Dark Matter | JJK

42. Quiet Courage

The moment Jungkook saw the telephone drop from her hand, he felt his heart drop, too.

When she fell, however, he was there to catch her. Before his very eyes, he saw her crumple like a piece of paper within a fisted palm, her body folding in on itself as she met the floor. She was still in the first few minutes he silently held her, so still that he feared she might have stopped breathing. And before he could check for himself, she was crying, crystalline droplets pouring from her eyes like a relentless torrent of grief, wetting the front of his shirt but sucking his heart dry with helplessness. 

Helplessness because he didn't know. He didn't know if the girl in his arms was shedding tears of sorrow or guilt, if the fact that her frame wasn't convulsing with overwhelming sobs yet meant that her heart was not irreparably broken in two. He didn't know because she was so quiet in his lap, no agonized wailing or beating fists or unsteady whimpers — just quiet. Dangerously so. 

When she spoke, it was hard for him to recognise her voice. 

"It's my fault." 

Jungkook threaded his fingers through her hair. "It's not your fault, Petra." 

"No," she said, pulling her face away from the shield of his chest, training her bloodshot eyes on the hardwood floor. "I knew he would make me pay. I knew Gwonhan wouldn't just let it go when I refused to work for him, and yet I did nothing. But m-my parents..." her lips quivered, fresh tears slicing down the tender skin of her cheeks. "Why did he have to take them? Couldn't he have taken me instead?" 

Jungkook felt his own vision start to grow glassy. "Don't say that, Petra," he hushed, his grip tightening around her wrists in desperation. "Please don't say that." 

Despite his pleas, Petra's features scrunched in torment and her fists balled, huffing out breaths so unsteady it was as if she could barely breathe. "I didn't — I d-didn't even say goodbye properly the last time I saw them... I never c-called, never asked how they were doing, if they were happy... I abandoned them too, Jungkook. Just like my brothers. I abandoned them, too."

Jungkook hated how inept he was in the realm of verbal consolation, unable to do anything concrete to stop the way Petra was trembling like a fine china doll in the middle of an earthquake, on the verge of shattering. So he opted for silence and swept her in once more, nestling her face in his neck and pressing his lips to her hairline, more than willing to let his own heart bear the brunt of her pain just so hers could heal. "We'll find a way," he said weakly. "We'll find a way to bring them back, I promise. It's not your fault —" 

"That's not how it works, Jungkook!" The thin thread holding her together finally snapped in two, her eyes burning red with rage and strangling him with a piercing desperation. "That's not — I was selfish, okay?! I was a selfish daughter to who left her parents behind! And now they're gone and there's n-nothing I can do." She shook her head, hands trembling before they crushed the material of his shirt in anger. "Y-you don't understand. You don't."  

But even as he held her, letting her pieces crack and splinter within his hold, Jungkook wanted to tell her that he understood her. He understood the depth of her guilt like it was his own, the suddenness of her loss. 

He understood her because that was exactly how he had lost his father. 

☯

At S+TV's news centre, Hyun Seunghee let the sporadic tapping of her fingertips on her laptop's keys give her exhausted mind some endurance. She was working overtime, like most officers at the centre were during the apocalypse, but she wasn't complaining. The next day's newspaper edition was almost complete, save for one editorial that would soon be delivered to her desk before she mailed the draft to the editor.