Chapter Text
Yoongi notices the kid long before he gets a good look, he’s been following him for maybe half a mile now. Making his steps careful, he’s holding onto the carabiner that's hooked to his belt loop to stop it from clinging against his belt as he walks. Yoongi guesses that’s at least something he can give him in terms of smarts, although as hard as he tries he’s wearing heavy boots. The kid is tall and has some muscle weight on him. His steps don’t match Yoongi’s and they’re a lot heavier than anyone else’s he’s heard in a while. It’s been a while since he’d seen anyone, or heard anyone, anyway.
Yoongi steps over the concrete barrier leading into the parking garage and pauses after a few steps when he hears the person behind him fall. He turns around to see a tangle of rope, limbs, and clothing sitting on the floor. The kid grunts, pulling the rope off of the rusted nail that’s shoved into the barrier. Yoongi leans down, getting level and close to the kid's face. When he turns to make sure Yoongi isn’t far away he comes only a few inches from his face. He starts to shout but Yoongi slaps a hand over his mouth, holds the back of his head with his other hand.
“Fucking idiot, what are you doing screaming?” Yoongi whisper-shouts. The boy pants through his nose and shakes, rearranging his legs to get into a position to run. Yoongi backs him up against the barrier and lets his hands fall from the kid’s head only to pin his arms against the concrete. Yoongi can tell he’s scared. He keeps quiet, as anyone without a death wish would. Yoongi realizes he’s wearing a hoodie with bunny ears on it and scowls, rolling his eyes and shaking his head.
“Why are you following me, I could kill you easily right now, you weren’t slick in keeping my trail.” The bunny ears flop as he shakes his head frantically. “Wasn’t following.” Yoongi scoffs and scoots his knee up against the boy’s leg, he whimpers and mumbles something about it hurting. “It hurt’s yeah? A lot less than what those rangers would do to you, what if I had been one, huh?” The kid twists his wrists under Yoongi’s grip and whines. Yoongi wants so badly to punch him in the mouth.
“Why did you go the same way as me while trying to stay quiet for thirty minutes? That’s following.” The kid shakes his head, he mumbles again that he wasn’t following him. Yoongi has enough of this and reaches around his back, grabbing his handcuffs. He tightens them around the boy’s wrist and then around a metal loop in the barrier. The kid makes noises of protest but doesn’t yell, just stutters and pleads for Yoongi not to. Yoongi pulls away and the kid tries to follow but he’s very roughly stopped by the cuff and falls back against the concrete.
Yoongi turns to leave, “Wait! Wait I wasn’t following you, let me go!” he whisper-shouts and Yoongi takes a look around him making sure nobody had come in the garage since the boy had screamed. Once he gets a good look around he kneels back down in front of the kid and puts his hand over his mouth again. “Listen to me. I don’t fuck with other people. I don’t care why you were following me, at this point it’s meaningless. Just shut the fuck up and wait for the birds to come to eat you or something.” Yoongi stands back up and turns around.
“I’ll scream.” He hears the kid say quietly. Yoongi freezes for a moment. He shrugs and turns back, “Why should I care, I’ll be long gone.” The bunny ears flop again, “You won’t, you live here.” Yoongi clenches his jaw and denies it. “I live up the river.” The kid continues to shake his head, like a child, Yoongi is so, so close to punching him now. “You wouldn’t make it by nightfall if you lived up the river, you decided to take care of me here because you live here. I don’t know why. If I scream they’ll search the whole place, you know they will.”
Yoongi sits down a few feet away from where the kids’ platform boots stick out. “Why were you following me?” Yoongi spits each word out. The kid wiggles against the barrier and flinches when a bird starts picking at some trash next to him. “I recognized you.” A chill runs up Yoongi’s spine and he leans forward. “I have a mask on, you couldn’t recognize me.” Jungkook uses his free arm to point at Yoongi. “Your jacket. The bird. I live here too.” Yoongi glares.
“Lived here, before. Next to you. I’ve never met you or seen your face, but the bird. You wore that jacket before all of this even started.” Yoongi sighs and picks at the paint, the bird sloppily painted onto his canvas jacket, it’s faded now. But still there. He runs a hand through his hair and leans back onto his palms. “You followed me ‘cause we used to be neighbors?” The kid says nothing and sinks back, relaxing a little. “You played piano. Thin walls.”
Yoongi squints at him. He had moved the piano down the hall to one of the empty rooms a few months in, he needed to make room for more supplies. Rationing and not going out as often favors better than only gathering small amounts and going out every few days. He has a whole wall stacked floor to ceiling of food, only going out for things he may need or want that badly. He thinks back to before he remembers seeing everyone running out of the building. That’s where his vivid memory starts.
Everything before then is a little blurry, it’s been about a year and a half now and nothing has changed. Rangers only come more often. He’s running out of places close by that have things he can take, that’s why the kid had followed him for so long. He had to go down through some of the fallen buildings to get to something that may not have been ransacked yet. It had, he came back empty-handed.
“What do you want from me?” Yoongi asks and stands back up grabbing his bag he had shrugged off before he decided to tackle the guy. “Nothing.” Yoongi pauses and looks back at him. “I don’t want anything, really. I recognized you. I wondered if you still lived in this building. I wanted to see my place, is everything gone?” Yoongi swallows and wipes sweat off of his forehead.
“Nobody else I know of has come through here, not my floor definitely. The lower floors sometimes I notice seem a bit different, but it could just be animals. The buildings are not in great shape I’m sure you can tell. Not many people dare to venture past the third floor, the stairwells fallen in.” Yoongi puts his backpack on and stares at the boy, he looks more familiar now. It’s not out of the question that he had seen him in the hallway before.
“If there was anything of use in your place. I’ve taken it, anything personal is still there. Might not be where you left it but I don’t make a habit of taking people's scrapbooks.” Yoongi twists his neck around and it cracks, the boy seems to smile a bit knowing his things are still there. Yoongi gets a bad feeling. “Can you let me see?”
“No.” Yoongi starts walking away, the kid gasps and starts begging again. Yoongi quickens his pace and makes it around the corner, he doesn’t hear him scream. He’s thankful and prays that he won’t scream once he’s out of hearing range. He rushes up the stairs until the collapse, pulling down the ladder in the supply room to make it up to the fourth floor. He swings his bag over the ledge and pulls it back on once he’s up. He makes his way to his room swiftly and easily, a memorized route to confuse other people into thinking there isn’t anything in this building of interest.
He throws down his bag once he gets into his room and rummages through the drawer in his kitchen to find what he’s looking for. Once found he takes off his extra gear and puts it into the hall closet. Turning on his heel and going back down to the parking garage. The boy handcuffed to the barrier is crying when he makes it back down. Yoongi steps slowly around the corner, the boy sniffles and whimpers, he’s moved positions to lay down and face the space that looks out onto the water.
Yoongi crouches down a bit away from him and sighs. He makes his way around and doesn’t see any sign that anyone’s coming. Hopefully, he had been too busy crying to think about screaming and fucking them both over. He makes sure he won’t startle him this time by walking into his field of view slowly with his hands up, holding up the key to the handcuffs.
The boy takes a breath and sits back up, sniffling and wiping his eyes. Yoongi gets down on his level and unlocks the cuff but grabs his wrist roughly, reaching his hand around to his knife. “Do not follow me, and I mean it. Go off somewhere else, you’re lucky I didn’t kill you without talking to you first.” He shoves his arm away and stands back up, shoving the cuffs and key into his pocket. He turns towards the stairwell, figuring if he goes fast enough the kid won’t be able to figure out how it is he gets up to his room.
He hears the kid scrambling behind him and winces, continuing walking. “I’m Jeongguk. Thank you.” He hears come from behind him. Yoongi takes a deep breath and climbs the stairs, the ladder, goes into his room, and locks his door. In the middle of the night, he hears a noise coming from the parking garage. He pulls his gun from the wall so it’s laying next to his bed. Starlight leaks through his window. Yoongi thinks it’s ironic that all it took to see stars in Seoul was for everyone to die, and then he falls asleep.