It's a heartbeat

Chapter 1 | Jeon Jungkook

When your father told you he met a very delightful woman during your uncle's birthday party ten months ago (a traumatic experience you spared yourself feigning a sudden stomach-ache on the very day of the hellacious event), you accepted the news with a shrug, and an imperceptible scrunch in your nose (mostly because the alarm clock read 10:43 AM and no human being should receive a phone call on Sunday morning before 03:00 PM).
Then, you mumbled: "Yeah, great, happy for you dad. Sorry, but I gotta go. Jogging is waiting for me," before cocooning yourself once again in your sheets -desperately trying to sober up from a five-rounds of Vodka shots you had the night before in the company of your theatre group.

Oddly, the abrupt news didn't put you in any uncomfortable position.

Even when you replayed the conversation in your head during breakfast a few hours later, taking care of your bad hangover with a large mug of dark coffee and an aspirin, it hadn't any particular impact on you.

As days elapsed in a sort of weird quietness between your classes and the rehearsals for the annual Christmas play, you thought: 'Ok, I will have my huge setback sooner or later. I will for sure burst into tears in front of a Margarita and a bowl of hazelnuts and pistachios' in the middle of your so called: 'I-need-liquor-to-dull-the-pain' nights you and Taehyung organize once a week (you know, that kind of nights in which you two meet up in your favorite club and you moan about your awful love-lives. Aka, destiny is a bitch and adores to play with your fragile hearts).

But when the time came, when you spilled the beans in front of a bowl of potato chips and a watered-down Manhattan cocktail, you didn't feel anything. Nothing at all. Not even a smidgen of disappointment or distress or rage cracked your unbothered expression.

Strange to say, your best friend took it pretty badly, instead: he ripped his stare from his almost-evaporated Bellini cocktail and gave you an astonished look, as if you just told him you were on the cusp of feigning your own death and becoming a trapeze artist for the Cirque du Soleil. "And... how do you feel? I mean, two years aren't few, but... but you still miss your mother, you-you haven't quite recovered yet." And, then, the coup de grace: "You always told me you'd never accept a new woman by his side".

For the very first time, you had a heart-to-heart conversation with yourself (well, your conscience tried to have a chat with your brain, left it to soak in a blend of whisky and red vermouth) because Tae was damn right: quite sincerely, you thought you'd react badly at the prospect of your father in love with another woman.

You thought you'd tear down your whole apartment at the thought that a new motherly figure could replace the sweet, lovely memory of your mother that you still preserve. You thought you'd hate your father with every fiber of your being for even thinking to rebuild his life...

But, despite the absolute truth beyond Tae's speech, you accepted everything without batting an eye. Absolute vacuum in the abyss of your heart. More glacial than a Siberian winter.

And you acted like an iceberg (the iceberg that sunk the Titanic, for accuracy) even when your father called you once again (on a Saturday night, this time, saving you from a lethal limbo competition that led to several injuries) to tell you: "Eunjung is giving a little party for Christmas-she loves giving little parties, actually. But, anyway, she invited us to come over. I thought it'd be a good occasion for you to meet... only if you feel like it, of course. I know Christmas day is hard... so, we'll do as you wish, pumpkin."

You should've yelled a curt: "No" and hung up; you should've burst out crying because you stopped celebrating Christmas since your mother's gone because it lost every magic without her; you should've packed your things and take in serious consideration the idea to become a member of the Cirque du Soleil; you should've turned on the gas and blow out the whole apartment complex (an act of generosity, since Taehyung was flirting once again with the vile Jinae, a classic ballerina who smashed his heart a billion times already).