✔️ Unconditionally [Book 2] | Jeon Jungkook

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"She was a pretty quiet child. I consider myself blessed that she was so well-behaved. I never really had to tell her more than once to do something."

Areum's fingers traced along Seokjin's skin, following the outline of a pink lotus decorating his arm, her head resting on his chest. His other arm held her close to his side, his hand resting on her waist just above the white sheet covering her bare hip.

"She was always feeding the feral cats in the neighborhood. She even named them."

"What did she name them?" Seokjin asked, his voice raspy.

"Let's see." Her lips pursed as she thought. "There was Pumpkin, Oreo, Friendly, No Name, Bam-Bam... Those are the ones I can remember. I caught her sneaking chicken and fish out of the house one night and she confessed. So we went to the pet store the next day and bought food and dishes for them. And she would sit with them while they fed and sing about how she loved them."

Despite his neutral expression, he breathed out a chuckle. "She always tried to brighten someone's day, even if that someone was an animal," he recalled.

"She did. She still does," Areum agreed. "She was into sports for a while. If she wasn't swimming she was playing baseball, and when she wasn't playing that, it was volleyball. She claimed she liked being active but I think she just wanted out of the house, not that I can blame her."

She let out a long exhale as her mind recounted the reasons why. Areum never denied a request Hyun-Ji made to play any sport. It kept her off of Seojun's radar and seemed to be one of the few things they had in common, their love of sports.

"As she got older, she traded her cleats for video games. I never complained because she always did her schoolwork and got perfect grades, but she was glued to a tv for all of three years. Then when he began to dislike it, she started going to some PC cafe. From then on she started to withdraw into herself more and more.

"She asked about you often," she softly added.

Her admission made his eyes slowly open. "Did she?" He asked.

She nodded. "When things started to get bad between us and Seojun, she would say how she missed you. That only made him angrier."

"Did he hurt you?"

The painfully direct question made her gentle caress of his arm slow to a stop. She fell silent, swallowing the answer that fought to escape.

"Did he hurt her?" He asked, each word spaced out and enunciated clearly as he stared straight ahead at the ceiling.

Her arm wrapped a little tighter around his midsection, her head lowering, her continued silence speaking volumes. A slight nod of his head was his response.

"Are you still with him?"

"Technically no. We don't live together anymore and we haven't for a little over a year."

The same as Hyun-Ji. The information was wordlessly stored away.

"Have you divorced?" He asked.