𝐔𝐍𝐅𝐈𝐋𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐄𝐃

32 | princess Mononoke

Nox

Once the session is complete, Jimin lifts his body off the massage bed and reaches out for his shirt when I take it off the rack and hand it over to him. He mutters a thanks and turns his back at me when he puts it on.

His body has changed since the last time I saw him shirtless. His skin is tanner than before, his muscles slightly broader and dare I say firmer; especially his back. I've caught him a few times going to the neighborhood gym with Taehyung, but I was too shy to say hello to them because he was there. It's refreshing to see that Jimin has been paying more attention to his physique. He's never struck me as the kind of guy who's obsessively into body-building and frankly I like that he isn't the stereotypical buff guy that you see out in the streets. He's working out just enough, maintaining this healthy routine that simultaneously adds to his physical appearance.

It was easy keeping an eye on Jimin the past week, since he lives right across my building. I would see him pace towards one of his friends' cars, in his washed-out jeans and worn-out blue Nikes from the window of my living room. Or when I returned from a shift at the patisserie, he was sitting at a table in the yard right next to the fountain, desperate for a change of scenery while typing something on his laptop, his brows furrowed in deep concentration.

He's always writing something on his laptop. He's always working on something when he's alone.

I've also seen him carry a little red notebook that he recently got. I've noticed how his face embodies this totally pissed off look when he's unsatisfied with the things he's written down and then he's forced to rip off the page because he refuses to use a correcting strip.

My eyes are fixed on his back muscles and his honey-colored skin that looks as soft as it feels. Shadows are painting the path of his spine, where the bones protrude only slightly as he moves; the silver scar on his right shoulder blade is barely visible under the dim lighting, but each time I ran my hands all over his skin it was there, the soft fleshy texture reminding me of its presence. I was always curious about how he got that scar, ever since the first time I saw him shirtless at Sam's.

"Jimin, how did you get that scar?" I finally ask.

As he turns around to face me, his hand reaches for the scar, slipping under the fabric of his white T-shirt when he smiles awkwardly through shaky breaths and it doesn't take me long to connect the dots.

"She did that?" I pipe and he nods.

"We were having an argument and things got heated, so she threw a glass at me." He says lowly. "The glass shattered and some of the slivers went down my shirt that night, but I didn't realize I got hurt until later. The neighbor who lives next door, called the cops and while everyone thought that I was to blame, Evelyn finally cooled down and explained everything to the authorities."

A bitter laugh leaves his lips when he proceeds. "Funny thing is that even though they let us leave, they still hadn't believed her. Our neighbors thought I was abusing her, hurting her." His breath hitches in his throat when he runs a hand through his dark brown hair and tries to calm himself down. "Every time I would leave the house, I would get stared at, people would whisper meaningless, petty things to one another and they would change sidewalks when I was around. Even in the stairwell, or the elevator, our neighbors would inch away from me because they believed everything they've heard."

I stare at him speechless and I can't help but feel terrible for the way I treated him when he first moved into the building. For fucks sake this man has been falsely accused of abusing his girlfriend when clearly, it's the other way around and when he tried to help me out a situation that he himself empathized with, I lashed out at him thinking that he was going to harm me.