Chapter 10

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Jungkook's POV:

Saturday evening. Ji-eun's 'little gathering' is half an hour and a feeling of dread is wrapped around my heart, tightening every time I think about having to socialise, having to 'let go', as Ji-eun calls it. As I said before, parties are not my thing. Never been to one, and I don't think I was planning to, either. For the past week I've been walking Ji-eun home. Apparently we've become an official couple now (when did I agree to this?) and Sehun, Jackson and Vernon are bathing in this new popularity that I've brought them. It's almost as if we've become part of this new, 'perfect' world where everyone is rich and carefree and grades don't matter nearly as much as climbing the social ladder. Of course, I've been careful of my grades. Very. Sehun, Jackson and Vernon are all incredibly intelligent, and I've urged them not to lose their way as people often do when they get into all this popularity . I mean, it's all been kind of nice. I'm still getting used to all the attention but there's still occasions where I feel uncomfortable. One of these situations is where Taehyung brought it up. 

"So you're going for it this weekend, eh?" Taehyung had grinned. We'd gone out to the skate park. I was surprised to find that Taehyung's not really that good at skateboarding and he wanted me to teach him. What a softie. 

"What do you mean?" I'd asked, genuinely confused. We on the edge of one of the wooden ramps, the black paint peeling and chipped, covered in grafitti. Taehyung had ruffled my hair. Lately, he'd developed a habit of doing that. Just playing with my hair out of nowhere. 

"Come on. Are you?"

"I really don't know what you mean, Tae," I'd said, exaggerating the don't to prove my point. He'd looked at me as if I'm joking, and then grinned his unique box-smile. He slapped me on the back. 

"You know. Go for it. As in-"

"Oh," I said, suddenly feeling my face flush. I held my skateboard to my chest. "I- I don't think so. We barely know each other..."

" that," said Taehyung, stretching his arms behind his head. "Life's too short for sentimental ."

"But isn't it supposed to be...I don't know, special?" I'd asked, my voice suddenly quiet. 

"Special? Yeah, for your first time.." realisation hit Taehyung, and he looked at me with wide eyes. "You haven't done it before?"

I shook my head. 

"Is-is that bad?"

Taehyung had thought for a moment. 

"Of course not!" he said. "I keep forgetting you're a lot younger than us. No, Jungkook. You're at the right age, now. Sixteen, arent you? Cute."

"Yeah, but I don't know how. Like, I'm sure Ji-eun's got a lot of experience and I'll be rubbish at everything..." I'd never felt more embarassed in the whole of my life. Talking about... about that, made me feel like running away to a world where I don't have to worry about girls and and how to do things right. 

"I'm sure you won't. And she'll get it. She knows you're young," Taehyung had reassured me. "And plus, some girls are weird about that kind of thing. Ji-eun's one of them. For some reason, it's a turn-on for her when the guy's all innocent and pure like you. You'll be fine."

So since then, the Bangtan Boys have been putting me under a heck load of pressure to... to have with Ji-eun. I'd been searching stuff up on Google to help me, so that I'd have a bit of an idea what to do. It's all scary and if I'm honest with myself, I really, really don't want to do it. Not this weekend. Not for a long, long time. 

Something else that's been bothering me is Jimin. He's all but completely ignoring the fact I exist. The other boys have invited me out with them, talk to me, mess around with me, but for some reason Jimin always keeps his distance. His answers to my questions are always single words, and he avoids any eye contact. When I'm with the Bangtan Boys, he never seems to laugh with the rest of us. He looks like he's thinking about something, deadly serious. I want to talk to him about it, but I've never been good at that kind of thing. 

I'd asked Ji-eun if I could bring some people, and she'd agreed with a bright, smiley 'the more the merrier!' which kind of contradicts the idea of a small gathering of close friends. Sehun, Vernon and Jackson had arrived in the morning and spent the day at my house. The plan was that we would all go there together. Safety in numbers and all that. 

"I'm not sure what I should wear out of these," I say to Vernon, glancing at the three outfits I'd laid out on my bed. Vernon raises an eyebrow. 

"Jungkook, they're all basically the same."

I look at the clothes. The first one is a plain black t-shirt and black ripped jeans, the second was a plain white t-shirt with blue ripped jeans and the last was a plain white t-shirt with black ripped jeans. They're totally different! After much deliberation, I decided on the third outfit and paired it with a khaki green bomber and my favorite Timberlands. Yoongi had (forcefully) persuaded me to get my ears pierced. I'd agreed to one on each ear, but somehow that became three on each ear. It was painful as hell, but Yoongi had told me I'd get used to it. The feel of the earrings on me now are still strange and unfamiliar. I have a small silver hoop on my left ear and three studs on the other. He also decided that I should dye my hair (turns out he's a total for hair dye) and suggested pink. Pink? Never. We'd finally both agreed on a chestnut brown colour that wasn't overly different from my natural black hair. I look at myself in the mirror. I realise I haven't looked at myself in the mirror for a while, and that I look very different. It's almost as if I'm staring at someone else, someone who belongs with the Bangtan Boys, someone who can talk to girls,  and someone who is definitely not Jeon Jungkook. 

"Boys! Are you ready yet?" Mom yells from downstairs. She said she'd drive us. Jackson replies with 'I was born ready' and Mom laughs. She absolutely loves Jackson, perhaps more than me. Oh well. Can't change that. We all rush downstairs, and Mom looks positively overjoyed. This is the first time she's driven me to a party that I myself have actually been invited to. It's almost laughable. 

"You boys look great!" she smiles, though she's staring straight at me. I smile back. I'm pretty sure this is the very first time my mom's seen me like this. "Come on. We should get going or we'll be late."

We all bundle into my mom's Rolls Royce, much to my friends' pleasure. Apparently it wasn't evident that my family had quite a bit of money when they'd first met me, so seeing where I lived was a bit of a shock to them. The drive to Ji-eun's house is quite a while and by the time we're there, it's already half past seven and the the party started at six. Mom pulls the car up to the drive, and we get out. 

"Have fun," she says through the open car window, and waves before driving off. We all look at Ji-eun's house, speechless. 

If I thought our house was big... then Ji-eun's place is like a ing palace. There's flashing lights and music erupting through every open window and the walls of her house. Outside, in the front, are four sports cars parked on a white stone driveway. We're not even inside and there's like fifty people already, in the pool, on the grass. It's unusually warm for this time of year, but all the better, I guess. I look around to see anyone I know- and I don't really. A few kids from school, but the rest are strangers. Sehun nudges me and we all make our way inside. The door is wide open.
There's a hallway that leads into a massive room, bigger than our school hall. There's an enormous chandelier dangling from the impossibly high ceiling and two sets of stairs spiralling from either side of the room to an upper floor with a balcony. I can barely see anything- there's so many people yelling drunkenly to the music, jumping up and down and in general scaring the out of me. Everywhere I look there are couples all over each other- on the floor, against the walls, on the pool table. I shudder and turn to say something to Vernon. 

"," I say, looking around me desperately. I've already lost all three of them. Oh, God. What am I meant to do now? I take off my jacket because it's ing boiling and drape it on one of the sofas. I search the room for someone, anyone that I've spoken to before so that I don't have to keep standing here like a complete idiot. So this is what Ji-eun meant by a small gathering for close friends? F