Names- Jikook (✔️)

Chapter Four

Jimin's POV

"I've overthought everything I can think of." - Say My Name, Odesza

"Park Jimin, where have you been?"

Jimin cringed at the icy tone of his mother's usually pleasant voice, not wanting to look the obviously vexed woman in the eye. "I was at my soulmate's house. We wanted to, uh, get to know each other."

Mrs. Park raised a dark eyebrow, but didn't question him further. She stepped out of the open doorway to allow her relieved son to slip into the house, now dark with sprawling evening shadows. Inside, the only light came from the living room, where the pixilated screen of the TV cast a piercing white glare through the rest of the midnight-tinged room. A wicker chair, a couch, and an expanse of red carpet were all that decorated the wooden floor, and it was perhaps the simplicity of it all that made the room his favorite out of the entire house. Jimin slung his backpack onto the ombre couch and flopped down on it himself, feeling as though a huge weight had been lifted off his shoulders. He had promised Jungkook that, when confronted, he would reveal the nature of their relationship, but that didn't mean he couldn't be nervous as hell about it. He pulled down both of his sleeves, trying to make out the undisturbed canvas of his wrist in the slightest whisper of silver moonlight streaming through the windows. Staring hard at the perfectly assembled line of words on the other, which for some reason were plainly visible to him even in the almost nonexistent lighting. It's gotta be magic, He thought, eyelids growing heavy. It had been a long day, full of jumbled nerves and confusing events. These names. Pure magic. Magic they say is a blessing, He pulled down his sleeves and lay his dark-chocolate head of hair on a sapphire couch pillow, feeling his vision grow dark with promises of sleep, of relief from this disorienting reality. But to me, it's more of a curse.

"Jimin, did you sleep down here?" He awoke to the sound of his mother's voice, opened his bleary eyes to her face, all recently applied makeup and smiles. "Silly boy," She said, ruffling his hair. Disgruntled, he reached to brush her hand away. She let him, though she didn't move out of his bleary vision. "Listen, sorry If I came off as mad yesterday evening. I just get... worried, you know? I want you to be safe." She paused for a moment, as if the words on her tongue were difficult to get out. "Promise me, if you and Mi Na are ever... together, you'll use-"

"MOTHER! So early in the morning, and this is what you want to talk to me about?" Jimin all but leapt off of the couch, his sleeping figure an imprinted ghost upon the cushions. "And I wasn't planning on doing that anytime soon." He registered a flash of utmost relief on his mother's face before fleeing the room, cheeks aflame with embarrassment. The light glaring through the glass window panes gave way to a bright blue sky; he would have to hurry if he wanted to meet up with Namjoon and Hoseok before school. He wished he didn't have to face them, but they would know something was up if he bailed on them. He threw his backpack over one jacket-clad shoulder, his shirt the same one he had worn yesterday. Trying his best to tame the lion's mane that was his blackish-brown crown of hair, he eventually gave up and accepted that he would have to look like how he felt: a poorly-held-together mess of a human being.

The door was a trapdoor under his grasp as he pulled it open, a portal into a swirling pool of paranoia. They're going to notice it today, he told himself over and over, the voices in his head rushing about in a panicked storm. You lucked out big time yesterday, Park Jimin, but not today. He tried to drown them out, assure himself that he was being unreasonably anxious, but their incessant babble poured into his thoughts, into his lungs, his heart. His breath quickened, even though he told himself that it would be okay, in the end. His heart raced, although he assured himself that it would be over soon. He took one step, then another, waiting for the pounding behind his temples to go away.