kdrama | l.jn

f o r t y e i g h t

"She what?!", Mark's eyes widened as he spoke with his boyfriend on the phone about what happened earlier that day, "So that's why she was so weird during dinner. She let me have the last wing! You know my sister, she would never let me have the last wing even if it was our last day on earth."

"Mark! Focus!"

"Oh yeah, right."

"Can you talk to her or something? We tried calling her and sending her messages but she's not responding. Jeno's been locking himself in his dressing room for the past two hours."

"Alright, I'll try and talk to her."

"Thank you. See ya, babe."

"See ya."

Mark hung up and made his way to his sister's room, determined to know what was going on.

"Yo lose- Hey, Aerin what's up?", Mark's tone changed when he saw his little sister curled up in a ball on the ground, crying.

"I am sick.", she managed to say in between hiccups.

"Your temperature seems normal.", Mark replied after putting his hand on her forehead.

"Noooo. I am sick of people telling me I don't belong in their rich and fancily over the top world. As if that was a bad thing. I don't even want to be apart of it. I don't know why I'm like this. I-I just-"

"-want Jeno?", Mark finished for her, sitting down on the ground as well.

"Don't be so cheesy.", Aerin rolled her eyes.

"I'm serious. Maybe you're like this because you want Jeno to accept you. You want your friends to accept you. You don't care about the fancy shcmancy world but you care about your friends. You're afraid that they too will think that you don't belong with them, which you do of course."

Mark's rambling made her wonder,"How do you even know how I feel?", making an emphasis on 'I'.

"Been there. Felt that. Why did you think mom and dad suddenly wanted to move to Seoul mid semester? They did that so I'd have no way to quit everything and go back home because home would be literally ten minutes away from uni.", her brother explained, "I started to doubt myself, didn't know if I fit in, I was really close to quitting everything but I had a talk with mom and dad and they convinced me to at least finish the semester before I make a decision then before I even knew what was happening, you all moved here."

"Yeah sounds like mom and dad.", Aerin let out a small chuckle at her parents' antics.

Mark nodded in agreement, chuckling as well, "If I'm being honest, the only reason that gave me enough confidence to keep going...was you.", Aerin furrowed her eyebrows at her brother's words, "When you all moved here and you got into that school for rich and smart people, it didn't seem to change the way you act or how you were as a person at all. Even when you told me about those rich people looking down on you, you never gave up, you gave them hell and you never let these people bring you down. I told myself that if even my pain-in-the-ass of a sister could do it than I'm not going to give her something she'll make fun of me for, for the rest of my life. So don't give up now. Don't let their words get to your head. Show me I wasn't wrong. Talk to them, or at least Jeno."

"Aigoo, look at you making me emotional.", Aerin pinched his cheek before pushing his head, "Fine, I'll give him a call.", she sniffed, picking her phone up. She looked passed the multiple missed calls from her friends and clicked on Jeno's number.

She put her phone to her ear, hearing it ring a few times before someone answered, "Hello?"

"Chenle? Where's Jeno?", she asked confused as to why Jeno wasn't the one to answer his phone.

"Jeno hyung locked himself in his dressing room and refuses to come out.", Aerin could see the pout on the younger boy's face as he answered.

"I guess I'm coming then. See you in a few."

"Okayyyy~", Chenle replied with a smile growing on his face.

a/n: OOF mark really is the mvp of this chapter 🤧