Fall Down (Stray Kids Seo Changbin)

Twenty-one

"This sucks," Paige muttered as she pressed a bag of ice against her forehead.

Cassidy chuckled.

"What were you even thinking? Lincoln warned you not to touch books in the library."

"How was I to know they were trapped?"

"You're lucky to be alive," Kyla mentioned, sitting on the dining table beside them, staring out of the grand window. "We've killed a while bunch of intruders with those darts."

That statement didn't help Paige at all. She just groaned louder.

She had managed to successfully dodge all the darts but ended up bashing her head against on of the bookshelves in the act. From what she heard, she was unconscious for two hours yet her head still ached when she woke up.

"Where's Linc?" She changed the subject. She hadn't seen him all day but then again it was still mid-morning and she had been in a semi-coma for the majority of the morning.

"Took the Stray Kids boys out to a shooting range. You would have gone too if you didn't try to kill yourself."

Paige rolled her eyes.

"Not like I tried to. It just... Happened."

Kyla simply laughed and shook her head before turning to Cassidy.

"Any good news on finding Harrison?"

Despite being with them less than a week, Paige could clearly feel the tension. Every time Kyla spoke to Cassidy, her voice lacked it's usual friendliness. It was coarse and mean. And Cass tried so hard to make it seem like it didn't affect her but she never had eye contact with her. If Paige didn't know better, she would have believed at some point in time, Kyla had bullied the heck out of Cassidy.

"Minho's still at it. He says he's close though." Cassidy's voice was a lot softer than Kyla's and lack all trances of confidence. She stared down at her bowl of cereal and swirled her spoon around it.

"He better hurry up. Lily's tracking us down. And she's darn good at it," Kyla complained.

"Still don't trust her?"

Kyla glared at her slightly, bitterness written all over her face.

"Still don't trust me?"

"I do trust you."

"Yeah, right. Probably blame me for what happened to Janey."

"Why would I?"

"Why wouldn't you? A month before her passing, you used to always warn her about me. Got her of all people against me and then when we were left alone on the mission, she dies. You think I killed her, don't you?"

Paige recalled how a few days before her passing Janey would constantly tell her how strange Kyla started to act. She always just believed her sister was going crazy after getting all those death threats. Now she didn't know what to believe.

"I never said that, Kyla," Cassidy raised her voice but still avoided eye contact.

"You don't need to. Is that why you've been constantly around Linc these days? Trying to convince him to kick me out."

Cassidy gulped.

"Kyla, it's not-"

"It is, isn't it? You've been trying to act all innocent while I seem like the bad guy, huh? You left us to fight over twenty armed men. That was basically asking for us to die."

"Well, I'm sorry I was the only one smart enough to realise we'd never beat them," Cassidy snapped. Her voice was harsh and she glared intensely at Kyla. "I wanted to live-"

"When has the Society ever been about living? It's about making things right whether it kills us or not. Think of all the people that died to get us here. Think of them!"

"I tried to help you-"

"Liar. You ran away like the coward you are. You don't deserve to be in the Society. You don't-"

"Hypocrite! You ran away too. If you didn't you'd be in the same situation as Janey."

"They let me go. After killing Janey, they let me go." Kyla broke into a sobbing mess. "They made me watch them kill her then they let me go. I tried fighting. I tried saving her but the pushed me out!"

"Whether I was there or not, the aftermath wouldn't have changed!"

"Maybe it would have. You were always the best at stalling. We could have bought time for reinforcements. We could have-"

Cassidy sighed before rubbing her hand reassuringly against Kyla's back.

"Look, Kyla. I miss her too. More than anything but if we keep living in the past nothing would happen."

"You don't get it, Cass! I can't. We can't-"

"Kyla-"

"She was pregnant!"

And those three words was enough to make the whole room fall silent. Even the bugs outside seemed to go still. Paige's jaw dropped.

"She was pregnant with Lincoln's baby. Two months pregnant," she further explained.

"But... If she was pregnant, she shouldn't have gone on the mission. Why didn't Linc pull her out?" Cassidy muttered, suddenly feeling light-headed.

"He didn't know. No one did until after it happened."

"No, you're lying. She couldn't have been."

But nothing they could say could change what had happened. Janey was pregnant when she died.