“I feel your pain”, “I feel your loss”, “I know how much it hurts” – people say such things too easily. But whenever you said it, you could actually feel it.  

You hated it now more than ever. Looking into Jungkook’s eyes made you think the situation was genuinely so unfair. Why did you have to be the one to feel his pain?

Meanwhile, Jungkook was still grappling with what you just did. Then, the chance to say anything was lost.  

“Y/N”, Namjoon came up to you and he warily looked at the bruised-up guy standing before you. “You guys talking about something?”  

“No, we are done”, you replied as Jungkook’s eyes were still fixated on you.

“OK… let’s go then, Mirae is late again. She told us to save her a seat.”

“Yeah let’s go”, you forced a smile at Namjoon. You were so glad that the lecture today was not the one you shared with Jungkook.  

As you strode past him, he kept thinking about how much he wanted to just hold on to you so that you wouldn’t leave him there again. How many times he contemplated grabbing onto your wrist to turn you around, to ask you to listen to him, to just have you standing before him again.  

—

The next day wasn’t so fortunate for you, you were having that damned lecture with him again.  

“Were you the one who beat Jungkook up?”, Namjoon jokingly nudged you.  

“What? No! Of course not, what the hell Namjoon”, you whispered sharply back at him as the lecture was ongoing.  

“Chill, I’m just checking, because he keeps staring at you and I can’t tell if it’s out of vengeance or what?”  

You knew he was looking at you, your peripheral senses were on edge. However, never once did you even acknowledge his presence. You endured it all the way until the lecture was finally done and then the ever-so-unhelpful Namjoon had to insist that he must converse with the professor about an unnecessarily academic question. So, here you were, waiting for him outside the lecture hall.  

“Y/N”, you heard that same voice that still makes you shudder.  

You looked up at him with a frustrated frown and took one step to your right, ready to bypass him. He quickly moved to block you again without getting too close to you.  

“I know you must really hate me now, and you have every right to but will you please hear me out once? It will only take a while”, if you weren’t already fooled before, you would have considered the plea.  

“Hate you? I don’t hate you. But the last thing I want to do now is listen to another word from someone like you.”  

“I know you must think that I am an , just like all the other party boys but I…”,  

You felt the need to shut him off right there, “Stop saying ‘I know’. Stop pretending like you know anything about me.”  

“I don’t! I know so little about you. But in the same way, you don’t know about me”, Jungkook was almost raising his voice at you.  

You heightened your volume right back at him, “I have absolutely no freaking interest in knowing anything about you! And for the record, you are worse than all the other guys.”  

The breath he held hitched in his throat but he tried to continue, “Y/N… ever since that night you asked whether I was ok, everything stopped being ok and…”

You couldn’t let him continue, for fear that your mind will be overridden by his schemes, “Maybe your insistence on all of this is because you think you failed this challenge”, you hissed as you gestured yourself.  

“Let me make this clear then, Jeon Jungkook. I am not an accomplishment for you to unlock. I am not a stage in a game for you to clear. I am not a special trophy for your stand. All I know was that you were in a lot of pain, and I could feel it. I might have wanted to help you in some way because you didn’t seem so bad. But I was wrong and regret hurts enough, are you happy now?” 

He wasn’t happy, he wasn’t happy a single bit to hear that you felt hurt because of him. But it wasn’t just unhappiness he was feeling, there were feelings he never had before too.  

—

You were diligently at work in the bookstore, but you were constantly startled whenever someone walked into the store. Seeing that it wasn’t Jungkook made you heave a sigh, not sure whether out of relief.

The lady that just walked in felt familiar, she quickly walked up to you, pushing a pram along with her.  

“Hi, this is kind of embarrassing but do you remember me? I am the one who had a bit of a situation here the other day?”, she asked you very sheepishly. That’s right! It’s her. The lady who almost gave birth here and you instinctively shrunk away from her recalling what had happened to you that day.  

“Oh! You are the girl who was helping me and then fainted, right? Are you doing ok? I was wondering whether something happened to you.”

“I’m fine. Thanks. Can I help you with something?”, you tried to maintain a professional stance.  

“Haha no no I don’t need any help today, hopefully”, she laughed. “Actually, I am here to say ‘thank you’. My baby’s all healthy and good now and I really wanted to invite the people who helped me on that day to dinner at my place. Will you be willing to come? And is your store manager in today?”  

“Ma’am, we appreciate it but it’s ok, we only did what anyone would do in that situation…”, you were almost about to reject the offer when your manager appeared and usurped the conversation. He started making funny faces at the baby in the pram and the mother extended the invitation to him.  

“Ma’am,  it’s really not necessary…”, you tried a second time to politely reject the offer.  

“Call me Yunsu”, she said with a warm smile. “And it’s necessary for me, I’m doing this partly for myself too.”  Your store manager and you looked at her inquisitively.  

She naturally took the cue to start explaining, “I had my baby Ri-ah after one of those nights, you know… after I partied too much. When I found out that I was pregnant, I was devastated. Oppa didn’t want her either. All he wanted was to have fun with me and he even said that this was all my fault.  

    I resented her so much… I was determined to get rid of her. So, I went to the clinic by myself one day, feeling all unfair that this happened to me. There was this other woman who sat beside me in the waiting room, and she was carrying a toddler in her arms. The toddler kept tugging at my sleeves and I got annoyed so I turned and pointed my fingers at him to tell him to stop. That was when he grabbed my finger in his tiny hands and smiled at me. I’m not sure if it was just instincts or something else, but I suddenly thought about the tiny life within me.”

You could see the tip of her nose and the rim of her eyes turning a tinge of red from the recounting.  

“Ri-ah was a mistake, but she was my mistake, and she was also a reflection of my life. I felt despicable for wanting to erase all traces of her because I couldn’t face up to my own problems, I felt ashamed that I was making her pay for my wrong choices. I knew then that I should start taking responsibility, even if not for her, I needed to do it for myself.  

    But having decided to keep her, the one thing I feared the most was facing the pain of child birth all alone, with nobody next to me to even hold my hand. You were the first people to rush to me that day, and I was not facing it alone thanks to you. Oh and that young man too, who helped me after you fainted. I remember he even ordered the mall staff to clear all the cars at the nearest pick up point so that the ambulance could stop there, seems like a really thoughtful guy”, she finally lightened up a little.

“You thought well, Yunsu, it was the right decision”, your manager uttered while you still stood there not knowing how to respond.  

She exhaled shallowly and continued saying, “I was told by people, often the wrong kind of people, that I should never regret anything I do, because regret is for the weak, for losers. But I regretted for wanting to get rid of her. It took me a lot to do that, and I began to realise that I regretted living my live that way, I was just too weak to recognise it.  

    So, I need to thank all of you, for helping me bring her into this world safely. To be honest, I don’t really have anyone else to celebrate with. And it hurts my heart to think that nobody is happy for my baby”, she finally ended her daunting narrative.  

“Yunsu, thank you for your invitation, we will be most happy to celebrate with you, but we will only agree to go if you would let us help you with something. It’s not easy raising a baby by yourself, and we won’t be able to celebrate with you in peace if all we can think about is how much we will be imposing on you”, your store manager replied. You never really knew he was such a considerate man, and you started looking at him with a new-found awe.  

Yunsu was so grateful to have her offer finally be accepted and she beamed at the both of you.

“Y/N, you have the task of bringing along your friend who helped out the other day too”, your store manager commanded. You opened your mouth to defy that but shut it again because you didn’t yet have a good enough reason to say no.  

—

Later that day, you were organising the books at the far end of the bookstore, standing on the ladder that allowed you to reach the highest parts of the shelf. The things that Yunsu had just said to you were weighing you down to no end and you decided to lean against the wall for a break. That was until you accidentally knocked one of the books to the floor.  

Bothered and annoyed, you ploughed your way down the ladder, sighing while picking it up. You had to squeeze in between the ladder and the bookshelf to get to it, since you were too lazy to move the ladder away. And that was your mistake.  

When you turned around to manoeuvre out of the tiny space, your only escape path was obstructed by the guy you have been painstakingly escaping from. Half of your mind was hating the fact that Jungkook appeared at your work place again, half of your heart was asking you weren’t you kind of, a little, maybe, waiting for him all this time?  

“I thought about it very hard and these are the things I can come up with for now.” Jungkook started speaking very quickly as he ambushed you in that small compartment. He wanted to make sure you couldn’t cut him off prematurely again this time.  

“Calling me trash or comparing me to other jerks out there is nothing to me. Trying to toy with my feelings doesn’t do that much either. Talking bad about my mother doesn’t mean anything to me, but saying that I am like her would probably hurt me a bit. Telling me my father doesn’t care would likely make me feel worse. When someone I care about ignores me, I get upset too… I think. If someone I care about can’t forgive me for something, I think it’ll hurt pretty bad.” 

“Why are you…?”  

He bulldozed over your words, “There was once in high school I got into really bad trouble and the media picked it up, my Dad was so angry he didn’t talk to me for days and I felt like …

    … And most of all, if someone l care about is in pain, it will hurt a lot. But there’s only that many people I can think of that really matters to me… and you…”

“Why are you telling me all these?!”, you were forced to yell over his words in order to stop his rambling.  

He did stop, his eyes looked at you with conviction, “If you want to get back at me, then do it properly.”  

“What… Is this what you have been wanting to tell me?”, you asked in bewilderment.  

It wasn’t, but those words, he knows those words he’s been dying to say would mean nothing to you now anyway. He did already try to say them three times. And you walked away from him three times. He wasn’t sure he had the strength to try again. 

So instead, just like how you allowed him to hurt you, he would do the same for you. If that would make you feel better, if that is the only thing he can do for you now.  

“Just… please don’t hurt yourself. You can use all the other things against me. If I think of anything else I will let you know”, he made it sound like this was one of the most normal conversations two people would have.  

After a short moment of pondering, you rebuked softly, eyes unmovingly watching his, voice laced with an undertone of menace, “You act just like your mother. Does your father even know you are like this, or he just doesn’t care? I am already trying my best to ignore you, so if you are really sorry then leave me alone. And… I am not intending to forgive you.”  

He blinked exactly three times, then he flashed a consoling smile, which disappeared quickly. Nodding acceptingly, he finally lowered his gaze away from you, not wanting you to see whatever that was showing on his face.  

“Don’t forgive me.”

Your heart throbbed in pain, even breathing started to hurt and your eyes begun to turn blurry again.  

As he turned to leave, your voice coming from behind him made his steps halt abruptly.  

“But doing this hurts me a hell lot, so hurt a hell lot like me.”

—

In the end, maybe, the two of you changed because of regret. A regret that you allowed yourself to be hurt; a regret that he didn’t know some things earlier.