“Jimin.” I called his name quietly. He glanced over at me, momentarily distracted from his phone. It had been a few hours since our heartwarming reminiscing about the first time we said "I love you." He had finished all of my manga and decided to play some games on his phone.

“Hmm?” He absentmindedly bit his bottom lip, waiting for me to continue.

I sat down on the couch next to him and rested my head on his shoulder.

“Jimin, can I cuddle with you?” I asked in a whisper. I held his hand in mine.

“Sure, baby.” Jimin moved so he could hold me in his lap. He wound one arm around my waist and my hair lightly. I laid my head against his shoulder and sighed contentedly. Yukon saw us cuddling and hopped up on the couch, curling up next to Jimin's thigh. He snuffled into Jimin's jeans before yawning and closing his eyes.

“Jimin?” I whispered after a little while.

“What’s up, baby?” He murmured his question into my hair.

“Can you tell me a story?”

“A story, huh?” Jimin lifted his head up and hummed thoughtfully. “What kind of story?”

“I don’t know. An interesting one.” I pressed my nose against his sweater and breathed in deeply. He always smelled so good.

“Hmm…” Jimin mused for a moment. “Okay, I’ve got one.”

“Okay. I’m listening.”

“So, we had a hamster in the house when I was younger. I really loved that hamster, but one day it went missing. I don’t even know how it got out of its cage. But I was really sad.”

“I’m sure.” I lightly kissed his shoulder.

“I really was, baby. That hamster was so cute. Okay, so it went missing and we had no idea where it was. So, like, two years later, I was rummaging through my closet and getting rid of shoes I didn’t wear anymore when I saw it! In the closet!”

“No way!” I cried.

“Yeah, for real!” Jimin insisted. “And like, it had turned wild. I tried to pick it up, but it hissed at me and tried to bite me! I was so scared that I just dropped all my shoes and ran out of the room.”

I giggled. “I can definitely imagine you doing that.”

“Listen, it was really scary. This cute little thing that I had loved suddenly turned into a hissing beast hiding amongst my shoes. You would be scared, too.”

“Probably.” I agreed. “You remember when you tricked me into believing a mouse was coming to get me in our closet?”

Jimin snickered. “How could I forget that? Your reaction was so dramatic. You were screaming for me in like three seconds.”

“So mean.” I pinched him.

“Ouch, baby. Stop pinching me. You know I hate it.” Jimin scolded. “Besides, you deserved it. Trying to steal my things. Like I don’t give you enough already.”

“It’s fine.” I said flippantly. “That Givenchy backpack’s mine now.”

“Okay…” Jimin began.

“Don’t you dare.” I warned him. I pointed my finger in his face. “It’s mine.”

“But, baby. I love that backpack.”

“You left it to me! When we had broken up! When you were being a little that didn’t want me to forget about him!” I exclaimed heatedly. “That backpack is my compensation!”

“Yeah, but now we’re back together.” Jimin said easily. “You have me. You don’t need any more compensation.”

“I need compensation for the emotional trauma that I experienced.” I muttered.

Jimin fell silent for a moment.

“Were you really that sad?” He asked me softly.

I paused before responding. “Do you remember how sad I was when my grandfather passed away?” I looked up into his eyes.

“Yeah.” He whispered. He looked guilty, so I reached up and his cheek.

“It was like that, but a little different. I could still laugh at things; I could eat and sleep and move out of our home, but all along, there was a weight in the pit of my stomach. A heavy knowledge that the love had gone out of my life and wasn’t coming back. So even though I could function in my day-to-day life and even feel happy, I couldn’t forget that you weren’t here anymore. That you didn’t love me enough to stay.”

Jimin didn’t say anything; he just looked away from me and my hair.

“I used to sleep on your side of the bed just to catch a whiff of your scent.” I continued. “But then everything stopped smelling like you. And then I found your backpack with all of your clothes in it. And your ring. I cried so much when I found that backpack. I was so angry with you for leaving me something like that, but so happy that I had things that smelled like you again. That was when I decided I needed to move out. Actually, that was when I decided I needed to move on. Because it hurt too much to miss you. I couldn’t keep crying every time I found traces of you around the apartment. You left your stupid toothbrush here, too. It nearly killed me to see it in the bathroom every day and know that you weren’t going to be using it. But I couldn’t throw it out because a part of me kept hoping that you would be coming back. That one day, I’d wake up and you would be lying next to me, half-asleep and kissing my arm. But every morning I would wake up alone, my face buried in your pillow, wrapped up in your sheets instead of your arms. You left so little to me that I clung to what I had. So when I found that Givenchy backpack, I cried. I cried because I could smell you again and I cried because I knew you would never give it to me unless we were really over. Because even though you spoil me, you always swore I could never use that backpack. So I knew you must be feeling sorry towards me to leave me something like that. And I knew you wouldn’t feel sorry unless you really weren’t coming back.”

I took a deep breath; I felt a little worn from speaking so much. Jimin remained silent. I glanced up at him, worried by his abnormally quiet behavior. His head was bent down to the side so I couldn’t see it.

“Jimin?” I called out to him.

“You…You…can have the backpack.” He said haltingly. I reached over and turned his head to face me. Tear tracks stained his cheeks and his bottom lip quivered.

“Honey, don’t cry.” I whispered. I leaned in and kissed him softly.

“I’m sorry.” He told me. His voice cracked and my heart cracked along with it.

“Shh…it’s fine now. I shouldn’t have even said anything.” I murmured. Jimin cuddled me even closer to him and planted a kiss on my forehead.

“I didn’t think you would even care that much.” He said honestly. “You never called or texted me. I didn’t hear from you at all. I thought you were happy to be rid of me.”

“You’re so stupid.” I sniffed, joining in on his tears. “How could you think that after all we’ve been through that I didn’t love you? Why the sudden loss of confidence?”

Jimin tucked my head under his chin and sighed deeply. “I don’t know, baby. I think it was a slow build. I stopped seeing your sarcasm as cute and started seeing it as rejection. Every time you pushed me off, I could handle it, but when we started seeing each other less and less, it hurt more. My schedule had become so busy, you remember that?”

“Yeah.” I whispered into his shirt. I didn’t like to remember it.

“I just missed you so bad and I’d come home and you’d be your usual cute and shy self, but suddenly it didn’t seem like you were embarrassed to admit you wanted me. It seemed like you just didn’t want me. I don’t know why, baby. I still loved being with you and we still had so much fun together, but gradually, I kind of felt like we were falling apart.”

“You kept a lot of this inside.” I said softly. Jimin kissed the top of my head.

“Yeah.” He sighed sadly. “It was a stupid mistake. So when I asked you about marriage and you so sternly said not right now, I couldn’t help but think that you honestly just didn’t want me.”

I kissed his collarbone. “I could never not want you.”

Jimin rested his cheek on my hair. “I know, baby. I know now.”

“Jimin?” I asked after a few minutes.

“Hmm?”

“When you came to Busan, you didn’t know I was going to be here, right?”

“Yeah.” Jimin agreed quietly.

“If you hadn’t seen me here, would you have still tried to get back with me?”

Jimin hesitated for a moment before responding.

“I think so.” He squeezed me tightly for a second, as if he hated even the possibility of us not getting back together. “Things just sort of happened suddenly. The morning of the day I came home, my manager told me I needed to get my act together. I had been moping around for three months and everyone was frustrated with my gloomy behavior. She told me I either had to move on or get you back. I didn’t want to get over you. I really, really didn’t want to get over you. So, even if I hadn’t seen you again, even if I didn’t have the confidence to win you back, even if I didn’t think you loved me anymore, I probably would have ended up drunk calling you at 3 a.m. begging you for another chance.”

“But you didn’t do that for three months.” I pointed out. “Would you really have just suddenly contacted me again?”

Jimin sighed thoughtfully. “Probably. I can’t really say what I would have done because things didn’t happen that way. But I was reaching a breaking point. I really had to choose between moving on and trying to get you back. And moving on just wasn’t an option for me.”

I thought about that for a little while. “You know, your attitude really changed from the first day I saw you and the next morning when I found you in my bed.”

“Did it?” Jimin asked, surprised.

“Yeah. You were all quiet and reserved and hooking your finger around mine in the night and in the morning you were kissing me and crying and fighting with me about getting back together. What happened that night? When I was drunk?”

Jimin suddenly stiffened.

“What did you do?” I demanded, pulling back to look at him. His cheeks had turned a light shade of pink and he averted his eyes guiltily.

“Nothing happened, baby.” He mumbled.

“You’re lying!” I cried. I glared at him suspiciously. “What did you do? Why were you really in my bed?”

Jimin sighed. “It wasn’t so much what I did. It was what you did.”

I blushed. I hated hearing stories of things I did when drunk. It was always things I would never do sober. Never anything too crazy, but definitely not anything I would be able to do in my normal shy state.

Jimin laughed at my expression. “I’ve been trying to keep it a secret from you! You basically already know everything. Like how I found out about the ring and the clothes you kept in my backpack.”

“There’s more. I know it.” I insisted.

“Yeah.” Jimin smiled. “It’s my favorite part.”

I groaned. “Oh gosh, what did I do?”

“Nothing really.” Jimin shrugged. “You just weren’t cold to me anymore. I could see your true feelings.”

I stared at him expectantly and waited for him to continue. He sighed and reluctantly told me the story.

“When Young Jae left, we cuddled on the couch for a minute. You kissed my arm and told me to help you get to sleep. I washed your face and you asked me cute questions like if I missed you. And you told me you missed me. And then you fell in the bathtub – ”

“Oh my gosh, how embarrassing.” I interjected, a little humiliated.

“Nah, it was really cute.” Jimin grinned at me. “And then I got in there with you and finished with your face wash. And then…then you started kissing my arm and you told me I was a brat. And that I was cute.”

“You are cute.” I whispered. I his cheek and he turned his head and kissed my palm.

“You started falling asleep on my arm so I gave you a piggyback ride to your room. And you kept kissing my neck. And then you even nibbled my earlobe!” He tweaked my nose affectionately. “You really were out to get me. But then you melted my heart and told me to never call anyone else baby.”

Jimin tucked my hair behind my ear and gazed at me tenderly. “And then,” He continued in a whisper. “I tried to put you down on the bed, but you held onto me and cried. You told me not to leave. And then you told me to get your pajamas out of that backpack because they smelled like me. And then I tucked you up in bed and you fell asleep right away, so I looked at that necklace because I was so, so jealous of Young Jae and I was planning on stealing it if he gave it to you.”

“You were really gonna steal something of mine?” I looked at him skeptically.

He nodded. “Yeah. I would have thrown it away and hoped that you two would fight over it or something.”

“How conniving.” I whispered. I kissed him gently.

“Anything to get you back, baby.” He said softly as he pulled away. “I just really wanted you at that point.”

“So then what happened?” I asked. I couldn’t believe I had showed Jimin that sentimental side of me that night. Actually, I could. Everything I had done with him that night was everything that I wished I could have done with him every night. All the secret things I wished for alone at night in my room without him had happened.

“Well, after that, I found the engagement ring. And you rolled over in your sleep so I couldn’t see your face anymore. But I just missed being with you so badly that I just wanted to pretend for a second that I hadn’t left. So I climbed in bed with you and leaned against you and told you I loved you. And then I guess I fell asleep.”

I took Jimin’s face in my hands and kissed him deeply.

“You fool.” I whispered, resting my forehead against his. “Why did it take you so long to see how much I love you?”

Jimin buried his hands in my hair and pressed his lips to mine. “I won’t forget again.” He promised me.

“I’ll just have to keep reminding you.” I said softly. Jimin suddenly hugged me tightly to him and nuzzled his face in my neck.

“I didn’t know you were so sad.” He told me, leaving kisses along my throat. “I thought you were taking a long time to take me back, but I didn’t realize how much I had hurt you. I’m so sorry, baby.”

“It’s okay.” I whispered. “You’re back now.”

“Yeah, and I’m not leaving again.” Jimin breathed. He pulled back from my neck and looked deeply into my eyes. “I’ll never leave you again. I promise.”

“Okay.” I gave him a small smile.

We kissed several times before Jimin broke away and asked me a question.

“What convinced you to take me back?”

I kissed him once more. “You were always just there. In my bed, in my apartment, at my job. Kissing me and telling me you loved me and taking care of me. It’s only been a few days since I saw you again for the first time, but we’ve spent most of that time together. And when you weren’t around, I missed you. And cried. And wanted to be together with you. I just love you so badly. I didn’t want to be apart from you anymore. Even if I wasn’t sure whether or not you were going to leave me again.”

“Sorry for accusing you of being a tease.” Jimin mumbled sheepishly.

I laughed softly and poked his cheek. “You’re always just so impatient.” I said playfully.

“I just wanted to be with you again.” Jimin sighed.

“Yeah.” I whispered. “Me too.” I intertwined my fingers with his and leaned forward to kiss him.

He kissed me back fervently.

“Thinking about us being broken up makes me want you all the more.” He murmured. “For all those times I wished I could kiss you. For all those times I dreamed about holding you and woke up alone.”

“Kissing you just feels so good.” I whispered. “I just wanna kiss you all of the time.”

“I won’t stop you.” Jimin laughed quietly. He kissed me again.

“I love you.” I told him seriously. I stared into his eyes and brushed his bangs away from his face. “I really, really love you.”

Jimin smiled softly at me. “It’s amazing to hear you say it so easily. So many times in one day. I don’t even have to ask.”

“I love you.” I added another just to see him smile again. “You won’t have to ask me to tell you again.”

“I love you, too.” He whispered. “Thanks for taking me back.” He tucked me safely into his chest and kissed my head.

“Thanks for coming back.” I kissed his collarbone.