“OK class, hold your partner’s hand and follow closely”, you heard the teacher call out as you strutted through a dark museum behind your classmates.  

“Y/N, what’s the matter? Why aren’t you holding her hand? I told you, you need to hold your partner’s hand and walk together, I don’t want to lose any of you.”

“Ms Kim, Y/N doesn’t like to hold other people’s hands”, another student said in a mocking voice. Tattletale… The darkness starts to inch in on you, you were sure it was daylight before you entered the museum. You could feel the snide remarks and demeaning stares surround you.  

“Maybe she has sweaty hands.”  

“She thinks she’s too good to be holding our hands.”

“Such a weird dweeb.”  

And suddenly you jolt awake. The nightmare was exceptionally realistic, because it bore the memories of your childhood days.  

—  

When you were just five years old, you saw your mother crying one day on the couch and all you wanted to do was to comfort her. So, you walked over and held her hand and in an instant, you felt a sharp pain pierce through you, making you let out a shriek and collapse in tears.  

Other kids would enjoy walking around holding their grandparents’ or parents’ hands, but you had no idea why they liked it. “How is something like this enjoyable?”, you used to wonder. Each time you held someone’s hand, it was like a gamble.  

You learnt to shun it, to avoid it and naturally you hated those times when the education system required you to physically come in contact with anybody. One time it got so bad your elementary classmate, April, thought you disliked her when you refused to hold her hand when forming a circle for class activity that she started bawling and claiming you hated her.  

As you grew up, your parents began noticing your behaviour and one day, after your teacher told your mum about the ‘April incident’, she sat you down at home. “Y/N, did April upset you? Why did you not want to hold her hand?”, she asked while she faced the kitchen counter chopping up some vegetables.  

“I don’t like to hold hands”, you said almost matter-of-factly, because you never understood why it seemed so easy for other people to do that.  

“Why not darling? When you hold someone’s hands it creates a bond between them and you and it allows you to make friends. Don’t you want to make lots of friends at school?”  

“Is that what it was? A bond between people?”, maybe that is what you feel every time.  

A few years passed and you tried your best to improve your social interactive skills as you progressed through elementary school. Somehow you never managed to go about this physical contact thing with as much ease as everyone else. Maybe you were a weird dweeb.  

It was a hot afternoon, and it was the dreaded physical education period, Mina was practicing her standing broad jump and you had to be standing right opposite her. She must have overexerted herself and lost her balance, as she came hurling towards you when she landed. She was right about to fall on you with both hands outstretched grabbing at nothing for support when you instinctively flinched and backed away from the contact, leaving her to fall forward onto the jumping mat. Immediate regret was an understatement and Mina looked like she had sprained her ankle in the process so the teacher asked you to take her to the infirmary. You held out a hand to help her up and there it was again, the piercing feeling tearing right through you which lasted all the way to the infirmary until you let her plop down on the bed there.  

That night you were sulking in your room thinking back to all the nasty remarks you heard from your other classmates about you letting Mina fall on her face and hurting her. Why does it seem like nobody else has the same dilemma you had? That was when your grandfather quietly entered the semi-lit room, “what’s the matter, my dear?”

You said “nothing” at first, but you could never hide from grandpa.  

“My classmates all hate me.”  

“Now we know that can’t be true, who could bear to hate such a precious baby? You tell me what they did to you now and grandpa will send tiny monsters under their bed tonight.”  

“Grandpa, they’re all a little too old to still believe in monsters under the bed. They think I am weird because I don’t like to hold their hands or hug them. They seem to do it so easily, I don‘t understand, grandpa. Am I really weird?”

Suddenly a frown appeared on your grandfather’s face, it was ever so subtle but you were sure it was not just the wrinkles over his forehead.  

“My dear, tell me, why do you not like to hold someone’s hands or hug them?”  

“I just don’t like it. It is scary, I don’t know when it will hurt me”, you mumbled through your words because you wondered if it was a stupid reason.  

“Oh gosh.”  

—

From then on, you learnt that you were indeed strange, although they tried to say it was more on the spectrum of ‘special’ – you could feel someone else’s pain, quite literally. While you may not feel the same type of pain, as in a sprained ankle for a sprained ankle, you would nonetheless feel some form of pain coursing through your own body. It came from all forms of physical contact, but the most intense reaction comes from holding someone’s hand; you will feel the same intensity of any pain that person is going through when you held their hands.  

—  

Somehow you made it through the public education system all the way to university. While university is supposed to be the time of your life, or so they say, you just wanted a low-key life, the less interaction the better, for obvious reasons. And that’s why you kept mostly to yourself, exceptions being Mirae and Namjoon, who were your best friends. They were also the only ones whom you have ever shared your “condition” with outside of your family.  

Mirae’s birthday was coming up and you had asked her a gazillion times what she wanted, and she finally revealed that she wanted to attend a party, with Namjoon and you. You hated parties, also for obvious reasons and Namjoon was very studious, pretty much a weird dweeb too, so neither of you had any intention to accompany her to a party, ever. But it was her birthday and that was all she wanted.  

That explains how Namjoon and you were both being dragged by an excited Mirae towards a mansion that was vibrating from the booming music coming from within. Honestly, you had no idea whose house it was, all you recalled from the conversation where you reluctantly agreed to come, was that this was some schoolmate’s party and you were just here on “birthday wish fulfilling duty”. Your plan was to stick to Namjoon and Mirae, have a few celebratory drinks and try to enjoy yourself as much as you could.

Once the three of you pass through the wooden door frame, there were just people everywhere. You were on high alert, trying to prevent yourself from coming into contact with anyone as much as possible. Mirae and Namjoon were flanking you front and back and you felt some security being wedged between them.  

Eventually the three of you settled down in a corner of the huge living room after a drink or two and having another one in hand. Mirae did not come to the party to sit around and sip on badly mixed cocktails. She wanted to get onto the dance floor, the heart of where the party was.  

“Guys, let’s go dance!”, said Mirae  

“You know I can’t dance”, Namjoon said with an exasperation in his booming voice

“It doesn’t matter, there’s so many people out there nobody’s gonna care if you can pull out any moves Namjoon, just get on the dance floor with me! Y/N, let’s go, I know what you are worried about but seriously, everyone’s just having fun there, even if you touched anyone it’ll be fine, they won’t be in pain”, Mirae was straining to get her words through to the two of you over the loud EDM music that was blasting through the roof.  

“You know, if it wasn’t your birthday, I would have walked out by now but fine, I’ll do it for you since I am a great friend”, said Namjoon dryly.  

You, on the other hand, was feeling a tad dizzy from the alcohol running through you, a feeling you are yet unaccustomed to, and said you had preferred to just sit here for a while and will try to join them later.  

It must have been around five minutes of watching the two of them executing weird movements in the centre of the badly lit living room. You wanted to get out for some fresh air, so you got up and immediately stumbled almost falling back down onto the chair. That was when a voice came from beside you.  

“Be careful there, don’t want our new face hurting herself at her first party.”  

You did not recognise the voice, but when you looked around, you immediately recognised its owner. Jungkook – idol of the faculty. Correction… idol of the entire school. At least half the girls in school want to date him, but he doesn’t do dates. What does he do then you may ask? He was famous, or in your view infamous, for being a playboy with no actual interest in relationships. You once saw a girl crying her guts out next to him in front of the school library and he just stalked off, leaving her there sitting on the sidewalk.  

“Uh excuse me?”, you replied, harsh but meek.  

“Hoseok’s party, I have been to all of them, have not seen you before. So why is our new face sitting in a corner by herself acting all tipsy? Doesn’t seem like you would come to a party by yourself.”  

“I’m not tipsy, I just stumbled. And my friends are over there, so yeah, you will be taking up their seats, in case that was what you were wondering.”  

Jungkook raised an eyebrow at you, “Seems like our new face does not really want my company. But your friends are all the way over there, having a good time, and you are all the way here…”, he gestured towards your friends who were embarrassingly shimmying on the dance floor.  

“I don’t dance, and stop calling me ‘new face’, that’s rather rude you know?”  

He sat down next to you, body leaning forward to rest his elbows on his thighs which were donning some skinny black ripped jeans, as his face came closer towards your own, he said almost challengingly, “Oh I’m sorry, where were my manners? What’s the name of our new face then? I hope it’s not some generic unmemorable name like Rachel. My name’s Jungkook by the way.”

He spoke like a predator playing with his prey. Kind of reminded you of how a cat would whack its prey repeatedly, just because. While any other girl at the party may beg to be his prey, you were not any other girl.  

“No, my name’s not Rachel. And your introduction was not required, I know very well who you are. Now, if you will excuse me…”, you were quite sure that going to the dance floor to be squeezed by tonnes of sweaty people, hiding in the toilet for the rest of the night or even leaving your friends without a word would all be better choices than remaining in this situation.  

As you stood up to leave you felt his hand grab your wrist, “That’s not very nice …" and his voice faded off. You felt an immense jolt of pain shoot through your body, it was not the usual piercingly sharp pain. It was dull, pulsating through your chest and caused a blur in all your senses. Everything around you was thumping and swiveling. And the pain suddenly stopped, but the remnants of the intense feelings lingered, and you felt tears rolling down your flushed cheeks. You could only wonder whether this amplified reaction was due to the alcoholic content in your blood.  

“Hey, wow, OK, I know I’m famous for making girls cry but this is the first time someone’s pulled this on me before we even did anything.”, he said pointedly to you, as you come to realise you are now crouched on the ground in front of Jungkook.  

“Oh gosh, had to pick one tonight that would cause a scene. Should have just gone with the second Rachel just now.”, you heard him mumble under his breath to himself as he turned away to look around, perhaps searching for said Rachel. 

You wiped away the tears and looked up at him, “Are you OK?”, that’s all you managed to say in a shaky voice.  

Jungkook paused, and turned his head slowly to look at you, eyes a little wider than before and with more darkness in them than before, even though you didn’t know that was possible.  

“What did you just say?”

“I said ‘are you ok’, because when you grabbed my hand…”, you hesitated.  

“Let me get this straight. You are the one currently sitting on the floor, crying, when I did literally nothing, yet, and you are asking whether I am ok?”

“This isn’t what you think it is. But I think it’s fairly obvious that I am not ok…”, you replied, “… it’s you I am not so sure about.”  

He didn’t break eye contact with you for what could have been minutes, or was it just seconds, who knows, before he said sarcastically, “I think I would be ok if you would just get up so that people would stop staring at us”.  

Seems like the people around the two of you had caught on that something less than ideal for a party scene must be going on, and what’s more attention attracting for drunken people than something that looks remotely like it will lead to some drama.  

Jungkook extended his hand to help you up. You looked at it doubtfully, once bitten twice shy indeed. You weren’t going to take any chances so you held onto the chair instead and got yourself up. Jungkook wasn’t exceptionally surprised at this, he’s met the likes of you before, girls who think that he is just a playboy, that he is trash. And let’s not forget the girls who act like they are not interested in him at first glance to try to pique his interest.  

“Well since our new face has no interest in this company, I will be moving on. That said, you know, you still didn’t tell me what your name is”, Jungkook said smugly as you stood up.  

“And you didn’t tell me if you are really feeling ok.”  

He turned wide-eyed again, wondering what is with this persistence about questioning his well-being.  

“I guess that makes us even then”, Jungkook scoffed.

As you watch him leave and blend into the crowded room in search of his next ‘prey’ of the night, you couldn’t help but wonder, what caused that kind of reaction in you just now. You were sure it only happened because he grabbed your hand, so it must have been him. He looks absolutely fine though? Just look at how smug he was. Was it just the drinks? Maybe he was sick or injured somewhere? But the feelings were unlike anything you have experienced before.  

You were snapped out of your thoughtful daze when Mirae and Namjoon came crashing back onto the chairs next to you from how exhausted they were from all the physical exertion of bad dancing. “Let’s call it a night shall we, I am not feeling too well”, you said. They looked over at you worriedly and you reassured them that you were fine, just tired.  

As you were walking out, squeezing past the hoard of drunken bodies, you saw that at the end of the room where there were huge ceiling-to-floor glass windows exhibiting the pool behind them. And there he was, Jungkook, making out with some girl on lounger beside the pool. “Some questions, we just don’t need the answers to…”