Welcome to Your Last Race (Street Racers #3)

17. Taehyung/Jungkook

Taehyung

Everyone shows up at this race. Everyone. Yeeun is here. Hoseok is here. Sana – she will go into it. Jungkook is here. He's here, and he's hanging around me like nothing happened yesterday. Him and Yeeun are acting like nothing happened. I'm quiet.

I sit at the hood of my car, hangovered, emptying the cigarette pack, and I listen. No, I hear. I don't even have to listen.

It has gone beyond just me being gay and somehow not fitting the community. Now they talk about how I always acted cocky, while Jungkook should have been the one on my place. He's 'straight, handsome, with a pretty girlfriend, and has always been a better racer'. That's what they say. Can I disagree with them? No, not really. Even if the viewpoint seems a bit shallow. Though I don't have a mind for viewpoints these days.

They talk about how I've always been an asshole and how they can't understand why Wooshik would want to be with me, and how Jungkook would want to be my friend. I should be all alone, they say. They say I'm faking it and I'm still the same asshole I've always been.

I hate how I feel like one. How I feel like I used to. The feeling is all over my skin. Inside and outside. It feels like every day of my life has felt, back when I lived with my family. I can feel it, smell it, taste it. I'm there, and I can't crawl out of it, because it's everywhere. Unless I tear my skin off, the feeling won't change.

The worst of it all is what people online say about me. Even for me – who has no idea how to move around social media – it wasn't hard to find the racing people online. People post about the Japan Race, about this race. They use our names – Kim Taehyung and Park Hyoshin. People from other countries say they want to race me at least once in their lives. Isn't that what I wanted?

I've got nothing else, anyways. My reputation, here in Seoul. Crushed. Not that I've ever cared much, but I tried so hard to at least not be the worst asshole these people know. It's gone.

I dream of nothing but not being myself. I can't stand myself. Again. How long has it been since I stopped feeling this way? That was going so well, too, and it's over. So quickly. After I've spent so much time making peace with myself. Gone.

Jungkook and Yeeun being here pisses me off. They shouldn't be here. One day they won't be. They'll be gone just like that. Just like everything else. I will have control over that day, not some... coincidence. Fate. Fuck this.

I'm desperately searching for a way out of the promise I've given. Maybe if Wooshik hates me, it wouldn't hurt him if I was gone. If I could get him to hate me. To want me gone. I could free myself from me, like I should have years and years ago.

Or I'll wait. I'll wait and see what Hyoshin will do to me. I'll win only to have him kill me.

🏁

Jungkook

I decided to push it last night. Like I should have, maybe, weeks ago. Whatever he told me yesterday, I know it's all a lie. A way out. He's trying to push us away, and I'm not going to give in.

Not when I can see the way he's acting. It's slightly different now, because he's got people to push away. But besides this, it feels so much like we are back there. At that race. And then I was at the hospital. I don't know what's on his mind, but I'm not doing this again.

The air is strained. Probably because literally everyone can fucking hear those people talk. I didn't think it was that bad until I heard it myself. The kids – like I asked them – do their best to silence it. But it never stops. I've gone as far as to sit next to him, and a moment later someone walked past saying how I should be in his place, because I'm somehow better.