Cooked // NCT Groupchat

-58-

A/n: Long(ish) chapter ahead.

"Why am I so stupid?" Rosa huffed outside her apartment door. she started fiddling with her keys in hopes of a distraction. When she couldn't find her apartment key, she laid her forehead on the dark brown door. "I shouldn't care! Why do I care?" She whispered while feeling the cool wood clash with the rising anger in her face.

"He's always been like this. I've known this." She said in hopes of distracting herself. It was the same old story after all. Rosa knew she should have been used to it by now but the truth was, she wasn't.

The girl bit her lip and closed her eyes. She thought back in her life, a time when things were much worse. She hoped it would make her remember how good it was for her right now.

Rosa thought back to when she was nine years old. She remembered standing in front of a beautiful tomb stone, etched on the somber surface were her mothers favorite flowers, roses. She remembered hearing her father pleading -in a foreign tongue she barley knew at the time-  to another woman. He told her that he loved her, and only her. The young child remembered the look of regret that he held when he looked upon Rosa's weak, tearful, state.

The rest went on in a blur. She had a new mother and new brother that she barley understood. They were part of the new family, one that he didn't want her in. No, instead of letting her pick up the pieces along side him, he casted her away like a broken toy. Rosa was sent to live with her sickly grandmother, a ray of sunshine to the bleak moments she called life, or at least she hoped. With all the love in the little girl's heart, the older woman would not get better, instead, Rosa would let her rest for the better parts of days.

Then there were the girls next door, the two friends that practically raised her out of the goodness of their heart. She loved them dearly, however, due to their 5 year age gap, Rosa would usually be left out of a lot of things.

She had nothing else, no one else, so she poured herself into her studies. Then, after six years, she was deemed a genius. Someone who finished high school at sixteen and enough college credit to have practically two years of college under her belt. Her absent father even invited her to Thailand for the summer. She thought she was finally being excepted into their family, but she soon realized, it was only to butter her up. He wanted her to go to business school and help him run the family company. He wanted her to make him even more money.

Rosa remembered crying her self to sleep the day she realized it. Although, she was able to become closer to her brother, the trip only made her angry. Rosa had had enough.

Yes, she went to business school, to her father's relief, however, when she graduated at the top of her class, she told him that she would never work with him.

That day she cast her father aside, and although she knew it was for the best, now, she was truly alone.

"Dammit." Her tears started to drop to the floor. "It's always going to be like this, isn't it?" Her voice started to crack. She felt defeated.

This long struggle she had to endure, it was all for nothing, wasn't it? In her eyes it was. Rosa's rage and sorrow made her forget her achievements, her wonderful life long friends, and the brother she loved so dearly.

"I'm nothing." The defeated cry escaped her lips. Her tears showed no signs of stopping and her breaths became more erratic. There was a hole in her chest, it felt like someone had stabbed her heart and ripped it out of her half dead body. This life, this pain, and this frigid and unforgiving winter that raged on in that hole that was her heart, they confirmed it. She was half alive, hanging on a thread, and leaning on the edge. "I have no one" she cried in an ironic hope that someone, anyone, would hear her, but, she knew there was no one.

She wished for it so badly that she could feel arms encircle her. It was a silent comfort that only made her cry harder. The pain threatened to rip her apart and she was no longer willing to fight it.

"You are not alone."

The voice made her knees buckle. The soft, reassuring, tone that kept giving her false hope.

"Don't lie to me. I can't take it anymore." She pleaded to it. She felt donkey following a carrot on a stick. Rosa felt stupid for believing she could change this hellish cycle, oh so many times before.

"Listen to me."

It only made her cry harder. She couldn't hear it. She refused to hear it. The girl had hoped to tune it out. "I know you aren't there. No one is EVER there. Let me fall apart in peace. At least let me have that." There was no reply and the weight around her torso disappeared. Not even her mind would keep her company now.

However, maybe, someone else would.

Without warning, the girl was gently flipped and her back was now against the door. Her eyes gazed upon a familiar face once again. "Mark?" She called out in an inaudible whisper.

He didn't say a word, instead, he simply enveloped her in his arms. He was determined to to patch that hole in her heart. He didn't know how, or even if he was helping at all, but he wanted to.

He could hear her soft whimpers from her spot in the crook of his neck, and wished to never see her cry again. "It's ok to not be ok, but you aren't nothing, you aren't broken, and you aren't alone." He wanted her to hear his words and remember them. He needed her to remember them, and when she moved her head to gaze into his eyes, he knew she had.

She looked at him, and smiled. Rosa could not process the entirety of the feelings she felt. The words from a boy she has only known for the better part of three months, had stood there and told her everything she had ever wanted to hear.

"Mark?"

"Yes, Rosa?"

She was never more sure in her life. The warmth that spread through her body, the feeling of her beating heart, and happiness that she was refused for so long, nothing had ever felt more right.

Nothing had ever felt more right than when she kissed him for the first time.