Dark Matter | JJK

26. Confronting the Past

When he was a child, most people in town believed that Jeon Jungkook had a knack for every once in a while startling the neighbours with some unanswerable query: "Why do we get hiccups, Mr Kang?"

Or: "If the moon is so big, Aunty Ella, how come it looks so little?"

Or: "Songwoon, can deaf people hear their heartbeat?"

Having received no response, little Jungkook would waddle into his father's laboratory with a disappointed pout, tug the hem of his white coat and stare up at him with expectant round eyes.

"Why doesn't glue stick to the inside of the bottle, appa?"

Appa would laugh. He'd tousle Jungkook's hair, he'd whisper, "They'll say that you're too little, Jungkook, that you're from nowhere, that you shouldn't dream big. But I believe in you. I believe you'll do something great."

Then he would smile down at him and patiently explain that when the water in the liquid glue evaporates, it hardens, dries and sticks to a surface. But inside a glue bottle, there is no air to cause the water to evaporate and make the glue sticky. Jungkook, albeit understanding only the words water and glue and sticky in all his six-year-old wisdom, would nonetheless nod with amazed enthusiasm.

For him, his father had been greater than any marvel superhero.

Now, he didn't know.

Maybe he should never have come here. Maybe he should have given into Namjoon's reluctance to send him twelve miles away from home to find answers to the questions that stole his sleep. Maybe he should have given up his adamancy and listened to Mr Kim when he warned him countless times about the weight of what the truth would bring.

Maybe.

As feet shaped new shoes for themselves so that in time they stopped hurting, Jungkook had shaped his past for himself. It fitted him well enough until now. He could live in it. It was a shell into which he could retreat without any fear of injury. He did not want to change it for a new version of the past, however worthy that may be.

But he had. Dr Jeon Jaewha, renowned scientist and researcher, his father, had created Aenigmium. He had let Gwonhan use it to kill tens of thousands of innocents. He was a murderer.

A murderer.

For years after a night of melted wax candles and an abandoned cake and silent tears, after his eomma crouched down before her weeping son to tell him that his father had gone on a field trip from which it would take long for him to return, years after a group of bullies at school told him that his father had, in fact, died in an apparent car crash and that he would never come back — he had still believed.

Jungkook had still believed that his father would one day return, walk through the door in his lab coat smelling like sweet-scented ethyl ethanoate, lift the little boy up in his arms and twirl him around with a million-watt smile that people often said his son had inherited.

Even after ten years, he had believed.

But not anymore. His father could never return, not even for his son.

Jungkook bit down on his lower lip so hard he was sure he'd feel the bruise for days. Then he felt a weight on his hand. Gentle, patient — soft as eyelashes brushing skin. Fingers slowly curled around his, but she said nothing, expected him to say nothing.

I'm here, she seemed to say in the silence. Don't ever forget.

Entwining their fingers together, he closed his eyes and rested his head on her shoulder.