Nana is not really used to the presence of Yeri in this home in such a normal and unproblematic condition. Even for the past two years, she already witnessed all kinds of situations involving Yeri. Of course, it was all happening because of Jungkook, someone who suddenly crashed into this family and changed everything. She thought he was a family ruiner at first but now he mostly seems like an angel. The one who fixed everything for the household.

 

“Do you want something, miss?”

 

Yeri wasn’t giving her any work or ordering her to do anything all day. She was staying in her room, she’s out for a jog around 4PM, and at dinner time she’s here. In the backyard, she stands near the edge of a huge pool. Something she never expected to happen.

 

“Do you know that my brother died here, Nana?”

 

What a question. She takes some time before answering Yeri while trying to find her intentions of asking. But her expression is blank, she can’t read it.

 

“The former maid told me before I started working here.”

 

“I wonder what they told you about me.”

 

Nana started working here when Yeri is a college student, she doesn’t experience the worst situation when she still needs treatment over her mental state. Yeri at that time was cold, unapproachable, quiet, completely something that you usually see from the unhappy heir of a rich family.

 

“They probably told you that I'm crazy.”

 

Of course, she remembers a few maids who told her that, they also talked about her being evil and totally scary.

 

“You changed a lot, miss.”

 

Yeri lfit her face when Nana talked with so much confidence to her, she watched her eyes to make sure that what she said was genuine and smiled at her when it did feel like it.

 

“I cried on my first day here because of you. And I rarely cry.”

 

Nana’s first day. Yeri doesn’t really remember it but judging from how long she’s been working here, it was probably that one incident. 

 

“When I called my parents’s out over what they did to my brother and…”

 

It was a mess, she remembers that one fight she had with her father, the last one she ever involved emotions while interacting with her parents before Jungkook came into their lives.

 

“I cried because I saw you here the night after.”

 

“You did?”

 

It was surprising, Yeri thought that no one was here at that time. 

 

“I feel sorry for you.”

 

She said nothing but gave Nana a smile as she reminisced about that time, how messed up her life was, how totally and completely unhappy she was. 

 

"Oh? Good afternoon."

 

She lifts her face to Nana again when she talks with someone else from the door. It's Jungkook. He nods his head to Nana and she leaves a few seconds later.

 

"Did you happen to listen to our conversation?"

 

She walks to him with a smile.

 

"Why would Nana cry from watching you?"

 

He reaches out his hands to her so she grabs it and he helps her walk, his hands are warm, maybe because she spent an hour here already and the cold air is affecting her already.

 

"Why?"

 

He asks again and she shakes her head to answer him, it is actually good to see him often, right before she started her day and after she ended it. It feels reassuring somehow.

 

“I think we need to stay here for another night.”

 

He slowly gives up from asking her what’s going on, and changes the topic of their conversation while letting go of her hands slowly.

 

“Sure.”

 

Jungkook is totally not expecting this reaction. 

 

“Why?”

 

Yeri is not annoyed, protesting or bothered by it, that’s odd. She laughs at him because he asked her why.

 

“There is one thing that you’re doing so much better than I am, since the first time we met until today.”

 

"There are many things that I do better than you."

 

"I'm just going to admit one thing."

 

Yeri talks without looking at him, now they're walking side by side and she does look serious talking about this when he was joking earlier.

 

"You are good at making decisions."

 

She stops and turns her body to him while giving him a smile, she's still not used to seeing Yeri with short hair but she does look different, it's helping him so much to recover from his nightmare.

 

"When the first time you showed up in front of my door after our nightmare, I was wondering how crazy you are to do that, also when Lee Jihoon took me away and you tried to save me."

 

She stares at him and continues to walk while watching the backyard through a window glass.

 

"I made a decision without thinking much, I used my emotions because I stopped using it after my brother died.. and then you came so i used it again without thinking..i ruined your business, i made you and myself in a dangerous situation numerous times over decisions i made abruptly.”

 

He held her hands, so that she stopped walking and turned to him again.

 

"I trust you, that’s what I meant.”

 

She nods her head when a few of Mr. Kim’s staff are walking past them, they’re here to work for him too. And Yeri seems to finally understand why they need to stay here longer than their plan.

 

“I’ll tell Nana to prepare extra dinner for them, don’t overwork them too much.”

 

She let his hands go and walked fast to the second floor before informing Nana about dinner. He watched her go because it’s actually weird to have someone depending on him and trusting him that much after so many things he has done in his life.

 

***

 

Yeri actually had plans to sleep for the rest of her night before she finds an old box from her closet which is actually not something she expects to be here. Seems like someone is taking the old box to her room after she was hysterically searching for her backpack last year.

 

“All the old stuff.”

 

She sat on the floor and opened the dusty box slowly. The first thing she found was a pile of comic books she usually read when she was a kid. An old photo album of her as a toddler, her old journal which is always full with course schedules, her old bags and dolls, things she tried to forget for the past decade.

 

She spent hours reading three comic books and two journals. She also takes everything out and cleans it up lightly, thinking about using it again because right now, she doesn’t want to run away from her past anymore. Her thoughts stopped when she found an old letter written by her to her brother when he was away for college, probably months after Sooyoung died. She wrote a letter because she doesn’t know how to face him after that one incident.

 

It wasn’t a long or touching letter, but now that she learned about what happened, it does feels like she was so selfish sending this letter to him where she said things like he will be fine, there are plenty of things he will need to go through in the future, that she said sorry Sooyoung died but it isn’t worthy that much grieves, she told him to play with her again after he feels better. She didn’t cry reading this, it’s just, it feels like she really is living her life recklessly for how selfish she was. Even though in the end she realized everything she did was wrong after Seokjin killed himself, still..

 

“What a devil.”

 

She ended up saying things to herself. And put everything back into the box while sighing. Seconds later a knock is heard from her door, she glances at her watch and it is almost dawn, past midnight already. She opens the door and it is actually a surprise to see Jungkook here, she thought he’ll keep working until tomorrow.

 

“Are you done working?”

 

She looked around and it seemed too quiet if all the staff was here. She’s back to staring at Jungkook whose hands are holding two cans of beer, he’s still wearing his work attire means he was just done with his work.

 

“I don’t drink here.”

 

Makes sense. Kim Yeri is not someone who drinks a lot, and she definitely won’t be doing this in front of her parents, even though Jungkook heard about her past which includes ruining her parents' image after drinking so much at a party that people talked about it.

 

“Watch me drink then.”

 

He asked for her hands and she smiled at him while shaking her head, probably thinking that he is ridiculous from doing this in the middle of night.

 

“alright.”

 

She walks away first, he does nothing but follow her steps while being wary, afraid if he bothers someone else’s sleep. 

 

“Why aren’t you sleeping?”

 

Yeri stopped when they reached the kitchen, she poured the beer for him, not all of it, just half of the can.

 

"I should be the one asking you though? Why are you here in the middle of night, asking me to get drunk? My parents were traumatized."

 

“From what?”

 

She takes a seat in front of him and tells him to drink with a glance. He follows her order.

 

"There was a time when I made a mess because I was drunk, I got into a fight with my parents, said crazy things to them and they left me to stay here alone for days, it was after my treatment with dr. Yoo."

 

Yeri takes a sip of milk from his cup and looking around, her eyes are bright, so different from the content of what she just said.

 

"The one you talked about with Nana earlier?"

 

"Right. It was her first week here."

 

"What happened?"

 

"You know.. I was a freshmen in college, my life was a mess, and the only thing i wanted to do was making it messier, they got mad, i bring up my brother's suicide, and they left."

 

He can actually imagine the fight, Yeri who was crazy, Mr. Kim who completely can not accept what she did, Mrs. Kim who at first tried to understand her and took her side but ended up hurted by her and decided to leave her. He can totally imagine it.

The whole thing, the mess.

 

"I didn't care every time they went away, but that night, I regretted everything I said to them and I cried because they were gone, that's what Nana saw. Me right there, at the pool, blaming everything on my brother who died."

 

Yeri is no longer looking at him but turns her chair to a backyard where the swimming pool reflects the night sky. At first, he thought this family was not normal when he learned that Seokjin died there but they're keeping it until now. Seeing Yeri talk about it, he slowly understands why she did that.

 

"Anyway, after that night, i made a decision to ignore my parents completely, to deal and interact with them without any emotion because..it’s either them getting hurt or they forget about what they did to my brother.”

 

"You hurt yourself in the process."

 

"I didn't realize."

 

"Obviously."

 

Yeri is back to focusing her eyes on Jungkook who's taking a sip of his beer and staring at her, like he knows exactly what was going on to her back then.

 

“I am no longer like that though, that’s why i choose to stay with you,i made a decision after so much thoughts now.”

 

"Really?"

 

He asks for another glass of beer but she shakes her head. He is still not healthy enough to do this, not after long hours of work. He seems to understand what she wants and takes back his glass and puts it aside while staring at her eyes, waiting for her to talk.

 

"You seem delighted hearing my decision though."

 

She can tell right away after this morning, he does seem hesitant to let her stay with him for two weeks but he was happy. She could tell.

 

"I do, because after last night, I thought you wanted another useless, meaningless break again."

 

"It wasn't meaningless."

 

"It was for me.”

 

She stops responding to him because the vibe of this conversation starts to get intense and a little bit unfriendly. She’s back to staring at the pools outside the window and her thoughts begin to change from what she has right now to what she lost back in the days. She says nothing for quite some time until the sound of the chair moving is distracting her, and Jungkook is leaving.

 

“Don’t you want to know why I changed my mind about us?”

 

Yeri is talking slowly, her voice is thin but also bright. She seems excited to talk about this. It is enough to make Jungkook back in his chair and stare at her again.

 

“Because I told you that what you did is bull and..”

 

“What you said affected me, Yes. But until this morning, I was still thinking that we shouldn’t be together.”

 

That was surprising, he thought she already understood what he wanted last night, but turns out that she has her own decision. Which was the opposite of his.

 

“The nightmare could happen to you only.. When both of us had it, at least I still found it fair, but last night..”

 

He still does nothing to react to what she said, he needs time to proceed.

 

 “I was going to stay here until my apartment’s renovation is done, even after that..so  you will need more time and energy to see me, you’ll get tired and busy, we’ll end up seeing each other less.”

 

At the end, he can only give a forced smile listening to all of this. Kim Yeri and the way she thinks. He lifted his face to her, searching for her eyes.

 

“So why? What happened then?”

 

“I saw you this morning, with my parents, having breakfast, discussing work, and talking about your plan for a picnic, which I found totally ridiculous after what happened to you the night before.”

 

“We agreed that they don’t need to know about it.”

 

She nods her head as she’s getting down from her chair and walks closer to him.

 

“You worked hard to act like you were fine. I should do the same thing too.”

 

Well, he worked hard because that’s the only way for Yeri to stay, he can not drill his pain too much just in case she gets worried and thinks that she needs to leave so he could be happy.

 

It is too much to take, the whole conversation, he doesn’t expect that Yeri would notice what he’s doing, and thinking that she can do it too, he never asks because he doesn’t want to dictate his way to deal with this matter to her.

 

“I’ll try to pretend that seeing you get hurt or experiencing the nightmare is easy. I’ll work hard until I get used to it, so I can face you and everyone else with a better version of me, just like how you do it.”

 

Yeri stopped talking when she knew that Jungkook doesn’t seem to have the will and energy to react to what she just said. She thought he'd be happy and relieved after she finally became more mature instead of telling him to go away all the time. He’s only looking around while sighing before trying to leave again, she does nothing but watch him walk away from her, thinking if there is anything she said wrong.

 

She’s trying so hard to catch up with his steps without being too loud about it. He didn’t stop, only glancing at her and made his way up to the guest room, which basically turns into his own space right now. She stopped when he opened the door and got in, without any words. 

 

Well, he probably doesn’t want to talk about it further so she waves her hand to him and says goodnight weakly.

 

“Where are you going?”

 

“Sleep.”

 

Yeri’s answer is coming out rather fast, she even used her hands to help Jungkook close his door. Her behaviour is funny somehow, she looked mad but also trying hard to not make him annoyed.

 

“You said you’ll work hard.”

 

“I will, don’t worry.”

 

She gives him a nod and turns around from him so he grabs her hands fast. She can’t go anywhere after what she just said.

 

“I need to get used to it too. If I had a nightmare tonight, the first thing I would see when I woke up is you. It has to be you, and I need to keep doing that.”

 

Not going to be easy, but if that’s the only way Yeri offers him instead of her leaving he’ll do anything to make it work.

 

She also isn’t sure, he can see her eyes are shaking after looking at him from head to toe. It is probably harder for her after what he said that one night. 

 

“Alright, let’s do it.”

 

It takes her a long time before she agrees to his suggestion and makes her way into his room. Only a few steps in and she stopped abruptly.

 

" I need to be honest with you, I didn’t have any nightmares for the past month, when I didn't see you...”

 

She speaks while covering her face after sitting at the edge of the bed, there is a forced smile on her face that she gives him after. He doesn’t know how to react to this, because that’s actually what happened to him too, he didn’t experience anything for the past one month, and last night was the first time he had it again. 

 

He doesn’t want to think that seeing Yeri resulted in him experiencing the nightmare, but now he is sure that’s what happened. Something, someone is asking for his sacrifice in order to have her in his life.

 

Yeri feels bad for telling him that but she has no choice, he needs to know the fact that this nightmare could probably stop from happening when they're not together, so he can possibly have an option to not having it ever again, to stop suffering.

 

"Does it change anything?"

 

She carefully asks him and Jungkook shakes his head while caressing her hair lightly.

 

"No, I'm still sleepy and I still want you here."

 

That's what he said while moving his hands from her hair to her cheeks, caressing it again and bringing her face closer for a kiss. A delicate one. Enough to reduce her anxiety about what's happening. She held her tears and hugged him after he let her go.

 

"That was the last chance I gave you, starting from now, I won't go anywhere even if you told me to."

 

She's quite surprised when Jungkook seems to notice her tears because she pushes her away and uses both of his palms to wipe her tears while squeezing her cheeks to make sure she has no tears left.

 

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