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iuwon · 2 years

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X ▸ yang jungwon (part i)

▸ DESCRIPTION : what do you get when you have a stupid asshole of a bestfriend (who’s completely head over heels for you, should he add) and a fucked up ego that refuses to admit any form of defeat? you guessed it: the summoning of a jealous ex-boyfriend who dumped you two years ago, and is hell-bent on winning you back.

▸ PAIRING : ex!yang jungwon x female reader (feat. nishimura riki)

▸ GENRE(S) : angst, fluff, slow burn, exes au, college au

▸ WORD COUNT : 28.5k+

▸ WARNING(S) : this is very fast-paced for a slow burn, VERY cringe-y angst and writing (pls spare me it’s my first time😭), fake-dating with riki, JUNGWON REDEMPTION ARC ON PART 2, breakup scenes, indication of hang-ups and love triangles, jealousy, profanities, mentions of a car accident, blood, flashbacks from before and after the breakup, both reader and jungwon have issues :D, this has a second part because the fic is too long, not proofread, kindly let me know if there are any more ^-^

▸ SPOTIFY PLAYLIST : here

▸ UPDATED A/N : hello!! i finished this fic on the start of 2022 and then left it like that when i went on my hiatus, so rereading it nearing the end of 2022 .. i CANNOT take this seriously LMFAOO i was high and i dramatized everything im sawry. But. this is the longest fic i’ve written so far and for that i’m sort of :D i have little to almost zero experience of writing long fics AND angst, so i really hope to any who read this won’t have any high expectations T^T pls lmk your thoughts on this one!

▸ REQUESTED! for my scorpio twin anon :)

SOME PEOPLE ARE JUST LIKE KITES.

Someone had said that once, you remember. They’re the type of people that don’t have their two feet planted anywhere near the ground. They fly, and they keep flying. They have their mind fixated on solely reaching higher and higher up the sky just to blissfully enjoy the breeze.

They continue to fly up once the string is held securely in someone’s hand. The thought never crosses their mind that the person holding the string might ever grow tired, or that the person would only continue to hold on because it’s hard to release the string - because it’s hard to let go.

Sometimes, the kite flies away. Either the wind current was too strong, or maybe it slipped out of your grasp. In the end, the one holding the kite is always the one to blame for carelessly losing them - it’s the person who mourns of the lost kite and suffers the consequences.

↻ … ᶠˡᵃˢʰᵇᵃᶜᵏ

You were the type that always focused on studies.

A homebody was what you were. To you, school was meant for school. The topic of boys never interested you, and Yang Jungwon wasn’t anywhere never of an exemption.

Yang Jungwon, the notorious musical genius – the charming boy-wonder who lived in his own 4D world. People could say countless of sweet things to describe him, but you would forever see him as a person who was incapable of holding an interest for anyone for longer than his short attention span could hold – much more a romantic one.

You hissed in frustration, “Yang Jungwon, I swear to God, if you will not leave me alone -” your tone doesn’t faze him at all, as expected. He was immune to all your threats and remarks long before. A wide cheeky grin splits open his features before his hand reaches over and snatches your chemistry textbook at the mid-sentence of your threat, peeking over at it, “Chemical bonding?” he reads aloud, titling his head.

And he irritates you further. Your mid-term finals were next week, and you were barely getting any of the subjects done at this rate. You were close to college, and you did not want to have anything, or anyone mess it up.

You glare at him, “I’ve been at the same topic for the past half hour because of you,” trying to reach over your stolen textbook from the boy who never just seemed to leave you alone, his lips tug downwards in a musing pout. He stares at you before his eyes light up in thought.

Without another word, he leaves his chair beside you, not before passing you your book. You immediately grip onto your textbook with relief, skeptical that he’d grab it back away from you again.

Moments pass and you have the time all to yourself to study, but it’s too quiet for you - despite being at a bustling café. You turn your head to both your sides, eyes subconsciously searching for him. You blink, where did he go? Did you manage to kick him out once and for all -?

A whisper from your left ear interrupts your thoughts, and you feel a warm figure lightly pressing against you from behind, “try to sing out the formulas, they’re easier to remember.”

You almost yelp in surprise, jumping away from him. Where the hell did he come from? “Yah, are you crazy -?” you began, but he starts to lightheartedly poke fun. “C’mon, do it. It’ll be easier to remember,” he encourages you, pulling out a guitar from behind. You didn’t even bother to question where he had the time to get his guitar. All you were thinking about were ways to make him leave.

You shot him a look, annoyed. “Do what?”

He was always so childish. So bothersome.

He randomly strums out his guitar strings before picking up a tune, “Sing the formulas out,” his eyes momentarily directed you to the textbook laid out on the table, “I’ll help you with the melody. Go on,” you were ready to throw a harsh retort at him, telling him off to how he was wasting your time and how his idea was stupid - but his eyes; his perfectly shaped eyes looking ever so purely earnest your way.

You hated it.

You weren’t a musical genius or any of that sort, that was all Jungwon. You couldn’t just whip out the best melodic high note nor could you memorize a thousand slide powerpoint discussion even with the help of music. He didn’t have to worry about his grades - hence, his carefree attitude - and he didn’t have to stress over finals week when his career in music was already made out for him. All he ever did around school was tag along and annoy you, try the most obnoxious attempts to ask you out, play his guitar, and listen to music in the earphones he never took off.

You hesitantly look away, if you went along with him - maybe he’d go away once he got what he wanted to do. Little did you know how helpful the technique Jungwon suggested came out - or how fun it actually tuned out to be despite how awful your voice was, he was still looking at you like you were the singing like the angels.

Barely another hour later, you remarkably managed to get it all by heart and cover the topics that couldn’t have been covered in at least three days - with the help of the one person who has been disturbing you from studying in the first place. You could only gawk dumbly at his guitar.

Jungwon could sense your astonishment from miles away, and that made him all the more complacent with the huge beam he was wearing on his face. He wasn’t going to merely let this go. That trademark boyish look of his is back. “For my payment of very helpful service,” he starts as if you had ever asked him in the first place as he pretends to think, humming, “I’ll accept it in forms of you allowing me to take you out,” he suggests gleefully, his eyes sparkling in mischief.

You would normally scoff at his attempt yet again, telling him off - but this time. You couldn’t keep count of the endless tries he’s pulled this trick. This time you helplessly shake your head with a roll of your eyes. You couldn’t keep count of anything anymore, nor were you going to start now.

Yang Jungwon wasn’t going to give up on you.

… ᵉⁿᵈ ᶠˡᵃˢʰᵇᵃᶜᵏ ↺

TWO YEARS LATER [ JUNGWON’S POV ]

Through the extent of his memory, you never failed to take care of Yang Jungwon.

Not once. No matter how hard you would push him aside and passively act like you didn’t care much about him, you would be there for him; you would always be there. By his side.

And then you were gone.

Jungwon was two years older now.

Checking the items in his shopping bag to see if everything was complete, he leaves the grocery store, rummaging through his purchased items when his body swiftly crashes onto something. He takes a few steps to regain his stance as he stumbles backward.

“Oh, sorry,” someone says, and it takes a moment or two before he snapped out of his daze. He turns instinctively to the direction of the voice as he tries to readjust his grip on his pile of bags.

That voice. He knows that voice.

But for a moment, his breathing halts, body stiffening instantly at the sight of someone he’d never expected to see. Never. Never again. Because this time, it’s you.

You.

You blink, showing mild surprise. And indifference. As if you were looking straight at a stranger. Your eyes pointedly averts itself away from him while you keep the proper formalities and try to start a conversation with your composure, “Uh, hello. How are you?”

To say that he’s caught off guard is too much of an understatement.

You looked different.

You looked good.

No.

You looked beautiful.

Is he dead? No, wait. What? Air gets knocked out of his lungs and he feels like he’s been punched in the gut at the same time.

You looked more beautiful than the image that he had of you for the past years, and it breaks him.

Like nothing has ever pulled you down – as if leaving you only did you good – as if it never happened or affected you by the least.

How could you look so well?

To say that Jungwon looked like a mess was an understatement.

He bit his tongue, cursing for choosing the greatest timing. He tugged at the hem of his shirt, subtly trying to adjust it. What should he do . . . now? How should he start?

How were you? Why didn’t you look for him? Were you doing fine? Did you find someone else? Have you moved on? Should he move on? Did you -

In the short silence, you seemed to be relieved to receive a text message, the ding that gives you an excuse to look away and check your phone. You make a face, feeling suddenly alarmed. Expression rushed, you formally bid him goodbye, and it fucking hurts him even more. “Nice seeing you. I should be on my way now. Have a nice day.”

A strangers’ nice pleasantry. With no sincerity.

But you walk away, leaving him – not bothering to ask him for another meet-up. Jungwon is left standing in the middle of the street, dumbfounded.

Like it ended here.

Is this it?

He wasn’t even able to get to say anything.

This was worse than being nothing to each other.

It was worse than being treated like someone you hated.

He tries to inhale.

Jungwon has no idea, honestly. Not anymore.

One day, he had told himself for years.

One day, he would broadly smile at you. He’d stand proudly confident, and you’d know that he’s gotten over you for good. He’d win and see that he’s no longer suffering. You would see. You would. He’d get over you.

But bumping into you for the first time in years had Jungwon rethinking if he’s ever gotten over your eyes in the first place.

PRESENT

You can sulk for a little, throw a tantrum - but a kite is a kite. There’s no chance of it coming back; once you let go, it doesn’t look back at you to pause and run back to your hold. There was only one thing you could do from thereon: you could always forget about it, toss it aside like a child does, and replace it with a new one; making sure it’s a much better kind.

That. That was something you reminded yourself time and time again for the past two years. Though the line was taken from a measly television show that you’ve watched long ago, it’s been the only line of string that kept you from looking back - like a mother telling her child to stop crying over a lost kite.

But, right then and there, it was like time itself pauses for you when you stand in the same café four years ago, hearing the all-familiar voice that you could never forget. There, when you feel your heart beating out of your control and dropping dead. There, where you’re not sure of the extent of what you could restrain yourself from doing.

You don’t know how you’re suddenly transported to the direction of the soft voice - it’s familiarity greeting you, and for a brief second, the memories you’ve burned long ago painfully flash back to mind - you almost flinch.

[ now playing ◃◃ ⅠⅠ ▹▹ train wreck by james arthur ]

“I don’t wanna lose this, but I’m not getting through this. Hey, should I pray? Should I pray? Yeah,” Yang Jungwon.

It’s him.

Him, with his stupidly beautiful voice and his damn entrancing presence dragging you back harder than you remembered, and the pain he’s trying to immerse himself in as he ignores his physical surroundings.

And you.

You, as you’re trying to fight away the haunting flash of memories that are slowly starting to accompany you, and you, as you could do nothing but fleetingly watch him.

This was the second time you’ve bumped into him. You snorted, why was he always everywhere you went?

And it was like after the years of methodically stitching yourself back together, you’re transported back to the same person you were two years ago.

A fool.

“To myself? To a God? To a savior who can …”

You admit, there were days where you forgot his face - or in other words, days where you refused to acknowledge how he used to look at you. Days where it was too painful to even think about.

You swear to yourself that those days are long over.

Standing across the end of the room after three years of absolutely nothing from him felt suffocating, as if there was no air to breathe. You didn’t realize you were holding in a short breath, and when you exhaled - you felt pinning, and needles, and knives stabbed deep into your lungs.

“Unbreak the broken, unsay these spoken words. Find hope in the hopeless - pull me out of the train wreck,”

When Jungwon’s eyes slowly open, the first thing he sees is you.

Both your eyes meet, and he freezes. All too slowly. Everything in motion. You notice how his eyes widen, and how the old memories flash in his eyes all the same.

PainMiseryHurtDisbeliefHope-

The regret.

All this happens in front of you. A dream. A nightmare. All at once. Your face remains passive and unaffected, hard - nonchalant with ease, refusing to feel bothered. Time seems slow, but you don’t hesitate to casually walk away, being the first to break eye-contact. You didn’t want to spend another second in that room.

Your grip on the drink in hand tightens in its own accord.

You’ve moved on.

But what was this sort of feeling enveloping you in?

A teasing wolf-whistle startles you on your way out of the café, ripping you out of the lethargic trance you were warped into. “Was that an ex I saw over there?” You find Nishimura Riki with his shit-eating face and his waggling of eyebrows up beside you. Grimacing at his face, you harshly nudge your elbow to his sides in annoyance.

Breathing is a little bit easier with him around.

But you still feel like vomiting. “Is shutting up not part of how your brain is wired?” you roll your eyes, showing no effort at all to hide your agitation. He lets out an amused laugh, his playful gaze only duplicating itself as he proceeds to brutally tease you.

Riki isn’t an asshole. Not really. He’s what you’d call your best friend … without much other choice. Though he can perfectly embody one, he knows his limits (though you may sometimes find yourself doubting it) and the extents to where he can joke around. He can be all sorts annoying and a douche whenever food is on the line, but he’s the only one who’s stuck with you since day one of what happened two years ago - and never bothered to pressure you into questions that tormented you even further.

You lost contact with the friends you had once shared along with Jungwon. It felt embarrassing and uncomfortable to hang around them with everyone aware of what happened, until it was long months later that it just didn’t seem right to suddenly start hanging around them again after your efforts vigorously avoiding them.

You’ve lost a lot.

And you just met the man behind it all.

Nishimura Riki was sort of all you had, and he knew that too. He figured everything that happened eventually through time, by himself. Picking up the little things wasn’t too difficult to do, neither was piecing everything together with a little help and slow nudge from you over the years.

“He’s moving in this building, you know,” he looks over to your side.

Your stomach lurches, freezing in place. Your jaw nearly drops to the floor, gaping at him like your eyes would bulge out any second.

Over your fucking dead body.

That building was precisely the building you lived in. “What?” you nearly yell, causing passersby walking along the sidewalks to throw the both of you looks.

He rolls his eyes, “Geez, princess, clam down. I was kidding,” he bumps his shoulder next to yours, as if he was trying to shake you up. He starts going over about how you were showing ‘hang-ups’ symptoms before you start barking a mouthful of threatening-nothings to have him shut his mouth, running after him.

Something rings different, however.

Yang Jungwon.

The name lingers in the back of your head, no matter how hard you try to push it away. It’s been three years, but when the kite you’ve lost years ago - the kite you swore you’ve already forgotten about - comes back, what then?

↻ … ᶠˡᵃˢʰᵇᵃᶜᵏ

You weren’t necessarily the warmest type of person.

Blank faces, blunt responses, and sharp glares were all people received from you. You got others avoiding you in return, it was a give and take situation that benefited perfectly on both sides – perhaps more on your side. It worked as a repellent to kept everyone off your radar. And you liked that. You enjoyed being left alone. You found peace in your own solitude, away from other people. You were never exactly fond of people, either way.

Yang Jungwon was certainly a different breed.

Maybe it was the challenge that he liked, at first. You; the unwavering and ‘unbeatable’ challenge that provoked him – enticed him. That kept him coming. You were a brick wall, and he was someone who had the world at the palm of his hand.

But you don’t know how his intentions changed along the way.

You don’t know what made him change his mind – or what part of you that he saw that made him choose to do so, but it wasn’t of any use to figure out how.

Because he wanted you, now.

And he would ever-so-bluntly admit that.

All your efforts of shrugging him off made him fight harder for you. It was useless. The more you would curse at him with the harshest words just made him want to tag along by your side even more with that boyish grin never leaving his face.

He was a weird one.

“You know, you’re not as mean as how the people label you as.”

“And you’re more annoying than they claim you to be,” you don’t crack an amused smile. Jungwon wonders if he’s ever seen you smile – or even wear anything else of an expression that didn’t look bored, annoyed, angry, or enraged. He takes a moment to visualize how beautiful you would look when you smile and decides that he’ll do anything to see that happen. Just like that.

“You keep tossing me away,” he defended himself, the corner of his lips tugging downwards in the smallest pout.

“You keep coming back,” you retorted back, eyes shooting daggers.

By the look of his face, you realize your response wasn’t the best. “I’ll keep coming back to you,” he finishes. A lopsided grin. His brain was wired differently.

You didn’t hold back your prolonged suffering exhale.

It was a careless remark.

Such a recklessly made promise.

… ᵉⁿᵈ ᶠˡᵃˢʰᵇᵃᶜᵏ ↺

↻ … ᶠˡᵃˢʰᵇᵃᶜᵏ

[ JUNGWON’S POV ]

No one loves you like Yang Jungwon.

Whenever you’re blabbering about something with the biggest smile on your face, every time at that exact moment Jungwon knows that no one can ever be as fucking in love you like a dumb plain sheet of white paper like he can. Nor can they get to know you - or the 2 am you. They wouldn’t get to know how beautiful you look with the one side-lamp illuminating a side of your face - and the little things that come along with it, it’s only him.

It’s only him.

But when he stares into your eyes, he knows it all too. No one is as bad for you as Jungwon is either, he believes, and it fucking destroys him as he holds onto you tighter, his hands slightly trembling. He can’t lose you, he doesn’t want to, and he doesn’t know the person he’ll become if he ever does. He doesn’t know if he’ll even make a day after it.

Why didn’t he think that there would ever be an end to a sweet dream?

Yang Jungwon is your first, but someone else is going to be your last.

Someone else that wasn’t him.

He muffles the sound of the soft cries that escape him as you peacefully sleep next to him in his tight hold, unaware of what’s to come.

He’s everything that he promised you he would never be.

… ᵉⁿᵈ ᶠˡᵃˢʰᵇᵃᶜᵏ ↺

THE NEXT WEEK

Riki must’ve placed some sort of curse on you for this to happen.

You could vividly imagine his shit-eating face with his loud laughter already.

Whatever witchcraft or shitty attempt of ‘fate’ this was, Nishimura Riki was going to be the cause of your death. Though this has barely anything to do with him, you can’t think of anyone else that brings that much bad luck to you. You’re seriously starting to think the world is unreservedly just fucking with you for entertainment.

Just when you thought you were never going to see him again.

Yang Jungwon stands at the front of the classroom, leaning on one foot with a backpack slung over his one shoulder. You almost facepalm, this was some Egyptian curse that was going to follow and haunt you, wasn’t it? Perhaps the ghost haunting you was in the form of your ex-boyfriend.

Of course, the new student had to just be him.

You never thought you would ever see him again. Thankfully, he doesn’t notice you and sits the farthest from your area. You keep your head focused on the individual work assigned to the class. If this whole thing could keep up, you could probably spend the next semester without him knowing you’re in the same class, then, you could hopefully change classes by the next - it wouldn’t be so bad. You didn’t have to acknowledge him.

That is, until the Professor starts assigning him roles and tasks. “There are the modules for you to read, and then around four individual minor projects to keep up with. The fifth individual project, however, majorly affects your grade,” he pauses, lightly smacking his lips as he scans his student list.

He flips through papers as he continues, “since you’ve missed most of the term, I’ll be pairing you up with Lim Seoyeon,” he drags the last word, scurrying through his papers to find another name, “and Y/L/N Y/N. Both are only lacking their thesis papers, while the others are still lacking to submit three projects, so it would be most convenient for her compared to the rest.”

Your stomach churns, feeling sick. Physically cringing, you felt like creating an uproar. Wherever Yang Jungwon goes, trouble always follows; this simply could not be happening to you. Lord, it was the least convenient to you.

This world couldn’t hate you this much.

You wanted to curse any of the gods above you placed you in this shithole, being beyond frustrated and unwilling. Anyone but him. You could only mournfully regret passing all your projects in advance, it was ironic. You get yourself into fucked up situations for being a good student? What is this university?

The Professor doesn’t clarify anything with you - nor does he justify the situation and the injustice, but only throws a nod in acknowledgement in your direction before he waves at Jungwon in dismissal - excusing himself from the classroom.

Your eyes could almost bulge out.

What was happening . . . ?

Jungwon’s eyes sweep over the room before he finds you, but you note how he doesn’t look the least surprised to see you. He stares, trying to discern your expression, but you once again break eye contact within a second.

You were in hell.

You had no option to stalk up to the teacher’s desk to bargain when the professor wasn’t there in the first place. You were fucking stuck with him. You felt the burning flames when he got up to make his way to you, and as he stood right in front of you. Choking to death because of a meatball in live television seemed like a much peaceful idea that kept most of your remaining dignity.

Maybe if you kept your head buried with studies, he would go away.

“Y/N,” a voice acknowledges you.

Fuck, you could remember that voice anywhere.

“It’s nice to see you.” Yang Jungwon.

You made a noise in response.

The feeling was not reciprocated.

You hate the way he sounds.

Like he wasn’t the same person three years ago.

You forcefully nod curtly at him, and you’re drowning.

Suddenly, we are strangers again. An unwanted stranger. There was no other option rather than tolerating him until it was all fine. You could do this. You didn’t want to, but you had to, otherwise you’d be at the polar end of the classroom by now if you had the choice.

But you chose to ignore him: Ignore the fact that he sat right next to you in close proximity, ignore the fact that you could smell his cologne - the familiarity of it and how it smelled like home, and ignored him like he never existed when he tried asking questions. In your defense, either they were a waste of time to answer, or they could easily be found in the textbook.

“Hi, I was wondering if –” Ignore it.

“Do you know where the questions for –?” Ignore it.

“Don’t you think this project is pretty difficult –?” Ignore it.

And you turned a blind eye to the fact that you disregarded him because you didn’t know if you could control yourself.

Seoyeon was a lifesaver, managing to keep you sane as she voluntarily chose to step in to help Jungwon out after hearing all his questions directed to you left unanswered. You wouldn’t know what you would do if you were forced alone with him. She reads the room but doesn’t question anything.

You tell yourself it was anger that made yourself this way.

Blind consuming anger.

You hate how Jungwon could still manage read you after all this time.

A quiet and gentle question, “Y/N, are you mad at me?”

You barely react, but your eyes squint on their own. You weren’t going to lie nor deny it, you do really wish he hadn’t chosen to interact with you. Staring blankly at your laptop screen, you don’t move. A hushed voice - a subconscious that you swore you lost long ago - in the back of your head whispers an answer before you force yourself to shove it down. You almost scoffed; are you mad at him? What kind of a dumb question is that?

He was nothing but an ass, he hadn’t changed.

“No, why would I be?” You answer brusquely, your tone signifying that you were keeping a distance from him without having to say it.

You hope the cue was taken.

There was no need to keep the friendliness with him – you weren’t obligated to. Formalities were all there was left. At least you would treat him with the respect that you were scraping your skin out for, right? Whatever you had with him - it was over. It was long gone.

You refused to be controlled under the palm of his hand ever again.

You swiftly pack your belongings and left him without a work or glance to spare his way the second you hear the bell signal the end of the period right on time. You don’t even bid your classmate, Seoyeon, goodbye. You’d apologize to her later and explain things to her, hoping she’d understand and lend a helping hand.

It’s been two years and the minute he shows up, you find yourself crumbling and unable to control yourself, and that frustrates you. You’re slipping.

Being around him was a waste of energy.

You remind yourself that you feel nothing.

He was a stranger to you now.

Once again, you walked away from him, gripping the strap of your backpack tightly in sheer annoyance and vexation. Mind racing, you try to find a reason; why was Yang Jungwon in your major and university and what in the heavens above does he want from you?

LATER

Riki roars in laughter, his hand slapping his knee as he nearly falls off the chair. You were almost tempted to push him off.

“You think it can’t get any funnier than that, but it does!” he pretends to wipe away a fake tear, “you ignored him all the way through!” he bursts into fits laughter once again.

“Poor guy, getting the silent treatment from someone like Y/N on your first day at college is depressing,” he empathizes, though it doesn’t sound by any means sincere. Nothing about Nishimura Riki is sincere. “At least I’m not the only one Y/N treats like shit!” he notes positively with a beam on his face, but you’re not sure if that’s anything that’s supposed to be of positive news.

You whack the back of his head, and he whines. “When have I ever treated you like shit, you dumbass?”

“I’m taking this as a form of harassment,” he grumbles.

You stick your tongue out at him mischievously, “Oh, boo-hoo, you big baby, ‘s not like you don’t bully the hell out of me,” you roll your eyes, “and help out and do something about Jungwon, will you?” you ask him for a favor, your tone indicating exhaustion.

He furrows his eyebrows at you, “What’d you want me to do - bury his body? Doll, I barely even know the guy.”

You swing your arms - shooing something nonexistent away for gesturing, “Just keep him away! I don’t know, do one of those stupid ideas that you always come up with. I can’t stand seeing his face,” you complain, almost childishly stomping your feet in outrage. This was unlike you.

He lowly whistles, “I was really hoping for some real kind of exes-to-lovers type of k-drama lead coming to life,” he comments, and you muster the biggest disgusted glare at him. He only shrugs his shoulders with a mere ‘hey-what-can-you-do?’.

“However, there’s a …” he trails off, lighting up like a lightbulb with an idea in mind already.

You raise a brow, “A what?”

He looks at you with a grin, suggestively wiggling his eyebrows, “We can fake-date.”

You were dumb to ask him for ideas. You groan. “Not again.”

“C’mon,” he probes you, tugging at your arm. Was he really that bored with his life to want to fake-date you?

You blankly stare at him, deadpanned. “You get dumber and dumber the more I talk to you,” you don’t hold back from telling him, receiving a dirty scowl thrown at you, “I’m serious! Isn’t that what people do whenever one of their exes show up?”

Squinting at him, you ask, “Just how many fanfics have you been reading?”

He crosses his arms, “Make fun of me all you want, but we both know that those ideas never fail,” he huffs, “you wanted him gone, didn’t you?” he tries to resonate, “Everyone thinks we’re already a thing anyway, it won’t be too hard, or would it be much of a trouble if we just went on with it. We’re basically pros at this dating thing, aren’t we?”

You pinched the bridge of your nose, “Yes, and getting back at him would feel rightfully good as hell and all but,” you sigh in exasperation, hating to be the one to ruin the fun, “doing that would mess everything up even more, I’m sure. We’d be the ones ending up as the dumb fools in the situation. Did you already forget the time we fake dated to get that girl obsessed over you off your back? And how it backfired on us?” you stated, and Riki’s thoughtful silence justified your stance.

You’d rather die the most undignified death than have Yang Jungwon win the second time around, and that was not happening under Nishimura Riki’s watch.

“If I could just turn into a wizard or anything like that and ‘magic’ him away,” you plopped an arm up on the desk, resting the side of your cheek at the palm of your hand, “probably turn him into a damn ugly and useless broomstick while at it, too.”

Riki lets out a humorous short laugh at the sight of you, “Cheer up, princess,” he slings an arm around your shoulder, poking your cheek, “I’ll help you too, and I’ll beat him up whenever he tries to go near you; hot sexy Nishimura Riki cares about your cute dumbass,” You bump your hip playfully toward his. I’m not leaving you alone, is what he was trying to say.

He’d excuse it as simply returning the favor that he asked from you. The time when the both of you fake-dated, and it backfired – forcing you to reach extreme measures that went on for months.

Right, you had Riki. And he wasn’t going to just ditch you, not like him. He’s stayed firmly next to you for the past two years through all the shit you put him though (and all the shit he put you through). Riki may have been a rascal, but he was nothing compared to how shitty Yang Jungwon was.

You simply just had to keep going and help Jungwon out in certain parts while interacting the least you could and ignore him (or preferably call Riki to tell him off, he’d love to finally be given the chance to annoy the shit out of someone) whenever he tries anything funny. As soon as it was over, you’d do your stay out of his way and pretend like nothing happened. After all, he was the one who left. If anyone was trying to run away, it’d be him.

Everything was going to be fine. You didn’t care.

It was no big deal; no extensive measures were needed.

A sharp inhale.

You didn’t know if you were lying or if you were telling the truth.

[ now playing ◃◃ ⅠⅠ ▹▹ yellow by coldplay ]

↻ … ᶠˡᵃˢʰᵇᵃᶜᵏ

Jungwon liked to follow you around.

He also liked dragging you along with him with whatever excuse he could come up with. You never could really decipher what that oddball was thinking, just when you thought you caught up to him, he surprises you with something new every day.

Lee Heeseung, your senior, was discussing that week’s event that the school was holding with you when Jungwon swoops in and drags you away without second thought, “Sorry, hyung! Gotta borrow her today ~” he throws a grin, and Heeseung could only roll his eyes, staring in playful disbelief after the both of you, “ya, that’s what you said the last three times too!”

Jungwon gives the kind of pleading look you know Heeseung couldn’t resist, “I swear I’ll pay you back with free lunch, hyung!” he yells back. You were used to being dragged away or trailed around by him; it wasn’t anything of the ordinary. He winks at you.

No matter how hard you would try to avoid him or threaten him, he was always looking at you with the most mischievous silly and crazy ideas in mind.

On the other hand, he didn’t really enjoy the idea of you hanging out with other guys.

Could you call him delusional? You really wanted to.

And then there was this other instance, where Jungwon had sulked behind you the whole period, making noises that surely irritated you whilst you interviewed Park Jay for a class paper, who was a part of the varsity team. It forced you to spend the entire day with him for the interview, which Jungwon did not seem to like. It came to the point where you had to embarrassedly excuse yourself from the number of huffs and noises he was making. Jay was left giving confused looks, completely distracted from the whole topic that the whole interview was pointless no matter how hard her tried to ignore Jungwon.

“What is your deal?” You hissed at Jungwon in annoyance as soon as you scurried away from the varsity team, “you completely embarrassed me over there, you rascal!” He doesn’t hear you. He seemed deep in thought, as if he was battling with himself. Jungwon faced you with the biggest frown - looking more distraught than ever, “You don’t like him, right?”

Your mouth slightly hangs open, thrown off-guard. What?

“He isn’t your type, isn’t he? He doesn’t look like it. You’d never go for a guy like him.” He looked ridiculous – and it wasn’t much of a shock to you. An idiot and a loser. You figured it’d only be a matter of time before he completely lost his mind. It was as if he was talking to himself. You lightly whacked his arm, trying to get some sense into him and snap him out, “What are you talking about, you rascal?”

He bores his eyes onto yours, “Whatever. I won’t let you, anyway. I’ll stay by your side you ‘till the day I die if I have to.” His eyes were set with firm determination, yet you didn’t bother pressing on - being sure he was up to no good, as usual.

He was speaking, but you couldn’t piece together what he was trying to imply. You didn’t really care either, he was a weird guy. Still, you were frustrated at him for just having to mess everything up for you again, “I can’t believe you,” you muttered incredulously, turning your heel to start walking away from him – you were done with this boy.

“Hey – angel, no, wait. Where are you going –?”

�� ᵉⁿᵈ ᶠˡᵃˢʰᵇᵃᶜᵏ ↺

↻ … ᶠˡᵃˢʰᵇᵃᶜᵏ

Admittedly, you didn’t hate Yang Jungwon as much when you had first met him, but the dislike started to grow at a profound rate when he started acting as a nuisance the more occasions he stuck around.

You weren’t exaggerating. Jungwon was just the epitome of overbearingly unable to understand social boundaries and your extreme dislike of having him in a 2-mile radius near you.

And you had your dignity, but Jungwon was an entirely different topic. Hiding from him in the gymnasium lockers was your last resort.

“Gotcha,” a cheery voice slides in beside you out of nowhere. Your heart almost jumped out of your body in fright, did he always have to jump-scare you out of nowhere?

“Seriously –?!”

“Stop playing hide and seek with me, angel. I’d love to play this game some other time with you but not now! We have somewhere else to go!” He has got to be shallow. Or dumb. Really dumb. You don’t know. As much as he loved blabbering endless nonsense around you that never seemed to make sense and was barely capable of leaving your side, you barely knew anything of him.

You glowered at him, “I’m not playing hide and seek with you, you rascal! I’m obviously avoiding you –!”

He pats the top of your head before gently grabbing your hand, interrupting your nth effort to knock some sense into him. “Let’s go! It’s my turn for a Y/N day.” he points forward, leaving the library baggage hall that he found you hiding in. A Y/N day? What were you to him, an item? You groan, sounding sorrow. You really thought you got away from him this time. “Yah, we’re going to miss class!”

You didn’t even know why you bothered.

Jungwon tilts his head, giving you a look as if to tell you to not worry, “We’re going to the river today, anyway. I brought my boombox with me,” he proudly tells you, and you aggravatedly sigh, feeling defeated. You swore you made all the measures needed to carefully avoid him, thinking you were finally left alone.

“Why do you always bring me along?” you deadpan, trying to wriggle free from his grasp. He was probably going to insert another flirtatious line or something among those actions. Why don’t you ever leave me alone?

You never really got it. Any of his interests, in fact. Why was he so determined to pursue you? There were countless of girls who were more of a ‘challenge’, and they were all the more interesting than you, with no doubt. What did he see in you? “Don’t you have any other friends?” you pulled a face at him. Jungwon has been by your side for such a long time that you grew accustomed to his presence, still, you weren’t going to admit that.

“I don’t want to hang out with them, I want to go with you,” he simply explains, as if it was the most obvious answer.

You furrow your eyebrows at him, irritated, yet curious as you stress, “Why?”

He pauses, still looking ahead as he guides you forward, “Being around you makes me happy.” You simply glance at him and the look he has makes you shiver.

Jungwon was always straightforward. There was not an ounce of shame in that man’s soul. He said what was on his mind without any filter, and he also had a peculiar way of thinking, which in terms, you guess, made him intelligent.

A beat passes, and you don’t find a retort to throw back at him.

Jungwon was like this beaming sunshine and busted in the dark hell you drowned yourself in.

Even if you enjoyed the darkness.

He always knew where to find you.

He found you.

… ᵉⁿᵈ ᶠˡᵃˢʰᵇᵃᶜᵏ ↺

Every year.

Every moment.

Jungwon was always there.

Yang Jungwon always knew where to find you, it was like his sixth sense. He could spot any of your bullshit or anything that you were hiding from him in a mile radius. There was no bother in hiding from him. He would always pop up by your side with a lopsided smile, carrying his guitar around and whining to you because he wanted to do something fun.

He was a bothersome child.

He was there in the times you didn’t want to see him, and he was there in the times where you needed someone but there was no one to turn to. It was as if you could summon him, you would always retort.

Making up excuses was his specialty, he always seemed to disregard everything to tag along with you. He made crazily creative alibies that never seemed to run out just in order to be able to stay by your side.

Until one day he stopped.

Until one day he ran out of reasons.

So, where was he and what was he doing two years ago when he left you the moment you needed only him the most?

One day, you woke up and he was gone. You haven’t heard from him since. Not a trace left. Not a ghost left to haunt you. And somehow, that haunted you even more.

Where did you go?

↻ … ᶠˡᵃˢʰᵇᵃᶜᵏ

You liked the pastries that Jungwon used to make for you.

You remember that he made them for you a lot. Whenever you did a job well done on a simple test or if you overworked yourself, you always found a box of your favorite flavors on your desk or locker the following day. You didn’t have to question who it was from; he didn’t have to say anything.

You weren’t accustomed to having that kind of treatment. A simple job done is merely a simple job done. There hasn’t been much of a pat on a back or a congratulatory party for the little achievements, and that was completely fine you. However, that wasn’t the case for Jungwon.

Puzzled, you held up the mysterious box, “What is this?”

“Sweets. Try them and tell me if you like them or not,” you could tell that he was anxious in anticipation. You try and hand it back over to him, “Oh, I’m not really in the mood for sweets, you can go ahead and give them to Minju though, she loves -”

“I didn’t make them for Minju,” he stands in front of you, sort of dejected and earnest. That was a new look on him. His face seemingly somewhat deflated, and somewhat embarrassed. He scratches the back of his head awkwardly, refusing to meet your gaze as he shakes his head and changes his mind, trying to reach over the box to save his dignity in the situation.

Your eyes slightly widen, processing, “Wait,” you withdraw your extended arm, looking back at the box, pointing to it, “you made this?”

“It’s not really any -” Jungwon starts, reaching out for the box for him to take back but you swat his arm away.

“You should’ve said so, dumbass! I love things homemade,” you explain lightheartedly, your eyes glittering once you open the box to reveal damn beautifully decorated chocolates. Your mouth formed an ‘o’ shape from the blow, almost gasping.

He did that?

“You don’t have to act all that, you know,” Jungwon adds, and when you spare him a glace, you realize he’s being serious.

You roll your eyes at him, ready to punch his arm. Acting? He wishes! Was he just wanting more compliments from you, or did he really believe that his baking didn’t look like the prettiest things ever? They looked too beautiful to eat but you didn’t know if you could manage to restrain yourself from eating something that looked so delicious. “Shut up, look at that! Are you, like, a world-renowned baker or something?”

As soon as nearly half of the box was eaten by you, you mentally felt something hit you, like a pang. Though you couldn’t exactly discern what. You felt something, a lurch of it. A swell of happiness, a swell of being seen, a swell of not being alone, not anymore. “Jungwon?” you looked at him.

He leaned his weight against the wall in the front of you, taking one of his earpieces off, “Mm.”

“Thanks,” It was casual, but you meant it. You really did. He could read it from your eyes. He probably spent a lot of time making these, you thought. Then you realize that’s all he ever did to you; spend his time on you.

He’s sincere. A troublesome rascal, definitely. But sincere. It’s funny how it took him to just make some homemade sweets for you to see and realize, “you’re not that bad.”

You don’t know if you left him speechless, but you walk down the hallway with him staring after you. Words left unspoken.

Something new had changed then.

You didn’t know what to call it.

But it felt good.

… ᵉⁿᵈ ᶠˡᵃˢʰᵇᵃᶜᵏ ↺

[ now playing ◃◃ ⅠⅠ ▹▹ meet me at our spot by the anxiety ]

THE NEXT MORNING

[8:04 am] unknown number: hi good morning

[8:04 am] unknown number: it’s jungwon :)

[8:05 am] unknown number: i just wanted to wish u a good day

[8:06 am] unknown number: i’m really proud of u

Four text messages to ruin the start of your day.

And in addition, there it was: the exact familiar box of pastries on the desk you were at yesterday that morning.

You nearly got yourself nauseous at the sight.

Were you dreaming?

Blinking it off, you snap out of it. You scoff, Jungwon was more shameless and a lot bolder than you thought. What was the box supposed to signify? ‘I’m proud of you’?, ‘I’m sorry’?, or an ‘I miss you’? Either way, you never knew Yang Jungwon could ever stoop so low.

Two years and the first thing he does is give you a box of sweets, was he thinking it’d pay back all the shit he pulled? Bribe you with sweets and suddenly everything would be okay?

Your resentment for him grew even more.

Anger was a better feeling to experience other than any of the other emotions.

At the side of your eye, you could see Jungwon. You pretend not to, and you try so hard. You don’t miss the glances he throws you, he was probably waiting for your response.

Surely, he should expect from you that the response was going to be nothing good. Does he know you at all?

Throwing it away seemed over the top, but you didn’t know what the rest of your options were. You hesitate, eating it would only make him believe that everything’s okay. And in case Jungwon didn’t get the memo: everything is not okay.

This won’t hurt you.

You toss the box to someone else; your hands slightly freeze on its own for a moment when you realize Jungwon was watching. Only for a moment.

You weren’t taking his bait.

You didn’t want it.

You don’t look at him, and you don’t bother to see his reaction. Biting down your tongue, you jabbed your pen down the desk forcefully - you ignore the sense of guilt. He asked for it.

It takes a bit more effort to remain nonchalant this time.

Jungwon was getting in your nerves. Again.

LATER

You were dragged into a library group filled with people you barely knew of by Ningning and Seoyeon. You recognized Jake Sim from chemistry class, and a few others that you weren’t entirely confident you knew the name of. Jungwon was there. Of course, he had to be.

Though you were an expert at turning invitations and confessions down, you really weren’t much of the action type. Some would call you the ‘all bark, no bite’ type, but that was mostly because people who ensued and pressed on having it their way was just stubborn.

Most of your life, people went along your bark, it was rare that anyone went against it – but not impossible. Yang Jungwon.

The name flashes by your mind involuntarily as if it was a burn.

As if your mind works on its own, you find yourself staring at him – he paid no interest in the conversation as he mindlessly scrolled through his phone, bored. The only word he had ever said was when he had assertively stated that he wanted the seat that was close to yours. He had also joined the conversation and firmly voted against Jake sitting next to you. What a problem boy.

[02:44 pm] yang jungwon: u look good today

You were bored, but definitely not bored enough to be willing to immerse yourself into that mess.

You were entirely out of the group’s topic of conversation yourself, immersing yourself all in your head and thoughts until a girl named Naeun – you think – waggles her brows at you. “What about you, ms. ‘most-popular-with-guys’?”

“How many of them did you turn down this week?” Lee adds into it lightheartedly, poking fun.

Jungwon’s attention is immediately averted to you – and you hate that you can feel his gaze boring into your face.

You feel more uncomfortable than ever, trying to argue with them, “What? That’s not true—!”

Ningning’s eyes glint in mischievousness, taking in your denial as something you were embarrassed about as she joins into the conversation. But it wasn’t, not entirely.

You were highly uncomfortable. “Don’t deny it. You’re more than just ‘popular’ with guys. I swear I saw with my own eyes at least two guys try and hit you up on this exact library alone from the past few days.”

You could hear chortled laughter from around you.

You know none of the voices belonged to or were from Jungwon.

You’d rather suffocate.

“I heard you were pretty popular with the guys during your high school years too!” Seoyeon chirped. You felt nauseated. Where did they even hear that information? You incredulously retorted to yourself.

“D’you date any of them?” Lun from literature class pipes in, interested. You feel your face turn hot against your will. “Any hotties you can introduce me to?” someone adds into it suggestively, clearly enjoying the topic of discussion.

Your face starts to sour, reeking of irritation.

“Ooh! I remember hearing Y/N dated a guy during high school. That’s probably why she wasn’t able to date much?” Ningning suggests, and you wanted to kick her out of the room. Was anyone just not able to pick out on social cues? Was everyone not able to notice how uncomfortable you looked?

Seoyeon’s eyes enlarged in alarm, “Y/N dated before?” Despite the distressing situation, you almost slipped out a laugh, you were always known for your strong dislike towards romance and men and you liked it that way. You guess the impression still hasn’t changed.

He’s in the exact same room right now, you wanted to spit out. Your face hardens, but you don’t say anything.

“What’s the big deal? We were barely anything anyway.”

Ningning does not get your clue, instead, she looks more confused than ever. “Huh? From what I heard; you both were pretty serious.”

“You never told me anything about him,” Seoyeon complains, grabbing your arm and repeatedly swinging it around. With everyone’s attention on you, your usual ‘i-hate-everyone’ façade falls into dust.

You snort, keeping your tone casual, “About what? He was barely anyone special, in the first place.”

A bunch of unanimous curious ‘oohs’ were heard around the room. “Oohlala, spill. What made the relationship end?”

You take a thoughtful pause, as if it was the first time you were giving it thought, “He was selfish.” A shrug.

You ensure that the whole table hears your answer, especially him. Ningning scrunches her nose in distaste at your answer, “Ugh, typical. Boys really aren’t shit.”

“You’d give your entire world to them, and they decide that it’s not enough. Discontented assholes.” Lee comments with a bunch of insults thrown away without regard, and the Seoyeon pretends to vomit at the mention of boys. “Dirtbags. His loss,” is all she says.

You really don’t have any idea of what to do in this situation.

A strangled noise escapes Jungwon, and he covers it up with loud coughs. He looked like he’s just been badly burned, and you try to casually shift in your seat. The rest of the group takes it as a cue to ask him the same question as well, figuring he wanted to be included.

“And what about you, newbie?” Jake notices, an effort to try to get Jungwon to feel included. “Ever dated before?”

He stares blankly in response. A glance your way, and it takes a fraction of a second for you to avert your eyes away. You hope no one caught that. A moment. Or two. Until, “No, never.” Casually, with a helpless shrug before his attention was back on his phone. He doesn’t even regard that you were ever a part of his past.

Your insides clenches on their own.

That was it. The signal. You were back to being notoriously known for your cold behavior, good grades, and popular game with men, while Jungwon was back into his reputation of being a cute and care-free affectionate and loveable brat that would never do anyone wrong.

Everything was back the way it started.

Rewind. A start over. Where Jungwon doesn’t get to see the nurturing, caring, childish, and mischievous side of you, and where you never got to see the depth to him: his coolness and his silence. The eyebrow lifts, his head-pats, his reliability, his loyalty, his promises, his stories, his determination – everything about him that everyone missed, that was simply nothing now.

We’ll never be those kids again.

Your phone buzzes.

[02:52 pm] yang jungwon: i figured u didn’t want them to know.

[02:54pm] yang jungwon: are you mad?

Both your eyes meet in the midst of the others bickering with each other.

All the remnants of history erased.

↻ … ᶠˡᵃˢʰᵇᵃᶜᵏ

[ JUNGWON'S POV: 1 YEAR AGO ]

“I’ve been looking for you all night!” she skips, twirling in front of him, “What d’you think? I figured you might like this outfit.” She had an annoying voice, and was definitely way too clingy. Black long hair or something, honestly, any of the faces he’s seen were all only just blank and empty to him.

Jungwon doesn’t even regard her existence.

“C’mon ~” The girl drags, tugging at his arm. He doesn’t even know her name. He’s probably crossed by her more than a couple times with the way she was acting.

She was annoying. Not like you at all. No one was like you.

Jungwon was already in a sour mood. “You’ve been stuck at the couch all night, you lame-dummy!” She points a dragging finger to his chest, “No one wants to be a lame-dummy, c’mon, come with me! It’ll be fun,” she tries to persuade in a sing-song voice, inviting him in.

It doesn’t shake him by the least.

He shakes his head, shortly emitting a single scoff in irritation as he jerks away the hand on his shoulder. His tense facial features say everything. Without saying another word, he chooses to leave the room quietly and awkwardly without bidding goodbye to the other friends who invited him.

These parties were useless. Everything was useless. Every day was too boring and empty without meaning.

He had no place here.

This wasn’t where he belonged.

He damn well still belonged to that person he always has belonged to.

You.

… ᵉⁿᵈ ᶠˡᵃˢʰᵇᵃᶜᵏ ↺

[09:12 pm] yang jungwon: hello bo ;]

[09:12 pm] yang jungwon: i hope u had a good day :)

[09:17 pm] yang jungwon: i’m always here if u need me

[09:17 pm] yang jungwon: just so you know

[09:17 pm] yang jungwon: i’ll always be there

[09:20 pm] yang jungwon: and i hope i crossed your mind at least once..

read

A FEW DAYS LATER

You were beyond thankful to have Seoyeon around him to save yourself the awkward interactions.

She was the icebreaker. The only factor that allowed you to act as if Jungwon wasn’t there in the first place and ignore his existence. Given that she was an icebreaker, she was also clueless.

She had no idea of the hatred you had for him - or the reluctance to look his way, much more interact with him. It wasn’t her fault, but you wish you rather didn’t have to explain the situation to her as the only option for her to stop trying to get you and Jungwon to talk.

“Wasn’t yesterday fun? It was nice having new people around,” she brings up as a conversation starter. Jungwon was minding his business working on his project on the side, the both of you had your free time. You politely smile at her, and you know it looks genuine. Explaining things to her wasn’t ideal – you shudder that the possibilities that would happen once you’d confess the situation.

Maybe Jungwon was a private secret of your past that you were never meant to bring up to those in your present.

“That reminds me, who’s the group you hang out with? We really should hang out more.” She slightly frowns before adding, “You’re really fun!”

“You too,” you add with a half grin, and you genuinely mean it. You kindly nod in agreement with a laugh, desperate to end the topic – but Seoyeon doesn’t cease her intent of giving up her first question.

She smiles at you expectantly as she awaits for an answer, and though you know she’s really just trying to make friends, if awkward topics were all that she was going to be bringing up around you, you would rather not converse with her at all. “Oh uh, that question,” you forced a laugh that comes out awkward, “no one else, really.”

Her lips form a small ‘o’ shape, apologizing for intruding. She softly gasps, alarmed, “Really? To be honest, I think it’s because everyone’s intimidated of you. It was until a few seconds ago that the whole campus figured you had countless of friend groups. Me included.”

You furiously shake your head at her, making a dreadful face in which she giggles at, “Oh God, no.” you comment, “it’s really just me,” you pause, “and Riki of course. Riki. Me and Riki. No one else. Kind of a loner,” you coughed out an awkward ramble, but Seoyeon never even seemed to mind.

“That’s cool, neither way! I get to have you to myself,” she teases lightheartedly as she links her arm around yours.

You were too flustered to notice that Jungwon had heard everything.

THAT EVENING

[10:21 pm] yang jungwon: hi love

[10:22 pm] yang jungwon: you must be tired i hope u rest up tonight :)

[10:22 pm] yang jungwon: i’ve really missed u

[11:49 pm] yang jungwon: goodnight love, sweet dreams :) ♡

read

By the next day, at the end of class, you’re forced to work with Jungwon at the library for the afternoon. Seoyeon was running late by fifteen minutes. This was the only time you didn’t mind.

The air is cold, and the tension was cutthroat, you could suffocate, but you wouldn’t have it any other way. Starting a friendly conversation? Why even bother?

You decided to ask him straightforward the moment he tries to initiate conversation by asking you a question, cutting him off, “What are you pulling at?” you blankly stared at him, pokerfaced. Maybe you went off too aggressive, but his face slacks; he was definitely accustomed to your whole act of ignoring his existence, and probably never expected you to even spare a glance his way.

A long pause before he regains his composure, “What do you mean?” his voice is a lot quieter and controlled compared to the past. Now that you notice it, he’s changed in a lot of ways. He’s no longer the bright happy-go-lucky rascal that you were once familiar with. No longer the one who didn’t care about grades, but the one sitting beside you at one of the best universities. He’s … matured a lot.

“The messages?” cutting directly into it, your eyes narrowed on him, “what are you trying to pull at?” you interrogate him. Tell me lies. Tell me the truth. Tell me you’re leaving. Tell me you’re staying.

Surprise is written all over his face, catching him off gaurd, “They’re nothing,” he clears his throat, words getting caught in the midst of it. “I just thought … I, um,” he trailed off, avoiding direct eye contact.

Your hard gaze doesn’t falter, patience running thin. “Spit it out, Yang.”

He winces at your tone, and you wished you hadn’t seen that. “I just thought that you needed it. Not needed it exactly, but, well, I assumed - I wanted to let you know -” he doesn’t finish his sentence, but starts another one instead, “I just miss you,” he states, and he’s looking at you - you remember that kind of look. The kind of look that would once tug at your heartstrings.

Once.

You don’t know what Yang Jungwon is pulling at.

Hm.

You stare down hard at him - eyes narrowed, prospecting, judging, and surveying. You no longer tremble at his words. You don’t falter. Have you grown immune to them? Maybe you were sincerely and truly over him after all.

He was pulling at his charms. His thoughtfulness - the little aspects that’d make you believe that he actually cared; the things you so easily fell into. Not anymore. Not after you believed, once.

Once was enough. It’s all a simple game to him, isn’t it?

The day you break down in front of him and let him hold the strings again would be the day you would die.

Not showing a flicker of emotion, you nonchalantly tsked, irritated, “Don’t bother again, will you?”

Jungwon doesn’t say anything, but you feel his lingering stare.

Your settling glare on the textbook in front of you could burn holes. You let him go – you dismiss him, but he never leaves his spot.

Why does he always linger behind?

[01:03pm] yang jungwon: i don’t know if we should be alone together

read

[02:54pm] yang jungwon: i really can’t control myself when you’re around

read

[04:23pm] yang jungwon: i miss the old you

[04:26pm] yang jungwon: im sorry

read

How much was it going to take for you to admit that you felt the same?

[05:33pm] yang jungwon: just so you know i didn’t mean it that way

[05:33pm] yang jungwon: i just noticed that you’ve changed

[05:33pm] yang jungwon: of course you’ve changed

[05:35pm] yang jungwon: you don’t look at me the same anymore

read

[04:47am] yang jungwon: hi bo

[04:47am] yang jungwon: im sorry but i cant

[04:48am] yang jungwon: i really cant let you go

message delivered

A FEW WEEKS LATER

It didn’t take much for her to piece together. She noticed the pattern of behavior from you, your sour and aggravated persona, and Jungwon’s desperate efforts, then figured you were probably his ex.

“You know,” she clicks her tongue, “the thing about love and hate is that there’s a very thin line between them.”

She squints, fingers fiddling around with a penny as she tries to explain, “they’re two sides of the same coin.”

You made a face. She’s been going about this for hours and showed no sign of stopping. Whining, you turn her way, “what are you taking about this time?”

A grin. She raises both her brows in surrender, “You guys got a lot of unfinished business.”

You give her a look, unimpressed.

“The guy nearly snapped his head yesterday the moment he heard you laugh because he wanted to know what you were laughing about,” Seoyeon stares down at you steadily, provoked that you managed to toss the fact over too easily.

You throw her a crumpled piece of paper, and she easily dodges your throw. “Sure.” you snort, barely feigning any interest.

“Cut him some slack! He was your ex for goodness’ sake, some feelings for him still have to be there at some point. You can’t hate your ex that much without actually-maybe-probably loving them,” she singsongs teasingly. This was lighthearted, you knew, but.

You deadpanned. Feelings.

She has got to be serious.

Some feelings still have to be there.

Your heart didn’t feel anything.

Not anymore.

She stares at you in the silence, faking astonishment.

Her mouth forms a small ‘o’, “You’ve got to be serious.”

You only blink at her.

“Stop … don’t you feel anything for him anymore? Or is it like … nothing at all?” Of course, she was talking about him, you knew that - but why were you suddenly caught off guard? This was crazy.

Nothing.

Nothing at all.

No one has ever asked you this question.

How were you going to answer that?

You resented him.

You were angry. More than pissed.

You hated everything about him.

Your face scrunches up in disgust at the thought, but you answer her question after a pause, “One thing I know for sure,” you start casually, pausing in consideration, “is that I don’t want to see that annoying face of his again.”

You meant every word, this time.

You were willing to do whatever it took for that to happen.

At that moment, Seoyeon then concludes that the both of you had unfinished business. Jungwon was clearly not over you, anyone with a mile radius could see that. The boy was drop-dead crazy for you.

The more you try and repress feelings, the larger it grows.

How cliché does that sound?

She tilts her head to the side, glancing your way. But in a way, she knew it wasn’t one-sided, either.

[ now playing ◃◃ ⅠⅠ ▹▹ all too well by taylor swift ]

↻ … ᶠˡᵃˢʰᵇᵃᶜᵏ

“Jungwon?” you whispered incredulously. Rubbing your eyes due to your half-asleep state, you leaned your frame against your door with your worry starting to alarm you awake. “What’re you doing here?”

Standing at your apartment door, your boyfriend appeared rugged, his eyes tired and drowsy. You noticed his clothes were still of what you saw him wear yesterday morning. your heart ached to see him in such a state, concluding he had spent the whole day producing, working, and overworking himself without rest. You hated whenever he did this to himself.

Seeing you frown, Jungwon pulls you to his embrace, wrapping you around his arms with a contented sigh, “Just wanted to see my baby,” he mumbles out incoherently, fighting through sleep, “I’ve missed you.”

You clung onto him, your face still at a cloudy state of haze – unreservedly astounded. Meanwhile on the other hand, Jungwon continues to laugh over your dumbfounded look. He pinches the sides of your cheeks, cooing over at you. As you try to wriggle yourself away, you found yourself embracing your figure back into his arms to squeeze his waist tightly in fear that he might disappear. He teases you at the action, lightheartedly calling you his little koala, but you don’t miss the endearing tone to his voice – or the way his breath hitches from your embrace.

“You’re here,” you managed to breathe out to yourself, burying your forehead against his neck. Squeezing your eyes shut, you desperately hoped to the gods above that the moment you opened them, everything wasn’t just going to turn out as another dream of yours. You could barely process much more comprehend what was going on, ‘he’s here, he’s here, he’s here’ were the only notions you could formulate by the slightest, chanting through your brainwork repeatedly for you to comprehend. Humorously, you didn’t wonder how he was possibly here, or why. He shouldn’t be - he was too busy.

You didn’t think about the fact that he’s supposed to be halfway across the world working on his production, and definitely not here. Inhaling his scent, your ongoing worries and stress had seemed to evaporate, your form relaxing almost immediately. He smelled like home.

The loud chatters and distinctive outside noise from people passing by that surrounded the both of you, along the fact that the both of you were in a public place – all had seemed to drown out and appear forgotten. You clung to his warm figure after months of being apart, out of all the days you’d secretly dreamed about him surprising you, you never figured today was going to be that day. You clasped onto him even tighter, your smile growing wider by the second, it’s been quite some time since you ever felt half this happy.

He let out a low vibrating laugh with your face pressed against his chest, engulfing you tightly around his hold whilst swaying the both of you side to side. It was little moments and acts of efforts like these that mattered most to you. You drowned yourself at the rhythm and sound of his heartbeat that spoke the words the both of you already knew; he had missed you.

“I promised, didn’t I?”

Maybe you were always too busy for Yang Jungwon when the both of you dated.

Maybe that was it.

Maybe that was the reason why.

Or maybe he simply always seeking attention from you, constantly and childishly. He complained about you studying too much as he started sulking alone was, he wandered around the place ‘miserably’, while you were trying to place your focus on your book, refusing to give into him again.

A little later and he tossed the fact that he had to pick up some errands, and you volunteered to help accompany him since he mentioned that he’d only be out for a while.

But after picking up the things he had acquired through his errands, the rain was against your luck and poured heavily. You cursed at yourself, having brought no umbrella with you. Looking at Jungwon, you could judge immediately by then that he didn’t bring one as well.

“Running for it sounds pretty good,” you suggested with a beam on your face, but you noticed how Jungwon huffed in disagreement, not approving of the idea; worrying that the rain might get you hurt or sick as he starts pulling out deliberate excuses and reasons.

“It’s too slippery out in the rain, you might fall,”

“Car accidents happen more often in the rain,”

“You’ll get sick, can you afford to be sick at a time like this?”

You ignored all his protests when you decided to just audaciously leave the store entrance before walking into the rain without any given warning.

He doesn’t say anything, and when you glanced back at him in question, you immediately noticed how visibly irritated he was with you misbehaving and ignoring him. Jungwon was always overly protective over you.

Though you appreciated it, his over-protectiveness wasn’t something you exactly needed at this time of your mid-terms. You just needed to study, and Jungwon could simply work on his music. The place you were at wasn’t too far from home, so it wasn’t exactly too absurd to make a run for it.

His eyes zeroed on you, giving no humor in his eyes, “Come back in here.”

You looked at him with fake-pleading eyes, “I left my notes back home,” you frowned.

“I don’t care. You are not getting sick.”

He wanted to sit the rain out, of course he did. But you didn’t know when the rain was going to stop, or if it ever showed any signs of stopping, in the first place. Just by your boyfriend’s tone itself, you knew you got yourself in trouble. That was not a good sign, he would always pull some crazy idea that would always try to teach you a lesson.

You didn’t move an inch from your spot.

Jungwon hurdled at you once he realizes that you were being stubborn, wrapping his arms around your waist securely regardless of the hefty downpour of rain, “Step another foot further and I’ll make sure you’ll never be touching your beloved notes again.”

“Ugh, Yang Jungwon, are you crazy?” you argued, trying to untangle yourself from him but his firm grip wouldn’t let you go.

“Jungwon, I’m serious! I really need to study, I have my exams—!”

“Aish, you’d be on your deathbed, and you wouldn’t even think of me at all, you would only care about studying!” he contested nonsensically as he dramatically complains.

You scowled at his comment, your face souring as you try wriggling yourself out of his grasp even harder, “Yah, you rascal!”

“Come back inside and I’ll let you go,” he conditions, a small grin showing that he had won. You glower at him, but having no choice but to subit and wait the next two hours by the porch of the store for the rain to subside. He covers you by towering in front of you, ensuring that you weren’t going to get hit by the rain.

Jungwon was a lot of maintenance - a lot of people would say, but he was adorable.

And most of all, he was yours.

… ᵉⁿᵈ ᶠˡᵃˢʰᵇᵃᶜᵏ ↺

PRESENT [ JUNGWON'S POV ]

Jungwon spends the rest of his night at school fixing up your science project, without an ounce of sleep.

He finds Sunoo dropping by the room, slightly jumping in surprise at the sight of him there. He covers his chest with his hand, “What the hell are you doing here?” he lightheartedly scolds him.

But he pauses squinting at him, “Were you . . .” his eyes widen, “Dude, did you spend the entire night here?” he asks Jungwon, bewildered. “Doing . . .” he tilts his head, taking a peek, and his mouth hangs open as he finally pieces things together, “-Y/N’s science lab project . . .?”

Sunoo’s eyes almost budge out of his sockets. “Isn’t this what Y/N’s been worrying crazy about –? How did you –?”

He couldn’t exactly admit that he’s overheard you complaining about your project and begging others to help you with it miserably. He knew you always took your grades seriously, but, how could he explain this to Sunoo of all people?

Jungwon looks conflicted, immediately standing away from your project. He was finished wish it, anyway. He just needed to get here undetected by you. Kim Sunoo was a problem, however. There was no way Sunoo wasn’t not telling you about this.

“Don’t tell her I did this,” Jungwon tells him, reading Sunoo’s next moves.

His eyes dart from the project to Jungwon. He frowns, confused. “Why not?”

Jungwon hesitates with his words, being careful. “Just because. Don’t.” What the hell can he say? The bell rings, and he panics.

“She has a hell of an ego, you know this. Tell her you fixed this or something. I don’t know. Make some shit up.”

He scurries out the lab but hangs behind at the entrance door for a few seconds.

Jungwon emphasizes what he’s told Sunoo. “I’m counting on you, bro.”

He slips away like a ghost.

Sunoo tells you that Ningning and Jake helped with your final lab project, and you believed it – eyes sparkling with relief and complete utter gratitude. You wondered how they got to finish the project in a day. They were the chemistry experts of the class, anyway – who were you to question them?

Sunoo sees Jungwon at the side of the room looking at you and your project. He watches him watch you. How happy you were with the project, and the endless showering of compliments. Was he really just . . . not going to tell you?

Sunoo takes a look at both you and Jungwon and scratches his head in utter confusion. What was going on with the both of you?

He has no idea what that boy is hiding.

A FEW DAYS LATER IN THAT WEEK

Jungwon really was getting in your nerves.

On your way to class, you did nothing but mind your own business when he swirls out of nowhere and pushes you aside, refraining you from entering the classroom. You furrow your eyebrows in annoyance, trying to wriggle away from his grasp, but his grip stays firm. He’s holding the sides of both your arms to let you stay in place, looking anxious and rushed. “Wait.”

“Yang Jungwon, what the hell?”

He tries to find words to say, but he can’t find any. “I . . . like the color of your hair. Did you dye it?”

Your stare is blank. “What?”

“I need recommendations. I might use it too, so –“

“This is my natural hair color.” you deadpan, without an ounce of friendliness, “now if you’ll excuse me –”

“No! Gah,” he lets out a frustrated noise, rushed, “. . . the speech report! I need help in –“

He was messing with you. He had to be.

“I don’t know what you’re trying to do,” you try to breathe in calmly, but you were talking through your gritted teeth. “You submitted your speech report last week,” you hissed, your patience running thin.

You finally wriggle yourself free from his grasp, and that was when the panic was evident in Jungwon’s features.

You barely get to move an inch before, “Do you still have hang-ups on me?” He rushes out of nowhere, an attempt of desperation.

What?

To say that you were at a loss for words was an understatement.

You freeze. Staring at him, dumbfounded.

Were you simply a joke to him?

What was he saying? He was desperate, willing to just have your attention anywhere else. You could not enter the room. That was his plan.

You were trying to regain composure. Clamping your jaw down hard, your eyes narrowed. “Please, kindly fuck off.”

You stalk away, pissed off.

As soon as he ensured that you were walking the opposite direction, and Jungwon heaves a small sigh of relief. At least.

He budges the door classroom open – the room he had noticed that a couple of asshats were trying to pull on harsh pranks on – and immediately, an old tray of leftover food spills from above, falling flat on the floor instead as Jungwon dodges it from anticipating this beforehand.

And you piece thing and thing together.

This was what he was driving you away from?

Because that could’ve been you.

His eyes settle on the group of bullies seated at the end of the room. He cracks his knuckles. Jungwon’s eyes have never been so deadly.

Jungwon comes in class later with a purple bruise coloring his upper left cheek, and a busted lip.

You don’t ask him the story, but instead, you assume the worst in him. Like you always do.

He’s up to no good.

He always was.

[08:12pm] yang jungwon: are you going?

[08:21pm] you: ?

[08:21pm] yang jungwon: oh hi love

[08:22pm] yang jungwon: are you coming to gyeonju tower tomorrow? i wanted to tell you in person today but you seemed like u were in a rush to leave

[08:24pm] you: ? what do you want

[08:25pm] yang jungwon: i wanted to explain things

[08:25pm] yang jungwon: and explain myself

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[08:53pm] yang jungwon: i want to make things right

[08:54pm] yang jungwon: please let me, bo

[08:54pm] you: im busy.

[08:57pm] yang jungwon: i’ll be waiting for you tomorrow at 1pm

[09:00pm] you: i said im not going.

[09:02pm] yang jungwon: just one chance, please

[09:04pm] yang jungwon: one last one

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You didn’t care, you weren’t going.

THE FOLLOWING DAY

You’ve decided that you wouldn’t go.

You won’t go.

You won’t go, end of discussion.

You spent the last night considering it until two in the morning. You’ve finalized your decision. “This is a no-brainer. Who does he think he is? I’m not giving him the satisfaction,” you rant morely to yourself - it was almost as if you werer trying to convince yourself instead.

You tug at the ends of your hair in frustration, hissing. Both Ningning and Seoyeon watches you in silent amusement after being told of the situation. The two were the only ones who knew about you and Jungwon, and the only two who you’ve been ranting to for the past two hours.

“I’m not going,” you repeat aggravatedly, exclaiming as you fling your arms. You pace around the room.

Ningning languidly lazes around the chair as you frantically pace around the room, “So you’ve told us for the past forty six times,” she can’t help but comment, fighting away her grin. You scowl at her, grabbing the strap of your bag to sling it around your shoulder.

“You guys are annoying. I’m leaving.”

Both Seoyeon and Ningning stare after you, waving you goodbye at your stressed state.

Ningning props herself up with her elbows, leaning her cheek with the palm of her hands as soon as you’ve left the room. She stares at Seoyeon, who was mindlessly scrolling through her phone, “She’s definitely going, isn’t she?”

Seoyeon tosses the bag of chips that she’s been hogging Ningning’s way - which she accepts immediately, munching down on the ones on her palm with disinterest, “Yep.”

LATER, 1 PM

You tug awkwardly at your sleeve, eyes searching for a certain figure in mind as they bunglingly dart around the place.

So, maybe you really did end up going to the tower. Just to check things out. That was it. And maybe see if he was there. If he really showed up. Hear what he wanted to say if it was important. Nothing more. You felt bad just leaving him alone - you weren’t like him, intentionally leaving someone on for hours to wait for you.

You had a conscience. You simply showed up because you didn’t want to be burdened by it.

You don’t know how long you waited on the first half of the period under the heat of the sun from the tower, but by the time you take out your phone to check the time, it was half past one in the afternoon.

Tick-tok.

You stare at your phone’s lock screen, expecting a text from Jungwon to pop up any second to inform you that he was probably running late. Anything.

An hour passes by.

You figure you’d give him another thirty minutes. Just another thirty minutes. If he wasn’t going to show up, you didn’t care anymore. You would leave.

It was past 30 minutes.

Another hour passes by.

Until rain starts to lightly drizzle.

Until clouds start to darken.

Until your legs start to ache.

And until you were soaking and clothes drenched with water in the pouring heavy rain.

Again.

Until it dawns on you.

Jungwon isn’t here.

He wasn’t coming.

He was never going to.

And there you were, standing alone stupidly – a fool. A fool who never learned her lesson after two years.

He was enjoying this; toying with you, he’s got to be.

You don’t know why you really expected anything else from him.

A heavy exhale.

You don’t know why you hoped you did.

You get a call from Jungwon by the evening. You were dumbly weak enough to easily get manipulated to answer the phone.

He sounded frantic, “Hello? Y/N? I’m so sorry, I wasn’t able to attend our meet-up. I’m - I’m really sorry, I was really planning to go -” You wish you could believe him.

“Yeah. It’s okay, don’t worry about it,” you sound too monotone for your words to sound like you meant them.

“I’m so sorry that you waited on me, I promise I’ll make it up to -” No more promises. No more, Jungwon. I can’t take anymore.

You harshly cut him off, oppressive. “What do you mean? I didn’t come. I told you I won’t, didn’t I?”

You still had your dignity. Lies were all that you had left. You’d lie just for Jungwon to not get that sense of satisfaction from you. You wouldn’t let him.

He is silent, “Yeah, I know.”

You inhale, vexed. Your eyes flicker around the room, feeling flighty with apprehension. “What’s up, anyway? What held you from coming?” you made an effort to sound as casual as possible bringing it up, as if you didn’t care. As if you didn’t spend the whole afternoon drenched in pouring rain waiting for him.

A long silent pause again. You could tell he was hesitating to answer.

He tries to let out a lighthearted laugh as he waves it off, "It’s nothing.”

It was nothing, again. It’s always nothing. Were you ever something - anything - to him?

It takes a moment for you to register his response. How effortlessly care-free he was about it. Your tone appears tight, “Okay. Well, it’s good that you weren’t able to go. I wasn’t there anyway.” You didn’t know what else to say other than stressing that you never came. That you didn’t care.

Lie.

“Oh,” is what Jungwon replies with, he sounded distracted - like his mind wasn’t in the conversation. He wasn’t interested in talking to you anyway, why did he bother calling?

You grit at your teeth, “I’m not a fool, Jungwon.”

You don’t know if he’s even listening to you, you start to question. It takes long for him to respond, “I know.”

He was being as short with his responses as ever. Was this what he called explaining himself? You doubt if he ever cared about making it up to you in the first place. You try to hide your disappointment in your tone with impatience, “Is that all? I’m gonna go now. I’m busy.”

You don’t wait for his reply.

You immediately end the call and toss your phone as far as you could.

You hope that was worth it for Jungwon.

[ JUNGWON’S POV ] . . . what really happened

Jungwon woke up three hours earlier that day.

When Jungwon was getting himself dressed, a boy from across the city was still sleeping through his alarm that he wasn’t able to set the night before. Meanwhile, a girl was waiting somewhere in the city’s lobby, waiting for her boyfriend to pick her up.

While that happened, Jungwon was on his way to a jewelry shop to buy you a gift. He was beyond excited to see you. The boy from across the city was still sleeping, but the girl’s boyfriend eventually came to pick her up. On the other side, Jungwon had forgotten his credit card, and had no other option to pay by cash.

By this time, the sleeping boy’s mother barges into the boy’s room to wake him up as he was late for class – and asking him if he spent another late night playing with his friends. The girl in her boyfriend’s car receives a text from her ex while her boyfriend stops by to pick up the cake they ordered for their anniversary.

Jungwon was nearly at the Gyeonju tower when the boy who was running late for class stumbled out of the house, got on his bike, and peddled as fast as he could. The girl was already texting her ex-boyfriend by this time, and before she could tuck her phone away as soon as her boyfriend got into the car, the boyfriend had caught her already.

All the while the couple slowly started to argue about her talking to her ex, Jungwon was stuck in traffic and anxiously waiting – frustrated. Though he had more than an hour to spare, he wanted to see you as quickly as possible. This was the moment of his life that meant most to him. The boy who was running late took a wrong turn because he was not on the right state of mind, still half-asleep.

The couple argued all the way to the girlfriend’s parents’ house while the boy in the bike running late was trying to find his way out of the unfamiliar place, completely flustered. Jungwon had already arrived at Gyeonju tower, parking his car before trying to fix up his hair. He never really cared about how he looked like, but Jungwon’s nerves were jittering. This was the first time he was so anxious to see you.

And finally, at the same time, the boy was too distracted to see the couple’s car in front of him – as well as the couple, as they were still too busy arguing. Jungwon had just gotten out of the car, crossing the road.

It all happened too quickly.

If the son had set his alarm the day before and wasn’t running late for his class, if the girl hadn’t picked up the call from her ex-boyfriend, if couple hadn’t been arguing while the boyfriend was driving, or if Jungwon didn’t take his time in the car mirror trying to make sure he looked good for you - then maybe he would’ve gotten to meet you that night.

Maybe he wouldn’t have gotten into that car accident.

Maybe none of this would’ve be happening right now.

Life is a series of multiple interactions, they said.

The next situation Jungwon finds himself in was lying still – unable to move – in the hospital emergency room with blood – his blood? – covered all over his clothes, and when he gains the smallest bit of energy to barely open his eyes, he feels like he’s lost everything all over again.

In spite of all the events, he remembers you.

Your smile.

And his promise.

But he blacks out.

The moment Jungwon awakes into consciousness, his first thought isn’t what he was doing in an emergency room hospital, all alone. It isn’t wondering why he had blood all over his clothes, or why his body physically hurt too much for him to move.

His first thought was you.

His first thought was always going to be you. Where were you? What-? He sees the small bag settled beside him, squinting at it - before realizing it was for you. For the meeting. Today. Shit. In less than half a second, he ignores the pins and needles of his skin feeling like it was being stretched out just to reach his phone and dial your number.

“Hello? Y/N? I’m so sorry, I wasn’t able to attend our meet-up. I’m - I’m really sorry, I was really planning to go -”

Your tone interrupts him midway, seemingly clipped and tight. “Yeah. It’s okay, don’t worry about it,” were you mad? Guessing by the tone of your voice, you seemed upset. Lord, he begged for that one chance you gave him and he had to go through this out of all the occasions?

You pinches the bridge of his nose after running a hand through his hair, cursing inwardly. How many more chances could you give him? You would never believe him ever again. “I’m so sorry that you waited on me, I promise I’ll make it up to -”

Your response hits him right in the gut, harder and more painful than any of the stitches and bandages he had being freshly reopened. “What do you mean? I didn’t come. I told you I won’t, didn’t I?”

His throat constricts, eyes lowering as the grip on the phone tightens, “Yeah, I know.” He hangs his head low.

You shrug it off with disinterest, your tone indifferent. “What’s up, anyway? What held you from coming?”

He hesitates, glancing down at the patches of bandages and stitches. He doesn’t try to explain. He doesn’t want you to know. What could he say to cover things up? He tries to avoid sounding suspicious with a lighthearted laugh, “It’s nothing.”

God, it sounded fake.

Your indifference rings through his mind over and over again. Did you really not care about him anymore? Did you really mean it when you said you weren’t going to go? A sharp stab in the heart each time the thought rings through him.

A pause.

“Okay. Well, it’s good that you weren’t able to go. I wasn’t there anyway.”

“Oh,” was all Jungwon could respond with, he was beginning to feel dizzy - overwhelmed and exhausted. A sharp buzz rang deaf through his ears.

The room started to spin as you continued through the call – unaware, “I’m not a fool, Jungwon,” you remind him. Was it really the end?

Has he finally lost you?

He doesn’t know what to say, but he couldn’t deny the fact that it hurt. Everything hurts. Fuck. A long pause, “I know.”

“Is that all? I’m gonna go now. I'm busy,” you harshly end things, not bothering to expant the conversation or on the details. You don’t push him. You don’t care.

The line went dead.

A piece of him along with it died too.

Jungwon sits at one of the emergency room’s beds alone and he realizes that the hospital could heal all his physical wounds and scars, but he doesn’t think the internal pain he’s feeling could be treated.

A nurse that was passing by finds him passed out, unconscious, and unresponsive only long minutes later.

A WEEK LATER

Initially, you had planned to keep away from Jungwon at all costs the moment classes started again. He could suffer all he needed.

But.

You don’t see Jungwon.

Not that you cared if he was around - it was a relief to you that you didn’t have to deal with him, but didn’t you .. deserve an explanation?

No.

That’s right. An explanation from Jungwon for ditching you was something you would never get. That hasn’t changed, and you were a fool for believing otherwise.

You repeatedly sneak glances by his desk - anywhere, for a sign of him. It was useless to ask anyone else. His friends? When had Jungwon ever tried talking to somebody that wasn’t you?

Not that you ever took notice, either.

It’s been a week.

Seconds tick by slowly, and lectures drag in what seems like hours. It comes to the point where you almost decide on texting his number and demanding where he was. It took every part of yourself to manage to not do so.

Your notifications remained empty this time.

No messages. No calls.

He’s gone again.

THREE WEEKS LATER [JUNGWON’S POV ]

With a fractured arm and multiple wounds and stitches, Jungwon had to opt to wait three weeks before he was able to attend classes again.

He only looks forward to seeing your face.

To explain everything to you.

He messed up again.

Maybe you were looking for him? It’s been three weeks, maybe you had wondered for a fraction where he went all of a sudden? Maybe you were worried? Maybe you were concerned? Or maybe you didn’t care? Maybe you were celebrating right now?

He flinches that the thought.

He spots you by the hallways after his hour long search around the campus. You barely looked bothered at all. That was fine, Jungwon reminded himself. He walks his way towards you with the gift he had bought you weeks prior, when the accident had happened. The gift he had protected with his life to save, and had held on for weeks to give to you. If he wasn’t going to explain things, he at least wanted to give you the gift he had picked for you.

He thinks you’d look pretty in it.

However, as soon as he tries to open his mouth to speak to you once he was close enough for you to hear him, you coldly ignore him entirely. You pack up your things once you hear the bell, ringing just in time for classes to start. You barely even spare him a single glance.

You walk past him like was invincible.

Like you couldn’t care any less of what happened to him.

It turns out, you were never worried at all.

That fucking him hurt more than being hit by a car a hundred times ever did.

[01:24 pm] yang jungwon: im sorry

[01:29 pm] yang jungwon: can we talk?

[read]

You blocked yang jungwon’s number that day.

[JUNGWON . . . ]

Seoyeon made you laugh.

It was unintentional, he guessed. But she made you laugh. In a way. Other’s might’ve called it a snort. It was a goofy side-comment he made when you expanded the instructions on the chapter needed to be finished. He felt himself destructing and freezing while his heart soared and ripped itself apart. He swore he was flying while being drowned six feet under at the same time.

As someone who spent his entire life on music, Yang Jungwon has heard many sounds. Various melodies and tunes, but none of them were like yours. He’s been walking around tone-deaf for the past few years because it was like he forgot the way your laugh sounded and the way it made him feel like he could do anything.

It was like you immediately regretted it - laughing with him in the room, and maybe his emotions were written all over his face because Jungwon was losing you all over again when you disclose your emotions off once again from him. Then he’s all but greeted with a cold face - an effect of the mess he caused.

He remembers the time where you were his to call, and now, you couldn’t even stand to look at him - or be in the same room as him. He remembers the time where you would look at him and the way your eyes would light up, and now, he looks at your eyes for a fraction of a second and they’re dead. Once vibrant and easy to read - now empty and desolate. Nobody is home. They’re emotionless for him.

Your eyes only tell lies now.

You’ll never be like the way you used to be again.

To think that he ruined it. That he ruined a smile that ran so deep and had so much meaning. A smile that was always for him. A soul that had so much love and kindness for him. He shattered that. That was because of him.

He remembers the time where receiving ‘I love you’s from you were everyday like routines to you, and he compares it with the flash irritation that would cross your face and the petty tone of anger he would get from you every time he tried talking to you.

You’ve changed.

He doesn’t know what those two years have done to you.

What he’s done to you.

Maybe he really messed it up. Maybe he should run and leave and never see you again so he would stop hurting you and fucking you up over and over again. Maybe he should let you move on and let you be happy with someone else. Maybe he should just stop hoping because the gods above know that they don’t trust him with you alone.

It was killing him.

Jungwon couldn’t do any of that.

Getting to see you every day - it was already much of a blessing compared to the two years in the shithole he went through without you, waking up to feel nothing but empty - if it’s not endlessly torturing and tormenting himself for putting you through what he had to.

But couldn’t Jungwon be a little selfish? Just this once? Couldn’t he ask for a little bit more?

If Jungwon could admit, he never wanted much, nor has he asked for much either. To say the truth, he doesn’t care about ninety percent of his life: fuck his gods be damned ‘career’, fuck air and water and happiness and money.

Yang Jungwon was someone that had no interest in the world. He never really got to care about anything. But you. He met you. You were his first. You were all he cared about. You were all that really mattered.

And that was his world.

You were his world.

It’s been two years since he lost you - since he let you go for good, and that was worse than dying. Each moment was as if it was meant to come back at him and break his soul - or whatever’s left of it. All Yang Jungwon gives a damn about is you.

He was damn well still in love with you, and he was never getting you back.

He’s lost you.

And the separating distance between the both of you proves it better than anything.

[ now playing ◃◃ ⅠⅠ ▹▹ hold me while you wait by lewis capaldi ]

↻ … ᶠˡᵃˢʰᵇᵃᶜᵏ

THE TWISTING POINT

Jungwon wasn’t in a good mood today.

It was most likely because of work, so you didn’t want to question or pressure him into dwelling into it any further. You stayed smiling, knowing that whenever you were down, Jungwon knew exactly what to do. He needed sunshine.

You hear glass shatter, and loud clanging accompanied with it. You sprang upwards, racing to Jungwon’s aid to check yourself if he was hurt.

As you stared at the mess created, and the person who seemingly intentionally created the mess, you only stood by the doorway.

You knew him, he wasn’t the type to let his anger consume and get the best of him, nor was he the type to physically express his anger. Especially around you. Jungwon loved the idea of you seeing him as a laid-back unique oddball, and you’ve rarely ever seen him irritated or angry. You’ve never seen him like this, however.

You remained silent; your gaze downcast. Whatever happened in the studio today must have been seriously rough enough to affect him into a state like this.

The room is too silent. “Won?” He loves being called that name; he’s told you. It gets him erupting with happiness in no time, but why isn’t it working now?

Why does Jungwon’s eyes look so empty?

“Can you leave?” he asks you when you try to help clean up the broken shards of glass, finally uttering a word after the first time you’ve seen him today.

“I don’t need you here right now.”

Jungwon sees the way you freeze. The way confusion flashes over your face. The way your hopeful and gentle eyes crack by a fraction.

Jungwon sees it all.

You purse your lip in hesitation, worried, but you follow his request with a nod nonetheless as you quietly slip out of the room. I’m always here for you if you need me.

Jungwon feels nothing but emptiness.

“Jungwon, you’ve missed two meals.”

He’s stuck in his music room. Again. Your lips pull into a forming frown at his state, placing the plate of food that you’ve organized for him at a table nearest to you.

He only gives you a glance before his attention is back at his music, “I’m kind of busy here,” he blandly reminds you the obvious, and you feel yourself mentally deflate, a bit.

A pause. You sucked in a breath. “I know, but you shouldn’t skip meals, okay? Take some rests,” you keep your voice gentle, hopeful.

He barely gives a grunt in reply.

Why didn’t you see that he didn’t want you anymore then?

You swallow, trying in another attempt, “Um, do you need any help in -” Jungwon swivels his chair abruptly, turning completely at you. It’s the first time you see him look at you in a while, “No,” the look in his eyes is something you’d never forget, “I’m fine, Y/N.” And when he turns his back on you, you feel a jab in the gut.

Ah.

You get the message.

You weren’t wanted around.

“Okay, I’ll uhh … I’ll …” you don’t finish your sentence, merely signaling that you were going to leave, but well aware that Jungwon was already back facing his screen. You don’t think he notices. You don’t think he ever notices anything at all.

No response. Not even a glance your way.

You felt so lonely.

Jungwon was going out again, as he’s all done for the past week.

Maybe you were overthinking all of this, but you felt as if he was doing whatever it took to avoid you. To avoid looking at you. To avoid talking to you. To avoid spending time with you. Of course, it was all in your head.

He would never hurt you like that, Jungwon was just busy. He was just going through things. He had it rough, you should be considerate.

It was just you alone most of the time, and you started to wonder if he was doing fine. If he needed you, at all.

“Jungwon?”

He turns to you, his body almost out of the door. “Are you okay?” you gently ask him.

He blinks. “I’m fine,” he replies after a pause.

You wanted to help him, whatever he was going through. You wanted to go through it with him together — you wanted to be there for him. “You don’t seem fine,” you try to start, “Jungwon, I’m here for you, you can talk to me if you—”

An exasperated sound of displeasure cuts you off, like a tether piecing everything together that snaps. “Can’t you do anything else other than bother me?” he waves you off, slamming the door in visible distress. He leaves you like that, and he doesn’t have to say anything else to make the wound hurt all the more.

The words left unsaid were enough.

He doesn’t come back the next day.

You wished he’d have told you how he loved you before he left, even if he didn’t mean it.

The air was cold. You know that it was not because of the weather.

Your mind wanders.

Sometimes you consider the fact that there could be someone else.

You wonder where everything started to change, and somedays, the thoughts get heavy and immensely difficult for you to carry. Sometimes they hurt too much to think about. You can’t help but wonder where your love lacked for him, in where you gave him everything. Even if it costed more than you could afford, it was worth it. But was it not for him? Was it not anymore?

It’s hard to fight what was fated.

But you would’ve still ruined yourself to fix him.

Even if there was another person, you think, you just wished he told you - so you would stop foolishly hoping and trying to convince yourself that this was all a sick phase of his that would eventually pass. So, you would stop foolishly assuming that there was ‘together’ and ‘forever’ for the both of you. You wouldn’t insist on it anymore, if that’s what made him happy. Watching him torture himself like that and choosing not to say anything to you was more painful than anything else.

You knew you were not the one in his heart.

This was all going to pass, right?

Jungwon, talk to me.

Jungwon can make it better.

He always has. You could never remember a time where he didn’t come to swoop in and save your day.

Was this the timing in where you realize that things were permanently going to change?

A simple month changes you a lot.

You believed, but you were slowly losing the light.

You gave so many signs.

So many warning signs.

He walked past every single one of them.

You couldn’t be the only one fighting for something that was already gone. Something that was thrown away and given up on. Because you have been, for as long as you can, and you don’t know if you can still continue to allow yourself to put yourself through it - because you don’t know if you can take it. Even if it was just one last time.

But still, you were willing to offer him anything he wanted the moment he needed it. You were ready to run to his side even if it killed you. Waste my time, waste it all.

The painful fake smiles, and pretending if everything was perfectly fine, as if you were okay, and the desperate pair of eyes that he always seemed to ignore.

You don’t know when it would stop.

You could only wish he would stay a bit longer to savor before he was going to make it hurt for you.

You felt the fatigue, then.

It’ll get better soon.

THE BREAKING POINT

It was all about him.

You don’t know if you could take this any longer.

“Jungwon?” you called out to him - through the empty house, “I’m tired.” Faintly.

You were washing the dishes after immediately arriving home from your part-time job. No time for giving yourself a rest, or for catching up on the upcoming exam the next day. It was eleven o’clock at night. You heard the door slam, and you knew Jungwon was home.

He could mope around and throw things around. He was entitled to treat you harshly because he was going through a rough time. He could do absolutely nothing. That was how everything worked.

But you couldn’t. You couldn’t cry. You couldn’t pause and rest. You weren’t entitled to feel angry or irritated because you weren’t going through whatever he was going through. You had to take care of him, and you had to endure getting treated that way our you could leave and walk through the door.

The shuffling of footsteps stops. You don’t move. You leave the faucet water running, eyes staring distantly - somewhere. But you don’t look over at him. You know that the courage that you’ve spent months trying to build up would come crashing down the moment you do.

There is no noise, only the running of the water. You know he’s listening.

“I can’t do it anymore,” you bat an eye, and your shoulders ease up a little. There is a certain stillness in the air.

“I feel like I’m just wasting my life in this relationship,” you’ve thought about this. You’ve tried to shrug the feeling off, but you wanted to know if you wanted to fight for him too. “I’m always looking stupid. I’m always left behind,” Isn’t it exhausting for you too, Jungwon?

Nothing. Silence. No response.

He wasn’t pushing you.

He wasn’t begging you to stay, like he always did.

He wasn’t going to even just try to change your mind.

He’s letting you go.

That infuriates you further, and you hate that he’s making you feel like you’re being too unreasonable without having to say anything. You hate the words he’s saying to you without even him having to open his mouth. Silence is all you’ve been receiving, hasn’t it? It’s always turning his back. It’s always the cold shoulder, whatever he had to say - he wouldn’t say it. It’s always been that way. Itwas always you that had to adjust.

You hated this.

You hated this so much.

It was him leaving you alone to your degrading thoughts that would break you more than he ever can, “It’s all about you. It’s all just about your sufferings, isn’t it? It’s all just yours!”

Why wasn’t he stopping you?

Why wasn’t he trying to fix this?

You wanted him to explain himself and assure you that everything was going to be okay. You wanted to work this out. Good God, you did. More than anything. But what happened to the day when you missed the most important exams for him just because he was too in his head to take care of himself? Where was he? What was he doing? Where was he when you were called to the school’s office because you were nearly falling off school? Where was he when you cried countlessly from overwhelming stress because of that?

Where was he when you were pacing back and forth at four in the morning without a wink of sleep, waiting for him to come back home and wondering to the heavens what the hell had happened to him? Where was he when you felt so isolated and alone? Where was he when your parents turned your back on you for you giving up everything for a boy who already seemed to have given up on you? Where was he to fight for you? Where was he to look you in the eye and give you a reason to keep fighting - to stay?

Jungwon was going through shit. That was something you understood. Something you wished he never went through, something you know he doesn’t deserve. And you were there for him. Every step of the way. But that didn’t mean that you had it all easy, either - did it? Didn’t he know? Or did he just not care?

You wanted to work this out. But … did he?

Soft, too soft. You could barely hear. “So desperate,” it was murmured. A pause, a shift in movement, and he was gone.

He was gone. He walked away. Like it meant nothing to him.

It stays, lingering. But he leaves.

You can’t believe him.

So monotone.

So emotionless.

Like it doesn’t mean anything.

He breaks you.

You crack open.

He doesn’t say anything else. He doesn’t fight for you. He doesn’t feel anything for you. He doesn’t find a reason to stay.

He finds a reason to leave.

That was it. And you weren’t even sure if he said it. Maybe it was a flicker of your imagination. Maybe you were going insane, was what it was. Did he leave?

He couldn’t have.

It was the end.

End.

The end of the both of you.

After that end, there was … nothing.

It was the end?

Your weight leans against the counter table in support, breathing heavily. Your heartbeat racing, your mind processing. A minute passes by, and you still stand frozen.

No. The stillness was too much to handle, you needed Jungwon, even if the only words he was ever going to say to you would hurt. You stumbled, rushing after the door as you tried calling after him. You didn’t want him to go. You couldn’t let him, you won’t give up on him. You needed him there. You were tired, and you needed Jungwon.

“Jungwon.” Where was he off to the moment you finally told him how you were feeling? Was it a mistake? Should you have stayed quiet instead?

“I didn’t mean what I said, come back and we’ll talk this out,” you called after him. You would take it all back.

He was gone.

You turned, and you turned, and you hoped. Nothing. Pitch black. Darkness.

“Jungwon?” you were crying now, crumbling a little. “Jungwon, I’m sorry, please come back, please.” you begged. And you kept calling him, until even the gods above could hear you. But where was he? No, he was going to come back for you. He was.

He was going to explain that he was sorry and that he never meant to hurt you. He was going to pop up right next to you like he always used it. He was going to smile at you with a cheeky grin and make fun of how you fell for his sick joke. He was going to give you a reason to stay and you were going to be okay.

“I didn’t mean it, I’m sorry,” you shouted after him, numbly trying to follow his footsteps that weren’t there. Footsteps that were erased. The footsteps of someone who promised he’d never leave your side. It was pathetic. Your desperation was pathetic.

Where did he go? Which way did he go? Please show up. Please. Please.

You shivered at the cold. Why was it raining so hard? You could barely see a thing. It was too dark. Not a single light in sight. You didn’t even realize it was raining. But it didn’t matter. You wouldn’t go home until Jungwon was back. And safe. Everything will be okay.

Moments pass and you don’t know if it took hours. Jungwon wasn’t there and you were losing him the way you were losing yourself. “Please,” your voice came out a whisper as your legs gave up on you, falling into your knees, “come back to me,” your body shakes, and that was the end.

All you were left with was the memories.

The both of you were nothing but memories now.

Ended because of happenstance.

He was still gone the next day.

And the next.

And the next after the next.

And the week after.

And the month after.

And after that.

You waited.

He promised.

You believed.

Ah.

You felt it, then.

The light you held onto exhaled and took its last breath.

Expired.

When things are expired - when things pass its due date, no matter how much big of a waste it is, or how much you were looking forward for it; you can only throw it away.

Because your relationship wasn’t the only thing gone and lost to disappear that day. It wasn’t only him - or it wasn’t the one thing you cared most about. It was you. You came along with it. You; a simple crumpled worn-out paper thrown away. A rough draft. Scrapped and forgotten.

He wasn’t coming back.

… ᵉⁿᵈ ᶠˡᵃˢʰᵇᵃᶜᵏ ↺

[ now playing ◃◃ ⅠⅠ ▹▹ skin by sabrina carpenter ]

PRESENT TIME, THE FOLLOWING DAY

The group was chatting with each other as usual. You were with Ningning and Seoyeon, catching up with the latest most random topics while you were making it a point to ignore Jungwon’s longing stare. Until Jake Sim takes a glance his way and points out of nowhere, “What happened to your arm?”

He immediately replies, “Nothing.”

When you sneak a glance over at Jungwon’s arm, he catches you and straight away tucks his arm away from your side’s view as casually as possible. Why did he have bandages? Your brows furrowed at him, skeptically surveying him.

What was he hiding this time?

It was in the middle of individual study period when Ningning queries out of nowhere, “Y/N, Is Jungwon trying to win you back?”

A few glances your way at the sudden uplifting noise through the quiet room.

You almost choke. You wish you did. “What?” Loudly whispering, you snap your head over her direction, eyes blazing down at her incredulously.

“He isn’t?” Seoyeon pipes in, questioning incredulously, all the more surprised than you. The both of them were never going to let her newfound discovery of exes that were quote “fated back together” end quote. You stare blankly at the both of them, unamused.

She shrugs innocently. “He looks like it,” she answers her own query and peeks over his way. Explaining, she heaves a casual exhale, “He keeps looking over at you every five seconds with those starry hopeful eyes as if you’d change your mind.”

Your face hardens at the mention of it. You hadn’t told what happened between you and Jungwon to anyone. Once both Seoyeon and Ningning had asked for the details of what happened, you simply brushed it off, not wanting to talk about it. They had assumed something went wrong.

Whatever Seoyeon had in mind to be out of a romantic film - this wasn’t the case. You had no idea what he was up to, but it was most probably something that would put up some entertainment to aid his boredom before he fleets away again.

She playfully nudged you with the edge of her elbow, “So, what made you dump him?”

She laughed. Loud. She was talking quite too casually that you speculated Jungwon could hear the conversation. His head was bowed, supposedly reading. You couldn’t read his facial features. You don’t want to.

“Poor dude, he looks like he’s had it rough.” Of course, everyone would assume it was Jungwon who was dumped. That it was him who was hurting. That it was him who got the mistreatment. You were the bad guy. In the end it’s your fault.

A chill runs down your spine. You dumped him? You almost laugh aloud in sarcasm, but it comes out as a snort. Waving her off teasingly, you motion the both of them to shoo away, “Shove off.”

Seoyeon gives a toothy beam before scribbling something down her notebook, Ningning peeks over to read it and giggles. You barely catch a glimpse of it.

‘Where there is anger, there is always pain underneath.’

LATER, AT THE LIBRARY

Another day. That meant another meeting with both Jungwon and Seoyeon in the library. After long hours, the group meeting was finished. All there was left to do was to submit the chapter’s draft for corrections to the professor; it had been decided already that Seoyeon and Jungwon were to do it.

You were leisurely taking your time packing up your stuff when Seoyeon hurriedly scurries out on her way to exit the library. “Hey, Jungwon, I’m really busy today, so I can’t accompany you to pass the papers. I just realized I have soccer practice,” she forms her lips into a pout, faking a thought. It occurs to you then that Seoyeon doesn’t have varsity.

Your eyes narrow at where this was going. “What about ask Y/N to do it? She has nothing to do anyway!” she winks, lightheartedly hitting Jungwon’s arm. He was taken aback, looking confused and somewhat lost himself, but having no choice left other than nodding, he agrees. “Uh . . . sure.”

Seoyeon turns your way and wiggles her eyebrows suggestively at you as soon as Jungwon had himself distracted with the papers in the meantime, giving you a thumbs up as if to say ‘you can do this!’ before slipping out of the room - faster before you could protest.

You scowled darkly, clenching down your jaw. If looks could kill. That girl.

On the other hand, Jungwon continues to arrange the pile of papers with a shuffle before quietly handing them to you, he then started on packing up his things. It was suffocating. Would leaving the room make it seem like you lost this nonexistent battle between the both of you?

He cuts you out of your trance of thoughts, “You were there that day at the tower, weren’t you?” he asks you out of the blue. He doesn’t even look your way as he stuffs a few books in his bag, and he doesn’t have to give context for you to know what he was referring to. not a look of uncertainty was evident in his eyes, “I know you were.”

Anger starts to boil inside. You have to remind yourself that this is what he wanted. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” you casually dismissed.

He inwardly huffs out a breath. “Was it tough for you?” he changes the topic, and you swear it was only a matter of time before he gives you the biggest whiplash.

You were raging with endless anger and fury, yet you keep your face was void of any emotions – standing in front of him as his form blocked your path, stressing you even further. You gripped the strap of your backpack tightly, “Move out of my way, Jungwon.”

“Answer me, first.” he pleads with you. “Was it tough for you, then?”

He doesn’t budge and stubbornly remains rooted to his spot.

You grit your teeth, ripping apart your poorly concealed anger bit by bit. Jungwon didn’t care. He wanted you to feel emotion. Any emotion. Even if it was blinding rage. To scream at him and punch the living lights out of him. It was better than receiving your blank emotionless stare all the time. He couldn’t take it.

He was definitely testing your patience carelessly. Was it tough for you? You laughed humorlessly. A stab to his gut. A knife filled with poison. “I don’t know what you want, but let’s be mature people here. You do whatever hell you’ve been doing the last two years, and I’ll continue do the same. Okay?” you spoke, your tone hostile. You take the folder placed beside him before leaving him there, disinterested.

It wasn’t as simple for you as it has been for him to simply walk the relationship off down the drain.

Not when he promised the world.

Not when you believed him.

Not when he was standing there right in front of you acting as if he didn’t know anything about the shit you had to go through without him. As if he was just innocent. As if he had nothing to do with it. As if he cared. And especially not when he was the one who put you there and left in the first place.

This is what had become of the both of you. Jungwon and you. Worse than strangers, haunted by what’s left of something that was long gone.

All he had to do then was apologize. Actually, he just had to come back, and you would do the apologizing for him. You were always the one who gave in, in the end, anyway.

You would’ve accepted him.

You would’ve even begged for him.

The things you would have done.

None of this would’ve happened.

But.

None of that would work now.

None of that mattered.

It was all too late.

The both of you were just so different now.

LATER

Riki was confusing, truly.

“Didn’t you make fun of me two years ago about how much of a dumbass I was?” you rolled your eyes incredulously at Riki picking at you to how rude you were being to Jungwon, “You hated him, what’s with the change of attitude?” you snort.

Riki shifts his weight, fixing the strap of his bag, “You were a dumbass,” he agrees, pulling a face at you, “and I still hate that guy,” he continues, his expression turning sour at the thought of him, but pauses.

“But you were happy,” he looks over at you deliberately.

A happy dumbass. You could cringe, that was the old you. The desperate old you. Long gone.

You were most definitely not having it, your facial expression hard. “Did you have a head trauma or something? A fever? Are you forgetting the past two years?” you press the back of your hand to his forehead, checking his temperature and warmth for dramatic effect.

He pushes your hand away, “I’m just saying,” he starts, talking to you as if you were a child, “he left, but he’s back, isn’t he?” he throws his hands around for emphasis.

Then he shrugs, like he doesn’t know any better either, “He’s gotta be back for a reason.”

You don’t care. You don’t care what reason he’s back, or whatever he wants from you. “He can’t just come and go as he pleases, idiot,” you forcefully shrug it off, grumbling. “that jerk made his decision that day. He made his bed and now he has to lie in it.”

And Riki gives up on how stubborn you are, “You really do hold grudges, don’t you?” he ruffles your hair up, amused.

Strangling a sound, you kick the back of his leg, but he dodges.

Oops, your eyes slightly widen, anticipating a fall. You lose your balance, nearly tripping - but luckily, Riki notices within a half of a second and catches you before your face plants flat on the ground, hoisting you back to his chest by the grip on your waist.

You were going to laugh at your mistake, your face already breaking into a smile - but your eyes catch someone a few feet away.

You blink. Your smile slowly starts to drop at the sight of him.

Of course, it had to be Yang Jungwon.

For a split second, your shock doesn’t allow your eyes to leave his.

Riki snaps you out of it, releasing you from his grasp and guides you to his side as he slings his arm around your shoulder - like he always does. You’re sure Riki knew well enough and had an idea of how Jungwon looked like. He recognized him straight from the café, and you never questioned how he knew. How were you going to walk out of this one?

Riki doesn’t look at you in confirmation - you have no idea what shit he’s going to pull, but you’re sure as hell it isn’t going to be good.

He nods once in acknowledgement over at Jungwon, but Jungwon pays no mind and choses to ignore him as his eyes flicker onto the arm around you.

Riki notices it.

You don’t know what to do.

“Hey, I’m Riki,” he starts - and for some crazy reason, he sounds as if he was gloating, “who are you?” he throws back casually. Too casually. You would be irritated to talk to him, if you were in his place. The dislike in Jungwon’s features is evident enough. You don’t know what Riki was playing, but he extends his hand out for Jungwon to bro-shake, whatever that could even signify.

A long pause. Jungwon barely glances at it before his attention is back on you, ignoring him beside you as a whole.

“Why are you with him?” he tries to casually question you - as if he was trying to create small talk - his voice is calm - but Jungwon’s eyes never lie. He could never hide anything from it. You knew that look, and you didn’t like it. It made your blood boil. The guts of this self-centered arrogant asshole.

Riki answers in your stead, knowing that you wouldn’t be able to answer. He laughs, throwing his head back a bit, “Oh, don’t mind us,” he curtly replies, “my girl over here ‘s just really clumsy.”

You forgot how much of on asshole Nishimura Riki really is.

Riki effortlessly sighs, openheartedly shrugging as if to say ‘what-can-you-do?’. It was friendly, but you understood the underlying meaning. He was testing him. Picking at him. Provoking him. You wanted to facepalm. Provoking was the only thing he was ever good at, why did you even bother? What was this, some fighting-for-the-alpha-spot werewolf shit?

Nishimura Riki, you asshole!

Jungwon understands the message. A muscle up on his clenched cheek twitches, his eyes slightly narrow. Was he threatened already? You were in a state of disbelief, Riki was barely even doing anything. Seriously. He never changes.

“Why are you with him?” he asks you again, this time his voice comes out somewhat strained in the end. The old Jungwon would’ve probably started a fight right then and there, lacking any sort of composure. Jungwon changed, hasn’t he?

But you have, too.

Riki peeks at you, “Babe? Do you know him?” Confused. Curious. Innocent.

You had to give it to him. Riki was an amazing actor, he could’ve fooled you if you didn’t know any better yourself.

You merely glance at Jungwon, barely a pause before you answer, “No.”

No hesitation in your tone. A ‘no’ as if he was simply a stranger standing before you. Nothing. You observe how your answer hits Jungwon. How the simple word destructs him. You could only watch. Everything was different now. This is what you wanted, wasn’t it?

But where was the sense of satisfaction?

You tug at Riki’s arm, “Let’s go, you promised me to bring me home today.”

You leave Jungwon like that. You leave him with the uncomfortable feeling that was bubbling up. Riki is surprised. And confused. You don’t know if he’s still continuing the act when he affectionately waves Jungwon goodbye before immediately following after you.

Yang Jungwon strikes again.

You whacked Riki at the back of his head the moment you were as far from the gods-be-damned-scene and as far from Jungwon as possible, “Idiot!” you hissed, “What the hell was that?”

He rubs the back of his neck soothingly, glaring at you. “You know, just a little ‘thank you’ would suffice.”

“’Thank you’, my ass! I told you to not pull any stupid shit!” You threaten to hit him again, vexed at the stunt he pulled. The situation was only going to get worse from there and you couldn’t take back anything at this point. You retreated your arm, groaning in horror of what’s to come.

“The moment called for it!” was his only excuse.

You scowled at him, as if your eyes could annihilate him at the spot.

You got Jungwon, you had to admit. A few more of these blows and he would leave your sights. This was a bad idea, but your mind didn’t seem to pay any care.

Hurt him.

Right then and there, your ego allows Riki to participate in whatever crazy-sick game this was. You just needed Jungwon far away.

Riki smirks at you and flashes you a winning smile. He knows you’ve agreed to his idea without having to say anything else. You had no other option, either way.

“You won’t regret this, ___. It’ll be fun!” he singsongs, draping his arm around you.

It’ll be fun, you echoed.

You’ve been lying to yourself for two years, what’s a couple days more to you?

THE NEXT DAY

Jungwon finds you asleep, leaning your head on the desk with your cheek pressed up against the table.

And Nishimura Riki was by your side, reading gleefully. Mostly watching you sleep. A fucking weirdo, Jungwon inwardly comments. His stomach turns at the sight. His mood has already dried.

He stands there for what seems like a torture of infinity before Riki sees him there. He just grins at him. Jungwon would want to do nothing more but throttle him and that shit-eating look off his face.

“Here for the thesis paper?” was all he asks, he starts collecting himself and his things, preparing to leave, thankfully, Jungwon praises.

But when Riki decides to act like the biggest fucker to piss him off all the more when he leans in to gently tuck back the hair covering your face as as you sleep, Jungwon defensively takes a step forward to you by instinct, ready with a handful of swear words.

Riki notices it, and only press his index finger on his lips, indicating to keep his voice down. Jungwon’s jaw slightly ticks as he stays in place - not risking your sleep.

He pats Jungwon’s shoulder on his way out, but he stops by the door. He motions him closer, as if he were to tell him something hugely important. Jungwon presses his lips into a thin line, walking up to him and trying to keep it as civil as possible.

He holds up a finger, as if to gesture ‘and-one-more-thing’, “Oh, and tell her to keep the hoodie she’s wearing, will you?”

Jungwon raises both brows in question, and instantly regrets it.

Riki further explains himself, "She likes stealing them from me. God knows she has a whole rack of them on her closet.” He shrugs, a growing smirk on his face. “But eh, I like it on her, it suits her better.”

That little shit.

He was about to give him a phony nod and thumbs up to let the whole agitating conversation over with when Riki presses his luck even further, “She’s pretty.”

God. Jungwon’s patience was running thin, his jaw flexes.

“Oh, and tell her -”

Jungwon nearly slams the door on his face.

He wondered what you saw in that guy.

Walking back with his hands stuffed in his pockets - something he does when he was definitely pissed off, he yanks a chair, face displaying irritation at its finest when he arrives back at your table. He doesn’t bother to spare you a glance your way, he knows you too well.

“I know you’re awake,” he says out of nowhere, his voice tight. “Stop pretending.”

It takes several moments before you start faking a yawn. You could easily fool anyone, but sadly for you, he knows you too well. His glance is blank as you outstretch your arms as if you had just woke up, you greet him as if you hadn’t expected to see him there, “Oh . . hey.”

Jungwon had already looked sour from his encounter with Riki, his pissed off gaze averts away from yours. A muscle from his jaw ticks as he huffs, “Your boyfriend left.”

You nod, blinking as if you were slowly trying to register everything. Jungwon wanted to ask you a flood of questions: what was he doing here? Were you already awake when he was being a creep and staring at you while you were ‘asleep’? Why are you wearing his hoodie -? “Okay.”

That aggravates him even more, and his tone turns curt and strained. “I’m going to work on the thesis. You do whatever.” he dismisses you, heaving a short breath.

He stalks off, but not before grimacing at your outfit up and down - more than fumingly horrified, spitting out through gritted teeth, “And take off that hoodie. It looks horrible on you.”

THE WEEK AFTER

You wake up in Monday morning with aching pins and needles, not being able to move an inch of your body. Your eyelids were too heavy to keep open, weighing tons of your effort.

Of all days, you were sick.

Lord.

Releasing a cough, your hand reaches for your ringing phone. Riki, the contact label name displayed. You try to clear your throat as you answer the call, in effort to not sound as sick as possible. “Hello?” your groggy and hoarse voice could be depicted from miles away by a total stranger. Much less Nishimura Riki.

“Princess?” His voice answers through the call, perceptibly worried, “what’s wrong? You sound . . . off today.” You could tell he was squinting as he said this.

“Uh. . .” you sniffed, trying to come up of a lie, “just watched a sad film. Cried a lot.”

Riki hums, giving no humor in his voice. “Mhm. And that’s why you’re late four hours to class?”

Your stomach lurches. You were what? You had classes today, and you didn’t even remember. Were you missing on anything important in university today? Shit.

Racing for the most reasonable excuse, “I wanted to . . . enjoy a day off?” Bad liar. You were nothing but a bad liar. You were too exhausted to create a better and more creative lie.

Riki, being way too observant on things he shouldn’t be, clearly wasn’t buying it. He clicks his tongue. “I’m coming over. Don’t go anywhere. Stay in bed,” he orders you shortly before ending the call. He doesn’t scold you or lecture you, and he leaves it at that.

You moan at the surge of pain once again located in your stomach, you had no plans of leaving the bed even if you wanted to anyway, given your current state.

Riki texts you that he was outside around less than ten minutes later.

If you could complain, you’d rather have Riki come in your room to help you up. Like he always did. You found him not doing so rather odd, as he would always make the weirdest reasons to come drop by your house. Moving the slightest inch was hard as it already was.

It takes you what seems like hours for you to get out of bed, and even more for you to bag your bag and head outside. You were ready to grumble about how efficient and less painful this would’ve been if Riki had come to help you until more than one figure greets you outside your yard.

Riki and . . . hands stuffed to his pockets, head bowed - you know that side profile -Yang Jungwon?

Both stayed at opposite ends, standing in front of their cars, awaiting for you with the hardest glares sent the other’s way. What was happening? Jungwon was most likely the reason Riki wasn’t able to go inside your house to pick you up. That was the only factor that made sense - the rest was something you couldn’t connect the dots of.

Both their cars parked out of your house, and you could feel the tension slicing you in half the moment you step foot outside. These two could never stay in the same room, sticking around to wait for you was strictly meant for you.

Jungwon is the first to break the glaring match as soon as he sees you, being the first to approach you while gently holding you up.

“Love, are you okay? Let me bring you to the hospital - come on,” he pleads with you, gesturing towards his car.

“This isn’t the time to joke about something like this in her state,” Riki forces a fake smile through his gritted teeth, irritated as he sneaks his arm around your waist, holding you up himself all the better with a single hand, “just so you know.”

Jungwon’s gaze darkens, “It isn’t about fighting for who gets her, just so you know,” he mimics, “I don’t trust her with you, you dipshit.”

Riki scoffs to himself, shifting his weight as he continues to press you tightly against him, not budging an inch of you to Jungwon, “And look who came to talk.”

Jungwon opens his mouth, his eyes ruthlessly set on Riki’s before you try and weakly cut in from your lack of energy. However, your weak knees give up on you and you almost stumble down, not before both Jungwon and Riki reaches out their hand to grab your arm within half a second. Riki half-yells your name, all the more uneasy and concerned than you were.

“Y/N? Love? Are you okay?” Jungwon’s hostile tone towards Riki not seconds ago immediately dissipates, conveying his tone of worry and panic at your weak state.

“I’ll drive you to the hospital,” Jungwon additionally suggests, trying to have you lean his weight on him for you to stand property, and in that way he could easily carry you back to his car.

“Hell no,” Riki growls, in the other hand.

You notice Jungwon’s eyes darken at the corner of your eye, “And who exactly are you to her to begin with-?”

“Her boyfriend, nice to meet you, you dipshit,” Riki retorts.

Jungwon lets out a low noise, pissed off at a topic that was seemingly sensitive to him. “Over my dead body would you ever be her boyfriend.”

He rolls his eyes in disinterest. “Still going through the stages of grief? Is this the denial stage?” he taunts, clicking his tongue with a tsk.

“Bo,” Jungwon calls you - candidly ignoring Riki’s shitty statements, but his sharp eyes never leave Riki’s, “let’s get this over with and tell us who would you want to -”

This was getting too prolonged, you were so close to vomiting again. You definitely did not want to vomit here of all places. “Riki,” you called out faintly, interrupting Jungwon, “please take me to the hospital.”

All parts of your body ached painfully, and you were too miserably ill to deal with this situation. You imagine Jungwon’s expression crumbling, deflating.

Riki straightens, visibly surprised, but he doesn’t hesitate. Not before giving Jungwon a final look, he carries you with you gently, making sure you were watching your step as the both of you left the defeated Jungwon without another word.

You were too weak to look back at Jungwon – he helplessly stares after the sight of his girl - his girl - being taken away from him when she needed help the most.

Again.

You spend three days in the hospital for a diagnosed viral infection.

Thankfully but not surprisingly, Riki stayed by your side through every minute, only leaving for a shower, buying take-out, and for getting you new packs of clothes. It was Ningning and Seoyeon who came over to take care of you during Riki’s leave.

He sticked around from the moment you were submitted, to the insertion of the IV, through your countless trips to the bathroom to puke and for him to hold your hair back, and through your dischargement.

The both of you were on your way to the car to load your things. Riki had all of his hands filled. “Oh yeah, I almost forgot, thanks for the wanton noodles,” you mention immediately as soon as you remembered, “How d’you know they were my favorite?” You don’t recall ever brining it up to Riki.

Instead of bursting up his signature winning smirk, Riki furrows his brows at you, “Wanton noodles? What wanton noodles?”

You perked up a brow, “The one you left by the door earlier when you were paying the discharge bills?”

Riki had nothing. He blinks at you as if you had been hallucinating. “Why would I leave food by the door?” he shakes his head, “Doll, what in the hell are you talking about?”

“The wanton noodles that you –“ You stop mid-sentence, freezing. Realization dawns on you then. The note, you recall as you piece things back together.

Stop skipping meals. I got you your favorite. I’m sorry I wasn’t there when you needed me.

Yang Jungwon.

There was no name from who it was from, you had simply assumed it was from Riki. This wasn’t your first time realizing that Jungwon had never dropped by, you had simply figured he didn’t care. Your stomach sinks, ‘I’m sorry I wasn’t there when you needed me’. The double implications.

Riki waves his hand in front of your face, “Earth to princess? Hello?”

Ah. Right. You blink, shaking your head – you meet his eyes with a smile, “Nothing. I just thought I remembered something.”

WEEKS LATER

Jungwon was a lot quieter than usual ever since you’d been discharged.

Since . . . the night he and Riki were there. You slightly wince at the memory.

You almost managed to successfully spend a thesis discussion with him without having to say much - to your great pleasure - until he just had to ruin it for you. He was filling in his part for the thesis paper while you were scanning through the pages of the book you were reading, skipping to the ending.

“Hey,” he starts, humor laced in his voice. “D’you still read the endings of books like you used to? I remember –“

Your head snaps up. You don’t smile. You don’t flush red in embarrassment. You don’t laugh like the way he’d expected you to. The way you always did. You stared harshly down to his eyes. It wasn’t the heart-fluttering kind - nor was it the passionate or the fierce or the loving kind of stare. No, it was a heart-piercing glare - so full of pure hatred, the kind that had his breath hitching up his throat in the worst way possible and his heart sinking into your stomach.

“Don’t.”

Ah.

No double meanings. Nothing else. The essence couldn’t be taken as a mere mistakable, conveyed with just one simple word that held the heaviest weight, yet it was enough for him to understand. He doesn't try to catch himself or his smile as it fades - along with the antagonizing agony that accompanied it.

The light in your eyes has gone.

They were so dark.

It doesn’t shine the way it used to.

He opens his mouth to say something, but nothing comes out. He struggles. It takes him two more tries. Two more times of you opening and closing his mouth for him to finally unknot his tongue and drag the words to the surface.

“You have a …” he hesitates to say it, “boyfriend?”

It was so close. A few seconds until you would leave, and he just could wait. Stuffing your university belongings back into your bag, you exhaled, your lips tightening into a hard line. “What is it to you?”

A second or two passes, “Oh,” he replies, “I didn’t know, so -”

“What difference does it make?” you rhetorically question him, your patience running thin, “if you didn’t know or if you did?” You were being absurd - you knew that, but you wanted anything but the idea of having to talk about that subject with him and act like it was fine.

Being snappy at him wasn’t the greatest idea, but you know Jungwon was trying to get at somewhere. You would do whatever it took to defy him. That quiets him down, only forcing a painful nod.

You needed to leave. You couldn’t stay away from him, especially whenever he was near. God knows only a few words from Jungwon would be all it would take for him to manipulate you back into his strings.

Painful silence.

Until, “Does he make you happy?”

You find yourself freezing.

A sick feeling in your stomach.

Does he make you happy?

Happy.

Why was he asking the question like he meant it?

Your eyes flicker his way, and there is no hint of humor or taunting mock in his face. Was he serious? The man who broke you to pieces and disregarded you stood before you and asked if another man was making you happy, as if he cared. As if he ever did.

You don’t say anything.

You don’t have anything to say.

Jungwon knows that.

You try to breathe.

One.

Two.

Three.

You walk away, and he lets you. You walk away because walking away was the only thing you’ve ever done. Because walking away was the only thing you could ever do around him. Because you can’t risk another goodbye from him.

You were done gnawing back at the past.

[ now playing ◃◃ ⅠⅠ ▹▹ spring day by bts ]

↻ … ᶠˡᵃˢʰᵇᵃᶜᵏ

AFTER THE BREAK-UP

And the both of you became back to being nothing.

Just like that.

You told him your secrets, and you let him in. All the good, all the bad. You trusted him and brought down your defenses. You let him know your weird thoughts or funny inside jokes and the deep insecurities.

But he never got to know the little things, you realize the moment it’s over. The little things that infuriated you. The little things that made you laugh. Or the little things that would always put you on a better mood - the little bits and pieces of you.

You barely got to know him at all.

Was that the reason?

Was the fact of loving him just as plainly as that - nothing more, and nothing less - the root of it all?

Or was it just the big things that held the both of you together, and the small things that caused you to fall apart?

You don’t believe it’s over.

Because it’s not.

You’ve been stuck inside the house for longer than you could count. You’ve memorized the number of tiles on the floor and seen every miniscule crack on the wall. You know how many steps it takes to walk from here to the door.

And you know just how many steps Jungwon took to leave.

Your eyes remained fixated on the door, waiting at the dining table for him to come home.

Like every other day.

He was still finding his way back home, you reminded yourself.

Busy. He’s busy.

Tick-tock.

He’s on his way.

He'll come back. He always does. He promised.

You form hundreds of thousands of excuses for him.

But the door doesn’t swing open to reveal Jungwon in all form and glory beaming down at you, apologizing, telling you that it was a mistake, telling you that he didn’t mean it. Every day is the same.

But nothing.

Nothing.

Riki knows it’s one of your days.

He reaches for your hand to grab and the fact that you have no response alone proves his assumption even further.

He doesn’t mind, Riki decides to walk you home.

You have those days where you go completely silent. Worse than ever. So quiet that he could never guess what you’re thinking or if you’d ever come back from it. Eyes empty as if there was no one home. He doesn’t know how he could help you specifically, how he could make you snap out of it.

The only thing he can do is talk. Talk and talk and talk and talk. He talks for hours about anything on the top of his head, and Riki himself is surprised he could somehow manage to not run out of topics to tell you about.

Even if you don’t respond. Not even a flicker of recognition to any of his comments or jokes.

Riki never knows what you’re thinking.

But this time, that day, he knows it’s about Jungwon.

Someone asked you about Jungwon today. How he was doing, where he is, and what happened to him. As hard as Riki would shield you away from situations such as these, it wasn’t hard enough.

Riki was so close to making you smile the other day. He was finally doing it.

And then he’s back again to square one.

After his efforts of trying to get your attention by the food stalls the both of you passed by, Riki starts to go quiet.

There is no noise - nothing between the two of yoou. Only the rustling of leaves. The cool breeze of air. The sound of footsteps on cobblestone. Cars driving by. Indistinct chatters.

“Why are you still holding on?” quietly. So quietly, but you easily catch on Riki’s question. Then your hands slightly tremble.

You don’t answer him, you’re afraid of saying too much. You’re afraid.

He never said goodbye.

That was your reason.

He never said goodbye.

Jungwon always bids you goodbye, you’d explain to Riki if you could.

What makes this time any different, right?

He won’t leave without saying goodbye. He wouldn’t. Only you could understand.

He never said goodbye.

A part of you still believed that meant he was coming back.

When Riki tries dropping by like any other day - a sneaky reason to check on you, from the start of early morning, he sees you there.

You spend the whole day stuck in the kitchen.

Riki knows what day it was without having to ask.

By the evening, you bring out the cake that you’ve been preparing for and set it down the table, in front of an empty chair. The chair you never let anyone sit on. It’s still belonged to someone else.

Riki knows who it’s for.

Your eyes are distant, as if they were caught up in a dream. Light. You were there - physically, but you were far away. Far, far away. Riki started to wonder if this was just how you were. He wondered if there was ever a time where you were really alive.

He wondered the extent to how much this guy did to break you.

Your eyes looked so empty.

But you were still holding on, weren’t you? You’ve never responded to him, but he knew. Riki made no noise, but he clenches his hands into fists. You don’t acknowledge him standing there.

You set the candles down the cake with the lighter.

You only stare at the cake, expectantly. Waiting. Waiting for someone to blow the candles off. Waiting to sing the cheerful ‘happy birthday’ song and make a wish. But it wasn’t just anyone.

He doesn’t attempt to do anything - or say anything. But he stands near close to your proximity. Watching over. Silently. He doesn’t leave you that day.

You take a seat next to the empty chair, simply and patiently letting time pass as your eyes affixed themselves with the dancing fire.

Until the candles blow out themselves hours later from the cold air.

That night, Riki also knew who it was for when he heard your uncontrolled crying and broken whimpers pass from your room for the first time.

There was a period wherein you stopped leaving the house entirely. And Riki stopped pushing you to.

Everything reminds you of him.

The house has never felt so big.

Alone.

You miss the way he smells.

The overbearing feelings starts to compress, and you feel it expanding within your chest. It gets hard to breathe. You feel helpless.

Jungwon won’t like it if he sees you like this, wouldn’t he?

You keep reminding yourself.

He might come in any second, and you wanted to be at your best.

You promised yourself you wouldn’t cry.

You won’t cry.

You’d make it up to him.

You don’t want it to end.

He’ll come back.

You don’t know how many months it has been.

That’s a lie. You do.

You find one of the notes he wrote for you in an old shoe box.

It reminds you that what you had was real, that what you had wasn’t just a figment of your imagination. It wasn’t a dream.

You picked up the first letter, your fingers tracing through his handwriting.

It was painful. A shard of glass piercing through your skin.

To my one and only girl,

You couldn’t breathe.

It was merely the first line of the long letter, and you couldn’t breathe.

This time, you don’t pretend to forget that you aren’t Jungwon’s anymore. You don’t pretend that this was all a phase. A nightmare. A joke.

This time, you don’t pretend to wait at the living room for him to come back home, swinging the door open with a grin and greeting you from a long day like he used to. Not anymore. Even if you had so much to tell him. So much news to show off to him. So much news to be happy for. To celebrate. But you weren’t.

This time, you almost suffocate.

You torture yourself even more this time. You open the letter again and it rips your heart out. It stabs you and leaves you bleeding. You read the last line. Sealed with a promise. A broken promise that meant nothing now.

I’ll make you the happiest girl, I promise. I love you :)

You could imagine his cheeky smile as he wrote this, sealing the promise - among with every other one that he’s made. Every single one that he didn’t claim responsibility for.

Liar.

He was a liar.

He was reckless and a liar.

He broke you to the point where you couldn’t even manage to bring yourself to say his name.

You wish you were brave enough.

What a fool you were.

A dumb, useless fool.

“Kant’s metaphysics?” Riki answers, lying on the edge of your bed. He lounges carelessly with a review paper clutched on his left hand.

You rest a hand on your hip, pacing around your room. “No, but you’re somewhat close. It’s categorical imperative.” You corrected, recalling your philosophy lesson by memory through mentally singing a tune to yourself.

The philosophy oral examination was this coming Thursday that next week. It was Saturday. Riki complained, saying he needed help and tutoring, and you, other than staying cooped up at home debating your life choices and burying yourself in academics, there wasn’t really anything else you did.

He squints his eyes in confusion, “But how does that relate to the second follow up question after that?” you pause, staring hard at the desk beside you to remember the answer, you take minutes - but nothing.

You run a hand through your hair, visibly frustrated and stressed. You had all the more topics to go through. Hell, you had to go through the whole book and you couldn’t get past the second lesson yet.

Releasing an exhale, you shut your eyes tightly. Shit. Shit.

Jungwon always knew what to do. He knew how to calm you down and rile you up and make you laugh right after like he was born with it. He’d drop everything at the sight of you overthinking and over-stressing school work, embracing you and telling you that you didn’t have to worry. That he was there. He’d let you cry it out, vent out your frustration and stay by your side through it all, running a hand through your hair soothingly to comfort you.

He knew exactly how to take care of you.

You need him.

You needed him.

Just for this moment.

How much longer?

Biting down your lower lip forcefully, you chant the words over and over again.

He’s not coming back.

You know he’s not coming back.

You know.

You’re back to pacing across your room, back and fourth. ‘”I don’t know, I really -” you cut yourself off, irritated. At this point, you’re ready to erupt from the heavy weight of his absence. At this point, you want to drop to the floor and stop time to give yourself a breath.

Riki has sat up at this point, silently watching you. He’s probably either thinking that you were worrying and stressing over the amount of workload given to you like the usual. Or, does he know that academics isn’t what you were worrying about at all at that moment?

You try to level your breathing.

Come back.

Jungwon, please.

Come back to me.

To: won 😚🙄

[03:46am] you: hi i’m graduating this wednesday. i’d really like it if you could drop by.

error. message undelivered. try again?

[03:50am] you: hey did you know my graduation is nearing?? haha you should come :)

error. message undelivered. try again?

[05:18am] you: jungwon

[05:18am] you: are you there?

[05:19am] you: you’re gone and i really need you.

message sent.

do you want to delete this message?

message successfully deleted.

Contact user: [ENTER]

Contact: yang jungwon

by pressing [Confirm] you are allowing the name changes to be saved.

changes saved.

“The sun’s so clear out. Lighten up, princess ~” a voice calls you out of your thoughts and you realize you were trapped in a dream.

Identifying reality with dreams seemed entirely difficult to you. There was something fiction in the way reality was going to you.

Reality was as crazy as dreams were.

“Your moping is bad for my skin,” Riki comments lightheartedly, scrunching up his nose.

It’s been a week or so since he came along. Since he bumped into you and started to grow interest towards you. You don’t ask him, and you don’t really care. Nothing that every happens around you matters to you as much anymore.

You only blink in regard to him. That was more than a sign of acknowledging his presence that he was used to.

Riki is used to this. He doesn’t mid this type of behavior, nor did he expect anything else. He self-proclaimed himself as your guardian angel – two days after he’d met you – who’d look after you “since you lack the ability to look after yourself” end quote. Which was true. You couldn’t look after yourself. Especially due to the past circumstances that he pieced together himself.

You were probably someone’s ex-girlfriend.

To him, Y/N was a detached-from-reality schoolmate of his who was definitely more than what meets the eye.

You were someone he wanted to get to know, until you stopped becoming that person, one day.

Until you became someone he wanted to protect.

Sliding himself into the seat next to yours, he pouts at you. “Y’know . . . I think it’s time for you to . . move on,” he struggles finding the right word for it. You know it takes a lot in him to try and be gentle, as he probably would’ve been teasing you with a bunch of insults.

Your throat encloses, and you feel like burning up.

Moving on meant accepting that he was gone. Gone from your life. Accepting a future without him, and that wasn’t something you were ever going to be ready to do.

He was long gone.

Jungwon was long gone.

The magic you once felt with him wasn’t there anymore.

He wasn’t there anymore.

And neither were you.

Waiting for someone is painful.

Letting go from someone is painful, too.

But not knowing whether to wait for someone or let him go?

It hurts more than anything.

You were out inside the bathroom for the first time in hours since you’ve left your seat from blankly staring at your phone.

It was all pure coincidence when Nishimura Rik stumbles upon the open phone screen that you’ve been torturing yourself endlessly with.

It was all pure coincidence.

And coincidence just happened to align with his curiosity.

you: S.O.S. [7 hours ago]

you: come back [7 hours ago]

[Read]

Riki doesn’t have to read the contact name to see who it was.

It must be Riki’s professional job; being the only one around able to spot where you are when you suddenly disappear from the face of the earth.

“Princess?” Riki finally finds you along the benches, alone. He figures it weird, he’s not exactly sure what you were doing there exactly.

Until he sees your face. Your tear-stained cheeks.

Ah.

“It hurts.” Out of nowhere. He has never prepared himself for this. Your voice cracks a bit, “Riki, it hurts.” You plead with him as if he power to take it all away. Small. Helpless. That was what you sounded like.

He offers his open arms to you, and you bury yourself in them. He lifts you up from the darkness, even if it was just by a centimeter.

“I’m in so much pain, can you stop it?” you tell him in a managed whisper, your voice hoarse.

He’s afraid anything he’d say would only break you even further. He only hugs you tighter.

Fuck, why did he give too many shits about you? This wasn’t the least like him at all. What in the world have you managed to do to Nishimura Riki? He stares at you, not being able to do anything.

“Why does it hurt so much?” a small vulnerable child whimpering in pain – pain they were forced to believe was their fault. That was how you sounded.

He doesn’t know what to say. He’s frozen, in fact. “Riki I want to –“ you pause, trying to start again, “I’m tired,” you struggle with your words, your eyes closed shut, “Please make it stop.”

His eyes flicker.

Please make it stop.

Riki isn’t much of a person who really cared about anyone else’s business. He never poked his nose around because he never bothered enough to. Everyone was black and white to him.

You were a quite peculiar one to him, though. It drove him crazy, what was so good about you? You were clearly dead hungover your past ex. Barely talked. Barely did anything, at all.

But he saw the most beautiful and vibrant colors when he looked at you in the whole life that he’s been walking around colorblind to any other.

He was just being pulled down deeper.

For the first time, all Riki wanted from someone was just their happiness. Purely. Passionately. Their happiness for his happiness. He just wanted you . . .

He just wanted you.

Nishimura Riki is done for.

If this was what he thinks it is, he’s done for. Because Riki was ready to be anyone you wanted him to be.

You gave be something I’ve never had, he wants to tell you. And I have nothing special to give you - but I will give you everything I have.

He doesn’t break promises. Especially if it’s you.

Riki will mend what was broken.

Whatever it takes.

One step at a time.

He was getting himself into the biggest mistake in his life, God, he sure as hell knew that. But Riki was never going to regret what was to come.

He was going to make it stop. All of it.

… ᵉⁿᵈ ᶠˡᵃˢʰᵇᵃᶜᵏ ↺

PART TWO

3K notes · View notes

69dias · 2 years

Text

baby don’t go (i’m bad at being alone)

genre: bff2l, idiots to lovers

warnings: as slowburn as it gets for 25k words, jk is an idiot and oc is so mean to herself AND to others occasionally. religious themes [Bible verses], mentions of alcoholism, unrequited love (not between jk and oc), mentions and themes of death, resolving trauma, bad childhoods. smut: vaginal fingering, marking kink, ily kink, kinda breeding kink, unprotected sex which is BAD

wc: 25k (this is hefty IM SAWRY)

listen to a playlist for this here!

When Jungkook was seven years old, his mother had asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up. He'd answered, way too confident and much too quickly, that his ultimate passion in life was to be a ninja. His mother had laughed fondly, serving him a plate of fruit that she’d cut up for him, and ruffled his hair

He’s positive that she had convinced herself that he'd figure it out eventually; that she’d probably taken it in stride considering the fact that he was seven, but the memory remains clear as day in Jungkook's head in his senior year of college.

Computer Science. That had turned out to be his actual ‘ultimate passion’ in life, though Jungkook always finds himself hesitating when he says it out loud. Perhaps his younger self had thought that he would figure it out eventually too, shoving the concept of a future deep into his mind until he was nearing the end of his gap year and had to choose something tangible to study, and perhaps he’d made the right decision considering his knack for coding and the outrageous starting salary for his major, but his voice always waivers when someone asks what he’s studying.

After all, Jungkook is nothing like you.

Enter character: his childhood best friend, whose umbilical cord had only freshly been cut when they met, much too young to comprehend what he was even looking at. You were a year younger than him, but always a few grades ahead, thanks to your insane amount of academic aptitude (that came with the burden of being afraid to fail at all, but only Jungkook truly knows that), and you’d always, always, known what you wanted to be when you grew up.

You’d answer, voice too strong and vocabulary too poise for an elementary school kid; “My passion is to study law, like my mother.”

You stayed true to it, as well, and if Jungkook wasn’t too absorbed in being impressed by you, he would’ve been sad that you never had a true, silly dream — a princess, or a ballerina, or an astronaut, or anything that didn’t require you to be so stringent at such a young age. But you’d skipped 3rd grade, skipped senior year, went straight to Columbia, and then to Columbia Law; by the time you had graduated college, Jungkook was about halfway done with his gap year. Simply put, being impressed by you wasn’t difficult.

But back to the point he was making, Jungkook is nothing like you, but he misses seeing your face at the frequency he did when you lived next door. And he misses getting you your ridiculously overpriced iced white mochas from a very specific New York-based small business. And he misses you.

The thought of you makes the aforementioned memory with his mother run through his head a bit more persistently than usual, and it’s hard to ignore on an otherwise quiet Wednesday morning. That is, however, until his roommate pops his head into the bathroom.

Enter character: Jungkook’s roomie, Kim Mingyu. Ripped, tall, extremely attractive, and at any given point, either drunk off his ass, or high off his ass, or hungover as shit.

Today, it’s the latter, if the exhausted lily in his voice is any indication.

“Hey, JK.”

He blinks, and the man in question nods from the edge of the bathtub.

“How the hell do I kick this girl out.”

Jungkook’s toothpaste drips onto his wrist, and leans across the commode to spit it out.

“I don’t know, man. Ask her to leave, and give her breakfast money.”

He is not speaking from experience, but Mingyu nods as though he’s been given profound philosophical advice. Jungkook turns the tap on, and wonders how much his friend has had to drink when he visibly grimaces at the rush of the water.

“Thanks man. See you around.”

We live together, I’ll see you in literally one minute.

Jungkook nods, and lets Mingyu shut the door before he’s rinsing his mouth and tending to the very strict AM skincare regime he’s curated. The memory he was stuck on has taken another path to the back of his brain, and he’s thankful that he doesn’t have to think of it, think of you, or think of how much he misses his mother any longer.

He doesn’t, however, exit the bathroom immediately. The girl Mingyu had over is causing a ruckus in their living room, demanding to know why she’s being kicked out and simultaneously letting Jungkook know that his advice was definitely not taken into account; he’d be a bit offended if he couldn’t practically hear Mingyu’s head pounding as she steadily gets louder.

He decides Comp.Sci is a good option; he’s definitely going to get paid enough to not have to deal with this roommate bullshit once he’s out of this college, but he can’t help but feel bad for the girl, and feel worse for Mingyu.

Jungkook walks out when he hears the front door finally lock, and looks up a sobriety program on his phone as his roommate walks past him to his own room.

“Hey JK?”

He turns around, sheepishly hiding his phone without considering the fact that Mingyu is definitely seeing double and definitely didn’t make out his search.

“Yeah?”

“Do not do this one-night stand thing.”

Hey Mingyu? Do not do this alcohol thing.

Both pieces of advice are a bit too little too late, considering that the two of them are in their final years and are confidently past the stage of needing such freshman-esque tips, but Jungkook chooses to stay quiet so as to not rub salt into Mingyu’s wound, though he’s positive the latter is barely aware of this metaphorical wound.

“Yeah, thanks man.”

Mingyu nods again, this time affirmatively, as though he’s given some profound Kantean counseling before shutting his door. Jungkook copies the cheapest and closest sobriety program he finds, and pastes the link in his notes app for future reference.

—

When you were 17, late in your first year of college, your boyfriend had died.

It’s a horrible note to start off on, and it’s worse to have to think about it on a Wednesday, seeing as you reserve these deep delves into trauma for long weekends and bank holidays, but the thing about grief is that it presents itself in weird ways.

Today, you remember the wake. Specifically, you remember the coffee you’d drank afterwards, and how you’ve ended up with the same drink today. It wasn’t your fault, no, a shaken espresso is a common drink at the coffee shop next to campus, and there’s no way AJ would’ve known, seeing as it’s a detail you’ve quite literally never mentioned.

Enter character: AJ, or Alex Jacob Lee, your closest friend at law school, and barista of another overpriced coffee shop you frequent, not to be mistaken with the one further into the city from where you buy those sinfully good white mochas. He has a game going on with you, where he’ll conjure up a different drink for you every Wednesday after your last class, which aligns with his shifts there.

And today, he’s chosen a shaken espresso. Again, not his fault. Again, not a bad drink. It’s the way the bitterness sits on your tongue, and the first greetings of summer in the evening air that have you thinking of your boyfriend — ex-boyfriend, that is. You think of his smile, the closed casket he was laid to rest in because his body was pretty wrecked from the car crash, and you think of Jeon Jungkook.

You remember his arms around you, and you remember refusing to cry. You remember him buying you the drink, and you remember breaking down in front of him, showing any semblance of weakness for the first time in all your 17 years of knowing each other. You think of how much you miss him, how it’s been a good few weeks since you’ve seen him in person, you think of how you never actually fell in love with your boyfriend, and how broken you’d been after he passed.

You still feel the ebbing pain in the left side of your chest, but that’s not something you’re willing to admit. After all, it’s been a good 6 years since then, and you laid him to rest in the tresses of your mind the second you had left the cemetery after his wake.

When you’re done with the drink, you’re done with the memory, and you decide to return to the shop; that way, you can convince yourself that you’re fine, and you can convince AJ to get dinner with you. The coffee lingers in your mouth, though, and take a quick detour to the vending machine to the left of the shop to pick up a bottle of water and think about how horrible the placement of this machine is.

“Hey, you. What’s wrong? Drink not good enough today?”

AJ’s right next to you when you pick up the water from the slot at the bottom, and you find yourself smiling up at him instinctively.

“I think you’ve lost your touch, honestly.”

He laughs, you laugh with him, and your heart feels just a bit lighter after the thought you’ve just had to throttle out of your brain physically, which reminds you of why you returned to the shop in the first place. He looks down at you, gaze so fixed that you look away for a moment before you even open your mouth to speak.

“Wanna grab some dinner? I’m kinda winded, we can get pizza.”

He looks back at the shop, and then at you. The silence is comfortable, and you can hear the music from within the business as someone opens the door to enter. AJ’s expression is a bit hard to read, but the little furrow of his brow, and the way he’s avoiding eye contact tells you that he’s about to say no.

“Can I take a rain check? I’ve gotta finish up at the shop, and I have an early morning tomorrow.”

I’ll wait, and we won’t take long. We can just take it out, we don’t have to sit and eat.

Your mouth feels dry, tastes little like you’ve just thrown up bile, and your eyes shake just a bit as you think of what to say, think of where to look.

“Oh, yeah? No prob, Jakey.”

The nickname slips out, and his mouth droops into a lopsided grin. You don’t notice the twinkle of his eyes, because you’re too busy unscrewing the bottle of water, eager to finally get the tinge of coffee out of your mouth.

He doesn’t say much more, just tells you that he’ll see you around, and takes a quick jog back to work. Pulling your phone out of your pocket is a bit hard because of how hard your hands are shaking, and you clench your fingers together to stop them from doing so, though you’re not sure why you’re acting like this in the first place. Maybe it’s because you’ve just remembered one of the worst days of your life, maybe it’s because you needed company, maybe it’s because you know AJ doesn’t have classes early tomorrow, and maybe it’s because you miss your old best friend.

You decide it’s the latter, and when you finally, finally unlock your phone, you decide to call Jungkook.

The phone rings, and you can’t stand to hear the way AJ’s voice travels outside the coffee shop occasionally, so you walk onto the pavement, trying to focus on the obnoxious rings of the phone. You let it go to voicemail when he doesn’t pick up, and decide that you won’t deal with rejection today, so text him to get dinner with you instead

[to JayKayz] hey, you down to get some pizza tonight?

[to JayKayz] i’ll take the train to NYU and you can meet me at 2 bros?

You figure he’s either in, or finishing his last class, hence the lack of response for the first ten minutes or so, which severely dampens your mood on the way to the train station, but he replies soon after, and you’d be lying if you said your mood didn’t do an entire 180.

[from JayKayz] this is fucking insane cuz I was literally just thinking about you this morning

[from JayKayz] yes to pizza btw.

[from JayKayz] sorry I didn’t pick up I was dealing with Mingyu who’s fucking drunk again.

[from JayKayz] text me when ur on campus and I’ll pick you up.

You have to physically fight yourself from smiling like a psychopath, which is awkward since you don’t really know why you’re smiling. Maybe it’s because he was thinking of you, maybe it’s because he said he’s, or maybe it’s because it’s funny how fed up he is with his roommate who definitely needs to attend a sobriety program. You decide it’s the latter, and your heart isn’t on edge the whole time you make your way to Jeon Jungkook’s university.

—

The thing about you and Jungkook is that there’s nothing awkward about the silences that tend to ensue between the two of you. It’s not uncommon for there to be no words spoken, especially in the past few years — Jungkook has always been an introvert, and school tends to tire you out of being able to carry the conversation. It’s okay, it’s normal, and it’s happened a lot since you moved out to be nearer to campus, but you’re different today.

Jungkook notices the shift almost as soon as you sit down across from him and slide him his coke, hands otherwise empty, saying absolutely nothing else. Typically (read: every single time the two of you eat at 2Bros Pizza, which is not rare), you make fun of him for ordering the Meat Supreme slice, and you always get a coke float for yourself, which reminds him of the time there was a new employee working the Night Shift, and you, in your drunken stupor, almost jumped the counter when he didn’t know how to make one for you. He tucks the memory aside to ask you what’s wrong:

“No float today? Finally saw the light?”

It comes out wrong, less empathetic than he’d like to be, seeing as you’re visibly struggling with something, but it seems to break you out of your own head, and you look up at him. Your eyes shine under the streetlight just a couple inches away from the table the two of you sit at, and the way a smile breaks across your face sends something akin to a shiver down his spine.

“Yeah, I had a coffee earlier. AJ and I have a game going, so - uh, yeah, I’m not that thirsty right now.l

Jungkook remembers this guy, but he also notices the way you’ve started to chew on the right side of your lip as you think about him. He hums quietly, opening his mouth to speak when you beat him to it.

“How’s Mingyu by the way? Day drinking again?”

He laughs out loud, taking a bite out of his pizza. You do the same, eyes a bit less dazed as you listen intently to whatever he’s about to say, but he doesn’t speak for a while again, and the silence that ensues this time is more comfortable than before.

It’s something about Jungkook that’s routinely, and you don’t hate it at all. You’ve been a stickler for organization, for schedules, for routine for as long as you can remember, and while you and him are quite different, you can tell that Jungkook appreciates the stability you bring.

You remember being a child and coming here with your family, Jungkook with his. Your mom would share a cheese slice with you, and his mom would share the abominable Meat Premium slice with him. You’d get a coke float, and his eyebrows would furrow as he animatedly talked about how good everything tasted, almost looking upset because it was delicious. You’d stay quiet, sharing an exasperatedly fond look with the two women who sat across from each other, and then you’d look at Jungkook.

And then, you look at Jungkook.

He has the same pinch in his eyebrows, but he’s been eating here for over a decade so the comments about how good the food is have dwindled, and he just slurps obscenely at the cheese, occasionally stopping to take an equally obscene swig of his drink. You’d be disgusted if AJ ate that way, but it’s Jungkook, so you just laugh, and the question you asked about his roommate dissipates from where it was hanging in the air.

“So this AJ guy, what’s his deal?”

You pause mid-bite, looking a bit confused; the timing is scary, and it’s almost like Jungkook's managed to read your mind in the past minute. You answer with a question of your own.

“So this Mingyu guy, what’s his deal?”

“Touché.”

“No like, actually, though,” you let out a laugh at the way Jungkook goes back to devouring his food. “He needs to get to a sobriety program.”

“Dude, for real. I was literally looking one up for him this morning, like it’s an actual fucking problem and he refuses to acknowledge it.”

“Have you actually tried to get him to acknowledge it?”

Jungkook is many things; he’s smart, capable, strong, his eyes are bright under the streetlights, and he’s compassionate, but he’s never been confrontational. Though you don’t doubt he’s concerned for his friend, you also don’t doubt that he’s never brought it up in front of Mingyu, at least directly; you reckon there’s been a lot of beating around the bush, a lot of surreptitious monologues about ‘seeking help when you need’, etcetera. The thought makes you laugh, and Jungkook looks at you quizzically.

“I mean, I made him watch a TED talk about sobriety last week, and he seemed intrigued…”

You raise a brow. Jungkook would bully you relentlessly for watching those videos, and you doubt he’d watch them even with someone’s best interest in mind.

“We were both high.”

The two of you laugh, looking away so as to not break entirely, and then accidentally making eye contact, breaking almost immediately after.

His laughter is loud, bright, and it brings you back to when you were kids.

You laugh silently, taking in large gasps of air whenever you feel the need to, and Jungkook can’t help but think of how you’ve had this habit since you were a toddler.

When a few tears slip inevitably, Jungkook doesn’t let you use the collar of your shirt to wipe them like AJ typically does, using the pads of his fingers to gently flick them off of your cheeks. (It’s another thing he’s done for years now, but you don’t think about it in the afterglow of laughing so hard that your ribs sting a bit.)

Thinking of AJ reminds you of the question Jungkook asked you before you grilled him about Mingyu. You wonder why you avoided it so desperately, and you wonder why you’re thinking so much about AJ today, when Jungkook is right in front of you.

He’s pretty like this, the pizza parlor’s sign lights up a little after 21:30, and the green and red hues make the dewy skin of his face look softer. He’s chewing at his straw, and has a lazy grin on his face, occasionally giggling when he undoubtedly remembers the outburst the two of you just had.

It’s simple, routinely, laughing with Jungkook, being with Jungkook, and your mind is no longer clouded with the wake, with how much your Tort Law professor hates your whole class, with how AJ lied to you, but you don’t suppose it’d be the worst thing to not leave Jungkook hanging.

“What about AJ, by the way?”

He looks up, and his eyes are just as big as they used to be when he was a toddler.

“You asked what his deal was, what’d you mean?”

Jungkook’s lazy grin is back as he stares at you, reaching across the table to push back a strand of hair that you hadn’t even noticed fall into your face. His touch is warm, and you hope the bright red light of the sign masks the soft blush that warms your face when he strokes the underside of your jaw before pulling away.

“I meant, like, you know,” he pauses, but you shake your head, still confused. Jungkook breathes to regroup, and continues. “The Wednesday drink thing, and how he’s the homescreen of your phone, and how you’re blushing right now after bringing him up? I know dating’s a bit tough but like, maybe there’s something there?”

The realization dawns upon you; Jungkook thinks you’re into AJ, and vice versa. You don’t know why it makes your stomach turn, so you attribute it to the pizza you’ve just had and the coffee from earlier.

The ridiculous urge to defend yourself like Jungkook’s accused you of something fights it’s way up your throat, accompanied by bile. You swallow it down, clearing your throat before you start your rebuttal statement. (You don’t think about how you’re thinking of this like a case, when it’s quite literally just your best friend talking about who you’re dating).

“The Wednesday drink thing’s only because he has a shift there after I’m done with classes, and it’s not like he gives them to me for free.”

Jungkook can’t tell why you look so serious now, back straight and face cold, voice icy. It’s a sharp contrast to the way you were speaking only a mere 10 minutes prior, and he wants to tell you that it’s nothing serious; that he wasn’t accusing you.

“He’s the homescreen of my phone because I look good in the picture, and also because it’s from my 21st birthday, which was just a good day in my life —“

“I think y-you misunderstood me?”

He doesn’t sound confident, but you stop speaking, unable to tell him that you weren’t, in fact, blushing because of AJ.

“There’s nothing there, Jungkook.”

He looks down, and then back up at you, the prickly feeling of discomfort crawling across his chest. Jungkook isn’t sure why he feels cornered, why he feels upset at the way you responded to something innocent he said.

It makes him think of another time, back in your first year of law school when he’d asked you why you hadn’t called him for a week; you’d straightened up, basically recounted every assignment you had due, every other engagement you had, went to hell and back to justify yourself when he was just asking a question.

It makes him think of countless other times, when you’d dissect questions like he was a prosecutor in a courtroom, when you’d pounce at him at the slightest indication of being cornered, when you’d feel the need to justify and self-assess even if he wasn't even in a 100 mile radius of asking you to do that.

He wants to tell you that you don’t have to feel like he’s forcing an answer out of you, that you have a life and you could’ve just laughed it off, that you don’t have to be afraid to have human instincts and relationships and that you’re his best friend.

Instead, he ignores the way your eyes look glossy, ignores the clear indication that you’ve had a stupidly hard day, ignores the screaming cries for someone to tell you that it’s okay, for someone to just ask what’s wrong — something he’s been on the fence of doing for the whole evening. He ignores it all, and gets up to throw his plate away.

“I’m sorry —“

“Need me to walk you to the train station?”

“Uh, no. I got it. Thanks.”

You follow with your own plate, picking your bag up from the seat beside you, and wave at Jungkook a bit awkwardly. He waves back, still not making eye contact with you, and lets you walk away without saying a word more.

Jungkook tries not to think about how pretty you are, tries not to think about how you’re going to cry in the solitude of your room which is how you’ve always dealt with emotions, tries not to think about whatever you could’ve been thinking of that had you on the edge the entire evening. He tries to think about Mingyu, sobriety, and a fraternity party he has to go to tomorrow. He tries to think about skipping his last class, and ends up thinking about how lovely your smile is.

You text AJ to pick you up from campus despite the fake excuse he’d thrown at you earlier even though you don’t really want to think of him, and you hope the person sitting across from you on the train doesn’t notice how you’re crying. It’s your boyfriend, it’s Jungkook and how you lashed out at him for no reason, it’s fucking AJ, and how Jungkook thinks you’re dating him when he’s just lied to you — it’s how AJ lied to you about a morning class — it’s Tort Law, and it’s the shaken espresso you had that seems to still linger on your tongue. You try to think about a party you’ve been invited to tomorrow, try to think about how badly you need to get laid, and end up thinking about Jungkook’s pretty eyes.

—

AJ ends up picking you up from outside the train station, and if he notices your red-rimmed eyes, he doesn’t say anything.

Jungkook’s words, the cause of you snapping him, his insinuations all come to mind when AJ’s this close to you. You can smell his deodorant, you can feel the thin hoodie he dons on your sleeve, you can hear the small breaths he takes; I know dating’s a bit tough but like, maybe there’s something there?”

Is there? You wished you would’ve asked Jungkook to elaborate on this theory of his; he’s observant, and as aforementioned, not one for confrontation of any kind — the thought makes your head hurt with guilt because you’ve just shown him that he shouldn’t, in fact, confront people lest they give him a reaction anywhere similar to yours — and it’s apparent that he was probably sitting on the thought for a while.

Is there? AJ looks at you warmly, the Wednesday drink thing is a bit intimate, he knows your schedule, knows your professors and how you feel about them, knows your apartment even when he's drunk and it’s dark, and you know all of these things when it comes to him. You think about it for a moment, and when you look up at him, he’s already staring down at you. It’s kind, a bit far away like he was doing some thinking of his own, too, and you’re grateful he doesn’t look away immediately.

AJ and you make sense together, if you were to put it logistically. Met in Law School, were friends for years before potentially getting together, and you’d be lying if you said it didn’t feel like a puzzle piece fitting into place. But logistics aren’t the game you play, and the longer you look at him, the more it settles in that there isn’t really much there. With Jungkook, for example, you’d notice the pretty doe shape in his eyes, the scar above his cheek, the slope of his nose and how when he blushes, the pink spreads from the tips of his ears inwards — with AJ, all you see is a handsome face.

Jungkook is your best friend, though, and again, it makes more sense to notice these nuances with him than with AJ and fuck, why are you even thinking about this?

AJ continues to look at you, and you’re thankful, not for his eerie silence as much as for the fact that he’s walking you home at night after you’ve had such a rough day. If being with Jungkook is routine, AJ is the soft of your sheets after a long day — he’s always there, always with you, even if he doesn’t really say anything to you.

(You fight this thought from appearing in your head, but evidently fail.)

Even today, he didn’t question where you were coming from, didn’t say that he couldn’t come get you because he had this supposed ‘early morning’ (which he didn’t, which you could not get over), didn’t say a single word, at least it until you did.

It’s a quiet question, one that has lingered in the back of your mind for the whole evening: “Why’d you lie, Alex?”

He looks startled, both at the rare use of his first name, and by the question itself.

“What… what do you mean, exactly?” His laugh is a bit forced, and he steps away from you, looking away.

“You said you have an early morning, but I know your Crim. Justice class starts at 2. You could’ve just said you didn’t wanna have dinner with me —“ you laugh at the end, hoping to lighten the atmosphere but it doesn’t work.

There is seriously something wrong with you today, but AJ breaks through that thought with a laugh.

“Early morning for work, ___. Internships don’t start till June, but doesn’t Cravath ask you to come in sometimes? It’s that. Some petty admin work.”

Your heart stops trying to commit suicide, and your shoulders relax for the first time since AJ handed you that damn drink this morning. You’d both landed top internships; you with Cravath, AJ with Watchell Lipton, and he was right, because you have gone in to do ‘petty admin work’ for them in the past month since you were accepted.

It’s a happy reminder of how well you’re doing, a happy reminder that your friend didn’t just lie to you, and you can’t help but laugh. It’s a sheepish one that turns genuine when you realize how accusatory you’d been, and you’re grateful again that he starts laughing along with you.

(You don’t notice his laugh the same way you did with Jungkook, but you also don’t dwell on that too much.)

“Fuck, man. I’m sorry, I’m really sorry.”

He throws an arm around your shoulder, pulling you into his upper body so he can plant a loud kiss on the crown of your head. It’s something he does with everyone, but the conversation you had over dinner remains at the forefront of your mind and you close your eyes to really take in the proximity, the ease with which he just touches you, the way it feels natural, and the way you don’t mind.

“Maybe you should ask questions on the spot instead of working yourself into a frenzy about them, huh?”

“Maybe I should. No yeah, I definitely should. I don't know why I’m being slick about it —“

He laughs at that, taking your hand to spin you in front of him, and then around.

If AJ notices the way your hair frames your face when he stops puppeteering you, if he notices the way your laugh echoes in his mind after you’ve stopped, if he notices the way you’ve remembered his classes, he doesn’t do anything about it. He had, however, noticed the way you were so obviously crying, and though he refuses to pry lest he invade your privacy, lest he finds out that he might’ve been the reason.

He stays quiet about it, though, all the way till he reaches the lobby of your apartment complex, which is when he repeats what Jungkook had done just about an hour prior, fixing a strand of your messy hair.

(You don’t blush like you had when Jungkook had done it, but AJ also doesn’t touch the underside of your jaw as gingerly as Jungkook had, so you convince yourself that it’s nothing)

“If it was hayfever, I know a great remedy, but if not, you should know that whatever you had to cry about, that it’s okay. If you can do Tort Law with Henderson, you can do anything.”

His assurance, paired with the fact that he hadn’t lied, paired with the fact that he’d kissed your head, paired with the way he’d spun you around like he was starring in some Glen Powell rom-com, paired with the way that he’d come and pick you up in the first place — all of it settles your heart fully, and you don’t even really remember why you’d cried in the first place.

“Thank you. For picking me up, and I’m sorry that I was so, you know —“

“Don’t worry about it, it’s literally going to be your job to be ‘so, you know’ okay?”

You nod, chuckling lightly, and watch him wave you goodbye. If you pronounce your own wave a little extra so he laughs at it and isn’t even slightly worried about you being upset, nobody has to know. And if you still can’t stop thinking about Jungkook and how you need to apologize to him, nobody has to know.

—

Jungkook despises his schedule on Thursdays. It’s class after class, a shift at his job, another class, and another class — typically, by the end of the day, his brain is nothing but mush, he’s frazzled; exhausted, and passes out for a much simpler Friday, but as it is, there’s been a lot more unconventional breaks in routine than he’s used to, and he ends up going to a party after his final class on this particular Thursday.

Mingyu invited him, but he’s not thinking about that, because thinking of his roommate makes him think of his conversation with you, which makes him think of how abruptly your manner had changed, which makes him feel bad for you, and also a little upset that you spoke to him that way, which makes him think of the notifications on his phone that he’s definitely not ignoring right now.

[from Elle Woods] jeongguk

[from Elle Woods] im sorry, i don’t know what that was or why I got so defensive about aj, and you didn’t deserve it

[from Elle Woods] i really missed you, it’s been weeks since we’ve talked

[from Elle Woods] actually, can i just call you?

[2 missed calls from Elle Woods]

He’d feel a little bad, because he knows that if you owe each other something, anything, it’s communication — you’ve been friends since you were literal infants, and he should know that there’s probably a very reasonable explanation for yesterday but he shuts his phone off, and recites the excuse for whenever he decides to get back to you.

___ie, I’m sorry, I was just busy — you know how Thursdays are, right?

He’s sure you’ll understand, and he can’t bring himself to continue thinking about it lest he breaks and gets himself into a longer-than-necessary phone call with you when he could be getting shitfaced to forget about the day he’s had; either that, or protecting Mingyu from throwing himself into premature liver failure as best as he possibly can.

Jungkook finds himself shoveling any remaining thoughts of you to the back of his head, another thing he’s being doing unconventionally often, and his short commute to the fraternity house Mingyu’s typo-filled message points him towards — another thing that should debase him, but the promise of alcohol (with a borderline frightening amount of emojis) keeps him going.

He realizes soon, that senior year is an absolute bitch, because it’s been months since he’s seen half of these people and it’s like nostalgia’s kicked him in the mouth, followed by the pungence of miscellaneous alcoholic drinks that you can only drink half a cup of before blacking out, followed by the familiar twinge of the fraternity party patented sweat.

He’s broken out of this haze, watching people pass by him as he slumps against the doorframe of the kitchen by the vaguely familiar voice of somebody he used to know very well —

“Jungkookie? At a party? As I live and breathe!”

Enter character: Lim Nayoung, Jungkook’s ex-fuckbuddy, ex-situationship, near ex-girlfriend. Though the first two are terms exclusively used by high school students, there’s really no other way to describe the relation he has (had) with her, and even as he hears her voice, there’s a rush of emotion that he had to swallow down before he gets a good look at her.

She’s, well, a sight to see; though Jungkook told her he liked her long hair a lot (especially when she styled it like yours, which isn’t something he’s willing to say out loud), she has it cut short. He thinks it suits her, and he makes a mental note to let her know as he tries his best to take a once-over of her subtly, but gives up shortly when he notices her gaze on him; expectant.

“It’s been a while, huh?” A soft grin makes its way up his face, and he fights the urge to pull her into a hug. “I love the hair.”

“What happened to liking it long? In that weird 90s blowout?”

(Your ‘weird 90s blowout’. The same hair you’ve been wearing since junior year of high school, but Nayoung doesn’t have to know, and Jungkook doesn’t want to tell her.)

“I actually still like that look, but this is working for you, baby,” the pet name slips from his lips, force of habit, and he’d be lying if he said he didn’t notice the way her eyes lit up for a second. “Where’s everyone else?” It’s a quick attempt to salvage his slip-up, but it doesn’t seem like Nayoung notices the deflection. She doesn’t point him to the group of friends he’s so familiar with, though, instead dragging him by the forearm into the kitchen.

He catches sight of Mingyu by the drinks as Nayoung pours him something from a punch bowl, bright red with fruits strewn about the top, and Jungkook’s sure just a smell of it would kill a medieval peasant. He does, in fact have an incentive for being here, and is reminded of that by his aforementioned roommate’s loud shriek of his name.

Nayoung gets to him before Mingyu, passing him a solo cup that she so graciously garnished with an orange slice, and he strokes her hair as a silent thanks, and a preemptive apology for what’s about to hit her, vis-à-vis Hurricane Mingyu;

“Yo, JK? You came, man!” The side hug he gets is sloppy, and Mingyu’s voice is so slurred that Jungkook can’t help but assume he’s been pre-gaming this for a while. The thought is cut off violently when his jaw is grabbed, forehead pressing against Mingyu’s in a manner too intimate for Jungkook to deal with without alcohol in his system. “You’re the man, I can’t believe we haven’t partied at all this year!” He shoves Jungkook away, while the latter looks dazed (read: disgusted) at how strongly Mingyu’s breath smelled of alcohol.

He takes a sip of the concoction in his cup, wincing just a bit as the gasoline-y aftertaste fully settles in, right before the realization that it has, indeed, been way too long since he's last been to a party at all. He downs the drink, trying not to let his aversion show immediately before he looks down at Nayoung, nodding towards the drinks again.

“Down like water, huh? What happened to my whiskey addict?” Nayoung’s voice is bleary over the terrible EDM drop that’s just played over the speakers, but Jungkook laughs anyways — whiskey’s been his drink of choice ever since you managed to get away with buying a bottle at 17, and he thinks about you every single time he drinks it; more specifically, the way you’d all but hurled it in front of a bodega, and then the way the two of you had drunkenly ran off.

Whatever was in the drink is working, apparently, because Jungkook can feel the buzz of the drink in his veins, and as he pushes aside the memory of the two of you, there’s a burst of confidence that pulses through him. It isn’t anything forward, just the personality so many of his friends were well acquainted with — cocky, a little egotistical, a little too hot for his own good — fighting it’s way out of the somber senior he’s been playing for a good few months now.

He leans against the punch table so he’s eye-level with Nayoung, who shies away from the sudden proximity, and if she’s blushing just a bit, he pretends like he doesn’t notice in favor of grabbing the drink out of her hand and drinking it all in one go. It stings on its way down, and she stares at him, mouth agape at what she’s just seen him do twice in a row.

“There’s like, an entire bottle of vodka in that.”

Jungkook smiles, a little lazy and a little lopsided.

“Is there another full bottle somewhere?”

The catastrophic thing about Jungkook isn’t that he makes bad decisions, it’s just that he refuses to admit when he’s made a bad decision.

To set the scene, think of Jungkook, on the lawn of the insanely big glorified fraternity mansion, 7 shots of vodka in and drunk enough that his equilibrium is fully askew and he’s slurring his words in the dialect only you’re familiar with, one he’s grown out of years ago.

Nayoung is still by his side, reasonably sober compared to him, and a couple of his friends — both close and those who he all but neglected in favor of computer science senior year — surround him. They’ve chosen the surprisingly well kempt area because EDM and copious amounts of alcohol stop making sense when you hit your twenties, and as it is, Jungkook’s previous attempts to keep you out of his brain are failing horrifically.

They talk about the time Nayoung and Jungkook got drunk, called Namjoon and told him the only identifiable landmark was the moon, talk about Seokjin throwing up at the foot of the Statue of Liberty, talk about their lives, Mingyu talks about his endeavors in bed (which is weird because he definitely doesn’t know half the people in this vicinity) and Jungkook thinks about you.

He thinks about feeling bad that he’s not replying, thinks about how you don’t drink a lot because drunk driving killed your boyfriend, thinks about how smart you are and how he wishes you had an easier childhood, how he wishes you weren’t so hard on yourself, wishes you were here and that you hadn’t moved out, wishes he could see you everyday, and wishes that he could just get you out of his head.

He thinks about you, uncharacteristically quiet until Nayoung calls him on it —

“What’s got you all worked up?” Her question is really just a figure of speech, but he wants to tell her everything because if anyone knows Jungkook even a smidge close to the way you know him, it’s Nayoung.

“N’thin, nothing,” he takes a pause to breathe out, regroup and look down at Nayoung. It takes him a while to really gather that the group has split up, all going their separate ways after getting shitfaced, presumably to find themselves another drink or a hookup. He wonders if you’ve ever hooked up with someone at a party, wonders if you’d say yes if he were to ask —

“Wanna go upstairs? I hate this fucking music.”

[In retrospect, he should’ve known, at that point, that he was making a horrible mistake, but again, he’d never admit it]

“Yeah. Not because I wanna sit in a fraternity kid’s bed, but because I wanna shoot Avicii right about now.” It takes Nayoung a while to comprehend his slurred words, but she laughs at the sentiment before telling him that Avicii’s very much not alive. It makes Jungkook grin morbidly, and he finds himself grabbing her hand to pull her back into the house.

In the essence of wanting to be a good friend, he looks around to catch a glimpse of Mingyu anywhere, and finds him near the kitchen. He’s, surprisingly so, not drunk outwardly, but Jungkook figures that’s bound to change soon; the party is nowhere near being over. His roommate catches Nayoung’s hand in his, and shoots him a horrifically confused look, which Jungkook pays no mind to.

It doesn’t take long for them to make their way upstairs and into the only bedroom on the floor that isn’t locked or mysteriously producing obscene pornstar-esque sex sounds, and even though the bed is horribly unkempt in a way that would become the butt of your jokes for months on end, they settle.

Fuck, Jungkook has got to stop thinking about you. It’s becoming dangerously apparent that you’re becoming the forefront of his thoughts this evening, and he just can’t figure out why. It’s happened before, too, every time he’d go out to get lunch or dinner with you, every time you’d force him to come with you to The Met or every time he’d force you to come with him to a Yankees game, you’d just plague his brain for the next couple of days. He thinks it because you’re his best friend, that it’s normal to think about someone who’s entire childhood has been riddled with yours, but he can’t exactly focus on that thought when Nayoung pulls her jacket off.

It’s one she bought when they used to… be involved, and Jungkook smiles ever so lightly when he remembers the day.

“That from our little detour to Jersey?”

She looks up at him, and the light of the room is a bit too dim to properly make out her features, but it reflects off of her collarbones, gets his mind all fuzzy when she reciprocates the dopey smile he has on.

“Yeah, yep. I always keep the memorabilia.”

“I mean, the other memorabilias,” he quotes the word, still feeling really fucking buzzed, “were just tattoos. Bit hard to get rid of those, huh?”

Nayoung laughs, and Jungkook feels the claws of past intimacy scratch down his back. It’s familiar, being like this with her, and he values that. Values her, even if she never really gave him an actual reason for breaking it off — ‘we’re in different places, clearly’ she’d told him, and if he sat down to really think about it, he might be able to decipher her words in the context of their relationship but Jungkook literally cannot think of more than three things at once right now.

She lies down flat on the bed, and he has half a mind to tell her off about frat boys and their abysmal hygiene, but he thinks it’s a good idea, and readjusts himself so he’s laying right next to her. She tilts her head to look at him, and he finds the ceiling to be the most interesting thing in the world as soon as it registers in his mind what might be happening.

“What happened with you?”

“Huh?”

“Just… how you disappeared after senior year, how you were dozing off even when you’re definitely drunk. It’s so unlike you to not be like, the one keeping the conversation going.”

I can’t stop thinking about my best friend. I’m worried about her, and senior year is ruining my life because I’m not sure I even want to do computer science and my roommate needs to be put in a sobriety program and I need to talk to my best friend right now but I’m ignoring her.

“Yeah, it’s just — work stuff, ya know? ‘S been crazy this year. You know.”

Though his intentions aren’t to give her the wrong idea about this ordeal, he can’t help himself from turning his head to look at her. He laughs, and she doesn’t wince even when his (presumably) vodka-smelling breath hits her face. Nayoung’s giggle is quiet, and she lifts a hand to his head to push back his hair.

If Jungkook keens just a bit, nobody has to know.

“I don’t know, really. I mean, I don’t have a sick internship, so work’s not that bad for me.”

Jungkook’s pupils are blown out, and when Nayoung’s eyes meet his, he sobers up enough for him to realize just how close they are. With a portion of his brain suddenly not inebriated, he should realize what’s happening, he should pull away, but he also realizes that you haven’t crossed his head for a good couple of minutes, which is good enough of a sign for him to stay put.

“Your thing with ___ not work out?”

He’s confused at why you’re being brought up, but he shakes his head as best as he can manage; there’s no way she remembers you, and there’s no way she thought there was a ‘thing’ between you and him. That would be weird, but he can’t help but think of what she’d said — we’re in different places, clearly.

Different places.

“There was… no thing.”

“So there’s nothing with her and you?”

“No, Nayoung-ie. Never was.”

Different places? Was there a thing?

When she kisses him, he doesn’t stop her.

(And when she asks him to fuck her; delirious, eyes wide, skin dewy, he doesn’t stop himself.)

It’s messy, limbs tangled as he’s basically bent her over in half to plow his cock into her, more drunk off the pretty sounds she makes — familiarly, intimacy — than the copious amounts of drinks he’s had. She’s moaning his name out like a prayer, and he’s leaning over her like a god, and Jungkook’s stopped being religious, but he thinks it’s sin, the way she envelopes him and gives herself to him. The way he doesn’t have to ask, the way she’s meeting his hips halfway.

Exodus 20:14, Proverbs 6:32, Hebrews 13:4 — You shall not commit adultery, But a man who commits adultery has no sense; whoever does so destroys himself, Marriage should be honored by all, and the marriage bed kept pure, for God will judge the adulterer and all the sexually immoral.

He remembers these verses, and he remembers your pretty eyes, and you’re all he can think about when he looks down at Nayoung. Does that make him an adulterer? Does that make him a cheater, dirty, sinful? He fucks into her deeper, inevitably hits the spot — familiarity, intimacy — and drinks her moans in. He remembers the slope of your nose, and how you’d laughed together over dinner a day ago, how your eyes had looked under the streetlights. Nayoung tears up, tells him it feels so fucking good, and he thinks of the tears in your eyes. His hips stutter, and it makes her dig her blunt nails into the clothes expanse of his shoulders, but he welcomes the pain better than he welcomes the guilt of having let you walk away.

He feels wretched, feels horribly for Nayoung and feels the vodka in his system crawl its way up his throat but he keeps it down. He’s close, she’s close, and if this was a bad decision, nobody has to know.

Jungkook feels her lose herself over him, and he lets his mind drift to you one last time, biting his lip so he doesn’t groan out your name as his hips lose their rhythm. When he pulls out, one hand lazily pumping his cock, he tries to picture Nayoung, her tits bouncing pretty under her shirt, how she’s trying to regroup all because of him, how she laughed and how it felt when she touched his hair but all his brain can manage is you.

Fuck, he feels wretched. Disgusting, like it’s incestual to think about you the way he is but he welcomes it, let’s you into his mind after fighting it for hours, and when he spills all over Nayoung’s stomach, there’s some sick gratification that coats him.

And that’s the thing about Jungkook. This was a horrible decision, down to every last detail. Fucking your ex-fuckbuddy in a random frat boy’s room after getting shitfaced because you haven’t drank that much in months, and ending up thinking about your best friend even if the goal was to not do that? Bad, bad decision.

But he takes it in stride. Thinks of this as a silver lining, a distraction from you as though you haven’t clouded his head like a stupid wet dream while he fucked somebody else.

And that’s the thing about Jungkook. He refuses to admit that he’s messed up.

Jungkook doesn’t take much time to recuperate from sex. He has incredible stamina coming from the insane workout regime he absolutely has to keep up with, and he can definitely go multiple times in one night, thank you very much, but he can’t bring himself to even think of agreeing to fuck Nayoung again.

He hopes she’s on the same page when he looks at her, the pacing of her breath slowing down as she sits up slowly. He reaches out, stroking her arm right above her elbow where the matching tattoo she got with him sits. Jungkook distracts himself from deciding on what to say as he recalls how they’d gotten it together, how he’d called you right after to show —

Fuck, he hadn’t even thought about you. Granted, you don’t fit into the situation very well, but he doesn’t doubt that you’ll be impartial to telling him off about what he’s just done. He thinks about what to tell you, and remembers the unread messages on his phone, and remembers what he should be doing, which is somehow getting the idea of ever doing this again out of Nayoung’s head.

“Well, you’re never gonna be bad at sex.”

He laughs sheepishly, shuffling to pull his boxers over his still exposed dick. He has no idea what the hell to say to that, and it seems like it’s about to lead to a monologue about how since he’s never ‘gonna be bad at sex’, that they should continue — or return — to be fuckbuddies.

Fuck.

“But we aren’t doing that again.”

Jungkook’s neck snaps up and he lets out a breath of relief he had no idea he was even holding. Nayoung looks incredibly beautiful, and he would lay everything at her feet out of gratitude because she’s just made this whole ordeal inexplicably easy for him. Her face is bright, like it always used to get after they fucked, and Jungkook feels a bout of familiarity catch in his throat, this time accompanied with a sick rush of guilt.

“Uh, w-why do you say that?” His voice is gentle, coaxing the answer out of her, though he can predict what she’s about to say.

We’re in different places, clearly.

“I mean, you were shitfaced just half an hour ago. This was like, a drunken rebound,” Jungkook laughs at that, quiet and low, reaching up to rub at his nape. He doesn’t feel as drunk now, but Nayoung’s next words definitely do the job of sobering him up. “You’re fun, but I want a relationship before I graduate and I honestly don’t think you even like me.”

His world pauses for a split second, and his heart breaks for her; because he made her feel unloved.

Jungkook thinks of Nayoung. Sitting in front of him, face tinged a bit pink from the incredible sex (Exodus 20:14, Proverbs 6:32, Hebrews 13:4), hair cut short and hair long in a blowout (the one you sport all the time) (he thinks your hair is the prettiest shade of brown, and he remembers running his fingers through it). He thinks of Nayoung, matching tattoos and drives to Jersey and how she kissed him with so much fervency and how he tried so hard to match it.

“Your thing with ___ not work out?”

He thinks of calling you after getting tattoos, thinks of how your laugh echoed through his phone in the empty street. He thinks of texting you (shit, he has to text you) for ideas of things to give Nayoung. He thinks of Nayoung opening those gifts and throwing her arms around his neck. He thinks of getting drunk with Nayoung and telling her about childhood memories with you — he thinks of the house you grew up in and the one next to it, where he grew up.

He thinks of you telling him how hard school was, how young you were in high school. He thinks of you crying when your boyfriend died. He thinks of your overpriced white mochas and 2Bros Pizza and fucking AJ. He thinks of how you told him to date Nayoung about two years ago, he thinks about how you’ve always been under this multitude of pressure to excel, and he thinks about how he loves you, and how he loves (fuck) Nayoung.

“Of course I like you, Nana.”

Jungkook remembers how she’d lay down on his bicep after he fucked her one night, telling him about the silly nickname. He remembers thinking then, about how you never had a silly nickname because your parents were too focused on getting you into the top ranking kindergarten in all of the Upper East Side. He remembers laughing at Nayoung’s story, and then making a note to give you a stupid nickname.

And then, Jungkook realizes she’s right.

He doesn’t like her, at least not enough to date her. He thinks of his best friend more than he thinks of her, and Nayoung probably already knows this, hence her little comment earlier.

“Your thing with ___ not work out?”

“But I think I like you too much to fuck you and let myself leave it at that. So you’re wrong about that. But I also think that I can’t give you that relationship. I’m busy, and I think I need to figure out like, my future job and stuff and fuck, I’m sorry if I led you on.”

The look Nayoung gives him reaches down into his stomach and tugs at his gut. She looks pitiful, like he’s the one who’s being hurt in this situation. He looks equally as confused as she does woeful.

“I don’t think your job is all you need to figure out, Jungkook.”

“Your thing with ___ not work out?”

Exodus 20:14, Proverbs 6:32, Hebrews 13:4

He doesn’t ask her what she means, and she doesn’t elaborate.

Jungkook watches her redress, and he chooses to do the same as the reality of being butt naked on a random frat boy’s bed nearly gives him whiplash.

He feels the weight of his phone in the back pocket of his jeans, and realizes how desperately he needs to talk to you, to let you talk to him. To let you tell him what went wrong yesterday. He thinks he won’t tell you what just went down with Nayoung.

Nayoung.

She’s beautiful in her clothes again, a little messy, but Jungkook feels the urge to never let anyone hurt her, including himself. It’s love, he knows immediately, when the dim lamp hits the apples of her cheeks and he can see the flutter in her eyelashes when she blinks. But it’s not romantic, and he’s a bit relieved when he realizes this. (It feels nothing like how he does when he looks at you). This love is platonic, not brotherly but friendly, like he’d pick her up from a club and remember her restaurant orders and be the one to haze any of her boyfriends.

And he tells her just this.

“I love you, Nana. You know that, yeah?”

She looks over at him, and it must click in her head what he's implying, because her eyes brighten just a little.

(If they’re glossing over because she’s about to cry, Jungkook will pretend he doesn’t notice.)

“I love you too, Jungkook. You know that, yeah?”

He nods, and he feels the taste of his love for her heavy on his tongue. This love is platonic, not brotherly but friendly, like he’d pick her up from a club and remember her restaurant orders and be the one to haze any of her boyfriends.

(He thinks he loves you platonically as well.)

(If the love he feels when he looks at you is entirely different than the love he feels when he looks at Nayoung, even though he cites them both as being platonic, nobody has to know.)

—

[from JayKayz] im sorry baby, i didn’t check my phone all day.

[from JayKayz] you know how thursdays are.

[from JayKayz] dont apologize. i don’t wanna talk over call, twll me when you’re free

—

It’s about a month after the small reconciliation that Jungkook tells you about how he’d fucked Nayoung.

The last couple of weeks have been incredible; works dwindled down over the past couple of weeks for the both of you, finals are in their last bow before summer, and after a brunch at one of Manhattan’s finest rooftop bars where the two of you had drank a shit ton of margaritas, the guilt of potentially offending Jungkook no longer eats you alive.

It reminds Jungkook of, funnily enough, his freshman year of college — going out as he came in — when the grief of losing your boyfriend wasn’t eating you alive any longer. The two of you had done every cheesy New York tourist thing; ice skating at Bryant Park down to lunch on top of the Empire State Building, and you’d laughed, learned to ballroom dance from YouTube videos only to botch it horribly in the streets; it was the first time Jungkook felt that rush down his throat, and he’s begun to feel it again recently.

It’s like the montage of a romantic comedy where the main characters get to really know each other: a part you savor, and a part Jungkook tends to skip so he can get to whatever conflict awaits. The two of you have done everything together, continued to get weekly pizzas at 2Bros, where you’ve openly made fun of him for his order choice, gotten white mochas at the small business you love too much (he thinks it’s not that great but spends $18 anyways), rewatched the first 5 seasons of Friends (he’s realized you can literally quote it), gone to every Yankees game you could get tickets to (you make him explain all the plays even if he’s done it a million times), spent too much time and too much money at the Statue of Liberty, gotten pictures together at random photo booths in the street, slept under the stars, slept tangled in each other’s arms, drunkenly made out once only to never talk about it —

It’s going better than it ever has, and Jungkook can count on one hand the memories he has that beat out any of the ones that he’s spent with you.

However, as a callback to the Glen Powell rom-com plot curve, there has to be a conflict. So when Jungkook tells you about that drunken memory that still is very much in his mind, you really think you should’ve seen it coming.

It happens over lunch, another sick foreshadow you should’ve seen barreling towards you, and it hits you in a way you can’t exactly explain. He doesn’t take it as seriously; doesn’t think you’d care because it’s not like any of this is inherently romantic. It’s not like he cheated on you; the two of you were just best friends who hadn’t even seen each other in a while when it happened.

(If the Bible verses are at the tip of his tongue when Jungkook thinks of it, he leaves that part out of the recollection.)

He laughs when he tells you, and you savor the sweet sound, the one that’s low and tugs at your heart in an inexplicable manner.

It starts off as a conversation about how he cannot drink vodka anymore, and you immediately wish you hadn’t asked when he speaks: “You know that time, when you got really pissed at me for saying that AJ shit to you?”

The memory sends something queasy down your stomach. It shoots down your legs for a split second before you remember his words from a month back.

You don’t have to explain yourself, I get it.

It must’ve been a hard day, huh? That fucker got you a shaken espresso, Jesus.

Yeah I know he had no idea, but still. I do. And it makes me feel so shitty for you.

You don’t have to explain yourself.

“I’d say pissed is an overstatement.”

“Overstatement for you, you have the best attorneys in the country teaching you on random Tuesday. For me,” his hands reach to rest dramatically over his heart, and you laugh unironically, making a note to yourself to only order mocktails from this moment forward. “It was like getting bitchslapped.”

That genuinely makes you laugh.

“But whatever, the next day, I went to a party and got shitfaced to deal with the pain.”

That reminds you of how you’d dealt with snapping at him the day after — how you had hyperventilated in your room when he didn’t reply, how you had to skip a class because your heart wouldn’t stop beating at the prospect of losing him.

You don’t have to explain yourself.

“And I fucked Nayoung. So no more vodka for me.”

“Lim Nayoung?”

You don’t know why you ask, obviously it’s her.

Obviously it’s Lim Nayoung. The girl who has a matching tattoo with Jungkook on her arm. The girl who has gifts you told him to get for her decorating her shelves. The sweet girl who never stopped Jungkook from speaking to you even if the ‘girl best friend archetype made perfect sense. The girl who has a jacket from when Jungkook and her had almost had a Ross/Rachel wedding after getting drunk in Jersey. His ex-fuckbuddy, hell, his ex-girlfriend because who does all of that with someone who’s supposed to be strictly physical.

Obviously it’s Lim Nayoung.

Obviously you shouldn’t be this fucking surprised.

Obviously your heart shouldn’t sink to the tresses of your stomahc.

Obviously this wasn’t meant to be romantic.

“Yeah, her. It was fucking crazy, I don’t think I’ve ever drank that much.”

His voice is fuzzy in your ears, and you can’t look him in the eyes properly. You take a sip of the drink that’s next to you, willing yourself to suddenly get wasted so you never remember this moment.

Why does it make a sharp pain go through your left side? Why do you have to clench your palms into a fist to subside said pain. Why did you think this was going somewhere, why did you think Jungkook wasn’t still hung up on her.

You think of AJ, and how he doesn’t even know about your ex-boyfriend. You think of your ex-boyfriend, and shaken espressos, and wakes, and how Jungkook’s the only person who’s been through all of that with you.

You think of how you graduate in less than a month, and you think of how Jungkook will have attended six of your graduations by that point. You think of Nayoung, how pretty she is, and how much you think she deserves him.

You wonder why you think you would ever deserve him, and you wonder why you thought it would end in anything but an eternal friendship; beautiful, intimate, but forever bound by the jagged cuffs of platonicity. You wonder if he, even for a fleeting moment — when you were tangled in his sheets, when you laughed at his stupid king-kong jokes at the Empire State Building, when you reached for his hand during the climaxes of horror movies, when your lips were fervent on his in that back alley — thought that this would go anywhere.

“Maybe we need to get you in that sobriety program, huh?”

If your voice cracks, you pray he doesn’t notice. You pray the laugh you get out of him is genuine, and you pray that he didn’t look at Nayoung so warmly, only to feel just as guilty as you had a month prior.

AJ has no idea why you’re at his apartment, nor does he have any idea as to why you’re drunk. It’s way too early in the day for you to be wasted; in fact, he distinctly remembers you telling him that you and Jungkook were going out, which is why you couldn’t make it to the lunch he had proposed.

Were you getting drunk at noon? He knows you like margaritas, but he also knows that you have an insane tolerance; how many did you drink to get you this —

“H- he doesn’t love me.”

You interrupt the tangent of his thoughts with a hiccuped, slurred out sentence, and his entire face contorts trying to decipher what you’re saying, and then why you’re saying it.

“Hey, hey — wait, come in, what are you saying? Who doesn’t love you?”

Your skin is warm under his touch as he gently tugs at your arm to pull you past the threshold of his door, and he tries not to look too hard at the way your lips glisten under the dim light of his entranceway. He tries not to notice the way your hair is a little messy, undoubtedly from the wind, and how pretty your collarbones look under the small top you’re wearing —

Jungkook.

You’re talking about Jungkook, and he knows this not because there’s literally nobody else you could be talking about, but because there’s nobody who could get you this upset by ‘not loving you’.

(Do you love him?)

He sits you down on one of the barstools he keeps in front his kitchen countertop, and you slump your head down onto your arms, mumbling incoherently.

(Do you love him?)

He pours out a glass of water for you, and pats your head gently, touch lingering for a second to give you even the slightest inkling of comfort in this outwardly distressed state.

You lift your head, eyes red-rimmed and glossy with tears.

AJ doesn’t feel like this often. He jokes about how the two of you grew up, devoid of the privilege of showing normal emotions, bottling them up and spilling them over textbook pages and only ever being allowed to feel happy upon seeing numbers scribbled in red at the top of test pages. He jokes about the two of you ending up in Ivy Leagues at the cost of having normal human feelings; he knows that he’s perceptive and sharp and he likes to think that he has you all figured out, but when you look at him like that, he knows that he doesn’t.

He doesn’t know why you told him to never make you a shaken espresso again, he doesn’t know what relationship you and Jungkook even have, he doesn’t know why you’re this upset over him not loving you.

He does, however, know that even if Jungkook doesn’t love you, he might.

AJ met you in your first year of law school, and he remembers thinking that you were the only person in the whole class who was fit to be his rival; you’d been only person other than him who’d gotten through the cold calls, the only person who’d read all the way to the end of the syllabus, the one person he would accept as a ‘rival’, like he was in a Viola Davis drama, if you may.

He’d spoken to you after class — a little cocky, a little smug — and you’d been nothing but sweet. Soft voice, pretty smile, quips that had him looking away to stop himself from laughing, he liked you immediately.

The two of you had really done everything together — studied at ungodly hours, called each other drunk to drive the other home, you had inside jokes and three years worth of memories, you’d helped him through breakups and he’d gotten you free coffee every week for a year now — the rapport he had with you was one he’d never ever expected, and the way he looked at you, felt about you, was something he’d never ever expected.

He had his girlfriends, and he told you about them while you’d answer with a curt joke about never having dated anybody, but he’d never ever looked at them like he looked at you. Never noticed the furrow in their brows when they read something hard to understand, never noticed their lopsided smiles and the way they’d drink, but never enough to really get them wasted. And the thing is, AJ hadn’t cared that he saw all of these things, because perceptive as he was, all you’d ever been to him was a brilliant girl who he’d be sure to keep up with after law school.

Right now, though? He knows. He knows why he noticed, he knows why it bothers him that you might love Jungkook back, he knows that you graduate soon and that he doesn’t have much time, and even if he did, it wouldn’t matter because you might love Jungkook back —

“AJ, Jungkook doesn't love me.”

“Yikes.”

He wants to say more. Wants to tell you that it doesn’t matter what Jungkook thinks, because I love you, and I think you’re incredible and I’ve spent the past 3 years ignoring it but I’ve never ever ignored you and I love you.

“He fucked Nayoung.”

AJ has no idea who that is, but he wants to sock Jungkook in the face for having this girl, this amazing girl with him for his entire life and fucking somebody else.

“I’m sorry.”

I’m sorry he did that, and I’m sorry you don’t know that I would never do that.

“He —“ you pause to sob: a soft, strangled noise that makes AJ’s stomach turn. “He doesn’t love me.”

“Do you love him?”

Say no. Say no. Say no. Say no. Say no.

“Fuck, AJ. He doesn’t —“ you don’t again, shoving your head back into your arms.

“Do you love him, though?”

AJ’s not sure why he’s asking, because he knows that there’s no way you’d be upset if he didn’t love you back. He thinks of it like a prosecution case; he’s gotten enough out of you on the stand that everybody can draw the conclusion but he has to get it out of you.

A surefire kill.

“Hm?”

Your eyes are bleary when you look up, half from crying and half from being the drunkest you’ve ever been. Your hair is still messy, and your lips are bitten red from all the quiet crying you’ve been doing. He can’t cry in his kitchen, not when you’ve been here laughing, not when his granite countertops hold years of your touch, not when you’re unraveling a foot away from him.

“I think I do, AJ. I really think I do.”

“Fuck, baby. I’m sorry.”

I’m sorry that I thought I could have you, when Jungkook’s always been the one you wanted.

“He used to be like, the one person —“ pause to hiccup. “I never thought I’d love like that. But we got closer after the fucking, shaken espresso day last month. And I guess the proximity j-just set it in.”

He can’t tell if the reason your words are so mangled in his ears is because the sound of his own heart crashing into his stomach is so loud, or because you’re slurring your words that much.

“Drink some water, please.”

Say you’re lying, please.

—

Jungkook doesn’t exactly know why you ordered another 3 margaritas in the middle of your lunch detour, and he doesn’t know why you stopped looking him directly in the eyes right after he told you that he’d had sex with Nayoung. He doesn’t know why you insisted on drinking when you never get to a point where being wasted is even an option, and he doesn’t know why you so fervently denied him walking you home.

He doesn’t know why he stays awake at night thinking of you, either.

Jungkook is surprisingly introspective for somebody who zones in and out of conversation so much, who is typically dazed and doesn’t have much to offer when it comes to picking up obvious hints thrown at him, but he knows himself quite well.

Better than you, he’d argue.

The sheets are warm around his waist, and he has one arm propped under his head as he stares at the ceiling, eyes wide without even a hint of sleep in the tresses of them, which is unusual for it being the middle of the night. He remembers how a month prior, all you’d ever been was his best friend. He remembers the little fall-out and how you’d gotten together for dinner, how pretty you’d looked and wonders why he’d focused on that when he simply never had done that before.

He remembers the day after, and how he’d taken another girl to bed. Jungkook remembers faint Bible verses about adultery, how he couldn’t get you out of his head, and he remembers what Nayoung had told him that night, as long as what she’d told him when they broke it off.

“I don’t think your job is all you need to figure out, Jungkook.”

“Your thing with ___ not work out?”

“We’re in different places, clearly.”

He never thought about what she meant when they’d split; the pain of losing someone who’s memory he had literally etched into his skin was too imminent for him to even think about the ending scene. He also never thought about what she meant when she’d walked out of the fraternity room that day; he’d made up with you right after, and the following month was you, you, and more you. Focusing on Nayoung’s words and the small sliver of conversation they’d engaged in hadn’t even been an afterthought, at least until he’s brought her up today and you, like similar poles of a magnet, quite literally repelled him.

But really, what was she even talking about?

Why would there be a thing with you? Sure, the two of you were close, and sure, he’d probably talked about you and called you and FaceTimed you too much for her security, but he’d always thought the concept of him having a ‘girl best friend’ was what annoyed her, and not the notion that the two of you would have a ‘thing’.

Why would there be a thing with you? Sure, he idolized you and told her how smart he thought you were, but him and Nayoung were never official, and he’d only ever assumed that she was confused as to why he was always talking about some other girl after literally sleeping with her -

Oh.

It hits him like a shot to the heart, and he physically sits up to grab his phone because he has to confirm this sudden realization.

The look Mingyu had given him at the party shoots to the forefront of his brain, Nayoung’s words echo, and the way your resolve has crumbled when he told you about her suddenly makes a lot more sense.

In fact, it all makes sense.

I don’t think your job is all that you need to figure out.

She was talking about you. About how he was hung up on you and never even realized it —

We’re clearly in different places.

She was talking about you. About how she was willing to be invested with him, but the place he was stuck at, was you.

The ringing of his phone as he calls Nayoung seems louder than it usually is. It’s daunting, like he’s hoping she doesn’t pick up with each ring so he doesn’t have to face the reality he’s been unknowingly ignoring for… fuck, he doesn’t even know how long.

“Jungkook? It’s 2 in the morning. Are you okay?”

“Why did we break up, Nayoung?”

His voice is hoarse, and if he wasn’t so fucking stressed, he thinks about how proud you’d be for putting on the ‘interrogation voice’ you’d introduced him to in your second year of Law School.

“What?” Her laugh is quiet, laced with sleep, and Jungkook wonders if she should hang up and say sorry for waking her. “We weren’t really together, so I wouldn’t call it a break up —“

Her pause is long, and Jungkook doesn’t correct her, doesn’t bring up the tattoos and leather jackets and how they’d nearly eloped and the fact that they just had sex a month prior. She’s right, and he needs her to continue now.

“But I always assumed that you had something going on with __”

“You mean the time I called her after we got matching tattoos?” He can’t fight the urge to make the joke, even though it just dawned on him that you were, indeed, the straw on the camel’s back that broke him and Nayoung up. It just dawned on him that he might be in love with his best friend, and that he’d hurt Nayoung because of it, and that you might love him back.

Maybe.

He ignores that, and laughs wryly at the silly anecdote, thanking every religious figure he can think of when she also laughs.

“Yeah, that, but also just… your relationship. The way you obsessively talked about her and were literally always on call with her was one thing, but…” she pauses like she’s thinking about what to say next, how to describe the end of it all to him in a way that won’t flip his entire world around, not knowing that she’d already done that. Not knowing that you’d already done that.

“She came over once to pick us up when we got drunk. It was the same night I was talking about at the party, when we told Joon the closest thing to us was the moon? Yeah, ___ came and got us that night.”

“I knew right then, honestly. The way you looked at her was fucking insane. When you used to look at me, my friends would say that it was like I’d done every good thing in the world for you. But when you looked at her, it was like she’d saved you from every bad thing that could’ve ever happened to you. It was like, relief. Like you could let it all down in front of her. And I’d never been on the receiving end of that look; not ever when you were sober. Being like that and looking at her like that completely shitfaced? I knew I couldn’t stand in the way of the two of you, even if it literally killed me.”

He doesn’t process it immediately, choosing to focus on the last sentence, because feelings for you aside, he felt like the most massive douchebag in the world for making her feel that way.

“Nayoung, I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry. I honestly — I had no idea, I really didn’t —“

“Jungkook, I know. And I know you’re probably trying not to drive yourself insane thinking of whether she loves you back.”

He definitely is, but he doesn’t tell her this in fear that it’ll just hurt her more.

“No it’s not like that, I’m just, so incredibly sorry that I put you through that, you deserve so much more, you deserve the relationship you want and I feel like shit —“

“What do you mean it’s not like that, Jungkook? You’re not thinking about whether she likes you back?”

“Huh?”

“You don’t think she loves you back?”

Do you love him back? Do you look at him like he’s saved you from every bad thing that could’ve ever happened to you? Do you? Will you ever?”

“I don’t… know?”

“When you called her that night, you tripped over your own feet. She knew exactly where we were based off of that.”

Summer of 2006.

The field he’d gotten wasted with Nayoung, except he only remembers you.

Remembers how you’d just gotten promoted up to the fourth grade, remembers how you were licking down the side of your ice cream cone; vanilla with sprinkles, as always. He had his mint chocolate chip, and your mothers were on a bench a couple of feet away from you.

The sun had made your hair look golden, your eyes were bright, and your smile was so pretty that he couldn’t hold your gaze for longer than three seconds. He remembers this, because he’d physically tripped over his own feet when you looked at him just a couple of seconds too long.

The small ‘oof’ that he’d let out when he’d fallen, damp grass and soil under his tender palms, knees tickled by the summer green just seconds later, the way you’d gasped and abandoned your ice cream cone on the ground to come tend to him, and your mothers rushing over too, laughing at how much you cared for him.

He’d always, always tripped over his own feet at that spot, always fallen with that little ‘oof’ and soon realized that it wasn’t really because he couldn’t make eye contact with you, but because there was a little hump in the ground at the spot he’d been standing at.

And you remembered.

You remembered even if the first time it happened was more than a decade and a half ago, you remembered even if you had grown out of visiting that field when you went to college.

“She remembered.”

“Yeah, Jungkook. Obviously she remembered. Because she loves you back, and it’s honestly making me more upset that the two of you haven’t worked it out yet.”

“Fuck, Nayoung. Fuck. Thank you. Thank you — I have to think about — fuck, I’m sorry it’s so fucking late and I’ve just called you and went on this weird self discovery path —“

Her laugh is bright when she cuts him off, and Jungkook feels part of his heart ease when he realizes that she’s not angry with him.

“Go to bed, talk to her tomorrow. I love you, Jungkook. And you love her and she loves you in a completely different way, but I love you. And don’t say sorry, I was up anyways.”

She hangs up after, not giving Jungkook space to even say goodbye, and simultaneously giving him a million different things to think about, but only one that he can really focus on: how he’s in love with you.

And how, apparently, you’re in love with him as well.

—

The beauty of New York City is the anonymity it provides, even amongst 8 million other people. Street bustle, skyscrapers kiss the clouds, floods of people drown you in the street, and even through all of that, you have the privilege of being alone. Solitude; a lighter flickering in a Brooklyn balcony, and the drip of water down in Harlem.

Tonight, you and Jungkook have the privilege of being alone, just 20 minutes away from each other, staring at the same film photograph of the both of you from the photobooth you’d stopped at a couple of weeks prior.

The grainy picture features four shots; your hair is damp, and Jungkook can still feel how it felt on his neck, your lips are a dark maroon, and Jungkook can still feel them hovering right above his. Jungkook’s in his leather jacket, and you feel the goosebumps on your arms from when the fabric brushed against your skin. His hair’s also wet from the rain, but the gel he still uses had kept it together surprisingly well; you remember the way you’d made fun of him for his incessant usage of the product.

The picture on the top right is a glamour shot, if anything. You’re smiling, and when he looks down at it, his chest blooms with a warmth akin to spring’s first bloom. He has a softer look; sporting the lopsided grin you’re so used to seeing, and it makes your stomach coil enough to make you physically look away and laugh.

Top left is a lot less serious, you remember he’d made a joke about the two of you being mafioso heirs, and it hadn’t even been that funny, but the picture features bright, childish, innocent grins. Your eyes are shut, smile spreading all the way across your face as you lean forward. His head is thrown back, lip piercing caught between his bottom lip when he laughs. The both of you hear each other’s laughter, echoing in the photobooth and across the empty, rain stricken streets of New York.

You think of how much you miss this, about how this day had inevitably been when you fell face first, defenseless with your guard all the way down. You think of the bottom left picture, not having the courage to look at it fully; you remember how you’d leaned into his body, and how he’d let you do it, how your lips had been just millimeters from touching when the flash had caught you off guard and you’d looked up straight into his eyes like something out of a Glen Powell rom-com.

Jungkook thinks of how much he misses this, about how this day had been one of the ‘moments he knew’, a collection that grows the more he thinks about how irrevocably in love with you he is. He thinks about the bottom right picture, how he’s looking at you and you’re fixing your hair, how he got the picture developed and still didn’t see the stars in his eyes, still didn’t realize that you were always the one.

The four photos are pressed to your heart. You haven’t had it in you to fall asleep, there’s still a full ache in your head from the alcohol and you make a note to thank AJ for getting you home safe today. A tinge of embarrassment shoots down your body when you think about the conversation you had with him today, the conclusion you’d reached, what you’d learned about Jungkook and Nayoung, what you’d learned about yourself; that you loved him, and he didn’t love you back, and how it made you want to die the more you thought of the month the two of you had.

The four photos are pressed to his heart. He wonders if they’ll soothe the ache or not knowing whether you love him, too. The phone he’s just put down should provide him with silence; fuck , he craves silence, but Nayoung’s words just echo in his head. Talk to her tomorrow, but he has no idea if you feel even remotely the same. He has no idea if he’s completely off base, he has no idea if he’s gotten the wrong ideas based off of the last month, and the guilt of potentially having taken your platonicity and genuine friendship as a lead eats him alive.

[But it can’t all be platonic, you think.]

[But it can’t all be platonic, he thinks. ]

No, you think. Because the alcohol might’ve made it easier, but you remember the way he tasted on your lips a little too well. The way his hands traveled down your shirt, sodden and soaked in the rain, caressing the curve of your waist. The way your own fingers had explored the figure of his shoulders, pressing into the hard plains of muscle as he moved his lips against yours too languidly to be a drunken detour.

No, he thinks. Because the drowsy haze of Sunday might’ve made it easier, but he remembers the way your leg was thrown over his thighs, the soft cotton of his own shirt hardly covering any of your legs, the rasp in your voice when you’d mumbled out his name, looking over you as he cooked. The way you’d laughed at his stupid dad jokes, and the way Mingyu had slapped his back after you’d gone, talking about the ‘way she looked at you’ — there’s no way it was just platonic.

There was nothing platonic about the way he’d held you in line at Liberty, the way he’d looked at you when you went up the fire escape when Mingyu had another girl over, the way you’d spoken, hushed into his skin the night you fell asleep at his place. Maybe falling in love, for the two of you, was like having your eyes closed while standing on the shore; maybe it was a wave that came crashing, rushing up your legs and soaking the two of you entirely before you even realized it. Maybe all the two of you had been doing, was enjoying the crashing of water ahead of you, ignorant to the receding waves and how dangerously close you were to being caught up in the mess your ignorance would inevitably bring.

And there you are —

Present day New York City, staring up at empty ceilings with full hearts, itching to reach for your phones with nothing but apprehension holding you back; what if he doesn’t love me, what if she doesn’t love me, what if I’m off-base, what if everything changes, 23 years down the drain, I have to tell her, I have to tell him. Alone, anonymous, lovers amidst millions others, feeling so much that you taste it on your tongues, feeling so much that you want to rip your beating hearts out; alone, anonymous, in love, in pain.

And there you are —

Begging the other not to go, because you’re so bad at being alone, but not being able to tell them why.

—

Cravath asks you to work in their London office after you graduate. It’s one of the perks of

consistently being at the top of your class, one of the perks of having an internship at the best law firm in all of New York, and it’s an opportunity you can’t say no to.

You figure it’ll help you get over this Jungkook fiasco, considering the fact that it’s basically a dead-end for you; you wonder if Watchell Lipton can refer AJ to a firm in London so you won’t completely be alone in a new city, you start to think about how wonderful it’d be to get some time away, to get space away from where you’d suffered such a big loss just a couple of years back — away from where you’d been pushed beyond every limit of yours since the first grade.

There’s nothing loss has taught you other than to put up walls, to close people off and to shut them out at any waking moment that you even come close to vulnerability. It’s not healthy, nor is it a quality you’re proud of; your stricken body’s last attempt at cushioning any further blows, any further losses from even those you claim to be the closest to you. It’s the reason you never told your parents about the intense stress their expectations put onto you, it’s why AJ doesn’t know about your ex but you know about all of his, and it’s the reason you’ve been ignoring Jungkook for a week now.

The realization that you were, in fact, madly in love with him had might as well carved through your skin to make its way into your system judging by the pain you’ve gone through since it’s hit you. You’re a rational adult, and loving someone is human nature, but loving your best friend and knowing that he doesn’t love you back should be something God implements in hell as punishment. You haven’t been able to look at the photo booth picture, have turned every photograph that reminds you of him around to avoid seeing it, have turned to sticking your head in your ridiculously heavy textbooks so you have a way to save face should Jungkook ever text you, and you’re sure that this game of shutting him out is going to be successful when you accept the job in London.

But you don’t.

For some reason, the drafted email accepting the position sits on your laptop, in a minimized tab that you open and contemplate hitting ‘send’ for hours on end, but never do. There’s a sliver of yearning — stupid, human yearning — that you wish you could just turn off, that tells you there’s a chance Jungkook might love you back. That tells you this situation will end with him running to you in the rain and kissing you under the stars, a grandiose recreation of the kiss you’d had almost a month ago now; the little voice in your head is your biggest vice, and you stare at the email over and over everyday, telling it to just shut up, telling you to get over yourself because he’s always loved Nayoung and you will never be her — never be that pretty, that put together, that kind or compassionate — and you tell yourself to just send the email.

Send it, burn this love you have with the littlest flicker of emotion you have left in your heart, move to London and start over. Reinvent yourself and learn to love properly, learn to love things that will love you back, learn to feel properly and not be so stringent on goals, learn to be human because it seems like you’d forgotten how to, until the realization that you love Jungkook barreled towards you like an avalanche of everything you never wanted to be.

Send it, and tell Jungkook. Take his little display of sadness and walk out of his life with the bitter taste of a confession that’ll never leave your lips still heavy on your tongue. Watch him in pictures like he’d watched you sleep, watch him fall in love with Nayoung eventually and move out because Computer Science has a killer starting salary, watch him pursue something he wants to do —

(“I think I really wanna do art. Sing, paint, do something that doesn’t involve binary code.”

“I think you should go for it. Stick it out till graduation and work for like a month because your starting salary is totally gonna support you even if you fail, and take the leap. Kierkegaard.”

“No idea what the fuck a ‘kira gard’ is.”

“Shut up.”

“You think I’ll be able to do it?”

“I think you’re the most talented person I know. If anyone can be an artist, it’s you.”)

If you love someone, let them go. And you want to do it so badly, a part of you craves the final sweet release of pain that New York City will give you before you escape it, but there’s another part that’s screaming in agony because you cannot do this to yourself, like your body fears that giving up someone you love so much that it physically hurts you to think about will be the final straw, that you’ll drop dead at JFK airport if Jungkook doesn’t tell you that he loves you, too.

If you love someone, let them go. Let them go, let them go. If you love yourself, let yourself go. Leave, and enjoy London and free yourself from a city that’s so beautiful that all you’ve done is loved it and the loneliness it’s handed you on a platter. If you love New York, let it go. If you let Jungkook, let him go.

You’re staring at the email again, and you can’t tell if you’re tearing up because of how long you haven’t been blinking, or if it’s because you know that when you finally click the send button, it’ll all be over.

You’ll be putting the fear of shaken espressos behind you, you’ll be putting Jungkook, New York, your parents, your entire life behind you; you’ll graduate in two weeks after finals, and you’ll grab nothing but your passport to go to London. It’ll be over, which is a thought that’s as daunting as it is relieving, but not because of your ex, not because of New York, or your parents —

It’s hard solely because you don’t want to put Jeon Jungkook behind you. The first person you’d ever talked to about how burnt out you were, the first person to sleep under the same sheets with you, the only person to eat a meat lovers pizza at 2Bros, the only person you let your guard down with, the only person who’d ever seen you cry, the only person you’d ever been in love with. The photographs you’ve turned around, the permanent imprint of his lips on yours, the way his hand found purchase on the small of your back, his heartbreaks and your biggest loss, the strum of his guitar back in middle school when you’d blushed under his gaze for the first time, the way he rubs at his nape when he’s embarrassed, his smile, the way he trusts you with his life — you’d sooner die than call it quits on those memories, but it’s even harder to imagine living with them, knowing that he’s never going to feel the same way about it.

Your heart is heavier than it's ever been, even if you’ve been carrying the weight of your own world for the past 17 years at least, without putting it down even for a second. You’re sure you’re crying, if the way the words on your screen blur is any indication. Your left side aches the same way it had a month ago when he told you about Nayoung, and you wonder if that pain will ever go away if you leave.

Your fingers tremble when they clasp the mouse, and you decide that the pain is something you’ll have to live with. It’s the melancholy it’ll leave in your eyes that’ll make strangers fall in love for you and never quite forget; it’s the edge of having to walk away from something, from the only thing, you’ve ever loved, that’ll make you a strong lawyer. Unattached, a bit desolate, and incredibly strong, but only when working. It’ll be this mistake that’ll prevent you from making others, it’ll be this mistake that’ll make you fall harder for whoever will come next; that’ll teach you to cherish those who love you back.

(You fall back onto your bed and break down.)

(You send the email minutes after you’re done crying.)

(You figure you’ll tell Jungkook the day after. That you’ll apologize. For everything.)

(You figure Jungkook’s going to cut you off for not telling him before sending the email.)

(You figure it’s for the best.)

—

Jungkook feels like his heart is being torn from his chest, inch by inch so he feels the surface of his skin ripping, so he feels the blood dripping down his chest and soaking his shirt, so he can feel the poison in his veins, can feel the thump of the organ when it’s pulled out of his body.

You’re leaving.

“You’re leaving?”

You’re leaving.

He loves you, and you’re leaving in two weeks and he’s trying so hard to not look like he’s in unfathomable, unspeakable, unrelentless pain that leaves him wanting to get on the floor of his apartment and claw at his chest so he can scrape some of the ache away.

He clenches his fingers into fists and refuses to look at you.

“I’m sorry, Jungkook, I thought I’d tell you but finals had me busy —“

You’re fucking lying to him, too. You’re leaving, and he loves you and you’re lying. You weren’t busy with finals, you were ignoring him for whatever godforsaken reason, you were cooped up in your apartment overthinking and fixating on whatever he’d told when the two of you had brunch, and you were doing it on purpose.

Fucking finals.

Your go-to excuse for shutting people out and putting up walls that nobody will ever be allowed to break down. He thought he’d be the first to, he thought he’d already broken them, plowed through the cement when he’d kissed you in a back alley, when he’d held you in his arms after the wake, when he’d bought you your coffee and gotten the order correct, when he had you in his bed. He thought he’d broken them, but he’d been wrong; he hadn’t done shit to stop you from holding yourself away from the world, he hadn’t done shit to help you face vulnerability instead of ignoring it in favor of not facing anyone at all, he hadn’t done shit to get you out of your stupid fucking law school shell, and he was in love with you despite this one tiny flaw, and he knew everything about you, so he knew you were lying.

“Stop that.”

“Stop what?”

“You’re fucking lying to me.”

Your scoff is incredulous and it makes Jungkook want to pull his hair out and drag his blunt fingernails down his face until he’s bleeding out to show you; I care, stop pushing me away, why are you leaving, you don’t know I’m in love with you, why, why, why, why —

“I’m not lying, you know I have finals — you have my planner!”

“No. No, you’re not fucking doing this again. In sophomore year, you were upset because of something your dad said and locked yourself in your room for three days straight. You said you had finals back then. After your fucking boyfriend died, you locked yourself in your room and said you had finals. Whenever you’ve been scared, or humiliated, or had any semblance of fucking human emotions, you’ve said you have —“

“Jungkook, you have no fucking right to bring that up now, what the fuck is wrong with you.”

“What’s wrong with me is you! You decide you’re leaving the only place you’ve ever lived in within the week I last saw you and didn’t even think to discuss it with me? Even after the month we’ve had — even after the life we’ve had?”

You stare at him, and he can see the redness in your eyes like he had seen before you broke down at the wake.

He wants to get down on his knees and put his forehead to your feet and apologize, hold you and never let you go.

You’re leaving.

“It’s my life, not yours.”

“It’s my life, too. You know this.”

“No. I don’t fucking know this, because I’ve worked my ass off for the past 17 years to get to law school and graduate and work at the best fucking law firm in the country. It’s not your fucking life —“

“You’ve killed yourself for all this—”

You stand up from his couch, and turn away so he doesn’t see your tears fall.

“You’ve fucking killed yourself. You worked like a dog since middle school to get into that pretentious private school, and you worked even harder to get to Columbia. You never had a fucking dream, you never had a childhood because you killed yourself to get to this point. You never had time to have a fucking ‘life’ or whatever you call it because all you’ve ever done is work for some stupid fucking goal.”

You sob once, twice, and Jungkook has to put a hand to his heart so he doesn’t die on the spot.

“And you can’t tell me that I don’t know this because I’m the only one who knows this! I’m the only person you’ve ever told about this and it fucking hurts because I love you, and it fucking hurts because you’re leaving me —“

“Because my best friend is leaving me,” he backtracks.

Best friend. Because you don’t know, and he doesn’t know how he’s going to have the heart to tell you.

“And it hurts because my best friend is leaving me and she didn’t even think to mention this before.”

“You didn’t think to mention Nayoung even once in this aforementioned ‘month’ we had,” the quotes you make with your fingers do nothing but show him how much you’re shaking. He wants to grab your hands and tell you that it’s okay; that you don’t need to cry and that he has you.

That he’ll always have you.

(But he won’t, because you’re leaving.)

You’re leaving, and you’re talking about Nayoung for some reason.

“Yeah, because we had sex one fucking time! I don’t even like her, why the fuck would I bring her up — and why are you bringing her up like fucking a girl is anywhere similar to moving halfway across the world.”

You sob once, twice, and when you turn around to face him, he feels like he’s holding his dead heart in his cold hands and watching it try to come to life.

“I’m bringing it up because you love her, and you didn’t even bother to tell me.”

“I don’t fucking love her.”

I love you. I love you, why do you think I love her —

Why do you think he loves Nayoung, and why does your face fall when you say it, and why did you start to ignore him the day he told you that he’d had sex with her?

“You do. She’s the one that got away, and she’ll be here so it doesn’t fucking matter —“

“Stop saying that it doesn’t matter. Stop saying that you don’t matter.”

“Because I don’t, Jungkook,” a sob breaks your sentence and it feels like his world has just come crashing down when he realizes how you feel about yourself. “I’ve lived here for 23 years and nobody knows shit about me and you’re right, it’s because I shut myself away, but nobody bothers anyways and I’ve worked so hard to get here so I’m gonna take the chance to leave, so I don’t have to not matter anymore, so I can like… change.”

“You don’t have to change, ___”

Your name on his lips is a prayer, a silent hope to the god he only remembered when he was fucking somebody, a plea and the final chance he gets to have you.

“Don’t change, __”

Don’t let her leave me, God. Don’t let her change, don’t let her go.

“How can you ask that of me?”

He hears his mothers laugh from when he told her he wanted to be a ninja. He decides that he doesn’t want to be a ninja, or a computer science major, or an artist. He decides that he wants you to know how madly in love with you he is.

“Because I love you.”

“I love you too, Jungkook.”

“No — fuck, I’m in love with you.”

Your stare is dumbfounded, like he’s just told you that he’s a vampire hybrid or something else completely unorthodox. He would laugh at the look typically, but he feels empty, like the compression that had been a steady pressure on his chest for the past few days had lifted, only to be replaced with a pain unlike any other, because what if this messes it up more?

What if you would originally go to London and keep tabs with him and be in his life, and what if he’s told you this and turned you off the idea of ever even looking in his direction again.

What if you don’t love him back?

“You’re in love with me.”

He nods, silently swallowing as he tries to whisper a prayer to whatever god is listening that whatever you say won’t end in you leaving for good.

“You’re in love with me?”

“I am. I have been. I am. I’m in love with you, I’ve been in love with you, and I don’t even remember how long it’s been since it first happened.”

“Jungkook —“

You chuckle, and it should break his heart because it seems like you’re on the road to mocking him, but he feels his heart rejuvenate in his arms when he hears the sound of your laugh. It sounds like a metaphor he’s been trying to write down for ages. It sounds familiar, it sounds intimate, and his name rolling off your tongue is a balm he presses over the open wound of his chest to soothe it.

“Jungkook — you’re in love with me, and not Nayoung?”

He can’t speak, isn’t used to the lightness in his chest.

He shakes his head, and he swears he sees the world light up behind your eyes. He swears you’re the prettiest girl in the entire world, even when tears track down your face and even when you’re red-eyed and have a snotty nose from crying.

(Especially then.)

“Fuck.”

“Fuck, Jungkook, I’m in love with you too. I am. I have been. I’m in love with you, and I’ve been in love with you for as long as —“

You won’t finish that sentence, he decides, taking one long stride towards you to close the distance between your bodies. Your face in his hands is warm, a little sticky from the tears, and your lips are chapped. He doesn’t doubt that he’s in any better of a condition, but you look up at him through your wet eyelashes and he’s had enough.

He’s had enough of yearning, and pleading, and wondering if you love him back because you do. He’s had enough of waiting and wondering why he keeps thinking of you because he wants to think of you.

In fact, he thinks he’s open to thinking of you forever.

So he kisses you, and he thanks his lucky stars when you kiss back, for blessing him with the embodiment of them in the form of you, a girl who shone so brightly that he couldn’t see the love cooped up in her eyes until she cried, told him she was moving to London, and kissed him in his living room.

He thinks he could die happy, but he doesn’t want to die when he finally has you.

Finally has you.

(Except, you could be leaving.)

Jungkook ignores this because you tilt your head so his lips slot against yours better, and he can barely focus on anything other than the way you feel and the fact that he’s kissing his best friend — kissing the love of his life.

He bared his heart and walked through hell for this, and if the way he feels right now is redemption, he’d do it all over again.

—

It starts with you on a table, umbilical cord freshly cut, wrapped up in a pretty pink fluffy blanket. Jungkook, just a one year old, stares blankly, and starts crying in his mothers arms.

It starts in the suburbs of New York City, where you lose yourself between textbook pages and Jungkook wonders what he’ll ever amount to being.

It starts with your boyfriend dying, and the way shaken espressos feel on your tongue. It starts with Jungkook seeing you cry for the first time, and it starts with you wondering if you can ever love someone.

It starts with law school, and a three week gap in your final year during which you and Jungkook don’t talk. He finds himself thinking of you, and you text him, asking to meet up for dinner.

It starts with him asking you about a friend of yours, and you getting vigorously upset, uncalled for and downright appalling on Jungkook’s part.

It starts with you calling him to apologize while he makes a drunken mistake. It starts with you meeting him to apologize and promising to do better; it starts with him telling you that he doesn’t need you to ‘do better’ like it’s a standardized test — that he just needs you to talk to him.

It starts with an amazing month, trailblazing and falling for each other, starts with drunken kisses and getting soaked in the rain and the ruse of being ‘best friends’ and drinking margaritas even though Jungkook doesn’t really like cocktails. It starts with the city of New York, and the anonymous back alleys where millions walk, but nobody lingers long enough to leave a mark.

It starts with him telling you about this drunken mistake, starts with the both of you realizing how madly in love you are with the other. It starts with you accepting a job in London, and it starts with Jungkook calling his ex and figuring out that it’s always been you.

It starts with an argument encased in the walls of his living room, where you empty your heart out and he empties his, starts with accusations that he loves somebody else and utter silence because he can’t tell you that he loves you.

There’s a million beginnings to this story, thousands of waking moments that could’ve been the moment both of you knew, hundreds of little sparks that ignited into the brilliant flame of the love between the two of you, but there’s only one ending.

This is the end of yearning; his lips are on yours, and his warm hands are holding your body like if he lets go, you’ll really be gone. His hands find purchase on every inch of you like he’s trying to map your very existence out with his ten fingers, and you lose yourself when he licks into your mouth, your own hands flying to his face, tracing the little scar beneath his eye, scratching over his sideburns, on an excavation of your own; to discover him and to never let go.

He has you pushed up against the kitchen counter, large hands groping you through your jeans, soft squeezes at the flesh, quiet moans coloring the air when you move your tongue in tandem with his.

Jungkook promises himself to take it slow, but he doesn’t know if he’ll be able to honor that thought when your manicured nails play with the hair at his nape, when he feels you pull away so you can get a better look at him —

Fuck, are you a sight to see. Red rimmed eyes, swollen lips, cheeks dusted with the slightest hues of pink; you wear a smile so pretty he thinks he could fall for you all over again, and your warm breath hits his face with every exhale.

You think he’s never looked better, either. His lips are bitten from kissing you, tear tracks down his soft skin, jaw tight and eyes dark when he looks at you as though he’s trying to drink you in like you’re a glass of fine scotch. You rub your thighs together, desperate for some friction to provide even a fraction of relief from this innate need Jungkook’s instilled in you with just one kiss, and he catches your lips in another, clearly wanting this to go the same way you do.

Jungkook encases your face in his hands, he feels you keen against his lips and releases yours to curse lowly. Your hands travel down his chest, toned and warm from hours at the gym, and trace down the trail of hair you know leads down into his underwear. It has him bucking his hips against you lightly and you can barely hold back a moan, readjusting your focus so you can trace the denim of his waistband, letting two of your fingers slip beneath the fabric, rubbing at the elastic of his boxers —

You’re a fucking tease, and Jungkook should’ve known this about you after 23 years but he’d be lying if he said that it wasn’t thoroughly enjoyable. It’s barely been 5 minutes of you fervently making out with him, though, that he realizes how badly he wants you. The bulge in his pants is one indication, but he’s utterly surrounded by you — your cologne, your soft sounds, breathless whimpers, incredulous gaze like you can’t really fathom this; he gets it, he’s horrified that he’ll wake up in his bed and you won’t love him back and you won’t be kissing him and feeling him up like this, and he needs to feel you, needs the reaffirmation, needs you to fall apart between his sheets. He needs everything you have to offer, needs to smell your shampoo on his pillowcases and your perfume on his shirts and he might as well should just die if he’s waited this long to stall some more.

Two hands trail down your back, pads of his fingers pressing into the little dimples at the bottom of your spine before they land on the junction of your thighs. His eyes are stuck on yours, like he’s too afraid to even look away, and you smile against his jaw.

“Jump, baby,” it’s a whispered order, too silent for anybody but you to have heard it, and the thought makes your brain go numb for a second — it’s you and him now, your whispered secrets and hushed tales, it’s the two of you and this space you’ve curated, even if it was out of your own heartbreak. You can’t do anything but oblige; fuck, you might as well should just die if you don’t hang on to every word that leaves the tip of his tongue.

Your legs find home around his waist, and he carries you to his room, telling his high school self and college self and every single past existence of his that you’re his. He’s mapping out this floor with you in his arms, and though they’ve been around many women, he doesn’t think any one of them have fit like you do. It’s simple intimacy, you can see sunlight pouring into the living room as he carries you out, you see the art he has framed, and you see traces of his roommate strewn around the apartment. You wonder what his and your apartment will look like, wonder if he’ll like the interior design you do, and decide that if he doesn’t, you’ll let him choose whatever.

The door to his room shuts behind you, and you notice the only photo frame he has contains a picture of the two of you.

Your eyes tear away from the glass frame in fear of breaking down again, and you choose to look at him. You choose to look at his eyes that hold all the stars in your skies, you choose to run your finger over the curve of his face and the slant of his nose and his Cupid’s bow. You choose to bask in his presence, feel all of his body pressed against you and feel him uncomfortably hard against your thighs — it’s a bit filthy, but you’ll take anything when it comes to Jungkook, and you let that thought linger when you lean forward to kiss him again.

Jungkook closes his eyes because he doesn’t think he can look into yours without going insane. He hasn’t shut his curtains, so the sunlight lands on your face and highlights all the angles and all the slopes and he thinks that he should memorize the planes of your face, that it’ll give him a reason to stay alive. Your lips smack softly, and he readjusts his hips so he can grind the clothed bulge in his jeans against your own, and his thighs stutter just a smidge when you let out the sweetest moan he’s ever heard in his life.

His fingers trail their way down from your waist, pulling gently at the hem of your shirt, a silent final exit just in case you want to back out, but you don’t let him even consider the thought of you leaving when you pull your own shirt off your head. It’s an aggressive jerk, one that catches him off guard and following you, abandoning the piece of clothing somewhere in the corners of his room.

Even when you’re just in your bra, he can’t stop looking at your eyes. He can’t stop thinking of you, how you’re in his bed and how he has you with him now and how he’ll have you with him forever if he has anything to do with it. Jungkook never doubted that you were attractive, not even for a slight second, but he doesn’t dare look at you, near naked and in all your glory in front of him — he wonders if this is what Icarus felt like, wanting to fly so close to the sun because he loved Helios too much, and he vows that he’ll be careful, he won’t look too quickly and that he’ll be gentle because he cannot stand even the idea of losing you, even if he’d be the one crashing and burning.

You pull him closer by the name, and his hands go to cradle your bare shoulders. Before he can even process the proximity, your lips are on his neck, and they’re soft, warm: they’re everything he’s ever wanted and he feels like he’s been set aflame because he’s lived his whole life not really knowing what he wanted, but he knows now. Your lips on his skin are the tantalizing fruit that's been dangling behind his head the whole time and he can see it, can feel it and he can feel it; all he’s ever wanted is you, and he lets himself go, voice breathy and untethered to his own self as he moans, incoherent pleas for you to keep going.

Jungkook prays he’ll see marks tomorrow, if this is even real. He prays that you leave a tangible sign, a purple bruise on his golden skin as a reminder that this was once real. If you leave after he’s made love to you, he doesn’t think he’ll be able to recover from it, but if you leave your mark; the indent of your teeth and the faded stain of your lipstick, he thinks it’ll be enough to satiate him.

You’re not one to waste time, apparently, fingers tracing down his abs agonizingly fast before Jungkook can process the touch, reaching for the button on his jeans so he can be free, get inside you, because it’s been way too fucking long and you need him sheathed within your body like you’re entwined, like you’re one entity. You reckon the thought is one of the filthiest ones you’ve ever had, but it doesn’t matter, because you can feel yourself soaking through your panties and you run cold like ice, wanting him to melt you — needing him to melt you.

This will be your new beginning; fuck London, you decide. Fuck London if it means you have him like this, the pads of his fingers running like feathers over your skin, leaving chills in their wake. This will be your new beginning, his lips grazing over your collarbones as he grinds his hips into yours just hard enough for you to feel through your jeans. This will be your new beginning, desperately bucking your hips up to meet him halfway, to gain some much needed friction until he decides to stop giving you the tantalizing guise of what you need, until he decides to unbutton your jeans with daft digits,, pulling them until you lay before him in all your glory.

Jungkook has never known religion until he sees you like this. The curves of your body and the slope of your waist and the way your bra just barely covers your breasts and the way your panties sit on your hips and your collarbones illuminated by the sun that desperately laps at your soft skin like it, too, wants to have you wholly. He has never known a God until he thanks Him for you, thanks his lucky stars that he has you in front of him, fights the urge to sink to his knees and pray that you don’t disappear into a brilliant beam of light like you were nothing but a figment of his imagination.

His cock strains, and he reaches out to stroke the lace of your panties so gently, almost like he’s afraid to leave a mark, though he yearns for yours on his skin. You want to ink the calluses of his fingers so they leave permanent imprints on your body, so you feel the rough drag forever, but it's only an afterthought when he begins to rub at your clit through the fabric. The added friction feels like heaven on your tongue, like you can taste the waning of yearning on the tip of your tongue –

“Fuck, Jungkook,” your voice sounds dazed in your own ears, and he shifts your panties aside to rub your wetness all over your sex, thumb rubbing slow circles over your clit as his fingers tease your entrance. If there was a way to put the bliss, the desperation into words, you’re sure that you could talk for hours. You hear his breathing, heavy like he’s incredulous, in utter disbelief, and you hear the unrecognizable keens of his name.

“I know, baby. I know, I love you. Lemme have you.”

He repeats it like a prayer, those three words running like water off his tongue as he rubs tight eight-figures of your clit. Eyes raking your figure, he drinks in the tilt of your head backwards, a tattoo on your shoulder blade that he makes a note to ask you about, the bend of your elbows and the way your stomach tightens. Jungkook tries to take his time, but his fingers are drenched in your arousal and he deems you wet enough to slip his index finger in.

You moan, high and unadulterated, and he moans, low and throaty; it feels like you’re complete, and he can’t help but wonder how your walls would feel on his cock. You suck him in, pussy greedy for something to fill it, and he does his best to affirm this when he bends down to catch your lips within his again –

“Shit, doll, you’re soaking me… look at your sweet cunt, look at how she’s taking me,” he uses his free hand to tilt your chin downwards, and the pink of your bitten lips distracts him for just a second before he pushes another finger in.

“Jungkook – ah, fuck, more please, more,” you let your mind go adrift, thinking about how good you feel and then thinking of nothing at all when he curls his fingers in an upwards motion, rendering you speechless and fucked silly. The thought of what his cock would do is lost among a myriad of unsullied pleasure, and you don’t know whether it's because you haven’t cum in so long, but you’re dangerously teetering over the edge of your release, continuing to beg him to just throw you over.

He tells you he has you, eases another finger in until the tears that prickle the corners of your eyes finally spill over. He licks them away, rutting his hips up into his free hand like it gets him off, seeing you cry for him, seeing you writhe under him. He knows it's too much, knows that you’re close like he’s done this a million times before, like your body is his own.

“I’m f– fuck, so fucking close,” you can feel the coil in your lower belly so close to snapping that it makes you want to run away from the feeling. It’s all too much, because his thumb feels rough on your clit and his fingers are jackhammering into you like he has a point to prove, because he’s calling you his and his voice is echoing somewhere in the back of your mind, because all you can do is squirm and push your hips up to get yourself over the precipice of pleasure –

“Fu- fu- uck, Jesus –”

“I gotchu honey, let go for me, just let go, ‘m always hare, let go for me –”

What you expect to be a wave, crashing into you like the realization that you loved him had, is nothing but a soft roll of ecstasy taking ahold of every inch of your skin. It starts in your head, numbing your senses and then heightening them, makes its way down to your arms until you’re clawing at Jungkook’s because it’s so fucking good, rolls down your legs until you clench your toes, grapples at your throat until your voice is choked out and all you can do is pant helplessly. What you expect to be a wave is a slow pulse that leaves you breathless and staring up at Jungkook who seems to be mesmerized by the expression you’re wearing, fingers slowing within you as he helps you ride it out.

“Fucking hell, baby. You’re stunning,”

You laugh, out of it and incredulous as he presses a kiss – too chaste for the mind-blowing orgasm he’s just given you – to your temple.

“Gonna make me do that everyday, Jeon?”

“You can count on it, angel. I’ll make you do that every single day.”

The two of you move in tandem, knowing that this wasn’t nearly enough to satiate you both; your hands fly to his jeans, pulling his zipper down and yanking the fabric off of his legs. Jungkook’s laugh is breathy, pupils still blown out as he watches you try to get him naked and he lets you.

He lets you strip him until his skin is bare, watches you rake your eyes over his figure and pause at the ink of his arms. He vows to tell you about all the secret tattoos he’s gotten that remind him of you; that he got because of you, but all he can focus on is the way your eyes go dazed and glossy when you push down his boxers to pull his cock out.

You’re well aware that Jungkook is beautiful, and he’s never doubted his physical appearance for more than a split second since college, but he never thought that his dick would be the center of said attention. Fuck, he has a pretty cock; it’s thick and your mouth waters at the angry vein running down the underside of it, desperate to get your mouth on him and savor the weight of him on your tongue. It curves up, pretty mushroom tip having been rendered a dark red from when he was getting you off, the pearly beads of pre-cum that spill over the sides of it when you rub your hand over his length a stark contrast.

He buckles over, hand splaying over your stomach as he lets out a choked groan at the contact, and you can feel the wetness of the sheet underneath you as you see him lose himself underneath your touch. You could do this forever, and the inexplicable urge to just get him in your mouth takes over your body reflexively, but Jungkook doesn’t let you act on it; his warm fingers press down on your skin, and he lets his free hand replace yours on his cock.

“Gonna fuck you real good, darling. You’re gonna feel it all the way — shit — all the way up to here,” he pumps his cock like he’s trying to deprave himself of your pussy on purpose and your eyes desperate search for his, no longer trusting your brain to form adequate words to explain just how badly you need him to fuck you.

He knows, he knows you like the back of his hand, and he knows how much you need and crave this. Just as quick as he’d gotten your hands off of him, he presses himself to your entrance, rubbing the head of his cock up and down your embarrassingly wet slit. The squelching would typically have you curl in on yourself, but it’s Jungkook, and you’ve let every wall down around him and it feels so fucking incredible when he rubs his dick against your sensitive clit that you just cannot bring yourself to care;

“Please, please Jungkook —“

“I know, I know baby, shhh… just relax for me and I’ll make this so good, ‘kay? That’s my girl,” the hand on your stomach goes lax when you exhale, letting him align himself with your entrance and ease himself in.

He gets his tip in with surprising deftness, rubbing over your torso when you tense your body. He knows you’re not a virgin, he’s done this before and so have you, but with each other? It feels holy, like you’re coming back to earth and coming back to the person each of you is meant to be with.

His inked hand goes to cradle your face, pushing your hair away from your tear-stricken skin, kissing away at the new tears that threaten to slip from your eyes. You breathe out at his touch, and he pulls out all the way to thrust back into you, slipping in and filling you all the way to the brim.

A choked moan leaves you, and your simultaneous gasps color the air, mingling and dissipating as the two of you mold into one entity. Jungkook forgets the Bible verses about adultery, things of new beginnings and redemption and how you’re the Holy Grail he tried so hard to find when you were right there. He curses himself for not doing this earlier, for realizing so late, but it’s all so worth it when you give an experimental roll of your hips, bucking upwards to get him to move.

Jungkook thinks he would give you anything, take chunks out of the moon if you so looked at it with desire, and he thinks that he’ll lay his body down for you if you even implied that you wanted him to. He thrusts into you, a gritty moan leaving his throat when he feels your walls, warm and wet and fluttering around his cock. Your pussy is greedy for him, milking his every drop and he knows you can feel him, knows you feel everything.

He’s right, too, because the veins of his cock, every ridge and every edge of it is fully sheathed within you. When his shallow thrusts get longer, deeper, when he bucks his hips upwards to fuck you just right, when you look down at his hand and see the bulge of his cock in your stomach — fuck, it’s exhilarating, and he seems to notice it too, following your gaze and letting his hips lose their well adjusted rhythm for just a split second.

“G-god Jungkook, so fucking full — shit.”

“Yeah, you are. Fuck, fuck, I told you. Told you I’d fill your greedy little cunt up.”

You think this is the only side of Jungkook you haven’t seen, so when he continues to talk, confidence and this natural allure of dominance absolutely dripping off of him, you thank whatever deity is up there for letting you have him.

“Look at you, tsk tsk. Baby, you kept this pretty pussy away from me for so fucking — shit — long?”

His moans are nothing compared to the high keens, pornographic breathy whimpers that leave your throat. It’s like he’s ripped off every barricade you put up in front of you, has you naked and bare and begging in his sheets like you were made for this, fucks you like your pussy was made for this.

“How’d you keep her satisfied without me, darling?”

He leans down, hands still playing with your hair and holding onto your face in a way that you know will leave pink fingerprints — in a way that makes you wonder if he even believes this is real, grasping onto you so he can reassure himself that you’re tangible. You see the knot in his brows, feel the murmur of his words against your jaw when he presses his lips to the bone, catch the tension in his abdomen as he tries to keep his rhythm.

You’re sure he won’t have to, though, because there’s something about the way he’s leaning down into you, the way he’s thrusting into you so deep, never slow but never too fast, the way he snakes one hand between your bodies to rub at your clit, knowing he won’t be able to last long inside of you. All of it has your head spinning, and you’re not sure if you’ll ever experience anything this riveting, this revitalizing before. It feels like you’re closer to being born again with every thrust, with every bit of the coil in your stomach tightening —

He presses his forehead to yours, thumb rubbing circles onto your clit, cock prodding against just the right spot like he’s practiced this only for you, only for you. Your eyes meet, and you see tears in the corner of his own eyes, you feel his hand trembling in your hair as he tries to leave traces of his prints on every inch of you — you lock your legs around his waist, and the new angle is like the straw on the camel’s back as you’re thrown so violently over the edge that it catches you off guard.

This one is a wave, drenching you and drenching his cock and the sheets and the miles of skin that connect the two of you. He lets out a deep groan, lips connecting to the column of your throat when you throw your head back, nails digging deep into the skin of his shoulders so as to lessen the blow.

Fuck, he wants you to leave his back scratched and bloody, needs a reminder of this rebirth; needs the sting of you permanently imprinted if it on his body, then in his brain.

You get the memo, clearly, running the sharp acrylics up and down the toned expanse of his back as you just barely catch your breath — it comes in pants, the achy pleasure of overstimulation creeping its way up your spine.

If he doesn’t come inside of you, it’ll be his biggest regret. You’re smart, he knows you’re on the pill and he knows you would’ve told him to pull out, wouldn’t have had your legs wrapped around his waist if you didn’t want this just as bad as he did, but he opens his mouth to ask anyways.

“Come inside, baby. I — fuck. I fucking love you, I’ll love you forever, come inside of me, please.”

The deliriosity of your orgasm, along with the continuous sensation of being fucked senseless as Jungkook loses his rhythm and resorts to jackhammering into you, chasing his high like you’re nothing but a toy to do it; all of it pushes you into overdrive and you babble, begging for him to finish inside like it’s the only thing you can think of.

He doesn’t dare look away from your face, mapping every second within his brain, feeling the familiar feeling of an orgasm washing its way up to shore. He’s sure you’re on the same page, too, recognizing the face he’s seen twice now etch itself back onto your features —

You cum for a third time when his hips stutter and he buckles over your body, hand never moving from your head, cradling it like the contact is keeping him grounded. You feel the warm ropes of his cum paint your insides, and the third orgasm is nowhere near as intense as the others, just a gentle pulsation of pleasure and a bout of love that you don’t think you’ve ever felt before blooming over your heart.

Jungkook collapses next to you, dirty sheets be damned when he throws his inked arms over your body. For a while, neither of you find it in yourselves to talk — it’s barely even the orgasms, more so the fact that the two of you are best friends who are madly in love with each other, the fact that you’ve just told each other this and then proceeded to have the most mindblowing sex the either of you could even imagine, all within the span of an hour or so.

He’s first to make a move, lifting your chin so you look at him, smiling down at you so gently that you feel every bit of insecurity — every worry that’s already clouding your mind about the future, London, all of it — disappear.

You match his gaze, trying to read what is so clearly written in his eyes. I love you, they say, twinkling brighter than the golden rays of sunshine that pour through his poorly strewn curtains. It’s hard to speak so you don’t, opting to reach up and slot your mouth against his.

Jungkook swears he’s been given a second chance at life when you kiss him, and he decides to plan it out better this time. The thought goes away quicker than he’d like, though, because you slip your tongue into his mouth and his brain short circuits for the umpteenth time that day. It’s hard to imagine anything being difficult if you kiss him like this, it’s hard to imagine struggle, hard to imagine dissatisfaction, hard to imagine not being in love with every waking moment of his life when he’s this madly in love with you.

You pull away.

“I’m not worried, by the way.”

He grins, leaning into your smaller frame to press a kiss against the junction of your shoulder.

“I know. I’m not either.”

“We‘re gonna make it work?”

“Yeah. Of course. It’s us, ___. We’ll make it work.”

—

Jungkook doesn’t like summer, but he thinks you make it better. You graduate law school a week after he graduates college, and he’s in the front row watching you give your high honors speech before getting your degree. You tell Cravath that you can’t work in London, and ask AJ if he’s willing to quit Wachtell Lipton and take your place.

He tells you that he thinks he’s in love with you, that he’s happy you’ve found love with Jungkook, and takes the job.

You decide to give New York a second chance that summer; decide to give yourself a new beginning as you start to work and don’t immediately take immense bouts of stress upon yourself. Jungkook thinks about what he really wants to do, and though he takes a job that is gratuitously well paying – bless the Comp Sci starting salary – he thinks he wants to freelance art on the side.

–

When fall rolls around, you stand in the kitchen with your mother. The two of you look out at Jungkook and your father turning pages of old photo albums, and she tells you that she’s proud of you. You wonder if this is what it feels like to be avenged. It gets colder, and Jungkook gets you all the white mochas you want to drink, especially when you drive up to the cemetery to see your ex in early October. The two of you lay down orange roses, and you tell him that you’ll always love him in a way nobody else knows – Jungkook is proud, you’re proud, and for the first time in years, your heart doesn’t feel heavy when he drives around that part of town.

Jungkook paints portraits of you in the living room of the apartment you share. The two of your extremely well-paying jobs had let you buy a penthouse in Greenwich Village, and you’re just grateful you can find someplace to call home. Speaking of living together, Mingyu had enrolled himself into a sobriety program when Jungkook had forced him to watch that TED Talk, only this time neither of them had been high.

You tell Jungkook’s parents, too, and their excitement is nowhere near as gentle as your parents’ had been. His mom cries, and his dad tells you that he’s been rooting for you and Jungkook for ages.

(As it turns out, Jungkook had been rooting for him and yourself for ages as well.)

–

Winter follows, encasing New York in an icy chill but your heart has never been warmer. You have a classic NYC Christmas, doing all the insanely cliche tourist activities that are manageable. Nayoung moves out of state as well, and Jungkook cries into her shoulder at the airport. You’re there with him every second of every day – baking cookies, forcing him to take notes when the two of you watch Die Hard together for the first time, in his sweaters, in his sheets, in his heart.

Jungkook’s art sells well, he loves this city, and he still loves getting 2Bros with you – he even forces you to get the meat pizza he’s devoured for years, and you decide that while it’s not so bad, that you’ll continue to make fun of him for it. A tradition, just like the coke floats you still buy in sub-zero temperatures.

He makes you a shaken espresso in February, and you tell him it tastes incredible.

You stop putting walls up, and he learns to actually talk about his feelings, and you’re still the same toddlers from two decades ago; a bit immature, bound to end up together, and totally susceptible to throwing your ice cream cones on the ground if the other shoes any semblance of an injury.

–

New beginnings are for spring, though. Months after his birthday and yours have passed, months after new years, right when the first flowers bloom and the cold starts to whisper it's goodbyes, right when he realizes it’s nearly been a year since the day he’d randomly thought of you and set lose this insane chain of events – right in the middle of April, he decides he’s going to marry you.

It won’t be anytime soon, but seeing as how you’re steadily progressing in your career, and he’s earning more with his art than with his job? The budget for a wedding is definitely on the table, and he vows to officially make you his one day.

Some day.

(He already has the ring in his cart on the Cartier website.)

(Mingyu comes out of the program a few weeks later, and Jungkook asks him to be the best man.)

(You’re on the same page, if the wedding themed Pinterest board he sees you shut with insane speed is any indication.)

–

You love infinitely, filled to the brim and overflowing with it; so much so that it gets overwhelming at times, but neither of you go. You choose him, and he chooses you, and seasons go by and Jungkook figures out the direction he wants to go in this new life, and you learn to be gentle with yourself, and neither of you go.

And so it goes.

You and Jungkook, two kids grow into two adults in the most marvelous city in the world. A million possible beginnings in the span of two decades, but one conclusion; one ending: the both of you aren’t flawless – it’s hard to be – you’re just bad at being alone.

—

a/n: U GUYS ITS HEREEEEE. I’m sorry for the incessant word vomit and unnecessarily long smut scene it was important for the plot development hehe. and if u feel bad for AJ and Nayoung… so do I! this is also a birthday fic for my love jungkook and I hope he has the bestest day in the entire universe I love U my little virgo sweet boy I should Kiss u a million times

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