Chapter 121

Guys…

I am not setting any target…. As a fifteen year old teen…. I never felt this proud of my own chapter! I don’t curr if any of you didn’t like this…. But till now… This is my most favourite chapter ever!

I want you all to show your own interest and tell me honestly about how you felt in this chapter!

I want to see how much comment I get without setting target…. I want to know how much my story is really loved by how much comments you give in this chapter!

Don’t let down my hope you all!

7k+ words.
Still in comfy spot and read it at one single read!

Now enjoy!

December 7, 2007.

Kim and Yoona stood outside the NICU. Hyunwoo stood a little further back giving them their space, but staying close. The way he always did.

The corridor was quiet. The kind of quiet that had been building for three months three months of waiting rooms and hushed conversations with doctors and sleeping in hospital chairs and holding each other through the particular terror of not knowing.

Three months of visiting a tiny incubator behind a glass window and talking to a baby who couldn’t hear them yet, who was too small and too fragile and whose heart hadn’t quite finished deciding whether it wanted to keep going.

After three months of waiting the door opened. The doctor stepped out.

She was carrying something small. Something wrapped in soft white so small it barely registered as real, cradled against her chest with both arms.

Yoona’s tears started before the doctor had even reached them. She pressed her fingers to her lips, shoulders trembling slightly, eyes fixed on that small bundle with an expression that had no name for it.

Kim stood very still. Posture rigid. Jaw tight. Trying visibly, effortfully to hold himself steady.

The doctor looked at them both. And smiled. Her own eyes were glassy with tears. “He fought hard,” she said softly.

Yoona nodded a small, quick nod tears spilling over. She couldn’t speak.

She turned to Kim. He was looking at the bundle in the doctor’s arms with an expression he didn’t know his face was making.

“You hold him first,” Yoona whispered softly. Kim looked at her. “….Me?” She nodded. Smiling through her tears. Kim looked back at the doctor. He nodded once just once and took a deep breath and slowly extended his arms.

The doctor transferred the bundle carefully so gently into his hands.

Kim, who had held two sons before this. Who had never once trembled holding a newborn.

Was trembling now.

His hands shook as he adjusted finding the right angle, supporting the tiny head, settling the weight of him and the weight was so small. So impossibly, heartbreakingly small.

Little Kim was sleeping.

Tiny face peeking out from the white wrap. Lips pressed into the smallest pout. Lashes barely there against his cheeks. Hands tucked up near his chin.

Kim looked at him.

And something in his face all that carefully maintained stillness, all that rigid composure he had been holding for three months simply gave way.

A tear fell. Then another. “….My baby,” he whispered.

His voice came out barely anything. Rough and soft all at once. Like the words had been waiting three months for this exact moment and had finally found their way out.

He leaned down and pressed his lips against the tiny forehead a kiss so gentle it barely made contact and stayed there for a moment with his eyes closed.

More tears fell. He didn’t wipe them.

Yoona leaned against his side looking at her son, her fingers reaching out to brush against the soft curve of his cheek and didn’t say anything. Just leaned in. Just looked.

“He looks like you,” Kim said quietly. Looking at her. “Does he?” she asked smiling. Her voice was smiling even through the tears.

Kim nodded. Then leaned over and closed his eyes tears fell and pressed his lips to her forehead slow and war and she closed her eyes and let the tears come and just leaned into it. Just stayed there for that one moment with her husband’s lips against her forehead and her youngest son in his arms.

Just the three of them. Just…. finally…. the three of them.

Kim looked back down. And Jungkook’s eyes opened.

Slowly. Blinking against the light those wide, dark, impossibly round bambi eyes taking in the world for the first time outside of that incubator. Looking up at the face above him without comprehension but without fear either.

Just looking. Kim felt his breath catch. “Hey,” he said. His voice trembled. “It’s appa.” More tears fell through his smile.

Jungkook blinked slowly. Then his tiny hands flew up both of them, waving slightly and his lips curved. Barely. Just the smallest, softest, most uncoordinated smile.

Yoona let out a sound that was half laugh half sob. “He already loves his appa,” she said.

Kim laughed through tears. A real one quiet and wet and completely undone. “Appa loves you so much, baby.” He leaned down and pressed another kiss to the tiny forehead, lingering this time. “So much.”

Jungkook giggled. Small and high and completely delighted the sound of someone who had no idea yet what kind of world he had fought his way into, only that the face above him was warm and the arms holding him were steady and that was enough.

Kim and Yoona both smiled at the exact same moment.

“Why are you so cute, huh?” Kim murmured, shaking his head slowly, tears still falling. “….Just looking exactly like your eomma.”

Yoona laughed softly through the tears.

Jungkook, understanding nothing, thrashed his tiny fist upward again catching nothing, delighted by everything.

Kim smiled the warmest, most unguarded smile and leaned down until his nose brushed against his son’s. Stayed there. Just stayed.

“Thank you,” he whispered. Just to him. “Thank you so much for fighting, baby. Appa loves you the most.”

His tears fell onto the tiny face beneath him. Jungkook didn’t mind.

Yoona was fully crying now standing beside them, one hand over her mouth, shoulders shaking with the specific overwhelm of someone whose heart was simply too full for their body.

The doctor still standing nearby, clipboard forgotten in her hand wiped her eyes quietly and didn’t even try to pretend she wasn’t.

A little further back in the corridor, Hyunwoo reached into his pocket. He took out his phone. Wiped his own eyes with the back of his hand. And took the photo.

Of the happiest family

.

.

.

Jungkook…. Moved his hand to drag it further. Suddenly The glass was gone.

Yanked away from his hand so fast he didn’t register it happening until it was already over – his fingers suddenly empty, the cold pressure against his wrist suddenly absent.

Jungkook flinched hard at it.

A few minutes earlier.

Tae had come out of his room with a towel around his shoulders, drying his hair with the easy, unhurried movements of someone who had no idea what was happening two doors down.

He came downstairs to the living room. Past the kitchen where he caught a glimpse of Jin standing at the stove, phone pressed to his ear, speaking quietly to someone while cooking something.

Tae smiled at the sight. Something small and warm and relieved.

He turned toward the steps again and walked towards Jungkook’s room.

He pushed the door open.

And the next moment….. The towel dropped from his hands.

He saw Jungkook was sitting on the bed hunched forward, a piece of broken glass pressed against his left wrist, blood already visible and the absolute stillness of him was somehow more terrifying than any amount of noise could have been.

He just left him for fifteen minutes to fresh up… And here he was trying to cut himself and eld his life.

Tae moved before he had consciously decided to. Across the room in three steps, hand closing around Jungkook’s wrist, wrenching the glass away in one sharp motion and throwing it across the room.

It hit the wall and shattered further.

Jungkook flinched violently at the sudden contact the sudden sound his whole body jerking.

“ARE YOU CRAZY????” Tae’s yell cracked through the room like something splitting. Loud and raw and soaked in tears that were already falling before he had even finished the sentence.

Jungkook flinched again. His shoulders hunched up around his ears.

Tae was shaking. His chest heaved fast and hard tears streaming, hands trembling with blood at his sides now that the glass was gone.

“Why?!” His voice broke on the word. “Why do you keep doing this? Why do you keep trying to….” He couldn’t finish it. Tears fell more.

“You need to LIVE, Jungkook! You are supposed to be here living…. you are supposed to smile and laugh and be happy NOT this! NOT again and again and FUCKING AGAIN”

His voice cracked completely.

“YOU DON’T DESERVE TO DIE!” The words tore out of him desperate and furious and devastated all at once, his whole body shaking with them. “You never did! You never deserved ANY of this….. NOT YOU”

The door flew open. Jin.

He had heard the yelling from the kitchen had dropped the phone mid-sentence and run and now he stood in the doorway taking in the scene in front of him.

Tae, standing in the middle of the room, bleeding from where the glass had caught his hand when he grabbed it, tears streaming, chest heaving.

Jungkook sitting on the bed, completely still, completely hollow, blood running from both his palm and his wrist, surrounded by the shattered remains of the glass on the floor.

Jin stood there. For just one second.

And then he stepped inside and closed the door behind him.

Tae was yelling and the sound of it was wrong in a way that went beyond volume. Because this was Tae. Kim Taehyung yelling at his little brother.

The one who had never once raised his voice at Jungkook. Not even once. And now he was standing in the middle of the room with tears pouring down his face, shaking from head to foot, yelling and every word of it was soaked in terror rather than anger.

Jungkook sat there.

No tears. Just…. still. Hollow and numb and looking at tae, the way he got when everything became too large and the body simply switched off to survive it.

The tear stains on his face were from before dried now, just marks left behind. His hands trembled slightly in his lap, blood still running from both the palm and the wrist in slow, quiet lines.

“Tae,” Jin said quietly from the doorway. Tae didn’t look at him. Didn’t acknowledge him at all.

“WHY?” He turned back to Jungkook, his voice breaking again. “Why do you keep thinking about taking your own life? WHY?” The terror in his eyes was absolute unshakable, written into every line of his face. “TELL ME WHY?” Tae’s yell came sharp.

Jungkook looked at the floor.

Jin crossed the room slowly. He crouched down slightly bringing himself to Jungkook’s level and looked at his hands. At the blood. At the trembling that wouldn’t stop.

He straightened and looked at Tae. “W-what happened?” he asked quietly.

“He was trying to cut himself.” Tae’s voice came out trembling and cracking, barely held together. His eyes met Jin’s wet and wide and begging for something that Jin didn’t know how to give. “He was trying to…. Take his own life h-hyungie”

Jin looked back at Jungkook.

Jungkook was looking away. Eyes fixed on his lap empty and dark and carrying a sadness so deep it had stopped looking like sadness and started looking like absence.

Jin didn’t say anything. He couldn’t.

Not immediately. Not yet. Because something in his chest was breaking again and again very quietly and very completely, and he needed a second just one second to hold himself together before he could be what Jungkook needed right now.

He pressed his lips together. Breathed through his nose. Held it. But couldn’t. A small tear fell. The another.

Then Tae made a sound.

A long, shaking exhale the kind that came right before everything gave out. He pressed his hand over his mouth. It didn’t help.

“Kook-ah….” His voice came out completely destroyed. “You…. You are o-our world.” He stopped. Started again, forcing the words through. “And I c-can’t forgive myself…. I can’t. I just……” his voice dissolved “I just cant—–“

He broke. Completely. Turning away slightly, one hand still pressed over his mouth, the other gripping the edge of the desk beside him and sobbing. Hard and loud and without any attempt to contain it, his shoulders shaking violently with every breath.

The sound of it filled the room. Jungkook slowly looked up. His eyes found Tae.

His hyung….. his Tae hyung, who always laughed the loudest and loved the most openly and had never once made Jungkook feel like a burden just by existing standing there completely fallen apart.

Jungkook had never seen Tae cry like this before.

Not like this. Not this hard, not this broken, not with his whole body shaking and his hand pressed over his mouth and the sobs coming out regardless of how hard he tried to hold them back.

Because of him. Tae was crying.

Something shifted in Jungkook’s expression.

The numbness that careful, protective blankness he had been hiding behind developed a crack.

Just one. But it was there.

He looked at Jin.

Jin who had never once, not in all the months Jungkook had known him, cried in front of him except when he called him hyung and accepted him. Jin who was always the steady one, always the wall, always the person who held everyone else together and asked for nothing in return.

He was crying now.

Quietly. Without making a sound about it. Tears running down his face while he sat there trying to hold his expression still, trying to be present and calm and composed and failing, just barely, at the very edges.

Jungkook looked at both of them.

His hyungs. Crying. Saying they had failed him. Saying they couldn’t forgive themselves. Coming apart at the seams because of him – for him – in a way that made no sense to the part of his brain that had spent years believing he wasn’t worth that.

The crack in his chest widened. His eyes filled slowly. Unwillingly.

“I…. I just don’t want to l-live,” he whispered. Looking down. Barely any sound behind it just the truth, placed quietly into the space between them because he was too tired to keep it inside anymore.

Jin took a slow breath.

Then he moved carefully, leaving a distance between them, and sat beside him.

“It’s not your fault,” he said softly. The words landed differently than Jungkook expected them to.

He looked up slowly.

Jin was looking at him directly, steadily, tears still falling and his expression held something that had no pretence in it. No performance. Just certainty.

“N-not my fault?” Jungkook asked. His voice came out small and cracking. His own tears finally spilled over again and again.

Jin shook his head slowly with tears.

“Nothing was your fault,” he said. His voice stayed quiet and even despite the tears running down his face. “It wasn’t your fault that your own father made your life hell. It wasn’t your fault that he traumatized you. It wasn’t your fault that you were forced to pull that trigger. It wasn’t your fault that you lived like an orphan when there was a family who was supposed to protect you. It wasn’t your fault that you fought. It wasn’t your fault that your own…. Own brother failed to protect you” He held Jungkook’s gaze. “None of it was yours. Not a single piece of it.”

Jungkook stared at him. Tears flowing fast now running down his chin, dropping onto his hands. His lips pressed together in a thin, trembling line.

Then he looked down. “I killed suho hyung,” he said slowly. His fists clenched in his lap. “You were searching for him…. for years…. And I killed him. And then I came here and I was with you and I was s-smiling like—–” his voice cracked “like nothing happened.”

“You didn’t kill him,” Tae said. Firm. Immediate. Jungkook looked at him and shook his head with tears “I did. I… I pulled the trigger.”

“You. Didn’t.” Tae held his eyes. Pressing down on every single word. Refusing to let them go anywhere.

Jin spoke then quieter, more careful. “He was precious to me. To us. He will always be precious to me.” He paused. “But not the way you are, Kook-ah. Nothing the way you are.” He shook his head slowly. “You didn’t kill him.” A tears slipped down again.

Jungkook looked at him with tear-soaked eyes for a long moment.

Then, very quietly he spoke “You don’t hate me? For being a killer?” He looked at Tae. “You’re not ashamed? To have a killer as your brother?”

The words came out completely broken. Like even asking the question cost him something.

Tae shook his head as no slowly. Jin spoke first. Jungkook looked at him with tears.

Jin spoke “Do you remember that day,” he said, “when you asked me if you ever killed someone, would I still trust you? Would I still be there?” Jungkook went very still.

“I said yes,” Jin continued. His voice cracked quietly on the words but he kept going. “I said I would be there with you even if the whole world turned against you. I promised you that I would trust you even if you came to me and said you killed someone.” He held Jungkook’s gaze steady, certain, wet with tears.

“And I kept that promise, Kook-ah. I didn’t turn against you. I didn’t hate you.” His voice dropped to almost nothing. “I never once stopped being on your side.”

Tae spoke then. His voice carrying the same raw, unguarded emotion not performed, not contained, just completely real.

“When I say you are my world i mean it, Kook-ah. Every single time.” He looked at him steadily, tears still falling. “When I say I missed you and cried for you for all these years that was all true. Every word of it.” He paused.

“Because you didn’t come into this world the way we did. You came with a heart that hadn’t finished yet. The second you were born….” his voice wavered slightly “everyone said you wouldn’t make it.”

Jungkook looked at him. Listening. With tears.

“But we waited,” Tae said. “Three whole months we waited just to hold you. Three months of sitting outside that NICU and not knowing and just waiting.” He exhaled slowly. “And then the day I finally got to hold you…. I was five years old, Kook-ah. Five. And I felt something that I didn’t even have words for yet.” His jaw tightened against the emotion.

“I felt this….” He pointed at himself and spoke “This need to protect you. To make you smile. To make sure nothing ever hurt you.” He shook his head slowly. “You made me understand, at five years old, that I had something worth protecting. That you were the most precious thing in my life. At that very young age.”

His voice broke quietly on the last words. Jungkook stared at him. Tears running freely. Lips pressed together. Not speaking. Just absorbing it. Like his body was trying to take in something it had never been given enough of and didn’t quite know how to hold all at once.

Nobody spoke for a few minutes. The room just held it.

Then Jin spoke. “You spent years thinking you were alone in all of this.” His voice came out quiet and careful each word placed careful, like he had been carrying them for a long time and was finally setting them down where they belonged. “Carrying everything by yourself. The guilt. The pain. All of it. Completely convinced that nobody wanted you here.”

He stopped. He looked at Jungkook’s eyes wet and numb and still holding that particular lost quality of someone who had been wandering somewhere dark for so long they had forgotten there was anything else.

Jin’s voice was barely holding its shape now. Cracking at the edges of every word.

“But you weren’t alone, Kook-ah.” He shook his head slowly. “Not once. Not for a single second.”

He exhaled long and unsteady tears falling freely down his face now, not even attempting to stop them.

“Three months we sat outside that hospital when you were born not knowing, not breathing properly, just waiting. And not one of us left.” His jaw tightened. “Not one.”

A pause. “That hasn’t changed.” His voice dropped lower. “Even when you pushed us away. Even when twelve years passed between us. Even when you stood on that rooftop. Even in the moment you truly believed there was no one left…..”

He stopped. He pressed his lips together for just a second. “We weren’t there when you needed us the most.” The words came out soft and broken and completely certain all at once like an admission that had been sitting in him since the moment Hyunwoo had told them everything, waiting for exactly this moment to be said out loud.

“Those twelve years we failed you. We failed to protect you. Failed to be there. Failed to make you smile.” His voice fractured completely on the last part. “But none of it none of what happened in those twelve years was your fault.”

He looked at Jungkook directly. “It was ours.” Silence. Then slowly carefully Jin reached out. His hand found Jungkook’s the injured one, still carrying dried blood, trembling slightly in his lap and closed around it. Soft. Gentle. Completely certain.

Jungkook looked down at their joined hands. He didn’t flinch. He didn’t pull away. He just let it happen. Let the warmth of Jin’s hand close around his without moving away from it. And didn’t let go.

Jin took a break and spoke looking into his eyes. “I told you once that I would be there with you even if the whole world turned against you. And I meant it then. I mean it now.” Jin’s voice cracked quietly. “I am still with you, your brothers are here still with you and will alwyas be there with you and for you always….. always!”

Then tae spoke “Even if you don’t remember those eight years…. even if they feel like they never existed they are still there, Kook-ah. Those precious memories are still with you…. You were still loved in them. Every single day. And will be loved everyday”

Tae’s voice dropped to almost nothing. “And we couldn’t protect you then. But we are here now. So please…. let us do it now. Let us protect you now…. While you are with us…. When we are there still with you to protect you!”

Jungkook felt something heavy in his chest. Not pain. Not hurt. Nothing but love. The way they said those…. It made him feel something which he didn’t feel in years. Trust. Love. Comfort.

“I don’t want our brother…. Whom we waited for years…. to end his own life while he should be living happy and smiling everyday…. We didn’t pray for that…. We didn’t wait for years to just see our little world take his own soul right?” Jin said tears were flowing. It hitted hard.

Jungkook looked at jin with teary doe eye. “C-can you just stay with us…. Smiling. Giggling. Just let us stay with you…. That’s all I need! Nothing else!” Jin spoke with emotions voice breaking. Tears pouring down.

Tae was crying hard now, tears streaming silently down his face as he watched his youngest brother fall apart.

Jungkook looked down, taking a shaky breath before he spoke, his voice trembling and cracking under the weight of everything he had been carrying.

“But… but I… I am scared.” The words came out barely above a whisper, raw and broken, his tears falling freely now.

Jin swallowed hard, forcing down the sob that was rising in his throat. “Scared of what, Kook?” he asked softly, his voice barely steady.

Jungkook still couldn’t look at him. His jaw tightened, his hands trembling in his lap as he forced the words out.

“I… I am s-scared… that… thaft I’ll kill you too. That I’ll be a killer again.” His breath hitched violently. “That you’ll both suffer because of me. That everything will fall apart because of me. Again. And I don’t want that. I don’t want to be that person. Not again.”

The last words crumbled completely, dissolving into silence.

Slowly, painfully, he lifted his eyes to Jin. Tears were streaming down his cheeks, his lips pressed together as he tried to hold himself together just a little longer. His breath came out heavy, uneven.

“I am tired, hyung.” He whispered it like a confession. “It… It hurts.” A silent tear left from his eyes. His lips trembled.

And then Tae moved. He didn’t say a word. He didn’t need to. He pulled Jungkook into his arms and held him tight, close, the way you hold someone when you’re terrified of losing them. Jungkook went still for just a moment, then something inside him broke open completely. His fingers curled into Tae’s shirt and he buried his face against his chest. Tears fell “I am sorry!” He broke down. Cried. Cried in his hyung’s chest.

Tae held him and cried too, silently, his own tears soaking into Jungkook’s hair.

Jin sat across from them, unable to move. He watched his little brother shatter in Tae’s arms, and every tear that fell from Jungkook’s eyes felt like it was carving something out of Jin’s chest.

His own eyes burned, full and overflowing, but he couldn’t look away. The guilt sat so heavy inside him that he could barely breathe under it.

“It hurts everywhere, hyung.” Jungkook’s voice came out muffled against Tae’s chest, broken and hoarse. “M-my hand… my chest… my ribs, my head. Everything just hurts…. hurts so much. Every single day it hurts and I don’t know how to make it stop. I can’t even try anymore. I just… I can’t.”

He wheezed, crying harder now, his whole body shaking.

“My heart…” He paused, his breath stuttering. “My heart hurts the most. It feels like someone is always there, always just stabbing it, over and over and it never stops. It never stops, hyung.” His voice broke completely on the last word. “I don’t want this. I don’t want to be hurt anymore. Please. I am so tired. I am so…. so tired.”

Tae pressed his eyes shut, his arms tightening around Jungkook as his own sob tore quietly from his throat.

“I am sorry, Kook.” His voice shook. “I am so sorry.”

Jungkook didn’t respond. He just cried deep, exhausted, gut-wrenching cries that sounded like they had been trapped inside him for far too long.

After a long moment, Tae slowly, gently pulled back just enough to look at him. His own face was streaked with tears, his eyes red and swollen. He cupped Jungkook’s face carefully in his hands.

“We are sorry, baby,” he breathed. “We are so, so sorry.” Jungkook just shook his head. Slowly. Quietly. As if sorry wasn’t something he knew how to accept anymore. Cuz the whole world was always cruel to him whcih he could never forget or forgive.

Jungkook wiped his tears slowly with the back of his hand, the gesture small and exhausted, like even that took effort. When he spoke, his voice was quiet, careful, as if each word cost him something.

He spoke looking at tae’s eyes. “One day… you asked me, right? What I want.” He paused, swallowing.

“I want to sleep. I really just want to sleep. I want rest. Peacefully. Without… without nightmares. Without waking up drenched in sweat, screaming into the dark. Without the pain waiting for me the moment I open my eyes.” His tears fell without him even trying to stop them now. “Just one sleep. Just one night of real rest. Without those pills.”

He exhaled shakily, “Th-those pills…” He shook his head, his voice dropping lower. “It’s not like I want them. It’s not like I enjoy it. But without them… I just can’t sleep at all. I lie there and everything comes back and I can’t breathe and I can’t stop it.” He pressed his lips together hard.

“Every single day feels like a nightmare I can’t wake up from. Every single day feels like hell and I’m just… I’m just surviving it. That’s all I’m doing. Just surviving.” The room was completely silent except for the quiet sounds of crying.

Jungkook’s eyes dropped to his hands. He stared at them for a long moment at the scars that mapped themselves across his skin like a history he never asked to carry.

“These scars…” he began, his voice barely above a breath. “I cried. I begged. I told him it was hurting. I told him I didn’t like this. That it hurted soo much. I told him over and over.” His voice cracking with emotions.

“But appa just kept going. Every time. Like it was nothing. Like I was nothing but a fucking slave.” He swallowed hard, his throat working. “And now… every time someone looks at these scars, I feel it. That look. Like I am something disgusting. Something broken.” His voice cracked.

His voice trembled as he spoke further. “I d-don’t know what I did wrong. I genuinely don’t know. I have tried to figure it out so many times and I just… I don’t know why he did that to me.”

His fingers curled slightly over the scars, a small, instinctive movement. Hiding them. Protecting them. Or maybe protecting himself.

“I don’t want these scars. I don’t want to feel ugly every time someone sees me. I don’t want to feel tired just from existing. I don’t want the pain anymore.” He looked up looking at his brothers, his eyes red and burning.

“I just want one day. One single day without all of this. One day to live like a normal teenager. To eat whatever I want, sleep when I’m tired, laugh without it feeling wrong.” His voice cracked and broke on the last words. “Just one day to live like a fucking human.”

The silence that followed was devastating.

Then Jungkook looked at Jin directly, and something in his gaze shifted quieter, more resigned, like he had been holding this part the longest.

“You’ve asked me things before, right? Why I always wake up so early. Why I eat so little. Why I never come out of my room. Why I flinch when I oversleep.” He paused, taking one slow, unsteady breath. “You asked and I never answered.”

Jin nodded, tears streaming silently down his face. Jungkook held his gaze for a moment, then looked down.

“It’s because… I… I just wasn’t allowed…. whenever I overslept… appa punished me for it.” His hands moved slowly, trembling slightly as he reached up and rolled his sleeve back further than usual revealing the curve of his upper shoulder. And there it was. A large, ugly burn scar, the skin raised and uneven, permanent.

“I missed one day.” His voice was hollow now, distant, like he was recounting something that had happened to someone else entirely. “Just one day from the mafia work. I overslept. It wasn’t on purpose. That day had just been… too much. I… K was so exhausted I couldn’t move.” He paused. “I was just fifteen.”

The word landed like a stone in still water. “It burned… it burned so much like nothing I had ever felt. I was screaming. And appa just… looked at me. And threw me aside like I was nothing.” Jungkook’s jaw tightened. “Like I was absolutely nothing.”

Jin stared at the scar. He couldn’t speak. Fresh tears rolled down his face and the guilt inside his chest expanded into something suffocating, something he didn’t have words for.

He looked over at Tae. Tae’s face was completely broken. Jungkook wasn’t done.

“You’re following your dream, hyung,” he said, looking at Tae now, his voice quieter again, softer but no less painful. “And I’m so glad. I really am.” He swallowed. “But… But I am soooo fucking jealous of you! And I… I hated you all for that…. For living the best life…. For smiling… I hated you all for fucking being happy.” He said honestly tears falling.

“Be-because… I had a dr-dream too. It was small. So small. I just asked if I could play basketball. If I could keep making music. Just on the side, while I still worked for appa. That’s all I asked for.” He reached down slowly.

He rolled the fabric up from his leg, revealing another scar long and deep, the kind that didn’t come from an accident. Tae and jin gasped at it.

“That’s what he said back.” Jungkook’s voice was barely a whisper now. “He locked me in and he made sure I understood what happened when I wanted something for myself.”

He let the fabric fall back down. Tae and Jin sat completely still. No words came. There were no words for this. They just sat there, tears falling, listening because listening was the only thing left they could give him, and they were terrified it wasn’t nearly enough.

Jungkook looked at Jin again, his red-rimmed eyes carrying something softer this time. Fragile. Like a memory he was almost afraid to touch.

“The first time… when you and Tae hyungie took me to that hill.” A small, broken smile ghosted across his lips. “And you bought me that ice cream.” He paused, blinking slowly. “I loved it. I loved it sooo much. Not because of the ice cream, but because… no one had ever done something like that for me. Something so simple. So small. And yet it felt like the biggest thing in the world of mine…..”

The smile faded. “They were there for me too. Noona. Eomma. Eunwoo.” His voice dropped. “But I abandoned them. I hurted yhem. I was selfish, hyung. So unbelievably selfish.” The tears came harder now, his breath catching.

“Because of me, hyungie died. Eomma died. Noona had to let go of everything she ever dreamed of. Eunwoo was pulled into the mafia before he even had a chance to just… be a kid. His childhood was stolen. Just like mine was.”

His voice cracked completely on the last words and he looked down, pressing his lips together to stop them from trembling. He wiped his tears slowly. They kept falling anyway.

He took one long, unsteady breath and then looked up really looked up at both of them. His eyes moved between Tae and Jin, something deeply honest settling in his gaze.

“I was never loved. Not really. Not in a way that didn’t come with conditions or bruises.” He stopped the smiled sadly.

“I… I never experienced those precious teen years everyone says…. Every time fucking I saw someone smiling and enjoying with their family…. I felt soo fucking jealous. And I didn’t ask for that…. I just obeyed. There was never a childhood where I had good memories….. But just fear and punishments!” he said tears slowly left.

He swallowed. “But then… you two came…… loved me.” His voice nearly gave out on that sentence.

“I felt it. For the first time in my life, I actually felt loved. You both made me feel loved which I couldn’t live in years. I felt like I had a family. A real one. Not adopted. Not forced. But a real family. My family. My own brothers. My own cousins. I felt safe and cared for and like maybe… maybe I mattered to someone.” He exhaled slowly. Tears fell.

“But then the fear came. Because it always does. I got scared that I would ruin you both too. That I’ll ruin other hyungs too. That staying near me would only bring you pain. That I was nothing but a curse wrapped in a person.” His jaw tightened.

“So I thought… if I ended it… if I j-just disappeared… then no one would get hurt because of me anymore. And I wouldn’t have to get hurt either.”

“You didn’t hurt anyone.” Tae’s voice broke as he said it. “You deserve to live, Kook. You deserve to be here.”

Jungkook let out a small, bitter laugh. It wasn’t cruel it was just tired. So deeply tired. He looked at Tae, and for a moment something unbearably sad moved across his face.

“You think I don’t want to live?” His lips curved faintly, not quite a smile, not quite anything. “I want it every day, hyung. Every single day I wish for it. I wish I could live the way you do. Smile without it feeling borrowed. Laugh without the guilt chasing it. Just… exist, without pain sitting on my chest every waking moment.” More tears slipped down his face through the smilee

His smile is still there but lips trembled. “I wished to be myself. To be brave enough to explore things, to love things, to live without looking over my shoulder. I wished to fucking love myself. I wished for it so many times.” He exhaled. “But this world has made it very clear to me, over and over and over again, that I am not someone who deserves those things. That pain is just what I am made for.”

Silence settled over the three of them like something heavy and gentle at once. Then Jungkook spoke again, softer now. More lost.

“I…. I don’t even remember anymore, hyung. What a true happiness without guilt felt like” His brows drew together faintly, like a child confused by something they can’t quite grasp. “I don’t remember what you all used to be to me. I don’t remember what my real mother felt like. I don’t remember what it meant to live without being afraid.” He shook his head slowly.

“Everyone around me says I was so loved when I was young. That I was pampered and happy and so full of life. That I was soooo precious that no one ever made me feel a pain. That everyone cried when cried..” His voice cracked.

“But…. B-but I don’t remember any of it. I can’t find it anywhere inside me. I don’t remember what true happiness felt like. I don’t even know what it looks like for me. I don’t fucking know what a happy life means….”

His eyes were full overflowing and beneath them was something that had nothing to do with being nineteen. It was the ache of a little boy who had been broken so young that even the good memories hadn’t survived.

Jin couldn’t hold himself together anymore. Without a word, he crossed the space between them and pulled Jungkook into his arms, holding him the way he should have been held a long, long time ago. Tight. Steady. Like he wasn’t going anywhere.

“You don’t have to remember, Kook-ah.” His voice was thick, trembling, but he held it together enough to speak. “You don’t have to find those memories on your own. We’ll make new ones. Together. We’ll build them from scratch, just for you.” He pressed his hand gently to the back of Jungkook’s head.

“And whatever you’ve forgotten the love, the warmth, the safety it’s still in you somewhere. It never left. The memories are Still With You. And we are still here…. Still here with you. We are right here. We are not going anywhere.”

“But I can’t, hyung.” Jungkook’s voice shattered completely. “I just….. I can’t.” And then he stopped speaking. He just cried.

Not the kind of crying that came with words or explanations. Just raw, exhausted, gut-deep sobbing the kind that had been locked away for years behind walls built from survival and silence and the learned belief that no one would stay to hear it.

Tae sat beside them, tears streaming freely, not saying a word. There were no words that were right enough for this moment. So he simply stayed.

Because that was what Jungkook had never had. People who stayed.

.

.

.

This had always been the shape of his pain not loud, not sharp, just endless. A little boy who had grown into a young man without ever being given the chance to simply be a child. Who had forgotten what joy tasted like. Who had carried guilt and bruises and broken nights for so long that he no longer knew what it meant to put them down.

He wasn’t asking for the world.

He was asking for just one day. Just one ordinary, painless, quiet day the kind everyone else seemed to have without even thinking about it.

And the question that hung silently in the air between Jin and Tae, heavier than anything either of them had ever carried

Would they be able to give that to him?

To that poor, aching soul who had waited so long, and asked for so little, and deserved so much more than the life that had been handed to him?

They didn’t have the answer yet.

But for the first time in a long time, Jungkook wasn’t alone in the dark. His hyungs were there to hold him and to tell him he wasn’t alone. He had his hyungs to share his pain just like he did today.

And maybe just maybe that was where it could begin. A real happiness. Which he wished.

7k+ words.

Full of emotions which I showed from the 1st chapter to the last chapter I showed.

And…. A most awaited chapter. For me. For you all. A kind of emotions which I never felt while I writing. A kind of chapter which I never cried for like this.

And…. TDY…. I feel sooo proud of myself for writing this chapter…. With all my emotions!

I hope you all liked it.

(End of author mode!)

Ahhhhhhh I crieddd! It was soooo sad you all! I never cried like this! 😭😭😭😭

I cried a lot. I just couldn’t bring myself to write cuz my already visionless eyes were full of tears yk! 😭😭😭

If you cried! Tell me where you cried!

I cried when tae said “I want to protect you and let us…” Ahhhh it was soooo emotional!

So now I want you all to share you thoughts!

I am not setting any target cuz I want to know ow you all truly felt without setting any target. I want to know how you all react for this chapter!

I don’t know if you all like this chapter…. Butthe chapter which I feel sooo proud of writing is fr this!

Love you all! Don’t forget to comment your thoughts!