A buzzing ache encircled Jungkook’s head as he woke up the next day, and it persisted even after he drank plenty of water and enjoyed his morning coffee in the living, watching TV shows.

He eventually took an aspirin, and just minutes later, the shooting pain relented. He made a mental note not to mix his drinks from now on.

Two knocks stirred him out of his nest of comfort on the couch, and he pattered closer to the door. “Who is it?”

“It’s me.”

An instant firmness gripped at Jungkook’s muscles at the sound of Seokjin’s voice. “What are you doing here?”

“Kook, give me a chance. Just listen to me, please.”

Jungkook considered the situation. He knew Seokjin for years, and he had never said something so hurtful to him before. He was curious to know why he did it, too. Seokjin had to have a reason. And Jungkook was ready to hear it.

Jungkook slid the door open and peeked at him. He recognized Seokjin’s frown with traces of remorse and sorrow at once. He ducked his head and settled down on the couch.

Seokjin followed him and sank down next to him. “Jungkook... You know I didn’t mean it like that, right?”

Something flashed through Jungkook that left behind spikes of sudden fury. Sure, he was ready to hear his explanation, but not his bullshit. “Cut the crap, hyung. I’m so pissed at you. How can you say that about me? You know me for so many years now. How can you think so little about me? Because of what happened with Jaebum?”

Seokjin nodded slowly. “But I only said it because I didn’t want you to sleep with someone just because again. That’s not like you, Kook. You deserve so much more.”

“Do you know why I even slept with Jaebum in the first place? Because I couldn’t stop thinking about Taehyung. He was an asshole to me when I met him, and I couldn’t get him out of my mind. And that made me fucking scared. Because I didn’t want to fall for someone again and have my heart broken again. And I thought that sleeping with Jaebum will help me forget him. But that never happened.”

The sadness in Seokjin’s eyes got cloaked by overwhelming surprise. “You have fallen for him?”

“You have fallen for him!?”

Jungkook jolted at the shrill voice of his other best friend, and he snapped his head to the door. “What the hell?” He scurried there and opened it, only to find Jimin smiling awkwardly. “Why are you here?”

“I came with Seokjin, but I wanted to give you guys some time to figure out your shit or whatever,” Jimin said as he walked past him and sat on the couch.

“And by give us some time you mean eavesdrop on our conversation?”

“That’s not the point, Jungkook. Have you really fallen for Taehyung?” Jimin asked with any playfulness now discarded.

Jungkook bit his lip as he joined them. “Yes. And I don’t like that.”

“Kook, I didn’t know,” Seokjin uttered. “I’m sorry for what I said, really. You know all the things Yoongi had said about Taehyung. I just wanted to protect you. I’m really sorry.”

“I guess if I had talked to you about it, you wouldn’t have said that...” Jungkook whispered, as the dawning realization of where he was wrong landed on his shoulders like a rock.

“I just thought Taehyung was flirting like he always does. And I didn’t want you to get hurt. I don’t want you to get hurt.”

“Oh please, Taehyung isn’t just flirting,” Jimin scoffed. “He looks at you and melts under your gaze.”

“Shut up!” Jungkook snickered.

“But seriously. I don’t think it’s just a game for him. He seems different. Compared to when we met him, he has changed a lot,” Jimin said.

Jungkook nodded, then anchored his regard on Seokjin. “Hyung. I’m sorry too. I made a scene in front of everyone and you just wanted to talk to me.”

Seokjin enclosed him into his embrace. “It’s okay. I know I pushed you when I shouldn’t have.”

“Yay!” Jimin cheered as he joined the hug, making the others giggle. “So, have you confessed?”

Jungkook crept away from the loving embrace and glanced around the room in a moment’s awkwardness. “Kind of?”

“What do you mean kind of?” Seokjin asked.

“I didn’t actually say that I’ve fallen for him. I just said some other things and that I like him.”

“Why?” Jimin grimaced.

“Because! I don’t know...”

“Jeon Jungkook. Don’t tell me he confessed, and you didn’t say anything.” Jimin’s voice carried a severity that had Jungkook turning his head away from them, and he realized. “Jungkook! What the hell? You've fallen for him, too. Why haven’t you confessed yet?”

“Because when I do, it’s going to get real, hyung! When I admit it just like that to Taehyung, it’ll become real. And I don’t know if I’m ready for that.”

“Kook,” Seokjin called in a soft tune. “It’s already real. It was real when you first felt it. It was real when Taehyung confessed to you. It’s real, even right now. You’re just scared and don’t want to admit it.”

“But guys... Isn’t it the same thing every time you meet someone new? You fall for them, you think about them all the time, you want to see them every day, you think you’re going to die if you don’t see them. You say this time will be different. And you really believe this time is different. But is it different? How can you know that? How can you tell which one of the relationships you had was true or not? How can you tell if it was true love or not? How can you be sure this time is going to be true love? How can you be sure this time everything will work out?”

Jimin gazed at the younger with a notion of surprise at his outburst. “Wow, where did all of this come from?”

“I’ve been thinking lately since he said he has feelings.”

“Okay, let’s talk about it then.” Seokjin offered a soothing smile to him. “So you said how can you be sure this time it’s true love and blah blah, right? But the truth is, you can’t know. Isn’t that what everybody says? You can’t be sure about anything. You just have to dive in and see what happens?”

“Exactly what I was thinking.” Jungkook nodded. “So after a relationship has ended, what are the criteria to say it was really true love?”

“I don’t know.” Jimin shrugged an idle shoulder. “If it was love, you just know it, right?”

“I’m not sure. I’m so fucking confused right now. I mean, you have to be with the other person for more than, I don’t know, six months? One year? To say it was a solid relationship. To say you could develop feelings for the other person,” Jungkook said.

“I’m not sure about that,” Jimin disagreed. “You can develop feelings for someone within a month, even a week! I’ve seen that happen.”

“But you can’t know if it really is love. It’s too soon!”

“But it can—”

“Okay, wait.” Jungkook sprang from his seat and stood in front of them. “It’s that feeling, you know? When you meet someone new and you feel you’re going to die if you don’t see them, even for one day. It’s that feeling. But can you really say you love the other person even if you’re together for just a week? Can you say it was true love even if you broke up after a month? In that case, it wasn’t true love for sure.”

“It can be another type of love. You don’t know,” Jimin mumbled and tsked at the disapproving glare the other two shot him.

“Really? Another type of love that ends within a month?” Jungkook huffed. “And what even is love? I surely don’t know what it is because I’m here with you guys and think and think, and I don’t have any answers. I’ve fallen for someone before. I know what it is, but that’s different from love because true love doesn’t ever end, right? So it wasn’t love. It was something. No one says otherwise — it was something, but it wasn’t true love. Because true love doesn’t end. I mean, it’s another thing to love someone, and it’s another thing to just care about someone.”

“Wait, what do you mean?” Seokjin asked.

Jungkook wilted next to them again. “It’s like when you have a lot of friends or just people from school or work. You talk to them and you care about them in a way that you ask about how they are. If something happens to them, you’re concerned and you ask what happened and all these things. You care, but that doesn’t mean you love them, right?”

“I’ve never thought about it that way,” Jimin uttered as a whirlwind of haziness seeped into his eyes.

“Yeah, you have a point,” Seokjin added, still processing everything he heard.

“I know, right? I just thought about it, too.” A faint smile tugged at Jungkook’s lips as he felt like he could understand a few things better now that he discussed them with his friends. “So one thing is for sure. Love isn’t the same thing as caring about someone.”

“Well, yeah,” Jimin sighed.

“Why do you seem so depressed, hyung?”

“Because you just destroyed everything I knew about love and relationships and stuff! I thought I knew about love. I mean, I had relationships, but now I don’t know if they were true loves or not because they ended, so that means I didn’t have a true love. And what about Yoongi? I’m with Yoongi and I just have to wait and see if it really is true love. That’s what you’re saying right now.”

“I broke you,” Jungkook teased, but his taunting smile turned into a feigned pout at the slap Jimin delivered on his shoulder. “It was a joke, and that hurt!”

“Oh shut up,” Jimin hissed.

“Okay, okay, so... Oh, let’s take you as an example.” Jungkook rose to his feet again and pointed at Jimin.

“Can’t you just stay still for like a minute?” Seokjin sneered.

Jungkook stared at him in a moment’s quietness. “No,” he chirped. “So you and Minjae! You guys—”

“Why would you even bring him up?” Jimin whined.

“It’s for science.”

“But I hate that guy.”

“But you loved him once.”

“But he broke up with me for no reason.”

“Exactly to my point! So you had a relationship with that assface and it ended. Where did all those feelings go?”

“His feelings didn’t go anywhere because they never existed!”

Jungkook chuckled at Jimin’s adorable, angered tone and sat next to him. “Let me tell you what I think. A lot of times when a relationship ends, we confuse the ‘I still love them’ with the memories we have with them. You were with this person for a long time and you got to know them. You got used to being with them, spending your day with them, going out together and doing all these kinds of things together. So when something leaves — when you don’t have something in your life that you really want anymore, or when something even gets taken away from you when you got used to this thing or person or whatever, you feel empty.

“You remember how much you cried, right? And you kept saying you love him and that you can’t live without him, but the truth is, you didn’t love him anymore. And honestly, you never did. You just felt something. I don’t know what it was, but it wasn’t love. Because love is mutual. I mean, you can’t love a person alone. You can care about them, you can want them, you can even fall for them alone, but for actual love? It takes two. You said it yourself. He didn’t feel anything for you. My opinion is he did, but it wasn’t strong enough. You guys weren’t meant to be, and it’s okay. And the same applies to me and Bogum. I cried my eyes out for him, but not because I couldn’t live without him. But just because I wanted to have someone.”

“He really made me feel like he loves me, though, and I thought I loved him too,” Jimin whispered.

“Well, it wasn’t love. And the question now is, if it wasn’t love, what was it?” Jungkook’s gaze seesawed between the two, waiting for them to say something.

Jimin and Seokjin shared a look before setting their eyes on the younger. “Are you asking us? Personally, I have no idea! And I’m expecting answers from you!” Jimin said.

“Same!”

“From me?”

“You started this shit,” Jimin said. “Finish it!”

“But I don’t—”

“No, no, think and talk. You can’t leave us like this now,” Seokjin stated, folding his arms over his chest.

A sonorous sigh buzzed in Jungkook’s throat as his brain worked overtime to think of something to continue with. “Okay so... All the I love yous you said, and he said to you, what was their purpose? What did they mean? Some people say true love is to care about someone, but the truth is, you can care about someone even if you don’t love them. It’s exactly what I was saying before. So what you felt probably was the ‘you have fallen for him’ part.

“Sometimes we confuse the enthusiasm with falling for someone, and in the exact same way, we confuse the ‘I care about you’ with the ‘I love you’. You had fallen for him, but he was just thrilled. It was just his enthusiasm. As time passed, this feeling disappeared and nothing was left, so he broke up with you. That’s why they say everything takes time, and time here is important. You need time to see if your feelings and the other’s feelings are real, and you need time to get over a breakup too. So yeah, time is important in everything. And see? You forgot about him at some point and you met Yoongi, too.”

“Well, I didn’t think I could move on. He didn’t even give me answers. He just said we have to break up and, like, disappeared...”

“But you did. Also, I don’t believe that someone can’t move on from a previous relationship to another. That’s just not possible because if you really want to move on, if you really want to get better and forget about how that person hurt you or whatever happened, I think you can do it, but only if you really want to. Maybe you weren’t ready yet, you know, to move on. But when you made that decision, you were happy again.”

“Why didn’t you think about all those things when you broke up with Bogum and instead locked yourself in your house and cried your eyes out for him?” Seokjin asked.

“I guess I didn’t think about it like that then. And I wasn’t ready to move on. But then I just moved on.”

“Are we done? My head hurts,” Jimin whined.

“Of course not! My questions are still unanswered, hyung.”

“What else is there to talk about?”

“Well... In every person you meet, what makes you think this time will be different? I really don’t have an answer to this. And honestly, I don’t think there is an answer. You just have to go along with it and see what happens, right?”

“I guess so, yes,” Seokjin said.

“But what happens when you meet someone who has never fallen in love before? Who doesn’t even know what the idea of love means? You said this time you’ll start slow, take your time to develop feelings if there’s a chance and so on. What happens then?”

Jimin studied the contemplative frown that settled over Jungkook’s features. “Are we talking about you and Taehyung now?”

“Of course, assface.”

“The name-calling wasn’t necessary, but okay, I’ll take it.”

The grimness hanging around Jungkook’s face abated with the snort he released. “So you meet this guy and he’s such a sweet, beautiful boy and the only thing you want to do is hold him close and give him all the love he needs. He opens up to you and makes you feel things you thought you’ll never feel again because of your asshole ex-boyfriend. He makes you think about him all the time. He makes you care about him from the very first day. You said to yourself you’ll take it easy and not that serious from the beginning. But how can you do that when someone can be so amazing as him? And on top of that, he says I’ve fallen for you out of the blue.”

“Did he really just blurt it out?” Seokjin asked in disbelief.

“Yeah... I think it’s because I’m different from all the other boys he met before. You know him. He was just fucking boys, and he was so empty. And now saying he has fallen for me just made me want to give him everything. All the care and love, even. That’s why I’m so confused. Is love even a real thing? Can you give it to someone else? Can you learn to someone else how to love if you give them all the love or whatever it is you have? What does it really mean to love someone? Is it when you say you would do everything for the other person? Is it when you have the need to protect them at any cost? When you feel like dying if something happens to them? Is it when you feel shattered just because they’re hurting? To miss them all the time? But isn’t this the same thing with falling for someone? What separates love from falling for someone? When you fall for someone, you feel all these things I said before and more. So is it love? Or is it just you who has fallen?”

“I think I’m braindead.” Jimin buried his face in his hands and massaged his temples, frustrated.

“Me too,” Seokjin murmured.

“Guys, I’m serious.”

“Me too!” Jimin snapped. “I don’t know what to say. I don’t even know what to think!”

Jungkook sighed once again. “Well, I always believed that when you meet someone, you fall for them first, and when this adrenaline or rush or whatever you feel in the beginning kind of fades away, then love comes. Because you can love someone forever, but you can’t feel that adrenaline or rush the ‘falling for someone’ part has forever. It’s human nature. We get used to things and people and everything in life. And it’s normal. It’s okay.

“Take for example a married couple. Let’s say they’ve been together for six years or more. They don’t feel how they felt at the beginning, in the first month, for example. It’s not possible. Their feelings calm down. They become more stable. So when that happens, love comes. If love doesn’t come after this phase, it means it wasn’t real. That’s why I believe that people get bored. If you get bored of the other person, you never truly loved them. You had just fallen for them at the beginning, and when those feelings faded, nothing remained. So probably you didn’t really love the other person. You just cared about them and you were having a good time with them and you wanted them, but that doesn’t mean that you loved them.”

“I really don’t have any thoughts,” Seokjin said.

“Can love exist for a short period of time?”

The two boys narrowed their eyes on him. “After everything you said, do you really believe it can?” Jimin sneered.

“I guess no, right? Realistically no, it can’t exist. It’s just the ‘falling for someone’ part than the actual ‘love’. But we call it love, and I guess it’s okay. Love never hurt anyone. The break up hurt us, yes, but not the actual love.”

“You continue to confuse the hell out of me,” Jimin sighed.

“I don’t know myself if what I just said even makes sense. But my real question is what I asked in the beginning. Isn’t it the same thing every time you meet someone new? What makes this new person different? What about this person makes you say this time is different? That this time it’ll work out okay?” Jungkook reached for his phone from the coffee table once he heard it beep.

Taehyung: Can we meet?

His lips formed a delicate smile, and an inexplicable warmth erupted right in the center of his chest. He locked his phone and set it on the table as he fixed his eyes on his hyungs.

“Now that I think about it, it could be exactly that. That person. Their personality. The way they make you feel. The things they do for you and the things they say. The things they make you want to do for them. There are a lot of things I can say, but I won’t. So it could be that. Everything about that new person. Because everyone is different in their own way. And every single person who comes into your life has something to teach you, something to give you, and sometimes, something to take. That’s life. In the beginning, it can feel like it’s the same story all over again, but as time goes by, you can see it’s not if it really isn’t. And this time, I feel it really isn’t. Because the feelings are mutual. Because he’s real. Because he has nothing to hide and no purpose to hurt me. He is real. And that makes me want to give him everything I have.”

“So we’re talking about Taehyung again,” Jimin said with a faint chuckle.

“Wow, Kook, you’ve really fallen—” Three knocks on the door silenced Seokjin’s remark.

Jungkook frowned as he stood up. “Who is it?”

“It’s me.”

Jungkook’s heart lunged into a galloping frenzy. The one person he craved to see the most appeared at his doorstep, bringing the warmest of smiles to his face.

⚜✳⚜