Chapter Text
Jimin wants to cry.
He wants to cry, but he knows he can’t because it’ll just worsen the situation.
Instead, he balls his fists at his sides and clenches his teeth, helplessly watching the scene unravel in front of him.
There are three boys. Students from the other class, he knows this because he’s seen them before. Seen them flock in his classroom around the desk of a pretty classmate called Jiyeon. Seen them glare at him as he pass them by some days, always muttering into each other’s ears words that sometimes reach Jimin and pierce through his chest. Though on most days he doesn’t mind, doesn’t want to even think about it when it seemed like such a trivial thing.
He hasn’t done anything to them at all, has he? He mostly keeps to himself, not having a particular group of close friends that he hung out with on a daily basis. He stays away from trouble, does his best to stay unnoticed and just be a good student until he can get out of high school and into a university far, far away.
But there’s that, the rumour.
That Jiyeon likes him. Out of the hundred students they said Jiyeon likes him.
What was so good about him? They asked.
He looks… so normal. They said.
Jimin doesn’t know. He doesn’t even think he wants for Jiyeon to like him. She’s pretty, sure, she looks like a flower when she smiles and she actually smells like flowers. But maybe Jimin isn’t into flowers and people just don’t get that.
“I said I don’t like her,” he says once more, voice wavering at the end of his statement as he sees one of the boys pluck a notebook out from his opened bag hanging from the hand of the other, “can I have my things back please.”
“No? Then how come our Jiyeonie likes you if you haven’t liked her first? The only way that she’ll like someone like you is if you’ve done something,” he clicks his tongue, skimming through Jimin’s notebook with barely concealed disgust, “tell us, did you threaten her? Stalk her?”
“I said —“ Jimin doesn’t get to finish because a basketball whizzes past his head and hits the one holding his bag smack dab in the middle of his chest, causing him to stumble backward, dropping Jimin’s bag in the process. Jimin immediately scrambles for his bag, snatching his notebook back from the person who’d taken it, who’s currently looking at his friend on the ground, stunned.
“Yah, you think you’re Sherlock Holmes or someshit?” Somebody growls, voice low and harsh. The boys all still and Jimin lifts his head up in a snap. Someone’s standing over them, the sun casting a shadow on his features. Jimin can make out a raised eyebrow and a pair of lips curled into a scowl.
“Why the fuck are ya’ll still here?”
Like magic, the silence is broken and the boys scurry away like startled ants. They give Jimin one last look of disdain, but leave without saying anything else.
When Jimin stands up and slings his bag over his shoulders, he sees the person crouching to pick up the ball that he presumably threw, brushing the surface of it as he straightens back up.
Jimin nervously curls his fingers around the straps of his bag, lowering his head in an attempt to take a peek at the person who may have just saved him, “Um… Thank you, for doing that… uh…”
When the person turns and raises his head, Jimin can finally see his features clearly. Cat-like sleepy eyes, thin, pink lips, button nose, clear porcelain skin. Jimin almost asks if he’s the same person who’s just growled. He looks too delicate to have the kind of voice that prickled the back of his neck.
“S’kay,” he says, same low, husky voice floating into Jimin’s ears. He tucks the ball under his armpit and takes something from his back pocket. Jimin belatedly realizes that he’s wearing a seal on the collar of his uniform that indicates him to be a junior.
Before Jimin can vocalize his surprise and embarrassment, however, the older holds something out for him to take.
“Here,” a carton of strawberry milk sits on the middle his palm. Jimin takes a look at it and glances up at the other who’s sporting rather indifferent expression, “my friend bought the wrong one, so here. I’m giving this to you.”
“N-no, but I…”
The other merely raises his brow again, almost as if challenging Jimin to finish his rambling, and he immediately picks the carton off his palm, bowing his head in thanks. “T-thank you, um…”
“Yoongi,” He helpfully supplies, and when Jimin looks at him again, he can see a hint of an amused smile curling the ends of his lips upward. Something flutters in his chest, almost too quickly that Jimin almost misses the shiver that it sends through his spine, “You can call me Yoongi-hyung.”
“You can also come to me if those assholes try that shit again, yeah?” Yoongi finally lets the smile bloom on his face, lifting a hand near Jimin’s face that has Jimin flinching, shoulders tensing.
Yoongi pulls his hand away after brushing the pad of his thumb against Jimin’s cheek, chuckling softly as he holds it out for Jimin to see, “Got dirt on your cheek.”
“A-ah,” Jimin says, heart beating a thousand miles per second. He curls his fingers tighter around the strawberry milk, “thank you, Yoongi-hyung.”
“You’re welcome.”
When Yoongi arrives at school tomorrow, he opens his shoe locker to find a carton of banana milk already in it. A note neatly tucked underneath it.
“Because you said you didn’t like strawberry milk,
I thought maybe you liked banana instead?
This is thank you for yesterday, hyung.
Thank you.”
Yoongi smiles, in the middle of an almost empty locker room, the note clutched between his fingers.
Park Jimin.
It’s signed at the bottom.
Yoongi takes the carton of banana milk and slips it in his back pocket, and he’s smiling all the way until he reaches his classroom.
“Namjoon-ah, I think I may have found the most adorable person to exist ever,” Yoongi whispers to his friend, the two of them on their way home when something stops Yoongi mid-step and ultimately, stopping Namjoon along with him. Namjoon follows his line of sight and furrows his brows in confusion and amusement at what he sees.
“Park Jimin? You sure?” Namjoon starts, giving Yoongi a look, “Didn’t know you were into the quiet type?”
“How do you know his name?” Yoongi points accusingly at Namjoon, barely taking his eyes off his object of interest for a second, “And, for the record, I am plenty into the quiet type.”
“High school council president, remember,” Namjoon rolls his eyes at Yoongi, seeing the other completely dumb-stricken by the person they’ve just been talking about. “Huh. Interesting.”