Jongin’s head is a jumbled mess of thoughts as he jams the elevator button for his floor. He hardly dares hope. He’s finally got a lead – a real, verifiable lead – to where Kyungsoo might’ve gone after his disappearance. For the first time in ten years, Jongin really feels like he might be getting close to solving the mystery of his best friend’s disappearance.

Part of him is happy, so happy that it feels like his chest is going to burst. But mostly he’s terrified. What if he doesn’t like what he finds? What if he finds out that Kyungsoo really is dead? What if Kyungsoo was murdered? Or worse, committed suicide? Jongin honestly doesn’t know how he would be able to go on if that happened.

But then there’s the question of what if he actually finds Kyungsoo? Not Kyungsoo’s body or the memory of him, but actually Kyungsoo, live and in the flesh? He thinks that part might terrify him the most.

He’s exhausted and feels like screaming when he lets himself into his apartment. “Babe,” he calls, toeing his shoes off in the entryway and slipping his socked feet into his slippers. “I’m home! Sorry I’m so late!”

But it isn’t Sunyoung who comes into the entryway to greet him. It’s Jongdae, still wearing a suit from work and carrying a mostly-empty beer in his hand. “Hey Jonginnie,” he greets his younger brother, forcing a smile that is so fake it’s actually painful to look at.

“Hyung?” Jongin says in some surprise, shrugging out of his suit jacket. “What are you doing here? Where’s Sunyoung?”

Jongdae ignores his first question, preferring to answer only the second one. “She’s in the kitchen. I think she’s working on a lesson plan on her laptop. She doesn’t seem too happy with you at the moment, little bro.”

Jongin winces. He’s been coming home late a lot lately, giving his girlfriend more and more excuses; he’s not surprised that she’s pissed at him. He’d be a little alarmed if she wasn’t, to be honest. But he doesn’t want to think about that now, so he gives his brother a steady look. “So what are you doing here, Jongdae?”

His brother just shrugs, taking another long swig from his beer, emptying the bottle.

Jongin sighs. “Did you and Yoonah have another fight?”

Jongdae’s face crinkles up and it looks for a moment like he’s going to start crying, but the moment passes and he just sighs, looking utterly drained and exhausted. “Yeah,” he admits. “It…it was pretty bad, Jongin. I think this was really it. I think we’re done for good.”

Jongin leads his brother into the living room, sitting him down on the sofa. There are half a dozen empty beer bottles littering the coffee table; he wonders just how long Jongdae has been there, drowning his sorrows in cheap beer. “Don’t say that, hyung. This is your marriage. It can’t just be over. What happened? What did you fight about?”

Jongdae huffs out a humorless laugh, slumped against the couch cushions. “What we always fight about,” he grumbles. “She complains that I don’t help her enough with the kids. She hates that I’m gone during the day. I can’t seem to get her to understand that I’m gone during the day because I’m working, because I’m trying to provide her and the kids with a good life. And tonight I made the mistake of going out for a drink with the guys from work. You’d think the world had ended. She was screaming so loudly that the neighbors called and complained about us. That was my fault too, apparently.” His bitterness is palpable.

Jongin sighs and pats his brother’s arm. He doesn’t know quite what to say. It’s true that Yoonah has always been high maintenance, and he does think that she’s being a bit unreasonable, but he doesn’t know what to do or say to make it right. “I’ll get you another beer,” he says simply.

He wanders into the kitchen, loosening his tie. Sunyoung has her computer set up at the kitchen table, her fingers ghosting over the keys as she types, her reading glasses low on her nose and her hair pulled up in a messy knot.

“Hey babe,” Jongin greets her, pecking her on the cheek before going to the fridge to get another beer. “How long has Jongdae been here?”

“About three hours,” Sunyoung says, and it’s obvious from the tightness of her voice that she’s pissed off too. Jongin winces. “Which you’d know if you bothered to come home every once in a while.”

Jongin puts a hand on her shoulder. “Babe, I’m really sorry. I had work stuff to do and-”

“I called the precinct,” she cuts him off tensely, turning to glare at him. “They said you’d gone home hours earlier.”

Jongin winces. He should’ve known she’d do something like that. “That’s because I wasn’t at the precinct. I was working at a friend’s house.” It sounds like a lie even to him, and he knows it’s the truth. He can’t even begin to know what Sunyoung thinks of him.

He sighs and sinks down in the chair beside her, taking her hand in his. “Listen, I know I’ve been a bit distant lately and I know that it’s really taking a toll on you, and I’m really sorry. I really have been working, I swear. It’s just…we’re working on an old case that we don’t technically have permission to work on so everything’s sort of secretive right now. I swear, tonight I was with the guys from work. We went to a friend’s house who thought he might’ve had a breakthrough in the case.”

Sunyoung still seems skeptical, and he doesn’t really blame her. His behavior these past few months has been nothing but suspicious. “Why are you working on a case if you weren’t assigned to it?” she demands.

“It’s been an open case for ten years,” Jongin says carefully, not wanting to give away his personal connection to the case. He owes it to his girlfriend to be honest, he knows, but this is still too personal for him to share. “My own father couldn’t solve it. I guess there’s some kind of drive to solve something that no one else has been able to.”

She gives him a long, hard look, but in the end she must decide that she believes him because she loses some of her edge. “I just don’t like it,” she admits. “I feel like you’re always sneaking around and I really hate it.”

He gives her hand a squeeze. “I know, babe. I know. We made a real breakthrough in the case tonight, so maybe we won’t be working on it all that much longer.” There’s a catch in his voice but Sunyoung doesn’t appear to notice it.

“Fine,” she sighs, pushing her glasses up into her hair and pinching the bridge of her nose. “But not while your brother is here. I told him he could crash here for a few days, just until his latest fight with Yoonah blows over, and I don’t want to be left alone here with him while he’s all mopey.”

Jongin doesn’t want to agree. He’s right on the brink of something that could be momentous, and to put it off for even a few more days seems like asking too much. But this is his brother and his girlfriend, and they’re just as important to him as Kyungsoo. So he sighs and nods. “Okay, I promise. I’ll put the case on hiatus until after this all blows over.”

Though typically Jongdae and Yoonah make up after a day or two, this proves to be one of their worst fights yet. He stays with Jongin and Sunyoung for nearly a week, contacting various divorce attorneys and looking into the visitation rights he might get with his two kids if he were to pursue a divorce.

Eventually he leaves. It is a Friday night and he comes by to get his belongings and thank his brother and Sunyoung for letting him stay. He’s gotten temporary lodging at a share house and will be staying there until things settle down with him and Yoonah, for better or for worse.

“Thank god he’s gone,” Jongin groans when the door is finally shut behind him. “He’s like a cloud of walking depression.”

Sunyoung hums in agreement, sliding her arm through his as she leads the way into the bedroom so they can start getting ready for bed, both too exhausted to stay up and watch television the way they normally do.

Jongin changes into a t-shirt and fresh boxers, washes his face, and brushes his teeth. Sunyoung is already curled up in bed, the light turned off, when he slides in beside her, feeling the weight of his brother’s troubles heavy on his shoulders.

Sunyoung is quite for a moment, but then she speaks. “Promise me something, Jongin,” she says quietly.

“Of course, babe. Anything,” Jongin replies without hesitation. 

“Promise me that we’ll never let our relationship get like that,” she says. “I don’t ever want us to act the way Jongdae and Yoonah are acting. I-I don’t know that I could handle fighting with you like that. I just want us to be honest and happy together.”

Jongin is silent for a long time. The guilt that he’s been pushing to the back of his mind has reared its ugly head and the words are on the tip of his tongue. It’s not fair to Sunyoung to keep everything a secret, he knows. She’s been nothing but good to him, good and kind and fair and wonderful. And it’s not her fault. None of this is her fault.

His resolve finally cracks. “Sunyoung,” he says, and his shaking voice doesn’t inspire much confidence.

She rolls over to look at him, a little confused. “Yeah?”

“I-I’ve got something I want to tell you…”

Even though it’s dark, he can tell that she’s giving him a wary look. He can practically hear her heart pounding as a million different scenarios race through her mind.

Jongin swallows thickly. The words are difficult to find. “Do you remember my best friend who disappeared?”

Whatever Sunyoung has been expecting, this is not it. “Yeah…” she says, rather uncertainly. “Your mom told me about him, about how torn up you were about his disappearance. But what does this-?” She stops suddenly, putting together what Jongin had told her earlier. “The unsolved case you’ve been investigating…you’ve been trying to find out what happened to your best friend.”

Jongin nods, hanging his head a little. “It’s stupid, I know,” he forces a chuckle. “That I think I can succeed where countless others have failed.”

“It’s not stupid,” she assures him gently, putting a reassuring hand on his shoulder. “He was your best friend. Of course you want to find out what happened to him.”

All her kindness is only making it worse, Jongin thinks miserably. “It’s not just that, Sunyoung…there are some things about Kyungsoo that you don’t know…Things that even my mother doesn’t know.”

She is silent, waiting for him to elaborate, her hand a steady, reassuring pressure on his shoulder.

He takes a deep breath. “Kyungsoo was gay,” he finally says. “And he had a really big crush on me.”

“O-oh…” It’s obvious that she’s not quite sure how to respond to this little nugget of information.

Jongin hangs his head even lower. “I-I turned him down. I broke his heart. The same night he disappeared…”

“Oh babe!” Sunyoung’s arms are around him at once. “It’s not your fault! You couldn’t have known what would happen-”

“I do feel guilty, but that’s not the worst part,” Jongin interrupts her. “The worst part is that when he told me he loved me, I turned him down even though I didn’t want to. I turned him down because I was afraid of what everyone would say…what they would think of me…”

Sunyoung’s hand on his shoulder is retracted. “Y-you were in love with him too?”

Jongin nods miserably, arms wrapped around his knees. It’s both cathartic and terrifying to say these things out loud, especially to the girlfriend who has stood behind him through thick and thin all these years.

She is quiet for a long time, so long that Jongin thinks she won’t respond. But eventually she says, very softly, “Do you still love him?”

Jongin doesn’t even have to think about it. “I do,” he admits. “Not a day goes by that I don’t think about him, about what happened to him. About whether or not I could have prevented it.”

There is another long pause, and when Sunyoung speaks there are tears in her voice. “What will you do?” she finally asks, voice breaking. “What will you do if you find him?”

But Jongin doesn’t have an answer for her. He doesn’t know himself. So he remains silent.

That is answer enough for Sunyoung. She gets out of bed and goes into the living room. He doesn’t follow her, even though he knows that he probably should.

The sound of her sobbing continues for hours. 

I know a lot of you, like, hate Sunyoung. Many people have expressed to me how much they hate her, and I honestly don't understand why. I actually really disliked writing this chapter because it made me really sad :( Sunyoung honestly has done nothing but be supportive of Jongin, but at least he finally grew a pair and told her the truth. 

But yeah, I really like Sunyoung's character and I feel really sorry for her in this chapter :/