the anatomy of love / jungri

13. 他是我的柾国，我亦爱他。

"I...have a question." I hear myself saying, my eyes flashing over with a placid sort of anger, one that thrums through my body. My fingers shake a little as I lean to the side, placing my weight on the edge of the marble countertop beside me. "We haven't gotten to know each other well, but despite this, do you think...that I'm a good person?"

The restaurant lighting is dim, and it sets everything in an orange glow. My voice wasn't as assertive as I had wanted it to be—the music playing from the speakers drowns it out a little.

Soojin looks at me then, with a sort of forlorn pity that stirs the irritation underneath my unassuming expression. Years of working business had taught me much, but my faltering self-control was beyond questioning right now.

"Of course I do—" she starts, eyes wide as I shake my head.

"Soojin, you're wrong. I'm not a good person." I interject, exhaling lightly. "A good person would have left Jungkook the moment it was clear there was someone else."

"But—"

"Jeon Jungkook." I state Jungkook's name rigidly. "Who is he?"

"He's someone I admire." Soojin counters bravely. "He's the son of the Jeon family—the man I grew up with and who cares for me."

That's when I rise from the slant in my stance, facing her with blood rushing through my ears. "Understand this, Soojin..." I breathe in quietly. "He's not only someone you admire. He's not just the son of the Jeon family, the man you grew up with and who cares for you. He's also Jeon Jungkook, the man who is my future husband, and you need to remember that."

I leave her with this, because there isn't much else I can say. I'm okay with being the selfish one, as long as Jungkook can forgive me.

He is Jeon Jungkook, and I love him.

—

When I finally drive to the airport at the end of the week, it's not for Seulgi. As it turns out, Jimin had taken her hostage the moment her plane had docked at the gate, and consequently, for the first time in my life—I'd missed the party. The rest of my week was spent slaving at the office all day, as my calls to Seulgi were always cut short by Jimin's tempered impatience, and I had found it awkward to speak with Ms. Seo after my encounter with her daughter, so much that I inclined not to return home at all until Jungkook was back. After work, I spent a great deal of my free time trying to dissolve the perplexity that plagued me by the absence of my two best friends, though at the end of it all I knew nothing except the fact that Seulgi was surprisingly okay with it.

"I'm fine, Yerim." she'd insisted to me through various phone calls, seeming unusually chipper. "Jimin and I are simply engaging in friendly competition."

As to what that competition was, I was given no explicit details. The most I'd gotten through pestering either of the two was a few lines about "writer's block" and "inspiration through experience"—what that meant for two pining exes in enclosed spaces with each other, I had little idea.

"At least let me see her once this week, will you?" I demand when Jimin picks up his twenty-second phone call from me in the span of five days.

I glare at my phone screen as Jimin's grunt of dissent echoes in my ear.

"I told you Yerim, we're busy." he spits out ungraciously, "And God, I can barely even hear you right now. It's so noisy—are you at a bar or something?"

"I'm at the airport to pick up Jungkook." I tell him, adding scathingly: "Mind you, if you also happen to kidnap my fiancé, I'm calling the police."