Archive of Our Own ^beta

“Grandma,” Taehyung calls, snapping a strawberry off the bush with a swift flick of his wrist, “how come you have that string on your finger?”

His grandma’s frizzy, graying hair pops out from the other side of the bush, her exasperated sigh still audible through the grouped bushels of lush green leaves. Fat, ripened strawberries droop from branches every few feet, glistening from having just been watered.

Seokjin still scorns him for whittling his youth away—gardens die, his elder brother warns, and this charade won't last forever—but he’s fallen in love with the work, the feeling of holding something real and concrete in his hands and nurturing it to life.

The sun beats onto his back, leaking under his straw hat and scorching his exposed nape; his neck is engulfed in his sweat and grime, the bottom of his sneakers caked in dirt. He groans, lifting an arm to swipe at the back of his neck, which comes off damp and utterly gross.

“Do they not teach these things in school anymore, Taetae?”

Taehyung peers through the maze of branches to find his grandmother’s face. “Not really,” he shrugs, tossing the strawberry into a small wooden basket.

His grandma bursts into giggles, full and lively and bright, and for an infinitesimal moment, the sun’s glare softens into a wide beam of warmth, washing gently over his body. “My mom told me this story: One day, the gods were planning out the universe, and they decided that some people were meant to be together. So they drew these tiny little red lines—” She lifts her hand, where a charred, black string loosely dangles around her pinky. “—to help us find each other. And once you finally meet them, your string will start to glow. You can’t see yours yet, but that’s a good thing—when you meet your soulmate,” she assures the child, “you’ll be able to see yours.”

Your soulmate. His grandma utters the word as if it holds an unbearable weight.

“Seojoonie says I’m gonna fall in love with my soulmate,” Taehyung remarks brightly, lifting the hat upward so he can view her better. “Like you and Grandpa did.”

His grandma’s eyes venture back to the crops, a frail hand reaching to snap another strawberry away from the bush. Her fingers squish gently at the flesh of the fruit, testing for its ripeness before she gives a small huff of satisfaction and tosses it into her basket.

“Having a string doesn't always mean you'll fall in love with whoever's on the other end,” she clarifies in a small voice, rising once more to move to another section.

Taehyung hops over to where his grandmother’s moved, ignoring the dampness of the dirt sinking into the soles of his shoes. “What does that mean?”

“Some people don’t end up liking the person they were Connected to.” She beams, wistful. “Your grandpa and I were very lucky.”

Taehyung frowns. “Is that why Mom and Dad fight all the time?”

Her smile weakens. She stands, feebly wiping excess dirt onto her dress.

“I think it's time for us to go inside, little one,” she murmurs, beckoning towards the fence.

Unbeknownst to Taehyung, the illness had already done enough damage by the time his grandma told him that she would not be able to work the field anymore.

The boy was only eighteen at the time, led to believe she had the common cold or some other insignificant issue. That day, he ventured into the garden by himself without thinking much of it, watering the crops and hacking at any weeds that sprouted in the few days that they neglected it.

The plants seemed to slump with him, craving the constant hum of his grandmother’s soothing voice almost as much as he did. He labored into the night, determined to compensate for the plants; they were the fruits—quite literally, for some crops—of her work, and it seemed honorable to ensure that the garden remained alive in her absence.

Taehyung had wholeheartedly trusted that she would return to their coven by week's end.

He takes a breath in, and releases.

Today is the seventh anniversary of her death.

Still teeming with that boundless, exhilarating youth, he’d been much too young to bear the weight of his grandmother’s death, still too red-faced and too blindsided to evaluate the extent of what he had lost. A safe place, a precious life.

Parts of her lingered, in the fabric softener used to wash the bedsheets and the strawberry jam bread Taehyung ate for breakfast and in that local convenience store she frequented, but most of her laid in the garden she’d curated with her own two hands.

His father had begged Taehyung to abandon the tiny garden. “Let bygones be bygones” was the mindset he’d chosen to adopt. While he knew his parents’ affection for their mother never extended to extravagant heights, Taehyung nevertheless failed to grasp how easily they’d brushed off her death—as if she had never truly been a part of the family to begin with. That blind rage had packed his bags and bought a one-way ticket to Japan six years ago, and it’s blazing still.

Now he's stranded in Seoul, with nothing but a bag and the clothes on his back. It seems he hasn't learned from his mistakes.

Taehyung isn’t a hoarder by any means, but he’s kept one possession with him: his grandmother’s necklace. It’s a beautiful thing, ancient jade encased in a simple gold lining.

(“Keep it safe for me, baby bear,” she whispered, giving him a look that could wither that garden of hers as she forcibly pressed it into Taehyung’s palm. “Or I’ll come back to haunt you.”

“Grandma,” he’d responded in abject horror, attempting to shove her hand away. “I—I can’t—”

“Promise me,” she’d croaked, with a finality in her tone that told Taehyung she would not accept “no” for an answer.)

It’s around his neck now, the small stone thudding lightly against his chest as he walks along the lamplit street. Winter in Seoul is, objectively, too cold for anyone to be out past midnight; if Taehyung exhales with his mask off (or strongly enough with his mask on), his breath will immediately condense into a fleeting, misty cloud. His toes are just about frozen solid in his pointed-toe Oxfords, too expensive and too awful to be worn on a pair of human feet.

Home is where he should be: snuggled under a mountain of blankets, drunk with a steaming cup of cinnamon-infused hot chocolate (with extra marshmallows, because he isn’t a barbarian), and immersed in a very serious rerun of Howl’s Moving Castle.

But Taehyung no longer has a place to call home.

He shudders, bunching his hands into fists within the pocket of his hoodie; the painstaking regret of having not worn more layers is hitting him in full force, but he’d been hyperventilating while packing his bags and so he might have forgotten to throw in extra jackets. There’s probably an overcoat hidden somewhere in one of his bags, but he’d rather not pause in the middle of the street within a bustling city at half-past three in the morning.

He hesitates upon arriving at Hoseok’s front door. An hour-long phone call with Yoongi, who had spent the entire hour swearing to him that Hoseok was not going to slam the door in his face, proved insufficient to completely dismiss his worries. He can’t imagine, though, that anyone tied to Yoongi via a red string could be that horrid of a person. Usually, he would be fleeing to Yoongi’s studio when the situation at home became too much, but his cousin's not in the country at the moment. This is his next best thing to a halfway-home.

Taehyung sighs, hoisting his backpack straps higher onto his shoulders. He has the feeling he’s going to stay here awhile.

The door opens before Taehyung has the chance to knock, revealing a surprisingly alert Hoseok, rocking some pajamas with tiny, neon-colored flower patterns scattered across the off-white fabric. The man gives him a small, sad smile, and opens his arms to take Taehyung into them.

“I’m sorry, Taehyung-ah,” Hoseok mumbles into Taehyung’s hair. The younger only wraps his arms around Hoseok in return, any attempt to respond lodging itself into a lump in his throat.

Even though it’s the dead of night, the silence is nearly unbearing. Taehyung is grateful for the crackle of oil sizzling, salvation from the clamor of his thoughts, as Hoseok stirs up some day-old fried rice. Taehyung had waved off Hoseok’s insistent apologies for not having anything better to cook—fried rice, he assured Hoseok, is already too kind of a gesture for someone who’d been banging down his door in the middle of the night.

The air is savory with the tinge of sesame oil and gochujang; he can acutely smell the Chinese sausages Hoseok is chopping up, scraping them off the cutting board into an abnormally large pan. The older hobbles around the kitchen, humming and making small, animated noises; the constant thrum of sound marginally eases the whirring gears in his brain. The racket from outside, somehow, cancels out the roar from within.

Taehyung had always assumed Yoongi's stories about his soulmate were glorified to a certain extent. Yoongi has few—too few, in Taehyung's opinion—true friends, and even fewer that he idolizes. Hoseok was always the exception; as a child, even, Yoongi's stoic face broke into a grin whenever Taehyung would beg to hear the story of their Connection—how they had met for the first time.

Yoongi and Hoseok, he recalls, are a rarity. A perfect example, one only ever heard of in the most imaginative of soulmate fairy tales and oral legends, of two soulmates who met as young children and grew up together. "He was nicer back then," Yoongi would huff, still smiling. "Way chubbier. Now he's in this big dance company and his body is all bulky and muscular, it's terrible. In high school he carried me out of bed in the morning, draped over his shoulder. Literally draped. Like a towel.”

Yoongi hasn't ever been wrong, to Taehyung's knowledge, but his words rang especially true concerning Hoseok. The man's body is spectacularly muscular.

One of Taehyung's highly anticipated Big Life Milestones, among the obvious sort of things like his Connection and marriage and childbirth, was the Coronation of Yoongi and Hoseok. The official, legal tying of two souls to one another, promising to be with one another until the end of everything.

Yoongi always managed to dodge that particular subject.

A small yellow blanket, retrieved from the living room couch, is draped protectively around Taehyung's shoulders. Behind his seat at the dinner table is a lengthy hallway, lined with five or six identical white doors leading to the various bedrooms and bathrooms of Hoseok's other housemates; he keeps his eyes averted from that hallway, deathly afraid of confrontation. He hasn’t had the time to fabricate any sort of cover story, any rational explanation as to why he’s barging into the house of three people he’s never met in his life.

As such, his heart plummets when one of the bedroom doors creaks open behind him.

“Hey, hyungie, what’s the noi—”

Taehyung’s head whips backward, alarmed, to make eye contact with a boy, in the middle of scratching his dark, mussed-with-sleep hair. Golden skin frames a thin nose and a pair of slightly chapped, crimson-tinted lips, parted open in shock.

His eyes are huge. The thought is initially intended to come across as a compliment, but he feels like saying it aloud is probably toeing a line, and he doesn’t want to accidentally cross it.

“Um,” the younger boy says, looking unsurely at Taehyung. “Hey, bro."

Taehyung weakly raises a hand.

“You know,” he pipes up cheerfully, shifting his gaze to Hoseok, “you don’t have to bring your hookups home in the dead of night, me and Jiminie hyung are perfectly good co-hosts—”

The pan clangs with the sound of Hoseok’s wooden spoon dropping into it. “I'm not hooking up with him, you dipshit,” Hoseok hisses, retrieving his spoon and stabbing angrily at the rice. “Taehyung’s Yoongi’s…” He glances back over his shoulder, silently calling for aid.

“Cousin,” Taehyung supplies helpfully.

The man lifts his brows, suspicious. “You look nothing like him.”

Taehyung grimaces. “It’s, like, third remove—whatever. It's complicated. Yoongi hyung and I are friends.”

The younger narrows his eyes, and Taehyung watches them shift into tiny slits of ebony pupils. “Friends,” he repeats slowly, grinning. “Yoongi has friends?’’

Taehyung almost starts, the blanket slipping from his shoulders. “Watch your mouth, fu—”

“Come on, JK,” Hoseok pipes up, his head tilting slightly as he digs into the rice. It's unapparent whether he had been listening to their conversation or not, but his timing could not have been better. “Have some fried rice. You must be hungry.”

To Taehyung's surprise, the tension seems to disapparate. The man jogs to another chair, swiftly pulling the chair out and shimmying onto the cushion. “Jeongguk,” he says briefly to Taehyung, presumably as a means of greeting.

“Taehyung,” he returns, “but you already know that. Thanks for, you know.” Letting me stay here. Being not-an-asshole. Not asking questions, because God knows I couldn’t even begin to answer any of them.

Jeongguk’s shoulders lift into a shrug. “We all got skeletons in the closet, man,” he yawns. “We don’t ask about ‘em, and, well. Neither should you.”

He doesn’t plan to.

Having put the steaming, golden rice into a large bowl, Hoseok plops down into the chair opposite Taehyung, sliding the bowl across the glass. “We had a lot left over,” he laughs, vaguely gesturing to the bowl, which is larger than Taehyung’s face. “Hungry?”

Jeongguk shakes his head rapidly, on the verge of denying him, but Hoseok is already fetching spoons for the three of them, and a minute later, they’ve all migrated to the couch, huddled under a singular shared blanket as Ponyo plays on Jeongguk’s laptop. The bowl sits in Taehyung’s lap, and the two men are cuddled snugly into his sides, occasionally leaning over to grab a spoonful of rice. Neither one of them has got any sense of physical boundaries, but Taehyung doesn’t mind. The warmth is proof that he can still feel things.

The other bedroom door opens, and a shorter guy with equally untidy hair, jet-black, peeks out. His eyes are glued half-shut from sleep, and Taehyung worries his lip, an ugly knot of guilt in his stomach beginning to curl.

“Morning,” the man groans, voice raspy and thick with sleep. “Who’s the fugitive?”

Hoseok’s head tilts back. “Morning. Taehyung, Jimin. Jimin, Taehyung. Um… Taehyung’s Yoongi’s… friend? Cousin-friend. Anyway. He’s gonna be staying here for a few days. Right, Taehyung-ah?”

Taehyung hums affirmatively, unsure of whether he’s allowed to speak or not.

“Is he—are you alright?” Jimin steps further out of his room with expanded eyes, smoothing the wrinkles out of his thin white tee; a small frown illuminates Jimin’s face, quirking at the edges of his lips. It’s mainly dark in the living room, save for the slivers of moonlight shyly glinting inward from the cracks in the curtains, and yet everything about Jimin glows: his face, honeyed skin fresh from careful cleansing and moisturizing; his hair, the still-sleek aftermath of just having washed it.

The moonlight falls in thick waves on Jimin’s features, caressing the cavernous shadows of his face. He looks boyish, natural. Vulnerable.

He’s beautiful.

“Fine,” Taehyung murmurs, clearing his throat. “Um. Do you want some fried rice?”

Jimin glances downward at his feet, contemplating. “Alright,” he finally relents with a rushed exhale, walking slowly into the kitchen to grab a spoon of his own as Taehyung forces himself to return his gaze to the screen. Jeongguk sniffs as he snuggles further into Taehyung’s side, unconsciously clinging onto Taehyung’s arm with a warm hand.

“Sorry about Jiminie hyung,” Jeongguk murmurs into Taehyung’s ear, prompting the older to look at him. His eyes are even larger up close, the flickering laptop screen glittering in their reflection. “He’s grumpy when he’s sleepy. He’s just grumpy in general. Don’t mind him.”

“That’s fine,” Taehyung whispers back, ignoring the sinking of his heart. Two friendly hosts and a semi-hospitable one are more than he deserves.

This is fine.

Sleep is about to bless Taehyung with its sweet mercy when a small, cold finger prods him awake.

The arrival of dawn is angry and unforgiving, aggravated crimson splotching into the void of his eyelids as his hand instinctively flies up to block it. The house is peaceful, save for the occasional gust of wind from a passing car or the various birds chirping near their windows. Everything is still, in the strange, idyllic way that time seems to slow down at dawn.

He notices, most of all, that his neck is killing him.

“W’na sleep in, Hobi hyung,” Taehyung groans quietly, an eyelid slitting open to find that a mop of black hair is standing over him.

“Not Hobi hyung,” Taehyung cringes, forcing his other eye open. “Sorry.”

“It’s… whatever,” Jimin whispers. “My blanket.”

“Huh?”

“You’re using my blanket.”

Taehyung glances down at the yellow fabric cloaked around his figure, unexplainably soft and laced with the lingering smell of peaches and cinnamon. “I’m sorry,” he repeats quietly, wanting nothing more than to burrow himself into the crook of the couch and dissolve into a pile of goo. Everything is spiraling, and everything he used to be able to control so well is slipping beneath his fingertips. Even his basic courtesy has flown out the window.

The older looks unperturbed. “C’mon,” Jimin whispers, cocking his head towards the hallway. “We keep spare blankets in the cabinets.”

With the blanket meticulously folded and cradled in his arms, Taehyung shuffles behind Jimin, keeping his eyes trained on the small, light footsteps he leaves behind. The airy grace of his step makes Taehyung anxious, hyperaware of the heaviness of his own feet, but by the time he works up the nerve to apologize for stepping too loudly, Jimin’s already arrived at the cabinet. It’s built into the wall at the end of the hallway, stretching from floor to ceiling, and if the panels didn’t add a layer of depth it would have blended right in.

“Here,” Jimin whispers, his hand extending towards a folded blanket similar to his. “Wait—you probably need a bigger one—”

“No, this is fine,” Taehyung interrupts adamantly.

“You’re lanky,” Jimin’s muffled voice erupts from somewhere inside the cabinet. “Your toes will fall off. Here. This is better.”

The second blanket to surface from the cabinet is a much larger duvet cover coated with a small layer of dust, otherwise so blindingly white it nearly hurts to look at it.

“The others don’t like using big blankets,” Jimin explains, gently brushing off the particles that have collected at the top. He smiles slightly, and his entire face shifts, cheeks coloring a pretty pink in the dim hallway lights. “They just cuddle. You’re sleeping in the spare bedroom?”

Taehyung knows from his various nights holed up with Yoongi that the “spare bedroom” is actually Yoongi’s room. On the occasion that Yoongi stays over at Hoseok's, he has to pretend to sleep in Hoseok’s room before sneaking off to his room to pass out. Neither Jeongguk nor Jimin is aware that they're not in a relationship, but Taehyung knows better than anyone how it feels to share a string with someone he does not love. Even staying in the same room can be exhausting.

Taehyung nods noiselessly.

Now equipped with two sets of blankets and a pillow, Jimin and Taehyung navigate further down the hallway to the very end, where he recognizes Yoongi’s bedroom door. The room appears to be the same as the last time Taehyung saw it: nearly stripped bare, save for a mattress and a small nightstand with a rather antique-looking lamp. Taehyung kicks the bags he’d retrieved earlier to the corner of the room, tossing his pillow at the head of the mattress and immediately collapsing onto it.

He hears a short giggle that sounds like it’s supposed to be more chastising than fond, but it twinkles in a way that settles Taehyung’s heart.

“Good night,” Jimin calls.

“Good morning,” Taehyung corrects sleepily.

If Jimin replies, he isn’t awake to hear it.

Park Jimin is an epitome.

Hoseok and Jeongguk, to Taehyung’s relief, are generally open books, so open that it freaks Taehyung out sometimes. They cook for Taehyung, mostly variants of ramen or fried rice. They usher Taehyung’s head on their laps, combing through his hair, and tell him stories. They listen attentively as Taehyung tells his own, ones of working in his grandmother’s garden and of new friends he meets on the journey to finding Yoongi’s hotel room.

(“You always seem to be running away from something,” Hoseok had noted once, discreetly, as if he were unsure whether he wanted Taehyung to hear it.

The younger boy, perched cozily in his lap, hadn’t offered a response. He couldn’t bring himself to agree.)

But Jimin—

Jimin shies away from Taehyung, neither repulsed by him nor incredibly fond of him. He’s nowhere near antisocial—Taehyung’s heard that wonderful laugh echo from his room when he and Jeongguk are drinking and Taehyung is supposed to be asleep—but something steers him away from Taehyung. Like magnets, they repel, except the forces of repelling magnets are constituted of the same force, and the two of them cannot be more different.

Jimin folds his clothes in neat, perfectly positioned piles. Jimin comes home late, Airpods blasting Tinashe and sparks of radiant light in his eyes, and wakes up before Taehyung to check in early for work. Jimin color-codes his bio notes with highlighters and has a strangely impressive alcohol tolerance and occasionally, Taehyung spots ginger hairs flying off of Jimin’s jackets from petting stray cats.

Jimin slathers on lotion in the morning that smells faintly of peaches, but by the end of the day, it diminishes to a scent that Taehyung comes to identify as the Jimin Smell: sea salt and Busan beaches, flower buds opening up after a day of rain, cobalt sunsets on rooftops of buildings he’s not supposed to be on.

Sometimes, Jimin comes home with neon pigment on his hands. Sometimes, he comes home with a dirt smudge on his jeans, or wind-swept hair, like he'd just ran for his life. Taehyung notices the small details: the way neither Hoseok nor Jeongguk grill him about what happened, only taking his hands to wash the paint off and talking with him in soft voices.

Jimin lives the life that Taehyung has envied for a majority of his life: he is free. His passion is written on his sleeve, that searing-hot hunger for adventure behind his eyelids; he is a young flame, angry and searing, brimming with life. Jimin is a fortress, and Taehyung is the sole soul hovering by the door, knuckles bloodied from knocking. Eyes heavy from begging to be let in. The epitome of Park Jimin, though, is only the least of his worries, an entertaining thought to be put on the back burner.

The most hideous of Taehyung’s demons come from within.

Guilt manifests itself in an immovable knot, lodged deep within the walls of his stomach, rearing its ugly head and roaring from the moment he wakes to the moment sleep steals him once more. It’s sentient. It follows him around, perched silently on his shoulder as a steady reminder of who he is. What he’s done to his family. What he’s done to himself.

It’s lodged in the cobweb-ridden corners, on the ceilings, and under antique pieces of furniture: the lack of phone calls even though he’s now technically a missing person, because despite his endless contact list, not one of them seems to actually give a damn as to his whereabouts. It’s lodged in the pitying glances, in the quiver of his hands when he reaches for the salt because a part of him is still afraid his hand would be swatted away. He cannot shake off the voices of his parents, of his eldest brother, constantly reminding him that he will always be second-best.

Whatever that guilt has become, it’s found a home in Taehyung, wedging itself in the spots that Taehyung’s never bothered to look.

And so, he sits in front of the piano, and he plays.

Yoongi taught him how to play as a child, hurried tutorials squeezed in between private schooling lessons. The keys are slightly dusty from disuse, the chair still creaky in all the spots Taehyung remembers; it’s been years since he’s been here, and even longer since he’s touched a piano.

He stays at the piano from dawn until dusk—not for himself, but because it brings him peace. It reminds him of times where he believed he still had a family, of times where he had somewhere to call home.

A night away from his household turns into two, which turns into three. Taehyung’s received no word from his family ordering him back home, not that he expected much of anything from them, and Yoongi isn’t set to return to Seoul until the end of the month. No matter how much Hoseok insists that it’s nothing and that none of them mind, that guilt still finds a way to knot itself tighter, coiling until it’s blockading any sense of joy. It hasn’t quite sunk in, the reality of it all, but he is still carrying enough baggage to feel remorse. To feel he weighs more than he is worth carrying.

No one dares to venture so far as to disturb him when he is playing. Jeongguk, despite all his oddities and his urgent curiosity, was right: We all got skeletons in the closet, and if Taehyung doesn’t ask about theirs, they don’t ask about his.

No one disturbs him while he’s playing.

No one but Jimin.

On his fourth day in Seoul, he immerses himself in Chopin’s Valse Op. 69, No. 1, notes tumbling one after another from the keys into the air—he is immersed enough that he doesn’t notice Jimin leaning against the doorframe, watching him with gentle, yet questioning eyes. He continues to play until the song is finished, eyes closed, emotion surging desperately through his fingers for the sake of having somewhere to release them. The height of the waltz collapses to a quiet ending, a slow loop of the beginning chords, and finishes with a last push of the keys; Taehyung’s fingers remain there for a moment, the pads of his fingers collecting dust.

“You play the piano.”

It’s meant to come across as a statement, but it more closely resembles a question. Taehyung rotates his head, just enough so that his silhouette comes into view, before giving him a nod.

“Yoongi hyung does too,” Jimin notes.

“He taught me how to play,” Taehyung rationalizes. He exhales softly, a hand flying upwards to rub circles into his shoulder, relieve some of the tension knotted in his shoulder blades. After a quiet moment, he scoots over, an unspoken invitation for Jimin to sit down.

“Is Yoongi hyung really your cousin?”

“Sort of,” says Taehyung, hands roaming noiselessly over the keys as Jimin slides his legs under the piano. “We never found out how we’re related, so. He was friends with my brother—Seokjin—though.”

“Was?”

Taehyung stifles a laugh. “Yoongi hyung doesn’t like him anymore,” Taehyung clarifies. “But we’re still friends. He taught me all I know.”

Jimin finally lifts his head, although Taehyung doesn’t turn his chin to meet Jimin’s gaze. “He’s never mentioned you,” he remarks.

It’s phrased as another question. Taehyung lets his eyelids fall closed and imagines Jimin approaching him with a meter-long stick and wide eyes, prodding and poking at his body. Interrogating.

“I bet you haven’t heard much of anything about Daegu Yoongi. He doesn’t like to talk about it.” And for good reason.

“Was he different back then?”

His eyes remain closed, unchanging. Weary. “You’re from Busan,” Taehyung presumes instead of responding, “right?”

He hears a small hum of affirmation. “Is it the accent?”

“Sure,” Taehyung justifies, even though it isn’t—in actuality, it’s the faint scent of sea salt on his skin, the spark of adrenaline ever-flickering in his eyes, the wind still caught amidst his pitch-black hair.

Jimin feels like freedom.

“Are you the same person you were in Busan?”

Jimin’s lips part, eyes widening just marginally. It’s a subconscious reaction, one both of shock and fear. Something shifts in the air between them, that tightrope between strangers and whatever it is that they’re inching towards. It is then that Taehyung realizes that they are both equipped with those meter-long sticks, poking and prodding at each other, equally terrified of coming too close and teetering over the edge.

Their heads simultaneously turn to face the door, which has just squeaked open to reveal the silhouette of a very Jeongguk-like hair bun. “Oh, sorry,” he hisses, tone hushed to a croaky whisper. “Was I interrupting?”

“No,” Taehyung and Jimin reply simultaneously.

Jimin looks at Taehyung once more, and for a split-second, they arrive at an unspoken agreement. A ceasefire.

“Is dinner ready?”

His chin is facing away from Taehyung before he registers it, his gaze fully focused on the large bun in the doorway. Jeongguk tentatively peeks inside Taehyung’s room, squinting at the lack of light. “Yeah,” he nods, eyes flickering in confusion between the two of them. “Hobi hyung says to come out and eat.”

Without a single backward glance, Jimin rises from the bench, mindlessly wiping dust off of his pants. Taehyung’s appetite, however, has diminished to nearly nothing over the past few days, and so he remains stationary, fingers longing to fly back into the routine that’s been drilled into him. The keys hand him a steady rhythm, something constant to grasp onto in the roaring, destructive whirlpool that is the rest of his life. He hears the notes before he plays them, about to hurl himself back off the cliff and drown in the music—

“Taehyung-ssi?”

His fingertips hover just above the piano, brushing it slightly. His silence is invitation enough for Jimin to respond.

“No,” Jimin responds quietly.

Taehyung’s fingers land on the white keys, gently enough for no sound to emit.

“The person I was in Busan,” he continues. “That guy’s dead. I don’t know where he is anymore.”

The first cog in the wheel.

Taehyung peers over his shoulder. “You ever miss him?”

Jimin’s beam starts small, just a tiny quirk in the corner of his full, mildly chapped lips, but it grows and grows and grows until it’s an expanding, fiery light, unable to suppress itself. He chuckles under his breath.

“Goodnight, Taehyung-ssi,” he replies before shutting the door closed.

It takes a few days for Taehyung to stomach anything, but with the combined efforts of Jeongguk and Hoseok, who are both equally and fiercely determined to feed him by any means possible, he’s able to swallow down some tteokguk without feeling like a villain.

Hoseok and Jeongguk seem to care less about his demons than they’re concerned with making sure that Taehyung is looked after, is aware of how loved and valued he is. It’s a type of nurture Taehyung hasn’t experienced in what feels like ages, but it feels nonthreatening. Familiar.

Taehyung has no idea what Jimin thinks of him, and normally, he’d worry himself to death attempting to decode the split-second glances and subtle shifts away from him whenever they pass each other too closely in the hallway, but he’s so tired. Every bone in his body is an anchor, and it becomes a chore to sit straight and brush his teeth and rise from Yoongi’s bed every morning. He starts to question whether all of these things, everything he used to brush off as mindless tasks, are even worth it.

He is acutely aware of how hard everyone is trying for him. With a bright red face, Hoseok confessed that he’d never tried to cook tteokguk before; sometimes, when Jeongguk isn’t busy poring over his media assignments or working late shifts, he climbs into bed with Taehyung and lets him watch as he builds Animal Crossing islands on his Nintendo. Yoongi calls him every few days, despite conflicting timezones, and Taehyung doesn’t feel like talking most of the time, but the company is nice. Hearing Yoongi’s travel stories, the new piano songs he’s learned, makes him feel included. It all makes him feel wanted.

And it all feels rotten, and horrid, and selfish.

He sits silently as Jeongguk and Hoseok knock on the door to hand him a plate of savory, steaming food, despite his protests that he’s not hungry. Spends more time burning holes into the piano keys with his eyes, playing them to satisfy that strange belief that pressing furiously enough would make him feel something, anything. And he tries—tries fervently not to think about when he should return home, and especially not to bring it up in conversation, because talking about it would make it all the more real.

The more he ignores it, the more it starts to snowball, and Taehyung is unsure of how much longer he can keep the grief within him.

Some nights he falls asleep at dawn, sneaking out with the singular coat he packed to watch the sky set its canvas of cobalt alight. The moon has always been beautiful, and he’s lived with this dormant knowledge in the back of his mind, but the dragging hours have forced him to look outward (because looking inward would, frankly, drive him insane). Fearful of losing his way home, he stays on the porch, clinging to a cup of warm chamomile tea and watching the sunrise.

The first time he tries to sneak out of the house, Jimin is already there, prepped with a cream-colored, much warmer-looking coat and a white fur cap. He vaguely resembles a marshmallow.

Before Taehyung can make up some fathomable excuse as to why he’s leaving the house at the asscrack of dawn wearing the same pair of pajamas he’s adorned for about a week straight, Jimin tears his eyes away, adjusting the gloves on his wrists.

“You gonna run away again?”

Jimin expresses the question with a nonchalance that irritates Taehyung, one that suggests that he doesn’t care if Taehyung will respond one way or the other. The disconnection, bitter and cold, clearly tells Taehyung that Jimin is unaffected by Taehyung’s fate.

“No,” Taehyung answers, with a tad more gumption than was necessary. Jimin’s lax gaze deepens for a moment, gears of hostility sounding their alarms. Taehyung sighs—he doesn’t want to make an enemy out of anyone, let alone someone he’ll have to live with.

“No,” he repeats, in a slightly tamer tone. “Just… I have trouble sleeping.”

Jimin’s head rotates, a look on his face that tells Taehyung absolutely nothing. His silence is more revealing; whatever tension had begun to rise was now dissolving, unable to create a large enough ripple in the vat of peace between them. He would still rather lie, to preserve some sort of dignity, but there is no longer enough energy in his bones to fret about something so seemingly insignificant as dignity.

“Oh,” says Jimin.

The gaze that Jimin gives him then is striking in its softness, his facial expression disquieted. It reminds him vaguely of the look painted on his face when Taehyung had questioned him that one night, weeks ago, about his past life in Busan—windswept, breathless, illuminated with the light of a new dawn. Yet, simultaneously, on the brink of terror.

Jimin is afraid of him.

The last thing on Taehyung’s bucket list this morning is to scare him. He longs to rewind to ten seconds ago, before he’d ever said it; then, he’d sugarcoat his statement, offer Jimin a little less truth. Perhaps then, Jimin’s face would still be unchanging and unemotional, instead of the threatened look that Jimin is giving him right now.

It starts to give way slightly as Jimin breathes, his exhales following Taehyung’s in rapid stride.

“I go on the rooftop. When I can't sleep.”

Taehyung’s eyebrows shoot up. “On the roof—like, you climb the building?”

Jimin snorts. “Just the one,” he says, head cocking towards the roof towering over their house. While it’s only one floor, it’s still at an impressive height.

“There's no way in hell.”

With a classic eye roll, Jimin shifts his face away. “C’mon. I’ll show you.”

Turns out there’s a brick wall in the alley on the left side of the building, lined with windows that Jimin carefully places his hands and feet onto before springing upwards. Despite being plunged into what Taehyung can only identify as a suicide mission, pure defiance propels him halfway, and the fear of falling and meeting an untimely death keeps him in motion for the rest of the journey.

It’s been weeks since Taehyung partook in any physical activities, and so he’s panting by the time Jimin grips his first hand onto the roof, using it to pull himself over the edge. In a second, his fur cap pops out from over the edge, followed by his wildly dark eyes peering down at Taehyung's pitiful figure. “C’mon,” Jimin breathes for the second time, reaching a hand out. Taehyung seizes it, and not once does the thought of how Jimin’s hand slots so perfectly within his cross his mind.

Taehyung flops unceremoniously onto the slanted rooftop, stomach curling around the numerous shingles of baked clay. He inhales, exhales; the air is clearer at this altitude, although the howling winds threaten to bite his nose off. Jimin remains silent from where he’s sitting, facing towards the sun, which is already beginning to peak over the horizon and leave behind its angry streaks of muted oranges and yellows.

Immersed in silence, the city of Seoul is still shrouded with that pre-dawn hue of blue. It is this shade that Taehyung is coming to enjoy most of all: not quite blinding, yet not quite dismal. The shade lightens and lightens with each passing minute, offering tiny glimpses of hope as the first streams of amber light peek timidly over the horizon, asking permission to bathe Seoul in that first blanket of gold.

“Taehyung-ssi.”

Taehyung straightens his spine, suddenly aware that he’d been slouching. “I wish you’d drop the formalities,” he responds honestly, keeping his eyes averted to where both of them face the ascending sun.

Jimin ignores him. “You look like shit.”

“Flattered,” Taehyung exhales. “I haven’t been sleeping. Or showering. Or… well, doing anything.”

“I don’t get you,” Jimin remarks.

He snorts. “Me neither.”

“The whole self-destruction thing,” he elaborates. “Jeonggukie does the same thing. I don’t get it.”

“Self-destruction?” Taehyung repeats, almost in disbelief.

“I get it, I don’t get to know what happens because you guys are always so depressed and won't ever let anyone in—”

“Dude, what the fuck is wrong with you?” Taehyung backs away from Jimin, eyes narrowed in alarm. “Have you tried talking to either of us just once?”

“I have! Jeongguk won’t tell me anything, and you’re too busy not-eating-and-not-sleeping to bother, apparently, and Hoseok has a perfect life with a perfect soulmate—do you know how insanely well Hoseok’s doing? He’s fucking captain of our dance company, and everyone loves him, and God, he’s doing great in school. And Jeongguk’s on the dean’s list.”

“That doesn’t mean any—”

“Where did you go to school, Taehyung-ssi?” Jimin scoffs. “I’m willing to bet it was somewhere private. I’m betting, actually, if I pulled up a list of top 10 private universities on Naver and threw a dart blindfolded at it, my odds would be pretty good. Isn’t that right?”

Taehyung is rendered speechless.

“I wondered what you wore every day before you ran away,” Jimin presses, twisting the knife into Taehyung’s chest. “Your bathrobes were probably made of silk. I bet you had a maid or a butler.” His tongue runs along the inside of his cheek as he leans forward, resting his elbows above his knees. “Connected already, and you’re what? In your early twenties, barely? Must be nice,” Jimin sighs, “to have that string following you around, huh? I bet it haunts you. That why you ran away?”

“Jimin—”

“Do you blame yourself?”

Taehyung stops, heart running cold, ears overwhelmed with the sound of crashing waves and the roar of whales and sharp teeth sinking into skin; there is so much noise occurring at once in his brain, as if the world had split cleanly into two, and his palms are sweaty and grimy and he wishes he were back in the scorching heat of the sun, within the safety of that garden, back in the safe arms of his grandmother—

“I do,” Taehyung whispers hoarsely.

Jimin’s neck slowly twists to meet Taehyung’s gaze, his peach lips parting open. He says nothing.

“Winter hit,” he mumbles, low and sibilant, eyes drooping. A tear slips past, inflamed and hot. “Winter hit that year, and the air was so dry, and—and the plants died, and it’s all my fault, Jimin, it’s all my fault—”

His voice catches on the word Jimin, and he cuts himself off before his words spiral into a confession he may never be able to take back. There is a moment of quiet, in which he ducks his head, propping its weight in his hands. Time continues to pass by, leaving the two men on the rooftop in its midst.

"The whole garden just withered," he confides. "Everyone says spirits live on after the body dies, but it was our safe place. Every day after school I went to work with my grandma, she spent half her life there—I spent all my life there. What happens if it—if she has nowhere to go? What if I killed all that I have left of her?"

Taehyung wrenches his eyes forward to meet Jimin's, which are softer than he has ever seen them. They bleed with color, delicate strokes of soft pinks and purples introducing light back into the canvas of his pupils.

Jimin suddenly shimmies his coat further down to reveal his hand, carefully cloaked by a glove. His nail hooks under the glove, tearing the nude fabric off of his skin, where a blackened, severed string is knotted around his pinky.

It lacks all of the luster, the faint glow that surrounds red strings. His red string is more translucent, made more of intangible light than of real twine; this black string more closely resembles a physical string, its end splitting into individual threads just as a true string would. It’s only a couple of inches long, tucked in with some sort of tape to the side of his hand.

It looks exactly like his grandmother’s.

“I'm not angry," he says softly. "Not at you. I'm sorry."

Taehyung’s hands shakily travel over his kneecaps, gripping at his shins as he hugs them closer to his body. The knot of guilt, rather than tightening, seems to wean at its own identification. It loosens—only by a fraction, but it begins to budge.

“You were right, I did go to a good university,” he divulges, returning his eyes to meet Jimin’s. “I got expensive gifts, but I always wore the same three shirts to go work in the garden, and my parents would kill me and say it was suicide if I got anything dirty.”

Jimin smiles just slightly, and it feels like a victory. It propels Taehyung to continue: “The family spent a lot on me, though, when they found out I got Connected. In their eyes, three generations of perfect soulmates were about to become four. They sent me to college, bought me a car. Treated me like royalty for a few months.”

“Like an investment?”

“Exactly like an investment,” Taehyung concurs, his own smile waning. "Right until they set a Coronation date."

“Already?” Jimin's arms thrust onto the rooftop, straightening his back. "I've never heard anyone get Coronated this young.

“They're making a special case," he counters dryly, allowing his tense arms to fall to his sides. The roar of water in his ears has settled considerably, replaced by the steady hum of cars in Seoul as it stirs to life. “Your string… It’s been severed your whole life?”

“Dunno,” Jimin shrugs. “Don’t remember much. Mom always made me wear gloves to hide it. I used to hate them,” he adds with a telling grimace, “but I got used to it. She was protecting me. It worked, too. No one ever gave my hands a second glance.”

“Can I see?”

A silence erupts, daunting, followed by a short chuckle. “The string? You gonna ogle at it like I’m a guinea p—”

“Your gloves,” Taehyung interrupts, voice soft. Curiosity quirks at the corners of his lips, lifting the ends into something that Taehyung hopes resembles a smile. “Only the severed can wear them. Right?”

With his eyelids lifted, Jimin nods. For a moment, Taehyung thinks—wonders—if Jimin is going to smile back.

He doesn't. He instead reaches behind his back, where he'd previously discarded his glove; Taehyung recognizes the pair as a part of Jimin's everyday attire, normally tucked into his sleeves or otherwise fastened securely onto his arms. They're a tan hue, tailored to perfectly match Jimin's golden skin tone; spots of faded color stain the fabric, perhaps from old art projects or other mishaps. They've been washed enough to dull out, otherwise appearing as good as new.

Taehyung turns the fabric carefully over in his hands. It’s made the sort of material he would expect from knit-tight stockings, but a slight tug tells Taehyung that they’re sturdy enough not to rip as easily; the years, maybe decades, of washing has given it a remarkably Jimin-like smell and a slight fuzziness that tickles when Taehyung slides the fabric under the pads of his fingers.

Taehyung's never noticed how burnt the severed strings look, almost as if they had been charred off rather than snipped off by some divine force. His initial thought was lined with horror—how could the divine forces be capable of committing such great harm to the fate of a human?—but the more glances he steals, the more inquisitive he feels himself become.

"How do the gloves hide it?"

Jimin's taken to fiddling with his other glove, which is still clinging desperately to his left hand. "I don't really know how it works," Jimin confesses. His words are still clear-cut, almost harsh, but his tone has noticeably lightened, and that realization sends a stream of relief lazily trickling through Taehyung's chest. "When I was a kid I had twice the amount of questions you do. I didn't get any answers."

"I'm sorry," Taehyung says quietly, pinching at the fabric with his thumb and forefinger. He is sure to be gentle; he's held many items of materialistic value, many articles that cost more than his limbs, but none of them have ever quite felt this heavy, like he hasn’t yet earned the right to hold it. "That must've been hard."

"Yeah," Jimin agrees. "I’m sorry I went off on you.”

"I get it," Taehyung brushes off hurriedly, straightening the glove once more to return to Jimin. The latter pinches it from Taehyung's hand with a nod, quickly locating the armhole to stuff it back onto his hand. "I’m glad you have someone to take it out on that’s not… yourself.”

Like I do, the beast in him adds.

Dawn emerges from the depths of sleep, specks of stardust and rebirthed embers twinkling on nearby windows, and Taehyung thinks, not for the first time, of his grandmother. How she would refuse to close the windows at dawn, despite the chatter of ivory in her teeth and her bones; how she would insist, We have to let the light in, baby bear. If you shut yourself in, you’re gonna go loco like your old grandma. Let the light in, baby.

Now, he’s drowning in it.

“Hey, Taehyung.”

Jimin's legs curl inward, towards his chest; he wraps his arms around his knees, planting his cheek onto his kneecaps. The sun has almost completely surfaced from its bed in the horizon, and the brilliant, rosy hue of Seoul taints Jimin's other cheek a warm, gold-dusted pink.

“Will you ever talk to someone about those dying plants?”

The corner of Taehyung’s lips curves upward.

“Will talking bring them back to life?”

Ten days after Taehyung’s arrival in Seoul, Yoongi calls to tell him that he’s coming home.

“In a week,” Yoongi says when Taehyung’s celebratory shouts had finally died down. “I finished with work, and Hobi called last night with this whole dramatic intervention speech, like ‘Taehyung needs you, and I would really like some kimchi jjigae' and I just couldn’t say no to him,” he sighs extraneously.

The man in question leans into the frame, blowing a raspberry at him, and cried, “You didn’t even come home yesterday! You fraud soulmate!”

“You guys do this every time you talk to each other,” Taehyung grunts. “Yoongi hyung, just don’t come home. Leave us be.”

“Can we get a headcount? The majority vote decides whether Yoongi hyung comes home,” Jeongguk chimes in from the kitchen.

Hoseok’s brown hair, lined with strands of hazel when the sun reflects just right, bounces as he glares at the two youngest men. “I hate all of you,” he deadpans, turning back to the screen. “Want us to pick you up at the airport?”

“I got an escort,” he grimaces. “Family arranged.”

Hoseok and Taehyung simultaneously “Ahh” in understanding.

“We can come to save you,” Taehyung reminds him. “We can do the friend-emergency-scam again.”

Yoongi laughs, shaking his bangs away from his eyes. “Well, if worst comes to worst, have your ringer on,” he warns. “I gotta go, okay? I’ll see you guys soon.”

“See you, hyung,” Jeongguk cheers.

“Next time I'm not picking up,” Hoseok sighs, manually pressing the “end call” button. “What’s this friend-emergency-scam you just mentioned, Taehyung-ah?”

“Namjoon—my soulmate—my parents made him try applying for jobs for me,” Taehyung grins. “I didn’t wanna go to work, so I’d make Yoongi call me and say he had an emergency so I could ditch the interview.”

“Responsible,” a new voice pipes up from the hallway. Jimin is adjusting his shades higher on his nose, jamming his phone into the back pocket of his ripped jeans. “Taehyung.”

“Jimin,” he returns, equally serious.

“Get up. We’re leaving.”

His eyebrows raise. “No explanation?”

“None whatsoever,” Jimin confirms cheerily, bending to fetch his keys from the communal Desk of All Things (really Yoongi’s old workspace, which has fallen into disuse and revamped into a collectivized piece of property).

And Taehyung has no choice, really, but to follow.

The mural on the wall is about the length and width of five Taehyungs, vertically stacked atop one another.

It’s hidden behind a gate, plastered on the sidewall of a commercial building that looks over the Han River; Taehyung’s face had soured when Jimin informed him they would have to climb the gate (“What is with you and climbing things?”), but the fence, which was only a few feet taller than Taehyung himself, was admittedly less daunting to climb than the wall of their apartment complex.

The alley is too narrow for Taehyung to see to the top of the painting, but from what is visible, there is more spray paint than cement covering the wall. The centerpiece is a flock of larger-than-life bluebirds, mainly sapphire in color, with tiny feathers and specks of bluish dust scattered every few feet between the birds. They form an imperfect, clumped triangle, with the smallest leading the flock. Other images surround the flock, leaking into each other yet keeping a respectable distance from the birds; the nearest to Taehyung, fresh and still vibrantly pigment, is of a sunrise, partially hidden by the slanted roof of a familiar building.

“These,” Taehyung verbally realizes with a start, “are yours?”

Jimin ducks his head; a smile grows, his mouth settling into the familiar, soft curve that Taehyung has memorized. “I had to find a better place to hide my work,” he comments, the pads of his left glove stroking the outline of a spilled glass of water. “My parents’ house in Busan didn’t… we didn’t have a landlord, so whatever we did with the house, we just had to live with. You got Connected at sixteen,” Jimin suddenly says, laughing, “while I was getting whooped for spray painting on the back wall of my house.”

The question of how Jimin was able to reach the top of the wall busts into his head. He quickly decides that, perhaps, he is better left in the dark.

“I paint things I want to keep with me,” Jimin resumes, the pad of his finger tracing a spilled cup. “This glass is from my first night living with Hoseokie hyung and Jeonggukie. We drank ourselves under the table—I think this is supposed to be soju.”

“How long ago was that?”

Jimin whistles lowly. “Long,” he answers, his eyebrows shooting upwards for a moment. “I only remember spilling my bottle. It’s not that anything super memorable happened that night. It’s just… It was the start of—well, everything.”

“The death of Busan Jimin,” Taehyung recalls from one of their earliest conversations. “Right?”

Jimin’s eyes meet his then, flitting around Taehyung’s face as if to drink in every feature. Taehyung wonders if he looks as vulnerable as he feels. He doesn’t humor Taehyung with an answer, but the lack of answers tells him enough.

“Is there a Daegu Taehyung?” Jimin inquires, tilting his head sideways. A nearby streetlight takes the opportunity to flood Jimin’s face with its yellowing, dim light; it colors inside the depths of the murky shadows of his face, flooding the crevices and nooks with soft luminescence.

“I think I am Daegu Taehyung,” he ponders. “But everyone here is so different. You all just kind of… do things? You set up little shifts to feed me three times a day like a sick person and make me watch you play video games to keep me company even though I keep saying it’s fine that…” Taehyung blanches. “This is the self-destruction thing you were talking about, isn’t it?”

Jimin's eyes avert from Taehyung's. “Yeah,” Jimin confirms, voice abnormally high-pitched. He clears his throat, ducking his head marginally. “That was still out of line for me to say.”

The lighting is horrid, but it kisses the apples of Jimin’s cheeks and Taehyung forgets they are in the middle of a conversation for a moment. Taehyung decides, then, not to humor Jimin with an answer, to make things even.

He sinks to the floor, sitting with his knees bunched up to his chest, and points to a small, four-walled shack with a caved-in roof. “Is this your old house?” Taehyung queries, his arms crossing above his knees.

Jimin’s back thuds against the wall opposite the mural, sliding down so that he is pressing into Taehyung’s arm. Jimin’s side fits snugly into his, the curves and edges of their bodies slotting together. “You learn quick,” he cracks, his voice now barely above a murmur due to their proximity. “In Busan…” Jimin takes a lengthy pause, in which Taehyung remains motionless, patiently waiting for the other before he proceeds. “I lived in a house, but I didn't have a home."

And Taehyung and Jimin may be repelling magnets, but Taehyung understands every word.

"Mom's still in Busan," says Jimin. "She worked to pay for my college, and now I'm working to pay off the debt for the house. She worked all her life to get me out of that hellhole," he curses, "and away from my father."

There’s a stark difference in the honorifics he uses for his father and mother. Taehyung has always been taught to use high honorifics for anyone in his family, but in Seoul, Taehyung is rapidly learning, honorifics aren’t only chosen for respect, but they indicate friendship. Hyung is a term that’s thrown around their friend group much more often than Taehyung is used to, and only with Jimin has he been referred to as any less than a friend.

The freedom that Taehyung has longed for his entire life, freedom from the burden of strings and soulmates and destiny, has scarred Jimin. Has altered him, perhaps irreversibly.

Taehyung steals another glance at the roof, caved in at the center and crumbling inward, and thinks that he is starting to comprehend Jimin a little better.

“Jiminie.”

The nickname is pleasant, cute. Rolls right off the tongue.

“Yeah?”

Taehyung no longer has a place to call home, but Jimin has had to witness his home fall apart.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “You deserved better.”

Jimin remains quiet for a second, which lengthens into a moment, which lengthens into a minute. The wall behind them vibrates slightly as he rests his head on it, then slides it sideways to slot onto Taehyung’s shoulder. They stay there awhile, completely motionless even when the moon tucks itself into bed and the alley sees dawn once more.

“Do you think this might be the worst part?” Jimin mumbles. "You think we can go up from here?"

Taehyung responds, “Maybe this is the end of everything." He rest his cheek on Jimin's forehead, places a gentle hand on Jimin's knee. Adds, "Maybe, this is where we restart."

He dreams of vibrant bluebirds chirping outside his window for weeks.

For the following week, Taehyung and Jimin develop something akin to friendship.

Normally, Taehyung’s room is bustling with chatter; Jeongguk and Hoseok, Taehyung thinks, both try to supply the void of silence with their stories. Taehyung is happier than anything to listen to the recaps of their days, occasionally reciting flashcards for their exams and learning about the friends Taehyung doesn't get to see, but on nights where the knot of guilt refuses to unravel and the voices in his head don't taper off, silence is nice. Silence is comforting.

"Taehyung-ah."

He has no recollection of exactly when the "-ssi"s turned into "-ah"s in Jimin's vocabulary, but the level of familiarity is another comforting thing, and so he embraces it.

"Yeah?"

"What was it like?"

Taehyung's head rotates towards Jimin. His silhouette, barely contrasting against the prevalent dimness of the spare bedroom, is still hunched over the bowl of kimchi jjigae that Jeongguk had crafted a few hours earlier. If he squints, he can identify the steady flow of steam, lingering with aromatic spices and the savory smell of meat, that engulfs the air around them. Taehyung has already finished his bowl, which would normally be considered a remarkable feat, but his bowl was about a third the size of Jimin’s. While Jeongguk had grinned to see the empty bowl and awarded him a solo standing ovation, he can’t yet bring himself to feel any sense of pride.

"The Connection," Jimin continues, his gaze angling downward to fall at his feet. He's warmed up enough to Taehyung that he's brought his pajama pants out of his closet; now, he sports bright yellow ones now, lined with fat-lipped doodles of ducks. "What did it feel like?"

"I was fifteen," Taehyung says heavily. "Homeroom. Namjoon hyung walked in, and the whole room clapped."

Jimin laughs, then quickly stifles it with his hand, his eyes widening in horror. Like he had just been caught laughing at a funeral.

"It's okay," he reassures the older. "You can laugh. It was pretty funny."

Jimin slowly removes his hand, a hint of a smile still lingering on his lips. The sultry moonlight of evening makes Jimin look different, feel different. Dawn softens all of Jimin's rough edges; dusk sharpens them, makes them dangerous enough to draw blood.

"Everyone says life is supposed to magically start making sense after that, except I was still so confused—Namjoonie hyung was already seventeen.” Taehyung shakes his head vigorously. “He was about to go off to university, so all my plans for my grandmother’s garden just went out the window. I had to follow him, wherever he went.”

“So…?” Jimin’s head leans to the left. “He an asshole?”

Taehyung sighs dejectedly, grasping the neck of his water bottle to take a swig. “I wish,” he replies, “then maybe it’d be easier to hate him. He’s got a bonsai tree named Rain, for gods’ sake—I—I felt so awful every time I thought about running away, dropping out. When I ran away he was always waiting at the window when I snuck back home, and he just let me in, and he never told my parents. I couldn’t hate him. I tried so hard but I just can’t.”

He looks at Jimin, whose dark brows are currently digging graves in his forehead. “You don’t love him,” he says. “Namjoon.”

It’s the first assumption Jimin ever makes about Taehyung that doesn’t sound like a question.

“No,” he asserts in a gentle voice. “I don’t think I ever will.”

Jimin leans back into his chair at a sloth’s pace, eyes so widened that the whites of his eyes appear on the top and bottom of his irises. Taehyung’s heart lurches irksomely, the demon in his stomach cavity stirring irritatedly in its sleep.

“I thought you just… I thought you fell in love, as soon as you Connected.”

The demon closes his eyes once more, but his heart continues to sink to such low depths that it begins to ache. “I didn’t,” he discloses, shrinking into himself. “Four generations of Connections, but the last true loves, I think, were my grandparents. But,” he progresses, “Namjoonie hyung is a good guy. A great guy. Anyone would be lucky to marry him. It’s just… I thought I had more time. I don’t know. I feel shitty every time I think about it.”

“But why?” Jimin leans forward, his knee digging into Taehyung’s duvet. “Why do you feel bad about it?”

“Sometimes I want to be like you,” says Taehyung. “Sometimes I think not having a string would just… make me happier. And when we first met…” His head lifts, eyes searching Jimin’s. “You just looked free. Like you didn’t have to worry about any of the things that haunt me every day. I wanted to be like you.”

Jimin smiles in understanding, swinging his legs over the bed and sitting with his long legs crossed. “And I, you,” he reveals softly. “I’ve never thought about it—myself—like that.”

“That’s how I see you, Jimin,” Taehyung says. “How could I not? You scale buildings for fun. You make spray paint art. You smell like sea salt—has anyone ever told you that?"

Jimin’s body convulses into a fit of silent laughter, his eyes forming tiny crescent moons. “And you pet stray dogs and work in fields and you still call your garden your grandma’s garden,” he returns, pupils dilated. “That’s how I see you.”

It goes without saying that Taehyung’s never viewed himself in that way either.

“It never stopped being hers,” he says.

It’s the easiest thing he’s ever said in his life.

The creak of hangers scraping across clothing rods and boxes being shoved around echo from Jimin’s closet, hidden in a pocket of his room. Taehyung raises his knuckles to the wood, about to knock, when he hears a distinct sob erupt from inside the room.

In a pivotal moment, Taehyung forgets who he is. He forgets that he is the guest of the house, meant to stay isolated from the others and return home as soon as he can; he forgets that he and Jimin are still learning each other, figuring each other out. All of it, everything that may have held him back from barging into Jimin’s room, flies out of his brain.

Taehyung’s hand finds the doorknob and twists to open the door, and he is greeted by a twin bed and an open suitcase, littered with spare clothes that are spread around it. Taehyung zeroes in on the hunched figure in the opposite corner from where he’s standing, curled into a ball at the head of the bed.

Quietly, Taehyung enters. For once, he is no longer thinking of whether he is meant to be there, or whether he is wanted there; his only priority is to get to Jimin, to figure out what’s happening. He only ponders for a moment before making his way to the other side of the bed. Tucking his feet into Jimin’s yellow blanket, he rests his head on the pillow and engulfs Jimin into his embrace, maneuvering his arm under Jimin’s neck and enveloping Jimin’s legs with his own.

“Taehyungie?” Jimin croaks, voice hoarse.

“I’m here,” Taehyung whispers, hot tears sprouting in his eyes as his hands find purchase in the strands of Jimin’s hair. “I’m here.”

“He’s sick, Taehyung-ah,” Jimin cries into Taehyung’s chest, pitchy and hoarse and utterly, utterly wrecked. “Mom says he—he might not make it. Why—I can't stop crying, Tae—why can't I stop crying? He hurt me, Taehyungie, he broke me, he made me think I was nothing my whole life—why can't I stop crying?”

"You're grieving," Taehyung whispers helplessly, "and you love him. You're grieving."

"I don't want to," Jimin cries. "I don't want to see him, I don't want to love him anymore, Tae, please make it stop—"

And he cries, and he cries. Taehyung cradles Jimin in his arms, and for the night, he holds the both of them together.

Jimin leaves for Busan the next morning.

The morning had involved a sluggish disentanglement of limbs because somehow at some time during the night, their bodies had morphed into one and it took a minute or two to figure out where Jimin ended and Taehyung began. Jimin left Taehyung sleeping in his bed, carefully draping the blanket over Taehyung’s unconscious figure (he had been right all those weeks ago, no amount of shimmying would force his body to fit under the blanket), zipped up the suitcase he had left open, and locked the door to their apartment building without uttering a single word.

Taehyung intends to leave him alone, to give him the space Taehyung assumes he needs, but without fail, Jimin calls every night. He relays everything to Taehyung, talking in hushed voices to not wake up his mother, who was always fast asleep next to the body of his father.

Hoseok and Jeongguk had been in the dining room that morning, hissing at each other in panicked voices, and when Taehyung emerges, his eyes still baggy from crying so hard his voice had died, Hoseok’s face dawned in realization.

The illness is terminal, and it takes less than a week for it to run its course. There is no 3 am call from Jimin that day, but he doesn’t have to call. Taehyung knows.

There is a new call waiting for him the next day, though, early in the morning. Taehyung, still groggy from sleeping poorly and trying to scramble eggs for the two sleeping bodies in the other rooms, had quickly swiped the “answer” button and pressed the phone to his ear.

(“Taehy—Taehyung, are you cooking something?”

“Eggs,” he grunted feebly, uncertainly stirring the yellowish liquid concoction to prevent it from sticking to the pan. It was already hardening too quickly for his liking, so Taehyung adjusted the heat level on the stove, frowning. “Are you well?”

Jimin cut straight to the chase. “I’m coming back tomorrow, Tae. I don’t know if I can be here anymore. God, my mom looks worse than how I feel, and everything here just reminds me of him, and I can’t leave the hospital yet because some-legal-something and I just can’t—”

“Jimin-ah,” Taehyung interrupted, licking his lips to combat the dryness of morning. “If you want to come back, you can. But I think you should stay.”

The phone fell silent for a moment. “Stay?” He hissed. “I can’t, I can’t do this, Tae—”

“Stay for one more day,” Taehyung mumbles, letting go of the spatula to adjust the phone to his ear. “I don’t want you to come back without… Without knowing you’ve said goodbye. I want you to be at peace, Jimin-ah. I want you to be happy—’s all I want. And you can come back anytime as I said… but I don’t want you to regret coming back too soon.”

The silence lasted longer the second time.

“Okay,” Jimin whispered. “I’ll stay.”)

He remained in Busan for a day, then two, then three. Winter gave way to early spring, the sun surfacing meekly from where it had been in hiding, and Jimin learns to heal.

Taehyung could not be happier to see his Instagram stories, filled with photos of his frequent visits to the beach and home-cooked meals made with his mother. His favorite, he would later tell Jimin, is one of him and his mother holding identical bowls of bibimbap with small mountains of galbi ribs atop each bowl. Their smiles were identical, as well.

They looked like a family.

Through Yoongi, Namjoon had gotten wind of his phone number, and sent him a single text:

Hey, man, it’s Namjoon. I hope I’m reaching Taehyung. Please send some proof of life. Your parents still want the Coronation to go through, but I just wanna know you’re okay. Please take care of yourself.

With the correct grammar and spelling included. How could Taehyung ever hate him?

With Yoongi’s confirmation that this unknown contact was indeed Namjoon’s number and not one of his parents in disguise, he sends a photo of the three of them—Hoseok, Jeongguk, and himself—each clinging to a plate of scrambled eggs and a cup of instant ramen, all varying in flavor.

all good, staying in seoul was his response. im glad youre alright, i really am. i hope my parents aren’t being too harsh on you. could we meet up, just us two? lets talk about the coronation. miss u buddy:)

Upon hearing that Taehyung had reached out, Jimin had beamed brighter than Taehyung had ever seen him beam.

“Closure,” he reminds Taehyung.

The younger man doesn’t think he could have put it any better.

He faces Namjoon three days later, the first time he’s encountered anyone from his hometown in over a month. The man, funnily, has gotten quite buff since the last time Taehyung saw him; he’s also adopted these large, thin-rimmed glasses that complement his face. He smiles warmly when Taehyung enters the coffee shop, and the entire conversation is spent exchanging anecdotes from the past month rather than discussing business matters. Taehyung nearly pees laughing when Namjoon acts out his attempts to avoid Taehyung’s hawk of a mother, and in return, Namjoon encases Taehyung’s hands in his own and tells him he is proud of him.

“Seriously, though,” Namjoon is arguing, maneuvering his straw to catch the last of his iced americano. “It took me years to get to where you are now.”

Taehyung’s interest, already high, peaks further. “You were… like me?”

“I had to take care of a teenager at eighteen,” he chuckles. “Of course I would feel guilty about not liking you. But you keep choosing to hurt yourself, and it damaged you so much, I didn’t know what to do about it. I wish I had the guts to run away. I think what you did is pretty badass.”

His acts of defiance against his parents aren't born of hatred. Their chemistry is strong, and there is no denying it. But, despite feeling equal parts understood and in awe of the man before him, he still could not bear the idea of tying the knot. Of being bound to a single soul, forever. Of letting the system win.

He vocalizes his concerns to the older, who, despite his baggy eyes, nods in understanding. “I’ll go home and try to figure something out,” he says. “You have to be prepared for however they wanna retaliate. But I’ll figure this out, I promise.”

“I can go home with you,” Taehyung suddenly says, instantly regretting his words the moment they come out of his mouth.

Namjoon only smiles, shaking his head. “We still have so much growing to do, Taehyungie,” Namjoon says, grinning. “Plus, I can’t lie to you, the distance is kind of nice.”

“It is,” he agrees. “Just. Let me know if you need anything, alright? And text me when you get home safe.”

“Always the nurturer,” Namjoon yawns, arms raising to stretch.

Always the nurturer.

Taehyung tells him about Jimin. He tells Namjoon about the night on the rooftop, and of the mural that stretched into the sky, and of the way Jimin had felt, like summer air and screaming at the top of his lungs out of rolled-down windows. Of the way Jimin had first looked at him, how they had danced on this tightrope before conjoining and allowing themselves to plummet to the ground.

“If the coronation goes through—”

“When,” Taehyung supplies unhelpfully.

“If,” Namjoon emphasizes, “the coronation goes through, it won’t matter. Look—I gave into the system. It got me through college, and I’m happy with the choice I made. But, Taehyung, you and Jimin—you… I think that you two have always been more than that. More than whatever the hell we were trying to be. You… You balance each other out.” He bursts into laughter, suddenly. “You’re soulmates, Tae. The type that could put red strings to shame.”

This, he thinks, is where we restart.

Upon Jimin’s request, Taehyung books a train ticket to Busan.

It is strangely satisfying to see the location printed on his digital ticket, the pinpointed destination finally leading to something he is learning to call home. Jimin is waiting for him outside the station with his mother, who attacks Taehyung with a cozy hug and a flurry of cheek kisses (Taehyung completely understands where Jimin gets that lovable quality from), and they return home, where the Parks craft another homemade plate of food for him.

Jimin ushers Taehyung onto a motorcycle that had formerly belonged to his father and drives them to the local cemetery, where he has been buried. They approach the tombstone with one tulip each—one yellow, one sapphire—and toss them onto the center of his grave. Jimin kneels, and Taehyung sinks to his knees along with Jimin, hand in hand, as Jimin weeps.

“Where to next, Tae?”

Taehyung leans his chin on Jimin’s shoulder, finding the Taehyung-shaped groove in the curve of his neck as he snakes both arms around the older’s waist.

“To the ocean,” he whispers back.

The moment the motorcycle stops, having arrived at its destination, Jimin pauses, waiting for Taehyung to prepare himself. They dip their toes into the warm sand together, walk to the shore together.

Taehyung leans on Jimin’s shoulder, telling him of the day they sent his grandmother away at sea. Her dying wish. It was Taehyung himself that had pushed for the idea, and his parents signed the paperwork when he had brought up their birthright to honor the dead. He’d never cried harder than he did that day, still longing for his grandmother to wake as they lowered her into the water.

They stand ashore, the sea racing against itself to catch up to their shins; sand envelopes the crevices of his toes, a chilly gust of wind whipping around their ankles. Farther away from the shore, the sea roars, colliding against itself to form waves that diminish by the time they reach the two boys. There is an eerie calm lying in the fury of the ocean; perhaps, at the very bottom of all of the chaos, there is peace.

“Taehyung-ah.”

Taehyung finds Jimin’s eyes amid the heart of the ocean, shimmering and happy and warm warm warm.

“Gardens die,” he calls. “But why can’t we grow a new one?”

Winter shifts into spring, and Taehyung learns to heal.