Taste | Changbin

Chapter Ninety-One

A/N: Trigger warning for mentions to suicide. 

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At 6am, every member of the band was sleeping besides the maknae. After stuffing themselves with pizza until their stomach hurt, most members fell asleep while watching the movie. They were strung throughout the living room. Twisted on the couch, spread out on the floor, limbs were locked together, and snores filled the room. 

No matter what he did, I.N couldn't fall asleep. He spent hours scrolling through the social media pages that he wasn't supposed to have. Of course, he had them. How else was he supposed to stay up to date with the outside world? 

His mind kept drifting to Lennon. He knew how much a person could struggle under pressure. He had been a victim of it himself. There were times when he personally fell down rabbit holes of hate. One after the next after the next, he wouldn't be able to pull himself away. 

Of course, the older members checked in on him often. For their sake, he had forced himself to stay away from reading the hate. It made him feel shitty and he wouldn't feel his best. When he wasn't at his best, his mental health suffered which led to his singing and dancing suffering. So for the sake of everyone, he had forced himself to stop. 

He had sent Lennon almost thirty text messages and they all went without a single response. She hadn't even opened them and looked at them. The two of them had formed a close bond. Since he grew up with brothers, Lennon had started to feel like a sister. 

Blinking, he forced his eyes away from the screen. Exhaustion hung over his head, but he couldn't sleep. Every time he closed his eyes, he kept wondering about Lennon. Was she okay? Did she have someone she could talk to? He had texted Hana last night and she said that she hadn't heard from Lennon either. The whole situation worried him. 

A large yawn came out of his mouth. He pressed the back button on his screen and refreshed the trending feed on Twitter. Most of the trending items were about his band and other k-pop news. Occasionally, he'd get information about breaking news from South Korea, but since he followed so many fan pages and other groups, the algorithm had pinned him as a k-pop stan. 

A new hashtag had started and it only had a few thousand tweets. I.N blinked to make sure he was seeing it right. It couldn't be about...? No way. 

#Lennon

And right beneath it.

#Changbin

He clicked on the Lennon hashtag. The first tweet that popped up was a retweet of another tweet. He scanned the words quickly. 

I don't like Lennon either but what you did was too far. You should be ashamed of yourself. How could you say that to somebody? 

He shoved himself off the ground as he clicked on the enclosed tweet. In the video, Lennon stood facing whoever was behind the camera. Her arms wrapped around her body protectively. The video was playing on mute, so he unmuted it, and turned up the volume a few notches. 

The girls behind the camera continued talking to her. His heart hammered in his chest. This had to be what she experienced the other night. What could they have possibly said that was so bad? 

"Haven't you learned anything from your past? All you do is break people." 

Eyes widened from the words, I.N pulled the screen closer to his face. Lennon removed her hands and balled them into fists at her sides. Her eyebrows furrowed in anger, "excuse me?" 

The fans continued going at it. 

"You're a worthless piece of bad luck. It's a tragedy that you haven't killed yourself yet. You'd be doing the fans and the band a favor."

Multiple emotions flashed across her face before one stood out clearly; pain. Their words had clearly cut her to the core. How could they say something like this? 

"Hey!" 

The male voice caused Lennon to jump. The phone was immediately taken off of Lennon and positioned to film the ground. 

"What the hell do you think you're doing back here?"  

I.N stared at the phone in disbelief. This couldn't be his fans. Would his fans really do something this cruel? Would they really tell a member of their staff to kill themselves because they were dating a member of the band? 

And Lennon, she looked so broken at the end of the video. Not everyone could shake off the words of other people. Sometimes words cut too deep. Those girls knew exactly what they were doing when they did that. They were trying to crush her and they had succeeded. 

Lennon is all alone. 

The thought was like a bucket of ice water over his head. The band just got back last night, but that was more than enough time for a person to commit suicide. One of the biggest warning signs of suicide is distance. Lennon had completely cut all of them off. 

In the midst of panicking, he reached out to the closest band member to him. Hyunjin had curled himself into a ball on the floor. They had pulled out pillows and blankets last night, so everyone could be comfortable. 

He shook his leg, "Hyunjin, wake up!" 

He groaned and rolled over. 

I.N tried again, "get up!" 

Nothing happened. 

Not wasting time, he quickly copied the link from the tweet, and sent it into their group chat. He shoved himself off the floor and hurried into the kitchen. He picked up the first pan he saw and grabbed a wooden spoon out of the silverware drawer. It'd take too long to wake everyone up one by one. 

Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! 

He hit the pan as hard as he could while walking back into the living room. He had no desire to wake them up gently. This was an emergency. 

"What the fuck?" Changbin groaned

"Fuck off!" Hyunjin snapped. 

"Wake the fuck up!" I.N yelled. 

Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! 

"What's going on?" Chan asked. He blinked his bleary eyes and forced himself to sit up on the couch. "Is everything okay?" 

"Someone better be dying for you to wake us up like this," Lee Know mumbled. 

That's all it took. The pan and spoon slipped out of I.N's hands and clattered to the floor. His eyes welled up with tears. 

"Hey, what's wrong? Are you crying? I.N, what's going on?" Chan forced himself off the couch to comfort him. 

"It's Lennon, I think she's in trouble."