ACT XI | SCENE LIII

❝MANILA ENVELOPE❞

[five years earlier]
august 2012

HER NAIL SCRATCHED against the wood of the old coffee table in her small apartment. jangmi focused on the movement and not on the man across from her. she kept telling herself that it would be dumbest thing she would do to cry in front of him. somewhere in the back of her mind, she knew how this was going to end. but she hoped against hope that she was wrong. yet she braced herself for the worst.

her eyes strayed to the manila envelope on the coffee table. the one she'd only just gotten that morning from the dance company. she hadn't opened it, seeing that jimin suddenly showed up after weeks of zero communication. forcing herself to look up, she met his intense gaze. neither of them had said anything in nearly ten minutes. just sat there on the floor of her tiny apartment, looking at anything but each other.

"where have you been?" her voice was barely audible. were it not for the stark yet awkward silence of the room, he wouldn't have heard her. "seoul." he answered plainly. her gaze was back on the bit of the table she was compulsively scratching. "you've been avoiding me." it wasn't a question and she didn't phrase it as one. she scratched the wood more viciously, picking up specks of wood in her fingernail. "why?" she examined the nail, picking at the wooden motes now buried in her skin.

she was unnervingly calm, the only hint at her discomfort was the constant scratching which served as a form of self harm, seeing that the miniscule pieces of wood, painful and difficult to remove, kept lodging in her index finger. jimin watched her action, wanting to stop her but resisting the urge. instead he kept his visage impassive though he twisted his rings up his fingers, hiding the action from her line of vision.

"is there really a need for me to answer that?" he said after a brief moment of harsh silence. she stopped scratching, fixing him with the coldest glare he'd ever received from her - from anyone really. "yes, jimin. there is." the scratching became more aggressive, scaring him a bit.

"when a guy starts acting like his girlfriend doesn't exist out of the blue, doesn't she deserve an explanation when he suddenly deems it fit to see her?" her tone was angry. his eyes widened when he saw her nail break. it didn't stop her though as she continued to scrape the wood. "or are we even still that?" she glanced at him.

"you just disappeared without a word for twenty seven days. not a call, not a text, not even a glimpse of you. i was worried out of my mind, thinking something had happened at first. i was only able to confirm you weren't dead because of taehyung. and you sit there and ask if there's really any need for you to answer my question." she was bleeding from the scratching, more spelks sticking out of her skin. he had to force himself not to look down to resist the urge of grabbing her hand. "i had things to do." he supplied, looking her in the eye. "you had things to do?" a dry, humorless laugh left her mouth.

"look jimin, if you want to break up with me, just be straight with me and tell me. don't be a coward and hide away for a month. don't tell me shit like you had things to do. just say you don't want to be with me anymore." her voice cracked on a tiny sob at the end. when he looked at her again, he saw that her eyes were glossy with unshed tears. "the only thing i'm asking for is the honesty i always gave you. a little straightforwardness is all i want right now. not your roundabout, one line replies." she resumed her scrattling of the wooden table.

"you want honesty?" he straightened his back, trying to organise the words in his head before he said them. "i've decided to grow up. and that means shirking childish behaviours and cleansing myself of puerile distractions. i can't be a man if i keep thinking like a boy." he stated cleanly. he barely stopped himself from flinching at the way her finger seemed to slip down the wood, picking up a large splinter in her skin in the process. she moved her bloody finger to her chest, staining her mustard yellow t-shirt with a dark red smudge. "am i one of those puerile distractions?"

he said nothing, but to her, his silence spoke volumes. she chuckled mirthlessly, glancing away from him to a popsicle stick birdhouse that sat on a small table to jimin's left. she rubbed over her eye with her thumb, focusing on keeping her cool. "and all the times you told me you loved me? what was that? was it all part of your puerile bullshit?" her cold gaze was back on him. "nothing but a foolish child speaking." he affirmed. his even, unaffected tone irked jangmi to the core. "since when did love become a sentiment only a grownup can feel?" her left brow rose in question, eyes hostile. he did not reply.

"three years. we've been together three whole years. there are marriages that don't even last that long. were you just leading me on all that time? was this just a long con? every word you said to me, did you ever mean any of it?" her voice was low. "i used to think i did." he answered. "and now you know better?" she couldn't hide the pain in her voice. "i do." he nodded, ignoring the look in her eyes. "you're the one who came here to talk but i'm the one who's doing all the talking." her smile didn't reach her eyes.

"if you want me to talk then i will." she hated how mechanical he sounded. it was almost like the real jimin had been replaced with an android lookalike. "in the time i have been away from you, i felt...free. i was doing the things i should have been doing, instead of whiling away my time with stupid childish fantasies. i've realised there's so much i could do, i can do. and if i stay with you, i will never reach my full potential." he told her. "so i am holding you back?" the bleeding in her finger was getting worse.

"i need someone who can make me a better person. someone who can bring out my strengths and compliment me. i need a woman not a girl with her head in the clouds. you can never give me what i need. i don't need you if you can never be that." he rubbed the tip of his nose, keeping his eyes away from her finger. "you know what's funny? you saying all this nonsense about growing up and it took you this long to man up and even now you can't be straight with me, you're still beating around the bush. i don't care about who or what you need, neither do i care about who you suddenly realise you want to be." she pulled out the splinter in her finger only to resume scratching the coffee table again.

his eyes moved up from their vacant stare downwards to meet hers. for the longest minute, he just stared at her and didn't say a word. she felt tears sting the back of her eyes at how lifeless his seemed. "i curse the day i met you." she mumbled out in a sullen voice. the ring he was twisting came off completely, nearly slipping out of his fingers in his surprise. "it was the beginning of a waste of three years i can never get back." she was getting teary eyed again. "the feeling is mutual." he replied, sliding the ring back on. "all this time i was fooling myself but the reality is the feelings aren't there anymore. i'm starting to wonder if they were ever there in the first place and you weren't just an excuse to act out my rebellious phase."

"what are you trying to say?" she fixed him with an icy stare, holding back tears that threatened to fall. "i don't want to be with you anymore. i can't continue to pretend that this relationship means even half as much as it clearly does to you." he stated, devoid of emotion. she reeled back like he had punched her in the stomach. "so i think it's best you don't show up in front of me." he said with a finality that made her feel like he had hammered a nail into her heart.

"you know what? i never want to see you again. good riddance!" as soon as the words were out of her mouth, a wave of nausea hit jangmi and she jumped on her feet, running to the bathroom. she crouched down in front of the toilet, spewing out her breakfast. washing out the sickening taste in her mouth, she stepped back out to an empty room.

he was gone. letting out a breath, she clapped a hand over her mouth to muffle the sob that threatened to leave her lips. she crumpled to the ground, finally allowing her tears to fall, hand still clamped over her mouth. she wiped at her face aggressively, smearing blood on her face in the process, feeling her head begin to throb.

trying to keep her mind off jimin, she grabbed the unopened envelope and ripped off the flap. she just wanted one good thing to come from this horrible day. and caring about her future right now was better than dwelling on someone who had decided to become a part of her past. the information inside the envelope could tell her where her first step into adulthood would start. pulling the papers out, she tossed the envelope aside. her eyes scanned the letter quickly.

she'd gotten in.

☀️☀️☀️

i wrote this from my grave because i am no longer breathing after the hixtape. jung hoseok fucking did THAT! jung hoseok: bringing light to lives since 94.
so that was the fight that jangmi and jimin wouldn't shut up about for half the story so far. finally here and not much oop. bUT THANK YOU FOR 20K READS Y'ALL ARE THE BEST LITTLE BUTTERFLIES ILY!