On Your Way ✓

Chapter 8.

3rd person POV:

"You're not going to ask what happened?" Jungkook asked when his cousin came out of the guest room she had been staying at for the last two days. She still hadn't brought up the topic of what happened that day so the younger took the initiative to ask her.

"I just needed a moment to think. Try to connect some dots on my own before I ask about it. And also needed some fresh air, talking about all this feels suffocating in a way." Seonghee said as she sat beside him at a distance.

"So.. what did you think?" Jungkook was testing the water as he asked, he was already feeling like some disgusting homewrecker since the day he saw that man who brutally broke his and his own heart, even though taehyung's eyes told him that you can't break a home that was never a home to begin with.

"I just feel a little.. dumb I guess. I don't know I think it should've been obvious, I should've noticed it earlier. Everything was in front of me, yet I refused to see it." Seonghee sounded guilty in a way, and disappointed and jungkook furrowed his eyebrows asking—

"Can you elaborate what exactly are you talking about?"

"Taehyung is gay, isn't he? I mean.. that makes sense. A lot of it. I just never made it a possibility I don't know why, I thought he was homophobic for a long time and as much as it pained me, we live in South korea so most men are like that, i didn't question him much. It's just a little shocking because of that.

Also, I didn't know details of what happened with you that you abruptly left in just a week notice and cut all contacts with everyone that I couldn't even tell you that I'm getting married, but I did hear from your family that it's something about some breakup. With the way he reacted that day when he saw you, I could put two and two together." Seonghee didn't sound like she was in pain with all that information but she did feel like she was experiencing a lot of emotions at once which were hard to balance.

Jungkook laughed the moment he heard the word 'gay' in the same sentence as his cousin's husband, making the woman look at him in confusion.

"Am I wrong? Is that why you're laughing?" She asked and the younger just shook his head, saying—

"When you confront him, don't say that. That he's gay, one would think he might've changed for the better in the past few years but it seems like it has only gotten worse. He's probably going to have a panic attack if you say that to him." Jungkook was only disappointed by that, not surprised at all though.

When he had said that if taehyung decides to live a life of lie, he'd end up making it miserable for him and the woman he decides to live that life with. He told him so.

"Oh. I.. do you know anything about him? Are you the reason he's in so much pain?" Seonghee didn't know if she even had the right to ask but she did deserve answers for putting up everything and staying in the dark for years.

"What exactly do you mean by that?" Jungkook had an inkling, if taehyung's swollen, red rimmed eyes with heavy eyebags were anything to go by.

The woman chewed on the skin of her lip, thinking if it's right to talk about it or not but deciding she had nothing to lose, "he.. cries every night when he thinks I'm sleeping. He's always anxious and tired, and stays quiet most of the time. The pretense was good enough for the first few months, he was really trying his level best to make it look real, didn't cry at all either but it slowly started slipping off.

He just came home drunk one night and I've never seen anyone looking so.. destroyed before that. He was crying so badly that he couldn't breathe, he was sick for days after that. He had to be admitted to the hospital at some point and it was like.. he was grieving something I had no idea about. After that he went back to his normal life, tried to act like how he used to but he was failing really badly at it, I saw it happen. It just kept getting worse after that. I don't know when is the last time I saw him smiling after that.

I.. tried talking to him about it multiple times without making it obvious that I knew he cried everynight but he never really opened up about it. I heard him say a few times things like 'why is it so hard for me to be normal?' 'why does it have to be me?', which makes sense now. But.. yeah. He's in a lot of pain I know that."

Jungkook had his lips parted in.. surprise? Was it surprise? Or disbelief? He couldn't figure out but something bitter simmered in his chest, made his heart clench as he heard her say that.

"Oh." Was all he could let out as he touched his face with the back of his hand, then looked at it noticing there was wetness coating his skin. Why was he crying? Why did he feel bad for the man who made him cry for years? Why did he still feel bad for the man who treated him terribly.

Terribly? Jungkook's breath hitched in his throat as he thought back to everything.

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