Yoongi has never been without her for more than a week.

The only time he can think of is that one August, four years ago. Her father had to take her on a business trip, nine days abroad in a northern city. Yoongi had wondered, at the time, whether she would look different; act different; be an entirely divergent person after spending such a time apart from him. After tasting the flavour of a life untainted by his presence.

Though when Yoongi had rode to her house on the day she arrived home, he had realised that his concerns were groundless. She had been lugging her belongings out of the car boot, but the sound of his tyres skidding to a stop at the end of the driveway had hooked her attention. At once, she had dropped everything and clambered over to him, toppling their bodies onto the grass in a fit of laughter and whispers of I missed you, hidden in the dip of his neck.

Nothing about her had changed. She still had eyes that swallowed him whole. She still had a mouth and tongue that crafted angel’s lullabies. She still had a touch that surged enough electricity through his bones to bring him near death; forever teetering on the edge of ascending to her heaven, or keeping his feet grounded for a few moments longer. A constant tug-of-war with his soul, since she never went too long without knocking his knee with her own, or poking at his shoulder.

Now, Yoongi wonders how different somebody can become after three years. Surely, days upon days must bend and manipulate one in the long run.

Time does not fly. Without her, it slows to a near halt. Like wading through thick mud and never reaching the other end of the puddle. The sludge sinks into Yoongi’s pockets, dragging his feet down until he is neck deep, barely breathing, and she is still nowhere to be found.

Her hand does not part the clouds. It does not reach from the crystal clear skies, offering to pull him out and up into the stars where she sleeps, and no laws of such inhumane genocide are imposed. Where Yoongi can brush his fingertips over her cheeks, kiss the rosiest of lips, and feel the softness of her sigh tickle across his collarbone. He can love her without the fear of losing her to a mint green envelope, reeking of death, in her letterbox.

It is difficult to find somebody when they do not wish to be found. Or, more so, it is worse when you know precisely where they are, but they would rather have their spine twisted until it snaps in two than see you.

That is how matters go after their lips touch in flawless harmony, as if made for one another. She runs, and runs, and never comes back. She hides like the truths Yoongi keeps beneath his carpets, wedged in the crevices between the floorboards, tucked too tightly away to ever be properly found again. It is a game of hide and seek where nobody is found. They stay trapped in their bedroom. They never stray down the street. They never message, call, or provide an inkling of something. Anything, to at least hint that they are still alive and breathing.

Not necessarily okay. Just managing enough to live without you.

But Yoongi does not persist. No matter how much he misses her. No matter how desperately he wishes to, at the very least, hear her voice whisper that she is okay, that she is doing just fine. Because even if he were to knock at her front door until his knuckles were shredded bloody, or throw stones at her window until the glass pane smashes, or leave her cell phone to constantly vibrate with fifty-seven missed calls and texts, he knows it would only drive her further away. She would dig deeper into the grave of their friendship, just to keep the distance.

Instead, Yoongi did all of the above once, and then ceased to engage further. One visit to a door left unopened. One phone call that rang through to voicemail. One text message that never even received a read-receipt. He was too late. She had already taken to the axe and hacked the tree of their relationship to a stump, because the flowers that were blooming smelled of anything but death. They blossomed in glorious shades of hope and devotion. The tree bore a forbidden fruit that she let rot because the taste was too bittersweet; too intimate on the tip of her tongue when she took the smallest of bites in the shape of his lips.

Yoongi accepts, but refuses to forget. He cannot bear to be without the memories that are taped down in the photo album of the past seven years, albeit faded of their colour and eaten at by moths. A vanilla milkshake shared between them at the diner bar, no qualms about sharing saliva; no thoughts of indirect kisses. A hand clutched firmly at the hem of his school shirt until he would grin and throw an arm over her shoulders, tucking her into his vessel; not noticing the peculiar stares aimed at her shy eyes or his careless affection. A whisper, stolen by a midnight breeze that had the dead leaves in the gutters dancing, and encouraged her to wriggle deeper into his sweater which adorned her figure. All the while, he shivered with a smile, oblivious to the gentle knocking against his heart that did not belong to the tune of living. Rather, they mimicked the symphony of beating in time with another.

No. Yoongi cannot forget. Such memories are not poisonous. They are not tainted by her sudden, yet expected neglect of the truth that she so arduously demanded. That she received barely a glimpse of, though it was still enough for her to cower away.

Anger boils his stomach raw with its vicious tongue of flame as the days pass on; as the earth rotates without her. But forgiveness has been ready to extinguish the fire since the very moment she spun on her heel, and ran with no expectations of him trying to catch up.

They are not selfish. The world made them this way. Soulmates thrown into a war zone that was bound to tear them apart from the beginning.

Yoongi leaves for college two months after the great contretemps that severed the red string linking their pinkies and hearts. A new chapter, his parents insist. A time to start anew and breathe a fresher air that no longer tastes of honeysuckle and her laughter. A city that does not remind him of her cum on the back of his throat, nor her heartbeat in the silence of his bedroom.

Little do they know that Yoongi makes sure to bookmark the pages of her with the remnants of their scarlet thread. Horribly tattered at the ends. Nothing that a needle cannot mend.

THREE YEARS LATER...

Yoongi is dying. An overdramatic statement, but he would not be surprised if it were the honest truth.

An earthquake is taking place in his head. Sandpaper has replaced the surface of his tongue. Sunlight that drips between the drapes like honey feels akin to daggers against his squinting eyelids, rather than drizzling sweetness. Draped across his bare stomach is an arm that holds no familiarity. Yoongi has little to no recollection of what happened after he lost a game of beer pong with Seokjin last night. Cue internal damnation.

When he subtly shifts against the foreign mattress, the aroma of honeysuckle and vanilla arises from the lithe body laying facedown beside him. Bird nest hair conceals her make-up smudged face. A shiver that is neither unpleasant nor welcoming irritates his skin. He wonders if that is the reason why he ended up going home with her last night. The perfume of his nightmares.

“Morning,” croaks from beneath the midnight fluff, and Yoongi stills in his motion of exiting the situation. He fixes his eyes on the girl, vaguely concerned that she thinks this might have been more than what he was intending. It would not be the first time.

“You don’t mind me heading out, right? Got things to do.” Yoongi half-smirks. He spots his shirt draped over her desk chair and decidedly makes a beeline for it, stumbling when his hangover decides to drag his head by the nails down to Hell. “That was a lie. Jus’ hate awkward morning after shit.”

Yoongi almost gets down onto his knees to praise whoever is watching him from above when he discovers his underwear tucked nicely into the crotch of his jeans. He slips the both of them on, and then grabs his shoes.

“You and me alike,” the agreement is followed by a chuckle, which quickly dissolves into coughing. It seems like her night was just as rough as his own. Her heaving lungs sound like cigarettes.

“Well, it was nice fucking with you,” Yoongi says as a way of goodbye, and the girl, once her partial asphyxiation has calmed, half-heartedly lifts her hand in a wave. She does not bother to remove her face from the pillow and reveal her identity. He wonders if she even remembers who he is, too.

Thankfully, no other housemates are spotted on his Walk of Shame out of her room. All of them must either be still in bed, or in the same situation as he, but elsewhere. Yoongi, in a true streak of unbelievable luck in such an unlucky world, spots his cell phone upon the kitchen counter. Lighting up the screen, he discovers four missed calls from Seokjin, all sent in the earliest hours of the morning. There is a single message from Hoseok, received eight minutes ago.

Received [11:12AM]: Jung Hoseok

need me to come save u from some persistent hoe, damsel in distress?

Delivered [11:20AM]: Jung Hoseok

eat my ass

Received [11:21AM]: Jung Hoseok

oh baby don’t tempt me

shake shack on 5th?

This is not an unusual morning for Yoongi. Truly, it is his every single Saturday and Sunday (sometimes Thursdays, as well) since branching out and making friends within his Engineering major.

Jung Hoseok, of chocolate brown locks and a billion watt smile, is the campus known partygoer. He is greeted to every frat weekend, and welcomed by every night club within a twenty-mile radius of their university with open arms. He is gifted all of the VIP tickets, he receives all of the free rounds. Duly crowned as the royalty of their university party life.

Kim Seokjin, on the other hand, hones popularity within his charm and phenomenal appearance of slicked back blonde hair and a physique refined by hours at the gym. He is the A-grade student who finishes his assignments weeks before they are due, while still having enough spare time on the weekends to get absolutely smashed. Well, until he is sobbing and calling Hoseok and Yoongi. Or, on the other hand, is waking up the next morning with three unknown figures tangled amongst his sheets and limbs.

There is another, Park Jimin, who has been Hoseok’s best friend for the past four years. He can compete with a flute of champagne for effervescence. Since he majors in Theatre Arts, Yoongi only sees him amongst sweltering bodies while they are drunk or high, or both. But that is the thing about Jimin, with his misleading half-moon grin, and his jet black hair that frames a baby face. He is in the thick of the student body drug scene. All actors do it, Hoseok had once said, and Yoongi never questioned it. He is unsure if he has ever seen the guy without blown pupils or reddened scleras; a jitter to his voice and an incessant urge to be moving. Jimin is a nice person, nonetheless.

When Yoongi stumbles out of the apartment complex, he is not sure whether he should be concerned about the fact that his car is parked (albeit very crookedly) in the student parking lot, directly across the footpath. He is usually never prone to drink-driving. The boys always ensure that everyone catches cabs to their homes, or to their one-night-stand home-away-from-homes. But Yoongi must have managed to sneak around them.

Or, they were simply too intoxicated to even realise.

Delivered [11:27AM]: Jung Hoseok

I drank and drove

Received [11:27AM]: Jung Hoseok

fuckin idiot

Received [11:28AM]: Jung Hoseok

come pick me up then I’m at home lol

Ever the delight, that guy. Yoongi makes a mental note to cross Hoseok off the funeral attendance list for when his car bends metal around a tree trunk, or runs through a red light and finds its driver side crushed by an oncoming heavy-loader because he was too drunk on vodka or high on molly to swerve and brake.

Opening Google Maps on his cell phone, Yoongi is provided with three routes to get back home. He also notices that the campus he is currently on rings painfully familiar with a dream that was held by a girl deep in his past; never far enough to forget. The bitter acid that forms in the back of his throat at the memory is quickly swallowed down, burning less painfully in the pit of his stomach. He is beyond used to feeling flames eating away in there. The walls went numb long ago.

Driving back to his own college only takes ten minutes, and then another two while waiting for Hoseok to exit their apartment building. He, alike Yoongi, appears crippled by a hangover. Chocolate hair is mussed into a whirlwind; usually glowing skin dimmed down to neutral. The black shirt he wears is on inside out, the tag flapping beneath his chin as he somewhat skips over to the passenger side of the car, forever wrapped in delight. Even when the guy feels as though he has been dead for a century after a night like the last.

“You look like you made a pitstop at Hell and Satan fucked you ten ways to Sunday,” is the first thing Hoseok comments as he gets into the vehicle with his bright smile. The kind that somehow manages to glare like real, golden sunlight, and encourages Yoongi to wince away from the luminosity. His head seems to be splitting down the centre.

“Likewise,” Yoongi weakly mutters back, putting the gear into second and taking off. He ignores the indifferent comment made by Hoseok of: Wouldn’t mind that. Bet the Devil has top dicking game.

The drive onward is silent of words with their hangovers thick in the air. Only the radio plays softly between them. Yoongi mentally attempts to piece the fragments of his vague memories from last night together.

It started at a frat party, held by the fraternity that this one overly nice guy, Wang Jackson, currently leads. He was also the guy that gave Yoongi two ecstasy pills, which he popped roughly twenty minutes before the game of beer pong that Seokjin insisted they both play. Normally, Seokjin is not one for such party games, but the exception was that they were versing two girls he wanted to fuck. From then on, everything was lost in murky rivers of being too drunk, feeling too high.

Yoongi wonders how on earth he was able to score a night in an anonymous girl’s bed whilst in such a state. She was probably just as plastered as him.

Hoseok suddenly screeches when Yoongi almost rear-ends another vehicle as he distractedly tries to park in front of the restaurant. He swears to every entity that the sound makes the world end within his head. Aspirin and at least a week of sleep is required, pronto.

“I wasn’t going to hit it,” Yoongi grunts as he switches off the ignition, unbuckling his seatbelt.

Hoseok, as if to make the current struggle of living more of a damnation, slams the door with mild indignation. Glass shatters inside of Yoongi’s skull, and he tries to not collapse into a ball right then and there on the bitumen. Hitting his head against the gravel and falling unconscious sounds like less pain than the pounding migraine that inhabits his brain right now.

“The fuck you weren’t. Your headlight would have clipped the boot of that car if I didn’t help you pay attention.”

Normally, Yoongi would bite back until his point won. But his internal struggle to stay standing overrules all persistence to argue. “Whatever.”

The restaurant is particularly full for a Sunday, mostly with college students, some that the pair can partially recognise from their own campus, other parties. Everyone, of course, is either deadbeat hungover or hitting their comedown. Just like them.

A girl seated near the counter sparks Yoongi’s familiarity as one who he has been inside of beneath sweaty bedsheets. He barely manages a nod at her when they pass to make their orders, more out of pain than shame. Hoseok flirts ostentatiously with the young man at the till, offering a lewd wink that causes roses to blossom upon the cheeks of the employee. Yoongi wonders how on earth this guy has the energy to be so amorous when he is currently dragging his feet through a hangover. And ordering the greasiest meal on the menu.

As always, Yoongi skims past the words vanilla milkshake, ignores the gentle tug at his heart, and orders an iced tea. The three minutes spent waiting on the orders are ones of silent, slow-build regret as the hangovers claim their souls. Quicksand of the mind.

Once Hoseok grabs his tray of grease and Yoongi takes the perspiring plastic lidded cup of liquefied hangover cure, the pair find an empty table by the windows. Immediately, Hoseok launches into conversation, simultaneous with wrapping his mouth around the burger dripping with melted cheese.

“So, how was Seulgi?”

Yoongi cringes at his lack of memory, faintly assumes it may be the girl he abandoned no more than an hour ago to her asphyxiating lungs of smoke. “Who?”

“The girl you went home with last– Fuck, how can you not even remember that?” Hoseok drops his burger, throws his hands up in exasperation and then slams them down on the table. Yoongi swears something implodes within his head at the splitting sound. Probably his brain. “You really don’t give a shit, do you? Just fuck and leave. Rinse and repeat. What about feelings, man? Ever thought about making a connection?”

“As long as it feels good, that’s all that matters right?” Yoongi shrugs, sipping at his iced tea. “We’re all dying anyway. No time for love in this world.”

Hoseok blanks. “You’re really depressing, y’know? A serious downer.”

“Sorry that the sunshine doesn’t shoot out of my ass like it does with you, pal.”

“Maybe you should start learning from me.”

“I’d rather die.”

Hoseok slams his hands on the table once more, and Yoongi genuinely thinks about slicing them off. “There you go with death again. Do you really want to live your life being so miserable? Pessimism will send you to your grave sooner rather than later. It’s a proven fact that optimists live fuller lives.”

At that, Yoongi grins razorblades. “My one true wish.”

“Okay, enough,” Hoseok shivers, lips pulling into a pursed, triangular shape that flags down the end of the morbid subject. “Your obsession with ceasing to exist is going to start rubbing off on me. That girl who made you this way must have been a real shocker.”

Yoongi, at those simply spoken words, blanches. Ice water rushes in a flood over his skin, halting his motion of lifting the plastic cup to his lips. “What did you just say?”

But Hoseok only blinks, wedges four crinkle cut fries into his mouth, speaks before swallowing, “The girl. ___? You told–” Then, he is choking on the fried potatoes, eyes tearing up before he determinedly drinks his whole glass of water to clear the airway. Yoongi, all the while, continues to stare in shock. “Fuck me, man. I almost died and you just sat there like–”

“What exactly are you saying?”

Hoseok, after a few laboured breaths, sighs. “Jesus, you really don’t remember anything from last night, do you? It was after beer pong, right before you went home with Seulgi. When she walked past, you turned to me and started freaking out, blabbering how she smelled just like this ___ girl before you stormed over to her and began angrily making out with her against the kitchen table. She seemed pretty into it, so I guess that’s how you ended up at her place.”

Oh, shit.

The finer details are coming back to him now. The moment the girl, Seulgi, had strutted past was while Yoongi was attempting to control his rolling eyeballs from circling all the way back into his head. The aroma of her perfume, distinct honeysuckle and vanilla, had straightened him out within an instant as it wafted from her skin and into his senses. His dilated pupils had flicked back to attention. The drug and alcohol infused fog that was looming heavy around his mind had cleared for the faintest of seconds, because he was so sure that it was her, it was her, it was her.

The ocean of bodies had barely parted when he charged himself between the waves of limbs. Yoongi had pushed and shoved and waded his way to the home of the scent that his mouth watered for; that his every fibre craved. When he grabbed at her wrist, it was with the expectancy of her face. But when it was not her that was watching on with an oblivious, mildly curious expression, his heart had plummeted to the core of the earth. Shrivelled up and burning within molten lava.

Yet it did not stop him from taking her lips between his teeth. An unfamiliar kiss against his tongue that was dirt in comparison to the succulent heaven he knew, belonging to a girl he had bookmarked with torn red strings. He grimly wonders if he had moaned her name while he was fucking the poor girl, Seulgi the smoker, last night. That would not be another first.

Hoseok finishes wolfing down his chips and takes a large gulp of his shake. All the while, Yoongi is having this brain splitting revelation that makes death truly not sound all that bad right now.

“Do you wanna talk about it?” Hoseok asks.

In response, Yoongi drops his forehead to the table with a bang that resonates around the restaurant. The sound catches the brief attention of the customers seated around them, until they realise he is just being dramatic. Unfortunately, not collapsed into an unforeseen coma. Or, you know, dead.

“I’m a great listener,” Hoseok encourages, all sweet and singsong. Yoongi presses his forehead harder against the wooden grain of the tabletop. “I already know part of it from what you were moaning and groaning about last night. The love of your life, or some shit.”

At that, in a quick movement that makes him lightheaded, Yoongi sits back up straight and lays his palms flat against the table. His gaze rests firmly on Hoseok, who suddenly pales, as if aware that he might have accidentally dipped his feet in poisonous waters. Ones that Yoongi would have no qualms about dousing Hoseok’s entire body in until the acid disintegrates the bones of the sunshine man.

Suffocating golden beauty was his speciality, after all.

“We were the same. Morbid and sad. But she was lovely. Born in the Culling year and everything. We were best friends back home.” Yoongi speaks quick in a mutter, nervously tapping his nails against the tabletop before running the same hand through his hair. The incessant pounding of his head has worsened, thumping in time with her name as it loops in a continuum through his mind. “But that’s all she thought we could be. Anyway, don’t mention her again. That was a mistake, she’s not worth talking about anymore.”

Hoseok nods, shrugs indifferently. “No worries, I get it. My lips are sealed.”

The conversation stalls to make way for silent eating, and Yoongi allows himself the smallest of moments to indulge in the sober thought of her after so long. He wonders what she must be doing right now. She would have finished up high school, endured the blood and sweat of exams, earned a score that can become meaningless once the clock strikes midnight on her eighteenth birthday. She would be twenty years old now, three-years-aged from the seventeen-year-old girl that taught him curses are not all so bad. Especially when they taste like the sea on his lips, and can moan so beautifully just by the work of his fingers.

But she was much more than that. Greater than a feeling induced by numbness. She was delight singing off-key in the passenger seat of his car. She was comfort tucked beneath a blanket upon a vanilla-flavoured diner, with the moon to keep them company. She was love curled in a calm smile, in star-strung eyes that always searched for him in the crowds, where nobody else mattered but each other.

Yoongi loathes how they screwed up so badly. How they ruined themselves to a split second of lust that felt more driven by their hearts than their desire. That may have been to forget the momentary pain, though was in fact their bottled up feelings, spilling all over his bedsheets where they soon after lay. And it was there that they were able to dwell in it, mull it over, become consumed it by until they were convincing themselves that it was wrong, wrong, wrong.

For more than the hundredth, even thousandth time, he wonders what would have happened if they had never hit that kink in the road. If they were never set on that collision course. If he had reached out and grabbed her wrist before she could sprint into the shadows and out of his heart. If he had whispered don’t leave me against her lips. If she were not so afraid of love in a world that suffocates honesty.

Too many if’s that he wasted time on; enough to let her escape.

Knives slice through his back and drive into his heart. Here, Yoongi remembers precisely why he never thinks of her when his mind is not clouded by white dust on the tip of his nose, or the acrid burn that stays slick on the back of his throat. Maybe, that is why he is content with spending the later end of his weeks in a drug-and-alcohol-induced illusion, since he becomes numb and invincible to the blades and spears that the memories tainted with her bear. He can think of her without the agony that the pair of them lived within. He can remember her touch without feeling as though her fingertips will shatter him like glass.

Hoseok suddenly severs the reverie straight down the centre. Yoongi, for once, is grateful.

“Jimin wants to smoke weed at his place. Wanna join?”

Usually, Yoongi would immediately be up for such an activity. He has nothing to lose anymore. Nowhere else to be. He left everything behind in his backyard, within the shadows that the large oak created. Right where he tasted infatuation and honesty in the crevices of her lips. Right where he realised that love in such a godawful world would be completely worth it if he was spending such affection on her.

But today, something holds him back. Whether it be the desperation for a shower, or this murderous hangover, or the unnerving memory of her bloody knuckles amongst ocean waves, Yoongi is unsure. The straw poised between his lips loses the watered down taste of tea, and starts to suck at air and chipped ice.

“Nah, I need aspirin and fifteen hours of sleep,” Yoongi huffs, dropping the empty cup and grinding the heels of his palms against the burn that thinly veils his eyes. “If I hang out with you any longer, I may fall into a stress-induced coma.”

“I’m delightful,” Hoseok quips, and Yoongi cannot help but twitch his lips. “You know what makes aspirin work quicker?”

“What?”

“Snorting it.”

Yoongi barks out a short, fierce laugh. “Pessimism may kill me, but drugs are gonna bury you.” There is no malice in his tone, no matter of care for wellbeing, just genuine fact. He stands up, jostling his keys. “And after the shit that went down last night, I don’t think I will be doing lines ever again.”

“Don’t eat your words, man,” Hoseok waggles his eyebrows, pushing away his tray and standing up. The pair begin their departure, but not without Hoseok blowing a kiss to the flustered cashier. “Ten bucks that on club night this Friday, you will have your nose pressed to a dirty basin like a cheap crack whore.”

Yoongi, amid his head-splitting ache, manages to file away the mental note of ensuring he brings a ten dollar bill this weekend. He reaches out his hand to the deal and clasps palms with Hoseok, shaking on a bet that he has already lost. Both of them can see it from miles away.

“Deal.”

Well, you only live once, they say.

“Jesus fucking– Hey asshole, your cutting game is weak,” Hoseok whines, forefinger pressed to the side of his powdered nostril. He inhales hard and winces as the rocks catch on the flesh. “It feels like I just sniffed shards of glass– Ugh, yeah my nose is bleeding now. Douche.”

“Shut your ass up or your free line days are over,” Jimin grunts, licking his dry lips and bending down to the basin to shoot up his own line. He tosses his head back with a hiss, blocking his nose and sniffing repeatedly. “Okay, alright, you’re right. But excuse me for not being able to crush this shit into baby powder on a goddamn basin.”

While the pair argue without malice, sweat gathers in Yoongi’s palms. His mouth waters as he stares into the dimly lit mirror, cracked right down the centre and separating his face into two. The pounding bass that thumps on the walls of the bathroom; the light bickering between Jimin and Hoseok; all of it becomes background noise as he squints, blinks, observes the saucers of his black pupils. The slight buzz that coats his hearing translates into his vision, and his surroundings attain a shimmering quality.

The pill that he popped two hours ago is already reaching its comedown. A dud. Or maybe, the ratio of ecstasy to dishwashing powder, rat poison, and all of the other toxic filler that was used in it (and is clearly stated on a package somewhere to not be consumed) was minimal in this particular batch. A cheap tactic to produce more product. College dealers are becoming stingy as fuck, lately.

“Move,” Yoongi mutters, elbowing a giggling Jimin out of the way.

He retrieves a small baggie of cocaine from the bottom of a cigarette packet, and takes to the credit card to start sorting it into thin lines. He licks the pad of his forefinger and swipes up the white dust that still clings to the plastic edge, rubbing it into his gums. Already too far gone to react when the acrid taste hits the back of his throat.

“Yoongi, what was it you were saying the other week? Never gonna do lines again?” Hoseok jeers, poking at Yoongi’s ribs as he rolls up the ten dollar bill and blatantly ignores the comments that bounce about the bathroom. Hoseok is practically tripping over his own words, sentences blurring together. “And look at you now, going at it like a pro! Didn’t you drop only two hours ago? Fuck me, this shit is working quick. I feel like I’m spitting bullets. Hey, that better not be the ten dollars you owe me–”

“It is,” Yoongi bluntly remarks. Then, he is positioning one end of the rolled up note to his nostril, aligning the opposite opening to the first line of cocaine, and quickly inhaling it all in a refined, unpleasant hit.

Yoongi makes quick work of the second and third lines. Not able to dwell too long on how many germs this dirty basin must be swarming with, for the intensity of his high slams into him like a truck. Yoongi’s eyes roll as he throws his head back, loudly exhaling.

Hoseok snatches the crumpled bill out of his hands. “Thanks, asshole. My hard-earned money is not only covered in drugs and bacteria, but also your blood. Go clean yourself up.”

Yoongi wipes his bloody nose on the back of his hand. He has no time to dwell on crimson rivers and cleanliness. It is time to drown in the sound that is leaking underneath the bathroom door and sliding across the tiles. Grabbing him by the ankles. Luring him into the heat of bodies and the dazzling strobes that intensify the ecstatic craze of his mind.

Effortlessly, Yoongi lets the techno notes take control of his limbs. Barely dancing, just simply swaying. Allowing the blood and bone that surrounds his form to shove him side-to-side. Head tilted back, he gapes at the fluorescent rainbow that drips from the black ceiling in brilliant, over-exposed colour.

The night at the club is alike any other. Hoseok and Jimin are dancing with more coordination, more momentum than they should be capable of after consuming so many drugs. Seokjin is wedged into the corner of the leather couches, a girl straddling his lap and very obviously grinding against his crotch, while another latches her mouth to his neck, fiddling acrylic nails down the first three buttons of his black dress shirt. Yoongi, as always, lets the numbing hum consume his being. Lets it drag him into the limbo betwixt life and death; reality and imagination; heart screaming against his ribcage while the lights entertain, distract.

He distantly believes he might have taken it a little too far tonight. Forced too many toxins through his bloodstream. Overworking the vessel that has barely kept him standing as it is since she left.

Oh. Oh god, that is right. Her. Herherher. Yoongi can think of her right now in this near comatose state where his body becomes invincible. The knives that stab through his back turn into plastic rather than metal, rebounding against the muscle. Or perhaps, still cutting through, though he cannot feel a thing.

Star-shine smile against a backdrop of pale blue sky. Laughter of the gods. Red dirt knees washed by a backyard hose. Electricity fizzling between joined palms. Lips like vanilla milkshakes and eyes drowning in expanses of infinity.

We will always protect each other.

Shallow insults made out of adoration. A car swimming in the salt of tears. Four hands touching dusty ivory keys and performing the sound of their love in terrible harmony. Blue icy poles licked up from wrists where they drip, drip, drip.

Your laugh sounds like home. Is that weird?

Her tongue, behind his teeth. His tongue, pressed to her cunt. Bloody knuckles cradled in his hands like the truth exposed. A cello and viola, they are. The End of The World by Skeeter Davis. Vicious stench of bleach.

The bleach didn’t work, Yoongi.

It’s grey, ___. It’s fucking grey.

Maybe this means you really will live until your old.

Jesus I hate you, shut up.

You are such a terrible liar.

It feels so good. Yoongi feels exhilarated. Alive. His heart is about to burst out of his ribcage and be trampled by the bodies that push and shove. He wants to die by these thoughts, he truly does. How pathetically unromantic. Hatred tastes like love. Another lie. Could never hate her. She just wears feet that betray the truth.

Wait.

There.

In the crowd.

Yoongi thinks he must be hallucinating, that he really did take it too far this evening. For there is a face across the dance floor that he has not seen, has nonstop thought of, since his feet were rooted to the earth in the shadows of his yard three years ago. When the face was turning away, never to be seen again.

He blinks, grinds the heels of his palms against his bloodshot eyes, looks again.

Has he died?

Lipstick clings like blood to a mouth. Smoky eyes of burned out charcoals, smeared with sweat, reside beneath arched eyebrows. The kind that have always had a querying angle, as if constantly doubting. Thick tresses are styled into a mess that he is all too familiar with; that has stirred his own heart into a whirlwind alike too many times for him to count. The dress that clings to the figure is all black, strapless, dipping in a tempting arrow between breasts and glorifying legs that sheen with sin. Hunched shoulders are cloaked by a leather jacket that screams bad intentions, yet hides a heart of gold.

If this is a hallucination, Yoongi never wants it to end. He wants to stay high for eternity and a day.

If he truly is dead, then he is more than glad to be welcomed through the gates of Heaven. Or maybe, this is closer to Hell.

She delicately sips her cocktail and glances between the half-circle of people that huddle close. Friends. Her crimson lips move to seemingly form responses.

A helpless bout of hope suddenly starts to bloom poison ivy inside of Yoongi’s chest. Because that is the thing, he has hallucinated not once, but twice in the past. So, he understands a little of the logistics. He knows in the dot points of the symptoms that imagined bodies may interact with life, but life will never legitimately return the favour.

Though the people surrounding her like shadows, without a doubt, respond to the shapes that her lips create. They laugh in perfect harmony when her chin tilts back, eyes scrunch, and she looks fifteen all over again.

Convenience plays its hand when Hoseok walks within arms reach, heading straight for the bathroom, fists already rummaging in his pockets for the next hit. He stops stock-still when Yoongi clasps a hand around his elbow. For a brief second, Hoseok stares him down with wide eyes, almost as if he cannot recognise the person that the hand belongs to. But then he is frowning with familiarity, and the boy of silver hair and a stone heart is scrambling to find words.

“Hoseok,” Yoongi barely manages, suffocating on his own voice. “H-Hey, man. Tell me, can you see that girl over there?”

“What? In the leather jacket? Yeah, why–“

Before Hoseok can even finish his sentence, Yoongi is throwing himself into the clutches of the crowd, parting the sea of bodies and wading over to her. She is real, this is no hallucination, she is real and here and oh my fucking god, she looks precisely the same. Nothing has changed, nothing has changed. They never kissed, they never fought, they never nearly fucked and ruined everything.

Yoongi does what he should have done three years ago before she was swallowed up in the oblivion of a black hole. A place where she could look out and see, but he was only ever faced by thick banks of darkness.

Yoongi reaches out, can feel every fibre of his hand, the movement of his knuckles, the stretch of muscle. Time seems to thin and extend, pulling out until seconds drag into minutes, where his movements are ones of underwater. Glacial and paced.

Contact is made, and she turns. No, whirls, like a tornado set on destroying him where he stands. A storm that he embraced to be ruined by long ago, though she was too kind; too selfish to let her rains come crashing down on him.

Her skin, beneath his palm, is searing flame. The pulse that flutters in her wrist is absolutely genuine.

When her eyes land upon Yoongi, it is as though she is seeing the ghost of the ouija board they did when they were kids all over again. Her complexion drains, bloody lips parting in silent horror. She seems to shrink into nothing but a speck.

Before Yoongi can tell whether she is going to speak love or claw out a scream, her wrist is being yanked from his grip and she is running away. Just like the first time.

Yoongi wonders if this is what dying feels like. If this is how it must feel to have someone dig their nails into your chest, cutting through flesh and bone to reach the vessel that only thrums because it avoided the monthly sentence. To have it yanked out from where it pulses, disposed in the dirt where it turns black and forgotten.

A rush consumes him. Before he can completely grasp onto any sense of abandoned rationality, his feet are moving.

Instinct, more than anything, directs him. Yoongi shoves and ignores the empty accusations made by those who are pushed, squinting and blinking when his eyes start to betray him; shuddering figures into doubles before they become single solid beings again. The strobes that soak everything in violent pink and deep ocean blue do absolutely nothing to help him.

Yet still, he surges. Must appear like a desperate fool when he bursts out of the club entrance, gasping and gulping for air. There, he realises that, from the moment she ran, he had been holding his breath as though he could not bear to let the oxygen they momentarily shared escape his lungs.

A stranger swathed in shadows asks if he is okay, and blindly, Yoongi waves them off. He stands up from his hunched position to take a few paces forward, right into the line of action where other club-goers stand to smoke, or wait for the bodyguard to allow them entry. He keeps still and stands on his toes, despite that his body jitters and seems to bend and wave beyond his own command. Surveying. Searching.

There.

Standing on the curb, she hunches into her jacket as though she is hiding, rather than feeling the chill of the air. Blue smoke plumes around her, dancing in a veil until it disperses. Though by that time, another curtain of toxins has already risen to take its place. Yoongi, for all his feet were worth in the club, is cemented to the pavement. His bones are now of lead, blood like tar.

Go to her. He urges himself, lifts his left leg and barely manages to plant it forward without toppling over. Gotoheryouneedtogogogo.

She looks over her shoulder, eyes locking.

But she does not run.

And just like that, his limbs become air, drained of all their weight. As if the consent of her willing to stay is all he ever needed. A ticket to approach the sun in all of her might and maybe (just maybe), she may not sear him into ash.

Yoongi comes to a stop five feet away. He firmly closes his eyes, and when he opens them again, she is still there. Watching on with an expression that he, in all of his years of knowing and not knowing her, has never seen before. Familiar, yet unrecognisable.

The cocaine sharpens her every feature. It defines the slope of her nose, the angle of her cheekbones, the arch of her brows, and the dip of her cupid’s bow in unadulterated clarity. Refined beyond a perfection he once saw her as, beneath the gentle light of the moon all but three years ago.

She appears to tremble. Yoongi is unsure whether it is the piercing cold of the evening, or the quiver of his pupils with the high. Perhaps, it is consternation over the boy she so earnestly escaped, now standing mere feet before her, high as a fucking kite. Soaked in the unfair stench of lost love that she long ago decided to associate with the putrid scent of despise.

She is the deer. He is the headlights.

When Yoongi parts his lips, the inside of his mouth feels like a volcano. Bone dry. Threatening to erupt with the slightest misplaced movement, to spew vulgarity held dormant since she decided to cut the ties with her bare hands.

“Say something,” Yoongi manages, taking a tentative step forward, ignoring the pain that fleets through his heart when she shuffles slightly back. “Anything. ___, please.”

In silence, she observes, analyses, swallows him in from head to toe. Yoongi wonders if she is more deprived than she first realised, greedily taking in all that she can while he exists in scarcely coherent state before her. He wonders if the rush that devastates her being is unidentifiable, the deja vu near sickening, as though everything she has held back since the moment within the umbra of the oak tree is starting to submerge from the places she confined them within. He wonders if her heart demands to soar, yet she tugs down on the reigns, knowing full well what occurs when it disobeys. A veteran of past experience in the field of the forbidden.

Yoongi can see that she will not let that happen again. She must believe that neither of them will survive the second time around.

“Are you high?” Despite that the words come out with a tinge of insult, they still hold that blue velvet quality, the lustrous flow that drapes his skin in years of comfort and warmth. It feels like coming home. He wishes to pluck the chords of her vocals from the air and tuck them to his chest for safe-keeping; to never let the gorgeous sound escape his hearing ever again.

Yoongi tilts his lips in a tiny smirk, a miracle in itself that he can shift his features into an expression other than awe. He fixates his gaze on the pale cloud she exhales. “Are you smoking?”

As if to spite him, she takes an especially long drag, eyes watering and all before she breathes out the smoke between smiling teeth. Her iron exterior cracks, only barely, yet it is still something. Enough to make his bones feel as though they are melting into butter.

“Touché.”

They are encompassed in private silence, consumed by the presence of one another. Yoongi, in all of his feeble bravery, takes another step forward, and this time, she stays still, save for the ash that she flicks from the tip of her cigarette. The flecks stir dizzily in the air that he disturbs with his precarious advance.

One pace. Two more. This near, the oxygen is stolen right from his lungs by the pleasance of her perfume pervading his space. The smoke hardly manages to veil the distinct honeysuckle that only she suits. On any other entity, it is utterly ersatz. The tension coiled in her shoulders noticeably loosens, newfound tenderness smudging at the circumference of her irises. Almost as though she is daring to give in. Head losing to heart.

Yoongi can feel her exhalation skitter across his cheeks. The cigarette is abandoned in the gutter. In one fell swoop, he could crumble her resolve right where she stands. The walls of the maze are collapsing, yet he knows the route like the back of his own hand.

When he focuses on the plush of her lips, he can still see the truths nestled in the corners. The secrets that only he could ever notice. She is a puzzle that he has solved a million times over, and he does not intend to kid himself with false hope. But by the way she is staring at him right now like she is being suffocated by her own mistakes, he can almost think that she is letting him get all of the answers right.

He presses his nose to the glass surrounding her heart.

“___! Jesus, I’ve been looking for you!”

It is a voice that calls in a tone dripping with depth, the sound of bottomless oceans, and it tears the two of them apart within a split instant. The approaching owner, a tall stretch of darkness, a shadow wrung out and pulled taught over muscle and bone, draws her attention immediately. Her hair fans out in her movement to acknowledge the new presence, and Yoongi soaks himself in a waft of ambrosia because christ, it really is her.

The guy seems nearly sober. His gaze passes through Yoongi as though he is not truly looking. Could not really care. “Who’s this?”

She hesitates, minuscule, though Yoongi sees it. “He’s a friend from home.”

He almost wants to laugh out loud. In disgust; in disbelief. The word friend has betrayed him so much throughout his lifetime. Even more so when it lacks the tag of best.

“The taxi is almost here,” the guy says after a brusque oh, gaze flitting away from Yoongi in an instant. He takes her by the shoulders. “Let’s go.”

“O-Okay.”

He has never seen her this nervous and unsure. Yoongi almost reaches out to grab her wrist and stop them both, but he is terrified she may yank it away again. Third time is a charm to break a heart. The only solace he clings to is the fact that, as she is whirled, her chin tilts back. The pair of eyes that deceived him so long ago anchor to his own with barely a hint of a smile.

“Next time,” she mouths, her voice ceasing to wash over his skin. But Yoongi can hear the words with perfect clarity in his mind, no matter the shroud of drugs that mantles his every other thought. She shines through, crystal clear, like she always has.

Standing on the curb as headlights swing by, dousing him in bright white while other club patrons holler and scream as though they hope for the stars to hear, Yoongi realises something. No hallucination could ever compare, nor think to perfectly replicate the experience that is her standing before him.

He stares at where she stood, merely a breath away. Faintly, in the silver lustre of the moon, Yoongi can make out the scintillations of glass fragments against the pavement where her obduracy had started to shatter.

Next time comes at a small convenience store, no more than a week after their encounter. It must be near three in the morning. An hour, nonetheless, that girls who run from truths should not be.

She fashions cheeks that shimmer with vulnerability, and a black sweater a size too large. They are matched with thin tights that hide legs known to take his breath away, and a pair of battered white sneakers locked at the ankles. Comfortable; approachable. She sits with a cup of steaming instant ramen, intently swilling the contents with pinched chopsticks, hood pulled over her hair in a meagre attempt to appear nonexistent.

As always, she shines too brightly to ever be completely hidden away.

Lit up with florescent, Yoongi sees her right there, through the window. Never for a moment did he doubt it was her as he leisurely strolled by the store. The glint of her damp face caught his eye before he had managed to completely walk past. He knows those tears like his own secrets.

Here, the subway shudders beneath his feet. Yoongi almost expects the train to travel explosively through the bitumen and crash straight through his heart. Maybe, with it smeared across the glass pane, she will finally understand the honest truth. She will see the gory details, painted out in crimson, that he can never stop loving her.

She, still unaware of his presence, barely flinches when Yoongi stands directly before the window; a thin pane of glass their only barrier. It is no more than a few seconds of him staring with a faint smile curving his lips, hands wedged into the pockets of his hoodie, that she calmly comes to a still in the process of lifting ramen-laden chopsticks to her lips. By the time her eyes have lifted to his own, slowly flaring with recognition, he is already entering the store.

Yoongi takes his time. Enough for her to notice that the person who just trudged through the entrance is well and truly him. Enough for her to forget the half-eaten ramen cup, abandon ship, and escape him for the third––or is it fourth?––time. Yoongi can no longer recall. The numbers are melding into a figure too many, to say the least.

He carefully selects the most bearable noodles that he can squeeze into his tight student budget, then approaches the counter to exchange coins with the clerk. Yet, the moment he turns on his heel, she is still there, observing his stride through the reflection in the window. Her expression, cast in the glaring white light, is one of forbearing.

For a sparse moment, Yoongi considers waiting; providing more of an opportunity for her to escape. Though he quickly finds himself completely fucking that idea off. If he does not continue moving forward, the courage will slink back into the shadows, and he will barrel himself right out of the store once more.

At a pace as languid as he can retain, he strolls down the aisle until he is standing right at the food bar, beside where she sits. He quietly peels open his cup, empties the seasonings inside, and fills it with hot water. Then, he circles around her ever-shrinking frame and sits on the stool to her right.

Silence has never felt so suffocating. This is newfound territory between them; their instances together have always been filled with their voices. But she was the one to build the wall, and she damn well knows that Yoongi will not be the one to bring it down to ruin.

She did this. She must deal the first blow.

Two heartbeats unite at a steady pace. Her lips part, and the quiet is so dense that Yoongi hears them separate. The sound is almost comforting. It rings with the familiarity of past conversations, had whilst lying side-by-side in the belly of darkness. It is the soft noise she would make before her younger voice asked a question about the stars, or idly commented on the pathetic performance that is existing in a world which crushes those who dare to defy the unspoken illegality of love. A world which strips your soul from beneath you, so effortlessly, by the bold-black of your name, inked on paper.

The click of his chopsticks snapping apart echoes around the store. Her voice is quick to follow.

“I can never find waffles as good as home around here.”

Yoongi freezes, stunned silent. He momentarily wonders whether it is due to her voice resembling that of nirvana. But he is quick to realise it is because he is completely unsure of how to respond to such an elementary statement.

She speaks as if the past three years were merely a blank spot in his memory. A period of amnesia where, for the entire thirty-six months, they were still best friends; red strings uncut and remaining to be tightly coiled around the knuckles of their pinkies. Or perhaps, an expanse of time where he was living in a nightmare in which she had become invisible, though she could still see everything in refined clarity.

A thickness builds in his throat, the welt of a sob. But it burns like furious indignation.

“That’s the only thing you have to say?” Yoongi, in all of his venomous tone, stabs his chopsticks at a vulnerable leek floating in the broth. He pretends that it is her heart. “Honestly, ___. Fuck you.”

She sighs, as if he is behaving childishly. “I know, fuck me. But you and I both know that saying I’m sorry will never cut the cake with what happened between us. It’s like shouting into the abyss and expecting something good to come from it.”

He realises, as she always used to be, that she is right. Apologies are more like weak excuses than a resolution for travesty. And when they are confessed this late, after all the excruciating damage has worn its wear, it is like attempting to stitch up a wound that has already scarred over. There is no point. An empty avow.

“I still want to hear you say it,” Yoongi says under his breath. He scoops noodles into his mouth and slurps loudly, just because he knows she hates it.

Her cringe is almost audible. He cannot decipher if it is from the sound he makes, or the way the words taste on her tongue. “I’m sorry.”

“Say it genuinely.”

Yoongi almost jumps when he feels careful fingertips through the fabric of his sweater, laying upon his wrist. His gaze instinctively tracks to them, noticing how they still look the same, shiny oval nails with chip-free edges. A small fondness swells in his chest, which he immediately attempts to trample down. If anything, it blossoms viciously as his eyes travel up her arm, her throat, until they settle on her own.

Her gaze is neither firm nor gentle; simply watching with that ever curious contour.

“Min Yoongi.” God, only now does he realise that she has not once spoke his name since they have reunited. His stare instantly surges down to her lips, just to catch the end of them shaping around the three syllables. What a sight, it can never get old. “For everything I have done: taking advantage of you in a moment of vulnerability; kissing you back while we were both drunk; running away and ignoring your calls; being born in a timeline where the world is so undisputedly fucked up that the both of us were doomed from the very start... I am deeply, and so sincerely sorry. The profundity of my contriteness is utmost.”

Her expression is so bona fide that Yoongi has to look away. Otherwise, he truly might convince himself that her apology is the only salve that can soothe the laceration she created on his chest. He might convince himself that the pain dealt by her own hand will always be worth it if that is the way her voice will sound––cold silk against hot flesh––when she makes her amends after the blade has damaged his heart beyond repair. No matter how deep she drives the knife.

“Christ on a bike,” is all that Yoongi responds with. But even she does not seem persuaded by his dismissive tone.

The contact is ceased; her hand slinks away. They return to silent eating without him uttering a single thank you or I’m sorry, too. Neither of them expect it, either.

When she finishes first, she does not get up and leave. Rather, she rests her elbows upon the tabletop and leans her chin into her palms, directly observing his chewing. The sheer weight of her gaze is enough to lure bumps to form across Yoongi’s skin. Tiny mountains of prickled flesh that she traverses with a regardful sweep of her tentative eyes.

If Yoongi were land, she has conquered him a prodigious number of times.

“So, instant ramen is the next best bet?” Yoongi leads on from her initial comment. An attempt at conversation to shake off the sensation of her emphatic vigilance, which follows his every move. It is almost as though she is waiting for the pin to drop, expecting him to abruptly implode in a rush of accusations and insults. Ones that have tied knots around his tongue over the past three years. No, even beyond that.

Her lips are a ghost of a smile. “Ramen fits the budget.”

“True,” Yoongi chuckles, and it actually tastes sincere in the back of his throat. “But you’re wrong about the waffles. There’s a diner ten minutes from my campus that serves them up just like home.”

Yoongi does not mention how many nights he has spent there, more than in the beds of other women who taste like honeysuckle. High or intoxicated, his forehead would be pressed to the cold tabletop. He would imagine that he is at their diner, and she is sitting across from him, sipping at vanilla and about to hit him over the head with a menu while her voice sings out: Wake up!

The version that exists beside him, the real-and-now girl––beyond better than what any figment of his fantasy could ever consider creating––gapes. “You’re kidding.”

“Dead serious.”

“What campus?”

“South, at the State University.”

“Oh, that’s where–! Oh,” she says, eyes lighting up, as if she is about to say the name of a friend. But her expression instantly falters, realising he probably would not know them. “I’m there often. Funny how we’ve never run into each other throughout my entire first year.”

Absolutely fucking hilarious, Yoongi should say. Though his tongue trips into something just as dangerous.

“I’ll take you there sometime. To the diner.”

Yoongi inhales the remaining noodles spooled at the bottom of the cup. She, out the corner of his eye, worries teeth to lips; habits playing his heartstrings like a harp. A tiny crease forms at the centre of her brow, though it smooths out almost as soon as it surfaces. Her gaze flits down to where her fingers pick at the peeled back lid of the ramen cup.

“I’d like that,” and she says it in a tone that reminds him of car windows rolled all the way down and red dirt caked on their knees. It reminds him of the girl who loved him before she ran away after realising how frightening the monster of truth is up close; how sharp its fangs gleam.

Yoongi chokes on a stray string of pasta. He does not miss the glimpse of a tiny smile tilting her lips before the heel of her palm comes down hard on his back.

Once he has calmed, the pair of them discard of their rubbish and exit the convenience store. They fall into step with one another almost naturally. There is no parting of ways, nor calling for taxis. The night opens its arms and welcomes them in, four in the morning already so near, telltale in the way the pitch black spills into a vague navy across the horizon. Neither of them consider the possibility of separating and saying their goodbyes. Even if he had to go the opposite way, Yoongi would have silently agreed that it was his route too. Home may have been safe for girls to navigate in the thick of the night, but the city is crawling with monsters.

They are both prime examples to that. Living paradigms, slinking through the shadows.

They stroll at a languorous pace. Not out of tiredness, but more so to make up for lost time. It is reminiscent of their lazy saunter home from school, all but five years ago as the sun would beat its fists onto their backs. They would milk the twenty-minute walk home until it would last up to an hour, merely so they could spend as much of their afternoon together before they would have to part ways.

“Are midnight walks like, your thing now?” she lightly teases. Yoongi’s heart is stirred into a frantic storm when she grazes her shoulder against his; barely a nudge.

“I had a lot on my mind.” I had you eating me from the inside out. “It helps to get some fresh air. Clears the thoughts up.” Ironic how you just happen to invade me, even outside of my head. Then, he remembers the streaks of silver. The shimmering diamonds against the skin that he once, a lifetime ago, had his lips upon. “Why were you crying?”

“No reason worth sharing,” she says without missing a beat, as though she had been expecting the question all night. The answer was just waiting to be up to bat. “Girl dramas that boys like you would know nothing about.”

“She, the bane of my every single drama says.” Yoongi states it bluntly, incapable of finding the audacity to care when she flinches. She wants it all out on the table, exposed and brutally honest? Well, he is going to take to the scalpel and cut himself open until he has pulled out every shred of agony that she has tucked between the joints; threaded through the sinew.

It is not as though she is unused to blood on her hands. The mere date of her birth year is sheer fact to that.

Once those two sentences surface in his overtired mind, Yoongi mentally punches himself in the stomach for ever conjuring such a disgusting thought. God. You would think it was hate instead of love.

She comes to a halt in the middle of the road. Yoongi continues to trail a few steps before he realises she is cemented to the bitumen. For a single, distressing moment in which his heart lodges itself in his throat and then plummets like lead into his stomach, he fears he thought those twenty-five words loud enough for her to hear. The only giveaway that such a matter is not the case is her expression.

Instead of pained or horrified, it is distant. Far from here.

“Hey, you know what you need to do?”

Yoongi raises a brow. “What?”

She was looking past his shoulder. Now, she looks over her own, and then twists to stare directly at him. He is in a constant state of reminding himself how deadly those eyes are when used in full, undeviating force.

“Yell it out,” she shrugs indifferently, as if she is no longer sure about the answer herself. “Have at me. Scream everything you need to say.”

What a joke, he thinks, like their emotions are some ridiculous game and one of them has to come out a winner. Neither can rule together; a fight to the death. But she has always called him sarcastic, and so it could not do much harm to humour her request.

“Right here?”

She shrugs again, looks at his feet, and then slowly tracks back to his eyes. “Better place as any, right?”

Silence passes between them, voices reduced to make way for the breeze that caresses the leaves of a neighbouring tree. The rustling is so dense that it sounds akin to rain. Yoongi buries his hands deeper into the lone pocket of his sweater, clenching them into fists so tight that he almost expects to feel the skin split over his knuckles. After a moment, he relaxes the joints and slides his palms out of the fleece, calmly resting them at his sides.

“I’m not going to hold back.”

“I don’t want you to.” It sounds like a lie. She almost seems nervous.

“Fine,” he huffs, running a hand through his hair. When he speaks, there is no difference in volume, nor tone. “First of all, fuck you. From the very core of my being. Fuck. You.”

At that, she smiles, and the sheer sight has him scrambling for what he was going to say again. He inhales so deeply that his chest stretches with pain, and then he breathes out a calamity.

“I know that we took it too far. I know that we overstepped an unspoken boundary in our friendship. But what you did...” Yoongi can feel his voice crack. He does not notice how it rises in gradual increments; the build of a wave before it plunges down and floods the streets. “Christ, I knew you had it in you. But I never thought you would actually go ahead and do it, you know? At no point––not even when we were so close to one another on the beach that day, not even when I was touching you in my bathroom––did I convince myself that you would actually cut the ties.”

“For a few days? That’s reasonable. Two weeks? I would've given that decent leeway.” The water starts to break, hurtling down in a swooping undulation. The land is Her, and Yoongi encounters no remorse when the deluge swamps her coast and drowns the homes that they built when they were kids who knew no better. “But three years. Three whole fucking years! You picked up your things and left like the seven years of us being best friends never existed. As if we were living in some fantasy, and you decided to wake up without letting me know it was all just a dream too.

“I wanted to go after you so fucking badly. I wanted to beat down the front door to your house and grab you by the shoulders, just to ask you why. Why did you have to be so goddamn dramatic? Why did you have to act like one of us had received the envelope and it was safer to end things then and there? Why, ___, did you think I was so meaningless and insignificant that you could just throw me away without a care, after all we had been through?”

“You ruined me.” She is drowning. Yoongi can see it from here. He cannot tell if he should grin victoriously or reach out and save her. “The way you left made me feel like I was just some fucking toy that you grew out of. You tossed me away and left me for dead because you’re a heartless bitch. Yet here I stand now, still wanting– No, needing you! Here I stand, grovelling at your feet with my pleas for forgiveness, confessing the truth of how badly you screwed me up by leaving without glancing back. It’s almost as if I’m the monster who abandoned you when you knew I was going to be right by your side until the very end. No matter if the conclusion was made by a natural cause, or a piece of fucking paper sent by the government.”

“The thing is that I didn’t care if you wanted to stay as friends, or be lovesick idiots who should know better in a world like this, ___!” Air is tight in his lungs, fuelling wildfires. “I couldn’t have given a damn about whatever decision you made for us because as long as you were in my life, I was content. Don’t you fucking get that? Can you genuinely tell me that the past three years have been better off without me? Did you never sit and think that I would never push you into something that you didn’t want? That just because I know what your cum tastes like doesn’t mean I expect us to hold hands and fuck each other like we’re something more?”

“All I ever wanted was for you to be in my life. I need you. Not solely for friendship, not only for love. I just know that I have always, and will always need you!”

There are so many words left in his lungs, too many confessions and accusations that he needs to inscribe on her black as tar heart. But Yoongi’s throat crumbles; the sentences strain and fall limp. White flags are kept down. No draw is announced. Nobody is victorious because the game has been burned to ash.

Deeply, she exhales. “Are you good?”

Yoongi stares at her from across the street, partially washed in the muted orange of the overhead lamp, the rest of her concealed in the shadows. His shoulders still heave, teeth sunk in his bottom lip in order to keep the floodgates closed. She stares at him like she knows him, and god, nobody else in this world does as much as her. Even if she only discovered the raw truth of his emotions mere moments ago.

Before he can contrive any further blades in the form of his words to slice into her skin, she is gravitating close. The crunching of gravel is deadened beneath the soles of her sneakers until she stands as near as they had last week. A proximity that would have been considered mundane for them to be within beyond three years ago.

Now, all Yoongi can do is drop his gaze to their feet. Calculating the distance that separates them; only centimetres when it seems akin to vast oceans. So close, yet he has never felt so far.

“Good?” she murmurs once more, tilting her head down so that she can peer up at his drooped chin. Yoongi cannot even find it in himself to wipe away the tears. His fists loosen, useless by his sides.

What he does not expect is for her to breach the minimal space that remains. Her arms come around his waist, palms finding purchase against his shoulder blades and pressing him so tightly to her own chest that they may as well be a sole being.

It may just be his imagination, or the dissipating anger that leaves a dull ringing in his ears. But Yoongi swears he hears something break in her voice when she speaks again. Maybe, the last of her heart.

“Are we good?”

She holds on tighter when he precariously nods against the side of her head.

Yoongi does not hug her back out of fear that he may lose himself completely in her vessel. Become trapped within the bone cage of her ribs. Instead, he tips his chin back to face the stars, cheeks feeling damp and cold. He stares accusingly at the incandescents bodies, mere pinpricks of luminosity, as though it is all their fault.

How could you do this to us? Why did it get taken this far? Neither of us deserved such devastation, yet you awakened an apocalypse right where we both stood.

The stars are left speechless.

To say that matters resumed to how things were in the past would be obscene. Yet, genuinely, it is somewhat how the treacherous tides came to calm into clear waters.

The unbosoming that tainted the atmosphere of that isolated street was merely the chains to the drawbridge unhinging. From there, it plummeted back down so that the two of them could be on even ground. Enabled them to understand and embrace the differences, the hardships, which were emphasised and catastrophised beyond their initial extremity.

To themselves, they cannot help but wonder if such dramatics would have happened if they were born in a different timeline. If they existed in an entirely divergent world to the one where a ballot can tear their life from beneath their feet, even before they make it to the year’s end.

Adjustments are made with their developed maturity. Yoongi no longer waits at the bus stop to pick her up on a school-day morning. Rather, she drives to his campus and takes them to the local library to study for their courses every Wednesday afternoon.

The new diner is visited regularly, though not as often as the convenience store in the middle of the night. Usually, these ventures are planned. Yet they sometimes arrive unexpectedly when either one of them strolls up to the store entrance, discovering the other already watching with a sheepish grin through the window.

They rarely go out to parties together. Their assignments often conflict with the dates, or other responsibilities take the advantage. But Yoongi ceases with the narcotics, and instead sticks to the pleasures of alcohol. It is a matter that none of his friends seem to care for; they almost appear to admire him. He no longer needs to hallucinate in order to see the one person that his heart has been sewn back together for.

The wilted flower of their friendship slowly revives with every small step that they take forward, the petals blossoming into something familiar. Yet Yoongi cannot help but notice the vague restraint that she upholds with their every lighthearted conversation; in the small flinch that she makes when their elbows brush too close; when he squeezes her knee out of reassurance. The red strings are knotting back together, though they cannot deny the fraying of the ends. The ties are loose and unsure, as if suggesting that they may snap once again.

Yoongi only pulls tighter. All the while, she watches on with guarded contemplation, letting the threads go limp in her palms like she is wondering whether all of this was such a great idea.

Two and a half months, on the cusp of three, and only then does he discover her worst treachery of all. The reason behind her unwillingness to allow their bond to return to its utmost potential. Yoongi does not know how she hid it this well for so long.

It is made infinitely worse by the fact that he is so beyond hungover, his brain seems to have transformed into a cement brick.

On Sunday morning, he makes the trip to Shake Shack alone. Hoseok is still passed out under the dining table, Seokjin is actually studying something other than the female reproductive system with his dick, and there is the smidgen of a possibility that Jimin might be dead. It is eternally a mystery as to what happens to him after a hefty night out.

The restaurant door chimes, alarm bells that echo in cymbals through his head. Yoongi is focusing too strenuously on keeping his brain from splitting in half to realise that they might actually be warning him.

Honeysuckle captures his attention as soon as the door swings shut, sucking still air through a vacuum that drifts the aroma, like an instant hangover cure, into his senses. Yoongi, once he is convinced that his head is not about to topple off his neck, levels his gaze to see straight before him. Instantly, his eyes lock onto a figure that he could identify, even when she is merely a silhouette in the distance.

She turns from the counter, holding an extra-large takeaway cup of freshly brewed coffee. The world stutters to the slightest of stops before kickstarting again when she notices him watching on, probably appearing like a goddamn fool standing at the entrance of the restaurant. So, Yoongi decides to will his feet forward, casually calling out her name.

But he stops dead in his tracks when he sees fear ambushing her wide eyes. Yoongi almost does not notice him until her alarmed gaze sweeps away from Yoongi and up to his face.

It is the guy from the club. The one who had sundered their reunion with a single sentence. The one who had managed to draw her gaze away from Yoongi; something that always took a breath of a moment to do in the past, but was as effortless as blinking in the now. The one who had softened her eyes when he spoke, the way Yoongi always could. The one who had clambered her into his jacket and Yoongi did not, at the time, have a chance to think twice of it.

The guy from the club, who has his arm curled neatly around a waist that has always belonged to Yoongi. The guy from the club, who has the fucking stars gleaming in his eyes, because that is just the effect that belonging to somebody like her will always have.

They approach like royals striding toward a peasant. The heart thief glances between the two of them with mild scrutiny. But before the guy can say anything, she parts her lips. The sound that comes out is hardly a croak, yet it sets off World War III within Yoongi’s ribcage.

“Yoongi–”

“Oh! This is the guy– The friend from home right?” He affectionately jostles the arm around her frame, knocking her back into rationality. Her chin barely tilts in a nod. She no longer looks at Yoongi.

Underneath the seething rage that is making his migraine throb like the brink of death, Yoongi vaguely contemplates how to sever the foreign limb attached to her body.

When the guy extends his hand, Yoongi has to restart his dying heart in order to reciprocate the gesture. The defibrillator is charged, and he almost hopes that it will not work. He wishes that the flimsy vessel will collapse, and he will be sucked right out of this moment, swallowed by a most welcome eternal darkness.

“Hey man, I’m Jeongguk,” the guy says.

Three... two... one...

“I believe we already met. But I didn’t get the chance to introduce myself properly.”

Clear!

“I’m ___’s boyfriend.”

Yoongi feels his heart stutter back to life. He wonders how much betrayal the average human being endures in their lifetime, or whether he is just that fucking unlucky.

Jeon Jeongguk is one of the lucky ones in the form of a platinum certificate, declaring a free pass on genocide; cleaning his fingertips of scarlet. A promise to not die by an unlawful hand.

That is what happens, after all, when your life is deemed valuable to this world. When your intelligence is too good to be wasted. When the zeros tacked onto the end of your future inheritance are far too infinite to be ignored. They say this is the secret to immunity: hone pockets weighed down by gold, and bear diamond fangs that can tear through a piece of paper, splotched with the ink of your name.

In a town as small as their own, such a matter was deemed a myth. Then, she met him.

She never knew whether it was sheer fascination, or genuine attraction. Even now, she remains unsure. But Jeongguk was drawn to her; opposite poles of a magnet that met in unexpected harmony. He had knocked into her elbow at the campus cafe and spun to apologise. Instead, he had found himself struck silent by the graves that were on blatant, unadulterated exhibition in the cemeteries of her eyes.

Maybe, he was convinced that he could uproot the dead from where they slept. Thought he could dig his fingers into the soils, and grow bouquets from the minerals that the bones had scattered beneath the surface. Maybe, he wanted to know the secrets. The reasons behind the ghosts that lurked about her irises, eternally trapped betwixt the limbo of Heaven and Hell. Maybe, he was as selfish as the rest of the world. Precisely like her and the other, who was buried the deepest in the boneyard of her heart.

Too many maybes had filled her mind, yet she had found herself saying yes. Not just once. But again, and again, until the two of them were sharing coffee against the lips of the other instead of over a cafe table, and she could describe precisely how it felt when he entered her. Again, and again. Yes.

Now, the boy of platinum teaches her about things that she already knew, but from a different perspective. A preferable one, where one is not concerned with their fate. When their life is not threatened at the beginning of every new month, because their skin and bones are invincible to the bullets of a Government rifle.

Jeongguk takes her to the theatre. In the shadows of the back row, where their mischievous chuckles hide, he shows her what salt and butter tastes like on his tongue. He lets her listen to the sound of their voices blend off-tune with the song playing on the radio. The windows of his car are rolled all the way down, spring breeze curling through her hair, his hand resting on the sunlight that seeps gold onto her thigh. He shows her the bridge that connects the southern and northern ends of the city. The lights that are cast onto the glass surface of the river from street lamps resemble stars, flickering beneath their feet, shining on the gentle ripples rather than above in the hazy, dark skies.

This is where Jeongguk whispers that he loves her. This is where he accepts that she cannot find the voice just yet to say such a burden back. But he helps her take her dress off in the backseat anyway, and he kisses every inch of her skin as if he is trying to find the answer tucked somewhere between her joints. Engraved in her bones.

When he thrusts into her, he moans in such a way that she digs her nails deeper into his flesh, as though she can bury herself within him. Become a part of his platinum shield. She, too, can be untouchable.

It is not that she does not adore Jeongguk. Of course, her chest thrums with that certain warmth when he grazes his knuckles over her throat. Her gaze softens when she finds him walking into the room, lighting up with a grin that is specially reserved for her. He is a secure anchor amidst the raging ocean of this society, and she swears that such a matter is not the reason why she laces her knuckles together to connect at the palms, or swallows his laughter into her own lungs, or presses her lips against his bare spine when the moonlight turns his skin into stardust.

Somewhere, deep down, she thinks there may be a hint of love, too shy to reveal its face. Maybe, it is insecure; unsure whether its roots are woven through the carcass of a natural demise, rather than the tacky mint shade of an unwanted envelope.

No. That is not the reason why she desires him. She may be cruel, but she is not a monster. That is what she tells herself, at least, as she ignores the blood red gaze that watches on from the darkest shadows of her mind. It folds its talons in its lap, wearing the glint of a wicked grin.

The sight is too repulsive to even glance at.

Now, when she parts her lethargic eyes, it is to find Jeongguk already gazing at her through the tangle of her sleep-heavy lashes. He draws the tip of his finger down her nose, outlining the shape of her lips. A map that he marks with his touch before he presses his own mouth to them in a quiet good morning.

“What were you dreaming about?” he murmurs throatily, and it is then that she realises she is frowning. The sunlight that slides into his bedroom attempts to soften and smooth the crease between her brow, though it cannot seem to fade. “You were stirring and mumbling.”

She thinks back to the realm she was briefly visiting. It held the taste of vanilla, and the eyes of blackholes that would bend her at the edges. Although she had clung fiercely to the stars and suns that surrounded him, he let her be free, just like that. There was no fight left in him. No force. No will to drag her into his desolate infinity.

She is unsure if she is grateful, or if she would rather be dead.

“Nothing that I can remember,” is all that she whispers before her face finds solace in the dip of Jeongguk’s throat. There, he will not be able to see the betrayal that brews in her eyes. His ignorance is all the more confirmed when he hums indifferently and slides his palm beneath her rumpled shirt, gliding up her spine.

Because Jeon Jeongguk, with platinum luck threaded through his veins, with good fortune as a shield against unnatural fate, is not, and could never be Min Yoongi.

That day at the restaurant was like giving Yoongi all of the stars in the universe, only to rip them away into the mouth of a black hole. Leaving him with nothing but a handful of tenebrosity.

A boyfriend. A lover. A something that she claimed she could never have because this world took intimacy by the throat and squeezed until the skin blossomed blue. A lie that she threaded through Yoongi with barbwire, as though she could never actually love him. He was just another puppet that she controlled the strings of for all these years.

She was never his best friend. It was always betrayal that stuck by his side through thick and thin.

After the introductions had been made, she had dragged Jeon Jeongguk out of the restaurant without a second glance at Yoongi. She knew she had banjaxed the secret, that this took the cake for being the ultimate egregious bullet point on her list of perfidy. Yoongi did not go forth and make an order. Rather, he had waited five minutes before exiting the restaurant himself, praying on the drive back to his campus that his hangover would make him swerve off the road and bend his bones around a tree.

As per usual, he is never that lucky.

For days, they do not communicate. It eats at him; hollows his body out into a carcass of his true being. He can feel himself slipping back into the skeleton of who he once became; the version who has pupils the size of Pluto and snowy powder on his nostrils.

That is, until Yoongi is in the sanctuary of his dorm room with glass bottles containing the remnants of his heart strewn about the bedside table. He finally gains the liquid confidence to light his phone screen, pulling up a conversation that details the time and location of a recent meet up they had had. Sent over a week before he had discovered that all those times she had said she could not hang out––that she had more important plans––were probably to see him.

Delivered [2:11AM]: ___

why didn’t you tell me

It is late, and Yoongi expects no reply. He just needed to get those five words out of his head; the question that has been persisting his every thought. The memories of the past two months where she entailed no such relationship, never hinted that her heart belonged to another while Yoongi was still convinced that it was the fondest for him; they were all marked with that one word, now.

Why?

There is a gentle vibration that almost goes unnoticed, if not for the way that the shadows of his bedroom shrink away from the dim light that the screen emanates. A lump forms in Yoongi’s throat when he swipes his thumb across the device to unlock the two messages, labelled with her name.

Received [2:16AM]: ___

because it’s not important

why did I need to?

Yoongi is calling her before he even realises he has dialled the number. She, to his disbelief, answers after two rings.

“You know precisely the reason why,” he seethes. The words are laced in malice, yet airy in their tone; exhausted. “Not important, my fucking ass. What kind of horrible excuse is that? Aren’t you tired of making up bullshit? Will you ever be?”

On the other end of the line, there is the shifting of sheets, the distant scuffling of feet, the slide of a balcony door before it clicks shut. Her exhalations are shallow, hair rustling against the speaker with the hint of a breeze. Or perhaps, the distressed combing of her knuckles through the strands.

“You’re with him right now, aren’t you?” Yoongi almost laughs at the realisation, a dead smile drawn on his lips. She audibly gulps.

“Y-Yes. I mean. He’s my– Well, he’s–”

“Your boyfriend? That– That thing that you always claimed you could never have?”

She makes no acknowledgment, nor no confirmation of the aforementioned statement. Only when she sniffs does Yoongi realise that she is quietly crying. He suffocates the surge of regret that threatens to soften his anger. He is tired of being pitiful.

“What do you want from me, ___?” he barely whispers. His heart begins to detach from his body. “All this time, what is it that you wanted?”

Static crackles between them. When her voice finally sounds, it shudders.

“Everything. I wanted, no, I want everything from you. Of you. B-But it can never work.” The words are muffled around a sob, the kind that claws right out of the pits of your lungs. “Yoongi, everything you said all of those months ago is precisely the way I feel too. I need you in my life, no matter the circumstances. But being together is such a risk. We have lost so much already. And– And I don’t want to hurt you–”

“You’ve already done that, sweetheart,” Yoongi barks out with a humourless chuckle. He runs a clammy hand down his face. “You’re doing it right now. You’re doing it constantly.”

“I mean that I’m cursed, for christ’s sakes! You and I both know that!” she nearly shouts, and then her voice drops into an undercurrent. He can almost sense the way that her gaze must be darting back to the glass door, providing the view of a dark room where her lover may or may not be listening to her confess to another man. “You know that first night at the convenience store, when you asked why I was crying? A girl that I’d only just become friends with was drawn from that damned ballot. Honestly, a week before her name was pulled out, we exchanged numbers and made plans to meet for lunch.”

“This was a girl I had only just met. You would’ve been dead from the moment I gave in to you, Yoongi. I’m trying to protect you from this. I want you to live a long and happy life, as normal as it can be, without me being a burden. If that means hurting you in the process, then so be it. I refuse to let you die, especially because of my birth year...” her voice trails off, clamped down by a palm pressed to her lips.

Yoongi swings his feet off the edge of his bed and pads over to the northernmost wall of his room. Even after so many years, he refuses to believe that she still thinks of herself as a bad omen who drags those that surround her to their demise. That she continues to attain such a childish perception; a fib whispered by kids who know no better.

They are adults now. It would be moronic to believe a wives’ tale regarding the four numbers that signified the change for a better world, where all those who were born in that year supposedly honed the curse of death.

“Then why is he so different?” Yoongi murmurs, grazing his knuckles against the plaster. “Why is he the special one that gets to experience being in love with a girl who claims to be cursed?”

“Because he is exempt from the project, Yoongi,” she sounds so empty. A hollow heart. “The rumours about the wealthy families are true. They have no involvement in the ballot.”

Skin splits over bone. Scarlet streaks down his wrist and marks the wall in four bloody patches. Yoongi grunts, but the stinging sensation is soothing compared to the knife that stabs deeper through his back.

The hearsay was no new knowledge since he moved to the city. He has known a few people himself who honed the platinum certificate, bestowing them with normality. A natural end to this world that all human beings should be granted, no matter if their pockets are full of dirt rather than diamonds.

But Yoongi’s fist connects with the wall again when Jeon Jeongguk’s face violently blooms within his mind, eating up the space that she always accommodates. The guy who she can never claim to have slaughtered by the four digits of her cursed birth year. Yoongi swears she winces at the dull thud, followed by a short gasp between his gritted teeth.

“God, aren’t you just selfish,” he mutters, staring at the torn flesh of his knuckles. He clenches them tight when they remind him of her smaller, crimson hands floating amongst ocean waves. That memory, with her mouth that tasted of salt and untruths, should not be tainted by an incident like this.

There is no jocularity in her tone. “It’s a refined talent.”

The plaster is cold against his forehead; his palm is warm with drying blood. After a glacial moment of basking in the sound of her breathing––existing––Yoongi’s voice drops to merely a whisper.

“You need to realise that having you in my life is a decision that I make, not you. And what about these past two months, huh? If that were the really the case, I would be dead already, don’t you think? Stop being so ridiculous. Stop thinking you can make all of these choices for me when you’re ticking all of the opposite answers to what I want. If you don’t want me in your life, stop acting like you do. Don’t lure me in just to throw me back out in the water.”

“I can’t willingly cut you from my life, you know that,” her voice is weak, just like the both of them. “That’s why I’m pushing you away. I can accept it if you leave, but I can’t voluntarily let you go.”

“Why, ___?” God, he is so tired, the words barely come out coherent. “Why don’t you just do it already?”

“I can’t say it, Yoongi. I couldn’t before, and I especially can’t now that– Now that I’m with him.”

At that, Yoongi’s chest caves inward. The vessel within is sucked into the abyss, because the one person in this world who he cares infinitely for practically admitted the truth. She had ghosted over it, yet it was there. An echo of honesty. An admission so vague, though ringing with the utmost profundity through his head; a record that stutters back over that one same line.

I love you, Yoongi. I love you, even now that I am with him.

Yoongi sighs a lifetime of air through his teeth. “Me too, ___. Always.”

Between their paced exhalations that taste like devotion at long last divulged, there is background sound. A door sliding open. The crackle of a voice that is not her own.

She does not say that she has to go. There is no utterance of a goodbye. The line simply hangs up.

Yoongi, the next morning, cannot recall for how long afterwards he listened to the dial tone.

In July, the monthly draw lands on a Friday. The final day of the semester.

It is the end of exams. The return of the summer holidays, celebrated by a barbecue down by the foreshore. A place where all students alike arrive in their respective groups to rejoin before they part for home, but everyone mixes, mingles, and congratulates.

Friendly tournaments of beach volleyball are held between the colleges. The aroma of sizzling meat and charcoal manages to overpower the scent of salt that wafts from the waves. Laughter and conversation tucks itself into every available space. Alcohol is poured graciously and in volumes considered comparable to a frat party.

Yoongi cannot help but wonder how many of the students who have flocked to the beach are going to have their name drawn from the ballot. Whose exam scores are going to become insignificant. Who might be celebrating for the final time with their peers––their friends––before they return home to a family with cheeks stricken by tears and a mint green envelope, bloodied with their own name.

When Yoongi arrives at the foreshore, there is a solid seven minutes of texting back-and-forth with a half-drunk Hoseok––who is dreadful at giving directions as it is––to figure out where the hell he is. Though it is only when Seokjin puts the latter on his shoulders that Yoongi manages to find them amongst the dense crowd. Nobody could miss that Hawaiian shirt paired with a sunshine smile, arms flailing like one of those wacky inflatable tube men.

Their area consists of a canopy housing three coolers filled to the brim with ice and beer, and a scattering of chairs to take up the remaining shade. A portable barbecue is set up to the left of the arrangement, currently left unattended. The sausages are starting to sizzle beyond cooked, but everyone is too busy enthusiastically welcoming the new arrival to care.

Yoongi greets them all with muted excitement. Though his gaze immediately drifts down to the only person who had remained reclined throughout the entire feat, spread on the grass like a starfish. With his blank features partially concealed by his large black sunglasses, Park Jimin––who is known to be the most mercurial of the whole lot––almost appears dead.

“Is Jimin okay?”

“He’s sober,” Seokjin laughs, kicking at the ankle of the aforementioned, who grunts something incomprehensible.

Jimin shifts up from his leisurely position to lean back on his elbows.

“Three weeks off it,” Jimin squints so fiercely that it is even noticeable behind his glasses. He sounds slow, the words drawn out on his plump lips. “It’s not right to do it around family. Plus, my Ma would probably send me to the fuckin’ moon if she caught me shooting up on the coffee table that has been passed down through the generations for like, ever.”

“The fuckin’ moon, he says,” Hoseok quips whilst a safe distance from Jimin and his fists, dousing an overly burnt hotdog in sauce. “You’ve been there every weekend since the start of first semester, Mr. Low Hallucination Tolerance. Hey Yoongi, remember when Jimin literally thought we had managed to make it into outer space and we were walking on the moon like Apollo 13?”

Jimin seems to contemplate whether he should get up and beat the shit out of Hoseok. Ultimately, he decides to slump back onto the grass. “Eat my ass.”

Hoseok genuinely sighs. “You all keep offering, but you never pull through.”

“You mean Apollo 11,” Seokjin circles around Jimin to stand beside Hoseok, raising an eyebrow. “Apollo 13 never landed.”

“Amazing, Seokjin knows facts! And here we all were, thinking that he only knew the precise anatomy of the female body.” Hoseok jeers, the disparages flying out like they are a second language. “Who would have thought?”

“One, I’m not sure if I should be insulted by that,” Seokjin takes his hands out of his pockets and uses an elbow to knock Hoseok in the arm, causing the sauce he is squirting to spray over his own shoes. “Two, you’re honestly asking for a beating, from all of us. But I guess three-on-one is just your style, right?”

“Oh daddy, you know it,” Hoseok, despite that his eyes blaze lividly over the ruined shoes, takes a disgraceful bite out of his hotdog with a lewd wink as if to prove a point. Everyone gags in perfect unison.

“Speaking of, what are you guys doing for the holidays?” Yoongi asks the feuding pair, wrinkling his nose when Hoseok offers him a sausage that resembles charcoal. He opts for a beer instead, and it fizzles pleasantly on his tongue. An old friend that his liver has known well for the past three years.

“My family lives in the town just beyond Hoseok’s, so I’m going to be dropping him there on the travel home.” Seokjin states while cleaning up the grill of the blackened mess, shooting the occasional accusing glare at Jimin, who appears to have initially been on barbecue duty. “God knows how I’m going to deal with that for six hours straight, but I consider it my good deed for the year.” Seokjin effortlessly dodges a kick to the shin by the insulted. “How about you?”

“You’re driving back with ___, right?” Hoseok questions, plonking down beside Jimin, who parts his lips in a demand for a bite. The poor guy nearly chokes when Hoseok eagerly shoves half the hotdog into his mouth.

A shiver is elicited when her name infiltrates the atmosphere, crawling up his spine in a sensation near pleasurable. But now, it is weighted with the touch of a forbidden truth. She no longer belongs to him, no matter if she still keeps her heart nestled between his palms.

Yoongi chugs back a quarter of the beer as if to wash away the feeling, cringing immediately afterwards.

“Yeah, it makes sense to go in one car. Her– Uh, the boyfriend is going to be visiting his family in the east, so he won’t be coming with us,” Yoongi speaks dismissively whilst running a hand back through his hair. His friends appear to not notice the fervent longing that resides beneath his skin.

Yoongi is about to take another sip of his drink. That is, until he stares directly ahead and finds the devil herself, drying off her hair with a beach towel.

It is eternally mesmerising watching her. From the way she moves with the fluidity of water, to the beautiful manner in which her features transform into her signature expressions. Most of them are private inclinations to an opposite emotion. A habit that only he knows of after such an extensive period of time observing her throughout their growth.

She laughs at something her friends says. The surrounding commotion swallows it whole, but Yoongi can hear it in divine clarity; the harmonious melody that has been the repeating soundtrack to half of his life. The calling of songbirds; the gentle notes of a piano; the tinkling of wind chimes in a summer breeze.

There is a faint vibration against Yoongi’s thigh. When he reaches into his pocket to retrieve the device, she makes eye contact from across the grass. A smile drifts about her lips that he cannot help but return, gazing at one another like a secret. Then, she purposefully distracts herself with the entertainment surrounding her.

Yoongi stands up and departs from the group, who are already indulging in other topics. He answers the phone without checking the identification. The line crackles with static, and then, his mother is sobbing through the speaker as though the world is about to end as they know it.

And when she finally manages to choke out the syllables, he realises that such a figure of speech may not be far from the truth after all.

NOTE — this has also been adapted into third-person perspective!! to those who have never read this before, I’d love to hear your thoughts on the piece. besides that, all likes and reblogs are super duper appreciated!! ♡

our finale should be coming very soon. get ready for a true rollercoaster of emotion. I’ve already cried twice while writing certain scenes of it dfsghs.

also, I’ve removed the links to the individual parts of attts because tumblr is being dumb by deleting posts/blogs that are using links or something. until they’ve resolved this issue, you can access the other parts of the series via my master list!!