KILL THIS LOVE | JENLISA

Chapter 111

Jennie

'What even is agpym?' I thought to myself, my patience growing flimsy. Maybe it wasn't a random combination of letters, maybe it was an anagram, which would mean rearranging the letters could give me a real name. "Hey, can you grab me the notepad over there?" I asked Hanbin who was on his phone intently, gesturing towards the little notepad on the nightstand.

He passed it over to me, a beaming grin on his face that lit up his sable eyes, "The semester's over and you still can't get enough of your work?" I cracked a small smile in response, not sure what to tell him. I then took my pen and wrote 'AGPYM' in bold capital letters on the paper. How on earth could those letters be arranged to create something meaningful?

MAGPY

GAPMY

By the third word, I gave up, realizing how insipidly stupid all of it was. I closed the laptop in frustration and put the notepad to a side, a groan escaping my mouth. Hanbin, who had been laying by the end of my bed, on noticing the little movement, inched towards my seated form. One of his arms hands snaked around my waist, the other on my shoulder as he almost straddled me.

"You're so tensed babe," He whispered into my ear, sultry and deep. "Let me fix that."

I blinked up at him as I gingerly placed a hand on his chest, putting some distance between us, "I... I just have too much on my mind right now."

He ceased his action immediately, respectfully drawing away from me, but his eyes remained full of regard, "Do you want to talk about it?"

I shook my head, "No, not right now." I looked up at him, only to notice his face was still glossed with concern. To change the subject, I began, "I mean, all we do is talk about me. I want to know more about you." I forced myself to smile, dragging my body to lie down beside him.

He raised his brows playfully, visibly eased, "Oh yeah, what do you want to know?" my gaze fell onto my roommate's empty bed, raising a quintessential question I'd almost forgotten about. "Why haven't you gone home for the holidays?"

More than half the campus was empty, owing it to the fact that almost everyone had gone home to see their families for the Seollal break. I, of course, had no one to go home to. In fact, I knew I didn't even have a home, for that matter.

A deep exhale left Hanbin's mouth, "My grandma raised me, you know." He turned his face to look at me, "I lost my parents when I was young. Gran looked after me all that time. And.." He paused, "I lost her too, last year." His tone was clipped by the end.

I reached out to caress the side of his face softly, "I'm sorry." For a brief moment, I debated whether or not to tell him the truth about my own family. Tell him that I understood loss. I'd half lied to him about my family, telling him that I had never met my parents. Listening to him being so earnest, stirred something in me to spill the grisly details of what went down ten years ago.

But I couldn't, I'd never opened up to anyone about that besides the child psychiatrist I'd been sent to at the age of ten.

It was then that Hanbin sat up abruptly, reaching for his coat.