BEHIND THE SCENES

chapter 91: i'm sorry, i love you

Namjoon raised his eyebrows and Hoseok slammed a hand over his mouth at once.

"Oh, crap."

Namjoon narrowed his eyes. "What did you just say?"

Hoseok shook his head vigorously, his eyes bulging. "Nothing, bujang-nim. You didn't hear anything from me-"

"So I was right."

Everything made sense to Namjoon now - why she had given him little to no updates about them lately, why she had decided to quit her job so suddenly, the look of fear in Jieun's eyes when she saw Jungkook and the look of utter betrayal in his face - those two... were in love with each other - in the most modern Romeo-and-Juliet way possible.

"Bujang-nim, since I told you everything, you have to keep your promise," Hoseok held Namjoon to hit words. "It's now your turn to tell me what I need to know. Why did you meet Jieun-ssi today and what exactly happened?"

Namjoon paused for a while, before looking up at Hoseok. "I met Jieun-ssi today to process her resignation."

Hoseok's jaws dropped. "Her what?!"

"That's not all-" Namjoon let out a deep sigh. "You asked me what happened today, didn't you?"

Hoseok feared what was about to come. "Uh-huh?"

"That guy... JK?" Namjoon pursed his lips, his expression grave. "He was at the café too, unbeknownst to us. And he found out about everything."

Hoseok's jaws dropped. "Like... everything?"

"Yeah, everything."

Hoseok almost fainted on the spot.

-•-•-

Earlier in the day, Jungkook had asked Jennie what love felt like because he had no clue - after all, he had never experienced love before. His parents divorced at a young age, and he was left to be cared for by his grandpa, who had eventually passed away a couple months after he had moved to Seoul. As a child, he was always independent. Taehyung was his first best friend and he betrayed that trust.

And now... Jieun had just betrayed that same trust.

Singing about love didn't make Jungkook any more familiar with love than any other person who had been abandoned at a young age. He always heard people say that love was a very strong emotion - an emotion that couldn't really be described in any other words other than 'love' itself. In dramas, it was often associated with things like romantic candlelit dinners, cozy dates by the ocean, a guy's whole world coming to a stop as his dream girl walks into the room.

But very ironically, it was as Jungkook sped back home in his black Mercedes with tears of betrayal flowing down his cheeks that he finally realised what Jennie meant. It was indeed an indescribable feeling - and he did indeed recognise it, though in the most cruel way possible. He said he hated her before he had hopped onto his car and sped off - but really, wasn't that hatred for her precisely because of how much she meant to him? The emotions he felt in that moment was akin to how he felt after his final audition at Gold Entertainment seven years ago - just a million times more intense.

Jungkook realised in that painful moment that he had actually already been in love with Lee Jieun all this while.

Jieun reached back at the apartment only twenty minutes after Jungkook, only to see him already in the process of moving all her things out of his apartment.