Arranged | Jinkook ✓

Chapter 31.0

In this world there was no such thing as fairy tales and happy endings did not exist.

...

Watching the life slowly drain from the person who held your heart within their chest was difficult - and everything inside of him screamed to stop, to save Seokjin before it was too late. They could still go back, there was still time. It didn't have to be this way. Didn't have to end like this.

But there were only two choices - they could stay as they were. Perhaps they would be granted a few decades by each other's side. But eventually Seokjin would grow old and fade away like flowers in the spring. Would rise and bloom and then wither and die, and he wasn't sure he was strong enough to endure it. To stand by and watch, knowing there was something he could have done to stop the process.

Or take this chance. Prove the looming fate that had always rested in the distance wrong. But the future never stayed in the future. Eventually it became the present. And that moment was now. Because they were out of time. Out of chances. Out of everything but the love they felt for one another.

The way he loved Seokjin was impossible to describe. Like a river flowing quickly across the land, or the oceans depths filled with wonders. As vast as the sky and all the stars held within. His love was beautiful and endless and consuming and desperate and sometimes it was so much that it frightened even him.

Seokjin had long since gone limp with his arms, and slowly he had lowered them down, until the other was cradled against his chest and he could feel the way his heart slowed. Counted the beats and held his breath between each one as they grow softer and weaker until they finally stopped.

Maybe it would be better this way. To leave Seokjin like this. To send him from this world where he would have to endure so much. Where no one would ever see the beauty of who he was. Would never know his heart. His kindness. His humor. Would only see someone who had been lucky enough to be chosen, who'd had their fate changed by the hands of the gods themselves.

But it was the gods who had arranged everything. Who had lead them here, to this moment. And he knew what he was meant to do. What he was supposed to do. Everything within him longed for it. Desperately wondered why he was hesitating.

Would the cycle just begin anew? Would this truly end it? But death was the not the answer. Jimin had proven that. All that would come of this was further torment and suffering, another poor heart who would be forced to live through this nightmare all over again.

Seokjin had made his choice.

But there was fear, hidden deep within his own chest, threatening to get out. Fear at the outcome. Fear at what it would mean. Fear of the consequences.

He wanted to believe that it wasn't true. Wanted to think of it as nothing more than a foolish bed time story that his mother had told him endlessly in order to groom him into what she wanted. Tried to be reasonable, to think that it couldn't possibly be true. Souls that reborn constantly, meant to be with one another. Life cycles that always reformed and came together.

There was only one way to find out.

A cry left him as he sunk his own teeth into his wrist, tearing into the flesh until blood flowed freely. Twisted and lowered it to Seokjin's mouth, parting the full lips and allowed it to drip inside. Counted slowly within his own mind, first down from ten and then twenty. Felt the wound start to heal and close and restarted the task within his mind.

Maybe it was too late. And panic welled up within his chest when nothing happened. Maybe it was too late. He had hesitated too long. Had spent too much time wondering. Contemplating. Had lost the one thing that had ever meant anything to him. Had let his own fear control him.