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Let it be stated here that Kim Mingyu tried to stop this.
When Jungkook walked over to their usual meeting place, a tree in the courtyard, an impish grin on his face and a sparkle in his eye, Mingyu knew that he would not like what was about to come out of his mouth.
“I just had the best idea.”
“And what would that be?” Mingyu asked dryly.
“You know how Mr. Park is subbing in music theory?” Nods from both Mingyu and Yugyeom, who had his head laying on Mingyu’s lap.
“I don’t feel like dealing with him today.”
“I doubt any of us look forward to it.” Jungkook finally caught on to Mingyu’s tone and glared at him. Yugyeom watched on in amusement.
“I’m not a fan of your attitude today, mister.” He cleared his throat. “As I was saying, I don’t really want to deal with him today. So… why should we?” He lifted his chin up, clearly proud of himself. The two stayed silent out of pure confusion. He scowled. “I don’t want to deal with him, so why should we?” he repeated. Still, nothing. Jungkook looked up to the sky and begged for help. He inhaled deeply and exhaled. “I’m suggesting that we skip his class.”
Their mouths formed “O”s in realization. Mingyu nodded understandingly.
“I get it. That’s a terrible idea.”
“What? Why?”
“You know that we could never get away with that. He would report us absent and either your guys’ parents or my brothers would find out. There’s no way,” Mingyu explained. Jungkook looked to Yugyeom for help.
He shrugged. “I’m in.” Mingyu turned to him in shock.
“You can’t be serious right now.”
Yugyeom shrugged once more. “Hey, why not? We all know that my dad couldn’t care less what I do as long as I stay out of his hair. The worst that would happen is Jaebum and Jinyoung getting mad at me for, like, a day. The rest of my brothers would probably be proud.”
Mingyu stood up, pushing Yugyeom’s head off of him. “You two can do whatever you want, as far as I’m concerned. I’m just not gonna have a part in it.” He started walking away. “Next period starts in a few minutes, we better get going.”
Jungkook caught his wrist. “Please, Gyu. We need you with us.”
Damn those puppy-dog eyes, Mingyu thought. He sighed.
“Fine.”
The three didn’t have seventh period together, but Mingyu did share the class with Minghao, another member of their little group of friends.
“So I guess we’re skipping eighth period,” he said after explaining the previous events.
“But next hour is the last one of the day. How are you all gonna get home if you’re not here to catch the bus?”
“It’s not like we’re going very far. We’ll probably just go hang out in the woods on the edge of town. Perfectly within walking distance from our houses. If we get asked why we’re late we’ll just say we walked slower than usual.” If Mingyu was going to do something that was against the rules, he was going to do it right. He had spent all of his time since finding out he was skipping figuring out how to do so successfully and with the least consequences for each of them. That was what he came up with.
“Say, Minghao, would you like to come along, by any chance?”
Minghao shook his head and looked at him apologetically. “I have to present in class and today is the only day I can do it. Besides, I made plans with Jun, Soonyoung, and Chan. I can’t ditch them.”
Mingyu slumped. “I thought you were going to say that.”
“Boys!” the teacher snapped from the front of the room. “Would you like to share with the class?” They shook their heads. She “humph”ed.
A faraway rumble that Mingyu took to be a passing train could be heard. He rested his head down on his arms on top of his desk, the teacher’s lecture becoming mere background noise.
The bell rang, snapping him out of his almost-just-barely-fell-asleep. He basically jogged out of the room to avoid being held back by the teacher who he knew was glaring at his back as he disappeared down the hall. It was as he turned the corner that he realized that even though it was time to skip, he had no idea where he was meeting up with the other two. He checked the group chat; sure enough, there was nothing new added since last night’s debate about if octopuses could conceivably overthrow the human race. When the eighth period bell rang and he was still in the middle of a row of lockers, he had to make a decision.
He went out to the tree. Sure enough, Jungkook and Yugyeom were waiting there for him.
“I asked Seokmin and Dongmin if they wanted to come with us but they have to present today so they couldn’t. I won’t even mention it to Bambam, he would probably accidentally let it slip before we even left the campus,” informed Yugyeom.
“And Yoonoh is out of town. Bowling competition or something like that,” added Jungkook.
“Hao must have the same class as those two, he has to present today too.”
Before they could continue their conversation, they heard the telltale clicking of heels on the sidewalk accompanied by a whistle. They froze, praying that the vice principal would just walk past without noticing them. It would be quite embarrassing to be caught before the plan could even really start. No one so much as dared to breathe.
As soon as she was a safe distance away, they let out their breath. It was a good thing too, as Jungkook had started to look a little blue around the mouth. In an attempt to make themselves smaller, they crouched down and snuck away, through the gates, out to freedom. If you were watching you would think it was one of the high school movies that have the students basically performing stunts to prank their teachers and somehow escape without being seen.
Once off school grounds, Mingyu really began to believe that maybe they had a chance at this. Without a word they started towards the forest, and made it there in ten minutes, tops. The shade provided by the leaves gave them all a much needed break from the early June heat. The back of Mingyu’s neck thanked him. He was sure that he was going to burn if he spent any longer underneath the sun.
Less than a mile into the forest, they arrived at their destination. It was a small treehouse, barely big enough to fit their whole group, which consisted of a grand total of eight people. When it was built they were barely ten years old, so it was no wonder that it had trouble containing eight almost-sixteen year olds.
Yugyeom and Bambam’s family was well-off, and it had to be to support them along with their five older brothers. Unfortunately, their mother wasn’t in the picture, and their father was a rather unpleasant man. He hired some engineers and construction workers to design and build a place for his youngest sons and their friends just to keep them busy and not bothering him. At first the older boys had to take them out there; the trek was simply too much to trust a pack of ten-year-old boys to make without someone breaking a bone. Once they were all twelve or thirteen they were able to make it out there by themselves. None of Yugyeom and Bambam’s brothers took the time to visit the place after that; it was always more for the babies of the family more than them, after all.
Even after all of these years the falling-apart building brought a sense of comfort to Mingyu. Holes in the walls, vines growing through the windows, water-damaged roof, everything.
The ladder leading up probably wouldn’t be structurally stable for much longer. Still, they all used it without much worry. When it broke, it broke. It wouldn’t be that big a deal. It wasn’t like the fall would be too devastating, either. The treehouse was only ten feet above ground. The first thing they had all been briefed on by Mark, Yugyeom’s brother, before they were let up inside for the very first time was how to maneuver yourself to limit the damage when you hit the ground. Those lessons, combined with the fact that the earth in this area was made up of very soft grass and moist soil, made it so that none of them were too scared of falling.
Today wasn’t the day, anyway, it seemed. They all made it inside unscathed. The ceiling was just tall enough for Mingyu to be able to walk around without hitting his head, but only if he slouched. It was annoying to do so, so by the time he reached his current height, he just took to crawling around everywhere in there. In order for him to not feel judged (not that he would, but he let them believe it anyway), and maybe also just because they wanted an excuse, they started crawling around too. And now it’s an unofficial rule that once you reach the top of that rickety old ladder you are now a quadruped. Yoonoh was the hardest to convince to go along with it, but he gave in eventually. He enjoyed it as much as everyone else, even if he complained about it whenever he was there.
Yugyeom crawled over to the cupboard in the corner. He opened one of the doors.
“What should we play?” he called over his shoulder. “We have Monopoly, Life, Clue, Pictionary…”
“Let’s do Heads Up,” suggested Jungkook, “but only because Mingyu sucks at it.”
Mingyu pouted but agreed. They were able to fill the next hour with the game, most of which consisted of the three getting increasingly frustrated with each other, especially Mingyu. Jungkook wasn’t exaggerating when he said that Mingyu kind of sucked.
It wasn’t long after they put away the game (Mingyu lost, which meant he had to clean up) when an alarm started going off on Jungkook’s phone. He grabbed it and gave a satisfied smile at what he saw; he stopped the alarm and lifted his screen to show them the time- 3:30 p.m. School was officially out for the day.
“Well boys,” he said, “we made it.”
Mingyu checked his phone as well. “I haven’t gotten any messages from my family yet, either. They must not be onto us.” He raised his eyebrows and looked between his two friends. “Celebratory game of Monopoly?”
It’s safe to say that by the end of Monopoly, two thirds of the group were holding back tears of great fury, and the other one third was cackling at their rage. I’ll give you a hint, the one third was Yugyeom. (Hey, he had surprisingly few qualms about destroying the livelihoods of his companions.)
After that they sat around for a while, much too mentally and physically exhausted from Monopoly to get out another game. While Jungkook and Yugyeom did something together using the first boy’s phone, Mingyu sat with his legs hanging out the door, eyes closed, and ears wide open. He listened to the sounds of the natural world around them, from the birds chirping (he swore that if you concentrated hard enough you could even hear their wings beating the air; Minghao wasn’t convinced) to the river with its white-water rapids just under a mile even further into the woods, to the leaves rustling in the wind. Now that he really thought about it, the wind had picked up quite a bit in the time that they’d been out there… He shook his head. Wind changed speed often, there was no point in getting himself worked up over nothing. Besides, today was supposed to be their relaxation day, away from all of the stress of Mr. Park, away from the chaos of their homes, as all of them had quite large families.
From behind him he heard Jungkook start to laugh heavily, the laugh transitioning into a rough, dry cough. It lasted for longer than was acceptable. Mingyu turned back, alarmed, just to find Yugyeom slapping him on the back in an attempt to help clear up his throat. Jungkook settled down soon after; still, the incident troubled Mingyu enough for him to retreat back inside with them, just in case he ended up needing to perform the heimlich or something.
He saw Yugyeom and Jungkook look at each other, and Mingyu was immediately on edge. Having been friends with those two for as long as he could remember, he knew what that look signified. They were up to something. Those two were arguably one of the closest pairs within their group, and were known for pranking anyone they could find with the littlest of warnings. Slowly they crawled towards him. He took note of the fact that they had separated to approach him from either side, as if trying to corner him. Then, in the blink of an eye, they were on top of him. He had no idea how they did it so in-sync. Then again, those two always had seemed more in-tune with one another than most people. Mingyu was laughing too hard to fight them off, and before he knew it his phone had been wrangled out of his pocket and thrown out the window onto the cushiony forest floor below.
“What the hell?” he exclaimed, shock taking over.
Jungkook, who had ultimately been the one to actually steal the phone, looked utterly unrepentant. “We saw a TikTok daring us to do it,” he explained, not an ounce of regret detected in his tone, “and you just happened to be right there.”
“Please don’t be too mad at us,” Yugyeom pleaded even though he didn’t look all that nervous himself. “We wouldn’t’ve done it if we thought that your phone would break. Your phone has survived worse falls.”
Mingyu grimaced; Yugyeom was right. He remembered clearly accidentally dropping his phone out of the ferris wheel cart when they were at the top. He also remembered Yoonoh and Seokmin not being too helpful and laughing at his misery, only for them all to recover his phone in perfect condition. Not even the screen protector had the most minor of cracks.
“It’s practically invincible at this p-” before he could continue his sentence he was interrupted by a cough that sounded all too similar to the one that Jungkook had let out earlier.
“Are you two feeling alright?” he asked.
“Oh yeah, we’re fine,” answered Jungkook. The way he said it made him sound so confident, like he believed every word that came out of his mouth, that Mingyu couldn’t help but believe him too.
“If you say so,” he said. “I better go get my phone now, though.”
“But I want to play Pictionary,” whined Yugyeom, seemingly fully recovered from his bout of coughing. “Can’t your phone wait? It’s not like you were using it anyway.”
Mingyu sighed. “Go get the box.”
“No, you goddamn idiot, it’s a house! How the hell did you get ‘turtle’ out of that?”
“Well, if you look at it this way-” Mingyu faltered. Apparently he couldn’t even figure out where he got his answer from.
Of course, given the limited number of participants, they couldn’t really play the game as it was intended. It was more of “guess what I drew” than Pictionary, but they still enjoyed themselves. For the most part.
Throughout the gameplay, Mingyu noticed that both of them were coughing more often, and more violently. On several occasions he tried to ask them about it, but he was quickly distracted by a subject change.
“Let’s face it, Gyu, you’re just somehow even worse at this than you are at-” a boom of thunder sounded in the area. Jungkook didn’t try to resume his sentence, too startled by the unexpected noise. A few minutes late- another boom. And then the rain started pouring. It started so suddenly that it scared Mingyu more than the first thunder had. There was no warning drizzle, just immediate heavy downpour, quite possibly the worst he’d ever experienced.
“We can just wait it out,” Jungkook laughed anxiously. It would be tough, but they had no other choice, Mingyu supposed. The holes in the room were letting a lot of water in, and the windows couldn’t be closed.
After sitting there for God knows how long, they accepted that this wasn’t something that could just be waited out. It didn’t look like it would be stopping anytime soon. What was at first just thunder now had lightning added to the mix. Yugyeom had stuck his arm outside once and tugged it back in a flash. He shook his head at them.
“It feels like it’s hailing. There’s no way that we’d be able to run for it.”
It wasn’t even actually hailing out, Mingyu realized. The rain was just that sharp. He was well aware that it was far past when they were expected home; their families were all probably very worried about them. But he just didn’t know what to do. They had properly gotten themselves into a fix this time, he thought, one that they couldn’t weasel their way out of.
It was several hours later. Well, Mingyu thought that it had to have been several hours. He had lost track of time. The storm raging outside had shown no signs of letting up. It had started to rain sideways, letting in even more water than before. Mingyu thanked all his lucky stars that that had only lasted a few minutes; he didn’t know if they could’ve lasted much longer in those conditions, huddled up as they were on the wall that the rain came from in order to avoid as much as they could. They were all shivering, but Jungkook and Yugyeom were vibrating more rapidly than Mingyu. They felt warm to the touch as well. Once he realized this he stood up, surprising the other two.
“You guys are sick, aren’t you?” They simply nodded, too tired to put up a fight. “And you didn’t tell me?”
“We thought you would’ve canceled hanging out with us,” Jungkook attempted to explain, his voice quivering.
“Of course I would have! I would have sent you two home!” He closed his eyes, taking a deep breath. Calm down, Mingyu. Yelling at them won’t solve anything. “We have to call someone to come get us. Jungkook, where’s your phone?”
“It, um- well, it died.”
“And yours, Yugy?”
“Dad took it this morning.”
“Your dad took it. Of course he did,” Mingyu muttered, gripping his hair so tightly the two still sitting were scared he might tear it out. “Well, I guess we’re out of luck then.”
“Why can’t we just use yours- oh.”
“Yeah, Jungkook, oh. We can’t use mine because your dumbasses threw it out the fucking window!” he raised his voice more than he ever had with them before. He slid to the corner opposite them, not caring that he was putting himself directly underneath a leak in the roof. He pulled his knees up to his chest and stuck his face in between them.
They sat in silence. Mingyu listened to the rain pelting the outside of the building, to the ragged breathing of his friends. All of a sudden he was ashamed of himself. They were as terrified as him right now. What gave him the right to take it out on them? He removed his head from his knees and cleared his throat. They looked at him, apprehension on their faces. It made his heart clench.
“I’m sorry guys. I’m just… really scared right now,” he laughed humorlessly, “and I know that doesn’t excuse it but-”
“Oh shut up,” interrupted Jungkook. “Get over here.” He waved Mingyu over to join their huddle, a small smile on his face despite the circumstances. Lightning flashed; he flinched, but the smile remained. Mingyu smiled back weakly, making quick work of the journey across the room.
They sat like that for even longer. Eventually the youngest two of the trio fell asleep. Mingyu had no idea how they managed that, but he was thankful for it all the same. It gave him some time to gather his thoughts. He knew that his brothers must be worried sick by now. Ever since their parents passed away it had just been the four of them. Seungcheol was the only sibling of-age at the time and had gained custody of all of them after a long legal battle. It was hard on him financially, but he refused to let his brothers get put in the system. A few years had passed since then; the second oldest, Wonwoo, was now an adult as well, though he was still living with them until he went off to college. Then there was Mingyu, now almost done with his freshman year of high school. The youngest was Hansol, nicknamed Vernon, who was only a year younger than Mingyu and entering high school after this summer. The loss of their parents had been hard on all of them; they were all extremely protective of each other. Mingyu would be panicking if it was him at home while one of his brothers was missing. He wondered what they were thinking right now. Did they think he was dead? Kidnapped? Wonwoo was the most sensible one in stressful situations. He had surely called his friends’ families and found out that neither Jungkook nor Yugyeom had reported home either. If he thought to call one of them who hadn’t gone with he would find out that they had skipped the last period. If they were lucky enough, Minghao would tell him that they had gone out to the treehouse.
Except that wouldn’t make a difference, he was suddenly reminded. Even if his brothers did find out where he was, there was no way for them to get a vehicle through the densely packed woods.
Yugyeom coughed. Mingyu looked at him. Both he and Jungkook had been getting progressively worse. They were shivering despite the warmth radiating from them. Their cheeks were flushed. Mingyu didn’t want to admit it, but he wasn’t feeling too hot himself. Well, he was, and that was the problem. He felt warmer than earlier, and he had been coughing a bit.
Regardless of the knowledge that help would not be arriving, that it was virtually impossible for anyone to come out to them, he couldn’t stop himself from longing for his brothers. He wanted them to hug him and tell him it was going to be okay, tell him that he wouldn’t feel bad for much longer. He even wanted little Hansol to comfort him.
With those troublesome wishes in mind, he drifted off into a restless sleep. The rain didn’t do anything to lull him.
He woke up exactly once in the middle of the night. He was coughing violently; he cursed. Well, he tried to. All that came out was a croak. His throat felt like hell. Swallowing was like he was licking the ground in Death Valley. He sat up, taking in the darkness and the silence. Not just silence from lack of voices, but silence from lack of anything. Silence from lack of rain. A blessed lack of rain. He was tempted to wake up the two beside him just to tell them or, a voice in his head whispered, so that they could start walking back now. He shook his head. No. They needed the sleep. Hell, he needed the sleep. They had been out here for this long already, he thought. What’s waiting a few more hours till sun-up gonna hurt?
He was woken up by whispers that didn’t sound all that quiet. He opened his bleary eyes and blinked a few times to clear them up. It was light out, the birds were chirping, and all Mingyu could think was thank god it’s over.
Sitting up, he registered that his head was pounding. He turned and coughed into his elbow. Jungkook and Yugyeom looked at him, concerned.
“We got you sick too, didn’t we?”
“Yeah,” Mingyu managed to rasp out. His throat was killing him. He thought it was kind of unfair that he was the one who got the short end of the stick. Those two were obviously still sick, yeah, but they seemed able to talk just fine. They must not have developed a sore throat like him. “Do I look as rough as you guys do?”
They looked at each other, judging. “Worse, I’d say,” Yugyeom finally decided. Mingyu groaned and fell back. It made a squelching noise. Their clothes were still damp from the rain, as well as their hair. Jungkook had never been so eager to take a shower in his life.
“Should we get out of here, boys? We’ve got quite the walk back, we might as well get started now.”
The youngest ones had to help Mingyu up. Once down the ladder, Yugyeom almost crashed to his knees and kissed the ground. In a nearby bush they found none other than Mingyu’s phone. He tried to turn it on; nothing.
“Looks like water was the one thing it couldn’t beat.” He pocketed it anyway, and they set off.
The journey today was significantly harder than yesterday’s. Maybe it was the fact that all three of them were suffering from a fever and cough, or maybe it was that the entire ground was now essentially mud. Probably a combination of the two.
The moment the edge of the forest entered his view, and he could see the buildings of the town, Mingyu had to stop himself from setting off in his fastest sprint. He didn’t know what they looked like to witnesses; three teenage boys stumbling out of the woods, wet and flushed from sickness. They continued on to the beginning of the residential area.
“Are you sure you can make it back by yourself?” asked Yugyeom. Him and Jungkook lived on the same street, but they couldn’t say the same for Mingyu.
“Yeah, I got it. You two should get back home. Maybe we’ll get back in time to keep them from calling the police.” They hugged one last time before going their separate ways.
Mingyu paused on his doorstep, scared of what he would find on the inside. He thought it better to knock than just barge in using his key. Seungcheol opened the door. His red-rimmed eyes widened. “Gyu? Is that you?”
“Yeah, it’s me.”
He was pulled into the tightest hug he’d ever had right away.
“Cheol, what’s taking so- Gyu?” Hansol pulled them into the house, slamming the door behind them. Then he joined them, burying his face in Mingyu’s neck. “I can’t believe it’s you. We were so worried. What happened?”
Mingyu didn’t have time to answer before a fourth party joined in on the hug. Wonwoo didn’t say a word, but he didn’t need to. Mingyu understood. They stood in the entryway like that, none of them caring that one of them was getting the rest wet and dripping water onto the hardwood.
Mingyu took a shower and was glad to finally clean himself off. And then they gathered in the living room, tears in all of their eyes from the reunion, and waited for Mingyu’s story. He told them everything, even about him yelling at Jungkook and Yugyeom.The didn’t judge him at all, just nodded understandingly.
“Well, Gyu, I won’t pretend that I’m not disappointed. This would never have happened if you three had just done what you were supposed to,” Seungcheol said when Mingyu was done with his explanation. Mingyu’s shoulders fell. He couldn’t say that he wasn’t expecting this, he just wasn’t expecting it right away.
“But I think that I can let it off just this once. It seems like you’ve learned your lesson quite a bit already.” Mingyu lit up, and that was enough for all of them to forgive him everything. “You go to bed. Let Hansol bring you some meds while Wonwoo makes some soup. I’ll see what I can do about your phone.”
That was all Mingyu needed to rush up the stairs (as fast a rush as a person with a headache could manage), a smile on his face, as his brothers stared after him. You could never stay mad at Mingyu for long. They couldn’t, at least, and he used that to his advantage, even if he didn’t realize it.
Mingyu went back to school on Tuesday next week. He met up with Jungkook and Yugyeom by the tree where all of their problems began in the first place. Jungkook had been treated as well as Mingyu had, and both of them had recovered quite well. Yugyeom's father paid a nurse to come take a look at him, only for her to determine that he had a simple cold. No hospital visits had to be made, thankfully, though there were several panicked calls between older siblings about how to take care of a sick little brother.
“I got my phone taken away by Namjoon, but I don’t think it’ll last too long. He loves me too much.”
“I was right in my predictions.” They stared at Yugyeom blankly. “Jinyoung and Jaebum were mad for the first day. Well, they all were, so I wasn’t totally correct, but I was close enough. I think it was more worry than anger, anyway, but dad never taught us how to project our emotions the right way, so…” He made a what can you do motion. “Dad wasn’t all that concerned, though. I don’t think he even noticed I was gone.” Mingyu patted him on the back.
“Well, kids, what did we get from this?” he asked.
“Don’t skip class?”
“That’s right. And also that you two should listen to me when I tell you you have a dumb idea. I’m always right about those types of things.”
“I think that’s a bit of a stretch, but okay. Whatever helps you sleep at night.”
The bell rang. They looked at each other. “That was the first period bell, wasn’t it?” Mingyu asked slowly, eyes closed.
“...Yep.”
“We’re late for first period, aren’t we?”
“Also yes.”
“Shit.”
“Shit indeed, my dear friend. Shit indeed.”