The harrowing pain howled inside Taehyung’s jarring body, the earsplitting echoes stabbing his heart and punching holes to his stomach. It hurt so much his mind couldn’t even digest it, and it reeled with the fatal aftershocks.

The ache in his legs by his extended kneeling stance was drowned in the unsparing despair streaming through his blood like molten lava, heating him to an unlivable degree. He wheezed and sobbed, fresh tears swimming in his vision nonstop and gushing out in wave after wave of heartbreak.

The cold water battered his head and back in little pricks like hailstones, but any other sensation except for that gut-wrenching stranglehold around his heart was long forgotten and ignored.

He was ruined. Completely torn to shreds without Jungkook. He didn’t know how to exist without him. And the search of an answer to that dolorous question only wrung more tears out of him, vehement, hot tears, underlined with gasping breaths and convulsions.

Time seemed to flow without his awareness as he remained in torture, causing him to lose track of it, but tears kept coming and coming like an unending rainstorm.

The worst part of his wretchedness was that he had no idea how Jungkook felt. He offered him plenty of chances to tell him if he was in love with him too or not. But the only thing Jungkook did was change the subject or tell him it didn’t matter.

It wasn’t about if he was in love with him or not, though. It was about their moments together and everything they lived in these few days. If Jungkook really didn’t feel anything for him, what did all these moments mean? What were they? So many questions flitted like deadly darts through his mind, but they were all swept away by the rip current of suffering.

Two knocks tangled with his sobbing and the sound of the streaming water. He unburied his wrecked face from his palms in haste as a glimmer of hope glowed in the pit of his misery. It was Jungkook. It had to be. He couldn’t stay away from him either. He couldn’t let him leave either.

But his hopeful assumptions were steamrolled before he could even push himself off his mire of heartache.

“Tae? Please come out. We have to leave in forty minutes.”

Taehyung’s head hung at the sound of Hoseok’s voice. He slid a hand down his face that was a mess of tears and snot and rose to his feet through great struggle as his enfeebled body kept giving out. “How did you know... I was here?” His voice sounded as destroyed as his heart — so croaky and small.

“Seokjin told us. Jay asked him to tell us to come take you,” Jimin said.

The tears refused to stop, even though his sobs had quietened now. “Like he cares,” Taehyung murmured. He adjusted the temperature of the water to a bit warmer and began his shower with listless moves. “I’ll be out in a while.”

“Okay,” Hoseok uttered. “We’ve already packed your things for you, so don’t worry about that. See you in a bit.”

Taehyung didn’t respond. Even standing felt too strenuous. He felt like he didn’t want to exist. And he definitely didn’t want to exist in a world without Jungkook. He still didn’t know how to do that. It didn’t seem like he would ever find an answer to this question.

The fresh mounting wetness in his eyes spilled over again without sound. It cartwheeled down his cheeks throughout his shower and didn’t stop even after he finished.

He dragged his ponderous body back to the room and waited until Jimin opened the door for him.

The sight of him was one of the most heartbreaking they had ever seen. His eyes were so swollen and bloodshot, sunken into their sockets. They held tears in them that escaped here and there, trickling down his haggard features with the shadow of agony adorning them.

Simultaneously, they inched closer and enclosed him into their embrace. There was nothing they could say to him. Nothing they could say to alleviate his heartbreak. So they hugged him long and tight, leaving delicate caresses on his back.

Taehyung’s drained eyes flowed around the room and snagged on Jungkook’s empty bed. Each one of his memories with him paraded across his mind from their very first encounter. How he kept him company at night, how he took care of him when he got sick, when he led him to the storage room, when he saw his face, when he fucked him like no one else before for the first time.

How could he say goodbye to all these memories and move on with his life? Fuck, he couldn’t. He really couldn’t.

“We have to go, Tae,” Jimin said in a soft tone as he squeezed his shoulder.

Taehyung’s unfocused eyes fastened on Jimin. “How can you be okay?”

“I’m not. I just can’t do anything about it. Yoongi didn’t fall for me like I did. It hurts to know that. But I think it makes leaving a tiny bit easier for now.”

Taehyung slipped into the contemplation of something invisible for so long Hoseok had to force him back to coherence with a pat on his shoulder. “Come on, Tae. Let’s go.”

His luggage was gently placed into his hold by Hoseok. Caring hands ushered him out of the room next. They felt like Jimin’s, but he couldn’t tell for sure. He had sunk out of consciousness for a while now, and everything happened mechanically. He didn’t know how or when he reached the reception.

Everything in his eyes and ears was just a blur. Until the sight of the exit leaped into his vision. His lifeless steps slowed to stillness. The emptiness inside him bristled with an exponential anxiety that lunged his heart into turbulence and festered the scurry of his breathing.

Hoseok noticed he straggled and twisted to inspect. “Tae?”

Taehyung’s mouth quivered in its attempt to form words. “I can’t,” he breathed out. “I can’t leave.”

As Yoongi slowly lifted himself to his feet in surprise, Hoseok stared at him with hard creases of bewilderment. “What are you talking about? We have to leave, Taehyung.”

Taehyung furiously shook his head as a newfound frenzy seemed to take possession of him. “I can’t. I can’t.” He spun around and ran with all his might towards the one his heart repeatedly cried for, deaf to the calls of his name by his friends.

He went up the stairs with a hasty skip as everything in his sight hazed over. The realization that he was crying again took a moment to sink in, but he didn’t care. Nothing mattered in that moment than being with Jungkook.

He scurried all the way to the storage room and rammed the door open. He stood still for a second, panting, as he absorbed the image of Jungkook sitting on a chair with his elbows propped against the table and a beer in his hand.

Jungkook snapped his head at the sound. His weathered eyes twinkled with bemusement and shock as he lowered the can to the table and stood up from his seat. “What are you doing here?”

Taehyung shut the door. His tears escalated into an outpour as he bridged the space between them with three shaky strides of his legs and crushed him into his arms. “Jungkook. Baby. I can’t leave. I can’t—I can’t exist without you.”

Jungkook remained frozen stiff. His crying words drew every shred of pain within him and mounded it in a colossal tide that came crashing through his existence all over again, drowning his vulnerable heart. His eyes seared with tears he endeavored to contain through steady, deep breaths. “Taehyung. Don’t do this. Hmm?” Despite his efforts, his voice broke and trembled like Taehyung’s frame against his body. “You know you can’t stay here.”

Taehyung clasped him tighter, squeezing him over and over, as the torrent of his tears stained Jungkook’s shoulder. “I can. I will.”

When he felt his cheeks warm with the wetness that oozed out of his eyes unwittingly, he harshly wiped them and wrenched him away from him. He maintained the brutal grip on his shoulders as he peered into his devastated gaze with aching outrage. “What do you not understand? I don’t want you here.”

Taehyung’s chest writhed with suppressed sobs as he shook his head. “That can’t be true,” he choked out. “You just don’t want to put me in danger. But I—I don’t care. I don’t care, Jungkook.”

“I fucking care,” he growled as more tears rolled down the forcibly contracted muscles of his face. He brushed them away quickly and stepped back. “You don’t understand how dangerous my life is because your head is full of being in love and shit. Snap out of it. And fucking leave.”

“I can’t!” Taehyung howled, his body shaking uncontrollably. He struggled to bring air into his lungs, as if something obstructed his breathing.

Jungkook grew agitated and alert by his strained, gulping breaths. His heart raced in fear, and he was found engulfing him in his arms, rubbing soothing circles over his back. “Breathe, angel. Breathe for me.”

Taehyung wailed and churned against him as his legs caved under the insupportable oppression of his heartache. The secure hold around him firmed up right away and kept him steady. The palliative whispers of Jungkook telling him everything would be okay caressed his dizzying turbidity and stabilized his breath little by little.

He fished a tissue out of his pocket and blew his nose with one hand, then stuffed it back before clinging onto him again. “What am I supposed to do without you?”

Jungkook felt as if his heart were ripped out at the question coiled around his shattered voice. “You’ll be a successful, famous artist.”

“I don’t care about that.”

Jungkook savored his hug for a few more quiet moments. Then, he withdrew and held his cheeks in two loving palms. “Go back, Taehyung. Where you belong.”

Taehyung closed his eyes at the next avalanche of tears that leaked out. “I belong wherever you are. I’m yours, Jungkook. Did you forget?”

Jungkook didn’t scrub away the wetness from his cheeks this time. Instead, he simply leaned to kiss his closed eyes in turn. “I’ll never forget.”

Taehyung’s view fell on the shimmering tear tracks on his cheeks when Jungkook strung their foreheads together. “Why... Why are you crying?”

A gleam of a smile rippled across Jungkook’s face. “It’s hard for me as well to let you go, Taehyung. Harder than you think.”

Taehyung tensed with the rivulet of hope that crossed him. “Are you...” He gulped his hesitation away. “Are you in love with me too?”

Jungkook’s eyes plunged, his traits glaciating with nervousness. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Jungkook.” He pulled back and fixed him with an intense, clear stare. “Are you in love with me?”

“It doesn’t fucking matter,” he spewed with a thread of uneasy vexation. “What will change if I am? What will change if I’m not? Nothing. We can’t have a future together with the life I have, anyway.”

Despondency wrapped itself around Taehyung’s chest like a belt of sizzling metal. Because he understood at the avoidance of his gaze and his sobering response. “You really didn’t fall for me like I did.”

Fuck, Jungkook wanted to scream he was wrong. His heart was racked with his need to tell him he was already in love with him since the first night they had sex. But he couldn’t. Because that was the only way Taehyung would go back to where he belonged. And that place could never be Jungkook with the life he had.

He sucked in a quaky breath and sighed, expelling that itching need along with it. “We had fun. The time we spent together was really amazing, Taehyung. And I’ll miss it. But that was it. Go back to your life now. And let me fix mine.”

“What about our night talks?” he spluttered in haste, brimmed with a new suffering now that he knew Jungkook didn’t share the same feelings as him. “It wasn’t just sex between us. It couldn’t be just that.”

It really wasn’t. Jungkook smoothed his thumbs over his cheeks, drying off the fresh brook of his tears. “I won’t forget you, Tae.” He drew closer to kiss his trembling lips, but every action ceased as Taehyung twisted his head away. With the crippling aftermath of shock weighing down upon his existence, Jungkook scanned the sudden harshness that smothered his features with a restless scrutiny. “Let me s-say goodbye to you, angel. Please.”

Taehyung fastened his fingers around his wrists and pushed his hands down, his misty gaze staring at his chest blankly. “You don’t deserve it.” The perpetual tint of desperation in his voice was now overshadowed by painful anger. “You don’t deserve anything from me.”

Jungkook could only watch as Taehyung rotated and slouched off, despite that his heart shrieked at him to follow him. The door shut, and the echo of the bang vibrated in a deafening ripple. “Yes, I don’t deserve anything from you,” he whispered to himself, as any kind of restraint started to crumble. “But I’m so in love with you, Tae.”

With the barely audible confession came a spate of tears that convulsed his form and a wrenching void in his core that burned ruthlessly.

Taehyung was gone. Along with his happiness. And he could do nothing about it than cry his heart out.

. . .

The three friends trod towards the storage room around eight. They had texted Jungkook, asking if he was okay and if he wanted to meet earlier, but he had said no. They didn’t know what to expect when they would enter the room, but the scene they faced was beyond any speculation.

Jungkook was slumped over the table with the side of his face pressed against it and nine cans of beer scattered on it. His eyes were closed, but his lips kept moving, as though he were chanting something inaudible. He seemed too disoriented to notice their presence, and the cloak of stupefaction carpeting his traits betrayed his drunk state.

“Jungkook... What the fuck?” Yoongi expelled on a breath as he set a hand on his back. “Did you drink all of these? Are you serious?”

“I’m fine.” There was a mumbling drawl in his words, making them barely coherent. “So fine. Everything... is so... fine.”

Yoongi screwed his eyes shut in absolute frustration and rubbed his forehead with calming pressure.

“Kookie,” Seokjin murmured as he dragged his chair closer and smoothed delicate lines over his back. “You should get some sleep. You’re in no shape to talk.”

The three exchanged concerned looks as the younger slurred something indistinct under his breath. Everyone took their seats, and a sonorous sigh pushed out of Yoongi’s throat as he positioned his eyes on him. “Jungkook. The world doesn’t end just because Taehyung left, okay? You have bigger problems to deal with.”

Jungkook used the table as a brace to straighten his folded posture. A flood of dizziness mixed with a drilling pain swung in his head as he blinked languidly. His vision cleared when the last remains of his tears leached out. “Shut up.”

Yoongi’s head collapsed in complete defeat at his mumble. “I know how you feel, okay? I didn’t want to let Jimin go either. Isn’t it better for them to be safe? Even if we can’t be with them. Hmm?”

Everything seemed to move in slow motion for Jungkook. His brain tarried to assimilate the words thrown to him gently, and it took even longer to compose a response. “It doesn’t hurt less. Though. How can it not... How do you stop the pain?”

Namjoon’s chest quivered with a deep sigh as he analyzed him; his face was like a blank page, mottled with vestiges of something lifeless and tortured. His half-closed eyes, sore and cushioned by heavy bags, lay glassy in their sockets, not focusing on anything. It wrecked him to see him in that state. But it pained him more that he could do nothing to help him.

Namjoon cleared the heaviness from his throat. “When we get out of this mess... you can go see him again. Secretly. Hmm? If they don’t know about his existence, they can’t hurt him.”

Jungkook’s eyes regained a fragment of aliveness as they darted all over his face. “Really?”

“Of course, Kook,” Namjoon reassured with a smile. “It’s better than nothing, right? Maybe you won’t be able to have him next to you all the time, but you can at least see him here and there.”

“It’s... Yeah, it’s something,” Jungkook whispered. A seed of hope was planted inside him as he contemplated Namjoon’s words with his turbid mind. Even seeing him once in a while would be better than nothing. He couldn’t bear the separation. It strangled him.

“You should rest, Kook,” Seokjin said. “Let me help you get to your room.”

Jungkook nodded slowly, and soon enough, two tender hands helped him rise to his feet. Seokjin felt for his mask in his pockets and pulled it out when he located it, then slipped it on Jungkook’s face. He ringed his body with an arm and led him out of the room at a plod.

Yoongi’s gaze flung to Namjoon as the door closed. “You know that’s still dangerous, right? How many times have they followed us randomly?”

“I know,” Namjoon sighed. “I couldn’t see him like that. I had to say something to give him hope. He was too drunk to realize that’s dangerous as well.”

Yoongi shook his head at a creep as he mulled over the messed-up situation they were plunged into once again. “This sucks.”

“How are you holding up?”

His eyes lingered on him, then tumbled to the table. “I’m fine, I guess.”

“You don’t miss him?”

Yoongi’s fist came to brush against the edge of the table and dropped on his thigh again. “I do. He keeps texting me about random things. Updates me on their trip. Like I didn’t fucking break his heart.”

A saddened smile budded on Namjoon’s lips as he perceived his internal turmoil of distress, even if Yoongi strove to veil it. “He’s in love with you, Yoon. He won’t give you up that easily.”

“Well...” He paused to draw in a fortifying breath. “I’m in love with him too. And I gave him up that easily.”

Namjoon’s surprise shined through his round, glittering eyes. “Wow. Never thought I’d hear you say something like this in my life.” He cracked a smile at the snort he elicited from him. “You had no choice, though. It’s not the same. You wanted to protect him. If we weren’t in this business, I’m sure you would never give him up.”

“Yeah. But we are. And it fucking hurts.”

Another sigh emitted from Namjoon. He couldn’t relate because the love of his life was in the same business as him. They grew up together. He never stopped protecting him. And he never would. Even if Seokjin knew how to fight and always carried a gun with him, Namjoon kept an eye on him. All the time.

He had given up on the thought of confessing his feelings long ago. Seokjin seemed to like him only as a dongsaeng. So he had confined his secret longing deep inside him, and he had learned to be satisfied with simply having him in his life and protecting him.

He always thought one-sided love stirred the worst type of suffering. But seeing Jungkook in that state earlier... Being unable to be with the person you’re in love with when the feelings are mutual is just as harrowing, if not more.

───⭒───༺🎭༻───⭒───

Angst, angst, and more angst 😔 Why do I love angst so much?

We're about halfway through this book! I hope you'll stay till the end 💜