Enhanced || JJK

VI. Back Then...

It took so much longer to get home, but I wouldn't have bared to spend another second with Jungkook who was making a fool of me. It only took him a day to go back to the old habits. I never really understood why he enjoyed embarassing me so much and then watching me struggle because of it.
There was only one time when, for a moment, I thought him and I were going to get close and maybe even become friends. But that's all it was, a moment.

Back in high school, when kids become meaner, a few of the GM kids in my class, among which Jungkook's girlfriend at the time, liked to pick on me because of me being a natural.
I never really paid much attention to them because, having always attended private schools, I' had gotten used to having GM kids around, looking at me like I was some kind of rare animal species, but one day during recess they took it too far. They decided that it was okay to take my glasses, throw them on the floor and walk all over them. I've always been shortsighted and I've been wearing glasses ever since elementary school, but it gets slightly worse every year. I was the only one in my class to wear glasses and one of the few in the whole school. The rest were either GM kids whose sight had been fixed even before being born, natural kids who didn't have bad eyesight or natural kids with bad eyesight wearing lenses to fit in with other GM kids.
Any type of disease or impairment had become reason of mocking since the bioengineering techniques for modifying the human genome became popular. But still, I didn't care, I had nothing to be ashamed of and also the lenses felt really uncomfortable to me and they still do.

However that day they took it to the next level, it wasn't just words. Without my glasses I couldn't see clearly, I could only see their blurred figures and hear their laughs and the sound of my glasses breaking.
I tried to stop them but I couldn't really move from my chair, because I was afraid to bump into something or fall. While they kept laughing at me and saying mean things, I heard his voice. Jungkook's.
He yelled at his girlfriend and her group and then dragged her outside. After that I didn't hear anything else. I listened to the rest of the lesson without being able to see much and without anyone noticing or caring about my situation.

I didn't have friends in high school, even though I had Tae, but since he had moved to another neighbourhood after middle school, we didn't attend the same high school. So I was completely on my own and when the time to leave was approaching I started worrying about how I was going to get home without being able to see much. I thought of calling my parents but I knew they were working and Tae usually went to an art academy right after school so I didn't want to bother him. When the last school bell rang, I slowly started to pack my things, waiting for everyone to leave before me so that I wouldn't bump into anyone.
It was then that I heard Jungkook's voice again, this time his tone was more gentle.

"Are you done packing, Moon?"
"What do you want? Finish what your girlfriend started?" I was really mad and even though I knew he hadn't done anything to me and he had even yelled at his girlfriend for breaking my glasses, I still wasn't in the mood to talk to him.
"She's not my girlfriend. Not anymore"
I stopped for a second wandering if he had really broken up with her because of what she had done to me.
"Come on, let's go home." He then added, interrupting my flow of thoughts.
"What do you mean?" I asked confused.
"I'm walking you home... Let's get going, Moon, come on..."
Then he grabbed my wrist and led me outside.
"Where do you live?"
He asked and I tried to tell him that it was okay and that there was no need for him to walk me home, but he insisted and in the end I gave up and told him my address. He quickly searched the directions and then started walking, dragging me along.
He kept holding onto my wrist for the whole way home and we both stayed silent.
Once we got to my house he let go.

"Thank you..." Even though we weren't friends and I kind of hated him, I couldn't be rude after what he had done for me. I was starting to think that maybe I could hate him a little bit less.
"Moon, get new glasses and stop getting yourself in trouble... It's annoying..." He said and left.
And that was the end of the one and only moment in which I thought me and Jungkook could be friends. He probably did it out of pity, just like you help a little bird who fell from the nest and has a broken wing. Charity, nothing more.

"Wait! So he knows where I live!" I said out loud after remembering this episode on my long way home. People started staring at me and I started walking faster, embarrassed.
He had called me a stalker for asking where he lives, but he knows where I live. I hate it when I think of something to say back to people only after the conversation has already ended. It's so frustrating.

That night Tae called to get the news about how my first day of internship went, but he didn't expect what I was going to tell him.
"THAT Jeon Jungkook? The one from middle school?" He asked shocked.
"Yeah, well, luckily for you it's only 'Jeon Jungkook from middle school'... For me it's 'Jeon Jungkook from elementary school, middle school, high school, University and now even internship'... I pray to God that we don't end up working in the same place too... But at this point I honestly give up on any hope..."
"Oh yeah, right... He kept bugging you also in high school... And I wasn't there to protect you... I feel so sorry..." He said with a sad tone.
"It's okay, it wasn't that bad... And it's not your fault if you moved... And also, you don't need to protect me! I'm not a damsel in distress!"
"Yeah yeah, whatever you say... Damn, though! I had almost forgotten about him! I don't think you've mentioned him in the past three years, a part from when you enrolled in Uni and found out that he was taking the same major..."
"Yeah, as he said today, universities are crowded and we rarely met each other in the last three years... And he also didn't forget to mention that, because of that, he couldn't make fun of me as much as he would have liked to..." I scoffed at the thought of him saying that with his annoying smirk.
"Did he actually say that?"
Tae didn't know him that well and I didn't always tell him everything that happened between me and Jungkook, because he gets very protective. That's why he didn't believe he could've actually said something like that.

"Yeah, that's typical of him... Nothing new... But let's stop talking about it."
I tried to change subject and tell him about the rest of the things that happened that day. I purposefully left out the part about going back home, because I knew he was going to get upset at how Jungkook had treated me.
Honestly, I think that Tae doesn't get protective because he thinks I'm weak and can't make it on my own. It's just that he's really sensitive and empathetic, so when something happens to me or to the people he cares about, he can feel it on a personal level. And sometimes even if something they do or say to me doesn't hurt me, it hurts him. That's why I try to avoid telling him certain stuff, like the glasses episode. He would have been devastated and I don't want him to feel bad, ever.