Between Truths ║Dahkook║K.DH J.JK

a season of firsts

CHAPTER I

He leaned against the century-old red bricks of the building, waiting, blessedly shaded from the waking sun. Bored. Until the crowd thinned like an opening curtain.

Jungkook perked.

At the figure of a girl across the distance. She stood unmoving in the middle of that massive courtyard. With her head perfectly poised towards the sky, eyes gently closed, and light hair framing her delicate face like a sheer veil, she was an illusion of a white stone statue. Unreal.

But she was real. A breath of a smile touched her lips. She attracted quiet attention. Under the morning sun, her face and hair were alight with yellow dancing colours. Even the tiles underneath her feet came alive in pretty mosaic swirls of earthly shades. She was pretty even from here where he could not draw her features. She could stutter hearts.

And stutter his did, that first time he saw her.

'Whose wouldn't?' He wondered. No one could have been ready for someone like that. It did not have to mean anything. He was just a simple boy who liked pretty things. So, he watched her without guilt. Like that light show he saw for the first time. Time was fleeting. Eternity could have spun around him, ethereal frostbites, and he wouldn't know, or know to care.

"Why do you have that faraway look? What are you looking at?" A voice jarred his pensive quiescence.

Jungkook blinked dazedly. His gaze broken. The gripping spell did too. It was reflex that had his eyes searching for the summer girl who had stood frozen amidst the thawing of time, but she was gone, and the breeze continued its lazy stroll around him.

Jungkook turned towards the girl who had spoken, dusting faint disappointment away.

"Nothing," he answered firmly. Fine threads of his stupor disintegrated like ashes to the wind easily. She was that wind. Jungkook could not help his smile when he saw her. It was genuine. It was rare. It was unfair.

"Doesn't look like nothing," she mused.

"What does it look like? Good?" He asked, playfulness coloured his tone.

She took a beat too long to reply, "You know you look good. Even dazed, Kookie," she smiled his childhood name, but it was too late to ignore the obvious space between them now. Jungkook knew his features lack the edge. 'Too soft; too pretty,' he heard them utter often. Mother said he would grow into his father's strong jaw, but he was far too old to be growing into anything. It used to bother him. Not anymore though. Even if they could never seem to do anything for her to his chagrin, his boyish features were not the worst of hands that he had been dealt with. Over the years he learnt to play them well into his favour. There were many other things to cry about anyways. She had not broken his heart. Not exactly. Not yet.

Yein. A girl he had known for more than half his life; his junior in middle and high school by a year, but as it turned out she became his senior in college because of his military enlistment. More than that, she was a place of familiarity. A girl living in the same neighbourhood, she had witnessed all that was his life. All the humiliation, difficulties, and distress there were. Like the time when he and his family were thrown out of their house for being behind on their rental payment. Or the time both his parents had to beg on their knees for the landlord to have mercy on them, promising him payment before he finally took pity on them. Or the times customers in the restaurant he was working in had it in their pompous head that they were better than him as they flung money, food and vulgarities to his face.

He saw her at her worst too.

If there was anyone that was worthy of his affection, it would be girls like her. If he had to be specific, just her.