Chapter 3

Summary:

“There is no such thing as a soulmate… and who would want there to be? I don’t want half of a shared soul. I want my own damn soul.”

For his twenty first birthday Jungkook had decided to take a trip home to Busan for the weekend. He figured a bit of fresh beach air was warranted given how badly his body aches seemed to be gearing up to be. He felt like his back had been on a mission to kill him for the last two days.

At midnight on his birthday he found himself sitting in the middle of his family home bedroom applying icy hot patches to his back with varying success in getting them to line up all the way across his shoulders and lower back.

“생일 축하합니다.” (Happy Birthday) His soulmate’s intrusion made Jungkook roll his eyes. He wondered what time it was where Namjoon was. Every year he seemed to be on top of his game with wishing Jungkook a happy birthday right at midnight.

He bit his lip as a cramp jolted through his left hand and he struggled to get his fingers to relax.

“몸이 아파요?” (*your body* Does it hurt?)

“Fuck off,” Jungkook thought back, gritting his teeth as he rubbed at his hand. He could feel tears pricking in his eyes and he was truly wondering how other people lived like this every day. How had Jimin been dealing with this for the last two years? How had Namjoon been dealing with this for however long he had been? Jungkook realized as the thought crossed his mind that he had no idea how old Namjoon was or when his birthday was. He didn’t really know anything about Namjoon other than his name and that he spoke English and very poor Korean.

“잠들다.” (Get some sleep.) Jungkook chuckled. Although he knew what his soulmate was trying to tell him Namjoon had chosen the wrong form of the phrase and now it sounded like he was telling Jungkook that he himself was going to sleep or maybe going to die.

“You go to sleep,” Jungkook thought back as his hand finally calmed down enough for him to straighten his fingers. He sighed in relief and wiped the tears that were coming down his face.

Jungkook stood up and grabbed the purple blanket he’d gotten in the mail the day before he’d left on his trip. It was express mailed and he’d assumed it was a gift from his parents, but neither of them seemed to know what he was talking about when he’d shown them the package earlier.

It was an Ostrich brand heated blanket that was specially developed to combat the body aches of unconnected soulmates. As Jungkook turned the dial to the highest setting and slipped inside the giant purple monstrosity he wondered where it had come from, but his thoughts were cut short as he felt all of his muscles relax in the soothing heat that was covering his entire body. He would probably actually be able to sleep now. He’d thought the pain would keep him up.

As he slipped off to sleep he vaguely heard his soulmate. “잘자.” (Goodnight.) And his brain registered that that was the first time Namjoon had said something to him in panmal (without honorifics) despite the fact that Jungkook was younger than him.

~~

“Jungkook-hyung? Jungkookie-hyung? Kookie? Kook!”

Jungkook sat up groggily and looked over towards his bedroom door. His younger brother, Jungsik, was standing in the doorway staring at him with a wide grin.

“Shouldn’t you be at school?” Jungkook asked as he rubbed his eyes and stretched. His eyes widened as he realized that his body felt amazing. He hadn’t been completely ache free since he was nineteen and he hadn’t expected to ever feel like that again, especially not after his twenty first birthday, but here he was feeling like he could do a few back flips. He gripped the purple blanket and stared at it in amazement.

“I told you not to bother him,” Jungkook’s older brother, Jungwoo, came up behind Jungsik and looked into Jungkook’s room, “ Oh, you’re awake? Come get breakfast.”

Jungkook nodded absently, still wiggling around trying to gauge just how pain free he was.

“What are you doing? Do you need some more muscle relaxers or pain killers?” Jungwoo asked as he took in Jungkook’s weird behavior. Jungkook knew that Jungwoo had a stash of pain killers and creams that would put his to shame because Jungwoo's soulmate was completely uninterested in meeting him. The two were decent enough friends, but Jungwoo's soulmate thought that if they met they’d just end up trapped in the dream stage because there was no way they would really fall in love. Jungkook felt bad for his brother sometimes because his soulmate also lived in Busan in the Namcheon which wasn’t far from their place in Haeundae so distance couldn't even be used as an excuse for their separation. Early on in Jungwoo’s connection their mother had offered to take Jungwoo to see his soulmate whether the girl, Sooyoung, agreed or not because she couldn’t accept that her son was being rejected so cruelly.

Jungwoo’s experience was part of the reason Jungkook had simply told his parents that he didn’t know what language his soulmate was speaking when he’d turned thirteen. It was really just a little white lie because Jungkook knew what language Namjoon was speaking, but he really didn't have any idea what he was saying.

“No, I feel great,” Jungkook said as he stood up and walked over to the door.

“How? I think I cried for three hours straight when I turned twenty one and I definitely didn’t sleep,” Jungwoo said incredulously, “Did somebody slip you some dilaudid?”

“I got an Ostrich blanket,” Jungkook told him simply as all three Jeon brothers started moving down that hallway towards the kitchen where the delicious smell of bacon was pouring out.

“You got a what? You know those cost like 1000 dollars, right?” Jungwoo asked in shock. His eyes had gotten comically wide. “Where did you get that kind of money?”

Jungkook stumbled forward into the wall next to the kitchen doorway and choked on air at his brother’s exclamation. “What?”

“Those things are expensive as shit. Where did you get one?”

“I don’t...I don't know. Somebody sent it to me. I thought it was mom and dad."

“Fuck. Somebody must love you,” Jungwoo said with a faux disgusted shake of his head.

All of the brothers sat down at the table and their mom began serving the food, but Jungkook was feeling slightly light headed at the idea of owning a blanket that cost 1000 dollars.

~~

“It’s an 800 dollar blanket,” Jungkook said into the phone, confusion evident in his voice. He was talking to Jimin because he didn’t know what else to do with the new found information about his blanket. He’d looked up the model number and although it wasn’t 1000 dollars it was still the most expensive thing he now owned and that included his laptop.

Jungkook wasn’t really sure what to do about the blanket. Everyone that he knew was just as broke as he was and even if they weren’t they had no reason to spend 800 dollars on him.

“What? Who would even have the money to give you that?” Jimin asked. His voice went up several pitches in shock.

“I don’t know, but I’m afraid to use it again,” Jungkook told him. It had been two days since his birthday and his body was locking up again, but he didn’t want to use the blanket for fear that it had been sent to him by mistake. Who’s to say that it wasn’t meant as a birthday gift for some other Jeon Jungkook who went to Konkuk University.

“Just call the company and tell them the numbers on the box. They can probably tell you the info for the person who ordered it and then you can send it to the right person.”

“But, Hyung, I already used it. It smells like icy hot,” Jungkook whined. He was lying on the floor of his room at his parents' house after having rubbed himself down in muscle relaxing cream so he could do his stretches.

“Just call the company so you can at least give the person an apology. It’s a ******* 800 dollar blanket, Kook-ah.”

Jungkook knew that Jimin was right, but he felt embarrassed at the prospect of having to explain that he’d assumed such an expensive *** blanket was for him.

~~

After chasing down the information of the person who had bought the blanket Jungkook was staring at a number he'd gotten from the company. According to what the woman on the phone had told him the person who ordered the blanket was from overseas (more reason for Jungkook to be freaking out). The company had been hesitant to give out the number of customer until Jungkook told them that he'd ruined the blanket and wanted to directly apologize to whoever had spent so much money on a gift. They also probably thought it would take some pressure off of them for making the mistake of sending it to the wrong place.

He stared down at his phone with the newly acquired number typed in. An account had come up when he typed the number into line, but he was hesitant to push the add or call button because what if they thought he was some type of creep adding random people?

He took another deep breath and finally just hit the call icon. It only rang for a short moment before a groggy voice mumbled something that Jungkook couldn’t understand. He panic ended the call as he realized that he had no idea what time it was wherever that person was. And now he was going full blown freakout as he realized that he had woken the person up only to hang up before actually saying anything.

This was fine. Completely fine. He would just move out of his dorm, dropout of school, throw his phone in the river and leave the blanket in an unmarked dumpster. He could live the rest of his life off the grid. It was fine.

Except that the line number was calling him back and he was close to crying as he stared at his phone.

“Uhm...hello?” Jungkook braced himself for a tirade, but only silence met him on the other end of the line. He pulled it back and stared at the screen worried that the call had disconnected, but the timer was still running at the top of the screen. “Who is it?” That was a stupid question given that he had called this number first.

“Ah...uh...Hi,” came the reply from the phone.

“I-” Jungkook stopped talking as he realized that he knew this voice. He wasn’t sure why he knew this voice, but he did. He stared at his phone in suspicion because if he knew the person's voice then the blanket might actually be meant for him, but he still didn’t know who he knew that would possibly be able to afford a 1000 dollar blanket. “Who is this?”

“Ah....uh...Nate.”

Jungkook definitely knew this voice, but it was speaking in a language he couldn't understand and he couldn’t seem to place it. “Do you speak Korean? I can’t understand you.”

There was some shuffling on the other end of the phone before a different voice came on speaking in Korean.

“Who is this?”

Jungkook was sure he didn’t know the new voice and this person sounded far more hostile than the first voice. “Uhm...My name is Jungkook. I was..I was calling...uhm...because...I.”

“Kid, it’s like four o’clock in the morning. I’m gonna need you to get to the point. I’m tired and I just got woken up out of my sleep. I’m not in the mood to listen to you stutter at me.”

This only succeeded in making Jungkook more nervous and he tried to think of things to calm himself down. As he focused on pictures of puppies in his mind he suddenly noticed that his soulmate was awake and his soulmate was almost never awake in the middle of the afternoon. As this thought occurred to him he was suddenly able to place the first voice from the call and he dropped his phone in terror.

“Hello?!” Jungkook could hear the anger from the person on the phone, but he was panicking. He couldn’t even runaway because the problem was in his mind. His soulmate was observing his thoughts and he could just tell that he knew. His soulmate knew that Jungkook knew and he could sense the way his soulmate was scrambling for some Korean to calm Jungkook down.

“괜찮아?” (Are you okay?)

Jungkook was most certainly not okay. He was pretty sure he couldn’t breathe. The call finally ended and Jungkook was quick to turn the entire phone off as if that would sever the soulmate connection in his mind. He struggled to push his soulmate out of his mind, but of course that wasn’t working.

~~

“Jungkook, are you okay?” Jungwoo was watching as Jungkook quietly panicked on his bed. He had been loudly playing music and singing along for the last two hours in an attempt to block out his soulmate’s voice trying to talk to him.

“No, hyung, he found me. He sent me the blanket. He’s coming,” Jungkook wailed at his brother.

Jungwoo stared in concern as his brother started crying and trying to pull him into the bed. “Who’s coming? You sound like you’re about to be murdered.” Jungwoo pulled his arm out of his brother’s grip and stepped back from the bed.

“Namjoon,” He yelled. It was the first time he’d told his brother anything about his soulmate and he could see the confusion on his brother’s face. “My soulmate. He sent me the Ostrich blanket. He knows where I live. He’s gonna come here and ruin everything. Hyung, what do I do?”

Jungwoo was completely taken aback by the abject terror in his brother’s voice. Jungwoo had always wanted to meet his own soulmate, but she had made the decision for both of them that things wouldn’t work out so he had to deal with it. He wasn’t really sure why Jungkook sounded so scared of his soulmate.

“Calm down. How do you know he sent the blanket? Why are you crying?” Jungwoo put his arm out to comb down Jungkook’s hair.

“I lied," Jungkook cried, "My soulmate speaks English. He’s been learning Korean for a few months and I think he’s planning to come here. I don’t want him, hyung. I don’t want a soulmate. I just want to dance with my friends and finish school.” Jungkook was hyperventilating and his head was starting to feel light. He stared up at his brother with tear filled eyes and Jungwoo stared back with wide confused eyes.

“What?”

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