SNS || jeon jungkook ✓

epilogue

Saturday, October 6th.
📍New York

"Happy birthday!"

The supposedly exciting phrase merely makes me groan. My pillow and the comfort I feel underneath my blanket is much more enticing than adhering to the energy required in responding. I give a small mutter to reply to the voice, peeking my eye open to read the time. It's 10AM.

"Get up. I'm hungry," David whines at my still body.

I kick my leg out when he starts to shake me against my mattress. I groan again because I don't hit him, and then again when I have to sit up in order to swing my arm.

This birthday tradition of eating breakfast together was beginning to annoy me two years ago, yet now I really expected it to be over given everything that has happened this year.

"Get the fūck out," I cry tiredly at him.

David is relentless in his attempts. "I've been smelling bacon for the last hour, and now I'm hitting the breaking point."

His justification for waking me up isn't enough. I'm officially 22 years old today, and given that I'm moving out soon, and definitely not a teenager, I would've thought participating in silly birthday traditions would be over by now. Like always in this family— I was wrong to assume such a thing. I don't think it's unnatural for me to feel disconnected from things that my family does nowadays.

"Eat without me," I yawn.

I didn't go to sleep until around 4AM. The idea of moving out has become so entrapped in my mind that I can't get enough of apartment hunting. Since I already have an option to live in South Korea (Auntie's Hanok), I figure, why not buy another property? Why limit myself? It's going to take some more healing until I can return to the hanok, anyway.

Too many things are attached to that place.

After paying so much money to repair all the damages from the sasaeng fiasco, and also hiring security and a team to keep up with the garden, that is the extent of my attachment to the hanok at the moment. I still have a lot of my belongings there, so I will have to return eventually. Not yet.

"Please," David frowns. "You know mom will get pissed off."

"Why do I care?"

"Because then I don't get to eat," he reasons with an exaggerated pouty lip.

I scoff with a roll of my eyes. Ever since he mentioned the word "bacon", my stomach has begun to growl lowly. I exhale deeply and rub my eyes with my palms, my only motivation to get up now being my hunger.

"Did she make pancakes at least? Or did she make waffles?"

"I think... pancakes," he says hesitantly.

I laugh at his worried expression as he waits for my reaction. I pick up my pillow and throw it at him, but he is too quick; he catches the large object before mercilessly throwing it back at me. I get whipped in the face.

"Hey," I anger, standing from my bed and hitting him harder across the back with the pillow.

His large and lanky, yet quick body manages to run out of my room fast enough to evade me from a second hit. This is why I need to get the hell out of this house. I've been named one of the most influential people in the world, yet here I am having a pathetic pillow fight with my brother in my suburban Long Island childhood home.