Partners In Speed - ver. 1 (Street Racers #2)

24: Jungkook

"Oh? What happened?" Yeeun asks.

"He was being an asshole," I say. "All sweet to me, but at the same time talking shit about Taehyung."

"So you did something a normal person wouldn't, yeah?" she asks, a smile creasing her eyes.

"You can say that." I move back to my pillow and tell her the whole story, and she listens with eyes wide.

"I send you to buy drinks, and you choose violence."

I let a laugh slip. "I did not, it was a very peaceful exchange."

"Sounds exactly like something you would do, minus a fist fight," she says, rolling to the side, hand under her cheek. "And then? What did Taehyung say?" Yeeun asks, folding the comforter to hug it.

I sit up, stretching. "And then, you know, it got emotional and stuff. We left, 'cause I wasn't going to listen to that man. I told him what I think about it, that there is nothing that makes me perfect or better, and then... the words 'best friends' were throw around, but... that's just an insignificant detail."

"But you're happy, aren't you?"

I cross my legs, facing her. The bed is too good for this conversation, makes me want to stay here forever.

"It's weird," I say, smiling. "I have had two friends my whole life, you and Hoseok, and it just happened. Like that, we were friends. I still don't know why I wanted to make things better so badly. There is... so much to it. But now that we're here... I am. I am happy."

"I know you never showed it much, but fighting with him was draining, wasn't it?" Yeeun asks. Letting go of it felt like I was releasing an anchor.

"All those fight were... yeah, they were draining. Maybe because I never wanted to hate him, but I was provoked or something." I reach behind the bed for a shirt I dropped there last night. It's getting chilly when I'm half-naked and not under the covers.

Yeeun watches me carefully, eyes slightly narrowed. "Have you ever... had a feeling before? That you'd be better off as friends?"

"Back when we were younger," I say. My rivalry with Taehyung was only a black and white case to the outsiders. "There were some instances where I just wanted to tell him to get his shit together and make things better. But then it would be as bad as always so... I gave up again and again. Since high school, I never thought it could be a possibility anymore."

"Well, it's a reality now, so that's even better, isn't it?"

All of this got me thinking many times about the actual position of Kim Taehyung in my life before this year. Officially, it was always enemies, they hate each other, they always fight. That's what people could see, that's what we rolled with. But was it all I saw him as?

Maybe sometimes I saw a kid who was the only one to understand me on a football pitch?

A guy with crazy racing skills who was the only one to understand me on a road?

Now that I think back, someone who was always around. Day, night, summer, winter, I stuck around, but he did, too. He could have just stayed away, but he always roamed around. To fight, to laugh at me, to bicker.

He says his parents made me seem perfect, put me above him like some royalty, but no one knows how many times I wanted to be like him.

When we were twelve, and our teachers made us choose an 'unusual sport' to practice during an event, and we both ended up doing archery. Every time, he shot an arrow into the middle. Mine always landed on the edge.

In middle school, Taehyung had a Rubik's cube phase and knew how to solve it in around a minute. I still can't do it.

At the end of middle school, he pierced his ears, and I did the same thing the next day. Obviously, we had a fight about me copying him, and I never admitted to it, but I did copy him. Not to make him mad, but because I thought it was cool.