Chapter Text
The first time Kim Taehyung sees Jeon Jungkook, he is bashing his friend’s face in.
There are many thoughts racing through Taehyung’s head. First and foremost came fear, because the look on Jungkook’s face is so rageful that it’s palpable to the small audience the fight garnered. Taehyung could feel this boy’s rage, could feel his punches and kicks, and although they aren’t being administered to him, he winces at each one thrown. On the receiving end of Jeon Jungkook’s bony knuckles and knotted fists is one of Taehyung’s acquaintances, a guy who’d begun to invite Taehyung and his friends to parties he really couldn’t tell his mom about.
Jackson Wang lay curled up on the ground, bleeding. Jungkook, it seems, is bleeding too, thin tendrils of red running from his nostrils down to his lips.
Hoseok, another one of Taehyung’s friends - and to Jackson’s luck, co-captain of the wrestling team - grabs Jungkook by the arms and separates the two boys. Jungkook lets himself be restrained, gasping for breath like he just broke to the surface after being underwater. His fists curl, and Taehyung braces for yet another impact, but it doesn’t come. Jackson coughs from his spot on the ground, accepting a fellow student’s outstretched hand and helping himself to his feet.
Jungkook blinks. His eyes meet the dozens of cameras pointed at his face, and he glares at Jimin’s phone specifically (another one of Taehyung’s good friends. What can he say? He’s sociable). Jimin averts his gaze, as if afraid to catch Jungkook’s attention like a contagion.
Jungkook spits on the ground, a wad glistening pink with blood, and walks away.
That was the first fight of Taehyung’s senior year. Slowly but surely, this Jungkook guy got progressively worse at quite a few things, mainly staying out of trouble. Trouble, like a dog tethered to a leash, followed Jeon Jungkook wherever he went. He got suspended for two weeks for this fight, even threatened with expulsion, according to Jackson’s dramatized retelling of his short stint in the principal’s office, taunting Jungkook on the way out. He fell asleep in class, sat alone in the cafeteria, and generally seemed on the verge of either falling asleep or cussing someone out whenever Taehyung spared a glance at him. Other than that, the guy minded his own business.
Anything anyone heard about Jeon Jungkook was neither confirmed nor denied by the boy himself, who seemed like he couldn’t care less what the other kids thought about him. In a crooked, warped kind of way, Taehyung was envious of this ability, envious of the uncaringness and envious of the respect - fear, even - that Jungkook attracted when he stepped into a room.
But regardless, Taehyung had one very important thing that the other did not: Big, bad wolf Jeon Jungkook didn’t have any friends. To Taehyung, that was proof enough that there was something off about the guy.
----
“So what happened, anyway? Why did Jeon go all… wolverine on Jackson?” Hoseok asks through a mouth stuffed with ham sandwich.
Their mismatch friend group has finally arrived early enough to the cafeteria to claim a full table to themselves. Taehyung frankly can’t take any of the credit. Jimin left class five minutes early and successfully glared at any onlookers for long enough to keep their seats saved.
“Wolverine? What are you even…” Jimin drifts off. “I didn’t see the beginning. I guess Jackson was maybe trying to rile him up.”
“Rile up like how?” Taehyung asked. His mom packed him a sandwich and tore off the crusts. It warms his heart a little looking down on it.
Jimin gives Taehyung a pointed look. “You know how Jackson is. He makes jokes.”
Taehyung recalls overhearing a conversation in math class the period prior, someone who said that Jackson swung at Jungkook first. Taehyung finds it hard to believe. He just remembers that crazed look in Jungkook’s eyes, and he can’t possibly picture someone willingly attacking him.
He glances briefly across the cafeteria, where Jeon Jungkook is sitting in a corner by the fruit stand, a tight black t-shirt bunching up under his armpits. As much as Jimin fought what felt like to the death to secure an empty table in their crowded lunchroom, Jungkook sits alone, as if he really did have some condition others could catch. He’s flicking through a workbook page in what Taehyung recognizes as his same math textbook, brow furrowed, and the end of his pencil is chewed and disfigured.
Taehyung looks back down at his sandwich, suppressing a shiver that walks down his spine. If he can get through this year without becoming a victim of a violent crime, he’ll take that as a success - and that means leaving the likes of Jeon Jungkook alone.
----
Don’t get divorced, Taehyung thinks, coming up with advice for some future memoir he might write. I wouldn’t recommend it.
There’s only one word to describe the new apartment complex he and his mom are moving into: downgrade.
He knows not to complain. His mom already feels guilty enough that their front door is nearly off the hinges, that the bushes out front are dry and brittle, that the sprinklers are broken and the neighbors seem cold. In fact, Taehyung makes a concerted effort to cheer her up.
“Mom, look: I feel like a kid again. This is so fun,” Taehyung tries, a boxy smile bringing his lips up. He’s laying like a starfish on his twin-sized bed. He hasn’t slept in one this size since the fourth grade. His new room isn’t quite big enough for anything else.
“I’m glad you think so,” his mom responds, quiet. She tries for a smile as well.
Moving day is otherwise uneventful. His dad is noticeably unreachable, by phone or text, when Taehyung asks if he can help locate some files that would make more sense to be stored at his mom’s. It hurts, but it’s also fine. It has to be.
Don’t get divorced, he reminds himself. As if his mom forgot this mantra and that landed them here.
Neighbors. That was one of Taehyung’s goals, to make friends with the neighbors, since he’s moving to this decrepit complex across town where he has to take an entirely different, more convoluted bus line to get to school. He’s lucky he didn’t have to move schools, he supposes, but a cursory glance around the stragglers in the complex mail room indicates that very few people under the age of 50 live here at all.
As Taehyung prepares to lock the front door of their new home, Unit 3B, for the very first night of likely fitful sleep, he hears a thunking sound from across the hall. Unit 3C’s door opens with a whoosh, and out comes a lean figure dragging out a plastic bag of trash. It must be heavy, for how the guy stumbles trying to fling it on his back.
In the dark, Taehyung can’t make out much. But the first few steps the figure takes triggers the automatic halllight, desperately in need of a new bulb.
The flickering yellow shine illuminates a familiar face, who has turned to make brief eye contact with Taehyung from across the hall - what feels like eons away.
The flickering light gives Taehyung a dreamlike feeling, like he’s blinking. Only he’s not.
Jeon Jungkook gives him only the briefest of glances. Then he ambles down the stairs.
----
Taehyung likes to rehearse, and nothing irks him the most than changing his routine without a rehearsal of how it might go. But time escaped him to practice this new bus route to school. All he knows is if all goes well, he’ll get there in a little over an hour. If it doesn’t, he thinks, maybe he can send Jimin a carrier pigeon of his whereabouts.
Stuck in no man’s land, Taehyung would write. The pigeon would squawk. He would sigh.
Taehyung spots Jungkook’s head of black, shaggy hair a few rows in front of him. He wonders offhandedly if he might be able to follow Jungkook back home too, just until he memorizes this new route. He imagines the awkwardness of both of them getting off on the same stop, one walking a few steps behind the other, both aware that they’re heading to the same complex, and the very same floor.
Taehyung bites back a swirl of anxiety in his stomach.
Jungkook, on the other hand, is unaware of Taehyung’s turmoil - of course he is, Taehyung thinks, they don’t even know each other. His spine is curved in a slouch, peering down into his lap where his phone lays clutched in both hands like it might run away from him. From Taehyung’s position in the back of the bus, he can see the phone is quite small and cracked in a couple places.
All in all, the trip ends up being less confusing than expected. Jungkook is the only other teenager on the bus, and when Jungkook gets off, he gets off. Taehyung maintains a few paces behind Jungkook in case the kid gets any bright ideas of turning Taehyung into his next quilt of bruises. He recalls that look in Jungkook’s eye, like his rage came from somewhere deeper, and begins walking even slower, until Jungkook’s figure is just a small dot a few crosswalks ahead.
----
“Jeez, Tae. Your lunch used to always be the coveted one in the friend group. What’s… what’s all this?”
Hoseok gestures mildly to the bounty in Taehyung’s lunchbox. It’s quite the assortment: where his meaty apple turkey sandwich typically is, maybe with a fruit snack or two dished in, Taehyung sees instead a piece of toast with jam, some string cheese, and an orange.
“Don’t ask me, ask my mom. We’re… I mean she’s, she’s going through a lot with the divorce. Yeah. I’m not going to say anything to her.” Taehyung pauses. “Unless it gets way worse, like tomato salad with a splash of leaves from the backyard.”
Namjoon jumps in unhelpfully. “I thought you don’t have a backyard anymore.”
Jimin glares at Namjoon to get him to shut up. “The real issue we should be focusing on is that your mom still packs your lunch. What are we, three?”
Taehyung frowns, but his eyes are playful. “You wish Mama Kim would take care of you like she does me, Park. You wish.”
He does a cursory glance around the lunchroom, in part to compare the treasures everyone else brings to school. His eyes land back on that near-empty table Jungkook sits at. The boy pulls an apple out of his bag and is mid-bite when, as if some supernatural sensation overtakes him, he locks eyes with Taehyung from across the room.
Jungkook blinks once. He lowers the apple from his mouth and wipes at it with the back of his sleeve, chewing slowly.
Taehyung looks away and clears his throat.
----
The walk back from the bus stop to the apartment complex is uneventful. Taehyung takes notice of when Jungkook gets up, leaves through a different door for the bus, and crosses the street so they walk in parallel. Jungkook enters their complex first, closing the door behind him.
----
A couple weeks pass with Taehyung subtly eyeing his semi-aggressive classmate on the bus, and moving to stand when he does. The nice thing too is Taehyung never has to pull the string for a ‘Stop,’ as Jungkook reaches up to yank it like clockwork when the bus turns some street corner with a significance Taehyung still can’t be bothered to pay attention to.
Taehyung only notices a change in routine when it’s too late, when he gets off the bus as usual, in tandem with that stranger with shaggy hair, and doesn’t recognize the area around him.
Jungkook yanks out his earbuds and whips around, facing Taehyung. Alarm bells sound in Taehyung’s head as he thinks about the roles they always play, to avoid awkwardness, to avoid speaking, and how they’ve already been broken by Jungkook’s big brown eyes finding his own.
“Are you following me?”
Taehyung’s tongue sits like a hairball in his mouth. He wonders if he might actually die here, in this neighborhood he barely knows, at the dry, cracked hands of Jeon Jungkook. He tries desperately to think of some de-escalation tactic to get out of this interaction unscathed. He licks his lips before speaking.
“No. Of-of course not.”
Jungkook gestures to the scenery around him, as if it means something to Taehyung. Right. It should, theoretically, if Taehyung got off at this stop. Which he did, willingly.
“It’s just-” Jungkook pauses. “I feel you staring sometimes, on the bus. Which is fine. And you always walk behind me. Now I decide, on a whim, to get off way past our stop. And somehow you’re here too?” He crosses his arms, although by now Taehyung can see him physically deflate, losing some confidence in his argument. The arms settle weakly back at his side.
Taehyung can’t think of any better defense than going on offense here and pretending he has no idea what Jungkook is talking about. “In case you haven’t noticed, we are neighbors. As in, I live next door to you.”
Jungkook nods as if actually processing this as new information. “Okay.”
“So, obviously, I take the same route you do.”
Jungkook nods again. “Okay. Fine. Maybe I’m- I guess you’re not-”
“Following you,” Taehyung finishes. “No.”
“Right.”
Jungkook looks down at his feet. “Well. Bye then.”
As he goes to turn around, a sharp gust of wind whips fall leaves around the two of them. Taehyung panics at his receding figure. “Wait! Wait.” He feels his cheeks redden at the faint terror in his voice, so improper for a situation like this. “Are you going home now?”
Jungkook stops and turns around. “Yeah? Are you?”
Taehyung pauses. “Yeah. I didn’t mean to, or I wasn’t, following you, obviously. But I just moved here and I don’t really know the bus route so I was kinda… following your lead.” He thinks stupidly in his head that “follow your lead” isn’t so far off from the “following you” accusation Jungkook just threw at him. Fortunately, the other boy doesn’t catch onto this misstep. He almost doesn’t want to know the answer when he asks: “How far are we?”
Jungkook’s lips quirk up. Taehyung registers in bits and pieces, from a glance down at his upturned lips to a look back up to his crescent eyes, that he’s smiling. The expression looks new on his face, like a brand new car being tested. “50 minute walk? 40, if I’m brisk. Or there’s a…” Jungkook glances down at his tiny phone. “There’s a bus going the other way coming in 45.”
“Minutes? Jeez.” Taehyung clears his throat awkwardly. “Okay, well. I’m going back too, I guess. Can I…?” Taehyung doesn’t want to, but he feels it’s the only way to avoid further embarrassing himself by trailing Jungkook. “Can we… walk back, like…?”
Jungkook grants him the small mercy of not having to say it. Together. “Fine.”
----
Jungkook doesn’t talk much, but what he does say adds more color to his character in Taehyung’s mind. They’re in the same math class, for one, and have the same opinion on their doddering teacher. Jungkook thinks he had a failed career as a drill sergeant but likes to roleplay during class, and Taehyung barks out a laugh at that.
When they reach their floor, they come upon Jungkook’s door first. They were mid-conversation about the school football team of all things and cutting off the conversation is stilted, but Jungkook does it anyway.
“Well,” Jungkook starts, and then places his key into his knob and turns it as if to punctuate the end of the adventure.
“Thanks for leading us back,” Taehyung says, just to say something. He’s half waiting for this “freak” part of Jungkook, or his violent side or his rough-and-tumble qualities to pop out at this last moment. But they don’t, and Taehyung can’t help but feel cheated for expecting such a strong personality, maybe even a story to tell his friends, and leaving empty-handed.
“Yeah, of course.” Jungkook opens his mouth to say more when a man comes up behind the door where it’s cracked open. This must be Jungkook’s dad, Taehyung thinks, who claps a hand on his son’s shoulder as if in greeting.
If Taehyung blinked he would’ve missed it, but Jungkook shrugs the hand off so abruptly and so quick that it almost seems violent. It slips off his shoulder and the older man furrows his eyebrows. In this one action, in that shrug, Taehyung sees a glimpse in his mind of the Jungkook who grabbed onto Jackson’s collar, shaking him like a coin jar.
Taehyung takes a step back as if a veil has been lifted. His mind, as if sensing this vulnerability, pushes forth a freeze frame memory of Jungkook’s fist pummeling Jackson’s stomach, and him being pummeled in turn. He briefly curses this apartment complex and the move for introducing him to people who would only cause him trouble.
“See you around,” Taehyung says, and doesn’t stay to hear an answer as he turns around. The door shuts with a click behind his back.
----
Taehyung sees more of Jungkook after that day on the bus. Part of it’s because now that they’ve spoken, broken the silent acknowledgement that they’ll mutually ignore each other, standing side by side at the bus stop scrolling on their phones is more awkward than actually greeting one another.
At least, for Taehyung it is.
This morning, the fall breeze has morphed into more of a tornado, whipping Taehyung’s hair around from where it peeks out underneath his beanie. His mom wrapped him in more layers than a cinnamon roll to keep from catching a cold. When Taehyung sees the bus turn onto their street from a block away, he glances back at his apartment complex, anxiety bubbling up for someone he barely even knows.
He sees Jungkook burst through the double doors of their complex just as the bus chugs to a stop. The wind seems to pummel Jungkook specifically as if they have some dark history together, shoving him back as he scrambles to the bus stop. He’s wearing a thin flannel that the wind rips off one shoulder, exposing pale skin underneath that’s undoubtedly covered in goosebumps. If they weren’t both about to miss this bus, Taehyung would almost laugh at seeing Jungkook this way, so different from the grim face he wears at school or the anger in his eyes during that fight in the schoolyard.
“Are you getting on or not?” The bus driver says to Taehyung, smacking the gum in her mouth.
Taehyung keeps one foot on the bus and the other off until Jungkook stumbles to a stop behind him, giving the bus driver a sheepish smile.
Jungkook, meanwhile, is unabashedly out of breath, sucking in gasps that merge into coughs when he realizes the only air to take in is cold and sharp from the weather. He barely has time to begin shouldering his backpack off his back and pull out his transit card when Taehyung taps his own card twice.
Jungkook looks at him quizzically, chest rising up and down. He doesn’t motion to move until the bus lurches forward onto the next stop, and then Jungkook trips forward, nearly crashing into the seat opposite Taehyung, the aisle between them.
Taehyung startles. His hands reach out for Jungkook on reflex but he pulls them back. “Are you okay?”
Jungkook gives a few small nods, still panting. “You paid for me.”
“Yeah,” Taehyung says simply, thinking that saying ‘you looked like you were about to pass out’ might be too abrasive.
“Here, I can…” Jungkook takes his backpack off and makes a move to pull back one of the zippers, where presumably some wad of dollar bills resides. Taehyung shakes his head.
“Don’t worry about it,” Taehyung says. Jungkook unzips the pocket, and Taehyung feels some boldness to grab Jungkook’s sleeve, lightly yet enough to pause the motion of his arm.
“Seriously, don’t worry about it. It’s what, two bucks?”
Jungkook stares at him, unblinking. “I’ll get you next time,” Jungkook says, staring right at Taehyung. Taehyung would laugh this off, insist it’s unnecessary, but something in Jungkook’s eyes makes it clear to Taehyung it’s important to him.
“Okay.”
----
Thus begins an odd before-school limbo where, to an outside eye, Jeon Jungkook and Kim Taehyung might be considered friends.
Taehyung’s still a bit wary considering the bout of violence he observed at the start of the year, yes, but to assuage his feelings he has to look only at the tortoise-like pace with which this thing some might consider friendship is moving. A friendship lasting for the duration of each morning’s hour-long bus ride, Taehyung learns to withstand a commute he had long prepared to dread.
Jungkook covers Taehyung’s fare the next time they board, and Taehyung’s “thanks” turns into more conversation, most of which Taehyung does not mind or might even admit he enjoys. It’s not that he and Jungkook have anything in common. But Jungkook’s quiet, calm demeanor means he never interrupts Taehyung in his long spiels. One day about Stranger Things, another about Pokémon, another rant about the creator economy. Taehyung loves his friends to death, but he has to admit that it feels nice to not feel like he has to fight for airtime in conversation with Jungkook, constantly scanning for a socially appropriate spot to interrupt.
They reach a certain comfortability that Taehyung almost brings himself to ask Jungkook about that fight in the schoolyard he saw so long ago, but he stops himself. He feels some fragile balance between the Jungkook who he rides the bus with and that Jungkook who’d beat someone’s face in. Any space the fight occupies in Taehyung’s mind only serves to make him feel uneasy and unsure. He’d rather forget it ever happened.
Today when the bus pulls up to the school, it’s ill-timed, as Jungkook is actually grinning widely at a story Taehyung is telling him about his old childhood habit of stashing candy under his pillow. It’s ill-timed because the second they step off the bus, the mood between them changes like clockwork.
Taehyung watches Jungkook’s smile recede slowly as they gather their bags to leave. Taehyung, too, feels uncomfortable but powerless to do anything about it. He thinks he can almost see Jungkook slouch and shrink into himself, scooping those most sensitive parts like his personality and smile back into the bottle of his brain and screwing the cap on.
From Taehyung’s observations, he doubts Jungkook will speak with anyone else at school today. Meanwhile, Taehyung will bop around from one friend to the next, feeling bad he hasn’t responded to everyone who has texted him this week asking to catch up.
On another day, a future day, perhaps, Taehyung might ask Jungkook if he wants to join his friends for lunch. But he can’t figure out how to say it without saying the quiet part out loud, that he sees Jungkook alone all day and the boy is not as invisible as he’d like to think.
Jungkook, for his part, seems eager to get rid of Taehyung too, like he’s worried what might happen to him the longer they walk side by side.
“See you later,” Jungkook says, already beginning to walk in a different direction, taking the long way to the school gates that they’re both heading towards.
“See you,” Taehyung waves back. He feels an odd tugging in his stomach as he sees that lean figure retreat.
----
If there is one thing Taehyung is wrong about that day, it’s that Jungkook won’t speak to anyone at school.
“Don’t start with me,” Taehyung hears a familiar voice spit out in the echoing halls of the schoolbuilding. He almost walks away, so sure he’s mistaken. Taehyung has never heard Jungkook speak so gruffly, no trace of the quiet boy from the bus.
“Here we go again,” Jimin says from beside Taehyung. Taehyung has, for lack of a better word, truncated his tales of riding the bus with Jungkook, so he’s sure he means it as a joke when Jimin says: “Isn’t that your friend?”
When Taehyung pushes past enough layers of people in the crowd surrounding Jungkook and another boy, he can finally see what’s in front of him, although he’s still too trapped in the crowd to push forward. Taehyung has to suppress a groan at the hulking figure in the circle with Jungkook. The other boy, Michael, is in the year above. He would always crumple up papers and throw it at their kind math teacher’s head when she turned to the board.
“We had a deal,” Michael says. The crowd surrounding the two seem to add fuel to his confidence, so when he says this next he addresses the crowd rather than Jungkook: “I’m going to fail this fucking class because of you, and you’re going to pay for it.”
Jungkook stares off into space, avoiding eye contact with the boy. “Did you also get held back two years because of me? Or was that your fault too?”
The crowd erupts in oooh’s and aaah’s, some cackles escaping the group. Taehyung tries to piece together what this fight is about. Did this guy expect Jungkook to do his homework? To anyone else Jungkook might look uncaring, even cruel, leaning against the lockers. At the start of this school year, Taehyung would have thought so too.
But now, Taehyung can see his hands are shaking.
When the laughter peeters out, the burst of motion is so fast, so without warning, that Taehyung could almost mistake it for two cats tangled up in each other. Michael wrings Jungkook by the neck and slams the side of his face against the lockers, creating a thwacking sound like a bag of rice hitting concrete. Then he brings his leg out to kick Jungkook’s own out from under him, and he lands in a heap on his back. His arms dart out uselessly at his side in a failed attempt to break the fall.
Just as fast as this burst of anger ran through the older boy, it seems to turn into disinterest. He grabs his bag, peers over Jungkook as if examining a bug on the floor, and leans back to launch a wad of spit at the boy as he curls into himself. The aim of the spit is off just slightly and lands on Jungkook’s arm, rather than, presumably, his face. With that, Michael walks away.
Taehyung’s heart is beating a mile a minute. He manages to push past a couple people as they begin to walk away, sensing that the fight - if you’d call it that - is over. He stares at a few of them incredulously, wondering how they can live with themselves, seeing one of their classmates get thrown around and then simply walking away like they’re leaving a fucking concert venue. Then he thinks back to the beginning of this year and realizes he’s in no place to talk.
When Taehyung finally reaches Jungkook, he’s standing over the boy as if looming, and no words come out of his mouth.
Taehyung shakes his head to try to force some good ideas in there and decides to crouch down so he’s eye-level with Jungkook, who is clutching the side of his face.
“It’s me,” Taehyung says, stupidly. Yet it’s the first time they’ve ever spoken on school grounds. Jungkook says nothing, his eyes squeezed shut from pain.
“We should get you to the nurse,” Taehyung says softly. He winces at the blood dripping out between Jungkook’s fingers where they’re pressed against his cheek. “You might have a concussion. Can you stand up?”
Jungkook winces again. “Yeah.”
Taehyung glances behind him, where Jimin is standing a few paces away with a scared look on his face. Taehyung nods his head to Jimin, motioning to the boy on the floor.
“I’m Jimin,” Jimin says unhelpfully as he helps Taehyung peel Jungkook off the floor. Although they pull his weight up equally, the second he’s standing Jungkook leans his weight against Taehyung, who stumbles for a couple steps before mostly regaining his balance.
“Sorry I didn’t come earlier,” Taehyung rushes to explain. “I didn’t see the beginning of what you guys- and there were too many people to- like, I couldn’t reach you.”
“It’s fine,” Jungkook says quietly. He straightens himself out and disentangles his arms from both Taehyung and Jimin. Taehyung can still see a bit of wetness on one of them from the spit, which makes him shiver.
Jungkook glances at them both and gives them a quick nod, as if in thanks, and starts for the end of the hallway. Taehyung grabs his arm on impulse to stop him. “The nurse is that way.”
Jungkook pulls his arm back. “I know,” he says. “I’m fine.”
Taehyung opens and closes his mouth, searching for a response. “You’ve, like, got some blood on your… everywhere,” he says. “You need to go,” he adds, perhaps a bit too strongly, because Jungkook takes a step back from him.
Taehyung expects some sort of response, at least, even if it’s an irritated one, like that Jungkook who threw a punch at Jackson all those months ago. Instead, Jungkook brings the collar of his shirt up to his cheek to wipe some blood away from his cuts and begins walking with purpose in the opposite direction.
“Wait,” Taehyung says. He takes off into a jog down the hall, Jimin left on the other end. “Don’t walk out- Jungkook!”
Jungkook quickens his pace down the hallway, limping slightly. Taehyung is scared, for some reason, at seeing his shadow retreat, so when he finally catches up he reaches out to grab the back of Jungkook’s shirt, which yanks Jungkook to a halt in a way that has Taehyung letting go as if burned and Jungkook spinning back around to face him, seething.
“What, would you like a go at me too?” Jungkook gestures at his face, his quiet voice filled with anger. Taehyung winces, realizing with horror that his grip has actually created a tear in the collar of Jungkook’s shirt.
“Of course not,” Taehyung says. “I just think-”
“Please leave me alone.”
Taehyung frowns. “You need help.”
Jungkook scoffs, an incredulous smile on his face, so different from the small smile Taehyung managed to pull from him on the ride to school. “We have been in the same class since second grade. Did you know that?”
Taehyung stays quiet, feeling a rush of blood rise to his cheeks. Because no, he didn’t.
Jungkook turns to begin walking away, but before he does, he calls out coldly from over his shoulder: “Right. Listen, you’ve done a fine job ignoring I existed all your life. Don’t stop now.”
And he stumbles out.