Jungkook

 
“Why do you sound so gloomy today? Is something bothering you, Sarang?” I ask her as I rake a hand through my hair; the tone of my voice reflects the turbulence that her unusually high silence, and single-word responses have caused within my chest.

“It’s nothing,” she sighs softly, clearly covering up something from me.

“Sarang,” I breathe out, “You’ll feel better if you talk about it… Share with me,” my voice lowers, trying to convince her to pour out her worries to me.

“No, it’s really not one thing that happened… I’ve just-” she pauses a second, and then she exhales softly before she continues, “it’s just my insecurities getting the better of me for no particular reason today. I don’t know, I just think I’m a misfit. Appearance-wise, career-wise, my relationship status-wise… I just don’t fit the standards,” she says in a sad tone that makes me sad too.

“Sarang, who sets the standards anyway?” I ask her, and she remains silent, which bothers me. But I continue. “Did someone else make you feel this way?”

“No, but if my mind is someone else, then yes.”

I let out a long breath through my parted lips as I roll onto my side, pulling a pillow to my chest and holding it tight. I know how hard it can be to tackle one’s own insecurities, and sometimes the people around us are the ones who start the fire. But, often times, it is the mind which causes more suffering. I’ve been there way too many times, and even though the gloomiest days may not last long, it still passes faster when we focus on practicing self-love.

“Let’s do something. Do you like doing little tasks for yourself? Maybe even challenging yourself a little?” My question makes her let out an unimpressed ‘huh’ because speaking of challenges might have seemed something inappropriate and unrelated at the moment when she said that she was feeling insecure.

“Yeah, I’m serious. Do you like taking up challenges? Being fully honest and up for doing random things without cheating,” I ask more seriously this time.

“Like what?”

“I won’t tell you over the phone… Hmm…” My eyebrows gather together, and my lips twist into a pout as I think about it for a second. “How about I send you a self-love challenge every day? Or one after the other? In a letter? Because that’s fun, right?” I chuckle at my proposal.

“Are you going to give me challenges to perform?” Sarang’s voice goes up an octave, surprised by what I just told her.

“Yeah, you heard me right.”

“You’re going to ask me to sing in public, aren’t you?” She laughs heartily, and I laugh softly too.

“So that’s something you’re not comfortable doing, is it? Thank you for the suggestion. I’ll make sure to include that one.”

“NO!” She shouts and then bursts out laughing again. “Don’t you do that to me. I will abandon the challenge if you include this one,” she says while still giggling.

“I can’t guarantee that, and abandoning isn’t even an option, my love,” I lay on my back, keeping the phone glued to my ear, and the line goes silent for a while.

It takes me a few seconds to realize that I accidentally called her ‘my love’, and it probably made her feel awkward.

Clearing my throat in a weak attempt to mask the strangeness in the air, I speak more cautiously, “I’m sorry. It just came out in the flow of the moment…” I wait for her to speak.

“That’s okay, no one ever calls me that anyway,” Sarang chuckles softly.

It tempts me to call her ‘my love’ again and again, just so I could possibly hear her blushy giggles, but I hold back not wanting to seem too desperate, and I choose to divert the topic back to where it started.

“About your challenges, look forward to your first one tomorrow,” I say confidently, already lining up a few ideas within my mind.

“Tomorrow? Wow! That’s too fast. And how many days are we doing this? I don’t really know if I can do any of it,” she is sliding into panic mode.

“Just seven days, and I will promptly send you a new challenge as and when you finish one. Look forward to it.”

“Why am I so nervous now? God! But did I say that I’m doing this anyway?” She questions me, or more like she’s questioning herself, and I find it cute when she starts to whine a little.

“You can do this. Trust me, and I won’t go too hard on you,” I say in a softer voice that makes her go quiet, and she only hums in response. Soon, we end the call, after which I instruct my phone to place a call to Taehyung, telling him to come over as fast as he could.

It takes him a very long time to arrive, almost seeming like a few long hours to me, after which I hear him entering my office room. He is taking stealthy steps, completely forgetting the fact that I can sense that way better than anyone else. His move also clearly gives away that he is about to cook up some lies for taking so long to get here, and then pretend to be irritated because I interrupted whatever ‘important’ activity that he was doing already before I called him here.

“Grab a paper and sit down, Taehyung,” I speak calmly while still seated in my chair; my words bringing his pattering steps to a complete halt.

He says nothing but only clears his throat a little, and then I hear him pulling a paper out of the stack of unused letterhead sheets that’s resting on my desk. He then aggressively plops his body down on one of the chairs, noisily dragging the chair closer to the desk thereafter.

My whole face scrunches at all the unwanted noises he’s making right now, but I have to bear with it because he was probably in the midst of something that had to do with Mi-Seul most definitely, and it’s understandable that he’s expressing his disappointment in having to look at me now instead of her.

He doesn’t ask me what to write, but the solemn clicking sound of his thumb pushing the plunge on the pen indicates that he is ready to write whatever I have to say.

“Dear Sarang,” I begin, and he clicks his tongue in frustration because he has probably already written that out.

“Alright,” I exhale and lean back in my seat. “I’m so excited to start giving you these little challenges starting from today, and I hope you will do them all fairly. Trust me, these are all little things which will help you outgrow so many of your fears and insecurities, and at the beginning, it may feel like I’m trying to mock you, or it could even seem like you’re being silly. But sometimes being silly and simple is all it takes to stop thinking too much about things. So, are you ready for it?” I find myself smiling as I’m narrating the content of my letter to Taehyung.

“May I ask you why you are still writing to her when you already have her phone number? You can tell this over the phone, can’t you?” Taehyung interrupts; his words are punctuated by the sound of the pen landing on top of the desk.

“This is more fun, but yeah, I also talk to her. This, however, can be done only through letters,” I flash my teeth in a big smile, and I know he probably rolled his eyes and cursed me, but I’ll let that all pass because I need his help now and always.

“Whatever, continue,” he scoffs, and I lean forward to rest my hands on the desk as I continue narrating.

“Okay, so the first challenge is this,” I begin, and Taehyung interrupts once again.

“Wait, what? First challenge? So how many more do you have?”

“Oh, this is for seven days, and I plan on sending her a new challenge every time she completes one challenge successfully. I’d be asking her to do little tasks for herself and challenges that she can appreciate herself for,” I pause for a breath and Taehyung remains silent.

“Taehyung, I know this is going to be really boring for you, but if I could write on my own, I would do it myself, and I really want to help her feel better about herself. I want her to be confident of who she is, what she does, and how she looks, and I want her to know that she is enough. No one needs to validate her, and no one should be able to make her believe otherwise. She also has some toxic people in her life that make her sad very often, and if there’s something, anything that I can do to make her believe in herself and love herself, then I want to do that,” I pour out to Taehyung, feeling a little helpless for being so dependent on him this way.

“Jungkookie,” he breathes out after a few seconds, “thank you.” Taehyung’s voice sounds as if he is speaking with a smile, and it makes me smile too.

“It’s the best I could do. Okay, so going back to the letter, Sarang, I want you to make a list of three things which you are good at, and the things which you love doing even if those are things which you feel that you might not be great at. And do one of those things, appreciate yourself, take time to admire your work, tell yourself how good you are at it. Trust me, it could even be something that you probably do every day, but it makes so much of a difference when you take a moment to slow down and praise yourself for it. Most importantly, don’t ever compare what you are doing with what someone else is doing because this is going to be about you and not about anyone else. Will you do it? Oh, and I need proof if you have actually done it, so I want you to send me photos or a recording of what you have done, okay? I’ll be eagerly waiting to hear from you. Love, Jake,” I speak in one stretch and send an eager smile in Taehyung’s direction.

“Done,” he declares, clicking the pen closed, and then he exhales deeply. “This is going to be fun. What else do you have in mind for the next six challenges?” Taehyung sounds eager.

“It’s all a surprise, but any way, you’ll know it before she knows. So, don’t be too curious, okay?” I laugh a little, and he does the same, after which I hear him carefully folding the letter and scribbling her address onto an envelope inside which he has now inserted the letter.

“Post it right away, I want her to receive it tomorrow.”

“Should I drop it off at her doorstep, Master Jungkook?” Taehyung speaks in a very serious tone, probably even bowing his head a little too dramatically, and it’s making me giggle and shake my head.

“I wouldn’t mind if you did that, but she’d know that it hasn’t been sent through post. So, no. Post it.” I add in an even more serious tone, and he flings a piece of crumpled paper on my face before walking out of my office.

 
Taehyung

 
“Seven days?” Mi-Seul sounds pleasantly surprised as she takes the sealed envelope from my hand.

Throwing myself on the couch in her living room, I lift my legs and bring my feet to land on the armrest of the couch, crossing my legs at the ankles and folding my hands under my head.

“Yeah, he told me to post the letters, but I like it this way because then I can meet you a lot more than usual,” I wink at her, motioning for her to come closer, and she does so after placing the letter on the coffee table in front of the couch.

Grabbing her wrist, I pull her to lay on top of me, spreading my legs apart, shrouding her hips with my thighs and wrapping my arms tight around her body. Mi-Seul raises her head off my chest and her gaze meets mine as I move aside some strands of her hair behind her ears, keeping my eyes locked with hers.

“Shouldn’t we tell them both the truth?” She asks softly with a pout on her lips, blinking her pretty eyes.

I let out a breath and slowly nod my head a few times, chewing the corners of my lips in contemplation.

“We must, but not right away, I guess,” My deep voice is the only sound in the space surrounding us, other than the sounds of our heavy breaths since we both are basically crushing the air out of each other’s lungs at the moment.

“Why not?” Mi-Seul adjusts her body a little and uses her fingers to play with a few strands of hair that have fallen over my forehead.

“Mi-Seul, Jungkook advocates self-love so well when it comes to everyone else around him, but do you know how harsh he is with himself? He is hiding from the world because he fears being sympathized for being blind, he fears being hated, and he fears his blindness being talked about by everyone else. There have been so many times when I’ve seen him actually crying because he’s unable to see anything, and it makes me feel so helpless and useless. No matter what I do, he still goes through this loathing. If he truly loved himself and accepted everything about him, not giving a damn about what anyone else thinks, don’t you think he would have revealed himself to the world long ago? He says it is to preserve his privacy, but I know that it isn’t the only reason.” I press my chin to my chest to keep my eyes on Mi-Seul who now lays resting her chin on top of her folded hands that are on my chest.

“True,” she nods in understanding.

“He feels comfortable talking to Sarang only because of the anonymity that this veil called ‘Jake’ is offering him, and even though she wouldn’t ever show him sympathy and pity when she learns about his blindness, it still has to be his own mind that makes him realize that she would still like him above and beyond everything else. No one can convince him otherwise. And Hae-Yeon,” another soft sigh leaves my lips. “I strongly believe that she is opening up to him only because they’re anonymous to each other, and it would be really awkward if we barge in and tell them both their real identities. Although I’m tempted to tell him the truth, I think they will do it when they feel comfortable to reveal themselves to each other,” I stroke a hand over Mi-Seul’s head when she lays her head down and holds tight onto me.

“I agree. I think they should decide when and if they want to show themselves to each other. You’re right,” she nods with her head still in place.

“And, honestly, aren’t these letters a sweet excuse for me to keep coming here to meet you?” My words make her chuckle softly.

“The sweetest excuse, but do you really need an excuse to come back here?” She asks in a muffled tone, warmly nuzzling her face against the fabric of the shirt that’s covering my body.

“Do I really need an excuse? Hm?” I question her softly, dragging the tip of my index finger up along the middle of her back, slowly sliding my hand into the soft hair at the nape of her neck and allowing my fingers to get tangled inside her silky locks.

“No, you don’t.” Her eyebrows and eyes lift to look at me.

“Should we think about moving in together already?” My question comes out a little strangled, and it makes her giggle.

“Taehyung, what?” Mi-Seul laughs, raising her upper body a little. “Let’s move in together, and I really want to take it further with you, but not right away. I want us to get to know each other better.” She says with more confidence than ever before.

My heart begins to pound violently within my rib cage because this would be the first time that I’d be, actually, seriously getting into a relationship with someone, and I hadn’t even thought about it in all these years. But I guess I’m old enough to shed my playfulness and do some serious dating now, and with Mi-Seul, everything has felt so right from the beginning.

Even though we’ve been taking things forward a little too fast, it hasn’t felt wrong, and we have done a lot more than just being physically intimate. She’s the first girl with whom I’ve spent time talking about life and passion, and she’s also the only one who has made me realize that I could spend an entire night by her side without taking off our clothes and doing anything carnal.

There’s no denying that I’ve felt a lot different with her than with any of the temporary flings that I’ve had in the past, and even the thought of taking the next step right now seems just about right. Ideally, it should have been I who should have asked her to be my girlfriend, but she did it, and it doesn’t take me too long to respond to her thought with a big grin, nodding my head.

Her smile shines brighter than mine as she crawls closer to my face, allowing our lips to connect in a soft kiss that makes my heart full.
 

My most favorite part of the story begins from here.
😊🥰

Published on : 09/14/2023