하나
01
DRIVER'S LICENSE
“cause you said forever, now i drive alone past your street.”
━━━━━━
10:43 pm
february 20, 2020
+
"the mysterious disappearance, and what is now widely presumed death, of an eighteen year old high schooler by the name of park jimin has been a mystery in the making. today, we uncover the life story of the—"
yuri switched off the television, closing her eyes with a sigh. it seemed as if that's all they could ever talk about these days. the death of park jimin.
the death of her ex boyfriend.
as if getting sympathetic looks in the school hallways by random strangers wasn't enough, she had now become a common figure for the local media to raise questions upon.
"sweetheart, dinner's ready." her mother called out from the kitchen and that's when the dark haired female realised that she had been sitting idle on the living room couch for the past two hours, scanning through local news channels.
"i'm not hungry, i'm going out mom." yuri mumbled, getting up from the couch and reaching out for her car keys from the shelf nearby.
"yuri, have you looked at yourself in the mirror? you look like you haven't had a proper meal in days, you might as well be dead." her father intervened, stepping into the living room, a stern expression displayed across his features.
yuri internally cringed at his choice of words. it was as if after the incident involving her ex, she had finally opened her eyes to how lightly people threw that term around. dead. the poor girl felt sick to her stomach everytime she heard even a slight mention of the word.
gritting her teeth, and not in the mood to have another argument with her parents, the young female strided out with her car keys, slamming the front door on her way out.
this was yet another thing. arguments. arguments with her parents — they had become typical sight in the house ever since the past few days. shouting till her throat felt scarred, tossing and throwing things at the wall, sobbing her heart out into her pillow till her weak body passed out from exhaustion every night.
she didn't know when exactly had she become this moody. it was as if the young woman was trying to find every outlet possible to let out her unreasonable pent up anger on the blond male who left her alone to face the consequences of his actions.
the ravenette slowly pulled her car out of the driveway, mind wandering away, as the never-ending stream of thoughts seemed to eat her alive. with no final destination in mind, yuri drove through the unexpectedly crowded roads of the city on the dark thursday night.
mindlessly, she flipped through the radio channels, trying to find a way to distract herself from reality.
she was greeted with a low static hum for the first couple of seconds, finally hearing the sound of the host some time later.
"—and this next song is called driver's license. with it's progression from initial slow paced vocals to energetic beats, it has managed to capture many hearts, and we sure do hope yours will be one of them. have a wonderful night, and thank you for tuning into lover fm. this was your host, daniel." the radio host's voice finally drains out, the silence of the next few seconds being occupied by a low static hum, finally leading onto the song.
the song begins softly, gently fading out into a mere background noise as yuri is brought back to long suppressed memories of how she used to sneak out on late night driving lessons with her boyfriend to the outskirts of their small town.
just about a week ago, she had finally got her driving license. even though the young female had turned sixteen almost two years ago, it had taken her two years to stop postponing the task and finally obtain her license in her senior year of high school.
most of the time in the past, the ravenette had to call up her boyfriend or her friends whenever she wanted to go somewhere, and park jimin had not left a single chance to tease her about it.
he even went as far as to joke about the fact that she was only keeping him around that long because of the fact that he was her personal chauffeur.
"you best believe that when you finally get your license, i'm gonna make your life a living hell by constantly asking you to drive me places." was something jimin was fond of saying. yuri's lips formed a small smile at the memory.
the ravenette was brought back into reality by a loud horn from a vehicle behind hers. hastily looking at the time, she realised that she had been driving around town aimlessly for the past couple of hours, for it was already almost one in the morning.
she drove back home, already dreading going to school within the next few hours. ever since the incident with jimin, school was the last place yuri wanted to be at, for everything seemed to remind her of the charming blond boy who left the world, all too young.
+
much to her dismay, the young female was forced to attend school the next morning, no matter how much she protested.
being trapped with people who snickered at her behind her back and faked sympathy while she was around, wasn't an idea that yuri was particularly fond of.
driving to school that morning, as the female rolled down the windows of her car for some fresh air at a traffic light, her eyes strayed over to a vehicle on her right, and involuntarily, the grip on her steering wheel tightened.
she knew very well who the owner of that black cadillac was.
she could hear loud music blaring from one of the open windows of the car, and her lips formed a sort-of expression that conveyed both concern and disgust as her eyes remained fixated on the car.
"your dad really got the car looking as good as new, jeon." yuri heard a muffled yell from the car, ears perking up with interest.
"dad doesn't know i got the car fixed. he's going to kill me if he finds out i got this car into an accident too." she heard jungkook yell over the obnoxiously loud music, which was accompanied by laughter by the aforementioned male.
seeing the traffic lights change color, the ravenette was quick to get back on the road, her thoughts still lingering over the conversation she had just overheard.
there were way too many questions in her mind. this was the first time she had seen the group of boys after the incident involving jimin. and she would be lying if she said that she wasn't frustrated when she didn't hear from them after jimin's "death", especially because of the fact that they had been jimin's so-called "best friends".
it broke her heart, not knowing what had happened to the blond haired boy with crescent-shaped eyes and honey-like laughter.
the last place where the police could track his phone was near a cliff at the outskirts of their town, but his car was nowhere to be found.
so people didn't believe the police when they declared that the young boy had most probably fallen down the steep cliff to his death, either intentionally or unintentionally.
there was no doubt that this wasn't the place the male had died, especially because of the fact that his body was nowhere nearby.
upon questioning, his parents had revealed that the boy had looked troubled that morning, but you would consider some stress natural for a high school senior now, wouldn't you?
widely known in criminal procedures, corpus delicti, otherwise known as no body, no crime is a term that means that you have to prove a crime was actually committed for a person to be accused of the crime. and as park jimin's body was nowhere to be found, the police did not start a murder investigation, no matter how much people from all over the town implored.
the mysterious disappearance of park jimin and the police's neglectful and shabby investigation into the case added to the perplexing aura of the case surrounding the blond boy.
laughter of jimin's so-called best friends still ringing in her ears as if he hadn't gone missing just a week ago, and the school building just coming in sight, yuri's car made a sharp u-turn on the road, suddenly heading in the direction opposite to that of the school.
being surrounded by people who knew her as "the girl jimin cheated on" was the last thing the raven-haired female wanted to do on that particular day. and so, once again, she found herself driving to the outskirts of their small town, something she had frequently been doing for the past couple of days to get her mind off of the unsettling reality.
she flipped through the radio channels; it seemed as if none of them had anything good playing at that particular moment.
being too absorbed in changing the radio channels, the female failed to notice an approaching vehicle, leading to her pressing the breaks at the very last moment, in the hopes of dodging the approaching vehicle.
"fuck, oh my god." yuri mumbled under her breath as she stopped the car on the side of the highway, trying to calm her racing heart and shaking hands.
still trying to recover from the shock of the dodged accident, her eyes wandered to the floor of her car and that's when she noticed a set of cassette tapes lying sprawled across the flooring.
scrambling to pick the set of tapes up with her already trembling hands, yuri frantically looked through them, having no clue as to when they made it into her car.
the tapes were labelled — "i" "am" and finally, "sorry" in a messy but intricate handwriting. yuri's eyes brimmed up with unexpected tears when she recognized jimin's handwriting, but she couldn't help but mumble a small "cheesy" under her breath.
the female released a long, drawn-out sigh as she put the first cassette tape into the outlet in her car and started the car back up, all the while her heart raced with anticipation. this was definitely going to be the longest drive of her life.
━━━━━━
chapter one is finally up, i can't believe this cause i've been writing this book since october. anyway, i hope you enjoyed ! + i just posted the epigraph before this so i'd advise reading that since it relates to later chapters ! okay thank you bye mwah. <3