YOUTH. | JK | COMPLETE

officially alone

FIX YOU
COLDPLAY

When you try your best but you don't succeed
When you get what you want but not what you need
When you feel so tired but you can't sleep
Stuck in reverse
When the tears come streaming down your face
'Cause you lose something you can't replace
When you love someone but it goes to waste
What could it be worse?

"Do you recognize the suspect, sir?" The officer asks. Jeongguk's chest heaves as he struggles to catch his breath.

"Yes." He chokes out, throat feeling tight and constricted. No, he thinks again, it can't be. "Not—personally, but yes. He works as a bouncer at a nightclub in S-Seoul. He's friends with Hoseok. Or, Hoseok said they were friends, anyways." Jeongguk rambles inarticulately. His brain feels like scrambled eggs.

"I see. Sir, can you think of any motivation this man would have to harm Mr. Jung?" The officer asks. Jeongguk braces himself on the end of Hoseok's hospital bed, mind reeling. What can he possibly have against Hoseok? He lets all of his friends into nightclubs for free! Hell, he even let me in— Jeongguk's train of thought comes to a lurching stop as it dawns on him:

The neckline of his black shirt is suddenly grasped roughly and yanked upon until he's face to face with the bouncer.

"I'm only letting you in because you're with Jung Hoseok. This is a one-time thing, Wanderer. I will beat whatever life is left in you out of you if you come around here again." The bouncer practically hisses.

Jeongguk feels his heart crumble, and he grips onto the hospital bed for dear life as his knees go weak. Could it be his fault that Hoseok is hurt? Could the bouncer's deep-rooted hate for Wanderers transfer to those few like Hoseok who support them? As hard as Jeongguk's frazzled brain tries, he can't come up with a better explanation. This is a hate crime, and the hate was refracted off the horrid, abnormality that Jeongguk is and onto the pure, kind Hoseok, like light off a mirror. Crimes with this motive aren't rare, but Jeongguk never thought they could happen to him before. Well, it makes sense. That was what he thought before he had friends, before he had Hoseok. And now Hoseok paid the price of being associated with the scum of the earth.

This is all my fault, Jeongguk thinks, the words repeating in his head. He feels faint as the clip of the bullet penetrating Hoseok's side replays over and over behind his eyes; the grotesque angle at which Hoseok jolts before crumpling to the ground; the red liquid that seeps from the wound and stains the sidewalk and every inch of Jeongguk's conscience. The blood is on his hands.

"Sir?" The officer asks once more, and Jeongguk's shallow breathing is the only answer he gets, until his lips, his lips that feel numb, like dry cotton, form barely coherent words.

"This is all my fault." He chokes out the mantra he's been thinking, and the officer raises his eyebrows in concern.

"What do you mean?" He asks.

"I'm—I'm a Wanderer." Jeongguk blurts. He's too overwhelmed with emotion to process the fact that he's just outed his life's secret to someone who may not be very fond of what he is. He frankly doesn't care. His wellbeing is the least of his concern; it's beyond him now.

"What?" A shaky voice asks from the door. Jeongguk glances over to see Seokjin. He's looking at Jeongguk with something Jeongguk's never seen before. It's a look Seokjin has given the mouse he saw scurrying around the floor of the back in the cafe. A look reserved for pure, unadulterated disgust. Seokjin is disgusted by him. "Jeongguk, no. You're not—you can't be one of them." Seokjin says, shaking his head.