As if Dijonae wasn’t perfect enough already, she had tucked some disposable bowls, plates, and silverware for Nari to eat with ease while traveling. The room had a small microwave the Nari used to heat up some canned soup that had been tucked away in the duffle bag. While she waited for it to be done cooking, she stretched out on the bed. Her back was stiff from sitting in the same position for hours and it felt amazing to just let herself melt into the soft, firm mattress. 

The microwave let out a beep and Nari let herself ignore it, just for a moment more as she felt all the tension from the seep out of her bones.

Then she stretched, let out a sigh, and got her food from the microwave.

She fished a spoon out of the duffle bag and started eating. With nothing better to do, Nari pulled out her phone and checked snapchat. 

Staring at her was a story that he ex had posted.

She hovered her finger over it for a moment, an almost habitual urge telling her to watch it. 

But then again, it wasn’t like they were going out anymore. It really didn’t matter to her what he did with his sorry life now that she was out of it.

Nari instead the front facing camera to took a picture of herself eating the soup. 

The picture turned out burry and the lighting was terrible. Her blue hair hung in wet chunks around her face and you could see a few pimples on her forehead. But Nari loved it. Her smile was genuine and truly happy, something she hadn’t done in a while, and she felt free in that photo.

Nari tapped the screen and added, “Soup is best 4 trips” before adding it to her story. She set her phone to the side and focused on enjoying her food, feeling much more liberated than she had before checking snapchat.

The lights flickered for a moment while Nari ate. She glanced up at the ceiling for a moment, but once they steadied, she went back to eating. The hotel might have not be refurbished since it opened in the 70’s, but at least it was cheap and it was something she could work with. And a few flickering lights and a broken water heater wasn’t the worst she had had to deal with.

Back at home, Nari lived in a tiny two bedroom apartment with her mother and little brother. It was really hard to make ends meet, even when she had gotten a job when she was old enough to help pay the bills. The only reason she had any money to travel at all was because she had finally given in and broken into her savings account for college. She sure as heck wasn’t going any time soon and, well, in recent years it became obvious that her brother wasn’t either. And she needed this. She really just needed to have some freedom in her life and do something reckless. She hadn’t had that when she was a teenager and this was her delayed rebellion against everything. 

It was just her, her truck, and the open roads of Route 66 all the way to LA.

There was a knock at the door and Nari was shaken out of her thoughts. She furrowed her brows and ignored it. She hadn’t ordered any room service and if it was a maid then she could come back again later. 

There was another knock, this time far more insistent.

Nari sighed and got up. She unbolted and unlocked the door before opening it.

The boy from the diner stood in front of her room, eyes wide and arms crossed over his chest. He had changed out of the white, not soda stained shirt into a very nice looking black t shirt that Nari could practically smell the designer off of.

He didn't say anything and looked her in the eyes before looking down at the ground with pink painting his cheeks.

“What?” Nari asked, crossing her arms. She really was getting sick of this guy popping up every where. She just wanted to have a self discover road trip in peace, yet this dickwad seemed determined to make life hard for her.

“Um…” He looked up and nervously rubbed his nose with a finger before mumbling, “Can I come in and talk to you.”

Nari laughed. Not even planning to dignify that with an answer, she went to close the door but he shoved his foot in the doorway and shoved it open.

“No please, listen!” He cried before rambling. “The lights in my room won’t stop flickering and I’m afraid of thunderstorms so the storm is really freaking me out right now I was just wondering if I could hang out with you until the storm calms down.”

“Wow how full of ing bull are you, short stack?” She crossed her arms and glared down at him. “It’s not even raining.”

If this guy looked afraid before, now he looked ing terrified. 

“It was in my room,” He whisper and hugged his arms tighter to his body.

“You’re ing lying,” Nari was loosing her patience and just wanted him gone at this point. “Let me see.”

She pushed passed him and grabbed his card key out of his hand. The sooner she proves him wrong, the sooner he’ll leave her alone and she can just finish her soup, which is probably cold by now, and go to bed. 

“W-Wait! Don’t go in there!” He grabbed at the back of her shirt, trying to pull her back. “Something is seriously wrong with that room!”

Sliding the card in the handle, she completely ignored him and forced herself into his room. 

The first thing that registered for Nari was that the room was completely dark. Then there was a large crack of thunder and a bolt of lightening flashed outside the window. The lights flickered on right after that before flickering off again. The boy was clutching her arm at this point and practically begging her to close the door again.

“… Do you think this hotel is old enough to be haunted?” Nari asked.

The boy screamed and dragged her out of the room. The door slammed itself behind them and they stumbled into Nari’s room. While the boy’s room was an impossible enigma of thunderstorms on a clear night, her room was exactly as they had left it. Normal and a bit messy.

“Please let me stay in your room!” He turned and begged her. “I’ll sleep on the floor or whatever! I can’t go back there after just finding out my room is the only one doing weird !”

“Wow such language. Aren’t you like 5 or something?” He opened his mouth to retort but Nari just spoke over him. “Fine, what ever I’m not heartless or anything. You can stay. Just stay as far away from me as you can and don’t ing touch me or I’ll kick your .”

The boy relaxed knowing he wasn’t about to get kicked back to his haunted hotel room. 

“Thank you…” He trailed off when he found he didn’t know her name.

“Nari,” She supplied. “Kim Nari”

“Thanks Nari,” He smiled at her. “I’m Jeon Jungkook.”

“You’re welcome. Now, shut up. I wanna go to bed.”

A/N: Lol we are 6 chapters in and they only just learned each others names I am only good at writing one shots and slow burns. 

I can’t believe I’ve written so much in 5 days. We are almost at 9,000 words on this story. That normally take me like a month. Wow, it is amazing what you can do with your pride on the line. My friend and I have a health competition going on between us and it’s actually really fun. We’re trying to get higher word counts that the other and it’s really motivated both of us to write a crazy large amount. It’s really funny though because she’ll post her word count before she goes to bed and I’ll stay up late to write 100-1,000 words more than her. Then she wakes up and writes more than me while she waits for the bus in the morning. So if you want to thank anyone for the practically daily updates, thank Caden.