awkwardly in front of them, fidgeting with my hands as I looked for the right words. Were there any right words for these situations?

Yewon, sitting between the two Eunbis, reached out to take their hands. My weird behavior and the unusual meeting without our leader present was making her anxious. It was making them all nervous, it was clear on their faces.

I looked out of the window and tried to find the mental strength that seemed to come so easy to Sojung. After a few seconds of tense silence, I turned back around and sat down on the floor in front of the couch. I needed to be able to look into each of their faces when I told them. I needed to be there for them.

“Sojung-unnie will be absent for the next few days,” I started and relief flooded through my body when my voice remained as steady as I willed it to be.

“Why?” SinB narrowed her eyes at me, but I saw how she tightened her grip on Yewon’s hand. She was scared. “We may not have a schedule at the moment, but we’re not on holiday. We can’t just leave.”

“Let Unnie talk, Eunbi-ya,” Eunha shushed her gently, eyes solely fixed on me. I met her intense stare and gave her a small nod. Despite her mental maknae image, Eunha had always been tough and attentive to her surroundings. “We will get an answer sooner, if no one interrupts Yerin-unnie while she explains it to us, okay?”

“Thank you, Eunha-ya. Sojung-unnie went to her parents’ home for a couple of days. Her abeonim is not doing well.”

I tried to look as composed as possible for my members, but I had never had to deliver a message like this. My gaze wandered over my dongsaengs to gather their reaction. Yuna looked expressionless down at her knees, hands tightly folded on her lap. Eunha swallowed thickly and pressed her lips together into a thin line. SinB’s knuckles had turned white from her tight grip on Yewon’s hand and she looked at everything except at me, while I could already see the first tears forming in Yewon’s eyes.

They knew where I was going with this. Sojung would never have left in the middle of the night, if it had not been serious.

“The doctors say that he won’t have much longer,” I said quietly and saw how the first tear escaped Yewon’s eye. She quickly wiped it away and took in a shuddering breath. “They gave him two days at most before he… passes on. Sojung-unnie received the permission from CEO-nim to take as many days off as she needs and she left as soon as she could last night with manager-unnie who drove her home. He will also release a statement to our fans and the public when the time comes.”

It became silent in the room except for the occasional sniffle from Yewon. Yuna and SinB were still avoiding my eyes, but Eunha had not looked away once. I was not even sure if she had blinked.

“He...” Yewon’s voice cracked and she cleared . “He will – abeonim will die?”

A lump formed in my throat as I gave her a nod. “Yes.”

“But – can’t they do anything? There must be something they can do!” Yewon looked at the others. “There have to be other options, some treatment they never thought of doing? Is it because of money? I can call my appa, he can pay for the medical bills, I’m sure he wouldn’t mind! Maybe he even knows better doctors. I’ll call him right now and –”

“Yewon-ah,” I interrupted her as gently as I could. My heart broke at her desperation. “It’s not about money or better treatment...”

“So what, we’re all just going to let him die? Just like that?” SinB asked and angrily met my eyes. “The doctors are just letting him die?”

“There’s nothing they can do for him anymore, SinB-ya. His time has come.” I winced at my own words and couldn’t blame SinB for getting louder.

“His time has come?! That’s complete and utter BULL!”

“You’re talking to Unnie, calm down,” Yewon whispered and tugged at SinB’s hand, trying to calm the furious girl down, but it was no use. Not that I would’ve been angered by her outburst anyway. I knew it wasn’t directed at me.

“Abeonim is not old, he’s, like, in the middle of his life right now, not at the end of it! It’s bull! He needs to be there when our career will completely take off and we will win award after award so he can point at Sojung-unnie and tell everyone that his daughter is the leader of this group! He needs to be there when Sojung-unnie brings home a boy so he can intimidate the crap out of him! He needs to be there when Sojung-unnie gets married! He needs to be there when...” SinB trailed off as her voice broke and the lump in my throat started to hurt worse. She shook her head and blinked rapidly before turning her eyes towards the window. “This is not… this is not fair. Nothing about this is fair...”

I nodded, silently agreeing with her. “Unnie asked me to fill in as the leader until she comes back. It’s highly likely that we will have to go to at least one schedule without her and I will try my best to not let her or this group down. If any of you have worries or concerns, I hope you can come to me and trust me with it.”

“How is Sojung-unnie dealing with this?” Eunha asked, still refusing to look anywhere else but at me. “What can we do to help her? Is there anything?”

Thinking back to the scene in the hallway, I fidgeted with my hands before I realized it and stopped. “She’s… doing as expected, I suppose. She’s obviously upset, but she was very composed when she told me. We all know how strong she is, she will get through this. We just… we’re just going to be there for her, okay? That’s probably the best we can do. We will reassure her that she still has us, if she ever needs a shoulder to cry on. We can take a few burdens off her shoulders and act more responsible than usual, so she won’t have to worry about us too. We can try to make her laugh and take her mind off things.”

The girls nodded and the silence spread again as everyone was lost in their thoughts. I sighed and stood up again.

“I’m going to make us some hot chocolate, okay? Does anyone want anything else?”

Silence.

I pushed my glasses back up and went into the kitchen. As soon as I closed the door behind me, the tears that I had held in for the last few hours started to trickle down my cheeks. I sank towards the ground and buried my face in my knees, trying my hardest to cry as silently as possible. I couldn’t let the other girls know. I was supposed to be strong, I was supposed to be the responsible unnie, the one who was leading them through this tough time. I couldn’t be weak. Not in front of them. Not now. Not when Sojung-unnie was counting on me.

It took me a few moments until I had myself under control again. I went to the sink and splashed some water into my face, hoping that it was not as swollen and my eyes not as red as I feared they were.

I had hot chocolate to make.