sea-kissed 🌊 || j.jk+k.th

{8} odd circumstances 🌊

Jungkook closed the door before either of them could react.

What... what had just happened ? He had just seen a boy, or rather a young man, leaning over a sink, and pouring a whole water bottle on his own head, still fully clothed. The moment had lasted for mere seconds, and yet the image was already imprinted in his memory.

The boy's eyes ; half-closed and lost in thoughts at first, then open-wide and confused when he locked eyes with Jungkook. The boy's hair ; brown, slicked back by the water, with a few strands dripping down on his forehead. The boy's body ; tall, slim, skin visible through his wet shirt. The sun caught by the water bottle, reflecting on his face ; the pool of water at his feet, expanding slowly ; the way Jungkook's breath stopped.

Jungkook stared blankly at the door for a few seconds, at loss for words or any other reaction.

Suddenly, he heard hurried footsteps coming in his direction, and then Jimin's alarmed voice coming from behind him.

"Wait! I forgot that our other waiter was taking his break right now, maybe you shouldn't g-"

He seemed to stop in his tracks upon seeing Jungkook frozen in front of the door, hand still on the handle.

"Maybe you shouldn't go in here," he finished with a small sigh. "Well, uh, what do you say about using the bathroom upstairs instead ? Technically it's in our apartment, but it looks like this one is occupied."

Jungkook turned around to face him and raised an eyebrow.

"Our apartment ?"

"Yeah, actually, all the employees here -so me, the chef, and the other waiter I guess you just saw-, we all live here together. Anyway, just take the stairs up, and it'll be the door at the very end of the corridor. Okay ?"

Jimin seemed suspiciously in a hurry to get Jungkook away from the bathroom door, but Jungkook honestly didn't care to know more about that.

"Okay."

He smiled politely at Jimin, and took the stairs as he was told to.

The apartment on the second floor was very similar to the café downstairs : bright, welcoming, full of plants. Through the various opened doors of the corridor next to the stairs, Jungkook caught a glimpse of several rooms ; a living-room with a piano ; a bedroom with sheets of paper crumbled up and scattered on the ground ; a big empty room with a whole wall for a mirror... It smelled nice, it looked cosy, and Jungkook concluded that this kind of people -young adults living in an aesthetic apartment by the sea and managing their own café-, did really exist in this world. Even if one of them was kinda weird.

He finally got to the bathroom, empty this time, and took his time there contemplating a painting hung on the wall. It was definitely amateur, but charming ; brush strokes painted clumsily but carefully, following the curves of the sea. He could recognize the view he had now perfectly memorized of the Gimyong beach, but it was ever-so-slightly different. The sky looked closer. The water looked darker, deeper. And once he got a little closer, he identified the little white spots in the water as jellyfish. White, tiny, countless jellyfish.

This seemed awfully familiar.

After a few moments of reflection, he finally put his finger on it : that weird, implausible hallucination, or dream, or whatever he had had out on the beach that night. Maybe he had experienced sleep-paralysis ? Whatever it was, that painting looked really similar. But well, it was probably a coincidence.

Right ?