Chapter Text
Jungkook woke to the notification sound of Duolingo reminding him to take another god-awful five-minute lesson.
‘10 minutes a day helps you learn a new language!’ the notification stated almost too cheerfully.
‘Yeah, no shit’, Jungkook mumbled to himself, answering a few texts from his best friends Seokjin and Jimin before he placed his phone back down on his bedside table and got ready for his Wednesday morning cinema studies class.
However motivational the Duolingo quote was supposed to make him feel every morning… he honestly just didn’t give a shit. He’d been trying to learn English for years, so the obvious solution was to take a class in college. Two months in, the professor asked him to get a tutor, and now, four months later, it was February, and although he’d improved… not even Duolingo and his now close friend and English tutor Namjoon were anywhere close to being able to save him.
It was only when Jungkook woke from his post-class nap 8 hours later that he decided that maybe he should really open the app and get some sort of work done on his basic vocabulary. He’d barely touched it since Namjoon had made him an account for the app three weeks earlier, and as he expected, he saw that he hadn’t gotten past the first two basic topics after the basic alphabet tests. He dropped his phone down on his bed and buried his head in his hands.
‘Since when was learning a language so fucking hard?’ He sighed at the emptiness of his small single dorm room.
It wasn’t like he wasn’t trying; he really was, but it just didn’t make sense to him most of the time. He didn’t understand how Namjoon could just watch a TV show and pick it up so easily. He even tried watching Friends himself to see if it made a difference… of course, it hadn’t done anything, but he thought it was worth a shot. Jungkook chalked it up to Namjoon just being a genius, which he actually was; he just found it unfair that he couldn’t be as smart as his friend.
Picking up his phone again, he decided he was just overworking himself, an excuse he gave himself often when it came to studying English. Instead, he grabbed his wallet and keys, fixed his hair and sent a text to Jimin saying he was bringing food over for dinner; his lonely little dorm room feeling a little too small for him to get anything productive done and being surrounded by Jimin and his boyfriend Taehyung’s energy was something he needed.
~
Days passed, and Jungkook neglected his online owl lessons without fail. He often thought he should feel guilty for not caring about the stupid app even when he’d been told it would help him achieve a goal that he actually wanted to accomplish. But no, he barely made it through Namjoon’s lessons without his head feeling like it was about to explode. How could an app with an imaginary owl possibly help him?
As on cue, Jungkook’s phone screen lit up with the daily Duolingo notification. 8 am without fail, acting as his alarm to wake him up every day. It was a Sunday, and he usually went on a morning run, so completely forgetting about the notification that now hung out in his phone’s notification centre, he got ready to go out, Linkin Park blasting through his headphones as he left his dorm room and exited the building.
Forty minutes later, he had finished running, and Jungkook was walking home. He checked to see what he’d missed that morning as he walked in the late winter breeze. A couple of texts from his group chat with Tae and Jimin saying he’d left his socks at their place, a missed call from his mom he’d neglected while he was sleeping, a horoscope app notification telling him he should take note of who was around him, one or two random emails and finally the Duolingo reminder. As he went to delete the message so he could ignore it as if it had never existed like usual, he read what it said. Usually, the app’s notifications were motivational, something about starting a new streak or how easy it was to learn a new language if you consistently took the daily lessons. This was not one of those usual alerts.
Hi, It’s Duo!
These reminders don’t seem to be working… Apparently, you can’t manage 5 fucking minutes a day to learn a valuable skill. Seriously, you haven’t practiced in a whole goddamn week. Do you even have the capacity to open this app you fucking coward? Taking this free education and completely wasting it… You should be ashamed of yourself.
Jungkook choked on air, his breath caught in his throat, and he clutched his phone so tightly that his knuckles turned white. If he hadn't been so shocked and scared, he probably would’ve been worrying whether the phone had bent or not. The accusatory and threatening undertone of the notification seemed too personal as if someone had been watching him avoid his lessons as if someone knew what he thought when he deleted the notifications. It scared him enough to call Jimin frantically.
“Pickuppickuppickup”, Jungkook chanted to his phone screen as the call dialled through.
On the third ring, Jimin picked up.
“What’s up, Jungkook?” Jimin answered the call groggily, clearly having been woken up by the phone call.
“I DIDN’T DO MY DUOLINGO LESSONS FOR A WEEK ANDNOWITSTHREATENINGME?!” Jungkook managed to breathe out in a single fast sentence, his heart racing, his voice panicked.
On the other side of the line, Jimin sat up, and Taehyung’s muted voice asked to put the phone on speaker mode.
“Jungkook honey, repeat that for us again.” Taehyung’s deeper voice spilt through his earbuds.
Jungkook took a few breaths before he tried to explain the situation again.
“I, fuck okay, you guys gotta believe me, but I didn’t do any of the Duolingo lessons Namjoon told me to do for practice this week, and now the app is threatening me through the notifications.” He let out shakily. The line was quiet for a second before the other side started laughing.
“Jungkook, how and why the hell would Duolingo be sending personalised threatening notifications to you?” Jimin laughed.
“I DON’T KNOW!” Jungkook let out frustratedly, “but they called me a ‘fucking coward’ and were condescending, and I never turned location services off and oh fuck, what if they find me and force me to do the classes, or they’re already following me oh my god.” He rambled.
Jimin and Taehyung stopped laughing as they realised there was clearly real distress in the voice of their friend on the other end of the phone.
“Kookie, it was probably a mistake by one of the employees or a joke they never meant to send out. I doubt anybody is following you, okay. It’s just a language app, honey… If it’s bothering you so much, you should file a report with them and get an explanation, okay?” Taehyung told him calmly. “Sorry for laughing at you, bun,” Jimin added on at the end of his boyfriend’s sentence.
“No, no, it’s fine… I was just kinda freaked out, you know? Anyways yeah, I’m just gonna like, go home now, uhh.” Jungkook said, nearing his dorm a lot less scared than he'd been minutes before. “Thanks for calming me down, I guess….” He trailed off.
“Anytime, Kookie, we’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Yeah, see you tomorrow.” Jungkook sighed, ending the call as he entered his building.
Still wondering if he had imagined the whole thing, he opened his notifications and saw that the message was still there, the threat not scaring him as much as it did when he first saw it, but it still shook him slightly. He screenshot the notification to attach it to his report that he’d eventually get around to doing, and then he forgot about it for the rest of the day.