kafka freezes if request hangs

Question

we have 3 microservices - a, b and c.

a needs response from b, b in order to give response to a, needs response from c. whenever c isn't available, b freezes, not only on current endpoint, but even on others, not related to microservice c

we use nestjs and kafkajs, here're minimal examples to reproduce the issue:

microservice a:

 @MessagePattern('a')
  async test(@Payload() data: any) {
    return await lastValueFrom(await this.client.send('b', data))
  }

microservice b:

 @MessagePattern('b')
  async test(@Payload() data: any) {
    return await lastValueFrom(await this.client.send('c(non-existing)', data))
  }

microservice c:

 isn't available

kafka has default settings, each topic has 10 partitions

ask me any questions for clarification would be very thankful for any guesses as to how to fix this issue