Jimin doesn’t understand. Or tries not to decipher the meaning behind countless reasons and grounds she’d hear till her ears would bleed themselves and tune all the words and thoughts out.
She gets it. But some rationality behind actions tends to challenge her morality and instilled principles she’d been taught back at camp. Especially when she had to take care of not only two, but three of her only peers that have been through hell like she did.
The curses wanted to spill out from her open-ended knob, verging and falling from the sinks that held her sights. Salt and scorch burning around the rims. The sensation held tight around the edges of her bare resolve.
“God damnit.” Jimin mutters. Wiping away the tear that escaped. Any trail of wake threatening to leave must be removed.
If she’s seen to be in such a state, she won’t be able to forgive herself.
Her vision clears. Then sees the house where she has been sent a location to.
Although it was past 3 in the morning, the neighborhood was still alive. Sort of.
It was more like inebriated individuals yelling and dancing around like the world's ending. Clumped into one designated area that fills up the empty silence. Makeshift parties and gatherings to nullify the void of their wasted potential. At least, that's how Jimin would describe it when she has the utmost recoil in nearing the chaos.
Letting loose seemed like the type she would join in and reciprocate the same. Losing the wave can mean losing the chance to become lost herself. People have their own fancy chalants to become part of the graceless nights.
It's like killing yourself. Only to come back up and alive again.
It's a vicious cycle of reclaiming your dying desires.
Jimin shuts the door of her car behind her. Pressing the lock from the remote of her car keys, she then trudges off towards the battlefield of intoxication.
Avoiding all invites coming from people she doesn't know was an easy job. Give them a silent smile of rejection kind enough to disarm them and you'll pass.
Jimin has been observing society for 2 years. Adequate enough to know.
She flits through the crowds inside, looking for any familiar faces so she can get the hell out of the smell of booze and the lingers of pot.
Her heightened senses were brutal to keep her fidgeting and uneasy.
A reminder that it's her fault she got into this mess.
If only she wasn't so inconsiderate of Minjeong… then maybe—
"Ryujin-ah." Jimin spots a girl with her familiar fuchsia highlight standing out from her ebony strands. Her sharp-flinted eyes darted toward her in recognition.
"Jimin-ah. Did you just arrive?"
"Leaving, actually. Need you to tell me where Minjeong is."
Ryujin cocks her head to the side, a grin spreading across her crimson lips.
"That soon? Are you sure you don't want a shot before you traipse yourselves out?"
Jimin glares in reply.
Ryujin held her hands up in defense, "She's upstairs. Kind of woozy."
The older one raises a brow. A chastise rose from her chest.
"Don't worry. I did not give her any brownies of the sort."
Jimin passes through Ryujin, but not without her shoulder bumping against hers intentionally, "You'd better not or I'll kill you."
Ryujin chuckled, hands clasped behind her back. Said nothing more, and went back to her circle.
Jimin was greeted by Minjeong sprawled on the mattress of the room. She took a quick scan of the younger whose state is clearly in a muddle. Hair disheveled, and clothes in a disarray.
“Get up, Minjeong.”
Minjeong grumbles in her dazed condition. A mix of fatigue and irritation racked through her joints and labor breathing.
It was harsh of Jimin to even command Minjeong at this point, given the current circumstances. She was unable to let the snark from its bridles, hence the futile directive. The tender pain over and under the wound of both her mishap and imminent days was just another searing reminder of Minjeong’s compulsory folly.
Deep breaths, Jimin.
Releasing a tired exhale from a pair of her own healthy lungs, Jimin carried Minjeong on her back.
Minjeong got sober real quick after finishing the hangover drink Jimin bought, along with a cup of ice cream that was almost not one due to its melted predicament.
However, the ride was quiet. An eerie one. Daunting. Tensed. Jimin didn't like it one bit.
A part of her wanted to vindicate the anger surging within her the more the silence has stretched, thin enough that she could just pass through it and she’ll burst.
But she didn’t. Because Minjeong would hate it even more. And knowing Minjeong, how Jimin did not let her rot and be wasted, was enough to revoke the indignation Jimin wanted to bring up. Minjeong’s smart enough to provoke anything from her. Not after Jimin’s recent incisure.
Unfortunately, the lack of even an apology still rubs Jimin off the wrong way.
The grip she had on the steering wheel was taut. Each second, is a bit tighter than the last because of the choking inhibition. Jimin perceives Minjeong’s discomfort in her peripheral vision.
Minjeong looks so small in Jimin’s thick coat and beanie. Shrinking as if she does would make her disappear.
Jimin unclenches the chagrin reserves, “How are you feeling?”
Minjeong was quick to reply. Quick to make amends in any manner.
“I-I’m okay. Especially after the drink and ice cream. Thanks, Jimin.” She bit her lip after the small reverberation of her voice bounces around the front seat.
Jimin focuses on the road ahead, taking a brief glance at the vehicle's clock that flashes a neon color of a quarter to five. Blinks and averts to the sky’s horizon between the fields, a deep and dark burgundy bleeds through.
“Why did you have to run away?” Jimin releases ammo from her cartridge of questions. Although most of them have already been shot and answered with nuff words to tell, the remains were aching to be explicitly acknowledged than her always reading in between the lines.
After all, she had been sparing Minjeong a little too much.
Jimin’s only human too. With incomplete kidneys and reduced guts.
Minjeong is too. Just with less than a pair of lungs one human usually have and a wedged pancreas.
Minjeong was quiet for a moment. Her quite fuzzed brain attempts to articulate her answer before the guilt drowns her.
“I was…” Minjeong whispers, fingers clasped around the apparel embracing her, “scared.”
There was a dull and daunting beat from their conscience.
Jimin feels the fear crawling on her skin. Even without wits, they knew it was coming. They understand it was wishful thinking to be avoiding their providence as donors. Thus, Minjeong’s instinct is to suddenly disappear and crash at an acquaintance’s house for a fleeting escape. Teetering at absconding their impending sacrifices.
But, is it so wrong to be holding onto the fantasy that they could have more years? months? weeks? days? seconds even? To be breathing the air so fucking polluted but tastes so holy in their lungs. Or to taste food disgustingly unhealthy but is so scrumptious that ignorance of its repercussion is nobody’s fear. To consume as much as they desire. To drink without worrying about cleansing. To see and liberate by envisioning colors and futures. To be in each other’s arms without the thought of having to lose their senses completely. Everything anatomy is capable before in due time.
Time. Jimin has scarce of it. Minjeong has almost none.
Jimin averts her eyes from the road of dirt in front of them briefly to take sight of Minjeong's hunched form in the passenger seat with her arms hugging her knees to her chest.
The bags under Minjeong's eyes together with her extremely pale complexion breaks Jimin’s heart. More than words could ever attempt mumbling.
Unspoken stitches, yet they open again the moment Jimin grazes her touch on administered scalpel scars done methodically but never gently.
It has not been easy since the beginning. It never will be. Not when their future was already sealed in a sickening modus operandi schedule.
The sound of tires crushing tiny rocks along its path lulls the silence, the tall weeds obscuring what's beyond, and the sunken sun on its horizon accompanies them.
It was stifling. The facade cannot go on any further.
"I’m sorry. But can you stop the car?" Minjeong harrowed from her twinging breathlessness — said something aside from Jimin initiating the question for her to return with a curt reply, ever since they left Naevis’ shelter where the truth held hostage for years were released from its cuffs.
Jimin permits the request. Albeit hesitant and partially against her will with the sun soon rising, she did not dismiss the weak solicit. She knew Minjeong needed this. Now more than ever.
Is it because she knew Minjeong more than anyone in this world could ever torment them? Or was it torment that brought that invisible string of empathy and friendship which accumulated beyond their obligations?
The moment Jimin halts the rented vehicle, Minjeong slams the door shut after her feet hit the ground. Her limping figure moved forward, away, creating distance for herself and from Jimin's awaiting presence once she got out as well.
Witnessing from a distance, the agonizing figure across the hood of their car breaks Jimin’s heart.
In the view where Minjeong has finally garnered space between them, she screamed.
Aching devoid eyes glistened with angry tears running down her cheek, arms locked in stiffened fate, and hands coiled in a defeated fury. Her legs were wobbling, shaking violently as Minjeong tries with every fiber of her remaining organs and strength to keep herself from collapsing. Her throat burns, burns, and burns, heaving all the pent-up frustration and fright that has accumulated over the years she was alive.
Minjeong was tired. The inevitable consumed her mind with daunting absolute and its nearing arrival since the revelation.
She screams once more, curling in on herself in pain.
Her deafening sirens of misery subsided, if only a minuscule, when Jimin ran to where Minjeong had distanced herself and enveloped her in a soul-crushing embrace.
“I’m scared, Jimin. I’m so, so scared. I ran away. I’m sorry.”
Jimin apologizes under the frigid reality impossible to be tempered. She was unable to let themselves be restricted. The weakness comes for Jimin when Minjeong is hurt.
Neither of them, especially Minjeong, deserves the anguish of foreboding demise.
“Please. Please don’t cry, Minjeong-ah.” Jimin doesn’t say they’re going to be okay. It was a fact that none of them are going to be out of their sufferings alive.
Sobs dampen Jimin’s entire being as Minjeong clutches onto her like a lifeline.
By how fragile, delicate, and brittle Minjeong was under Jimin’s touch, compelled her to cry the same, knowing she can do nothing about their situation.
She tries hugging Minjeong’s sorrows away as if time and fate will be merciful enough to ward off all the terrors engulfing them.
“You dream of singing?” Jimin asks, elbows digging themselves into the soil where grass blades brush along her skin with the gust of wind. Keeping herself upright, eyes roaming at the dreams written out on Minjeong’s sparkling features and ambitious irises.
“Yeah,” Minjeong had her arms spread out, her still strong limbs carrying the hem of her dress along the flow of breeze and her entire body to a twirl. The breaths of being alive are taken for granted.
“I don’t really see you in the musician field. Plus, you are yet to tune your ukulele properly.”
Minjeong sulks, “How the hell would you know?”
Jimin laughs when Minjeong mimes a kick as if it will land on Jimin’s torso, and leans against the large bark of the tree they are both resting under.
“I may not know how to tune an instrument, but I do have ears to distinguish the sounds you are making with the broken thing.”
“It’s not broken! I need to find a new string to replace the old one.”
“What a tough dream to have.”
Minjeong whines, “Jimin-ah!”
Jimin yields quickly, “Alright, alright! Stop giving me that ridiculous face of yours.”
“You better be around when I get to achieve my career as a musician. You’ll see how wrong you are.”
Jimin follows Minjeong as the younger plops down beside her, backside slanted against the trunk of the premature tree.
A smile doesn’t need any fighting, for around Minjeong, Jimin finds it easy to give.
“Of course! I’d be your number one fan. The very first.”
Minjeong’s grin widens.
“And the very last.”