Still With You | JK ff

Chapter 11 - Break of dawn!

Jungkook gazed up at the rimmed glass window perched up high in its lofty abode, cast in the leafy shadows of a tree nearby - dark, uninviting, and intimidating, like an unrealized dream. The frigid night breeze, the sound of crickets floating in the air, the lingering ordeal of waiting endlessly with baited-breath – everything about the moment felt like déjà vu. Forty-three hours – it had been forty-three sleepless hours, and twice in that seemingly long, yet fleetingly disappearing leap of time, he found himself waiting for Y/N yet again, with the same fervent hope in his forlorn eyes. Except unlike the first time, all the excitement of a reunion had been replaced with anxiety of possibly losing her forever.

She had stormed out of the office so quickly, leaving Jungkook riddled with guilt – guilt at having upset her, worsened by the mystery behind what had aggravated her under the surface.

'It's not my place to throw a tantrum at you,' the guilt edged into madness every time he repeated her words in his mind. It was like hearing her slam the door and turn the bolt to her mind, right on his face. He would rather have her yell and scream at him than being cast aside in the blind, like a stranger not even worthy of her anger. Sejin's recounting of their whole interaction word for word had only unnerved Jungkook further, despite serving as a clue to her mental climate. Some thoughts, he knew, were better nipped in the bud than allowed to crawl under the skin and burrow deeper into the subconscious.

He held himself back, while he mulled over her every word, both to him and Sejin. He twisted and turned them over in his head, one at a time and all together, like an earnest effort to solve a Rubik's cube. At some point post-midnight, he had found himself leaping past the foyer of their apartment, only pausing long enough to grab one of the car keys and a jacket, which from the tighter fit didn't feel like his own. Before the others could call after him from the living room, the door had shut behind him. Zipping through the empty streets towards her, gave him the false comfort of having some semblance of control over his circumstances. It was better than sitting still and allowing his mind to suffocate him in the deafening noise of thoughts upon thoughts layering themselves over each other.

Upon arriving on her street, he had wanted to run straight up to her door and demand answers, but his eyes wandered up the building façade. The window to her apartment was shrouded in darkness, as unforgivingly opaque as the resident inside. He had then planted himself on the hood of his car reluctantly, with his eyes fixated on the black windowpane, urging any sign to manifest itself that could give him enough courage to ascend the daunting flight of stairs.

'Twenty-four... forty-six... sixty-eight... eighty-three... ninety-nine,' he sighed. 'I'll count to hundred just one last time,' he thought to himself as he cracked his neck. He regretted not having followed her home right after they had parted at the HQ. Why had he even expected himself to have even an ounce of patience to give her the time she needed – why should he even be expected to give her time, when he knew it'd only serve the bitterness blooming inside her for him, and without his resistance, she would just submit to its vicious form and be consumed by it.

'I shouldn't have let her leave,' he kicked a pebble, as he strolled between his car and the gate to her building.

"One... two... three," he began to count his steps out loud this time. At seven, he reached the car and turned around. "Eight-," he froze in his tracks before he could take a step towards the gate. The faint shape of a windchime became visible in a dim light that emanated from the window. He rubbed his eyes and narrowed them at the pale-yellow square in disbelief. What he had hoped for had seemed like wishful thinking, and yet there it was, his sign, calling to him like the beacon of a lighthouse to a sailor lost at sea. Jungkook rode the wave rising in his stomach that led him to his shore – right before her door, where he stood nervously fidgeting with his fingers. All the courage that he had hoped would course through his veins remained hidden behind the fear of bothering Y/N, or worse still, simply scaring her away.