"You know you're almost there, right?" Lee Daehyun rambled on the phone, voice brimming with a kind of enthusiasm Jungkook could no longer feel. "You know that you're only a step away from finding an end to it all?"
"Yes, Professor."
"After all those failed antidote samples, J.0 is the closest we've come to a solution. You have to keep going."
"Yes, Professor."
"I knew from the very start, from the very day I asked you to work on this experiment," Daehyun remarked jovially, "that choosing you was the right decision. Nobody else has gone nearly as far as you have. The whole country has its hopes in you, Jungkook. Don't let us down."
The boy pursed his lips. He remembered his mother once telling him, that when a tree is tall and strong and mighty, there are many who cherish the taste of its fruit, rest in its shade and sing its praises. But when that very tree is chopped down with an axe, no one cares to stand by its side. Ironic, Jungkook thought, that the very professor who was quick to insult him and his father in the presence of a hundred hawk-eyed spectators in the university corridor did not hesitate to stack his expectations on him when he finally succeeded.
Suddenly, Jungkook had the greatest urge to walk out onto the street and hug every tall tree in sight.
"Yes, Professor," he said, sighing.
"Very well, then. I better not take up much of your time. You have an entire country to save."
Stuffing his phone into the back pocket of his jeans, Jungkook stumbled out of his chair and made to climb up the stairs of the basement. A look at his watch told him it was late in the evening, nearly four hours since he had cooped himself in the laboratory after lunch. His rumbling stomach led him to the kitchen, teeth itching to munch on the very first edible substance that his eyes fell on.
Before he could do that, however, Petra's figure greeted him first as she stood facing the stove, clad in a midnight blue sweater swallowing her torso and black skinny tights, her feet bare on the wooden floor. Her chocolate brown hair was pulled open from the braid he'd tied it in that morning.
"Hey," he said softly, placing a hand on the small of her back and pressing a kiss to her temple. When she didn't acknowledge his presence, he looked over her shoulder to see what was keeping her so occupied.
A pot sat on the stove, its condensed lid fallen to the counter as hot, boiling water sizzled onto the oblivious girl's wrist.
"Petra!" he shrieked, snatching her hand away and swiftly turning off the stove. She startled in his hold, perhaps only then realising what had happened, strangely silent as he led her to the sink and held her hand underneath cool running water.
"What's going on?" he asked frantically, prying his gaze from her reddened hand to look at her. "You should've been more careful!"
She said nothing, eyes trained on the way his hand held hers under the water, thumb gently stroking her reddened skin.
Whenever he saw Petra these days, she reminded him of himself from a few years ago. Only eighteen and fresh out of High School, Jungkook left his mother as an aspiring scientist to pursue his higher studies in the capital city. When he first began rooming with his hyungs, his consistent foul temperament and inability to get himself to open up and adjust to the new place came as no surprise to them. For him Seoul was nothing short of a nightmare, the city that had snatched his father from him, burned in the flames of a cursed laboratory and subsequently reduced what was left of his family to ashes. Sometime during the first weekend after joining undergrad college, Jimin – who was then in his final year of training at the Korean National Police Agency – insisted that they go to the Han River one night, just the two of them, to clear their heads.
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Dark Matter | JJK
Fanfiction"If you had to choose between wrong and very wrong, what would you choose?" When two young scientists decide to decode the secret behind a very millennial-looking zombie roaming the streets of their city on a moonless twilight, they are faced with...