The hard plastic chairs that lined the hallway were beyond uncomfortable to sit in, so I opted to stand instead, leaning against the wall with my hands in my pockets. The humming of the air conditioning for two hours was enough to drive anyone else crazy, but I’d long ago developed a method of drowning everything out.        

            After two hours and with half of my phone’s battery drained, I looked up to the sound of footsteps to find a white-clad doctor walking towards me. He had a ‘kind’ face; but it was people with kind faces that turn out to be devils at ‘unexpected plot twist’ of every book.

            He nodded a greeting, and I pushed myself off the wall, pulling an earbud out of my ear. “He’s going to be fine,” the doctor – Dr. Jung, the name tag read – said, as if I didn’t know that already. “A fractured rib, minor damage to a few organs, a broken nose and a black eye that’ll probably last for several weeks, but nonetheless he’s alive and breathing.” He raised an eyebrow then, his polished professional appearance melting away. “Where are your guardians?”

            “Why do you need them?” I was surprised. The only way my foster parents had been alerted about anything I’d done in the past was through a phone call saying that I was suspended or maybe expelled, not from the hospital itself. “He has people who can pay the medical expenses for him, right?”

            Dr. Jung sighed, massaging his eyebrows. “The young man you beat up…”

            “Jimin,” I said immediately. “His name is Jimin.” I wasn’t quite sure what it was that made me say that, but either way it was out, and there was nothing I could do about it.

            A brief look of surprise, followed by understanding, flashed through the doctor’s eyes. “Jimin,” he corrected himself, “I’m afraid he has no immediate family that we can contact.”

            Shock flashed through my mind for a brief second before I regained my composure. “Any relatives? Guardians?”

            “Nothing.” He sighed again. I realized that, despite his mid-thirties, crisply clean-shaven face, most of his hairs were already white or light gray, giving a pointer as to exactly how stressful his job was. “The only thing we could trace was an aunt twice removed who lives in America, who’s been paying for his living expenses since his parents died when he was twelve. He’s an only child.”

            My eyebrows shot up to my hairline, and a pang of sympathy resounded deep in my heart. I knew how it felt; to be empty, surrounded by people yet still completely and utterly alone. Perhaps there was more to Jimin beyond his constantly smiling face and his infatuation with annoying me to the depths of hell.

            I’d thought I was more used to the feeling of being alone than anyone else, but at least I’d still had parents. Detached and disinterested foster parents, but parents nonetheless. Jimin… he’d been alone since he was twelve. Too early for him to be able to deal with the pain, too late for the memories to be hazy.

            “But how did it work, when he was younger?” I found myself blurting out. “How did the government not-”

            “Realize there was a child living without any guardians? They did,” Dr. Jung answered. “He had a caretaker check in twice a day, and he was living in an apartment with maids and electricians.”

            “But that doesn’t excuse the fact that he was living alone at the age of twelve,” I shot back. “Why didn’t they put him in foster care?”

            Something dark and painful shadowed the doctor’s face for a brief second, the only intense emotion I’d seen him display this entire conversation. “It was in his parents’ will,” he muttered. “They’d already planned an entire future for him, after they died.” He looked at me with sarcastic surprise. “I’m surprised you’re so concerned about the past of someone you just beat up to the point of being hospitalized.”

            I ignored the latter half of his sentence. “They had a will?”

            “It was love suicide,” was his curt response before a mask of professionalism melted back onto his features. “The patient is awake now. You can see him, if you wish. I think he wants to talk to you,” he added.

            I sighed. To be honest, I wasn’t too keen on meeting Jimin, mostly because I knew how he would act – he would pretend that everything was still alright, that he saw me the same as he did before I lost control, but he would still have that now-too-familiar glimmer in his eyes, of fear similar to that of prey suddenly realizing that their predator was very near.

            But I couldn’t leave with any regrets. Regrets were the one thing that constantly threatened to weaken me.

            So, taking a deep breath, I pushed open the door.

--

            “Jimin.”

            At the sound of the familiar voice, I looked up abruptly, pain flowering behind my eyes at the sudden motion. Wincing, I tried to rub my eyes before I remembered the damage that had been done to it.

            “Did you really have to give me a black eye?” I said sarcastically, looking over as the cause of all my injuries closed the door behind him and leaned against it, his hands in his pockets. He looked like he’d been here before.

            I didn’t harbor any more negative feelings towards him than I had just yesterday. Obviously, he was a lot more messed up than I’d originally thought, but at least it was more psychological scars and less temper and personal grudge that had set him off.

            And besides, it wasn’t anything I hadn’t felt before.

            Jungkook didn’t answer, instead turning his head so he didn’t have to look at me. I scoffed. Rude.

            A brief silence passed between us before I decided to speak up. “Why are you here?” I asked, conveying with my eyes when he snapped his focus to me that I wanted nothing but an honest answer.

            He held my eyes for a moment before deflating with a sigh, pulling his hands out of his pockets and folding his arms across his chest. “I came to apologize,” he mumbled, averting his eyes to his shoes. He seemed almost… embarrassed? Like apologizing hurt his pride.

            I raised an eyebrow. “Well, I’m not going to accept it unless you come closer.”

            “I don’t need you to accept it,” he shot, but took a few steps closer to my bed anyways. “In fact, I don’t need you to pretend that you’re not scared of me either.”

            I would’ve laughed, had I not learnt half an hour ago that anything beyond breathing hurt. “Your anti-social tendencies are showing.” I shook my head, amused. “I’m not scared of you, Jungkook. You could fake hitting me and I wouldn’t flinch. Unless you actually hit me… that would be pretty bad, considering this black eye you gave me is gonna be here for the rest of the month, and I don’t exactly want another one…” I trailed off, realizing I was ranting, and gave him a sheepish smile. “Sorry. I kind of went all-out there.”

            Jungkook tried the hardest he could to keep a straight face, but I caught the corner of his mouth turning up in a smile. “Just because I don’t throw myself at random people like you do doesn’t mean I’m anti-social,” he argued.

            I widened my eyes at the insult. “I do not ‘throw myself’ at people. Just because I actually talk and converse with my fellow human beings does not mean I ‘throw myself’ at people.”

            He raised his eyebrows. “‘Fellow human beings.’”

            “Shut up,” I mumbled, staring at my lap out of anger and embarrassment. “Don’t mock my use of language.”

            He tilted his head, staring at me with emotions in his eyes that were actually (unbelievably) close to contentment. “You’re cute.”

            What?

            My head shot up, and I looked at him with wide eyes, my jaw almost dropping into my lap. Did he just say…?

            Normally, I would’ve been extremely offended, but at the moment I was too shocked to muster much anger at his comment.

            He looked equally surprised, his eyes widening to the size of saucers and his mouth opening a little bit. I noticed, then, that despite how dark they were, his eyes were rather large.

            “You did not just say that,” I said after a brief pause of shock.

            “I did not just say that,” Jungkook blurted out at the same time.

            I cackled with glee at how rapidly he was losing his calm and cold demeanor, before pain shot through my ribs and I doubled over, cursing.

            He was by my side in an instant, a hand on my shoulder. “Take it easy,” he muttered quietly, helping me straighten back up to a seated position.

            I grimaced. “Thanks.”

            He nodded in response, walking over to take a seat in the chair at the foot of the bed. I glanced up at the blinding ceiling lights, and we fell silent, the buzzing of the air conditioning suddenly magnifying as all other sound disappeared. I averted my eyes to the door, black spots appearing in my vision from staring at a bright light source for a while, and saw a middle-aged couple with an air of detachedness conversing with Dr. Jung, the first person I’d seen when I came to a few hours earlier. Jungkook’s parents, most likely. They looked tired, disappointed – but not surprised. That only further confirmed my suspicion that my condition was a result of Jungkook’s inner trauma, and not because I’d done something wrong exclusively.

            “Alone since twelve, huh?” he said quietly, once he was settled into the chair.

            I blinked at him, surprised but not taken aback. Of course Dr. Jung told him. “If you ask me how it was like I swear-”

            “I know how it feels,” he says simply.

            Despite myself, I rolled my eyes and scoffed. “Don’t pull that BS on me.”

            “You think I am?” I looked up. Across the bed, at my feet, sitting almost casually in the hard plastic chair, Jungkook was staring at me with this look in his eyes, like he knew exactly how it felt, to be completely and utterly alone, to be happy and laughing in the daytime and completely and utterly hollow at night.

            I turned away, unable to hold his gaze any longer. “You aren’t,” I mumbled in defeat.

            He nodded, something shifting in his eyes, and stood up, his hands disappearing into his pockets. “I’ll see you later, Park Jimin,” he muttered, more to himself than to me, and in a few strides was across the room and out the door.          

--

            It was all out of pity.

            Since my parents had to pay the medical expenses, I was at the hospital often, and I spent most of the time trying to force more of Jimin’s past out of Dr. Jung. Not that I was curious, of course – I just needed to know exactly which button to press, so that he finally left me alone.

            I didn’t get expelled, because apparently I was something along the lines of ‘mentally unstable’ and ‘suffering from deep emotional trauma’. It was ridiculous, really, how much effort people tried to put into beating around the bush and not just straight-up calling me insane.

            I didn’t really talk to Jimin much. The “I’ll talk to you later” thing? It was the first step in ensuring he wouldn’t break down my walls again. Sure, I slipped up a bit when I was talking to him, especially the – oh God – ‘you’re cute’ thing, but I could use all that against him later on.

            I wasn’t supposed to physically hurt him. Only emotionally. And since he still wasn’t afraid of me, I had to take extra measures to push him away even more, to get the point across.

            It was self-defense.

            My foster parents, informed by the doctor of Jimin’s past, visited the hospital the day he was discharged.  I stayed home, but couldn’t seem to focus on my schoolwork at all, so I connected my phone to the tiny Bluetooth speaker I’d been given on my thirteenth birthday and blasted the same song at full volume over and over again until my ears rang with the lyrics.

            It was all self-defense.

--

            I had the feeling that he pitied me when I continued my task of breaking his walls the day after I was discharged from the hospital and he actually responded, and that maybe he was setting everything up so that when he delivered the final blow it would hurt more, but I continued anyways.

No matter how cold his demeanor was, I found it quite easy to read his emotions when he wasn’t glaring at me murderously.

--

            It was all out of pity.

            “You look terrible,” Jimin commented, appearing once again behind my locker door when I slammed it shut. “How much sleep did you get last night?”

            I scoffed at his shallow comment. I’d honestly thought he was better than that, but apparently not. “Of course it’s sleep. There would be no factors contributing to my appearance other than sleep.”

            I could practically hear him rolling his eyes. “You think I don’t know that? I was trying to start a conversation, you anti-social jerk.”

            I raised an eyebrow, swiveling on my heel to face him. Forced to stop abruptly, he careened forward, grabbing my arm to catch his balance. Something within me jolted at the contact, and I stiffened up involuntarily, only able to relax when he let go.

            “Call me that again,” I threatened, fixing a glare on him. Although it wasn’t much, the height difference definitely helped in terms of intimidation.

            Jimin stared back defiantly, tilting his head up a bit to compensate for the few inches I had on him. “Anti-social jerk,” he all but drawled, lazily dragging out each syllable.

            Wow. So the guy could be an too. I had to admit, I was impressed. He could turn from an unbelievably naïve annoying pest to the textbook example of a bad guy in a blink.

            Just barely, to play with him a little bit more, I allowed the corner of my mouth to twitch up, crinkling my eyes to make it seem as if I was actually smiling. I turned away before he could see the satisfied smirk rapidly spreading on my face.

--

            Jungkook thought I was dumb enough to catch his bait? Please. Two could play that game.