Not For Long

.24

While they were waiting for the elevator door to open for them, Chaeyoung let out a soft gasp before she turned to face him.

"I almost forgot," she muttered. "The books Hoseok asked me to order for him had arrived. And he told me to tell you to get them for him."

"Books?" Jungkook almost laughed, furrowing his brows with his arms crossed. "I thought he stopped reading long time ago."

She chuckled. "Don't be mean."

"No, really. He lost interest for quite a long time," Jungkook said, waited for her to get inside the elevator before he stepped in.

And he was reminded of that day when Hoseok and Yoongi had breakfast together with both him and Chaeyoung in her house, and Chaeyoung did say that she liked to read when she had a free time. He didn't quite notice it but now he realized that Hoseok's interest towards books slowly came back when she talked about some things she learned from some book, and that piqued his friend's interest.

"I'm going to send them to your –"

"No, I'll go to your place and take them with me. You said books, right? How many of them?"

"Around ten. I can't remember."

"Ten? Wow," Jungkook chuckled.

The door was about to close when someone else yelled from outside, asking them to hold the door. "Wait! Wait!" And Jungkook pressed the button to have the door stayed open while three men went inside.

Chaeyoung immediately went to stand behind him when the two men led one of them, the drunken guy in. The sober men bowed to both of them and soon after the door slid close, Jungkook noticed from the corner of his eye that the one who was drunk turned to look at them. He didn't really care about it, kept his eyes fixated on the numbers changing above the buttons in front of him before he felt a soft hold around his forearm. Before he glanced over his shoulder, he could feel Chaeyoung drawing closer to him from behind, her hold on his arm getting tighter.

Jungkook looked over his shoulder at her, and she hid away her face to look at either his back or the wall next to her. When Jungkook shifted his eyes to look at the males, the drunken man was eyeing her with something that Jungkook, as a male himself, understood very much. His jaw clenched when the man roamed his eyes from her head to toe, smirk never leaving his face.

He reached his hand behind, holding her hand as his eyes fixed on the man alone, and his two friends were totally unaware of what was happening.

"Nice legs," the man said, his tongue darted out to swipe across his lips with a bigger smirk appearing next with his eyes basically glued to Chaeyoung's legs. His two friends looked startled, eyes widened as they looked from their friend to Jungkook.

"Excuse me?" Jungkook tilted his head, voice dropped in octave. He had turned his body to face the three males while his hand pulled Chaeyoung's to behind him, signaling her to move. She stood close to him still, with the wall behind her. Jungkook made sure his hand didn't leave hers, and it proved that she didn't want him to let her hand go either when she was holding his tightly, another hand held his wrist of the same hand.

The drunken man shot him a look and furrowed his brows. "Excuse me? I wasn't talking to you. I was talking to this pretty lady," he lifted a hand and tried to reach for Chaeyoung but Jungkook slapped the hand away, almost sending the man to the floor as he swayed and staggered but luckily was caught by one of his friends.

"Sorry, he's not usually like this," one of them said.

The man struggled to straighten himself on the floor, his friends nagged a little in hushed voices but he obviously ignored them, taking one step towards Jungkook to look at Chaeyoung but stumbled slightly before his friends pulled him back. "Do you want to know what the word of the day is?" he asked Chaeyoung, but she did not respond.