honey

OH IT TOTALLY WORKS... OK SO WHERE DO I START... WHAT AN ABSOLUTELY AMAZING FIC HELLOOO? it was SO TAEHYUNG (art, PARIS, but also the mention of Korean ballads playing WHILE HE SINGS ALONG!! im going to combust!!! i see it, i totally see it.) and he's so dear to me and now I'm so 🤯🤯

ok Soph u write so well I swear... I could feel how stressed and frustrated OC was at the beginning with all the flight trouble and the hotelier :/ BUT THEN U HAD ME GIGGLING BECAUSE OF TAE?? 🥴

don't get me started on the cute little dates they had. PEOPLE WATCHING TOGETHER?? ARR.. and and the whole “Elle est belle, non?” ... I'M IN SHAMBLES... and ofc the cute dance they had at the square, not stopping because of the rain, then she realizes she's in love!!!! ☹️☹️ how pretty

and when we got to the smut heehehe... i was sad because NO SHE'S LEAVING.... but then i was giggling again because the palm kisses and the fingertip kisses ahaahah..... im ok, i am!!!!

it hurt when OC felt like she let tae slip away but it's ok because they found e/o again and guys!! he painted his love for her!! HIS LOVE 😭😭 "I started to love the rain because I associated rain with the most beautiful person I’d ever met- you." what a beautiful way to put it, what a wonderful ending, truly :(

Emergency, Emergency, Emergency. This is Alpha, Juliet, Kilo. Can you hear me, Tower?

Jungkook feels like his heart is being ripped open at the sight, at the anxiety that lives in his chest — at the sight on his left; at the sight of you. He's flew planes countless times before, that's a given. He's been in the company longer than you do and he's just met you practically three weeks earlier prior to this, but he can barely recall the shock he experienced when you're not that much older than him and you're fresh in the company, but you already became captain. You're his captain. He's sure it was a fluke at first because when he caught wind that there would be a new pilot joining the airline, he became excited at first because he was always hyped up that he'd get to mentor the next one that comes in through the cockpit. He's sure his surprise was justified. That the hate he had for you at first was justified. After all, who wouldn't be surprised when they hear that the newest hire's previous job was being a personal assistant? That even if she's racked up 1,500 hours of flight hours and has her ATPL, not to mention the fact that she stopped working as soon as the specific requirements were achieved, she's already a captain upon entry to the company? And then he was paired up with you, hand-picked actually, by the president of the airline. Jungkook thinks it's normal to be mad. It's normal to despise you because it seems like you hadn't worked as hard as him but everything got handed to you so easily that it desensitizes his efforts. He's worked his ass so hard to even be in this company; he's been in here longer than you were, he has more hours than you do, and he's clearly the hardworking one between you both — why does he have to work under you out of all people? He thinks it's more than normal to be mad when he hears that your dad's the president of the company. Of course, that explains why you have it so easy and much better than he does. Because obviously, you're your father's only child — of course you'd be favored. Of course you'd be spoiled. But now? Now that he sees you on his left, body limp and passed out, Jungkook realizes that he's never once thought if you wanted any of this. Never realized if you've ever asked to be in this position nor wanted this treatment in the first place. He trembles, actually. For all the past three weeks, he's been faking his warmth to you because he thinks it would benefit him. If he wants the promotion, he wouldn't want to be snarky nor have bad blood with the president's daughter. He takes his time to ask you, to half-ass his concern for you, to make it seem like he cares. And you respond to him nonetheless, but the appreciation you've showcased for him was never staged like how he did it. It makes sense in Jungkook's head now — the empty eyes and the vague answers, the lack of a picture underneath your hat, and the hint of a tan line on your ring finger; all of those he's tried to connect to a discarded calling card you used to keep on your wallet for good luck, right at the trash bin in the rest cabin. Prod. JIMIN in a monochromatic card that's worn out from time with how it's aged on the sides, preserved intact at the expanse of your wallet, a handwritten note at the back of it. My first business card!!! Thank you, I love you.

Jungkook feels like his heart is being ripped open at the sight at the sight of you, realizing that he's misjudged you all this time but it's only when you're not talking; unmoving at all.

Affirmative, Alpha, Juliet, Kilo. What’s your emergency?

Seokjin’s back straightens even more the moment he hears the panicked voice in his headphones, keeping his cool.

He's what, three months in to the job? The deepest concerns he had to attend to as a controller were either turbulence or air traffic at most, but besides that, he's never really heard an actual call for emergency, much less a young panicked voice at the other end.

My captain passed out. Her nose is bleeding. She’s leaning on my shoulder.

Jungkook breathes in deeply at the weight of your head on his shoulder, wiping at your nose with his finger for the blood not to trickle down his white uniform; to distract him from the fact that you've fainted and are unresponsive.

She’s incapacitated then. Suspected unconscious or dead?

He chokes at the last word because not once did he consider the possibility since it was a far shot. He knows the controller he's talking to is just doing routine and his job but he feels agape somewhat, leveling his breathing in long paces.

Unconscious. I can feel her pulse. It’s f-faint, but it’s there. One crew member is a registered nurse, checking on vitals. Passengers are unaware of the situation.

He immediately noticed you were out the moment he's only heard silence when he expected you to relay the weather conditions upon preparation for arrival, looking at you in anticipation because if you weren't going to, then he'd be the one to tell Tower.

But he knew it. Knew there was a silence that lacked one less dimension of audible breathing. Knew it when he saw you with your eyes closed that you weren't just sleepy since you'd never do it on the job. Knew it when he called your name softly instead of your title but instead of being replied to, all he notices is the blood that gathers on your philtrum.

What’s your name, Alpha, Juliet, Kilo?

Seokjin raises his hand to flag down his superior and within a minute his senior is by his side, listening in to the conversation with all his concern. All eyes were on him and yet the nervousness he feels isn't for himself, but rather for the wellbeing of the pilot that audibly sounds worried.

He asks his name to ground him; to somehow calm him with the semblance of his name. They all speak with code and their names are basically rendered unnecessary, but Seokjin thinks it's needed this time. He thinks it'd help the pilot on the other line not only because it's his job, but also because he'd hate for the roles to be reversed and not one person thinks outside of the protocol.

First Officer Jeon Jungkook.

He speaks with no hesitation but his eyes are wary all-over, his neck oftenly craning to his left.

You are now the acting Captain of Flight 917, Jungkook. Are you able to land your plane on your own?

The taste of the title on his tongue should be sweet but he finds it the complete opposite, knowing that it's only a reminder of how he's failed you somehow. He could've intervened when he saw you being sluggish during the pre-flight check, or could've even made you take a rest for awhile when he saw you holding onto the lavatory door for support when you were all greeting the incoming passengers on-board.

He should've seen the signs. Should've been a better co-pilot. Should've atleast coaxed you to take a nap as he continues to monitor to forego lunch time. Should've noticed you weren't okay.

Affirmative, Tower. 15 minutes until arrival.

Jungkook's done this countless times before. He could land a plane by himself, with or without a senior. He knows he'll do well, but he's devoid of the awareness if he'll do it well enough because you're not awake. You're not like the other captains — you're kind. You'll praise him yet tell him gently on how he could improve his control of the brakes. You'll encourage him to make the landing announcement instead of yourself. You'll tell him he did a good job, to take it easy, and that you'll see him tomorrow.

Make short approach to runway 19, cleared to land.

He has a semblance of hope that you'll be okay — you should be, right? He doesn't know the controller personally but he feels like he can ask him for a favor even if it should be a given, the sentiment more than enough to prove that he's concerned for you not as a co-worker or a junior, but as a dear friend.

Able. Prepare emergency services upon arrival, please. She’s my friend.

Seokjin smiles gently to himself, making notes to call emergency services himself and not pass it to anyone else.

Will do, Jungkook.

It's not protocol to console the pilot but he feels like he should do it nonetheless, even if mere words aren't included in his paycheck. The acting Captain's soft please was too vulnerable that when he thinks about it, a little empathy wouldn't hurt; a round of tiny reassurance wouldn't harm anyone.

Your captain will fare.

( ♡ )

Jimin doesn't know how to face Yoongi at all.

He hasn't come to work ever since you left — didn't send his friend one message at all because he figures that he already knows what happened. He was always the sharp and keen one between the two of them, in fact, maybe he's even anticipated the whole breakdown.

Yoongi knows, of course he does. The moment that you've stopped reading his messages at the speed of light as soon as sent them, and Jimin didn't come into work the next weekday without so much of a notice, he knows.

What he did was work by himself. Wrapped up Eunji's EP and never entertained her curious yet devious eyes why Jimin isn't coming into work anymore.

Son Eunji, as an artist, is undeniably talented and charismatic. Her work ethic remains amazing and so does her drive even if she's spent quite the time in the industry. She's grace and genuineness personified — as an artist.

Son Eunji as an individual however, is cunning. She knows her way around and knows her own cues without buffering. She's consistent, driven at the most. She knows what she wants and won't stop until she gets her way to it, still poised as she shoots her shot even with her heel outside the boundaries. Even if it's unethical, even if it's foul.

Yoongi admires artists but never idolizes them; always giving a space for deficit because he knows no one is inherently transparent. He admires Eunji as an artist but he knows Jimin idolizes her. He always did.

His heart dropped the moment it set into his instincts that Eunji seems off. That Jimin is either oblivious or knows exactly what he's doing. Something was off when Eunji didn't flinch at all when he told her that you were Jimin's wife with every ounce of seriousness in his tone. That something's off when he checked the cameras to see that Jimin let her in so he could eat dinner with her.

Yoongi's all the more surprised to see Jimin come into work today, clearly down compared to the days he used to come in here when he had you at home and had Eunji in the studio.

He came into work two days after the EP was finally wrapped up. He didn't need to tell Yoongi he broke whatever emotional dependency and intimacy and affair he had with her because somehow, Yoongi almost always knows.

“Is it worth it? Is she worth it?”

He speaks thickly into the air when he realizes that Jimin just came into his studio to linger there, to just be with him and possibly talk to him (even if he didn't know what to say), instead of working.

Jimin didn't expect his friend to break the silence but he indulges in the venom on his voice nonetheless because he deserves it, one of the pinning questions in his mind stumbling from his lips in a shameful whisper.

“If you knew, why didn’t you stop me? Scold me, even.”

Yoongi stops. He actually stops doing the tracking beats he's been working and trying to perfect restlessly in favor of scoffing at Jimin, turning his body fully to seethe at him.

“And say what? That it’s only because I called you out that you stopped cheating on Y/N?” he's disappointed him and he has no ounce of mercy in trying to cover it up in favor of appeasing him. He doesn't tolerate Jimin and he will take sides, no matter what that means for their friendship. “What I did is tell Y/N what I saw, not what I assumed. I’m honest, Jimin.”

His friend in question pales as he desperately shakes his head no, eager to correct the assumptions plaguing Yoongi's mind.

“I didn’t — I-I didn’t sleep with her.”

He knows that.

Of course he knows that.

Yoongi may be blunt but he thinks Jimin's pathetic. He's still his friend but he thinks he's outright pathetic. He knows he's in a state of remorse and regret but he doesn't feel as much pity for him as he does for you, a clear show of his morals he always tries to keep in check.

“You don’t need your dick inside anyone for it to be considered cheating, dumbass.”

( ♡ )

Taehyung doesn't hire a personal assistant after you.

He doesn't hire one even if you've made him promise that he'd choose one from the handful of resumes you've hand-picked specifically for him. "They're much more skilled than me too, Mr. Kim. This would be great for you!" you've said to him excitedly, but that's just you.

That's your opinion. That's not his.

Two years ago he was lost beyond refuge. An entire company's waiting for him even if he didn't ask for it. It was shoved into his responsibilities and despite his name that people knew even if he's only stepped into the company floors once, as a child, one that had no idea he'd be named the CEO of several years later despite not wanting it at all — he was scared.

He was scared even if people did nothing besides looking up at him.

He was gonna start on a Monday and he hired you at a Sunday.

The whole meeting itself was impromptu. His dad's secretary gave him a whole box of resumes of aspiring personal assistants that bore such honorable degrees — all of those accolades, and yet they wanted to work for him. Him who barely knows anything about the whole marketing industry within itself outside of the spoon-fed and compulsory business degree his dad made him take, and yet these people wanted to work for him specifically.

He exhausted his own eyes reading sheet after sheet and he comes across to the last one on the bottom of the pile, his eyes skimming in surprise at your degree and he doesn't wonder why yours was at the very bottom. An off-chance. Perhaps an accident that was only mixed up in there but his eyes linger on your sheet the longest even if it wasn't even as lengthy nor decorated as the ones before you.

He meets you at a coffee shop on a Sunday, and the both of you start your first days on a Monday.

Taehyung is scared beyond his own relief and so were you, even though you'd never admit that you were terrified to know that you're perhaps the only one on the floor and the entire company with an unrelated degree and its accompanying experiences.

Taehyung was scared, but he was scared with you.

The both of you learned and grew together in spaces that were never built to house the two of you in the first place. It was terrifying and vulnerable to be in such esteemed positions that people would quite literally spend their whole life trying to gun for, but it was less terrifying and vulnerable with each other.

With you resigning from your position, Taehyung feels scared and anxious all over again.

The most he did was to assign two interns to the job that only belonged to you; one to take care of the calls, one to take care of his schedule.

He debates on texting you every now and then because ever since you've resigned, you haven't reached out even once. He's hesitant to do so because he thinks it'd be unprofessional, but after all, you're not working for him anymore and therefore it negates all crossed lines. The only link he has with you is your fiancé's wedding suit made by his personal tailor, but even that he's not sure of.

Could it be that you resigned because of your fiancé? Was it the pay? Was he not paying you enough that it made you quit?

Taehyung has to personally shake away all his thoughts because he figures that it's wrong to still dwell on your departure. It was your decision and the least that he could do is respect it. He knows he's not in any position to worry about you, but he knows you worry for him.

You worry for him when you see him fidget when he has a meeting with much older people that bear significant position within their own companies, the lines on their face telling him that it's their life's purpose to be the frontrunner of their business.

You worry for him when he types in emails that require great detail and attention and he triple-checks them for great measure, even beckoning you over to come take a look.

You worry for him when has to look over HR's reports of who's lacking and therefore needs to be fired because it seems like they're underqualified, and yet it's him who's sitting on the comfiest and most expensive chair in this building with his plaque that oversees papers explaining who's incompetent.

He worries for you too.

"Would this be Mr. Kim Taehyung? Of Kim Group of Companies? Would you happen to be related to someone in the name of-"

Taehyung hears nothing but ringing in his ears.

At first, he doesn't even know why the unknown caller's obtained his number in the first place, and his personal one at that. He thinks it must be someone he's blocked before (he has more than several) and it's just a new number that's calling him.

By the second sentence, his eyebrows furrow. He assumes it must be urgent somehow, and if it really was then it should be coming from his dad or atleast his secretary. Besides that, his number is never up for grabs for any of the other employees besides one. If someone wanted to know that you were working for him and his company, the HR's telephone lines would be provided.

By not even halfway through the first sentence, he realizes it's you.

It's from the hospital and it's about you.

He can't even begin to think that the reason he was called in the first place was because it's his calling card that it's in your pocket, linked to you directly. Your airline ID card was on you but it could only be traced back to you and your company in the event that it was lost, therefore doing nothing for them.

The hospital staff saw a picture folded in between your notes of money, but at a quick glimpse at you when you were wheeled in, the family of four on the fading photo doesn't include you at all.

They're mere faces; faces they can't trace, faces that they can't link back to you.

Taehyung listens attentively as he gathers his things and makes quick note to tell his makeshift assistants that he'd be gone much earlier or for as long as necessary, barely blinking as he listens to the speaker on the other line.

"O-oh. I'm sorry, sir. I did a quick search and it seems to be that you're the CEO of your company back there, correct? I'm afraid that Miss Y/N is in Jeju. Would you happen to know any of her relatives that I can call instead?"

Taehyung barely blinks at the fact that in order to get to you, he'd have to take an airplane. He's been given a brief explanation of your condition and what he's absorbed is that you're hurt, in a different place altogether, with no one.

"I'll see what I can do to check on her family and friends," he fidgets while he almost dashes to his car, thinking of the fastest route to get to the hangar that's a product of wealth he's somehow always been uncomfortable with, but now he's conveniently thankful for as he thinks about a certain private jet he doesn't have to check in baggage for nor queue lines with.

"It's okay, getting to her won't be a problem to me."

( ♡ )

Taehyung feels pity for you before he feels awe.

He feels pity for you at the base of his chest because the first person you'd wake up to wouldn't be your fiancé or family or anyone you'd want to be with the most in a hospital that lacks a sense of home — no, you'd wake up to him.

He's only connected to you as a formal boss; someone important enough to be in your wallet but not probably important enough to be considered as your first contact in a time of emergency such as this.

And then he feels awe.

He feels awe because such an unprecedented and terrifying thing happened to you mid-air but here you are, looking a little more vulnerable than how you used to in a hospital bed with sheets that aren't familiar like how they are in clinics back home, and yet the first thing you do when you wake up is gasp at his presence, the shock of seeing him dissipating into a warm smile.

"Taehyung? What are you doing here?"

You sound genuinely curious and surprised, no underlying malice beneath it. After all, who wouldn't be surprised to see your former boss as the first person beside you in this specific circumstance?

"Because you forgot to throw the trash in your wallet, that's what," he chuckles as he waits to see everything sink into your mind of how he ended up here, his face turning confused on how you unconsciously pout at him.

"But your calling card's my lucky charm," you tilt your head and jolt in place anyway when the curtain gets swept away, mumbling the rest of your words when you turn to greet the attending doctor to you. "I'm sorry that you had to be dragged into this, Mr. Kim."

He slacks at the return of the professional title, scratching the back of his ear because his wording and tone definitely could've used some more work if he just chose to focus on how relieved you looked having someone with you.

"It's Taehyung," he sighs as he nudges your elbow with his knuckle intentionally, looking away sheepishly as an attempt to apologize for sounding so dismissive of you, "and I'm here because I wanted to be here for you anyways."

You feel awe for Taehyung before you feel pity.

You're awed at how he's even here in the first place, the only context you had in mind being his calling card placed in your wallet and someone must've called him for you, but as straightforward as it sounded, it could've been all that you needed to know.

You know it's the time Taehyung would be leaving the office judging from the peek you took at your doctor's watch and it makes you think how if Taehyung's here, right now, he left the office during work hours — he left the city during work hours in favor of coming down here to be with you.

And then you feel pity.

You feel pity because he's still dressed in his expensive suit and you're reminded at the lengths your boss would go for you, the realization dawning in you that perhaps you're not exactly alone.

You pity yourself because you landed up here, with your former boss classifying as an emergency contact because there's no one else.

"Should I call your fiancé?"

"Yeah I'm — what? Hm?" you're preoccupied with answering questions from your nurse and tending to Taehyung at the same time that that you don't notice how he's angling towards your bag, having waited for you to wake up because as much as he felt compelled to ask for permission to call your family or better yet him, the guy whose name is Jimin whom he assumes is your lover for the numerous times he's seen the name in both your personal and work phones.

He's barely heard your confirmation (which really wasn't for him in the first place) before he rummages through your bag, already knowing his way around. He knows where you keep the gummies he munches on in between snack rides. Knows exactly where's your powerbank that became his overtime because he didn't want to lug around a brick. He's aware of which nook of your bag your phone's placed in and even knows the password, having played games and watched shows there before when he didn't want to open his own phone because of the notifications he gets.

Taehyung doesn't know why Jimin isn't visible throughout your recent notifications but it appears soon enough when he searches for him in your contacts, tapping to call the number without hesitation — he's even surprised when it gets answered at the first ring.

"Hello? Would this be Y/N’s fiancé?"

Your ears immediately prick that it makes you whip your head around and call for him sharply, slightly startling the nurse who's drawing your blood.

Taehyung immediately stops talking as he looks at you with a wide mouth, never having heard such a venomous tone from you. He even pulls away the phone from his ear, tuning out the voice from his hearing that he's unaware is already frantically calling out to him.

"We’re not together anymore."

It takes one solid second for Taehyung to understand and he immediately drops the call and practically your phone as if merely holding it burned him, mouth closing in distaste.

He apologizes at the miscommunication and how he's become a little too overbearing to you a little too quickly, being dismissed quickly with a smile that told him you understood — after all, it wasn't his fault. How would have he known if you've never even told him a single thing prior?

Jimin whines at his phone as if raising his voice to it wasn't enough. He's only heard incoherent mumbles before it was dropped so violently, swearing that he could've heard the sharp tap of the thumb ending the call.

Yoongi only looks at him blankly, only the least bit concerned about Jimin's state when he heard your name in the beginning because he mumbled it underneath his breath.

He only looks but he catches Jimin's gaze anyway, frantically shaking his head even if he wasn't interrogated about what happened in the first place.

"No, no. someone called me," he swallows, tapping the number again but it couldn't be reached this time. "The number's not accepting calls from me anymore but the guy said Y/N's name. He asked me if I was her fiancé and-"

He couldn't believe it at all. Jimin's been trying to reach you for weeks and this is the only time he's ever saw your number again, believing for a second that he was restricted during the time. Why was it your number but not your voice? Why would someone ask him a question such as that, especially coming from your number?

"It could just be a harmless prank," Yoongi scoffs because even he doesn't believe it, crossing his arms when even he knows too that a mention of the f-word such as that isn't harmless. "Y/N never said anything to anyone. No one knows that you're engaged."

It was true anyway. The only logical thinking behind the whole action of calling Jimin from your phone but from a different person altogether would be too far-fetched that it seemed comical.

Yoongi types a little too harshly on his keyboard.

"No one knows Y/N."

Jimin's on the verge of pulling his hair and his friend's words do little to even try and soothe the panic he feels in his stomach, the column of his neck burning.

"Maybe her phone got stolen. It's probably a pap wanting to dig dirt on you by mentioning her name at the same sentence as fiancé. Didn't even call you by your first name. He just wants to hear your voice, it's recognizable," he pokes his tongue to his cheek, snorting at how it's likely but Jimin still chooses to believe that someway somehow, you'd be the one to willingly reach out to him.

"Don't be delusional, Jimin."

And he tries. He tries not to.

He tries not to be delusional when he sits at the secluded smoking area for the sake of being alone, the lingering smell of cigarettes reminding him of the faint scent of it on his dad.

Tries not to be delusional that at the same time his dad crosses his thoughts, it's his number that appears on his phone. Apparently he's been calling him three times in a row and this is the only time he's noticed his phone was ringing incessantly in the first place.

He picks it up, was originally about to apologize for not getting to it sooner, but now Jimin just feels sick to his stomach.

His dad's always been a hit with the kids. Has always been a good friend and father figure to many which is one of the main reasons why he has so much godchildren, ranging from ages that are older than Jimin and even younger than Soomin.

One of his godsons are Kim Namjoon — the nice, tall older friend that Jimin used to play with consistently when he was a kid, but stopped being friends with after him and his family moved to Jeju.

Namjoon really doesn't want to meddle in his patients' businesses if it's not necessary but when he does his rounds in the emergency room for those who are just waiting to be placed in a room, and he sees you, he thinks it's necessary.

He hasn't met you before but he definitely knows you. He's seen you in countless photos in social media that his godparents are still trying to work their way around with, your name being tagged so oftenly.

He's confused to why you're here despite having seen your airline ID and uniform and even the rundown of what happened to you, you're only with this well-off looking guy that's been brooding ever since he got here.

Jimin isn't here. His family isn't here. You're here with a guy he hasn't seen before.

Namjoon doesn't know what type of moral compass he should let prevail at this moment in time while you, the rich guy, him, and his nurse are all within the curtain — but he calls his godfather nonetheless.

Jimin could only take so much all at once, his mouth drying to have heard your name linked in anything but positive news.

"She's... s-she's in the hospital?"

( ♡ )

You fall asleep after the multiple tests Dr. Kim made you undergo.

By the time you wake up, baby blue curtains don't greet you because it's instead a wide expanse of a room with much better lighting and a view that does, realizing it was already night and you weren't in the emergency room anymore.

Instead, you're in the private VIP hospital suite, and you didn't remember deciding on this room or any room at all for the matter.

"Did you get me transferred here?"

You speak particularly to no one right in front of you but it summons Taehyung anyway, coming from the large partition between your bed and what you assumed to be is the seating area that rightfully comes with this of an expensive-looking suite (this is in fact one of the only three rooms they have in the hospital), a smile on his face.

The meek upturn of his lips tells you enough, attempting to crouch just far enough to get your bag from the table next to you before he could even stop you.

"Charge it on me please," you make quick work of outstretching your card from in-between your fingers to Taehyung, a light-hearted chuckle leaving you when you notice his look of hesitance. "Don't worry. I can afford it now."

Taehyung looks for one, two seconds before he bursts out laughing, shaking you off as he pulls up a chair with cushions this time, sinking into them comfortably as he didn't even flinch when he swiped his card awhile ago for your room's amount that didn't even make a single dent to his account.

"Nah. Just consider this as an ex-employee benefit," he yawns, abandoning his suit jacket awhile ago to be in his white dress shirt that he's already untucked, taking solace on how someone's gonna be here the next morning to bring him his change of clothes and the extra things either he or you would need. "You didn't even take a sick leave anyway when you were working for me."

"You're not gonna go back home?"

You could only hope that he'd tell you he would go home because that would help alleviate your guilt of how he already far and beyond for you, yet you can't deny either that having company for the night would be something you wouldn't oppose.

"It's okay. You need a guardian anyway."

He chuckles when he sees your eyes narrow, reminding him of the times you'd deadpan at him when you walk on him playing Overwatch instead of tending to his job.

"I'm an adult."

"I know."

You know it's a lost cause to argue with Taehyung anyway but atleast you know now that you took your chances, tilting your body to lay more comfortably on your side when you think about a crucial detail. "Do you have anywhere to sleep in?"

"VIP room, I told you," he reminds, awed instead of pitying when he thinks about how you're worrying for him despite the state you're in. "There's a pull-out couch and I can ask the front desk for blankets and pillows."

If anyone told you what would be happening to you on this day alone, you wouldn't have been surprised with how it all seemed untimely and incoherent.

But if anyone told you that despite all the pacing of the past few weeks, or this day alone, that even for a night you wouldn't be alone because someone's there for you, Taehyung is, you would've thanked them for the bout of safety they've just allowed you to bask in.

You feel the urge to tell him the truth. You don't want him to carry your burden but for once, you want to feel like you have someone to share it with. The people you'd normally share it with aren't with you. They're your past. A reminder of your past and your dreaded present, knowing it'd be heavier to contain everything in.

You're not alone.

You shouldn't be alone.

Yoongi made you feel you weren't alone when even up to this morning, because that was the last time you've checked your phone, he checks in on you and tells you about things he think would lessen the pain your heart.

He did it when he didn't want to feel complicit for all the things he's seen and the instincts he's been through, taking the risk of being ashamed in the event that he gets proven wrong (he wasn't) than not telling you at all.

Taehyung makes you feel that you aren't alone by the time you tell him the breakdown of everything that's been going on in your life, details that didn't used to be privy to him because of the state of your professional relationship now being open.

He does it when he looks at you but this time it's without the pity. It's without the concern that's born out of not knowing what was going on. It's without the apologetic eyes of how he should've cared for you as a personal assistant as much as you did when he was your boss.

It's the warmth.

"Do you have anyone to pat your head for you?"

"What?" the question naturally catches you off-guard, shaking your head no as soon as you realize what he was asking. "I — no. I don't."

His question isn't something to dwell on for any longer because he hums with no critique in his eyes, making you blink twice for clarity.

"Okay," Taehyung says softly, tucking his left hand to the pocket of his slacks as he reaches out his right, gently placing it on the top of your hair.

"I'll pat your head for you."

( ♡ )

By the time Jimin learned you were in the hospital, the nearest flight he was able to book was the earliest flight the next day.

By the time he was boarding the plane, he bumps into his own family, only to know that they've booked the same flight unknowingly, only a couple of rows apart from each other.

Neither of them speak to each other. They don't ask each other why they're here in a plane bound to Jeju at the crack of dawn and their responsibilities abandoned.

Jimin didn't have to tell Yoongi he wasn't gonna be working for some days. His dad gave the neighbors a week's supply of cat food in case Miso comes looking for them. His mom cancelled on her once-a-year friend outing. Soomin made an excuse letter complete with a fake doctor's note to excuse herself from her classes for atleast the rest of the week.

None of them question each other. The four of them know anyway why they're here and who they're here for.

The concept of planes itself bring a chill on Jimin's spine as his eyes keep flickering on the cockpit every now and then, just hoping by a miniscule thread that all of this must be some sick joke and you've been comandeering the aircraft the entire time.

He pretends he doesn't hear it at all when this guy comes out of the cockpit and speaks into the intercom, the title of First Officer Jeon or something like that slipping his ears easily because it isn't as significant as your name.

Now that he thinks about it, Jimin hasn't seen you with his own two eyes working as a pilot — not even once. He knows he hasn't seen you in your uniform because of the exact reasons you've told him but here he is anyway; endlessly worrying but feeling pathetic nonetheless because he feels like he doesn't have a right to.

Jimin feels pathetic and he know he's selfish.

He's pathetic and selfish when he barely waits for his family who's moving as quick as him and almost shut the door on his sister when he hailed a cab that could get him to the hospital the fastest.

He's pathetic and selfish when he lets himself cry as the gravity of your situation dawns on him because you must've been so alone and vulnerable, unknowing either if his presence would've made it better but he thinks other wise.

He's pathetic and selfish when he bursts through doors and without conscience, tell the front desk that you're his fiancée and he needs to see you immediately, oblivious to how his anxious family behind him is added to the equation because none of them needed to act the role of being worried for you.

You're unaware of the turmoil brewing behind your door because Taehyung distracts you from the anxiousness towards your upcoming test results all the same, the bickering being light-hearted that it eases you immensely.

You're unaware of what happens to your heart the moment the door to your room is opened in blind panic, registering the confusion in Taehyung's face before you could recognize what's gotten him so shocked.

Jimin, most of all, feels pathetic and selfish when you look at him as if you're terrified — intimidated, blank, and unlike yourself when you take into sight the entourage of the all too familiar people behind him.

"I thought you left me for good."

You could only see a flash of hair before you feel someone at your side, embracing you for all of dear life and it's when the familiar fragrance of a house, not a home, guts you in the abdomen just as quick.

"Soo-?" you swallow the lump in your throat because she feels all too solid and all too real, your trembling hands above her skin being the one to remind you that she's exists. "Why are you here?"

"Jesus, are you okay, dearie? How are you?"

The scent of a particular house hits you from the other side of your bed, eyes unconsciously whipping to greet the eyes of the man that's looking at you with utmost concern.

"Mr. Park," you tremble in your words but he's the one who recoils at the unfamiliar endearment or if you could even call it one at that point, eyes unblinking as you try your best not to let your tears prick. "I-I'm in Jeju. We're in Jeju. How did you-"

"I'm sorry we couldn't have come sooner."

The maternal scent of the house takes you off-guard when she almost crushes you, embracing you with all her might just like how Soomin did but this time, it's desperation twofold.

You're overwhelmed and it makes you want to cry. Your VIP room is large enough to host a party of 20 and yet you feel suffocated, abruptly straightening your posture on your bed that rings the bells in their head.

"I'm Taehyung."

The deep familiar voice reminds you of your friend's presence and your chest deflates in relief, seeing him make himself known and visible to the room, shooting you a look of understanding.

“Kim Taehyung. Y/N’s old... boss," he clears his throat, a little crowded but not bowing nonetheless to the unclear gazes they give him. "I’m Y/N’s friend.”

None out of the four of them speak but it's broken as soon as Mr. Park pulls him into a hug, sighing in relief at the appearance of the tall and well-dressed man before them.

"Thank you so much for taking care of our daughter."

Your tears prick even more painfully and the tick of your jaw remind Taehyung why he even spoke up in the first place, maximizing the time that their attention was on him.

"I-I think it would be best if we all let Y/N breathe on her own right now. She looks a little overwhelmed," he lays it on as gently as possible and even attempts to deflect their realizing but concerned glances away from you.

"Right, right. He's right, honey," Mrs. Park agrees almost immediately as she reaches her hand out to Soomin, her other hand empty in the realization that Jimin's still rooted at the door.

They all know clear and well that Soomin wants to disagree with Taehyung, wanting to stay by your side.

Jimin's still frozen. His own eyes are pricking and they never left you, not even once throughout the whole time he's opened the door, but he feels like he can't see you at all.

He doesn't know if he can see you because he's unsure if this is even you at all.

"I'm sure your son knows when Y/N's overwhelmed."

Taehyung cuts the silence by speaking thickly into the air, a hint of a dare to his tone as he sets his eye on Jimin who takes the millisecond to spare him a look that's nothing but poisonous, clenching his jaw as he looks down on his shoes.

Who does this guy think he is? His features now appear in his mind that they did indeed belong to your former boss, the belated anger he had for him reforming again as he's the reason why you've made countless sessions of overtime. Of how he's worked you to the core and are probably a contributing reason why you ended up here anyway, despite switching jobs.

"Let's sit outside for awhile."

Jimin speaks and his family complies to follow him with no issue, leaving you alone with Taehyung once again.

You don't have the slightest clue of how they're here — of how Jimin's here.

Of why they'd even come all this way for you.

Of why he looks like he's devastated beyond repair as he's flown out to be with you and left his responsibilities, when he's proved to you once that you weren't enough for him to even stay.

( ♡ )

There has never been a more infuriating guy to Jimin than Taehyung who sticks to him like honey, shadowing him from behind with every move he does until it becomes overbearing.

He's annoyed that Taehyung tailed him all the way to the waiting area and sat himself at the other end of the row of armchairs. Angry at how he even thinks this guy has the right to act like the bigger person between the two of them; as if he knows something that he doesn't.

“Did you know Y/N’s a workaholic?”

The suddenness of the question isn't what made Jimin cough, but rather it's to how Taehyung even thought asking him would make him prove an unnecessary point or somewhat.

Who gave Taehyung the right to have his nose in your business that he isn't even involved in?

“Of course I do, she’s my fiancée. I know her like the back of my hand.”

Taehyung looks at the guy who was your lover of five years and he could see why you would love him, basing on the words you've uttered to him last night of how you've never loved anyone else like you love Jimin; a power so true that it's unknown.

But the more Taehyung thinks within the span of a second, he could see even clearly why Jimin, despite loving you beyond belief, has also hurt you unlike no other.

So he scoffs. He genuinely scoffs at the way the guy at his right sounds so adamant.

“She’s not.”

The sight of the two of them on both ends of the row is something to behold. It's ironic to anyone who knows anything beyond the level of superficiality.

The way they sit is different. Taehyung stands proud as if he has everything underneath his pocket but Jimin's hunched over, cold and calculating as he looks like he's weighing the world on his back.

It's on the difference of their outfits and their state. Taehyung’s been here earlier, longer, but he looks tidy and well-rested. Jimin’s just shortly arrived but he’s messier, more disturbed. He's unkempt.

"You don't even know what happened to Y/N that made her land up here."

"I don't know yet," Jimin bites back but the guy barely flinches, leaning to the cool metal more as he looks at him lazily.

"Don't you think you're being unfair by bringing your family with you?"

"Don't talk about them," he grits because the fucker's clearly crossing a line that he's not even familiar with, completely sure that no one would ever truly understand just how much is shared between you. "They came here to see Y/N for her sake because they care for her. They didn't come here in behalf of mine."

He's so angry that he only sees white, seething with every word.

"Don't talk as if you know Y/N," he rolls his eyes. No one knows about you as much as he does and the fact Taehyung seems so mighty is what pisses him off. "You're nothing to her."

"I'm her friend," Taehyung sing-songs, tilting his head forward to Jimin. "And you are?"

Jimin clicks his tongue to the roof of his mouth as he humorlessly laughs, shaking his head in disbelief at the absolute gall and ego this asshat had on himself, fists clenching in attempt to calm himself.

"Did you know Y/N's a workaholic?"

Taehyung repeats, but this time he's met with no reply.

"Because I do. She takes up overtime practically everyday."

Jimin doesn't know at all where he's leading with this but he chooses not to speak, knowing that the moment he opens his mouth, he would immediately lose the diminishing amounts of self-control he could only muster to have for so long.

"I know it because she asked me about the suits I wear and she wanted to buy one for you," he picks at his cuticles, the pity he has rising up to his throat like bile. "Wanted to save up enough to buy you an expensive suit for you to wear at your wedding."

Jimin freezes and he doesn't even care if Taehyung finds him out like that. He's unmoving and he remains that way as the lump in his throat grows in size, lodging a singularity that even if he tries clawing at it, it would do nothing for the shortness of breath that he feels.

"My tailor sent the rough cut with your measurements to my address. Have you been home enough to realize that one of your suits is missing from your closet?" he doesn't relent, remembering the text he's gotten just last week but decided against on forwarding to you because he wasn't sure if you would reply to him. "I didn't tell Y/N because she probably wants nothing to do it with anymore."

He didn't tell you because he felt something was off.

Didn't tell you because he didn't know enough back then, but now that he knows, Taehyung's ever so sure that the bundle of fabric wouldn't ever reach the designated owner.

"Your suit doesn't fit me."

"It doesn't fit you because it's not meant for you."

"Oh, I know that."

Taehyung twirls his silk handkerchief with his finger, looking at your lover straight-on without quivering, no matter the misplaced anxiety he feels.

"I'm just saying that your wedding suit makes a nice pair of pajamas for me."

( ♡ )

Something bad always happens on Soomin's birth month, or even the day of.

It's something she's shared to you one night, on the day that you came over to spend time with her and Jimin's family but you were oblivious to the fact that she and Mrs. Park had a big fight the night before.

It just happens, she explains. It's her personal string of bad luck that makes her dread for her birth month to even come, much more anticipate her actual birthday if not for you that gave her something to look forward to.

Soomin thinks that this is it.

She thinks that her loss of you in her life is the worst luck she's ever received in her whole life because it incapacitates her whole, leaving a gap on her heart that only takes up to the shape of you.

"I'm sorry he hurt you like that."

She's nuzzled to your side as you've allowed her to, holding onto her firmly because it feels like she's slipping away from you in the bed. There's a railing that cages you into her but it feels like she's going through the cracks, the inevitable fall being plausible despite holding onto her just as tight,

"I'm sorry I couldn't protect you from my own brother."

"Minnie," your voice cracks despite having only spoken a single word to her once for the time she's sneaked into your room by herself, your heart tightening at how she's blaming herself for a sin she wasn't even aware of. "I-it isn't your job to protect me."

"B-but you're my family."

She cries to you so hardly that you only hear her. You don't feel the rush of the pressure to your ears from suppressing your urge to cry. You can't even hear your own pounding heartbeat with how she folds in on herself just sobbing.

"Your parents and Jimin are your family."

It's the truth that's apparent. It's unavoidable. You're not Soomin's family and nor are you anyone else's. You're a stand-in, is what it feels like. You're a placeholder and a seat warmer for someone that's always gonna be greater and better than you; someone you can't be.

"Y-you're not supposed to be on my side. I-I'm not your blood and flesh, Soomin. You know that."

You only try to be gentle and yet she cries even harder that she trembles, feeling the pain of grieving for someone who's alive yet out of her grasp, an unmistakable feeling of contrition for being here in the first place.

"How could he let you go like that?" she trembles with everything she has, her hand holding onto yours that didn't have your IV sticked in it, closing her eyes so tightly that she sees static.

Soomin's empty from the inside out and she's found solace on a big sister she's never had. On a big sister that's just as old as her brother but she feels everything to her all at once. Her shelter, she feels. An embrace she can come home to at the end of the day, warm even when everything else is freezing.

"How could I let you go?"

Her pain is what breaks you and it hurts even worse than your heartburn, whispering the words to her because it feels like you can't even breathe at this point.

"Your brother unlearned how to love me, Soomin. You can do it too," you smile in encouragement but it's the words she'd want to hear last in her life. “Eunji can be your sister.”

Soomin stops her sobbing as she vehemently shakes her head, making herself dizzy even more with how much she exhausted herself crying. "I don't want her. I hate her," she seethes, "I fucking hate her so much."

You remain silent as you watch her bury herself to your side even more. As if you're the lone neighborhood cat an abandoned kitten cuddles up to for warmth, unrelated yet engrained.

"I don't want to forget you."

Soomin admits in a whisper when she feels her head throb, getting her last words in before she lets herself succumb to sleep, holding you as if it's her last time.

"I can never forget you."

( ♡ )

There are only several people you feel warm with outside of them.

Yoongi, the one who was with you in the beginning.

Taehyung, the one who was with you all along.

Jungkook, the one who was with you at the end of your rope.

It's Jungkook who's the second person of your second day in the hospital who bursts in through your door, tackling you by the side (with utmost care) to engulf you in a massive hug.

"Don't ever do that to me again."

He visits you straight from frigid cabin air, fresh from all the flights he volunteered for in behalf of your schedule you had to forego. He didn't complain, not even once when he knows all too well that what you must've felt is thrice more exhausting, in all aspects, than how he felt.

You look better now than how you did two days ago and it gives him relief, but not enough to the point that it brings the light back behind your eyes. It was barely even there when he first met you, but now they seemed more of an abyss more than they seemed like relief.

"I was so scared. Did you know that?"

"I could tell," you chuckle at the sheer comic relief Jungkook's presence alone brings you, already feeling lighter in your smiles. "I couldn't hear you when I was out, but I could tell."

The last recollection you have of what happened to you was having Jungkook look at the side of your face intensely before the wave of whatever it was that knocked you out crashed, your memory as hazy as it was incomplete.

"You probably cried to Tower or something like that."

It's a careless guess but you know you must have struck in a nerve somehow, seeing Jungkook's lip purse and his eyes avoid your playful gaze persistently.

"God, I hate you."

It's a welcome moment of purely just laughter between the two of you. It's a relief to laugh over something that's happened to you as if it never even happened at all, making you breathe without a single hitch.

It's warm even after the laughter dies down, the look of determination being plastered on your junior's face as he clears his throat.

"Y/N, I flew to here," he picks at his thumb. "I flew your dad."

You didn't expect the change of degree with the words exchanged between the two of you but just like Jimin's appearance, you know it's something you can't avoid together.

You chew on your bottom lip in anxiousness, an unknown type of parental longing blooming in your chest after so long. You don't know if he'll visit you at all. For what it's worth, he could just be here for business.

"You've known him longer than I did. You see him in the company more than I used to see him at home when I was a kid," you look down on your hospital gown, unable to meet Jungkook's eyes. "Did he seem worried?"

It's a question he didn't anticipate but he welcomes it nonetheless, answering you truthfully.

"Yeah. He didn't seem like himself."

It fills you even if it's the minimum. It fills you up even if it's a scrap because it's the feeling akin to not having anything at all — enough to make you feel needed.

"Okay," you nod surely. "Thank you, Jungkook. Thank you for looking out for me."

"Anything for my captain."

Jungkook gives you one more hug and the promise he'll visit soon again, exiting the door quietly but he practically yelps when he's greeted by a lady that's familiar, worried in her eyes but soft in her features — has he ever seen her before?

She's waiting, it seems like.

"O-oh! You must be Y/N's friend! How is she?" Mrs. Park asks but she's afraid that she down-right terrified the guy. "Sorry, I just got here. What happened to her?"

"Right! You must be Y/N's uhm-"

Jungkook tries to find the word or even locate the face, just knowing that she seems familiar somehow and he can't deny it.

"Mom," she answers with no hesitation but later clears her throat when it's too quiet, realizing that the guy in front of her must know too. "Mom figure. I-I'm kind of like a mom to her, in a way."

It's enough.

Jungkook can feel it. It makes sense. He tells her.

Tells her the way you've been feeling a little faint ever since that morning and how you continued up until late noon, never taking a break in the rest cabin.

How you've refused to eat your meals because you felt like you had heartburn, feeling as if your chest was tightening and you were immediately gonna throw up what you eat.

How you were getting a little too quiet, your head leaning forward as if it was heavy before he sees the crimson red ooze out of your nostril, the sight obviously being foreign to yourself even.

How you pick your head up but it leans backwards as if there's a weight to it, your eyes closing and your whole body obviously going limp even if you're sat down.

How your heartbeat was slow and he could barely hear your pulse.

( ♡ )

Mrs. Park and Soomin think that Taehyung is perhaps one of the most beautiful men they've ever seen in their entire lives.

Dr. Kim allowed and even encouraged you to get some fresh air, as long as you were in a wheelchair to avoid unnecessary straining with someone else pushing you because someone told him (it was Jimin but you don't know) that you're quite the mastermind when it comes to attempting to do everything yourself, not admitting that you needed help.

You were gonna be kept here for less than a week until you feel stronger. Until all the tasks could be ran and interpreted. Until you master your spirometry test and can blow the little balls up to the top of the casing, until it no longer becomes a competition between you and Tae who has trouble with it too.

Taehyung gleefully volunteered himself to push you and even no matter how much you tried to convince him that you can do it yourself, it only became the equivalent of conversing with a wall.

The two of you were in the elevator when Mrs. Park and Soomin were just about to enter to visit you upstairs, stopping in their tracks sheepishly at the sight of you.

They want to be with you too.

"Well aren't you a handsome man?"

Taehyung laughs openly, flicking your ear as if to remind you that you're also hearing what he's hearing.

"I try my best."

Jimin watches — he does nothing besides watching. He's never tried approaching you when it's only the two of you even if he's had plenty of windows. Didn't try getting the two of you alone because as much as he wants to talk to you, he's scared.

He knows. He knows now what happened to you because his mom cried last night to him of how painful it must've been for you. He knows because he's spent the last hour crying to his hands when his mom spoke in whispers of what happened to you, tearing up herself for something that wasn't her doing.

He's hurting but not as much as you do and it pains him — it pains him that the only way he could hurt is through you and yet you do nothing. You don't give him the hell he knows he deserves. You don't give him the pure hurt he's supposed to feel because that's what you are — never the one to share your burdens; never the one to give him pain because you wanted to shield him away from it.

“I’ll take it from here, buddy.”

Jimin's shoulder barely even grazes Taehyung's and yet he recoils, stepping away immediately.

His mom and his sister freeze briefly but they continue walking. They don't say anything. They're only here to be with you.

The sky's upset with how the thunder rumbles, the tiniest droplet of rain getting on your hospital gown that it reminds you you're still outside.

Jimin takes his hoodie off and puts it on you, putting the hood up to your head in the event that the rain gets rougher and the winds get colder, wanting to bring you back inside because he doesn't want to risk anything.

His scent is there.

It's on his hoodie.

It's everywhere.

It's overbearing, all at once.

( ♡ )

There's something comforting about your doctor.

He looks inviting and welcoming, his dimpled smiles enough to make you know that he must be a favorite in the hospital by many of his patients.

"Good morning, did you sleep well?"

Dr. Kim asks as he comes to your side, shooting Taehyung a pleasing smile too as he acknowledges his presence.

You answer and yet it isn't you who does so too, or atleast you're the one who does it verbally.

Jimin and his family are sitting just beyond the partition where your hospital bed lays and where the reception area of your VIP room resides, giving you privacy.

His family sleeps at a hotel nearby, it's more than decent, but they barely get any sleep at all. Jimin didn't book a room for himself. He's slept last night while sitting up but it felt like a nightmare within itself.

They aren't even sure if Namjoon knows that they're there but it's too late for them to slip out of the room unnoticed, calming their breathing in the process.

It's ironic. People you looked to as family, now tucked away and hidden.

"Finally gathered all the results for your tests today, Miss Y/N."

To be honest, you didn't even know that today would be the day you're getting the results for what Dr. Kim made you go through, a relief in your chest that it'll soon be finally over, but a sinking one at the opposite of it because it just feels like you won't be out here as easily.

Dr. Kim is welcoming and inviting. Warm, because he needs to.

He needs to before he breaks the news to you.

"Does your family have a history of arrhythmia?"

Your mouth becomes dry at the mention, blinking your eyes in succession.

"Not that I know of, no."

He nods once, immediately understanding. "Arrhythmia is a heart problem that's linked with how it beats. It's an irregularity, per se. The heartbeats of someone who has arrhythmia aren't coordinated."

Namjoon pauses in his words as he looks up at you, patiently looking up at him without an ounce of fear.

"According to your ECG, how do I-?" he straightens his dress shirt, looking at you personally because somehow he feels for you, even if he only knows you to a far degree. "You've said that you experience heartburns, right? Quite frequently nowadays?

You nod meekly.

"According to the tests I've ordered, you have arrhythmia. Bradycardia, to be exact."

The term piques at your ears and you're unaware of how you've tuned everything out because it feels like it's only you and Namjoon at the moment, your tunnel vision fixing upon him.

"I do?"

You verify but you're calm. You don't sound panicked — you're composed even if it's Dr. Kim who seems to be more nervous between the two of you.

"Is she gonna die?"

Taehyung asks in a panic, blinking fervently when Namjoon dismisses him with a squeak, shutting down his worry instantly because he was bothered by it too.

"Your heart rate's slow. That's normal, it happens to a lot of people more than you think," he explains. "But what happened to you in your flight, it was just a little too slow. It missed one, two beats repeatedly."

It makes sense even if he's only said so little, the awareness you've had all this time being unexpectedly named at this point in time.

"What you have is mild bradycardia. You may have not noticed the symptoms before because they felt normal to you. The fainting incident only happened now, correct?" you nod surely as you're transparent, still casting light doubt over Taehyung who's worried out of his mind. "Do you feel fatigued even if you haven't done much? Lightheaded, even. The chest pains, the heartburns, they were symptoms too."

Your heart, as if on cue, tightens. It wraps over your own chest like it has its own coil but oddly enough, it doesn't hurt. It merely squeezes you but it doesn't suffocate you. The ache just reminds you that it's there simply because it exists.

"If it got to this way, your body and mind must've normalized it enough that it only felt like regular days. Regardless, what you do have is mild bradycardia," he reassures you, a close-lipped smile on his face. "Your routine medical tests in the airline are accurate despite this. Your heartbeat is just slow enough to be considered normal, it's still medically acceptable to be in your line of work. I uh, I may have to put you in observation for the next two weeks to a month because I wouldn't want you to go back to work to faint again. I'm sure your co-pilot who was crying in the ambulance and all the souls onboard wouldn't want their captain fainting either."

It's over.

It's done.

You have your prescription already and Dr. Kim's finished giving you your results, already feeling much free and yet it feels like you're the only in this room who's relieved.

"You're right, I've checked. It doesn't seem to be congenital and it doesn't run in your family. All the other tests came out clear."

Not only were they clear but they all surpassed the healthy levels of what should be normal with flying colors, deducting to his final cause.

"Have you been emotionally stressed and exhausted these days? Psychological tolls, traumas and high anxiety can normally trigger mild bradycardia."

You didn't expect him to add more and yet you nod but you don't meet his eyes.

Taehyung only looks at Dr. Kim softly as if to tell him that this should be enough even if it's his job, the latter catching on fairly quickly.

"You're not gonna die, Y/N. Don't let Taehyung get into your head," he snickers and it alleviates the tension in the room, making you chuckle.

"It may not be entirely possible, but moving yourself away from psychological stressors can help significantly."

He's oblivious to the very people behind the partition, ones that he didn't seem to notice.

He's oblivious to how his godfather holds Mrs. Park so tightly as he suppresses his cries softly.

Of how Soomin is blank and unmoving at all.

Of how Jimin is the one who cries the hardest but is the most silent, putting his own hand on his mouth as he feels his knees give out to the carpet underneath him, the pain in his chest exceeding the ones he's ever had the experience of feeling.

( ♡ )

It's okay — you should be.

Knowing what you have somehow gives you a new perspective altogether. It alleviates the pain in your chest from time to time that you allow yourself to be hurt because it was meant to be there.

It was always there from the start.

"You're getting released tomorrow."

Taehyung sings to you as he spies the tiny frown in your face to cheer you up, opting to stand beside you instead of pulling up a chair. "You okay?"

His tone's lighthearted but you know it packs much more than it should in the first place, setting a tentative glint to your visage.

"I can't tell either," you answer truthfully but there's no shame when you say your next words, the period for that long gone in your state. "I want to feel, Taehyung."

His brows raise in genuine curiosity, fixing his posture to get a better look at you and to gauge your reaction.

"What do you want to feel?"

"Anything."

He merely chuckles at the candid answer but he knows it's the truth nonetheless, bringing up his hand to pat your head.

Taehyung stands a little too close to you, the soft smile on his cheeks making you mirror him, the words leaving your lips before you could contain them.

"Can you kiss me?"

And he does.

Taehyung leans to your side of the bed, as gentle and as sweetly as he could, his warm hand on the side of your face before you get to taste him, the smile appearing in your face instantaneously.

You don't look for his lips when he pulls away because you're thankful to have it on yours in the first place, a snort from him coming out as soon as you make eye contact after.

"Can you feel now?"

"I felt it."

You feel him poke at your cheek and it reminds you of the warmth, tilting his head to meet your eyes.

"I don't wanna take advantage of you, Y/N. You're vulnerable and it happens that I'm here," he says sincerely. "I feel vulnerable too, seeing you like this."

You understand where he's coming from and so does he, a complete connection between the two of you that's not as fragile as a kiss between two people would be.

"Just a kiss, Mr. Kim. I'm not asking you to marry me," you playfully roll your eyes, the laugh escaping you before you get to finish your words. "We all know how that turned out for you the last time."

It's painful but it's happy, a genuine laugh being fished out of you and Taehyung finds himself mirroring your sentiment, burying his face in his hands.

"One last vulnerable kiss," he leans in to press to you, catching you off-guard but you entertain it regardless. "And I'm getting you something else for lunch because stealing your hospital pudding makes me feel like I'm doing you a favor."

It's okay.

You feel okay.

( ♡ )

Jimin knew he had all his inhibitions out the door the moment Dr. Kim entered your room awhile ago.

He's pathetic and selfish and to hell if he stands by it, the whole gravity of everything that's been happening to the two of you, to you, knocks his equilibrium as a whole.

He's lost his way and it overthrows him completely because it seems like a maze with its only purpose being to close around him, the heartburn in his chest being a mainstay.

It wasn't there in the start, but now it never leaves.

Jimin cries even before he gets to your door because he feels too weak enough that opening it makes his arm give out, one glance at your bed to know that you're alone tonight and it's only the two of you.

You know it was him.

You know it's from the way he opens the door and how he sniffles outside his room, his sobs echoing in his ribs.

He only sees you and it reduces him to tears at the first glance, barely even making it near your bed before he collapses on his knees and folds himself on to the floor on the sheer pain he feels, dragging his knees to the floor to get to you — practically crawling.

"Don't do that," you mumble under your breath, your heart panging at the sight of Jimin.

But he doesn't hear you. He can't hear you until he's near to you enough to see how you're still yourself but you look different. You're unlike yourself and it's almost as if he can't recognize you.

Is it you who changed or is it him?

“My mom’s been going to the temple to pray," he admits to you on his knees with his hands on your arm, no matter how you try and nudge to pull him up to his feet. "Prayed that the heavens will take your pain away," he smiles through tears, "she's repenting in behalf of me."

There's something wrong with your heart and it shakes him to his core and hurts him like no other, your heartbeat too slow and yet you're here — still here as if you hadn't spent the last five years with him with your heart in the state, the pace enough to love him in slow motion.

He cries to your chest the moment you've regained enough strength to pull him to his feet by surprise, making you remove the barrier that separates you both.

It's heart-wracking enough to hear him because he sounds distinct enough, but it's even more heartbreaking to see him as is in such a state. He's holding to you on whatever way he could, making your tears spring nonetheless.

"Jimin," you whisper, the words leaving you with no warning. "Taehyung and I kissed awhile ago."

It's silence.

He looks up at you and he's not angry. He's not annoyed either. There isn't one bit of disdain on his face regarding what you've said, seeing him nod instead.

“That’s good. That’s nice. I’m happy for you.”

The gears turn in your head but he catches you in surprise when he pleads to you, your breath getting caught in your throat.

“Kiss him again.”

Your eyes bulge from their own sockets as you tilt your head, wanting to yell at him and yet it never comes because your voice sounds too frail; to unlike your own at your disbelief.

“Do you know what you’re asking of me?”

“I’m asking you to be unfaithful.”

He's asking you to be unfaithful even if now, there's nothing between the two of you.

Unfaithful, just like I once was, he was about to say.

He doesn't have to digest your words because he's already processed it long before, nodding even if you haven't said anything.

“It’s okay if you sleep with him. Sleep next to him even.”

Jimin's eyes well up with tears and it brings you to your own, unsure if you were looking at a mirror because it feels foreign. Feels all too new to see him in this state.

Is it you who changed or is it him?

“As long as you come home to me, please,” he brokenly mumbles, enveloping your hands within his own. “As long as you come home to me.”

It's a singularity that forms in your chest that expands the more you see Jimin hurting — the more you see him pleading to even have a sliver of you to himself.

It's a pain that grows in your heart that you weren't even sure is built to house a mass so big, making you sob within your own chest.

“It’s okay if you aren’t fully mine,” Jimin nods as he assures you, lip trembling as he tries to make you feel that he's sincere with his words because he's more than willing. “As long as I’m yours.”

“One day, you’ll wake up and it isn’t me anymore, Jimin.”

“That day will never come.”

Jimin shakes his head no as fast as you've raised him the possibility.

You don't know if it was you whom he picked the morning he woke up and decided that Eunji makes him happy, but what you do know that it's you now. That he's pleading for you without end.

“I’d rather not wake up than have the day when it isn’t you anymore happen.”

“Let me go, Jimin," you could only whisper because it could only hurt so much when you say it out loud.

“That’s the thing,” he whispers back, hands trembling. “I can’t.”

“You can let me go, if you want," Jimin offers and you don't know if you're hearing correctly, stinging eyes looking up at his that are boundless with how much he continues to search for you even if he's holding you. “But I can’t say that I can do the same.”

It's your hurt that pains him the most.

“Yell at me. Cheat on me. Slap me if you want,” he tries to take your hand and yet you fight his will to even tap your palm lightly on his cheek. “Whatever you give, I can take it.”

“I can take it, I swear.”

Jimin smiles through the heartburn, wiping at his tears as he tries to wipe at your own.

There is a home within Jimin.

To fall in love is to create a religion that has a fallible god, you've stumbled on it once. Read it in graffiti on a freshly-painted wall at a nice street when you went out for a walk, away from your college dorms because it was getting too suffocating in there.

Years later, you know now how you've made a religion out of Jimin, wholeheartedly devoted to him even if he has his moments. Love him all the same even if he's sometimes too sleepy to say it back to you once you urge him to go to sleep. Proud of him just as much when you talk about him to the people in your life.

You've made a home out of Jimin and it's a nest you wouldn't trade for anything else — that much you're sure of.

Loving someone doesn't necessarily mean loving every bit that comes with them, but in Jimin's case, nothing about him was unworthy of the same love you give him. His parents are warm and are the perfect roots to explain why Jimin had easily wormed his way to your heart. Mr. and Mrs. Park were speechless when you told them at your first meeting that you would never do anything to hurt their son, but they one-upped you by the end of the evening when they asked you to call them just like what Jimin calls them — you're our child now too, they say.

Soomin, Jimin's little sister that was younger than him by eight years, who had never been a fan of her older brother's past lovers surprised you when she engulfed you in a hug when it was time for you to leave their home after meeting them altogether.

Growing up as an only child with only one parent present at a time or none at all, the familial love you aren't used to receiving is something you've received all at once from the Park family, the overwhelming amount of it making you cry happy tears in the car when it's only you and Jimin. He didn't expect you to blubber about how his mother's spaghetti tastes like home or how his father's laugh sounds like the few happiest moments you've had in life.

Most of all, he didn't expect you to sob about how his sister's hug feels like a warm blanket plus a furnace because he didn't even know Soomin hugged you, thoroughly shocking him and making him grin heartily.

Having someone to take care of isn't something you've ever tried before. Loving Jimin and taking care of him intimidated at you first because you didn't know if you were even doing it correctly, but it was just a bump in the road when you came to know that it flowed out of you in instinct. You love him the most, that much you're sure of.

It's only natural that you feel a sisterly bond to Soomin because in the five years you've been together with Jimin, you've seen her grow up. Watched her grow into her pretty features that you have no doubt learning she's quite the heartthrob, taking after her brother with how much they look alike. Watched her fly through different interests as time passes, standing beside her at concerts you've conjured tickets for and talking to stall attendants when she's too shy to ask for a new stock of concealer.

Watched her warm up to you; the two of you growing closer as she endlessly claims that you're the big sister she's never had, feeling the pride swell in your heart at the thought that you have somehow a familial figure outside of Jimin to look after.

It's natural to nudge her as you hang out with her on her bed, watching the weekly variety show at the television Jimin bought her.

“Soomin. Stop looking at your phone.”

She distractedly hums and you understand, her new interest being the small business she created, undoubtedly successful because people flock her messages for the newest restocks for the jewelry she designs herself and gets manufactured in excellent quality.

You nudge her a little harder and she finally looks at you despite looking a little frazzled, flicking her forehead lightly when her eyes keep flickering to her phone.

"Yeah? What is it?"

She figures that you're just teasing her when you turn your gaze to the screen at a particularly funny moment. It's humorous, that much you admit, but in reality you looked away because you feel somehow nervous even if you expected this to be much smoother.

"Not funny. I could be losing money at the minute," she playfully whines as she shoves you, making you laugh to yourself to let one more moment of silence pass.

"Will you be my maid of honor?"

All the noise from the room is washed away even if the TV's volume is set impossibly high because Soomin lost the remote somewhere underneath hear bed and hadn't been able to change it lower since last night.

You feel weird because she isn't shrieking like what you expected her to, a little worried when you turn your head to look at her but to your surprise, she's just frozen. Frozen with her mouth apart and her eyes glinting extra brightly.

You feel sheepish under her awed gaze, clearing your throat as you take out your left hand from the pocket of your pajamas that you've been trying to hide the whole day from Jimin's family.

You could've easily just removed it so you wouldn't feel troubled in having your left hand hidden and clammy, but it's something you'd rather do instead of taking off the ring you love with all your heart.

"Your brother proposed to me last night," you smile warmly, flexing your fingers as you turn them to face her. "Didn't kneel or anything like that. He just said it before we were about to sleep and slipped the ring."

It's a breathtaking diamond; not too flashy but not too lackluster either. It's something that looks like it has a mind of its own, establishing the presence of Jimin on your vena amoris that the fresh memory of him asking to marry you makes you smile fondly.

You're oblivious to how Soomin herself is having a positive turmoil unfold from within because before you notice it, you feel her weight crashing into yours, trapping you into her embrace as you feel the damp tears on your shoulder.

"Of course I will. I can’t wait for you to be my sister," she sniffs, "what even stupid question is that? Of course I would say yes. Why, were you thinking of asking someone else?"

You roll your eyes at the territoriality she has over you, reminding you of that time when Jimin practically sulked the whole day when you asked a friend instead to accompany you to a huge end-of-season sale.

"I already am, silly."

It's a tiny infinity between the two of you when she just burrows herself to your side, eyes barely snapping open when her door is thrown open.

She should be used to Jimin and his very brotherly ways of not knocking and invading her personal space while dodging it completely at the same time, huffing when his face comes to view.

Jimin catches your gaze with a playful raise to his brows, standing by the door still as he directs the question to you. “Is she crying to you about her secret boyfriend or something like that?”

The two of them have a somewhat large age gap but it's nothing out of the ordinary, always swearing to you with a laugh that Soomin is definitely just a happy accident but tells you at the same breath that he's glad to have a little sister.

They bicker just like everyone else and even if their petty arguments do get a little out of hand at times, they're each other's irreplaceable confidant — way past the days of snitching on each other and getting annoyed at the other for breathing a little too loudly. Jimin may not show it, but you know that he has a protective and even a spoiling streak over his little sister.

“I don’t have a secret boyfriend!”

He shrugs but he doesn't buy it, flicking the lights on and off annoyingly that you understand Soomin's occasional annoyance towards him. He's delighted to have annoyed her, turning to look at you.

“Come to my room after you go do your girl talk or whatever it is that you do," he grins cheesily, slyly coughing towards the end of his sentence. "I mean, I pay the bills around here and I don’t get an in on the gossip the two of you have.”

“Just turn off the airconditioner in your room and hang out with us here," you suggest but Soomin protests even before you could finish your thought.

“God, no. Jimin snores so loudly and I can’t sleep!”

The reminder of how your fiancé is loud and delays your sleep to hit you makes you reconsider, sharing a look of understanding with her. “Yeah, she’s right. I’ll sleep next to Soomin tonight.”

“Not fair,” he whines as two out of the three most important women in his life (he knows his mom would've joined in on the teasing if she wasn't busy downstairs) single him out. “Is this how you treat the man of the house? The reason you can turn the fan on even if the AC’s already blasting?”

Soomin scrunches her nose, a mannerism she picked up from you. “Not really, no.” Their dad’s still very much alive and kicking. Retired but still working to get himself busy somehow because he mirrors Jimin's lively and dedicated work ethic. His newest venture is baking, explaining why he texted the two of you a short notice to come over and spend the night because he needed extra pairs of his tastebuds to try his pastries before he makes the jump in selling them.

Jimin whines even more, throwing himself at the end of the bed as he rolls around in anticipation. “Fill me in! What are we talking about, who are we shitting on? Tell meee."

He's adorably eager to hang out with the two of you, wanting to be put in the loop that grew on its own with little intervention from himself.

Soomin looks at you in thought but you helplessly shrug, knowing what would be her answer at the back of your mind anyway. “You call the shots, Minnie. This is your room anyway.”

“That I paid the bills for when she suddenly decided to renovate it," Jimin interjects, raising his hand while his face is still muffled to the cold comforter, a byproduct of the really nice airconditioning units he bought for his family's rooms.

Soomin has no retort to that but you know it, making you smile before she even speaks.

“Fine. But Y/N sleeps next to me! Just get an extra mattress to sleep on the floor.”

“Of course. You love my fiancée more than you love your brother. Understood though,” Jimin shoots straight out of bed to run out of the door but he retraces his steps, not leaving the room without kissing you on your cheek and leaving a kiss on Soomin’s forehead, complete with a playful cringe and a half-hearted remark of how she should buy oil blotting sheets.

He lets it slip and your eyes widen a little, Soomin's voice beating you to it as she tries to sound genuinely surprised.

“Fiancée?”

Jimin rolls his eyes at his sister, clearly seeing through her but it amuses him nonetheless. “Don’t play coy with me. I could smell from a mile away that Y/N told you already.”

He leaves the room to the sound of both your giggles because you could swear up and down that you're not that predictable! The futile attempts of being natural and unknowing don't go past Jimin and it makes you double in laughter.

Soomin settles into silence much faster than you do because she's nuzzling to your side again, mumbling in excitement. “You’re getting married. You’re gonna wear a gown and I’m gonna fix it up for you when you sit or when you wanna go pee. I’m so excited — I can’t wait.”

Her thought process cracks you up and it's her endearing personality that makes you sure you wouldn't trade for anything else in the world, stroking her hair.

“You’re gonna be my official sister-in-law and you’re gonna have to look away when I use the bathroom while I’m in my gown. I’m excited too."

You look at your ring finger in thought, the diamond glinting right back at you as if it's happy to know its bearer.

“I’m getting married to your brother. I can’t wait either.”

( ♡ )

You want to take all of Jimin's fatigue away.

Him coming home early is even more of a rare occurrence than him coming home much later, today being a happy medium of the two but you could see the tiredness on his face evidently.

His job isn't easy even if the majority of your knowledge towards it comes from your observations of him. Being a music producer is more strenuous than it sounds like and you know it because of the handful of times that you'd drop by in his studio to drop off food because he's too busy to get himself some, always bringing extra portions for Yoongi who came to be your close friend.

"Tough day today, baby? Want me to draw you a bath?"

Jimin just about moans at the thought of a sliver of relaxation, eyes closing peacefully when kiss his cheek and knead his shoulders lightly. "Yes please. Did you cook tonight? I don't know if I wanna sleep or if I wanna eat first. I think I'm gonna pass out either way."

You're not bothered that he doesn't ask you about how your day went because you wouldn't want to worry him in the occurrence that learning about your fatiguing work conditions would trouble him.

"Mhmm, I got take-out after work today. It's your comfort food."

The thought of honey-glazed fried chicken on warm rice with mushroom soup on the side is enough to make Jimin hum happily to himself, adjusting himself on the couch so he could nuzzle closer to your neck.

"Sounds tempting. God, I wish I could just run to coffee shops like you all day."

You don't take it to heart because after all, pitching in an argument at this time of the night wouldn't matter the next day.

You resist the urge to correct him because he's exhausted and you don't want him to strain his mind over it. It's just something small that you could talk to him about any other time. Tonight, it's not the priority.

You want to tell Jimin that being a personal assistant to a big shot in the marketing industry isn't all about running coffee errands. Kim Taehyung's meticulous and ruthless but he's kind; kind before he unloads a whole dump of work on your desk. He gets apologetic sometimes for making you work so hard, but you tell him that he shouldn't because after all, it's your job. You're getting paid by him to do the work he asks of you and it's not your position to complain.

You don't know if Jimin notices how this is the only day of the week that you've come home early and had some time to yourself, judging by the way you look more composed and less unkempt like when you've just come home. Did the little things that add up to make you feel more pampered; did a body scrub and a hair mask and spritzed perfume, wearing a shirt of his that takes permanent vacancy in your side of the closet now.

You don't correct Jimin because this isn't a competition of who has it rougher than the other. It's not a competition between you, a bachelor's degree holder in aviation but works as a personal assistant, and Jimin, a cum laude with a degree in mass communication but works as a music producer with his best buddy.

"How about a bite before you get into the bath? Then you can go sleep and you can just have it for breakfast," you propose after much thought, even rethinking if you can whip up a bath tray if he wants to do it at the same time.

You wait for a reply but it never comes because Jimin's already fast-asleep against the armrest of the couch because after all, he's spent.

The most logical thing to do would be to try and move him to your room upstairs but you don't. He needs rest and it just so happens that he's resting on the cloud couch you've bought together in an exact 50/50 money split, atleast reassuring you that it's a wise and comfortable purchase despite being a big amount.

It's okay if he didn't ask you about your day or stayed up to talk about whatever that comes into mind. Jimin's tired from work and so are you but it's okay.

You grab the pillows and the comforter from the master's bedroom and go down anyway, sleeping beside him.

( ♡ )

Kim Taehyung as a boss is not all that bad.

You've been working for him for approximately two years now and within the timeframe, you came to know how he isn't the stubborn and short-tempered boss his employees painted him out to be.

He's the CEO of the company his grandfather built from the ground up, the esteemed position handed to him by his dad who wanted to retire early. He was thrust into the family business he wasn't even sure he wanted to handle, but here he is nevertheless.

You're the first ever personal assistant he's ever had and he's the first person you've ever worked for as a PA, the two of you still learning about the ropes despite being in the wave for two years and counting.

He could be ruthless but that's just because he's driven. He could get a little frustrated and in turn become snappy and quick-witted at you, but he apologizes once he cools down enough.

He's your boss but you're comfortable enough with him to joke around from time to time, sometimes even daring to call him by his first name jokingly which always catches him off-guard but it's a fresh grounding reminder that he's Kim Taehyung before he became Mr. Kim.

You remind him of his government name from time to time and it helps put a grin on his face.

“Taehyung, can I ask you about something that’s not work-related?”

You already know you're pushing it by calling him by his first name so you make sure to ask if you could ask something that's outside your paygrade, but he looks like he doesn't mind.

His head flicks up to you at the mention of his name, slowing down his typing on his blue-switch mechanical keyboard that his dad's not the biggest fan of; the RGB backlit and ridiculously clicky keyboard not exactly being CEO-like but Taehyung just waves off his father's confusion of what compelled him to use it.

“Huh. Should I be concerned?”

He keeps his gaze on you while continuing on typing, barely any errors as it looks like but he giggles when you look at his monitor warily, only to see a bunch of keysmashes as he pretends to be composed.

“I think you’d be flattered.”

He purses his mouth at that, nodding to you before leaning back to his chair. “Inflate my ego, I guess. Go ahead, Y/N.”

You try not to let your excitement show because Mr. Kim let you call him by his first name and ask a personal question all at the same time, barely being able to stop the upturn of your lips as you try not to ramble.

“Where do you get your suits? Do you buy them? Do you have a tailor? Do you have any suggestions? You have a great sense of style, Taehyung. I love it so much.”

It's clear as daylight that it's not the questions he expected. He was thinking you were gonna pry on his childhood or why the only photos in his desk are of his dog, but it's a good type of shock anyway.

Taehyung scratches the end of his eyebrow with his pinky, clearing his throat.

“Thank you. I uh, I really didn’t expect that,” he looks away, obviously flattered that his sense of style was praised. “I have a personal tailor but I buy suits too. By suggestions, what do you mean? Can I ask why?”

It's only a logical question for him to ask you because out of all people, why would you come to him for suit recommendations? You have the answers for him but you withhold all the things you're expected to unpack, wanting to dodge the possible questioning when you admit to your boss that he's only one of the few male influences in your life you have and treasure — him, Jimin, Mr. Park, and Yoongi.

“I’m getting married eight months from now. I uh, I want to buy my fiancé his wedding suit — I-I was just asking so I could know the ballpark for it, y’know?" you wring your hands because you're pretty sure you sound pathetic basically asking your boss how much his suits cost. "I’ll pay but I don’t want to look at his suit because I want it to be a surprise. I asked since y’know... you look nice in suits.”

Taehyung had an idea that you were in a relationship but he didn't expect for you to be engaged. It's a pleasant surprise of the added things he now knows about you that were all uttered in one breath, genuinely finding you to be a good employee.

You're a good person, that much he knows.

“Your fiancé’s lucky to have you, Y/N.”

He grins at you warmly and you mirror his happiness, bowing your head at the comment.

“I have a whole spreadsheet and some notes for what I like and buy, I’ll send them to you later," he announces in finality as he leans to his desktop, exiting from the numerous tabs he has opened and starts to search for his personal files instead.

It humors you that the roles have been reversed, your boss doing his very best to locate what you needed and promising to give it to you as soon as possible.

“I’ll give you the number of my tailor and the addresses of some of the shops for my ready-made suits. I’ll put in a good word for you.”

The smile that breaks out at your face is contagious and Taehyung feels oddly touched at the moment, sealing the deal as he looks at you one last time with a playful wink. “Consider your bonus to arrive sooner than everyone else’s.”

It's within moments like these that you don't feel misplaced and ashamed in the career path you inserted yourself in. You know that many of your relatives and friends were surprised and even mad at you for not pursuing the career you studied — the same one you didn't say you wanted because it was your dad that projected all his dreams and expectations for a son he never had, to you.

It's little moments such as your boss joking around with you that you feel safe, unharmed as mere acquaintances would make comments on how it's such a big waste to not be flying with your degree because of course, money should be prioritized even if it comes from the very job that pieced apart your life, right?

You feel safe. You're content working regular hours with overtime for Taehyung. At ease being in a relationship with Jimin. Joyed to be loved by your fiancé's family. Happy to spend time with Yoongi and talk about whenever.

baby where are youuu

Jimin glances to his phone and he has a ghost of a smile knowing you've come home early, wanting to spend time with you ever since this morning when you left early.

He's just about to reply to say he's on the way to his car but Yoongi jogs all the way from his studio to catch him, excited eyes pinning him down.

“Where do you think you’re going? We need to meet someone.”

He scrunches his nose, genuinely having no clue to who Yoongi's pertaining to. “At 9 in the evening?”

Yoongi doesn't mind working overtime but he does mind when it's a Friday, making Jimin confused on why it's him who's pleading to stay back to accompany him when normally, Yoongi would be the first person out of the door.

“Yeah, she wanted to atleast introduce herself to us before we start working for real next week.”

“She?” Jimin backtracks in thought, eyes widening in slow realization. “Hold on, do you mean-“

“Surprise,” Yoongi breathlessly smiles, shimmying his hands around in sincere happiness. “I signed in Son Eunji awhile ago. We’re gonna produce her EP.”

Jimin feels cathartic because it's the Son Eunji he's always had the hots for artistically. Normally it would be the artists fawning around producers but when it comes to her, the tables are turned. She's known for her groundbreaking talent and persona, not to mention her excellent work ethic that makes her a dream to work with.

He’s about to type in a text how he’ll be later to come home than usual as Yoongi practically drags him back in to the studio, knowing you wouldn't mind because he already told you a couple times before how his and Yoongi's are to work with Eunji.

You can wait.

He doesn’t manage to send in the text because Eunji is buzzed into the studio immediately, all-smiles with her hands outstretched to eagerly meet the producers she wanted to work with for a long time likewise.

You can wait.

( ♡ )

Any rest day of yours that coincides with Jimin's is the day that you become the happiest.

It's sleep-induced talks that are intoxicating when the both of you are awake, but barely enough to even stand up and make plans on how to spend the rest day with each other.

You stay pressed to his side with your hand on his chest, his own hand drawing circles on your neck as he floats in and out of his several dozen catnaps he takes when his mind decided that he wouldn't be in deep sleep anymore.

“Would you love me if I was a grasshopper?”

“You know I hate grasshoppers,” Jimin barely blinks at your sudden question because he's unfazed at this point, yawning as he turns to cuddle into you more. “But if it’s you, then I guess I will.”

You're aware that he hates the little green things with too many limbs with a burning passion, entertained at the consideration that he wouldn't hate you even if you're the creature that makes his skin crawl.

“What if you had no way knowing that it’s me as a grasshopper?”

He hums thoughtfully.

“I’m sure it’s you. I know when it’d be you.”

You smile while your eyes are closed, pressing a noisy kiss to his jaw that makes him giggle.

“What if I’m just like every grasshopper out there?”

“Then I’d be kind to every grasshopper I see,” Jimin opens his eyes to see yours staring right back at him, putting a tiny kiss on the tip of your nose. “But you’re the only one I’d love.”

( ♡ )

Jimin shouldn't be surprised that you leave earlier and come home later than he does.

He asked you once why you've been picking doing overtime everyday for the past two weeks yet he gets no verbal answer, just receiving a smile from you as if it's gonna explain everything.

He wouldn't dare think that you're seeing someone else — you would never. The moment you climb into bed once you get home and pass out, Jimin tiptoes out from bed as silently as he could, going to the laundry basket to try and sniff your clothes.

There's no stench of liquor. No smoke. No sweat that reeked of clubs. Nothing that would point him to the conclusion that you come home late because you get wasted every night.

He doesn't know why you've basically left him alone for the whole two weeks and the only thing he sees of you is either when you call him during lunchbreaks or when he gets to stare at you while you sleep. It's frustrating to say the least, trying to ask discreetly a couple more times but you dodge your way around them.

You feel guilty, of course you do. It's an incessant guilt that you feel because you haven't been able to take care of Jimin the past two weeks but you know it's for a good cause — a good and loving cause because you want to save enough money to book him an appointment with Taehyung's tailor and get his wedding suit made.

“Gonna be late for ten minutes max. Mr. Kim wants me to rearrange some of his appointments for tomorrow. I’ll be quick I promise!!!”

Jimin sighs because as happy he is that he gets to see you awake tonight, the word late sits bitter on his tongue and he knows not to expect anything from you.

Instead, he chooses to just stay in his studio and just start packing for home when you send him the text that you’re done. That way, you’d be earlier to arrive at home before he does and you're the one who waits for him.

Is it petty? A little, he thinks. Would it really just take ten minutes? Not likely, he's sure of.

He's dejected but gets out of his wits when there's multiple rings on his door that's equipped with a security system, only being opened with either a thumbprint or a passcode that only he bears.

He unlocks his door without even looking at the tiny monitor to see who it is, his eyes doubling in size when he sees Eunji standing right in front of him.

“I bought ramen!”

She's gorgeous, that much he allows himself to think of. She's literally an idol and you can't blame anyone to think she would look otherwise, but even without all the glam nor the intricate outfits, she's really pretty.

She's bare-faced in a hoodie that's four sizes too big on her because Jimin recalls her repeatedly exclaiming how the hell is it so cold in their studios, later taking back her previous statements to say she'd withstand it because the cold helps her think better and therefore produce more thoughtful lyrics.

Jimin transparently reacts with how he's surprised Eunji's still in the building in the first place, the girl immediately registering the shock on her producer's face as she sheepishly explains.

“Funny story. I bought two, one for you and Yoongi. But he came home earlier than I expected and you’re here and I haven’t had dinner yet,” she rocks herself back and forth on her house slippers she brought all the way home to here. “So here I am.”

“Thank you for the dinner, Eunji," Jimin chuckles as he humbly takes the plastic bag from her outstretched hands, a little confused when she slightly bows after and walks away. "Where are you going? It's okay, come eat with me."

There's no harm in eating dinner with his client; his collaborator. No harm in eating dinner right now either because you probably won't take just ten minutes in the office.

Eunji's genuinely surprised as Jimin beckons her to come in, closing the door behind her as she points to the table he set the ramen on.

“Really? You sure? Yoongi mentioned that you have a wife, I wouldn’t want to impose.”

Jimin's confused why Yoongi would refer to you as his wife but his friend knows exactly what he was doing when he did it, a sort of gut instinct to try and establish your place around certain people in the studio.

He thinks it's a solid plan — he just didn't know that Jimin would correct her.

“Oh no, no. I don’t have a wife. She’s just a fiancée.”

She raises her brows at the back and forth but puts up her cup of iced tea in a mock toast, smiling warmly. “Congrats to you nonetheless.”

Jimin merely smiles but says nothing, once again thanking her for the food before he sets his sight on it.

He must've froze while he was thinking why Yoongi would say that when of all people, he should know his and your relationship status, because Eunji snaps him out of his trance, a worried look on her visage.

“Hey, are you okay? You seem troubled.”

“You noticed?” he tilts his head at the candid observation.

Eunji looks even more confused that Jimin is confused that she noticed, the natural worry ticking in her mind. “Of course. Who wouldn’t? You can tell me, if you want. Or we could just eat in silence, it’s okay. Whatever makes you happy.”

He freezes for a second because he's speechless.

A good kind of speechless that gets him weak at the knees.

Whatever makes you happy.

And so Jimin tells her — tells her all about the troubles of his heart.

But true to your word, you only take up ten minutes. It’s been two hours since you arrived at home and if not for your text, Jimin wouldn’t have noticed how he’s late because he’s had such a happy time with Eunji.

With her.

He blinks in remorse to look at his phone to see the time, your texts greeting him instantly.

“Oh. She’s uh, she’s already there," he says it but for some reason he's disappointed. She's already there at home, he wants to continue, but the home never leaves his lips.

He gets up somberly, half-sad to have a heartfelt conversation cut short with her but also half-jittery to come home to you.

“See you tomorrow, Eunji. Drive safe. Tell me if you need anything.”

Jimin’s been a little more excited to drive to work and a little more dreadful when it’s time to come home to his apartment — to come home to you.

He seeks out Eunji more this time. Takes the liberty to buy everyone in studio a coffee but he delivers it to her himself. He lingers around for lunchtime and lets Eunji steal his portions because she likes mashed potatoes a lot. He ignores Yoongi’s inquiring glances at him every once in a while.

Yoongi doesn’t know what’s happening but he informs you nonetheless. After all, he’s the reason Jimin got introduced to you in the first place. He feels some sort of unspoken responsibility for being both your friends. He knows he’d feel some sort of guilt if he doesn’t tell you what he sees.

You read his updates constantly.

( ♡ )

There's a heartburn in your chest and you don't know how to get rid of it.

It first appears when Yoongi texts you at night to ask if Jimin already came home. You bring the question back to him because he's with him longer than you are within the day, but it's when he sends the text reading "you know i would always be honest to you, right?" is when the ache in your chest makes its first appearance.

Yoongi's honest, you know he is. He finds no benefit from lying to you even if it's to make you feel better. He's upset you a dozen times when he tells you that your attempt at kimchi stew is gonna make his kidneys fail, but that's when you knew that Yoongi would never lie to you — even if he's seen you work for hours trying to perfect the dish.

Even if Jimin's his friend. Even if you're his friend.

You didn't even know that they're producing for Son Eunji because you thought that the moment they'd get to, Jimin would come home to you excited while hugging you because you both know that it's one of his biggest aspirations as producer; working with an artist he admired, and his work being recognized and praised.

The heartburn makes you panic at first because you had to rethink if there was something in the food you've gotten, and more importantly, if Taehyung has the same heartburn that you do because whatever you get for him, you get for yourself.

You rush to his office in a tiny frenzy but seeing that he's okay and calm and not hunching over with how his chest burns and his throat feels like it wants to throw up, you know that it's just you.

"I quit my job."

You say to Jimin while he eats the dinner you've prepared and the words slip out of you almost hesitantly, but once they do, you feel oddly relieved.

You don't know the reaction you were anticipating in the first place but it certainly wasn't your fiancé burying his face in his hands in front of you, groaning as he massages his temples.

“Why would you do that?” he almost seethes and you're confused why he's anything but happy, not knowing what you did to deserve that kind of reaction. “You know our wedding’s just six months away, Y/N. You know I can’t do it all alone.”

The realization hits you that Jimin's concerned about your resignation because he thought you were jobless, not once considering the why question to it.

It was hard for you to get through this day alone because the thought of leaving Mr. Kim, Taehyung, wrung you dry and you came to know how much you care for him as a boss. You reminded him to never skip his meals and to wear his glasses when he looks at his desktop for long periods at a time which is practically every day.

Taehyung was shell-shocked the moment you tendered in your letter and he didn't bother hiding it, not bothering either to hide from you the crestfallen expression on his face as he tries to ask why you would quit so suddenly.

You've quit your job and had a rough day and the first reaction of Jimin's is to hiss at you, making you defensive and small at the same time.

“But you’re not doing it all alone.”

You pay, of course you do. There’s a shared spreadsheet between the two of you and if Jimin tries to look closely, he’d know that you’re paying almost just as much as he does. It's a 55/45 split, if he really wants to be technical. Your pay isn't low but it's nowhere as near what he earns from a single song alone.

Jimin snickers and it makes you exhale heavily, adding insult to the injury as he boredly flicks the pasta his plate.

“Mhmm, sure. If it makes you happy, go for it.”

There’s no real happiness to his tone because he sounds deadly sarcastic and it flares you up from the inside, clenching your jaw as you push your plate away from you.

“You’re not letting me finish,” you exhale shakily. “I’m quitting my job to do my real one.”

The emphasis is what makes Jimin look up, knitting his brows in sincere confusion. “Your real-?”

It takes only a second for the gears to click in his mind until the worry plagues his features, tilting his head in a soft whisper.

“Why would you do that?”

The sudden change of his demeanor makes the heartburn bloom in your chest and you could just swear that it's not the pasta you watched over while it cooked al dente.

He's concerned to why you wouldn't meet his eyes, leaning his body more into the table until you finally look at him.

“Being a pilot isn’t your passion, baby.”

“And neither is being a personal assistant,” you reply back, even if it's an occupation you felt happiness in. “But this job... it pays the bills, Jimin. Even leaves a big spare. I wouldn’t have to budget in binders.”

You both know that your potential salary could and would be even higher than the monthly earnings he rakes in and it's the drive you have that convinces you to just do it. You don't want Jimin to feel like he's the only one putting food on the table and paying wedding suppliers left and right, even if you already contribute more than a significant amount than he'd acknowledge.

“Besides, flying somehow used to be my passion. I’m fine. I’ll learn to love it in one way or another.”

“Won’t you be reminded of your dad every time you fly?”

He could've worded it better but maybe it's just what you needed, a cold tub of water that he dips you into repeatedly now that the words echo in your head.

Your dad who was a pilot that cheated on your mom with a flight attendant or several.

Your dad who’s now just recently tried to reach out to you and gave you the idea to work in the industry in the first place. The same one that insisted that you go to the same academy that he went, to study the same bachelor’s degree that he did, to fly in the same way he did.

Your dad who gave you a spot in the very airline company that he’s now the president of, promising you a swift job and enormous pay. Maybe even dinner with him as you try and mend your broken relationship.

“I’ll learn how not to.”

It’ll pay the bills.

Jimin doesn’t question, doesn’t linger. Doesn’t try to ask if you’re okay considering he knows what you’ve been through and how you swore you’d never fly a plane after graduation.

“M’kay. Whatever you want to do.”

You don’t want to, but you need to.

( ♡ )

You know it was coming eventually.

You know it was coming one way or another because Yoongi texts you more frequently now. Tried to be more caring and soft around the edges as he just coaxed you into sleeping without waiting for Jimin because he's working.

Knew it was coming because the heartburn that settles in your chest has never left even once throughout the following weeks that you had. It never left as you fulfilled your last two weeks with Taehyung and tried to find an exceptional personal assistant to replace you.

The drilling feeling in your chest never left once even if you see Jimin smiling at his phone even if he's with you. Even if he's next to you, his mind is on someone else and you know that it isn't you. He feels pitiful at times at your hopeful look when he laughs at his phone so he tries to show you the messages, filling you in with jokes that she sends so you wouldn't feel left alone.

He thinks trying to tell you about Eunji would make you feel better but it does the harrowing opposite, alienating you further from him and the happiness he feels with her.

You know that Jimin doesn't sleep with her. The moment he climbs into bed once he gets home and passes out, you tiptoe out from bed as silently as you could, going to the laundry basket to try and sniff his clothes.

There's no stench of liquor. No smoke. No sweat that reeked of sex or atleast the aftermath of it. Nothing that would point you to the conclusion that he comes home late because he spent the large sum of his nights to sleep with her.

He doesn't sleep with her, but you know he's happy with her.

You're not surprised — you shouldn't be. You shouldn't be shocked when Jimin comes home way earlier than he normally did, lingers around you and trails after you like a lost puppy, and only settles once you've finished eating dinner in silence.

He says it in a whisper with his head down like he's ashamed but you know he isn't — he shouldn't.

"I think we should stop."

He's worded it in a way that is ambiguous, carefully crafted to not hurt you as much. He said stop, not break up.

Stop, instead of let's not get married anymore.

Stop, instead of I'm not happy being with you anymore.

Stop, instead of I'm making a religion out of someone who isn't you, but this time, she isn't a fallible god like you are.

You barely blink as the other shoe drops, the pain blooming in your chest that it physically weakens your voice.

"Is it Eunji?"

You ask even if you know, only ever asking in the first place to hear it from Jimin himself.

He doesn't answer but it seems to hurt even worse, giving you the confirmation you've longed to hear ever since Yoongi told you to guard your heart. It made you curious for the longest time and at first, you just wanted to know if it was true — but the moment that you do now, you almost long for the time you wish you didn't.

"I'll move out by the end of the week."

Your voice cracks by the end of your sentence and Jimin doesn't know what to make of it but he remains rooted in his seat, biting at his upper lip because seeing you fall undone triggers a foreign reaction from him that he's not familiar with.

It hits you all at once.

You don't know how to say goodbye to his parents whom you came to love and even look up to as parental figures, do they hate you?

Have they known this whole time of how Jimin is happy with Eunji? Have they all known that he'd end up with her somehow given his career and admiration for her, and you were just a filler all this time?

Do they love you as an individual or do they love you out of obligation because you're connected to their son?

You don't know how to say goodbye to Soomin who's turning eighteen two weeks from now, will she miss you?

Does she know about her older brother's crush on Eunji even back on her rookie days? Has the thought of her having a famous and talented sister-in-law ever crossed her mind?

Does she genuinely look up to you as her big sister or is she just vulnerable and has never had a sisterly figure in her life?

Everything hits you all at once because your heartburn doesn't feel like one anymore, the ache spreading all throughout your body that makes your limbs weak and your eyes cry even harder.

You move — you just move and let your instincts take over. You barely know that you're packing your most needed necessities to your suitcase with the repeated promise that you'll get out of Jimin's hair as soon as you can, wanting to get every last bit of your stuff out of his apartment.

Jimin watches you from behind as he sees you working on overdrive to stuff your things into your bags, seeing your shoulders shake until they no longer could because you freeze in your actions.

He's never shed a tear once starting from when he laid the words down to you at the dining table, but now that you stop, now that your back is turned to him yet frozen, it's when he feels his eyes stinging.

You turn around to him carrying a well-crafted box with crepe flowers in the middle, hands shaking as you get closer to make him hold it.

You're just about to lose it.

"Please give this to Soomin on her birthday. Y-you don't even have to tell her it's from me if it makes you uncomfortable. Please just — please just make sure it gets to her. I'm not gonna ask for anything more."

Jimin feels the box to weigh a thousand tons as you force him to hold it, letting go as soon as you felt his hands grip it as you wring your own from beside you, the heavy tears clouding your vision as you heave.

"Do you hate me?"

He wants to comfort you so badly but he feels wrong. He feels distraught holding the present you have for his sister, his family, his wellbeing still being the last thing in your mind as he practically kicked you out of his life without a moment's notice.

"I'm sorry, Jimin. I-I'm sorry I didn't quit sooner."

He wants to tell you that it's not about the money. Frankly speaking, he doesn't even know what it's about. There are no words on the tip of his tongue because he can't think of any, his own tears falling down.

The box feels heavy on his hands but his heart feels even more heavy when he sees you looking up at him, slowly disappearing from his point of view.

"I'm sorry that I couldn't make you happy just like how she does."

Jimin almost throws the box down on the floor when he sees you kneeling in front of him, a warning glint to his voice as a sob wracks through his ribs.

"Get up, Y/N."

He sees you descend even faster to your knees, making his head shake as he nudges your knee with his foot.

"Don't do this. Don't do this to me," he pleads when he sees you crying even more loudly, burying your face into your hands. "Get up right now."

"I'm gonna wire you all the refunds that I could possibly get," for the wedding, you want to say. "If they don't, I'll wire you the exact amount instead."

"Stop."

Jimin's voice trembles and it cuts off completely when he sees you turn your gaze to your ring finger, taking off your engagement ring because the diamond that used to gleam up at you is now insulting you.

"Y/N, please-..."

"I can't keep this."

You admit with your whole heart.

"If you've kept the receipt, you can return it. I-I don't know how long you've had this but if they don't accept it, please just sell it. If you can't keep the money after you sell it, just donate it to charity."

Jimin chokes back his own sobs, throwing his head back.

"If you wanna keep this, just tuck it away. If you," your voice cuts off on its own accord, "i-if you end up marrying Eunji, don't give this ring to her, please. She deserves her own."

"Get up, Y/N!

Jimin's heaving but you won't meet his eyes, pulling your hands away as he's the one left frozen when you zip up your belongings.

Your hands that no longer bear his ring — your hands that should no longer hold his.

( ♡ )

There has never been a more terse silence in their household.

It's only been a few weeks and it's only now that Jimin drove back home to tell his family what happened, the entirety of how it came to be.

His father quit smoking decades ago but he says he needs to go out at the porch to get some fresh air.

His mother likes maintaining eye contact but she can't bring herself to look at him, excusing herself to go to the bathroom.

Jimin's sat silently on the dining table, in the same place where you used to sit whenever you came over, completely parallel to where Soomin sits.

She's deadly silent — more silent than she ever used to be.

"Are you mad at me?"

He asks her and he almost wishes he hadn't because his little sister looks up at him with red-rimmed eyes as it's clear she's trying her best not to break down right then and there.

"Why would I be?"

She doesn't sound convincing at all but she chokes it down, rubbing her thumb on her knuckles to try and quell the anxiety deep within her. "You're my brother, Jimin. I'll always be on your side."

Soomin stands up from her seat as casually as she could, throwing in a statement she didn't know could ever convince anyone.

"Besides, Y/N probably deserved it."

He wants to say that you don't. That you did nothing to deserve him finding someone else to be vulnerable to. He convinces himself that you didn't deserve to be cheated on emotionally. That you've done nothing in order to be hurt this way.

At the same time, Jimin convinces himself that he shouldn't feel guilty for finding someone else. Someone who isn't you but makes him happy and unreal. Someone who takes all the pressure away from his shoulders.

He's trying to justify his means in making himself happy — that he isn't selfish by focusing on himself and his needs and wants. Turns himself blind at the thought that his happiness and peace of mind cost him yours, but it shouldn't matter because after all, Jimin's given you more than you've given to him, right?

It's justified. He's tended to your needs before and understood clearly. It should only be natural for you to give him what he desires — even if it's to detach yourself from the picture.

At this point, Jimin forgets that he's engaged to you. That it's six months away from the wedding and you've already had your gown-fitting. That most of your needed wedding suppliers are already paid and geared for your marriage six months from now. That Soomin keeps asking him every week about the preparations and stresses about the perfect sister-in-law wedding gift she should give to you.

He took a peek at your birthday present to Soomin the day after you left and he just about froze, knowing that he's not the only one hurt in your absence.

A ring in the shape of a tiara that matches your own piece of jewelry. A custom-made music box in the tune of what Jimin used to hum to her to sleep when she was born, a tidbit you've known through their mother. Thank you cards for her small business. Your old airline crew pin from when you were a student pilot that she always longingly looked at whenever she skimmed through your closet. A framed picture of the three of you with Soomin in the middle, her happiest state after tagging along to look for reception venues. A framed picture of Soomin and you the day Jimin brought you home to meet his family, a candid picture of you smiling at her that he took secretly while you've both come down to get water downstairs, bathed in the light of the fridge.

All of those in a box with your handwriting.

to my sister; i'm happy you exist. happy birthday. i love you.

Jimin convinces himself to get rid of the guilt and the hollowness he feels in his bones. The regret that ebbs from within. The anxiety of you not being on his side that manifests in his breathing.

It’s the heartburn he feels when he sees that even without your things, his apartment’s taken to the shapes of you and your mark.

The heartburn he endures when he sees Soomin completely unlike herself and is rewatching all the corny shows she hated but you liked.

The heartburn he experiences when he mistakenly gets a call that shouldn’t have been made to his number.

You have no one but yourself.

You have no one but yourself and it’s what you’ve always believed.

There is no safety net installed for you on the ground, waiting for you in the event that you fall because as much as it can’t reverse the drop you take, it’d atleast soften the blow. Would atleast erode the startling pain to have edges for it to hurt less rather than to dig into you mercilessly. Would atleast comfort you into the depths of the night that the debris from your impact, the remnants of it even, wouldn’t be carried by you alone.

You used to have no one but yourself until Jimin came.

Then came Soomin. Then came his parents. Then came the safety net of the love you’ve been deprived of yet unconsciously seeking.

Your heart clenches at the thought that just maybe by the events of this week alone, you aren’t completely alone. Separated, sure, but not alone. You’re still wanted in a sense that it makes the contentment within your ribs full. You’ve gotten numerous heartbreaking pleas and apologies and it reminds you that despite the pain of it all, you’re still needed. If you close your eyes tight enough to the point you feel pressure in your ears, if you think just hard enough, you’re required.

You’re needed.

It’s been mere days since Dr. Kim relayed your annoyingly ironic condition to you and it should only be normal that your first instinct is to put your hand on your chest at the dull phantom ache. The heartburn in your chest has always been there and it’s not fatal. It’s not meant to kill you but it merely exists within you. It’s meant there to taunt you that it’s only a measure of when it would hurt the least to the point that you feel normal. Normal enough to live with it; mundane to the point that you don’t hurt any more than you should.

The lack of warmth on your sides and the grasp of what it feels like to be at home; they remind you that even underneath high ceilings, against expensive cushions, and amongst structured flowers that should radiate familiarity — at the end of today and all the tomorrows you could bring yourself to think of, you have no one but yourself.

“Where does it hurt?”

You haven’t noticed at all that your dad’s been staring at the side of your face the entirety of the time you’ve been here because all that you’ve done is to stay still. You’ve detached yourself to the point you’ve forgotten you’re even in his house, one that you’ve only stepped foot in for the first time in your life. You don’t notice the way that despite being a man who carries so much gravitas with him everywhere he goes, with you, he looks scared. He looks delicate and is even more delicate with how he handles you (if he’s even doing that or he just thinks so), reminding him at every second how he barely knows his own daughter.

It’s only been a week after everything.

The first day was when you were discharged from the hospital and Jungkook personally flew you back home, keeping his eye on you ever so often that he’s startled some of the passengers at the sight of their uniformed first officer repeatedly exiting out of the cockpit with wide and wandering eyes. Taehyung was only a little bit worried when you had to turn down the opportunity of having a private plane all to yourselves for the sake of appeasing Jungkook, but he understands wholeheartedly how startling it must’ve been for the guy at first.

The second day was when you filed for temporary medical leave from the company to your father himself, having to barely skim your letter and attached results before signing his name on it. In fact, the both of you knew that you had no idea if you wanted to continue working in the first place and the whole situation is as good as handling in your resignation letter. Everything that’s happened is abrupt and out of all the people you wouldn’t gauge why and how — your dad understands and doesn’t push you further.

The third through the sixth was when you kept yourself at your new apartment, the one that’s slightly too big for only one of you. It’s lived in judging by the somehow comfortable clutter you have going all over the place, and it reminds you that you did live a life before Jimin. You’ve indulged yourself in nothing besides rest you haven’t had in so long, barely even opening your phone throughout, going so far as to put it in one of your kitchen cabinets.

You have time and it’s all for yourself with no one to wait for or wonder what time they’re coming home. There is time and you’re the only one privy to it, not having to worry if it would still be you the next day.

The twenty-five years you’ve lived don’t feel like they belong to you at all. The time feels like it’s been borrowed and doesn’t stop, not even once, for you. It keeps ticking away and you’ve only spent most of it thinking about what you could do for the next time you hear it click in your mind, no pause in-between.

You feel like they don’t belong to you at all because it feels as if you’ve lived for everyone but yourself. You used to live for the younger version of you, resembling a hollow glass sculpture of who’s supposed to be your inner child; your inner child that doesn’t remember what it’s like to be tucked to bed or kissed goodnight.

You used to live for the future phantom of you, what could’ve been you if only you are exactly the child that your father wanted. You’ve lived through thousand of hours being exactly what he wanted you to be, remembering the short-lived gratificiation you’ve felt when he was the one that pinned your wings and your shoulderboards despite loathing them.

You used to live for Jimin, the one you love or atleast loved the most. It’s beyond futile to deny that he’s the one who occupies your mind the most despite weeks having passed. For all the people you’ve lived for, your time with him is the on you’ve felt yourself the most. It feels as if living for him is the extension of living for your own, not having felt once through the better part of it all that being with him is an obligation you just needed to fulfill.

It’s been seven days since you got discharged.

Today’s the seventh day and it’s when your father called you asking if he could see you, picked you up, and drove the two of you to his house that’s too big to be occupied alone.

You know him for his wealth. One of the distinct things you know your own father for is his material, tangible, and unmistakable wealth. You don’t know him for his love. Don’t know him for his cooking or his quirky hobbies. Don’t know him that much for anything besides his wealth because it’s only one of few things he’s reminded you of with the presence.

For the rare and handful family portraits that you have, it’s evident just how much money he has. He’s clad in unmistakably expensive suits that Taehyung’s very own clothes do not stand a chance against them. For the choreographed poses by the photographer, his hand would either be on your mother’s shoulder or on your own but the most noticeable part of it would be the watch on his wrist, standing out even in black and white photos. He’s a tall man — a tall man with an even taller stack of money for his own disposal anytime, the type to have a problem with wallets because he has too much.

“Where does it hurt?” your father asks and you blank at it, not a stray glance to his side of the couch.

He doesn’t know you. You don’t know if he knows you’re hurting or if it’s an extremely lucky guess. Does he know your habits? Does he know when you’ll cry and how should he hold you if you actually do? Does he know your hurt and how it extends further than he could think of?

You don’t know him. He doesn’t know if you know that he’s been making conscious efforts. Don’t know him enough to know that the wrinkles he has aren’t from age but from these past few years alone when he’s rediscovered you after graduation. Don’t know him enough to tell that he wakes up in cold sweats out of guilt more oftenly with the thoughts that he could’ve raised you better. Do you know how he’s worried sick, yet you can’t tell if he’s lying because you can’t discern the look on his face?

It’s been too long. Far too long that you don’t even recognize your own blood and flesh.

“I’m not hurting.”

His mouth dries, his face softening as he grasps his hands.

“You don’t need to lie to me.”

He makes you clench your jaw and it’s the most emotion you’ve felt the whole week. You think you wouldn’t be bitter anymore given the years that have passed. That you’ve long accepted your fate and yet when he says it like this, in a way that makes you think for a single second that he knows you enough to know that you’re lying, you think that you’ve never moved on in the first place.

“You didn’t need to make me grow up alone so quickly by myself.”

You realize that you were young — you were too young to go through such hurt you shouldn’t have felt in the first place. Your father cheated multiple times, that one was never under wraps. Your mother was emotionally unavailable, obviously evident how she smiles harder at a newly-bought bag rather than your nanny telling her that you’ve memorized the multiplication table.

It was either one parent at a time or none at all. They were together and yet they’re absent. Neither of them are martyrs, that much you know. Your mother’s had enough and you don’t blame her for it. You’re not mad that she prioritized herself, isolating you in the process. You’re not mad that she kept staying the night away until she eventually left completely.

“And I regret everything I’ve ever done and didn’t do,” your father’s been hoping for an interaction with you, no matter how explosive it could be. He’s been waiting patiently to prepare himself for the hurt and yet he didn’t anticipate that it would hurt this much. That even his own words feel so far-fetched if he takes everything into consideration. “I-I want to fix my relationship with you, dear.”

The endearment reminds you of Mr. and Mrs. Park but the words feels different coming from him compared to them.

The way they say it is fluid. It’s natural. It’s warm and sounds like endearment in its rawest form.

The way your father says it is foreign. It’s unnatural and unsettling. It’s stale and feels like contaminated and bitter honey on your fingertips.

“And part of it is becoming honest.”

“What’re you gonna tell me now?” you quietly fumble with your fingers, soft tone reflecting his. “That you can’t come home for dinner? That your layover’s taking longer than usual?”

It’s quiet. It’s unnerving. It’s completely silent and it should be, given how there are years of unresolved tension from his side alone before it’s combined with yours.

Your father’s uneasy and he doesn’t know if he even deserves to be uncomfortable of the truth that’s caught on the base of his throat.

A mere fact he’s known all this time and yet it’s only know that he has trouble digesting it, hurt to know that if this pains him this much, he can’t even begin to imagine yours.

He should be honest to you. He should bare everything that he’s never said to you simply because he owes you transparency in a way he can’t even fathom.

Thinks once, twice.

He knows you’re hurting but he doesn’t know the entirety of why. Doesn’t know what you’ve been going through but he wishes he did. He knows it’s selfish of him but if only you could let him in as much as he’s doing now, even if laying down the truth on you is far too belated.

“You have a brother, Y/N.”

For a moment, he regrets it.

Would you have been better off not knowing? If he does you good by letting you know, he regrets that he’s said this now.

Should’ve been more thoughtful. Should’ve been considerate. You’re hurting and yet he lays down what he assumes is as explosive as a bomb to you only a week after your discharge. He should’ve been a responsible father; he should’ve been a lot of things.

“What do you mean?” you swallow to remind yourself that your voice is caught on your throat but it doesn’t feel like your own. You don’t recognize your own. “I’m an only child.”

This shouldn’t be far-fetched. Your father sleeps around and it shouldn’t be a surprise that someone’s a product of it. Someone you’re unfamiliar with but shares the same blood as you do when you grew up thinking that you were alone.

You should’ve expected something or atleast someone from your father but you don’t know why it hurts this much. Why it hurts this much even if you’ve been long bracing yourself for the impact you think would hit you anytime — just not this.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers out, unable to look you in the eyes for all the reasons available. “Y-you have a half-brother.”

“Who came first?” the question plays out in your mind, something you want to know further because you know for a fact that you have nothing else to lose. “Me or him?”

Whatever the answer may be, it shouldn’t hurt significantly more than you’re hurting now. His silence is your confirmation. The weight of the world feels like it’s perched on your shoulders and you don’t know how you’ve managed to stay still all this time, the sudden realization making you conscious of the weight tenfold.

“Were you already married to her at the time?”

“Yeah.”

You’ve never been alone. Your brother came before you and yet you’re the one who’s supposed to be the first and only of your parents. They were already broken even before your came along. You’ve grown up alone and you had the opportunity not to.

You’re mad at your dad. For being an adulterer and having a kid. Did he ever take care of him? Did he ever take the responsibility? Or is it only you that grew up by yourself in this way?

You’re mad at your half-brother. It wasn’t his fault to be born and not once had tried to wiggle his way into your family. You would’ve hated him if he did but you would’ve loved the companionship. His presence alone would remind you, or the younger version of you if only you knew earlier, that you’re not alone.

You’re mad at your mother for never stepping up to be one. The more forgiving part of you thinks it’s irrational because maybe she never wanted to be one in the first place but it shakes you to your core. Maybe, just maybe, it was better to have lived in a lifetime other than this even if it forsakes anything and anyone you’ve ever lived for.

You were born into walls that were already loveless, and if there was love in the first place, it’s long been tainted and out of your reach.

“I’m sorry for everything.”

it’s pathetic for him to apologize and the both of you know it. It’s said out of formality and yet it seems impossible to practice it in actuality.

“You don’t need to apologize.”

He’s crying and he hiccups to see you still. Just as still as how you came here and as still as you remain to be.

“I should be used to hurting.”

You need a change of scenery, that much you know.

You need a change of everything; you’re no longer in the place you want to be.

You want to protect yourself; build your own safety net by the own reservations you make.

For today and all the tomorrows you could think of as far, you have no one but yourself.

THREE YEARS LATER

Soomin is twenty-one.

She’s grown-up well as what a lot of people have told her and praised her, either to her face or to her family or even in the occasional DM she’d get from people she barely knows now.

She’s beautiful, that’s what people tell her a lot. Often does she get complimented in the same breath as her older brother but she isn’t affected by it now, seeing how it makes sense that she’s pretty but she looks so much like him that she can’t deny her resemblance to Jimin. They practically have the same features but how they differ is their own charm, Jimin being the one who’s more outgoing and charismatic type while Soomin’s the more reserved yet loving type.

She’s smart too, that’s what her grades and professors tell her. She’s a dean lister and a full scholar. People come to her if they need help, almost rarely the other way around. She’s studious and yet she doesn’t let the knowledge of her being better get to her head; consistent enough to know what she’s capable enough, but never boastful of what she possesses.

Soomin feels like she should have it all with the way people praise her. It should elate her infinitely but she doesn’t know why it makes her uncomfortable to receive so much of it, genuinely confused if she even deserves it all.

She’s too poised to be as graceful, a have-it-all, that she feels pressured. Unworthy, even.

She’s stuck to the same routine she feels like she’s always had. Always been in a hurry to go home to be in the comfort of her house’s warmth as soon as the bell rings, making up excuses to turn down any extra responsibilities and commitments that keep her away from home. In fact, her parents encourage her to go out with her friends and of the like, but she finds no need for it. She has her home, that much is enough.

It was enough during those times.

She feels like she’s been wearing the same clothes for years. Some are hand-me-downs from Jimin that she exchanges using as her going-out clothes and as her pajamas. The colors in her closet don’t adhere to the people she knows that has an exact outfit for every occasion. Even opening her cabinets don’t feel as joyous as what she feels when she opens her friends’, being so used to seeing the same old garments.

It didn’t bother her when she was younger.

She feels like she’s had the same hair for years. The same haircut in the same natural color. The occasional long curtain bangs and side pieces she does herself that grows out before she even notices. She feels unlike herself yet she wears the same skin everyday but she doesn’t know which one of the two should she alter.

Soomin feels like she’s changed.

She’s smart and pretty and she doesn’t feel like she’s any of those things. She’s sensible and calculating but she no longer wants to.

She’s been the same person her whole life and it makes her want to grip her hair because nothing seems to ground her anymore — not even the same praises from people who preach her for being exactly who she is and has always been, making her loathe herself altogether.

Soomin is twenty-one when she lets go and no longer wants to think of the consequences, even if it’s just this one night.

She didn’t have to sneak out of the house because she tells her parents that she’s going out and according to her knowledge, they were the one who’s been encouraging her to do so all this time. She didn’t sneak out and yet it feels like at it with the way they gawk at her, soon picking up their jaws from the floor as they bid her goodbye with kisses on her cheek.

She didn’t feel guilty when she loaned a dress from her new blockmate, the one that has more skin, the one that’s more unlike her.

She didn’t feel apologetic when she comes into the already-noisy club as a part of her own crowd, most of them her newfound friends from this semester and a couple of their own plus-ones.

Soomin lets herself become reckless as she downs shot after shot and has enough to realize that she’s not a lightweight, much like how Jimin brags to be, but she definitely feels the kick and burn within her body.

She lets herself become curious when she’s offered a joint and politely takes one puff of it before passing it around in to the next one in the circle she doesn’t even realize she’s included in, happy enough to know that she doesn’t stick out that much.

She lets people bump into her without scowling at them. Lets guys put their hands on the small of her back as the most she’s done is roll her eyes at them playfully and giggling, not going any further than that.

She realizes that perhaps, it’s more fun and liberating to be this way. To not be as smart or as rational like how she strives to be at all times. She looks out for herself, of course, but not so much to the point that fending for her safety and wellbeing in a club as packed and busy as this become her main priority because if it was, she would already be coming home sober.

She’s not entirely comfortable, but she feels happy.

She’s not entirely okay with the scene of it all, but her stomach feels full and her cheeks are hurting from smiling.

Soomin lets the night be.

She lets whatever’s supposed to happen, happen. She hops on flow after flow until it comes to a stop, letting that halt become her limitation for the night.

And it does halt.

It does halt when the car she’s riding in screeches and skids, the sudden ringing in her ears and the pounding in her chest coming to her senses first before she realizes what’s happened.

Soomin is twenty-one when she feels like she’s dying.

Her mind goes out to her parents, on how they’d cope if she dies and who’d look out for them since it’s been years since Jimin moved out.

Her mind goes out to Jimin, on how he’d ever smile if she passes away at the very second.

To you, on how you’d take the news of her possible death as she’s your little sister figure, if you still think of her as such, and how you’d react.

To Miso, who’s settled into their home two years ago. Who will feed her? Who will she cuddle up to? Will she notice her absence?

To all the momentary figures she’s ever met that she serves as a passing recollection to. The childhood friends she invited a couple times to the first few birthdays of her life. The seatmates she’s had and the people she’s lent pencils to. The people she’s smiled to and thanked — will they light a candle for her?

Soomin is twenty-one when she cries while she bleeds because she doesn’t want to suffer alone.

( ♡ )

Jimin is twenty-nine.

He is twenty-nine when he realizes that he has no grand plans for his future, not even the faintest idea of it at bay.

He no longer thinks about his next big purchase or anything that’s bigger than the last thing he’s achieved. He doesn’t keep track of his aspirations because he learns that he barely has any for the far future. There’s no lists nor planners because one of the only things that reminds Jimin he’s still living for tomorrow are the emails that he sends himself that would act as his schedule for the next day.

Jimin stopped having grand plans since three years ago.

He has had no grand plans ever since you, three years ago.

He has no grandiose outline for his future and it’s the truth yet he feels empty when someone asks him about it, just either dismissing with a laugh or answering directly. Either way, he’d get looks of worry and pity and he hates being on the receiving end of them, which is why the phrase he uses now when asked is that he has no plans for the future yet since he’s present-oriented.

He’s present-oriented because the only thing in his mind is what he could order that can be considered as dinner from this newly-opened cafe that Yoongi wanted to check out and invite him to in the process.

It was weird enough that they’re eating dinner at a cafe and even more-so being in one at night when they’re actually looking for a meal, but it would suffice. Yoongi and him haven’t hung out outside of a work for quite some time, even if they spend almost everyday with each other at work.

Yoongi and him are alright. Not the best, but clearly better than how they used to be.

Yoongi was mad at him for the better part of three years and Jimin doesn’t blame him for it and in fact, his friend’s loathing for him afterwards was what grounded him. Humbled him, even. Months after the two of you were over, he could have a vaguely good day in which his lips turned into the faintest hint of a smile and all it takes is one look at Yoongi’s scowl for him to remember that he has little to no reason at all.

They were rocky, even more of a miracle that Yoongi didn’t break off his friendship with Jimin completely. He was one of the top people in his list that he apologized sincerely to, knowing that he had hurt him by his extension over what he did to you.

When Yoongi had caught news of your incident, he practically cried himself to sleep because out of all the people he knew, you should be the last person to even go through immeasurable pain after immeasurable pain. He recalls learning the news through Soomin, then seeing Jimin the same afternoon of, decking him hard enough to make him stumble back, before he turned in early and cried himself to sleep.

Especially during the first few months, they wouldn’t exactly fight — how it would go is that Yoongi would raise his voice to Jimin and the latter accepts it all, not even defending himself because he knows that he wasn’t in the right in the first place.

He would be antagonizing him further and Yoongi only felt minimal guilt in doing so. He would mumble snide comments under his breath whenever he’s near him, barely having to look at the younger’s guy down-set eyes to know that he’s heard him loud and clear.

Would be petty at times too. There were more than a couple times that he snatched Jimin’s phone whenever he wasn’t looking and would hide it, although it conflicted him when Jimin doesn’t even bother looking for it and goes home without it; he probably doesn’t even realize with the way he’s detached even from even his own self.

The two of them are still friends. There’s been a shift between them for sure but they’re still brothers to a degree, no doubt stemming from their synergy in and out of their studios.

Their cafe dinner is Yoongi’s idea and Jimin could now clearly see why when he puts down the menu and his friend’s still looking at it when normally, it would only take him a second to skim before choosing.

“We should open another business venture.”

The abruptness of words that come out of Yoongi’s mouth makes Jimin chuckle, putting his arms across his chest as he tilts his head.

“What are you talking about?” he squints, pouting while he counts with his fingers. “We signed five deals in this week alone.”

Yoongi’s had this idea in his mind for the longest time. Technically he could do it all by his own but he finds it hard to do it himself, now that he knows how much success he’s gotten just by pitching the idea of a small run-down studio to Jimin back when they were college students.

They’re friends. They’re practically brothers. If Yoongi had to pitch the most ridiculous business deal to a person to save him from a life-and-death situation in less than two minutes and get approval and support, it would be Jimin.

“Believe me, I know that,” he murmurs as he turns his face to the side, blocking the girl who’s been taking pictures of them for the entire fifteen minutes that they’ve been here. “But we can’t do this gig forever, y’know?”

Jimin solemnly nods, looking at his shoes as he becomes honest, tapping his fingers rhythmically on the table.

“I do. I just can’t think that far ahead to see the future where we aren’t producers anymore.”

Yoongi completely disregards Jimin’s reply to him, nodding and squinting as he knows he’d get him to budge sometime these days.

“I’m thinking of a cafe. It’d look so cozy and shit, it’d be sick.”

“Nice,” he snorts, leaning back to his chair lazily. “We only have a million other cafes to compete with in this block alone.”

“Oh yeah? Let’s hear what your idea is then.”

Yoongi challenges, internally excited because he’s gonna get Jimin to talk and open up eventually into agreeing. He’d be open to suggestions, sure, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he’d be accepting them.

“I do want to start something eventually,” Jimin relents much to his dismay, leaning forward to get his phone that’s vibrating from his back pocket. “I just don’t know what it is yet.”

Yoongi deadpans and is told to hold his thoughts as Jimin’s eyes skim to his phone to see an unknown number ringing him up, accepting it but not talking first in case it would just be a crazed fan of his work.

The impatience plastered on Yoongi’s face disappears soon enough the moment he sees Jimin’s features shift into something that’s heartbreakingly similar.

Something so heart-dropping.

Jimin is twenty-nine when he feels the paralyzing heartburn in his chest again that spreads all the way to the tips of his fingers.

Soomin.

Car accident.

Hospital.

Unconscious.

( ♡ )

Mr. and Mrs. Park aren’t holding up well at all.

Jimin’s dad quit smoking two and a half years ago but he feels like his lungs are caving, his eyes automatically tearing up to see his daughter in a hospital bed that looks far too foreign underneath her.

He’s tried his best to make her feel okay, ringing up the front desk politely even if he’s heaving with tears to get her what she likes. Mr. Park too utmost care in putting pillows on either side of Soomin because even when she was a kid, she wanted to be surrounded when she slept. Wanted to have a barrier so that ghosts and monsters wouldn’t reach her while she slept, the fluffy casings enough to ward them away.

Soomin’s just sleeping. She’s just asleep and tired, only this time it’s not on her bed. He wants to protect her so bad from anything that could harm her and yet he didn’t manage to protect her last night, blaming it on himself even it what happened to her isn’t within in his control.

She hasn’t been sickly nor took even a single trip to the hospital even when she was young. She was eager as a baby to take all her vitamins and didn’t loathe them just like how her older brother did. When she was learning to ride the bike, she didn’t get fussy when her dad put on every piece of protective gear he could look for, and in fact, she encouraged it even.

She has an umbrella in her bag even if the weather report didn’t say it would rain because she hates getting sick; hates feeling helpless even if it’s just a cold that makes her sinuses blocked and her head heavy. She lays to rest when her eyes strain during studying because she’d hate to pour in all the effort, only to feel the starting effects of a fatigue-induced fever the next day.

Soomin has a couple of bruises and a cast. There’s a stitch on the side of her forehead. There’s darkness underneath her eyes and she doesn’t look at peace now that she sleeps. Without those, she looks perfectly fine.

Jimin’s mom has yearly check-ups with excellent results but now she feels sick from her bones within. Her knees want to give out as if they’ve never been alright before, bearing the weight that her heart carries. This is the time that she truly feels gravity — heavy as it sinks her down to her knees and she can’t get up because the pull is simply too powerful.

Soomin doesn’t like seeing her cry. The two of them would fight the most and yet even if their arguments would get out of hand sometimes and doors would be slammed, Soomin makes sure to peek at her mom before she goes to sleep, draping a handkerchief on the doorknob for her to wipe her tears with.

She’s the closest to Soomin, not even denying when Jimin teases her about it.

Mrs. Park hurts when she sees Soomin hurt. Her heart clenches whenever she sees her daughter staring off into space with the emptiest look on her eyes, shaking it off away when she asks her if she’s okay. Her chest tightens when she knows that she can’t relieve Soomin from her pain that she doesn’t even know because she won’t tell.

Soomin doesn’t like being a burden to her family. She doesn’t want to be deadweight because she already feels guilty when her dad urges her to just get Jimin’s share of dinner if she wants more; even if it’s her brother, her family, and what family does.

Mrs. Park practically collapses on his son’s arms with how weighed-down she feels, crying to his shoulder.

“What do we do, Jimin?”

Jimin drove himself as fast as he could and yet nothing could ever prepare him for the sight of Soomin sleeping, seemingly unharmed without her few injuries but it pains him twice as much.

His sister means the world to him.

Seeing her sleeping in pain is what shakes him to the center of his gravity, holding his mother out of muscle reflex and yet he feels vacant, the words leaving him in genuine disarray.

“I-I don’t know.”

Jimin carries the weight of his parents on his arms and Soomin’s on his heart as he watches, standing in the middle of the room as he looks at them, at her.

He thought he’d never get to feel this pain again in his life and yet he doesn’t know that his hurt lasts and extends for more than a lifetime, his own tears streaming as he shakes his head repeatedly.

“I don’t know.”

Soomin’s the first person that made Jimin become a better person growing up. He hated the concept of her when he was eight years old because he thought his parents’ attention would only be on him. He’s fared for 8 years more than okay and now his parents tell him that he’s gonna have a baby sister? His mind was of a literal child’s at the time and was selfish, yet the moment his uncle drove him over to the hospital where his mom gave birth and his dad stood watch, he understood.

The moment his mom beckons him to sit beside her on the bed to hold Park Soomin, his baby sister, in what his arms could scoop up — he understood loyalty.

Jimin understood loyalty when he promised to himself that he’d never let anyone nor anything harm Soomin the moment she came into the world.

He served as great help to their parents as he practically had to shoo them just so he could give Soomin her bottle, making sure to elevate her head and support her neck. He was the one who adjusted the hot water to make sure it wouldn’t make her shriek, even if it meant undergoing through a series of trial and error just to give her a bath.

He would gather his allowance every week and eat from his friend’s lunchboxes to buy Soomin a red toy because he’s heard once that it was good for a baby’s sensory and cognitive skills. Jimin would boast about her to everyone in his homeroom class, barely even cleaning up the floors as he rushes home because he yells that his sister needs him, definitely classifying her baby babble as her signal for looking for her older brother.

Just like when she was a baby, through her toddler and teenage years, Jimin watches over her like a hawk. He’s urged his parents to atleast get something to eat downstairs to distract themselves even for a little while, making sure to call them even if his instincts feel that his little sister’s bound to wake up soon.

He’s hurt but he prioritizes her hurt first, doing everything at once while she sleeps to get to the bottom of things.

Soomin wakes up exactly at the moment her entire family is there, looking down on her with teary yet awaiting eyes.

“Hi.”

She croaks, immediately being replaced with a broken giggle when she hears the collective sigh of relief from her family.

She’s groggy. Maybe it’s the grogginess. Maybe it’s the pain.

It’s only normal that she feels disoriented because she was in a car accident merely hours ago and it’s the crack of dawn at the moment.

She does a mental headcount, clocking everyone in.

Her mom’s standing next to her dad on her left side. Her brother’s standing on her right.

They watch her intensely as they’re about to ask what’s going on in her mind, choosing to know her thoughts before asking her what had happened as they wait for the doctor and the official report.

“Where’s my sister?”

Soomin asks definitively as her head whips arounds, peering into the corners of her hospital room, oblivious to how her family reacts.

“I saw Y/N awhile ago,” she says it to herself more than she says it to them, tilting her head in confusion in a pout. “I swear.”

She asks again as the doctor comes in. She’s confused as to why her family looks like they’re seeing ghosts — how Jimin hasn’t left his spot once in confusion unlike their parents, how not a single hair on him is out of place but he’s dematerializing from the inside out.

“Where’s my sister?”

( ♡ )

Yoongi’s mind is running on nothing but concern and secondhand panic.

The moment Jimin left the cafe abruptly without even a mumbled excuse as to why, he could feel it in his bones that it was serious. An emergency that Jimin can never pass up on with the way his movements are similar, in the same way that he moved when your incident had happened.

The food’s long-forgotten because it only takes Yoongi a total of three seconds before he dashes out of the door to chase after Jimin, worried at the way he’s panicked and how he knows his friend would absolutely stop at nothing, fearing for his safety even if he doesn’t the context of why he’s in this state at all.

He tailed him all the way as he tries to catch up with Jimin’s speed, his hazard lights on as he switches from lane to lane, honking excessively to clear the path all the way to the front for Jimin, his instincts settling faster than his reason.

Yoongi has a bad feeling in his gut in the same way that he’d experience when he’s watched Jimin waste himself away due to his own faults. His friend’s long changed and this situation just felt different, different in the sense that he’s entirely frazzled with the way he’s erratic.

Yoongi just follows Jimin inside the hospital, stopping when he walks through the room with no hesitance and Yoongi realizes that Jimin must not have even noticed that he tailed him in the first place, staying rooted on the ground as he waits outside the door.

All he needed was a faint glimpse inside at the flash of the door swinging open and shutting closed, two figures that he knows so well and the sound of heartbreak, one figure lying on the hospital bed.

Soomin.

He could only piece what he had seen but it’s enough to get his mind running and his heart hurting at the thought, his ears unable to block out the sounds of Jimin’s parents cries even if the door has long been closed.

What Yoongi does is wait.

What he does is be there for Jimin.

It’s been an hour since he’s been waiting from outside the room; he doesn’t know for what or for whom. He saw Mr. and Mrs. Park leave once but they don’t recognize him as they’re clearly preoccupied in hurting as what it seems like. He keeps steady watch of the door as he watches the two of them rushingly come back to it again not a full hour later, taking a glimpse once more.

He could only hope Jimin’s okay.

This time it’s different and yet Yoongi isn’t too sure that he wouldn’t throw himself away just like the last time something as grave as this happened.

Jimin walks out of the room and straight to where he sat with no questions asked, breaking down beside Yoongi as he cries for no end.

His sobs are stuck on his throat and his fingers are trembling, shaking even more when they do nothing on stopping the barrage of tears from his eyes. He explains as he heaves, a gentle hand on his back for him to take his own pace on telling him what happened.

He stays like that for the longest time until Yoongi could hear his throat cracking but he wouldn’t stop sniffling, eyes already burning out of pressure.

“Atleast drink some water.”

He nudges him as Jimin’s head is too heavy that he rested it on his shoulder, shaking a bottle of water right in front of his face that’s meant with no interaction.

The water isn’t the problem; it doesn’t even amount to anything against the elephant of the room that he dances around, skipping by it as his only intention was to tell Yoongi what happened to relieve the pain on his chest and for nothing else.

“You should call her, Jimin.”

Yoongi addresses it while Jimin’s the least hysterical he’s been for the past hour, suddenly feeling the weight from his shoulder being relieved as he shot straight up.

His eyes are bloodshoot and every bit of him hurts but he shakes his head no, closing his eyes as he swallows the lump on his throat.

“No.”

The doctor said it was only temporary. All the necessary and precautionary tests have been done, not one result pointing to the possibility that yielded to amnesia or severe trauma.

Soomin knows all the important dates in history. She knows when her parents were married, when Jimin was born, and her own birthday. She knows all the schools she’s been to and even their chants. She knows what’s the color of their family car and breezed through the question what color was the wainscoting in their house because it didn’t have any. Soomin knows what happened, albeit blurry in a sense.

“It’s just a false memory. Soomin’s still hazy,” the doctor explains kindly at the revelation that Soomin, in fact, does not have a sister. He’s been made aware in a short explanation that the name Y/N she kept looking for is her brother’s ex, nodding in understanding. “The fog in her mind will clear up eventually.”

It’s brain fog, something completely normal after an accident like hers. Her mind’s jumbled and clouded and bears difficulty in differentiating reality, but it’s only for now.

It went as far as the doctor suggesting his professional assumption, unaware that he hit home unknowingly.

“This sister of hers probably has been a coping mechanism for Soomin when she was waiting for help, detailing to how she even saw her, not unless she was physically there awhile ago. Maybe the sister she speaks of was the last person in her mind before she passed out, and she’s looking for her now that she’s awake.”

Jimin didn’t know what to do when he had heard the doctor.

Jimin doesn’t know now what to do when Yoongi, out of all the people he’d least expect to push him into contacting you, is practically begging him.

“We’re talking about Soomin, Jimin.”

“I know.”

He knows how you love her entirely, separately from him.

Knows how you would’ve loved her as a little sister even if you hadn’t even met him.

“I don’t want her to be tied up to me,” he shakes his head somberly, fiddling with his fingers as he lays his head back on Yoongi’s shoulder. “I don’t want her to feel obligated.”

Jimin knows it’s for the best. This would be the best. His guilt can’t bear stringing you along once again even if it’s indirect, refusing to come to you and barge in as if he had the right to do so; as if you’re indebted to him and he had the right to demand you to do one more thing for him.

“She doesn’t owe anything to me.”

“Even if Soomin needs her?”

Yoongi’s frustrated because out of all the times that he knew Jimin would want to see you, be with you, and now that he has a chance to do so even if the intention is not for his own appeasement — Jimin refuses.

“Because I’m Soomin’s brother at the end of the day,” he taps on his knee in succession, inhaling once after every rotation. “And it feels beyond wrong to invite my ex that I cheated on, because my sister needs her.”

He doesn’t want to do you any more wrongs.

“It would be too selfish of me — of us.”

You’re a casualty of fate, a victim of coincidence — he doesn’t want you to be any of those.

Jimin doesn’t want to hurt you any longer, even if it’s at the expense of his sister who’d benefit from seeing you. Even if it’s at the benefit of Soomin who means the world to him, as long as he won’t get to hurt the one who encompasses his own universe.

He says it with conviction even if it feels heavy and uneasy, trying to convince himself more than he’s convincing Yoongi.

“Soomin will be okay.”

( ♡ )

You’re twenty-nine.

You are twenty-nine when you realize that you no longer want to draw the bigger picture; that you find no interest in stepping back from your canvas to see the wall that it’s hung on simply because you expect nothing to wait for you to change it.

You’re twenty-nine when you wholeheartedly admit that you refrain from having commitments and avoid them until you no longer feel the guilt when you avoid groupchats and take different seats to avoid conversation.

The three years that passed have treated you well someway somehow.

You left almost everything you’ve ever had but not everyone, not finding the heart within you to abandon them entirely.

Taehyung’s still in your life, a vital part at that. He knows your dad offered you a whole wad of money you can use to live your lifetime and still have some extra left when you handed in your official letter of resignation. At the same vein, he knows that you declined the offer.

He’s offered you the job that mixes in both of the only two you’ve ever had, only having to do it a few times but still with the gusto he thinks would suffice and it did, it does.

You’re his company’s pilot, tasked to be on-call to fly his family’s private jet when the need arises. Could be for Taehyung himself for business purposes, or if his parents simply just want to have a vacation. Could be for some of their executives that need to fly in and secure deals, could be for holiday destinations that Taehyung plans in-detail for months on end.

It’s only a few times a month, the added hours not even the same length of a week’s hours when you were a commercial pilot. The pay is good, the boss is good, and even the end of the day is good.

Jungkook remains in your life too, the whole reason why you have somewhere you can call home after you abruptly left yours. He was due to move out anyway and after knowing your entire situation, he was more than eager to rent out his apartment to you. It was purely luck that he even accepted your payment for your first month of renting because you feel like his family and he shouldn’t charge family, but you insisted nonetheless.

He was willing to drop almost everything to join you at Taehyung’s company in order to be your co-pilot, willing to leave everything he’s made progress because having you as his captain is better than any hours he’d get.

Of course you denied, making him stay at the company where he is and has been in longer than you were — you did resign, but not without handing in your letter of recommendation to promote Jungkook as captain to your father, calling it in as a favor that he immediately granted.

Yoongi, most importantly, is still with you.

You both know that he wouldn’t drop neither friendships with you or Jimin and it doesn’t bother you, knowing that his loyalty for either one of you doesn’t change his moral compass towards what happened in the first place.

You’ve seen him a couple times for the past three years and although it’s significantly less than how the two of you used to hang out before all this, what matters to you is that he’s still here with you.

You meet up with Yoongi tonight, insisting to treat him to dinner as your advance birthday present to him. You’ve talked about it weeks prior, reckoning how he’s been looking forward to it the whole time.

The two of you have never stopped being friends — you know him.

You know him when something’s plaguing his mind, a look of unease on his features that he would always have difficulty in trying to hide.

The two of you have been here for the past half hour and yet it’s only been you who’s touched the food, finally breaking into asking him rather than waiting for him to speak.

Yoongi’s pupils tremble, tilting his head as he gauges the fact that you’ve been easy this whole time because you’re clueless.

“He hasn’t told you?”

You know who he is and it settles a bitter taste in your mouth, the iron washing away when you find it in Yoongi’s eyes that he’s not just saying anything to fuck with your mind or anything of the sort.

His eyes are strangely familiar with the same heartburn you’ve felt three years ago, only this time it’s much different.

“I’m honest, Y/N,” he whispers under his breath, looking down on the floor to avoid your curious gaze. “I’m sorry.”

He doesn’t know if he’s at the right place to do this but he knows it would be wrong if god forbid anything happens to either of the people he cares about, right with the knowledge that he could’ve atleast done something.

“I-I don’t know if or how I should tell you either but it’s just,” he shakily exhales, making eye contact with you to which all he gets is the hurt in your eyes, all too familiar to him. “I’m honest.”

You listen even if the hurt persists in your chest, unknowing of the ache that’ll settle when Yoongi opens his mouth next.

“Soomin got into an accident.”

( ♡ )

The hurt you feel in your chest is unlike any pain you’ve ever experienced before.

The pain of it sticks to your skin before it penetrates your heart, leaving a trail of discomfort in its wake. It feels as if the pain is materialized into something heavy that sits on your chest proudly, making you claw at it and look down only to see nothing.

Soomin was once your family, the mildly irrational part of the back of your head confirming that she still is. She’s your personification of a sibling even before you knew you had one; even before you knew the true concept of family and how it’s harsh and unforgiving as much as it’s portrayed to be gentle and loving.

She’s the only Park Soomin you’ll ever know.

Eating dinner with Yoongi is the least of your priorities now that he’s dropped the truth on you out of nowhere, a fresh truth that merely happened just two days ago that it hasn’t even begun scabbing at the edges.

You wonder if she’s hurt.

Wondering if Soomin is hurt puts a knot on your stomach because you remember her cries when she was thirteen, recalling that it was only your third time coming over at Jimin’s family home when you hear her shriek. The two of you barely knew each other by then and yet it was only the third meeting that you saw her genuinely hurt, her tears and her whines of pain enough to remind you how you froze when you look at her.

She slipped from the fifth to the last step of the stairs and toppled all the way down from there, badly twisting her ankle that she sobs that she heard something twist and snap so badly that it instantaneously brought tears to her eyes.

It was only you and Jimin downstairs, preparing for what was supposed to be lunch, before Soomin hurt herself on the stairs.

It was too quick. It was too quick for everyone to react accordingly and realize that the moment Soomin fell in pain, the first person to reach her was not Jimin, but you.

You can’t remember the event in detail with how frazzled you were but Jimin clearly can.

He can remember it from the way your eyes snapped away from him and how they went wide, dropping the spoon on the counter carelessly.

He recalls it down to how you eyebrows furrowed in concern as you dash to his little sister, a sob of concern stuck in your throat as you lift her up slightly and assess her with trembling eyes.

Jimin saw the way you stroked her hair and wiped her sweat of panic from her forehead with the back of your hand, looking at him desperately as you ask for help to relieve Soomin’s pain.

What happened to Soomin, one that involves her being in pain, matters to you more than your own standing with her brother at the moment.

The thought of her being in pain overrules you entirely as you work in muscle memory to drive yourself to Jimin’s studio late at night when you got past the traffic from what was supposed to be your dinner with Yoongi, not stopping for anything or anyone.

You look for his studio, his shoes, just anything that would tell you he’s here, head frantically whipping around to search for him or atleast a semblance of his presence.

Until you find him.

Until your eyes finally land on him who’s just as breathless and frozen as you are.

Three years have passed and Jimin’s in front of you.

Jimin looks the same at surface-level, the only key differences from the last time you saw him is how his hair’s longer and is back to its natural color, no longer the faded blonde in your last meeting.

You look at him and you stop entirely, only a second of recognition being shared between the two of you before your anxiety over Soomin overpowers your shock for Jimin, the words tumbling out of your lips immediately.

“What happened to Soomin?”

Jimin feels like he’s underwater.

He’s underwater in the sense that he knows how to swim but he refuses to rise up to the surface, rooted down at the ground for god knows what reason. He can hear you, but he can’t talk to you. He can hear you, but your voice is muffled and having to hear it clearly means pulling himself up — and pulling himself up is what Jimin hasn’t been good at the past three years.

He’s underwater in the sense that he’s an experienced swimmer and is in a well-maintained and balanced pool that he can stay in without the need for goggles. He’s looking up at you from below the water and his eyes can see, but they sting.

He can stay down for as long as he can but at some point he needs to resurface to regain his breathing, finding himself answering you before he gets lost in the ocean of you again before he forces himself to be grounded under.

“She went to a club,” he explains as if the two of you have been seeing each other everyday to feel as casual, barely a barrier between. “She just wanted to have fun.”

Jimin adds at the end as if he doesn’t know you at all. He inputs it for good measure to be defensive as if he thinks you’re judgemental, even if he knew you wouldn’t and would be the last person to, most especially when it comes to Soomin.

You nod attentively, looking him by the eyes as if you haven’t spent the last three years not seeing his within the crowd.

You’re floating on the water in the sense that you’re not versed with swimming and it’s the only thing you can do, staying relaxed under pressure as if one wrong breath and you would be suffocating.

You’re floating on the water in the sense that you do it out of survival rather than enjoyment, the fatigue of just keeping yourself afloat about to catch up on you sooner or later that you stabilize yourself as much as you could .

“Got a couple of drinks, hopped into the back seat with her friends,” Jimin narrates from what he’s heard of the police officer in charge of the cameras, that conversation being wrapped up not even a full day ago. “The girl that was driving ran a red light through an intersection and,” his throat constricts, lodged around nothingness as he exhales sharply.

“That.”

He can’t spell it out nor can he bring himself to. Even trying to recount the events hurt enough for him that he feels as if he’s been gutted at the stomach, the pain manifesting into something much bigger than he is.

“Her side of the car was the only one that’s badly hit,” he mumbles in detail, the footage replaying clearly in his mind. “But even if, they all left her alone.”

It hurts.

It hurts the most being the witness to someone else’s pain after it had already transpired. Jimin knows he can’t do anything about it and yet he hasn’t slept even a wink for the entire time that Soomin’s been home.

He stands watch outside of her room. She lets him sleep on the spare mattress on her floor because even if she offers just sleeping beside her, Jimin says no because she’s injured and wouldn’t want to risk rolling to her side when asleep and risking hurting her. In reality, Jimin didn’t even nap the entire time that he stayed over at Soomin’s room, eyes focusing so often on her figure to see if it was rising and falling — to see if she’s still there.

Your throat is constricted and if you were once floating above the water, you’re now dunked underneath it.

“The car,” your voice croaks, “was it blue?”

Jimin’s lost for a second over what you’re talking about but he connects is soon enough, nodding at the realization that Soomin’s friend’s car was indeed blue.

It’s all the confirmation you need when you feel the bile rise to your throat, eyes widening in panic and fluttering so slowly that he panics at the sight.

He’s just about to catch you because he thinks you’re gonna faint but you whisper, your hand coming up to your mouth as your voice trembles.

“Soomin was the one in the car?”

The realization hits you before the confusion creeps to Jimin, his chest tightening at your words.

“What do you mean?”

It’s pain that you’ve never felt that surrounds you as a whole, engulfing you piece by piece that you don’t know how to ask for salvation.

He’s concerned with the way your eyes well up with tears, an emotion he can’t gauge that he’s never seen out of the five years he’s known and been with you because it’s unlike no other.

“Jimin,” your voice trembles, his name leaving you in cracks. “I was the one who called the ambulance for her.”

“I-I didn’t know,” your head’s fuzzy with the way your mind goes to your tangent of guilt, the blood circulating to your fingertips coldly. “I had a flight and I was in a rush. I-I was in a taxi so we only passed by the car.”

The accident had been so hard to notice at all.

You were called in and you remember even putting the taxi’s windows down to clearly memorize the scene as you fumble with your phone to call for an emergency, trying to relay all the details.

A blue car with people walking away from the scene, confusing enough to see everyone of the barely harmed or none at all compared to the obvious crash on the side of the vehicle.

Your guilt of not helping out is relieved when you see some people get out of their own vehicles to rush to the intersection, joined by an enforcer soon enough.

It’s misplaced guilt that you may feel but you feel so bad nonetheless. Your heart’s burning at the thought that you saw Soomin get hurt and yet unlike the time she fell down the stairs, you didn’t rush to her.

You didn’t know and you didn’t rush to her to help. What you’ve did was look on her pain, one that you didn’t even know belong to her, as witness and call someone else who could relieve it for her.

Jimin remains still, eyes blinking slowly with no anger behind them.

“You were really there?” he all but whispers. “When she woke up, she said she saw you.”

“S-she saw me?”

“She was looking for you too,” he confirms, nodding his head as the ghost of a sad smile settles on his face. “She kept asking for her sister.”

Your heart hurts more than you’ve allowed it to.

“Sister?”

“Doc said that she was disoriented at the time she woke up,” he adds to ease you but he doesn’t know if you need the reassurance in the first place because for all he knows, this upsets you more than he thinks it does. “It’s a case of brain fog, it’s normal. What she asked was somehow a false memory. Somehow a truth she believes. W-we were all just shocked.”

Shocked wouldn’t even be able to cover it.

Their mom cried even harder.

Their dad smiled, keeping his tears to himself.

Jimin remained underwater, breaking down even if he couldn’t resurface.

“I don’t know if you wanted to hear this,” he admits whole-heartedly, pursing his lips before looking at you. “I just wanted to let you know.”

Jimin feels the same sentiments he did when Yoongi got frustrated at him for not calling you, remembering his distance.

He discreetly takes a step back and yet you notice, his eyes settling on the floor as if you’ve burned him by your presence alone.

“You weren’t supposed to know in the first place.”

“You could’ve reached me.”

You’re honest when you say it. You’re sincere when you tell Jimin that he could’ve reached you and you would’ve allowed it given everything.

“I didn’t know how. I-I didn’t know where you were.”

And he didn’t — he truly didn’t know where you were or what you were doing.

He knew nothing about you and he knows he doesn’t have the right to wish for otherwise, knowing that being kept in the dark is a pain that doesn’t hold a candle to what he put you through.

“You could’ve asked Yoongi. He told me that he was offering my number to you too.”

Jimin shakes his head politely, looking down.

“I don’t want you to feel obligated to me. I-I can’t do that to you.”

“I’m not obligated to you anymore, Jimin,” you mumble but you know that he heard it loud and clear, running your thumb across your knuckles; honest with every word. “But I would’ve come if I known.”

He raises his gaze to meet yours but this time it’s you who avoids his, the truth that you know within your heart weighing much lighter than it should be that you feel unused to it.

“I would’ve come if you asked me to.”

Jimin cries.

He cries as he tearfully nods, sobbing into his hands restlessly.

“Is Soomin okay?”

You ask to get him out of it but he barely even responds, crying in front of you so hard that his hiccups rack throughout his whole body.

Your hand raises on its own before it barely grazes his arm, your head tilting in sincerity.

“Are you okay?”

It’s an accumulation of everything Jimin’s ever felt.

It is every pain combined to engulf him as a whole that it feels unreal and detached from his own heart, clueless to how he had even survived last night alone with his own thoughts.

Soomin’s the Sun that Jimin’s family revolves around to, the light of their days and nights that they don’t ever want to dull.

“Soomin’s okay. She’ll be okay,” he says throughout his sobs, trying to convince the both of you. “She’ll be okay.”

“Can I see her?”

You ask because you want to.

You ask because you genuinely want to see Soomin out of your own matters of the heart and not by obligation; not by former relations nor attachments.

“You can,” Jimin says the most surely he’s ever spoken for the past three days. “Of course you can.”

( ♡ )

“Are you sure you’d be okay?”

Hoseok, your half-brother, asks for the umpteenth time for the day.

It’s been three years since you’ve met him and not one meeting with him passed without him asking if you would be okay.

It wasn’t a question if you’re okay today — it’s a question to whether you’d be okay tomorrow.

You treasure him more than you’ve ever expected that you would come to love him as family, as someone of your own blood even if it isn’t full; even if you’ve sworn at first that you only have yourself.

You can’t even begin to describe the fulfillment that you feel when someone asks what’s your relation to him whenever the two of you would spend time together outside.

You never thought you’d be able to call someone your brother and for each time that you do, your inner child gets to sleep better at night.

“It’s been three years, Hobi.”

You were the one who reached out to him the week after your father let you know about his existence. His number was left to you out of a long-shot and yet you woke up one evening with the urge to call it, not expecting the immediate answer you would receive.

Hoseok knew about you.

He was waiting for your call.

“Time isn’t always enough,” Hoseok half-heartedly smiles because he would know; the two of you would know.

Your parents were married at one point in time (it’s a memory so distant that you can’t believe it) and had you five years later.

Despite that, Hoseok’s two years older than you, his mother being your dad’s former secretary.

He knows.

He would know.

He had drove out the next morning after you called him at night, only to blank immediately when he picked up and only managed to introduce yourself in a mumble.

The two of you have already established a relationship early on, making up for the lost time.

He’s honest just as you are. Knew how the other could be just as sensitive and vulnerable.

You know about Hoseok’s pains just like he knows yours.

“I wish I could’ve protected you earlier.”

Hoseok figures that the most logical thing he could ever describe what you mean to him, despite having only known each other properly for three years, is that you’re family.

You are his family and it’s an irrevocable truth he stands by.

“It’s none of our faults we’ve met this late into our lives,” you shake your head at him, telling him a truth you no longer blame yourself for. “If I hadn’t ended up in the hospital, who knows if I would’ve ever gotten to know about you?”

Hoseok brings out his resemblance with you with the way he deadpans, scoffing to the full effect.

“2/10. Not funny at all,” he playfully roll his eyes with no real harm to it, pushing you by your arm as he knocks down your racks of tissue paper on the bar to annoy you.

Hoseok is your family.

You have a brother, and you have a family of your own blood, regardless of its entirety or even the half of it.

“You could still protect me now.”

He smiles sweetly, ruffling your hair. “I know.”

Hoseok knows about your pains and he stand from afar to be your safety net, letting you figure it out alone as you’ve always done, but this time with a cushion to soften your fall.

“Guard your heart, Y/N,” he hugs you in your kitchen counter, the warmth of familial love being something you still need practice on to receive without bawling the next minute. “Let it be yours before you share it again.”

Hoseok, as your brother, sets himself up to be your safety net in the event that what you’ve decided on now — to see your ex-fiancé’s family and specifically his sister.

He won’t tell you what to do.

What he can do is try to protect you, even if it means letting you fall a few times.

“No one should be a saint.”

( ♡ )

Soomin is recovering.

She’s in recovery as she lays in her room, her head propped up as she watches from the new TV that Jimin’s gotten her because the last one got outdated so quickly, having to wack it by the receiver in order to lower the volume.

She’s gotten most of her strength for the most part. The only noticeable injuries she has is her cast that’s soon to be removed and the faint stitch that she has on the side of her forehead, choosing to just look at her reflection from the side whenever she looks at the mirror.

She knows everyone by their footsteps. She has them committed to memory infinitely since they’ve only entered her room for about a hundred times each within the past week, even memorizing Miso’s silent steps.

But Soomin thinks, she just thinks that her mind’s playing games with her when she hears a familiar set of steps, one that’s beyond familiar yet one that she hadn’t heard in years.

She’s about to bolt out of her bed as quickly as she could, effectively stopped when her door creaks open to reveal exactly who she thought it was.

“Surprise.”

You didn’t know what to expect when you show up at Jimin’s family’s house to visit Soomin and lift her spirits even for the tiniest bit, but you know that it was somehow this.

It was somehow this, along the same vein of warmth you’ve expected because Soomin practically jumped on you and embraces you so dearly, so warm to the point you swear you could feel damp droplets the crook of your neck.

“I missed you.”

She admits even if it’s never been a lie in the first place.

For three years, the two of you exchanged messages occasionally. The birthday ones and the holiday ones, the checking-up ones at the middle of the morning, the silent confessions of how she misses you to the point that it’s not even funny anymore.

“I missed you too, Minnie.”

His parents welcomed you long ago as soon as you arrived on their property, welcomed by hugs as their son stood the respectful distance away.

You don’t know where they are now but they excused themselves, if only you knew that they’re in their room uncontrollably happy to have seen you again and for you to be there for Soomin, no hidden agenda elsewhere with their son.

You had talked about this with Jimin. Talked to him about the prospect of visiting atleast one and staying only until dinner.

That’s your only plan.

Jimin thought he would’ve been content with that plan alone but when he peeks at Soomin’s door and sees the two of you hugging; the two of you happy and beaming, he realizes that Jimin only wants one plan for his future.

He feels happy in the sense that he’s never expected to see a sight like this again or for this day to ever come, regardless the context that it’s in. He feels empty however, in the sense that he finds himself wanting more, even if this single visit alone means the world to him.

It’s nearing dinnertime when you come downstairs to the sight of Jimin sniffling, the furthest thing away from even getting started on cooking family dinner in which you sit on your chair.

“I haven’t properly apologized to you in person for everything I’ve done to you,” he says sincerely, knowing that his letters to you in your voicemail wouldn’t count as much as this does. “I’m sorry.”

He apologizes the whole night, even through his gaze at the dining table.

Even through his waves goodbye to you as you pull your car out of the driveway.

Even through his curious glances when Soomin pulls you to her and pleads that you visit again.

( ♡ )

You think you will.

You think you’ll visit Soomin again.

The drive back to your apartment to freshen up just before your planned flight schedule does more than wake you up.

You haven’t drank anything and yet you feel like it sobered you completely. It’s opened your eyes in a way you can’t even fathom to be so aware of what you were doing.

It’s in the early morning as you stand by the entrance of the plane, customer service smile on display even if it isn’t Taehyung nor his family that you’re flying out.

You bow your head as the Head of Public Relations and what seems to be his plus one pass by you, only lifting your head once they go their ways to their own private cabin that’s separated.

It’s only after you flew the short distance and the sun rises that you’re thinking clearer than you used to, saying your customary greetings upon arrival.

It’s when the passengers’ cabin opens that you see her.

Eunji, all along, was the arm candy of the Head of Public Relations on your flight.

He’s married.

And it’s not to Eunji.

She recognizes you the moment her eyes lay on you, eyes widening in realization.

She’s intimidated. Much more intimidated than she could be.

“You must be Y/N.”

Her voice snaps you out of your thought process, unnerved to look at her which confuses her even more.

Shouldn’t you know who she is?

And yet you smile, shaking your head, rattling Eunji by barely pouring in the same effort that she does.

“And you are?” your brows raise, tilting your head as the both of you wait for the executive to gather his things, a faint smile on your lips.

“Sorry, I don’t know you by your name.”

People like Eunji never change, that much you could think of. She’s a flat personality with no development because it’s who she is, regardless of the guy she’s with.

It’s in her system, something she hasn’t managed to shake off.

It’s sobering to meet Eunji for the first and last time.

“I only know you by who you are.”

( ♡ )

Loving someone doesn’t necessarily mean loving every bit that comes with them, but in your case nothing about you was unworthy of the same love that he gives you.

It’s all too domestic, all too warm.

Having someone to take care of is something he’s already tried before. Loving you and taking care of you intimidated at him first because he didn’t know if he was loving you in the way you deserved to be loved. Your heart has far too much space to carry love for others and yet only the small bit of it was allotted to receive it, already filling to the brim with how he knows that his family fills it up.

He’s spent five years with you and three years without, yet there was not one moment that Jimin didn’t stop loving you — even in his sins, even through his despair.

“I’ve already made my peace. Forgive yourself, Jimin.”

You had only told him minutes ago downstairs when you walk down on him crying again. He tells you that he’s crying out of happiness; out of selfishness at the flip side.

He’s crying because he feels so warm having all the people he loves and loves most underneath the same roof, so much so that he wants to forget everything forwards besides now.

It’s when he peeks at Soomin’s room and asks if he could sleep over but she looks over to you before she answers him, a gentle smile on your face.

“You call the shots, Minnie. This is your room anyway.”

It feels all too familiar — all too warm again.

He feels sure, he feels infinite within your roots regardless if it would forever be drought for him.

Jimin’s only one plan in the future is to have you in his hold, just once more, even if it would be the last thing he’s ever feel. He would be yours, and yours alone.

Maybe not now. Maybe it’s in the future.

Jimin doesn’t know tomorrow but he knows now.

Now when he pulls up the spare mattress to sleep on the floor, adjacent to your side where you lay next to Soomin on her bed.

Now when he turns off the nightlight and tucks the comforter neatly to both your sides.

Now when he says good night and gets one right back.

You are Jimin’s favorite pain; his favorite ache and his favorite grief.

You are his favorite roof and his favorite warmth.

You are the only grasshopper.

You are his favorite lifetime if there are four — a lifetime with you is a lifetime he’s pick four times over; one that sows, one that waters, one that reaps, and one that consumes.

He can love you from afar.

You are Jimin’s religion.

There is a home within you.

.

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There will never be another Jeon Jungkook in this world — that much you're sure of.

You're sure of it because it feels as if it's a universal truth. An irrevocable and irreversible one that you don't bother verifying because Jungkook carries his presence with finality, obvious that he carries security within himself the most.

If he were to slip away from your grasp for any reason beneath or beyond you, you’d know that he leave a vacuum in his wake. Jungkook isn’t yours for you to lose, but he is yours for you to long for.

You know this because Jungkook is the type of beauty you won't ever grow used to despite spending years, with him and around him. You're both seniors in college and yet you don't feel like it, despite being born just a couple months earlier than him (therefore older) which irks him to this day. You don't feel like it because his presence alone makes you feel like you're in elementary figuring out your heart flutters from square one.

If he were to star in a show, he’d be the mainstay character everyone fawns over. He would be the one to stay in the biggest trailer, have the most doting team, and have the brightest lights on him. If Jungkook was a star, he’d rake in all the money by himself.

If Jungkook were to to be yours, you’d never want for anything more.

“Are you seriously — don’t sleep on me!”

Jungkook’s voice is the first thing that snaps you out of your reverie, reminding you once again that you think of him even if he’s already in your presence, an endearingly-type of new low for you.

“I wasn’t sleeping on you,” you snort with a defensive cross of your arms across your chest, the prospect of rest making you yawn in suppression with your mouth closed, eyes tearing up and your nostrils flaring instead.

“Yeah but you were zoning out on me,” he sing-songs in faux irritation, twirling on his chair with an accusing point of his finger, “and that means I have two minutes left to talk to you before you fall asleep.”

The only reason you’re awake is because Jungkook practically begged to keep you up as emotional (and actual) support for the entirety of the assignments he’s been cramming.

You share a spacious dorm and yet the two of you are cooped up in his room because his mind would overload if he’s in someplace else, eyes surely gonna shake if he were to write essays on the coffee table in the living room or at the bar stool in the kitchen.

“What do you need me for now?”

Need.

It’s nice being needed.

It’s nice being needed that despite Jungkook’s initials on your ring finger that tied him to you as your soulmate, and his unawareness of it, Jungkook needs you.

The initials on one’s left ring finger develops over time. Some take mere years after their birth while others take decades. Starts off faint until they become clear red letters right on your vena amoris, inked on the skin above the vein that’s closest to your heart.

It gets fully-developed when it’s fully-realized. Having Jungkook’s bright and clear on your finger didn’t necessarily mean your initials reflect the same condition on his.

It was personal preference, really — whether or not you choose to cover up the soulmate mark or not. You’ve always chosen to cover your finger up with a ring because you didn’t want to freak your best friend ever since childhood that simply put, the two of you are soulmates.

Jungkook, just like you, chooses to wear a ring. In fact, he even wears the same one that you do because he argues that even if you’ve bought the silver signet ring first with the money you’ve saved up for years (it wasn’t cheap at all), he thought about it first.

That’s where the connection ends; only goes so far for the two of you to have matching rings to cover up your soulmate marks.

Jungkook, adamantly and stubbornly since the start, doesn’t like looking at his ring finger.

Even before there were faint outlines of ink, too vague for it to resemble your initials, eight-year old Jungkook would start having things around his particular digit, whether it’s a two-day old ring pop he leaves in the fridge or a piece of yarn that accidentally almost cuts off his blood circulation.

You remember Mrs. Jeon sheepishly explaining to curious onlookers whenever both of your families would go out for trips and that out of the two youngest members of their entourage, the handsome child with the wide eyes would have some sort of cover on his ring finger at an early age, be it an oven mitten or a headband scrunched up.

“I like not knowing who’s apparently meant for me.”

You’ve asked him multiple times throughout your life, all for Jungkook to be consistent and give you the same answer every time.

The same answer when you were kids as you repetitively flicked the tip of his ring finger with your eyes closed as instructed by him, in panic to make him feel something because he’s covered his mark with yet another ribbon too tightly, and in respect because even he himself didn’t want to see the ink.

The same answer when you were teenagers and you’re getting Christmas gifts together and Jungkook just looked too much like your ideal boyfriend with the way he’s lining up for you on the counter and is watching over all the items, pulling you closer every now and then when the prospect of losing you to the crowd gets higher with every rush.

The same answer now while you’re passing the time on his bed as he’s hunched over his desk, a harmless question included randomly into your series of sleep-induced curiosity; the question of why he doesn’t want to know about his soulmate, asked in the same breath of casualness to whether Jungkook preferred his rice better cooked with too much water or too less of it, or if he’d go home for the holidays with presents already prepared.

“Is that a kink?” you scrunch your nose at his unwavering consistency, knowing you would’ve liked it for any other situation besides this.

Jungkook breathily laughs, shrugging his shoulders carelessly as if the two of you are talking about the weather and he’s admitted that it’s been years since he’s last looked at a forecast willingly.

“I don’t wanna know, really. I still breathe without knowing who they are.”

The way he says it is easy, no underlying malice indicated in his tone at all. He says it in the way as if he’s been asked this a hundred times and his response is natural and well-lived, not once changing.

“I don’t believe in fate.”

Hurt doesn’t even explain half the pain in your chest all this time but in this light with the way you’re simply asking him why he doesn’t want a soulmate, why he doesn’t want you by extension — it’s only an ache.

It’s only an ache that pacifies on your bones instead of gnawing on them. It’s drawn-out yet dull, the pain not striking you enough to the point that you even hum at him to elaborate.

“Because what if I don’t end up loving them? What if the one I end up loving isn’t the one the universe apparently destined for me?” Jungkook goes on, lips in a slight pout. “Love doesn’t have initials.”

You sink further into his pillow, playing with your fingers yet retaining your gaze on him.

“You don’t have to love your soulmate.”

Read: you don’t have to love me.

Additionally: you don’t have to love me because having you in this platonic way atleast gives me the semblance that you love me even by a fraction, but if you love me in the same way I love you, it’d be nice.

“You say that now to make me believe in them,” he snorts, twirling a pen between his fingers with a genuinely curious gaze, “but what happens if you aren’t the one they want?”

You haven’t been doing anything and yet you still stop in your tracks, the question echoing in your mind as you repeat his query out loud.

“What happens if your soulmate doesn’t want you?”

What does happen?

You don’t die. You don’t puke flowers.

There’s no catch to it. There’s no grand consequence to having your soulmate not want you.

It makes you think once of your present situation and rethink twice of every decision you’ve ever made beforehand when your ring finger was still plain and devoid of his initials; when the only person you’ve made plans with and for isn’t just yourself, when it wasn’t him.

Jungkook doesn’t want you.

What’s supposed to happen to you?

“I need you to stop zoning out and help me make this essay!” he whines demandingly and it’s the last thing that pulls you out of your thoughts, sitting up straighter.

“If you start asking now, I can actually start helping you, y’know?”

Jungkook’s in STEM while you’re a literary major, the obvious exchange of help being convenient, yet the only difference is that when you make him answer your worksheets, you don’t wait until it’s three hours before the supposed deadline.

He’s giddy now that he’ll get to finish his last assignment due, eyes scanning back to the instructions because his attention span’s already been spent looking at his phone.

“What's love to you?"

You freeze at the abruptness but you move on just as quick as you were surprised, remembering that it’s just the guideline for an essay and not the turning point you’ve expected it to be for a split second.

“How do you want me to answer that?

You ask lightly, humorously even, as you stand up from his bed, running a hand through your hair and working the knots of out of your neck before you get to work.

“I want you to answer it in the sense that I have a paper about love due tomorrow. At 12:00 in the morning.”

“Why?” Jungkook giggles additionally, nudging you with a shit-eating grin and a playful glint on his eyes. “How would you have wanted to answer that?”

“Nothing else,” you smile faintly, scooting him to out of his seat and switch positions so he could sit on his bed while you type for him at his desk. “I’m answering it in the sense that you would be lost without me.”

“Are you sure about that?”

It’s only meant to be a tease but it hits home nonetheless. Maybe it’s because you’re in your soulmate’s room underneath his lights and you’re visible to him. Maybe it’s because your mark pulses just ever so slightly underneath your ring, irritated and itchy underneath the silver as much as you feel hurt.

“Lost without me in the sense that you’d fail your subject if I don’t help you with your essay now."

( ♡ )

Anyone who’d meet Jungkook for the first time is likely to think of three things.

He looks clean. Handsome in a way that he looks effortless even if he wears the same oversized black shirt every guy wears outside, enough to garner second glances for himself. He’s tidy in the facet that he looks like he takes care of himself but not vain, far from annoying prep kids he scoffs at.

Jungkook looks rich and is rich. His family doesn’t come from generational wealth and yet they thrive from their own holdings, learning early-on that they owned a cottage near the beach and rented it out as they moved next-door, and the next thing you know is that at present, they own multiple properties and ventured out into food business that make absolute bank.

He carries himself with the stature that he knows what he’s doing, back sometimes slouched but dignified nonetheless, the air of importance surrounding him. Jungkook was raised in comfort but he’s humble, that much you’d bet your whole life into believing. He was the type to have pocket money whenever he goes out but he spends it in the same way you do, calculating his expenses mentally as if the bills in his wallet wouldn’t pay for the video games he’d want and even have some change afterwards.

He’s aware in the sense that he doesn’t forget where he comes from, admitting to you numerous times that his family having much disposable income sometimes bothers him. Jungkook thinks there’s an itch behind his ear whenever his dad proposes to eat at a five-star restaurant for dinner; that there’s a guilty pout on his face when his mom takes the initiative to buy him new sets of clothes because his shirts look too lived-in, even if he knows to himself that his wardrobe needed a change.

He’s down-to-earth and it reminds you of the way he’d forego all of his Fisher-Price toys just to try and plead to you if he could borrow your hand-me-down stuffies from your older siblings. Mr. and Mrs. Jeon are nothing but humble in the same way that they raised their child, despite the fact that in rare times, they have the taste for the finer things in life.

Mrs. Jeon’s beyond generous during the holiday seasons and you recall her gifting your mother the expensive casserole you’d catch her looking at in adoration whenever both your families had dinners, customized to her favorite color and attached with a heartfelt letter from Jungkook’s mom. Mr. Jeon practically adores your dad and looks up to him like a younger brother would, always taking him to fishing trips just and buying two pairs of the same things so the two of them could match.

Jungkook was raised-well and if it’s even possible at this point, he gets much more endearing in your eyes.

“Why would I not walk you home? We live together, if you haven’t realized.”

He says it when he sees you in campus as he drops everything to walk you home, even if your shared apartment isn’t his destination for the time being. He goes out of his way to ensure that if you stay home while he goes about his plans, there should be food in the fridge and cupboards that you’d actually like. He’d lock the door and try to budge it open from outside, and once he’s assured enough that it remains secured, he’d go about his routine of texting you to call him if you need him.

“You can have mine. I’m full anyway.”

Jungkook says it whenever the two of you end up ordering new items from menus and you end up liking your dish, offering you his plate nonchalantly. He insists that it just tastes average for him, and if he sees you hesitating on stealing some from his portion, he’d go as far as telling you that it tastes horrible so you wouldn’t feel guilty.

“Look! My mom sent you these! I told her you liked them.”

He calls you over every time his family’s goodies for him for the month arrives at the mail, laying the package on the floor as he waits for you to unbox it with him because he knows just how much you like going through things and organizing them. Mrs. Jeon always made sure to include something specifically meant for you in Jungkook’s box — whether it’s the family-sized portion of your recent cravings or your favorite hair treatment in bulk.

“Hey, wanna go on a drive with me?”

He asks you whenever he sees you too absorbed and frustrated in your studies in conjunction with whatever work gig you have at the time, heart panging to see you struggling to take care of yourself because he knows you have the tendency to try and finish everything as fast and as good as you could, not stopping even at personal circumstances. He’d simply put your pair of house slippers on the floor for you to wear, pull you up by your armpits to urge you to come with him, and he’d just drive. Would go through a drive-thru and take off from there, not pressuring you to open up to him at whatever cost.

Jungkook can’t sense you in the same way you do, like a soulmate would, but he cares for you in the way that he can tell when you don’t feel like functioning at all and you’re shutting down; you’re shutting even him off and that’s when he knows that something’s bothering you to no end even if he can’t decipher what is it.

Whatever’s in his power, Jungkook sits next to you, lies on top of you, and does almost everything to invade your personal space whenever you shut down — just because he doesn’t want to give up on you like how you do with him.

If anyone were to meet Jungkook for the first time, they’d know he’s uniquely himself.

He cleans up extremely good as he wears a suit to the grand opening of his family’s café, a dream of her mother ever since she was a teenager that became fully-realized and he can’t be any more happier seeing his parents content.

He greets people left and right with genuine happiness to see all of them ecstatic and supportive, eagerly shaking their hands with a full smile on his face. He draws everyone in effortlessly as if he’s inertia itself, well-aware that it can’t only possibly be you that looks at him with this much reverence.

There’s a red string of pull and you feel it when Jungkook stumbles on his feet on his way to you, feeling your body being slightly tugged downwards but you pull yourself up just as quick, playing it off by pretending that there’s a speck of dirt on your shoes.

He’s been looking for you for the past five minutes because it’s his mother’s fault that she wanted two floors for their café and it’s packed immediately on opening, pointing at you eagerly as he weaves through people. “There you are!”

It’s not your first time meeting Jungkook but you feel the same three things each time, heart swelling in size in familiarity of the person who inhabits it the most.

Jungkook giddily laughs and takes his position beside you, slinging an arm around your shoulders and making conversation with your parents for the umpteenth time, your head instinctively bending to lean against him. He looks every bit the part of the person you love the most in this world, despite being unsure if you even deserve to in the first place. He looks every bit of the guy that makes you realize you can’t deal with having anyone else’s initials on your finger, the words slipping out of you naturally.

“You look like someone’s first love.”

( ♡ )

You’re flawed.

You’re flawed and you don’t need anyone to tell you so in order to give yourself a wake-up call.

You’re flawed in a way because you feel dumb being so lovestruck and devoted with little to no point of salvation. You pride yourself in not being selfish but you’d be lying if you say don’t once hope that Jungkook would look at you in the way that you do. Every now and then would you feel the urge to demand from him insistently every second of the day that he should love you. That he owes you atleast that for the years you’ve spent helplessly trying to put him first rather than your own sanity.

But it feels wrong. It is wrong.

Jungkook doesn’t owe you anything and you know that much.

He doesn’t owe you anything and you shouldn’t expect for him to pay attention to you even if you’re his designated driver for the night, celebrating the end of the stressful semester by unwinding at a club.

He doesn’t owe you an explanation when you see him not fending off the countless girls that go up to him and get their hands on whatever they could; doesn’t owe you an apology when you see him leaning down fondly to kiss someone who isn’t you — someone who isn’t his soulmate.

You would’ve been alone in your booth and the club in general (your soulmate’s out of the equation because he looks like he’s in a different realm entirely) if not for Hoseok, someone who’s perhaps your second best friend right after Jungkook.

It’s merely a coincidence that the both of you are here at the same time, him being the one to easily spot you as he weaves himself in your company seamlessly because he’s been meaning to escape all his frat brothers who annoy him more these days.

“I have something to say to you.”

Hoseok breaks into your worrisome silence, beckoning you over even if the two of you are sat right next to each other with your shoulders bumping.

“No. no. Come closer,” he insists and it makes you roll your eyes at what he could be playing at this time, indulging him by putting the side of your face right against his playfully.

Hoseok’s even more rational and realistic than you could be. In fact, he’s followed your gaze the entire night and he wonders how you haven’t grown tired. He knows about your helpless pining for your soulmate who doesn’t even want to know about you nor your existence, and all he can do is watch.

“You’re insane if you think this whole thing wouldn’t end up anything but extremely painful.”

His words are in a harsh whisper but it feels as if he’s yelled at you right to your ear, making you flinch away from his softly with a defeated pout on your face.

His words come out of nowhere but the rational part of you, the one that disappears whenever you’re vulnerable in this state longing after Jungkook, already knew that you’ve had this coming for a long time.

Hoseok doesn’t sugarcoat his words and it’s what you need almost all of the time. He’s harsh and unforgiving and it reminds you that you have a friend who isn’t Jungkook — someone who isn’t as gentle or kind; someone who grounds you rationally whenever you get too far up your head.

“Let me live, Hobi.”

“What you’re doing isn’t living, Y/N.”

He thinks for a second that he’s being too harsh but he realizes that maybe, just maybe, you need the truth no matter how cruel it could be. He figures that maybe you’d need someone to call you out instead of pitying you over what they could clearly see. “Tell me,” he murmurs, crossing his arms as he looks at you whose eyes are avoiding his gaze.

“Do you live for yourself first?” he nudges you by the shoulder, lightly tapping your ring with his finger. “Or do you live for Jungkook?”

Do you live for yourself first,

or do you live for Jungkook?

You’re dead silent and it’s the type that Hoseok doesn’t want to hear, mumbling to yourself before leaning to his neck to sniff whatever remnant he has on.

“God, what are you on?” you’re deflecting and you know it, cracking your knuckles at the process. “Let me have a hit of it.”

“I’m serious over here.”

Hoseok sees right through you and you feel like crying, recognizing the familiar solemn look on his face because like everyone else who has even the faintest idea of your situation, he pities you.

“And I’m telling you this as someone who cares for you,” he lightly swipes underneath your eyes that are welling up with tears before they even get to fall, effectively prying them out. “Let go of him while you still can.”

“How do I do that?”

You’re breathless in exhaustion but it’s not as if you’ve done anything physically strenuous to be in such a state. You haven’t done anything but it feels as if the wind is knocked out of your lungs and it doesn’t come back to you even if your sail blows.

“How do I do that if Jungkook asks me what do I want for dinner?” there’s trepidation underneath your tone and Hoseok recognizes it, the tremble in your fingers visible even if you have them clenched. “How do I do that if he holds my hand when we cross the street and shields me in crowds?”

“How do you expect me to do that when he calls my parents on weekends and tells them that he’ll always look out for me?”

You’re not scared of letting Jungkook know but rather, you’re scared of your inevitable fall. You’re not scared of the white hot pain you anticipate to feel when the moment finally comes that he says it straight to your face that he doesn’t love you; you’re scared of what happens to the two of you after and what’s left of it.

“How do you expect me to stop loving Jungkook when he acts like he loves me back?”

“He doesn’t.”

“And I know that.”

You’re flawed in the way that you’re self-aware. That you’re painfully mindful of your own emotions and multitudes. You hate that you’re as logical as you are emotional and for once, you just wish you didn’t know better.

You wish that you’re insensitive and reckless. You wish you were more cunning in the sense that you disregard Jungkook completely and stop at nothing to try and get him to look your way with a different gaze.

You wish that you’re anyone but yourself, someone who’s deserving of Jungkook.

“What do I do now, Hobi?” you lean into him because you can’t support yourself and he knows it, the weight of your heart being heavier than your head on his shoulder.

You’re flawed because you suppress a coo at the back of your throat when Jungkook stumbles over to your booth and immediately wraps his arms around you, drunken babbles leaving him as it’s a sign for you to take him home.

You’re flawed because you hear your soulmate speak as you bid goodbye to Hoseok for the night, only smiling when you hear his words. It’s a pain that doesn’t encompass you, rather, it’s a pain that’s hot enough to burn your flesh yet just warm enough to quell the pain in your bones.

“You're my best, best friend in every universe. Y’know that?” he hiccups, eyes completely glazed and rubbed raw as he looks at the side of your face while you haul him to your car. “I hope you know that.”

( ♡ )

Your door opens up before you even realize it.

Actually, Jungkook opens your door before he even realizes it.

He’s woken up in a rush with a single text from his dad that they’re coming over to visit and normally it wouldn’t bother him. Waking up abruptly in the morning isn’t a problem to him and so is making a game plan in cleaning everything up to make sure it’s spotless to his mother’s standards.

What is a problem is that when he entered the bathroom to brush his teeth without a shirt on, he sees the reflection of his hickies from the night before glaring right at him.

However, what an even bigger problem than that is when he tries to wake you up by knocking on your door with the pleads of helping him cover his marks up, it automatically opens when he twists the knob.

“Y/N, no! Why’s your door unlocked?”

His eyes widen in panic and worry, wondering why it wasn’t even locked in the first place. Better yet, has it never been locked ever since? When he leaves you alone in the apartment, do you go out of your way to unlock the main door that he secures closed on the way out?

“And why aren’t you even moving out of bed when someone’s inside your room? What if it isn’t me? What if it’s someone else who did the exact things I did?”

Jungkook’s more worried than he is mad even if his tone’s jittery, hands on his hips as his mind makes up for the whole nine yards. Seriously, does he regard your safety more than you do with your own? Leaving your door open is beyond unsafe. Were you being more forgetful these days? Does he not look over you enough?

You’re oblivious to his panicked state as you burrow yourself deeper into your sheets, eyes remaining peacefully closed because it doesn’t surprise you anymore when he suddenly inserts his presence into your vicinity.

“But it’s you,” you sleepily mumble, half-coherent with the way you hug your pillow closer. “Aren’t you the one who kept knocking at my door?”

He scoffs because you do make a point even if he refuses to admit it, but it just ticks him in a way that you regard his concern for you so lightly. “That’s different and-…”

“And now you’ve opened it yourself and invited yourself into my room.”

“Yeah and that’s okay because it’s me!” he gestures out but he forgets that you’re not even looking at him, unaware of how he looks genuinely upset and worried at the moment. “But what if it was someone else, hm?”

“Like who, an intruder?” you suggest even if you don’t know where this conversation is taking you, your careless words leaving you before you even realize because you don’t have half the realization to think about them deeper. “You’ll protect me if there is one, right?”

Jungkook freezes in his tracks and he suddenly feels no point in trying to berate you further, the stark suggestion that was only meant to be light-hearted painting him a grave image he wasn’t even trying to conjure, trying not to snowball for the worst possible scenario.

He should always be there for you, that much he knows.

“Fucking idiot, of course I would,” he huffs that you even doubt his prioritization for you and it makes you snort because you clearly hear it, turning to face the other side as you make no move in shooing him away and instead try to go back to sleeping. “But starting now, promise me you’ll lock your doors and wake up immediately when someone knocks, alright? You hear me?”

“Hmm.”

“Cross your heart on it,” he says it out of habit even if he knows you wouldn’t do it anyway, sitting on the vacant side of you bed as he tries to shake you awake. “Anyways, I need a favor from you.”

It’s never been lost on you that unlike every other time, Jungkook wouldn’t willingly come to you this early into the night without needing something from you for his own benefit. You don’t get your hopes up that perhaps this time, he comes to your bed just to hold you in warmth amongst his embrace because it’s something only a fever nap could do for you; clearly not sick enough to see that image.

“What do you need me for now?” your eyes start blinking open as you shift to look straight up at the ceiling, casting a glance on Jungkook who has a sheepish pout on his face.

“Please cover up my hickies. I’m begging you."

You don’t even flinch once and he’s nervous at how it seems like you didn’t even hear what he said, prompting to explain himself further. “Mom and Dad are visiting and they’re already on the way.”

You’re used to this.

There shouldn’t be any surprise factor to know that the time Jungkook wakes you up outside for the purpose of not making you late to your classes or to your errands, it would be for his sake. He wakes you up for the sake of himself, asking of you to cover up his hickies because he’s ever the angel to his parents and he can’t do it himself.

Jungkook wakes you up for you to see marks that link him to another woman, even if it’s just for a night, while he covers up the only marks he has of you on his finger and he doesn’t even know it, completely devoid of the only linking thing you have with him.

“Get me my makeup bag.”

He immediately knows where it is and he manages to mumble out a rushed thanks, sprinting back to where you lay. In fact, you have a separate concealer in Jungkook’s shade already that you don’t even need to turn the light on to know it’s a perfect match.

You sit up lazily and cover up his hickies like it’s routine. You see him everyday as he belongs to everyone but yourself, and the physical proof of it doesn’t hurt you as much as you expected it to be.

He lays down on your lap and neither of you talk.

You skim past the hues of pink and purple on his neck as if you were born simply to see them on your soulmate’s neck, as if you were conditioned all your life to be the one to cover up hickies on Jungkook’s skin as your sole purpose. You do the process of covering it up over and over again until you get rid of the marks that remind him he isn’t yours at all, right until he sits up to admire your handicraft.

“Woah, it’s like it wasn’t even there! This is so-“

“Now get out.”

Jungkook’s eyes widen as he gets whiplash from your hostile tone, but he probably chalks it up to you being sleepy, him interrupting your rest, and you desperately wanting to get back to it.

He’s out of your room to now clean up the entire place but your tone doesn’t leave him still, making him sigh out loud while he tries not to overthink it.

You’re just sleepy.

You’d never get mad at him.

Jungkook’s eyes blink once, twice as he resumes wiping down the counters, slower and more thoughtful this time.

You’d never get mad at him, right?

( ♡ )

The day is slow and so is the pain in your heart.

You can’t put a finger on it exactly, but being with Jungkook in any other form besides a soulmate doesn’t hurt you as much nowadays. The hurt is there but it’s never really left anyway. The vacuum in the shape of Jungkook from within you has been there for so long that the hurt you feel seems like a routine at this point.

You look for him in the way when there’s a misplaced decoration on the shelf; a single magazine missing amongst a row of books. You look for it, but you come to accept it. You don’t look for Jungkook in the way when you realize that an heirloom is missing from your possession and you tear around the whole place to seek it.

Having Jungkook away from your grasp feels as normal as you have him within yours platonically, the two weighing the same amount of harrowing.

“I have an idea,” Jungkook proposes to you over the couch when he’s shouldered dinner and it’s just yet to arrive, passing the time by being around you even if your attention isn’t on him. “What if you look at my soulmate mark?”

You’ve only been endlessly scrolling through your feed and as much as you expected Jungkook to bother your silence with one conversation or another, you didn’t think it’d be this.

Rarely does it cross your mind nowadays that you’re soulmates before you’re best friends turned roommates. In fact, not once did you wander about him today and admittedly in realization, it scares you before it relieves you.

“What for?”

“Shit and giggles, I think,” he replies with much amusement but the determination in his eyes tell you that he’s more than insistent. “Don’t tell me about it though. Don’t tell me even a single clue.”

You will yourself to look back at your phone, to ignore him as if he hasn’t said the stupidest yet simultaneously brightest proposal he’s ever given you because it’s too sudden. You’ve waited for years but now that Jungkook’s asking you to look at his mark in behalf of him, simply for shit and giggles, you worry that it’s too sudden. Too early. That the moment you’ve waited for years is too abrupt and now you’d rather wait for another lifetime for it.

“What’re you doing this for?”

You repeat the question again but you’re equally as serious the first time around, seeing his brows furrow because he feels like you’ve changed the atmosphere without him knowing.

“I suddenly got curious.”

“You don’t get curious.”

“I know, I just get easily influenced,” Jungkook sheepishly admits, scratching the back of his head because it seems to him that you’re cornering him and shutting him down for no reason at all. He doesn’t necessarily know why he feels intimidated by you, but it doesn’t mean he wouldn’t try to ease the tension by explaining himself. “Remember when I asked you to cover up my hickies last week?”

“What about it?” your eyes narrow in genuine wonder, prompting you to think just how long Jungkook’s been meaning to ask you this.

“You weren’t wearing a bra that time.”

The words tumble out of Jungkook’s mouth continuously and he only has the mind to look embarrassed by it when you sputter out loud, averting his gaze to suppress a laugh,

“Jungkook-!” your pupils dart wildly, appalled and embarrassed at the same time when you defensively cross your arms across your chest even if what he’s pertaining to has long been finished. “Of course I wasn’t wearing a bra! It was 5 AM and I was still asleep when you kept knocking on my door!”

“And I wasn’t looking!” he defends himself with a laugh, head automatically shaking as he tries to reach out to you but you only swat him away. “I just glanced once because I realized it but I didn’t look again, I swear!”

“Well sometimes, you should keep your mouth shut!” you squeak, rolling your eyes as you try to get away from his further by moving to the opposite end of the couch. “I would’ve been able to live in peace without knowing you saw my boobs through my shirt.”

“It’s normal! Just like you seeing me without a shirt! We live together, stupid. It was bound one way or another,” he argues, earning yet another frustrated groan from you.

You power through the embarrassment because you’d look like such a sore loser if you walk away from him now, hiding your face to a throw pillow as Jungkook gathers his wits while he tries to get closer to you, abandoning his spot on the other end of the couch.

“Not only weren’t you wearing a bra-”

“Watch it,” you seethe when he gets close enough for you to flick his forehead harshly, earning a whine from him in the midst of laughing as he gets choked up.

His cheeks are tinted pink and it’s clear he can’t breathe well with how much he’s entertained, clearing his throat a few times and having to look away from you because your face alone apparently sends him into a fit of giggles.

You think this is the end of it. You think Jungkook’s effectively forgotten about his previous proposal and you’d be able to end the night with a good dinner and no confrontations at all, but your expectation gets spoiled as soon as you started hoping.

“You weren’t wearing your ring too.”

Your heart drops before you even get to digest all of the words, the hurt hitting you before the impending realization.

“W-what?”

Jungkook’s face twists in worry to see you so shaken up when he barely did anything, certain that you wouldn’t look this pale over a few minutes of teasing and banter. He tilts his head at you and it prompts you to straighten up and fix the worry in your features, good enough for him to continue.

“Don’t worry, I didn’t look. Besides, your mark was turned away from me the entire time because you were dabbing on my neck and I was getting sleepy while you did it,” he shrugs carelessly and it’s the first time you could physically feel the relief in your shoulder that melts all away the tension, the feeling so fluid that it feels warm.

“It was still dark too,” he adds in recollection, a faint smile on his face as he gestures to you and motions at your chest vaguely. “All I saw were just like… peaks and shadows.”

“Shut the fuck up, Jungkook,” you snap but there’s no real bite to it. In fact, it even sounds sweet but he doesn’t know how to read between the lines and therefore nestles to your side in rising worry.

“I’m sorryyy,” he drawls out and the moment he feels you pat his nape with your confirmation that it’s okay and doesn’t really matter in the first place, he springs up back to his straight posture against the cushions of the couch, an eager smile evident.

“Anyways, that’s why you have me wondering what’s underneath my ring,” he connects seamlessly, obviously unaware of the way you’ve tensed up beside him. “Now come on, it’s okay! Think of this as me making it up to you. You can go look.”

Jungkook turns his position on the couch to face you, his left hand raised right in front of you and he’s laughing with unknown nerves, the feeling being akin to being tickled because he anticipates it fully, but the sensation feels different every time.

Your mouth dries when you’re faced with the same signet ring that you wear yourself, right on Jungkook’s digit. The shiny silver stares back at you in the eye and you can’t take your gaze away from it, the familiar piece of jewelry looking more unrecognizable the longer you look at it.

You don’t know what you expect from it when he teasingly starts to pull his ring up without any big movements to reveal the ink that’s underneath, but as much as you don’t know what you want to see, the trepidation blooms fully in your chest for you to have the mind in stopping him.

“Don’t.”

Jungkook’s confused and shocked to why you suddenly refused, recalling that just two seconds ago, you were all for his fun little proposal but now you’re no longer on-board.

He’s familiar with the conflict in your eyes, he just doesn’t recognize what’s it supposed to be. He sees the cracks of your hurt, he just doesn’t know the focus of it,

“Why not?” he frowns, genuinely curious to see you avoiding his gaze.

“I shouldn’t be the first one to see it.”

“I trust you, though.”

It’s what hurts all the more because he trusts you to see the initials of what would lead him to his soulmate, to you, but not in looking at you face-to-face for you to become the very thing he doesn’t want.

“Maybe next time, Jungkook.”

The mood is somber and he doesn’t know what to make of it besides the fact that you worry him deeply, bending downwards to have a glance at your face. “Do you wanna talk about it?”

He looks down on his ring but now he suddenly feels off-put looking at it, obscuring his mark that makes him curious.

“Does it have to do with your own soulmate not wanting you?” he jokes around lightly to ease the mood and if only he knew that he’s hurting you right where it hurts, he would’ve shut his mouth int the first place.

You’re bitter, harshly biting the inside of your cheek to prevent yourself from crying, voice straining as you try to bring back the playful atmosphere.

“I’ll have you know, I’m easy to love, Jungkook. Try it sometime."

He giggles right to your face — laughs at your hurt, right to your vulnerability and the little pride you have left.

“Silly,” Jungkook ruffles your hair in much amusement, eyes crinkling in giddiness because you’ve bounced back from the minor inconvenience in his eyes just as quick. “I can’t love you.”

( ♡ )

Jungkook’s family has a new house.

What’s different this time is that the house they had built isn’t for business purposes to be occupied by long-time tenants nor short-term guests. The spacious three-floored house is wide in technicality but it feels quaint and warm with all the furniture and personality inside it. Most vacation houses and cottages they had built are neutral, the life of the space completely dependent on its future inhabitants. But this house of theirs is clearly their own, the evidence of the three-member family visible from floor to ceiling.

Your family’s at the top of the guest list for their housewarming and it’d be a lie to say that you don’t feel fold seeing your parents and older siblings’ reaction to the welcome that the Jeon family gives. They’re nice hosts with the way they usher their visitors to the catering tables but they’re even more warm and familial with the way they give you your plates themselves, taking you by the arm as they tour your family around their house way ahead of everyone.

Mr. Jeon gushes to your dad how they have a pond out back and invites him to accompany him next week to buy fish for their deck, Jungkook’s dad insisting that he drives the two of them and they can go for street food right after.

Jungkook takes pride in touring around your mom and your older siblings by proudly introducing them to the other visitors, all along the lines of how you’re all basically like family ever since they’ve moved in next door to your family, their humble beginnings in the form of their original house where they started from scratch.

You stand meekly by the corner, against one of the towering pillars as you watch everyone interact with each other. One thing about the Jeon family is that they’re just the type of successful no one could ever be bitter of because they’re immensely kind and genuine, not a trace of bitterness being seen in any of the faces you see.

You know the last thing you should be feeling at the moment is displacement because as far as you knew, your family’s the talk of the household right after the hosts’. You should know out of all people that you belong in this environment that’s nothing short of familial and supportive, but it’s unavoidable.

It’s unavoidable because you see exactly why Jungkook doesn’t need you.

It’s inevitable to feel out of place because in yet another house that serves as a home for Jungkook, you realize why he finds no need nor significance in having a soulmate because he has everything he needs and more.

He has everything that completes him and balances him perfectly. He stands on his own two feet and is able to be happy without knowing who the universe has assigned for him. He lives and breathes without knowing you and it’s perfectly okay.

It’s perfectly okay for him to not want you and only live for himself because he doesn’t owe you at all.

Jungkook doesn’t owe you the love that you give him and that’s perfectly okay.

Everything should be perfectly okay because he is and yet you don’t know why your eyes are downcast despite everyone else around moving on without you. No one owes you anything and you should know better than to even voice the tiniest bit of sentiments you’ve been repressing all this time because the hurt you feel should only be yours.

All the while, you’re oblivious to how you’ve gained the attention of the woman who knows Jungkook the most before you.

“It’s Jungkook, isn’t it?”

Mrs. Jeon stands before you and your eyes flit to hers in an instant, pupils trembling to see what she could possibly mean.

You think you could salvage the pitiful situation she’s caught you in because of course, there’s no possible way that she could know, right? Even your own family doesn’t know of the initials that are inked on your finger and they’re your own flesh and blood. If anything, they should be the one who’d figure it out first.

The lie you were supposed to tell her gets caught in your throat because from her gaze alone, the same gaze you receive when Hoseok speaks you the truths you always try and make excuses for, you know that she knows.

Mrs. Jeon sees right through you before Jungkook and the realization crosses her face that the two of you only stand parallel.

“I’m sorry,” she apologizes, the dots connecting in her head much faster even if it’s years worth of all her intuitions, the gravity of it only hitting her now. “I’m so, so sorry.”

“There’s nothing to be sorry for.”

You quickly shake your head even if she holds your hands in hers, her eyes wide and glassy to see her son’s soulmate in this light. She’s always treated you as a daughter and at first, she thought it’s because she only has a son. That maybe it’s because Jungkook’s an only child and she’s always wanted a daughter figure in her life. That maybe, she just happens to love you more than any of the daughters her friends have because she’s known you the longest.

She feels so remorseful that she should’ve listened to her instincts more and not just glaze over the fact that perhaps, you were her son’s soulmate. She feels that maybe she could’ve protected you better by saying that sooner or later, Jungkook would outgrow his phase of sleeping around.

She’s not blind to see the makeup that covers her son’s neck whenever she comes over, no matter how seamless it is. However, she’s blind enough to not see that it’s you all this time and how you’ve been hurting far longer than you should’ve.

“But what about you? What happens to you?”

“I’ll be okay, mom.”

She told you to call her that, much like how your mother insisted that Jungkook calls her that too. You reassure her endlessly that she shouldn’t feel sorry at all because it’s no one’s fault, and if it’s anyone whose blame should befall on, it should be you.

“Why did it have to be you?” her lip blubbers and it reminds you of her son, seeing her clench her eyes at the second wave of realization that you must be so hurt beyond salvation. “Oh god, I’m so sorry, Y/N.”

You don’t deserve the apology but hearing it makes you awed, your own tears welling at your eyes because for once, even if it’s the person you’ve least expected to say it to you, you feel seen. You feel remorse and pity without being looked down on; something you haven’t been able to experience in a long time.

“You deserve someone better than Jungkook.”

She looks up as if it would resolve anything. Mrs. Jeon looks like she’s begging for the universe to befall and it catches you off-guard with how she’s hugging you so tightly.

If she prayed to the universe for a short second, then the universe must’ve loved her enough to grant whatever it is that she wished for. The universe doesn’t befall on you but rather, it marches up to you with a furrow in his brow and his jaw clenched.

“What do you mean better than me?”

Jungkook didn’t mean to eavesdrop in the first place but he couldn’t hold himself back from inserting himself into the conversation that two of the most important women in his life were having, thinking it would be something he’s familiar with given the way the two of you looked shellshocked at each other.

“What are you talking about?”

He harshly whispers and neither of you meet his desperate gaze, not one bit of reassurance trying to confirm nor deny what he had just heard. He looks at his mother clutching your hands, thumb particularly rubbing your signet ring like how she would with a wound to soothe.

The realization and the heaviness that come with it are unlike no other.

“In my room now.”

Jungkook seethes as he doesn’t wait for an answer, pulling you desperately upstairs. He’s fuming even if his grasp on your wrist is gentle. He’s furious at you even if he nudges you inside his room, closing the door behind him firmer than he’d ever think of.

“Jungkook-“

“You are so fucking evil.”

What you could only see at the surface is that he’s mad, the maddest you’ve ever seen him. You don’t know if he’s mad at you directly but you feel the bite of his words nonetheless, catching you in surprise that you stutter.

“W-what?”

His expression can’t be gauged and neither can he discern what he feels. All he feels is that he’s in the dark and he’s disoriented with how blinding the light is that’s focused on him now, voice turning hoarse with how overwhelmed he feels.

“How long have you known? How long were you lying to me, huh?” he has his hands on his hips, looking at you as if he’s never seen you before and all he knows is that he’s angry at you. It feels like he doesn’t know you besides the outline of you that blindsides him. “How many people know that it’s me? How did it happen that my mother knew that I’m your soulmate before I did?”

You’re mad at him too. You’re angry at him because he speaks down to you in the way as if he doesn’t know you and all you’ve done to him is hurt him when not once did you betray him to be treated hostile as such. All you’ve done is give and it feels like Jungkook’s asking you to give him the satisfaction of being angry at you, one that he feels entitled to.

“I didn’t let you know because you didn’t want to. You’ve said it yourself a hundred times!”

“How would I have known that my fucking soulmate was standing in front of me the whole time?” he raises his voice, eyes widening. “Almost my whole life, Y/N! You knew and you didn’t even question my beliefs once?”

“And I know you don’t love me for almost as long as my whole life too. Even if I told you, it wouldn’t have made a difference. You wanted to be free and I let you!”

He scoffs, throwing his head back to mock you. He’s never the one to cry when arguing but the frustration wells up in his eyes because it all feels too much.

“So now you’re holding your heroic act against me? You already know how I feel about soulmates. You already know what I don’t feel about you! You could’ve just left and I would’ve understood!”

“No, Jungkook. You wouldn’t have understood,” your finger points at him and you don’t feel the slightest bit of remorse that you’ve offended him. “You wouldn’t have understood because not once were you in my shoes. I didn’t leave you because you didn’t want me to leave!”

Jungkook would make you cross your heart multiple times for you to never leave him. You were older than him by a few months and at one point, Jungkook must’ve looked up to you. He would’ve made you cross your heart to not leave him in the playground as kids and to not leave him to eat alone at lunch as students. He made you cross your heart to not leave him for longer than necessary as roommates, and cross your heart to lock your doors so he’d be able to sleep securely at night that nothing and nobody can harm you.

“You’re right, I wouldn’t have wanted you to leave,” he grits his teeth, looking at you menacingly with stray tears on his cheeks. “But when I said that, I meant that in the sense that you shouldn’t ever leave your best friend.”

“You could’ve left me as a soulmate and I would be okay, Y/N,” Jungkook emphasizes and it’s not lost on you what he’s asking from you now. “But you’re still here! You’re still around me and it’s like you’re expecting me to love you back!”

You’re flawed but you know better than to let Jungkook construct his own truths that the both of you know are lies, persistently shaking your head as your eyes prick in frustration.

“I would never force you to love me back and you know it, Jungkook.”

You mean it with every fiber in your being because it’s tattooed into your mind that he doesn’t owe you anything at all. You love Jungkook simply because you do and you don’t expect it to be requited.

You mean it genuinely when you say that not once have you ever pressured him to love you back but it falls on deaf ears because he goes on, no matter how much you try to get it through his mind.

“I don't have to love you. Goddamn it Y/N, atleast give me a choice here. Don't just chain me to you!"

You resist the urge to grip at your hair as you cry, sobbing frustratedly. His words no longer hurt but what instead hurts you is that he makes you out for someone who isn’t you, the little pride you have left forcing you to stand up for yourself and become rational. “Hey, hey. Listen. Two people can be soulmates and not be in love with each other, y'know? That's possible."

“It’s not-“

“I’m already in love with you, Jungkook! That's the problem!”

You burst as you raise your voice and the little moment of calm gets washed away because Jungkook retaliates even louder, his chest heaving as he points at himself.

“I’m the problem now? You've been begging me all this time to love you back, and now I’m the problem?"

“You're not getting my point, Jungkook!"

“I’m really not getting your point here because you're making it sound like it's my fault that you love me!"

You try to breathe deeply, running your hands through your hair as the words slip out of you. “Maybe it's your fault, have you ever thought about that? You act as if you love me-"

“What the fuck? I’m kind, Y/N. Being kind is different from-"

“Best friends don’t-“

The words get lost on your tongue.

You stop yourself and it’s as if one seed of clarity plants itself in your mind, the sudden silence making Jungkook cease the heaving of his chest as none of you speak a word.

You’re flawed but this is the only time you feel that it’s fine to be as such, figuring that if you want to salvage the tiny bit of whatever compassion you have for yourself, you should no longer try. The tensions melts away from your shoulders and Jungkook feels the way the atmosphere once again changes before he knows it, wide eyes trying to gauge what exactly is happening.

“I’ll stop — cross my heart.”

( ♡ )

Jungkook doesn’t want to lose you.

It’s your university’s semestral break for the holidays and throughout the entire time, you haven’t contacted him.

You don’t contact him even when it’s the day before Christmas and there’s two minutes left on the clock before it’s the 25th.

The two of you are apart this time. You’re in your childhood home while his family stays over in their new vacation house. His parents miss your family beyond measure but they’d overheard your fight and decides that maybe having a different celebration this year, one that’s only the three of them even if it’s not as boisterous and fun being with your household, is for the better.

The wound’s still fresh. The sting’s still there and it’s barely healing.

That’s why Jungkook sends you a quick series of texts before his family feasts without you.

i’m sorry for the things i’ve said, i was really rude

i don’t want to lose you

happy holidays btw, we miss you

see you after break :)

( ♡ )

It’s like it never happened.

It’s like Jungkook didn’t cry himself to sleep and feel extremely lethargic because as soon as break was over and the two of you are back into your shared apartment, you act normal.

You act as if nothing changed and it drives him out of his mind for you to be so casual despite everything because it’s like this time, he’s the only who’s affected by the entire situation that’s unfolded. The two of you’ve already exchanged apologies and reassurances that you’d move on collectively but now that he thinks about it, Jungkook never should’ve agreed to move on.

He never should’ve agreed to move on because out of the two of you, you’re the only one who isn’t on a standstill.

He’s distraught that even if it’s the same scenario and scenery before the two of you even blew over, you move on from him faster than he thought you could. Jungkook almost cried himself to sleep when you weren’t home by 9 PM from your classes and you looked genuinely confused to see him pacing by the kitchen, waiting for you to come home.

He feels like he’s losing it by the minute when you wake up by yourself and not without his incessant knocking that you’d be late for class if you stay in bed for a minute longer.

His heart feels like it’s about to break down when you don’t call him over to say hi whenever your parents call you, only getting to hear your conversations through the door as he suddenly feels that he’s excluded from all the things he shares with you.

He reminds himself that he wanted this. He reminds himself that he said he wanted you to leave during his family’s housewarming party, that he then retracts his statement and said he didn’t want to lose you over the holidays, and that all throughout the years he’s been with you — he’s never wanted you.

Jungkook reminds himself that he’s still with you.

He’s still with you, that much he knows.

He just isn’t sure if you’re still with him.

( ♡ )

Jungkook didn’t expect for this to hurt so bad.

He didn’t expect to be so lost into his thoughts that he couldn’t sleep in his room and marches right outside the living room wearing a new pair of socks that he didn’t expect to be this slippery, not registering into his mind that he’s done household chores the whole day to keep his mind preoccupied and that the hardwood floors are squeaky clean with wax.

He didn’t expect that he’d slip and fall on his arm painfully that it makes him wince, groaning at the impact of his body weight crushing his arm and for such a striking pain to travel to his elbow all the way to the tips of his fingers.

Jungkook didn’t expect for it to hurt this much because you don’t come out of your room to help him and he can’t take it, frustrated as he can’t get up that he does nothing but yell out your name multiple times.

All his calls for you effectively summoned you out but you’re more confused than you are panicked, a gasp leaving your lips when you see him lying in pain on the floor.

“What happened to you?” you ask in worry as you try to pull him up without hurting him, making him wince while trying to answer your question nonetheless.

“Huh?” he lets you carry him up to sit him down the couch for the meantime, assessing just how bad his fracture looks like to see if you’d have to drive him to the hospital. “What do you mean? Didn’t you feel the pain?”

Jungkook knows about the red string of pull and his eyes blink twice in confusion because you only realize what he’s talking about belatedly, the genuine confusion in your face making him swallow the lump in his throat.

“Oh. I didn't feel it. There wasn't a pull."

“Stop joking with me."

He clenches his jaw at how you could manage to play with him over such an important matter, even more baffled when you defensively shake your head and even breathlessly laugh.

“I’m not, Kook! I swear, I really didn't."

“Bullshit,” he rolls his eyes casually, deadpanning at you with a gasp emerging from his lips. “You knew I broke my arm and intentionally didn't help me!”

“Jungkook, I swear on my life,” he sees you hold up your hand in the air in a promise, tiny giggles of disbelief leaving you as he genuinely can’t understand where exactly is the humor you find in this.

He purses his lips and tries to look deeper for anything in your eyes that give you away even the slightest bit, pointing at your ring. “Take it off."

He watches intently the way surprise sweeps across your features and he thinks for a second that you’re just lying to him — you wouldn’t really take off your ring because doing so would confirm his hopes that it’s his same initials with the same vivid shade of red, right?

But you do it nonetheless.

Truth be told you’ve only removed your ring once since the incident because you didn’t want to be reminded of whose initials were underneath it, but it surprises you that your compliance gets the better of you and you take it off from him.

Jungkook’s stare falters to see the very thing he’s asked for.

What he could only make out clearly now is the J in the middle of his first and last initial, the two other letters clearly not as prominent. You’re shocked to see the difference from when you last saw your mark, the first J and K by your ring finger fading in contrast.

“You can’t — is this true?” he finds himself swallowing the lump in his throat painfully, taking your finger into his own hands that he barely winces using his other arm, rubbing his thumb against your skin to see if it was just some trick. “Surely you can’t spell my name without the jeon and the kook, right?”

His breathing is too heavy and you don’t speak either. The two of you have heard about this once when you were children from both of your mothers, all blissfully too young and unaware to consider the possibility that it might just happen to the two of you.

“About the mark-…”

“My mom said-…”

The two of you pipe up at the same time but Jungkook lets you go first because even if you haven’t spoken at the same time as he did, he wouldn’t have been able to finish what he was supposed to say.

You say your next words honestly, in a gentle and soft voice but it lands loud and disruptive to Jungkook’s ears, making him want to clamp his ears shut because he refuses to believe.

“It could be because the universe is reassigning me a new soulmate.”

“Y-yeah,” he clears his throat as if it would stop the tears that are threatening to fall on his cheeks, looking down on his lap as he unconsciously hunches on himself. “I remember our moms saying this when we were kids.”

“Mhmm,” you hum in recollection, pointing to him eagerly because the two of you are at the same page. “I asked my mom about a week ago then an hour later, I got put into a groupchat with all the moms of the friends that I have."

Jungkook weakly snorts to match your energy because he’s weak. He’s too weak to raise his head to face how you’re so nonchalant about this and this time, it’s him who’s hurting so badly.

“Everyone's bets are on PJM — Park Jimin! Who would’ve known, right? The J initial makes sense."

Jimin, a family friend of a family friend.

Jimin, the one kid in preschool that always wowed the parents and the teachers because he talks like how a fourth-grader would and knows how to do addition with the carrying.

Jimin, a distant friend who studied abroad for college and whose news broke out that he’s coming back home during his break and plans to settle here in your city.

Jimin, someone who’s theorized to replace Jungkook.

“Don't even joke about that. I’m serious,” he mumbles under his breath and the croak of his voice gives him away, suddenly standing up from the couch and forgetting about his physical pain entirely, bidding you a quiet good night that he could only know is not something that he’d be getting underneath this dark.

“I’m gonna go to sleep."

( ♡ )

Jungkook wishes that his eyesight wasn’t so clear.

He wishes he didn’t heed his mother’s warnings of not looking at screens for too long too closely and his father’s insistence that he takes his vegetables and vitamins.

He wishes that his vision is poor because in that way, he wouldn’t be able to notice how the silver that’s against your skin looks different; how he couldn’t tell that it’s shine isn’t the same that he’s used to seeing and how it’s no longer the signet ring that looks like the same piece that he wears on your ring finger.

“Did you change your ring?"

He asks you one morning when you’re making breakfast. He memorizes seeing the furrow in your brows and the realization in your face as you look down on your hand, his words clicking into your head in understanding.

“Oh yeah, I did.”

Your ring’s now of a thicker design with intricate details and swirls, the band of it seemingly molded into decorative crosses. It looks heavy and of high-quality and Jungkook’s certain that your ring’s more expensive this time, clueless to where and when you got it.

The groove of the silver reminds him of the letter P, and his mind goes to Jimin’s family name instantaneously — and it makes Jungkook pray that he’d rather have his vision tainted than to ever see it on your skin.

( ♡ )

“Where are you going this early in the morning?”

Jungkook can’t bear to sleep in his bedroom anymore nowadays because it feels to confined, not wanting to be alone with his thoughts and insecurities which is why he chooses to sleep in the living room where it’s open and he has everywhere else to look at besides his ceiling.

He hasn’t even been sleeping well in the first place which is why he’s alert from his shallow nap when your door clicks open and he sees you already bathed and dressed.

“My dad told me to join him fishing,” you answer when you move on from the surprise he’s given you, releasing the hand from your chest as you calm down. “He’s fishing with Jimin’s dad.”

You’re too busy packing snacks that you don’t register how there’s pillows and blankets on the couch because Jungkook sleeps out here nowadays, compared to your assumptions that he’s just gaming or doing his assignments. Your back is turned to him which is why you don’t notice his face that looks crestfallen at your further explanation, heart sinking in thought.

“Oh,” he stabilizes his voice as best as he could, eyes set at the back of your head as he tries not to give himself away. “Would Jimin be there?”

“Not sure. I’ll see when I get there.”

He nods once, biting on his lip as he tries again.

“Is my dad coming with?”

“O-oh,” the realization crosses your mind that your dad’s companion when it comes to fishing and perhaps any other activity is Mr. Jeon, only hitting you now that you haven’t heard the mention of his name. “I honestly don’t know.”

That’s the thing of both your dads and Jungkook aches at the thought if his time is over. If his family’s time is over with yours. If it’s too late and the ink on your finger can no longer be traced back to him.

If it’s still him.

“Drive safe, m’kay? Call me when you need me.”

You don’t approach him for a goodbye hug and he feels too odd to only keep to himself as you leave out the door, not looking back even once.

Call me even if you don’t need me.

The words only remain on his tongue because speaking it out loud is pointless. It’s pathetic to be said out in the open because you aren’t there for him to look like a fool in front of. He looks pathetic as he waits for you.

It’s because you don’t call him throughout the day to ask if he’s already brought out the meat to defrost for his lunch or what he wants for dinner because you’re ordering on the way home. It’s because you don’t tell him to text you repeatedly so you wouldn’t fall asleep in traffic and miss out on your dad’s banter. It’s because even if he doesn’t need anything from you; even if you aren’t willing to give and he’s eager to take —

Jungkook will always need you.

( ♡ )

The pain Jungkook feels in his bones simmers before it bubbles over.

It marinates and lulls into his skin warmly before it stings. It’s a soothing type of heat that he mistakes for tension before it starts to sting. The pain he feels in his heart all the way down to the pit of his stomach stings before it boils and bubbles at his skin.

The pain he feels burns him unlike no other.

It’s the type of hurt he feels that no matter how much he rubs at his skin and cries his eyes out, it doesn’t relieve him even the slightest bit. He doesn’t feel the calmness when he goes through every single thing that used to soothe him before, every chance at salvation only for the pain to burn deeper making him more frustrated than the last.

Jungkook cries his eyes out every night and he thinks he’s exhausted all the tears out of himself because he finds himself knocking on your door, waiting for you to grant him entrance as he keeps his breathing at bay.

It’s late at night when you’re buried into doing your requirements that you tumble out of your chair to open the door for Jungkook, figuring that it must be an emergency with the way his knocks are desperate.

His eyes land on you the moment you open the door for him, words crawling out of his mouth as he pleads.

“Let me kiss you."

He’s no stranger to the confusion in your face and it feels as if nothing from the two of you would surprise each other at this point. He knows you’re tired and busy but he can’t stop himself to just reserve what he feels tonight and save it for the morning.

Your mouth flounders in wonder, closing it when you figure that nothing else would be lost from you.

You let Jungkook kiss you.

You taste as sweet as Jungkook thought for you to be and more and he cries. He cries as you allow him to kiss you for the first time and let him knock his forehead against yours as his cheeks are damp with despair, eyes looking down on your finger instinctively.

You know exactly what he’s looking at and it makes you sigh solemnly, pressing your knuckles against your sheets so he wouldn’t be able to see.

“Jungkook-…”

Jungkook refuses to give up because this time, he interrupts you with an even deeper kiss that you accidentally moan into, lost into your senses by the surprise that it makes your eyes close.

He tastes you deeper and longer and he feels like he can’t breathe, inhales feeling heavier and his exhales being fewer that you have to put a hand on his chest to nudge him away from you, a pitiful look spanning across your eyes that makes him shut his.

“Kissing me harder isn't gonna help.”

His initials on your finger don’t magically turn more vibrant, more alive. He thinks he’s exhausted every single tear he could possibly cry but it’s seemingly not over, sobbing into his hands right in front of you.

“Why are you not freaked out that your mark's disappearing?! It's changing! I-it might not even be me anymore!”

Jungkook sobs brokenly when he used to not be able to even have his voice tremble at your presence. His shoulders hunch and give out and you have no choice but to catch him with your hands, fearing that he’d tumble out of the edge of your bed and fall on the floor.

“I thought you wanted this. I’m not consciously controlling this, Jungkook. It's just the same when you had no control of your mark not appearing on you."

His words haven’t left you but so is the remaining little love you have for him, knowing realistically that a single night of confrontation isn’t enough to undo years of loving.

“It's on me now. I-It's showing up on me, but it's disappearing from you."

His sobs wrack his own body and you think for a moment that he’s about to pass out with how much he coughs from getting choked up, springing more tears into his eyes as he feels like puking.

“You started to accept it when I started revoking it."

You mumble to yourself in realization and what pains him is that he’s heard it loud and clear, crumpling into your figure as you unconsciously realize that your hand soothes his back.

Jungkook cries the most in his lifetime, tucking his face into your shirt as he shakes his head back and forth like it was a nightmare he’s just forced to live out, words repeating over and over again.

“Don't shut me out."

He clings onto you more than he’s ever had.

Jungkook looks for you in everything and tries to weasel his way into every day that passes, not the least bit of embarrassment creeping up to him on how he looks like a fool every time you leave him hanging and alone.

He apologizes to you day and night until you grow tired of him; until you roll your eyes at him to give it a rest and just shut up at that point onwards.

He endures the hurt and the rejection you give him over and over again; not even going up to par with half of the hurt he’s unknowingly given you all this time.

Jungkook knows he’s flawed — but he’s certain that he’s not flawed enough to stop trying.

He wakes up to the morning light and goes to sleep at the evening glow with only the prayer that he becomes better, better enough to be deserving of you and better enough to be someone the universe would shift connections for.

He’s flawed, but not flawed enough to think that you owe him your love, regardless of his efforts.

The days are warmer and the gaps are fuller when there’s an incessant knocking on your door. The lights are softer and the nights are kinder when there’s a figure that wedges itself beside your bed, a quiet hum to his voice.

“I told you to start locking your doors.”

Jungkook feels the tiny exhale of breath that leaves you before it turns into a giggle, hugging your pillow closer.

“But it’s you.”

He smiles.

“But it’s me.”

Jungkook lies next to you a little closer, his arms bigger compared to the last months that he now manages to cage you fully and have his hands be able to cup yours without having to stretch further.

There’s nothing cool to the touch because nowadays, you let your ring finger breathe as much as he lets his own mark to be seen.

“There are three types of love, y’know?” he hums to your ear when he knows you’re just about to be lulled back to your sleep, able to see you clearly in the dark because no matter what light the both if you are underneath in, he only sees you.

“I was your first, right? Jimin's the second, I’m sure,” he breathily laughs, taking away the hair from your nape because he knows that it bothers you. “I can be the third. I-I can be your third love. I’ll work for it."

For only a second too long that it’s quiet, your voice cutting through the air.

“You can't be my third love, Jungkook,” you hum just as long as his heart stops beating. “You're my only love."

Your eyes are still closed when you silently profess the love that’s never left you, oblivious to how Jungkook is as stiff as concrete behind you that you feel his shoulders lose the hurt immediately. “I’ve loved you three times through."

Jungkook could only hope that it’s not the sleep talking.

He knows you’re real beyond anything and anyone. You’re tangible and fragile and he’s come to learn it a thousand times more. “I’ll love you three times more."

For the longest time on end did Jungkook feel that he’s been falling but the impact never comes. He would’ve wanted to feel it, but either way, he’d know that it would be fine. That he would be fine. That the two of you will be fine and it’s you who he entrusts to spend all of his infinites with, no matter the hurt.