In Another Life

Her Fault

Life had been peaceful for a while. Mingyue was no longer tormented and Heeseung was freed from his relationship.

Mingyue was finally happy, she woke up early just to spend time with Jiah, and she would have late night gossip with her too. She balanced her home life, school life, and social life pretty well.

Well less so her social life. She only hung out with Haneul and Sunoo in class because she wanted to get out of any public situations that might occur. After going to the cafe with Heeseung to pick up breakfast for everyone, then being accused of being a home-wrecker, she made sure to steer clear of Enhypen, minus Sunoo.

Everyone could tell that she was very cautious, even if it was in the Choi's house to work on homework with Haneul. They knew that this was going to be the new 'normal', that Mingyue couldn't just leave the past events behind her.

Jiah told Mingyue that she would have an important meeting, so Mingyue and Haneul decided to do homework together.

"Let's go to the convenience store!" Haneul cheered.

Not giving Mingyue any choice, she dragged them both there. Haneul grabbed their favorite milks and other treats that they could enjoy while doing homework.

"Mingyue?"

"Yeah?"

"Will things ever go back to the way they were?"

"I'm not sure... maybe someday." Mingyue answered honestly.

Haneul knew that she was slowly losing her best friend. They used to be attached at the hip, now they were poorly sown and looked like the seam would tear at any moment.

After their pit stop, they made their way to the house. It was routine to see Enhypen there now.

"Mingyue, I hope you don't mind, but Kangdae did invite them over to do homework too. We can go up to my room and work there if you want."

"That's alright, I know that you would get too distracted if you were in your room. We can work downstairs."

Haneul smiled, she felt like she was making a little progress in helping Mingyue. She knew how terrible their classmates had been to her. They sent mean notes, death threats, and even some blades for the accusation. Jangmi had a great influence over everyone, somehow they all fell for her charm.

The two girls walked in, going directly to the dinning room to do their work. Enhypen was there too, but Mingyue already told Haneul that they could work downstairs. She already was deeply regretting her decision. Upon their arrival, all heads turned to their entrance, most of them were surprised to see Mingyue anywhere near them.

"Jungwon, Ni-ki, move." Sunoo said, shooing the two boys away so Haneul and Sunoo could sit on either side of Mingyue. It was clear that she wasn't fully comfortable after everything that happened.

But she came to work, so that's exactly what she did. Her eyes were trained on her homework, she paid no attention to anything else. Even when her strawberry milk was placed in front of her, she didn't even realize because she was so focused.

"Mingyue!" Kangdae snapped her out of her trance.

"Huh?"

"We've been trying to talk to you for ten minutes," Ni-ki said.

"Oh sorry, I didn't realize... what were you saying?"

"We were asking if you were staying for dinner?"

"I can get back to you on that, I just have to talk to Auntie Jiah."

Multiple text messages had flooded her phone from Jiah. They were all along the lines of 'don't come home' and 'your mother got out.'

"Haneul," Mingyue looked frightened. Her hands began shaking. It was a nice peace while it lasted. Her best friend walked over, taking the phone and reading all the messages.

"You're staying here tonight. Let's go, you can change into something that isn't the school uniform."

The girl woke up exhausted. She could barely sleep with the lack of information that Kang Jiah had gave her. It felt like every time she closed her eyes she either saw her mother or the weird dreams that she kept getting when she lived with the Choi's.

Mingyue felt like she was going crazy. She would wake up in the middle of the night, the smell of gun powder still lingered in the air.

She woke up crying three times that night, sleep would not have mercy on her.

The girl lugged herself out of bed and went to go to the kitchen. She was in no mood to go to school today, she looked like a vampire that had come back from the dead.

"Woah!" Ni-ki yelled, seeing the girl. She quickly picked up the closet thing to her and threw it at him, it happened to be a spoon. Heeseung had walked into the room to see what's going on.

"What are you guys doing here? It's was a school night."

"Mingyue, today's Saturday." Heeseung said, picking up the spoon.

"Why did have a homework hangout then? I could've sworn that it was a Tuesday..."

No one had told Mingyue that the only reason they were doing their homework was so they could they could all spend time together. Haneul had texted the group chat ahead of time that there was a possiblity of doing homework. They went from playing video games to pulling out their books within a second.

The girl couldn't even look at Heeseung without seeing the memories of her vivid dreams. The picture... She never took it with her. Realizing this, she quickly nodded, and ran back upstairs. Opening the draw, she was met with an empty space.

"No, no.. it has to be here." She muttered to herself, searching through all of her other drawers. All of them came out empty. She wanted to scream at herself for being so stupid and forgetting it in the first place.

"Are you alright? You ran up here." Heeseung knocked on the door, slowly opening it.

"Yeah, yeah I'm fine. I just forgot something."