You were sitting in a very large white room with high ceilings. It was completely empty, except for the one white chair that you were sitting on. The sound of you getting up from the chair and taking steps towards the window, reverberated through the entire hall. There were large windowpanes on all four sides, and the reflection of the sunlight flooding into the room and bouncing off the white walls blinded you. You looked around but couldn't spot a single door anywhere. 'How did I get in here?' you thought.
Someone covered your eyes from behind, but without a shadow of a doubt, you knew who it was. From his touch and his scent, you could tell, it was HIM.
"You'll never catch me," he whispered in your ear, sending shivers down your spine. He trailed a finger down you neck, then your back. Like a little child on Christmas morning, you couldn't wait to unwrap your eyes and see him. You picked his hand off your eyes and turned around eagerly only to find him behind a glass screen. He had an unkind expression on his face, one of hatred or even disgust. Your insides whimpered, and you banged your hands against the glass, only to realize that you were trapped in a glass box, like a museum relic on display. You could feel a loud scream leaving your body, but you couldn't even hear your own sound. Nervously, you ran your hand against all four glass walls, hoping to find a hidden door. When you returned to where you started, it wasn't just Jungkook staring at you in dismay. He had his boys with him, all seven dressed gloriously in white suits, looking like wrathful Gods, about to crack their whip upon you. In a blink, the glass walls began to crack and shatter, but so did the floor, and you began to fall into a void. Your last sight – Jungkook peeking over the edge, with a satisfied smile on his face.
You awoke with a jolt from the falling feeling. Your neck and temples were soaked in sweat, and so was the pillow under your head. You threw the covers off you, and sat up, feeling exhausted and scared. It had been a month since that unforgettable night and you still dreamt about him every other day. Sometimes, they were as simple as just having a mundane conversation with him. Other times, he would disappear or walk away from you, leaving your insides aching for him. But gradually, they were now shaping into nightmares, that left you unsettled for the rest of the day. You were embarrassed that one encounter with him had left you longing for him so helplessly. 'I'm so pathetic,' you thought as you got out of bed, determined to not lose a grip on your life. Today was the last day of your University, and you were still scrambling to find a job. What had once begun as a hunt for something you would love to do, had now turned to just finding anything permanent that would pay.
You got dressed in a rush and put some water on the stove for tea. While you laced up your sneakers, your phone rang. It was an unknown number – there were several such calls these days, lots of rejections of applications.
"Hello?" you picked up, already sounding exhausted. "Is this y/n"? a man's deep voice asked from the other end.
"Yes?" you replied impatiently. The water on the pot was beginning to simmer. You tucked the phone between your shoulder and ear and picked up a mug.
"Hello, y/n. I'm calling from a talent agency, and I would like to schedule an interview." You froze in your place. 'A talent agency?' you thought. 'I don't remember applying to one.' But at this point, after having gone through at least a hundred applications, maybe you just couldn't recall.
"Sure," you replied urgently. "Can we pencil you in for today afternoon?" he asked. "I'm actually graduating today, and have to be at the University," you said as you picked out a tea bag and threw it in the mug. "Is that so?" the man said, and paused, almost as if waiting for further instructions. "Sure," he said, after some hesitation, "we can schedule it in for tomorrow then. I will text you the details shortly."
"Thanks a lot, that would be great!" you said as you grabbed the piping hot handle of the pot with your bare hand. A loud painful groan escaped your lips, as the steel sizzled your skin and you dropped the pot on the floor.
"What, what happened?" a concerned voice demanded of you. "Sir, I'm sorry about that. I just dropped something. Please send me the details, I'll be there tomorrow. Thank you," you replied while fighting back tears, and quickly disconnected the call. Slowly, you sank to the floor, clutching your hand to your chest, and broke down crying. It felt like this was the tipping point, that broke lose everything that you had been bottling up inside of you lately. You let it all out as you lay on the kitchen floor sobbing. It was better to let it out while you were alone instead of having a meltdown around other people – you were always very private about your struggles.
At the University, you met your best friend Sooyoung, who gave you a long hug and pulled out some ointment from her bag. She knew how you refused to take care of yourself, and always tried to make up for it with her own affection. It tortured you to know that you were keeping a big secret from her, but the window had already passed, and it was too late to tell her anything now. 'It's all over anyway, like a dream,' you told yourself.
After the graduation ceremony, the entire class gathered outside, to take pictures, with their families and friends. You sat on a bench under the shade of a tree, and watched everyone celebrate joyfully, bursting with excitement for life. 'It's like the sun shines for them, and they know it,' you thought, feeling unsettled by that unexplainable darkness you knew you held inside of you. You missed your mom, but you knew she couldn't make it to Seoul because she was busy working hard, and you didn't resent it.
Suddenly, some of your classmates came running squealing with excitement, and grabbed Sooyoung by the shoulders. In unison they were all telling her a story, but you couldn't understand what they were saying from where you sat. From Sooyoung's face you could tell that it was clearly news she wanted to hear. She came running to you, "Some girls think they spotted someone who looked like JK, on campus!!" she squealed at you! "Come with me!" she shook your shoulders.
You sat frozen in your place, eyes wide, letting Sooyoung's words settle in. Your heart began to race, and you could feel your palms become cold with sweat, but you couldn't let Sooyoung find out. You grabbed the bouquet from her hands, "You go ahead, I'll wait for you here," you said, trying to act casual with a grin. "Ugh, when did you become such a bore," she replied with a wink before leaving her bag next to you and rushing off with the other girls. "I saw JHope's VLive yesterday, they've finally returned from their tour, haven't they? Could it really be JK, eeee?" you heard her squeal as they ran away.
You sat alone on the bench shivering. After longing to see him for a month, why did you suddenly feel the urge to hide, you thought. Maybe you didn't want to be disappointed to find out that it wasn't him after all. 'But what if it is him? Will he even recognize me?' the questions echoed in your head repeatedly. "I'll find you," his last words to you popped into your head.
Suddenly you stood up and began to walk towards the main exit of the campus, lugging your bag and Sooyoung's things, welcoming the pain from your palm as a distraction. You couldn't sit still anymore and decided to walk to the bar where everyone from the senior batch had decided to gather after the ceremony. It was a long tedious walk and your back was soaked in sweat when you reached. You had already chugged your first two glasses of beer before Sooyoung called, looking for you. She entered the bar a few minutes later holding another very large bouquet but looked disappointed. She slammed the bouquet on the table and took a large gulp of beer from your glass.
"We couldn't find him, we looked everywhere!" she sighed. "I'm so tired."
"Aww too bad, so should I hold the wedding invitations then?" you tried to tease her, acting as natural as you could manage. "How dare you, I would never betray my Tae like that!" she snapped back, laughing.
"The bouquet is for you by the way, someone left it in our class," she said as she pushed it towards your end of the table. You felt a flutter in the pit of your stomach, as you stood up to peek into the tall bouquet of pink and purple carnations and lilies. "There's no card, I already checked," she winked at you slyly. "There was just a note with your name on it. It's probably from your Mom, she's so sweet!"
"Yeah, she told me she sent something," you lied to her, even though you really didn't know who sent you the bouquet.
Soon the bar was bustling with people from your batch, who were singing songs, laughing loudly, and playing games, celebrating the end of an era. Every time some girls would break down crying while hugging their friends, the whole bar would erupt in a loud applause and laughter to tease them. Sooyoung was circling the room and dancing with different groups, being the social butterfly that she always was, but every now and then she would come back to your table and plant a kiss on your cheek, making your ears red. You were finally drunk enough to let yourself relax a little bit – you sometimes cursed the fact that you could hold your drinks well, because it was so hard for you to get drunk. The obsessive thought of Jungkook existing on this planet, and that you would probably never meet him again, had finally subsided into a dark corner of your mind, and you felt like you could breath for once.
You dug through your bag for your cigarettes and stepped out into the dark back alley of the bar for a smoke. You leaned against a wall as you took a drag and released a cloud of smoke towards the sky. Besides the muffled thump of the music playing inside, there was no other sound and no other person around you. There was a time when you felt at peace on nights like these, you felt like yourself, when you were alone with your thoughts. You had always embraced solitude, but something inside you had changed. You wanted to escape this silence now, because you didn't want to hear what your heart had to say, even though it was a deafening sound. JUNGKOOK.
It was a night like this, when the sky was clear and the radiant moonlight drowned the stars, when a gentle winter breeze carried the scent of rain with it, when the trees rustled like whispers, when the city lights twinkled on the horizon, that you had met him. The sight of him leaning into you with a smile and embracing you into a kiss, played in your mind, for the hundredth time, and it made you smile, but pinched your heart. 'Why did I fall for him, so hard?' you thought, as you suddenly had the urge to play his song 'Still with you'. You hadn't had the courage to play it ever since that night, which was hard, because it was your favorite song. But tonight, you knew you couldn't resist. You pulled out your phone and pressed play as you took another drag of the cigarette, engulfed in a haze of the smoke. The sound of his voice seemed to echo in the dark alley, and you closed your eyes. You began to hum the song along with the track because you just couldn't help it. During the second verse, you felt like you could hear his voice twice, as if the song were also playing somewhere else. You stopped singing, and sure enough, you could hear two of Jungkook's voices. You opened your eyes and paused the track, and the only sound that remained was of him singing, but it wasn't the track playing anywhere else. It was just his glorious voice, magnified by the silence of the night, that was slowly growing louder and closer to you.
You turned around in disbelief and saw his silhouette against the light flooding from the streetlamp on the main road. It seemed to form a halo around him, as he continued to walk towards you slowly, singing the lines of the song softly...
'When will it be?
If I see you again
I will look into your eyes
And say, "I missed you".'
He stopped a few steps away from you and for a few moments, there was nothing but silence between you. He ran his hand through his hair and took a step closer.
"Bad girl, smoking's bad for you," he finally spoke. You laughed, as millions of other emotions gripped you.
"What are you doing here? Does this song like, summon you?" you giggled covering your face.
"Is it the song, or is it you, who knows? We'll find out, I guess," he replied with a shy smile. "You are really hard to get a hold of, do you know that?" he said as he casually walked over and leaned against the wall beside you.
"Says the idol himself," you scoffed, as you stubbed the cigarette and turned towards him. You caught his earthy scent and it drove you crazy inside.
"Not like you even tried to find me," he rolled his eyes. "You're right, maybe I should join that sasaeng mob of yours. Man do they try hard to find you," you nodded sarcastically.
"Give me your phone," he said as he pulled it from your hands. He searched for his name in your phonebook and a number appeared on the screen. "You had my number," he said petulantly, as he held the screen up in front of your face.
"What th-," you couldn't believe your eyes. "When did you-," you began to ask, "But why didn't you tell me?"
"Maybe I was testing you, who knows?" he shrugged nonchalantly. "I had lost my phone that night remember. So, I couldn't get your number, but wanted to leave mine with you, just in case. I couldn't ask Bang PD for yours, for erm, personal reasons," he stuck his tongue out like a kid as he laughed.
You thought you knew the reason, that the company was probably all 'No No' about the band members interacting with girls, especially strange girls they met on the street. But the fact that you had Jungkook's number all along, made you want to kick yourself.
"Do you really just hand your number out to random girls like this?" you giggled. "You should really be more careful Jungkook-shi."
"Ah, let's see, I've only given it to a couple of other clueless girls, who I also personally delivered bouquets to," he smirked.
"So, it really was you who people spotted on campus today?!" your eyes couldn't be any wider in shock.
"I just wanted to congratulate you, when I heard you were graduating today."
"Thank you, but how did you find out?" You felt so confused and questions kept floating through your head, the biggest ones of all – Why was he here? Why did he give you his number? Why did he come all the way to your University to find you? But you didn't want to ruin the moment, you just wanted to drink in, every moment with him carelessly. He was here, and that was all that mattered.
"Erm, I just stalked you online a little bit, after I returned to Seoul yesterday," he titled his head to the side in embarrassment and flashed an adorable smile.
Your cheeks and ears felt warm as they turned red from blushing. "I'm honestly surprised you even remembered my name," you giggled.
"What! How can you say that?!", he stepped closer to you, peering into your eyes. "We're thinking about the same night, right?" he let out a frustrated gasp and turned away from you. He paced a few steps and then came back towards you. "Maybe I remember it differently than you do y/n," he sounded upset. "Did you even think about me?"
Your heart was beating so fast inside your chest, you were afraid he would hear it loud and clear. But if he did hear it, maybe then he'd know how you felt. You wanted him to know that you ached for him, that you slept in his jacket more times than you cared to admit, that you dreamt of him a lot and then thought about him every quiet second your mind got when it was awake; That you had always felt complete, but he made you aware of this large vacuum in your heart, that seemed to grow bigger every day ever since; And that these sudden unexplainable feelings for him scared you, that made you not want to admit anything to him at all.
Moments passed as you suffered through this internal struggle, while he waited impatiently for you to respond.
"I guess you didn't," he laughed nervously, sticking his tongue against his cheek. "It's cool, I get it."
"I did," you whispered, "a little."
"What did you say?" he stepped closer, placing a hand near your head against the wall you were leaning on, trapping you in his gaze.
"I did think about you, okay? There, I said it. I thought about you, a lot," you said as you looked down at your feet. "There's a lot I want to know about you, much more than any number of videos or articles online could ever tell me. But I sound crazy even saying that – you're JK of BTS, for crying out loud!"
"Well, here's the first thing you should know about me. I like you! And when I kiss someone I like, I like to do it again," he said as he brushed some strands of hair off your face and leaned it closer to you. "God, you have no idea how I've been dying to do this!" he whispered, as he enveloped your lips with his, sucking on them softly. He pressed you against the wall as he grabbed your waist, while the other hand ran through your hair. You slipped your hands inside his jacket and wrapped your arms around him. His tongue caressed your lips and explored your mouth gently. You both began to giggle at how impulsive you always were around each other, blatantly kissing in public places, while he continued to plant kisses on your cheek and neck.
Suddenly, the bar door slammed open and Sooyoung walked out into the alley and turned to see you both huddled against the wall. "Y/N!!!" she exclaimed!