Jay's pov
Flashback inside flashback ends ~
I was sitting there on the sofa with my head hanging low.
I had finally let everything out, exposing the darkest, most terrifying parts of my soul to the people right in front of me.
I was still trembling and crying quietly, my damp palms covering my face as a fresh wave of silent sobs racked my frame.
I refused to look up at any of them.
I just couldn't bring myself to do it.
A heavy, paralyzing fear gripped my heart—I didn't know if they were going to look at me with sympathy, or if they would feel disgust, or if they'd see me as permanently broken after hearing what my life had really been like.
I kept my gaze locked firmly down at the floor, until suddenly, someone wrapped their arms around me.
It wasn't a gentle, hesitant embrace;
it was a tight, fierce hug, almost like someone had lunged onto me in a desperate rush.
And sure enough, when I felt the familiar warmth, I knew I was right—it was CN.
He was crying completely uncontrollably, trembling just as much as I was.
He buried his face right into the crook of my neck, his shoulders shaking as he choked out a broken, shattered cry.
"Jayyyy!" he wept, his vo
ice thick with raw agony.
He was crying, I was crying, and together we were a complete, pathetic mess.
Past his shoulder, as I blinked through my tears, I saw the rest of Section E.
Every single one of them had heavy tears shining in their eyes, their heads bowed low in a deep, devastating sorrow.
"I'm sorry..."
CN cried out against my skin, his words muffled and heartbreaking.
"I should have been with you at that time... I'm so sorry that I was just three years old back then..."
Despite the overwhelming grief, a sudden, wet chuckle escaped my throat.
I was still crying, but I genuinely couldn't stop that tiny, unexpected burst of laughter.
Only this ulupulong could say something so ridiculous right now.
CN pulled back slightly, wiping his wet face with his sleeve.
But before I could even process what was happening, my eyes drifted past him and caught Aries standing up abruptly from the sofa.
His posture was rigid, tense as a tightly wound spring, and without a single word, he aggressively turned and ran toward the stairs, heading upstairs fast.
He roughly wiped his face with the back of his hand as he ran.
I couldn't even tell if the streaks he was wiping away were actual tears.
"ARIES!"
Kuya Angelo shouted after him, his voice echoing sharply through the room.
But Aries didn't even slow down.
"Kuya!" I called out, turning toward Angelo.
"I'll see him," I said, though honestly, even I didn't know why the hell I had just volunteered to go after him when my own legs felt like lead.
I pushed myself up from the sofa.
Without my permission, my eyes drifted over to Keifer.
I couldn't read his expression at all.
His eyes looked so... dead, hollowed out by a terrifying rage and sorrow that he was holding back with every ounce of his being.
But I didn't wait.
I knew I needed to go to Aries right now.
I turned and ran after him.
I rushed up the stairs, and seriously, after crying this much and reliving all that hell, my body was entirely exhausted.
Climbing those steps felt like running a marathon.
By the time I reached the upper landing, he had already slammed his bedroom door shut.
I hurried over and came to a dead stop right in front of his room.
Clash!
Crash!
The violent sound of breaking objects echoed loudly from inside the room.
He was throwing things here and there in a blind, reckless fury.
Oh god!
I muttered under my breath, my heart pounding against my ribs.
And right then, a strange shift happened inside me—the worry suddenly mixed with a flash of anger.
Why the hell was he acting so upset right now?
I was the one who had gone through all of that!
I raised my hand and banged hard against the wood.
"Aries!"
No reply.
Suddenly, all the crashing stopped.
No sound at all was coming from inside the room.
Total, suffocating silence.
"Aries!" I called out his name again, trying to sound somewhat polite—though to be fair, my voice was shaking so badly it sounded like I was right on the verge of bursting into tears all over again.
Still, absolutely no reply.
I called his name nicely two times more, pressing my ear slightly against the door.
"ARIESSSS!"
I finally lost my patience and just yelled his name at the top of my lungs.
I was really getting angry now.
Click.
The door snapped open with sudden force.
"WHAT IS YOUR PROBLEM?!"
I flinched so hard I took a step back.
He had literally just shouted right in my face.
Fresh tears instantly escaped my eyes, hot and stinging.
He was breathing heavily, his chest heaving up and down.
His hair was a complete, tangled mess, like he had been clawing at it frantically with his hands.
His eyes were red, bloodshot, and terribly puffed up.
It honestly looked like he had been crying his eyes out, but... I didn't know.
I couldn't tell anymore.
"Jay! Just go away,"
he said with cold authority, refusing to meet my eyes, speaking in a harsh, serious tone that felt like a slap.
But despite his harsh words, I still remained standing right there on the threshold, staring up at him through my blurry vision.
And then, just as I looked closer at him, I noticed something terrifying.
Blood.
His hand—his knuckles—were split open, and they were bleeding.
"Aries, your hand!"
I gasped in shock, my eyes locking onto the blood dripping from his split knuckles.
He was standing just two or three steps away from me inside the wrecked room, his chest heaving.
I lunged forward instantly to grab his hand, desperate to look at the damage and make sure he wasn't hurt any worse, but the second my fingers brushed against his skin—
"Ow!"
he hissed, shoving me away with a sudden, sharp jerk.
"STAY AWAY, JAY!" he shouted at the top of his lungs.
What the actual f—?
"WHAT THE HELL IS YOUR PROBLEM, ARIESS?!"
I shouted right back at him, and honestly, this time, I completely lost my grip on my temper.
All the exhaustion, all the pain of the past, and all the overwhelming frustration boiling inside me finally broke through.
"WHY THE HELL ARE YOU BEHAVING LIKE THIS, HUH?!
WHY THE FUCK... WHAT IS YOUR PROBLEMMMMM?!"
I finally yelled everything out, hot tears streaming uncontrollably down my cheeks as my voice cracked with fury.
He stared at me, and I stared right back at him, chest to chest in the middle of the mess.
He looked intensely irritated, running his fingers aggressively through his hair and pulling it down in sheer, desperate distress.
To be completely honest, right at that exact second,
I seriously wanted to call Keifer up here and let him beat the absolute shit out of this idiot.
Typical hotheaded Aries horoscope behavior!
"YOU ARE MY PROBLEM!" he shouted back.
"HELL, YOU ARE MY PROBLEM!" he roared, his voice shaking with a raw, twisted agony.
Before I could even process what he was doing, he lunged forward and grabbed a brutal fistful of my collar, shaking me back and forth like a ragdoll.
I swear to God, I want to punch him right now.
Punch!
Okay, I actually just did it.
I threw a quick, sharp punch straight at him, catching him entirely off guard and forcing him to let go of my collar with a gasp.
"Why the hell?!" I shouted back, panting.
And right after the punch, all the fight instantly drained out of him.
He grabbed his hair again and just sank straight down onto the floor, his head bowed low, staring desolately at the ground.
"Why didn't you ever tell me...?"
he whispered, his voice cracking into a broken fragment.
Ehh? Is he having some kind of daylight nightmare or losing his mind?
"Why did you suffer alone...?" he cried out.
I swear, the second those words left his mouth, my heart completely sank into my stomach.
My anger vanished in a single heartbeat, replaced by a sudden, aching void as I watched thick, heavy tears roll down his cheeks.
"Why was I not there...?"
he sobbed, pulling frantically at his hair as his forehead pressed almost entirely against the floorboards.
A sharp, broken sob escaped my own throat before I could even try to stop it.
"Aries..." I whispered.
I swallowed hard, walking closer to him and dropping down to sit right in front of him on the floor.
I kept my hand firmly on his shaking shoulder to steady him, even though my own hands were trembling ten times worse.
Slowly, gently, I reached up and pulled his head up.
He looked at me with red, swollen eyes, looking like he was about to completely ugly-cry right then and there.
"Jay..." he choked out, his voice sounding more like a desperate, helpless plea than a question.
"Jay... wasn't... wasn't I supposed to be your... your kuya?"
I said it very emotionally, completely caught off guard by the depth of pain hiding behind his hotheaded mask.
"Jay... wasn't I supposed to save you?
To... to protect you?"
He asked me, his throat bobbing painfully as he swallowed hard to force down those heavy tears,
looking at me like he had failed the one job that mattered most in his life.
"Aries..."
"Jay, tell me! Fucking tell me!"
he suddenly yelled again with a
raised, cracking voice, grabbing his hair once more, pulling at it so hard it looked like he was trying to tear it straight out of his scalp.
"I was your Kuya, Jay..."
His voice cracked completely, the raw pain breaking through every defensive wall he had ever built.
"You used to trust me..."
He cried, and yes, he cried ugly this time, sobbing like a helpless, broken kid,
his shoulders shaking violently as all his tough-guy armor finally shattered into a million pieces.
And of course, as always, heavy,
unstoppable sobs escaped my own throat without my permission, tearing through my chest.
"I was supposed to save you from that... that monster..."
he choked out through his tears, gasping for air.
"I was..."
"Aries...!" I called out to him, my voice cracking, even though my throat was burning from the dry, aching pain.
"That was just... it was just supposed to happen like that... it's not your mistake..."
I tried to reason with him, my words tumbling out brokenly,
interrupted by my own gasping breaths.
"You... you were just a kid back then, too, Aries!
It's not your fault, please..."
"NOOOO! NO!" he cried, shaking his head frantically against the floor, refusing to listen.
"I could have saved you... if... if I had just been there.
I wasn't just busy wandering and being angry at you just because you didn't remember me...
...I could have..."
He couldn't even finish his sentence, choking on a fresh wave of agonizing self-blame.
I couldn't stand to look at him like this anymore, watching him tear himself apart for something he had no control over.
"Aries..."
I cried out, and without thinking twice, I lunged forward, wrapping my arms tightly around his neck and pulling him into a fierce, desperate embrace.
"It's not your mistake," I kept muttering over and over against his shoulder, my voice a soft, trembling plea.
"Stop blaming yourself... please, Aries, just stop..."
For a long, quiet moment, the only sound in the wrecked room was our ragged breathing and the muffled echoes of our shared grief.
Then, slowly, his heavy arms came up, wrapping around me just as tight, pulling me in so close it felt like he was trying to shield me from the world all over again.
We were both still trembling from the sheer exhaustion of crying, our bodies shaking against each other on the cold floor...
I'm sorry, he mutter in half sob, kissing at the top of my head
It's ok...kuya, I mutter as I patt softly at his back, a tiring smile touching my lips.
As I buried my face in his shoulder, I knew.
Even through the tears and the pain, it was worth it.
I finally got my Kuya back.
_____________________
Hey buddies! I hope you guys are doing well.
I know I was really disappeared, but....it was important for my survival, otherwise my teachers and parents would have killed me.
Ok buddies
Bye bye
I'll try to update asap
Love u 😘😘