ᖇOOᗰᗰᗩTᗴՏ ᗯITᕼ ᕼIᗰ 《C.TZ × J.JK》

Epilogue

Please enjoy and hopefully read through the whole thing for the sake of the tears I shed while posting this. LOL

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Snow crunched like dead leaves under their heavily-stepped-with boots. The frigid, swirling breeze ruffled the pom-poms on their caps and, despite being wrapped under a million layers of wool, the hair on their skin stood to their ends.

Their insides felt just as cold.

Hollow.

Raw.

Tzuyu's hands trembled as if her body was experiencing a high magnitude earthquake, but Jungkook knew it wasn't the weather. He also knew that this was the same reason she wouldn't let him hold her.

She didn't want him to worry. But he understood exactly what she was going through.

A tiny, glistening drop of tear surfaced from her bottom lid and slid down her cheek like a slab of ice, and that's when he decided she was done having her personal space and he wasn't about to let her walk even an inch away from him again. He gently seized her hand in his, her fingers tiny tangled in his long ones, and pulled her to the side from the edge of the curb. So lost she seemed in her misery--a misery that she didn't even deserve to waste her feelings on--that she wasn't even paying attention to where she was going. The sidewalk curved into a turn and the next step would've had her toppling down the road.

They were walking past the wrought-iron grilles of the park near their college and Jungkook dragged her inside soon as the first entrance neared. Her eyes hazy, Tzuyu wasn't even aware of her surroundings anymore.

A community project last month went around modifying the tiny town and now the park was scattered with newly-built wooden benches--as if it needed any more than the hundreds it already housed. There was one situated right under the big, old oak tree their friends always hung out beneath and Jungkook led her right there, where its thick branches, though naked, sheltered the area from most of the snow. It'd only begun falling this morning, the first snow of the winter.

"Tzuyu."

Her gaze lingered at his shoes. No response. Dead silence was all he heard. He could hear no more than the blankness he saw in the space her figure wasn't occupying.

"Tzuyu!" He lightly shook her, pulling her out of her daze. "Look at me. I said, look at me!"

When she finally did, the sadness in her eyes overwhelmed him. So devastated it was that Jungkook felt as if he should be mourning as well--

No. "Tzuyu, stop. No more," he told her, stern but soft enough for her to handle it.

And, at last, after two whole hours, she mouthed her first words. "She isn't with us anymore, Jungkook," she said. "She isn't here anymore." Another tear made its way down, and another. With his thumb on her cheeks, his glove absorbed them all. "She's gone."

He tore his gaze from her and deeply sighed, frustrated at her. At her soft heart. At her easily-forgiving personality. "No, Tzuyu," he said through clenched teeth. "She deserved it. She did it to herself because she brought it upon her herself. And what she doesn't deserve are your damned tears!"

She jumped when he yelled and took a step back. "Jungkook, why do you have to be like this?" she asked, brushing away his hands from her cheeks. She rubbed at the glass-like tears pooling under her eyes. The trails the previous ones painted on her left her skin feeling like a piece of frozen flesh.