(Jimin POV)
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"What's your name?"
"About time you've asked, I was beginning to think it didn't matter to you," I replied, taking a sip of coffee.
I nudged the bedroom door closed with my foot, the ivory-chipping door drowning out the why-s and no-s of my parents' lethargy laced voices echoing off walls downstairs.
"That's because it didn't."
I feigned a gasp of dramatic hurt, wincing slightly as the hot liquid trickled down my throat too rapidly.
"Jeez, are you always this bitchy?"
He laughed, but it was soon replaced by coughing. I watched the coffee mug leave a beige, wet circle upon my desk, an imprint of its temporary presence before being dissolved in the dishwasher's bubbly water soon.
"You're not sick, are you?"
"N-"
"Are you eating?"
A pause, and the slight negative space of the silence confirmed my belief.
"You haven't told me your name either," I uttered, a try of encouragement to hear his voice again.
Voice; a sound to get lost in its phonetics, vowels and verbs.
"Jungkook." He responded.
Voice; the memory to remind us of the simultaneous beauty and regret placed there when silence becomes too heavy -- the songs from throats and lungs that ache to fill the suspended air of unspoken woe.
"Jeon Jungkook," he softened.
He made the definitions of words morph from basics to cliches, and the question was; which one was the truest one?
"Jungkook," I repeated his name, letting the sharp letters meld into the following softer ones. "What's the definition of that word?"
"I don't know."
"Make one up then."
"It's a name, it doesn't really qualify as a word, you know." I could practically hear the roll of his eyes.
I curled my fingers around my mug, fingers once again warming up to the hardened clay's temperature.
It was fascinating how even objects adjusted to the temperature of what they had inside of themselves -- like humans.
"Then what does qualify as a word, Jungkook?" I couldn't help but include his name in my sentences.
It was as if it belonged there.
"I guess. . .if it describes things?"
"And you don't think your name has a definition that could describe things?"
"You're sounding as if you're typing up a story. Is that what you're doing? Oh my God, that's why you're sounding like a girl on Valentine's Day."
An exasperated sigh floated to my end of the line and I suppressed a laugh at his paranoia.
"I can't help but speak cliches when I'm with you."
"Stop. It."
"And no, I'm not writing right now. I have no inspiration these days." I shuffled onto my bed, curling up beside my window.
Naked branches stood still but the world seemed to hang from loose threads of populous browns and decaying leaves.
"At times like these," I brought the phone closer to my cheek, "I wonder whether I should just stop writing. But another part of me knows that's bullshit because even if I delete all my chapters and words away, I know I'll be describing every single moment I experience."
"But you wouldn't be experiencing that moment then, right? Describing something during them is the same as taking photographs or something."
"Perks of being a word-stringer."
"A what?"
"A cooler word than 'writer'."
"That's an. . .interesting word to describe a writer."
"Tell me then," I bit my lip, "which word describes me?"
"Only if you tell me what your name is first."
I sighed. This boy had a way of swimming his way around everything.
"Jimin. Park Jimin."
"Jimin -- that's what describes you."
"Oh come on! That's not fair." I grumbled, scanning my fingers fold and uncurl.
The voice of my father vibrated through the thin walls and I pulled a blanket over my head, ignoring the red response of my mother downstairs.
"You know, that's exactly what I hate so much about us humans. We have this tendency to want to describe and stamp a label onto everything and everyone we see."
He paused and coughed, clearing his throat, he continued, but his voice softened another two tones of polished edges around his letters.
"That's exactly why I don't want to define your name. Because somehow, someway, it will end up defining you."
To be at a loss of words would be the wrong phrase as my voice itself was lodged in my lungs. That's what he did to me; he made the alphabetical letters and constants and vowels stick to the meshes of my ribs, daring me to re-think what I really wanted to say, what I really wanted to believe in.
"And you say I'm cliche," a smile forming once again on my lips.
"But that's where you and I differ; the permanence of a label is a much too heavy of a weight for you to carry. Whereas, for me, it's a reason for existence."
I continued, stretching sentences that tumbled out of my brain, not caring that a verbal conversation was not like the world of writing -- no backspace to erase my words, no cursor to add at previous paragraphs.
"You can say what you want, but I need wordy definitions to make my reality less painful. You can argue that that's making it into a fantasy, but either way, its made me exist even up till now -- I'm still breathing, here and now."
I turned my voice onto a bridge of amusement and jokes, "you better be good, Jungkook, otherwise I'm going to make up a shitty definition for you," I sang.
"And you better be good, otherwise I'll actually call up Oxford dictionary and have them replace dumb-ass for Jimin."
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A/N
ya'll do know that junghyuk is jungkook right?
