"got no reason, got no shame,
got no family i can blame. just don't let me disappear, i'm gonna tell you everything. "
Jungkook POV.
A flash of blonde hair.
The smell of coffee.
Pale brown eyes.
Being picked up and spun around.
A man's deep laugh.
Some faraway lullaby.
Cherry blossom trees.
Bright sunshine.
Blinding bright lights.
Speed.
Then came the horrifying screech of a woman.
Shattered glass pieces.
Raging yellow flames.
The chaos all around .
Darkness.
I could see it in my head, like a long forgotten movie. As I kept replaying it like a broken record every night before I fell asleep, I could hear every shatter of the glass every scream of agony. I couldn't help it and was obbsessed with imagining how I could have changed it all. If I had the ability to reverse time, to stop my own useless breathing I would do it without blinking an eye. It was either if the two choices. My eyes refused to close and if they did it everything just kept coming back to me like a train all over again.
On some nights however it was hard not to think about what could have happened if I hadn't messed everything up. It wouldn't bring my parents back, but atleast whoever had done it would be behind bars. The memories were as vivid as if it had happened yesterday and not years ago.
Her face as the car slammed into ours.
How she hadn't panicked, just leaned over and tore forcefully at the seatbelt tangled around me. She had shoved me out of the car just before it exploded.
She had still been in it.
I could still feel the burn of the flames on my skin, the smoke clouding my eyes as they watered unknowingly.
"Abbeoji!! "
My own trembling voice sounded so foreign to me. I remember looking frantically for my father and his forced blank expression as they wheeled my mother into the emergency care unit.
I remember it as clear like a picture in a camera roll.
The single tear that had rolled down my father's cheek as they declared her dead on arrival .
The harsh edge in his voice as he vowed to find the murderer. And before he could find them they killed him too.
I never got to know who had killed my father and mother. And just like that the parents whom I had grown up with, were gone.
The moon outside my pale curtains looked so dull to me now as I remembered those bright lights, the flashing cameras and reporters. They still haunt me even now like a predator looking at my every move. I could remember the hundreds of clicking noises and how it had been impossible to see because of the blinding lights. And finally how I had blurted out anything and everything about whatever they were asking me just to get them to leave me alone.
The amount of regret that I carried around was unimaginable. No one could know it at any cost. A seven year old me was told that I was lucky to be adopted so soon. But it didn't last long. It always ended the same way. Now that I think about it, maybe it was all a curse.
I have had a set of three parents including my biological parents since my stay at the orphanage. But in the end I was always left without a family.
I was not sure what to think of a family, I didn't even understand what a family meant anymore. What could I do when they all left me in the end? I didn't even know who I really was and what was my indentity. I kept changing names like seasons. It was always a new one for a new family, as if I was merely a unimportant character who could be thrown around in different stories. And in the end I had no story of my own.
No one in school ever knew my real name. I wasn't important anyway, just a temporary prop in the background.
The name given by my biological parents was, 'Jeon Jungkook' and I was against using it.
I wasn't able to protect them, so I don't deserve it. It was also a painfull reminder of my past and I was barely putting up with life. I preferred staying detached earlier, it was the best way it seemed. I had realized that the moment I had got close to one of my new family, got used to one of them.. something horrible happened every time and they were taken away from me just like that, one by one. It was a traumatizing cycle.
On my 9th birthday finally I had something I could call a family, something that wasn't taken away from me. I thought maybe my curse was finally broken. I remember very little about my childhood, except the horrifying incidents that had scarred my mind to the extent that I'd remember them probably in my next life too.
But nothing good lasts forever. And after 8 years my family, my happiness disappeared into thin air without any trace.
I still carried her picture around with me.
She had been my support, and had been the first person who accepted me, put in effort to understand me and stayed with me.
I tried. I tried so hard to get back the one real thing I'd ever known. But my efforts in finding her were never successful. And one day I finally gave up.
There was a radical change in me, since that day. I became depressed, found acceptance and solace in bad company of friends. But it was never the same way, because all this while I was searching for one thing, belongingness. Unknowingly I was looking for a family again, and I hate myself for being so pathetic. I became worse as days passed by. People avoided me, and I was stranger to every single person. Soon I started believing that I deserved to be like this, a cast away.
I was tired of myself.
I was the school bully, the spoilt kid who cared not enough for himself to care about others. I had no other identity. I myself didn't get why I behaved that way, living felt exhausting to me anyway. Maybe I knew the reason, I just didn't accept it.
I ignored it until the point I made myself believe that it didn't even exist.
Nothing has changed. The past, the present, and the future all seem to be the same bleak color on the rugged canvas of my life. The accident still exists, and it still keeps me awake at night.
Forgetting wasn't an option. Perhaps it is just a useless consolation people say when they haven't faced such situations.
I wanted to move on and live a new life. But the past clinged on to me with it's cold freezing hands that never let go. The sepia memories frozen back in time when everything was fine, kept eating me up from inside.
Whenever I felt like I was going to fall apart, I was going to break down and cry like a small child - I did what I did best, I bullied. I soon started liking the fact that people were scared to even approach me. But sometimes I retrospect.
Why do I do all this? I ask myself in the mirror on rainy afternoons. But then I have made myself believe that this is who I am. Of what use is company after all when you can be alone and free always?
I didn't ask for help, I was embarrassed.
So I decided to help myself. I needed distraction. I occupied myself with observing others and finding out their secrets. To forget myself I indulged in others lives. And one thing that pissed me off like nothing else was, not being able to figure out someone.
Because then the horror of my past threatened to resurface, mocking me, knocking the doors of my mind and creeping into my conscience. It drove me insane.
Jimin was the only person whom I couldn't figure out. Yet.
But instead of getting pissed off by him, he peaked my curiosity each day.
He seemed simple at first. But there was definitely something about him that I couldn't figure out no matter what. He may seem like an open book, but when I think about it he actually doesn't reveal anything about him at all.
Sometimes when I do get frustrated I mask my emotions with a blank expression. But Jimin never follows the same pattern, his expressions, his eyes are always different. Or maybe it is just me who gets lost in them to comprehend anything else.
These days he seems to get on the hint about my blank expressions and copies me to look intimidating. Park Jimin was amusing yet so mysterious.
There was no doubt he was intimidated by me. But he always had sarcastic comments up his sleeves to throw me off.
It was easy to find out his number by threatening his classmates. In the beginning I was so happy to have freaked him out as sending him weird texts seemed like a fun prank. But soon I myself started noticing things about him and doubted whether I wanted to annoy him or really say those words to him.
I followed him to see him more. Figuring him out had become my mission.
I remember our first encounter. I wonder whether he remembers it too, how we'd collided and how his eyes spoke before his mouth could.
I couldn't help but notice him. He occupied my thoughts always.
Soon I was getting frustrated of myself, why was I so drawn towards him? If I don't stop now, I don't know if I'll trust myself after this.
I didn't want to do anything with him anymore. So I stopped sending him messages from the unknown number, I couldn't do it anymore because the prank was now on me.
But that day in the library after promising myself that I'll never look at him, inspite of that I smiled at him.
I was surprised at myself now.
Why?
To be continued.....
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Note:
I feel like I expressed better in the 3rd person POV rather than this. But you guys wanted a glimpse of what goes on in Jungkook's head so here you go! 💗