Intertwined: Two fates

3 - Jimin's Gift

Jungkook held his forehead helplessly. "Jack..."

"You drank alcohol, a whole fucking bottle at that, and slept on the fucking kitchen floor! What do you have to say about that, Hyung?!"

"Don't curse," Jungkook slipped that out by reflex.

No offense but being on the end of Jackson's furious holler was scarier than the prospect of being a murder suspect.

The flying spit notwithstanding, they just had to do this confrontation in front of Jimin.

Jungkook palmed his eyes as waves of helplessness came over him. First, the man had seen what kind of mess Jungkook's apartment was and now, it was solidified by Jackson's nagging.

Jungkook wished he could stay like this forever so he did not have to see what kind of look Officer Park was giving him right now. It was just nine am in the morning but Jungkook already felt tired to the bone.

Jackson abruptly turned silent. There was the sound of a chair being dragged back followed by a touch on his shoulder. "What's wrong?" Jackson asked, softer this time. "Do you have a headache?"

"I..." Jungkook offered a weak smile. "I am sorry. I have made you worry again."

"Tell me honestly, Hyung. I am your doctor, I need you to be honest about your own body." Jackson asserted solemnly. "I know you're not a drunkard. Why did you drink last night? Did you have a headache again?"

When he put it like that, how could Jungkook evade him anymore? "I did." Jungkook admitted with a sigh. "When I returned from school, the pain got worse and I saw the liquor you gave me so..." He sighed again.

This was the origin of the mess, wasn't it? If he had not drunk, then perhaps he would have been sober enough to notice something wrong next door. Alas...

There was something he did not tell the doctor though. He had been feeling this throbbing pain in his head for the past few days and yesterday, it was especially bad. He had downed twice the dose of medicine to get through the day because he did not want to mess up his first day of teaching, which is coincidentally his first stable job after seven long years of part time jobs and scraping whatever tasks he could find.

But he had been too naive.

Toward the end of the class, the dull pain had intensified into sharp, burning pain that hammered down his skull again and again, insistent.

Honestly, he had no idea how he had driven home safely without creating a traffic accident somewhere. And then, it was made worse when he found out that the elevator in the apartment malfunctioned. Jungkook had to force himself to climb to the fifth floor on his own feet amidst the wrecking agony.

When he stumbled into his apartment, he was already half conscious. Then the rest was a blur of pain, the urge to slam his own head against the wall so he could get a brief respite was overwhelming. He was so close to breaking down when his blurry vision landed on the bottle of liquor in his cabinet.

Without even thinking twice, Jungkook chugged down the wine directly. It went smoothly down his throat, leaving a burning sensation in its wake.

The good, distracting kind of burn.

Amid the strong desire to escape from the pain, Jungkook had drunk again and again, losing control of himself and fell asleep on the kitchen floor.

Unaware that right beyond the wall, a heinous crime was taking place.

Jackson snapped his fingers, pulling Jungkook's attention away from the spiral of memories. "From the scale of one to ten, how strong was your headache?"