Slowly Daesung paced through YG building unable to find an outlet for his pain and feeling unbearably worse because of it.  Finally he found himself standing in the bathroom staring at his own face in the mirror.  Words YoungBae had once said to him began to filter through the haze of exhausted grief that hung around him.  He had just spent half the night sitting up in bed listening while YoungBae spilt his major family problem to Daesung and all his fears and worries that went with it.  Daesung had listened, given encouragement and tried to help in what he felt a fearfully inadequate way.  Sometime later Daesung had thought YoungBae was asleep and started when he spoke again, his voice quiet this time with relief.  "You always make me feel better.  No matter what problem is troubling me, it always gets better after talking to you.  If I didn’t have you, sometimes I’d be tempted to think my life wouldn’t be worth living but you make me want to live.”  At the time Daesung had felt simply profound gratefulness at his words.  Now they seemed to release something inside him.  He would never again hear YoungBae’s voice let alone any of his problems.  Sobs began to break from Daesung’s body as the full realisation of what had happened tore through him.  Gripping the basin, Daesung watched his own face crumple as more of YoungBae’s words multiplied his sobs. “Thank you for caring for me Daesung-ah – Best brother I could ever want.”

“How could I not care for you? You, S.O.L, our sunshine, how could I not?”  He pushed himself away from the mirror onto the wall opposite, then, powerless against the first wave of overwhelming desolation, slid onto his knees and let grief wrack his body in gasping sobs that would not be stopped.  Disjointed words emerged on the sobs and hung over the young man with his death-broken heart. “I still care for you my brother but I can’t.  I can’t care for you if you’re dead.”

When JiYong left the lounge room he only knew he had to get away from Seungri.  Blaming his maknae was unthinkable.  JiYong couldn’t; wouldn’t.  But his grief expressed itself in anger and anger needed an outlet.  As he strode down the halls he kept replaying the scene in his mind.  Seungri thumping YoungBae’s boot; YoungBae lifting his foot to stamp down again… JiYong shook his head sharply and barged through a door.  His mind flicked back again.  YoungBae jumping up onto the ledge; all his athletic grace and supple energy clear in every movement.  YoungBae’s joyful shout to the world.  YoungBae’s uplifted triumph as he flung his arms up, embracing the heavens.  YoungBae, YoungBae, YoungBae, falling, disappearing from JiYong’s sight and life, forever.  Forever.  With a tortured half groan, JiYong pushed through another door and almost fell into the gym.  For a second he stood, breathing hard.  His whole body tense.  Then he flung himself at a boxing bag hanging in a corner.  He stayed in the gym for hours, working out, striving to empty himself of the burning anger and pain eating into him.  Finally, too exhausted to move anymore he simply leaned his head against the wall and punched the bricks until his knuckles bled.

A hand went onto his shoulder and he jumped, swinging around in the same motion.  It was Dara.  She had heard what had happened, seen JiYong leave the lounge room and had been standing outside the gym all that time to make sure no one else went in.  JiYong didn’t give her a chance to say anything. 

“Why are you here? What do you want?”  He swung away then back and yelled at her, “He’s dead!  He won’t ever be able to tell you he loved you but he did.  He couldn’t live a day without saying something about how much he loved you, but he’s dead now!”  With the last phrase he brought his fist once again into the wall but Dara moved faster and JiYong froze in horror as she gasped in pain, drawing her hand back grazed and bleeding, both from the wall and JiYong’s sharp rings that had slashed though her skin.

“Why did you do that?” Demanded JiYong incredulously.  He slid his hand underneath the one she was now cradling protectively, and gently turned it over to see what damage his fist had done.  “Noona, why did you do that?” 

For just those few moments all the anger had been shocked out of him and Dara grabbed the opportunity.  “Because every time you hit that wall you to hurt yourself, you hurt me more.” She said gently.  “Don’t harm your body trying to express your feelings.  That won’t help anything.  Talk about them.  Tell me. Yell at me all you want, if it helps.” 

He stared at her speechless, unable to find a beginning to everything going through his mind.  “Seungri said it was his fault.” Said Dara quietly, knowing that it couldn’t have been but sensing JiYong needed a place to start.

“No.”  JiYong’s words were jerky, abrupt and forced as though it was an effort to force his body to speak.  “It wasn’t.  He just, YoungBae was just, playing around with him…” suddenly something unlocked inside him and he was screaming at her.  “He was always being stupid.  It wasn’t Seungri’s fault it was YoungBae’s!  The stupid idiot never knew when to be sensible!  It isn’t enough that he has to risk his dumb neck doing backflips in concerts, he has to go and jump onto the edge of a building and that still isn’t good enough for him!  He has to go and play tootsies while he’s up there!  He never knew when to be sensible!  Of all the stupid ways to die…”  All the agony and angry confusion that JiYong had been burdened with poured out of him, unable to be stopped until finally he collapsed on the floor against Dara.  When he spoke again, pain and guilt quieted his voice while tiredness made it hoarse.  “I never did anything.  I didn’t try to stop him.  I’m supposed to be the leader and take care of them all.  But when he actually needed me, I was useless. I didn’t even move! I just sat there.  I didn’t take care of him, my friend who I knew even before YG.  I said I’d always have his back.  But I didn’t.  My band mate, my brother…  Why didn’t I stop him?  What kind of a leader am I?”

Dara felt his torture and could do nothing but lock her arms around him in the hope that physical contact would be some comfort and try to quench his raging guilt with the most earnest words she had ever spoken.

“Listen to me.”  She said in English, then switched back to Korean.  “”you could never have known, even guessed, that something like that would happen.  How could you?  You aren’t his father, or his bodyguard.  You’re the leader yes, but no leader could be expected to know how to act in a situation like that.  You were an excellent leader to YoungBae.  You did take care of him in all the ways you possibly could have.”

“I didn’t even try to stop him.  I just sat there… and watched him…”  JiYong’s voice was expressionless, numbed by self-reproach.

Dara set her jaws together hard to stop a shudder at the thought of watching YoungBae falling from the edge of the roof and tried not to visualise it as she spoke again.

“What could you have done?  Nobody could have done anything.  Even if you had been there he would have just dragged you with him and we couldn’t have borne to lose both of you.   You don’t need to feel that you should have stopped him.  You couldn’t have.  Nobody could have done anything for him, let alone the person sitting furthest away from him.”

Gradually she felt JiYong’s body relax until from pure exhaustion he joined Seungri in sleep.  Dara stared into the silent gym and tried to understand JiYong’s words that were still ringing in her head.  “He loved you.  He wouldn’t let a day go past without saying something about how much he loved you.”

She looked down at her bleeding hand and something inside her began to bleed as well.  She had loved YoungBae.   Loved him in a deep, hopeless kind of way that was worse than any fan-girl’s because it wasn’t some vague, far-off superstar she loved.  She knew him; had worked with him, sang with him and travelled with him.  Occasionally there would be glimpses of wild unrealistic hope.  He had asked her to dance with him in the I Need a Girl MV.  At a few award shows he had come from the stage while singing to take her hand and lead her up onto the stage with him.  Occasionally when YG Family had been travelling together he had chosen to travel beside her and a very few times she had been held by him.  When 2NE1 won an important award he would hug all his sister musicians, Dara included.  Once when he had found Dara crying he had wrapped his arms around her and rocking her slightly had sung to her until she stopped crying.  Dara cherished that memory as she cherished no other.  Remembering it now, a half gasping sob of pain passed her lips.  He had loved her.  Everything that might have been welled up before Dara and she pressed both hands over , regardless of the pain in her hand, to keep herself from crying aloud.  The pain in her heart was far greater than any physical pain she could feel.  Finally Dara, who had loved silently and selflessly for so long with the wistful yearning that maybe someday it would be returned, dropped her head with a pitifully supressed whimper, tears from her bleeding lost love sliding down her face onto her bleeding hand.