Dark Matter | JJK

15. Death at an Unexpected Door

"Jungkook?"

"Ugh. I f-flunked my assign —"

"Jungkook."

"Ugghh, ethanoic acid plus ethanol in the presence of concentrated sulphuric acid —"

"Jungkook, you need to get up."

"Hafnium, tantalum, tungsten —"

Petra watched, agape and bemused, as the half-asleep boy on her bed switched between grumbling scientific jargon, murmuring elements of the periodic table and the laws of natural selection, his lips moving in pouty gibberish and eyebrows arched in distress.

His hands balled into fists around the duvet as he scrunched his nose, his eyes tight shut as if he was in the middle of some agonising dream. "Eomma...no... where's appa? It's my birthday why isn't he here yet?"  

She placed her palms on either sides of his warm cheeks and gently tapped them. His mouth stopped moving, and ever so slowly, he squinted his eyes open.

Jungkook yelped and hit his head on the headboard.

"P-please, no," he stuttered, crossing his arms against his chest with his eyes partially closed. "No! I said NO! Don't pinch my —"

"Hey," Petra said, a little loudly, curling her hands around his wrists and prying them away from his chest. "Calm down, it's me."

When his gaze settled on the girl sitting beside him on the bed, biting her lip to contain a burst of laughter, his eyebrows scrunched in confusion.

"What's going on?" His voice was raspy from sleep and exhaustion, the curves of his nose and chin gleaming with melanin. It did weird things to her. "W-where am I?"

Without giving it a thought, her hand reached out on its own accord to push his ruffled black bed hair away from his eyes, like she was comforting a little boy. "You, Jungkook," she said, trying but miserably failing to bite back her smile, "are sleeping in my bed. And I'm Petranella Gordon, the owner of this house who had to sleep on the couch because of your practically-dead ass hogging her bed all night."

"Oh," he said in a whisper, and Petra had the greatest urge to squish his cheeks between her palms. "I'm sorry...why didn't you wake me up?"

"What makes you think I didn't try?" she lied. How could she find it in herself to disturb his peace when there he was, bundled up and softly snoring like a child within the safe cocoon of her blue bedsheets? "You're just sleeping beauty in a black hoodie."

"That's Yoongi hyung..." he mumbled under his breath, scrunching his nose. "But I'm really sorry." The guilt in his features gradually faded when he glimpsed the teasing grin on her face.

"By the way," Petra ventured, distractedly pulling a stray thread of the bedspread, "why did you think I was going to pinch your, uh, nipples?"

The colour drained from his face as he gulped nervously. "Oh, that." He scratched the side of his neck, his eyes looking at anything but her. "Jin hyung...Jin hyung does that, sometimes...to – to, uh, wake me up."

She sputtered a laugh, getting up from the bed and smoothing the hem of her t-shirt. "Go freshen up and come for breakfast. You'll find a spare purple brush in the bathroom."

Petra walked into the kitchen to the aroma of food on the stove wafting into her nostrils and the soothing melody of Bach floating around the room. She stirred the pot of cashew rice bowl with a spatula, adding a few more cashews for good measure.