While I Sleep™ • ✓

9: Panic Attack

Raindrops drip from the edge of the white window, the patter leaving a painful mockery.

Jungkook can hear the sloshes of cars hastily driving on the roads and as far as his knowledge goes, he thinks that most of the people are in a hurry to go back home.

Back home.

The word 'home' brings to him a million waves of fear and a stinging needle of weepy and abject past instances tears right through him. Trepidation fills him as soon as he thinks of the burning room and his hyung in the flames of the raging fire.

Rudyard Kipling describes fire as the 'Red Flower' in 'The Jungle Book'; Jungkook describes fire as a blatant mockery to the ones who witness or see it.

He has seen it fume right in front of him, and what is worse, is that he has seen somebody walk into it.

An odious incident keeps haunting him every night, only impairing him more and more. It daunts him to go back to where he came from, to go back to the pale-white building where he found out what fire actually is.

The radiating heat from the flaming fire hits him straight and he can still visualise the titchy sparks of the blazing 'blatant mockery' in front of him, teasing him as always.

The curtains to Jungkook's room are slightly open with a single streak of light striking into the room like an arrow. The white walls turn a mixture of pale yellow and off-white. The single streak meets the floor at the edge of the black door of his room and the lighting the of room bides fixed on dim mode.

Jungkook lays on his bed, body relaxed and arms and legs spread out on the white bed-sheet. A soft pillow stiffly positions itself beneath Jungkook's head and he lays on his bed, stock-still.

His eyelids stay motionless as he loiters and trails in his world of godawful memories.

How unpleasant can someone's life be? Can things really be that woebegone, or is it just Jungkook's life that is complex and forlorn?

His brown hair falls back-wards on his forehead as he exhales deeply, gloom flowing around him.

The dead silence of the room jeers at Jungkook, the darkness adding onto the atmosphere's chiack-like state.

+

"Are you sure?" Taehyung's brows furrow, unsurety circling around him and his friend.

"I think so." Jimin answers, sipping water from the glass of water.

"I think so?" Tuts Taehyung, face dropped in incredulous-ness. He doesn't expect Jimin to be such an idiot, at least not in serious times. "Do you hear yourself Jimin?"

"What better plan do you have?" Jimin cocks an eyebrow.

Taehyung lifts up his chin, pride and confidence flashing on his face. He places his chin on his palm as he exhales and says, "We spy on him."

"We keep a silent check on him time to time. Later, maybe after some time we can talk to him. We shouldn't talk to him directly before having an idea about anything." Taehyung adds.

Jimin is shocked. For real.

His goofy and vacuous friend, has managed to come up with a brilliant idea that properly justifies: things should be taken slowly. "But isn't spying illegal?" Jimin asks, wanting to hear more from his friend.

"Stop thinking of yourself as a part of the government. You overthink a lot." Taehyung lets out a small groan of ire.

"Calm your ti-" Taehyung stops when he earns a dangerous glare from Jimin.