Chapter Text
☆
the back of your head is at the front of my mind
soon i’ll crack it open just to see what’s inside
☆
imagine.
there is a boy, hundreds of years into the future, and he’s fallen to his knees in a pool of blood.
imagine.
he has blonde hair, wait, no. he has black hair. he has hair the color of a starless night. a ceremonial wreath of sunflowers adorns the crown of his head too.
his name is min yoongi, and there’s really not much left for him to do as he stares down at the dead corpse.
his fingers are decorated with different shades of red, and as he shakily rises back to his feet he begins to wonder how he got here. he begins to wonder how he ended up with such a tragedy on his hands, how he found himself staring down a person he was responsible for killing.
perhaps it started when the townspeople pushed him to the front of the crowd, having just turned twenty, the age of two decades, the age of two sacrifices.
was it then?
was it with their dark stares and rough hands as he bowed his head to the elders of his town, was that when it started?
he remembers the adrenaline, the desperation to please his people, the will to follow the path destined for him. yoongi remembers smiling as people cheered, charcoal black tattoos drawn onto his knuckle as he was officially accepted as another year older.
he remembers blowing out the candles of unity and peace, and he remembers the people applauding him.
yoongi’s eyes train on the broken ribs artistically poking out of the dead body in front of him.
this is what he was meant to do, what he was always meant to do. the scrolls dating back thousands of years record that his people have always done this, that they have always been this sadistically destructive.
so why does he feel hesitant? he can’t name what emotion is slowly beginning to twist deep within his chest, but he knows that it’s not right.
his people told him he’d feel like a hero, like a god.
so why does he feel like falling to his knees again? why are his bones crumbling inside of him as if they can no longer hold up the rest of his body?
perhaps it started before that, yoongi wonders to himself. perhaps it started when he was ten, when the townspeople made him sacrifice a deer to the burning hearth for the first time. he was the age of one decade, and consequently that made him the age of one sacrifice.
it had rained that day, he remembers this well. mud had stuck to his laced boots as he lead the deer to the middle of his village.
it was all a ritual.
once you were ten years of age, you were to lead a deer to the burning hearth. there, you would douse it in gasoline, inhale the fire, something you were taught at age five, and then breathe it onto the deer’s body. you would then release the deer free into the great forest where it would set the trees alight in a fury of orange and black.
it rained the day of yoongi’s sacrifice, and since not many people were turning the age of ten simply because not many people were left in his village, left on earth in general, the failed sacrifice was a disappointment.
people had sent him condolences for it. yoongi never told anyone that he was relieved it rained. he never told anyone how he ran to his cottage after freeing the deer back into the forest very much alive with relief flooding his veins. he never told anyone how he tore the ceremonial crown of sunflowers from his hair and threw it into the fireplace.
he slept for the first time in weeks that night, and the next morning the sun had risen. he remembers looking out of his window to gold light peeking through above a green forest. green—the color the trees were meant to be.
yoongi’s no longer ten though. he’s a decade older, and he wasn’t let off as easily. no, he couldn’t escape his fate this time.
the dead body at his feet doesn’t even look like a body anymore. he’s not particularly sadistic, but the elders told him that murder was an art. violence was an art. war was an art. destruction was an art.
it's an image he knows will haunt him late at night when he tosses and turns in nightmarish sleep.
yoongi clenches his fists. he didn’t want this. he never wanted this.
he’s deep within the great forest, had carried the girl’s lifeless body for an hour or so. he’s deep enough that the trees are green.
time has passed since yoongi was ten, and now the trees surrounding his village are all burned the color of ash. sometimes when it’s night he can’t tell the difference between what’s earth and what’s sky.
his elders once told him the visual was metaphorical, something to allude how men are not much different from gods, how the land they live on is not much different from the land of the heavens.
yoongi grimaces when he turns away from the dead body. he stiffly begins to walk in the direction of his village. everyone is waiting for his return.
something’s off, he thinks. something’s not right, because if it was right he wouldn’t feel this way, but it isn’t wrong because, well, because his people have done this for as long as he can remember. this is tradition, and what are morals but old traditions ingrained into a society?
yoongi wonders when it started.
he wonders when it will end.
☆
before yoongi was born, in fact, before you and i were born too, a mother decided to have a baby boy.
this was no ordinary child, for he was created from sunlight and crumbling stars. he was created from autumn wind turning the leaves from green to red to brown and ocean waves crashing against rocks in a bubbling white foam. he was created from the birds chirping their whimsical lullabies and the butterflies never caught to be hung up in oiled frames.
all those from above call him haebalagi—sunflower.
he was never meant to mean anything to anyone on earth.
it is a cruel game fate plays.
it’s a very human thing, fate that is. it’s an insignificant concept not meant to affect the gods.
so perhaps it's not fate that caused it, that started it, perhaps it’s something different.
☆
it’s before yoongi returns to his village, right where the green trees meet grey, it’s there where he removes the crown of sunflowers from his head. he prefers to leave it with the living world where it belongs.
nobody will question why he left it behind. the townspeople are always already too fixated on the blood stains decorating the people who return from sacrifices, the blood stains that often cover the tattoos. they don’t notice the tear stained cheeks or the shaking hands. they only focus on the blood, guts, gore.
yoongi stares at the golden and brown flowers intricately wrapped around each other. he doesn’t know how to explain it, but the petals make him relax with a sigh. he’d say they were beautiful, but yoongi’s not too sure what beauty is.
his elders told him sacrificing living creatures was beautiful, but the idea has always made his insides shrink.
min yoongi doesn’t know beauty. he’s not sure he wants to.
there’s a slight breeze as he begins to walk through the ash burnt forest indicating the proximity of his village. the wind is the only thing that reminds him that the planet’s alive whilst the coal black earth cracks beneath him.
the sky’s a faded grey color. it doesn’t bring yoongi any comfort. hoseok once told him it was from all the smoke, but yoongi would like to imagine it as the clouds hiding the rest of the world from him. he doesn’t like to think about the possibility that his people could corrupt something as innocently serene as the sky.
in the scrolls he reads in class, he learned that the sky used to change colors, wouldn’t just change from grey to black. they say it used to be blue, but yoongi thinks it must be a lie.
sometimes he wonders about this, about the world before his people. he knows something existed before him, they call it the old world, but it’s something he avoids thinking about. there’s a certain loneliness that comes with contemplating the past, and yoongi told himself long ago that he would stop letting himself feel lonely.
the ground crumbles under him in an array of cracks. it’s awfully quiet this far from his village. back in the forest, where the trees were actual trees, there had been the sound of animals and leaves crinkling in the air. here, however, here, where he’s not yet near his village but also too far from where the earth is actual earth, here, a silence wraps itself around him.
yoongi looks behind him to where ashen footprints detail his path from the dead body he left in the forest.
it wouldn’t be that hard, he tells himself.
running.
running as far away as he can.
it wouldn’t be that hard.
☆
at the same time, in a different place, the boy made of sunlight is surrounded by other gods as he folds over in pain. comforting hands trail down his back, through his hair, along his fingertips.
“how could they do that?” he heaves through his tears. “how could they disfigure a corpse like that in the forest i regrew with my own blood and veins?”
the gods pepper featherlight kisses onto the younger’s forehead, hands, cheeks.
blood seeps from intricate cuts dragged across golden skin. worried hands press against the red liquid unsure of what to do.
gods aren’t supposed to bleed.
the boy tries to push their hands away, tries to stand up from where he had fallen, knows what he has to do.
“please don’t go back down, sunflower.”
“i have to.”
☆
seokjin pats yoongi on the back when he passes the gate into his village. yoongi can only offer a weak smile and a nod of his head.
it’s not that this exchange is abnormal. seokjin’s one of the elders. he likes yoongi. yoongi’s well liked among his people. it isn’t that it’s not normal, it’s that yoongi just doesn’t feel the same. he doesn’t feel the way he should.
they told him he’d feel like a hero after his first human sacrifice, but the only thing yoongi feels is a hollow desire to go back, to rewind time and never set a hand on the dead body.
“there’s a girl turning ten tomorrow.” seokjin says. “you’ve been appointed to lead the ceremony.”
it takes everything in him for yoongi to not deflate. he tries to avoid the sacrificial ceremonies. they aren’t common, but the few he’s been to have always made him chew on his lip and ring his hands.
of course, he can’t tell seokjin that. seokjin doesn’t know him like that. seokjin knows him as the boy who just returned from his second sacrifice with too much blood on his hands. seokjin knows him as the boy the rest of his village knows him as.
yoongi has a duty to his people. after surviving earth’s first collapse, he owes his people, he owes the entire human race, his efforts. he knows his people had nearly died after the first collapse, knows he’s living on stolen time.
yoongi bows his head slightly in delayed response, “it would be an honor.”
seokjin smiles. “i like you, yoongi.”
“i’m simply upholding my responsib-”
“no, i like you.” seokjin interrupts him sharply. “you understand our people and our way of life.”
the two begin to stroll into the village square where glowing lanterns are hung in celebration of yoongi’s return.
“you understand the importance of tradition, and it's people like you who will lead humanity to salvation.” seokjin continues. “you understand that humans are naturally cruel and violent creatures, and the only way for us to live in peace is by indulging ourselves.”
yoongi swallows.
“it is a terrifying world we have found ourselves in, min yoongi. the scales are not in our favor, i’m afraid they never will be, but it is not balance we must seek. it’s a determination to find balance.”
seokjin’s quoting the scriptures written on the jade tablets from the village’s historical studies room. yoongi himself has them memorized as well, had them ingrained in his mind since age five.
“after tomorrow’s ceremony, i would like to pass my position as a town elder to you. i do not expect to survive the next few moons, so i need someone i can trust to guide this village.”
yoongi’s lip twitches as he tries not to immediately protest. “i’m not sure if i’m fit for such a position.”
“this isn’t a favor, this is an order.” seokjin replies levelly. he stares at yoongi for a moment. “i know how you feel about our way of life, i know there are parts you oppose, but you cannot let trivial personal interests stop the prosperity of the human race.”
yoongi purses his lips. perhaps seokjin knows more about him than he had thought. if seokjin could pick up his quiet opposition of his people’s traditions, what else could seokjin know?
“we are dying, min yoongi. it is a fact.” there’s an intense look on the elders face. “we are dying, and so it's okay that the world around us is dying too.”
yoongi nods his head at seokjin’s words, but a voice in his head relents. a voice, near defeated, whispers promise of something else. yoongi’s not sure what this something else is, but he knows that it must be out there. something different must be out there.
“we have survived far too long for you to hold onto morals so tightly, yoongi. morals were created by man to benefit the individual-”
yoongi interrupts seokjin with a whispered, “i know.” he looks down at his bloodstained sleeves. “i’ve read about people and societies, and i know why we live this way.” yoongi glances back to the grey skeletons of the charcoal trees. “i just feel like…” he trails off.
memory of the green forest that had towered over him only a few hours prior replay in his mind.
his revelation from earlier is brought to the forefront of his thoughts, it wouldn’t be that hard.
it wouldn’t be that hard at all.
☆
there is a line between the things we want to do and the things we should do, and there is another line between the things we should do and the things we have to do.
the young god’s decision to try again is perhaps all of these.
☆
“he wants me to lead the sacrifice tomorrow.” yoongi’s sitting across from hoseok on his porch staring up at the empty sky.
they’re both busy. hoseok’s sharpening one of his daggers, and yoongi’s skillfully weaving another crown of sunflowers for the ceremony.
“i’ve grown up here all of my life, but there’s a part of me, something beyond just my bones, there’s a part of me that doesn’t fit in the way i want it to.”
hoseok glances at yoongi. light from the flickering lantern above them morphs shadows across his face. he stares in silence, and maybe, yoongi thinks, maybe the silence is one of understanding. because sometimes there are things that we all acknowledge and understand but never do anything about. sometimes there’s a connection binding us all together, a connection we deny because denial is a stone that's easier to swallow.
yoongi used to wonder if he was alone in disagreeing with his village’s traditions, used to wonder if others flinched too during sacrifices and closed their eyes in order to cope better. for awhile he thought he was, but then he started noticing the way some people grew awfully quiet after particularly violent ceremonies. he started noticing the way some people locked themselves in their homes for days at a time following the rampant fires.
“i used to ask seokjin if that’s what a society was.” hoseok eventually replies, eyes now focused on the ground. “if society’s just a bunch of people pretending they don’t feel like the outcasts they are.”
yoongi gently pulls another sunflower stem through the crisscross pattern he’s weaved together.
he and hoseok have conversations like this often.
it isn’t anything dangerous. it’s not like they’re planning on overthrowing the authoritative figures. it’s not like they’re scheming a revolution. they’re just two boys sitting on a porch discussing in defeated voices the world they’ve found themselves in.
hypothetically, they could pinpoint every flaw of the system and where it went wrong, they could dissect the leaders of their society and scrutinize them, they could ridicule the laws and order and tradition, but the issue is that these things, no matter how far they escalate, they’ll never change anything.
hoseok continues. “seokjin told me society was just a word we gave to those who try to balance the scales of war and peace.”
“indulgence keeps peace.” yoongi quotes one of the inscriptions carved into the hearth at the center of his village.
hoseok hums. “the elders could be right, you know.”
“they could be wrong.” yoongi’s voice is gentle. his defiance isn’t loud. it’s a quiet rumble in his chest.
it’s this uncertainty, this fact that yoongi can only wonder if the elders are wrong, that worries him the most. he knows no other way of life beyond his own, so how can he challenge a way of life in favor of something he can’t comprehend? how can he believe there’s a better option when he knows nothing beyond what he already has?
he stares down at the tattoos on his hands and forearm, the tattoos traditional to his village. everyone in his village has them—an array of dots and lines unique to the individual but conformed to the people.
“sometimes i feel like my only option is to run away and leave this place behind.” yoongi says.
it wouldn’t be that hard, he thinks to himself for the hundredth time.
people have done it before, have walked into the great forest never to return.
the idea has become far more prominent lately, and yoongi wonders if it’s always been prevalent in the very back of his mind. the option of running away has always been a choice, something he’s considered multiple times before, but now’s different. now, he’s about to lead a sacrificial ceremony he’s never been able to witness without looking away, now, he’s about to inherit the village elder position meant to guide his people through traditional rituals he’s never agreed with.
“i won’t stop you.” hoseok looks him directly in the eye when he says this. “if that’s what you want. if somewhere out there is where you think you’ll find peace, i won’t stop you.”
☆
earth is a lot colder in the future. after the first collapse the ozone layer began to deteriorate, and so heat escapes quickly these days.
that’s the first thing the boy made of sunlight notices—how cold it is.
the first time he visited following his mother’s death he had tried to heal the sky, but it was far too vast. he cried a lot during that first visit, not because it hurt but because he couldn’t do anything about it.
he crouches down and rests his palm against the cracked earth. he does this to ground himself, to reassure himself that he’s in the right place.
beneath him is the barren land the city of incheon once stood on.
he's worked on incheon the most. it's a smaller city, easier to heal.
he sends a heartbeat of energy into the dead earth and watches as the blossoms of flowers and the beginnings of trees slowly begin to grow from the cracks.
he doesn’t cry, simply watches quietly as the plants bloom around him. he hasn’t lifted himself from the ground yet, and a vine softly wraps around his hand and up his arm.
“it’s not much.” he whispers. “i’m sorry.”
the vine delicately tightens around his hand like the earth’s already forgiven him, like the fate of the once alive planet has never been his fault.
☆
the heavy beat of a drum marks the beginning of the ceremony. it's early in the morning and still dark out as yoongi tips his head back to stare up at the hearth in the center of his village. a crowd of people surround him. he lifts his hand up to the sunflower crown atop his head so it doesn’t fall.
when the drums begin to fade, he tears his eyes from the hearth. it’s quiet for a moment. he closes his eyes and breathes deeply.
he tries not to flinch at the roar of the fire once the hearth is ignited.
on cue, yoongi rolls a sleeve of his white robe up and kneels in front of a young girl.
it’s her birthday, he thinks to himself. he dips his index and middle finger into a gilded cup filled with ash. it’s her birthday and this is how his people celebrate. they should be celebrating life. he drags his fingers across her left cheek creating the outline of a star.
they should be celebrating life.
yoongi bows his head to the girl, and then he directs her to the torch lit path where she’ll lead the deer.
the girl avoids looking him in the eyes, simply bows her head and turns away.
yoongi hasn’t witnessed an age of one sacrifice ceremony in a long time. he doesn’t quite remember how it goes, and so he keeps his eyes trained on the girl’s back as she walks.
when she reaches the deer a silence falls over the crowds of people watching. the girl reaches out toward the deer to secure a braided collar of rope around its neck.
however, the deer immediately kicks its legs at her, and she stumbles back. yoongi’s deer had been calm when he had to harness it during his ceremony.
something’s not right.
he bites his lip.
the deer lets out an awful sound of distress and kicks its hind legs again in a fit.
violence is an art, the elders voices ring in yoongi’s mind. destruction is beauty, they had said. but yoongi doesn’t know.
yoongi doesn’t know.
a hushed whisper arises from the crowd, and an archer steps forward. it takes two seconds for them to aim at the deer and even less time for the arrow to lodge itself into its upper leg.
the deer crumples to the ground letting out pained whimpers.
min yoongi doesn’t know beauty, but he knows that this isn’t it.
he has nightmares about this sort of thing.
the girl looks behind her to where the town elders are standing. seokjin nods his head, and she reaches back out to the deer with the collar.
yoongi looks away.
☆
a few miles away, the boy made of sunlight runs a finger featherlight over the blossoming wound on his upper thigh.
he had been walking through the grey forest humming the dead trees back to life. he hadn’t been doing anything dangerous. he had no logical reason to fall, but an overwhelming pain erupted on his thigh from the skin down into the muscle. his leg had immediately given out beneath him.
the boy tries not to tear up, yells out an exasperated “goddamn it.” he tightens his fingers around the growing wound and grits his teeth.
the pain is at its worse, he knows this. he knows it’ll subside within a few seconds, knows he’ll be able to walk again in a matter of minutes, but it still hurts.
he tries not to think about what it means, but he can’t help it.
it starts off as quiet whimpering, but then it grows into crying and then into heavy sobbing as he desperately digs at the torn flesh.
tears run down his cheeks, not because of the pain, but because he’s only been on earth for a few hours. he’s only been on earth for a few hours, but he’s already losing.
☆
yoongi doesn’t know how it happens, hadn’t seen a rain cloud all morning, but somehow it begins to downpour. rain falls from the thundering sky and showers his entire village in water.
it drenches the fire from the hearth until it flickers out, and for the first time all morning yoongi feels like he can breathe.
for a few moments the crowds of people can only stare up at the sky as it pours and pours and pours.
someone must be looking out for him, yoongi thinks to himself. he feels unconventionally lucky as the rain sticks his hair to his forehead.
it only takes a few moments for seokjin to walk to the hearth where yoongi’s standing. he rests his hand on yoongi’s shoulder and then begins to address the village.
“it seems like we’ll have to dismiss this ceremony.”
yoongi sighs in relief.
“we’ll resume the ceremony tomorrow morning.” seokjin adds while nodding his head once in conclusion.
yoongi inhales sharply because that’s not...that’s not right. that’s not how it works. last time when it had rained during a ceremony, the entire sacrifice was dismissed. never to be resumed. never to be finished.
he opens his mouth to protest, but seokjin turns to him and gives him a heavy stare.
yoongi looks out to the stands of people slowly evacuating.
his eyes catch on hoseok in the crowd. he frowns at the other, and hoseok gives him a sympathetic look, slowly rests his hand against the left side of his chest.
yoongi reaches up and rests his hand against his chest too, over the erratically beating thing trapped behind his ribcage, over the reminder that he’s alive despite how difficult it can be sometimes
he thinks about what seokjin’s words entail, how he’s meant to lead the ceremony again tomorrow. resume it. finish it.
it leaves a bitter taste in his mouth, the idea of doing it all over again, doing any of this all over again. the waiting. the fire. the bowing. the sacrifice. the traditions.
he presses his hand harder against his chest. firmer. his heart’s still beating. beating like it wants to escape. beating like it would rather be anywhere but inside him.
there must be something more, he entertains. this can’t be it.
rain blurs eyes, and it can blur thoughts too, but it’s clear to yoongi what he has to do because this can’t be it.
it can’t.
☆
plants need water to grow, and so maybe it’s best that the young god cries.
cries and cries and cries.
maybe he’s doing the world a favor, falling apart like this.
☆
he leaves.
it isn’t monumental, had been on the tip of his tongue for days, months, years.
after everyone’s gone, yoongi stares at the sky that’s always been too grey. he stares, and then he begins to walk.
all of his people go west, toward the houses and cottages, but yoongi goes east. yoongi goes east toward the great forest.
the shadows of ebony burned trees loom over him, but he doesn’t stop. doesn’t hesitate. doesn’t look behind him.
he doesn’t think it through, but he doesn’t have to.
min yoongi doesn’t know beauty, but he knows it must be out there. there must be something better. something lighter. something easier on the heart
☆
after the tears stop falling the young god falls asleep. he doesn’t mean to.
emotions are just exhausting, and on earth everything seems so much bigger than it is.
his eyes flutter shut before he gives it a second thought.
it's dangerous out here, out in the open, out where the earth has become a toxic nightmare, out where he could easily be killed and returned to the heavens.
but the young god disregards this.
he dreams of the world before the first collapse, dreams of the people, the way of life, the beauty, the tragedy.
he dreams of all the times he visited earth to learn more about it. the young god’s always had an infatuation with the little blue planet, has always had an attachment to the people and how they live every moment like it’s their last.
he used to think it was a miracle—how the people could live everyday with the determination to truly live. mortal lives are short, but that's never been enough to stop humanity.
for the better or for the worse.
as he sleeps, plants the color of mint and citrus curl around his frame, like they’re trying to embrace the boy made of sunshine. small flowers bud in between his fingers in a complex design.
the wound on his thigh is healed by now, washed away in a flurry of blue and gold. but the scars are still there, the scars far too deep for someone as delicate and bright as the young god. the scars are still etched across his insides from his heart to his lower lip. the scars are still there, whether being his own fault or someone else’s or something else’s.
sometimes the earth can’t heal, and sometimes the wounds can’t heal either.
it’s a matter of thought. it’s a matter of how you see the world and yourself in it.
☆
it’s hard to draw lines. it’s hard to distinguish where one thing stops and another thing starts. it’s hard to say where one story ends and another story begins. it’s hard differentiating someone saying i love you, i care, and i’ll change and someone actually meaning it.
it’s hard to draw lines, yet yoongi finds him on one.
they meet in the woods right where green meets grey.
it’s quiet, and yoongi supposes it’s fitting for a place made up of more death than life.
he’s been walking for perhaps two hours when he comes across something strange. he nearly misses it too, almost walks past with no regard for his surroundings.
yoongi’s scanning over the growing underbrush marking the line between the forest that’s dead and the forest that’s very much alive. his eyes are skimming the leaves and stems when they fall on a figure in the distance lying on the ground, a figure representing a body.
at first he briefly thinks it’s the corpse he left the day before, but he buries the thought once he notices the flowers spiralling out around the frame.
he takes a few hesitant steps forward until the features of a boy become clear.
he’s immediately taken aback the moment he’s close enough to study the boy.
it’s the afternoon, and so the sun is still high in the sky casting glimmers of bronze across the trees. as yoongi examines the boy, the sun paints his face in tangled patterns. vines and leaves and flower blossoms decorate his hands, arms, chest, collarbones, jaw, forehead, hair.
it looks like the plants are consuming him, yoongi thinks to himself. it’s like he’s being eaten alive.
yoongi kneels and reaches a hand out toward the boy, and in response the vines begin to pull away from his body. it’s strange. yoongi never learned much about plants and biology. he never learned much about anything beyond societies and people and prosperous ways of life.
do plants do this? he asks himself. he hasn’t had much experience with other living things besides humans and the one deer he was meant to sacrifice when he was ten.
he watches as the budded flowers around the boy’s fingers unwind. golden skin is revealed underneath them, and yoongi’s eyes widen. the boy isn’t glowing, but there’s a certain youthfulness, a certain brightness, to him that leads yoongi to wonder.
yoongi never knew beauty, but he thinks this boy, who’s more sunlight than skin and bone, must be it.
the boy’s eyes flutter open, and yoongi’s hand is still reaching out for him. drowsy eyes filled with too much light flicker up to him, and yoongi’s hand is still up.
he feels like a fool.
the boy, now lazily blinking up at him, smiles softly, and yoongi doesn’t know what to do. doesn’t know what to say.
“you can put your hand down.” the boy says.
and of course, yoongi thinks, of course his voice sounds like rose petals brushing against the cold palm of a hand. of course his voice is maple syrup dipped syllables and a mouth full of yellow summers.
yoongi doesn’t process his thoughts when he mindlessly mutters, “you’re beautiful.”
but the boy hears him anyway, swallows, looks away, blushes, looks back up. “thanks, yoongi hyung.” the sentiment effortlessly leaves his mouth.
yoongi jolts in surprise, not only from the the fact that the other recognizes him but from the honorific too. “how do you know my name?”
the boy stares blankly at him, but then he skips over the question. “i’m jungkook.”
and it’s all very strange.
yoongi slowly lets his hand fall and rest on the ground. he flinches when he feels the smooth leaves unravelling around jungkook. he studies the other curiously not entirely sure what he’s meant to do. he’s never talked to someone under such circumstances.
yoongi’s never met someone from outside of his village, and jungkook’s skin isn’t marked with the tattoos associated with his people.
but that doesn’t make sense because he’s never heard of any other civilizations surviving the first collapse.
“where did you come from?” yoongi asks.
a distant look casts over the other’s features. “somewhere far.” he looks down.
“where are you going?”
a vine curves up around jungkook’s hand. “i ran away.”
it’s something about the way he says it. it’s something about how the vine tugs on his hand and how jungkook lets his hand be pulled by it. there’s a passive sadness, like the way cloudy days feel.
the sky’s grey now, in the future, that’s the thing. the sky’s grey, but the sun still shines, and clouds still try to hide it.
yoongi doesn’t know why, but he feels this inclination to do anything to stop the sadness washing over the boy he’s just met. he feels a need to catch the clouds in a glass jar and release them anywhere but here.
“i ran away too.” yoongi whispers, still kneeling on the line where the forest is more death than life.
jungkook immediately looks back up at yoongi, blinks heavily. after a moment a smile spreads across his face, a smile that’s alarmingly bright.
like the sun, yoongi thinks. he’s like the sun.
☆
jungkook isn’t like the sun though, and this will confuse yoongi for awhile.
it’s too early for him to understand in the way he deserves, in the way both of them deserve.
but that’s also just a matter of opinion.
most people don’t trust opinions.
most people don’t trust facts either.
why is that?
the ozone hole in earth’s stratosphere has grown 27 million square kilometers in the past two decades, did you know?
every year overexposed ultraviolet light from the sun kills more than 60,000 people.
jungkook isn’t like the sun.
none of us are.
☆
there's a moment when you meet someone, someone special, someone you know will stay with you whether it's physically or simply in your mind, there's a moment when all you can do is captivate yourself with who they are. there's a moment when all you can do is listen to what they say and hold onto every word because you know, for some reason, that what they're saying is important, what they're saying could mean everything one day.
every once in awhile you'll meet someone like that. it's a thing about people. it's a thing about who you are when you meet them and who they are when they meet you.
it's like that with jungkook.
"i used to run away a lot." jungkook's sitting up now, looking down at the ivy curled around his fingers. “i liked the idea of running away…" he trails off. "the idea of going somewhere new and being someone new."
yoongi hums under his breath, a nervous tick when he doesn't know what to say.
"but you can’t run away without taking everything with you." jungkook looks up at him. "do you believe that, hyung? that you take everything with you no matter how hard you try."
there it is again, yoongi pinpoints, the familiarity, the gentle hyung.
he doesn't ask about it yet. he's just met jungkook. he doesn't want to set the other off, doesn't want him to leave, wants him to stay.
there's a sense of security in the way jungkook regards him, the way jungkook refers to yoongi as if he's something precious, something important. it's offhandedly, but jungkook says yoongi's name like it's a comfort, like he's doing it more for his own sake than yoongi's.
and so yoongi doesn't ask about it yet.
jungkook asked him a question about whether he thinks people carry everything with them wherever they go. it's something yoongi's never truly contemplated.
the other's still looking at him with a sadness in his eyes, a sadness like a thousand ships lost at sea. and the thing is, the baffling thing is, yoongi finds himself replying far too quickly because for some reason he wants to make it better.
"i do." yoongi says.
he thinks about how he left his village a few hours earlier, thinks about how he hadn't felt any different, thinks about how he still feels the guilt, the regret, the shame. he left, ran away in every meaning of the term, but he's still the same person. he's still the same yoongi who trembles at the idea of blood and guts and being who everyone wants him to be.
you can run away from a place and its people, but you can't run away from a concept, and you sure as hell can't run away from yourself.
"where are you running to?" yoongi asks again because jungkook hadn't exactly answered earlier. "where are you going?"
jungkook's looking at him still with an unreadable sort of expression. "home."
yoongi doesn't know how to take it.
☆
if home is where the body is,
his home is in the people.
it’s pressed against the masses,
pressed so he can rotten.
it’s where it’s easy to get lost,
and easier to be forgotten.
☆
yoongi thinks about the word home.
they never quite tell you what one is, yet everyone's always looking for one.
yoongi used to think it was because people had their mind set on owning something, on having something belong to them, but he eventually came to realize that it was the opposite.
it isn't because people want something to belong to them. it's because they want to belong to something.
and maybe that's what a society is. maybe it's just what happens when a collection of people want to find a home.
it's unfortunate that that often falls short.
yoongi looks away from jungkook. he suddenly doesn't have the courage to look the other in the eye. he's so out of his realm. it's never usually like this. "is this place your home?"
jungkook's less hesitant than him though, more open. "it was."
"what happened?"
"i had to leave." jungkook whispers.
a heartbeat, a mental clock ticking. "why did you have to leave?"
"people."
and, yeah, yoongi thinks to himself, i get that.
there's a characteristic humanity possesses that's unavoidably careless. it's never really on purpose, but everyone has a bit of it within them. everyone has the habit of forgetting things, places, people, and it's not a flaw. in fact, it can be a blessing sometimes.
but most of the time it's not.
most of the time it's helplessly cruel, not to the world but to the individual.
how terrible is that? that we can hurt those around us so easily by accident, or even worse, how easily we can hurt ourselves, how easily we can hurt our very souls, hurt the very root of who we are.
yoongi tries to imagine what sort of people hurt jungkook to the extent that he felt he had to run away. he tries to envision who would taint jungkook's soul, which seems to only shine before him.
because, surely, if jungkook's soul was revealed to the world it'd be something beautiful, right? it'd be silver and ivory in the sunlight. it'd be overflowing with life and light and warmth.
jungkook's standing in sunbeams surrounded by leaves and branches that all stretch toward him.
yoongi doesn't know beauty, but he could have himself fooled because jungkook's soul might as well be as beautiful as the rest of him.
in contrast, yoongi thinks that if he was stripped down to his soul he'd find something like the green and grey line he stands on.
he thinks he'd find something not quite alive but not quite dead either, something lost in traditions and sunflower crowns and broken ribs.
because that's what a society can do to you after years of meddling and festering.
that's what people can do to you.
that's what you can do to yourself.
☆
if home is where the soul is,
his home is in the sea.
it’s hidden beneath the shorelines,
hidden in the taste.
it’s where it’s easy to wash away,
and easier to be replaced.
☆
sea.
you know that song, right?
how does it go?
where there is hope...
you know, you know, you know, you know, yeah.
there used to be a difference between the desert and the sea, a difference important enough to write songs about.
jungkook remembers those times, can still hum the lullaby if he tries hard enough.
jungkook wants to ask yoongi if he remembers too.
he doesn't, instead settles for, "where are you going, yoongi hyung?”
and yoongi wants to ask how the other knows his name again, wants to ask why it falls so easily from jungkook’s mouth.
“you seem lost.”
i am, yoongi thinks to himself, but replies with “i’m going east.”
jungkook tilts his head to the side, “why east?”
and yoongi ponders the question, really thinks about it for the first time. he didn’t want to go west, he knows, didn’t want to go west because that was the way to the ocean. the sea is filled with toxic water that burns when you touch it. it’s dangerous, and tides are unpredictable in the future. going west would’ve been a dead end.
going east though, that was the direction into the heart of the peninsula. of course, ocean awaits him east too, but it’s further away. it’s a longer journey to the same poisoned waters, but there’s more time. there’s more of a chance he’d find something before the end.
because it's the future now, and in the future it doesn't matter whether you're in the desert or the sea because both are just as hopeless.
when yoongi brings his eyes back up to the other, jungkook’s curiously looking at him. “i think i would like to go east too.” he says in a polite tone. “if you wouldn’t mind.”
yoongi can only stare at him in silence. he doesn’t know what to do, doesn’t know common etiquette. jungkook isn’t from around here, and yoongi’s never interacted with someone outside his village.
is this what usually happens? is this how it usually goes? back then, back before the first collapse, was it normal to find beautiful boys in the woods who wanted to travel east with you?
yoongi isn’t sure.
“i wouldn’t mind.” he eventually replies because it’s the truth. jungkook seems harmless enough perched on his bed of greenery. yoongi brushes his hair out of his eyes, squints up at the sun, looks back down to the white flower blossoms littering the ground.
“do you know anything about what lies east?” jungkook's voice is feather light.
“an ocean eventually, but i don’t know much else.”
“you’re in for something special.” there’s a glint in jungkook’s eyes, and maybe it’s the sun, yoongi reasons, or maybe it’s just jungkook.
“what do you mean?” words come slow to yoongi as he watches jungkook move away from the trees. a few vines hold onto him, as if they don’t want to let him go, but he hums something sweet and they loosen.
jungkook ignores his question and instead asks his own. “what do you know about the physical world?”
yoongi flushes, “not much.”
and jungkook smiles again, that same blinding smile that left yoongi breathless before. jungkook extends his hand up toward the sun and slowly pulls it back to his chest with a luminous gold light between his fingers. “it’ll get dark soon.” he justifies.
yoongi’s eyes fixate on the light in his hand. that’s not possible, is it? he blinks a few times at the sight. if he squints, it’s almost like there’s nothing in jungkook’s hand, but that can’t be true because something invisible, something he can’t quite pinpoint but is there nonetheless, is glowing brightly in his palm.
what is he? yoongi asks himself, but he doesn’t have the courage to ask it aloud. is afraid it’ll break something, break whatever spell is cast over him.
“what’s east?” yoongi asks instead.
jungkook beams at him. “seoul.”
yoongi hears soul.
☆
if home is where the mind is,
his home is in the sky.
it’s flying as far away as he can,
flying so he can shrink.
it’s where it’s easy to feel weightless,
and easier to think.
☆
when yoongi was younger he looked at the sky a lot.
that's one habit that doesn't go away in the future.
it seems like humanity's always been looking up for as long as time can remember.
it's not a coincidence either. looking up, holding onto hope, hoping in general—it's never gone away, even in the future when all there is to look up to is grey skies and a pale white sun.
yoongi used to wonder what made the sky so grey, similar to how scientists wondered what made the sky so blue before they knew about light and optics.
when he was younger he used to ask a lot of questions like that, but as he grew up he stopped.
he's been left unanswered too many times, been returned only silence too many times, been kept awake by his own confusion and desperation to know too many nights, and he just stopped asking.
but jungkook ignites a curiosity in him, one yoongi hasn't felt beneath his skin in a long time.
the other's pointing at seemingly random things in the grey sky and talking about the old world.
the only reason yoongi knows the other’s talking about the old world is because jungkook's mentioning cities, and cities don’t exist anymore. cities were destroyed during the first collapse. the earth could hardly hold itself up, and so the concrete frames and glass people were logically the first to fall.
cities don't exist anymore, yet there’s a certain spark in jungkook's eyes as he talks. “seoul used to be called the heart of this land back when the world was divided into countries.”
yoongi knows about the old world, knows it existed before him, but jungkook makes him wonder. jungkook makes him question how old the time truly was.
jungkook talks about the old world as if it wasn’t thousands of years ago. he talks about it as if it was a few days ago, as if it was yesterday.
it makes yoongi want to stop the other in his train of voiced thoughts. it makes him want to grab jungkook by the shoulders and ask him who he is, ask him where he came from, ask him how he knows.
because yoongi’s grown up in his village for all of his life. yoongi doesn’t know anything about the world before his own, and it’s not because he doesn’t want to learn but because he’s never known how. he used to sneak out after curfew to the historical studies room to find information about the world, but all he ever found was a fourteen page essay about it’s collapse.
and he’s read it countless times, always trying to find a hidden message, always trying to find something more.
the essay only covers the geographical landscape of earth before the first collapse. it only covers its cracked deserts and methane craters and unnatural weather patterns. it only discusses how the cities fell into sinkholes from underground gas bubbles and how the ice turned black from the sun.
most people don’t think about the end of the world before it happens.
in the future though, after the earth’s first collapse, after the world's already over, the people think about it a lot.
yoongi thinks about it a lot.
he says he doesn’t, says his mind isn’t lost in the past, says it’s not important.
but yoongi’s a bit of a liar to the world, to his people, to himself.
his lies aren’t harmful though. everyday so many people lie to hurt each other, but his lies are different. his lies are only meant to bring him a sense of comfort. and perhaps that’s something more common than we think—lying to make it easier.
it’s a bit like watering fake flowers.
it seems innocent enough, right?
yoongi isn't sure.
all he knows is that humans can be unintentionally careless, but it's hard to draw lines and he can never decide where the line is for such moralities.
because, sure, you aren’t causing any real damage watering fake flowers, but you’re still wasting half a dozen gallons of water on a plastic decoration.
yoongi thinks about these things more often than he’d like.
it’s all he ever does—thinks and thinks and thinks and thinks. and maybe one day he’ll be able to think himself to the next end of the world so that he doesn’t have to think anymore.
but yoongi doesn’t want that.
he's still standing on the line where green meets grey, hasn't moved yet.
jungkook's saying something, but yoongi's tuned out. he runs his hand through his hair again and thinks about how little he knows about the world. and, god, he ran away right into it, ran right into the unknown, right into a blackhole.
all he’s ever studied in his mandatory classes growing up was society and how it progresses, how it goes from rice farms to kingdoms. he’s spent his whole life learning about the prosperity of society and how it’s foundation is indulgence, but he’s never learned about actual examples. he’s only ever learned about hypotheticals, and it makes him feel unbelievably small next to jungkook.
“ah hyung, i remember. there used to be this bowling place where the finger holes were always too small.”
there it is again, yoongi notes. there’s something about how jungkook talks about it, something that’s less like he’s reciting the past and more like he’s recalling memories. it’s as if he remembers the old world, as if he was there.
“are you still terrible at bowling?” jungkook turns to face him. “still throw with two hands, hyung?”
and that's the other thing—the way jungkook regards him. things like that will occasionally slip, the questions, the familiarity, the strange feeling below yoongi’s ribs that jungkook doesn’t only remember the old world, but that jungkook remembers him too.
it doesn't make sense.
“what exactly is bowling?” despite yoongi trying to sound relaxed, the question comes out mildly uncomfortable.
for a moment jungkook laughs his yellow sunlight laugh, but it fades into something else at the end. fades into something a little more grey.
yoongi watches in silence, tries not to let his mind wander, wills himself not to think about it.
they used to call it keeping your head out of the clouds. or at least, that's what they called it in the old world.
they used to make it out to be something terrible. to have your head up above the skyline. to have your mind racing through dreams and questions and fantasies.
because they wanted you to have your feet on the ground where they could tie you to a life of mechanics and equations and systematically doing the right thing.
they didn't want your head in the clouds. they wanted it on the earth.
and in theory, the mind belongs on the earth, but it belongs in the sky as well.
they would pull it down, for good reasons at times, but the intentions were often skewed.
jungkook knows this. yoongi doesn't.
☆
if home is where the heart is,
his home is on the earth.
he cries, “it’s here. it’s right where we are.”
“it’s here. it’s here. it’s here.”
it’s where it’s easy to run away,
and easier to disappear.
☆
on a planet where the dead outweigh the living, it's hard to not become a ghost, to not fade away, to not evaporate into nothing.
yet yoongi's still here.
that must mean something.
it has to.
growing up, he used to have to remind himself this more than he'd like to admit. used to look at himself in the mirror next to his bed and remind himself that he's alive, remind himself that that's more than what most souls get.
most people never get the chance to live, especially in the future, and it's ironic because the living barely live anyway.
so what's the use? he used to ask himself. yoongi would stare at his eyes that were always a little too dull, stare at his hair that was always a little too dark, stare at his reflection that was always a little too small. he'd dissect himself and puzzle over who he was.
because it was easier to analyze himself than the world around him.
he'd obsess over it.
why is he here? why is he alive? why is it the future and why is he part of it?
goddamn it.
god fucking damn it.
where does he belong? where does his mind belong? his body? his soul?
his elders always told him to bring these things back from wherever they've wandered, and they disguised it by saying he was only bringing himself back home.
but that's not what a home is.
a home is the earth, the sky, the sea, the people.
yoongi realizes this later.
he changes overtime, stops looking in the mirror everyday, starts looking at the world with open eyes instead.
because that's what happens while the moon orbits the earth and the earth orbits the sun.
times change. things change. people change. places change. worlds end.
it happens.
did happen.
will happen.
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find the nearest person to you.
i'll give you a moment to do this.
there may not be anyone around you. if so, imagine in your head the last person you saw.
have you found them?
good.
look at them.
speak to them if you want, but look at them.
they carry the world on their shoulders, did you know?
you do too.
we all do.
the world is reliant on us to perceive it.
it wouldn't exist if we weren't there to let it.
it wouldn't be collapsing if we realized that our position in the cosmos isn't as random as we think.
you ask yourself what your purpose is, what the meaning of your life is, what you're here on this planet for, why you're here, why you're reading a story about a world you already understand.
and i can promise you that the person you're looking at asks the same things.
the two of you aren't that different. you and i aren't that different either. you and the society you live in, you and your neighbor, you and that kid who you always see but never say hi to, you and your elementary school crush, you and the person you've been trying to talk to recently but you still struggle with finding the right words sometimes because you haven't quite left the awkward stage yet—i could go on forever. you and the people just aren't that different.
why is it like that? why are our hearts set on being different when we never really are?
astrologers will tell you theia crashed into the earth four and a half billion years ago because it was different.
they'll tell you the harsh impact changed earth and its brittle mineral makeup and violent magnetic fields forever.
but they'll also tell you that theia began to orbit the earth after this collision in twenty seven day intervals.
they'll tell you how the collision created ocean tides for the people of earth to marvel at centuries later. they'll tell you how the collision created eclipses and prophecies and space missions and so so many pieces of art, music, literature, stories, myths.
because theia, as different as it was, later became known as the moon, which is perhaps one of the only things humanity has always been familiar with.
theia and the moon.
they're hypothetically two different things, but physically they're the same.
you and the people.
you're physically two different things, but hypothetically?
well.