The Perfect Trap // jeon twins

27. jungwon

Jungwon, more or less, recovered from the hell of a day of the coronation. The easier all of this was on him, the more real it felt that he was no longer bound to Silvia. He wasn't bound to anything. Frankly, he had a fresh start. There was nothing he had to do that he didn't want to. Jungwon was free. More or less. Free from Silvia, from his family, and from Kwan. He was freeing himself from the expectations.

Freedom was terrifying him, no matter how good it was. It could seem like he'd always done everything he wanted, but it was all an act. He was always influenced, always did something to satisfy someone else. Freedom was new and it was making him feel like his life was falling apart (it kind of was, the old way at least).

After a week, Jungwon had to get out of his head and fix something. Anything. He craved some stability.

He entered his old neighborhood. He walked by, without making eye contact with anything behind the fence of his old house. He was done with this place, and one day he would walk by without the twist in his stomach.

Three houses further, Jungwon walked up the driveway and knocked on the door of the house he spent endless hours in as a kid.

Namjoon opened the door.

Their 'goodbye' never happened. They drifted away from the topic of Jungwon and Silvia. Jungwon wanted to pretend the ending to their friendship never happened. While Namjoon never showed much emotion, Jungwon sensed he liked the way they pretended they weren't going to stop seeing each other.

Mutual ghosting to make it less painful.

Now, Namjoon was looking at him wide-eyed.

"Aren't you in Silvia?"

Jungwon took a deep breath. "I am not doing that. I quit. I'm back."

"Since?"

"A week? I was... working on something. But I'm back. For good."

The only thing that kept Jungwon sane in the past week was breaking into the royal library in Silvia to make sure neither his father nor Kwan could mess with Jungkook. He doubted Kwan would, but Jungwon – to his own horror – feared his father the most. He needed to make sure it wasn't actually possible to take back the spell Kwan used to create Jungkook. As weird as it sounded.

It wasn't. Jungwon was relieved. More than he had expected to be.

Namjoon let his smile slowly grow. "I didn't want to tell you that, but I really didn't want you to go."

Jungwon huffed, getting emotional, and dropped his gaze.

They were never overly expressive with each other, but neither put any effort into hiding what they thought. Namjoon knew when Jungwon was struggling, Jungwon knew when Namjoon was upset. At some point, talking was redundant.

Now they were relieved, and neither had to say a word about it.

Jungwon waited on the bench in front of a convenience store. The bell over the door rang, and Namjoon sat next to him, handing Jungwon a bottle of water. Namjoon himself had the biggest can of an energy drink possible.

Jungwon chuckled and twisted the cap, at the same time as Joon cracked the can open.

"So? What changed?" Namjoon asked.

"Everything," said Jungwon. "I never wanted the crown. I just liked... I liked being praised and all. I liked that my family thought I was perfect."

"Perfect? As in?"

"Everything that I've done was perfect to them. Being a wizard, inheriting the crown, all this..." Jungwon waved his arm, pointing at his body. "The health stuff. My body. Everything."

"That's why you work out?"

"No, I love doing that. But I don't care if I have abs or not, man. I just... I just like lifting. That's all." Saying this out loud made him feel lighter.

"For the record, I don't care if you have abs either."

Jungwon chuckled. "Good to know."

"You wore braces when I met you." He smiled playfully.

"I wore braces because I wanted to have perfect teeth."

Namjoon took a sip of his energy drink. "Wasn't it tiring?"

"Exhausting. That's why I gave up on the crown."

"How was it? What did your dad say?"

Jungwon wasn't willing to go back to that day, but he told Namjoon all about the coronation. And all about Jungkook. All about Myeongsoon. Jungwon couldn't shut up for good twenty minutes. He took a sip of his water at the end, throat dry, and put the bottle on the ground.

Namjoon, eyebrows creased, tried to process. "A spell? Seriously?"

"A very modified clone spell. So that we'd look the same, but would be totally different."

"Well, that worked wonders." Namjoon huffed.

"I don't even feel real anymore," Jungwon said. "I'm not telling Jungkook any of this. It's enough he knows it was a spell."

"Not that I'm a fan of your brother, you know, but what kind of a dick you have to be to tell someone 'hey, you weren't supposed to exist, but I casted a spell and here you are'. Followed by 'now prove wizards are no better than humans'."

Jungwon thought about the 'I'm a fan of your brother' part. He wondered if it was his fault that Namjoon and Jungkook didn't get along. Maybe they would have been a trio from the beginning. Namjoon did live in the same neighborhood, and Jungkook never played with them because of the whole rivalry. Things could have been different.

But Jungwon couldn't change the past, so he let it go.

"He's not as bad as we used to think."

Namjoon laughed. "I'd never think you'd be the one to tell me that."

"I'm as surprised as you are."

"So we judged a book by its cover?"

"Not sure." Jungwon pushed his hands into the pockets of his jumper. "You can't say his outfits aren't kinda cool."

"I wouldn't dress like that, but fine. They are cool." Namjoon took another sip, and Jungwon glanced at the can. He'd never had anything like that. He'd never had a sip of anything that wasn't water or coffee, really. "Did you make up?"

"Sort of? There's a lot to work through, but... we'll be trying. I guess." The topic was slowly fading away, and Jungwon pointed at the can to cut it short. His focus was on the new goal now, anyways. "Next time, I'm drinking this."

Namjoon, after a glance at his drink, pulled another one from his pocket. "I got it for later, but take it," he said, handing it to Jungwon.

Jungwon cracked it open, letting the thoughts about the nutrition facts label be. He didn't feel like fighting them, but they didn't have to rule him. He didn't check the amount of sugar. He didn't want to know.

The drink hissed at him. Jungwon brought it closer, sniffling. Some tropical fruit. Pineapple, maybe. Sweet scent of pineapple.

Namjoon laughed, dropping his hand onto Jungwon's shoulder. "Don't worry, son. I'll teach you life."

Jungwon suddenly felt like he wasted his teenage years, and it was so overwhelming he had to ignore it. For now. He'd work through this later. Instead, he took a sip.

It was weird. He could feel the sugar dragging down his throat. He ignored it, too. He'd ignore it enough times to forget he'd ever cared.

"It's good," he said, cracking a smile.

"When was the last time you had something not labeled as healthy?"

"Never? If I did, I was too little to remember."

Namjoon dramatized a sigh. "We've got a lot of work to do."

Jungwon was grateful he didn't become the king of Silvia. He was grateful he was having an energy drink instead of the water. And he was grateful he was spending the afternoon with his best friend, sitting on a bench in front of the convenience store, instead of the throne in Silvia.

He was so grateful.