Chapter 19:

My throat was dry, my lungs ached with a more than full burn, and while the car was warm and the blanket comforting, my body racked with chills.

But I still managed to feel my face heat up and slight excitement flow through my veins. The constant feeling of I really need him overwhelming me.

“Jongin,” I started. “I will go out with you if you don’t force me back into the hospital and allow me to help you.”

Jongin watched me with furrowed eyebrows, as if his requirements would’ve been the opposite.

“Alright,” he agreed. “Then you’re not going to be my boyfriend.”

“Wait, Jongin!” I whined at him, watching the edges of his lips twitch in amusement. “That’s not fair! Why’d you ask me then?”

“I’d rather not be your boyfriend than let you rot away without any medical help. Kyungsoo, this is stupid,” he told me seriously.

“Right,” I arranged. “So you don’t have to go around risking your life because I know whatever you’re doing has risks.”

Jongin in a breath.

“I’ll admit, Kyungsoo. You are really good at reading me.”

He released and exhaled, shaking his head.

“But I can’t put yourself in jeopardy because of me. That is not ing cool,” the teenager reasoned.

I tried to ignore the way his words melted my insides, making me want to squirm. I was a young man. How could I possibly be letting this affect me so deeply? My emotions took the better of me but I could only close my eyes, refusing to express them.

“Yah!” I finally resorted to an old Korean tactic. “I am your hyung! Show some respect! What I say goes!”

“You’re hardly older than me,” Jongin muttered.

I quirked an eyebrow, preparing my working brain to challenge him but my features rested to a dull line and my expression remained desolate.

“Jongin,” I finally whispered. “If anything ever happened to you, I’d never be able to forgive myself. And it would haunt me for the rest of my existence.”

“Bold words, Kyungsoo,” Jongin retorted. “I don’t think anyone’s ever said anything remotely like that to me, though.”

“Dammit, Jongin!” I hollered, feeling my face burn and my veins strain. “I’m obviously different and I know you’ve got a slight personality disorder but that’s not a reason for anything and you know I care about what ing happens to you despite how you were treated in the past.”

“Kyung…”Jongin trailed, closing his eyes and loosening his grip on the steering wheel, sitting back whilst thinking. “People die of pneumonia.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “And people also die when they sneak around against their boyfriend’s wishes, doing ing stupid stuff!”

“And who said I agreed to be your boyfriend?” Jongin uttered, laughing at me despite our serious conversation.

“Yah!” I hissed. “You asked me out! Let’s not get confused here!”

“Eh, shorty,” Jongin continued, still laughing his off.

He grabbed my wrist, gripping it tightly but at the same time with a gentle motion.

“Think about my past. Think about how I was when you met me,” Jongin started, allowing me a few moments to consider these thoughts. “And think of me now,” he went on. “I don’t know if you realize exactly what you did to me. But Kyungsoo, you are so ing precious to me. You actually do not know. And I don’t ever compliment people.”

Allowing these thoughts to consume my mind, I gazed upwards towards the ceiling of the car, sensing an uncomfortable feeling in my throat, a pre-cough, but ignored it.

“You know this isn’t one sided,” I finally informed him. “It’s not like I just changed you- which I assume that’s what you mean, but you changed me. I-“

A buzz cut me off and I glared down at the phone vibrating in my fingers. I ran a hand through my hair after I read the hangul which revealed itself to be Chanyeol’s name (Colossal Giant).

“This is the fifth time he’s called me,” I whispered to Jongin, eyes closed, feeling a panicked sensation clenching inside of my chest.

“Kyungsoo, you need to go back to the hospital,” Jongin urged me. “It won’t be long until your parents get involved. You’re not a legal adult so you don’t have control over this situation and neither do I.”

I sighed, finally shifting my gaze to meet his, which was transfixed on me intently.

“Let’s make a deal,” I told him. “I get to spend the next 24 hours with you and then I swear I will go back to the hospital.”

“23 hours,” Jongin argued immediately.

“No, , 24,” I quickly protested. “I’m not playing this game with you and I won’t be persuaded.”

Jongin rolled his dark eyes.

“Fine,” he muttered. “But,” he speedily added. “If you show any signs of intense weakness before then or something that makes me suspicious, I’m taking your back.”

I sat and contemplated this, realizing that this was probably the best deal that I was going to get and I would probably want to go back to the hospital if I got close to a breaking point anyway.

“Deal,” I said while outstretching my hand to him.

He glanced down at it, smirking with a playful glint that briefly shone in his eye.

“Better idea,” he muttered, grabbing my wrist instead and snagging me towards him, stealing a brief brush of lips and a slight of his tongue.

I immediately pushed away.

“, do you want to get sick too?!” I demanded, angrily, but secretly dizzy from the close contact, unused to the idea of Jongin and I dating but furtively fancying it.

“Now it’s real,” Jongin winked.

“What the happened to you?” I grumbled. “Where’s the antisocial, brooding, cold, emotionless, egotistical bastard from a few months ago?”

Jongin’s gaze turned jokingly dark.

“Inside of you now,” he mumbled.

I coughed at him for a dramatic effect.

“Right, so are you going to explain to me what we’re doing now? Because I’m utterly confused.”

“I’m looking for my mother,” Jongin answered with a hiss of his breath.

I narrowed my eyes, fluctuating light in and out, blinking as if the Jongin I stared at appeared trapped in a separate and more sympathetic vessel.

“Are you okay?” I wondered, studying his face and observing the lines as they creased.

He seemed more worried and less peaceful, not that he was serene before but now it gave the impression that he encompassed an entirely unsettled feeling.

“Yes,” he whispered, though his face denied the answer that he slowly uttered back at me.

“So, why?” I questioned. “What does your mother have to do with this?”

Jongin’s gaze shifted until it met mine and our stares dangerously collided. It reminded me of why we didn’t get along in the first place.

“After the incident in eighth grade,” Jongin explained, watching the floor attentively. “My mother disappeared. She left without a word to me, though I knew that she had argued with my dad the night before. We tried tracking her down…well he did.”

My eyebrows buried together as I contemplated the predicament. It didn’t settle in my stomach evenly and caused me to feel uncomfortable, which forced me to continuously shift in my seat.

“Were your parents married?” I asked.

Jongin shook his head, his gaze lingering over and twitching almost, as if the situation just hit him now instead of way back when it had actually happened.

“No,” he slowly remarked. “I don’t think they were. And either way, she’s gone.”

A silence passed between us making the atmosphere even more uncomfortable despite the love that had sifted through the air originally. No, uneasiness replaced security.

“I think,” he finally began. “That my mother had something to do with the situation but she never said anything. And I need to know. It’s a gut feeling.”

I reached over the arm rest and strategically grasped at his hand, snaking my fingers through his in comforting motions, trying to compel him so his body felt convinced of a more relaxing ambiance.

“Okay,” I agreed. “Then let’s go find her.”

“What was her last name?” I inquired while we fought our struggled limbs to squish into the same payphone booth, earning insightful glances from curious individuals.

“Conveniently the same as my father’s,” Jongin answered. “Probably a tactic that they used to trick people into thinking that they were married, though I was never quite sure.”

“Kim…”

“Kim Hyosung,” Jongin replied, flipping through the phonebook.

His fingers traced over wickedly deteriorated, crumpled pages when I realized that his hands were beautiful.

“There are two women named that,” Jongin observed.

I peered over his shoulder, locating the position that his fingers rested.

“One in Seoul,” Jongin noted. “And one in Bucheon.”

“Well,” I started, staring at him.

“Assuming that she didn’t leave the country,” Jongin reasoned. “Our best bet is that she’s in Bucheon, because there’s no way that she’d stay in Seoul because it’s too close to us.”

I felt his body quiver and my heart trembled as if the blood couldn’t quite fully pump through my body fast enough because my breath hitched.

“Come on,” I said, clutching his shoulder.

A sudden fit of coughs retched through my body though, throwing my mouth into my arms and my back against the glass before I managed to finish.

Jongin cast a worried glance in my direction before taking my hand and leading us out. I found it almost too tempting to unlock our hands because the thought of me getting him sick plagued my mind like a disease of worry that I couldn’t shake.

“Do you have the address?”

Jongin flashed me a smirk as we stuffed ourselves in the warmth of the vehicle.

“Yes,” he answered, pulling out the phonebook.

I nearly choked.

“You can’t simply take that!” I accused.

“But I just did.”

“Isn’t it attached to something?” I argued.

“Oh please? That removable chain,” Jongin responded as he turned the car on.

I sat back leaning my head against the cushion.

“Jesus, I feel illegal already,” I declared, pointedly. “ you can’t just take phonebooks from phone booths.”

Jongin skeptically looked at me.

“There’s no law against it,” he informed me while pulling away from the parallel park and into the traffic of Seoul.

“You better know where you’re going,” I immediately shot back once we were halted at the next stoplight.

He already started to slip back into his routine of troublemaker attitude with a slice of arrogance and that dash of carelessness. It drew me in but at the same time made me wonder what I had to deal with sometimes.

“Of course, Kyungie,” Jongin slipped the nickname with drips of venom laced into the syllable yet it still made me squirm because I saw the intimacy behind it.

“Okay,” I shakily replied, sniffling. “I trust you.”

For the majority of the car ride, I sat slouched in my seat and slightly turned so my head pressed against the cold glass, curing my burning forehead but increasing the chills that shook my body.

There was no solution because one of the two could be ceased at a time.

“Look,” Jongin pointed out. “We can see the city from here.”

A silhouette of the lines of tall buildings, skyscrapers, and warehouses came into view, squished tightly into a compact area, competing for space in the sky. Littered around those zones were smaller buildings overshadowed but also surrounding the area so they too appeared more viewable.

My eyes were trained on the scenery so well that I hardly noticed Jongin toss his phone towards me.

“Can you punch in the address to the GPS?” He asked.

 I nodded as I slid the phonebook off of the dashboard and into my lap where it annoyingly rested, threatening to fall of the sides of my thighs every few seconds, too often for my liking.

I copied the same address into the search bar and it calculated a peculiar, zigzagged route that caused me to shake my head.

“GPS,” I deadpanned. “Go home you’re drunk.”

Jongin shot a worried look towards me, possibly convinced that I showed more signs of being psychotic than the phone.

“Alright,” I said. “It wants you to go downtown but in the trickiest ing way, okay?”

Jongin didn’t believe me until we took the actual route. He refused to accept the directions that I gave him, insisting I simply read the screen wrong. So he whipped it from my fingertips only to be greeted with the same screen I had seen.

“What the …” He mumbled shaking his head.

“Let’s take it anyway,” I remarked. “It could be because of construction.”

Jongin cynically rolled his eyes.

“Kyung, last time I checked, GPS didn’t exactly care for construction because it’s not programmed to predict the future.”

“Well, then I don’t know!” I snapped at him, coughing a few times.

We took the puzzling route nonetheless and discovered ourselves to be found at a plaza-like apartment complex.

The building stretched high into the sky and wider than the majority others that surrounded it. Gold outlines trailed all of the windows and doors and spun themselves into patterns about the surface of the structure.

The sheer size of it amazed me but also the architectural design. While the building appeared large, it still remained in an unoriginal shape, yet the adornments made up for the uninspired contour.

“Apartment number…” I glanced down at the phone before Jongin took it back. “875.”

Jongin already walked up the steps and I jogged to meet up with him, catching his sleeve.

“You alright?” I immediately wondered.

It finally hit me. Jongin and I were about to meet with his mom who abandoned their family which probably caused him an intense amount of emotional pain and contributed to his resulting antisocial and cold personality.

This was actually much more dangerous than it initially seemed and I was beginning to think that it was a terrible idea and it was going to be awkward and I forced it upon him for me to accompany.

“Yes,” he replied.

“I can wait outside if you want,” I said, not looking at him, afraid of what his expression may have been.

“No,” he firmly argued. “I didn’t originally oppose you because I didn’t want you to come with. It was because you’re sick. If you had been healthy I would’ve asked you, selfishly. Because I’m not exactly sure how risk free this is.”

His hand slipped into mine.

“Good,” I said. “I feel the same way.”

Nervously we walked inside.

I was surprised that we were able to walk inside without having to buzz someone who lived there but the sign said that was only necessary during ungodly times between the hours of ten pm and seven am.

Jongin also seemed intrigued that we didn’t get locked out.

“How do we know what floor?” Jongin wondered.

I smirked at him, leading the both of us to the elevator, reminding myself to not take in too much of the beige painted walls, with contrasting vases and inviting red armchairs.

“Floor eight, genius,” I informed him with a knowledgeable nod.

Jongin rolled his eyes, pretending to not care but I could literally feel him trembling next to me so I gave his palm a small squeeze.

Time ticked slowly as we traced our fingers along the walls symbolically, while searching for the room number, taking up time.

We reached the door and Jongin appeared so nervous that I had to calm him down with soothing words and more reassuring squeezes before he regained composure.

Part of me desperately wanted no one to be home. For it to be the wrong person. For something else unexpected to happen that didn’t include his mother being behind the door.

“Knock, Kyungsoo,” Jongin mumbled, eyes closed. “Please, knock.”

I acknowledged the mahogany door with a judgmental gaze, before obeying Jongin by disregarding the doorbell and pounding my knuckles against the wood.

We waited agonizing seconds, each one ticking by dissolving the suspense as we slowly realized that no one was home after around thirty seconds.

Both of us exhaled and took a step back.

My hands moved up Jongin’s to his elbow, comfortingly pulling him away.

And then there was a click.

Both of our heads snapped around in unison.

I nearly fainted.

Our eyes were welcomed with the face of a woman.

A straining thought sliced through my mind because I knew I just knew.

She looked exactly like Jongin.

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A/N Well I finally updated…that wasn’t supposed to take such a long time but…it…did…kay I’m sory ahahahahaahahdaosdiahf,, so yeah. DRAMA OIGDEGOINROIGNOIRNGOIRNG. COMMENT AND SHIZNITSSOGIFDI PLEASE. My next update will be erm..better I think. LOLZ. Don’t worry some more intense stuff is to come!#WORINadsoing. ß- those are my feelings right now. So thank you lovelies for subscribing. I love all of you. ALL OF YOU. I seriously had to update because I got like thirty subs without even updating so…0.0 THANKS like...what..