Acrophilia

I: night view

crossposting on AO3!

A/N: So... this story might sound sad, or depressive, or triggering... it might be, I don't really know how to measure that 'cos I don't get triggered, like ever? But I put all those tags because they are themes in the story. Still, I think it's cute and I love it, it doesn't make me sad at all while writing it.

Anyhow, at first I was just going to write this for myself 'cos I had been fantasising with death a lot (those are happy thoughts for me, okay? Don't judge me) so I came with this character that was for me... then realise Jinyoung would play it perfectly and all my JJP feels exploded so I just had to. As I took this more seriously than other fics I decided I would post it once I had reached at least 15 chapters in advance, which I did...

All in all, it's a love story, I guess, and I tried to portray better the setting by using my time living in Korea, trying to make it as accurate as possible.

Finally, if you do give this story a chance, thank you. If not, that's okay, I enjoy this enormously and I just hope someone else will do the same.

∞

 Traditional Korean music plays softly in the room, the vibrato of the vocalist's voice carries deep sorrow and longing for a lost love, making Jaebeom's hair stand at the high notes mixed with the voice and the lyrics. It's not music he'd listen on his daily life, definitely not a song that he'd stream and listen to for his own pleasure, although he does reckons it is a great song, just not his cup of tea. The song, just as the previous one and the one before that, are all solely for his mother in a desperate attempt to reach her and make her come back to them.

It's been one week since a fatal and gruesome accident in which Jaebeom's mother was nothing but that person in the wrong place at the wrong time. She was driving back from visiting her own parents' grave, late at night as the tomb was in Jinhae, her hometown and Jaebeom's too. It was a long drive, almost four hours, and she had insisted to go alone and drive all the way there and back in one day.

She had made it back to Seoul, around midnight, almost home; she was just waiting for the light to turn green at an intersection. Perpendicular to her road, a boy in a bike came out of nowhere when an oncoming truck seemed to be in a rush before the lights changed.

Jaebeom clenches his fists and closes his eyes as he remembers the accident, having seen it already so many times on different screens as it was all captured by the CCTV. In the footage, Jaebeom sees the truck driver desperately trying to avoid the young boy in his way, without fully succeeding. The risky move made the driver lose control and head directly to Jaebeom's mother, impacting her car, sending it flying over with his mother inside.

The truck driver survived, watching in horror how Jaebeom's mother's car lied upside-down, smoke coming out of it already as if calling for an explosion; just a bit behind, in the intersection, lied the young boy with his limbs twisted with the bike, blood already pooling under his body.

It was the driver who called for the police and ambulance, turning himself in. Jaebeom's mother ended up with multiple fractures, intern bleeding, brain damage and ultimately in a coma. Jaebeom has no idea what happened to the young boy, too worried with his own tragedy.

When the truck driver came to apologise, Jaebeom lost his temper and almost attacked the man, even if the police declared it had been an accident out of his control, Jaebeom still blamed him for his mother's state. He will always blame the driver.

One week later, Jaebeom's mother lies unconscious without any sign of getting better no matter how much he calls for her, how much he begs her to wake up and not leave him alone. He still has his father but he's so dedicated to his work that it's as if Jaebeom only had his mother.