Still With You | JK ff

Chapter 14 - A Fleeting Epiphany

There are some fleeting moments in life, that creep up on you unexpectedly, simple and pure, yet holding the promise of changing your lives as you see them. They're too humble, easy to miss if you blink for too long, and too vulnerable, you cannot grasp and hold them forever. They pass over you, gently, brushing past you like a summer breeze, and just like that, they're gone, dissolving into the ether, leaving no traces of their influence on you. It's like a little light turning on in the dark, a piece of a puzzle clicking satisfyingly into place, to reveal the bigger scheme of your life and its events, giving reason to your existence, and bringing meaning to every little breath you had drawn, every staggering step you had taken, seemingly inconsequential at the time, to have brought you to that point.

Jungkook ran his hand through his hair as this realization washed over him, his eyes glued to Y/N spinning around in one place, her eyes darting from one corner to the other, alive with a fire he hadn't seen in them before. His eyes stuck firmly to her as she walked eagerly along the walls, pausing between every few steps to peer up at a canvas, trailing her hands nervously along their edges to feel the texture of the paint-coated cloth under her fingertips. She grabbed the end of one of the dust covered sheets wrapped over a stack of paintings leaning against a wall and swept it over her head, leaving the grains dancing in the air under the sunrays streaming from above as she eagerly picked her way through the frames. He watched as her cheeks brightened with a faint flush, beads of sweat teasing down her temple and neck as she threw her head back, trying to crane her neck to inspect some of the pieces perched higher up on the walls. It was like watching a child in a toy store.

Everything about her presence in that room – her brisk movements laden with desperation, her spellbound eyes, the passion on her face edging dangerously close to madness – everything heightened Jungkook's senses to the epiphany, a deep-seated gut feeling that all the coincidences, the good fortune and even the ill fates in his life, everything had led up to this moment, to bring her here in this room with him. It all felt so serendipitous – in his frantic search for that one artist, he hadn't ever imagined that he would stumble upon someone he would fall so hard for. And in his unspoken life-long yearning for love, he hadn't imagined that that someone would hold the power to inspire his dream closer to him. He felt his life coming full-circle entwined with hers and all he knew was that she was meant to be here, enclosed in these four walls that he had kept away from the eyes of the world, even his hyungs, tirelessly filling it with paintings that he had made or collected over the years, as if to fill an invisible vacuum inside of him. This room had needed the light in her eyes, and he couldn't lie, so had he.

'I've waited for you for so long,' he thought, as a warmth burst from within him, erasing any traces of the emptiness that has once throbbed incessantly. The realization was so sharp, burning hot with certainty in his chest, that he felt overwhelmed with emotion.

"When I was a kid," he spoke quietly, his voice echoing in the vacant hall, "I was smaller than the others my age, scrawny and funny looking. It made me an easy target for a lot of bullying," he ran a hand through his hair with a nervous laugh, as Y/N turned her gaze towards him. "It was harmless at first I guess, just silly little words, the bigger kids just trying to be cool. But I hated it, hated having any sort of attention being drawn towards me, much less if it was shoving me around and laughing at my expense."

He pulled a folded bedsheet from one of the shelves and spread it on the floor, right in the center of the patch of sunlight cascading in through the sunroof, bringing the stains of paint to vibrant life.

"I had some friends of course, but they'd often get pulled into trouble because of me, so eventually they became too afraid to be around me too," he continued, as he lay down on the floor, with his arm tucked under his head, patting on the floor beside him, asking Y/N to join him. "It was like I had been boycotted. Sometimes I'd come back home from school and realize that I hadn't spoken a single word that day." Y/N settled beside him, with her head propped on her elbow, watching his face closely.