LATE NIGHT TALKING (READERXJENNIE)

20: FOUR MONTHS AFTER.

Fingerling. The potato.

So fun to say, Jennie thinks, though there is nobody to share this with, even though the room is filled with people she knows and loves, and many, many that she doesn't.

There are party favors, and heavy liquors and sparkling wine and warm-congratulatory speeches addressed to them, from big smiles and laugh lines.

Her dress is beautiful, and she is smiling, anchored to her group that's laughing and celebrating away the recent success of their concert and the fact that they had just won a major award.

It is everything a celebratory party is meant to be. But Y/n's absence is like a drying wound on her skin. It doesn't sting, doesn't really bleed like it used to, but she picks and picks and picks on it until it's raw again.

The party needs to be grand, everyone had said. It needs to embody this milestone, brandish their success for everyone to see. Jennie had spent her life trying to be right, to fit in the mold that they made, so she doesn't argue, did not care even, very much, because the words were nice, and surely that was the point of it all, right?

Surely this the point of Y/n leaving her.

All night, they talk and stand and drink. She flows from people to people, accepts champagne glasses from left and right, and faux congratulatory hugs from people that she doesn't know.

Taehyung parts the crowd just then, makes a beeline straight for her, pulling her close and captures her lips, smiling as he pulls away.

They're dating now, for anyone who's missed this gigantic leap in her life. They're dating on cam, she should clarify, because that's important. The most significant take-away from all this mess.

YG's doing of course.

Always is.

A prison, as it seems, can take any form that it wants, and Jennie for a while, had believed that reaching the top would help her break away from it all. But fame and fortune was a different penitentiary all together, would even go as far as to say that it was worse. Far worse.

Taehyung takes her hand with a smile, playing his role all too well. He drags her in the middle of a crowd, making a small circle to dance with her for show, and Jennie thinks about that night in Gosapo beach, the current between her and Y/n and the urge she  had to both touch and not touch her. The dangers of it all, the adrenaline coursing through her veins from a time when her heart still knew how to feel. And this, Jennie thinks, feels like the polar opposite. She was steady in Taehyung's arms. Propped up. They sway, and people cheer, and Jennie feels absolutely nothing.

In the middle of the crowd, Jennie thinks about the barebones of the last few months.

Y/n flew back to Korea for Jennie's birthday as a surprise. Though, it was hardly a surprise as much as an announced pop quiz is. They danced, everyone was happy, and Y/n had kissed her in the middle of the crowd because she's like that.

They were together, until they weren't.

Her birthday party had died close to two in the morning, and what little hours in between two and nine in the morning, something had happened and photos were leaked, and suddenly Y/n was pulling away, and Jennie's left ashore.