𝐋𝐎𝐎𝐊𝐄𝐑 || [JINKOOK FF ]

[1]

Jeon Jungkook is Lonely.

With his back facing toward the non-fiction section and the front door of Bound to Please, Jungkook carefully slid the 78 of The Old Dixieland Jazz Band out of its protective paper sleeve and placed it down onto the turntable of the record player. This was by far his favorite record in the store. An original pressing from 1917, it was actually the first ever jazz recording, a fact not many people knew, and that he generally kept to himself. After all, this wasn't the literal first record, but from the first pressing of this record, like a first edition book.

Jungkook tapped his foot to the beat, drumming his fingers on the counter. He had an affinity for older things–older books, furniture, and albums pressed onto slate instead of vinyl, but any record would always do over a CD. He wasn’t necessarily even into jazz, but this was one of the old things, things that smelled like they had a history, things that had stories to discover.

He loved going to estate sales and yard sales to see what he could find. Jeon Jungkook loved to touch and smell all the items people decided they no longer needed, so he could try and feel their stories. It would break his heart though, standing in a packed up living room on a South- Korean , Seoul Sunday, looking at family albums someone had painstakingly assembled and kept for generations, only to be left behind by ungrateful grandkids and sold for a couple of thousand wons.

Of all the items he found at those sales, his favorites were the Bibles, and Jungkook bought as many as he could. Not the modern ones you could get for Fourteen to Fifteen thousands won at any chain bookstore, but the old Bibles, the family Bibles, bound in leather or some even in wood.

The Bibles that had marriages and deaths recorded in the faded ink from a fountain pen. Seong Jae and Yang Myung got married in 1846, their daughter Eun Ae was born and had died in 1847. Why didn't anyone want to keep their family history anymore? Why didn't anyone care about the importance of legacy? Of history? All you had was what was left behind. And all Jungkook wanted was for himself to be that important to someone.

After he had come and gone, who would care, who would remember him? He wanted someone to pick him up with strong hands and offer him a place of honor and reverence in their home, look inside of him and turn page after page until they'd reached his end together and then put him back in his place to keep him safe when there wasn't anyone else to look after him.

But as the days passed, it seemed more and more unlikely he would find that. Jeon Jungkook's bright cherry red hair slipped loose, covering his left eye, and he let it stay. He’d found hiding was much easier than leaving himself open for people. They would be disappointed with what they found anyway.

Before he’d even realized it, Livery Stable Blues had ended and the record was spinning blankly around the turntable. He gently took the record off the deck and slid it back into its sleeve, put on a longer playing Sidney Bechet album, then picked up a stack of books that he needed to shelve.