On your tenth birthday, you found out that everything you had learned in school was too ideal for the imperfect universe. Or put another way, teachers simply didn’t know as much as they claimed to.

That’s why no one ever bothered to explain what miracles were, or spoke of soulmates and the ways of fate and destiny. There’s no such thing as covering every possible scenario, which means 100% accuracy also doesn’t exist.

Because if it did, you would’ve never met Jeon Jungkook.

You had just ran away from your birthday party in tears after getting into an heated argument with one of your friends because she broke the present you were most looking forward to, on purpose, or so you accused. You were on the verge of plopping down in the shady grass under a tree in one of the more secluded areas of the city park when you heard someone call your name from behind. Whipping your head around you see a man, seemingly in his 30’s, strongly built but lean and tall. He was dressed in a white button up with a dark blue and green-checkered knitted vest and slacks. He had dark brown hair and a pair of round thin-rimmed glasses, lightly paced on his tall nose bridge.

“Y/N! There you are! I’ve been looking for you for ages. Why didn’t you-” He doesn’t finish his last sentence when he sees the confused look on your face as you lock eyes with the handsome man that’s running up to you. Breathing heavily with small beads of sweat glistening on his forehead that was peaking through his slightly parted chocolate brown hair, he looked like he had probably been running around for quite some time.

“Who are you?” You ask, as you lift your head to look at him, eyes squinting uncomfortably due to the bright glare of the sun. Even through the small slits of your squinted eyes you could tell the man’s features were almost unnaturally angelic, and his skin glowed with a warm undertone, which was even more strange because it was a known fact that all people in the Yin dimension had cool undertones.

“Ah, so this is the last time” the man utters softly as he sighs and smiles at you with warm, endearing eyes that strangely made your heart tug ever so slightly. “But why are you crying?” He suddenly asks, when he notices the trail of tears gliding down your cheeks. His expression immediately turns into one of caring concern, and he kneels down to get to eye level with you. “Are you hurt?” The pain and worry in his voice was evident, and you had no idea why this strange handsome man was so affected by your crying.

Your bottom lip quivers and you puff up your cheeks in a cute pout that makes the man’s tender doe eyes look like they could fill up with salty tears as well.

You start from the beginning and tell him all the details of the events that occurred at your birthday party. He just sits in the grass under the large oak tree, legs crossed and listening intently to you rant about how your friend didn’t even apologize for breaking the antique doll you had wanted for months, the one that your parents had worked so hard to save up the money to buy when your birthday came around. You cheeks were stained with dried tears; you weren’t even really paying attention to the man sitting in the spot next to you at this point. The whole “don’t talk to strangers” lecture that your mom always gave you was totally out the window by then, and you just needed someone to understand why you were so upset, someone who would just listen to you and not see you as some immature kid who hadn’t learned to grow up yet.

After you finish your story, the man gently rubs you on the back not saying a single word and just letting his actions dictate the feeling he was trying to convey. A kind of gesture that would normally make you feel uncomfortable coming from a stranger, but for some reason his touch gave you exactly the comfort that you needed. An indescribable tenderness radiated from him, unlike you had ever experienced before.

“Am I supposed to know you?” You ask snapping out of your thoughts all of a sudden, realizing that this strange man knew your name but you didn’t know his. You’re still staring at him, trying to recall if you’ve ever met him before. Not only was nothing about him the least bit familiar, but also there was something about him that made him even stranger and more foreign than anyone else you had ever met.

“Oh sorry, I…uh…I’m Jungkook, Jeon Jungkook. Uhhh…..damn, how do I explain this? Wait, how did you explain it again?” He was basically talking to himself at this point. Hesitantly scratching the back of his head, and stumbling with his words while glancing at you and away in the other direction like he was embarrassed to look at you for too long, a stark contrast to his composed expression earlier. His nervous actions made you giggle a little while covering your mouth, making you forget the reason you had been crying.

“So this is going to sound crazy, but it’ll clear up over the next few years.” He finally begins to explain. “You’ve heard of the legend of Park Jimin and Kim Taehyung, right?”

You nod slowly, recalling the story that kids are told when they are little. Of course you had heard it too, it was a classic tale, like all the other magical fairytales that surround everyone’s childhood. You remember being completely engrossed in it, the first time your mom had read it to you as a bedtime story. The countless questions that swirled in your head like the infinite number of stars in the galaxy, but as you got older, you had long stopped daydreaming about the kind of love that was powerful enough to compel people to trade their immortality for.

The thirty year old Jungkook continues to explain things that make you question whether he might just be making stuff up on the spot, while the two of you walk up to a man selling ice cream on the sidewalk. It was late in the afternoon and you realized that you had left the party before you could even taste a bite of your birthday cake.

“So this is why strawberry ice cream is your favorite.” He says as he watches you the pink ice cream topped with fresh strawberries, unable to resist the force that makes his lips stretch into a wide smile. “Should’ve known it had something to do with me.” He chuckles to himself.

You look up at him with a raised eyebrow, unsure of what he’s mumbling to himself about. You notice the look of pure delight spread across his face when your eyes come in contact again, a sort of unexplainable happiness, tinged ever so slightly with a hint of sadness that was evident in his dark orbs.

“So you’re saying…you’re from the Yang dimension?” You ask with a mouth full of ice cream. He uses a napkin to gently wipe a bit of the pink cream that has made its way to the side of your cheek.

“Yeah, I know it’s hard to believe since we’re always told that glitches don’t happen, but I promise, it’ll make more sense later” He says, sighing again. It was clear that he was deep in thought, like something big was going to happen that day and he was trying to decide what to do, the vulnerability peaking through his clear doe eyes.

You finish eating the last bit of ice cream and begin to ask if he’s leaving soon, because your parents were probably going to get really worried and start looking for you anytime now, and seeing you with a stranger, who claims to be from the Yang dimension, was probably not the best situation to be in.

“You’ll see me again in a year,” He finally says after some thought, giving you a pat on the head. “I’ll, uh, be a little younger too.” He adds, winking playfully trying to use humor to hide the slight waver in his voice. “I guess I took too long to find you this time, we usually have more than one day together. Had I known this was your first time, I would’ve tried to find you faster. Now it makes sense why you weren’t waiting at our usual spot. And uh…” At this point he was just ranting now, thoughts all kind of jumbled, like he was unsure of what to do with himself.

The ten year old you just finds it all quite amusing, seeing a grown adult so awkwardly choked up in front of you, but also somehow wishing you understood this man in front of you on a level where you could comfort him the way he comforted you.

He was crouching down so he could talk to you at eye level, but now he was just staring at the ground, lost in his own thoughts. You lift your small, tender hand and pat him on the head, the action making his smooth parted bangs bounce up and down. He looks at you, surprised at your sudden motion, but soon beaming into a bright smile. After a long moment of serene glances and the tension of unspoken words drifting in the space between the two of you, Jungkook finally stands up.

He puts his hands on his hips, looking around the empty park and soaking in the bright sunlight like it was the last time he would feel the warmth of its rays reflecting off his skin. He had a gut feeling that it was almost time.

“Our first and last” He whispers as the sound is carried away by the cool breeze.

You look at his face one last time before he walks up to a dark swirling opening in the middle of the park. The look on his face expressed an emotion that’s so unfamiliar you didn’t know how to even begin describing it. It was like the colorful sky at the brink of sunset, the aquamarine waves of the ocean crashing on the sandy shores, the smell of cherry blossoms on a spring day, the tug of unspoken words during a farewell. A emotion that was written all over his face the whole time, that you seemed to just notice now, engulfing his whole body in a beautiful light with blinding warm hues.

And that’s when he vanished.

Leaving you feeling an emptiness that you hadn’t noticed before you met him. Like his presence filled something that had previously been incomplete, and was only noticeable now because of his coming and going.

And for the next year, you never forgot the strange man whose warmth surrounded your body when you were cold, and whose sweetness danced on your tongue whenever you ate strawberry ice cream.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“He jumped that day, didn’t he?” You ask the doctor with tanned olive skin and a deep musical voice.

Your head was still throbbing after the procedure, and you could barely recognize your psychologist, Dr. Kim who had been treating your condition for months up to the surgery and was now sitting next to your bed in the sterilized recovery room.

He pauses for a second, glances at you with unreadable eyes and eventually nods. You let out a breath you didn’t know you were holding at his muted response, for some reason even if he hadn’t reassured your hunch; you just had a sure feeling that you already knew.