(Jungkook POV)
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I knew the answer.
The teacher was waiting, eyes skipping along the faces of various students, wondering who was going to answer the math question.
I knew it, the various steps to solving it had already been penned down and my hand was twitching to raise.
I knew it, I knew it, I knew it, you know it, you know it, you know it.
It starts off with a car in my chest, revving up the engine near the centre of my heart, blood roaring instead of gasoline.
Waves move at the end of my fingertips and they tingle, my hands automatically clenching into fists to minimize the pins in my skin.
I'm shaking, to answer, to speak, dear God, I want to say it, but my throat's dry and my hands and legs are shaking, vibrating.
'Say it' -- the two words that are so familiar to me now from the mouth of someone else.
My hands goes up slow, but my heart is anything but that.
"Yes, Jungkook?"
"985."
"Correct."
He nods, his lips about to speak again and I know what he's going to ask next.
"Can you explain how you got the answer?"
And I speak, a tad bit louder, my voice cracking, but that's okay, it's okay because this is the first time I've answered a math question in two years.
Hence, he nods and I'm good because I answered a question in class, I spoke in class all so voluntarily so I'm good even though my heart still feels like its chest isn't its home.
I spoke in class.
And that thought made the muscles of my mouth stretch.
___
"Mum?"
I walked into her bedroom, noticing the curtains blocking all light from outside. The snow had died down, and the sun flocked in small pinpricks, bleeding into the room from the corners of the curtains.
But she loved the sun.
"Mum, are you okay?" I sat on the edge of the bed, running a hand through her greying strands. They were still so soft, so gentle, but the charcoal pigment was dying.
She stirred a little, one side of her cheek pressed up against the pillow, eyes slowly opening to meet mine.
That familiar gaze.
And instead of wrinkling eyes, I see tiredness, not of the body, but of the mind and I'm reminded of a orange haired boy's brown orbs.
"I'm fine," she mumbles, but I don't miss the white tissue being squeezed in one palm.
"No, you're not. Is work stressing you out?"
She chuckles, or at least, tries to, because she winces when her mouth lifts upwards.
"No, I'm jus--"
"Tired," I finish for her.
Deja-vu doesn't feel like an epiphany, but more like spillage of water and now my limbs are separating from their sockets because my Mother looks so sad.
"You're sad," I say to her, laying my hand on top of her's and it's when my palm grazes the material in her hand that I realize it's not a tissue but paper.
She tries to move her hand away, but I grab on to it, wriggling the white paper out of her weak hold.
Zoloft is the first word I see.
Depression is the second one.
But "sorry" is what comes out of her mouth.
"Shh, it's okay, don't apologize," I whisper to her, leaning in close to lay down beside her.
Her hand rests against my chest and I rub slow circles in her shaking back, but not before feeling her spine stick out so progressively.
And I want to tell this to a particular boy, that the mere image of him is the reflection of my Mother because I didn't notice how sad my own Mother was until it was written for me and I'm reminded of his stories.
His stories, his words not sad, but the meaning behind them and maybe because we are what we write that I feel so strongly the sadness in his stories now than ever before for the sadness of my Mother has been written and I was slow enough to understand it in Times New Roman than from her eyes.
I felt like shit, that I only understood sadness when it was written for me and not when it was right in front of me.
So maybe now the sadness of my mother is equivalent to a prescribed bottle of pills and not a mouth full of laughter.
But I'm your son, I want to say to her.
Aren't I enough?
Why didn't you tell me you were sad?
Why'd you hide it?
And I feel like Mr. and Mrs. Park now, a conversation Jimin and I had a few hours ago as he retold me the time he was slapped for speaking of his sadness.
The irony.
So I hugged her tighter, desperately and selfishly and hopelessly praying that she didn't need the prescription, as I crumpled it up in my hand and slipped it into my pocket.
___
