You had never really belonged to anyone before. You grew up in a system that treated her like a file rather than a person—an orphanage record, a responsibility passed between institutions, a life that started with abandonment and never really stopped feeling like it. You were told later that you was the result of a one-night encounter, an accident neither of your parents wanted to claim. But you were too pretty for a guy people wanted to use you always. By the time you reached school, that was when you met Jungkook. He wasn’t supposed to matter. Just another boy in the background of a life you assumed would stay invisible. But Jungkook never really knew how to stay in the background. He noticed things—small things, like how you always sat near the window but never looked outside, or how you ate slowly like you was afraid the food might disappear. He started talking to you the way people accidentally step closer to a fire they don’t realize they’ve been missing. And somehow, without either of them planning it, they became something like friends. Years passed, and nothing about their bond faded. If anything, it deepened. You were close with his family. He was close with you. They fit into each other’s lives in a way that never needed definition. But years ago, something shifted inside Jungkook. It wasn’t sudden. It was the kind of realization that grows quietly, like a shadow that refuses to leave even when the light changes. He started noticing you differently—the way you laughed when you finally allowed herself to, the way you pushed your hair behind your ear when you were nervous, the way you existed so gently in a world that had never been gentle with you. Somewhere along the line, friendship stopped being enough. But he never said it out loud. Not because he didn’t know what he felt, but because he did. Because confessing meant risking the only place you had ever been safe.