Chapter Text
5
Ever since Jimin could remember, his parents had told him of a boy who lived on the moon. As they curled up together on a blanket, eyes cast to the sky with the stars reflecting in their eyes, his mother would run her fingers through his hair, telling him how, if he looked at the moon hard enough and for long enough, it was possible to catch a glimpse of him, nothing more than a silhouette in the sky.
Sometimes, as the words fell from their lips, a flicker of a memory would spark in his mind. An echo, perhaps, of what had once been. Nothing more than a shadow moving through the sky.
It was enough to convince him that it was not merely a story created to satisfy his curiosity.
As a child, he’d sit on the patio facing the ocean, sea spray leaping into the air, eyes locked onto the night sky, a blanket that had been draped over his shoulders left abandoned, pooling around his body in golden ripples.
He spent many such nights like this, and while most other children his age grew out of such fantasies, Jimin found himself drawn to the myth of the boy who lived on the moon.
10
He even spent his birthday there, yellow balloon clutched in his right hand, bobbing gently above his head as he searched the sky for a sign that what he had been told as a child was not only a story created to sate his unique interest in such tales.
He didn’t notice as the balloon slipped through his fingers as he gradually began to lose consciousness, eyes closing as his body fell towards the ground. By the time he had realised its absence, it had already begun to float far out of his reach. He watched helplessly as a cloud veiled it from view, fingers grasping at the cool, thin air in a vain attempt to save it from the dark void above.
At the sound of her son’s sobs, Jimin’s mother hurried out from the house, moving towards her son and bundling him back up into the blanket and into her arms in one swift movement. “Jimin, what’s wrong?”
“M-my balloon…” He reached out again even though the vivid yellow colour had long since become one with a sky filled with stars.
His mother let out a gentle sigh, running fingers through his hair. “It’s ok, Jimin.”
“B-but-” Jimin sobbed, cutting himself abruptly with a hiccup, tears streaming down his cheeks, leaving behind stains in their wake.
“It’s ok,” She whispered, “because the boy who lives on the moon will get it back for you.”
Jimin turned his head to look up at his mother, brown eyes widening and sparkling as bright as the stars above him. “Really?”
She nodded, smiling and tapping his nose playfully. “I promise. Maybe not now, but soon.”
She couldn’t bring herself to tell him the truth. It was certainly lost forever, but telling a child that they had lost something precious to them permanently was heartbreaking enough, even if you knew they’d lose interest in it eventually.
In the coming days, Jimin spent even longer by the sea. He would turn up to school more often than not with dark bags under his eyes. Jungkook, his best friend, caught onto what seemed to be happening quite quickly, pulling him to the side before they entered the classroom, his brows creased in slight worry.
“Jimin-ah, have you been sleeping well?” Jungkook asked, eyes drifting around the hallways.
Jimin did not answer, lowering his gaze to the ground, hands tightly wound around the straps that hung over his shoulders and his feet shifting slightly in discomfort.
Jungkook sighed, jabbing a finger at Jimin’s forehead, forcing him to look up once more.
“Hyung, you should take care of yourself more. Maybe take naps during the day if you want to stay up so much.”
Jimin nodded, but both of them knew that Jimin had already tried this, and it hadn’t gone particularly well. He had turned up the next day looking worse than ever and Jungkook couldn’t help but feel guilty.
Jimin continued to deprive himself of sleep, his feet dragging along the floor more and more as the days went by.
It wasn’t until one particular night, after a little over a month had passed, that Jimin saw it.
Little more than a silhouette, Jimin found himself jumping slightly when he caught sight of a shadow dancing across the pale light of the moon, full and glowing with a sheen that looked almost unnatural.
He almost missed it, but he could also make out something yellow trailing behind it. It looked at first like a flicker of light, but when Jimin looked a little harder he realised…
It was his balloon.
14
Since that time, his obsession had only grown. At high school, he joined an combined astronomy and astrology club with only two other people who attended regularly, one of which seemed to only be accompanying the other rather than having any real interest in the subject.
The others seemed to attend in random bursts, prioritising other things that seemed more important to them.
“Joon-ah, what are you looking at?” The older boy was splayed out on a desk, arm resting over his chest, the other hanging off the table entirely. His eyes were trained on the boy that was trying his best to study the different constellations that were currently visible at this time of year, scrawling down notes that seemed to alternate between barely illegible and strangely artistic, every now and then pushing a pair of glasses up his nose.
“Stars.”
“Yeah but what kind of stars?”
Namjoon, as Jimin recalled, wrinkled his nose, clearly irritated by the older boy’s questions, but not enough to send him away. Clearly they were close, but having the other boy there must have been a slight burden, even for someone as patient as Namjoon.
The incessant questions were even getting on Jimin’s nerves, but he guessed it was quite sweet to have someone willing to hang around, even if they were that bored.
Jungkook had rubbed his neck awkwardly when Jimin asked if he’d wait for him to finish up at his club, eyes shifting to the side. “Sorry, Jimin-ah, I have practice tonight, so I gotta be back as soon as possible.” He sent a small smile his way. “If it changes next week, I’ll definitely hang around.”
Jimin knew that wouldn’t happen, but he smiled back nonetheless.
So he spent Wednesdays after school either in a classroom, or out on the field with whoever else decided to turn up that day, flicking through the pages of several books, trying in vain to see if there was any evidence that could back up what he had seen that day. After reading the same words over and over again, it began to get a little too repetitive for his liking, but there was still a chance he may have missed something, anything , and that was worth reading the same line thousands of times, if only to find the missing piece of the puzzle he was so desperately trying to complete.
Was there a boy who lived on the moon, or was it really a fantasy like everyone else seemed to believe?
16
Namjoon and Seokjin were arguing again.
It wasn’t uncommon for the pair of them to fight, but it was usually over quickly with the two of them making some sort of compromise or agreement. However, when it came to Jimin’s ‘man on the moon’, there seemed to be an exception.
The two of them had been at odds with each other ever since Namjoon had taken an interest in Jimin’s rather unique story and when Seokjin, for some reason or another, had decided it was his life’s goal to prove the two of them wrong, and had suddenly turned up to the club one day with a pile of books and a face like thunder.
At first, neither Jimin or Namjoon minded. It was quite nice to see the older boy so engrossed in something other than his looks or trying to get Namjoon’s undivided attention, but things quickly turned sour.
It wasn’t even really about Jimin’s fantasy anymore. They seemed to just get a kick out of simply proving each other wrong.
However, Namjoon had proven to be helpful, so when he had started his childish feud with his senior, Jimin had begun to miss his company. His deep voice used to fill the silence with words that, despite being repetitive and quite meaningless, made Jimin feel as though the two of them had been making progress.
He even missed it when Namjoon, after sitting in complete silence for several minutes, a pencil or some other object wedged between his fingers, suddenly flung whatever he was holding at the wall, jumping up (which usually resulted in some kind of injury) before flinging himself towards the pinboard to write something down, waffling on about some new conspiracy he had just thought up.
Evidence of this could be made out on the walls, broken pieces of lead marring the once pristine paint job that couldn’t have been done too long ago, even some pencils scattered on the floor.
One particularly large dent reminded Jimin of when Namjoon had flung a bottle across the room.
He had sighed, going over to pick it up and marvelling at the impressively large mark it had left behind, despite the object being rather flimsy itself. Namjoon had tripped on his way to the board, holding up a sticky note triumphantly, a widening grin revealing the dimples in his cheeks.
The pinboard still hung on the wall and, though it was half-full of sticky-notes, looked depressingly empty. Most of them were meaningless; words scrawled on paper in order to fill the widening gaps in their logic.
Surely it wasn’t physically possible for a human to survive on the moon?
And though that was true, Jimin began to wonder whether this person he had caught a glimpse of in the darkest hours of the night really was a person, or something else entirely.
They could simply be tricks of the light, perhaps something alien.
But, whatever this person was, whether they were one and the same as the stories his parents would whisper in his ear or whether they were something new entirely, Jimin only knew one thing.
He had to find out who or what they were, and he had to find out how.
How it was possible to live on the moon, how it was possible to see them from earth, how it was possible that they had become a bedtime story…
How?
It had only gotten worse from there, and now it had become unbearable, practically at a breaking point.
“It’s not possible for anything human-like to live on the moon! Our bodies weren’t made to withstand the difference in gravity!”
“Surely through evolution, it could be made possible after hundreds of years-”
“ Then who was on the moon in the first place? ”
“Perhaps it’s not human then, just something similar-”
“The chances of that are so slim, it’d be more likely to suddenly find mermaids living in Asan Bay!”
The arguments continued, and Jimin twirled a pencil between his fingers. His eyes drifted to the open textbook beside him, its spine creased after searching between the lines for a sign that he knew wasn’t there after reading them three times, but he had still read it several times after that.
He reached across the desk, grabbing his bag and sliding it over his shoulder, rising from his seat. “I’m going to leave early, I’ll see you next time Namjoon-hyung.” He sent the pair a small smile before going to leave, shoving several heavy books into his bag along the way with the intention of studying more at home.
“See you Jiminie~” Jin’s smug smile frustrated Jimin slightly, but he also couldn’t help but feel a little guilty.
After all, he had been meeting up with Namjoon far more often recently in order for them to share ideas more frequently since they seemed to work much better when they were together rather than alone.
Jin was clearly unused to the shared attention, and so he had retaliated.
Jimin guessed he understood. After all, Jungkook had started to hang out with a group of boys he played football with at break, often leaving Jimin out of their conversations.
Jimin would have considered playing with him if he weren’t so bad at it in the first place. He had never been particularly sporty, and never took an interest after his obsession with the stars had begun, so when his mother had sent him to a trial training session with a group of boys who all seemed like giants to him at the time, his mother had dragged him away after he broke into tears following a rather vicious shove from a boy who always seemed to wear a smirk.
Several such attempts were made at introducing Jimin to new hobbies, and the only one that he seemed to connect with was dance.
It was when he was quite young that his parents both accompanied him to a dance studio only minutes away from his house. They had to coerce him with promises of sweets and even extra pocket money to get him to go since he had already had several traumatic experiences over the past few months.
However, he had soon started enjoying himself and, as he walked home with his parents, hands connected, he had never grinned quite so much as he did in those minutes.
He continued all through junior school, ignoring the cruel comments from some of his peers who seemed to think it was a hobby only for girls, and that he clearly wasn’t a man if he enjoyed it so much.
Jungkook had supported him through it, most likely because his conversations were no longer just focused on the sky.
When he joined high school, he immediately applied for two clubs; one of which was spent with Namjoon and Jin, and one of which he spent with a large group of students, only one of which was a boy.
His name was Hoseok, and Jimin had never seen anyone with a smile quite as big as his.
The whole class stared in awe when he showed his first choreography, body moving in ways many didn’t think possible until he did so, eyes drawn to him like a magnet.
Jimin had instantly taken a liking to him and, while many others in the class found the older boy overbearing, Jimin quite liked his company. He wasn’t as smart as Namjoon, but he certainly talked just as much, if not more, than their senior.
He was all bright smiles and motivation, and Jimin improved drastically after teaming up with him.
They often did pair dances, one time the older quite literally lifted him into the air resulting in Jimin, who was completely caught unawares, to topple quite ungraciously to the ground, landing in a heap on the ground, loud giggles erupting from his chest as he threw his head back and didn’t get up for several minutes.
The two of them were too exhausted to continue for a while, so while they went to get a drink, Jimin locked eyes with a boy who seemed to be glaring at him.
He increased his pace slightly, moving beside Hoseok with a slightly confused smile.
“What’s up?”
Jimin glanced up, shaking his head while he lifted his bottle to his lips before continuing. “There was a guy back there who didn’t seem particularly happy with me.”
“Huh?” Hoseok glanced back and when he focused on something, his eyes lit up. “Yoongi-yah!”
Jimin turned and, to his horror, the very boy who had been glaring at him pushed himself from the wall, hands shoved in his pockets, and began to move towards them. “Hobi, I’ve been waiting for a while y’know? We should go.” His eyes locked with Jimin’s, dark with an emotion he couldn’t quite put his finger on.
Hobi?
He reminded Jimin of the boy who had shoved him over in his very first football game. He shifted uncomfortably. Despite being surprisingly small, barely inches taller than Jimin himself who was rather short himself, he was quite intimidating.
“Sorry, I was practicing, but I think we’re done here,” Hoseok turned to Jimin with a bright smile. “Right Jimin-ah?”
Jimin nodded dumbly, eyes drifting to his feet.
He jumped a little when Hoseok patted his shoulder in a farewell, glancing up to meet his gaze, only to meet Yoongi’s cold one once more, moments before the boy barged into him.
What did I do?
This continued for a while. When Jimin wasn’t with Namjoon and Jin after classes, he was with Hoseok, which inevitably meant he bumped into Yoongi several times, of which none of the encounters were entirely pleasant.
It wasn't as if he had done anything in the first place, but the scathing glares he received whenever he and Hoseok got even just a little too close for his liking was a big enough warning for him. It did not deter him, however, from spending every moment he could with him before his new antagonist made his appearance.
Jimin refused to allow such things to get to him, and tried his best to ignore the extra attention he got from the older boy.
Not that it really worked, but at least he tried .
It was on one of the many days when Yoongi had effectively kicked him out of the dance studio for the umpteenth time, while Jimin sat with clenched fists on the floor beside his bed and eyes focused on the sky above in order to distract himself from the hot itch of anger he felt creeping up his arms that he saw it again.
For a while, Jimin had been far too distracted with dance to turn up to the club meetings with Namjoon and Jin. He had given up on getting the former’s help after the two had begun to argue like a married couple within moments of getting there, and had decided he was better off researching alone.
But after he and Hoseok had grown closer, he had nearly forgotten about his fascination entirely.
But now, with his eyes trained on the pale moon above, he was certain he saw a shape move across the beams of light that shone above, a blur of yellow following after it. It quite looked like a boy, but Jimin knew that to be impossible.
It took him a moment to process what was happening, but he soon realised that there was a star that seemed to be blinking, as if…
As if it were imitating morse code.
Jimin startled, falling backwards, only saving himself while suffering a sharp blow to his elbow as it made contact with solid flooring.
This was very much real, and Jimin could recall dashing around his room in a rushed attempt of finding a single book among many that could decipher what he thought was the sign he had been waiting for ever since he was a child.
His heart had stopped when he returned to his perch and the star had seemed to have returned to normal, but he finally released his breath when it blinked again.
With a pen between his fingers and a wrinkled page, he began to scrawl down dots and dashes according to the star’s flashes, almost quick enough to miss if you hadn’t been paying enough attention.
-.-. .- -. / -.-- --- ..- / ... . . / -- .
Can you see me?
It… It’s really a code! I-
Jimin could feel his breathing rate increase, reaching across the floor to grab a torch that lay nearby.
-.-- . …
Yes
~
It had been several weeks since that encounter, and though nothing more had happened, Jimin remembered how he had burst into the spare classroom after school, waving his piece of paper around frantically, voice breaking with excitement.
To say Namjoon and Seokjin were surprised would have been an understatement.
Jimin was usually soft-spoken and rarely raised his voice above conversation level, so when he was speaking so quickly that even Namjoon found it hard to decipher him, neither boy could believe what they were seeing.
His dance classes forgotten, he spent an entire week discussing theories with Namjoon, various sticky notes finding their way onto the pinboard in an orderly mess.
Seokjin found himself becoming more and more busy with coursework, and so abandoned the two for a while in favour of his studies. This meant they were finally left to their own devices for the first time in several weeks.
At some point during the week, Hoseok had caught sight of him as he pushed through the wave of students and pulled him to the side.
“Jimin-ah, you haven’t been coming to practice recently.”
Jimin nodded dumbly, shifting balance from one foot to the other as he pushed down his impatience. “Sorry, Hyung. I’ve been busy with work recently, so I decided to miss a few so I could catch up.” Jimin gave Hoseok a nervous smile. “I should have told you.”
Hoseok grinned, shaking his head fondly. “It’s no problem, just make sure you start coming again soon, it’s pretty boring without you!” Hoseok ruffled his hair, his already bright smile became stunning and Jimin flushed slightly in embarrassment, pushing the older boy’s hand away from his now-messy hair.
“I’ll be sure to come again soon.” The empty promise seemed to work and Jimin couldn’t help but feel a slight pang of guilt in his gut.
Then he caught sight of Namjoon in the doorway, eyes sparkling with new ideas, and Jimin forgot. He bid Hoseok farewell, hurrying towards the classroom, clutching his bag tightly to calm himself down, if only a little.
“Jimin-ah, have you ever considered how he knew morse code?”
“Wait, what if- what if he’s been watching this whole time?”
“Jimin-ah, have you seen him yourself?”
Jimin was bombarded with questions left right and center, brain processing each question carefully. “No, I’ve never seen him clearly. But I’ve seen… Shadows? I’m not entirely sure what to call them.”
“What do they look like?”
Jimin paused. This was a question that had been plaguing his thoughts a lot more recently. He could not trust his eyes entirely, but other than them, there was no way to prove anything was real. “They… They look human.”
Namjoon paused halfway through his half-completed sticky note, eyes snapping upwards towards the younger boy. “Human?”
Jimin nodded. “I’m not entirely sure, Hyung. It’s hard to make out.”
Namjoon nodded, finishing up his new notes with significantly less gusto than before. His brows were furrowed and he pulled his top lip between his teeth, gnawing on it as the cogs in his brain jolted into action. “Are you sure?” He paused but never glanced up. “At least, as sure as you can be about these things?”
Jimin nodded, watching as the older stuck the next sticky note to the board, the cerulean slip of paper disappearing into a sea of colour.
The pair didn’t talk much for the rest of their session, both lost in thoughts that, though they knew the other was pondering over the exact same thing, did not speak up, for neither could answer the questions that echoed through their minds.
That night, Jimin did not move from his usual perch since the moment he had arrived at home.
He feared that he would miss something vital if he left even once, and he could feel the paranoia settling in, knocking gently from the inside of his skull repeatedly, never once ceasing, even when he found himself losing consciousness at one point.
Yet he did not move.
The stars above did not blink, nor did the moon stir up above him, Its pale glow didn’t waver for a moment and, just as midnight began to approach and he found himself losing hope, the sky seemed to light up in response, lingering in the air for several seconds before disappearing as fast as it had appeared.
He sat still for a while, vision clearing up a little, when he glimpsed a light flashing from the beach below.
-.-. .- -. / -.-- --- ..- / ... . . / -- .
Can you see me?
Jimin could not quite believe his eyes, scrambling for the torch once more and replying in the same way as he had the night before.
-.-- . …
Yes.
The boy on the moon had somehow found his way down, and though Jimin had originally intended to take the significantly safer path down towards the bay, it seemed that the light had affected him more than he previously thought and, now a little disoriented, he stumbled, accidentally throwing himself down the slope instead of his original plan to regain his lost footing.
Of course, that didn’t go as well as he had intended.
Soon enough he was tumbling down the hill at full throttle, arms wrapped protectively around his head as he lost all control until the inevitable landing.
THUD
His entire body ached, scratches littering his bare arms and knees reddened with a tinge of blood.
No, he had not thought it through, but when he felt cool fingers on his shoulder, hesitant yet familiar, he forgot about his recent bad decision and focused on what was happening right in that moment, because he had never experienced anything like it.
Naturally, during the Summer, the night was warm. The air was heavy with humidity that clung to his skin, his forehead damp with sweat and his breath left him in hot puffs. However, he was sure he felt a shiver go down his spine, almost as if he had been completely submerged beneath the surface of an icy pool . However, the feeling wasn’t at all unpleasant. It was more like finding an oasis amongst the sands of a desert, like it was something he had been searching for desperately for weeks, possibly even longer.
He lifted his eyes to meet with a pair that could not have been of this earth. His irises were pools of the darkest of blues and Jimin felt as if he were looking into the night sky itself. For a second, he swore he saw them flash silver, but after a blink it was gone, and so he continued to stare, eyes wide with fascination.
“What are you doing?” His head was tilted, most likely an old habit, but it looked a little off.
Jimin continued to stare up at him dumbly, eyes glazed over and his heartbeat became erratic with a feeling he could not describe.
"Hello?”
He finally came to his senses, glancing at the fingers that rested on his shoulder almost protectively, as if the moment they left his skin, Jimin would injure himself again somehow.
“Hi.”
“You can see me?”
Jimin nodded and the stranger smiled, withdrawing his hand from Jimin’s shoulder, offering it out to him. It took Jimin a moment to realise he was offering assistance since he was still on the ground and he began to regret his grand entrance.
He took the boy’s hand tentatively, pulling himself up and dusting himself off rather sheepishly, refusing to make eye contact out of embarrassment.
“What’s your name?” The boy offered his hand out once more, this time in greeting, obviously not caring for the layer of sand that refused to detach from Jimin’s skin.
“Park Jimin, and you are…?” He took the other’s hand slowly, fearing he would disappear at any given moment.
“Kim Taehyung, at your service.” Taehyung then bowed slightly, letting out a laugh that rang like bells, and Jimin thought it resembled the twinkling of stars, which was of course impossible, but the thought still struck him.
“You- you... “ Jimin swallowed, half of him wishing Taehyung would drop their handshake that was definitely lasting longer than most, while the other half hoped he would never let go. “You came from- from the sky?” His statement came out more like a question and he shrank into himself a little.
Then Taehyung laughed again, nodding as he let go of Jimin’s hand. “I guess you could say so.”
For several seconds, Jimin remained silent, eyes darting up and down, side to side, barely beginning to decipher the boy who stood only a meter away, claiming to be the very person he had been dreaming about ever since he could understand the stories his mother whispered in the dead of the night.
My whole life, I-
Jimin jerked his hand back, brushing them against his legs furiously before raising his head once more, his chest burning and his eyes brimming with anger. “How long have you been watching, huh?”
Taehyung tilted his head once more, pulling his hand back as if he had been struck. “What do you-”
“You know exactly what I mean.”
What- what is this feeling? Why am I so-
“I’ve been waiting for over a decade now and-”
No… No, this is all wrong. I don’t want-
“You suddenly turn up with that smile on your face?”
It wasn’t meant to be like this-
“What took you so long?” Jimin’s chest rose and fell in rapid succession, breath heavy and salt water leaking from his eyes for reasons he couldn’t yet fathom.
“It’s been that long…?” The boy closed his eyes and clutched the sides of his head, shaking it a few times before opening and lowering his eyes to the ground. “I’m sorry, I- I was meant to come sooner. The balloon, it-”
“I bet you were.” He was shaking now. I should turn and leave, before I do something stupid-
“Jimin, I am truly sorry, but...” He trailed off, fingers brushing against Jimin’s arm in what seemed to be an attempt to calm both himself and the boy who looked about ready to blow a fuse, voice quiet and his movements tentative, testing the waters before he dived in. “What exactly did you expect?”
For a moment, Jimin found himself hesitating, his previous anger evaporating within seconds. His thoughts drifted back, focusing on a single word.
Balloon?
“What do you mean? Why are you talking about the balloon?”
Taehyung paused, touch lingering and unspoken words hanging in the air. “I- I remember finding it and I- I wanted to bring it back to you, I didn’t realise how long it had been-” He went quiet all of a sudden, but then-
“Jimin.” Taehyung’s voice suddenly rose in volume, as if the final piece if the puzzle had been put in its place, and the deep baritone shook Jimin’s entire body to the core. When he turned back, Taehyung’s entire stance had changed, expression hardening and eyes steeled. The moment he turned back, his hands were grabbed by the boy in front of him, hands soft but his grip firm.
They stood like that in complete silence for several seconds, eyes locked as Jimin’s anger gradually began to simmer down.
That was until Taehyung made the grave mistake of letting go, and the wave of calmness ebbed away, Jimin’s frustration bubbling up once more.
“Well, then you should have come when you meant to.”
And with those final words, he turned, this time being especially cautious as he made his way back up the hill.
He did not see Taehyung’s expression, but if he had, it certainly would have stopped him in his tracks.
Don’t look back.