Deadlock || ᴠᴍɪɴ

Chapter 19

Jimin set off for Wilmington just as the summer holidays began at the university.

When he told Rob that he was thinking of going to see V, Rob had good-naturedly encouraged him to go. Jimin would be lying if he said he didn’t feel guilty at all, but right now their relationship as friends had been the best it had ever been, and he wanted Rob to know because he trusted him.

After returning to LA, Rob seemed to have gotten over his feelings for Jimin. Although he made the occasional flirtatious joke, Jimin could tell that it was just part of his banter and there was no deeper meaning behind it.

However, Rob suddenly became anxious in the airport lobby just as Jimin was about to set off.

“Oh, I don’t know. I’m starting to get worried. Do you want me to go with you?” he had said, causing Neto, who was also there, to roll his eyes. Seen off by his two friends, Jimin boarded the plane to Wilmington International Airport, located in the town where V lived.

Wilmington was a port city located in the south of North Carolina, along the coast of the Cape Fear River. On the map, Jimin could see that it was sandwiched between the Cape Fear River to the west and the Atlantic Ocean to the east. The landmass narrowed dramatically the more you moved south from the urban area. V lived on the far outskirts of the city, about twenty miles from the airport.

After leaving the airport, Jimin transferred onto a bus. He rode for a seemingly endless length of time, but he never found himself getting bored. This was where V was living – just that thought made all the scenery around him seem like something special. He wanted to ingrain every single detail in his memory.

“Are you a student?” asked a sophisticated-looking elderly woman sitting beside him, as Jimin stared intently out the window. He must have looked young in her eyes, wearing jeans and a T-shirt and a backpack slung over his shoulders. When Jimin smiled wryly and told her that he was almost turning thirty, she seemed astonished.

Reckoning that she was a local, Jimin told the elderly woman V’s address and asked her which bus stop was the closest. The woman told him to get off at the fourth stop from here.

“It’s a very nice area,” she told him with a smile. “My husband and I go fishing there together often.”

Just before getting off the bus, the woman pressed a wrapped paper package into his hands.

“Have them if you like,” she said. She had apparently baked some muffins to take to her son who was living by himself, but he had unfortunately just left to go on a trip today.

Jimin thanked her and waved as the woman got off. It was nice to be on the receiving end of a kind gesture on a trip. He could feel his nerves relax a little thanks to her.

Jimin felt more uncertain than happy at the idea of seeing V. Perhaps he would be turned away at the door: just imagining such a scene made him afraid.

But he knew that he would never be able to move forward if he didn’t see V in person at least once. He could live every day pretending that the man didn’t exist, but deep in his heart, V would always be there. He would never be able to begin his new life if he continued to cling to his attachments to the past.

Jimin got off at the bus stop that the elderly lady had told him to, and asked for directions from the passerby before finally managing to find the house that looked like V’s. It was an old, wooden house by the seashore. It was most likely the beach house that V had mentioned purchasing with his teammates in his Delta Force days.

V had said that there was no use in coming here alone, but here he was, living in this house now. Did he have a change of heart? Or did he want to live in a place filled with nostalgic memories while his battered heart healed?