Aftertaste | J.JK

Seventeen Years

The black comes back to Jungkook's eyes the moment the Blood Hour loses control of his body. He looks at me with a stunned expression as my lips curve into a relieved smile, and is still motionless when I embrace him happily.

"Thank goodness." Jimin echoes. But his eyes still bear the shock and confusion from Jungkook's statement, as if that had been nothing of what he'd expected from the maknae.

"Oh no," Jungkook says, his voice nothing like the deep growl from before. "Elle, are you alright?"

Then he catches the two distinct red holes on my neck, and how my shirt neckline was pulled down low on my shoulder.

His face crumples.

"No, it's okay." I quickly say as I pat Jungkook comfortingly on his head. "It's fine. I'm alive, see? It could've gone a lot worse, you know."

Jimin's mouth knits into a thoughtful frown. "You refused to bite her, Kook. After the first- I don't think you would've bitten her after that."

Jungkook looks dazed, and I doubt that he heard anything Jimin said as he continues to run his hands down my body to check for wounds. Now I'm doubting he didn't even hear what I told him.

"Relax," I tell him, smiling warmly to ease his urgency. "I'm okay. Everything's fine, Jungkook."

"But I bit you," He says, chewing on the corner of his lip in anxiety. "Did it hurt? Did I take a lot? Does it sting?"

He really didn't remember anything.

"Perfectly fine," I reply. "It honestly didn't even hurt much."

His face goes hysteric with fear as his fingers find warmth against my upper arm, doe eyes wide and terrified as he hears me.

"Much?"

Jimin laughs, and the maknae shoots the older vampire a murderous glare as he tries to calm his rushed breathing. "Hyung, it's not funny. How come you're here?"

"Well, I'm hurt." Jimin says, feigning the emotion by pressing a shocked hand to his heart. "Shouldn't you be glad to see me here?"

Then the air vibrates, and five men who all look like they'd sobered up rather fast from a drinking session appear. Each of them looks dazed and stunned, matching Jungkook's expression when he'd first snapped out of his other side.

"H-How is she not dead?" Yoongi stutters as he waves a confused finger at me. "There is no way she could've survived the Blood Hour. No way-"

"Jungkook refused to bite her," Jimin explains, and I can feel the sheer shock radiating off of the men as they look to the maknae in surprise.

"What? But that's impossible." Jin exclaims. "It was the Blood Hour, Jimin. There can't be-"

"Hyung, I saw it with my own two eyes," Jimin tells him, expression serious. "He refused to bite her after the first time. Said he didn't like the way it scared her when he did."

At Jimin's account, Namjoon suddenly goes into a state of thinking while Taehyung and Hoseok begin to clap each other's hands while squealing uncontrollably.

Was that the Blood Hour, too?

"That's so freaking precious!" Hoseok screams as Taehyung jumps excitedly in front of our stunned faces. "Holy crap!"

"So that means that Elle won't be in danger anymore," Namjoon concludes, motioning with an outstretched finger. "Which means fewer headaches and one less dead body."

"Hyung!" Jungkook exclaims, making warmth flood my heart when I see how much concern his expression carries. "That's not funny."

"Just stating the obvious," Namjoon shrugs as Jin frowns at him. "Is it my fault that I'm just an objective person in general?"

"Agh," Yoongi groans as he runs his fingers through his mint-shaded hair. "Someone shut him up or that dead body won't be Elle's."

Time Skip

My mom had thankfully decided that locking me in my room hadn't made much of a difference in me, considering I couldn't step out of the house anyway. So she had lifted the ban, after changing the password of the doors.

But knowing that she always kept the note where she wrote down the password, I'd smiled when she told me that.

When she leaves the house for work, I casually slip out of my room and rush to my mother's bedroom. She'd been getting forgetful lately, and I'd seen her write the password on a paper and slide it into the very last drawer in her iron cabinets.

And after deciding that I might need the password quickly like last time, I'd decided that knowing the numbers couldn't do any harm than help.

Heart rushing with the excitement of doing something forbidden, I kneel down in front of her filing cabinets and unlock the very last one. There are a number of papers in neat stacks, and a thick manila folder on the bottom.

Slowly, I take out each paper and slip, careful to not make a mess as I look through each one, going through piles of useless advertisements and past contracts before landing my eyes on the familiar tiny sheet of paper.

123456.

I roll my eyes and giggle underneath my breath as I realize that it's a slight improvement from the 000000 from before. Typical forgetful, predictable mom. I should've known.

I'm about to place the sheet back when my eyes catch on the manila folder that had been buried on the bottommost part of the cabinet.

Elle's Hospital Records

Something in me makes me pick the folder up. In the beginning, I'd believed it to be thick and heavy, but actually, it isn't that at all.

It only contains a couple of sheets of paper, all worded heavily with tiny hospital font. My eyes trace over each of those words, not missing a single letter as I skim in detail.

Being confined to my house all the time meant lots of time to be spent. And since my mother had forbidden computer games and surfing on the internet because she thought it would corrupt me, the only thing I could confide in to spend time on was books.

Lots, and lots of books.

So believe me, I'd had more than enough time to learn the art of skipping the irrelevant parts of a book and digging deep into the parts that really mattered.

And what I see makes my face pale in horror.

The paper slips from my loosened grasp, fluttering to the ground and resting back onto its original spot next to the manila folder.

This can't be true.

It can't possibly be true.

Hands trembling, I snatch up the records again and read it through once more, just in case I'd hallucinated and misread the entire thing. But there was no way. The countless times I read over the paper, over and over again, it continues to say the same things.

Seventeen years.

The paper crumples in my tightened fist as my eyes slant in pure rage- the one that makes your entire body tremble and the one that blinds the whole span of your mind.

The one that makes you reckless, the one that makes you terrified of your own self.

Seventeen years.

Disbelief and horror hang over my every thought like a storm cloud, the storm cloud that signaled the very beginning of powerful, destructive weather.

Seventeen wasted years.