Harapjm

Most people assumed Jeon Jungkook has it all.

And in a way, they were not wrong.

He is the only son of Jeon Group, one of the wealthiest conglomerates in South Korea. The Jeon family name is carved into skyscrapers, hospitals, banks, and luxury hotels across continents.

His father is a respected business titan and his mother is the kind of elegant socialite who can silence a room with a single smile. To the outside world, the Jeons were untouchable, powerful, gracious, and screamed old money.

People expect Jungkook to be like his parents. Being raised with warmth and wealth, he was given every privilege and opportunity. After all, he was an heir born to take over an empire.

And in many ways, he is.

Jungkook isn’t just wealthy, he is brilliant. He absorbs information faster than most, can dismantle an argument in seconds, and most importantly, he knows how to read people and how to read a room.

What scares others most about him is how Jungkook does not like to waste words. When he speaks, he did so with so much precision and people listened to him, whether they were professors, executives, or classmates.

That’s why no one, not even his parents, could ever understand why he turned out the way he did despite the affection, warmth, and opportunity he was given.

Jungkook is known to be cold, intimidating, and untouchable.

And he chose to be that way.

At 23, Jungkook is already known as the Jeon heir who could silence a boardroom with nothing but a single comment or worse, his silence. He wasn’t the loudest voice, but his voice is the one everyone measured their words against.

His parents adored him, proud of his discipline and restraint and he does love them. But deep down, they didn’t quite know him.

No one does.

And Jungkook does not care to be known. Not by his parents, not by anyone.

Never did he wish to be known by anyone, except for one.

He still remembered the first time he saw you. He was 16, competing in a high school martial arts showcase. Karate was his outlet then, one of the few places he could release what was bottled up inside him. He fought with so much precision, enough to make even his instructors and the judges uneasy.

When the crowd was scattering, he heard a soft voice, “You’re really good at that.”

He turned around, expecting another classmate trying to flatter him, but instead found you.

A girl two years younger than him smiling so genuinely, something he wasn’t used to. With his people reading skills, Jungkook knew you didn’t say it as a favor or to gain his attention, you just meant it as it is.

The words slipped past his armor, leaving behind something Jungkook could not get rid of.

That moment as small and ordinary as it seems, imprinted on him.

Even as years passed, when the scandal broke about your father, his corruption, him going into prison, and the fall of your family name, Jungkook never let go of that memory.

When you disappeared from school at 15, from the world of parties, prestige, and power, everyone else moved on.

But Jungkook didn’t.

While the world turned its back on you, he kept watching.

At first, it was curiosity.

What classes do you take? Whose kid are you? What kind of food do you eat for lunch? Which school did you move to? Where did you go? How are you surviving?

But curiosity turned into habit and habit grows into something deeper and darker that Jungkook never named aloud.

At 18, he finally found you again after you had disappear from his sight for one year. Working at a flower shop, wearing an apron, hair tied loosely, and hands busy arranging flower stems.

You looked thinner and more tired than he remembered, but still you. Still the same girl who once gave him a compliment worth more than any other form of praise.

Jungkook sat in his car that day for hours, tinted windows hiding him as he watched you laugh politely with a customer.

Something inside him feels content and at the same time, he felt something dangerous growing.

Since then, the flower shop became part of Jungkook’s world. He visited often, not to speak or intrude. He would sometimes go in, get just one petal with the exact amount of cash ready in hand.

He was always careful.

When he could not go, he sent Taehwan, his trusted assistant to stand nearby. Not to interfere, only to watch and make sure you are safe. Jungkook knew Taehwan would never betray him, he was paid to work for him and Jungkook has learned enough about him to entrust this task.

Jungkook trusted no one else with this secret, especially not his parents. They would never understand why their son, who can have the world at his feet, spend hours following a girl who probably haven’t thought of him in years.

To them, he is their perfect and only heir. To the world, he is known as the cold Jeon prince. But to himself, he was something else entirely.

A shadow that is waiting and he didn’t mind being a shadow.

Jungkook learned early that silence is power. In boardrooms, silence made people nervous. In classrooms, it made people think he was miles ahead. And at parties, it made girls lean in closer to him, so desperate to fill the gap.

He is not oblivious to his surroundings, he just doesn’t care. Words are currency, one that he only spent when it matters.

That was why his professors remembered every question he asked and why executives twice his age would quote his comments days later.

Jungkook knows how to read people, how to calculate when to speak and when to let silence work for him, something his grandfather had taught him.

It was the same skill he used to keep his secret, to keep you.

Because no one, not his parents, not his “friends”, know that the Jeon heir spend his evenings in places no chaebol heir should be.

All because of you.

He told himself it wasn’t obsession. The word “obsession” sounded reckless and uncontrolled, and Jungkook was neither.

Everything he does is deliberate and calculated.

He preferred to think of it as proximity.

Still, he couldn’t explain why the sight of you, with your hair tied back, hands stained with soil, and the way you smile keep him awake at night.

Why the memory of your voice saying “You’re really good at that” was the only thing that ever pierced through him.

It doesn’t make sense, Jungkook is not the type to linger. He discarded people easily and cut ties without hesitation, but you, he just couldn’t let go.

Maybe he was curious because you no longer belong in his world anymore. The girl who once lived in the same elite circles has been cast out and forced to survive on scraps while the same people who once courted your family’s favor now pretended not to know you.

It made Jungkook furious.

Not that he ever showed it.

On the outside, he is the calm and collected heir. On the inside, every time he sees you wiping sweat off your head after a long shift, something in him changes, he feels the need to protect.

That was why he sent Taehwan.

“Don’t get close,” Jungkook had told him once, “just watch and make sure she gets home.”

Taehwan barely asked questions but Jungkook could see the confusion in his eyes sometimes.

Why would the son of Jeon Group, who could have models even princess begging for his attention, fixate on a girl who barely looks up when he entered the shop?

Jungkook never answered because he didn’t owe him an answer.

When he walked into the shop, he didn’t expect her to notice him.

He didn’t want her to, not yet.

Jungkook likes being in the background, just another nameless customer buying lilies or roses. It was safer that way than revealing that every flowers he bought ended up in his penthouse.

The flowers weren’t for anyone else. They never have been.

Only for you.