Jungkook looked down, then back up at you, and you swallowed. A smirk was lining his lips.

"Wanna do something fun?"

22: King Donkey Ears

You doubled over and laughed. He blinked at you.

Seeing his confusion, you explained, "For a second there, I thought you said, 'Want to do something fun,' haha."

"But I did say that."

"You cannot be serious."

"Oh, Cupcake, no!" Jungkook's eyebrows knitted together and he adamantly shook his head. "What have you been reading lately—fanfictions?"

Your cheeks grew hot. "Of course not! W-what are you talking about? I was just... wary of the way that phrase is usually—"

"Woah there, not everyone has questionable intentions every time they ask to do anything." He squinted at you, ghosts of a smirk still visible on his expression. "I was asking if you wanted to actually get into BTS."

"Get into??"

"Oh my god Y/N—"

"I'm kidding, I'm kidding!" you quickly interrupted. "Obviously. Right. Um, what do you mean by that, though?"

"Oh! I was just making good on my promise to throw Bangtan media in your face until you actually know who your employers are."

What?? No way! was your first instinct to scream. But then you thought about it.

How could you continue working for Bangtan if you barely knew their idol personalities? Of course, you knew the behind-the-scenes selves, but RM might be very different from Namjoon, for instance. With the muster soon and work becoming more detailed and creative-based, you knew you had to widen your horizons and find out how the world saw BTS.

Even if it was painful to have Jungkook as your guide.

However, your pride didn't let you give in just yet, so you had to maneuver a little carefully.

"'Bangtan media'? What kind of media are we talking about, here?" you asked, speaking slower than the author's WiFi.

"If you're implying—"

"Seriously, Kook."

"Okay, just checking!" His laugh was flippant, but you could've sworn his cheeks turned a shade pinker. "Uhm, everything, I guess? We have a few 'web series'—as the directors call 'em—like Run BTS and BTS In The SOOP and stuff. Years worth of Bangtan Bomb too. Obviously, recordings of concerts and musters an—oh, Vlive! And our albums and releases, duh. And our merch, collabs, concepts, alternate universe storyline—"

"This is way more than I expected," you muttered under your breath, but Jungkook heard and arched an eyebrow.

"What were you expecting, though? A few songs and that's it?" he asked, scoffing. "What do you take us for, some newbie pop group thrown together in someone's mother's basement?"

You let out a resigned breath. "You are absolutely right. I should've never applied for this job when I hardly even know what I'm doing."

"Hey," Jungkook said, his tone much softer, "don't go there! You know that's not what I meant. You're a wonderful makeup artist who's just lacking a little background info."

"A little? You call that monstrosity little??" You flopped backward on the couch and covered your face with a decorative pillow. "I give up."

"Oh, come on." He tugged at your legs, making you slide out from under the pillow with a grunt. "It'll be fun! I'll show you everything myself, so that's barely any work for you."

"That's what I'm afraid of," you grumbled. "Working with you."

His eyes shone with hurt, and you bit your lip. Was that going too far?

Yet, he smiled. "I'm really not that bad, am I?"

You immediately regretted your harsh tone. Dammit. This façade was seriously coming apart at the seams, and at this rate, it wouldn't be long until he had pulled apart every strand of your carefully constructed costume.

"Alright." You sat straight and sighed, then looked up at Jungkook with a grim smile. "Show me what you've got."

***

"You guys are more crackheaded on screen than I imagined," you said, watching Bangtan prance across the laptop in animal onesies.

"Oh? We get that a lot," Jungkook said. "Uh, this episode is kind of cringe, let's go to the next."

"No, no! This is fabulous. Let me bask in its glory."

"Really, now? You're enjoying it?" The eager tease in his tone made your lips tug up.

"And what if I did?" You turned away from the laptop to raise an eyebrow at Jungkook. He comically mirrored the action, and you chuckled.

You didn't want to admit it, but you were really enjoying this. The boys were way more entertaining on the screen and stage than you imagined, and the endless plethora of content seemed more feasible if you looked back on how much media you had already burned through in a single afternoon.

The educational value was a plus, too; you could just start to make out where Bangtan's private and stage personalities came together. In your head, you were already piecing together fresh themes and altering premades to suit your new knowledge.

Jungkook... well, Jungkook wasn't so bad either. His piping of context was surprisingly helpful, and his witty comments on everything were—okay, they were funny. The company was nice, too.

You liked it here. More than you expected, and maybe even thought possible.

Strange, to say the least.

"Aye, I am SO stiff right now," Jungkook said once the Next Episode? screen popped up. He loudly popped his knuckles, then shook them out and glanced at you. "How about a snack break?"

You stretched and heard multiple joints loosen with a crack. "Yep, time to take a ten."

••

"Hm, where's the grape ju—oh, did you say something?" You glanced over your shoulder at Jungkook, who was stirring something steamy in a cup.

He raised an unamused brow. "I said, I want you to give me a clear answer this time."

You scoffed and turned your attention back to the refrigerator. "Yeah? On what?"

"You know, our content and all." He set his mug down on the counter with an audible clack. "Really. No vague 'and what if I did's this time. On a scale of one to ninety-nine, how is it going?"

"Scale of one to—whatever." You took the juice container and shut the fridge, then whirled around. "You wanna hear what I think? Fine. A full one hundred from me."

His eyebrows shot up. After the silence hung in the air for a few moments, a breathless "Really?" was all you got in response.

"Yes, really!" you shot back. "It's incredible! Everybody's all so sweet and wholesome and hilarious that I can't even begin to describe... how had I missed out on this? I-I think I'm starting to understand why people would—"

"—pay to see our little boy scouts jump around on a stage?" he finished softly.

"How the hell did you know that?!"

Jungkook winced back, and you blinked. Without realizing it, your voice had risen to a shout. Taking a deep breath, you said in a much quieter tone: "I just can't believe how much I was in the dark about. Well... the scary thing about knowledge is that it makes you question everything you know."

You stared at the juice carton in your hands. "And I thought I knew. But I didn't."

With a start, you realized that you weren't only talking about Bangtan as a whole, but about—him as well.

Why did he seem like a completely different person than back then? Memories of the late night car ride rushed back, and you remembered debating whether he was the same Jungkook that you knew. While his pretty face stayed the same, everything else about him was nearly unrecognizable. Why did he seem so different? Why did he seem so much... better?

Why did he seem like someone who deserved a second chance?

And where the hell were these thoughts coming from??

Jungkook's eyes were fixed on you when you looked back up. But although he looked right at you, something in his gaze was distant. With his expression slack and rosy lips parted slightly, you knew that his thoughts were either whirling around furiously or completely frozen in place.

"Jungkook?"

"Mm?"

"What's two plus seven?"

"Wha—oh, um, yes. Definitely."

"Huh."

"Huh?"

"Let's take a break."

That snapped him back to attention. He blinked a few times, as if waking from a trance, and then his eyes actually focused on you. "W-what? Why? Aren't we already on a break?"

You laughed a little. "No, let's stop our Bangtan media-scrounging here for today. I think it'd be best to take a break from all this boyscout stuff, at least for now."

"Oh. Yes, I agree." But he stood there for a few more moments, staring down at the tiled kitchen floor with an empty expression. You cleared your throat. He blinked again. "Right. Um, I think I'll head to my room now."

"Good idea."

You watched Jungkook hurry down the hall, his steps on solid wood almost noiseless, and you had to marvel. How could dancers be so light on their feet? It was as if they weighed nothing at all, and floated through space instead of walking like ordinary earth-bound humans.

You only wished that he didn't float through your mind just as easily.

••

This is not making it any better.

That was the conclusion you had come to after sitting on your bed and eating sweets for the past hour.

You groaned and threw yourself back onto the sheets, crossing your arms tightly. How are you going to get out of this? This—strange little rut of cONFUSING EMOTIONS??

To be continued...

... is what you had agreed on with Jungkook, back in the car on your impromptu drive.

But how? And when? Not to mention, how??

You still hadn't come to terms with your feelings, you realized. Even though you had (mostly) accepted the fact that something was there, and that your grudge had (mostly) faded away, you still couldn't see the two of you... together again.

Gah, now why was that so hard to even think about?

It just didn't make sense. And you were so, so confused by it.

You decided to make a call.

Grabbing your phone from where it rested amongst the snack crumbs and discarded wrappers, you unlocked it and punched in... Taehyung's number?

With your thumb hovering over the green "Call" button, you forced yourself to stop and think.

What were you doing? You usually weren't this impulsive. A call? To Taehyung, of all people? Out of the blue, in the middle of the day, when you didn't even know what he was doing. Or what you were thinking, for that matter.

But... you needed to talk to someone. Bottling everything up inside—you couldn't take that anymore.

For some reason, you were reminded of King Midas's hairdresser.

Okay, so the mythical King Midas is best known for asking and being granted the ability to turn anything into gold with a touch; hence, the metaphor "Midas Touch." But something a bit lesser known about the same guy is that he got himself cursed with donkey ears at one point. (Not the brightest fellow, eh?)

Obviously, this man had to hide his ears, so he came up with an ingenious solution: a hat that he wore all the time. Only the royal hairdresser knew about his secret, but he was forbidden to speak of it. Yet, one day, the hairdresser decided that the burden was too much, and that he had to let it out somehow or he would go mad.

So he ran into a secluded forest and shouted into the trees, "The King has donkey ears!" Then he was satisfied, thinking nobody had heard (if a tree falls with no one around does it make a sound kind of scenario??). But he was wrong. The reeds by a nearby river heard him, and every time a breeze blew, they whispered The King has donkey ears! all throughout the land. And thus the secret was found out.

Now, most preachy-sentimental people would find some kind of lovely moral in this fun little myth. You knew better. The real lesson is that keeping all your burdens inside will eventually break you, and there's only one way out.

Likewise, all of the raw emotion and buried memories and truths untold were racing inside your mind like a terrible hurricane, and you were afraid that you might actually explode if you didn't find some kind of release. So that was that.

And Taehyung? Well...

Maybe it was because he knew. About your relationship, that is, back in high school. After all, he was your brother's best friend then, so he would understand without making you recount the event in graphic detail.

Also, Taehyung just seemed... more understanding in general. The other members were all insanely amazing, of course, and your brother was another story, but—you felt that your chances of receiving the kind of empathy you craved were best with him.

With your mind made up, you took a breath and pressed the button, then held your phone to your ear.

Beep.

"Please pick up," you whispered to the dial tones, fidgeting with the edge of your T-shirt. Now that you had thoroughly thought about it, you realized that you needed this conversation even more than at first, and a sense of urgency gripped you like some strange type of nervous paralysis.

Was Taehyung even available? What would you do if he didn't pick up? Why did your chest feel so constricted all of a sudden? Were you seriously experiencing physical effects now? Are you going to sprout donkey ears all of a sudden?!

Beep.

"Hello? Y/N?"

-
-
-

hello friends it's me the author hahaaa

sincerest apologizes for the long overdue update!! i've honestly been putting this (and wattpad as a whole!) aside for the longest time because of ~mental health~
but then i came back, read an extraordinary book, and regained enough creative mana to compose the entire second half of this chapter in a single day. yay!

did y'all notice a fresh layout tho 👀

anyway, what's next for y/n—and taehyung?? he's picked up, and she has a lot to say! will you stick around long enough to find out??

💜 y'all~

if you were wondering, yes, i did take a bit of inspiration from It's Okay to Not Be Okay ;)
tho greek king midas is decidedly separate from king gyeongmun, the korean counterpart of a donkey-eared king, i thought that more would know the story if i included midas (since the greek dude seems to be more well-known among my audience of english speakers!)

also if you were wondering, the extraordinary book in question is Storm and Silence, by RobThier ! simply spiffing works ^^