Wheels Have Each Other

36. The regret

Italics - Past Jeongguk's POV
Normal - Present Jeongguk's POV

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Weirdly, after reading the letter a couple (more than a dozen) times, all Jeongguk had to do was have a couple of drinks to remember that night. The memories returned with such force that it left him gasping in their wake.

The memory of him stumbling drunkenly behind Jiyeon after she asked him to follow her, the memory of her confessing to him, and the memory of him being shocked because that was something he had never imagined to happen. He had in fact thought she was having a crush on Jeongyeon because she was all Jiyeon would ever talk about when they were together.

He remembered fumbling for a nice way to reject her, but how much could his drunk mind try? He had tried saying 'no, Ji, I love you like my sister,' a couple of times, and when it didn't work, he got mad and stormed back towards the table his friends sat at.

More than mad, he felt disturbed.

Was he that incapable of a friend? How had he not realized that he had been leading her on all of these days? How had he not realized that she was falling in love with him? How could he hurt her now by rejecting her? 

He did try, of course, because he couldn't lead her on anymore, especially after coming to know about her feelings, but that didn't mean it didn't break his heart to reject her. 

Feeling more and more disturbed with every single thought that popped up in his mind on his way back, he grabbed a bottle the second he reached his friends' table and downed it in a go. 

And then the words.....those damned words...

WHY ON EARTH HAD SUCH WORDS COME OUT OF HIS MOUTH?! 

He destroyed his room so badly that it became unrecognizable to himself as well. For a second, he even considered killing himself, because he thought he didn't deserve to live after hurting a person so close to him so horribly, after insulting and betraying them so bad that suicide seemed like the only option to them. 

(A/N - Jeongguk was her mentor. Such words coming from his mouth when he was the one who had been supporting her the entire time regarding her gender transformation IS a huge betrayal from his side. If someone else had said the same words, she would have just felt bad about it, maybe even a little depressed. But JEONGGUK saying those words was what killed her.)

But he then remembered the pain all of them had felt at Jiyeon's loss. He didn't want his parents to go through the same pain. 

And Yugyeom...oh god, Yugyeom....what was he even going to tell him?! How was he even going to show his face to him?! 

He was sure Yugyeom would either kill him on an impulse or stop being his friend forever. There was no way he was going to forgive him for what he had done, and Jeongguk knew it for sure. Jiyeon was someone super-close to Yugyeom, after all. He was crazy when it came to his sister's safety and sanity.

And the more Jeongguk thought of how he was going to lose Yugyeom now, the more he realized that he didn't want that to happen. 

 Thus, he did the one thing that came to his mind and folded the letter up carefully and inserted it into his wallet, because he wanted it to remind him of his crime whenever he opened his wallet, and then he kept mum about it. 

He kept mum about the entire incident and tried his best to act like he wasn't the reason why Yugyeom was now sister-less.

"....so none of the hyungs told Yugyeom-ssi about what you did?" Taehyung asked.