учебники / forgive me father for i

“i should go,” yoongi pushes out, letting go completely, stepping away. he’s done it before, leaving. it doesn’t get any easier, he finds out. he takes off his jacket, pushing it onto jungkook’s arms. “give this back to namjoon, will you?” but, hyung— “go home, jungkook.” and yoongi wonders, as he turns, stumbling on uneven ground, if jungkook still has a home to go back to or if he’s still wondering the streets like before, getting in trouble. he almost turns. he almost asks. ultimately, he doesn’t.

ultimately, he goes back to his workroom, finding a wet wallet full of wet bills, and drags himself to a motel. ultimately, he finds the lighter in his pocket, still. he lights it up, touching his fingers to the flame until it burns and it hurts. then he breathes out, and then, ultimately, he— sleeps.

( where do you go when you sleep?

if some have forests, yoongi has a burning room—

the c-sharp minors follow him through unlit corridors of a motel that is burning down. yoongi steps carefully through soot and ashes and fire, hearing the wood crack underneath him. the bedroom, number thirteen, is still ablaze. yoongi walks in, slowly. flames approach him like kindred spirits. he sits on the bed, and it’s warm. there are the remains of an old plaid shirt on the floor. a few cigarette butts. bottles and bottles of cheap spirits. yoongi lets himself fall against the bed. the ceiling is turning black. he breathes in, deeply, ashes burning his lungs. he smiles.

you look happy. )

for a few days, there’s no sight of that sea.

“you look worn out,” namjoon comments, looking down at him from inside the container. yoongi is worn out— his clothes are wrinkled as if he’s spent days with them, which isn’t a lie, his hair is mussed and unkempt, tossed carelessly about his face, his eyes are hollow, sunken in his skull. he’s

been sleeping, but not dreaming. it’s unnerving. his body reacts to the lack of dreams rather poorly, the kind of dreamless sickness he only experienced once before. yoongi nods, then, because namjoon seems to be waiting for some sort of answer. “have you been sleeping at all?”

“can i come in? it’s cold,” his voice drags, yoongi can tell. namjoon raises his eyebrows, then looks behind his shoulder. yoongi understands that the space is taken already. “— ah.” namjoon’s cheeks turn red, and he sighs, jumping out of the container and onto the train tracks, pushing the door closed. he sticks the lollipop into his mouth again. yoongi takes a step back.

“it’s not like that,” he offers, apologetic. they’re quiet for a few minutes. “jungkook’s been here.”

“— do you want to get coffee?” yoongi asks, because he needs a moment before speaking of jungkook. the ghost feeling of their fingers against each other is still there, haunting him. it’s been a week, but ghosts are hard to kill. “i can pay.”

namjoon stirs his coffee with the remains of his cracked strawberry lollipop, some twenty minutes later, as they stand outside the convenience store, backs against the wall of the building. the smell of canned paint still lifts from the graffitti behind them. it reads youth , in blues that drip like tears, and it’ll stain their jackets. none seem to mind. “he said he went to see you,” namjoon starts over. yoongi drinks his coffee in order to stall. “that it was raining inside.”

“i’m having issues with my dreams,” yoongi prefers to divert the conversation towards his inability to dream anything other than that sea. it’s easier than talking about a boy. “we’re not agreeing.”

“you could dream what you wanted before.”

before, when there was a classroom turned storage room, and keys, fingers, proximity. before, yoongi could do anything he wanted. that sea, before, was just a body of water. in the after, yoongi’s just a dreamer with no one to dream for. “it’s changed.” he says simply, sniffing.

“jungkook looked better than i’ve seen him in years,” the topic goes back, in a circle. yoongi wonders if that’s his whole life, if everything, anything , will eventually lead him back to jungkook. he thinks of the lighter in his pocket. it’s a lantern . “even though he gave himself a good cry after seeing you.”

at this, yoongi raises his head, looking at namjoon, eyes widening. he remembers how miserable jungkook was at the hospital— how his expression was struck with heartbreak so deep it showed

happy about it, yoongi truly is. he doesn’t deserve anything else aside from dying young. he’s not worth the feelings inside him, they’re damaged. hands grab at him, violently so. yoongi frowns, eyes closed. his body spasms with pain. he feels the sheets move, the mattress dips, it’s too alike that other night, where the sheets also moved, the mattress also dipped.

hyung

it’s a scream, not a thought. yoongi stops breathing. his last thought is painful just like the fire licking at his arms—

let me go, jungkook.

)

he did, once . the thought is fickle. yoongi finishes his coffee, tossing the paper cup towards a nearby bin. it misses, falling on the concrete of the sidewalk. “jungkook isn’t happy to see me.” the idea of it warms him up inside, nonetheless. “he should know better than that.”

“you need to stop flattering yourself,” and namjoon smiles crookedly, the stick of his lollipop between his teeth. he has dimples like quotation marks around his mouth, as if the words he says are always important. yoongi smiles, too. he can’t help it. “it’s taehyung,” namjoon sighs. “back at the container.”

taehyung is like yoongi, in a sense. split into human and magic. they just don’t know what kind of magic he is. nothing good, yoongi reckons. he’s nothing good either. “taehyung?” he remembers the limbs asleep on the bed, how they looked so at home, so comfortable in the makeshift bed.

“yeah, taehyung.” it’s meaningful, when he says it again. yoongi understands, and he stares, surprised. he’s younger than you , he wants to say, he’s a boy. “there’s nothing wrong with it.” but there is , yoongi thinks, ashamed, and his shame has the colour of the bruises on jungkook’s face. “there’s nothing wrong with it, hyung.” that sounds like an advice. yoongi sniffs, looking away, pretending not to understand. maybe there’s a sickness about all of them.

“i play the guitar at the exit of galsan,” he says, instead. “if you want to meet again.”

then he pushes himself off the wall, and walks away without a farewell. namjoon’s mumbled take care, hyung follows him home.

their beginning goes like this

it’s a friday, yoongi’s sixteen / the youngest kid in the room looks frightened like a bird hitting a closed window / on a monday of another year, they’re introduced, this is jeon jungkook , and he’s the one aged sixteen now, and yoongi should have left school, but failed / they start playing the piano together that summer / jungkook turns seventeen, and he’s grown / yoongi notices it, and it bothers him / what’s a first love? / it’s a wednesday, and yoongi realises he knows what a first love is, and jungkook’s hair falls into his eyes, and his collar is wrinkled / everything starts burning from there—

he recalls all of those events as he sees jungkook sitting at his piano. it looks like the one in the classroom turned storage room, it’s been looking like that for a while now. jungkook’s eyebrows raise when he realises the sounds of the pressed keys are coming from inside yoongi’s ribs. they stare at each other. “i didn’t mean to come in, i just—“ he starts explaining, blushed on the cheeks. yoongi sighs, closing the door behind him wordlessly. the workroom smells like decay from being bathed in salted water for too long. it isn’t good. he puts the few groceries he’s purchased on the messy desk near the piano. jungkook presses another key, as if to make sure they’re not produced by strings but by— something else. yoongi feels it in his chest. “sorry.”

the thing with wings comes into the room, broken wings flapping. jungkook startles, standing up immediately. yoongi watches him approach the not-bird with care, a docile expression on his face as he coops his hands around it, gently, muttering soft words, here, don’t be scared . “it’s a dream thing,” yoongi tells him, then. “it isn’t hurt.”

“it looks hurt,” jungkook reasons, and the thing with wings stares at him, oddly calm. “i didn’t know you could dream living things.”

“i can’t dream anymore.” he pulls out a package of cheap dried nuts from the grocery bag, tossing it towards jungkook. it falls close to his feet, skimming on the wooden floor. “feed it and it won’t bother you too much.” it makes jungkook smile, the prospect of caring for the small thing. yoongi watches him for some time, watches his fingers as they hold thin slices of almonds, watches as his eyes grow small as he chuckles. he looks better , namjoon had said. it feels true. he’s already

“— yeah?” the water starts boiling. it doesn’t seem like a slice of his life just then. it seems like a not-dream, the ones that would wake him up drowning in tears.

“do you want me to go?”

(

“do you want me to go?”

yoongi looks over to where jungkook’s standing by the door. the room isn’t his workroom, but a tasteless one at a cheap motel. jungkook followed him there, yoongi didn’t send him away, weak against the feelings that clog the sewers of his insides. he should have. he can, still. “yeah,” yoongi exhales, staring. his vision is blurred out by alcohol, and it flows through his veins in coldness. jungkook huffs, and he’s blushed, and he makes to leave. “ don’t go. ”

jungkook’s silent as he turns, eyes of bronze in the golden hour that comes in through the dirty blinds. two years before and he was seventeen and yoongi had kissed him despite knowing better. it tarnished him, then. he can see it on jungkook’s colours, on his shaggy hair, on his plaid shirt. jungkook’s brittle and yoongi’s feelings are rocks. “hyung,” he calls, gentle. the steps he takes are fearful. yoongi watches him, watches him until he approaches the bed yoongi’s sitting on, standing between his knees. a hand comes to touch yoongi’s hair, but it’s held by the wrist. yoongi’s eyes drag towards the skin between his fingers. there are bruises on them, from trying and failing. the air in his lungs grow polluted. “i just wanted to feel something,” jungkook explains, breathy.

in another timeline, yoongi would have pushed him away. in another timeline, they wouldn’t meet two years in the after. yoongi leans closer, pulling jungkook’s wrist to him, pressing his lips against warm skin. he can feel jungkook’s pulse quickening under his tongue, how his breath catches. it’s exhilarating in a way, dreadful in other. “do you feel something?” he asks, low and raspy, not able to meet jungkook’s eyes.

fingers uncurl, softly touching yoongi’s cheeks. “yes.”

)

“i don’t want you to go,” yoongi says briefly. “but,” he stops, the sounds of flapping of dream-like wings follow close. “i need you not to touch me.” if someone were to look at their shadows on the

wall, the elongated figures that drip black into white, they’d see yoongi’s is full of splinters. he doesn’t want jungkook to get impaled. jungkook steps back after a moment. it is immediately easier to breathe. yoongi goes back into automatic movement, grabbing the kettle, the two remaining plastic bowls of dried noodles. jungkook helps him, then, stirring into motion as well. it is something they used to do, the two of them— sitting together at the edge of a bed that creaks (or a piano bench, or a patch of sand, or the top of a container), slurping salty instant ramen without exchanging words. yoongi realises there’s little he knows about the person next to him, though. in the before, jungkook was transparent as glass. now he’s gotten opaque. “are you still with your mother?”

the start of a conversation seems to surprise jungkook, because he coughs, the back of his hand wiping the corners of his lips. yoongi almost smiles. “hoseok-hyung,” he answers, voice hoarse. he clears his throat. yoongi wonders why hoseok didn’t tell him. he talks about you , he had said, instead. “just for a while.”

“are they alright?” yoongi asks, despite his bleak anger. “jimin, hoseok—“

“we don’t see jimin-hyung much, he,” jungkook swallows the food’s he’s chewing. “he moved back with his parents.”

“— and seokjin-hyung?”

“he doesn’t come around much since his girlfriend’s accident.” yoongi doesn’t ask more. his memory lacks, there are black holes in the fabric of space, all filled with salt water from that sea. seokjin’s girlfriend is only a blotch of dark ink. jungkook takes both of their empty bowls, rising from the bed to toss everything in the bin. he stays there, as if afraid he won’t be allowed to return. yoongi doesn’t invite him closer. “— are you unhappy?”

the question is tarnished the deepest blue. is the world tough for you, too? jungkook’s a broken slice of porcelain, even then. he’s grown but not out of his misery. yoongi understands that. his cheeks are hot. yoongi doesn’t like the taste that lingers on his mouth. “i don’t know how to be anything else,” it’s an honest answer, yoongi allows himself that much. he braves through raising his eyes, finding jungkook’s figure. he isn’t looking. his eyes are glassy, focused on the floor. he looks as if he’s trembling. yoongi swallows. “once—“ he doesn’t know how to put it into words. once i wanted to dream you a new world . “once you said—“

“if i could, i’d carry half of your unhappiness, hyung,” those words are also said in earnest. yoongi stares, heart beating somewhat awry inside his chest. he knows his eyes are wide, and he knows he’s red on the ears. jungkook ignores all of those things, eyes somewhere else. “i’ll get going now.” he bows. “thank you for the food.”

yoongi watches jungkook go, mute. his throat feels achy. the sound from his footsteps leaving resonate in yoongi’s ribcage just like the keys of his dreamed piano. he hears them and feels them long after jungkook’s gone. the smell of instant ramen permeates the air for a while, then it’s only the empty smell of cement and the cigarettes yoongi light up. he lays back against the mattress, watching the smoke spiral for the longest time. they’re like serpents, and yoongi closes his eyes, and when we wakes up the next day, the bed is crumpled with their slithering skin, all filled with salt water.

the burger joint hoseok works at is bright yellow themed. yoongi thought he wouldn’t have to be there again, stepping on greasy floors, hearing the cashier ding rather lyrically. it’s been years, too many of then. the burger joint is a cut out of his youth, ketchup stained sleeves and all. he doesn’t know how long he stays there, across the street, staring, mustering the courage to go in. finally, after what it feels like another set of years, hoseok comes out. his uniform is bright yellow, too. he sees yoongi right away. yoongi waves, unsure.

“if i hadn’t come out, would you creep around the whole day?” hoseok asks, dryly, once he approaches yoongi. his expression thaws after a second or two, as he sighs. “you look sick.”

“i’m not sick,” yoongi assures him weakly. he’s probably sick. dream-sick . it must be all that water. “can we talk?”

he holds up a bag with the burger joint logo. “i have an hour,” hoseok says, gesturing with his head towards an alley street. he buys them both coca-cola cans from the convenience store, and they sit outside, a good sense of space between them. yoongi huffs when hoseok slides him a wrapped up burger. “eat, hyung, you’re pale.” his stomach is grumbling, so yoongi doesn’t complain. “what do you want to talk about?”

“—what you told me once,” yoongi chews slowly. “ don’t you know what you mean to him? ” he quotes, pulling pickles from between the layers of the burger. hoseok doesn’t say anything. they’re quiet for a minute. “i—,” he swallows. “back then, i—“

“i was so angry at you,” hoseok huffs, and his voice still has the brightness to it, despite it all. “i was angry at all of us, but at you the most,” yoongi glances sideways at him. hoseok has a frown, and his mouth is pressed into a line. “you would just walk away so easily, you would— allow

others to hurt instead of staying ,” a sniff follows. yoongi feels hollow. “he slept at the alleyway next to the hospital, because they wouldn’t allow him in the emergency room.”

(

light / yellow, pouring in / a voice, familiar / yoongi blinks, and blinking hurts / he’s blind for too long / his chest fills up with dread and smoke and dread and smoke and smoke and smoke / fingers, fingers lacing to his own / “you can’t die, hyung,” / panic, pain / “you can’t leave me here.”

)

shame is an incongruous feeling, yoongi thinks. he’s full of it, all the time. he’s ashamed of who he is and the things he feels and the decisions he takes. this one hurts bitterly, just like everything else. “i didn’t know,” his answer is flimsy. the burger tastes like coal all of a sudden. yoongi puts it down.

“you never asked,” hoseok exhales heavily, as if tired. “jungkook was damaged when you went away after his accident.” the sound of wrapping paper being crumpled seems too loud. “and now you’re just giving him hope before skipping town again.” the anger and resentment in hoseok’s voice is just as loud.

“we slept together,” yoongi says it, the words that are like monsters. they grow in size, terrifyingly vicious, eating at his guts. he feels like throwing up. hoseok’s frozen as if time is held. they don’t look at each other. “i— felt guilty.” and dirty, and vile, and good . even then, yoongi still feels all those things. they’re his shackles, the ones that will drown him in that sea water. “you can lecture me.”

the quietness is unsettling. “that’s namjoon’s job,” hoseok finally says. “he told me— jungkook did,” it surprises yoongi when a fond snort follows. “he got drunk one time, and he told me.” yoongi blushes, against his will. he huffs, embarrassed. “but i knew what you meant to him long before that.”

“i don’t mean anything to him,” yoongi voices, heart aching.

“— you sound like jungkook,” their eyes meet. “like a liar.”