Chapter Text
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1984, Jeju Island
Min Yoongi was seven years old when his mother remarried. It wasn't something he wanted. Not right after his father passed away. He stood there with his big eyes ,watching his mother get ready.
-”Yoongi-ah, Life of an omega is difficult”, Yoongi's mother said as she petted his hair . He was holding onto her waist like his life depended on it. -”But eomma , what will happen to me. “ His mother looked helpless. He didn't understood then, he did when he grew up.
The wedding was a small, shameful affair with her new husband, a mainland fish broker with thick fingers and a thicker wallet. He didn't want a scrawny child trailing after his pretty young bride. So Yoongi was left behind on Jeju, deposited at the doorstep of his paternal grandmother's house like a sack of potatoes no one wanted.
"Make yourself useful," the grandmother said, not unkindly but not warmly either. "We don't keep idle hands here." Yoongi understood he was unwanted.
The house was small and cramped . Grandmother's room, Uncle's room and Aunt's room, and a storage closet that became Yoongi's. His aunt was a sharp-faced beta who looked at Yoongi like he was a stray cat that might piss on her good blankets. His uncle was an alpha with a drinking habit and a loud voice that made Yoongi curl him into a tight ball.
"You'll sleep in the shed," the aunt decided on day two, after Yoongi accidentally knocked over her rice bowl.
The shed had a dirt floor and a leaky roof. In winter, the wind came through the cracks like a living thing, biting at Yoongi's small bones. He learned to sleep curled around his own knees, using his thin blanket as both mattress and cover.
The worst part wasn't the cold. It was the food.
He understood from the beginning that somethings aren't for him , like the fish his uncle brought or good candy his cousins got to eat.
The family ate grilled mackerel, braised cuttlefish, spicy fish stew,while Yoongi was given leftover rice and the tough stems of greens. Once, he reached for a piece of fish at the table, and his uncle's hand shot out and slapped his wrist so hard the bruise lasted two weeks.
" This is Haechun’s ," his aunt said. Yoongi was left with his plain bowl of rice and a hungry stomach.
Grandmother looked away. Aunt smirked.
Yoongi learned to be hungry. He learned to make his small body even smaller. He learned that no one was coming to save him.
But he also learned something else.
At the edge of the village, past the tangerine groves and the rocky path to the sea, stood an old elementary school. The school had a broken piano , missing two keys, kept in a storage room that no one bothered to lock. Yoongi discovered it on a rainy afternoon when he was supposed to be gathering kindling.
He touched the yellowed ivory. Pressed a key. The sound was thin and out of tune, but it was the most beautiful thing he'd ever heard.
From that day on, Yoongi stole time. An hour here, an hour there, whenever his chores were done. Whenever his aunt wasn't looking over his shoulder.
He taught himself to read music from a discarded hymnal he found in the same storage room. He learned to play with his small fingers, to press the keys so softly that no one outside would hear.
Music became the place where Yoongi lived. The rest of his life was just waiting. Music became his lifeline. Where he could be himself. Where he didn't have to make himself small. He can be himself. He can just be Yoongi.
---
1986, The Alpha Who Smelled Like Tangerines
Park Jimin was nine years old when he first saw the boy in the piano room.
Jimin's family owned the largest tangerine orchard on the eastern slope. He was someone who was liked by everyone . He cried easily. He laughed loudly. He once spent an entire afternoon helping a beetle cross the path because "it looked tired."
His father despaired. "You should be strong. Stoic. Like the sea."
Jimin just wanted to make people happy.
That day, he had skipped his tutoring session to explore the old school. He'd heard rumors of a ghost that played piano a sad melody that drifted through the broken windows at dusk. Jimin wasn't afraid of ghosts. He was curious.
He found no ghost. He found a boy.
The boy was small, smaller than Jimin despite being about the same age. Dark hair fell over his eyes, and his fingers moved across the piano keys like water flowing over stones. He played something slow and sad, a melody Jimin didn't recognize but felt in his chest.
Jimin stood in the doorway, holding his breath. He didn't want to interrupt. He wanted to listen forever.
Then the boy stopped. Looked up. His eyes were sharp, guarded, the eyes of someone who had learned not to expect kindness.
"What?" The boy's voice was rough.
"I'm Jimin," Jimin said, stepping into the light. He smiled,his whole face smiling, the way his mother said made him look like a tangerine split open. "You play really pretty." He wanted to say more. He didn't know what to say to someone who can play piano so beautifully.
The boy stared at him. "Go away."
"Do you want tangerines? I brought tangerines." Jimin held out his hands, empty. "Oh. I forgot them. They're in my bag. Outside."
"Then go get them and don't come back."
Jimin went to get them. He came back.
The boy was still there, fingers hovering over the keys. He looked annoyed but also... not entirely angry.
"I'm Yoongi," the boy said finally, not looking at Jimin. "Min Yoongi."
"Hi, Yoongi-ya." Jimin set the tangerines on the piano. "Can I stay? I won't disturb you ."
Yoongi didn't answer. But he started playing again, and Jimin sat on the dusty floor with his chin on his knees, and he didn't talk. He just watched Yoongi's fingers move, watched the way Yoongi's face softened when the music carried him somewhere far away.
Jimin decided right then that he would come back tomorrow.
He came back every day .
Yoongi wanted nothing to do with him.
"Yoongi-yah!" Jimin called one afternoon, tripping over a fishing net and nearly face-planting into a bucket of octopus. "Your grandmother said you'd be here. I brought tangerines."
"I don't want your tangerines."
"They're the sweet ones. The early harvest."
Yoongi continued gutting fish, his small hands steady despite wanting to try the said tangerine. Jimin's was ridiculous sweet like the tangerines he carried, warm like summer rain on volcanic rock.
"I said no." Yoongi says without looking up.
Jimin set the basket down anyway and sat on an overturned crate, watching Yoongi work with that infuriating patience. He never pushed. He never demanded. He just... stayed.
That was the worst part.
---
1987-1989
Yoongi grew taller but not wider. His ribs showed through his shirt. The aunt noticed and called him "sickly." The uncle called him "useless." Grandmother said nothing.
At school people would talk behind his back. Calling him skinny and what not. He was used to it by then.
Yoongi didn't mind it much. But he minded that blond haired wouldn't leave him alone. Would trail behind him, offering him tangerines. Like he likes tangerine. (He does but that's not the point)
Jimin would sit with him during lunch with a bright smile on his face. "You're not eating," Jimin said looking at Yoongi's tray just rice and seaweed, no protein. "I'm not hungry." Lying but Jimin doesn't need to know.
Jimin pushed his own fish toward Yoongi. "Eat this."I don't want your charity." "It's not charity. It's... friendship." Jimin grinned. "Friends share food."
"We're not friends."
"Then I'm sharing with a stranger. Eat."
Yoongi ate. He hated how good it tasted. He hated how he couldn't stop eating. He hated Jimin's earnest, stupid, infuriating face.
But he ate.
After that, Jimin started bringing extra food every day. A piece of grilled fish wrapped in cloth. Tangerines from his family's grove. Sometimes, when he could sneak it, a small container of braised tofu or a boiled egg.
"My mother made too much," Jimin would say. "It'll go bad."
Yoongi knew it was a lie. Jimin's mother had no idea who Yoongi was. Jimin was stealing from his own kitchen, risking his father's anger, all for a half-starved omega who never said thank you.
"Why are you doing this?" Yoongi asked once, his voice cracking.
Jimin tilted his head, confused. He just breaks into a smile. -”Because I wanna marry you. “
-”I wouldn't marry you even if my life depends on it.” Jimin only smiles.
Yoongi looked away, blinking hard. He didn't cry. He hadn't cried since his mother left. But something in his chest cracked open, just a little, just enough to let a sliver of light inside.
Yoongi walked along the shoreline, his fishing net dragging behind him, his mind already composing a melody about the way the sunset bled into the waves. He didn't hear the footsteps until
"Yoongi-ya! Look what I found!"
Jimin came barreling toward him, sand flying, nearly tripping over a rock. His hands were cupped together, overflowing with colorful shells pink ones, white ones, a few speckled like bird eggs.
"Why are you showing me these?" Yoongi asked flatly.
"They could have pearls!" Jimin's eyes were wide, earnest, stupidly bright.
"And what would you do with pearls?"
Jimin's grin split his face. "Make you a necklace."
Yoongi stared at him. Then he knocked the shells right out of Jimin's hands. "You don't get pearls from these, dummy."
"Ah?" Jimin looked down at his empty palms, then at the scattered shells. "You don't?"
"No, paboya."
Jimin's shoulders slumped. For a moment, he looked like a puppy who'd been denied a treat. Then
"I'm still going to make you a necklace someday," he muttered, kicking at the sand.
Yoongi ignored him and walked toward a large rock that blocked the wind. He'd caught four shrimp in his net more than enough. His aunt didn't need to know. She never counted anyway. And if he shared one or two with the idiot trailing behind him... well. That was his business.
He gathered dry seaweed and driftwood, sparked a small fire with the flint he always carried. Jimin sat across from him, knees pulled up, watching Yoongi's small hands turn the shrimp on twigs.
The fire crackled. The shrimp turned pink.
"Yoongi-ya," Jimin said quietly.
"What."
"When we get married..." Jimin's ears went red, but he pushed on. "We'll eat grilled shrimp every day."
Yoongi's hands paused. He didn't look up.
"As if," he said.
But when the shrimp were done, he gave Jimin the biggest on
"Stop looking at me like that," Yoongi muttered, pushing the shrimp toward Jimin. "Just eat."
Jimin took a bite, blowing on it first, his cheeks puffing out. The shrimp was hot, slightly burnt on one side Yoongi had never been good at grilling. But Jimin chewed like it was the finest dish in Jeju.
"It's good," Jimin said, mouth half-full.
"I didn't ask."
Jimin smiled anyway. He always smiled.
The sun had dipped lower by the time Yoongi walked home, the remaining two shrimp wrapped in a damp leaf. His face was warm from the fire, he told himself. Not from the way Jimin had looked at him across the flames. Not from the words when we get married still echoing in his ears.
He entered the kitchen. His aunt was chopping vegetables, her back to him.
"I caught shrimp," Yoongi said quietly, setting the leaf-wrapped bundle on the counter.
His aunt turned. Unwrapped the leaf. Counted.
"Only two?"
Yoongi looked at his feet. The net hung limp in his hands.
"Your mother," his aunt continued, voice sharp, "was so good at catching all kinds of things. Abalone. Shrimp. And what not." She clicked her tongue. "Could have learned that, huh? Instead of " She waved a hand at him, at his thin frame, his silence. "Whatever this is."
Yoongi said nothing. He'd learned years ago that silence was safer.
His aunt's eyes scanned his face searching for tears, maybe, or defiance. Finding neither, she sighed. "Go wash up. You look like I just made you plow the field by yourself."
He left the net by the door and walked to the tube well.
The water was cold against his face and hands. He scrubbed the salt and smoke from his skin, watching the dirt swirl down the drain. His reflection in the water was blurry, but he could see his own eyes dark, tired, too old for a boy his age.
If only he was with his mother.
He pushed the thought away.
His grandmother was on the porch when he returned, fanning herself with a woven palm leaf. She'd just come back from her morning walk the only time she left the house, these days. Her joints ached, her back hurt, but she still walked to the shore every day. To see the sea, she said. To remember.
"Ah, Yoongi-ya," she called out. "Bring me water. Ah, this heat."
Yoongi ran inside, poured a glass from the clay pot, and brought it to her. She drank it in one long gulp, her throat bobbing, then let out a satisfied sigh.
"Here." She handed him back the empty glass.
But in his palm, beneath the glass, something else pressed against his skin. Coins. Two of them. Not much enough for a piece of bread, maybe, or a handful of rice cakes.
His grandmother smiled. The wrinkles around her eyes deepened.
"Run along now," she said softly.
Yoongi closed his fingers around the coins. He didn't say thank you she would have scolded him for drawing attention. Instead, he bowed his head once and walked inside, the glass clutched to his chest.
That night, he hid the coins under the floorboard of the shed. Right next to his composition, the one he'd titled "Tangerine Boy."
One day, he thought. One day I'll buy my own food. My own piano. My own life.
But for now, he had two coins and a melody.
It was more than he'd had yesterday.
The words reached Yoongi through the thin walls of the kitchen. He was supposed to be gathering eggs from the chicken coop, but his feet had stopped moving the moment he heard his own name.
"He's a child," Grandmother's voice weary, but with a flicker of fight. "How is he supposed to handle the market?"
"Why not?" Uncle's voice was louder, rougher. A drinking voice, even though it was only midday. "Huh? Why not? I see smaller kids running shops in the city. He can too."
"Send Haechun, then. He's older."
A snort. "Haechun's weak. You know that, Eomma. His chest gets bad in the heat. You want him collapsing on the road?" A pause. The sound of a chair scraping. "Besides. Yoongi needs to learn how the world works. Can't hide in that shed forever playing pretend."
Yoongi's fingers curled into the fabric of his pants. Playing pretend. As if music was nothing. As if he was nothing.
"Don't." Grandmother's voice was quieter now. Weary. "Don't be cruel."
"I'm not being cruel. I'm being practical." The clink of a soju bottle. "The boy eats our rice. He sleeps under our roof. He can earn his keep."
Silence. Then Grandmother: "Let me talk to him first."
"There's nothing to talk about. He goes tomorrow."
Yoongi heard footsteps approaching the door and slipped behind the chicken coop, pressing his back against the wooden slats. His grandmother emerged onto the porch, looking left and right. She knew he'd been listening. She always knew.
"Yoongi-ya," she called softly.
He stayed hidden. Not because he was angry at her never at her. Because he didn't want her to see his face. Because if she saw him cry, she would try to fight, and she would lose. She always lost.
After a moment, she sighed and went back inside.
That night, Yoongi packed a small bundle: his notebook, a piece of charcoal, and the two coins still hidden under the floorboard. He didn't know what the market would be like. But he knew his uncle wouldn't feed him lunch.
He would need to buy his own.
The market was chaos.
Yoongi sat on a wooden crate behind his uncle's stall a patch of worn fabric spread over a rickety table, piled with this morning's catch. Abalone, sea squirts, small silver fish glinting in the sun. The smell of salt and blood hung thick in the air.
His face was already red. Not from the sun, though that was brutal enough. From the people.
They shouted. Haggled. Pushed past each other like the world was ending and the only thing that mattered was getting the cheapest octopus. Yoongi tried to shrink, to make himself small behind the book he'd propped open in front of his face. But the book was upside down, and his hands were trembling.
"How much for the abalone?"
The voice came from somewhere above him. Yoongi looked up an ajumma with a shopping basket, her shadow falling over his stall. His throat closed.
"I " The price. What was the price? His uncle had muttered something that morning, but Yoongi had been too scared to remember. "I think "
"Two thousand won each."
The voice came from beside him. Jimin. Jimin, who suddenly materialized like a tangerine-scented ghost, stepping in front of the stall with his hands on his hips.
The ajumma blinked. "And who are you?"
"His assistant." Jimin grinned, all teeth. "The abalone is fresh. Caught this morning. My friend here" he jerked a thumb at Yoongi " he's the expert. I just handle the numbers."
Yoongi stared at him. Assistant?
The ajumma looked between them, then shrugged. "Fine. Two thousand. I'll take three."
Jimin bagged them. Collected the money. Handed it to Yoongi with a flourish. "See? Easy."
When the ajumma walked away, Yoongi grabbed Jimin's sleeve. "What are you doing here?"
"I begged my parents to let me sit the market too." Jimin plopped down on the crates of tangerines beside Yoongi, shoulder to shoulder. "Told them I needed to learn business. My dad almost cried from happiness."
"He doesn't even have a market stall. Your family has an orchard."
"So? I'm learning." Jimin picked up a sea squirt and examined it. "These are ugly."
"You don't have to be here."
"I want to be here."
Yoongi's chest did something complicated. He looked away. "You don't know the prices either."
"Sure I do. I asked your uncle before we left." Jimin counted on his fingers. "Abalone two thousand. Sea squirt five hundred. Small fish three for a thousand. See? I'm basically a merchant already."
"You're an idiot."
"Your idiot." Jimin bumped their shoulders. "Now stop hiding behind that book. You're going to miss all the customers."
The hours passed. And somehow miraculously Jimin made it bearable.
He shouted prices like a real vendor, his voice high and clear over the market noise. He charmed the ajummas with his smile, made them laugh, threw in an extra shrimp "for your grandson." He handled the money without hesitation, and whenever someone asked a difficult question Is this really fresh? When was it caught? Why so expensive? he just pointed at Yoongi and said, "He's the fisherman. I just work here."
And then the customer would look at Yoongi look at him and Yoongi would force himself to speak. "It's fresh. I caught it this morning. Before dawn." His voice was quiet, but steady. And something about the way he said it, the simple truth of his small hands and tired eyes, made people believe him.
"See?" Jimin whispered after one customer bought half the stall. "You're good at this."
"I'm not good at anything."
"You're good at being you." Jimin said it so simply, like it was obvious. Like being Min Yoongi was enough.
Across the way, the ajumma who sold dried seaweed nudged her neighbor. "Look at those two."
The neighbor a halmeoni with a basket of chestnuts squinted. "The orchard boy and the fishmonger's nephew?"
"The way he hovers. Like a little alpha already." The ajumma fanned herself. "Aigoo. Young love."
"Hush. They're children."
"Children who will be married in ten years. Mark my words."
Halmeoni watched as Jimin peeled a tangerine and held out a segment to Yoongi. Yoongi tried to ignore it. Jimin shoved it against his lips. Yoongi scowled. Ate it anyway.
"Twenty won says they're married before he presents," the ajumma said.
"Fifty says it's sooner."
They cackled together, two old women with nothing but time.
At lunchtime, Yoongi pulled out the coins his grandmother had givgiven him.
"What's that for?" Jimin asked.
"Food. I don't " Yoongi's stomach clenched. "My uncle doesn't pack me lunch."
Jimin looked at the coins. Then at Yoongi's thin wrists. Then at the market stalls selling hotteok and fish cake soup.
"Put that away," Jimin said.
"What? Why?"
"I brought lunch." Jimin pulled a cloth bundle from his bag two bowls of rice, a small container of spicy braised tofu, and a piece of grilled fish wrapped in perilla leaves. "My mother packed extra. She thinks I'm growing."
Yoongi stared at the food. His throat tightened. "You're lying."
"I'm not. She really did pack extra." Jimin pushed half the fish toward Yoongi. "Eat. You need it more than I do."
"Jimin"
"Eat, or I'll tell the whole market you aren't even reading the book. "
"I am !."
"Yeah, right."
Yoongi grabbed the fish and took a bite. It was warm. Savory. Made with hands that weren't his aunt's, in a kitchen that wasn't cold.
"You're insufferable," he said, mouth full.
"You're welcome," Jimin said, and ate his own rice with a smile that never quite left his face.
At closing time, Yoongi counted the money. More than his uncle had expected. Way more.
"Jimin helped," Yoongi said when he handed over the pouch.
His uncle grunted, counting the bills. "The orchard brat?"
"He knows the prices. He's good with people."
"People don't need to be good with people. They need to be good with money." But there was something almost approving in his uncle's voice. Almost.
Later, walking home alone Jimin had run ahead to help his father close the orchard gate Yoongi slipped his hand into his pocket. The coins were still there. He hadn't spent them.
He curled his fingers around them and thought about Jimin's smile, Jimin's voice, Jimin's stupid insistence on being everywhere Yoongi was.
When we get married.
Yoongi walked faster. His face was red again.
Not from the sun.
1989, Spring
Yoongi hadn't seen his mother in three years.
She appeared at the edge of the village on a Tuesday morning, when the tangerine blossoms were just beginning to open. A neighbor's child ran to tell him: Your eomma is here. The fancy one from the mainland.
Yoongi didn't believe it. Not until he rounded the corner of his uncle's house and saw her standing there.
She was... different.
The mother he remembered wore faded skirts and rubber shoes, her hair pulled back with a scrap of fabric, her face browned from years of diving. She smelled like the sea and cheap soap and the faint sweetness of her omega scent lavender, maybe, or something close.
This woman wore a pale pink dress with buttons down the front. Gold earrings dangled from her ears, and her hair was permed into soft waves that framed her face. Her skin was pale now no sun, no sea. High heels made her taller than Yoongi remembered.
She looked like a stranger.
She looked like everything Yoongi would never have.
"Yoongi-ya," she said, and her voice cracked. That was the same. That was still hers.
Yoongi didn't move. His hands were shaking. He hid them behind his back.
"Your grandmother said I could take you to the shore." She was twisting her fingers together nervous, just like before. "For a walk. Just for an hour. Would that be... would you like that?"
He didn't answer. But he followed her.
They walked to the shore in silence.
Yoongi's aunt had made him wash his face and change his shirt before they left. -”Don't embarrass us, she'd hissed. She remarried well. Act like you have some upbringing”. So Yoongi had scrubbed his hands until they were raw and put on the least-torn shirt he owned.
But walking beside his mother beside her clean dress and her shiny hair and her shoes that clicked against the stones he felt dirty anyway. Like a stray dog someone had dragged inside for a photo.
They sat on a flat rock facing the sea. The waves were calm today, lapping gently at the shore. A few fishing boats bobbed in the distance.
His mother pulled something from her purse. A chocolate bread the kind from the mainland bakery, wrapped in plastic with a cartoon bear on the label.
"I brought you this," she said softly. "You used to love these. Remember?"
Yoongi remembered. He remembered being small, sitting in her lap, sharing a chocolate bread torn into pieces. He remembered thinking she was the most beautiful person in the world.
He took it. His fingers clenched around the plastic, crumpling it. He didn't know why. He just... couldn't let go.
They sat for a long time. Ten minutes, maybe more. The chocolate bread grew warm in his grip.
His mother broke the silence first.
"Young-ie." Her old name for him. Her voice was careful, trembling at the edges. "Do you eat well?"
Yoongi nodded. He didn't tell her about the shed. The hunger. The way his ribs showed through his shirt. She didn't need to know. She had chosen to leave. She didn't get to worry now.
"I know you're angry at Eomma." She wasn't looking at him. She was looking at the sea, the way she used to when she was a haenyeo, searching for something beneath the surface. "But Eomma had no choice, huh? You'll understand when you're older. Omegas can't... we can't always choose."
You chose, Yoongi wanted to say. You chose a man with money over your own son.
But he didn't.
"I love you," she said, and her voice broke on the last word. "You know that, right? Eomma will always love you. No matter what. No matter where. Always."
Yoongi felt something hot slide down his cheek. He wiped it quickly, angrily.
"Hmm," he said. Because if he said anything more, he would shatter.
She opened her arms. "Yoongi-ya. Come to Eomma?"
He crashed into her.
All at once the chocolate bread falling to the stones, his face buried in her neck, his body shaking with sobs he couldn't hold back anymore. Three years of hunger, three years of cold, three years of pretending he didn't need her. All of it pouring out in ugly, choked sounds against her shoulder.
"Eish, eish." Her hand cradled the back of his head, same as when he was small. "Eomma is right here. Eomma is right here."
She smelled different. Perfume, expensive and floral, covering whatever she used to be. But underneath underneath, there was still her. Still the woman who had nursed him through fevers, who had taught him to hold his breath underwater, who had sung him lullabies about the sea.
"I wish I could take you with me," she whispered into his hair. "Eomma is helpless, you know? Helpless. But I'm going to try. I'm going to find a way. I promise."
Yoongi didn't believe her. Promises were just words. He'd learned that the day she walked onto the ferry and didn't look back.
But right now, in her arms, he let himself pretend.