Blood Ink ✔️

22: If I Fall

Personally, you've away been a huge fan of roller coasters.

Even with your isolated and lonely life back at home, your father always allowed you to go to a theme park on your birthday, supervised by exactly three bodyguards and accompanied by Jisoo. The two of you, ecstatic with celebration, would hit up every roller coaster in the park at least twice.

There's something about those few seconds of weightlessness, and that plunging drop in your gut as you plummet down a massive slope that gets your adrenaline pumping.

It's like flying for a split second. A sensation that humans can never experience in reality, only under simulation, yet something that generation after generation has chased.

Flight.

This is not that.

This is falling, with no safety bars or bungee cords to catch you before you hit the hard, solid ground.

This isn't adrenaline and fun and heart-felt joy: this is pure, unadulterated terror.

You're terrified.

At first, it's simply a few seconds of stomach-dropping freefall, you trapped against the heavy mass of Jungkook's body with his arms wrapped around you like a vice.

When you hit the first branch, it's him that takes the brunt of the impact.

He gasps in pain as his shoulder rams into the wooden obstacle, the hit spinning your bodies mid air so that your back is the one that gets ripped up next. Leaves and wood and long, protruding branches fly by in the side of your vision, scraping harshly against your sides and the exposed part of your face.

The next major branch that you hit slams into your back with excruciating force. You feel yourself arch away from it, only to contort your body back as Jungkook gets pummeled from behind.

Pain radiates down the length of your spine when the momentum shreds the rough bark down your back. Unconsciously, you bite your lower lip, as if the new tiny wound can distract you from the torn skin of your back.

It hurts, a lot. You can feel the jagged edges of ripped material brushing against your bare skin, which is serrated and wet with hot blood.

Something warm and wet is leaking onto your hand where it clutches Jungkook, originating from his shoulder, but you're too busy being  bashed over and over again by branches to think too much of it. You're bleeding too - you can feel the heat of blood flowing over your arms and back as you get hit again and again.

Although, in reality, it last for probably a handful of seconds, it seems like you're falling for infinity. Time slows down, making each hit an impact in slow-motion. All the more painful.

The only good thing about the heavier branches at the bottom is that they slow down your descent, providing a solid obstacle to slow the moment of your two bodies as you get closer to the ground.

Then, finally, with a dull thud that's almost laughably insignificant, the two of you slam into the hard-packed earth like a downed plane.

It's Jungkook on the bottom and you on top, the vibration of the landing shaking from his body to yours. Your forehead bashes against his chin, knocking your teeth together, and his knee jabs into your thigh.

After your bodies and the earth beneath you still, you just lay there, exhausted but alive. Blood is seeping from your cuts: you can feel it, but nothing is broken or torn enough that you can't stand. The branches at the bottom, although painful as you smashed into them, really did help to lessen the force of your crash into the ground.