Puppetry - P.JM. [ON-HOLD]

Seven

I sat on the countertop in the kitchen, it a large, smooth, gray stone. It was cool against my clammy palms, making my core temperature go down. My feet didn't touch the floor, them hanging in the air. The cabnits around me were a soft birch color, polished beautifully. Each cabnit stood over thirty seams over me, maybe even more. The space and air flow of the sunlight in the room seemed to lighten my mood a bit.

I had a blanket draped over my shoulders, my arms wrapping itself around me. I was still cold, but not as much as before. Plus, I didn't like my shoulders and arms being exposed like this. I only wore tank tops on occasions when no one was around. I liked to keep what little part of me untouched from anymore eyes.

I chewed at my lip, feeling the sunlight from the windows hit my hair, making it warm. My head pains were calming down, my shaking body able to stabilize. I was just glad Taehyung wasn't home. If he was, I knew he would have taken me to the doctors. He did that once. I ran.

I watched the puppet--Jimin, from what he was supposed to be called, but I was still not used to calling puppets humans--cook the food, smiling to itself happily. My eyes kept looking over the tattoos and diamond pierced on its nose. Its hair was black, though. Why was that?

"Why do you keep staring at me like that?" the puppet's voice said through our silence. It seemed to startle me, bringing me back to the real world. My eyes focused back on the puppet, watching it still cook. Its face was low, no smile there in sight. It didn't look at me.

"What are you talking about?" I retorted, sounding a bit annoyed by its question. "I'm not staring at you."

The puppet kept cooking the food, its voice going to nothing for a second. "You look at me like there's something wrong with me. I'm just curious, that's all."

I bit a little at my lip, feeling my feverish skin as my tongue pressed against my flesh. I could feel a fever was still persisting in me. "You're a puppet. You shouldn't care."

"But I do."

I stopped for a second, looking at the mechanism curiously. I watched as it turned around, bringing some vegetables to the counter to place in a broth. I caught a glint of the diamond dazzling on its nose, then it disappearing again. The puppet's tattoos move with it, the vine along its lower left side, stretching and curving with its movements.

The puppet pushed the vegetables into the broth, them making a little splash. I heard the liquid slowly boiling, the puppet bringing the cutting board down from the pot. It turned to look at me, placing its hip onto the counter as it did so.

"You're confusing," it said, looking me up and down. "You seem to not like people, yet my puppet master and you seem to get along perfectly. You say you don't want to go to the doctor, but you have to due to your head injury. You look at me like I'm some foreign object, yet I'm just a mere puppet. I don't know why I am, but apparently I am."

Dammit. This puppet was smart. Well, wasn't every puppet? I wasn't too sure. This puppet was just odd to me. I was too confused and I hated being confused.

"Well, I guess you just don't know me very well," I murmured, looking down at my lap. The fuzz of the blanket brushed against my shoulders soothingly.

"You have no records of criminal acts within the system. You don't have many records in general. Just who your basic identity and family line are." For some reason, I thought the puppet wore the same expressions as me at the moment. Furrowed eyebrows, curious, dark eyes, confusion hidden inside us. This was getting scary.

"I tend to stay off the radar, I guess," I said, swallowing a bit. It sparked a hint of pain in the lower back part of my head. "I listen to my radio for new clients, but that's about it. Nothing much left to say."