Velvet Necrosis • vampire tk

Five

For as long as Jungkook could remember, he had been living in pain.

It was an autoimmune disease, or at least that's what about thirty of the fourty or so doctors he's seen throughout life had agreed on. They threw fancy and rare illness names at him, some he bothered researching into when he was younger and naive. But eventually all their words seemed to blur into a monotonous and dissonant chorus in the background, easily ignored.

The pills never stopped, despite his belief that they were prescribed for placebo effect, as an elaborate chemical distraction to make him forget about the gradual yet irritatingly consistent collapse of his body.

The pain, oh the pain, his perpetual friend that never strayed far away. It came in many different forms, sometimes as a radiant internal rawness that stung to the touch, other times, it manifested itself as sudden sharp stabs in his joints and limbs whenever he moved. Or not moved, who knows for sure. Maybe ultimately there was a rhyme and reason to the biological madness that was raging inside, Jungkook would never find out while he was alive.

When the illness didn't strike, on the days when his body behaved miraculously normal, he lived vivaciously like a person that's on borrowed time. Riding Jules on the longest and most treacherous trails nearby, reading all his favorite books until the early morning. Spending time with Victoria: cooking, organizing the house, talking hurriedly in between gulps of wine, about places they both want to visit, dishes they want to savour, believing in the love that has eluded both of them. Living, mundanely yet deeply.

But those days were far and few in between, like some otherworldly aurora that tantalized then faded away. Most days were spent indoor, hidden inside his bedroom or the study in the basement. Doors locked, lights dim, and he sat or slept in a half lucid state, a slave to the waves of pain and desperate shivers that coursed through his body, waiting. He was not sure what he was waiting for, to be honest. There was no cure for it, he's long given up on it, despite his parents' objection. No, his mind was waiting for something else. A release maybe, some final breakthrough from the forever pain that shackled him down, morbid or not.

Jungkook had thought about dying once or twice when the pain was too intense, and the sky was an especially gloomy shade of grey. Not seriously considering ending his life, just toying with the idea, imagining what death would feel like, in all of its unsavoury stages of progression. It never appealed to him. Just like how life had been blanched of all colors by the illness, shrivelled up like dried flowers trapped between pages of black and white words, death too, somehow felt anticlimactic, neither scared nor fascinated him.

It was, now that he thinks back, an existence in limbo. Filled with shadows of what could've been, stuck between slivers of light that are far from each other. Decades of life all jumbled together, into a foggy blur.

His parents never understood him. They adored the high life, and Minho, his older brother, was a far better fit than him in that clamorous existence. Minho who's healthy, tall, social and ambitious. Minho who loved big parties and being head of the table at every corporate meeting. Minho who smiled at him at the several-times-a-year obligatory family meals and small talked like they mattered to each other, cared.

Jungkook never belonged to their flamboyant world, or anywhere else, in fact. Why would he, when his life was so frail and unpredictable, when he could never reciprocate love or friendship outside of his sterile little bubble fraught with night sweats and unrelenting aches. He had Jules, a gift his mother has long forgotten, and Victoria, the caretaker that's been with him since childhood. And maybe that's more than enough.

But now.

Now, the pain is gone. It's bizarre, waking up six feet under each night, shrouded in the scent of damp soil mixed with burnt candle wicks, feeling more invincible than he's ever felt. The world of the living is both forever closed off from him, and sprawled out in its infinity possibility, daring for him to test and savour. And Taehyung is always there - half asleep while embracing him, hidden amongst the trees as Jungkook hunts with an insatiable appetite. Even when they are apart, Jungkook can feel it, their thoughts in sync, communicating in a way that's more primitive than words, deeper, like echoes in a valley.