♚ — f e s s u m
“i’m tired.”
jungah looks up from where she’s folding a baby blanket over her lap, rahee sitting up beside her and looking for all the world like she’d gotten her finger caught in a light socket, with the way her hair’s standing up. jongin tries not to smile. fails, despite how exhausted it probably looks. “tired of what?”
jongin pauses. there are so many things he could say at the moment, so many things.. and yet, he keeps them locked away in his chest, unbridled ache throbbing with each beat of his heart. he feels like screaming. instead, his smile stretches, head tilting downwards as he fiddles with a loose thread on the sleeve of his shirt, and he's never looked so defeated. not in a while, anyway. it feels like an eternity that he sits like that, too tense, too tense— but it doesn't matter; jungah's still waiting on an answer.
"work. stress. the usual," is what he gets out, after a heavy beat of silence; the effort it takes to swallow the words that sit just behind his teeth is, of course, not minimal. rahee giggles. jungah stares. he knows she sees right through it, can see it in the depths of those brown eyes that pierce him like a knife. he wishes. but it's ignored, in favour of calling out to his niece, and grinning wide as she slides off of the couch, and stumbles into his awaiting arms.
still, he knows: there’s only so long you can turn a blind eye to something that is breaking your heart.
