Pathways

Odd One Out

6 months later...

Italy had broken Jungkook.

Others had made the same journey before him and many more people would still make the journey after him but...

...he won the destruction of his soul in the purest of forms in the process.

Whenever he heard the question "How was Italy?" he flinched. " Oh, you're back! " people said to him but he wasn't back completely. The person he returned was not the person that left.

From the moment when he returned to Seoul and the apartment he shared with Namjoon, he had been low-key terrified. He couldn't explain what happened and hope for a friendly embrace.

What was even more concerning was that he hoped once he was back in things would return to normal, but they didn't. Nothing changed, actually. Namjoon was still successful at his writing, still busy all day long with articles, book releases, and conventions. He was gone for three months and that wasn't nearly enough time for his hyung to change something around the house, although Jungkook did note the absence of a green and a yellow bowl. They had probably fallen to the clumsy hands of the genius but dangerous writer. It was good that Namjoon bought other bowls in their stead and that they were plastic since he couldn't be trusted with ceramics for 3 seconds. Admitting flaws and embracing them were two very different things.

Jungkook's golden and famously hideous closet was still in his tiny room. When he first saw it after coming back home, the maknae had an inexplicable fit of laughter. He wondered what the closet would have told him if it was somehow human. " I kept telling you... " Jungkook imagined the words of the wardrobe and wished they could have laughed together.

The only things that changed in Seoul had absolutely no direct connection to him. His friend, Hoseok, had purchased the dance studio and was actually turning it into a sort of dance school. He had big plans and Jungkook liked being around him and Jimin. He actually helped them with promotional material, he designed the logo, he made video promos, and he took awfully glossy commercial photos of their space. He wanted them to succeed. They were friends because the other two guys never behaved like Jungkook was a stranger. They immediately embraced him when he came back and constantly called him to come to dance or go to the gym together. They did everything to make Jungkook feel included and the boy suspected that Namjoon might have ratted him out regarding his quietness and difficulties to make true friends and hold those friendships.

He was not anti-social or misanthropic – or whatever fancy words Joonie hyung liked to use – but he felt like he wasn't interesting or interested enough to talk to a friend for hours and strengthen the bonds. Just like with Hoseok and Jimin, he was always hitting the breaks when talking about himself, never actually discussing personal aspects of his life. It didn't feel right, for some reason. He avoided those situations with Jimin, especially. The kid was just too honest, too raw and impossibly likeable.

Jimin and Yoongi had a strange dynamic but Jungkook never pried. He suspected Jimin nurtured a little bit more than friendship for his VERY "in a serious relationship" friend. They never spoke about it.

None of them continued the conversation.

Yoongi, Namjoon, and Jin actually became very close friends and even with Seokjin's very busy schedule, they started a tradition of meeting once per week. The other guys, Jungkook included, met with them various times. They were quite a combination: a model-actor, a writer, a music producer, two dancers (albeit a street dancer and a contemporary one) and a filmmaker. Art was the basis on which all of them worked but they were so different in their craft.

Namjoon was over the moon. He embraced everybody quickly. He listened to their problems, spun all the gears in his head to figure out solutions, lent his ear and his shoulder, and showed his smile. In envy, Jungkook wanted to be the same and he almost managed... but there was a part of him which he couldn't parade around in hope of friendship putting a band-aid on the wound. He couldn't even talk to Namjoon about what was troubling him. It had been months of dealing with what resembled a silent infection. Thank Gods, not contagious, not visible. But there was a constant mild pain that Namjoon sometimes picked up on. Most of the time, he ended up shrugging it off while commenting that Jungkook needed to be less shy about his problems.