(Jungkook POV)
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"You killed him!"
I rolled over in bed, anticipately awaiting Jimin's answer. In front of me was my laptop, displaying the final chapter of his story. With my phone pressed to my ear, I re-read the last line over and over again, still in shock.
"Relax, it's not like it was real," Jimin's chuckle emitting through.
I sat upright, eyes wide. "So?! After forty chapters, he died. Died as in no longer alive. You said you'd do a happy ending!"
"I did!"
"How?"
"Well," voice static flickering, "it was his choice to die."
"That's not a happy ending!"
"Yes, it is."
I suppressed the urge to yell out his name. "But his mother ended up being heartbroken! H-how can that be a happy thing?"
"See? It was a sad ending for his mother. To have lost her son."
I held my breath.
"But not for him. He didn't want to be alive anymore."
The gears in my head turned.
"The story was never about his mother — it was about himself. If he found happiness through committing suicide, then isn't that his own happy ending?"
I minimized the window in front of me, leaning back to focus on his words.
He chuckled, "we often forget that our sad ending could be a happy ending for someone else."
I pondered on his words, reminding myself that this was Park Jimin speaking, the senior with the orange hair at my school, all smiles and eye crinkles and laughter.
"How. . ."
"Hm?"
I felt like I was trapped in a daze, holding onto his words, trying to piece them together to imagine the facial expression he was currently displaying in this very moment.
But all that I could remember was a smiling face, orange hair and eye crinkles and laughter.
"How can you write like this?" Jimin.
The line was silence, heavy with the absence of his light voice. I felt an eagerness, ropes loosening in my chest, a warmth spreading through me. It was a bit of a rush, as if something inside me was escaping and wanting to know more and more.
"You sound like those followers that message me," he giggled. "But I don't know, I just. . .write."
"What I mean is," I fiddled with my sweater's sleeve, "why do you write like this?"
His voice dimmed a bit, "because I can be anyone and everyone all at once. I can be the author and reader and the protagonist and the antagonist. Hell, I can even be the fucking side character."
"So you're saying that you write about yourself?" His previous works ran through my head, dividing into sentences and phrases he wrote, endings and beginnings, antagonists and protagonists — were all of them about him?
"That's pretty tragic," I mumbled.
"Maybe that's why they feel like a tragedy. I'm the creator and observer of my own sadness." His voice dimmed and turned soft. "But you. . .you make me happy."
I dissolved in his voice, drowning in whispers and sighs and breaths, audio making me see and feel all that I never could before.
"We live in the same city, right?" He asked.
I froze.
"I think so."
He inhaled sharply, eliciting a comforted sigh. "Then we can meet up, right?"
"Um, I'm not sure." Shit, shit, make up an excuse. "I'm not really allowed to go out unless it's for school."
"Oh. That sucks."
"Yeah, it does."
I mentioned the high school I went to, obviously leaving out the fact that I went there.
"I go there!" He exclaimed. "But why do you mention it?"
"Oh, um m-my cousin goes there." I didn't have a cousin that went there. "Maybe you know him?"
"How old is he?"
And of there I continued, adding things along the way, later realizing I was subconsciously describing myself.
"He kind of sounds like someone I've seen."
My ears perked up. "Really? Have you ever talked to him?" Oh man, oh man.
"Well," he sighed, "I tried to. But he walked out of the bathroom without talking to me." He groaned, "fuck, he probably thinks I'm a creep. I've never even heard him talk either."
"That's probably my cousin you met — he never talks."
"What's his name?"
"Junghyuk."
What kind of a name was that? I mentally scolded myself for speaking too quickly.
"Junghyuk, eh. That's a nice name."
He continued speaking, now rambling, "he has the biggest eyes I've ever seen. They, like, fucking stare into your soul. But like, in a good way, you know." He paused. "Shit, are you going to tell your cousin that?"
"No, no," I laughed, "I won't."
"Good, 'cause oh boy, his fingers are so long and slim. I never knew someone's damn fingers could look so nice. And not to mention his hair. It looks so fluffy!"
I grinned from ear to ear, someone's else's describings of me seemingly intriguing. I looked down at my fingers.
They looked plain and normal to me.
"He's so cute."
My eyes widened. Heat pouring into my cheeks.
Jimin's voice grew teasingly and sultry, "but you're cuter."
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