"Hey Jin?!"

Seokjin was in the act of jotting down the last few notes onto the page in front of him when the voice cut through the auditorium and he glanced up to look at the sight in front of him. He saw the rows of seats in front and slightly below him were empty save for there other students and that his professor was sitting at her desk sorting out her own bag as she prepared to leave the room, yet he was still seated at the table making notes and after a moment of thought he turned to look back over his shoulder. As he expected the three of them were standing at the tops of the stairs by the double doors, all looking down at him with books hugged against their chests or in the backpacks slung lazily onto shoulders.

"Yes?" he called back.

"Planning on staying here all day?" Daeyeol asked with a grin as he fixed his backpack and shoved his hands into his denim jacket pockets.

"Maybe," Seokjin said as he looked back down at his book. "Maybe it's more interesting than hanging with you?" The quip made Solji and Hyuna start laughing and though he wasn't looking he could picture the faux annoyed scowl on the other man's face.

"You do know that the year has ended?" Solji explained as she curled the dyed ends of her blonde hair around her fingertips with one hand, the other holding her books against her side securely. "Why all of the notes?"

This might have been the last lecture of the year, a small taste of what would be coming after the short break, but that didn't mean that he should neglect to make notes. It might have looked silly to his friends that he was writing them down as if cramming for an exam, but Seokjin greatly wanted to memorise everything that he could. Just because he was on a break didn't mean that he was going to spend the time pretending that he was free from college. No, he would end up checking the college library for reference books and reading them over the break to better prepare himself. He didn't want this course to turn into the previous one, he was determined to pass it as well as he could and enjoy the entire experience, not just drag his feet through every single lecture and assignment.

"Are you seriously keeping the notes?" Hyuna asked as she pushed her glasses back up her nose. Seokjin confirmed that he was as he got to his feet and shoved the pages of paper inside his textbook. She made a noise at this and then looked at the other two. "I was going to put mine through the shredder."

"I was gonna eat them," Daeyeol announced in a surprisingly normal voice.

"I'm burning mine," Solji said and that made him think of the sight of Yoongi pulling his lighter free and putting the flame to the torn out pieces of paper, the flames licking at the paper and eating it up in seconds, smouldering black curls left on the metallic floor like ashes. "I'm going to get back home after a nice night out and I'm going to put them all in the sink and burn baby burn."

"I didn't know you were arsonist?" Seokjin asked as pushed his chair back under the table and transferred his bag from the back of the seat and up onto his shoulder. The leather body rubbed against his thigh and he fixed the strap in place before moving along the aisle to get to the stairs. He went up them at a quick pace to get to the top and the the four of them were stepping out of the auditorium into the wide hallway.

"Get her drunk and she's many things like," Hyuna said as she held a hand up to hide her mouth from view, "a psychopath." Solji kicked out at her and yet the young woman smoothly sidestepped to avoid the blow.

"You coming along?" Daeyeol asked as they all walked down the hallway, the mid-morning sunlight coming in through the high windows warm and bright. Seokjin thought it over before shaking his head and quietly saying that he wasn't going to go out. "Do you ever go out or do you live in a library Jin?"

"Do you ever go to libraries or do you live in clubs Dae?" he asked back and the man waved him off with a tsking sound, claiming at least he could talk in clubs. "Yes, that's why I actively avoid them, so I don't have to listen to you talking all night long as well as the day."

"Are we having a lovers quarrel?" Solji asked as she skipped ahead to push one of the doors open and hold it for everyone.

"Hey, I just want him to have a good time's all," Daeyeol argued as they stepped out onto the campus. "But also he's gotta car so that means free rides."

"You only like me for my car," Seokjin said as he shook his head. "Unbelievable."

"Come on, just this one night, huh? It's the end of the fucking year man!"

But he just waved him off as he crossed the campus in the direction of the college parking lot. It took him a minute or two before the sound of them all bickering about bars faded from his hearing and by that time he was practically entering the lot. There was still a few vehicles parked inside, various makes and models, and near the very back he could see his car parked and waiting for him: black 4x4 Nissan Navarra that was currently gleaming in the sun, rays reflecting off the glossy paint job and chrome facets. Seokjin hit the button on his keys and opened the door, tossing his bag onto the passenger-seat as he climbed in and slammed the door shut. He was in the act of going to slip his keys into the ignition when he heard his phone vibrating in his bag so he turned to look at it in confusion. As the first bars of the ringtone started blaring he shifted to open his bag and retrieve it, pulling it free to see an unknown caller ID. That was strange, but he still took the call regardless.

"Hello?" He pressed the device against his ear and glanced out of the front window.

"Hello, is this Kim I am speaking to? Kim Seokjin?" a female voice said on the other end of the line, one that sounded a little aged but soft rather than croaky.

"Yes ma'am, hello."

"This is Choi calling, Mrs. Choi from Keisung Middle School." Seokjin watched a student crossing the lot in front of him and yet he didn't really see them, just a blur of movement through the window. Keisung Middle School? There was only one reason that he would be getting a call from that school. His mother had made the suggestion of course, because she was friends with the Vice Principal of the school, and upon hearing the fact that there was summer tutorage classes opening up for college students to gain unpaid experience she had told him to try and apply. So Seokjin had sent an application in to be an assistant tutor for the summer, specialising in English, and literature and language classes. He didn't expect that he would get a call back over this internship, it was just something he had hoped for a little, yet here he was talking to someone about it.

"Ah yes, Mrs. Choi," he said after a moment just to respond.

"I'm calling about the internship that you applied for, to be an assistant tutor," she continued down the line. "We are currently working our ways through the applicants so I was calling to let you know that you're eligible for an interview." He could heard paper rustling and he knew she had stacks of files in front of her. "An interview I will be getting in contact to arrange with you in perhaps a day? The servers for the school are down, if you can believe it, so I'm having to do this all by hand."

"Oh dear, that's going to take a lot of time."

"Yes yes," Mrs. Choi laughed softly. "But of the applicants I'm checking through you are most certainly eligible. So yes, hopefully I will be calling you very soon with a window of interview appointments."

"OK," he replied. "OK, thank you, thank you very much." Seokjin said his goodbyes and ended the call, placing the phone back down on the dashboard of the car. He stared at it blankly for a moment. An interview...he was eligible for an interview to work in the school over the summer, much needed experience that he had been hoping to find for quite some time. Sure it was unpaid but he still had weekend shifts in a retail store that he could work without a problem. He hadn't possibly expected the school to get in contact with him and yet...

He grabbed the keys and twisted them, hearing the sound of the car engine rumbling to life as he hastily fastened his seatbelt. Then he was pulling the car out of the lot and twisting the wheel to smoothly curve out onto the main road that ran along the side of the campus. He only managed to get to the end of the block when he saw his friends still walking in their small group and he honked the horn once to get their attentions. Solji twisted to look over her shoulder and then she was twinkling her fingers at him, and he caught sight of Daeyong lifting his arms up as he doubt complained about the fact he didn't offer them a ride. But he wasn't going anywhere near the hustling centre of the city but rather back to Namjoon's apartment, which he had been sharing since the move back up from Anyang last year.

He had stayed with his parents for three weeks as he finalised and sorted out everything to do with college and then a little longer just to be in their company, and just like his friend had promised his door had been open for him without a single complaint. Once Namjoon had told him that he was dependable and yet it seemed the other way around truthfully. The younger man had been juggling his own enrollment amongst other things but Seokjin had rapidly discovered that having rich parents paid off. Upon enrolling his father had not only paid his tuition but had also lifted the block on an account opened in his name to help support him through the several years. Yet Namjoon hadn't moved out of the old apartment room and he still did part-time volunteer work when he didn't had college to worry about. He had seen him go from down and out and penniless just a year ago, pumping gas for a pittance and wasting it more often than gaining double on his bets. Now Namjoon had a bank account in the eight digits from his parents and yet he didn't spend more won than he needed to. He thought that that said a lot about how he had fully matured into an adult and Seokjin often wondered what the others thought when they saw him every a week or so. Did they see him differently now, or was he the same as he had always been? Had he really changed that much or had he been steady from the start? Seokjin himself didn't feel a vast change but there was something. Sitting in college and no longer feeling burdened was a relief that he had never thought possible. The weight that had been lifted off his shoulders had also seemed to have been lifted off his chest too and there was definitely a marked change in anxiety.

He now felt like he could breathe when he had been holding his breath for so long and wishing for a change that had seemed impossible. Seokjin could now sit in a lecture and not spend the entire duration staring at nicks in the tabletop and finding that the pages of notes in front of him were complete nonsense even though he had made them himself. It had taken a conversation in a freight train traveling across the country with his friends to figure out what had been wrong, along with torn up and burnt pages and a book taking to air like a bird of course. He would make sure to never let any of them near his current textbooks just in case they got anymore ideas.

And now...now he had a chance of an internship in a school, the experience coming in handy for finding an actual teaching job after college.

Seokjin settled into the seat and kept his eyes straight ahead as he pulled up behind several cars waiting at an intersection. The car was silent and so he reached over to press the window switch and as the glass slid down some noise bled inside. He heard the rumble of other vehicles on the roads, the faint sound of radios and music coming from them and also stores on the streets, but also voices of pedestrians passing by on the sidewalks. He couldn't hear full conversations but rather just the occasional word and nothing more. Sometimes that was enough to figure out a conversation with, but that was rare. His hands were on the steering wheel and so he tapped his fingers on them in an offbeat rhythm as he waited for the traffic to resume flowing, and after a minute it did a he stepped down on the pedal and carried on driving. After spending the last summer driving around for nearly two days he had found the experience strangely aided him in passing the rest of his lessons and obtaining his license, though the actual test had not required perfect drifting in a field like he had once achieved. No, that was something that was most certainly not allowed.

But that didn't mean that it wasn't fun.

Just thinking about it now was enough to make him smile as he rounded the corner and drove onto the next junction. He could recall the boys as clear as day, boys who were now men in his eyes even with Jungkook still in school; their voices in the back demanding he do something cool, that he do a trick because it might just be the only chance that they would ever had. And so he had grabbed the gear stick and had twisted the wheel hard and the had come the sound of them all hollering and laughing as the Chevy Impala had spun around and round over and over until he had lifted his foot off the gas, changed fears and stomped it down hard again, shooting back onto the dirt road so perfectly that he knew now that he couldn't possibly replicate it. It had been childish and very stupid of him and yet Seokjin found that the memory of that day was one of the best that he could remember from the adventure. There had been a few bad things before then, but that day had been full of hope and happiness until the car had died on them, and it was that day that always came to his mind when he thought about it all.

For some their strongest memory was probably a bad event and yet Seokjin wanted to remember only the good. There might not have been much but what they had shared...that was golden and he doubted that anyone in his college group would have stories like that of the Chevy Impala one.

The car drifted down the streets of the capital and Seokjin didn't really pay any heed because he traveled this route nearly every single day when he wasn't on a short break or having a day off for the week. The twists of the wheel came naturally and he only registered having to stop for lights and little else. As the wheels turned over and over he noted that he was starting to pass through the poorer areas and that meant one thing: he would soon be passing through the neighbourhood that Taehyung had used to lived in. He might just even pass his house and Seokjin furrowed his brow in confusion. He must have unconsciously taken a wrong turn at some point and he just hadn't realised for he had been too deep in his thoughts. He probably should have went back the way he had come, risking an illegal u-turn on the empty street or driving onto another road and making his way along streets until he ended up back where he was supposed to be going, but he couldn't stop himself from driving down the road. It had been years since he had last been around this area and yet he could recall it perfectly.

The roads were wide and generally devoid traffic. On the sidewalk there would be the occasional parked vehicle but it would be in terrible condition, missing tires, broken windows and side mirrors, empty engine blocks. None of them ever looked to have been used in the last decade or two and there was a thick layer of dust on everything including the paving slabs. He knew that it had been bad but he thought that the neighbourhood looked even worse now. The street lamps were all crooked and he doubted that any of them even worked, and most of the building were concrete and boarded up with plywood over the windows but not the Kim family home. No, he could remembered that as perfectly as his own and when it came into view Seokjin slowed down to a stop so that he could study it out of the window.

The house was a single floor bungalow, wide and large but in a terrible condition. It wasn't made of concrete but rather plaster and wood and brick; unpainted, untreated and unloved. Inside there was a joint sitting and kitchen area, two bedrooms, a bathroom and a small closet of kinds. He had been inside once with Namjoon and it had ended with Taehyung being locked in said closet and them being chased out with threats and a baseball bat. Taehyung had been ten at the time. The windows were set into rotting frames and Seokjin just knew that he could fit his fingers into the gaps between the pane and the frame in parts. The front door was dark wood that had been painted white except most of it had cracked and peeled away over the years, and the back door had been deep green when he had last seen. There had been a small dog flap built into it too, back when there had been a dog before that had 'ran away' though Taehyung had once voiced a sneaking suspicion that his father had backed the battered family car over the poor animal and had dumped its crushed remains across the city. Having known the man Seokjin wouldn't be surprised in the slightest.

Having known Taehyung's father had taught him that evil was real, and even the kind of person that should be wholesome and good could be twisted and fucked up. It allowed him to realise just how important and special his own parents were, but mostly it allowed him to see how Taehyung had strayed so far along the path that he had been on.

Before he could stop himself Seokjin popped the door open and stepped out onto the curb. He didn't close the door but rather left it open as he crossed the sidewalk to get to the front gate. Now that he was an adult it barely went higher than his hips, a small picket fence that had been untreated maple wood until that one day that Taehyung had shown them all brushes and paint that he had 'found' in the garage and declared that they should totally paint it. It had all been fun until his father had stumbled out of the house in a drunken stupor and then it had ended in tears and smacked asses and bruises that teachers had seen and had conveniently ignored.

Seokjin could recall the incident so vividly that he wondered if that had been what had finally broken Taehyung; being dragged into the house kicking and struggling in front of them all and then the sounds of him screaming and crying coming from the thin walls and broken windows. He had been eleven then, a child still but nearing a teen and both he and Yoongi had been fourteen. Fourteen year old Yoongi already with a self-rolled cigarette stick between his fingers and an attitude that had ended in them all having to drag him back down the front path before he had barged into the house. Yes, he was more than certain that that had been the thing that had pushed the already troubled boy over the edge in the aims of self destruction.

He hunkered down in front of the gate to look at the individual pickets. They had been white washed at one point over the years and yet he could see that it had been a shoddy job for the paint was thinly applied and it didn't cover up any of their childish paint at all. To his left he could see the graffiti-esque words that Yoongi had covered it in, curses and English words he had thought looked cool at the time. To his right was a comic book style monster that then nearly nine year old Jungkook had created. He couldn't really tell what it was but it looked cool so that was all that really mattered in the end. After a moment of study he had located his own piece and he studied it before reaching down to run his fingers along the wood. It was rough against his fingertips and he traced the slightly asymmetrical heart for a moment before pulling his hand away. He felt a shiver go down his spine and then he was getting upright and crossing the sidewalk to climb back into his car.

He felt a wave of emotion surging through him and it made him feel nauseous and breathless and before he could stop himself he was grabbing his phone off the dashboard and unlocking it with fingers that were shaking. As he held the phone against his ear he realised that he was blinking back tears and he started gnawing on his lower lip. He didn't really know where this had all come from, for he had been more than happy a mere minute ago, ecstatic even. Yet now he was shaking so badly it was a wonder he could hold the phone without dropping it. By the time his friend picked up on the other end of the line he was wiping at his cheeks with his heel of his hand and sobbing even when he tried to stop himself.

"Hey?"

"I need to talk," Seokjin managed to say between quick gasps for air.

He thought that it was an alarm waking him up at first even though it didn't sound like the usual alarm. It was less a repetitive beeping and more of a ringtone and yet Jimin didn't want to move. But it didn't really matter what he wanted for a few seconds later he was being disturbed anyway. He had his head balanced in the crook between Yoongi's neck and shoulder and the other man shifted and knocked him fully awake. He rolled onto his back with a whine and felt him sitting upright as he grabbed his phone and answered it in a sleep-heavy voice.

"Hmmm? Hey?" Yoongi's voice was usually husky but he found that in the morning it was even more so, likely the result of smoking so many goddamn cigarettes for several years straight, but regardless of this fact he found that he greatly liked listening to it. Jimin didn't open his eyes and instead reached up with one arm so that he could run his fingers up and down his back. He didn't feel the usual soft skin and nubs of spine against his fingertips but rather smooth polyester. At his touch he felt Yoongi reacting, a slight flinch in surprise, and then he relaxed again. "...Hey, you OK man?" He asked suddenly, concern filling his voice so fast that it caught Jimin off guard. He opened his eyes slowly to squint at the old ceiling and then shifted to balance his head against the arm of the settee, to stare at the back of his head as he did. The red had finally left his hair only to be replaced with a bright blond that was nearly the same shade as the white tee he was currently wearing. He watched Yoongi reach up to rub at his eyes roughly, knuckles first and then with the heels of his hands almost as if he could push his eyelids up and keep them open.

Jimin couldn't hear who was on the other end of the line but he knew that it was one of five young men, the game was deducting who exactly it was.

"Yeah, yeah," Yoongi shifted to sit on the edge of the cushion, knocking his legs as he folded his own up in front of him. Typical Yoongi sitting position, hunched up as small as possible, shoulders drooped and back folded in a soft curve. He could imagine the knobs of his spine sticking out from under his skin underneath the layers of clothing. "Hey, it's OK, OK? Take deep breaths, calm down first and then we can talk. Yeah...yeah but just-" Yoongi stopped talking and lowered his head to study his lap, eyes shifting as he looked over the loose threads and slight tears in the material.

Jimin sat upright too, bringing his legs up to cock them in front of himself and folding his elbows on his knees. His movement caught Yoongi's attention and the other man glanced him at him for a moment before dropping his gaze. So Jimin waved his fingers at him and then held his hand against his ear, thumb and little finger cocked to mime a phone. He mouthed the question 'who?' at him and Yoongi mouthed 'Seokjin' back at him. Seokjin? What exactly was he doing calling him this early in the morning? Had something happened? Wasn't today his final day in college? He didn't know and he didn't like not knowing, and judging from Yoongi's face he didn't know either, even though he was on the phone talking to him.

"Hey, look I'm with Jimin right now. He's in the room with me, want me to put it on speaker so we can all talk, huh?" After a second he moved the device away, presumably because their friend had told him he could, and after tapping his finger on the screen sound came out of the phone. Jimin heard a slight crackle and then the sound of Seokjin taking unsteady breaths down the line. The sound made an uncomfortable knotting sensation occur in the pit of his stomach and Jimin didn't like how cold his skin had become.

"Hey Seokjin," he managed to say after a moment. "Are you OK?"

"Yuh-yes I mean I just-" Seokjin took a deep breath and let it out slowly, "I was just thinking about something ah-and I got a little eh-emotional, that's all." He laughed softly on the other end on the line and he could picture his lips lifting in an embarrassed smile, eyes slightly swollen and red from his tears. "I'm getting old and senile on you all."

"What were you thinking about?" Jimin asked as he looked away from the phone and glanced up at his lover. Yoongi was staring at the phone intently and he looked like he was thinking about something too; something he was uncertain about.

"Well...less thinking more drifting," their friend explained with a sniff. "I was traveling back to Joonie's apartment when I took a wrong turn I think, I don't know I just remember that I ended up in the wrong neighbourhood and the next thing I knew I was outside Tae's family home, you know?" Jimin saw Yoongi's lips twitch at this, like they always did when that place was mentioned. Bad blood for them all, not just Taehyung. "I think I took a wrong turn but I was thinking, just thinking about the past, and then my car was pulling up to the house it was...it wasn't like I took a wrong turn at all or it was an accident it was almost like-"

"Like you were dragged there," Yoongi said in a quiet voice, almost a whisper.

"Yes," Seokjin agreed. "Like my heart drove me there because I was thinking about everything." He paused for a moment and then added. "I went over to the gate and saw the old paint underneath the whitewash. It gave me the chills touching the wood, I didn't like it. I think that...that that was why I got emotional. Do you remember that day?" They both made noises in agreement, not needing to dwell on that morning any longer than necessary. "It got me thinking that there were many times shit like that happened, you know? But we were too young to do anything about it other than just watch or...or get chased off and I spent so long trying to forget all of those days but they just came back to the surface on me."

"You're not the only one thinking about the past," Yoongi commented as he pulled on a loose thread on the seam of his jeans. "I think we all are, with the summer coming up."

"Hmmm, you're right. It's been a year already and it feels like days doesn't it?" Seokjin made a soft noise under his breath. "I should go, I probably disturbed you calling you this early in the morning, it was stupid of me."

"It wasn't stupid," Jimin argued, shaking his head even though their friend couldn't see him do so. "You needed to talk, that's what friends are for."

Yoongi ended the call a moment later after goodbyes were said and the house plunged into silence broken only by the sound of the clock ticking on the wall across the room. He didn't look over at it to check the time but rather just studied his lover to see what was going through his mind. Yoongi could be hard to read sometimes, rare but still possible, and with him keeping his thoughts to himself Jimin had learnt to teach himself how to have conversations with him without him voicing a single thing. Right now he could see that he was thinking about Seokjin had said and also the fact that he too had been thinking of the past. Jimin hadn't really let old memories cross his mind at over the last few months and he now felt like he had Pandora's box in front of him; just waiting for him to open it a peek to see what was inside and let everything escape instead.

"If you need to talk too..." he said to break the silence, seeing the other man shift at his words. "You know I'm here to listen, that we're all here to listen."

"There's not enough hours in the day for me to get my words out," Yoongi muttered before checking his phone screen. "It's 10:15, you should hurry up and get ready before Kookie thinks you stood him up."

"...Oh shit," Jimin announced as he reached up to grab the front of his tee, looking down to see smears of grease all over the material. "I wasn't supposed to fall asleep! Oh shit, this is just great." He swung his legs over the side and jumped to his feet only for Yoongi's fingers curled around his wrist. Not tightly but firm enough to make him stop.

"Check on him for me."

"Kookie?"

"Yeah, check on him and make sure he's OK," he explained. "I barely see him with school and work, once a week or so for a couple of hours is nothing. Make sure he's doing alright."

"...Sure thing," Jimin said with a nod and he kept hold of his wrist for a few seconds before lifting his hand and gently kissing his knuckles, just like always. It was an oddly sweet habit of his and he had often wondered what his friends would think if they saw him do it, saw him holding a cigarette between the fingers of one hand as he pressed his lips against his knuckles like a twisted Prince Charming. "He'll be fine, you know Kookie."

"Yeah, I used to think that about all of you at one point," Yoongi muttered as he let go of his wrist and shifted to settle back against the settee. "It was a big fucking mistake."

The walls in Yoongi's home had once been practically bare: photographs kept shoved in plastic wallets stored in boxes shoved under the bed where no one would ever see them, would be able to pick them up for a closer study and remark about a memory that they recalled whilst holding the wooden frame in their hands. The main area walls had been nothing but simple cream walls and very naked, like the entire house was. Yoongi might have made messes and cluttered the few surfaces he did have up with shit, but of furniture and knickknacks the house was surprisingly nearly empty. Moving into the building, Jimin had thought about how it had felt more like a skeleton than an actual home. But even with the bare and cold walls and floors, it had still been more welcoming than his family house across the capital. It had taken him just a few days to have accidentally stumbled upon the boxes of photographs and then...

Then Jimin had decided to bring a little life into the walls of the house.

As he hastily rubbed at his damp hair, skin was free from grease and fresh, he felt his eyes wandering over to the wall above the bed. When he had first started tacking all of old Polaroids onto the space above where the headboard should have been, Yoongi had told him that it was probably not a good idea, that he would get bored of looking at all of the stupid photographs, yet he had not, and after a few days his lover had actually started looking through the near mountains to find photographs that he had wanted picking out from the rest, that he had liked the most. So the project, that had been nothing more than sheer boredom and a chance to be mischievous and annoy Yoongi, had rapidly developed into something more.

Jimin found that lying in the bed and craning his head back to look at the photographs was like looking up at stars; a constellation of faces throughout the years with smiles just as bright, if not more so.

Yoongi had once told him that he felt like they were being watched whilst they made love but that didn't stop him in the slightest.

He tossed the towel aside and grabbed his clothing from the bed where he had tossed it earlier, not that bothered at all that his tee was wrinkled from being rolled up in a ball. Last year he had worn the same pair of jeans for nearly three weeks, cleaning them only to wear them back to filth once more. After an event like that he wasn't fazed at all by creases in tees or shirts, of a slight stain on the cuffs of his uniform pullover that had been dumped at a local thrift store just two weeks ago. No need to wear it now he had finally finished high school and would be enrolling in community college at the end of the summer.

The last few weeks had been an event to say the least, so badly stressed over exams that he hadn't been able to sleep for fear that the hard work he had gotten though would all be useless when he flunked the final exams. Just like he had always done, tried so very hard only to fall at the last hurdle and break bones rather than skin his knees. But after days of cramming and nights of panic attacks and the sensation of Yoongi's warm hands on his shoulders, arms tight around his waist as he pressed his cheek against the back of his shoulder and told him that he was going to pull through, he finally had. Jimin had pulled through with Cs and Bs to his name, and even that single elusive A that he had told him he could achieve hadn't slipped away from him.

That had been his first A and it might just have been the last but seeing Yoongi's face when he had read them aloud off the sheet of paper had made the single one feel like a thousand.

Jimin hastily fastened his jeans and then he was grabbing his wallet and the spare keys from the used pair to slip them into his pockets. He would probably need the keys to get back into the house just in case Yoongi slept through his knocking like he usually did. With it being his only night off for the week he thought that the man had earned an entire day sleeping, he just hoped that he would do so in bed rather than curled up on the small settee. Then he was exiting the bedroom to race down the stairs, grabbing his boots from the bottom and sticking his head through the gap in the wall to eye the clock. It was 10:30 and that meant he had thirty minutes to meet Jungkook before the boy would get annoyed with him, and Jimin had long learnt that when Jungkook was pissed off only great amounts of food would fix his mood.

As he expected he saw Yoongi was slumped on the settee, arms folded loosely and head low so that his chin was balanced on his chest. He could hear him snoring lightly from the angle, shoulders lifting and falling softly. Jimin went into the room and bent down in front of him, pressing his lips against the messy fall of hair on his brow to kiss his forehead. The other man mumbled something under his breath and so he told him to go upstairs, lips brushing against his skin. Yoongi mumbled at this and so he exited the area to get back into the hallway, slipping his boots on and hastily tying the laces before stepping out of the house and slamming the door shut.

The walk to the café that he agreed to meet the boy at took him twenty minutes, walking at a quick pace opposed to a leisurely one. With it being an early weekend morning the sidewalks were rather empty but the roads still had traffic rolling down them, slow but steady. Most of the stores were closed or didn't open until an hour from now, signs hanging in glass windows or shutters still down and reflecting sunlight back at his eyes. A quick glance up showed just a light scattering of clouds across the canvas of the sky and the sight was enough to make him hum under his breath as he went along blocks and cut down side streets and parks. When he got closer to the café he saw a familiar bike up against the wall, black and red body of the sports bike, and that meant that the boy was already inside, so he pushed the door and stepped inside. The overhead bell jingled and the sound caused a couple of heads to turn and look at him. He saw Jungkook sitting on a stool at the very end, back to him, and then he twisted to look over his shoulder at him.

"Hey."

Five minutes later they were leaving the café with a paper bag of snacks and two large containers of milkshakes that went right into the basket built onto the front of Jungkook's bike. He had to climb onto back and hold onto him and then the boy was cycling them back across the streets; right in the direction of the trainyard. It took twenty minutes for him to get there and when he finally climbed off the back he heard him breathing heavily.

"Remember back when were like...eight and cycling was fun and easy?" Jungkook asked with a grin as he balanced the bike against the side of one of the freight carriages.

"Yeah, except when you ended up at the bottom of a hill and you found what it was like to try and climb a mountain." The boy retorted that rolling down them was fun though, not having to cycle as the wheels spun and spun and hurtled the bike down to the bottom like a roller coaster. "For you maybe, I was always falling off."

The perfect spot to sit was inside the open doorway of the one of the carriages, a rusty yellow one with corrugated walls and wheels so old and worn that there wasn't even any treads left on them. It was high enough off the ground that Jimin could easily swing his legs, though Jungkook's soles nearly scraped against the dirt, and there was shelter from the heat of the day. Jimin held his milkshake container between his hands, fiddling with the straw but not really drinking it. The paper bag was on the carriage floor between them, ripped to create a plate on which the remains of kimbap and cookies from the café were still on. Jungkook was sipping at his own drink, a thick and creamy vanilla shake that was almost too sweet for Jimin's tastes.

"Hey Kookie?" he asked quietly. The other boy turned his head to look at him, straw stuck between his lips and eyebrows raising as if to ask "yeah?". "Is everything OK?"

"OK?" Jungkook made a soft noise under his breath and released the straw. "Yeah, everything's cool. Why'd you ask?" Jimin studied the container, looking at the milky pink substance through the clear top, the blue stripes on the straw and the café logo printed on the card side: the name with doughnuts for the rounded characters.

"Just checking," he said after a moment. "'Cos most of the gang don't see you much, so they don't get to ask how you're doing. I just wanted to check and also let you know that you can tell me if it's not."

"No, it's good," Jungkook said as he took another sip and then picked up a chunk of the large cookie. "It's weird to think that I'm almost finished with school and yet everyone else already is. By the time I'm starting college Seokjin will be in his final year in college. Crazy right?" Jimin nodded in agreement and lowered the container to the floor so he could lean back on his wrists. When he kicked his legs back and forth his boots thumped off the metal wheel.

"Everyone keeps talking about the past," he said quietly, eyes trained to look at the slope. He felt Jungkook's gaze shifting to look at him for a few seconds before following his gaze over to the eye the passing traffic too. The trainyard fell silent save for the sound of the rumbling engines and rolling wheels and then the boy sighed heavily.

"I was thinking about this place yesterday. That first day, back here with the cigarettes and beer and Venus, I was thinking about it." Jimin shifted his eyes back onto him to see that there was a distant look in his eyes. It was almost as if Jungkook was so deep into his thoughts that he wasn't with him currently, as if he had transported himself back down into his memories instead. "That was a good day, don't you think? Despite all of the shit, it was a good day."

"It was a good day," Jimin agreed. His own mind wasn't thinking about the trainyard however, but rather the streets of his block and how he had ran along them, the feel of tarmac and concrete against his bare soles whilst his father had yelled at him, had threatened to never let him back in the house ever again. It had been an entire year since he had seen the man and he wondered what he thought about him now, and his mother too. He wondered if they knew about his graduation and if they were proud of his part-time job in a local mechanics, of how he was going to community college soon too. But mostly he wondered if they even had a clue about him spending his days rather than his nights in the arms of one of his friends that the man had always hated and felt his breath on the back of his neck.

"Have you been thinking about it all?" Jungkook asked, breaking the temporary quiet.

"Not really," Jimin replied. He hadn't been thinking of the past until today, until Seokjin had called Yoongi and dragged all of it back to the surface and the boy had mentioned Venus. But now...now he couldn't seem to stop thinking about it all.

He felt something tugging on the ends of his light cardigan, currently tied around around his waist to keep the long sleeves clean, and when he looked over his shoulder he saw the very tops of a kid's head. Namjoon dropped his gaze to see the familiar sight of Sunhwa looking up at him, a cup in her hand filled with murky paint water.

"Yoogeun keeps trying to drink this," she explained as she held it up to him. "Some older kid told him to do so I had to take it off him."

"Smart idea," Namjoon agreed as he accepted the cup from her hand and turned back to the sink to tip it down the drain, swilling the inside out and replacing it with clean, paint-free water. He handed her it back, noting how him she had to reach up to get hold of the glass, and then she was trotting off across the large hall to go back over to far tables where the rest of the younger children were. For a seven year old she sure was small and he wasn't surprised that she would rather spend the few hours that the centre was open for in their presence as opposed to the children her own age. He had been volunteering for just four months now and he had seen quite a few of them turn mean over that time, show bullying streaks towards the other kids to get their own way, or attention. Whatever one was more fitting to their situation.

From the other section of the centre he could hear loud music, signaling that the young teens were having fun, even when it meant blasting hip hop songs with foul language that the children really shouldn't be hearing. Not that they could understand the English anyway, but that wasn't the point. He glanced at the sink, which was still full of used cups and paintbrushes, wooden palettes that had blobs and smears all over them that would also be all over clothing and tables too. He spared a quick glance at Sunhwa to see her squirting some paint out for another girl that looked all of four. Then he turned back to the sink and continued cleaning the objects free of paint, running the tap constantly at a hot temperature to make the blobs of paint slide right off.

Every weekend, and weekday in the late afternoon hours, this centre was open for 'disadvantaged' children, as the term of choice (poor and abandoned was apparently incorrect though they both suited it just fine). That wasn't to say that all of the children that came through the doors were poor, no not at all. Some of them had working parents that couldn't see them until the evening hours when shifts finished, that were booked on weekends making a living that just simply needed their children watching for a few hours. Sunhwa, for example, was the daughter of a single mother. He knew this because she was here everyday like clockwork, and her mother always picked her up too. The woman even donated to keep the place running in thanks for the hours her daughter spent whilst she was working. An example of a good parent, rather than a neglectful one like most would imagine when looking at the centre.

He had wondered what they would have all turned out had a centre like this existed back during their childhood years, back when most of his friends had required adult guidance and support and hadn't gotten any. The best they had gotten had been Seokjin and Yoongi, who hadn't been much more than children themselves.

Namjoon often thought about how much this volunteer work felt like taking cares of his younger friends, back when they had been teens but also children. It had started out with cleaning scraped knees and split lips that hadn't always been the results of falling from bikes when Seokjin hadn't been present, of checking over homework and scribbling out most of the mistakes and trying to correct them whilst also teaching them, but then it had progressed. Instead of piggybacking he had been holding up Taehyung's head as he had vomited all over himself after drinking his first entire bottle of soju, retching and sobbing like a child; had been talking Jimin out of doing stupid shit for validation and attention from the younger boys that he had often done the moment his back had been turned anyway. Yes, he had watched them go from scraped knees to self-harming, suicidal and addicts in the space of just several years. It was no wonder he felt so much older than he was standing around these kids, seeing them painting and writing stories and playing skip rope when he had been watching Yoongi rolling cigarettes at the ripe old age of twelve and Jungkook had drained his first shot of Chamisul soju at eight. Some of these younger kids had parents from his generation, the generation he liked to think of as the 'grand fuck ups born from fuck ups'. He only hoped that their chances at good futures were better than his had been.

Namjoon had spent twenty years on this planet and yet it felt so much longer than that, it felt like an eternity to him. He felt like his high school days were decades behind him rather than just a bare two years or so, and the fact that he had only just finished his first year of college didn't seem right. It didn't seem right that he was still on the same playing field as Seokjin and Hoseok when he felt much older than that. Yet here he was, a single year under his belt wiling away his break with volunteer work and hours spent in his apartment room messing around with old tracks that he and Yoongi had once created.

When he was finished he left the objects on the metal drainage board and hastily word his hands with paper towels before looking across the room. Yeeun was on her knees helping create things with a small bunch of children, showing them how to make an instrument with a cardboard tube and some rice that would sound just like the rain; all of them watching in rapt attention. A few of the kids at the table looked to be eight or nine and that made him think of Jungkook again. Eight. At eight years of age Jungkook had done more than swallow a single shot of soju. He had shared quick drags off cigarettes when Seokjin hadn't been looking, had stayed up at night until the early hours of the morning, had lapped up violent and borderline pornographic movies and video games. Namjoon struggled to remember a time when he had been like a actual kid and he knew that Taehyung had been even worse. Taehyung had been downing shots on a regular basis by thirteen, had smoked more than just cigarettes to his knowledge, and he didn't know how old he had been when he had first starting making a profit on the streets but he was willing to bet that he had been younger than fifteen.

In front of him right now were kids that were still amazed by rain sound instruments, and his had been smoking and drinking and prostituting themselves before they had hit sixteen. Yes, Namjoon was more than hopeful for this new generation to not have teenage wounds to heal as deeply as they had had.

"Nammie!" a kid called out from across the room, sweet voice that he recognised as a five year old boy called Donghyun. Namjoon ran his eyes over the wealth of low tables to try and locate him when he realised what he had just heard. Nammie. Just like what Taehyung had called him all those months back that currently felt like centuries. Nammie, the boy reeling outside of a subway entrance and stinking of alcohol, grabbing onto his arm and breathing all over him, eyes misted over with tears. The memory was enough to make his stomach plunge down nearly to his feet and he finally dropped his gaze on Donghyun. The boy was waving an arm up at him with a thick pencil clutched in his chubby hand; red.

"Yeah?" he called back, feeling his skin go slightly cold even though he couldn't figure out why.

"I made you a picture!"

"Oh! I wanna make him one too!" a girl called Sooyoung announced. She had been coming to the centre for just a few weeks now and already she followed him and Yeeun around like a lost puppy; four year old with a Doraemon sippy cup in hand.

"Let's all make pictures," Namjoon suggested as he crossed the room to sit at the table. It was so low that he had to hunker forward to even place his elbows on the tabletop. "Let's make pictures about...the thing that makes us happy."

"My mom," Sooyoung said as she picked up her sippy cup.

"My puppy!" another boy said before making puppy noises at him.

"What makes you happy?" Donghae asked, tapping his pencil down on the table like a drumstick.

"What makes me happy?" Namjoon repeated the question back at him and the boy nodded enthusiastically, slightly curled hair bouncing from the movement. "Well...my friends make me happy."

"Friends are nice," a little girl with scrunchies agreed, already scribbling what looked like a cat on her piece of paper.

"Yeah, my friends are the greatest in the world," Namjoon said quietly, eyeing the blank sheets of paper all over the table. "So they make me the happiest person in the world too."

The subway ride back to the apartment was one spent in silent contemplation, backpack slung up on his shoulder as he leaned back against the wall of the compartment and watched the desk tunnel blur past the window, the occasional light glaring bright orange like the eyes of a hideous monster lurking in the shadows. The way that Namjoon currently felt he wouldn't be surprised if there was a monster on board with him, for there was a restless unease about him that made him gnaw on his lips and consider biting at his nails even though it had been some time since he had kicked the habit. In his backpack, pressed tightly between the pages of a novel he had been reading this morning, were the countless drawings that the children had given him. It was nice, being gifted things like that when it meant a lot to a child to create something like that; things their parents should have been receiving and sticking on the fridge rather than him. But Namjoon had enough scrawled crayon and pencil and watercolour pictures in a desk drawer in his apartment that he could fill a gallery with them if he so wanted.

He thought that the galleries would look a hell of a lot better with children's art hanging in it. It wasn't about boring traditional or pretentious modern art, Namjoon just believed that the world made a lot more sense in the eyes of a child, so then art would be crystal clear too. Why, he should show them all to Hoseok and get him to analyse them all and tell him just how happy or sad each artist was.

When he shifted to fix his backpack the scent of smoke wafted from his clothing and he sighed under his breath. Yeeun had caught a few of the younger teens with a cigarette in the other room, sharing it over playing pool on a fun sized table, and he had had to confiscate it, along with a battered packet that had clearly been snatched off a table back at home by one of the teens. One particular boy that had a habit of running his mouth had called him a hypocrite, citing that he had totally smoked when he had been their age. The boy had been correct, for he had smoked a few here and there but he hadn't touched a single stick since the age of seventeen, so he didn't think it was too hypocritical. Either way he had brought an end to that and the crumpled packet was in a station trash can a mile or so back across the city. The scent reminded him of Yoongi, who was still smoking like a grumpy train except he was now sleeping and eating better, which he supposed was a fair trade. He would prefer if he cut down or cut them out completely but he knew that it would take some time to do so. Yoongi had been smoking for nearly a decade, that wasn't an easy habit to kick. At least he had noticed no new scars on his skin in quite some time. He owed Jimin a lot for this fact.

Namjoon shifted just as the carriage slowed down and when the doors opened he stepped over the slight gap to get onto the platform. From there he weaved around crowds of people and walked the long stretch of platform to find the steps that led back onto the street. His apartment block was not far at all from the subway entrance and within several minutes he was entering the building and riding up the elevator to get to his floor. No more Minah, she had moved out in the winter to travel down and console her grieving mother and had yet to return, though he had kept in contact with her in the form of messages every few days. The other room was currently empty, no neighbour for him. He didn't have to unlock the door for he knew that Seokjin would already be inside, and he stepped inside to see that that was the case.

Seokjin was usually sitting at their shared desk reading something, jotting down something, basically working away even when he had no need to, and yet today he was lounged on the bed and he had something in his hands. It took a few seconds of study before he saw that it was a camcorder, one had hadn't seen in years. It had been a gift for Seokjin's thirteenth birthday back when there had been a craze for making home movies about every little thing, a Sony that was bulky and well-built, and he could see a wire snaking out of it to plug into a nearby wall socket.

"Hey," Namjoon said as he dropped to his knees to remove his sneakers. "The fuck did you find that thing?"

"I packed it with me when I left Anyang," Seokjin explained without taking his eyes off the screen in his hands. "I left it in my old bedroom and so I just packed it. I didn't even check if it was working, I just thought that it would look cool on a shelf: retro. But then I found out it still works."

"Oh yeah?" Namjoon crossed the room to sit down on the edge of the bed, bag placed against the side table without a care. "They built those babies to last. You could throw that outta the window and it would still work."

"There's a couple of memory cards in a box, all of them used up I think, I just loaded up the one still in it to see if it worked and-" Seokjin turned the device around slightly so that he could see the screen. Right now he could see that most of it was taken up by Taehyung's face, for he had decided to stick his head right up in front of the lens, the voice coming from the tinny speaker a different pitch than he was used to hearing, a lot sweeter even when he was talking shit. "Guess when this recording is from?"

Namjoon waited for Taehyung to move out of the way and he saw a few things to help him figure it all out. The first was Yoongi had black hair, shorter than his usual messy lengths that now covered his brow. The second was that Jimin had a brace on his right arm that had been the result of going flying over the handlebars of Hoseok's battered bike and hitting the curb of the sidewalk to crack his wrist bone. The last and final thing he saw that helped him figure out a rough estimate was the fact that Hoseok was smiling and laughing in the background.

"That's the day we hit the park and Taehyung got so high on the swing that he jumped off and managed to land in the tree." And to prove his point the footage cut and started playing again, just in time to catch him climbing onto the seat and grabbing hold of the chains, hollering for someone to push him. Three years ago, give or take a month or two. So Hoseok did and they watched him going back and forth, back and forth.

"Who thinks I can't do it, huh?" Taehyung shouted. The sound of Jungkook's voice came offshoot telling him that he wasn't Superman. "Fuck you Kookie, I'm better than Superman." And he proved this point a minute or so later when the camera swiveled and followed his short flight that ended in him slamming his ribs into the thick branch hard enough to leave bruises for a week afterwards, but Taehyung had ended up straddling it and laughing hysterically down at their reactions.

"Probably should have expected him to go a little...crazy," Seokjin said after a moment, turning the machine off and placing it down and cocking his elbow so that he could balance his head in the palm of his hand. "No, that's not the right word, it's too cruel."

"Unbalanced is what you were thinking," Namjoon corrected. "Completely unbalanced and searching for equilibrium only to keep falling."

"Hmmm, that sounds right," Seokjin agreed with a nod and he sensed that there was something on his mind. He wasn't being very upfront about it but there was something there all right, for he could see it on the slight pout of his lower lip. Namjoon asked him if he was okay and he didn't reply instantly like he had expected, a series of reassured yes' that sounded forced. "I was thinking today, about the past. It upset me, so I called Yoongi and spoke with him and Jimin for awhile."

"What part upset you exactly?"

"The parts about Tae," Seokjin said, reaching over with his free hand to stroke his fingertips along the camcorder. "As always, it's always Tae." Namjoon thought about how thoughts of their friend had popped into his mind too and he could only silently agree. The chances were if any of them thought about the past it would involve him somehow, intentional or not."But mostly I was thinking about his father."

"That's the kinda thing you shouldn't think about," he remarked.

"Yes, but I still keep thinking about it even though I shouldn't. What would it have been like if we would have done anything, if we would have gotten him out of that situation?"

"We were kids, what could we've done back then, huh? Shit, Kookie was all of five when we first saw him whaling on Tae, you remember him crying don't you? 'Cos I do, burst out into tears at the sight of him smacking him on the back of the head. So Kookie grew up thinking fighting solved problems only to find out it makes more."

"What if we had though? What would Tae be like now, I wonder?"

"He wouldn't be Tae," Namjoon said with a shrug, "and that's all I know."

The camcorder was moved onto the desk as soon as it finished charging and he didn't know if it was because Seokjin wanted to use it for decoration or if he was planning on using it. All he did know was that he was going to help his friend make some food, clean up and sleep until the early afternoon if possible. After tidying up the kitchen area he remembered the drawings from the youth centre so he made sure to add them to the drawer, which was getting so full he wouldn't be surprised if he soon ran out of room inside of it. The drawer felt a little like his mind, which was currently so packed full of thoughts that he was certain things would start leaking out to fit room for more. Sleep hadn't ever seemed as appealing as it had at that very moment, and Namjoon wasn't at all surprised to find himself drifting off to sleep to the sight of Seokjin sitting at the desk looking through a book of some kind, a photo album he thought.

And he was awoken to the sound and sensation of his phone blaring on the side table beside him.

For a moment he was so confused that he could only open his eyes and stare at the device, vibrating along the wood violently enough to almost dance. Then he managed to reach over and grab it, sitting upright as he did. From the bed beside him he heard Seokjin muttering something but it was muffled against the pillow. He fumbled to take the call, not even reading the screen because his eyes were so heavy the name was blurred beyond recognition.

"Hello?" Namjoon said as he rubbed at his eyes. There was a series of static crackles down the line and then he heard a strange sound, a breathy wheezing. For a moment he was too sleepy to react and then he furrowed his brow. "Hello?" Another burst of static and then he heard someone else on the line. It took him a moment to figure out that it was Hoseok.

"Joonie?" his friend said in confusion. "Why're you on the line? I got a call from Tae and-"

"I dunno I just got a call too I-"

"Tae? The fuck're you calling at 3am for?" That was Yoongi, and he could even hear Jimin making soft noises in the background.

"Group call?" It was at the point that Jungkook's voice sounded that Namjoon shifted to put his phone on speaker to let Seokjin hear what the hell was going on. His friend shifted to squint at him and that was when there was more noises on the line. Another wheezy breath that sounded like someone struggling to breathe, or someone in the act of crying. Namjoon turned to look at Seokjin and then the wheeze turned into an actual sob.

"Tae?" Hoseok asked first, doing so in a voice that sounded calm on the surface but hinted at barely concealed panic. "Where are you right now? I just woke up and you're not in bed and-"

"Fucking did it," Taehyung spoke over him. Hearing him speak Namjoon could picture his lips pulling back in an unconscious grimace. "He fucking did it."

"Did what? Tae who did what?" Seokjin asked as he shifted to lean closer to the phone. His face looked wide awake and he wouldn't be surprised if he was for Namjoon's heart felt like it was pounding in his chest, racing a mile a minute.

"Speak to us Tae," Jungkook added. "Let us know what's going on man."

"I-I-I duh-didn't wanna...wanna do it but he-he-" Taehyung was hyperventilating down the line and the sound was enough to make Namjoon's stomach clench painfully tight, "I huh-had to."

"Tae?" Hoseok asked again, voice barely a whisper underneath his ragged breathing. He couldn't see him and yet he could picture their friend clearly in his mind, holding onto his phone with both hands, eyes wide so that he could see so much of the whites around his irises. His eyelids would flicker and his eyes would be rolling around in his skull like a horse that had scented water. He might relinquish his death grip on the phone to tug at his hair or wipe at his face, which would be clammy with sweat. The mental image was unsettling because it meant one thing: it meant that Taehyung was terrified.

"He's duh-dead," Taehyung said in a jittery voice, teeth chattering together. "He's duh-duh-duh-dead and- oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck." He whined the last curse out and Namjoon stared at Seokjin to see that his friend was staring at the phone with a blank expression, slack jawed and empty.

"He's duh-duh-dead and I fuh-fucking kuh-killed him!"