(Jungkook POV)
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I took my usual spot on the transit, shrugging my backpack off to place in my lap. Exhaling, I curled my frigid hands in the pockets of my jacket, right hand pausing when it grazed the feeling of a wire.
I pulled it out, the white colour in tune to the snow falling outside. My earphones lay tangled, not having been used on the transit since the day I started sitting with him.
His voice was plenty of music for me.
My lips curled in a small smile, and I kept glancing over at the opened doors. Passengers continued to climb on, but no sign of Jimin was prevalent.
It was odd, he was usually the first one to be here, with me trailing in five minutes in later due to the slow and hesitant walk I unfavouraby fashioned.
Another three minutes passed, I kept count, and the bus driver turned the key in the ignition, the engine sputtering to life.
I almost sprang out of my feet to stop him, when suddenly, Jimin climbed onto the bus, and I freely exhaled.
My right hand came up to wave at him.
I paused.
Something was different.
His features were different, and I lowered my hand as he made way towards where I sat. Nodding at me, he sat down beside me and I blinked at the sudden space between us.
I waited for him to speak, to explain the tension between his shoulder blades and brows, but the bus started to move and my earphones fell from my lap.
They landed near his feet, and I expected him to remark on how I didn't use them to hide anymore.
He stared at them blankly, no part of him moving.
Instead, he leaned back in his seat, and watched the roof of the bus.
"Jimin," I spoke, trying to silence the alarm bells ringing in my brain; something was wrong.
"Hm?" He asked, not moving his eyes from the roof.
"What's wrong?" I asked, though it sounded more like a plea. But his energy, his posture, was no longer like the warm sunlight I always dubbed him as.
He remained quiet, lulling his head to the side to look at me.
Despite the absence of warmth, he was still so hypnotic, electric with the way his features rose sharply from their locations.
Orange strands grazed his brows with that movement and my fingers reached out to brush them away.
He flinched and my stomach dipped.
The male lifted his head, straightening up to face me properly.
Fear coursed through me, hundreds of questions and their conjured up answers already firing from synapses.
"Jung--"
"You're leaving me."
The words escaped my mouth before I could stop them, and I begged they would be denied.
Deny them, deny them, I told him with my eyes, searching his to find any lies.
But I hadn't ever seen him lie, so I didn't know what I was searching for.
"Yeah."
I didn't move; didn't snap at the stranger that was listening to his music so loud I could hear it through his headphones, didn't warn the six year old boy two rows down to not kick his own mother, didn't scream at the bus driver to slam the brakes on because the person I yearned for was leaving.
"Why?"
He sighed, looking away from me to the window behind me, "look, I've thought about this carefully, and it's definite tha--"
"Get to the point."
He blinked at me, a hint of surprise in the lift of his brows.
"This won't work out." He shrugged, continuing, "I mean, I'm even a year older than you and I have to go to university soon -- the chances of a relationship surviving, even by statistics, is really slim."
I wanted to scream, to fuck the statistics, to fuck the chances of it all because I'd give you even a thousand chances to come back even if you left a hundred times.
"Besides, I think I've deteriorated mentally ever since I got together with you."
Cold, I'm sure this would feel cold later on when I'd reflect for I felt numb right now.
"I, I," he sighed, closing his eyes and a small part of me screamed that he was going to take it all back, that he would open his eyes again and smile and laugh and whisper he was joking.
He opened his eyes, "I'm different now, and I'm not who you became infatuated with."
You don't get to decide that.
You don't get to decide whether my feelings for you are infatuated.
I gulped, "you're defining my feelings for you as infatuation?"
"Yes, because it's ridiculous if it was anything else."
I couldn't understand whether he was highlighting our age and lack of experience with the term 'love', or whether--
"You're just afraid to be loved."
I breathed the words, my mind sputtering out words without thinking.
"You're just afraid of the lack of control over whether I could leave you," I told him, the area between my collarbones hurting, "and so you're defining the gravity of my feelings as mere infatuation."
"Because you can't ever handle that the person who once loved you could leave you."
"You're a writer, you don't believe in statistics, you believe in possibilities, and those same possibilities scare you."
He remained quiet, no emotion sprayed across his features.
An automated voice seeped through the bus's speakers, declaring the familiar stop I hated.
"I have to go," he said to the backpack more so in my lap than me.
And he swung his backpack over his shoulder, stepping over my earphones to exit to his usual stop.
But it felt more like our final one.
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