(not) his wife - part 1 | jjk
Pairing: non-idol!Jungkook x Reader (f)
Genre: arranged marriage, forced proximity, one-sided love, angst, childhood friends
Summary: Jungkook is your husband who believes he lost his chance with your sister because of you. Now you're married to him, and revenge was the only reason he said yes to this marriage.
Warnings: jungkook is a walking red flag and oc is a dumb girl in love so read at your own risk? again, neither of their brains is fully developed here. toxic relationship, angst.
Word count: 11k
check out my: masterlist
a/n: nine days in the making and here we are.... anon, i hope i did your request justice!! there will be a part two because yall i genuinely don't even know where to begin with this man’s redemption arc.... at this point, i fear the redemption arc alone is going to take over 10k words (lmk if you have any ideas, lend me ur creativity bbgs). all I can say is: please do not date men who do not kiss the ground you walk on!!!
taglist: @jiwikiwi @scriptved
You remembered the first time you saw him.
Your sister, Suji, was two years older than you and ever since you were ten, she brought her friends home nearly every weekend.
There were four of them: Jimin, Yejin, Taehyung, and Jungkook.
They were inseparable and exactly the kind of friendship you only ever read about in books or watched in movies. On weekends, your house was always filled with their voices and you never minded it, especially since two-years was not much of an age gap, hence you were included in almost everything they did.
That only changed after they graduated from high school and scattered across the country. Even then, the distance never truly separated them. They would stay in touch, called regularly, and planned a holiday together at least once a year.
As a child, being included in their group made you feel important. There was something exciting and cool about being ten and spending most of your time with older kids.
It did not take long for you to realise that Suji was the one holding them all together and her friends always orbited around her without noticing they were doing it. That never surprised you because Suji has always been the main character wherever she went, both at home and everywhere else.
You never resented her for it because she was the kindest sister you could have asked for. She never made you feel smaller than her, she invited you to parties you were too young to attend, defended you when Taehyung teased you about your missing front tooth, and let you borrow her clothes without ever complaining about it.
Her friends were kind to you too.
Jimin and Yejin were the first ones you met. You remembered them sitting beside you at the kitchen table, patiently helping you with your maths homework. Now they were married, with a daughter who was as cheerful as the two of them.
Then there was Taehyung, around whom fourteen-year-old Suji started acting differently. She became shy in his presence, more careful with her words, and she would glance at him now and then whenever she thought no one was looking. They were married now and, as far as you could tell, still having the time of their lives together.
And then there was Jungkook.
You, Suji, and the rest of her friends had been playing hide-and-seek throughout the house one Saturday afternoon, and Jungkook was the seeker. You hid behind the living-room curtain, holding your breath as you listened for his footsteps.
You were certain you would be caught first, because you barely had time to find a proper hiding place.
And you were right, Jungkook did find you first.
He pulled the curtain aside just enough to see you. But instead of dragging you out and gloating the way Taehyung or Jimin would have done, he merely smiled at you and ruffled your hair.
Then he let the curtain fall back into place and walked away to find the others.
You stayed behind the curtain for another full minute, your heart beating so loud that you considered asking your mom to call an ambulance.
At ten years old, what was that if not a knight in shining armour?
You have been in love with him ever since.
By fourteen, you assumed the feeling would have disappeared. It was supposed to be puppy love; something harmless and embarrassing that you would laugh about with Suji over wine in ten years time. But it did not just disappear like you thought it would.
In high school, Jungkook became one of the popular boys. His face made insecure boys resent him and hopeful girls imagine they had a chance with him. Yet he never seemed interested in any of it, he only cared about being around Suji and the rest of their friends, and he never seemed to mind having you around either.
Well, mostly because you were his best friend’s little sister.
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At fifteen, you finally told Suji about your little embarrassing crush.
She was not surprised when you confessed that you had a crush on one of her best friends. Jungkook was handsome too so it wasn’t really weird. You learned much later that she had known for years, but that night, she only laughed softly and said, “I’ll help you get together with him when you’re a little older, okay?”
Not long after you told her, Jungkook stopped coming to the house.
The rest of the group continued gathering in your living room every weekend as loud and inseparable as ever, but his usual seat was always empty. You still caught glimpses of him in the school hallways. He never said hello, though that wasn’t really strange since he rarely greeted you at school even before he stopped coming around your house.
Then you noticed that Jungkook started spending time with a different crowd. And it happened around the same time Suji and Taehyung finally started dating. These two quickly became the school’s “it” couple, with every photograph of them posted online always accompanied with the same ‘#CoupleGoals’.
But them getting together never surprised you.
What surprised you was that the moment Suji and Taehyung got together, Jungkook noticed you again, but not the way you wanted him to. The time your paths crossed again, he spat onto the ground in front of you and looked at you as if the sight of you disgusted him.
You didn’t understand it. You’ve adored him for five years by then, and you had no idea what you did to deserve that kind of hatred.
When you asked Jimin whether you somehow offended Jungkook, he only sighed and told you not to take it personally. And that Jungkook started spending time with wealthy, arrogant boys, and he has changed.
To you, it made sense for him to hang out with a different crowd, especially since he came from a different tax bracket than you did.
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You were twenty-two when you received the phone call from your mother.
By this time, Jungkook was somewhere not in your life; he was just a name that came up at your school reunion and nowhere else. You’ve heard things about him; that he helped his father ran their family’s company, then him eventually becoming the CEO.
Your mother has been a single mother almost your whole life, and she has never once, in twenty-two years, called you sounding like she was preparing for you to leave her life.
"Can you come home?" she asked, "tonight, if you can. I need to talk to you about something and I don't want to do it over the phone."
You asked if everything was okay, and she said she'll explain when you were there, which is somehow worse than any answer she could have given you, and you spent the whole drive over with your stomach tightened in knots.
Your mom was waiting at the kitchen table when you arrived, two cups of tea already going cold in front of her like she made them an hour ago and forgot they existed the moment she poured them.
“Mom?” you asked as you sat down in front of her, “this is reminding me of horror movies,” you chuckled.
"I need to tell you something," she said, "and I need you to not hate me."
You immediately became silent and didn’t even dare to say anything. So you let her say whatever she wanted to say in her own time, because she seemed as if she was going to burst into tears.
"I owe some family a great deal of money," she said, finally opening up after what felt like fifteen minutes, "forty million dollars. It's to the Jeon's family. Jeon Jungkook, do you remember him? From when you were kids, Suji's friend.."
You couldn’t help the gasp that followed, "How?" was all you could manage to respond with.
forty million dollars was more money than you have ever seen in your life. Your mother was an investment banker at a small firm, so your family has never been poor, but you were nowhere near forty-million-dollars rich. But then, compared to the Jeon family, you might as well have been poor.
“I’d been at the firm for three years by then,” your mother said, her eyes fixed on the table, “I was young enough to be desperate for a win. I wanted to prove myself, especially in rooms full of men who called me sweetheart and honey during meetings and constantly tease me.”
She paused, playing with her fingers in her lap, “One of my colleagues brought me a deal. It was a startup that was supposedly going to be bought out within eighteen months. It was the kind of tip that could make someone’s career if it worked.”
“And you believed him?” you asked.
“I believed in the startup,” she corrected, “enough to pass it on to a client I’d been trying to win over for months. Jungkook’s parents. I told them it was a sure thing,” your mother said, her voice slightly breaking on the word sure, “I wasn’t lying to them. I believed it too.”
She looked down at her hands, “That’s the part that still keeps me awake. I didn’t do it because I wanted to hurt anyone. I did it because I wanted them to trust me. I wanted it so badly.”
“And it failed?”
“Not at first. For a few months, everything looked promising, then the company’s lead investor pulled out after a fraud investigation. None of us saw it coming and the entire company collapsed within six weeks.”
She paused before continuing, “Jungkook’s parents lost almost everything they invested. And because I was the one who brought them the deal and told them their money would be safe, they came to me. forty million dollars was what they believed they would have earned if the deal had succeeded, added to everything they had lost.”
“They expected you to pay all of that?” you asked in disbelief.
“They said I could take as long as I needed and I could repay it at whatever pace I could manage, and they would never tell anyone what happened,” she said, before finally looking up at you.
"How much have you paid so far?" you ask, though some part of you already knows the answer will hurt you.
"Five hundred thousand. A little more, actually, slowly but steadily I was paying it off, but it has been years since the deal, ____," she said, her eyes filled with tears.
You have never seen her crying this much, not even at your father's funeral where she held back her tears for her children, "I didn't want you or Suji to know. It’s a debt I don’t want the two of you to carry.”
"And the rest of it?" you finally asked, "you wouldn't have called me here just to tell me about the debt or the amount. There's something else, right?"
Your mother's hands tighten in her lap, "They want to erase the whole forty million debt, if.. "
"If what?" you asked nervously.
"If you marry their son, Jungkook."
You laughed at your mother, because what she just said sounded like an opening line of a story or a cringe fan fiction you read on Wattpad years ago.
Then you looked at her face and understood she wasn’t trying to fool you at all.
“Mom,” you quietly said, your voice shaking out of anger, confusion, and sadness, you couldn’t really tell.
“I barely know him anymore. We haven’t spoken in years, and he’s not the boy from my childhood anymore. I don’t even know who he is now.”
“I know,” she said, and she sounded as if she dreaded saying the idea aloud, for even thinking of asking you to do this, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry for even considering asking this of you,” her voice trembled, “I’ve thought it over in my head for weeks, and I feel so bad as a mother, it feels as if I’m selling you to fix my own mistake.”
She drew in a breath, “It’s fine, you don’t need to do this. I’ll find another way. I will not make you responsible for a debt that belongs to me.”
“Jungkook is a good-looking man, Mom. He’s rich too and he could have anyone he wanted,” you hesitated before asking further, “so why would he agree to this? Why me?”
“He’s refused everyone his parents have introduced him to,” she said quietly, “for years, apparently he has refused half a dozen women. From what I understand, he turned every one of them down.”
She paused before adding, “But this time, his parents told me it was his idea,” her eyes lifted to yours, “he chose you.”
You thought it was bullshit, why would Jungkook choose you out of all people? It was clear as days that his eyes were never on yours, and all of the sudden he has chosen you?
Jungkook was an old friend you spent years hoping never to see again. What could someone like him possibly want from you now?
You couldn’t help but wonder if being chosen meant being wanted by Jungkook, or if you were simply the easiest answer to him; something he agreed to because saying yes was easier than arguing with his parents over a marriage he did not care enough to refuse.
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You said yes.
Because when you did the math more than once that week, lying awake in the dark, trying to picture your mom at seventy still working even during the weekends to pay down a debt that is almost impossible to pay off.
You just couldn’t make yourself accept a future that looks like that when you have the power to end it with a single word.
You said yes because you have spent your whole life being the person who helps everyone around you. The little sister who never made anyone feel lacking in anything, the daughter who learned early not to add her own weight to a household already struggling with just one income. You were always the person who takes care of others when they are sick and never asks anyone to do the same for you.
It is the only thing you have ever known what to do. And some part of you just does not know how to look at someone who needs you and say no, even when the person who needs you most is yourself.
Then there is the other reason.
That small part of you that is still ten years old, still standing behind a curtain while Jungkook smiled at you, has never fully stopped hoping there might be a version of this where Jungkook looks at you without hatred.
You know how ridiculous that sounded.
You know it is not the kind of reason anyone sensible enough should agree to a marriage. But you were ten when you fell for him, and somehow, despite everything, a part of that girl never really went away. When your mother said Jungkook had chosen you, that little girl came rushing back.
You understand, even as you agreed to the marriage, that this is a stupid reason to ruin your life. Yet you said yes anyway, because you have never been as rational as you would like to believe when it comes to Jungkook.
Because some part of you would rather walk willingly into the fire than spend the rest of your life wondering what might have happened if you had turned away.
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Two weeks later you were standing in a hotel lobby, your hands were trembling despite the summer heat outside, because his mother suggested or insisted, really, that the two of you meet before anything was finalized.
You spent forty minutes deciding what to wear and hated yourself for even caring about it.
Jungkook was already there when you arrived, sitting at a corner table with his jacket off and his sleeves pushed up, and his phone in his hand. He didn't stand up when you sat down.
Up close, he still looked familiar, only older now. He had tattoos all over his right arm and there was very little left of the boy who used to smile at you like the two of you shared a secret.
"You're late," Jungkook said, not even looking up to look at you.
"By only four minutes," you answered.
"Four minutes I didn't have."
"Then you should've told your mother not to schedule this in the first place," you scoffed.
That finally made him look up from his phone. Something changed across his face, you could tell that Jungkook was surprised that you answered back at him instead of backing down like he seemed to expect you to do.
You remembered, vaguely, a boy who was gentle to you. There was very little of him left in the man frowning at you now, and you hated that some part of you still mourned the loss of someone you barely knew anymore.
"You don't remember me, do you?" Jungkook asked.
"Oh, I remember you," you said, “though you used to be nicer."
"You used to be shorter," Jungkook said, rolling his eyes at you.
You ordered coffee neither of you touched and spent the next forty minutes arguing about the wedding neither of you wanted.
And some small, foolish part of you enjoyed that meeting because arguing with Jungkook meant he was looking at you. It meant you mattered enough to annoy him.
It meant, for those forty minutes at least, you managed to take up space in his mind.
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You married him six weeks later, on a bright Saturday in August, in a dress that cost more than your mother's monthly salary, in a ballroom filled with flowers your mother-in-law chose without consulting you.
The man standing in front of you was not the boy who once found you behind a curtain during a hide-and-seek game.
Jungkook shook your hand instead of kissing you when the officiant told him he could. He even came up with a charming joke about how shaking hands was an inside joke between the two of you, which made the room laugh.
When you told Suji and Taehyung that you were marrying Jungkook, neither of them believed you. It happened too quickly, you have never told them you were in a relationship, there was no engagement or anything that might have explained how the two of you have gone from never speaking to planning a wedding.
You could not tell them about the debt. You didn’t want them to be angry with your mom, so you insisted it was a long time coming. You told them you have always loved Jungkook and that, somewhere along the way, he secretly started to feel the same way.
Suji and Taehyung did not believe that either, of course they didn’t, they knew Jungkook has always liked Suji. They just didn’t want you to know it, that was what they have been protecting you from since you were ten. So, at the wedding, neither of them cried. Even Jimin and Yejin didn’t bother to congratulate you either.
Suji only held your hands for a moment, while Taehyung stood beside her with an expression you couldn’t bring yourself to read.
“We’re here for you,” Suji said.
“Anytime,” Taehyung added.
You couldn’t tell whether that was a warning, but you knew then that they knew something you didn’t.
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Jungkook’s hand on your waist during the first dance felt cold, because he was touching you only because the event expected him to. He never pulled you closer or whispered something sweet in between of the dance. His eyes stayed fixed somewhere over your shoulder, while you moved together with the applause of people who believed they were watching two people in love.
Later, in a hotel suite far too large for two people who had nothing to say to each other, you and Jungkook sat at opposite ends of the couch, still dressed in your wedding clothes.
Jungkook's tie had been pulled loose and the top buttons of his shirt were undone. Your veil was folded beside you and the hand bouquet of flowers were placed right between the two of you.
“Just so we’re clear, we’re only married on paper,” Jungkook eventually said.
Jungkook didn’t think he was being cruel to you. If anything, he believed he was doing you a kindness by being honest from the beginning.
“I won’t cheat on you. I can’t afford to have my company being caught up in a scandal,” he continued, “but I’m not going to treat you like a wife. As far as I’m concerned, you’re just my roommate.”
“Okay,” you said.
It was the only word you could utter at that moment.
You did not know how to explain how his words made you feel. You only knew that you already decided Jungkook would never see you cry over something he clearly would never think was worth grieving.
You changed out of your wedding dress in the bathroom because it felt strange to do it in front of a husband who barely looked at you since the ceremony.
That night, you slept on opposite sides of the same bed, with a pillow placed between the two of you like a line neither of you was meant to cross.
By the time you woke up the next morning, Jungkook was already gone.
At the very least, Jungkook had the decency to leave a note on the counter with his flight time. Much later in the marriage, you would realize it was the first of countless mornings that started the same way:
waking up to find out that Jungkook already left.
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first year of marriage
Jungkook moved into the guest room during the very first day you started living together. That first night, you lay awake in the enormous bed you were apparently meant to have all to yourself, listening to the faint sounds of Jungkook moving around the apartment.
Then during the first year of your marriage, you found yourself keeping track of everything Jungkook never did.
You stupidly believed that if you counted the nights he came home, the meals you shared, and the times he looked at you like he cared about you, then you might be able to prove that things were getting better. And when they did not, the numbers became proof that you had not imagined how lonely the marriage made you feel.
You hated that you cared enough to count it all and you hated yourself even more for still waiting for Jungkook to change.
Pathetic did not feel like a strong enough word for measuring your marriage by how little your husband gave you, only to find yourself disappointed each time the answer was almost nothing.
You counted the nights he came home before midnight: 11 out of 365 days.
You counted the meals you ate at the same table: 4, and two of those were during the week his grandmother visited. To Jungkook, keeping up appearances to his family mattered more than whatever existed between the two of you.
You counted the number of times he asked how your day was: 0.
Well, what did you really expect?
This was an arranged marriage, and Jungkook chose you because he knew you would be easy to please without ever having to worry that you might leave the marriage. At some point, you realized maybe Jungkook had always known how you felt about him. Perhaps that was why he had chosen you as his wife in the first place.
Yet what some stupid part of you wanted was to know undoubtedly that he cared for you, even just a little.
Whenever you were out with friends and thought of him, you would bring something home and leave it on the counter with a note telling him it was his to eat or drink.
By morning, the food was always still sitting there on the counter, clearly untouched.
Jungkook never ate any of the food you brought home for him, not once that entire year. So eventually, you stopped being surprised and then, sometime near the end of the first year, you stopped bringing anything home at all.
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Family holidays were the worst because Jungkook never bothered to show up. So you had to act and lie to everyone around you that the marriage was fine and Jungkook is just one busy businessman.
“He’s on a business trip,” you told your mother at Chuseok, “the company’s expanding into three new markets this quarter. He barely has time to sleep.”
“He’s swamped with work,” you told Suji at your father’s memorial dinner. That was the one day you truly wanted him there. Just once, you wanted your fake husband to stand beside you at your father’s grave, so you didn't have to lie when you were already drowning in grief and sadness. “Jungkook sends his condolences,” you added.
He did not.
You made it up, the way you always did. He did not come because he did not want to, because you were not worth giving up even a single hour of his life for. You could not say any of that to the people who loved you, not yet and maybe not ever.
Besides, you had no one to blame but yourself.
No one had forced you to say yes. Your mother would have been fine if she had to keep paying the debt, even if it took the rest of her life, and you could have helped her without marrying Jungkook. There were always other choices you could have picked, harder ones perhaps, but they always existed.
Yet you chose this route.
You walked into the marriage willingly because some foolish part of you wanted an answer to the question you’ve always had since you were ten: what would happen if Jungkook chose you to be his partner?
Well, now, the adult version of you know.
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What you didn't know that first year was that Jungkook noticed all the empty containers more than he let on, he noticed all the food you brought home for him to consume.
Jungkook would come home late most nights, and sometimes later than he actually needed to, because coming home early meant having to sit in the same room as you, and Jungkook never knew what to say to you.
He would see the food you left for him on the counter with a small note on top of it. And every time he saw it, something in his chest felt weird. Jungkook told himself what he felt had to be guilt, there was no other reason for him to care about you.
A few times, Jungkook found himself standing in the kitchen in the middle of the night, holding the food you brought home and he would just stare at it for a while before putting it back exactly where you left it. Because he didn’t want you to know he had even looked or noticed the effort you put in for him.
To Jungkook, the whole point of this marriage was revenge.
You ruined his life, so he was ruining yours.
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second year of marrtiage
By the second year of your arranged marriage, you were used to the coldness between you and Jungkook. You stopped hoping for him to change his ways, you stopped waiting for him at dinner and setting out a second plate.
You started going to Suji's for girls’ nights and coming home late on purpose, just to see if Jungkook would notice and he never did. Thankfully, it didn't hurt you as much as it would have in the first year. Most nights, he was either still out or locked inside his study. Sometimes the light under the door was the only sign that he was even home.
The apartment stayed exactly the same whether you were there or not.
At New Year, your aunt cornered you before dinner, “Where’s your husband? We’ve only met him twice in two years, and one of those times was at your wedding.”
“He’s closing a deal in Singapore,” you answered easily as lying about Jungkook was almost natural by now, “it’s a big one, so he had to be there.”
What she did not know was that you cried in your car before coming upstairs. You gave yourself exactly ten minutes to cry, sitting in the dark parking lot with the engine off and your forehead pressed against the steering wheel. Once ten minutes were over, you went upstairs to greet your family and smiled as if nothing was wrong.
It was also during the second year that you flew to Jeju for the wedding of one of Jungkook’s business partners.
You assumed you would sit together since it was still a public appearance. It felt stupid now, standing at the gate of priority passengers with your boarding pass in hand, but you didn’t think to check your tickets until Jungkook told you.
“I’m flying first class,” he said, “you’re in economy.”
“Oh,” you forced a small laugh, trying to sound as if it didn’t bother you, “I thought you would’ve booked us seats next to each other.”
“Economy seat should be fine for you. It’s only three hours.”
You spent the flight in a middle seat between two strangers, leaning past the person beside you whenever you wanted to look out the window.
Years ago, you believed being noticed by Jungkook would feel like winning something.
Now you were his wife, and he couldn’t even be bothered to sit beside you.
When the plane landed, he was not waiting for you, just as you expected. You had to book a taxi to the hotel alone and texted him to say you have arrived. And his only reply was the number of the room you had to share together since most of his colleagues and friends are staying in the same hotel.
When you let yourself into the room, he was on a call, feet up on the balcony railing as he sat on the balcony couch. It was thankfully an ensuite room with 2 separate beds, so you didn’t have to share a bed with him. Your only interaction with Jungkook then was when he lifted his finger in front of his mouth to tell you to be silent as he was talking on the phone.
At the wedding reception, you sat at a table full of his friends, who happened to be the group he used to hang out with at school, and you smiled throughout a dinner where no one asked you a single question about yourself, because to them you were simply "Jungkook's wife.”
You weren’t paying much attention to the conversation until one of the women at the table turned to you, “Is that even a real Van Cleef?” she asked, nodding at your bracelet, “it doesn’t look like it.”
“It isn’t,” you said, “it was handmade by a small business.”
“Huh,” she looked at it again, her mouth twisting slightly in disgust.
Another woman leaned closer, “Don’t you think you should make more of an effort with Jungkook’s friends? You never come to any of our gatherings. We barely know anything about you besides the fact that you’re Suji’s younger sister.”
Jungkook has never invited you to any of those gatherings, but you couldn’t tell them that, it would only give them something else to laugh about, “I’ve been busy,” you said.
“Jungkook is much busier than you,” one of the men cut in.
The first woman looked at you again, “You should be more careful about how you dress too, wearing cheap jewellery makes your husband look bad.”
It was not as if Jungkook has ever given you money to buy anything, not that you would have taken it even if he had.
“I see,” you muttered.
You stared at her bracelet before standing up from your seat, “Well, at least mine was made responsibly by someone who was paid fairly,” you said, “can you say the same about yours? Or do you just not care about the children who had to mine the diamond and stones as long as your jewellery came in an expensive box?”
Then you picked up your bag and walked away before any of them could answer.
Later, near the bar, you overheard your husband's name.
"Jungkook, honestly, I always thought you would end up with the sister. Suji, right? The one who's married to Taehyung now? She would've made more sense since you had always fancied Suji too. I mean, no offense, your wife seemed sweet, I guess, but.."
"She doesn't really fit in with us, does she?" someone else said, finishing the sentence the other couldn’t.
You turned away before you could hear Jungkook’s response, already heading back towards a table where you felt just as out of place, then his voice stopped you mid-step.
“Yeah,” Jungkook answered, sounding almost bored, “I guess Suji would’ve made more sense for me.”
That was the day you found out Jungkook fancied your sister.
You waited until you were in the hotel bathroom to cry. You locked the door, sat on the closed toilet lid, and pressed both hands over your mouth because Jungkook was somewhere on the other side of the wall and you could not let him hear you.
It should not have hurt as much as it did, you knew he did not love you. Jungkook made that clear from the first night of your marriage.
But knowing he did not want you was different from finding out he liked your own sister.
Suddenly, everything made sense to you.
The way Taehyung and Suji looked at each other when you announced the marriage to them and the way they never congratulated you. They knew, everyone knew except you.
And the worst part was remembering that you told them you have always loved Jungkook, and that he secretly liked you too.
♡━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━♡
A few weeks later, back home, you went to dinner at one of Jungkook’s business partner’s houses. You wore the nicest outfit you owned, but you knew the second you walked in that it still was not enough for them.
One of the wives looked you up and down before smiling, “Cute,” she said.
And you knew it was not a compliment.
“No ring upgrade yet?” another woman asked during dessert, nodding at the plain band on your finger, “Jungkook usually doesn’t do anything halfway. I guess he’s saving the good jewellery for later.”
“She likes simple things,” Jungkook said without looking at you and then he continued, “Suji always said less is more too.”
You quickly excused yourself and went to the bathroom before your face gave you away. When you came back, they were talking about Suji, about how smart and impressive she was.
“You know,” one of his friends said to you as he refilled his glass, “we always thought Jungkook would end up with your sister. You seem sweet, but Suji and Jungkook would’ve made much more sense together.”
“None taken,” you said. This was a conversation you have heard before, so you didn’t really care much of it, at least that was what you thought.
You looked at Jungkook across the table and waited for him to say something, but he didn’t. Jungkook could have told them to stop. He could have done anything that made you feel like you were not just the wrong sister sitting in Suji’s place. But instead, he looked away and didn’t even bother to correct them.
You didn’t speak during the entire drive home, Jungkook didn’t ask what was wrong or maybe he didn’t even notice how your silence was different, or maybe every silence with you sounded the same to him.
♡━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━♡
The next morning, you tried to talk to him about it, because some stubborn, hopeful part of you still believed that if you just explained it clearly enough, he would understand how you felt.
"You compared me to my sister in front of your friends," you said, over coffee he was drinking standing up, already half way out the door.
"It wasn't a big deal," he said, checking his watch, “it was a joke."
"It didn't feel like a joke."
"I don't have time for this right now," he said, "can we talk about it tonight?"
You knew, even as you nodded, that tonight would turn into tomorrow, and tomorrow would become some vague promise of “later”. By then, you already knew what later meant with Jungkook, it meant never.
♡━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━♡
What you did not know was that Jungkook kept thinking about what he said in Jeju.
“Suji would’ve made more sense.”
The words came back to him at random times; in the shower, in the elevator, during meetings when he was supposed to be listening, and he kept telling himself it was true. Suji was always the one he wanted and everyone knew that.
Still, he could not understand why saying it had made him feel so bad.
Jungkook should not have felt guilty. You were the reason he lost Suji in the first place. You were the reason she had chosen Taehyung and left him behind.
So if anyone deserved to feel guilty, it was you.
Later that year, on a night you were out, he opened the cabinet and took out two plates without thinking. He stared at them for a few seconds before putting one back.
You stopped setting a place for him months ago, but he watched you do it so many times during the first year that the habit had somehow stayed with him. He stood there longer than he needed to, wondering why he reached for two plates when he knew you were not coming home.
For years, Suji had been the person Jungkook believed he wanted. His friends still mentioned her like she was some great love he lost, and he let himself believe that was true because it gave him a reason to stay angry.
But whenever Jungkook tried to remember her, his mind kept going somewhere else. He remembered sitting at your family’s kitchen table, helping you finish a puzzle because no one else wanted to. Jungkook remembered finding you behind the curtain during hide-and-seek, and he remembered how easily you used to laugh around him.
Jungkook has not heard your laugh in a long time and that bothered him more than he wanted to admit.
One night, while you were out celebrating a friend’s birthday, he sat alone in the living room with a drink in his hand. He remembered you mentioning the party, though he couldn’t remember whether you told him directly or if he saw the birthday card on the counter.
Jungkook looked around the apartment and thought that you were probably happier when he was not there.
And Jungkook did not like that thought. He did not like knowing that you could leave the apartment and become a completely different person around everyone else; someone happier.
He poured his drink into the sink and went to bed early.
Jungkook told himself what he was feeling towards you was guilt that would pass if he ignored it long enough.
It did not.
♡━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━♡
third year of marriage
By the third year of marriage, you stopped hoping at all.
Whatever hope you carried into the marriage was nowhere to be found. You could not remember the exact moment it happened, you only knew that one day, you stopped expecting anything from Jungkook.
The two of you have been living separate lives under the same roof.
You paid for half of everything, the groceries, bills, and all the other small expenses neither of you ever discussed.
You have also gotten even better at lying during family gatherings; “he’s travelling,” “he’s busy,” or “the company is going through an important season.” You said the same excuses so often that the lies came out without any effort nowadays, even Suji stopped asking you questions about Jungkook.
“You know you don’t have to keep covering for him,” Suji said quietly at your mother’s birthday after you finished explaining Jungkook’s empty chair for the hundredth time, “we’re not going to think less of you if you tell us the truth.”
“I know,” you said.
You just didn’t have the energy to say it out loud. Once you told them, they would worry, they would ask what you planned to do, they would want you to leave him, and then you would have to explain why you even stayed for so long.
Some nights, you sat alone in the apartment and thought about how long it has been. Three whole years; you have spent three years living with someone who barely knew you.
You counted everything during the first year, but eventually, you stopped doing so. The amount of things Jungkook has done for you has become too embarrassing. There was no point keeping track of shared meals when there were barely any to count.
You feel like a different person now, sometimes, you almost feel sorry for yourself.
You waited so long for your knight to choose you, never knowing that when he finally did, it would be the very thing that broke you apart.
♡━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━♡
Sometime during the third year of the marriage, Jungkook finally began to understand something he spent most of his life getting wrong.
It has never really been Suji.
For years, he has been so sure she was the one he wanted. Suji was beautiful, confident, and always at the centre of everything. Everyone liked her, so wanting her had always made sense to Jungkook, especially when everyone around him seemed to expect it.
But when Jungkook thought back to the years he spent at your family's house as a kid, the memories that stayed with him were never really about Suji.
It was you sitting beside him at the kitchen table, asking for help with a puzzle even though you were too shy to look directly at him. It was you hiding behind the curtain during hide-and-seek and him trying not to laugh when he found you. It was the way you used to save him a seat at lunch, the way you followed him around when you were younger, the way your face lit up whenever he paid attention to you, as if he'd done something far kinder than he actually did.
Somehow, Jungkook took all of those memories and put Suji's name all over them instead. Maybe it was because Suji was his age, and she fit so easily into the rest of his life. You have only ever been Suji's little sister, or at least that was what he always told himself. And the truth came to him slowly, then all at once.
It would have been easier if Jungkook could have kept blaming you.
Jungkook was sixteen when he finally found the courage to tell Suji how he felt, he was certain she felt the same way, only for her to turn him down. Suji told him she liked Taehyung, not him. Then she told him that even if she felt differently, she could never be with him. She told him that she couldn't bear the thought of you finding out that the boy you adored since you were ten had fallen for your own sister instead.
That was the day Jungkook decided you were the reason he lost Suji. He never could decide who he was angrier at; you for telling her first or Suji for choosing you over him.
And Jungkook found it easier to be angry at you.
He told himself for years that marrying you was a way of taking back what he lost, except somewhere in the second year of your marriage, the plan stopped feeling like justice and started feeling like something he will regret his whole life.
Because somewhere in that same year, without meaning to, Jungkook started noticing you.
He noticed that he memorised the sound of your keys in the door. He noticed he wasn't surprised your mug was blue, because he remembered you telling him back when you were still a kid that blue was your favourite colour.
Jungkook started noticing the shows you watched in the living room that he could hear from his room, the nights you came home late and laughed quietly on the phone before disappearing into your bedroom, and the way the apartment felt different when you were gone.
He noticed you took your coffee black in the mornings but liked your tea with milk at night. Jungkook noticed the light under your door usually went out around midnight, and on the nights it didn't, he found himself lying awake wondering what was keeping you up.
Jungkook noticed how you would go still for a second before answering your mother's calls, then soften your voice the moment you picked up. He noticed you still bit the inside of your cheek when you were concentrating, exactly the way you did at ten years old.
He spent years insisting he had no interest in getting to know you, and somewhere along the way, he memorised you completely.
He even started coming home earlier on the nights he knew you would be there; early enough that he could hear you moving around in the kitchen, or catch a glimpse of you before you went to bed.
Jungkook remembered that night in Jeju more clearly than he wanted to. He watched you leave the table after his friends made fun of your bracelet, and for a second, he almost went after you. Yet he did nothing instead and later at the bar, he told someone that Suji would have made more sense for him. It was just easy to say because he has been telling himself the same thing for years.
It was easier to believe he lost Suji than to admit he was ruining whatever chance he had with you.
The night he finally realised it, he tried to think about Suji, tried to search for whatever he spent years insisting was still there and there was nothing. Whatever he felt for Suji disappeared a long time ago. Jungkook only kept holding onto it because it felt familiar, because blaming you was easier than admitting he was the one in the wrong.
He knew more about you than he ever bothered to learn about Suji, and that was when he finally understood that all along, the person he has been thinking about was you.
Somewhere in the middle of an arranged marriage he agreed to as a revenge, Jungkook had fallen for the person he was punishing, and he only realised it after you had already stopped caring whether he came home.
The only question left was whether Jungkook had realised he witnessed your devotion too late.
♡━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━♡
You didn’t come home that night, instead you called your sister for an emergency meeting at your mom’s place, "Come by mom’s house tonight," you pleaded, "please."
Suji and Taehyung were already there when you arrived.
You sat down at the kitchen table where you grew up doing homework, "I need to tell you guys something," you said.
So you told them about how he treated you, you told them the reason behind the empty chair at every holiday, and every single thing that happened during your marriage.
The moment you stopped talking, your mother went to her knees in the middle of the kitchen. You have never, in twenty-six years, seen your mother on her knees for anything, not even at your father's funeral where she stood so straight and so still you worried she had forgotten how to bend her knees
"I did this to you," your mother cried out, and she was frantic in a way you have never once witnessed, her hands were shaking as she reached for yours, "I owe them the money, not you. I sold you to fix my own mistake and I have watched you smile through three years of a marriage that's been eating you alive and I told myself it was fine because you never once complained, because you're so good at never complaining, and I am so sorry, I am so sorry, please forgive me."
You dropped to your knees and held her, and you cried the way you haven’t let yourself cry in years. You cried until your throat was hurting, until Suji came around the table and wrapped her arms around both of you, until Taehyung stood a few feet away with his jaw tight and his hands curled into fists.
"It's okay," you said, when you could speak again,"I'll always help you, Mom. I mean that, I’ll help you pay that debt. But this time, I want a divorce."
Suji was already standing next to you, and the look on her face was one you'd never seen there before, "I am going to kill him," she said, “I’m sorry, ____. I never.. I should have known. I should have asked you harder. I should have protected you."
"Don't," you said, “please. I don't want any of you doing anything. I don't want him in my life anymore, and I don't want to spend one more minute of my energy on him. I just want it to be over. I want to be done."
They didn't like it.
You could see in all of their faces that it was hurting them not to do anything in your stead. But they loved you enough to hear you out.
For the first time in three years you slept in your childhood bedroom, and that night, you slept better than you have in a long, long time.
♡━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━♡
At first, Jungkook didn’t think much of it when you weren’t home. You went out sometimes. Three years of marriage taught him your routine; Tuesdays with your girlfriends; the occasional weekend at your mother’s.
Jungkook came home the first night to an empty apartment, ordered food, and ate it standing at the kitchen counter. Your disappearance didn’t seem unusual enough for him to question it.
By the second day, the apartment felt different and he couldn’t immediately work out why. The coffee maker hadn’t been used, there was no bitter smell in the kitchen when he walked in that morning and the mug you always used for tea was still sitting where he left it two days ago.
Jungkook looked at it for longer than he should have, then he checked the entryway for your shoes and they weren’t there. An hour later, Jungkook checked again, and still you weren’t back home.
By the third day, he texted you.
Jungkook: You okay?
No message came back. He stared at the screen until it dimmed in his hand again, and when Jungkook unlocked it, there was still nothing.
By the fourth day, the uneasiness became too loud for him to ignore. It followed him into the shower, the car, and the office. Jungkook sat through meetings without taking in a word. Jungkook asked his assistant to repeat what they just said three times, and afterwards Jungkook still couldn’t remember what they were even discussing.
Jungkook called you once in the afternoon, then again on the drive home, but both calls went to voicemail.
Jungkook wasn’t used to this.
Jungkook is used to handling problems, hell, he has built companies and sat across from men twice his age and made them agree to terms they had sworn they would never accept. Jungkook knew how to remain calm when everyone else in the room was losing their mind.
But that night, at two in the morning, Jungkook lay awake thinking about one unanswered text, thinking about where you were, if you were eating well, if you were sleeping soundly, if you will ever come back home to him.
When did he become like this?
By the fifth day, Jungkook drove past your mother’s street twice.
The first time, he told himself he had taken the wrong turn. The second time, he slowed down near your house and looked for a light in the windows. Jungkook wanted proof that you were there, that you were somewhere and you didn’t simply disappear beyond his reach.
Jungkook hated how badly he needed you. He opened your contact on his phone again and again but never pressed call, his thumb only hovered over your name until the screen went dark again.
The past three years of marriage have been made up of small things he never should have done. The meals you prepared that he barely touched, the questions he answered without looking at you, the evenings when you sat beside him and eventually stopped trying to start a conversation.
You tried to make a life with him, yet Jungkook treated every attempt as an inconvenience.
For years, he told himself that he was the victim, that Suji was the person he should have been married to. But when Jungkook forced himself to remember exactly why he liked Suji, he felt nothing.
What Jungkook remembered was always you and everything the two of you had done together. He remembered a girl half his size sitting across from him, looking up at him like he was her world. He remembered playing hide-and-seek with you and he remembered pretending not to see you.
Jungkook always said Suji was the person he was the happiest with, but all the memories that felt warm to him, belonged to you.
Admitting the truth would have meant admitting that Jungkook spent years hurting the wrong person. And tonight, Jungkook sat alone in the living room and finally clearly admitted the one he always wanted was you.
Jungkook didn’t want a divorce and he did not want you to leave him.
When he imagined the apartment being empty of your things, Jungkook’s chest started hurting. When he imagined another man hearing you laugh, learning what food you liked, being invited to your mother’s house, he felt something pressing against his chest that it was hard for him to breathe.
Jungkook wanted you to remain his wife and the thought made him feel ashamed of all the things he had done to you the past three years.
“My wife,” Jungkook said to his empty apartment.
♡━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━♡
Jungkook tried to call Suji, but she didn’t answer. So, the next morning, he called Taehyung and to his surprise, Taehyung answered on the second ring.
“Stay away from my family,” was all Taehyung said when he picked up.
“I knew you had feelings for my wife,” Taehyung continued, “I have known for years, I knew since we were children, Jungkook. I didn’t say anything because I thought you would get over it. I thought it was some pathetic thing from when we were younger that would eventually die out.”
“Taehyung,” Jungkook tried to cut him off, but Taehyung wouldn’t let him.
“No. You don’t get to say shit. It’s been years,” Taehyung said, “and while you were busy feeling sorry for yourself, you destroyed her sister. Three years, Jungkook. She carried your marriage alone for three years and still smiled through every family dinner because she didn’t want anyone worrying about her. We recently found out it was an arranged marriage, fine, you didn’t have to love her, but you could have treated her decently.”
“You knew she didn’t deserve it,” Taehyung continued, “that’s the part I can’t understand. You knew exactly who she was, and you still treated her like she was responsible for everything you hated about your life.”
“I know.”
“No, you don’t,” Taehyung let out a short and bitter laugh, “But I hope you do now. I hope you finally understand what you’ve done, and I hope you feel every second of it.”
Then the call ended.
Jungkook spent years blaming you for a decision neither of you had made. Every humiliation, disappointment, and every bit of grief he carried since he was seventeen, he somehow found a way to make it yours.
It was easier than looking at you, who stayed beside him and asked for so little, and realising he had still given you even less than that.
Now you were gone and there was no one left for him to blame but himself.
Jungkook was not the man he always imagined himself to be. He was pathetic, petty, cowardly, and far smaller than the woman he spent three years treating like nobody.
Jungkook has been nothing but a pathetic, petty and frightened boy wearing a man’s face.
♡━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━♡
The next day, Jungkook went to your mother's house.
She opened the door and just looked at Jungkook with disappointment across her face. It was the same look she gave him when he didn’t kiss you at the altar.
"I'm not here to see her," Jungkook quickly said, before your mom could close the door, "I know she doesn't want to see me yet. I'm here because I need to say something to you, and I need you to hear me out."
She didn’t say anything, yet she opened the door wide enough to let him in. Unlike the other guests who have visited her home, your mother did not offer Jungkook tea. There was no need to treat him like an acquaintance, soon Jungkook will be her ex son-in-law and someone whom she’ll never ever meet in her life again.
She sat him at the same kitchen table where you cried just a few nights before.
"I owe your family a lot of money," she said, folding her hands in front of her, "I understand that. I understand this was an arranged marriage none of you asked for or wanted, and that you were as much a pawn in it as my daughter was.”
She drew in a small breath before continuing, “What I do not understand, Jungkook, is how you could treat another human being, my daughter, the kindest person I have ever raised and the one who never once in her life made anyone feel small… How could you have treated her the way you have done the past three years? I am in as much pain watching what this did to her as she is living it, maybe even more, because I was the one who put her in this situation with you in the first place. So tell me, why should I forgive you? Why should I let you anywhere near her again? What exactly do you intend to do?"
Jungkook has never been shaken by anything in his life, not until tonight, sitting in front of your mother.
"I don't have a clear answer," he said, "I wish I did. I spent years being angry at _____ for something that was never even her fault, something I won't even go into right now, because it's mine to explain to her first. And then I spent three more years married to her and still treating her like she was the one who wronged me. I'm not asking you to forgive me."
Jungkook looked at her, and he looked so broken your mother couldn’t help pitying him, "I'm asking for the chance to keep showing up until it means something to her. I'll beg for her forgiveness, I'll keep coming back even when she tells me not to, even when she has every right to slam the door in my face. But we'll talk, we'll argue, we'll probably fight, more than once, because I don't think she's going to make this easy for me, and she shouldn't and I wouldn’t want her to. I just know I can't bring myself to just let this end without actually trying for the first time in this whole marriage. I want to be someone worth her time. Without knowing it, I realised that the small things she has done throughout our marriage was never small at all. She loved me despite the ugly things I have done. I was just too busy being furious at my past to notice I was standing next to the person I actually wanted."
Your mother stared at him for a long moment, long enough that Jungkook thought she might ask him to leave without another word.
Her marriage to your father hadn’t always been easy. There were years of arguments over parenting, finance, and many more. There were years where she wondered if she married too young.
But when he died, something in her broke apart and it never quite put itself back together.
She remembered how you used to climb into their bed on Sunday mornings, how your father would let you win at cards, how you cried at his funeral so quietly like you were trying not to take up too much space even in your own grief.
you see, your mother knew about your crush on Jungkook. She watched you for sixteen years, she saw the way your face changed whenever Jungkook's name came up at the dinner table, and pretended not to notice the way you used to volunteer to answer the door whenever Suji’s group of friends came around, just in case it was Jungkook. She knew, long before you ever confessed to it, that you had loved him since you were a child.
And when she told you about the arranged marriage, some small, guilty part of her had let herself believe that maybe this could help. Maybe if she was going to ruin your life with her mistake, it could at least be with the one person you had always wanted to have a relationship with.
She was wrong.
She watched that hope change into something else these past three years, watching you get smaller in ways you thought she hadn't noticed, watching you repeating lies about a man who could not even be bothered to accompany you for your own father’s death anniversaries.
She was, is, a bad mother for that.
But she also knew you. She knew that if she asked you right now, whether some part of you still wanted to know if he was willing to try, you wouldn’t say no.
"Sit up straight," she finally said, and Jungkook blinked at her, caught off guard.
"I'm sorry?"
"You heard me," your mother’s voice was firm and steady, "If you're going to sit in my kitchen and tell me you intend to fight for my daughter, you're not going to do it slouched over like a boy waiting to be punished. Fighting for her means showing up like you mean it, every time, starting now."
Jungkook immediately straightened his posture.
"I'm not telling you this because I forgive you," she continued, "I will not forgive you for a long time, and that will be my right to decide, just as it will be hers."
She took a deep breath, before continuing, "But I have spent three years watching my daughter lie to the people who love her because she didn't want anyone to know how badly you have hurt her. If you're serious, then you do not need to convince me. You show her, you keep showing it to her, and you need to accept that she may never let you back in, and you don't get to be angry about it, not after all the years you've taken from her already."
"She was ten years old the first time she talked to me about you," she said quietly, "I used to think it was sweet. I didn't know I was watching the beginning of something that would be a long time pain for her. So if she gives you a second chance, you do not waste whatever time she gives you, Jungkook. She has given enough of it away for free, do you understand me?"
"I understand," he said.
♡━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━♡
You came home from a work trip three days later and found Jungkook sitting at your family home’s dining table, his laptop open and a stack of papers beside him like it was any other weekday.
He was sitting there as if it wasn’t your first time seeing him since you walked out of the home you shared with him.
"What the fuck are you doing here?” you sneered.
Your keys were clenched in your hand, and your entire body went rigid at the sight of him sitting in a chair at your family home.
"I'm here to date you," he said, slowly looking up at you.
You stared at him in disbelief, "You are here to what?"
“Date you,” Jungkook said as he closed his laptop, “I want to date you properly this time.”
For a second, all you could do was look at him.
"I know what I did,” Jungkook continued, “I know what three years of this marriage to me did to you. I'm not asking you to forget it. I just.. I want the chance to earn what I should’ve earned before we ever got married.”
You let out a dry and humourless laugh, before asking, “What the fuck?!”
You dropped your keys onto the counter, and they hit harder than you intended it to be, “You think you can just show up here and ask to start over?”
“No matter what you do, my heart is not going to change, Jungkook. I'm not a child anymore. I know better than to give you a second chance, hell, I gave you a hundred chances over the last three years and you didn't take a single one.”
“You are beneath me now,” you said quietly, “do you understand that?”
“Then give me one last chance,” Jungkook said, almost pleading.
“Let me court you,” he continued, “let me date you the way I should have the past three years.”
You didn’t answer.
You just walked past him and went to get changed.
You were meeting your friends that night, and had no intention of spending another minute in that kitchen listening to Jungkook act like he could fix three years with a few words.
He stayed where he was while you moved around the house, but you could feel his eyes on you. It shouldn’t have felt unfamiliar, he was your husband. Still, you couldn’t remember the last time he actually noticed you.
but you hated that your body enjoyed the feeling of being noticed by him, hated that some part of you still wanted to be seen by him.
"Can I come?" he asked, from the living room, he sounded quieter than you have ever heard him speak, “I would love to get to know your friends.”
You scoffed out loud in response and left without answering him.
When the door shut behind you, something in your body felt at ease because for the first time in years, your life felt like it belonged entirely to you again.
