Generations Expectation's | 8th member of BTS

66

Jungkook's POV

My new apartment was beautiful, and that fucking sucked. It was so cruel.

For years, all of us had talked about this exact moment like it was some distant fairytale waiting at the end of a very long road. Back when we lived piled on top of one another in that tiny dorm, stepping over shoes and laundry and each other's sleeping bodies, we'd laugh and dream about the day we would finally have enough space to breathe. We used to sit on those battered couches after midnight practices, exhausted and starving, talking about what our future apartments would look like when BTS made it big. Namjoon wanted somewhere quiet outside of Seoul. Jin wanted a massive kitchen. Taehyung wanted ridiculous things that changed every week. We all wanted our own rooms. Privacy. Space. Proof that we'd made it.

Now I had all of those things, and I hated every second of it.

The room around me was larger than our entire old dorm bedroom used to be. The bed was softer. The furniture actually matched. The walls weren't stained from years of use. Outside my window, Seoul glittered beneath the darkness, the city stretching endlessly beneath a sky washed pale by artificial light. It should have felt like success. It should have felt like relief after years of struggling. Instead, it felt hollow.

Every room in this apartment felt too big. Too quiet. Too empty.

I found myself staring at my bedroom door for long stretches of time, listening to nothing. There were no voices filtering through thin walls anymore. No Jin arguing with somebody in the kitchen. No Yoongi wandering around at three in the morning because he couldn't sleep. No Namjoon accidentally breaking something expensive. No Ae Cha laughing from another room.

The thought hit me so suddenly I had to look away from the window.
God.

Even now, months later, my mind still searches for her automatically. Every schedule. Every stage.

Every interview.

Every rehearsal.

I was always looking. The worst part was that she wasn't gone. I still saw her almost every day. That was what made it unbearable.

A glimpse backstage. A flash of green eyes across a rehearsal room. Her standing on the opposite side of a stage while managers hovered nearby like prison guards. Every interaction monitored. Every conversation was interrupted before it could happen. Every opportunity stolen away before either of us could grab onto it. The company acted like we were children incapable of controlling ourselves. Worse than that, sometimes it felt like they acted as if Ae Cha was the problem. As if she was some dangerous thing that needed to be managed.

The thought alone made anger twist through my stomach because every time I saw her lately, she looked worse.
Most people wouldn't notice it. Fans definitely wouldn't. Stylists were too good at their jobs. Makeup artists covered the dark circles beneath her eyes. They added color back into cheeks that had grown thinner. They dressed her in beautiful clothes and put a smile on her face before shoving her in front of cameras.

But I noticed. I noticed because I knew her.

I knew the difference between Ae Cha forcing herself to smile and Ae Cha actually being happy. I knew the difference between her tired and fuly exhausted. I knew the difference between her stressed-out attacks and heartbreak.

The girl I'd kissed in her childhood bedroom felt like a ghost now.

Not because she'd stopped existing, because she was fading. Every time I saw her, there seemed to be a little less of her left. A little less spark. A little less fight. A little less of the stubborn, reckless, impossible girl who used to drag all of us into trouble and then laugh while we dealt with the consequences. The same girl who lost her mom too early, who was kidnapped, abused, and neglected, and left behind by her own father. Even through all of that, she seemed more in high spirits than she was now, if that was even possible.