To What Was Ours

denying (jimin)

'Jungkookie

I keep checking my phone, and then typing a text you'll never see.

I keep exhausting myself to sleep, only to wake up choking on my own sobs.

I keep closing my eyes and pretending that this isn't real, because you'll come back to me, right?

You'll come back to me.

So there's no reason for me to do this. Soon enough you'll be back, and we can read this mess together, and laugh about how dramatic I was being. I'm not going to sit here and write a damn eulogy because you are not dead, Jungkook.

I don't care who's body it was in that casket. It wasn't you. You're somewhere safe and happy, relaxing, and only waiting for the right time to come back and laugh at our faces when you pop up.

I don't even know what I'm feeling. I'm so angry and restless, but I also feel nothing at all. I'm saving those emotions for when you come back.

I get angry when everyone is so accepting that you're gone. Even Army, Kookie, they're so convinced you're gone. I thought that they would agree with me on this - you are alive.

Just come back to me. So we can prove them all wrong. Please come back. Please come back, Kookie. Just come home. Come home.

---

It was a phenomenon; Jimin was a phenomenon.

He had cried when they connected the dots, during the rushed trip to the hospital, and up until it was confirmed that Jungkook had been the one to crash into that pole and almost instantly pass.

And then he stopped.

Not a single tear dropped from his face when he slid down the hospital wall, hearing the sobs and screams from his Hyungs and the slowly arriving management. Not when they returned home and somehow made it through the night. And not even when the police had come and gone, despite the overwhelming grief that filled him, the final salvaged remnants of Jungkook handed in broken sunglasses and bleached clothing.

At least, not consciously. He didn't feel the streaks, even though he had to have been a visible wreck watching Jungkook's family arrive, moving slowly like the undead. He had to have cried whenever Taehyung held onto him like he was the only life raft in the middle of an ocean. He swore that he heard his own screams in the chorus of their agony. But there was a missing spot in his mind between that moment the doctor walked in and whatever else unraveled after.

That lost puzzle piece was enough to convince him otherwise.

He was numb - and he was refusing to accept the fact that Park Jimin had been crying every second along the way.

Because Jeon Jungkook was not dead.

He had no explanation for where he had gone. But his mind, body, and heart we're all repeating the same exact thing - Jungkook could not be dead. So he wasn't. Being in the industry had taught him many things, but above all the lessons, trusting your gut ranked the highest. His gut was telling him that Jungkook was still around, somewhere, and he did not doubt himself in believing it.

It was impossible to ponder it, anyway, when you stayed up all night reading through every single text that had been sent, over and over again. He almost regretted ever deleting conversations before - until he remembered that there was no reason to feel regret, when they could always make new ones.

There wasn't a time limit on Jeon Jungkook, that was for sure.

Whenever he thought about it, he thought too deeply. Like watching every performance over and over, picking out tiny little flaws - that may not have even been flaws - until there was nothing but an incapable idol on the screen. There'd been enough scoldings that forbid Jimin from thinking like that. So he chose to not think, even a little bit.