This is How We Break | Jungkook

Part 3

[flashback]

//

The days turn into weeks.

You go through everyday as usual, but with weekends spent at your parents' and some weeknights with Areum, Jimin, and Yoongi at a cafe or a park.

Your friends have gotten used to your silence, though. They hold your hand when it starts to shake, sleep next to you when you're unable, remind you of basic things when you forget, finish your sentence because you lose your train of thought.

This is how you break. Slowly. It's not sobbing while you eat ice cream. It's quietly crying - while you take a shower, while you make your coffee, while you lie in bed at night. It's not the pounding in your head nor the excruciating pain in your chest. It's feeling like there's nothing inside you - just hollow and numb. How are you supposed to feel when half of you is gone?

But that part of you that's left thrives. It continues to live and hope and seek that excitement, seek that joy somewhere, anywhere.

It's two months later during breakfast when you tell them.

"I'm pushing through with the design course in Melbourne," you say in between sips of your coffee.

Areum can't help the smile on her face. "The one you deferred last year?"

You nod.

It was an impulsive application, as you were on a high from your visit to your sister. Jungkook couldn't join you because of school so you'd gone on your own and fell in love with the city. You joked about moving there, but deep down it was a desire you suppressed because your life had always been here. The love of your life was here. There's nothing keeping you from leaving now.

"I think it'll be good," Jimin says. "You talk about it all the time. I always felt like you just needed a reason to leave. Now you do."

It's another month later when it finally happens.

"I'll miss you but I hope you find it," Yoongi whispers as you give him the final hug.

"Find what?"

"Yourself? Your joy? Your inspiration? Whatever it was that you lost here. I hope you find it."

"What about love, Yoon?" You ask, genuinely curious.

"That'll follow, ___." He smiles, and it's that push you need to enter the airport gates, off the place where you hope you'll find all those things, too.

//

The days turn into weeks.

Jungkook goes through a dizzying roller coaster of emotions. Some mornings he wakes up energized - he goes through his readings with ease, aces his recitation, and analyzes the assigned cases well.

Some nights he can't sleep, tossing and turning in his bed, trying to erase the image of you from his mind. The pain is constant, demanding itself to be felt, reminding him of what he lost, of what he didn't fight for.

Losing you had been effortless, but why is it becoming more difficult convincing himself that he did what he had to?

It's in the third month when he realizes he's been at the bottom far longer than usual, feeling like a shell of the man he once was, losing focus, finding himself lost and uninspired.

"I just feel like I need to see her," Jungkook tells Namjoon and Jin, his college roommates and best friends, over bottles of beer. "I just... I need to hear her tell me that I'm okay, that I'll get through this."

"Why do you need to hear it from her? We tell you this everyday, Jungkook." Jin eyes Namjoon, as the pair tries to get a feel of who should be the comforter or the reality checker this time.

"I'm lost and confused and I miss her. Maybe when I look at her this time, I'll know the answer."

"What if you see her and still feel like a failure?" Jin asks.

Jungkook stares into his empty glass. "Isn't that still an answer?"

It's shortly after when he decides to go to your place, his heart beating out of his chest. He left parts of himself with you here and he's desperate to find even the smallest pieces to feel even a semblance of the man he was when he was with you.

Curious eyes greet him as the door opens, something that Jungkook returns. Da-eun is a good friend of yours but had always lived with her wealthy parents; he'd rarely seen her here.

"Can I see her?" He asks.

"She's... she's not here, Jungkook."

"I can wait then," he sighs. "I just... I just need to see her."

"I mean, she's not here anymore," Da-eun responds, the sadness in her voice permeating through his veins. "She left a week ago."

"Where... where did she go?"

"Australia, to her sister." Yoongi appears in the hallway, a sullen look on his face. "She's there to study and work, thinking that a change of scenery would be good."

The hole in Jungkook's heart comes out of nowhere, and he feels it getting bigger by the second. Suddenly he can't breathe.

"She loved it there," Jungkook stammers. "I missed that trip with her. She used to say she couldn't wait for us to go together." He sighs. "I'm glad she made the move."

Yoongi and Da-eun watch him try to hold himself up, seeking support by the door as he furiously wipes the tears from his eyes.

"She left a few things," Yoongi says. "You're free to take them if you want."

"That's not necessary," Jungkook replies, head down as he wills his cries to stop. "I'll go ahead. Thanks, guys."

"Take care of yourself," are the last words he hears as he walks away.

They fall on deaf ears, as two weeks later, Jungkook hears the loud banging on his door and the jingling of keys.

He's ready for the lecture, for his friends to pull him from underneath the covers and slap some sense into him. But they don't happen.

Instead he hears the clanking of broken glass, of his bookshelf being propped back up on the wall, of his books being stacked on top of each other. And then it's his dishes being washed, then the washing machine turning on, then some more sweeping, and more things being arranged.

"There's a place to go if you want to destroy things," Namjoon says. "Don't do that to your home."

"This isn't home," Jungkook sighs.

"We'll take you there," Jin says, sitting on the edge of the bed and removing the pillows and blankets over his friend. "Your parents asked us to fix your papers, file your LOA then drive you back to Busan."

Jungkook sits up, puffy eyes and dark crescent moons painted underneath. His collarbones and ribs are protruding without effort. "I didn't get my answer. She left even before I could."

"Maybe you'll find it somewhere else." Namjoon kneels next to him. "Whatever it is, it's not here." There's a crack in his voice that Jungkook's never heard before. "Do it for yourself, Kook. Do it for her."

Jungkook looks at his best friends, fear and worry painted on their faces. There was you, then his parents, then his friends. He's run out of people to disappoint. He can't do any worse than this.

"I don't know what to do," he sobs, burying his face in his hands. "Please, take me home."

This is how he breaks. Like he was floating aimlessly until he crashed to the ground, the shell of what he once was shattering at the impact, with pieces of himself scattering all over. It was a false sense of comfort, thinking that he'd be okay with losing you, knowing that this was his choice, his call. That he could live with the blame like he'd said, but he was wrong. The pain cuts through like a knife, and he's afraid he'd let it stay there.

~~