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i. fire flood
He remembers the lying, lying down on the table behind him and watching the silhouette of the boy at the classroom piano, weak sunlight falling onto everything. Jungkook turns his head and stays there for a long time.
And it goes on, because Yoongi lets him stay. He knows his audience; he knows what he likes.
When Yoongi smiles, he turns his head slightly and Jungkook watches the curve of his cheek from where he's lying down across the tables. Jungkook doesn’t tell him that he likes this.
But Yoongi doesn’t need someone to tell him. The days grow warmer and they grow towards each other within that enclosed space, tables barricading the fragile sphere of music against the rest of the cold building. Jungkook remembers catching the sunlight between two fingers in that little classroom, the windows left open and dust particles floating above his head.
Tonight Jungkook reaches out and touches thin dusky air, just like before, with the same wistfulness. He feels like a kid again, for that brief moment in time. The pillow creases under his head when he moves.
The disappearing takes a few weeks to get used to.
Jungkook receives an old box of his things, the ones Yoongi said he’d borrowed from him and forgot to return. He spends the day after in his room, going through the contents with dusty fingers and a weak heart.
The box is largely empty. He pushes a few folded shirts aside, some school books and a bootleg CD that they tried to make together in spring when Namjoon let them his new computer. the last thing lying at the bottom of the box scares him. It’s caught between the edges of the bottom flaps, the flat white object with a clicking switch on top. He doesn’t understand why it’s there.
In year 20 Yoongi puts it into his pocket while they’re seated on top of the high wall at school. Jungkook feels it, the stolid poke of metal against his side when they press closer against each other. Yoongi puts his arm around his shoulder.
From up here, they watch the soccer team practicing far out on the pitch. The wind is strong, tinged with the sort of woody smell that comes before the rain. Yoongi’s started smoking lately and Jungkook doesn’t really like it, but he never says anything. He rather likes the taste of the new candy at the store though, this little yellow lollipop that stains his tongue. The cool breeze dries his eyes up here and he keeps blinking.
Someone scores a goal and there’s shouting, loud and rambunctious. The sound carries all the way to where they are, beyond the wire fencing. Jungkook takes the candy out of his mouth and they both turn to look.
The wind blows again, and the shouting out on the field dies down gradually.
Then Yoongi’s hand on his shoulder moves up to the side of his face, a very slow, cautious motion that makes Jungkook stop looking - stop breathing - and turn around to face him. Yoongi takes the cigarette out his mouth, the tip still smoldering, and tilts Jungkook's head with strained gentleness.
And he leans in.
Jungkook remembers that he wasn’t ready, never had been ready. His heart jumps and he doesn’t know where to put his hands. He shivers when Yoongi's fingers move to the back of his head and their lips finally touch. He feels like he should be falling in, falling forward - because this is what people do, right?
But Jungkook ends it too soon, too soon and before he knows it the soft hand drops from his hair and Yoongi’s shrinking further into himself. He sticks the cigarette back into his mouth and looks away with hunched shoulders. Jungkook breathes again, tense, and still doesn’t tell Yoongi what he now thinks he should have said to him.
He watches the little figures in dark blue jerseys move up and down the length of the pitch, the coach in bright yellow threading his way through the rows.
They don’t mention it again. They don’t try it again.
In the surreal moments before sleep, Jungkook thinks he messed up in the panic of the moment and he wants to make up for it, but Yoongi has never been easy to approach, and it still scares him now.
Tonight Jungkook rolls over and the sheets wrinkle under him, the pillow cool, then warm against the back of his head, against the back of his neck. He doesn’t know what Yoongi must have thought about that year, two months ago from this day, drifting aimlessly in this same horizontal position, probably crying himself to sleep in a similar bed.
The same thing that scares Jungkook stays in his pocket. He takes it out, but he doesn’t want to use it. He doesn’t ever want to use it. The white plastic is scratched all over from being rattled around inside pockets full of coins. He wipes at the corners of his eyes with the heel of his palm and stands up from the empty box.
Maybe Yoongi understood why he pulled away. Maybe he forgot about Jungkook in the same breath, maybe he could forgive him for being afraid.
In those last few moments before the room went down, Jungkook wonders if he was one of the little voices running through Yoongi's head. He wants to believe that Yoongi didn’t remember their smiles in the classroom, because he doesn’t think he can take it if he did.
There was no way of asking, and he would never know. He would never know —
— how staying is worse. in the real world, Jungkook has to survive, he has to bring this with him and go on. Namjoon told him this before he left: you need to survive. He wonders if every new morning will give and take again. They say it’s a very subtle thing, this act of recovering from loss, the very subtle art of drawing a sweeter memory into the same wreck of a headspace.
There are options for him. In the dark, he looks all around and sees imaginary frescoes on the walls, the unreadable parts of his mind. Everything sings to him, but it doesn’t hit in the same way. The school is already gone and everyone has grown up and moved away.
In those days, Jungkook would lie on the tables and feel tears trickle down his cheeks. He lay there until Yoongi worked his way through the folder of scores he brought along with him to school.
Jungkook remembered getting up at the end and wanting to go back to the start as soon as it was over.
Did Yoongi want to go back too? Did he want to go back to - wherever it was? If life after death was an eternity in that elusive classroom, Jungkook wouldn't have minded.
But not in the same way, with missed phone calls and bloodied knuckles. Jungkook won’t go, he won’t go along with him.
Tonight Jungkook feels his heart break again - that raw, crude, uneloquent thing. He has to stop asking questions in the darkness, stop hearing things that aren't there. That old sound is still singing to him and Yoongi appears in his dreams now and then, stirring up the turmoil of an old memory. Their younger selves are gone, leaving nothing behind but fragments - those emotions never faded.
He's the only one here, the only one still missing him.
Jungkook keeps a version of Yoongi in his head. In his head, he is one-half of a mental image: the boy, tied to the piano. For the better part of the memory, he can still piece it together and he wants to piece it together while he still can. He'll hold on for as long as he is able to.
Like every other day, the hurting stops for a while. Here at three a.m. where the world spins quietly, Jungkook closes his eyes to the darkness.
It feels like he’s been lying here forever.
In his dreams, they're at the beach again - summer of year 20, sea blue and glittering under sunlight. Yoongi smiles at him and wanders ahead, just out of reach.
ii. pluto soundscape
(I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the supermarket and feel absurd.)
This place is a strange one. The building is square-shaped, drab and colourless except for the things on the shelves. Jungkook knows the grid lighting by heart, knows all the places where the bulbs go dim and which ones need to be changed. That's the place to him, clear as day.
They sell everything here except for dreams. There's a secondhand book fair going on in a corner with red flimsy shelves holding second-hand paperbacks adorned with plastic wrap. It’s in this place that he decides to take out his mobile phone one night and press the record button.
Yoongi cuts a diminutive figure in the wide entrance with the double glass doors. They slide open and he shuffles in, walking past the magazine stacks with scant interest. He doesn't take a basket or trolley with him. Jungkook's still going about his own business, the usual fruit stash and soft drinks. He's not a picky person. The things pile into the trolley and he adds a couple of snacks to the mix as an afterthought - blue and red, colour and light against the rusty metal bars of the cart. The people who come in here at night have private agendas of their own, things he doesn't usually bother to find out about.
Some of them are rushing, but he's calm, quiet. He knows what he wants, what he needs to get.
It strikes him the first time, the strange frequency that this guy operates on. He's not here to look for food. Jeongguk makes an idle trip around the shelves stocked with edibles one more time before coming back to the same corner, the red shelves burning outlines into his vision under strong white light.
He's still there, the only person reading at this time of the night. The book has a yellow border on the page. Jungkook lingers near the magazines and pulls one out, motoring, wrapped in plastic. He looks at the advertisement on the back cover, waits for something to happen.
He doesn't normally do this. The weird intuitive sense he has sometimes gives him the feeling that something's going to happen, and usually it does. Yoongi moves to another shelf and Jungkook turns around, looking up from his magazine. Dark hair, slightly messy. He sees a back, slightly slouched forward, a simple shirt with prominent crease lines down the back. The hem is pushed up on one side from where Yoongi slips his mobile phone into his trouser pocket.
Yoongi raises a hand to the back of his neck and brushes at something there before suddenly turning around.
The lights are strong in this section of the supermarket. First floor, near the checkout. Jungkook forgets what's in his trolley and pushes it against the wall. He threads his way into the book fair section and stays along the peripheral shelves, running one hand over the spines. His eyes don't stay on the titles for long, though, and he finds himself looking upwards at intervals, trying to make out a facial feature, a movement.
Jungkook sees a face, blanched under the lights, notices the habit Yoongi has of rubbing his eyes out of tiredness. It makes him look vulnerable, makes him look attractive in this worn-down way. The hazy nature of late hours, piped-in music and lethargy gets to his brain. Jungkook wonders what his obsession with taciturn people is.
Yoongi yawns and flips the book shut, tucking it back onto the shelf. He stares at the same row, surveying the top line of books, blinking hard. After a while he moves on to the next one. When Jungkook looks up again, he sees Yoongi staring back as they walk into the same aisle. His hand instinctively goes to his phone, suddenly shy and afraid.
"Excuse me," Yoongi says suddenly, and moves past him. The back of his hand brushes the hem of his sleeve. Jungkook leaves the recording function on, turning the screen inwards. "Thank you."
Jungkook goes to the shelf and takes a long look at the line of books that Yoongi was browsing through earlier. Old geography textbooks. Earth sciences, urban development. He pulls a title from the tightly-packed row and turns it over to read the back cover.
"If you're interested in that, it's good."
Jungkook stiffens and turns around, sees Yoongi standing at the far end of the shelf, observing him.
"You're trying to self-study? "
Yoongi's arms are folded, an expectant look on his face. His features aren't too harsh, kind of nice to look at, actually.
"I, uh," Jungkook hesitates, caught off-guard. "No, I'm just — I'm just looking around." He pushes the book back into the slot.
Yoongi comes up and stands right next to him, takes out the same volume he was looking at earlier. His hands are large and pale, fingers gentle on the pages. The book has a faded cover and a penciled- in name on the second page with dog-eared corners. Yoongi flicks through it to a random chapter and shows him a black-and-white illustration of a river floodplain.
"We had these in school. I studied a lot about it." He pauses and Jungkook nods, mumbles an "mm- hm". Yoongi doesn't look up at him. "Like, I guess —" his hand stops midway through turning the next page and he sighs "— I guess, if you're into light reading it works ... I've been told it's already outdated for the current school syllabus." Yoongi laughs a little, as if embarrassed.
"I-I don't know much about geography," Jungkook begins. Yoongi scratches at his head and smiles a little. "Well — you can start on this," he replies, matter-of-factly. Jungkook nods. He'll buy it later.
Yoongi flicks through the rest of the book until he reaches the last page and Jungkook can only watch, still holding the phone behind his back. "Here." Yoongi puts the book on top of the shelf, shrugs and walks away.
Jungkook watches his retreating back, still dazed. He slides his hand over the book and picks it up, slinking back into another aisle with burning cheeks. From where he stands, he peers through the gaps in-between the shelves and waits.
But Yoongi's waiting for someone else. The guy's a little taller than him, has a cap on his head and looks just as tired. "Are you done yet? " he says, clattering over with plastic bags. The song on the music system switches to something quieter. Running on five hours of sleep and a fast-draining phone battery, Jungkook stops the previous recording and saves the audio file, starting a new one.
"What are you reading," his friend asks, coming up to him. Yoongi doesn't say anything for a while. His friend looks over his shoulder and laughs. "Geography textbooks again." He stops, puts the plastic bags down on the floor and takes another copy off the shelf. "What's the fascination with this, huh?"
Yoongi wets the tip of his finger with his tongue and turns the page.
"The books we used to study in school. They're already outdated." They read on in silence for a while, then Yoongi nudges his friend and shows him something on the page. His friend leans in to take a look. They talk in low, hushed whispers. From behind them, Jungkook sees Yoongi's shouders shake with laughter.
"I knew this looked familiar," Yoongi says, louder this time. His friend sniggers again, nudges his arm. "Yes, tell me about this. Isobars. You were saying?"
"Isobars are interesting," Yoongi murmurs.
"Why?" his friend asks, still browsing.
Yoongi rubs at his eyes again. "Because they're so easy to read. Contours ... the elevation of a hill ... a riverbed." Yoongi tilts his head slightly. "Mm, I liked cartography a lot. Drawing stuff. We learned about map colouring." He looks around. "I don't know if you're interested in that kind of thing. Someone was asking me about it just now."
They move on to another topic. Old novels, cheap pulp paperbacks. Yoongi takes a book from his friend and starts reciting the first few lines. Here on the recording, his voice is a monotonous drawl, soft-edged and drifting. It sounds distant, a string of murmurs.
"On Pluto, every soundscape is a painting." Jungkook's palms are getting hot from holding the phone so tightly at chest level, hanging on to every word. "Am I a lonely person? " he asks next, pausing for effect. "Am I leading a normal life? "
Yoongi finishes reading the rest of the paragraph in silence. Then he passes the book back, shaking his head.
"Are you gonna buy it? " his friend asks. Yoongi frowns slightly. "No."
"I meant the textbook."
Yoongi shakes his head, jabs his finger on the paperback cover. "This guy in here, he sounds like a pretty sad person."
His friend smiles and nods. "That's what they all are, right?" Jungkook draws in a shaky breath and raises the phone slightly. Yoongi nods in agreement. "... All those book protagonists," he gestures lazily with one hand, "- their world is a busy place, and they all need to go somewhere before it gets dark."
They don't say anything for a few seconds.
"You know, they recently dropped Pluto from the solar system." The two of them stand where they are and survey the rest of the titles. Yoongi waits for a while before continuing. "It's too bad. I don't know why, though." He picks idly at his fingernails. "You'd think it's always quiet out there. It doesn't even know, the poor thing. How do you think it feels? " His friend looks over at him and shrugs. Yoongi narrows his eyes at the cover of the novel he's looking at. "I might like it if I were there," he shoves it back on the shelf, "but ... I guess that's —"
A pause. Jungkook holds his breath. Yoongi suddenly reaches for his back pocket and takes out his phone. Looks at something on the screen.
"Ah, they're already heading back to the car." Yoongi sniffs and rubs his nose with his knuckles. "We should go."
His friend picks up the plastic bags and they leave the supermarket, still talking about something that Jungkook can't make out. Yoongi doesn't look back at him, or anywhere in his direction.
From there, Jungkook waits for a minute, then pays for his groceries and goes home.
He's listened to the same thing for months now, looping it over until he knows what's being said by heart. The second audio file cuts off after the two-minute and thirty-three second mark, like it always does. He can't remember what Yoongi actually said after that anymore. He finds that Yoongi speaks in poetic ways when he wants to, has the sort of conversational voice that can make things sound darker, more serious than they actually are. Jungkook wants to know where they were going after that, what his name was, to take a better, closer look at his face. He finds himself wishing that they had a parting glance to hold on to.
He knows Yoongi probably didn't remember him after he stepped out of that store.
The silences between his words are precise, melting into the muffled music that backdrops the whole conversation. Jungkook whispers his replies into his sleeve when he stretches out on the table, tired from staying up.
"... How do you think it feels?"
"Like a dust particle." Jungkook smiles into his shirtsleeve, puffy eyes closed. "Indifferent to time as time is to it."
When Yoongi speaks, he listens. "On Pluto, every soundscape is a painting." Jungkook stirs slightly. "Am I a lonely person? " Jungkook stares blindly at the wall, eyes glazed over. "Am I leading a normal life?"
"Maybe not," Jungkook says, a soft whisper. "Maybe not. I wish I'd known you earlier ... wish I'd known you in my life."
"I studied a lot about it." A pause. Jungkook mumbles his response, "yeah." He doesn't remember saying anything else. In the recording, Yoongi's voice ebbs and flows, trickles through a stream of consciousness. "Like, I guess —" a pause, the rustling sound of paper as he turns the page. The next sentence is softer and Jungkook has to turn up the volume slightly, "— I guess, if you're into light reading it works ... I've been told it's already outdated for the current school syllabus."
Yoongi laughs and Jungkook's chest tightens.
"Where do you come from?" he asks, after the silence. There's no reply. He stares into the dim hollowness of his bedroom.
"- Their world is a busy place, and they all need to go somewhere before it gets dark ..."
Back here, Jungkook pores through the book, the pictures, keeping the pages folded on Yoongi's pet topic and listening to him speaking through the tinny noise of his headphones at the desk. He keeps the soundscape up till the early hours of dawn. He listens until he can trace the contours of Yoongi's words in the dark, until he feels like he can hear him in the same room, that nameless stranger he won't see again.
iii. song request
[21:00] Good evening ... and welcome back. It's Yoongi here - again - taking you through the graveyard shift. You're listening to FM 101.3, The End Times.
[21:43] Well ... if you're working late on a Friday, I hope this helps you get through the night, or whatever it is you're up to at this hour. I've been taking this programme alone for the past year or so and it's always the busiest on Friday because we get so many song requests from people trying to end their week on a good note. On the show today we've got the usual lineup - the top thirty countdown, ad-free stretch, new song recommendations, most-requested artists ... and the popular song request hour to close out the night. Starting things off - here's a slower one to ease you into the night - this is the single, Claire de Lune, off the latest eponymous EP by home-grown act R.G.B.
[22:40] It's a ... quiet evening tonight, the sun's going down a lot earlier these days. Make sure to keep warm, because we're looking at earlier snowfall this weekend. A few weeks ago we actually had someone calling up to play more songs that reminded them of Christmas ... are you lonely then, missing the holidays? We'll probably do it soon ... I mean, Christmas doesn't come for another few months or so. If it's a joke, good for you. You've got to be patient, I guess. (laughs) Next up we're having another stretch of ad-free music featuring some new releases from your favourite artists. It's gonna be good - we'll also be opening up the song request hour soon, so stay tuned.
[23:11] First request of the hour goes out to Jiwoo and Kiki, from Miyeon. "For our trip tomorrow, here's hoping it'll be a good one." Sounds promising, Miyeon-ssi. This is Sandcastles, by Aseul, for safe travels. Good evening.
[23:15] When someone sends in a request with no song, I usually bin it, but you've got to listen to this one ... you always talk like you can't be bothered with this whole gig but you're so funny ... I like the way you think. Please don't take offense, I really love your show. Do you by any chance make your own music? Because sometimes it seems like you know what goes into a great song composition.
Sorry, I can't say much about that (laughs) But all I'm gonna tell you is ... you're pretty close. Yeah.
[23:18] This next one is nice and simple, from Seokjin to ... himself, "a song to play after work because I'm very tired." (laughs) Hah, you're a funny one. Enjoy the rest of the day and have a good weekend. I'll play your favourite song now.
[23:24] A song from Tae for his studio mates and to "everyone rushing their end-of-year projects right now". Interesting. I guess you all need some motivation, right? I heard students nowadays get it really hard because of the excessive pressure put on them. I can't comment on that because I don't know much, but don't drive yourself too hard. I know everyone wants to shoot for a dream university or college but really, do what you want to do in the end. Happiness ... that's important, you hear me? Good luck for your final projects, take a break if you need it. I'm probably going to be here ... rooting for you guys. Good luck.
[23:27] So many of you keep asking me to play Grimes ... but is electro-pop really the thing you need right now? (smiles) Not very characteristic of a late-night show, but, uh, I'm not judging. Get up and get going.
[23:30] We have a couple of requests for ... "any song off the mono album". I guess the post-concert depression is kicking in, right? (laughs) RM ... he came here to perform a few days ago. But it's good, I'll say. He's been working his way up the charts and I'm not complaining because this recent release shows that he's getting better at it. Good stuff to listen to anytime. I'll just pick one and play it, alright?
[23:35] (amused) You know ... I thought people were over this but, uh, apparently not. (chuckles) Jung ... Hope? Jung Hope - is that your name - from Gwangju, wants to hear DJ Hanmin's Show me your Bba Sae - I know, an old favourite ... mm, here you go. Enjoy. Dance to it, or whatever. (sniggers) Who's it even for, anyway?
[23:40] A long message from someone new. I haven't seen you on the list before either, but since you're here I'll be a hospitable person and do the right thing. Yes, it's a long message and I'm sorry I can't read the whole thing out on air ... because if I do I'll probably be sitting here for the next seven minutes. Sorry. Just - uh, finding the end of it ... still reading. Thank you for tuning in, Jimin. You like listening to Brian Eno, that's nice. I like his music too.
... Ah, "I guess messages from astronauts and spaceships never fail to make me emotional - that tiny little human connection across space and time right down to the lonely little planet which we inhabit." I hear you, Jimin, and I guess you're right. If this is for a lonely soul out there, you're not alone.
[23:50] Maybe Brian Eno isn't such a bad idea after all. I'll play another one for you. It is a late night, anyway.
[23:55] We're reaching the last five minutes of the hour, so I'll run another two more requests.
[23:58] The last one - huh, this is interesting - the last request of the hour is for ... me? For me? That's interesting (clears throat) I mean, (laughs) okay, how nice of you. I've never seen anything like this before ... what a novel idea. Anyway - this one's from - Jungkook. He says that he's leaving the country soon and he's been listening in daily for almost a year now ... ah, that's nice, that's very nice. I didn't know people could enjoy this so much (amused) and he says - he thinks I'm a pretty cool person so this one is for me ...
[23:59] ... Well - uh, thank you - Jungkook, whoever you are. This is a little strange, I guess. (pause) Hey, if you wanted to be friends, you can just call in while I'm doing the show, you know? (laughs) Nah, I'm just kidding. Don't call in too much, please. I mean, yes, I'd like to get in touch with you or something. Someday. Thanks for listening. Thanks so much, again, to all of you out there. I don't know any of you but if I'm helping you out in any way that makes me quite happy. It really does.
Guess we'll have to end with a final dedication, right? (smiles) This is Geyser by Mitski, closing out the song request hour. Thank you and good night.
(When Jungkook sends the dedication in, he doesn't think much of it. P.S. this was done on impulse, he adds at the bottom of the text message. Jungkook is miles above the ocean when the song plays, drifting off to sleep with the pale glow of the screen on his face. He doesn't hear it, but he prays that Yoongi does, and remembers.)