When the campus heartthrob Jeon Jungkook who's actually a secret, self-professed romantic at heart, and the innocent country girl Kim Y/N, who's actually not as timid and docile as she seems, end up sharing a dorm for the semester, both discover tha...
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I COULD NOT for the life of me understand why Jungkook was acting so butthurt about a few harmless lies. Why did it matter to him where I lived, anyway? It wasn't his problem to deal with, nor was he entitled to judge me for the way I dealt with it, considering how it didn't even take a few seconds for him to jump to the worst possible conclusions about me.
The nauseating flashbacks of my mid-teenage years hadn't recurred since a couple of months now, at least not while I was wide awake. I was determined to bury the memories of those torturous couple of months deep somewhere within the depths of my heart, but Jungkook had - willingly or unwillingly, caused them all to resurface.
All my life, even while I experienced that harrowing harassment, day after day, month after month, I'd never dared to speak up against my exploiters or what they did. I had never had the courage to; I was not brave enough.
They hadn't raped me, no. But the obscenely suggestive whispers, the lustful gazes and those unkind, unforgiving hands had sufficed to traumatise me for life; the repulsive feeling of being a mere object of filthy lechery bespattering my body, swamping my soul, consuming my conscience; and festering into a painful open wound I was desperate to hide, but never could.
I was fearfully ashamed of myself. On some days, my body disgusted me; I felt like a stranger in my own skin.
And yet, being a mere fourteen-year-old, ignorant and terrified of everything unknown in the world, I never dared to raise my voice against the vile, deplorable actions of men that were supposed to protect me and my mother after my father's death.
I spent my days in silent agony, the fear of disbelief much bigger than the horrors of sexual assault because who'd have believed a fatherless child, anyway?
My own mother had failed to see through my façade until the day I'd finally gathered the courage to tell her.
However, it was too late. I'd already lost parts of myself that I knew I would never again gain back.
The day we left Seoul, I'd promised myself to never let a man intimidate me ever again; to never let my speech betray me and use my voice when I felt cornered or vulnerable.
And I'd done that today.
I'd finally dared to speak up about how I felt... uncomfortable. I'd told him the truth, and yet Jungkook had done exactly what I feared the most. He hadn't believed me.
Yes, I'd lied to him. In response to every single question that he had asked me, I'd brazenly lied to his face.
But did he really think of me as unscrupulous enough to lie about something so sensitive?
Letting out a deep sigh, I wrapped my arms around myself as loose gravel scrunched under my shoes with every step. The sun hadn't fully set yet; the evening sky coloured a bright orange with streaks of blue, pink and purple strewn across the horizon.
