Waiting For Us || Stray Kids 9th member Fic

Chapter 6

Her request to go home for a couple of weeks wasn't met with as much resistance as she had expected. After all foreign trainees rarely went back to their home countries. Thankfully she was no idol trainee.

She was given strict guidelines: always stay in touch with her manager, not break any rules, and return on the due date.

Sometimes she hated the kpop world for its controlling nature.

Her manager dropped her off at the airport, she had bought her own ticket and her parents were buying the return ticket for her. At this point, her parents had it understood that she wasn't going to leave the Kpop scene anytime time soon. Now they tried their best to be there for their eldest daughter in all ways possible.

The 9hr flight was terrible. The moment the flight landed, she felt a wave of relief she hadn't felt in a long time.

Her dad picked her up from the airport.

Her family gave her a warm welcome. Her parents had aged in ways she couldn't pinpoint during video calls. Leela had had a good growth spurt. She was almost 3/4th her own height at the age of 14.

But what hurt her was that things had changed for her family. They weren't much close now. Leela treated her the way Winnie would treat a friend's older sister and it made her feel so guilty. Whenever she spoke to her parents there seemed to be this wall, this hesitance.

At this point, Winnie was glad she had agreed to her mother's suggestion. She was only given 1 month and she wanted to make full use of it to get closer to her family. She knew that one month can't make up for all the years she missed, but damn her if she wasn't going to try.

But she couldn't deny that she missed Korea too. Since everyone was busy, the only way she could tell them all at once was to post on their group chat that was leaving for India to see her family for a month and would be gone by the time they returned. She had left just two days after her graduation.

Some of them weren't happy that they hadn't been able to say goodbye to her properly but relaxed about the fact that she would be returning.

Jihyo called her a few times, checking up on her and so did Jaebum and Sungjin and others.

Chan called, at first apologizing for forgetting her graduation day and then dropping the bigger news. Apparently, 3RACHA wasn't debuting but a new project boy group that JYP himself wanted Chan to lead. And now, he was gearing up to select members.

Winnie didn't mind that he forgot. It wasn't like everyone remembered. After all, in the group, she had become the forgotten member and she had come to terms with that. Everyone else had their own groups and their own things to worry about. She understood that.

She spent as much time with her parents and sister as she could. Then she took out some time and effort to meet her childhood friends. Half of them didn't recognize her but remembered her and it took a lot of effort to rebuild those friendships.

It was in the last week of her stay in India did she receive a surprise call from Jungkook. She was confused as he was supposed to be busy with their comeback and world tour. She did answer, though. They spoke for some good time before he asked her why she was all alone at her graduation.

"Everyone's busy. It's fine." she smiled

"It is not?! You are the group's maknae! How could they forget the day you were graduating?!"