✔️ Unconditionally [Book 2] | Jeon Jungkook

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This chapter has a soundtrack
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The heavy door opened silently, revealing a dim room, the only source of light coming from the direction of the bed. She pushed it open further and walked inside, her steps slow and careful as if she were walking on a frozen lake that was quickly thawing.

In front of her lie her fiancé.

A tube was inserted in his mouth and taped down next to his lips.

Another went in his nose.

Another in his arm.

Countless more attached to him, either supplying his body with fluids or taking them away from it.

The constant soft beeps of his heart monitor and the rhythmic sounds of the ventilator could be heard behind the sound of her heart thundering in her chest.

She didn't feel herself walking but found herself standing beside him, looking down at his altered form. She expected him to look like he did last night when he was at home sleeping peacefully in their bed.

Instead, his eyes were puffy and starting to bruise. His skin was still pale. Some of the hair on the left side of his head had been shaved off and a strip of bandages covered the large c-shaped incision extending from above his temple to the top of his ear.

He didn't look like himself.
But he was alive.

She looked down at his hand. Hers hovered above it, afraid to touch him even though the nurse informed her that she could, terrified to disrupt any of the wires and tubes connected to his body. Terrified to accidentally hurt him.

Or worse.

Inhaling a shaky breath, she rested her hand on top of his, the relief at finding it was once again warm causing tears to spring to her eyes. Her fingers gently curled around his, and the sadness that he was unable to hold hers back knotted in her throat.

"Hi," she whispered, her voice not even as loud as the short rushes of air being mechanically pushed into his lungs by the ventilator.

And the floodgates opened without her consent.

She clamped her hand over her mouth, stifling the sounds of her grief. Hot tears streaked down her face and burned her cheeks, falling in quick succession from her chin and onto the cotton of his hospital gown. Her shoulders shook with her nearly silent sobs, and the reality that he was unable to console her, to wipe away her tears with his thumbs as he cradled her face in his hands left her shattered.

'You are strong, and you will persevere. Say it.'

'Um... I-I am strong... and I will p-persevere.'

She recalled the morning they sat meditating on a blanket in the lush grass of Haneul's garden, the day he told her the mantra that she still repeated to herself daily in the mirror, her face surrounded by a heart made of love notes that he still hadn't taken down since his birthday.

Gradually her tears slowed, and she took several extended breaths, inhaling for three seconds before exhaling at the same rate.

He was always strong for her, always fulfilling the solemn promise made on a Ferris wheel nearly a year ago. Now it was her turn to be strong.

A task she would wholeheartedly fulfill.
For him. 

Another cleansing breath was taken in. "It's me..."