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It’s nearly 10pm and the sky is a canvas of spilled ink dotted with specks of glitter barely visible in its opaque darkness. Jimin flags for the bus and trudges up with his bag full of books and feet heavy with fatigue from yet another gruelling day of studying for the examinations.
The late-night bus is crowded - as usual - full of other lethargic students returning home from their hagwon lessons and adults from their overtime schedules. Just as the door closes with a loud, jarring squeak, a voice calls out and the door flings open again.
A certain blonde-haired senior plops down on the vacant seat next to Jimin, eyes hooded and hair a little drenched with sweat.
Jimin holds his breath in shock and hurriedly casts his gaze away.
It’s Min Yoongi - star player of the school’s basketball team. It’s nationals soon, and judging from the sports jacket haphazardly thrown over his sports attire, Jimin reckons he has just finished basketball practice as well.
After two years of gazing at him from afar in the school hallways and from the gallery seats in basketball matches, it’s the first time Jimin has been so close to his crush, to the point that he can smell the pine-scented deodorant masking the faint smell of boyish sweat.
The engines of the bus roar to life and the vehicle jerks to a start. The older boy, already dozing off, shifts due to the abrupt movement and his head lolls onto the younger boy’s shoulder with the softest thud.
Jimin stiffens up immediately, heart going over the speed limit.
Cautiously, he tilts his head just so he can glance from the corner of his eye, and true enough, the older boy is fast asleep such that he doesn’t even realise he’s leaning his entire weight against the poor boy.
The entire duration of the ride till the terminal is one and a half hours.
Jimin does not move the slightest bit for one and a half hours.
He has his fingers interlocked nervously and tucked close to himself such that his shoulders remain square. Min Yoongi snuggles up close to him, and Jimin’s belly is a riot of butterflies. He dares another look, and his face flushes. His crush is so close - he can see Yoongi’s eyelashes fanning out against his cheeks and his pointed cupid’s bow still slightly gleaming with sweat and salmon-pink lips slightly pursed and pulled apart in a silent snore.
Jimin thinks today is the best day of his life - the most precious one and a half hours ever. He can’t get enough, stealing fond gazes every now and then and a fresh blush blooming over his cheeks over and over again, a schoolgirl scream lodged in his throat. He wills his heart not to thud so strongly against his chest, because it feels like mini earthquakes that threaten to reverberate through his uniform that’ll wake Yoongi up.
“Hey kid, are you gonna wake your friend up or something? We’re at the last stop. You kind of - uh - have to get off.” The harsh flash of the light directed right at his face, coupled with the bus conductor’s gruff voice, pulls Jimin back to reality as he realises with a rude shock that they’re drenched in complete darkness and the bus is completely empty and he’s been stupidly gazing at Yoongi for one and a half uninterrupted hours that they’ve reached the terminal - holy shit.
“Oh-oh, y-yes. Sorry.” Jimin whispers apologetically, biting his lip as he gently shakes the peaceful senior by the shoulder. Yoongi stirs awake, squinting his eyes immediately due to the brightness of the flashlight shone his way, and blurrily rubs them a few times.
“W-what? Where am I?” Yoongi slurs, voice thick with sleep and hair sticking out at the side from where he’s been leaning against Jimin’s small shoulder. He looks at the frowning, irate bus conductor, then at Jimin confusedly, and finally at the pitch darkness outside of the window. “Shit.”
“Hurry up, will you? Tch. Kids these days. I have to get back home, you guys too. It’s late.” The bus conductor clicks his tongue in an urgent tone, and Yoongi ducks his head in apology, gathering his school bag.
Jimin, rooted in his seat and hugging his own bag, looks up when Yoongi turns to him and tilts his head to the side, hair falling into his eyes. “C’mon, let’s go.” he addresses, and without thinking, pulls the younger boy by the wrist out of his seat and out of the bus.
Both boys are left alone in the dust as the bus drives away, looking like satellites thrown off their orbits in this remotely empty terminal. Jimin’s heart slams and somersaults in its position, noticing with surprise that the older boy still has his fingers wrapped around his limp wrist.
“Dammit, did I really sleep all the way to the terminal?” Yoongi ponders to himself out loud, glancing frantically around even though his tone remains composed. “What time is it? Fuck. It’s almost midnight.”
He only releases Jimin’s hand to tousle the back of his hair in frustration. Jimin can’t help but admire the way the senior’s messy blonde locks glows in the dull moonlight like a pale halo around him.
“Yah, kid.” Yoongi stares straight into Jimin’s eyes with an almost exasperated disposition. Jimin’s simultaneously captivated by the depths of their blackness but also frightened by the hardness reflected in them. “I fell asleep on you? And you didn’t even wake me up?” The lilt of Yoongi’s accent makes his statements sounds like questions. It makes the entire atmosphere, especially under the blinking streetlamp with a few moths buzzing around, feel strangely like an interrogation.
Jimin gulps and nods. His voice is scratchy and his shoulder feels heavy and sore. “I…I didn’t want to wake you up. You looked really tired….so.”
Yoongi lets out a laugh that sounds like an embarrassed cough but his gaze softens. “Dammit. Park Jimin, is it?” He reads the name tag hung on Jimin’s breast pocket aloud and Jimin’s blood roars in his ears at the sound of Yoongi muttering his name and sinks further into his collar.
After a beat of deliberation, Yoongi sighs and shakes his head. “Well, that was the last bus so we’ll have to walk back home. You live near here?”
Jimin nods again and pips, “Around five stops from the terminal.”
Yoongi hums in acknowledgement. “Okay, thankfully I live nearby too. I’ll walk you.”
“A-ah, it’s fine. I can walk back by myself.” Jimin squeaks.
A scoff leaves Yoongi’s lips. “And let a cute little boy like you risk getting mobbed by weird ahjusshis lurking in the dark? No thanks. I’ll send you safely back home, it’s along the way.”
The butterflies begin their revolt again in Jimin’s already upset tummy. He blinks repeatedly, as if trying to ascertain whether this is really a dream and whether Yoongi actually called him cute.
It’s real, it’s real, he convinces himself as he takes a few deep breaths. Holy shit.
“You coming, Park Jimin?” Yoongi calls out and Jimin realises belatedly that his crush is already a few steps ahead.
“Y-yes!” Jimin replies hastily and rushes to catch up, though he’s struggling under the weight of his heavy sling bag.
Yoongi notices and jogs backwards. “What do you have in there? A pile of bricks?” He jokes lightheartedly, hand already reaching out to take it from the younger boy despite his petulant pouts of protest. Carelessly, the basketball jock throws it behind his shoulder as if it’s a bag of feathers and falls into stride with Jimin.
They walk side by side, silently, shoulders bumping now and then, and every slightest graze sends turbulence throughout Jimin’s stomach.
Jimin doesn’t know where to look, so he looks at the canopy of stars, now dusting the sky brightly against the dark backdrop and winking playfully down at him.
“The stars are beautiful tonight,” Yoongi remarks in a whispery voice, as if not wanting to break the magical, serene sphere of quiet enclosing the two boys.
Jimin tears his eyes away from the night sky to focus on his crush. In the night breeze, his hair flies carefreely away from his face to reveal the softest expression and Jimin is struck by how breathtakingly beautiful he looks. All the edges of his face are smoothened by the smudgy illumination of the new moon and by the shadows cast their way.
“Yes, they are.” he replies truthfully.
“Take a picture, it’ll last longer.” Yoongi teases knowingly and Jimin takes a few milliseconds to register it before his cheeks burn up in mortification. He comically ducks his head, suddenly finding the cracks of the asphalt to be the most mesmerising thing ever.
After listening to the loud screech of cicadas echoing in the silence of the night for what seems like an eternity, Yoongi speaks and Jimin lets out a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding. “So, what are you doing in school so late?”
“I couldn’t afford extra lessons in hagwons so I…stay back in the school library to revise,” Jimin admits.
“Ah,” Yoongi nods. “On a scholarship? I mean, I’m guessing just ‘cause you live in the same, you know, neighbourhood as me and, well—” The senior gestures vaguely towards the worn-down buildings around them and Jimin makes a noise of comprehension.
“Yeah, I’m trying to maintain my position in the top 10 percentile to earn my grants for next year.”
At that, Yoongi lets out a low whistle of awe. “Top 10 percentile…you’re something, Park Jimin.”
The younger boy would’ve thought his words were of biting mockery, like the insults he’s received throughout his school year from the other popular kids in school who look down on poor students on him. However, the genuine smile spreading across Yoongi’s face convinces him otherwise. Jimin can’t hold back the shy smile in response to the praise.
“Me too, actually,” Yoongi confesses with equal earnesty. “Sports scholarship. If we’re out of the finals, I’m out of the school too.” Shifting his smile to the side with wistfulness, he adds, “Tough life we have, huh?”
Jimin enjoys being termed as an entity with Yoongi, the ‘we’ resounding in his head and swelling in proportion with the warm feeling in his heart.
“You’ll do well,” Jimin says with certainty. “You always do.”
“Oh?” Yoongi widens his eyes a little at the younger boy’s sudden exclamation. Tucking both hands in his pockets, he inquires, “Have you been to one of my matches before?”
Before he can stop himself, Jimin begins to nod enthusiastically, words spilling out before they play out in his mind. “Yes, almost every single—I mean, some —maybe, I dunno.” He winces as his words trail off in embarrassment, mentally berating himself and already wanting a hole to materialise under him to swallow him up.
This earns Jimin a bright, hearty laugh from Yoongi, and boy, if that isn’t the most magical thing he’s ever heard. It rings nice in Jimin’s ears and he tucks it away in his mind to replay for months after.
Yoongi raises his eyebrows in amusement and simply replies with, “You’re cute, Park Jimin.”
Min Yoongi called me cute twice today, am I still alive? Jimin wonders in his head, biting the inside of his cheek to keep himself from fainting and scrunches his lips to one side to prevent that silly lopsided grin from floating onto his face.
It’s a pity that all good things come to an end, and even if Jimin deliberately takes the longer route back home, they eventually have to turn the corner into the alley that leads to the gate of his home, much to his dismay. All the lights in his house are out. Everyone’s probably already asleep and blissfully unaware of Jimin’s exhilarating night.
“Well,” Jimin drags out a sigh subtly, kicking the pebbles on the ground bashfully. “Thank you for sending me home, Yoongi-sshi.”
Yoongi passes Jimin his school bag back, hovers for a second before ruffling the younger boy’s fluffy hair and pinching his cheek. “I’ve never told you my name but I guess you already know who I am, huh?”
Jimin blushes even further but doesn’t say anything, still dazed from the affectionate action from before that lasted momentarily.
“See ya in school, Park Jimin.” Yoongi grins, hands yet again casually in his pockets as he pushes himself off the wall. He looks like an angel in his white sports jacket and his blonde hair and his bright gummy smile and gosh, Jimin just wants this night to last forever.
Immediately, Jimin longs for the warmth that spreads all over in a tingly way when Yoongi’s hands are on his skin; he feels like he’s radiating brighter than the glow of the moon and the stars combined, as if he’s swallowed a fireflies to add to his family of butterflies in the pit of his stomach.
When Yoongi’s shadow slowly, slowly, disappears round the bend, Jimin hugs his school bag close to his chest, muffles a scream into it and breathes in the faint, lingering smell of pine-wood and boyish sweat.
He twirls and twirls and twirls under the stars until he’s dizzy.