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The world is ending.
The weather’s gone to shit, at least. Earthquakes every other day, tornadoes where they don’t really belong. What’s left of the North American forests destroyed by fire. Tsunamis laying waste to coastal countries. All of Japan is already underwater.
But that was last year. Old news.
“…the president, with a new update on the federal government’s plans for—”
Jungkook reaches for the remote and turns off the TV. He isn’t really sure why he watches it anymore, anyways. News is the same every day. Government says they’ve got plans, that it’s just a bit of inclement weather, that the planet isn’t literally burning under everyone’s feet.
Bullshit. If high school history taught Jungkook much, it’s that governments haven’t ever changed their ways. They’re never to be trusted.
(He will admit he spent most of his time sleeping his way through those classes. But he will stand by his word.)
He’s going to sit back on his couch when the ground starts to shake.
So instead of sitting, he lays down. If an earthquake is what kills him, so be it. He’d have died within the month anyways, along with the rest of the world. It’s the 6th earthquake of the week anyways, and it’s only Wednesday. No one’s afraid of that kind of thing anymore.
Jungkook glances begrudgingly at the book on the coffee table next to him. It’s a bit hard to read when you’re shaking like a bobblehead on a trampoline, so Great Expectations will have to wait.
He can’t say he’s really getting into it much, anyways. Sherlock was better. As far as the classic “must-reads” go, at least.
So he stares at the ceiling above him. The dust falling as the building shakes collects on his glasses as he lays wordlessly. All the earthquakes are getting rather tedious these days. They went from once a month to once a week to once a day and now here he is, with a few a day.
If it’s a good day, there’ll only be one. His will to live these days isn’t that strong, but it’s easier to go about daily life and actions such as reading and eating cereal when he doesn’t feel like he’s inside someone’s maraca.
Today’s first earthquake though, is shaping up to be the hardest one of the week. If not the month. It’s definitely the longest, at least. Most of them are smaller, a little shaking and a few broken picture frames but otherwise everyone’s fine. But Jungkook can already hear the decimation that is now within his kitchen cabinets. His dishes may be earthquake-proof, but a change in manufacturing material doesn’t do shit to protect his meticulous organization.
He wishes he could forgo that trait of his.
The ceiling dust is chalky and tastes like mothballs and Home Depot, so Jungkook pulls the nearest blanket over his body. The shaking is making him feel a little sick now.
There’s a loud thump and a crash from somewhere in his apartment. By now, there’s nothing left on his walls, everything having been either removed or destroyed by earlier disasters, but he remembers with a sigh that he removed a few things from a desk drawer nearby when he was looking for the pen he lost.
The thump, he’s pretty sure, would be a few books he stuck in there, but he can’t figure out what the crash was.
The shaking stops.
Jungkook lifts a corner of the blanket, and sure enough, “Grad School Budget Plan” and “Your Toyota: A New Owner’s Manual” are splayed on the ground along with a magazine or two that he can’t remember why he saved, and a stapler.
The crash, though, he traces to a picture frame laying under a near-pristine copy of Business Monthly from over a year ago.
Fragments of glass fall to the floor in a rain from the broken frame as Jungkook picks it up, turning it over in his hand. His heart stops in his chest.
Seven years.
It’s been seven years since that picture was taken. Back when the end of the world seemed like something for his next lifetime. When money was tight and he couldn’t find a job for the life of him and he spent late nights awake, bent over a kitchen table with a wrinkled budget in his hand and an empty pen in his hand.
Back when he still had hope.
Hope for what, he never really knew. Objectively, life sucked. He had nothing. His apartment was bare, his bank account empty, his mother non-existent and his father killed in a car accident a year prior. He worked 2 jobs to pay for school and rent, and he went home exhausted every day.
But he had love.
Love came in the form of a 5’8 boy with hair the shade of a blue raspberry slushie and a dimple on his left cheek. A boy with a passion for photography and a knack for rendering Jungkook speechless. And he made Jungkook feel like the struggling wasn’t so terrible after all. Because at the end of the day, the other side of the bed was warm and an arm would always make its way over his waist when he climbed under the covers.
Taehyung had always been the affectionate type.
The frame’s shattered now, but beneath the spiderweb of cracks Jungkook can still see Taehyung’s distorted smile, and the sunflower in his hand. The dirt stained left sleeve of his formerly white dress shirt, because for all the nice clothes Taehyung liked to wear, he could never seem to keep them clean for the life of him.
Jungkook runs his finger along a crack that runs straight through the middle of the frame. This one isn’t new. Getting thrown against a wall can damage glass, it turns out. He’d meant to throw this away after the breakup. But after weeks of it just laying on the floor, facedown in the corner of his living room like poison he was afraid to touch, he must have mindlessly moved it onto a table.
And then into the drawer where it had lived the last seven years of his life.
‘Mutual’, Jungkook thinks, is a word people use to describe breakups when they’re too afraid to admit someone was more hurt than the other was. He thinks it’s used by prideful people in their 20s who don’t want to admit that seeing the face of their ex makes their bones feel like they want to cave in on themselves.
He’s not that person anymore.
He doesn’t know what’s become of Taehyung. He wanted to be a marriage photographer, last he knew. If it worked out for him, he must be busy. With the end of the world in sight, Jungkook sees what feels like a dozen weddings a day. The supermarket is in increasingly popular demand.
He puts the frame back on the desk. And then he moves it into the drawer.
Outside, he can see the wreckage that was the building across the street, and the throngs of people surrounding it. Checking for anyone hurt, no doubt. Weird, he hardly noticed the sounds of it falling. What was left of it, anyways. The earthquake a few months ago had shaken most of it apart, so no one really lived there anymore.
It had been a decent place. When it was still standing, at least. Low rent, and the landlords were fairly nice about late payments.
Jungkook would know. He’d lived there. But that was five years ago. He worked out his money problems, paid his debts, and moved into the fancy high rise across the street. And it’s from within this fancy high rise that he now looks down upon the wreckage of his former home. Ironic that it falls now, he thinks.
Wonders if Taehyung would be glad to see it gone. He hated the place, after all.
Jungkook walks back over to the desk and takes the picture frame back out. He sets it down flat. Standing it up is a bit too much of a step for him.
So he sits back down on his couch with a puff of ceiling dust from the couch cushions and looks at the picture.
Seven years ago, the end of the world didn’t seem so close. Natural disasters were kept to once every two months, at the most, and the grocery stores were usually still well stocked. Earthquakes were at a maximum of a minor one once per month, and one major one per year.
Taehyung hated them. Always curled up under the nearest table with his hands over his head, shaking. Jungkook always sat with him, though.
He remembers the day Taehyung asked him if he thought the world was going to end. And he remembers his response.
“No clue. If it does, though, I’ll be okay. If I’m gonna watch the world end with anyone I want it to be you.”
He wonders how Taehyung’s doing. If he’s gotten over his fear of earthquakes.
Hopefully.
His stomach growls menacingly. It occurs to him that he hasn’t eaten much today, and a search of his pantry proves unfruitful. He thinks he could go for some fruit right about now, but with the power going out all the time as a result of the earthquakes, he and everyone else in the area has to resort to a smaller type of fridge and freezer. It's a new type of appliance that can keep food cold without electricity for five days.
Thank god for technological advancements.
He could eat something dry. But raspberries sound like the best idea right now. He’s impulsive.
So with a sigh, on goes the mask. All the dust everywhere, no one can really go out without one. He hates the way his sunglasses look on him, so he forgoes them this time. World is ending soon anyways, and his eyes are fine right now. UV rays won’t be making him go blind within the week.
Unshockingly, the elevator is empty on his way down. As is the lobby.
Most people had fled for more landlocked parts of the country a year or so before, so rent prices took a nosedive in costal cities, and a “fancy high rise” becomes something Jungkook could have afforded even in his brokest days. He doesn’t understand why everyone’s so desperate to prolong their lives, if even by a few days. What difference does it make if he dies by tsunami or makes it the few extra weeks and lets the Sun’s glorious hellfire do him in?
The market is close, thankfully. It’s always near unbearably hot outside, and Jungkook always hates himself for making the decision to even leave his nice air-conditioned complex.
He walks fast. Thank god for long legs and gayness.
The market is bare-bones, as per usual. Shipments are difficult these days, and what little ever makes it through is so quickly snatched up by rabid shoppers stockpiling toilet paper and non-perishables as though they’re going to save their lives. Or prolong them, at least.
Jungkook doesn’t think toilet paper can be used as a flotation device.
The produce section is scarce, at best. And generally lack flavour. But for genetically engineered fruit, they aren’t too bad. Rising core temperatures made growing near impossible, so most fresh produce had to be grown within specialized labs. The nearest one had been destroyed, though, and all they had left was shipped from a while away.
No raspberries. Jungkook wrinkles his nose.
There’s blackberries though, so Jungkook grabs a container of those and makes to the checkout with it.
$15.60 for that? Rent may be decreasing, but market prices are sky high, so Jungkook’s breaking even. He takes his blackberries and leaves.
There’s a significantly smaller crowd around the destroyed apartment complex instead of Jungkook’s apartment when he returns. Now it’s just random passers-by stopping to look at the wreckage, and a guy sitting on the curb. Maybe a resident of the building having just returned to what used to be his home.
Jungkook doesn’t think so. Those types of revelations are typically accompanied with a few more tears. And he was pretty sure everyone had moved out. He cuts across the front patio of his complex to reach the doors.
“Excuse me, do you know if anyone lived here?”
Jungkook turns. The man is looking at him, he thinks. Hard to tell with the sunglasses, but he’s the only one in his general vicinity.
“No, everyone left.”
The guy’s shoulders relax, and he turns back to the rubble. “Okay. Thanks.”
There’s something vaguely familiar about the guy’s voice, but it’s hard to place. Jungkook knows it’ll bother him for the rest of the day unless he figures it out now.
“Why?”
“Someone I used to know lived there. It was a long time ago, but I had to check.”
Jungkook wishes the guy would take off his sunglasses. With the glasses, mask, and bangs, the man’s entire face is covered, and is making Jungkook’s task significantly harder.
“Relative?”
“Ex.”
Maybe he was a neighbour. Or a neighbors boyfriend, at least.
“You’re one of them, huh?”
“One of them?” The guy cranes his head back to Jungkook.
“You know. You’re single, so you’re going back to find your ex so you’re not alone?”
The guy huffs out a laugh. “It’s not like that.”
“Why else would you be looking for your ex?”
“I loved him. I can still wonder if he’s doing okay.”
The guy has a point. “If you find him, don’t go back to him.”
“Quite the cynic, aren’t you?” The guy stands up. He looked like he was going to be shorter.
Jungkook shrugs. “The world’s taking its time in ending. I don’t understand all the panic to get one last breath of life in before you die. Won’t matter whether you die alone or with people, so why not just continue your life? Whenever it happens it happens.”
The guy hums. Jungkook wants to turn back into his complex, but he still can’t figure out who the guy is. “What’s your name?”
The guy takes a few steps forward, hand extended. “Taehyung. Yours?”
Jungkook freezes.
Taehyung’s different than he remembered. His voice is deeper, his energy relaxed, and he’s swapped out his array of box-dyes for plain black hair.
He chokes, remembering he hasn’t responded to Taehyung. “Jungkook.”
“Jungkook?” Taehyung takes his glasses off. The small mole above his left eye stares Jungkook in the face, and he knows how Taehyung got the scar above his eyebrow.
The one above it, though, he’s not familiar with. Funny, what seven years can do.
“You changed.”
“You used to hate blackberries.”
Jungkook looks down at the package in his hand. “No I didn’t.”
“You hated them with a passion the last I saw you. Ate raspberries, but you always said the blackberries were too sour.”
He remembers now that Taehyung’s right.
“I liked them, though.”
Taehyung’s tone is suggestive, and Jungkook thinks he must be feeling sentimental.
Jungkook doesn’t want to spend the end of the world with someone who’s only interested in what they had. Pretending he means something for the split second before they both die and he goes back to just being him.
He thinks loneliness is better than pretending he has something he doesn’t.
“People change. If you’re just looking for an end-of-the-world bed warmer, I’m not your guy.” Jungkook turns back toward his complex. He’s long-over the breakup, but seeing Taehyung after seven years? It brings up feelings that he’d rather process on his own.
“Jungkook, wait. That’s not what I want.” Taehyung catches him with a hand on his shoulder. “Can we talk?”
“About what?”
“I haven’t seen you in seven years. And you’re… different. Then when I left. You look well.”
“I am.”
Taehyung asks again. “I won’t stay long. I just wanna see how you’re doing.”
Jungkook relents, and opens the door to the complex, allowing Taehyung inside.
“This is a nice place.” Taehyung’s looking around the lobby with a sense of mild wonderment.
“Yeah. It used to be nicer, but everyone left.” The elevator dings, and they climb on. Taehyung’s got his hands shoved in his pockets, and his gaze pointed fixedly at the floor numbers. “You look like you want to say something.”
“You’re… not broke anymore.”
“I graduated. The internship I had, they liked my work ethic, so they hired me full time.”
“That power company?”
“Yeah. Paid well. Really well, actually. So I moved.”
Taehyung nods. “That’s kinda why I didn’t recognize you at first. That and the mask, I guess, but I figured it was just a doppelgänger. You have one image of someone in your head for so long you forget how long it’s really been since you’ve seen them. How much they could have changed.”
The elevator dings, and they get out. Jungkook leads Taehyung to his apartment and scans them in.
“It used to be nicer, but with all the earthquakes I took everything off the walls. That, or they fell.”
Taehyung nods. “Yeah.”
Jungkook puts the blackberries on his counter. Taehyung is just standing awkwardly in the middle of the living room, looking at Great Expectations with his hands clasped behind his back.
“You can sit down, you know.”
Taehyung sits. “Didn’t want to just invite myself to your furniture.”
Just as polite as always. That’s something that didn’t change. Jungkook sits on the armchair near the couch, and notes how Taehyung’s seated at the other end of the couch, furthest away from him.
“You’re sitting normally.”
Jungkook creases his eyebrows in confusion.
“You—” Taehyung waves his hand vaguely,”—always used to throw a leg over the side of the chair when you sat. Or put a foot on the rung of the coffee table. Or sit cross-legged.”
“Thought we were catching up, not reminiscing.”
Taehyung chuckles. “Fine, then. How are you?”
“Well that’s a loaded question.”
“Great, I’ve got all day.” Taehyung leans back and crosses his legs over each other.
“I’m alright. Living, you know?”
“Alone?”
“Does it look like I have a roommate?”
“I didn’t mean a person.” Taehyung raises an eyebrow
“What do you mean then?”
Taehyung hums. “I thought you didn't want me to be sentimental.”
“Out with it then,”
“You wanted a cat.”
Jungkook nods. “Yeah, I got one. Adopted him from one of those shelters, you know? He was killed a year or two ago, though. Earthquake scared him and he got hit by a car.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it. Doubt he’d have liked the end of the world much, anyways.”
“At least you weren’t one of the people who just abandoned their pet. I’d have been shocked if you were, though.”
Jungkook nods. With everyone freaking out about doomsday, pets were getting abandoned on the sides of roads every day.
“Job’s alright?”
Jungkook shrugs. “Until they shut down. No one was really going into work by then, anyways. But it was a nice place until then.”
“Yeah, I get that.” Taehyung nods. “The school shut down, too. Everyone had their kids pulled out for whatever reason. Fleeing the country, and such. So they just shut down.”
“You’re a teacher?”
“High school english.”
“What happened to photography?”
“Unsustainable in the long term. So I got an education degree and didn’t look back.”
Jungkook nods in understanding. He wants his blackberries, and regrets leaving them on the counter. Too much effort.
“Where did your degree bring you?”
“Accountant. Was interviewing for a promotion to director of finance for the company when they shut down.”
“So the life of finance took you after all.”
“That’s how it turned out, yeah.”
Taehyung laughs. “Ironic.”
“In a way.”
“The thing that kills us becomes your lifelong career.”
“I moved on. And I thought we weren’t going to reminisce.”
He’s right, though. Looking back on their relationship, things were good. Jungkook thought they were going to get married. But his pockets were empty. Taehyung came from a wealthier family, he had money. And Jungkook never understood why Taehyung stooped down to his level, why he was perfectly okay passing up dream apartments and a comfortable lifestyle for a dingy, ground level place, watching Jungkook struggle to make ends meet.
Taehyung was always meant for better things than him, he thought. Better than what he could give him. The possibility that Taehyung was actually okay with their lifestyle evaded him.
So he started fights.
And it was okay for the first bit. Taehyung would calm him down, reassure him he was happy and they would figure it out. But eventually Taehyung started fighting back. And Jungkook would yell and slam doors and refuse to compromise.
And it was almost a relief when Taehyung stood in the doorway one night and told him he was leaving. He could find someone better than Jungkook. Maybe Jungkook was better off single, anyways.
“You don’t want closure?”
Jungkook shrugs. “I moved on. And I wasn’t any good for you.”
Why he’s still toting this mantra, he doesn’t know. He’s mature enough now to have come to terms with the fact that’s not necessarily why they broke up.
Taehyung laughs, a harsh bark. “Jungkook, we were together 4 years. I’d say I knew you were the love of my life for a good 3 years and 11 months of that.”
“We fought too much.”
Taehyung sits up, a serious look in his eyes. Jungkook knows he’s being stubborn, and he doesn’t know why. “I think you and I both know why we fought, Jungkook. I was mad at you for a long time after we broke up, you know? Yeah it was better for both of us. We were exhausting ourselves with the same routine day in and day out. But when I’d stopped trying to pretend I was okay with it. It hurt.”
“It hurt me too.”
“Jungkook, it hurt because you didn’t try harder. I loved you. I loved you for a long time even after we broke up. Hell, some days I look back and wonder if some part of me still loves you. But in the end, it looked like you didn’t care.”
“I cared.”
Taehyung leans back against the couch. “You pushed me out.”
“I had to. I was young. And naive. And you were better off without me.”
“I missed you.”
“But you didn’t have to watch me live paycheque to paycheque. Give up things you wanted because I couldn’t pay for them and I refused to let you help.”
Taehyung laughs, but this time his smile holds more delicacy. Sentiment, if Jungkook’s ever seen it. “All these years, Jungkook. That’s why we didn’t work out?”
Jungkook looks over to the counter passively, then back to Taehyung. His blackberries are taunting him. “I was young. I didn’t believe you were happy, then. Still don’t.”
Taehyung hums. “Did you stop loving me?”
Jungkook’s brain takes this moment to freeze.
Truth be told, he hadn’t really thought of Taehyung in years. Taehyung, and love in general, lived in a drawer of his mind he didn’t want to open. And by the time he might have been ready to open it, to try again, love with Taehyung or someone else, the world was ending.
And there was no point. Love takes time. Re-meeting takes time. Getting to re-know someone. And all for what? A few extra days of company?
Jungkook wasn’t afraid of dying alone. So Taehyung became a passive thought and an untraceable feeling in his chest when he passed by a certain park, or looked too long at the building across the street.
“Jungkook?”
“No.”
Taehyung nods. “Seven years. And I couldn’t get you out of my head.”
“The world’s ending, Taehyung. There’s no point in this.”
“What, love?”
“Meeting.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know who you are anymore.”
Taehyung hums. Nods. “But you care about me.”
“I did.”
“Then let’s spend the rest of our lives together. This ain’t marriage. The world’s ending in a few days at most, Jungkook. When we die, isn’t it just okay to be together? We’ve changed, we don’t know if we’d work out in the long term. But that’s the great thing about this. We don’t have to know.”
Taehyung stands up and walks around the back of Jungkook’s chair. The container of berries falls into Jungkook’s lap.
“World’s ending. May as well embrace what feels good. No sense in wondering if we’d still like it in the future when we don’t know how much future there is to be had.”
Jungkook nods. Opens his blackberries with a pop of plastic and throws one in his mouth.
Then he throws one across the room, where it hits Taehyung. “So what happened to the hair?”
“What color did you see me with last, red?”
“Blue.”
“Light, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Went to purple, pink, and then I tried split dye, half black half blonde. Got bored of that and did pink and blonde. But I went darker when I started teaching. I was thinking about going back to red, but then all the salons closed.”
Taehyung picks up the blackberry Jungkook threw at him, and eats it. “Again, last I knew you hated these. Now you’re going to the store just for them.”
“No. I was getting raspberries.”
“But you got these instead.”
Jungkook shrugs. “No clue what happened. Stopped hating them after you left. There was a good couple months there, my first bit at the job. Had them with lunch every day. Cost me a fortune when farm production went down, so thank god for the lab-grown shit.”
Taehyung extends a hand, and Jungkook throws another one to him. “Nothing like the natural stuff, though. Scientists took too much liberty trying to enhance them.”
Jungkook shrugs. “Guess so.”
There’s a shouting from the street, and a loud rumble and a crash. Jungkook cranes his head up to look out the window. “Rubble adjusting. Nothing huge.”
“Figured.” Taehyung nods. “Did you expect this?”
“Expect what?”
“Me.”
Jungkook laughs. “No, I expected raspberries.”
Taehyung hums. “I wasn’t looking for you, you know. Honestly, I don’t even know why I asked about you. Why I ended up there. Intuition? Something like that, I think. Last person I dated turned out to be an asshole, so I wasn’t gonna check up on them. But I hadn’t heard anything about you in years, and I was curious.”
“You and everyone else,” Jungkook remarks. That blackberry was a bit more sour than he’d have liked. Odd, usually they’re all scarily similar in taste.
“Sentiment isn’t that bad, you know. And I guess part of me was curious about you. How you turned out after all these years.”
“Am I meeting your expectations?”
Taehyung shrugs. “You’re more callous than I remember you being. Maybe a bit of a pessimist.”
Jungkook snorts. “Hey, you were always the more lively of the two of us.”
“Still. Didn't think finance would suck this much life out of you.”
“It didn’t.”
“It did.”
Jungkook leans back, looking up to his ceiling. He doesn’t think that crack was there before. “Maybe it’s not the finance stuff.”
“What is it then?”
“I don’t know. I said maybe.”
Taehyung leans back too, but he keeps his gaze set on Jungkook. “Explain.”
“It wasn’t the finance, you know? It was fine. That was fine. It was my job, not my life. But… I don’t know. When everything stopped, life just… lost all meaning. There was no job to go to. Nothing to do, you know? I got up in the morning and just sat there. Everyone was running for the hills, but for me it set in that there was nothing I’d be running for. We’re all gonna die anyways, and I guess I didn’t see the point in trying to extend the suffering at all. Or pretending like there’s any way to survive, you know?”
Taehyung hums. “Someone sounds depressed.”
Jungkook shrugs again. “Maybe. Should probably go to therapy. But there’s no therapy to go to.”
“Think that’s what we all need.”
“Therapy?”
“Yup. Everyone’s either paranoid or depressed now.”
“Which are you?”
Taehyung brushes a strand of hair out of his face and extends another hand for a blackberry. Jungkook throws one to him. “Undecided.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know.”
“Your turn to elaborate.”
“I’m not paranoid. I’m not running for the hills. I know I’m going to die and I’ve got no issue with that. But…” Taehyung stops to throw the blackberry in his mouth, “at the same time, I can still get up in the morning, you know? I’m not completely blind to this whole thing, but I’m just living what’s left of my life. What happens happens.”
“You sound like a hippie.”
“A highly dated reference. Where’d you even get that from?”
“You.”
Taehyung gasps in mock offense. “No way you got that from me.”
“You and your old movies.”
“Not that old!”
Jungkook rolls his eyes. “Forrest Gump is from what, the early 2000s?”
“1990s. 94, I think. You were close, though, how’d you know?”
Jungkook chooses to ignore the question. “See? Told you. Got the reference from you and your strange habits. Your old books, too.”
“And you were shocked I became an English teacher. Saw Great Expectations on your table though, I wouldn’t say they’re just mine anymore.”
“Weird habit of mine. Gives me something to do.”
“But it gives you so much else, right? Have you read Gatsby?”
Jungkook nods. He’s read all of the books on Taehyung’s list of lifetime-must-reads. It used to be an attachment thing, clinging to the things Taehyung loved, but now it’s just a habit. He admits he enjoys them too.
“A shock. You refused to, when we dated.”
“I had other things to do than read your books, you know.”
Taehyung rolls his eyes. “As you constantly reminded me.”
There’s a loud screeching from the street, and Taehyung jumps up with a curse and runs to the window.
Jungkook doesn’t even bother to look. “It’s normal.”
“It looks like someone died.”
“Yeah. Radiation sickness, I think. Something like that. Whatever’s killing people now, anyways.”
Taehyung nods slowly, looking down at the street for a moment before closing the blind again. “I haven’t seen that kind of thing in a while.”
“How?” It’s a daily thing for Jungkook now. Humans shouldn’t be this used to death, he thinks, but that’s just how it is.
“Everyone left my building. The entire street, really. There’s barely anyone left, and the people who stayed don’t go out much. If they died I wouldn’t know.”
Jungkook nods in understanding. He can’t relate. His street is fairly popular, probably for the nearby shops.
“I wish I could forget.”
Taehyung’s looking down, his gaze fixed on the ground.
“Forget what?”
“Everything.”
Jungkook doesn’t understand. He sets his blackberries on the table next to him.
“Look, the last few years have been… shit? Not because of the break-up or anything, it was just… I kept thinking that maybe things would look up, that I just had to get past this one hard part and I’d be okay. One more month, one more year. But then they told us that we were all going to die soon. Now here we are, one year later and we’ve got maybe days left. A week or two if we’re lucky. And I just wanna live. I just want to be alive, you know? My god, I kept thinking my life was gonna start soon. But now here I am. And I’m going to die before I’ve even lived.”
Jungkook’s curious. This isn’t something he expected from Taehyung, of all people. But he doesn’t think it’s his place to ask. “Live now, then.”
“I want to.”
“Why won’t you?”
“I just think.”
“What do you mean?”
Taehyung slides his back down the wall until he’s seated on the floor. “I read something about how people who think a lot can’t sleep because sleep requires peace and they don’t know what peace feels like. I get that, except for me I just… can’t relax. I can’t enjoy anything because I can’t forget my life enough to just be.”
Jungkook feels like he’s the opposite. He can’t enjoy anything because he doesn’t feel like his life ever had enough substance to give anything meaning. He struggles to be alive because there’s no memories. Nothing to reminisce over.
So he just hums. He doesn’t know what Taehyung’s feeling, but he’s… not completely ignorant to it.
“Guess we both wasted what’s left of our lives.”
Taehyung shrugs, then nods. “Who didn’t?”
It feels odd, sitting up in the chair and looking down at Taehyung. He gets off and sits on the floor in front of it.
“What do you want from life?”
Taehyung’s always been one for deep questions. Especially if he’s already thinking. So Jungkook’s used to this. “Nothing, really.”
“No, not from this life. Nothing real, I mean. If we could have anything at all. What would you want?”
Jungkook shrugs. “I don’t really know. I suck at wanting anything, these days. Really wanting. I just kind of live on impulse and exist outside of that. What would you want?”
“Safety. I don’t know, I… I miss flowers, Jungkook. I miss that day I was at the park, that one outside the city? With all the violets. I wasn’t thinking, then. I just… was.”
Jungkook remembers that day. He was there.
Taehyung lay down in the field for hours, eyes closed and arms outstretched on the grass while Jungkook tried and failed to make a flower crown the way his sister had shown him.
“I feel like I’ve been… running. Ever since. From money. You, after we broke up. Angry people and just… everything.” Taehyung sighs.
“Time.”
Taehyung furrows his brows. “What?”
“I… want time.”
“For what?”
“I’m not sure. Just… something? Fuck, I haven’t even tried to live. I haven’t tried to fucking do anything.” Jungkook laughs bitterly. “My god, I’ve been giving up since we were dating.”
Taehyung laughs a bit. “Yeah.”
“And I’ve been sitting here for years just feeling sorry for myself. Sorry that I didn’t have anything I cared about, or anything I wanted. I had so much time then. I could have done so much, holy fuck. Now I’m about to die. And I really am out of time.”
“World’s not over yet, you know.”
“Guess not.”
“Wanna do some living?”
The corner of Jungkook’s mouth quirks up. “Sure.”
Taehyung stands up, and steps over to Jungkook, a hand extended.
Jungkook takes it, and stands.
The world can’t take the weight of them both, it seems.
The building shakes, and the world falls apart.
The street itself is burning outside.
The screaming gets louder.
“Jungkook!”
Taehyung’s standing, unsteady on the shaking ground. His body speaks experience in this type of thing, but Jungkook’s close enough that he can see his eyes.
He’s just as scared as he was seven years ago.
And for once, Jungkook will live up to the promise he made.
He pulls Taehyung into his chest and dives for the counter and the bit of shelter it provides. The ceiling falls and crushes the chair he was sitting in.
Taehyung’s not shaking like he used to, but his body is rigid.
The sky is dark orange.
Jungkook knows this is the end.
He wraps an arm around Taehyung’s back and holds him as tight as he can.
He doesn’t know if they’d have made it, if they’d have met when the world wasn’t ending. If they’d have found each other for something more than a moment of memory.
But regardless of that, Taehyung is something. Whether they’d have made it, they’re together now. And Jungkook realizes that for seven years of separation, he never really stopped caring.
So, the world will end and Jungkook will not be alone for it.
He thinks about what his last words will be.
Nothing seems right, though. The building is crumbling apart around them, the sky falling outside. Taehyung grips him harder and Jungkook thinks he smells a whiff of lavender, even though those went extinct years ago.
He’s sorry he and Taehyung couldn’t do any living before this. That the end of the world seemed to have come so perfectly timed for the second he thinks he can do something worth doing before he dies. A cosmic joke.
Taehyung grabs at his shirt as the sky roars above them, and he feels himself pull Taehyung closer to him.
Maybe this is all living is meant to be for him.
But it occurs to him that in these few moments he has lived the life he wished he had. Taehyung is a memory. Even in their half hour of conversation, Jungkook feels more alive than he had in years.
This is what life comes down to for him.
Taehyung pulls his head down and shouts something into his ear but Jungkook can’t hear anything anymore. His eardrums are broken, he thinks. But Taehyung looks at him and he thinks that maybe these last few moments are enough living for Taehyung too.
He shouts something back for Taehyung too, if he can hear.
The ground is shaking so violently now that it’s hard, but he can still see the smile that blooms on Taehyung’s face.
He’s not happy, though. It’s not sad either, exactly, Taehyung just… is.
He looks alright.
Jungkook smiles back.
And the world burns around them.
. . . .
“Jungkook.”
“What?”
“If the world ends, and I’m not with you. You’ll come over, right?”
“What do you mean? Of course I’d be with you.”
“But hypothetically. If something happened and we weren’t together. You’d find me?”
“I’ll be right next to you when the world ends. I promise.”
“Okay.”