𝘠𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘏𝘰𝘯𝘰𝘳 | JJK | ✓

40

8 years ago, FSoPA High_

"Well, if he doesn't care about me, I don't care about him either."

Kim Seokjin couldn't help the sneer that made its way to his lips as he passed by Ahn Heiran's clique and caught the strip of her conversation with her so-called best friend. He had to admire the nerve of that girl to be so clueless and still make everything about her. It didn't surprise him. He had an inkling that she was not so glamorous as JK had painted her, but a pathetic barbie doll who thought the world revolved around her. His friend was suffering. JK was withering, fading, dying at the very moment. Yet his so-called girlfriend's biggest concern was that he had stood her up for some date and ignored her texts.

It was pathetic. Maybe if Seokjin had tried, really tried to make JK understand that she wasn't the best choice, something would've been different. But even as Seokjin thought it, he knew it would have made no difference. Tragedy had struck JK and that guilt would eat him alive. No matter who said what. It was his own mental prison that no one could get him out of.

Seokjin sighed. Even Taehyung was skipping school. He was concerned that JK might think of the unthinkable and had chosen to stay with him. Seokjin couldn't blame him, since the last time he met JK, he looked like a dead man, just a mere shell of the lively boy with the rabbit smile he used to be.

The passage of time felt like a dragging clock. Seokjin waited in his classroom for his class to end, counting the seconds before he could take off and find his friend. JK shouldn't be alone and there was only so much Taehyung could do.

The bell finally rang and he was out of the classroom like a breeze, walking off the building with only one destination in mind when he felt a tug on his shirt and he turned around and found the girl he despised the most standing behind him. Ahn Heiran.

"Hey Seokjin, I need to talk to you." Heiran wheezed as if she had been running after him.

Seokjin pried her fingers off his shirt. "I have nothing to say to you."

He was about to turn around and walk away when she said, "Please, I need to know what happened to him."

Seokjin paused despite himself. Something in her voice had made him. "I– I know you don't like me and that's okay but JK— he's... he hasn't been picking up his phone for the past few days and isn't coming to school. Even Taehyung is not here and I just know that there's something wrong. Something feels so wrong. So please, I just need to know if he's fine."

Seokjin turned back, refusing to believe that the Barbie doll was capable of something called emotions, and was convinced that it was all an act when he saw her eyes. Tears, concern, and worry as he had never seen before in her eyes. Walls down and vulnerable, Ahn Heiran had never looked so...human before.

"Why didn't you go to him? Why do you care now?" Seokjin questioned.

"I don't know, I just... I just thought maybe he needed some space and he'd tell me what was wrong when he feels fine but– he's never been like this before and I...I didn't want to be one of those clingy girlfriends and I have never done this before and I didn't know what else to do..."

This was the real Ahn Heiran. The Ahn Heiran without her walls, her attitude that masked her. Desperate and clueless. The Ahn Heiran that was her ultimate true self. And the worry he saw in her eyes was as true as his. He could feel it.