seduction in literature | p.jm + m.yg

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A/N: Since the book "Lolita" will be mentioned (and possibly discussed) in the upcoming chapters, I highly recommend you to search it up and familiarise yourself with the plot! However, putting this fanfiction aside, "Lolita" is truly a special piece of literature despite its 'notorious' reputation. It deserves your read.

That same Friday night, Jimin is settled in bed, the blanket wrapped around his small frame. He's holding the book that he chose himself earlier that afternoon. That sage green book.

Lolita.

He can't help but recall Mr Min's words before their extra lesson ended. "You chose a good book", his teacher had said. "It's not...", a pause, "usual."

But that's the beauty of literature, right? Jimin wonders. Whatever that means.

Jimin is determined to not refer to everyone's trusty friend, Google. He's going to, for the sake of Mr Min and himself, discover the book alone. No easy way out, no cheating, and definitely no Sparknotes.

He flips the book open, and the foreword already has him blown away. There's something comforting about old books, written by authors who have intricate stories to tell: stories expertly woven like thread on a spinning wheel, stories that are products of these people's individualistic outlooks on life, stories that age gracefully like fine wine, stories that are vintage but timeless.

"Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul."

Jimin does a double-take at the use of that particular word; as a matter of fact, it's widely viewed as a sexual literary term. Deep down, he has an inkling of where this book may be taking him. A provocative literary piece? What has he gotten himself into?

"She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita."

Lolita. What a beautiful name. The name radiates youthfulness, a sliver of innocence, that Jimin can't describe. He reads in wonder, his eyes busy taking in the words as his brain begins to paint a mental image of the narrator's past. Apparently, 'Humbert Humbert' was his name, to which Jimin fails to suppress a laugh at. How peculiar.

"Did she have a precursor? She did, indeed she did. In point of fact, there might have been no Lolita at all had I not loved, one summer, a certain initial girl-child."

At this moment, the doorbell rang.

"Annabel was, like the writer, of mixed parentage: half English, half-Dutch, in her case. I remember her features far less distinctly today than I did a few years ago, before I knew Lolita."

Jimin climbs out of bed, the book still firm in his grasp.

"All at once we were madly, clumsily, shamelessly, agonizingly in love with each other; hopelessly, I should add, because that frenzy of mutual possession might have been assuaged only by our actually imbibing and assimilating every particle of each other's soul and flesh; but there we were, unable even to mate as slum children would have so easily found an opportunity to do."

The ringing of the doorbell is significantly urgent now, each ring bringing about a deafening echo throughout the quiet apartment.

"There, on the soft sand, a few feet away from our elders, we would sprawl all morning, in a petrified paroxysm of desire, and take advantage of every blessed quirk in space and time to touch each other..."