The Love After | A JJK Werewolf AU

02: The Love Taken Away

You watch the fog clear up from your back porch, quilt over your lap and hot tea warming your hands. The birds are chirping, the early morning sun is shining over the trees and flowers, and the scent of the cool breeze is helping you relax.

You could stay like this all day with your favorite book and feel accomplished; you could even lie down on the grass just watching the sky and feel fulfilled. You don't have these back in the city, where rows of buildings and the sound of cars honking make you forget who you are.

There's no time for quiet there, no time to think, no time to feel. Perhaps that's why you chose to leave this place. And why you chose to stay.

"Good morning," Jimin sits on the chair next to you, his morning eyes and puffy cheeks a sight you miss. "Coffee?"

He offers the iced store-bought drink he got from your refrigerator.

You shake your head. "Made my drink from the basil plant over there," you respond, cocking your head to the left.

"Right. I forget you complain about the city air tainting the herbs you grow at your apartment that you can't make tea," he chuckles. "For all the talk of not wanting to come home, you're quite attached to it."

"It's an odd feeling, resenting and loving something at the same time," you admit. "It's almost like, I don't know who I am outside of this place, but being here takes a big piece of me every time."

"Losing a great love in a place you love can do that to you, I guess," Jimin says, grinning at how the sun shines over the pine trees decorating the mountains. "Doesn't mean it's the only great love out there."

"You're quite the optimist," you sigh, wanting badly for that to rub off on you, with everyone around you seemingly feeling the same way. "I wish I was enthusiastic about life like you guys are."

"You used to be, though," he reminds you. "Even if it was just a stroll to the bakery or riding our bikes down the dirt road, you always enjoyed them. A puffy cloud, the taste of rain, a pale blue sky... You marveled at the ordinary, ___. That's what made you, you."

"I still do that," you huff, trying not to show how much his observation affects you. "I'm here, watching the sky with my tea, humming to myself before you came. That's still me."

"Yeah, but you just keep it all to yourself now."

"I used to share it with him all the time," you say after a while. "Yoongi and I loved the ordinary. We thought we'd live it. Live through all this - a cozy house with a porch, a nice garden, baked sweet potatoes and eggs in the morning, reading books cuddled next to each other while lying on the grass... Wasn't too much to ask, right?"

Jimin wants to tell you that you can still have those, that Yoongi being far away and living out his Fate doesn't mean you get to stop living yours. But Jimin stops himself as he sees the look in your eyes, knowing at some point, you'd stopped trying. You're too young to feel like there's no other great love out there, but he knows you. You love deeply; it's why the cut runs just as deep, too.

"He could've at least let me still call him. They can do that, right?" You wonder. "Or at least let us write to each other. He left me with a bracelet instead. I see him in it, but it just feels so one-sided."

"But it's all the things you love," your cousin reminds you, prompting you to look at the charms of a bird, a book, a cloud, the sun, even the moon. "Maybe he didn't want you to forget that."

You mindlessly trace your fingers over them. "Maybe he didn't want me to forget him, too."

**

Mi-Rae places the last baby's breath pin on your hair and smiles excitedly at you, proud of the look she put together that wasn't met with resistance, as in the past.