Chapter 5

Summary:

Ignorance is my soulmate, it can neither love nor hate me. I am very much used to it.

Notes:

Ok Sunhye is Jungkook's mother's name. My friend said it was kinda confusing so I wanted to clarify.

Jungkook sat on the family couch rocking slightly as he stared at his brothers and parents. Everyone was in just as much of a panicked state as Jungkook but for very different reasons. Jungkook was still attempting to block Namjoon out, but he knew that the older was upset. He could feel the sadness radiating from Namjoon’s side of their mind more strongly than ever before.

“You-you’ve...you’ve been lying to us?” Jungkook’s father finally broke the silence that had enveloped the room since Jungwoo had announced Jungkook’s lie to the family. His father looked like he was on the verge of pulling out all of his hair.

Jungkook didn’t trust himself to answer without the threat of crying again so he just nodded his head and kept his eyes downcast.

“Why would you lie? And for so long?” His mother questioned next. She had started crying the moment she seemed to process Jungwoo’s words. Ok Sunhye was almost unbelievably attached to the idea of soulmates. She had been the aggressor in her relationship with her husband and she could never wrap her mind around the idea of someone deciding against wanting to be with their soulmate. Sunhye was the first one to curse Jungwoo’s soulmate when she rejected him and even over ten years later she was the only one, besides Jungwoo, that was still holding onto the hope that Sooyoung would change her mind. She had been the most wounded when Jungkook had shared that his soulmate didn’t speak Korean and had offered him lessons in whatever language he needed in order to communicate with his soulmate. She was devastated when her second son was unable to identify his soulmate’s language. And now she was absolutely gutted at the thought of being lied to for so long just so Jungkook could avoid meeting his ideal match.

“I didn’t want you to try and make me meet him,” Jungkook cried. He shrank into the couch further, his legs pressed to his chest and his forehead nearly touching his knees. Despite being the biggest of his brothers Jungkook felt two inches tall as he sat under the glare of his family.

“Why wouldn’t you want to meet him? Did he threaten you? Are you afraid he's going to hurt you?” Jungkook wanted to roll his eyes at the questions because of course the only reason that it would be acceptable for him to reject his soulmate would be if Namjoon was some kind of psychopath. In his parents’ minds there couldn’t be any other reason. The two of them had been completely brainwashed by the soul connection and that was exactly why Jungkook had lied.

“Because I just want to graduate from school and dance with my friends. I don’t want a soulmate,” Jungkook practically whined. He didn’t lift his head, but he heard movement and felt as his mother sat down beside him on the love seat.

“Honey, you can still dance and graduate from school with a soulmate. Why would he stop you from dancing or going to school? Did he say he wanted you to stop doing those things?”

“No, mom.” Jungkook finally lifted his head and looked his mother in the eyes. “I don’t..I don’t want to…” He pointed at his mother’s face and started crying as any useful words seemed to fly from his mind.

“You don’t want what?” His mother touched her face before looking at her husband in confusion.

Jungkook’s parents had been together for almost thirty years and he knew that the two of them were madly in love with each other. They rarely fought, they finished each other’s sentences and they kissed often, but that was what Jungkook hated. He hated seeing his mother’s face covered in burn blisters. He hated seeing his father’s arms covered with the bright red marks. He hated the way his mother would suck in a sharp breath at her father’s touch if she wasn’t expecting it. He hated the way his mother would narrate where she was in the room so his father wouldn’t accidentally walk into her when he was carrying something heavy. He hated that they hurt each other. It didn’t matter that they smiled and laughed with one another because they were in pain. Jungkook’s mind wouldn’t let him forget that they were in pain. And the only reason they were in pain was because they loved each other.

Why should people who love one another be subjected to constant pain?

It had been clear to Jungkook from a young age that love meant pain and he didn’t like being in pain. Nothing anyone told him about the soul connection could cancel out that fact that his parents had spent three weeks in the hospital when he was seven because they fell asleep on the couch watching a movie and accidentally ended up lying on one another. He’d woken up to their tortured sounding screams at two o’clock in the morning and he’d never forget how his mother’s face had looked as if someone melted the side of it. No amount of arguments about perfect love and ideal matches was going to make Jungkook forget that image.

He stared at the side of his mother’s face as it was now and cried harder because it looked perfect as if nothing had ever happened to it. It was so common for soulmates to burn away one another’s skin that doctors had perfected the grafting method. It was rare to find anyone with permanent damage from their soulmate. People had grown so used to being hurt and in pain that they could erase all traces of it. There was nothing amazing or beautiful about that to Jungkook it just meant that too many people had been sucked in by the lie of soulmates for too long.

“Jungkook, you just have to give your soulmate a chance. He’s literally perfectly made for you. I’m sure he’ll forgive you.” His mother ran her hand over his back in what should have been a soothing manner, but was really just making Jungkook itch.

“I don’t want him to forgive me, mom. I want him to live his life and I’ll live mine. I don’t want him mom. I don’t want a soulmate.” Jungkook was finally able to breathe properly as he tried to calm down. He knew that panicking wasn’t making anything easier for him as he tried to explain himself. “I have never wanted a soulmate. I lied because I didn’t want to meet him and I knew you would make me.”

“But why wouldn’t you want him especially if he wants you?” Jungwoo had sounded as if he was on the verge of tears since he’d walked out of Jungkook’s room almost an hour ago. Jungkook knew that his brother was probably having the hardest time with Jungkook’s lie given how hurt he’d been when he realized that his soulmate didn’t want him.

“Because it hurts,” Jungkook argued in a meek voice.

“What hurts? Having a soulmate?” His father interrupted.

“Yes.”

No one in the room made a sound as they slowly realized what Jungkook meant.

“It’s not that bad,” his mother started with a smile. She thought that this would be an easy fix. She just needed to explain to Jungkook that the soul connection made up for any hurt either of the soulmates felt. “It doesn’t hurt the way you think it does. When you unexpectedly touch it is a bit painful, but when you’re ready for it it doesn’t feel any worse than getting a little bruise.”

Jungkook shook his head at his mother’s words. He didn’t want to hear this again. This was the same argument his teachers had tried to feed him when he’d asked about the burning back in school. Everyone was always insisting that it wasn’t that bad, but Jungkook remembers the screaming from his parents. “I don’t wanna hurt, mom. I don’t...I don’t want it.” Jungkook could hear the shaking in his voice and it made him realize how much harder he’d started crying.

“It’s okay, Kook-ah, we won’t make you do anything you don’t want to do,” Jungkook’s dad said quietly. Jungkook just nodded at his words as his mother pulled her big baby into her side and let him cry until he could breathe again.

~~

Jungkook wasn’t going to lie and say that he didn’t think about taking the purple blanket back to his dorm with him. He’d hesitated at least three times as he thought about how good he’d felt waking up after his birthday, but he didn’t want it. He couldn’t bring himself to actually pack the purple monster into his stuff. He left it at the house, folded on top of his bookshelf so it was hidden from sight. He hoped that by the next time he came home he’d have forgotten about it, but he knew that wouldn’t happen.

Back at school he was crying his way through dance practices and forcing Hoseok to rub his shoulders after.

Both Jimin and Hoseok asked him about the purple blanket, but he kept it vague. He’d just shrugged and told them it was meant for a different Jeon, but he’d called and apologized and now the blanket was returned to its rightful owner.

He could sense that his friends knew something was off with him, but he didn’t want to talk about what had happened at home. He hadn’t spoken to his parents or his brother in the week since he’d returned to school and he felt horrible. He was a bit of a momma’s boy, never going more than two days without speaking to his mom, but he couldn’t bring himself to call her after everything that happened and she didn’t seem interested in talking to him either.

So, Jungkook just danced and danced and danced. He’d found that if he was focusing on moves then he couldn’t focus on Namjoon and after all of the dancing his body was in so much pain he didn’t have any brain leftover to think about anything other than how long he was going to soak in the bathtub.

When it became glaringly obvious that Jungkook was overworking his body Hoseok and Jimin felt like they had no choice but to step in. They didn’t like seeing the way Jungkook was struggling through normal daily activities like going up the stairs and how he was starting to fall asleep mid-day sometimes mid-conversation.

“Hey, Jk, no practice today,” Hoseok shouted as he spotted Jungkook walking into the dance studio building. He had been waiting for the younger for the last twenty minutes, knowing that he would show up at some point since his classes had finished.

“Oh, I know. I was just gonna get in an hour. I need to get the footwork for the second dance down. You know I’m not super good with contemporary dances,” Jungkook laughed lightly. Hoseok could see the way he was fidgeting with the strap on his bookbag and he knew that Jungkook must have had at least three energy drinks before coming to the studio.

“Nah. I’m taking you somewhere,” Hoseok said. He turned and started walking. Jungkook watched his hyung’s retreating back before his eyes darted to the dance studio, wondering if he could make it up the steps if he was quiet. “Let’s go, Kookie.” Hoseok’s sudden shout pulled Jungkook out of his head and he started after the older.

“Where are we going?” Jungkook asked once he’d caught up with Hoseok. He hoped that whatever it was was something physical because he had a lot of extra energy to burn off.

“You’ll see when we get there.”

They walked the twenty minutes it took to get to the other side of campus and Jungkook was really confused now because he never came to this side of campus. He was a social science major so it wasn’t often that he needed something from the engineering quad.

“What are we doing?” Jungkook’s energy was still running high even after the walk and he knew that they couldn’t be going to do anything physical now because all of the sports facilities were on the other side of campus.

“Here,” Hoseok said with a smile as he pulled open the door to the student center. Jungkook stared at the building skeptically because he was the first to admit that he wasn’t much of a joiner, he’d only ended up in the dance club because of Jimin, so he tended to stay far away from the student center.

“Hyung, please tell me that you’re not forcing me to go to your stupid club again. I don’t want to answer questions,” Jungkook sighed as he stepped through the door.

Hoseok had started a club on campus his freshman year specifically for people who were unmatched. It was supposed to be a kind of support group thing, but by the time Jungkook started school the word on campus was that it was for finding a good hookup partner. Jungkook and Jimin had been forced to help with the ice breaker last year, but it had quickly devolved into them answering a lot of inappropriate questions that the unmatched had about soulmates but weren’t usually comfortable asking.

“I’m not taking you to UNO. There’s a new group that just started this year and I thought you might wanna join.”

“Hyung,” Jungkook whined. He was not a joiner and he planned to remain that way until the end of college. He didn’t really count the dance club because he would’ve wandered into the dance studio at some point regardless of anything. But anything else was too much for him.

“I swear you’ll like it.”

Jungkook didn’t really trust Hoseok’s judgement about things like this, but he also knew that if he tried to run now he’d probably get beaten up.

They kept wandering down the long corridor of the student center until Hoseok stopped abruptly at a room with a green door. Hoseok just grinned at Jungkook before he knocked.

Jungkook wasn’t sure what he was expecting to happen because Hoseok was a bit of a loose cannon when it came to doing things, but he wasn’t expecting for a girl who looked like an idol to open the door.

“Hi, Hobi-oppa,” the girl smiled at Hoseok and stepped aside to let him in before looking up at Jungkook, “Hi, I’m Sumi. Do Sumi.” The girl stepped forward with an outstretched hand and Jungkook just barely managed to get himself together enough to shake it.

“Jungkook. Jeon Jungkook.”

Notes:

I'm not sure if I should keep going with the switching back and forth thing that I've been doing or if I should just do Jungkook's part then Namjoon's and then move to the second part......

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