Archive of Our Own

It had started with an email.

Well, no.

It had started when Yoongi had decided that checking his work emails at one in the morning, on a Saturday, after he’d had one too many drinks, was a good idea.

One of his colleagues – not even a friend, which should’ve been a red flag right there – had forwarded a link to the whole office with the subject line ‘Corporate charity work for the year?’

Which is why he’s here now.

In all honesty, Yoongi had completely forgotten that he had drunkenly signed up for a 100km walking event until he received the welcome pack in the mail.

“Hyung,” Namjoon had said to him when Yoongi had told him about it. “This is a huge commitment. This isn’t like an evening stroll along the Han.”

“I know,” Yoongi had muttered, flicking through the welcome pack. They’d included a training plan, and the first week was already suggesting workouts he wasn’t sure he’d ever even attempted. “But I signed up under our company’s name, so if I back out now the whole office will know about it.”

“So it’s a corporate thing? Is anyone else from the office doing it with you?”

“That’s the funny thing,” Yoongi said flatly. “Hilarious, actually. Although the company has already funded my charity raising goals, none of those assholes want to commit to actually doing the walk with me.”

“Ah, so you’re being fuelled by both the fear of embarrassing yourself by dropping out, and spite because none of your co-workers will do this with you,” Namjoon had said. He sighed. “I’ll do it.”

“Namjoon-ah, you don’t have to…” Yoongi trailed off. He didn’t want Namjoon to feel obligated, but it did sound like it would be more enjoyable if he had someone to do the walk with.

“No, but I’m going to. If you’re going to walk yourself to death, I should at least be there for moral support, so your embarrassed, spiteful ghost doesn’t come back to haunt me.”

So, they’ve trained.

Have they missed one or two of the suggested workouts along the way? Sure. But Yoongi’s feeling pretty confident about this – he’s the strongest he’s ever been, his cardiovascular strength is now on par with, like, athletes, he’s pretty sure.

“Technically long-distance walking is a sport,” Namjoon says when Yoongi mentions this to him. They’re in a huge group with all of the other walkers, the sun not even peeking over the horizon as they huddle together on the beach. The charity representatives are leading them through some stretches; it’s the kind of overly upbeat pep-talking that Yoongi doesn’t necessarily enjoy, but he gets that it works for some people. There’s a group of three men clustered near them, and two of them look like they’re going to vibrate out of their skin with excitement. “Not sure that doing this walk makes us full-on athletes, though.”

The representatives start a cardio warm-up, putting on a track that Yoongi recognises because Namjoon produced it, and he’s heard the bare bones of it filtering through Namjoon’s headphones countless times. It’s sweet, though, watching Namjoon’s somewhat alarmed expression upon hearing music he’s worked on out in the wild.

“Namjoon, I run now. For fun and relaxation,” Yoongi points out as they move into a slow, high-kneed jog. “Pretty sure that makes me an athlete?”

Yoongi is mostly joking – he knows his limits, which is why, when it comes time to choose a group of walkers to stick with, led by volunteer guides who will maintain a steady pace, he chooses the middle group. The walkers in the fast group look terrifying, lithe and wiry with stern, focused expressions and calf muscles the size of grapefruits.

“Remember!” One of the representatives calls out. “It’s much easier to drop back into a slower group if you need to than it is to speed up to catch a faster group!”

One of the walkers in their group casts a wistful look over at the fast group; both he and the man he’s standing with have got that fast group look, but it looks as though his friend has made him choose the middle group.

“Hey,” someone says, drawing Yoongi’s eyes away from the man. The man in front of him is incredibly handsome, even if he is wearing a terrible hat and shirt. “So, I’m Seokjin, and my friends and I are online content creators – we’ll be posting photos and videos and stuff online during the walk, and I just wanted to check if you’re okay with appearing in the background? If not, we’ll avoid filming near you, and blur your faces out if you accidentally turn up in anything.”

“Sure,” Yoongi says, shrugging.

“Share, your,” Namjoon says, making Yoongi worry that he’s somehow gotten heatstroke before six in the morning. In the dark. In October. “Uh, I mean, yeah, sure.”

“Great!” Seokjin says, holding out his phone. “If you could just sign to say you consent?”

Yoongi looks through the form; it’s got the logo of the charity in the top right corner, and a list of their names and photo IDs for them to sign off on. “So, you’re working in partnership with the charity?” Yoongi asks politely as he signs next to his name and face.

“Yeah – the three of us have pretty substantial followings online, so it helps get the word out about the charity’s work, you know?” He points out his friends, the two men who had looked so enthusiastic earlier, now each making their own rounds of the group getting signatures. “Taehyung and I are both on Instagram, Jeongguk does that Gen Z gamer stuff.” At the sound of his name Jeongguk looks over and pouts.

“Hyung, you sound like an old man when you say stuff like that,” he says. He smiles politely at Yoongi and Namjoon, who Yoongi’s pretty sure has barely breathed in the last few minutes. “I’m a streamer, and I also use TikTok because I’m not, you know, decrepit?”

“The only reason you have TikTok is because everyone moved on from Dubsmash and you know it,” Seokjin says, rolling his eyes. Yoongi hands Namjoon the phone, nudging him surreptitiously when he just stands there holding it. Namjoon hastily signs and holds the phone out to Seokjin with such vigour that, had anyone been stood in front of him, there would have been injuries. Yoongi’s not discounting the possibility that Namjoon might have just dislocated his own shoulder. “Great, thanks!”

“Hyung,” Namjoon whispers as they both watch Seokjin walk away. “Hyung, what the fuck? You didn’t tell me the most attractive man in the world was on this walk.”

“You already knew I was coming,” Yoongi says tonelessly, prompting Namjoon to shove his shoulder. “Yes, he’s very hot.”

“Right? Like, objectively. Subjectively, too. Adjectively?” He sighs. “I think my brain’s melting out of my ears.”

“Well, you’ve got thirty-eight hours, and just over one hundred kilometres, to get to know him,” Yoongi says consolingly, patting his shoulder.

99.6km To Go

“You’re RM?” Jeongguk squeaks, walking backwards so that he can stare at Namjoon. They’re walking single file on the bridge over where the river meets the sea, and Jeongguk, walking in front of Namjoon, is somehow managing to maintain the same walking pace as the rest of them. “RM?”

“Uh, yep!” Namjoon says, rubbing the back of his neck.

“That’s so cool! I’m a big fan.” Jeongguk stands up on his tiptoes and looks at Yoongi over Namjoon’s shoulder. “What about you, Yoongi-hyung?”

“Oh, I’m just his roommate,” Yoongi says, shrugging. “Work in an office, eight-to-six, nothing special.” Namjoon shoots him a stern look over his shoulder, so Yoongi is now relying on Jeongguk staying with them for the foreseeable future, otherwise Namjoon will give him the talk about ‘valuing his worth’ again. “It must be nice, getting to set your own hours like you do?”

Jeongguk hums thoughtfully, falling into step with them as the path widens again. “It has its pros and cons, you know? Most streaming sites reward streamers who do daily content – the algorithm, you know – so, especially for newer creators, it’s so easy to fall into the trap of churning out content. And some of my friends edit their streams into YouTube videos, which eats up even more of your time…” He wrinkles his nose, and then grins. “But I get to play video games for a living, so.”

Yoongi watches a couple of streamers for background noise, but he doesn’t think he’s ever caught one of Jeongguk’s streams. He has, however, seen Taehyung’s work here and there – his photography crosses his feeds enough that, when he sees Taehyung up ahead on the path, setting up a shot of the landscape, angling his camera to include just a thin swipe of the farm field they’re walking alongside, an equally thin smudge of the mountains in the distance, and a huge swathe of the indigo sky, Yoongi recognises the composition.

“That’s kind of you to say,” Taehyung says when Yoongi compliments him on his work, a big, boxy grin on his face. “I’ve never been recognised before, I don’t post pictures of my face on my public Instagram.” The thought crosses Yoongi’s mind that, if Taehyung did post selcas, it would probably draw in more subscribers and followers. Although, maybe that’s precisely why he hasn’t posted anything showing his face. “Hyung gets recognised all the time, and I couldn’t deal with that – I take the bins out barefoot most times, and I wouldn’t want my feet plastered all over the internet, you know?”

Yoongi doesn’t, but he nods as though that is a worry regular people with office jobs have.

“Hyung,” Namjoon says, catching up to him. “Hyung, Jeongguk took a selca with me, and now loads of people are following me on Twitter?” He holds up his phone where, sure enough, his home screen is being flooded with notifications.

“That’s good, Namjoon-ah,” Yoongi points out as their guide leads them off of the path through the farm fields, and into a tiny beach village. Namjoon shrugs, glancing at his phone a few more times before shoving it back in his pocket.

The route they’re taking through the village isn’t intuitive by any stretch of the imagination, which means they have no choice but to trust the volunteer guides to lead them well, despite the fact that Yoongi has been able to navigate a map himself since he was a teenager.

It’s also odd being in a place where the buildings are smaller than the utility poles, but it means that Yoongi can see more of the sky than he has in years – with one tilt of his head, he can see the sun rising over the sea to the east, and the dark blue sky of the retreating night to the west.

The road out of the village loses its footpath as it heads uphill, so Yoongi slows a little, content to bring up the rear of their group. He sees no reason to barrel on up hills, especially as they’ve still got a long way to walk yet. He can see Namjoon up ahead chatting with Jeongguk and Seokjin, and even from here Yoongi can see how pink Namjoon’s cheeks are.

Somebody stops ahead of him and waits for him to catch up, hands on his hips and foot tapping a little.

“Hi!” The man says, a little too peppily for six-thirty in the morning. “If we want to be sure we hit our time cut-offs, we might need to pick up the pace, especially on hills!”

Yoongi looks him up and down before raising an eyebrow; he’s not working a volunteer t-shirt, which means this is just some random guy giving him unsolicited walking advice. “Somebody needs to be at the back,” Yoongi replies.

“Yes, but somebody at the back still needs to be maintaining a steady pace!” The man looks at his sports watch. “We should be averaging just over five kilometres an hour, especially in these early hours, which means we need to exert a little harder on the hills!”

Suddenly recognising this man as the member of their group that had very obviously wanted to join the fast walkers, Yoongi just rolls his eyes. “If I speed up, I’m just going to walk into Taehyung.” Literally – Taehyung is just in front of him, slowing a little as he looks at Yoongi over his shoulder upon hearing his name.

“If everyone speeds up, just a little, then no one will walk into anyone and we won’t have to worry about hitting a wall tomorrow morning out of exhaustion-”

“Jimin-ah!” The man’s friend speeds around Taehyung and throws his arm around Jimin’s shoulders. “Making friends?”

“No,” Jimin says shortly. “Just trying to provide some encouragement.”

Yoongi scoffs. “Oh, is that what we’re calling it? Where I come from – you know, this planet – we call that being rude to someone you’ve never met?”

“Well, when the whole group is overly tired tomorrow morning because we kept stopping and starting today, you’ll think to yourself ‘Wow, I really wish I’d listened to Jimin, who obviously knew what he was talking about’!” Jimin marches ahead, possibly to give advice to even more walkers.

“Jimin, wait, your-” his friend sighs and smiles at Yoongi apologetically. “Sorry, he’s just very enthusiastic. He’ll mellow out in a few hours.”

Jimin’s friend, Hoseok, is a lot more agreeable to talk to, and they talk for a while, strolling along a path lined with trees turning orange with both autumn and the steadily rising sun. It’s pleasant, and enjoyable, and Yoongi can’t enjoy it because he’s too focused on his pace. Is he walking too slowly? His goal for this whole thing had just been to finish, and he’s trained well enough for that to be possible, but was he supposed to have set time goals in order to walk with the middle group? Is the rest of this walk just going to feature Jimin popping up at random intervals to make him walk faster?

96.2km to go

Once the sun has fully risen, Yoongi’s mood relaxes. It’s hard to feel irritable over advice from a stranger when the sky is such a pretty, cornflower blue, the clouds a soft, fluffy white, the birds are singing in the trees, and the fields stretch off as far as he can see into the distance.

There are… a lot of fields.

Even Taehyung, by this point, has put his camera away.

Seokjin and Jeongguk, however, both still have theirs out. Jeongguk is vlogging a little ahead of them, talking about how the first hour of their walk has gone so far; Seokjin is just behind him, taking a huge number of selcas in rapid succession, not even checking them before moving onto the next photo.

Namjoon sighs. “Imagine being that hot, hyung, that you don’t even need to check photos of yourself to know that they’re probably good.”

“It’s literally his job,” Yoongi says. “Also, you are hot, what the hell?”

Seokjin turns around and smiles at them; Yoongi treads on Namjoon’s foot when he whimpers, and then pretends that it’s due to the uneven dirt track they’re walking along. This backfires a little when his foot lands awkwardly on the path, sending a jolt up his ankle. “Ah, hyung, be careful!” Namjoon says, grabbing Yoongi by the shoulder. “Are you alright?”

“Yeah, I’m good,” Yoongi says, twisting his ankle in circles to double check.

“Good – although, you did just stand on my foot, so I might go ahead and trip you up myself?” Namjoon says, letting go.

“You two are cute,” Seokjin says as they catch up to him. “How long have you been together?”

“Almost ten years,” Namjoon says.

Yoongi shakes his head, wrinkling his nose. “I think he meant how long have we been dating.”

“Oh! Oh, gross, no, none, no years,” Namjoon says hastily.

Seokjin’s smile turns polite, a little distant. “Ah, my bad.”

 “Gross because it’s Yoongi, not because he’s – I’m exclusively into men?” Namjoon says. “Well, not Yoongi, he’s my best friend. But other men? Yes.”

“I’m also not into Namjoon,” Yoongi points out. “Just so we’re clear.”

“Good – good that you’re on the same page, I mean!” Seokjin laughs squeakily. The path they’re on leads out onto a road – no footpaths, but one half of the road has been blocked off for their walk, and the smooth asphalt is lovely after a few kilometres of undulating dirt track baked dry by the sun. There is, according to Yoongi’s phone, some sort of body of water running alongside the road, but he can’t see anything down there except for thick grass and rocks.

92.5km to go

The alleged body of water Yoongi’s phone insists is there eventually presents itself as a lake, coming into view as their uphill walk levels out to bring them onto a relatively flat road around the water. It’s beautiful – there’s a rugged mountain on the other side of the lake, its dark green face fading into a muted blue as it climbs up into the sky.

“Ahh, this lake looks perfect for fishing,” Seokjin says, stopping to look over the water, one hand on his hip and the other shielding his eyes. “Do you like fishing, Namjoon-ah? Yoongi-yah?” Yoongi has to hand it to Seokjin – he’s very clearly interested in Namjoon, yet keeps making an effort to include Yoongi in his questions. Yoongi has tried to extract himself from the conversation a few times, either speeding up or falling back – however, whenever he speeds up Namjoon just walks faster, and whenever he slows down Jimin seems to pop up out of nowhere to prod him into walking faster again.

He can tell that Namjoon wants to talk to Seokjin, but he’s using Yoongi as something of a crutch. For example:

“I love fish,” Namjoon says. What he means is that he likes fish as creatures, as beings he shares this planet with. He loves fish in the noun sense – he does not like to fish, as a verb. In the face of Seokjin’s obvious excitement, though, he does not clarify this any further, and instead says “Yoongi-hyung, though? Loves to fish. Best fisher I know?”

This is news to Yoongi, but he nods calmly.

“That’s great!” Seokjin says. “Maybe we could all go fishing together?”

“I’d love to, but I, uh, broke my fishing rod,” Namjoon says. He does choose to clarify this point, however, by adding “Uh… I sat on it.”

“Oh. That sucks?” Seokjin says. “I’m happy to lend you one of mine, though – it’s been a while since I last had fishing friends.”

Namjoon just looks impossibly endeared, so Yoongi says that both of them would love to go, with the intention of maybe developing a mysterious bout of illness on the day so that Namjoon and Seokjin could spend some time together alone.

For now, though, he is subjected to almost a full hour of this attempted flirting. Namjoon, Yoongi knows, will start off nervous and gradually warm up to a conversation – Seokjin, on the other hand, starts off confident, but the longer Namjoon’s attention is on him, the more flustered he gets. This, in turn, makes Namjoon empathetically nervous, creating a never-ending feedback loop of mortification.

“Jin-hyung!” Jeongguk calls finally, waving from where he stands, a little ahead. “I’m about to go live as we get to the first checkpoint, come on!”

“Coming, Jeongguk-ah!” Seokjin shouts back. He grins at Namjoon, and then at Yoongi. “I’ll see you later?”

“Yeah! I’ll be here. Well, not here, physically, because we’re walking, but… Metaphorically?” Namjoon says, as Yoongi considers pitching himself into the lake.

“Namjoon,” Yoongi says flatly a few seconds later. “What was that?”

“I don’t know,” Namjoon whispers, blinking. “He wants to be fishing friends.”

Yoongi sighs, but resigns himself to watching a bunch of YouTube videos in order to learn how to fish.

Checkpoint 1 – 87.2km to go

Their first checkpoint is little more than a carpark, but there are stalls with water, hot drinks, snacks, a few portable toilets, and a number of volunteers standing around with flags and clackers. Fourteen kilometres in doesn’t really seem like the time to be cheering how well they’re doing, but hey – if it’s working for the other walkers, then that’s alright by Yoongi.

There are also a few first-aid volunteers standing around in high-visibility vests, offering check-ups, which Yoongi is more or less certain it’s too early for. Jimin is getting checked over by one of them, showing off some leg stretches.

“He’s probably checking that his foot strike pattern is correct or something nerdy like that,” he mumbles to Namjoon, who looks up from his rice cake; Yoongi nods his head towards Jimin.

“Do we know him?” Namjoon asks, squinting. “Oh, wait, he was the guy you were arguing with earlier, right?”

“We weren’t arguing, he was offering me unsolicited, almost mean encouragement,” Yoongi says, surveying the snack choices. They’re not great, and he’s a little upset at the event runners choosing to cut the bananas up in half – surely the now exposed banana will just go brown? – but he takes a rice cake and a small cup of coffee before handing his water bottle over to be refilled.

Jeongguk bounces over to them, sweeping his camera over the food available. “Sorry, guys, I’m gonna need to cut this stream short – if you want lives throughout the whole thing, I can’t use up all my battery on the first checkpoint! Turn on the notifications to make sure you don’t miss me going live later!” He whips the camera back around to himself, waves, and switches it off. His streaming persona, Yoongi’s noticed over the last few hours, is very similar to his real-life personality – the only difference Yoongi’s spotted is that he doesn’t swear while streaming. “Namjoon-ssi, Yoongi-ssi, later on in the evening, is it alright if I interview you both? For content.” He wiggles his fingers a little.

“Uh, sure?” Yoongi says, looking over at Namjoon, who just shrugs. “Why though?”

Jeongguk snorts. “Because there’s only so many lives I can do where I just tell the viewers how many fields we’ve walked through, or how many kilometres are left to go. Plus it’ll stop me from reading too many of the comments - one of them pointed out that we’ve walked just over ten percent of the distance. I think they were trying to be encouraging?”

“I feel very unencouraged. Discouraged. Anti-couraged,” Yoongi says, stretching his right leg out behind him to stretch his hip.

82.5km to go

The event website had, euphemistically, described the first two stages of the ten-stage walk as progressing from a 2-star difficulty level to a 4-star difficulty level.

The first four or so kilometres of the second stage had been fine. Good, even! Shadier, which was welcome as the sun started to inch up the sky, and the forest path they were walking along meant that they didn’t have to constantly worry about getting run over.

And then the gentle slope they were walking on had become an ungentle slope.

And then it had gotten steeper still.

And then the dirt path had been subsumed by rocks. They are climbing rocks. They are, semantically, rock-climbing, which Yoongi had not signed up for and the website had done nothing to prepare them for.

“Hyung,” Namjoon huffs. “I think… I think my calves are gonna pop?”

Because yes, they had trained well, but inclines on the treadmills of the gyms in Seoul do not compare to the undulating uphill paths of a forest. They’re stepping from stone to stone in ways that make Yoongi incredibly grateful that at least it’s not raining, because trying to navigate these stones if they were slippery would probably result in him breaking at least one bone.

It’s made worse by the fact that there’s a pair of walkers just in front of him who are trying to use walking poles – ‘trying’ being the operative word. They’re swinging them wildly, which means Yoongi, several rocks below them, is in almost constant danger of losing an eye.

“You’re all doing great!” One of the volunteers calls out. “Once we get to the top of the hill, we’ll take a quick water break!” Yoongi looks up to see just how far away the top of the hill is – it’s not that far, but he can see Jimin right at the front of their group, climbing the rocks like he’s secretly part ibex.

He and Namjoon make it to the top of the hill, however, and judging by Namjoon’s pleased smile, he’s feeling just as proud of himself as Yoongi is. He’s even climbed fast enough that he’s comfortably in the first third of their group to make it up the hill. Sure, he’s not Jimin, but he’ll take top third.

“If the sun’s in your eyes, put your hat on,” Namjoon suggests, swigging back water before continuing. “You’re squinting.”

“I’m glaring,” Yoongi says.

Namjoon turns to look, and then looks back specifically so that Yoongi can see him rolling his eyes. “You’re being ridiculous.”

Namjoon, Yoongi thinks, is in no state to be calling anybody ridiculous, considering the fact that they both now need to learn how to fish due to his earlier behaviour, but Yoongi graciously does not call him out on this. Instead, he watches as Taehyung scales the last of the rocks, moves off to the side a little, and promptly lies down flat on his stomach.

“Taehyung-ah, you alright?” Yoongi calls; Taehyung looks over his shoulder and shoots him a thumbs up.

“Yeah, come look.” Yoongi heads over and, at Taehyung’s prompting, lays down on his own stomach and peers over the edge.

The climb looks much more dramatic from this angle, the shadows cast by the late morning sun making the rocks look sharper, almost insurmountable. He points this out to Taehyung, and then says “Although we did climb it, and they’re all climbing it. I suppose it just depends on your perspective of the problem at hand.”

Taehyung, who is carefully trying to wiggle his camera into place, nods. “The perspective of the problem at hand. I like that. Are you a writer, Yoongi-hyung?”

“Oh, no, I thought I told you? I work in an office,” Yoongi says.

Taehyung glances sidelong at him. “You can still be a writer and work in an office. You don’t have to sum yourself up as the thing that pays your bills. So, are you a writer?”

“No. I used to write lyrics, though.” It’s not something he talks about much. He and Namjoon had talked about it a lot in college, and Namjoon still asks for his opinion on the tracks he produces, but Namjoon doesn’t ask why he stopped carrying his notebook of lyrics around, and he’s never offered that information.

Seeming to sense there’s a story there that Yoongi doesn’t want to tell, Taehyung hands over his camera. “Take a picture of what you see?”

Yoongi wordlessly winds the camera strap around one of his hands and shuffles forward a little to take the photo.

81.7km to go

Their guide stops them at the top of a descending hill, allowing them time to huddle around her.

“Take this hill slowly, folks!” She says. “It’s deceptively steep, meaning that, if you go too quick, you’re gonna feel it in your shins later!”

They walk slowly, one careful foot in front of the other as they make their way down to the bottom of a valley. There’s a pretty little creek running through the valley, with crystal clear water reflecting the blue sky and the golden yellow trees.

“We’ll be crossing back and forth over this creek, because there are parts of the paths that have become a little overgrown over the summer,” the guide says. “If you’ve got waterproof shoes, feel free to just wade through, it’s not very deep! Otherwise, we’ll be crossing at points with stepping-stones.”

At the first set of stones they need to cross, Yoongi watches Jimin step on each stone incredibly gingerly, almost as though he’s afraid to get his shoes wet. Yoongi, very pointedly, wades into the creek in order to pass him.

He instantly regrets this, because his shoes are not as waterproof as he had assumed they were, but he tries not to let the uncomfortable feeling of moist socks show on his face as he marches past Jimin.

“So,” Namjoon says lightly once he catches up. His shoes, Yoongi notes, are nice and dry. “What happened?”

“Hubris,” Yoongi mutters.

“Uh-huh,” Namjoon agrees. “And what have we learned?”

“That I’m not meant to overtake people.” He’s got a spare pair of shoes in his drop bag that he can change into at the next checkpoint, but that’s not for another five kilometres.

“Overtaking’s fine, just don’t be obnoxious about it,” Namjoon says. He wrinkles his nose. “God, I can hear you squelching as you walk.”

“…too fast uphill, Jimin-ah, you’re going to – Namjoon?” Namjoon turns, blinks, and then brightens.

“Hoseok? Holy shit!” Namjoon looks at Yoongi. “Hyung, this is Hoseok, we were best friends in high school.”

“Small world,” Yoongi says. “We met earlier, although I’d have mentioned it to you if I’d known you knew each other.”

“This is Jimin,” Hoseok says, primarily for Namjoon’s benefit. “He’s the reason I’m doing this, actually.”

“Funnily enough, Yoongi’s the reason I’m here,” Namjoon laughs, and they’re off, talking a mile a minute about their shared past, what they’ve been up to, what mutual friends have been up to, leaving Yoongi to walk silently at Jimin’s side.

It doesn’t need to be silent, Yoongi’s fully aware. Yes, Jimin is a little bit too intense about this walk for Yoongi’s liking, but that could just be due to excitement, or nerves. However, Yoongi’s not great with starting conversations with strangers, and Jimin doesn’t seem to want to talk, anyway, so they walk along in silence.

75.5km to go

There had been a time, earlier in the walk, when Yoongi had been grateful to stop walking on roads, preferring the ambience of the forest, liking not needing to constantly check for traffic. Now though, as they all file out of the forest and onto a gravel farm road, he’s never felt more thankful to have a firm surface to walk on. His ankles feel worked from the hills in the forest – not to mention his shoes are sodden right through, so he’s still making little squelchy noises as he walks.

They’re walking alongside the shells of old greenhouses, and it’s amongst this backdrop that Jeongguk reappears, camera in hand.

“Happy for me to go live with you now, hyung?”

“Sure,” Yoongi says. “I’ve never livestreamed or anything like that, though, so I don’t know what I’m doing.”

“It’ll be just like this,” Jeongguk explains, holding up his phone. “Just chatting, except I’ll be holding my phone at this weird angle. If it helps, just ignore the phone!”

It’s surprisingly easy to forget that there’s an audience once Jeongguk goes live. He occasionally addresses his phone, but he’s just as attentive to their conversation as he’s always been – just like he’d said, the only real difference is that his hand remains outstretched in front of them the whole time. He asks Yoongi about how he’d trained for the walk, whether he’d done anything like this before, who he’d come with-

“Namjoon and I go way back,” Yoongi explains. “We’ve known each other since college, we were doing the same course.”

“That’s RM to you, Chat,” Jeongguk says sternly to his phone. “Don’t be embarrassing in his mentions.”

“Does that happen a lot?” Yoongi asks afterwards. It had been surprisingly fun, although he’s had to switch his notifications off on Twitter. “Your followers…”

“Embarrassing themselves by being overly familiar with celebrities I mention?” Jeongguk asks. “Hmm. Most of my followers are pretty chill, but some of my other friends have shared some horror stories. Not to mention that Namjoon-hyung is like, a real celebrity, so I don’t want the very small portion of my viewers who can be a little… Enthusiastic being too insistent.”

It’s interesting, and a little funny, that Jeongguk – who has more followers on one of his platforms than Yoongi and Namjoon do on all of their platforms combined – views Namjoon as a ‘real’ celebrity. Not to mention that it’s very difficult for Yoongi to view Namjoon as any kind of celebrity at all as, just last night in the hotel room, he had come out of the bathroom to see Namjoon almost managing to tip their noodles down the sink in his attempt to drain them.

They traipse into the next town – all of the buildings look as though they’ve been dropped in from other places, nothing quite matching in terms of architectural style, building material – hell, even colour. It’s quiet, too, just a couple of people smoking out of their front doors and a few children on bicycles.

Despite this, the school that’s serving as their second checkpoint is surprisingly large, and the outside play area has been filled with stalls for their walk. Even from the school gate, Yoongi can smell freshly cooked hot food saturating the air – and, blessedly, the very first stall they walk past has their drop bags, neatly lined up and labelled.

He’s never been happier to see a school in his life.

Checkpoint 2 – 74.6km to go

This checkpoint has everything – not just their drop bags and hot food, but there’re little pots of rice, cups of soup, little sandwiches, and even neatly stacked pyramids of tangerines. He helps himself to some food and a tangerine, takes a seat next to Namjoon at one of the tables, and promptly starts changing his shoes.

It’s pretty unpleasant - his socks are soaked through, and, because they’re thick, a nightmare to peel off his feet. Thankfully, his blister tape is more or less dry, although he might need to change it sooner rather than later. For now, though, he pulls on a new pair of socks and his second pair of boots.

“All good?” Namjoon asks, once Yoongi finishes lacing up his boots.

Yoongi hums, searching through his drop bag for his head torch and stuffing it in his rucksack – the next time he’ll have access to his drop bag will be after dark. “Yeah. But we’ve been doing training walks that are, what, twelve, fourteen hours long? I’d be very surprised if I fucked up my feet after walking for six hours.”

“But when we trained, you didn’t go marching into a river,” Namjoon points out with a grin.

“It was a creek,” Yoongi mutters defensively. He shovels some rice into his mouth, and then says “It’s cool that Hoseok is here.”

Namjoon smiles wide. “Right? I’ve mentioned him to you before, yeah?” Yoongi nods. “He hadn’t really ever thought about doing something like this, but his friend Jimin wanted to do it.” At the sound of his name, Yoongi looks around for him, spotting him with one of the first-aid volunteers again, who’s carefully examining each of the joints of his right leg. This time, however, he seems to be there under duress – Hoseok is standing next to him, arms folded with a stern look on his face.

“That’s the second time he’s been to get first aid,” Yoongi says.

Turning to see the first aid station, Namjoon looks at Jimin for a moment, and then shrugs. “Maybe he has blisters? It’s better to get them sorted out earlier rather than later.” He waves at Hoseok, who waves back exuberantly.

“Weird way to check for blisters though,” Yoongi says, eating the last of his rice before turning his attention to the tangerine. It’s one of the good ones – easy to peel, sweet without tasting like sugar, juicy without being watery. He hums again, pops another segment in his mouth.

All too soon, his tangerine is gone, so he gets up to get rid of his and Namjoon’s rubbish. By the time he gets back, Namjoon’s not alone – Hoseok’s sitting next to him, Jimin hovering behind him awkwardly; Seokjin, Jeongguk, and Taehyung have also joined them, although Yoongi’s seat has been left empty.

Or, rather, not empty.

“Joon-ah, did you put your tangerine on my seat?” Yoongi asks, frowning and holding the tangerine up.

“Why… would I do that?” Namjoon asks bewilderedly, blinking up at him. Yoongi sits down and, still holding the tangerine, looks at it thoughtfully. It looks… Like a tangerine, in all honesty. “Did it, I don’t know, fall out of your pocket when you got up?”

“I don’t keep tangerines in my pockets,” Yoongi says, disproving this statement immediately by tucking this new tangerine into his pocket for later.

“Maybe someone put it there because they wanted to give it to you?” Hoseok says; Jimin coughs.

“I mean… Maybe?” Yoongi says, deciding that he wants to eat the tangerine now, actually; he takes it out of his pocket again and begins peeling it.

“Oh, hyung, can I photograph your hands while you do that?” Taehyung says. “Like Barros’s ‘Still life with oranges’, except, you know, without all of the other stages. And with a tangerine. And your hands.” This means absolutely nothing to Yoongi, but he’s more than happy to let Taehyung take photos of his hands.

Somebody in the group huffs out a breath, but Yoongi doesn’t look up from his tangerine in time to see who it was.

72.4km to go

Something in Yoongi’s hip is… Twinging.

Not painful! It just feels as though he’s trying to push two magnets together in his hip joint, especially when, as they have been doing for the past half an hour, they’re walking uphill. It’s fine now, anyway – they’ve just crested the top of the hill, and now they’re going downhill again.

There is, admittedly, not much to look at during this stretch of the walk. The single-track road they’re following has a thick, brownish thicket on one side and a hill on the other, blocking most of the view that, because of their ascent, would have probably been pretty impressive.

“Car!” Someone calls from the front of the group; sighing, Yoongi climbs a little ways into the long, thick grass at the side of the road. The person in front of him stumbles, almost tripping on a tuft of grass, so Yoongi reaches out his hand to steady them by their elbow.

“Thanks! Oh-” Jimin turns around and blinks at him. “Yoongi, right? You’re friends with Namjoon?”

“Yeah,” Yoongi says awkwardly as the car trundles past them slowly.

“I’m Jimin. I’m, um, sorry about this morning?” Jimin rocks forward onto his toes and then back onto his heels. “I had this plan in my head about how the walk should be going, but Hoseok told me that I’d probably been a bit of a dick about it.”

“No problem,” Yoongi says, shrugging, before stepping off the grass and back onto the road. He has half a mind to catch up with Namjoon, wherever he is in the group, even if that does mean he’ll have to listen to him and Seokjin attempt to talk to one another.

“So, why’re you doing this walk, Yoongi-ssi?” Jimin asks, speeding up a little to walk alongside Yoongi.

“A work colleague mentioned it, but I was the only one that actually signed up,” Yoongi says.

“So Namjoon-ssi isn’t a colleague?”

Yoongi shakes his head. “He’s my best friend, and he said he’d do this with me when I decided to, you know, do it.”

“Hoseok’s doing the same for me,” Jimin says.

“Work thing?”

“Something like that,” Jimin says, smiling a little. “This is more of a personal goal for me, honestly.”

“Have you ever done something like this?” Yoongi asks.

“Nope! I’m a professional dancer, so I’ve never really had time before,” Jimin explains. “It’s hard to train for an event this big on top of rehearsals and performances and stuff, so…” Jimin trails off and sticks his hands into his pockets. The movement draws Yoongi’s attention to his legs – he’s wearing awful zippable walking trousers, and he’s unzipped the lower half to wear them as long shorts. However, he also has very nice legs, so Yoongi is willing to forgive the terrible trousers. “Hah, yeah, Hoseok got me these as a joke,” Jimin laughs, misconstruing where Yoongi is now looking and flapping the baggy material of his shorts about. “But they’re surprisingly comfortable, and it means I don’t have to change into trousers if it gets colder later.”

“Yeah,” Yoongi says, forcing himself to stop looking at Jimin’s calf muscles. It’s probably less weird to appreciate the physique of a stranger during an athletic event, but it more than likely comes under the ‘weird’ banner of interactions anyway. “So, you’re a dancer?”

65.1km to go

Jimin, when he is no longer bullying Yoongi into walking faster, is surprisingly easy company. He’s engaging, suggesting conversation topics when he can tell that Yoongi’s running out of things to say, and listening intently when Yoongi offers up stories of his own. It might just be because they’ve got a lot of time to kill, and he’s looking for a distraction, but Yoongi doesn’t think so – Jimin seems interested in what he has to say, rather than just listening because he’s bored.

“So I walked into the office,” Yoongi explains. “And everyone just-” He freezes, holding his hands up as though he was typing on a keyboard. “Stops. All of them staring at me, like-” He widens his eyes and stares at Jimin, who laughs loudly.

“Oh no! They all knew?”

Yoongi nods grimly. “So, it turns out if you sign up through a company link, the company will advertise that you’re doing the charity walk by sending out a mass-email, but when you’re the only person to sign up then everyone suddenly knows who you are, and what you’re doing.”

“Well, you can’t drop out now,” Jimin says, shaking his head with a grin.

“That’s what I said to Joon! Imagine, all these people suddenly learn who I am, and the second thing they learn about me is that I’ve dropped out of a charity event.”

“Not a good look.”

“Not a good look,” Yoongi agrees.

62.4km to go

“That’s so weird, that we studied within the same faculty,” Jimin says, eyes wide. “We could’ve been friends.”

“I don’t think I ever really intermingled with the dancers,” Yoongi says thoughtfully. “Although, to be fair, Joon and I sort of kept to ourselves.”

They’d both been aiming for the same goal, then – a little wild-eyed, grabbing at any opportunities that came their way, they never really had the time or the inclination to socialise much outside of each other or their classmates.

“To be fair, I was almost always practicing,” Jimin says. “I wasn’t great fun to be friends with, back then.” Yoongi nods – he gets that. Jimin laughs suddenly. “Although, I’m not great at making friends now, honestly – Hoseok says I’m ‘single-minded’.”

“That’s a good thing for a dancer though, right?” Yoongi asks.

Jimin shrugs. “Depends.” He smiles, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “It can be the difference between recovering from an injury and, you know, not, but it can also be the cause of the injury in the first place, so…” He trails off and looks ahead, before checking his sports watch and raising his eyebrows. “We’re already at the third checkpoint?”

“Huh, I guess so,” Yoongi says.

Checkpoint 3 - 62.2km to go

Yoongi’s stomach rumbles.

“Eat your banana,” Namjoon says, swigging back water. “Also, how are you that hungry? We ate less than four hours ago. You ate additional tangerines!”

Yoongi pouts and readjusts the brim of his hat to block out the lowering sun. “I’ve walked thirty-nine kilometres? I think I’m allowed to be a little peckish.”

They’re only stopping for ten minutes or so, so Yoongi doesn’t sit down. He does, however, turn on his phone for the first time in over two hours to an obscene amount of notifications, including a message from one of his cousins asking him how he knew Vante.

Sure enough, Taehyung’s posted the photo of him peeling his tangerine on Instagram, and he’s tagged him in it, too, which explains where all the notifications have come from.

“RM-hyung!” Jeongguk says, skidding to a stop in front of them.

“Jeongguk-ah, I told you that you could just call me Namjoon,” Namjoon says.

“Um, okay, RM-hyung, I’ll try!” Jeongguk says gamely. “So, this next stretch of walk is pretty long, so I was thinking of going live for it, and maybe playing music? So, I was wondering, um, would you mind if I played some of yours? And talked about it on stream, maybe?”

“I don’t think you can use anything I’ve produced for other artists, but I’ve got a Soundcloud? You’re more than welcome to use that.” Namjoon grins suddenly, and Yoongi becomes aware of what he’s going to say a split second before he says it. “Actually, if you go on my Soundcloud-”

“Nope!” Yoongi says loudly.

“On my Soundcloud,” Namjoon repeats louder. “And go through who I follow, and look for-”

“Oh, look, we’re leaving!” Yoongi says, pointing to where the guide is getting ready to leave. “What a shame-”

“Look for Gloss, that’s hyung’s music.”

Jeongguk looks thrilled. “Hyung! You make music, too?”

“Made,” Yoongi says, glaring at Namjoon. “I haven’t for a while.”

“Can I listen to it?” Jeongguk asks. “If you don’t want me to, I won’t, but I’d love to hear it!”

Yoongi stops glaring at Namjoon and shrugs. “If you want. If I didn’t want people to listen to it anymore, I’d have taken it down.” There is, admittedly, a difference between leaving his music up on a Soundcloud page that maybe hits double-digit views in a month, and having Jeongguk play it to his audience of thousands live on stream, but Yoongi can, and will, simply choose not to think about it that way.

“Great, thanks Yoongi-hyung, thanks RM-hyung!” Jeongguk speeds off to talk to Seokjin, who Yoongi catches looking their way.

“Hey, hyung,” Namjoon says quietly; Yoongi hums. “You’re not mad, right? That I told Jeongguk about Gloss.”

Yoongi snorts. “No, Namjoon-ah, I was just teasing.”

62km to go

Take a boy, fresh out of Daegu and working just enough hours to make rent, but too many hours to keep up with his classes.

Have him apply for internships at producing companies, and fail, and apply again, and fail again.

Next, have him apply for an administrative job, which is better hours and better pay but leaves him too drained to make good music, and way too drained to make his bad music better.

Give him a mediocre degree that no production company will take seriously.

Have him continue at the administrative job because it makes money, and let him continue to believe that he’ll get around to making music again one day.

What do you get?

61km to go

“You’ve been quiet,” Jimin says politely, making Yoongi jump. He hadn’t even realised he had company, too caught up in thinking about how, just up ahead, Jeongguk might be playing his music to the biggest audience he’s ever had, and he’s too chickenshit to go and say anything.

“Sorry,” Yoongi says.

“You’re not in pain, are you?” Jimin asks, looking him up and down. “You’ve been carrying your leg a little, is it hurting?”

“I’ve got a twinge in my hip,” Yoongi admits, digging into the specific spot with his thumb. “Nothing major, though. No, I was just thinking.”

Jimin grins; one of his teeth is slightly crooked. Yoongi’s never made a point of noticing something so specific about anyone before, which makes him turn his head away quickly. “Bit early in the walk to get introspective, isn’t it?”

“If I get introspective now, though, won’t that mean I’ve got nothing left to think about when it gets late?” Yoongi asks, making Jimin laugh.

“I mean, if you have a finite amount of thoughts, sure? Like your brain’s a jug of water and if you just think enough you can empty the jug?”

“No thoughts, head empty,” Yoongi agrees, shrugging, which just makes Jimin laugh even harder. He throws himself around a little the harder he laughs; he’s holding onto Yoongi’s arm to keep himself upright, even though the path they’re walking along is incredibly flat. The path cuts through brownish fields that stretch as far as the eye can see in front of them, while to the sides they’re being sandwiched by mountains; the sun is low enough in the sky that it’s already set behind the mountains to their left, but the sky is still light enough that it’s not time for them to get their headtorches out just yet.

“Yoongi-hyung!” Jeongguk calls – he’s standing on the grass out of peoples way, waving.

Yoongi turns to Jimin. “Coming?”

Jimin grins and shakes his head. “I’ll catch up with you later?”

Nodding because he doesn’t trust himself not to say something stupid, especially to someone he’s only known for half a day, Yoongi speeds up to catch up with Jeongguk.

“I’ve just finished listening to your music,” Jeongguk says excitedly as soon as Yoongi draws level with him. For somebody who’s walked over forty kilometres, he’s still remarkably bouncy on his feet. “It’s so cool! Have you ever collaborated with RM-hyung? I mean, of course you have, you’ve been friends for years, but did you ever release it to the public? Also, when I start a stream again in a bit, can I talk to you onstream about your music? Or do you want to stay anonymous?” He laughs. “Sorry, I’m not even letting you get a word in edgeways, you’re just so cool!”

It’s been years since anyone’s called him ‘cool’, and even longer since he’s been called cool because of his music.

“Uh, Namjoon and I’ve definitely fucked around on a track before, for sure, but I don’t know whether we released it? It might still be on one of our thumb drives somewhere, though, so I can have a look and send it to you, if you want.” Jeongguk nods eagerly. “Also, I don’t mind you mentioning it, but I’d rather you didn’t… I don’t want your fans thinking they’re being advertised to, you know?” Yoongi knows that he should relish the opportunity to be asked about his music in front of a sizeable audience, and that his therapist would probably ask him why he feels as though he doesn’t deserve the opportunity.

However, his therapist isn’t here, so it’s fine. Probably.

“Don’t worry, my audience knows the difference between when they’re watching an ad and when I’m just really enthusiastic about something,” Jeongguk says. “We’ve got to be really explicit about that shit. But I’m not gonna make you talk about it if you don’t want to.”

He does want to talk about his music, is the thing. He loves talking about music, both his own and in general, but he’s not talked about it with someone other than Namjoon in so long that he worries he’s rusty, that someone will call him out on not knowing what he’s talking about.

“Imposter syndrome,” Namjoon says immediately when Yoongi tells him about Jeongguk’s offer. “I mean, you know my opinion, I’ve been a fan of your stuff for years.”

“But is it really imposter syndrome if I’ve not touched any of my stuff in months? I don’t know if I make music enough to even qualify to feel imposter syndrome over it,” Yoongi says. The sun is getting low enough now that it’s starting to get under the brim of his hat again, so he pulls it down a little more.

“Only you could feel imposter syndrome over whether you’re feeling imposter syndrome,” Namjoon says with a gentle laugh. He knocks his elbow into Yoongi’s side. “You should talk to Jeongguk, he knows his shit about music. You’ll have fun.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Yoongi says, not yet convinced.

59.8km to go

Neither he nor Namjoon really date much.

They’re not fans of dating apps, and people they meet in real life tend to assume that there’s something more going on between them than there actually is.

Which means neither of them are great at establishing when someone might be interested in them.

“Oh, no, Joonie,” Hoseok whines as, a ways in front of them, Namjoon courteously scoots a little bit over and tells Seokjin that he’ll make some room on the path, ‘it is a little narrow here!’ “He wants to hold your hand!”

“If we walk up alongside them and bump into them-” Jimin demonstrates by lightly bumping into Yoongi, pressing their arms together. The movement means they knock knuckles – Jimin’s already wearing his gloves, and they’re soft against Yoongi’s skin.

“Then Namjoon’ll just assume that he’s walked into you by mistake,” Yoongi says, righting Jimin and patting him on the shoulder. “Seokjin needs to be more obvious.”

“I’m not really sure how much more obvious he can be, hyung,” Jimin says flatly. “Bar, like, asking him out.”

“A terrible thought, actually asking someone out rather than having them rely on context clues,” Yoongi says sarcastically.

“I dunno, perhaps Seokjin’s worried about making the rest of this walk awkward if he asks Joonie out only for him to say no,” Hoseok suggests. Jimin nudges him with his elbow.

“Yeah, but you know Namjoon,” Yoongi says. “He’ll just talk himself out of doing anything.” It’s nice, finally getting to meet Hoseok – he features in so many of Namjoon’s stories from his childhood that it’s like he’s running into an old, half-forgotten friend of his own. He’s not sure how Hoseok feels about meeting him, but he’s so bubbly and vibrant that Yoongi can’t imagine that it’s anything bad.

“Poor Seokjin,” Hoseok muses as Seokjin laughs at something Namjoon says. “The unstoppable force of his flirting meets the immovable object of Namjoon’s inability to recognise when he’s being flirted with – fight!”

“You’ve known him a while, Yoongi-hyung,” Jimin says. “How would you get through to Namjoon?”

“By telling him I was interested,” Yoongi says bluntly.

“I knew Namjoon for a while, Jimin, don’t you want my opinion?” Hoseok asks. There’s a look on his face that Yoongi can’t read, but Jimin apparently can, because he huffs and turns away.

56.5km to go

Taehyung and Seokjin are trying to hold an impromptu portrait photography session, and Yoongi’s been pulled in to help.

“Stand just like that, hyung, perfect,” Taehyung says, snapping away. Yoongi flashes a stony-faced thumbs up at Seokjin, whose lip quivers. “Seokjin-hyung, stop laughing! You said you wanted to look ‘wistful’, and that’s not wistful!”

“Yoongi-yah’s making me laugh,” Seokjin says, pouting.

“I am just standing here in my role as, what was it? The ‘mysterious shadow across your face’? ‘Who could it be, and why are they making me so wistful’, is what I think you said?” Yoongi jokes, knowing full well he’s just directly quoted Seokjin’s pitch to him.

“The disrespect,” Seokjin mutters. “Perhaps we should’ve just told Jeongguk to stop streaming and help.”

“Jeongguk’s too tall for where the sun currently is, you’d look like you were staring longingly at the Lotte World Tower or something,” Taehyung says, adjusting the settings on his camera before holding it back up again. “Okay, okay, go again.”

Yoongi knows enough about photography to know that Taehyung and Seokjin are trying to take advantage of golden hour, but it’s difficult to do when they keep having to stop, take photos, power walk a little to take over their group, and set up a shot again. Seokjin, Yoongi notices, has taken to holding his breath when the camera’s on him, because otherwise he’s almost panting.

“Okay, I think… Yeah, that’s it for the light,” Taehyung says, putting his camera away again. “We can try for blue hour, but that’s a little too sad-looking for your usual audience, plus we’ll risk it looking like an edgy ‘shot through a rainy window’ portrait.”

“Thanks, Taehyung-ah,” Seokjin says, stretching. Taehyung nods and goes to catch up with Jeongguk, who’s still streaming.

“Does Taehyung take your photos often?” Yoongi asks, falling into step with Seokjin.

“I take most of my Instagram ones,” Seokjin replies, readjusting his artfully slouched rucksack into a position that won’t mess up his shoulders by the end of the walk. “But if I’ve got a specific idea in mind, I’ll usually ask Taehyung. He likes to practice portrait stuff on me and Jeongguk, though, and I’ve appeared in a bit of Jeongguk’s Golden Closet Film stuff. Cross-fan appeal, you know?”

They walk in comfortable silence for a bit – or, at least, Yoongi assumes it’s comfortable.

Seokjin blurting out “So, Namjoon, huh?” leads Yoongi to believe that Seokjin had not found the silence so comfortable as he had.

Yoongi hums noncommittally.

“I know you’re his best friend,” Seokjin presses on. “So I just wanted to ask… Am I making Namjoon uncomfortable?” It’s not the question Yoongi was expecting – he had thought Seokjin would ask him if Namjoon was interested, maybe tips on how to flirt with him. His surprise must show on his face, because Seokjin elaborates further. “I’ve been trying to flirt with him, and it’s like he doesn’t even notice. I’m not sure whether he’s too polite to tell me to back off, even though he was quite happy to tell one of those women with the walking poles to stop swinging it around like she’s playing hockey. He doesn’t seem like the type of person to not tell people when they’re bothering him, you know? But I realise that it’s a bit of an odd situation – I’m flirting with him in a small group that has to spend the next, what eighteen hours together? Twenty?” Seokjin talks very fast, and he just keeps going. “What if it’s like flirting with somebody while they’re working, so they’re not allowed to tell you to get lost? I don’t want him to feel like that, I just want to maybe go on a date with him to a museum or something-”

“You’re not making him uncomfortable,” Yoongi interrupts, because if he doesn’t he thinks Seokjin might combust from how red his ears are turning. “Like you said, if you were, he’d let you know. He’s just not used to being flirted with – or, rather, he doesn’t tend to notice when he’s being flirted with.”

“Gotcha,” Seokjin says, making finger guns that he seems to immediately regret.

54.1km to go

Yoongi tries to be nonchalant about it, but he feels like he’s walking through a swamp as he draws up alongside Jeongguk; he’s holding his phone like a camera, but it doesn’t look as though he’s currently using it. He turns to look at Yoongi and grins wide.

“Hi, hyung!” He taps his fingers on his phone. “What’s up?”

“You know how earlier, you mentioned interviewing me on stream?” Yoongi asks; Jeongguk nods eagerly, so eager that Yoongi almost considers changing what he’s about to say. “I’m not… I don’t think I’d be comfortable talking about it on a livestream.”

Jeongguk looks visibly disappointed, but he smiles gamely anyway. “No worries, hyung.”

“I wouldn’t mind talking about it in a normal video, though,” Yoongi says. “That way if your fans are interested, they can watch.” He shrugs nonchalantly, even though his palms are starting to sweat.

“That would be great!” Jeongguk says eagerly, adjusting his phone and pointing it at Yoongi.

“Oh. Uh. Now?” Yoongi asks, glancing around. Is he supposed to look down the camera lens? At Jeongguk? On the news bystanders seem to be looking at the interviewer or the cameraman, but streamers and content creators look down the camera lens, right?

“I’m ready if you are! Although… Hyung!” He calls. Up ahead, Taehyung turns to look at Jeongguk, eyebrows raised. “Can you film?”

“Sure,” Taehyung says, taking Jeongguk’s phone with familiar hands and holding it up. “Okay, rolling.”

“So, it’s just a chat, hyung,” Jeongguk explains. “I’ll edit it before I upload it, so feel free to take as much time as you need to answer.”

Yoongi’s nervous to start with, but Jeongguk is not only chatty, he knows his shit when it comes to music, just like Namjoon had said. He asks questions that need to be carefully considered, that require longer answers, so Yoongi’s genuinely surprised when he looks down the road to see the banners and stalls of the fourth checkpoint coming into view. Judging by his expression, Jeongguk’s also lost track of time; he takes his phone back from Taehyung, raises his eyebrows at something, and then stores it in its bag.

“We’ve been talking for over half an hour, hyung,” he says. He bites his lip. “I think… I still have more questions, would you be interested in meeting up another day for a full on video?”

“I… Sure, if that’s something you’re interested in?” Yoongi says.

Checkpoint 4 – 52km to go

The checkpoints are starting to blur into one – the same stalls, the same snacks, even the same volunteers. At this checkpoint, though, there’s a hive of activity as people get their headtorches on and ready, adjusting head straps and triple-checking battery power.

“I feel like a mole,” Jeongguk says as Taehyung adjusts his headtorch for him; Seokjin puts his chin on Jeongguk’s shoulder.

“Because… You’re wearing a headtorch?” He clarifies. Jeongguk nods.

“Hyung, what’re you looking at?” Namjoon asks Yoongi, who jerks his gaze away from the first-aid station.

“Nothing,” he says, well aware that he sounds guilty. “Just zoning out, I guess.”

51.2km to go

Barely out of the gate of the fourth checkpoint, and they’ve already hit a hill. Their guide cheerfully tells them that this isn’t one hill, but a series of hills with rocky, unstable paths, so they should be sure to use their headtorches as much as they can!

You would think that this would be enough to distract him, but all Yoongi can think about as he carefully steps along the path is how much he wants hot food. He’s not hungry, necessarily - he’d had yet another tangerine at the last checkpoint – but he wants to sit and eat a meal, feel it settle in his stomach.

And his legs hurt. Because the path is unstable under his feet, the slow movement is making the aches and pains feel worse. If he hadn’t been doing this walk, he’d probably sitting at home, having a nice, home cooked meal, reading a book or watching something mindless on television.

Who cares if the people in his office had known if he’d dropped out of this walk or nor, he doesn’t like them, anyway! It’s a terrible job! He should quit!

Jimin offers him a slice of tangerine with a raised brow.

“Sorry,” Yoongi says as he takes it, having spent the last ten minutes raving at Jimin with barely a pause for a breath.

“No, I get it,” Jimin says genially. “I’m prone to going off on a rant when I’m frustrated, too.” He snorts. “I mean, remember this morning? The first thing I said to you was me losing my temper because you weren’t walking fast enough.” Yoongi nods, popping the slice of tangerine in his mouth. “So, you hate your job, huh?”

Yoongi goes to mollify his response – no, of course he doesn’t hate his job, he’s grateful to have a job at all in this current climate. The hours are fine, even if he does have an hour and a half commute each way. He has his own desk? But, as he thinks about the things he likes, or at least tolerates, about his job, he realises that…

“Yeah, I do hate it,” Yoongi says, surprised by the vehemence of his feeling.

“If you didn’t work there, if you could walk into any job in the world, what would you want to do?” Jimin asks curiously.

“Anything?” Jimin nods. “I’d like to be a music producer, I think.” There’s no ‘think’ about it – it’s the only job he wants, the only job he’s ever wanted, since he’d first learned that the job existed.

He expects Jimin to ask something well-meaning but naïve, like ‘why don’t you?’, something that would betray how little he knows about how cut-throat the industry could be, something that would suggest that he thinks Yoongi hasn’t tried.

Instead, he says “I don’t know much about producing. What’s your favourite part of it? I’m guessing this isn’t some pipe-dream, that you’ve produced before?”

It’s a good question to ask, Yoongi thinks, and as they climb up and down the hills slowly, the sky turning from powdery pink and blue to a clear, dark blue, Yoongi answers as best as he can. Jimin listens intently the whole time, and although, by his own admission, he doesn’t know much about producing, he asks thoughtful questions that prove that he’s paying attention to what Yoongi’s saying.

They come to a stop at the top of a hill, and their guide points to a floodlit stadium in the distance.

“That’s the fifth checkpoint – you’re all doing so well!” She says cheerily. “This hill has the steepest decline of the walk, so check your shoelaces to make sure your shoes are secure!”

Yoongi dutifully checks his shoes, even though he can’t remember the last time he tied his shoes incorrectly, and then they set off, trudging along the path.

Checkpoint 5 – 45.6km to go

Squinting under the bright floodlights of the stadium pitch, Yoongi follows Namjoon – and his nose – to the food tent. There are great cauldrons of food cooking as volunteers hastily plate up already cooked food. It’s basic, rice and noodles and bread and soups, but it all smells incredible, and as the red-cheeked volunteer ladles food onto his plate, Yoongi almost wants to cry as he thanks her profusely.

They’re set to stay at this checkpoint for a while, at least an hour, so Yoongi settles into his chair comfortably and starts eating.

“I’m really excited,” Namjoon says as they both shovel noodles into their mouths. “For this next bit.” Yoongi nods in agreement, and then looks up at the person walking towards them.

“Hyung, did you do much night training?” Yoongi asks Seokjin as he approaches, holding his plate in front of him like a nervous schoolchild looking for somewhere to sit at lunch. He smiles gratefully at Yoongi and takes a seat next to Namjoon. “Namjoon and I didn’t really train much at night, we’re really excited.”

Seokjin shakes his head. “I did a lot of my training on my own, because our schedules never really lined up – Jeongguk does a lot of his streaming at night.” Jeongguk appears almost as soon as his name is said, Taehyung in tow, with both of them having heaping piles of food on their plates.

“There’s not a lot of places around us that are suitable for night walking,” Hoseok says as he walks over, carrying enough food for two, which he promptly divides up between the seat he takes and the one next to him. “So Jimin and I went camping a few times and walked around the camping grounds.” He looks right at Yoongi and smiles. “He’s getting checked over by the volunteers, he’ll be here soon.” Yoongi flushes and looks away; he hadn’t meant to be quite so obvious in his search for Jimin.

He arrives quickly, but before he sits down he shakes his leg a little. “They’ve got a massage station set up,” Jimin says, pulling the plate Hoseok had set down for him closer. “Looks pretty good.”

“Are they properly trained?” Hoseok asks, looking Jimin up and down.

“I didn’t ask for their certifications,” Jimin says. “I’m not getting a massage, though, don’t worry.”

Hoseok rolls his eyes good-naturedly as he picks up some rice with his chopsticks and more or less shoves it into Jimin’s mouth.

The general atmosphere is much more excited than at the last checkpoint, and as everyone is well fed, massaged, and rested, the excitement only builds. The sky looks pitch black beyond the glare of the floodlights above, and although Yoongi can tell it’s getting colder, he doesn’t feel as cold as he’d expected he would.

As they gear up to go, Jimin pulls on an additional layer of clothing and grins at Yoongi when his head pops out of the hole.

“Excited?” He asks, fluffing up his hair before immediately pulling a hat on. Yoongi nods, unable to stop his own smile from spreading across his face as he puts his headtorch back on.

Yoongi feels like a giddy, naughty child out late, and he doesn’t think he’s the only one. He can hear everyone talking in hushed, giggly whispers as their guides lead them out of the quiet town; as soon as they reach the road out of town, and the volunteers tell them they can talk at a normal volume again, he hears Jeongguk start up another livestream behind him.

It’s amazing how much his mood has improved from rest and food. It’s coming up to 10pm, they’ve walked over fifty kilometres, and just a few hours ago every single joint in his legs felt like he was trying to move them through water. Now, though, it’s like a party, or a festival, as their group walks through the night. He can feel his good mood improving, too, feeding off the good mood of everyone else.

As they get off the main road and onto a quiet, unlit path through a field, the mood starts to mellow. The sky is clear enough that, now that there are no other lights aside from their headtorches, the stars are bright above them.

Yoongi settles in.

40.1km to go

Time slips by oddly when you’re walking in the dark. It’s hard to see where you’re going if you’re looking at your phone, so Yoongi just doesn’t bother, focusing on putting one foot in front of the other.

The mood is quieter, too, although there are murmurs of appreciation when one of the volunteers points out a town glinting in the distance, mentioning that they had walked through that town earlier today.

Yoongi’s not sure if it’s the late hour, the relative quiet, or the novelty of being out walking so late, but he’s feeling contemplative. He’s thinking about his earlier conversation with Jimin – specifically, whether he could afford to quit his job and focus on promoting his music for a while. He thinks he could, and that scares him, a little – without the comfort of needing his job for financial security, what else is keeping him there, other than a fear of failing again?

Checkpoint 6 - 34.1km to go

Yoongi’s quiet mood carries him, and everyone else, to their sixth checkpoint with relative ease. It helps that the paths between the fifth and sixth checkpoints have been relatively flat, which makes things easier still.

They’re practically two thirds of the way into their walk, now, and Jimin’s getting checked over again. Yoongi hovers by the medical station worriedly, waving off one of the first aid workers when he asks if he needs any aid. The volunteer checking Jimin over is thorough, so thorough that Yoongi can’t isolate what specifically is being checked – is it his foot, which he’s pointing and flexing? His ankle, which he’s rolling in slow, deliberate circles? His knee, which the volunteer is pressing at with gentle thumbs? Or is it his muscles? Blisters?

“You alright there, Yoongi-hyung?” Jimin asks as he stands up from the chair and walking over. He seems to be walking fine, but Yoongi’s not exactly a doctor.

“I am – are you?” Yoongi looks him up and down, as though the problem will suddenly reveal itself if he has another look.

“Ah, you know how dancers are, hyung, just getting my knee checked over!” Jimin says airily, waving his hand as he and Yoongi wander over to the snacks. There’re instant noodles, but Yoongi’s craving something sweeter – his eyes alight on little pots of jelly, which he accepts gratefully from the volunteer who offers it to him.

“I’ve never danced before,” Yoongi says, shrugging as he opens his little white pot of jelly. It’s got an orange on the label, and the jelly inside is certainly orange coloured, but Yoongi would be willing to bet that this food has never come into contact with any fruit, let alone oranges. “I mean, professionally. I’ve danced.”

Jimin nods – he’s got a cup of coffee in one hand, and a bag of candy in the other. “It’s like any athlete – you use a joint a lot, you can be, uh, prone to injury.” He gives Yoongi a little wave and walks off to join Hoseok over by the instant noodles preparation stall – it doesn’t escape Yoongi’s notice that Jimin’s walking… Not slower, but with more careful, deliberate steps.

29.2km to go

“Hyung.”

Yoongi jolts, not entirely sure what’s happening. He’s zoned out at some point while walking, and he’s not totally certain if he actually fell asleep. It certainly feels that way, his brain a little foggy and his eyes drooping shut. No one seems to be talking much, which adds to the slow, dreamy quality of the night.

“Hyung.”

Right, Namjoon had been talking to him.

Yoongi hums, turning his head to look at him; he points to the lake they’re walking alongside, which is reflecting the bright moon above and, closer to the shore, the ambient glow of their gathered headlamps.

“Pretty,” Yoongi mutters. “There’s a lyric in there somewhere.” It’s utterly nonsensical, but it’s also the kind of sentence that Namjoon will understand. “How’re you doing?”

“Tired, mostly,” Namjoon says. “My feet are a little sore, but yeah, tired. You?”

“My hip’s stiff as hell, and one of my toes might’ve fallen off? I’m scared to look,” Yoongi replies, pointing his right foot.

“Schrödinger’s toe. No, wait, Toe-dinger.” There’s a sudden, loud laugh from behind them, making them both jump. Seokjin’s following behind, laughing as though he’s just heard the funniest joke in the world.

“Hyung, oh my god,” Jeongguk mumbles beside him, rubbing his eyes in a way that makes Yoongi want to tuck him up in a blanket or something.

They maintain their path around the lake, and Yoongi wistfully thinks about visiting during the spring, with all the trees in bloom. Or, maybe, just during the day, so he can actually see shit. The volunteers tell them that people often come here to photograph and paint the scenery, which, admittedly, would be more interesting if they could see the allegedly paintable scenery.

Once they’re around the lake, the trees on the other side of the road give way to a view of the ocean – they’ve been walking through woods and along fields for long enough now that Yoongi had forgotten just how close they were to the coast. It’s dark enough that he can’t see much of the water against the black horizon, but it’s also quiet enough that the crashing of the waves sounds cacophonous, especially in comparison to the quieter lapping of the lake.

Checkpoint 7 – 25.8km to go

Their seventh checkpoint is right by the beach, close enough that Yoongi bundles himself deeper into his coat to protect himself from the bitter winds coming in off the ocean.

Yoongi goes to the medics, pressing his thumb into the crease of his hip as he goes. One of the medics looks up as he arrives – the other is seeing to Jimin.

“Hip trouble?” She says, standing up and coming to him rather than making him walk the rest of the way. He nods, pressing his lips together as she runs him through a series of quick stretches.

“Are you alright, hyung?” Jimin asks worriedly from his own quadricep stretch. It’s more intense than the one Yoongi’s doing – where Yoongi’s holding his ankle with one hand, Jimin’s got his clasped in both hands.

“Your friend should be fine,” Yoongi’s medic says, prompting Yoongi to put his leg down. “Whenever your group takes rests, run through some quick stretches, take some pain killers if you need them, and pop a heat patch on,” she says, handing Yoongi a square, white patch. “If it gets unbearable, let your guide know, and we can get you picked up from anywhere in the route.”

Yoongi doesn’t think his pain is that bad, but he nods in gratitude as, next to him, Jimin finishes up his own stretches.

“Are you alright?” Yoongi presses Jimin as they reconvene with the rest of their group. “You’ve been checked over at every checkpoint-”

“Ah, don’t worry about me,” Jimin says cheerfully as he readjusts his bag. “Just being cautious, you know?”

23.2km to go

Yoongi knows, objectively, that he has scaled steeper hills in his life. Hell, he has scaled steeper hills today.

Yesterday?

The point is, he knows, in his brain, that this hill he is climbing is nothing. A slope. A gentle incline, at best.

However, his legs disagree.

Every time he lifts a leg, it feels like he’s walking through water; every time he places his foot down, he can feel blisters in places he’s never had blisters before. His calves feel ready to pop, and his quads feel numb.

They’ve slowed down considerably in the last few hours, but their guide assures them they’re making excellent time as they’re led up a meandering forest path. Even in the dark, Yoongi can see how beautiful their surroundings are – a wide, dirt path lined with twisty pine trees – but it’s hard to appreciate it when Yoongi would, at this point, be quite happy to be led off the hillside to tumble down to the beach the guide points out to them.

He wants this even more when she mentions that they’ll be walking along that beach later.

“We’re currently heading through Geojin Sunrise forest,” the guide explains, as though anyone is in any state to retain information. “Unfortunately, if we want to keep good time we can’t afford to wait for the sunrise, but if you ever come back this way I strongly recommend timing your visit so you can experience the forest during the sunrise, it really is quite remarkable.”

“If I have my way, I’m never going to experience a sunrise ever again,” Yoongi mutters to Namjoon, who snorts.

“Sounds morbid.”

“I meant I’d never willingly choose to wake up at sunrise again. Before sunrise again. Shut up, you knew what I meant.”

They don’t spend long in the forest, the path sloping down the hillside until it leads them out onto a road with a thin pedestrian path running alongside it. The hilly forest they’ve just walked through runs alongside the road for a while before the hills slope down into shrubbery, then grass, and then flatten out to reveal the ocean again.

“Be mindful of traffic,” the guide calls over her shoulder. “Our next checkpoint is in a port town, so people will be commuting in soon.”

Sure enough, cars and trucks drive past them regularly enough that it helps to wake Yoongi up a bit – concentrating on the traffic, and both hearing and feeling the vehicles race past is invigorating after the quiet of the forest.

20km to go

Yoongi can tell the second they officially enter the port town, because the regular pavement they’re walking along is replaced with a pretty red-tiled path. The whole town seems to be awake, even though it’s not yet four in the morning, and people cast them confused looks as their group troops wearily through the town.

“They’ve probably missed the fast walker group,” Namjoon says as one man coming out of his house does a very obvious double take at them. “They would’ve walked through earlier, right?”

“The fast walker group have probably finished by now,” Yoongi mutters mutinously. The thought that Jimin had been considering the fast-walking group is odd to him – that their meeting had hung on such a seemingly inconsequential decision. He looks around for Jimin to share this thought with him. He looks around again, frowning. “Namjoon-ah, you seen Jimin?” Namjoon, who’d started talking to Seokjin, turns, frowns consideringly, and shakes his head.

“Not since the last checkpoint, hyung,” he says. “Although we’re pretty close to the front of the group – try hanging back for a bit?” Yoongi nods, waving lazily at Namjoon and Seokjin as they walk on.

A couple of the volunteers ask him if he’s alright as they pass, and Taehyung, Jeongguk, and Hoseok shoot him concerned looks, in that order.

“Have you seen Jimin?” Yoongi asks Hoseok. His comment hadn’t been that important, but he’s waited for Jimin long enough that he’s a little concerned.

Hoseok nods, jerking his thumb over his shoulder. “He’s a little further back.” Yoongi nods in thanks – sure enough, he sees Jimin walk around the corner, almost bringing up the rear of the group, followed only by a pair of volunteers.

“I’m fine,” Jimin says shortly as soon as he draws level with Yoongi. He’s very clearly not – he’s walking with all the deliberateness of a deer on ice, and his mouth is drawn into a tight, white line. However, pressing him for an answer probably isn’t going to help.

“Have you ever been this close to the ocean?” Yoongi asks, sniffing the air. They can catch occasional glimpses of the ocean through the gaps in the buildings of the street they’re walking through, but even if he was blindfolded he’d be able to tell where he was – the smell is very distinctive. “I grew up in Daegu, we didn’t really spend much time at the beach.”

“I grew up by the sea – Busan,” Jimin explains, inhaling deeply with a pleased smile on his face. “So this town smells like home, a little.”

It was the right thing to say – as Jimin talks about his childhood growing up in Busan, the pinched look on his face starts to lessen. He doesn’t start walking any quicker, and he’s still walking with those slow, careful steps, but he seems happier, smiling as he talks.

“Thanks, hyung,” he says as they draw level with the next checkpoint.

“What for?” Yoongi replies, holding the door open for Jimin to walk into the building.

“Letting me talk,” Jimin says. “I think… If you don’t mind, can I tell you about my knee injury?”

“If you’re sure, Jimin-ah?” Yoongi replies. He can’t deny that he’s curious, sure, but he only wants to know if Jimin feels comfortable talking about it.

Jimin nods determinedly. “I don’t mind you knowing.”

Checkpoint 8 – 19.2km to go

“I haven’t danced for almost a year,” Jimin says immediately. He’s getting checked over again, so Yoongi’s pulled up a chair to sit with him; he realises that he should’ve grabbed some snacks before sitting down, but Jimin pulls out a tangerine from his pocket and tosses it over to him. “I got into a pretty bad accident, which meant no dancing for me.” He doesn’t go on to elaborate on his accident, and Yoongi doesn’t ask – he wants to know what Jimin is willing to tell him, not what he feels as though he has to say.

“I’ve been doing physical therapy,” Jimin goes on, gesturing to the stretches he’s running through on autopilot. “And the reason why I trained to do this walk was, I guess, to prove to myself that I’m ready to get back into dancing again – if I can do this, I can dance, you know?”

“I get that,” Yoongi says, peeling his tangerine slowly. He’s eaten so many on this walk, more than he’d probably be willing to eat on a normal day, but fruit is an easy way to replace his sugars, and he doesn’t want to eat any more of the sad looking banana-halves.

“It’s pretty silly.” Jimin rolls his eyes. “It was originally meant to be a motivator, but now I’ve just built it up in my head that I can only dance if I finish this walk.”

Yoongi nods thoughtfully. “It’s not silly. I think it’s easy to accidentally create artificial barriers for yourself, especially in less conventional, creative industries.” He thinks about how his music has sat, dormant, for long enough now that, although he can remember most, if not all, of the melodies, he can’t really remember the other layers that had gone into his tracks.

He wonders if it would be like listening to new songs, listening to the tracks again now.

He still has most of them downloaded on his phone, actually.

As soon as that thought enters his head, it’s like his phone is burning through his pocket – the knowledge that his music, the tracks he’s not released anywhere, it’s all just sitting there, on his phone…

He looks at Jimin, who’s considering him very carefully.

Eventually, Jimin nods. “Yeah, you get it, I think.”

16.8km to go

The road from the eighth checkpoint is flat, and long, so Yoongi has nothing to distract him from the knowledge of his music being on his phone.

He can’t deny that he’s curious. He’d stopped working on it from frustration, more than anything – it had been exhausting, creating music that wasn’t reaching the heights he wanted from it, trying to create around financial limitations.

Finally, when the curiosity becomes overwhelming, Yoongi allows himself to put in one of his earbuds to give his old music a listen.

The playlist is buried deep, and all of the music contained within is titled with things like ‘AAAAAA1’ and ‘violins29’ and ‘this beat sucks but whatever’.

And it’s not… It’s not bad. It’s certainly not as bad as he’d remembered it being, and the inadvertent distance of time he’d given himself means he can examine it afresh. If he mixed it again now, he thinks he’d know what pitfalls to avoid. And his office job is good for one thing – he can now afford better software.

A tap on his shoulder makes him startle, pausing his music as though he’s been caught listening to something he shouldn’t, like when he used to watch his parents nervously whenever he’d listen to English rap music labelled ‘R’.

It’s Jimin, who’s holding out a hand for an earbud, blinking tiredly. He doesn’t know that he’s asking to listen to Yoongi’s music, but Yoongi decides to be vulnerable anyway, handing over the second earbud and waiting until Jimin’s put it into his ear before they hobble along the path together.

After half an hour or so of silence, the playlist loops back to the piece he’d been listening to when Jimin had joined him. Jimin takes his earbud out – Yoongi thinks he’s going to hand it back, but he holds it just outside of his ear and says “This is good, hyung, who is it? I want to add them to my playlists.”

“Oh, uh, you’d have a hard job of that,” Yoongi says awkwardly.

“Why? Are they not on streaming sites? Do they have a Patreon?” Jimin asks earnestly.

“No – um, it’s me. Mine. It’s my music,” Yoongi says. “I was listening to it when you came over, and didn’t have time to switch it before you asked for the earbud.”

“Are you kidding? You made these?” He waves the earbud; Yoongi nods. “That’s amazing! Can I listen again? I want to hear that one with the birds first.” Yoongi flicks through the songs. “What’s it called? I really liked it, the guitar bit was super pretty.”

Yoongi coughs uncomfortably. “I, uh, don’t really name my songs while they’re works in process, I just name them anything so that I can save them.” Jimin raises his eyebrows curiously. “Usually I just name them something random, or whatever I’m feeling at the time.” Jimin raises his eyebrows even higher; Yoongi sighs and shows him his phone screen.

Jimin stares at it silently and then laughs so loud that several people near them in the walking group jump. “Hyung!”

“Whatever I’m feeling at the time,” Yoongi says gruffly, staring down at the mortifying title he’s inadvertently given to Jimin’s favourite song.

“When you send me the song, I’m going to rename it that,” Jimin says with a grin that’s both delighted and fond. “Even if you rename it something sensible and poetic, nope, it’ll always be ‘need a wank’ to me.” One of the older ladies walking close to them shoots Jimin a shocked look that he doesn’t notice as he puts his earbud back in. “Okay, press play, please!” Yoongi grumbles wordlessly, but he doesn’t really mean it – he’s quite pleased to be on the end of Jimin’s good-natured teasing, and he can tell Jimin isn’t just being polite when he says he likes Yoongi’s music, because he’d said as much before he knew who had created it.

It’s nice, sharing music like this again. He can see, in real time, Jimin’s reactions, and Jimin gives him feedback, too – “The stress on that bar is a little different to the others – buh buh BUH buh, rather than buh buh buh BUH. Which is cool if you do it deliberately a few more times, but I don’t know whether you meant to do it?” or “I think I could choreograph something to this!” or “This bit makes me want to lie down and stare at the ceiling, but in a good way.”

It’s nice.

11.7km to go

The road is still flat, is still long, is still trailing along the East Sea. The difference now, though, is that the sun is rising.

Yoongi’s seen sunrises, of course, but he’s seeing this one roughly twenty-four hours after seeing his last – not only that, but it’s the first time he’s seeing two sunrises in a row without sleeping in between.

It’s not even an especially beautiful sunrise as it comes up. The cloud cover is too thick, so the sky is a soupy yellow colour rather than anything especially sunrise-like, but Yoongi find himself watching the sky change colour anyway, mesmerised. Jimin’s still walking with him, and they’ve been joined by the rest of their friends, too – Jeongguk is streaming to a frankly alarming number of viewers for six in the morning, Taehyung and Seokjin are taking photos again now that the light is getting better, and Namjoon and Hoseok are planning a meet-up. Yoongi’s only half listening, focusing instead on typing up Jimin’s feedback on his phone. He’s not great at typing while walking, but Jimin’s seemingly noticed what he’s doing – he’ll reach out and gently guide Yoongi with a hand on his shoulder, or his elbow, if he’s about to veer off course.

“Hyung,” he mutters eventually, causing Yoongi to look up from his phone. “We’re here.”

Checkpoint 9 – 8.2km to go

The ninth checkpoint is nothing significant, but the volunteers have decked it out in banners and flags professing that they’ve got less than ten kilometres to go. The thought of still having to walk that much actually makes Yoongi feel a little ill, so he tries to ignore the many banners as he and Namjoon head to get some snacks.

“Seokjin-hyung and I have made plans to see each other tomorrow,” Namjoon says as they wait in line; Yoongi raises his eyebrows significantly. “Not a date!” He quickly clarifies. “But he’s staying in town for a few days, too, so we’re going to meet up, maybe check out the arcade?”

“Not a date?” Yoongi repeats.

“Not a date. But maybe… The potential for there to be dates later?” Namjoon admits with a shy smile.

“Yeah?” Yoongi can’t help but smile in response – it’s been a while since he’s seen Namjoon so sweetly happy. He tries to put on a stern expression, but he knows that he’s grinning too much for it to be taken seriously. “I will need to vet him, of course.”

“Oh, of course,” Namjoon replies with a barely smothered laugh.

They’ve arrived in the queue at a bad time – it’s barely moving, so Yoongi looks around listlessly. He catches sight of Jimin at the first-aid station; his face is twisted in pain as he’s getting checked over. The volunteer medic says something to him that makes Jimin shake his head furiously, but before Yoongi can leave the queue to check that he’s alright they make eye contact, and Jimin hobbles over.

“All good!” Jimin says cheerily. Yoongi looks him up and down pointedly; Jimin wilts a little. “Okay, so I’m not great. But I’m not going to quit now, we’ve got less than ten kilometres to go! I could run that in less than an hour!”

“I don’t think you’re going to be running anywhere for the next few days,” Yoongi points out, looking at Jimin’s posture worriedly – he’s putting practically all of his weight on his left leg, so his hip is popping out to the side. “I read that recovery can take up to a week.”

“Good job I’ve got no plans for the next week,” Jimin replies, shrugging. “Hoseok-hyung and I are planning to stay in the area, because neither of us wanted to drive back so soon after walking.” He looks at Yoongi a little hopefully. “What about you?”

Yoongi nods at Namjoon. “We’re staying for five days, although Namjoon’s already made plans for tomorrow.”

There’s a pause, where Yoongi thinks it would be perfect if either he or Jimin asked the other to hang out tomorrow. But neither of them do, so they just end up looking at each other expectantly.

“Ah, hyung, we’re up,” Namjoon says, sounding profoundly guilty to be pulling Yoongi out of his staring contest. Yoongi briefly looks away – by the time he looks back at Jimin, he’s looking away, too.

“I’m gonna go catch up with Hoseok-hyung, I’ll see you both later?” Jimin says, giving them a little wave as he limps off.

“Is he alright?” Namjoon asks worriedly.

Yoongi bites his lip. “I hope so.”

7.7km to go

“Oh, no, he’s stubborn as hell,” Hoseok confirms. “The only way he’d willingly drop out is if his knee literally explodes?”

Yoongi looks, a little despairingly, at Jimin up ahead. He’d been hoping that Jimin’s sudden burst of speed after leaving the last checkpoint was due to him getting a second wind, but, according to Hoseok, it seems as though he’s being powered through sheer spite. Sure enough, he’s starting to slow down again, and his limp is becoming more and more pronounced. “He can barely walk.”

“Yeah, but he can walk,” Hoseok says. He sighs. “Okay, look, Jimin’s told you about his goal to complete this so he feels comfortable coming back to dance again, right?” Yoongi nods. “Well, I went with him to most of his physio appointments – he’s more than physically ready to come back to dancing full time again.”

“He mentioned that he’s accidentally given himself a mental hurdle, but I didn’t know he was physically fit,” Yoongi says, frowning. “If he’s recovered, why is he limping so badly?” Hoseok laughs a little. “What?”

“No, it’s just – tell me you’ve never been seriously injured without actually telling me you’ve never been seriously injured, you know? He might be recovered, but injury sites very rarely heal back stronger.”

“But what if he really hurts himself doing this?”

“That’s why he’s getting checked over at every checkpoint,” Hoseok explains. “The event organisers are only letting him take part if he gets checked, and they have the right to refuse to let him continue if needs be.” He smiles at Yoongi, a beatific smile that, he notices with some element of bemusement, is shaped almost perfectly like a heart. “It’s good that you’re looking out for him too, though. It takes a village, sometimes, keeping Park Jimin from running himself into the ground.”

5.9km to go

Yoongi decides that the best way to get Jimin across the finish line is to distract him – it seemed to work last time, when Jimin had told him about his childhood in Busan.

He means to ask two questions – ‘What’s your phone number?’ and ‘Do you have plans for tomorrow?’, so that he can hopefully segue in to asking Jimin to hang out while Namjoon is with Seokjin. Unfortunately, Yoongi’s now very tired, and not really thinking straight, so what comes out of his mouth is “Do you have a phone?”

“Do I… Have a phone?” Jimin asks, clearly bewildered. Rather than clarifying what he meant, Yoongi doubles down; he nods. “Uh, yeah. You’ve seen it?” He takes his phone out of his pocket and waves it a little.

“Nice.” Yoongi says. Perhaps he should just go and lie down in the sea for a bit? Watch the clouds, consider the choices he has made that have led him to this point, making an ass of himself in front of one of the best-looking men he’s ever seen. He’s not just good looking, either – he’s funny, and thoughtful, and both intellectually and emotionally intelligent.

Yoongi’s lost his train of thought.

“It… Gets the job done?” Jimin says slowly. At least Yoongi’s distracting him, even if he does now think that Yoongi’s a moron.

“What’re your plans for the week you’re here?” Yoongi asks – good, good, he’s back on track.

“Hm? Oh, we didn’t make any,” Jimin says with a shrug. “We didn’t want to plan to do anything only to be too tired to do it, you know?” Yoongi nods. “Hoseok and I were just going to see how we feel day to day.” Jimin gives Yoongi an almost piercing look. “It’d be nice to do something while we’re here, though.”

“Yeah, it would,” Yoongi agrees. Jimin sighs, but it doesn’t sound pained, or even exasperated, more like the huff of a laugh through his nose. “What’s up?”

“Don’t worry about it, hyung,” Jimin says, patting Yoongi on the shoulder. “I’m sure you’ll catch on after you’ve slept for a bit.”

3.2km to go

It’s peculiar, feeling this tired when the morning sun has fully risen. The clouds are clearing, too, revealing the bright blue autumn sky. Everyone looks a little worse for wear – muddy round the ankles, shuffling steps, bundled into coats and hats and gloves, bags under the eyes – but there’s a steadily increasing buzz of excitement among the walkers as they approach their goal.

“We’ll be stopping here for a five-minute break,” their guide says, waving her arm at the beach they’re standing on. “Grab some water, do your stretches, try to avoid sitting down if you can, and then we’ll be pushing straight on until the end!”

“You look disappointed,” Namjoon says.

“It’s ridiculous,” Yoongi admits. “But I’ve been trying to ask Jimin if he wants to hang out tomorrow, and I’m running out of time to do it.”

“We’ve still got, what, an hour?” Namjoon replies, looking at his phone. “You’ve got time.” He looks up from his phone at Yoongi, who fights the urge to immediately break the eye contact. “You like him, huh? You’ve spent most of the day talking.”

“I do, I think,” Yoongi inhales deeply, and then sighs. “I probably know him better than all of my work colleagues at this point. All of them combined?”

Namjoon nods. “You don’t know some of their names, so, yeah, I’d imagine so.”

“I don’t even know their names!” Yoongi agrees, before deflating. “So why is this so hard? ‘Hey, want to exchange numbers and maybe go see a movie or something?’ It’s not even that hard to say! They’re simple words!”

Namjoon nods thoughtfully. “They mean a lot, though.”

“How did you ask Seokjin to hang out tomorrow?” Yoongi asks. “Or did he ask you?”

“He asked me,” Namjoon says. “He said he’d enjoyed meeting me today, and wanted to hang out somewhere where we didn’t need to constantly keep walking.”

“It sounds so easy, when you say it like that,” Yoongi says, pursing his lips off to the side thoughtfully. Maybe it could be that easy, if he stops overthinking this.

2.1km to go

As they trudge into the next town, Yoongi realises, with some alarm, that he recognises where they are – this is the town he and Namjoon had stayed in before this whole walk had started. He’s running out of time.

Jimin’s stuck with him since they set off from the final pitstop; he doesn’t seem to be in too much pain, which is a relief. He does, however, keep looking at Yoongi expectantly.

“My hotel’s close,” Yoongi says, looking around the street they’re on.

“Really? Ours is, too,” Jimin says, sounding pleased. “We just walked past ours, actually – it’s a tiny room, I can almost touch opposite walls when I stretch out my arms, but it’s got a nice view of the sea.”

“It’s a good location,” Yoongi replies. “Close to the start line. And the finish line, but that’s because they’re in the same place.”

“I think we’re close to everyone else, too,” Jimin says, generously choosing not to call Yoongi out on his rambling. “It’d be easy to meet up, considering we’re all staying in the area for a few extra days.”

“I’d love for us all to meet up!” Unfortunately, although Yoongi’s thinking it, it’s not him that says this - Hoseok approaches with a big grin on his face. “Hyung, can I get your number? I’ll text you.” Yoongi reels off his number; next to him, Jimin inhales sharply through his nose. “Sorry, Jimin-ah, was I interrupting?” Hoseok says as he finishes typing Yoongi’s number into his phone.

“Oh, no, hyung, not at all,” Jimin says, so sarcastically that his tone is practically dripping with it.

“Well, I’ll leave you two to your conversation,” Hoseok says cheerfully. “But just remember that I’ve got your number, just in case, hyung!” He gives them a wink and a wave, and walks off with far too much pep for a man who’s just walked nearly one hundred kilometres.

“Just in case what?” Yoongi asks Jimin, feeling as though his brain’s full of cotton wool. Exhausted cotton wool. What had he been talking about with Jimin before Hoseok had appeared?

“Don’t mind him,” Jimin says immediately. “You were going to ask me something?”

“Was I?” Yoongi says, trying to remember. They’d been talking about their hotels… “Is your hotel far from here?”

“You’ve asked me that already,” Jimin says, looking equal parts endeared and exasperated.

“Well, if I remember what I was going to say, I’ll ask,” Yoongi says.

1km to go

Now he remembers.

He glances over at Jimin, who’s biting his lip as he checks his watch. Yoongi’s got fifteen, maybe twenty minutes before they cross the finish line – all he needs to say is ‘Jimin, can I have your number so we can arrange to meet up?’ That’s it.

He understands now, though, why Hoseok had gotten his number – at least this way if Yoongi doesn’t manage to ask Jimin, he won’t lose contact with them completely.

But it is hard, putting himself out there like that, especially when he’s tired and grouchy and just wants a shower and his bed. He knows, objectively, that his anxiety over this is being heightened by the exhaustion pulsing through his bones, but just because he knows this, doesn’t mean it makes it any easier to open his mouth and just ask the question.

He’s running out of time.

300m to go

They’re rounding the corner, and Yoongi can physically see the beach where they’d started. Can see the finish line, the crowds that have gathered to cheer them on, the stalls of food and masseuses and first aid workers on hand.

Jimin grabs his wrist, making him stumble a little.

“Ask, hyung,” Jimin says, the words bursting out of him through gritted teeth. “I know you want to, and I’m going to say yes.”

“Oh!” Well, knowing the answer for definite ahead of time certainly makes this easier. “Can I get your number?”

Jimin stops walking. “…That’s it? That’s what you’ve been trying to ask me for the past…” He checks his phone. “Almost hour and a half? I thought you were trying to ask me out on a date!”

“No!” Yoongi says; although he’s tired enough to blurt it out like that, he’s not tired enough to miss the surprised hurt that flashes across Jimin’s face. “I – that’ll be later. I thought it’d be weird if I asked you out after one day.”

“Yeah, but… What a day it’s been, right? Don’t they say not to ask someone out until you’ve been on holiday with them?” Jimin says with a relieved grin spreading across his face. They start walking again, Jimin’s fingers still enclosed around Yoongi’s wrist.

“…I think that’s don’t marry someone until you’ve been on holiday with them?” Yoongi says uncertainly.

“Well, this is kind of the same.” Jimin laughs. “Hyung, we’re gross, and grumpy, and sore, and so tired, and I still want to date you. I want to go to museums with you, and shitty restaurants, and watch movies with you and ask you about music. I want you to come to my performances! The only reason I didn’t ask you is because I thought you were gearing up to ask, and I didn’t want to steal your thunder.”

“I was, kind of,” Yoongi says.

Jimin winds his fingers through Yoongi’s. “So… want to ask? You know my answer’s going to be ‘yes’.”

Yoongi asks the question just as they’re crossing the finish line – the volunteers are cheering for them finishing their endurance walk, but if Yoongi thinks it sounds like they’re cheering for him finally asking Jimin out, well, that’s no one’s business but his own.

Finish Line

“I was genuinely expecting us to take the full thirty-eight hours we were allowed,” Namjoon says. “Just under twenty-seven and a half, though, that’s really impressive.” They’re all sitting around a table in the community hall the charity has rented out, finishing up the biggest breakfast Yoongi has eaten in at least a decade. The adrenaline rush of finishing is starting to fade, just a little, and Yoongi’s starting to feel warm, full, and sleepy.

“Next year we can go for under twenty-four,” Yoongi says around a yawn.

Namjoon gives him a very blank look across the table. “Hyung, we’re never doing this again,” he says flatly.

“Ah, it wasn’t so bad,” Jimin says, squeezing Yoongi’s hand under the table and grinning sidelong at him. “We met some pretty cool people.”

“I’d be up for doing this again,” Jeongguk says.

Seokjin shakes his head. “I agree with Namjoon-ah – don’t get me wrong, I’ve loved meeting all of you, but now that we have met, we can do normal people things together, rather than physically demanding endurance events.”

“Yeah, well, you would agree with RM-hyung,” Jeongguk says mutinously. “If he’d said he wanted to go swimming right now, you’d be inflating your armbands as we speak.” Seokjin splutters embarrassedly and shoves Jeongguk’s shoulder.

“I can’t consider walking ever again right now,” Taehyung muses. “But I’m sure if you asked me in six months or so, the nostalgia will have blinded me to the fact that I genuinely can’t feel my feet.”

“We could always do something else,” Hoseok suggests. “It could be our thing, picking something to do that’s really out there once a year?”

“I’ve always wanted to try skydiving?” Jeongguk says enthusiastically.

Hoseok looks genuinely unnerved by this, but he nods encouragingly. “Yeah, something like that! It doesn’t have to be skydiving, of course, but-”

“We could do it for charity,” Jimin says immediately, already looking through his phone. “Ah, hyung, look at all these places that offer it!” He waves his phone underneath Hoseok’s nose with a shit-eating grin on his face.

“These all look… Great, Jimin-ah,” Hoseok says, barely even glancing at the phone. “But, again, there’re so many options-”

“We could get some great photos,” Seokjin says to Taehyung, who nods vigorously.

“You got all our numbers, right?” Namjoon says to Hoseok, who looks as though he genuinely regrets bringing this up. “We can set up a group chat to plan it.”

“There’s a lot we can do,” Yoongi says, finally taking pity on Hoseok. “We don’t need to decide right now.”

“Ah, you’re too kind,” Jimin mumbles a few moments later, when everyone’s branched off into their own conversations. “If he hadn’t interrupted us earlier, you could’ve asked me out sooner. Should’ve let him suffer a bit longer.”

“You think too highly of me, I think when I did ask was as ‘soon’ as I was going to get,” Yoongi mutters back – they’re still holding hands, which is making eating his breakfast harder than he’s accustomed to. He doesn’t want to let go, though – Jimin’s hand is cool and soft in his, and their hands fit together nicely, too – so he just makes do with his nondominant hand. “Plus, by getting my number, he was making sure we didn’t lose contact.”

“I see you think too lowly of me,” Jimin jokes, swiping his thumb over Yoongi’s hand. “Because if you hadn’t at least asked me for my number by the end of the walk, I’d have found a way to give it to you. Sky writing, maybe. ‘Yoongi-hyung, please call Jimin on this number’,” he says, before reciting his full number.

“Expensive batch of sky writing,” Yoongi replies with a grin. “Practically a sky paragraph, at that point.”

“Well, I think you could be worth it.” Jimin says with smile so wide it wrinkles his nose with the force of it.

They’re gross, and tired, and maybe this isn’t the best place for their first kiss, but because he’s tired Yoongi blurts out “I want to kiss you when you smile like that.”

Jimin hums, his cheeks pinking. “Well, maybe you should.”

Yoongi leans in slowly; when he presses his lips against Jimin’s, he’s surprised to find that they’re still a little cold from being outside. He tastes like the breakfast they’re currently eating, and neither of them are awake enough to really pull out all the stops for this first kiss.

But Jimin’s hand is warming up in his, and he can feel how Jimin’s still smiling as he kisses him, so he’s not sure he’d have this first kiss go any other way.