"Did Anna leave?" Jimin asked. I swerved my eyes at him. He met mine, "I was assuming that she- did?"
"You are close, not right. Well, Anna..." My tongue halted itself. Words felt like heavy pebbles, abrading against my throat so as to come out but my heart stayed in jitters, not because I didn't want to reveal. It was rather hard to deal with the mnemonics crushing the lock and let the flock of clouds billow my demeanor to broken shards that only prodded me, hurt only me, and no one yet, not even my inner core, to the rescue.
"It's okay. If you don't wanna talk about it. I know how much it may hurt." I felt a weight on my hand as something cold encompassed my backhand, wedging small chubby fingers between my ones. I shivered at the first frosty touch. Jimin gave me an affectionate look, with the most warming smile. It was a forbidden touch, but I didn't want to be left bare.
"You're cold."
His small perspiration beaded on his palm stuck on my skin too. "Warm me up."
My heart felt a tang out of nowhere, I stuck out my tongue, "I ain't a heater."
"But you-" He stopped, gulping down the rest, "I don't think I should say it. You punch hard."
I squinted my eyes suspiciously, then decided to give it a shrug. We were close. The dorm was soon to be in sight.
"So then- with your friends aside, was there anyone else?"
"Anyone else who?"
"Like a boyfriend?"
"Umm..." I pushed my tongue to my cheek in thought, narrowing my vision, "It was complicated."
"Complicated? Like what?"
"I didn't have a boyfriend. But there were a few stalkers."
"Stalkers don't obviously fall in a category even near to boyfriends. What's the reason you had some? What had you done?"
"What kind of question is that? I was stalked because I am pretty."
"Oh."
"What's with that oh?" I turned around to take a look at him, my palm nestling onto my waist akimbo, "You don't think I'm pretty?"
"Well..." Retaining the speed and straight forward direction of the car on the road, Jimin propped against the steering wheel with his arm and took a full view of me, his eyebrow curled up at one corner, just as his lipline to a small crease. I sat, suddenly conscious of myself. His cheeks puffed up in a cute but devilish smile, beckoning his eyes to a far gone black small peek-a-boo, "I might be adding more to the definition."
The heat slowly started to sprout a full bloom of red and pink assorted blush on my cheeks brazenly, I shot around and looked away briskly, mentally eye-rolling as he burst into a giggle, "Cute."
"Ew."
He snorted, looking back at the road, "So, back to it, about the stalkers. Were they, really bad?"
"There's much to the stalking story. It's long." I nibbled my lower lip and said lowly, "Do you wanna...hear about it?"
"Why not? We're yet to reach."
"Alright." I was apparently hesitant at first as I started, "The thing started with some incidents. Two of the boys at my school were rusticated when they got caught red-handed with pictures and videos, they used to stalk girls around with the lecherous intention. I was a short-time victim. When they had tried to dupe me, I had gone alert, that's how I found out the hidden camera. When they were leaving, I was shot with threats. But they were not the only perpetrators, a few were still in the school who hadn't got caught, and they were the bigger heads behind this."
Jimin's face stayed rigidly concerned, he stayed silent for me to continue the rest. I added,
"Then there was one boy, who said he loved me, and...I believed him." I put a full stop.
"And..." My fingers fidgeted beside the seat, crawling in an urge to find the cold warmth of the male's finger again unconsciously which I couldn't get again. He said he could read me well, then why wasn't he bringing his hand forward? But then, why did I want him to? I shouldn't...
"He-he was...I felt a passive presence around me all the time, numbers of eyes watching me as if. Mom didn't use to stay back at home a lot, I tended to be alone, it was excruciating with my senses growing strong but I heard nothing, saw nothing, never found anything. Someone used to follow me around, but as much as I tried, I could never find a trace. I used to be strong, but I got afraid. I didn't know who to seek assurance from anymore. And then, when mom d-died, I was left more alone. It started to haul me as if there was a ghost, watching me, and then, I got to see his true face one day. It was him."
"He started to blackmail me afterward. I..." My breaths started running short with the ghastly remembrance, "I believed in too much. I went through breakdowns, not only because of the blackmail but that he- Anna was there by my side all the time but then-" My sentences started to lose structures as words started to stick up at the tip of my dry tongue. My heart started rousing its palpitation with the disease by virus of black memories as it went forward to some of that scarred scenes, sweats soddened my temple with shivers running under my skin. The innard oxygen felt too suffocating as I tried to hold back the solution of ire and tear.
"Y/N-" His hand found mine and I grasped onto his, and released a deep breath, closing my eyes to stop the black vision rushing in with snippets of clips flying around. I couldn't, not now, I couldn't blackout on the street, not before the people, not before Jimin...
"Are you okay? You seem to have a panic attack?" I throttled my thoughts out accelerating a truck against them on the road of my mind, stretching my neck. It started to settle down slowly.
"I'm fine."
"Take a deep breath. You are scaring me. Should we route to a hospital?"
"I'm fine, bish. Stop being so stupidly dramatic." I threw away his hand, "It's been so long I verbally let it out to someone. You are the only one to know about this besides my past friends." I gazed at him with wary eyes, "Let's not talk about it at the moment. You got too much info for a day. And don't tell anyone else."
"Okay. I won't tell anyone."
"Tell me about you. Had a girlfriend?"
"One. Once." He said nonchalantly, "We broke up after one week of our relationship."
"One week?" I exclaimed unconsciously hearing his words, still trying to get everything under control in my head, "Would you even call it a relationship then?"
"Will. Cuz we did all the things couples would do. But within then, I tried to realize if I loved her, actually. She never gave me a tingling sensation in my stomach."
"So you broke up with her?"
"Yes."
"Wow. You sure are, impatient in relationship thing? As expected from you though."
"Y/N."
"Yeah."
"Can you tell me one thing, honestly?" I looked at him, "What is it?"
He took a few seconds with his composition then slowly spoke, "Suppose, there's a boy who likes you. This boy has done something bad in the eye of law, in the past and umm...maybe his thoughts and point of view are just different about it. But if his feelings for you are true, would you accept him?"
I kept staring at him, "What are you implying to?"
"Not implying anything specific. It's just a scenario and uh- I still think over the relationship I had at that time..." He stuttered in a suspicious way, "still now makes me think, if I uh-well, if it were you, what would have you done?"
I didn't reply. My eyes stayed fixed onto his semblance. He said he could read me well. I still couldn't get a hold of him all the time, but in this situation, I didn't need a view of his eyes, or his face, or a little more of the intermittent verbal expression by his voice to convict that he was being a pathetic liar at the time.
"I don't know." I just decided to conclude with that, "Maybe I wouldn't have accepted him, maybe I-" He reverted his eyes at me. Our eyes kept in contact for a minute, in silence.
"Maybe you?"
"I don't know." I looked away in a jiffy and tried to intone as much as neutral it could be, "What bad did you do that time that you are still judging yourself over it?"
"Finish your sentence, Y/N. Maybe you what?" His voice was gaining a shade of frostiness, that prodded me as sharp as his question.
"Guys, are we here yet?" Taehyung's raspy voice growled the tension from the atmosphere out. I secretly released a sigh of relief, then looked back at him in glee.
"Almost. Pick up your stuff."
"I'm hungry already." He stretched his limbs above and around and quickly grabbed his phone, "Should we order something, Hyung? Y/N. Do you know a good place for bibimbap? I'm craving some so much right now!"
"I know one." I went into the conversation with him. Jimin sat silently through the rest five-minute drive. Not for once, he looked at me.
Preview to the next chapter:
"Wait-" My voice was rather startled than shocked, when I saw the gun in the youngest's hands, both clasping the grip and around the strap of it, letting the barrel nearby attain a small chunk of white shine from the slipping moonlight. His eyes were wide open, but had no meaning in the gaze. Glassy-eyed he stared at me and pressed his thumb tightly against the trigger guard.
"Jungkook," I mumbled.
"You b-bitch!"