Chapter 24
Days passed like a slow funeral march.
Everything was bleak, suffocating under the weight of exams and a heartbreak too raw to name. Freen never returned to her dorm. She didn’t show up to college unless it was to sit for an exam—nothing more, nothing less. Not a glance spared. Not a word spoken.
The Freen everyone knew—the dutiful student president, the fiercely attentive leader—had vanished.
Her responsibilities were silently picked up by Nam and Kade, who never asked questions, only did what needed to be done. And Freen? She did what she always did best when pain clawed at her insides.
She drowned in work.
She put herself on autopilot, drowning under layers of tasks, meetings, deadlines. She gave Krik an unexpected vacation and took over everything—handling every intricate detail of her businesses with precision and obsession, micromanaging herself into numbness.
Because if she stopped… even for a second…
The silence would return.
And with it—the self-hate.
The guilt of hurting Becky.
The ache of pushing BonBon away.
It rang in her ears like a relentless, vengeful echo.
But she refused to pause.
She worked until her body collapsed from exhaustion.
She passed out, not slept.
She survived, not lived.
And in those dark, stolen moments between consciousness and oblivion, she replayed it all—what she had said, how she had said it, the look in Becky’s eyes when the words landed like knives.
Yes, it was their first fight.
And yes, it had to happen.
Because Freen had tried—again and again—to create distance. She had begged the universe to let her protect Becky from the curse of her fate. But Becky kept holding on.
So Freen did the only thing she had left—she pushed her away. Brutally. Deliberately. She used words she never meant to say, laced with poison she didn't believe in.
And while Becky was reeling from the sting of it—
Freen was bleeding too.
Every word she had thrown out had lodged into her own chest like shards.
If Becky had cried herself to sleep, Freen had broken in silence—over and over, without a single witness.
As for BonBon…
Freen couldn’t bring herself to ask directly.
Instead, she used every string she had, every contact in her vast network to keep tabs quietly.
And when she heard he was recovering—eating again, safe at Becky’s parents’ home—she felt a tiny flicker of something she hadn’t felt in days: relief. Just enough to let her breathe.
But she never let that relief show.
And while Freen never lingered on campus for even a second after her exams were done—disappearing like a ghost before anyone could catch sight of her—she still knew, somehow, that Becky was not alone.
Becky had found her own kind of quiet shelter in the warmth of Irin, Nop, Mew, Kade, Nam, and even Krik.
Freen’s own circle.
Her people.
They were worried.
Not just for Becky… but for her, too.
They had all noticed Freen’s absence, her sudden coldness, the way her eyes had lost their light. At first, they thought it was just stress from the exams or her presidency duties, but it quickly became clear—it was more than that.
Something had happened.
Something personal.
Something painful.
So they turned to the only person who could possibly give them answers—Becky.
And Becky… couldn’t say much.
She couldn’t tell them about the fight, about the hurtful things said in that dark moment, or about Freen’s strange “fate” that had begun to unravel their bond.
But the silence between them said enough.
Everyone knew.
Freen and Becky—once inseparable—were now barely on speaking terms.
The shift in energy was loud without a word being spoken.
So Freen’s friends, out of care and quiet loyalty, did what they could.
They wrapped Becky in presence. In support.
They kept her company between classes, sat beside her during breaks, made sure she ate something, even if it was just a bite.
Not because they were replacing Freen.
But because Freen wasn’t there.
And someone had to be.
It was a silent understanding—none of them ever discussed it out loud, but it lingered in every shared look, every concerned glance in Becky’s direction.
She had heard things in passing, maybe even seen them from a distance—Becky sitting with Mew, irin lending her notes, Kade walking beside her quietly with a protective expression, and nam made sure she eats her meal.
Freen knew all of this.
She watched from afar—never close enough to be seen, but always near enough to feel it.
Because she had made her choice.
To protect Becky.
Even if it meant destroying herself in the process.
For Becky, nothing could have prepared her for this kind of silence.
She never imagined a day would come when she’d cry herself to sleep in an empty dorm, wrapped in darkness that felt colder than any winter night. The bed across from hers—the one that used to be Freen’s—remained untouched. And with each passing day, she stopped expecting it to be filled again.
Freen hadn’t shown up.
Not once.
And it had been nearly three weeks now.
At first, Becky held on to that tiny thread of hope—that maybe Freen just needed space, that maybe tomorrow she’d walk in and say something, anything. But tomorrow came, and went, again and again.
Now, she knew.
This was the end of… whatever they had.
She never brought BonBon back to the dorm, no matter how much she missed him. Instead, she’d visit her parents' house frequently, just to see him, to hold onto something that still connected her to them.
Most nights, Becky slept wearing Freen’s oversized t-shirt—the soft grey one Freen used to lounge in. It still carried traces of her scent: the faint musk of cologne and lavender shampoo. She held on to it like a second skin, like a memory she didn’t want to fade.
To distract herself, she kept busy.
Filling her time with studies, with rehearsals, with endless research.
She scoured every forum, every article—anything that could explain Freen’s “fate.” Some strange loophole, a counter-ritual, a cure... but there was nothing. Just theories and metaphors and dead ends.
No matter how deep she buried herself in distractions, the pain always surfaced.
It clung to her chest.
It weighed behind her eyes.
It burned in her throat whenever she tried to sing.
Because God, she missed Freen so much that she started writing songs about her.
She had always been a gifted singer—but lyrics? That was new. Freen used to tease her about it, saying, “You feel so much, Bec. Just write it down. That’s all lyrics are.”
Now those words echoed back at her like ghosts. So she wrote. She doubted herself every step of the way, hearing Freen’s painful words from their fight on a loop in her head, but still—she wrote.
And what poured out was raw.
Unfiltered.
Frighteningly real.
Meanwhile, her music project with Jeff was steadily progressing. They had already completed several songs, and soon, they were scheduled to appear on a radio show for an exclusive premiere—each of them set to debut one single for their fans.
Becky had a choice: release one of their upbeat tracks, or... release this.
The one she wrote.
For Freen.
About Freen.
It wasn’t just a song. It was a wish wrapped in melody. A hope.
Because once, Freen had said she wanted to hear Becky’s voice on the radio.
And now, Becky could only pray she’d tune in.
Even just for a second.
But one thing was painfully clear to everyone around her:
The Becky they knew—the bubbly soul, the campus sunshine, the girl who lit up every room with laughter and endless chatter—was gone.
What remained was a shell of her. Pale. Quiet. Withdrawn.
She moved through hallways like a shadow, her smile faded into memory.
And the entire campus felt the weight of it.
The void Freen left wasn’t just in Becky’s heart.
It rippled across every corner of the college, like grief that no one knew how to name.