"There ain't no woman scrutinized
More than that a visibly pregnant,
With a future beheld in her belly,
Growing on people's judgement.

The worth of man and nature,
Experience and Illusion.
She had wondered,
Was it really her that had conceived?
Or was it the mother in her that did."

⊱ ───ஓ๑♡๑ஓ ─── ⊰

"Mai!" Seokjin had gasped when he rushed to the poor girls room after hearing her scream. It was only an hour past midnight and the town was dead asleep. Seokjin couldn't sleep that night.

His mind repeatedly went back to the letter Lee Cheon Seok had written to him. Cheon Seok was heavily injured but the war was supposed to last only 2 more weeks. Cheon Seok had written that he had recently lost some blood but was effectively convalescing.

He had also revealed that his beloved was expecting their first child and should be nearly 38 weeks. A free spirit.

Seokjin had choked on his glass noodles that evening, coughing while laughing. He had zero ideas on whether he was tremendously happy or afraid to death. 38 weeks, that's a risky pregnancy time! And Cheon Seok wasn't even sure if his girlfriend, Seokjin's Mai, was exactly 38 weeks or more. What would he do if she had an early delivery? Why hadn't she told anybody?

Why does she not look like a pregnant woman? Or was it only he who couldn't notice the visible indication that she was carrying a life inside her?

Seokjin was mildly laughing and blushing, he was very happy for the two. He was only planning a wedding for them when he heard his Mai screaming upstairs. Seokjin rushed to see her partially passed out on the floor, a thin stream of fluid flowing from her vagina. She was tired and moaning in pain, her hand clasped onto her stomach.

"Mai, wh-what... What do I do? What, Mai!"

"Get... Get some... somebody." She spoke heavier.

"God, who?"

"Some midwife, please."

"Mid... Midwife, who's a midwife... Ahyun! Ahyun!" Seokjin yelled at his highest pitch, waking up most of the children and the adults living in the facility. His wife, Kim Ahyun, had their two year old daughter in her arms when she ran towards the source of her husband's voice.

"What? Why are you so panicked?"

"Mai, she... She was pregnant!"

"Eh? What?" Ahyun was momentarily frozen and then burst out in a fit of laughter, full of joy.

"Ahyun, we don't have the time to celebrate. She's in labour, her water broke. We need a midwife!"

"Eh? What?" No other words left her mouth. The words that came out of joy a while ago turned into a cold dread almost immediately. It was well past midnight, everyone in the village was asleep. And no woman was going to get to their aid. How would they get a doctor between the war?

Had they known she was pregnant, they'd have prepared everything.

Cheon Seok's girlfriend screamed, the pain of labour taking over her. It almost felt like the cry of a dying woman, her bones and skull being crushed under a hydraulic press.

Without wasting any further time, Ahyun put her now wide awake daughter in a crib in the nursery and ran again to get Seokjin a coat, a hat and some boots. Making him wear them, she pushed him outside the facility and ordered him to get any doctor available at any cost, even if it needed him to die.

Afraid that his death wasn't in getting any doctor but in his own wife's hands if he disobeyed, he pulled out his father's old car to drive to the nearest city and get a doctor.

Ahyun then went upstairs again and with the help of a few more older girls, they picked the convulsing lady and layed her on her bed. Ahyun had gently started instructing the girl to push the baby out from her own experiences when Seokjin came back with the only doctor at duty that night in Catholic Medical Institution under his father's church.

Around two hours later, with the first ray of the sun, the loud cry of a blooming baby rang with the melodious chirps of the first morning birds that floated and mixed with the open horizon. Free spirits, unabated by wars.

"She's got her mother's eyes." Ahyun whispered as she cautiously put the baby on her mother's chest.

"Ju Gyeong. A free spirit."

⊱ ───ஓ๑♡๑ஓ ─── ⊰

Friendship is like a stubborn child who is playing hide and seek with your life. When you find the child, his smile will light up the darkness of your life.

I had read it on a banner in the NY Square, advertising some small cafe in the locality, last summer. An old friend of uncle Lee was meeting up with him that day. How old could I be? 15 maybe. But that quotation that I had read was well embellished in my brain.

Like the sharp chisel sculpting knife, which I was holding in my hands, I was feeling heavier every time I thought of the upcoming campaign. I had already skipped the yearly campaign twice and now, I was no more a fresher, nor could I escape the wrath of my classmate had I skipped the event again.

And to add bitterness over the existing acrid mood, they made me the leader this time.

I was almost done carving the last bit of the wood I was sculpting when I heard the door to the living room open. Jimin stood at the doorway, peeking outside the room as he shut it behind him. I had thought, what's this about? But I didn't voice it out.

"Oi, Jk, listen," I nodded for him to speak further but he only grinned an ear to ear smile. His face was absurdly sweet and beautiful, the reason why his grin did not come off as creepy, but had he been a little uglier, I promise that people would have slapped the smile out of him.

"What?" My knife scraped the collar of the figure as I hummed in silence.

"Want a pizza?"

"Heh? Well, sure, I mean." I looked at him with confusion in my eyes. He was frickle minded and I had to struggle to understand what he wanted to me understand.

He closed the door behind him and silently trotted next to me. We'd usually leave the doors to all the rooms open except when we were changing, yes. And it was the first time that Jimin shut a door. He has a fear of being alone so he never closes the door to his room. The only time he does is when a patient has visited his chamber, just to maintain personal privacy.

My gaze was still affixed to him. He calmly sat down and shrieked at a higher pitch, sending shivers down my spine.

"What's the matter? Why are you behaving weirdly?"

"Man, man, dude! Guess what?"

"What?" The excitement on his face made me want to question something vulgar but we'll not mention it. It's... Honestly not the best.

"I have tea."

"Uhuh? Spill it, bruh!" Living with my sister made me lose some of my typical rules and habits and the last two years had made Jimin my closest friend, keeping Y/n aside. They were correct. Jimin seemed to be a very hardcore practical person at the beginning but I have started to believe that it was just the eggshell. His soul resonates with an unreasonable labrador.

"Your sister, Antonella, might be the charm this year."

"What's the charm thing?"

"An honorary award. If she can remain the Ms. Popular this year at the year end fest, she'll be the charm. No one has got it in the last 23 years."

"Mr. Park Jimin-"

"Dr. Park Jimin. Yes, please proceed." I left a breath of exasperation, mimicking him as I restarted my statement.

"Dr. Park Jimin, being awarded an honorary badge when you deserve it is not a tea! A tea must include an affair, a gossip and something dramatic. This is not a tea. It's a fact."

"Oh! So you like drama?"

"Well, yeah. Antonella was a theatre kid. My mother was too. I have seen videos of my aunt and my mother doing theatre at our grandparents'."

"You clearly know that I'm not talking about a play." Jimin frowned at me, taking a huge bite of a pizza.

"Where's my pizza?" Jimin gave me one last frown before he passed me a slice of Margherita. I dropped my chisel on the counter top as I grinned to myself, imagining Jimin's puffed up puppy dog face.

Jimin ate in silence, sparing me occasional looks until his gaze fell upon my half sculpted woman, the woman who I dreamed about.

"Who's she that you're sculpting?"

"Hmm?"

"Who's the muse for the figure?"

"I don't know. I just imagined it."

"Ah! Cool. Her eye is so captivating, like the depth of the ocean. But why does her face have only half the features?" A ding in my head asked me to tell him that it was incomplete but the whistles in my heart reminded me how I only knew half of her face.

"I actually only know half of the face." I blurted the truth.

"Uhuh, that's okay. You don't need to tell the exact truth. Why don't you name it, incompletion?"

"Incompletion, why?"

"Wel, people could interpret it anyhow they are feeling like. People who feel they're incomplete will think that this figure portrays their feelings. People who usually leave things undone will think that the artist went useless and left it undone like them. Victims of abuse, harassment or acid attack might consider that this beautiful lady was tortured to the extent that one part of her is now destroyed."

"I didn't think of it this way. I needed it to be done by tonight to present it in the class. I can finally leave it the way it is." Over the time, although Jimin and I were just dumb and dumber, I had found the intellectual but vulnerable boy in him. Y/n had told me, that he is but a deeper ocean.

"Psychology, child. I'm a psychiatrist. People with different types of psychology are bound to relate to art differently. Yes, at the end of the day you can make a joke and say the truth, though." We both chuckled at it. I saw Jimin exhale heavy breaths of exhaustion as he stared at the sculpture with moist eyes.

I took away both our plates and ran an errand around the house to get Antonella's camera. From behind the door, I took a shot of him. I could sculpt him for friendship day.

When I came back, he was still engrossed in his own world. I shook my throat, alerting him about my presence and asked,

"What do you think of?"

"Hmm?" He was jerked from his thoughts.

"Different psychological situations think of it differently. What does your psychology makes you think?"

"Mine? I think of some tragedy. I think of pain, loneliness, loss and anything that makes you sad. I think of it like dust."

"Dust? Why dust?"

"Jeon Jungkook, there is an obsolete word. Dustsceawang. It literally translates to the contemplation of dust. Here, dust is not just the mere fine particles present in our atmosphere. It's the past. It's pain that the past holds. Imagine, sometime during the war, a couple were broken when the husband went for the military and never returned. The dust from his ashes and the pain in her life. That is dustsceawang."

"What hurts you, hyung?" I asked, sitting right next him.

"Well, it all started with my mother and ended with my mother."

______________________________

Happy Ten Years, Bangtan!

I wasn't going to update this week again but how can I not on a day like this?

What do you think of this chapter?

Dustsceawang? Anyone else?