Strip it | JJK

chapter 18 | this is me

Seated in the far corner of the library, Chayoung and Haneul spent their lunch break working on their individual homework for the next class. Chayoung rarely ate lunch and if she did, it was never much. Haneul several times tried to convince Chayoung to buy her lunch, but Chayoung always refused to accept the offer. She explained that she wasn't hungry at lunch time yet. That was a lie, obviously, but Haneul could not force the girl to let her pay for her lunch.

The lack of a mid-day snack had its consequences though.

Most days, Chayoung found trouble concentrating in the late classes and even though the girl was used to compromising with food, she often left school with throbbing headaches.

But to excuse her lack of proper attention in school on her eating habits would be a weak attempt of dismissing the real reason.

What mostly weighed on the girl's mind was her job.

The job she was ashamed of and so desperately wanted to get rid off. Chayoung had never been proud of it, but the shame surrounding her job had only grown bigger after attending college and watching other people live totally different lives and if they actually did visit her world, it was for a fun night out. People saw her job as entertainment, and it did not feel good to be the entertainment.

Today however, the distraction from her homework, wasn't negative thoughts about her job. These were positive.

Chayoung had stopped selling sex.

Despite the disadvantage in her income by stopping this, she'd never experienced a bigger relief. It was like the room she'd been so claustrophobically locked up in had grown wider and less suffocating.

And it was partly thanks to Jungkook.

After Jungkook and Chayoung's first time, the girl stopped at an instant.

She never would've guessed that it could be so easy. So easy to just discard it. So easy to escape.

She sometimes found herself wondering if it was too easy to be true. There must be a catch, she thought. She couldn't just escape from the lowest part of her life like that, could she?

But the only catch as of right now, was that she still felt the shamefulness of her actions.

She tried consoling herself, repeating over and over in her head that it had been the only solution for her. She couldn't have done anything else. If she had, she would've never been able to start college this semester anyway.

However a negative part of the choice of stopping with her secret private business was that it resulted in a much lower income which required the girl to take more shifts. Way more.

It was difficult balancing school with her job when she had shifts almost every night, but it was a foregone conclusion to her quitting the sex-selling.

Yet — it was all worth it.

She just couldn't do it to him. She simply couldn't.

Jungkook was a fuck boy. She knew that the moment she saw him wink at passing girls in the cafeteria. On the other hand... Jungkook had shown another side of him during the past week.

To say that the girl had been dazed after the kiss Jungkook had pressed to her temple would be a slight understatement. And besides that, he'd acted a lot sweeter toward the girl.. or maybe he was acting as he always had and Chayoung just seemed to mind his actions more now.

She'd not only grown much more aware of Jungkook's behavior whenever she saw him, but she'd grown significantly more self-conscious around him, more shy and nervous (which she rarely was around men), less reserved and even a tiny bit happier.