13. After The Storm

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It lingered in the air. Thick and heavy, almost like a blanket around me. Wherever I moved, it followed, always watching and never fading away.

The quiet.

The absence of a sound.

The stillness.

The silent treatment Jungkook was giving me.

He is sitting beside me, on an old couch in his apartment, fiddling with his camera for the last thirty minutes or so, pretending to be watching something as his eyes were drowning so deep into the pictures he had once taken.

Ever since we left Taehyung's house, not even one of us has breathed out a word. Whereas I was absolutely terrified of doing so, he was angry, like a ticking bomb ready to go off at no matter what decides to leave my mouth.

If only he had known how easy it was to read him. Just the constant pushing of his tongue through his left inner cheek showed the anger boiling inside of him. The anger that was ready to splash through his skin and onto my very own being, so I wait.

For a few minutes more, I wait for his anger to cool down just a bit.

Sitting still, with my foot tapping impatiently, I look around his apartment, as if trying to find an inspiration, an object that could be the start of our conversation, but nothing comes to my sight. Every scrap of this room is covered with the same grey color. There were no flowers decorating the empty shelves, no clocks hanging from the walls, only a PlayStation in front of a small TV and a few manga comics scattered next to it.

It was dusty.

But in that same moment of silence, I can't bring myself to care.

So I intertwine my fingers, fidgeting in my seat as I scrape whatever dust there was underneath my nails.

''So...'' I start, willingly hushing up the silence, ''are you still mad at me?''

What I hear next has the hairs on my neck standing straight up.

It was a chuckle, one that was different from the one coming after a joke being told. And it was confusing. Because he doesn't look at me, he keeps avoiding an eye contact at any cost, but I can still see him.

I can still see the darkness circling around his pupils, like the clouds eating away the sunshine as the sharp angle of his thick brow raises up behind his black fringe. Seconds after he lifts his chin up to look at me, and I have never been more afraid in my entire life.

''Why would I be mad?''

Is that a trick question?

Knowing that there are no right answers to that I stay still, sinking deeper and deeper into the couch I was sitting on, hoping that it would swallow me whole. But I can't get away from it, can't get away from the way he was looking at me.

''I'm not mad at you.'' He says, and it feels like he's mocking me because his gaze goes back to staring at the moving pictures on his camera as if nothing ever happened. Everything goes back to normal just like that, with a snap of his fingers.

A heavy huff of air leaves my lungs as I try to come up with things to say.

Then I feel him shift against the couch, the depth of it suddenly becoming smaller as Jungkook stands up, the tension in the air standing up together with him. His hand moves away the curtains and he looks out of the window in search for something that would distract his mind because the camera wasn't doing its magic, not anymore.

''I just don't understand it,'' his eyes aren't moving away from whatever it was that he saw through the window, ''What is it about him that makes you so blind?''

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