Your phone buzzes as you sit in the subway, waiting desperately to be home and strip off your inner garments and just relax in your bed.

Park Jimin
Hey, beautiful woman.🥺
When can I expect you to go out on a second date with me?

You retch.

You hate it when someone is being so nice to you.

The whole reason why you fell for Jungkook was because he was so emotionally detached. Barely giving you a look and treating you like you were just another brick in the wall.

Kang Y/N
Never if you call me beautiful again.

Park Jimin
Watch me prove you wrong.😍

Kang Y/N
Honestly. Stop.

You sigh and you flip your phone over as you try to create a pattern of keywords from your business notes.

Tomorrow would be your first exam. You already feel your stomach dropping each time, the funny tingling sensation bubbling in your stomach each damn time you're nervous. As if you're falling face forward into the earth.

Park Jimin
Prepare to be amazed~🤪

Kang Y/N

That tingling sensation becomes more pronounced as you realize you're gonna see your brother today. Aunt Ara already dropped a message that she will leave San Ji in Leena's hands.

Park Jimin
Brother? A cute miniature you!? Hard to pass the opportunity to meet another amazing human being!🥴

Ps: you're such a dry texter..

You take a deep breath when your phone buzzes again.

Park Jimin

I love it 🙊

Kang Y/N
You. Are. Not. Meeting. My. Brother.

Ps : nice try at the reverse psychology, I'll still be a dry texter

Park Jimin
Omo what a treat 🙈
You also owe me an answer.🙃

You frown. What answer?

Kang Y/N
No, you're not meeting my brother and that's my final answer.

Park Jimin
Kang Y/N..
Not that answer, my girl

You read the message and are about to type back an explanation of how you're still stumped when the ding declares the arrival of your stop.

You get off and are walking home, you realize that it's gotten pretty dark. Winter was approaching and that meant the dusk would be falling ahead of its time with the sunsets.

You sigh feeling a chill run down your spine and feel absolutely uncomfortable with the sudden absence of the noonlight in the streets.

You consider hiring a cab, but every penny was important to you at the moment.

Aunt Ara had told you that the savings your parent left you were all expended. You had nothing left in the account. To be able to run your expenditure even for 11 months along with San Ji's special school fees and your college tuitions was a big damn deal.

You were grateful. You had nothing left to say aside from that to your parents.

You didn't have any complains anymore. In fact, you had no energy to do anything anymore.
The only thing that hadn't changed since that incident was your passion to study marketing. To resume your indulgence into business ambitions.

And the motivation to look after your brother and help him heal.

While you still had friends like Leena and Namjoon to take care of you and your mental health.. you had a lump in your throat each time you thought of your little brother.

What about him? He had nobody. And he was so young too.

You had friends who voluntarily and genuinely wanted to help you and heal you. But, San Ji's special school teachers and everybody around him were doing it only for extrinsic reasons. Their motive was simply money. As long as they had it coming, they would look after him.

But, now what?

Now that the savings money was getting over and you were afraid that soon you would have to discontinue his schooling for a while until you could make money enough to send him there, he would be kicked out and barely be given a second thought or consideration.

You are not the kind of girl to cry. You've been strong enough to take things head on.

In fact, you've been trying to remain strong through everything so hard, that you barely cry.

You suppress your emotions as much as possible. And you take crying as a sign of weakness. You don't want to give in to emotions in times of crisis. You'd rather be dead than appear vulnerable to anybody.

Including yourself.

You've gone numb.

You feel like if there's anything that has not been tired and has a high motivation to remain functional. It's your anxiety.

You're feeling them nerves kick in and you decide you should get yourself a cup of cool chamomile tea.

The one you had at Dr. Kim's office.

Your sixth sense tells you, you may fall in trouble even before you reach his office that feels like approximately 1.5 km away.

At least that's what your Gmap tells you.

You're 1.5 km away from home.

How will you shake off the two strangers that have been shadowing you..?

You decide to ring up Leena.

But, what will you say? What if it's just your anxiety convincing you somebody is following you? Maybe, it's just the absence of the street lights, the sudden earliness of dusk and the fact that you are so paranoid all the time that you're assuming anybody would even be interested in following you.

What do you have anyway?

No money on you. No jewelry. No motivation to live.

You see a café. You're trying to act as natural as possible as you push the doors and enter quickly. It's a dimly lit café. You realize it's one of those romantic ones where people come for dates and suddenly your social phobia decides to attack you.

Now you're anxiety ridden AND socially awkward.

Great!

You're fuming at your choice of escape as you go to the counter and order yourself iced chamomile ginger tea.

They inform you that there's a special discount over garlic ciabatta bread with mozzarella cheese.

You check your wallet and feel like you could allow yourself a little bit of surrendering to your cravings.

You're feeling cramps too. You think getting yourself a herbal solution would help more than resorting to those pills sold at the pharmacy.

You sit in the very corner of the room where you're closer to the counter and the glass doors. You turn to peer through the glass walls and subtly check for them shadowers.

Potential rapists, your mind convinces you.

You practically happen to see nothing. Maybe, it was just your anxiety.

You sigh. So your anxiety ridden brain literally put you into a situation where you feel even more anxious.

If your anxiety ridden brain was a person, you'd stick a cactus up its ass.

You hate it more than you ever hated Dolores Umbridge. Or Jane Pompadour. Or
Janice Litman-Goralnik. Or Sakura. Or-

"Ma'am." You look up as you're thinking of more hated characters in all the books, anime and series you've ever watched. "Enjoy your.. stuff." The judgemental waitress tells you as she walks away giving you an awkward smile.

"I will." You mutter angrily to yourself.

Why judge a person just because they ordered a simple meal? You can do whatever you like with your empty wallet!

As you're biting into your garlic bread, your eyes fall on a very familiar face you hadn't seen in 11 months.

Kim Seokjin.

He sat with a woman whose face you couldn't see because she had her back to you. He was engaged in a very animated conversation and you assumed he's on a date.

Why would you care? It's none of your business.

He looked hot, though.

You're only glad your mind is drifting to his sinfully beautiful features. His hair is swept back into an attractive mess, showing his forehead. A lock or two falls on his face covering a part of his eyebrows partially. His plump lips rolling into cute ways forming words you cannot hear and his beautiful big eyes narrowing over certain words he speaks.

You're noticing how often he blinks. And you find it so cute. You realize...

Those eyes are now locked with yours.

You become conscious and you find it so stupid that you chose to look away. You could have just waved at him and smiled.

You slowly turn your head back at him.

He's still staring at you and now when you turn to look at him square in his face, he smiles.

The woman sitting in front of him turns to see the new receiver of his attention. You turn your eyes to her and you happen to recognize her.

She's insanely beautiful and has worn glasses that fit her face so well, she looks like a gorgeous nerd model.

You smile back at Jin and with smiling lips you look at her too.

Where have you seen her?

Your awkwardness is more pronounced when you notice that she didn't smile back. It breaks your confidence a little and then you smile once again at Jin, pick your cup to drink from it and pretend to scroll down your phone.

Your phone rings making you jump, it was right in your hand and you didn't expect it to attack you like that.

"Hello?"

"Y/n." A voice all too familiar sends a wave of relief through you. He sounds relieved too.

Yeah, you could do with a little therapy.

"Yes, Dr. Kim?" You are mildly surprised that he would think of calling you around..

You check the time and your eyes go wide.

You had to be home in order to receive San Ji!

That little munchkin would want you to open the door and hold him.

He's going to be so scared and uncomfortable without a familiar face around.

You instantly get up, grab your stuff, pay the bill and are ready to leave when you come to a halt near Jin's table.

This woman.

She gave you financial aid when you needed it the most.

She never told you her name tho.

You had to find out.

You forget that Dr. Kim had called you.

There's so much that you have to do, you leave him on call as you rush to Jin's table.

"I know this is so inappropriate and I shouldn't interrupt you or butt into your conversation.. or meal.... or anything..." You tell the taken aback couple.

"But.." You exhale loudly, "What is your name?" You ask her. You're so socially awkward, you don't even know asking her name like that out of the blue is even more inappropriate. She stares at you for a moment as if she has something to tell you and you feel it's very likely that it's not her name.

"Y/n?" Your attention goes to the sound coming like a panicked buzzer from the phone.

Oh, shit. Dr. Kim is still on call.

"Irene."

You pull out your phone quickly and quickly say, "Dr. Kim, I'll get back to you in a second. I'm sorry-" you interrupt your own self as you cut the call.

You turn to the woman. Her expression has changed. You felt sure you saw a shadow of fear pass on her face for some strange reason, but you don't feel so sure as she quickly composes herself while she's folding and fidgeting with a tissue in her hand.

"Anything el-ahem.. anything else you might want to ask, Y/N?" Jin laughs awkwardly.

You blink as you turn to Jin and nervously laugh.

"Yes, actual-"

"How are you?"

"How are you, by the way?"

They both turn to each other and the woman lightly giggles. You realize they asked you the question at the same time.

"I'm good, thanks, and you?"

She's so beautiful. You don't feel so straight.

You don't give them a chance to answer as you say, "I am so grateful to you for the way you contributed in my brother's fees." You are so desperately in a hurry, but you never really got a chance to thank her and now's definitely the time. You can't let it go.

What if you don't get to meet her again?

"I did? I don't remember." She finally smiles. A small involuntary smile.

"You did. And I can't thank you enough. I wish I could pay you back- I feel highly indebted to you. I- I.. I don't know why you did it and I would love to know that, but for now, I'm just so drowning in gratitude.. is there any way I can pay you back?"

Jin pulls a chair from the nearby table. He points at the chair and smiles at you his eyes asking you to join him. As you take your seat, he snaps his fingers to call the waiter standing nearby.

You find the second gesture very rude and snobbish, but you let it slip by because you need to hear answers from Irene.

"You want to pay me back?" She asks with an enigmatic smile playing over her lips. You feel uncertain whether you will really be able to, at all. You nod passionately.

"My, my.. she wants to pay me back, Dr. Jin. Hmm.. I wanted so much in life, what should I ask for?" She rolls her eyes in a light-hearted manner.

You chuckle, "I'm not God, but I could keep in mind what you want and maybe make it easy for you to get ahead in the future when I become a little successful."

"Let's just say, Y/N. I'll let you know in the future, then. Just don't forget me."

unedited;