Baby Daddy | p.jimin [COMPLETED]

°13: Friend°

Jimin POV

Flashback - Ten Years Ago

I tried to stick out my hands but my arms snapped and my cheeks collided with the rough surface of the ground. My whole body ached with pain and bruises visibly coloured my skin.

I should have never taken the shortcut.

I struggled to get up on my feet but the pain of being hit and the weight of my backpack made it even more difficult to do so.

"Even getting up is exercise for you."

"At least we are helping him lose weight."

"He is going to have to do that hundred more times if he wants to lose all that fat he has."

Although my vision was a bit blurry from having my glasses thrown somewhere else, I could vaguely see the three boys laughing and giving each other high-fives.

At the end of the alleyway, a small crowd of students from our school were curiously watching. Some were even taking pictures of my humiliation on their flip phones.

I had stopped trying to get up because I wasn't getting anywhere at all. I decided to lay there on the ground as the boys went through my bag, taking whatever they thought had value.

Lucky for them, my bag was pretty much a treasure chest, especially my wallet- they happily shared the cash amongst them.

It didn't help that to them, I was just the perfect target, a rich loser who had plenty of things they could steal from and no friends to back me up.

I had always avoided the shortcut, knowing that it was the usual hangout area for the three boys. This meant I ended up taking the longer way home. But today I made an exception to go through this route. I didn't want to miss my favourite show.

It was a very rash decision of mine, definitely not worth getting beaten up for. And so, I ended up crossing paths with these three demons who would never leave me alone. Who was I trying to kid by thinking that I would be able to walk past them without getting a few bruises.

If only my dad was in a more powerful position instead of being just any old rich guy. There were plenty of those but not enough really powerful ones. Those with kids were strictly off limits at school.

I was too busy assessing my miserable life that I hadn't noticed someone charging towards us. I squinted my eyes as if that would suddenly give me better vision for me to work out who this person could be.

"You bastards will get a piece of me!" shouted the person, causing the crowd to gasp.

Due to the high-pitched voice, I knew that she was a girl. I vaguely managed to see her in a school uniform and joggers.

Since the boys were busy being harassed by the girl, I took the opportunity to find my glasses and gather my belongings. I wasn't going to lie and say that I wasn't enjoying hearing the desperate cries of the bullies being singlehandedly beaten up by this girl that I had yet to recognise.

"Please! I'm sorry, I really am!"

"Well you are apologising to the wrong person, mister!"

I slid my glasses up my nose and looked up to see my neighbour putting one of the boys in a headlock and punching his stomach. I blinked a little more simply out of disbelief. It wasn't like I expected anybody to save me but to see her out of all people beating the crap out of these boys for me was pretty hard to believe. Partly because of the fact that I was very sure she didn't know of my existence.

"You are crazy! We have been neighbours for almost a year now so of course I'm going to know who you are," she commented.

I tried not to wince when she dabbed my injuries with the wet tissue but that was basically impossible. For the first time, she had brought me into her house. I tried not to be too excited about that because all she wanted to was provide me with first aid care.

She is just being a kind stranger. It's not like we are going to suddenly become best friends.

"Thank you very much for looking out for me," I said, so quietly that it was almost inaudible.

"Well someone had to step in," she chuckled, "I would do anything to see those idiots begging for mercy on their knees again."

A tiny percent of me felt a little smug that the girl with everything and a faux pass to success in life was helping a loser like me.

PRESENT DAY

Her eyes widened with surprise and she viciously shook her arms in the air. I stood there unable to move from my spot as I watched her push the trolley as she charged down the aisle towards me.

"Jimin!" she exclaimed, my spine tingled when my name escaped her lips so easily that I had almost forgotten about the pain that she had left me with, "What the heck, it really is you!"

She opened her arms but before I was pulled into a hug, I quickly extended my right arm forwards. There was an awkward pause but she shook my hand. I felt like an actual idiot.

What a way to act natural.

"How did you recognise me?"

There wasn't many photos of my childhood years because I was too ashamed of my body. I felt disgusted to be in my own skin and other people didn't make me feel good about it either.

On the rare occasion that someone would stumble across a photo, they would always tell me that I had changed so much. Me and my childhood self might as well have been two totally different people. Well at least that was how I felt anyways. The last time she had seen me was before I had lost weight.

"Are you being for real right now? We are friends on Facebook for crying out loud!" she laughed.

I nervously laughed along. At that moment in time, I just wanted to melt on the supermarket floor because of the sheer embarrassment I was going through.

"When did you come back?" I asked.

"Only last week, I moved to the block just around the corner. I'm back for good this time," she let out a loud sigh, as if a huge burden had just been lifted off her shoulders.

She looked to my side to see Nari whom she gave a warm smile to. The smile that I had been so blindly captivated by for so many years.

"Oh how rude of me to not introduce myself to you," she chuckled, "I'm Kang Seola, Jimin's friend."

Friend.

My smile fell as the familiar emotions that I had worked so hard to push away came rushing back.