It was something of an urban legend that there was a list kept deep within the confines of the principal's office. A list of all the times the name 'Jeon Jungkook' was uttered over the PA system, summoning down the scrawny boy with pinkish plump cheeks that contrasted against his pale complexion. They nicknamed him 'the bunny boy' for more reasons than simply his appearance. He was as hyper and troublesome as a rabbit in the wild but all of that shatters into vulnerability the moment he's face to face with a person of authority. 

He wasn't at all timid as a child but social norms had softened him just enough to keep him in school as long as he had been. (That, and the presence of Park Chaeyoung.)

Over the years he had gotten away with multitude of things (slathering glue over desks, tossing water balloons from the rooftops, damaging property), courtesy of his parents desperately begging the forgiveness of the staff he taunted and Taehyung by his side devising schemes to slip him through even the smallest of cracks. But one incident in particular left him with nowhere to run but towards utter hell. 

“He severely violated the school's code of academic integrity,” the principal had told his parents, “not to criticize your methods but the boy needs serious discipline.” One test bank he had stolen from the maths teacher's drawer, made multiple copies of, and sold out to his fellow classmates. In his defense, it was simply asking to be stolen given how something so valuable was carelessly tossed into an accessible place.

He walked in with his parents that day with utter confidence that they would bail him out like they always did. Yet something felt awfully off about the atmosphere. They listened to the principal's complaints with stern faces as opposed to the dreadful, tired ones they always wore in this situation. His suspicions were confirmed by the very end of their brief meeting when his father had made a statement that changed everything. 

“Understood. We'll have him spend the summer working on the family farm with his uncle.”

“What?!” Jungkook slipped out from the chair and onto his feet with wide eyes.

“I mean what I said, Jungkook, you're getting out of hand.”

“But he's all the way in Damyang!”

“You're going to live there with him and that's that.” There was a stern, aggravated look on his father's face as he tried his best to utter the last words low enough as to not cause a scene but menacing enough to have Jungkook shrink in his seat.

That was the end of that, really. Even at the blissfully ignorant age of twelve, Jungkook knew better than to keep persisting. There are worse punishments even if he couldn't imagine it, he knew they existed somewhere in the depths of his parents' minds. 

He didn't hate his uncle. He didn't particularly like him either. Jeon Jihoon was always just another face Jungkook never looked forward to seeing at family gatherings because he smelled strange - like some concoction of pickled radishes and manure - and spoke with an accent Jungkook was convinced didn't even exist.

Not that what he thought of him mattered at that point, he was off on the Friday morning of summer vacation. Taehyung sent him off with a pat on the back and a snickering, “don't let the pigs eat you in your sleep,” - a reference to a particularly disturbing video they had watched together. Chaeyoung wasn't there, though he didn't take it to heart after catching her the day before school ended in one of the music room's closets in tears about him not being able to spend the summer with her. Chaeyoung had a soft heart, and even he didn't have the audacity to break it.

Just like his accent, Jungkook found everything about his uncle strange, almost alien. From his mannerisms to his habits, Jihoon embodied a place Jungkook didn't think he'd ever have to be - the working class. His farm was small and secluded, and he didn't earn much off the produce and livestock he raised but he was anything but miserable. Comfortable, really, was the better term. 

Jihoon welcomed him with a handshake and a cup full of raisins that made Jungkook's brows furrow. “They're handpicked from the bush out back. Dried them myself. Try one!”

“No thanks,” he responded monotonously without a second thought. It was much easier being blunt as a kid, unbothered by etiquettes and social obligations. Jungkook detested dry food and anything that tasted... concentrated. 

Over the next few days, he came to realize that he really had little choice as to what he ate. Everything tasted dry even if it was wet under the blaring sun outside and humidity inside. To make it worse, the power shut off every few days - a segue into sleepless nights of tossing, turning and sweating. Instead of goofing off online like he normally would, he found himself hunched over a lawn chair out back once in a while, palm pressed against his pouty cheek as he watched his uncle tend to the fields. It wasn't huge like the ones he'd seen broadcasted on tv but it could probably support a very large family.

For a man charting into his fifties, Jihoon didn't seem to break a sweat even in the unbearable summer heat. It was fascinating, Jungkook thought, and then he thought about how genuinely bored he must be if he found something like this interesting. He had an urge to call Chaeyoung and vent to her about how his summer was going, but his parents had confiscated his phone and the one his uncle had was attached to the wall and powered by the electricity they didn't have at the moment. This man was truly living in the past, and Jungkook started to think his parents were trying to get him killed leaving him here. 

He wasn't sure if it was the summer heat or some aggression built up over time, but there was an undeniable and unspoken spite growing in the pit of his stomach. They really have tried absolutely everything to get rid of him. Despite their efforts to keep him in school, the only motivation they had ever given him to go on was the threat of them cutting him off completely if he didn't succeed. It was a heavy weight on his chest to carry at such a young age, and every threat only further pushed him to greater acts of rebellion. Every scolding led to another deviant prank, every beating another outburst in class, and every ‘things probably would have been easier if he was never born’ he overheard in the middle of the night sent him into a period of silence had Chaeyoung holding him firmly in her arms after class without a word of question on the matter because she just knew somehow.

“Whatcha' thinking so hard about, Kookie?” 

Jungkook inwardly cringed at the way Chaeyoung's nickname for him so thoughtlessly came out of Jihoon's mouth as a smirk spread across his tanned, wrinkled face. “Nothing.”

“Seems like you're lonely.”

“I am,” he admitted.

“Y'know, it would help if you gave me a hand out here. We could talk about anything you want, pluck some tomatoes and water down some—”

“It would help if you took me back home to Busan.”

Jihoon stifled a chuckle. “I would but I promised your father that I would keep you here for the summer until you've learned the hardships you must face when you break rules.” It was the most sophisticated sentence that had come out of his mouth thus far, Jungkook thought. Little did he know, there were plenty of notable things Jihoon hadn't told him yet. Jungkook did feel somewhat guilty about his intolerable behaviour, mostly due to the fact that Jihoon maintained his calm no matter how sour he acted and didn't force him to work alongside him even though he had the authority to do so. Sympathy oozed from his kind gestures and reassuring smiles, and for the first time, made Jungkook think twice before lashing out. 

“Tell you what,” Jihoon began, “I think I have the perfect friend to keep you company. If you don't like being around me, which doesn't offend me by the way, then you can play with her while I'm working.”

Firstly, the prospect of playing with a her had already thrown him off. He didn't get along well with girls, with the exception of Chaeyoung whom he didn't quite consider a girl (even though she definitely was one in every sense of the word). Secondly, he came to understand that 'her' was definitely a girl... bird. A female bird. A little chick, to be exact. A small fluffy, feathery, smelly chick that Jungkook wanted nothing more in that moment than to fry her up into the chicken he needed to get rid of the strong cabbage taste in his mouth. 

“What am I supposed to do with it?”

“Her.”

“What?”

“It's a she.”

Jungkook did find it strange at first how personal Jihoon got with his barn animals, giving them names, praising the cows when they produced a good load of milk and the hens when they laid a fresh batch of eggs. He even sulked a little after sending them off to the meat factories. In truth, Jihoon didn't like killing, making his job all the more ironic. He loved growing things, giving life to plants, watering and nourishing them until they grew taller than even him. That was really what made the job worth it, even if Jungkook couldn't see the benefit of going through such hard labour. 

“She's actually new here. I haven't given her a name yet and she moved in on the same day your father told me you would be coming here so I figured I'd let you give her a name. So what are you thinking, Kook?” 

Jungkook stared blankly at the softly cooing bird, bobbing it's head back and forth as it walked around the small space, hay crunching under its little feet. This was the most ridiculous situation he had ever been in, and that was saying a lot considering the messes he usually got himself into. Yet as he looked at the little chicken, blinking away at him with it's beady eyes as if mesmerized by the shiny belt around his pants (of ing course, it's a dumb bird), the only thing he could think about was how much he missed the KFC near his high school, where Taehyung would drag him everyday after soccer practice to order an obnoxious amount of food and laugh so loudly they eventually got kicked out by furious staff.

“Nugget,” he said on instinct, the image of crispy strips of chicken floating around in his mind.

“Huh...interesting,” Jihoon nodded, “but unique. I like it.”

Jungkook never truly stopped complaining about how horrible a time he was having thus far during the summer - he only stopped voicing it out loud over the month the more he watched his uncle actually start breaking a sweat to keep up with the demands of the corporate factories and local grocery stores. According to the locals, Jihoon's food was always the best because they were grown with thought and care in contrast to the sloppily mass grown fields of most massive farms. At some point he felt bad (and bored) enough to pick up a plow and join him. Jihoon didn't comment on it at first, afraid he'd scare the little boy away with his chattiness. 

Things progressed quicker than either of them had expected. 

Jihoon was full of surprisingly fascinating stories, not just of his own childhood but of Jungkook's parents. Jihoon and Jonghyun weren't the closest of brothers in their adulthood but their childhood was spent very much inseparable. Jungkook found it hard to believe there was ever a time his father wasn't uptight and in everyone's faces, squabbling over money and debts. But the Jonghyun in Jihoon's story was relaxed, free spirited and almost as wild as Jungkook was right now. He once crashed their father's car on the side of a road, got a ticket, and threw it into a lake, naively believing that would get him out of it. Jihoon didn't tell him how getting rid of the ticket doesn't erase the penalty, and simply paid for it in secret. Jonghyun still wondered into his teenage years how he managed to get away with it.

“Why would you do that for him?” Jungkook wondered aloud.

“He's my little brother. I didn't have much money from the part-time job I was working at but it would have been much worse if our dad had found out about it.”

Jungkook wasn't aware of the sullen expression on his face at the thought of his parents. Jihoon noticed, but didn't say a word. He knew how his brother was now, how bad-tempered he could be, and how he was slowly declining financially. He also knew how hard it was on Jungkook at this age, not understanding how to take all of it in (and he believed he probably never would until it was too late). 

“You know your father is trying his best.”

“I hate how he's always treating me like this... like I'm a burden.”

“He doesn't really think that.”

“He does! He ing hates me. There's never a time he doesn't tell me that. Even when I get a good grade, he brushes it off like it's nothing but beats the crap out of me when I fail. I don't understand what he wants. I hate him. I hate him!” he yelled in a huff, face reddening as deep as the tomatos on the vines next to him. 

He half-expected his uncle to retort him with thinly veiled insults about how he was too young to understand what his parents do for him and how ungrateful he was for being so impulsive. Yet he didn't. He didn't utter another word about the matter, somehow managing to segue into another interesting story about the time he ate half of the ridiculously expensive cake at Jonghyun's wedding. 

Despite the strange mannerisms (that at this point no longer seemed so different) and accent (that grew weirdly comforting everyday), there was really nothing not to like about Jeon Jihoon.

Even after the story about how Jonghyun completely destroyed their father's car and threw away his ticket, Jihoon decided to teach Jungkook how to drive. It wasn't a fancy car - heck, it wasn't even a mildly ty car. It was a rusty little tow truck, mud lining rims and grease along the back, but it still excited him to be in the driver's seat. Jihoon decided that once accident was enough for the family, and letting Jungkook take the wheel early on with knowledge of how the road worked would somehow prevent any tragedies.

Jungkook, contrary to his educational reputation, learned very quickly. His feet didn't quite reach the pedals but that wasn't something a little newspaper concotion wouldn't fix. They drove around a few small parking lots, often in circles until the little boy got the hang of it, and then progressed onto the road a few days later. They didn't drive through busy streets, only the ones with few traffic and pedestrians, but it was enough for Jihoon to point out the essential signs Jungkook had to look out for and what certain signals meant. And somehow they got away with it - only a few people stopped to stare in disbelief at a child in the driver's seat of a pickup truck, though the side windows were fogged up enough and the people around them busy and careless enough that it didn't cause much of a commotion. Jungkook was a fairly smooth driver for his age, though Jihoon made him swear he wouldn't try anything like this until he was of the age to actually drive.

Chaeyoung once told him how one's perspective in life becomes more positive once they start to accept their circumstances - or some bull like that, Jungkook didn't really listen, and it was probably something she got from one of those sappy novels in her book club. 

It made sense, in a way, because the humid nights started bothering him less and he had become accustomed to the dry tasting meals that somehow bursted with flavour every night. Seeing how carefully Jihoon prepared every meal really made it all the better.

On one of the days Jungkook had planned to help harvest some vegetables, he had twisted his ankle when he got his foot caught in a wire by the fence and tripped. For once, he felt horrible about not being able to help on a particuarly difficult day, but Jihoon insisted he would be fine. Instead, he watched from the porch, Nugget nestled in his lap, providing a strange source of warmth over the injured leg. He never got tired of watching how elegantly Jihoon twisted vegetables from the soil and off long vines without damaging them. He was tall and skinny, yet he was anything but fragile (sort of like Chaeyoung). 

—And nothing made Jungkook more sure of that than what occurred the second night before he was meant to go home to Busan.

He didn't really want to go home, in truth. The past three months had been more eventful than any of his past summers, even the wild adventures with Taehyung couldn't top what he felt now. A small, secluded farm was an exhilirating place to explore. Every corner of a tree and turn around the barn always presented a new adventure that tv couldn't provide. 

More importantly, Jihoon was someone Jungkook never expected to think about as anything more than a strange alien of a family member. He listened to him, no matter how petty or stupid the topic, he listened. He never criticized or judged directly, no matter how wrong Jungkook was, because he knew that was the response he got every time. No child wanted to believe they were childish. So instead, he simply provided an outlet for Jungkook to vent, and anecdotes that were fun in the moment, yet allowed him to realize what the problems really were afterward. He was everything Jungkook never knew he needed, and the idea of leaving all of that behind was like a storm closing in over his head. 

He wouldn't cry though, he made sure of it. He would go home, he would see his parents, and he would pretend like none of it ever happened. How else does one let go of something like this? Pretend it was never real. You can't be sad over what you never had. So he tried to spend the last two days away from his uncle, locked up in his room with earbuds plugged in as he lay on his bed, eyes shut tightly. He wouldn't come out no matter how often Jihoon knocked on his door and begged him to eat something. Jihoon didn't question why he was acting this way. Perhaps he knew, or perhaps he just assumed that Jungkook was an enigma that he didn't care to figure out. 

What happened that night was something that Jungkook would go on to blaming himself for for the next few years.

Jungkook awoke at three in the morning to a bright orange light flickering and shining through under his door. When he blinked away the graininess in his vision, coming to his senses, the potent stench of smoke filled his lungs, forcing a cough up his throat. A nanosecond later, his door was kicked open with a loud thud, a crack running through the wood. A second later, he was in Jihoon's arms, lifted off the mattress and carried through the house.

It was a blinding sight - flames closing in, furniture blackened and falling apart. Jihoon's skin was burning hot, almost agonizing to have his cheek pressed up against. He was in a tank top, exposing much of his skin to the fire. Before Jungkook could mutter anything at all, Jihoon fell to his knees with a choke, dropping the small boy to the floor.

“The door is open,” he coughed, “I just called the fire department, just run outside, Jungkook, please!”

“But what about y—”

“GO!” 

He ran as fast as his feet would carry him, fighting the clawing urge to look back. There was no one at the end of his run (not for a few minutes), but even the rush of cool air into his lungs didn't relieve him or stop his heart from pounding painfully in his chest. When he looked back, the flames had closed in so far, he couldn't distinguish parts of the house from fire that engulfed it. He couldn't make out the figure of Jihoon, and no matter how loudly he cried out for his uncle, there was no response other than the crackling of the flames and the house going up in smoke. 

It was then that he realized he was all alone now. Jihoon was gone, whether he let himself believe it or not. Reality becomes more positive when you accept your circumstances. Jungkook couldn't see how that could possibly apply to him at that moment. Reality wasn't where he wanted to be, because reality was where Jihoon no longer existed. It was ironic, really, considering how hard he had tried to make that happen just hours ago. And not it was true. 

Tears burned a trail down his face as his fists clenched tightly at his sides. He hadn't cried in a while, afraid it would become a habit that would carry on and be exposed in front of his parents and his friends. Only Chaeyoung had ever seen him cry (though not really, because he would bury his face into her sweater, hiding from her gaze). But he was definitely alone now, though he really didn't care at that point who saw. He felt torn, and every reason he could possibly have for anger and sorrow poured in like a hurricane, flooding his mind of any trivial thing he ever thought mattered.

What he saw when he looked down at his feet was both fairytale-like and heart wrenching all at once. Right by his feet, Nugget stood completely still (no bobs of her head or shuffling of her feet), and stared directly into the flames, in another weird trance. 

Chaeyoung vision blurs with tears as she watches Jungkook turn away from her. In the midst of his story, she had noticed the way his blinking started to become more rapid and his speech more frantic. He's crying too, and even now he's afraid of her seeing. 

She sits up from her bed and rests a hand on his shoulder. “Look at me,” she says, so soft it doesn't sound like a command at all.

He's reluctant at first as he chews on his bottom lip in contemplation, but relents and gives in to the way she so gently carresses his arm in an attempt to calm him the way she would Snickles. It's strangely reassuring. 

His eyes have already become red, almost as deeply as his cheeks have become. A thin layer of sweat has formed on his forehead, and Chaeyoung almost winces at the way his lip quivers when he tries to hold it in. 

“Where did you find her?”

“Who?”

“Nugget.”

He inhales, “she was transferred to another local farm in Damyang. I couldn't take her home because my parents refused, so I tried to let her go. But some part of my mind just knew where she was destined to end up. So every year after that, I tried to visit the farm. I took time off every single week, and I helped with the farming there too.”

“How did you know which one was her?”

“I didn't. But she knew me,” a small smile graces his lips, “she always knew.”

“So you bought her out?”

“No, I didn't have the money. So I smuggled her out. She had become a big hen by then but I found a way. I'll tell you about it tomorrow if you're interested,” he tries to say with a laugh, but there are still tears lining his eyes and a small choke held back in his throat.

“Yeah,” Chaeyoung nods, trying to compose herself enough to speak. “I'd like that.”

“I guess I should get to sleep then,” Jungkook begins, pushing himself up from the chair, but Chaeyoung stops him with a firm grip on his wrist before he can move. “What?”

She blinks at him, motionless.

“Don't tell me you need me to tuck you in. Chaeng-ah, you're old enough to put yourself to sleep.”

Yet again, she doesn't speak. There's a moment of silence, just the two of them looking vacantly into each other's eyes. It's strange, it's comforting, and... it's exactly what he needs. 

He lets himself go, falling to the her bed and into her arms. She holds him tightly against her, muffling his quiet sobs into her hospital gown and feels a chill of relief run down his spine. He's needed this for a long time, and Chaeyoung finally understands that. Somewhere between loosening her grip and feeling herself start to cry as well, soft sobs become gentle breaths. She shifts over in her bed, making room for him as well. He nestles his face into the crook of her neck, and instinctively, Chaeyoung quietly starts to sing him a song. 

The ballad of a boy with loneliness in his heart and fire in his spirit.

A/N: Apologies for the long absence. I've been very busy with school but finally - here is the backstory of Jungkook and Nugget. Note that Jungkook and Rose's relationship will change drastically these upcoming chapters. I don't know when I'll be able to update again but thank you so much for sticking with me! Love you~ xoxo