00. YOU, ME.

It's close to 3 A.M. when I arrive home that night, and I don't plan on sleeping anytime soon—not after I spot the outline of a familiar figure, perched in front of the TV with a troubled expression on his face.

Jeon Jungkook is sitting in the shadows of my living room, slumped against the black leather couch. His long legs are sprawled ahead of him, one hand loosening his satin tie while the other clutches the television remote—his index finger curves over the down arrow, flipping through cable channels every second or so.

The glow of the TV screen flickers in the dimness of my apartment. Jungkook hadn't bothered to turn on the lamp beside him, and the light falls on his face in varying degrees of bright as the images on display change. It falls over that tall nose, those dark, brooding eyebrows, that cleanly cut jaw.

MBC Music. SBS News. OnStyle. JTBC Idol Room, wherein the newly debuted Jeon Somi chitters away at the camera, saturated pink backdrop behind her.

I bring the whiskey bottle in my hands to my mouth, eyeing the way his thin lips are waned into a simper, the way his hair falls over his forehead as if he's run a ragged hand through it more than a few times.

Jungkook isn't a very predictable person. I can never really tell what he's thinking, even if I knit my eyebrows together and concentrate a bit. It's something I've long gotten used to, but at the same time I haven't. It irks me, just a little, that I can't really figure him out—that he doesn't have habits I can grasp and use to my own advantage, like he does all the time with mine. He knows when I'm angry, guilty, and frustrated, and he makes a point to call me out on it.

Yet, I've never been able to do the same to him.

I kick off the heels I'm wearing at the door, my steps border-lining tipsy and sober as I finally make my way towards him. The whiskey bottle remains swaying in between my fingers when I plop myself ungracefully at his side, having taken a solid chug out of my liquor.

Jungkook has this habit of stealing my drink once in a while, but I like this one too much to sacrifice it. It's a choice I have to make, whenever Jungkook's in one of his moods—either to ask him about his problems, or give him a massive enough hangover to forget them entirely.

"What's got you looking like that?"

I later find that it's a question I'll regret asking.

He turns, finally, eyes lingering on the bottle in my hands like they always do. "What's that you got there?" he asks, voice only slightly louder than the sobbing of Park Shinhye emitting from the TV. It's typical of him to dodge my question with another question at first.

I raise a carefully groomed brow. "Scotch." I answer, "I had Heechul make me a whiskey cake, and decided I'd like the rest of bottle anyways." Then, with a wide grin tugging at my cheeks, I giggle, "The cake was good. It was warm, and had pecans on it, I think. Lots of whipped cream."

Jungkook peers over at me with obvious jealousy. His eyes narrow and his nose scrunches. "That would have been my cake, if I were there." He emits what sounds like a scoff before changing the TV channel again.

Even after twenty-five years of comparing and spitting on each other's achievements, twenty-seven year-old Jeon Jungkook is still my biggest rival.

When we were young, we were family rivals.

My family and his have never gotten along, and it's all retraceable to my grand-grand aunt and his grand-grand uncle, something of the sort. They'd eloped out of their respective arranged marriages and ended up running away with each other, leaving behind a century's worth of hatred boiling between their families. Both sides were eager to point fingers on just whose family had gone wrong, having raised a child with such little filial duty ingrained in their upbringing. Needless to say, I'm the first and only descendant of my great grandfather, Kim Minjoon, to be friends with a descendant of the Jeon household.

It never came in my favor that this particular descendant was Dr. Jeon Jungkook, Ph.D., child prodigy and the curator of a world-renowned pharmaceuticals company. A remarkable businessman, and a remarkable young microbiologist, with his handsome exterior sculpted extra carefully by the divine powers that be. I never saw the light of day every time one of his drugs would make it to the mass market, mostly because my parents had always wished I'd do better than him in some way.

But now that we've grown up, we're simply rivals by habit.

No matter the item of comparison—food, publicity, or wealth—it's just the way things are between Jungkook and me. It's comfortable, and familiar.

"It's not my fault you're always sulking in that laboratory of yours." I pat my stomach and smirk, still oblivious to the way there's a sliver of something mysterious in his eyes. The way he looks at me is nstrange right now, as if he has something to say that he know I won't expect to hear.

And it really is the last thing I expect to hear from him.

"Yerim, let's get married." he says all of the sudden, the same way one would suggest bringing an umbrella out on a rainy day.

As if it's the only common sense thing to do.

My response is to shove my whiskey bottle into his hands. "Christ, Jungkook. I think I like you better when you're drunk."

—

I met the famed Jeon Jungkook when I was fifteen years old, at a mutual family friend's wedding. He was sixteen at the time, dressed crisply in his formal tuxedo, and seated two rows across from me. We had been dragged by our parents into two hours' worth of sitting in pews and watching flower petals fall from the ceiling, and by the time the banquet rolled around, I was my rebellious, teenage self, and he was decidedly bored.

We ended up bonding over stolen champagne, which popped from its bottle with such gusto that it left the spaces between our fingers sticky. Our parents later found us drunk under the tablecloth, guilty as charged.

Since then, we became friends. Best-friends, despite of what our families thought of each other.

My mother had told me before that the Jeons were nothing but trouble, an inauspicious clan that aspired at every moment to entertain themselves at our own family's expense. "Look at how they parade around that Jungkook of theirs," she'd huff with a haughty drawl, "As if my daughter needs to skip three grades of school to prove her worth."

Just based on how everyone around him saw him, and also based on what little I knew of him at the time, I had always assumed Jungkook was exactly what my mother said he was—high-nosed enough to look down on others like me. He had this enigmatic air to him, as demanding as his presence was. His achievements never ceased to be the talk of our inner circle, and there was a time where I thought I hated Jungkook for being so impeccably perfect.

But I later came to realize that I didn't actually dislike Jungkook, despite the shadow he'd placed on my upbringing. I also realized that he wasn't who everyone liked to think he was. He was just shy, shy enough to be misunderstood as cold. It took him hours of practice to overcome his hidden fear of public speaking. He didn't like to talk to people who didn't approach him first. These were things I learned about him after walking into his life.

The true Jeon Jungkook can be wholesome when he wants to be, in a way that hits you in the chest, right where it knocks the wind out of your lungs. He keyboard smashes when he texts. He hugs a pillow to sleep at night, with all four of his limbs. He's actually great at singing. His clothes smell like fabric softener instead of cologne.

I often liked to joke that I was the most prominent defender of Jungkook's honor.

"He's not like that when you get to know him." I found myself frequently saying, whenever Jeon Jungkook came across the conversation. At the spa, during mid-facial gossiping sessions. At cocktail parties, whenever women gathered in circles to speculate the men around them. At my parent's house, at least once every now and then at the dinner table.

"I talk about you more than I talk about myself, you know." I often found myself telling Jungkook, quite reluctantly.

Myself—Kim Yerim. Heiress to a multi-billion dollar hotel and resort chain, and the only daughter of Kim Minseok, among other things.

And, after tonight, Jeon Jungkook's fiancée.

—

It's suddenly quiet in the room when Jungkook turns off the TV. He shifts his body so that he's facing me from a slant, the shadows of Seoul's nightscape moving like paint on the slope of his cheek.

I've always liked the way his eyes glittered.

"You're being serious." I say, the humor in my voice fading. My position on the couch also shifts as I pull my knees to my chest, letting the events of the day sink in.

The outfit I wore to work. The bagel I had in the car, for breakfast. Those two back-to-back meetings in the morning. The sandwich I had for lunch. The dress I bought in the afternoon. The lipstick I put on before dinner at my father's Pavilion. Minho oppa dropping me back home. Then, Jungkook.

Jeon Jungkook, who, at the moment, could not be more seriously asking me to marry him.

It takes me a moment before I finally sit up straight, and it takes another moment before I speak again. I my lips, suddenly finding them dry.

"Jungkook, I don't understand." I bring myself to admit, my brow dipping to a crease. "I'm not sure...I don't think I understand what you're trying to say."

He doesn't seem to be upset as he leans back against the couch cushion, chin raised to the ceiling. "I remember you said once, that you'd be happy in a marriage without love."

—

I had indeed once said such a thing.

"Jungkook, what do you think love is?"

It was an absentminded question that escaped my lips as I stretched my legs out on his chaise two summers ago, having decided to spend the evening dawdling in his estate's veranda.

As to why such a topic came to mind was a long story.

My father and mother believed in the practice of blind dates, and along this line had persuaded me into attending one every two weeks or so since I began my second year in college.

I did eventually end up meeting a man who fulfilled all my requirements. He was good-looking, had his own career, and had an even temper—but it had been two months of seeing each other before he'd broken it off, claiming, "Kim Yerim, you don't love me."

Little could keep me dawdling in one place for so long, but I was more so intrigued by what he'd said than upset by it.

It's not that I didn't understand the concept of love, but the fact that love was different to all those who experienced it. No one loved the same, which was why sometimes one's love would never be enough for another.

So I took to finding out the ways in which the people around me defined love.

"It's being able to sacrifice anything for that one person." said my father.

"It's accepting someone regardless of their flaws or mistakes, and wanting to be with them despite what challenges you may face." said my mother.

"It's dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, and endorphins." said Jeon Jungkook.

Who, then, looking up from the screen of his laptop and seeing the frown on my face, asked, "You disagree?"

I nod, brushing my hair away from my lips. "I don't think love is just a response of our bodies." I sigh, rubbing my temple with one hand. "But...I don't think love is something that's necessary for a marriage either. A marriage without love is also good; a husband and a wife who will respect each other as guests in a household, as long as their personalities match, will last a long time. I think this is where Jaehyun and I couldn't come to a compromise—I believe in a marriage without love, but he does not."

When there are no expectations set by love, expectations are set by ration.

Perhaps, I later tell Jungkook, life will be happier this way.

—

"I'm twenty-seven now." Jungkook's voice retains its clarity in my mind. "My parents wish for me to be married."

I press my lips together, thinking. "If it's a marriage without love, you could very well have your parents arrange it for you. I'm sure there are plenty of women who'd want to be your wife."

Jungkook shakes his head. "Even if they want to marry me at first, very few of them would be happy after they realize—I won't be able to give them more than a title." He smiles lazily at the ceiling, his eyes fluttering shut as he says, "Besides, I don't know them like I know you. Maybe I'll come to hate them, or become annoyed by them. But you, I won't. Yerim, I believe I will be a good husband to you."

I eye him mischievously. "Jungkook, I'll want to have kids, you know."

He chuckles, opening his eyes to peer at me in amusement. "Of course. So do I."

The corners of my lips tug upwards, but the taste in my mouth is bittersweet.

"Well then, Jeon Jungkook—" I stick out my hand. "Let's get married."

He places his hand in mine. In that moment, when our eyes meet and our hands shake, I smile.

Jungkook, maybe if I try hard enough, you will come to love me.

And when you do, when you tell me that you do—I will tell you that I have loved you, all along.