Illusions
CHAPTER 2 (Part 3)

"And I hurt you too, when you were so precious to me."

***

It's been two weeks.

It's been two weeks since Yeri made it through the meetings and parties of that time, or even a simple meeting at the cafe. Wh why? Because he can't look Jungkook in the eye. Not just Jungkook, actually, but everything.

His memory of having drunkenness came to him almost immediately when he woke up the next day, or they had not really left, to start his day. The embarrassment he felt was too strong for him, at least until his embarrassment diminished to the point of being completely gone.

That didn't happen.

How did the boy respond with his sudden absence? They don't like it. Suho called him many times trying to ask him, but he easily let the call go into the voicemail. He ignored all of Suho's angry voice messages, too. Sehun tried calling him twice, and Kyungsoo and the others too. He never answered anyone, buried his face in his bed and wished he could not feel the feeling he was currently experiencing.

He knew they just wanted to ask about his whereabouts. He knew they were just worried about him. But he didn't know how to answer the question of what happened to him to get their reaction in Suho's upcoming meeting. There was a surge of emotion in him - regarding his situation - that always pushed people away from him. Perhaps it was an undeniable shame, the shame of being old enough to fight in his own fight, but he still had not done so. It may be due to the emotions of sadness, or the sadness that she carries throughout her life that draws people to her like moths or pushes them away. Perhaps it was most of the emotions he could not name, tons of those emotions were on his shoulders like bricks, paralyzing him from making a reasonable path in his life.

Maybe it's just him.

Maybe he's a real coward. Maybe he really was just vulnerable to pain and misery. Maybe he was just afraid of what "friendship" had brought him. Such things never come alone, they always carry the other side, and thus the friendship of these people will bring not only his joy, but also other negative emotions.

He lay on his bed in his quiet house, four in the afternoon, staring at his hands and constantly squeezing his fingers. Suho's call has stopped coming, and so he sits on his bed in a case of regret and unforgivable guilt, trying to reproach himself for being an idiot.

Suddenly there was a big knock at his door, and it was so strong and loud that he heard it echo all the way to his room on the second floor. He jumped out of his bed, scared, and contemplated what he should do. His heartbeat was pounding like a set of music playing in his ears and he felt a kind of vibration so strong that it made his body vibrate like a violin. He was thinking. Should she go answer the door only to find the angry face of her parents, her mother in particular, or ignore it and get a sentence ten times greater than they deem worthy?

The knock was getting louder and louder, and he made the split-second decision to open the door. He ran down so fast. As soon as he opened the door, his heartbeat flared and his breath locked in his chest; his eyes widened. It wasn't his parents.

"Suhou?" Yeri exclaimed, almost the same when she first saw Suho in front of her house. This time he looked angry, annoyed; his eyebrows danced by themselves as it moved from an empty spot to a crease that looked angry. Suho pursed his lips, his hands inside his pants pocket, and Yeri was scared by what he wanted to say.

"You let me inside or I'll drag you with your ponytail out." Suho growling.

Yeri was very surprised at first. He had known Suho for a month now, and it might have been a little time compared to his years of friendship, but he had always been at his house and in his meetings, she said, he could already remember his routine, his facial expressions, his emotions, or his emotions. He had never seen Suho this bad before. Maybe a month is a short period. Perhaps Yeri should not have thought of him as the soft and silly boy he once thought he was.

Then, her shock faded into annoyance, because of what Suho told her?

"Excuse me?" Yeri furrowed her brows, closing the door closer to her body so that Suho could not barge in or even catch a glimpse inside her house. This isn't like home anyway.

"We need to talk," Suho began, his voice low and his eyes filled with a tensing rage, shivering at the end. "And I mean we need to talk serious right now. I don't take a "no" answer from you. I'm thinking of really pulling you out like a car that's overused right now."

Yeri surprisingly lets Suho in, due to the fact that he threatens to pull him out like an overused car. Yeri did not really think Suho would do it, but he never thought Suho was able to become angry as well, and here Yeri, seeing the best first anger from Suho. "Are your parents home?" Suho asked as he followed her inside and closed the door behind them. He wrapped a long cardigan around him with half a frown on his face.

"I wouldn't let you in if they were." Yeri moved towards Suho and then passed him, sitting on the sofa. Suho followed him and sat on the sofa in front of him, frowning. "They're hardworking lawyers who rarely come home, and when they do, they become worse people than people around here."

"Are you being sarcastic with me now?" Suho leaned against the sofa so that he could look at Yeri with his eyes, his wrinkles turning into a frown as well. "Because I'm this close to ripping your eyebrows off your face."

"Why are you so angry, man?" Yeri exclaimed again, her shock tinged in the same way as her past shock. Suho ignored his question and went straight to the point.

"What did you do to Jungkook?" Suho said slowly, saying each word one by one.

"Again, excuse me?" Yeri crossed her arms over her chest, hoping that she could fuse onto the sofa, onto where she was sitting or disappear into ashes. He was surprised that Suho asked about Jungkook directly to the point, and not about what happened about that day two weeks ago. He asks inwardly whether Jungkook has told Suho something, or he finds out about them, with the mess he once made before. Yeri anxiously fiddled with her fingers, hoping Suho would not notice that her courage was just a false testimony of her fear.

"Yeri," Suho looked so serious that he was afraid that his face would burn to dust. "What happened between you and Jungkook?"

Yeri sighed, gave up, and lowered her shoulders forward. He avoided Suho's eyes when he asked further. "What did he tell you?"

"She didn't tell me anything, that bastard," Suho let out a dramatic sigh. "But I think you're a lot easier to question than he is. Besides, you've been avoiding us for the past two weeks, and he's acting weird too."

This caught Yeri's attention and she gave Suho a look with a sense of curiosity. "Different how?"

"She is agitated, sensitive, and angry all the time. I .. "Suho stopped and swallowed his saliva, turned his face away from him and tried to avoid his eyes. When Suho spoke again, his voice became very soft, like a plucked rose, "I heard him cry last night, in the bathroom. He thought no one heard it but me. "

Yeri covered her mouth with her hands, speechless. It gives him a lot of emotions, the biggest of which is the feeling of guilt. Jungkook was crying because he, he thought, he was crying because he had acted like a jerk about him. One time he was mean to Jungkook, and another time he asked him to stay. If there was someone who didn't deserve any worries from him, that person must be Jungkook.

Suho exhaled, looking moody, and when he looked at Yeri, his eyes begged. "So please, tell me everything."

Yeri offered her a plate of cookies, cakes made by her in the morning before going to university. Suho did not take it, not even a single one, just looked at him coldly, so he placed the plate in front of Suho and returned to the sofa, curled up in an armchair away from his eyes, not staring. What Yeri was going to say was hard to express or talk about, but she realized that she owed Suho, at least an explanation.

"Where should I start?" Yeri said softly, but there was a hint of sarcastic pain in her tone as well. Suho did not know this.

"You and Jungkook" he said, "You knew each other before we met, right?"

"Right," Yeri managed to pierce through her tightly closed lips, fiddling with her hands so hard that her nails removed the marks on her hands with her fingers. "I met him in his first year of high school in Busan. I was a transfer student and I was scared at the time. I've been through a lot, you know, in my life that I haven't finished. Jungkook was like ...he was like a breath of fresh air," Yeri shook her head, trying to bite her lips so that Suho did not know what exactly she felt about Jeon Jungkook that his lips were begging to show it; but it seemed difficult to seal the light, when it was shining so brightly, so he tried to smile a little. "Jungkook is smart, he is cheerful, and he looks happy. He was very handsome when he laughed, and he looked like the orbit of the sun when he smiled. He was very different from what I knew about life. His sudden presence was like a ticking hourglass, waiting to be completed at a time. I knew she wouldn't last long, even after three years of living with him in high school. "

"What's going on?" Suho asked, gently, and Yeri was slightly surprised by how gentle and gentle Suho was as if he easily caught the pain. That discovery, the discovery where Yeri unleashed emotions of anxiety and despair as well as love and compassion when she talked about Jeon Jungkook, she tried to be brave, but it didn't work. Yeri was fiddling with her fingers.

"What happened was that time was over, Suho," his voice broke slightly, so he braced himself, or tried. "Sand in the hourglass subsides completely. I gotta go. I have no permanent roots in Busan, I will definitely be revoked and return to Seoul. He knew that, Jungkook really knew, but he was so stubborn. He knew I wouldn't stay but still asked me to do it. He's not listening. I hope he's listening." Yeri looked annoyed and unconscious in this, her eyes staring at the cake plate in front of them but not really looking at them, and Suho gulped, a little afraid to ask her the next question.

"You left Busan and came here?" Suho managed to grumble.

"I should have been here from the beginning." Yeri squeezed her arms around herself in a sheltered position." My parents won't let me. It was just good enough for me to receive a scholarship to high school in Busan. They don't like me too much going too far, I'll definitely come back," Yeri gulped. "He's very ... stupid."

"What's he doing?"

Suho looked confused, and he had the right to do so. Who is sad and upset when someone says they love them? So Suho asked, showing his dissatisfaction clearly in his voice.

"What's wrong with being loved, Yeri?"

Yeri stared at the cake plate for a while, considering whatever was on her head. Then, he stood up from his seat and faced Suho. He lifted his shirt, showing him bruises strewn across his stomach like sand chips stuck to his shirt on a rough day at the beach. There was a bluish one the size of a fist on the upper side of his stomach, and a purplish one, a little smaller, right on his ribs. Suho wondered if it was broken. Yeri turned around and showed her the one on her back before Suho could grab her jaw which felt like it had fallen to the floor. Yeri's back looked even more mutilated than the front of her body. There's also a scratch mark there.

Yeri sighed afterwards and Suho thought he was done, but he sat down on the sofa and stretched his legs forward. He lifted his sweater leg up to his thigh, showing a dusty bruising line on his skin from his left and right inner thighs. By the time he finished showing Suho all his injuries, Suho was wide-eyed, looking like he had seen a ghost from a bad past.

"Yerin..." Suho returned to speaking after gulping down his hard saliva, but Yeri had already spoken, cutting him off. Suho was astonished that Yeri locked their eyes together, showing her a false sense of bravery in her eyeballs as if Yeri was afraid she would never see him again after all the injuries Yeri had shown her.

"Do you know how to love a broken person, Suho?" Yeri muttered, leaning her chin on her intertwined fingers, looking at Suho with eyes so clear that she was afraid of the intensity of that gaze. "Do you know how they feel? Do you know the only thing we used to feel? Can feel? Here," Yeri pointed at her bruised body. "This is the only thing I know and still know, Suho. I don't know anything else. How do you expect me to suddenly be allowed to love someone?"

Suho said nothing.

"He knows that too. I told him many times about how scary what I was going through, about how limited it was to be a person like me. I told him that I was incapable of loving someone. I told him that I was not in a state of mind, body, and soul worthy of love. I told him I didn't know what love was. But he broke his promise. He wants something I can't give."

"Everyone can give love, Yeri," said Suho with gentleness in his tone so that Yeri was afraid of breaking the dam that was tightly sewn around his shirt and he cried. "It's the easiest thing to give."

Yeri ignored Suho's words and asked, "When did humans first learn about love, Suho?"

Suho looked confused. "I don't understand the question."

"When you were in kindergarten, you were still a child and you were still unaware of life" Yeri explained patiently. "What was the first thing they taught you? Letterbox. They give you letters, one at a time, so you can understand how to read, and then write, like climbing the stairs, little by little. When people are born, when do they learn about love? They first notice it when their parents first introduce it. When did you realize one hundred percent that your parents loved you? "

"I don't know." Suho whispered hesitantly.

"I don't know either," Yeri covered her face with her palm, hiding her expression behind her skin and blocking the emotion seen there from Suho's eyes. A bit of embarrassment seduced him, reminding him that he was too open with Suho; that he told him things that only he said to Jungkook. He remembers Jungkook's words when he tells him that he always pushes people away and swallows his embarrassment. "I don't think I'll ever know. Actually, I don't think that's ever gonna happen. The bruises on my body prove that. "

Suho remained silent, his eyes wide open. Yeri wondered inwardly why Suho's eyes were so wide when he looked at her. Is what he said so painful? Did the words that came out of his mouth feel unreal? Maybe Yeri is just having a discussion. Yeri had gotten used to the sadness in her life so she no longer realized how she got herself out of it.

"Jungkook is a loving person, Suho," he said when Suho's silence had been too long. His words came out convincing himself rather than convincing Suho. "He's kind, he's tenacious, he's selfless, he's loving. He .. he's beaming. The light shone from him. He resembles a rotating sun. He deserves the best relationship to embrace all that light within him. How can I contain it? How can I defeat this bluish mark from my body? They are part of who I am, of my personality. I knew that I was hugging them wrong, labeling them as mine. But Suho, that's all I know. I believe that's all I ever knew. How can I drag him into this? "

Suho stood up, so suddenly, to his surprise. Suho looked at her determinedly, took one of his hands out of his pocket and then stretched it out to hug her. Yeri looked at him blankly.

"You didn't drag him into this. He pulled you to go." Suho muttered. He turned his head towards Yeri, a shock painted in Yeri's eyes.

"How can someone pull me when I can't pull myself?"

Suho offered his smile to Yeri, shaking his fingers impatiently. "With the hand that it offers in an attitude of kindness, and love. Little by little, you will be introduced to love. The first thing you need to do is accept help. First thing. Don't run from him. Not anymore."

Yeri took his hand.

That was why three days later, he stood in front of Jeon Jungkook's house, refreshed from all the things that had happened all along. Change does not happen for a moment or a blink of an eye, but the changes that friends make can be accelerated. Half himself was embarrassed for not taking out Jungkook's helping hand, which was precious to him, when he offered the helping hand the first time. But the hand given by a friend feels different. Jungkook is a controller, someone who is ruled. If Yeri receives a helping hand in a period of time in which she has not been able to digest her mistakes, Jungkook will help her completely and keep her away from her problems so much that she no longer remembers her identity. Sometimes this is a good thing, removing the bad things. But Yeri did not want to erase all her memories, she wanted to open a path through them.

Yeri was wearing a soft summer dress that covered the already fading bruises on her thigh, now there were no more bruises as she did not feel overwhelmed with that bad feeling. On top of the dress was a jean jacket he had stolen from Suho. She is not a healthier version of herself three weeks ago, but Suho offers her help, and helps out over a long period of time. Step by step, Suho told him, so the first step he would take now.

The first step is the biggest one to take, and that is to look for a "cure" with Jungkook.

Yeri rang the door of Jungkook's dorm house and waited anxiously outside, biting her lower lip and tightly holding onto her long bag strap. He heard the man's footsteps getting closer to the door, and his lazy voice told him to wait. When Jungkook opens the door in sweat and a dirty white shirt; jungkook's eyes widen at the sight. Suho's eyes flickered onto his clothes immediately, taking into account all his looks. Jungkook had never seen her wearing such a cute dress. Yeri watched Suho swallow his saliva, but when he locked their eyes, Jungkook glared.

"What do you want." The question appears as a statement.

"You're right," whispered Yeri nervously, tightening her grip on the strap of her bag. "I'm a coward."

Jungkook's eyes widened in shock, not expecting such a reply.

"What?" Jungkook asked in surprise.

"I'm a coward" Yeri cleared her throat. "I should have taken your hand. I should have known it was a favor from Heaven. I should have been brave enough to leave. I should have accepted your love because God knows how much I want to repay you. I'm sorry."

Clearly Jungkook was surprised by his words and his entire presence. She was also a little overwhelmed by how complicated she was with the dress she was wearing. He was used to wearing jeans and sweaters, never this feminine, but he was stronger than a naive boy like himself three years ago. "Why did you really go here?" Jungkook asked, narrowing his eyes.

"I'm here to tell you that, starting from today," Yeri began, strangely sounding bolder than she really is. "I want to reply."

"It's too late." Jungkook whispers.

"Four months ago, when I turned my back on you because you wanted to love me. That day I will never be able to remove it, but eventually I will be against it. I want to admit it was a mistake. I'm willing to stay, and for the most part, I want to love you back too. "

Jungkook's eyes could not be seen any wider. He seems to think of things to say, answers to reply to, but he is stuck in a circle where there is no end and no beginning. There was a part of her that screamed at him to do the right thing, but the other part of her didn't know what was right. She pondered, her head contents were in a mess, and Yeri here looked very pretty with her hair tied up and her eye makeup or her dazzling dress. Is he here to seduce her? No, that's not at all what Yeri did. But what should he do?

"I'll think about it." Jungkook finally says it, and he hates how he seems to say it so uncertainly.

Yeri's face stiffened, but she quickly overcame the shock and strengthened her resolve. However, he remembered the same sentence he said the day he decided to leave her four months ago, the exact same thing he said to Jungkook. "You're not thinking of revenge, are you?"

"What do you want me to say, Yeri?" Jungkook sounded very tired when he said this, and he closed his eyes. "You want me to jump in happiness and hug you with gratitude? It was just a silly feeling of liking. I was young at the time and still under hormonal influence. You explained that you didn't want anything from me. It's time I learned to accept that. "

Jungkook then went inside his dorm and closed the door right in Yeri's face.