Innocence in Lust ✔

XXI. WANING GALES

"There are things that you should know but are not mine to tell, Jasmine nu- Baby." – Jeon Jungkook

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"Our soulmate is you." The statement echoes inside your head. It bounces like a Ping-Pong ball between well-seasoned players. It constantly dribbles along the walls of your confused thoughts. Its words split to consonants and vowels that sounds so wrong and untrue.

You blink towards Jungkook and to his gleaming gaze as he ends his call. Your brows crease and look back again to Jimin's sweet moon eyes. So much confused, you feel your head seemingly starts to explode.

'Are they joking?' You don't want to know.

Then you close your eyes so painfully tight.

"Why me?" The conversation you had the day you found their true identity flows within your memory.

"Because we know that you are meant for us." Namjoon's answer was soothing, yet the long pause before that was deafening. It made you question everything from the beginning. The little plant that had died in you was reborn on that day. Its stem crawled to its sunlight, hopeful that maybe a bud may form.

"Then...We wouldn't know how right we were about you." Hoseok's response when you asked why among all the jobs they wanted you as their Aphrodite, tickles your brain. The bud had morphed from pale to pink and beamed to bloom.

However, there is an intoxicating truth that still hovers, seemingly reducing everything as useless clues, wilting the bud deep inside your heart that had become a flower. It's like a winter frost. It made you shiver, reminding yourself, that it was the only reality that you had. "Once the soulmate comes, you are nothing but a substitute for her absence." Though painful, you accepted it.

You shouldn't have laid your heart to something so unsure.

"If ever, many would be affected, including yourself." Mr. Ryu's warning resounds.

He was right.

"Please don't joke on me." You weakly whisper. Your voice is shaking. Your hands curl into a fist, trying hard to snatch it away from Jimin's hold. But he never let go. Instead, he tightens his hold.

"Jasmine. I am not-"

"It's okay to tell me the truth." You continue. 'I don't deserve your pity.' You want to add but you halt with the seriousness on his eyes the moment they met yours. Tongue-tied, you just stay still as you search for any speck of insincerity on his creased forehead.

"Listen. I know we started this all wrong." Jimin quietly says with his sweetest hushed voice as his thumbs smoothen the tension on your fingers, his gaze never leaving yours, melting you into a pliant listener. All those memories are temporarily put into a pause. "We should have told you our intensions first."

"B-but... H-how? I-I don't understand." A web of chaos threads inside your head.

"You see. We had the hunch that you are our soulmate since Hobi-hyung and Jin-hyung met you. But there was no way to be sure. The more with you claiming having a fiancé only to find out that you didn't. Nonetheless, we got desperate. We wanted to know you."

"T-then why?" You mutter. Why didn't they tell you? Why it has to take months and for you to accidentally know it for them to mention it? Do they really plan to reveal it at all? Would they just pretend to know nothing if you didn't happen to eavesdrop? Would they continue to act?

There are so many questions and you don't know which to ask.

"Why becomes an Aphrodite?" Jungkook who had been allowing Jimin's gentleness to soothe you, asks with his breathy angelic voice to clarify.