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Blush for Me(brief mention of suicide up ahead)
1. She needs to get off the internet.
Once, he got up in the middle of night for a drink of water.
After treading softly out of his room so as to not wake the snoring KangJoon, he walked out to the living room and realized that he wasn’t the only one still awake. Bent over a phone, her profile illuminated by the brightness of the LED screen, Jackson easily recognized YoungJi curled on the couch, seemingly engrossed at whatever she was looking at. She hadn’t noticed him then so, Jackson being Jackson, decided to sneak up behind her just to scare her.
He smirked in the dark, already anticipating her look of shock and terrified shriek. Jackson actually managed to get very close to the back of the couch, hands coming up, ready to pounce on her slim shoulders...when YoungJi made a funny sound that sounded a lot like a sniffle.
...and then she did it again...and again...and Jackson belatedly realized that he’d inadvertently stumbled upon a heavily-sobbing Heo YoungJi.
Jackson froze, gripped with the horror that befell most men when they come across a weeping female, their brains jumping into fight-or-flight mode as if they were suddenly faced with a roaring grizzly bear as opposed to a crying girl. For a brief, cowardly moment, he contemplated if it was possible to retreat back to his room without her noticing. But then YoungJi swiped at her face and her shoulders were actually shuddering from sobbing so hard and the way she seemed to scrunch herself up as if she was going to disappear was like a punch to Jackson’s gut.
It spurned him to fight.
“Hey,” He whispered in the dark, “Are you alright?”
YoungJi yelped and dropped her phone when she startled, pigtails whipping wildly as she turned. In any other occasion, he would’ve laughed at how comically surprised she looked, except tonight her widened eyes looked bloodshot and her cheeks were still wet.
“Oh my gosh, Jackson.” She said a little breathlessly as he walked around the couch to face her head on. “You scared the crap out of me!”
“Sorry.” He said unapologetically, sitting beside her and regarding YoungJi with a stare that made her feel like she was in trouble.
“W-What are you doing up so late?” YoungJi wiped her face once more in a futile attempt to regain her composure and tried to look nonchalant, as if having dark bags under her red-rimmed eyes was how she always looked. “Don’t you have an interview this morning?”
“Are you alright?” Jackson repeated because she was right, but also because he knew she was trying to redirect his attention.
The brat of a woman actually tried to smile, lips tugging at the corners into a pathetic, b*stardized version of the one she wore almost every day. He decided it was a very ugly smile.
“I’m fine.” She lied to his face.
Jackson made an irritated snarl and opened his mouth to call her out when his eyes fell to her phone, haphazardly lying on the couch cushion between them where she’d dropped it in surprise just a moment ago. The room was pretty dark and the screen was so bright that Jackson was able to make out a line in the website that she was reading,
“Did they really think she could be enough to replace the others? SHE’S TRASH!”
Jackson frowned and he ignored YoungJi’s sudden “Wait! Jackson-!” protest when he swiped her phone and held her back while scrolling down the page she’d been reading. His frown turned into a scowl with every word he read.
“…KARA savior? That fat b*tch didn’t save anything!”
“I don’t understand how she even won. SoMin was so much prettier and talented…”
“…her smile makes her look retarded. How can she go in public looking like an idiot?”
“…and anyone can tell the other members can’t stand her! They would’ve been fine without her…”
“It’s so terrible about SoJin. But if I lost to that ugly girl, I’d probably want to kill myself out of shame too.”
Jackson stopped reading after that only because he realized that it’d be hard for him to bother YoungJi on a daily basis if he crushed her phone in his hands. He glowered at the girl next to him, his rage at what he’d just read making him heatedly demand,
“What the hell is this sh*t?!”
Jackson almost immediately regretted his outburst when YoungJi recoiled, moving back on the couch as if Jackson had struck her. She sniffed once, a hand coming up to cover , lips wobbling as if she was going to burst out into a fresh round of sobs once more. Jackson wanted to bang his head on the coffee table.
Leave it to him to yell at an emotionally-compromised girl.
He sighed once, a hand coming up to press on his temple as he counted to ten to calm himself down. But really,
“Yah,” He tried again, only a slight edge to his voice this time as he regarded the phone in his hand. “What are you doing reading things like this?”
“I…I wasn’t trying to.” YoungJi said softly (pathetically). She stared at her hands, fists clenched as she explained, “My band members all have their names on alerts to monitor when they start trending or if there’s any news of them…”
Jackson was aware of the practice, having alerts for “Got7” and “Jackson Wang” trends and articles on his own phone. Some of his group and other friends had similar settings for each other and their group but still,
“That doesn’t explain why you’re on an anti thread for yourself.” He ground out.
YoungJi bit her lip for a moment and Jackson somehow just knew that whatever she was going to say was only going to upset/frustrate him further.
“My seniors always tell me that we should continue to make ourselves better,” YoungJi said quietly, swallowing hard and staring at her twiddling fingers, “You know, spend our free time doing language lessons or learning something new.”
“I remember you’ve said that.” Jackson told her. The corner of twitched upwards,
“Of course you did.”
He didn’t say anything, lips pressed in a grim line, her phone held hostage in his hands. YoungJi sighed and sniffed once, bracing herself because even she knew it was a stupid idea,
He didn’t say anything, lips pressed in a grim line, her phone held hostage in his hands. YoungJi sighed and sniffed once, bracing herself because even she knew it was a stupid idea,
“I just…I just thought if I knew…” She swallowed uneasily, “I just figured if I understood why people had, I don’t know, a problem with me, that maybe, maybe I could…”
Jackson closed his eyes and counted to ten, first in Mandarin and then again in English so he wouldn’t explode on her again.
‘…maybe I could be better.’
Aish, this ridiculous girl was going to give him a headache. So he returned the favor, leaning forward to flick a finger at her forehead, making a loud snapping sound as it smacked her.
“Ow!” YoungJi jumped, rubbing where he hit. “Jackson, that hurt!”
“So did having to listen to you say something so dumb.” Jackson retorted, rubbing his ear dramatically.
“Hey-!”
“You’re not a smoothie, YoungJi.” Jackson blurted out, cutting her off. “You’re not some recipe that you have to tweak or adjust, adding more sugar or less milk to in order to get people to like or want you.”
“It’s not like that.” YoungJi tried to tell him meekly.
He made an impatient sound and waved his hand in the air dismissively.
“You’re literally on a website where people are writing about how much they dislike you because you think you can find a way to change their minds.” He deadpanned.
“And what’s wrong with that?” YoungJi challenged him, a little angry now. Personally, Jackson preferred it to her sniffling like a child in the dark. “Tell me what is so bad about wanting others to accept me?”
“Why the hell do you need these people's acceptance at all??” He raised his voice, agitated. "They're clearly delusional and crazy to say these things!"
“Of course you wouldn’t understand.” She scoffed, crossing her arms and leaning away from him.
Jackson sighed once in frustration because he did understand but words (in any language) were always hard for him when it came to telling a girl she was being silly without making them feel stupid or coming off as a jerk. He scratched his head, skewing his hair in every direction. Belatedly, Jackson looked away from her to make sure that the cameras in the room were off at that hour because this wasn’t a conversation they needed to air to the public. He felt a mild relief when the red lights were off because some words and moments needed to be kept sacred and safe between each other only.
He shook his head and pulled at one of her pigtails gently.
“You’re not broken YoungJi,” Jackson told her quietly, sincerely. “There’s nothing wrong with you so you don’t need to fix yourself for anyone.”
He was right of course but it was hard for YoungJi to know that when the ugly, awful words are still fresh on her mind. So Jackson waved her phone in his hand for emphasis,
“Don’t do…this anymore, okay?” He asked/demanded, sounding exhausted. “Stop looking for reasons to hate yourself in other people.”
Put in those words, YoungJi had to admit he had a point. Well, not aloud and to his face because then she might have had to admit that Jackson was regularly right about many things and his expansive ego did not need to be inflated any further. But she could concede that, on this particular instance, he wasn’t completely and utterly wrong.
Jackson reached across and nudged her knee with his hand, “Hey, did you hear me?”
YoungJi snorted softly and nodded, cracking her first real smile that night,
“You’re so loud, how could I not hear you?”
He ignored her jibe. “Good.” Holding out a pinky, he ordered, “Then promise me you won’t go through these things again.”
She had to laugh a little, “Really? What are we? Five?”
“I’m serious YoungJi.” Jackson insisted, the hand still at her knee squeezing once. “Promise me.”
She seemed to study him for a moment; his face gaunt and solemn and un-Jackson-like and she idly wondered if a lot of people got to see him like that.
“Alright.”
YoungJi wrapped her tiny finger around his, cheeks flushed but dry.
(Jackson is a good friend so he removes the phrase ‘anti-YoungJi’ from her web alerts. He’s also a brat so he adds ‘JackJi’ into the program before he returns her phone. YoungJi complains about the amount of articles and images of them together that she receives, but she doesn’t delete their ‘ship’ name from her notifications and Jackson doesn’t think to ask why.)
4/28/15
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