Chapter Text
It was the year 2007, and the school bell of Geumcheon District’s only public middle school wailed like a dying cat as always. Jin flinched, Joon cursed under his breath, and Hobi shouted, “Five minutes, run!” like a war commander.
The boys scrambled. Jin’s shoulder bag was falling apart at the seams, held together by a safety pin and prayer. Joon had his usual stack of books hugged to his chest—no backpack because the strap broke two weeks ago. Hobi was dragging a pant leg because his hand-me-down uniform was two sizes too big. The three of them moved in sync, a seasoned dance of poverty: dodging puddles, avoiding security guards, and making it to homeroom just in time for roll call.
“Kim Seokjin!”
“Present!”
“Jung Hoseok!”
“Here!”
“Kim Namjoon!”
“…Present, ma’am.” While finishing a math equation in the margins of his notebook.
But something unusual was happening today.
The classroom door creaked open. In walked a boy they’d never seen before. Tousled black hair that looked like he had slept in a laundromat dryer, a school uniform wrinkled like tissue paper, and thick headphones around his neck. He had a half-zipped bag that looked like it cost a fortune if you actually knew brands, but no one did. He was holding a banana milk.
The room fell silent.
The boy gave zero care.
“I’m Min Yoongi,” he mumbled to the floor. “Transfer student. Whatever.”
The teacher gestured to the empty seat beside Jin. Jin, ever the reliable one, gave him a polite smile as Yoongi plopped down and immediately put his head on the desk.
“Wow,” Hobi whispered. “We just got a zombie.”
“Do zombies drink banana milk?” Namjoon whispered back.
“Maybe he drinks brains in banana flavor.”
They weren’t supposed to be curious, but of course they were. Jin, Joon, and Hobi sat on their usual beat-up bench under the guava tree, peeling back the lids of their shared lunch like it was a sacred tradition. Jin had brought two rice balls wrapped in cling film, a small Tupperware of rolled egg, and stir-fried anchovies. Joon pulled out half a pack of cream crackers, and Hobi proudly plopped down one kimbap roll he bought with the last ₩500 in his pocket.
“Feast day,” Hobi said, rubbing his hands together like a game show host.
“Why do you always say that when we barely have protein?” Joon replied, already popping a cracker in his mouth.
Then Yoongi appeared, walking past them like a drifting ghost—slouched, unbothered, carrying a sleek paper bag from Bread Lab café and sipping on banana milk. The bag looked so clean and aesthetic it may as well have floated. He plopped himself down next to them without waiting for an invite, which surprised no one more than it should’ve.
Jin cleared his throat and smiled. “Hey, you can sit with us if you want.”
Yoongi blinked slowly. “I already did.”
“Right. Welcome, then,” Jin replied, stifling a chuckle.
Yoongi took out a soft bread bun with custard oozing out the sides and handed it to Jin like he was passing salt. “Wanna try?”
Jin blinked. “Uh… sure?”
“Dang, custard?” Hobi whispered. “I thought those were only in bakery commercials.”
Jin split the bun in half and passed the other to Hobi, who took it like he was handling a bar of gold.
“So,” Namjoon started cautiously, chewing on a cracker corner, “you’re not from around here?”
“Nope. Moved here last month. Too lazy to commute an hour to my old school.”
“What school was it?”
“Some private prep one uptown.”
The three stared.
“Wait, wait—so you’re rich?” Hobi asked, leaning forward as if Yoongi might transform before their eyes.
Yoongi shrugged. “Kinda.”
As if on cue, his pocket buzzed. He fished out a device so sleek, it made all three boys go silent.
“What is that?” Hobi asked, peering at the thing like it was a spaceship.
“Is that a… camera?” Jin added.
“It’s a phone,” Yoongi replied, poking at the screen lazily.
Namjoon’s mouth dropped open. “Is that a Samsung Anycall SPH-W2400? With a rotating dual screen?! That thing hasn’t even aired in the drama commercials yet!”
Yoongi looked at it. “I guess?”
“Yoongi-hyung, that’s like ₩700,000!” Joon cried, clutching his crackers like they were about to be taxed. “That’s my tuition, my school shoes, and our electric bill in one go and more!”
“Oh,” Yoongi said blankly. “Oops.”
There was a beat of silence.
“You might wanna… not flash that around here,” Jin offered kindly.
Yoongi nodded with total seriousness. “Ah. Right. Poor people. Got it.”
Jin choked on his egg roll.
There was another beat of silence, then Namjoon howled with laughter, nearly falling backward off the bench.. “He said it like we’re an endangered species.”
“Technically, we are,” Hobi said. “In this economy.”
Yoongi blinked again, looking confused but amused. “What? You’re not?”
That only made it worse. Jin covered his face, laughing into his lunchbox lid. Joon almost dropped the egg roll. Hobi fell sideways onto Jin’s lap, flailing.
“Hyung,” Hobi finally said between breaths, “you are so not ready for this school.”
“I’m not,” Yoongi admitted, tearing another piece of custard bun. “But this bread is really good.”
And just like that, he was one of them.
Weeks passed and despite the weird start, Yoongi fit in more naturally than any of them expected.
He didn’t try to impress anyone, which was ironic considering he could’ve bought the entire school canteen if he wanted to. Instead, he floated through their routines like a sleepy cat: aloof in class, grumbling during group projects, and flopping onto the school bench like gravity was his personal enemy.
He was terrible at running laps in PE. Every Monday, without fail, he’d show up with untied sneakers, mismatched socks, and a look of existential betrayal on his face when Coach told them to warm up.
“I was told this was a public school,” Yoongi wheezed after barely one lap. “Why are we training like Olympic athletes?”
“You’re wheezing and we’ve only stretched,” Joon said, wheezing too—but for different, less dramatic reasons.
Still, Yoongi never judged anyone. When Hobi forgot his gym socks one day and had to borrow Jin’s only spare—a pink floral pair with tiny rabbits—Yoongi didn’t even blink. He just mumbled, “Kinda cute,” and went back to tying his shoelaces like he hadn’t said anything revolutionary.
Lunch was where his quiet kindness showed the most. He’d casually pull out two jelly-filled buns, hand one to whoever looked hungriest that day, and act like it was nothing.
He once gave Joon an imported granola bar because the younger boy mentioned skipping breakfast, and when Joon checked the wrapper, he nearly dropped it.
“Hyung, this is real oats! Not the sawdust ones!”
“Huh?” Yoongi blinked. “It’s just… a bar. From home.”
“From which home, Buckingham Palace?!”
Yoongi blinked again. “No, Hannam.”
They didn’t even know where that was.
Eventually, Jimin and Taehyung—both from Grade 9—started tagging along at lunch. Jimin always brought half a boiled egg and rice, while Taehyung usually had plain noodles soaked in soy sauce. They were chaotic and clingy and occasionally loud, but Yoongi never flinched, even when Taehyung tried to braid his hair mid-chew.
“Hyung, you have really soft hair,” Tae murmured while tugging a chunk.
“Are you... brushing me?” Yoongi asked, mid-sip of banana milk.
Jimin just nodded, serious. “It’s how we show love.”
Yoongi didn’t stop him.
Then came Jungkook—the smallest, quietest, most wide-eyed of them all. Grade 8. Always in oversized uniforms and second hand shoes with the soles flapping like fish. The first time he sat beside Yoongi, he stared at the older boy’s banana milk like it was holy.
Yoongi glanced at him, then at the milk, then at his bag.
He pulled out a second one—the grape-flavored kind—and held it out.
“Want it?”
Jungkook gaped. “Hyung, are you sure? That brand’s expensive!”
Yoongi scratched his head. “I don’t like the grape flavor. Take it.”
Jungkook accepted it with both hands like a gift from the heavens. The others watched in stunned silence.
“…You buy flavors you don’t even like?” Jin finally asked.
“I don’t buy them,” Yoongi said. “They just show up in the fridge.”
Hobi dropped his spoon.
And just like that, Yoongi—the weird, sleepy transfer student with an unreasonably expensive phone, mismatched socks, and mysterious banana milk—was officially one of them.
One break time, a disaster struck.
Hobi, ever the human whirlwind, was demonstrating a dance move beside the bench—some ridiculous pop-and-lock he claimed Big Bang’s backup dancers were doing on TV. He spun, hopped, and on his second turn, his foot caught a wire stretching between Yoongi’s bag and the wall socket.
Snap. Crash.
Something small and sleek skidded across the floor before landing with a gut-wrenching crack against the concrete.
“Oh my God—Yoongi-hyung—I—oh no—no no no—” Hobi scrambled to pick it up, staring in horror at the shattered screen of a futuristic-looking device. “*Hyung, it’s cracked. I broke it. I’ll pay you back. I’ll—*I’ll sell my shoes—”
Yoongi leaned over from the bench to glance at the scene like he was mildly inconvenienced by a bug on the floor.
“…Oh. My Clix.”
“Your what?” Joon asked, peering over Hobi’s shoulder.
Jin squinted. “Is that… an iRiver?”
“It’s the Clix 2,” Namjoon breathed like he was reading scripture. “OLED screen… 4GB storage… FM tuner… Flash games... Touch-sensitive navigation…”
“Okay but why does it look like something from Star Trek?” Jin asked.
Hobi was now panicking at Mach 5. “Hyung, I swear—I'll skip snacks for a year! I’ll clean bathrooms! I’ll—”
Yoongi blinked slowly and waved a hand. “It’s fine.”
“…What?” Hobi dumbly asked.
Yoongi yawned. “Didn’t like the color anyway.”
“Color?!” Jin gasped.
“They gave me the red one. I wanted black.”
Hobi looked like he was about to cry. “You’re not mad?”
“Nah. It’s, like, three months old.”
“THREE MONTHS IS NEW!” Joon yelled. “I still use my brother’s cassette player from the ‘90s!”
Yoongi shrugged, digging around in his bag. “I think I’ve got another one at home anyway. Or maybe it’s my cousin’s. I don’t know. They all end up on my desk.”
Jin, Joon, and Hobi just stared.
Yoongi lay back on the bench and tucked his expensive backpack behind his head like a pillow. It was some kind of minimalist black leather thing with a silver tag that said MCM—whatever that meant.
“Wake me up before class,” he muttered.
There was a long pause.
“…He’s not real,” Jin whispered. “He’s a Sims character someone set to ‘Unlimited Money’.”
“Or a chaebol in a drama who got bored and wandered into public school,” Joon said faintly.
Hobi, meanwhile, sat frozen beside the broken MP3 player, holding it like it was the ashes of his sins.
“I broke his ₩200,000 gadget and he just… took a nap,” he whispered. “Is he okay? Are we okay?”
No one ever brought up the Clix again. Not even Yoongi. And the next week, he was casually listening to music from a brand-new silver one like it was just another Tuesday.
From that moment on, they decided Yoongi wasn’t just the rich kid.
He was their weirdly generous, banana-milk-loving, gravity-defying, secretly soft, maybe-a-little-insane rich friend.
And honestly? They wouldn’t have it any other way.