Jinyoung’s cold feet automatically moves towards the nearest shop that doesn’t look like a brothel to him, when his legs finally caught up to how tired his mind is for running thoughts that doesn’t matter. He has probably walked the entire length of the red district in search for nothing and anything, maybe nothing that would bring his back to his reality and anything that would momentarily make him forget. That doesn’t include es willing to open their legs in front of him though.

He is also aware of how dangerous the red district can be – or rather, is – but he wants to wander someplace where no one can recognize him, where no one knows him because if he sees someone familiar and they ask where he is going, he wouldn’t be able to lie. He’ll probably answer, “I don’t know.”

He can almost see their worried looks when he answers that way and it’s more tiring if someone cares when you are so used to no one cares. He doesn’t need that right now. He needs to walk as far as he can, exhaust his lower limbs, and maybe, finally, he can get some sleep.

But not before drinking something.

Jinyoung enters the small shop and fortunately, his instinct didn’t endanger him. It’s a small convenience store after all, with little tables and chairs around it. There are a couple of people inside besides him. He guesses one is a teenager because she is still in a school uniform buying several condoms and the other is an old man, asking directions to one of the shop’s crew.

He falls behind the school girl buying condoms and is not surprised when he finally sees her face that she’s not a teenager after all. It’s probably just costume, he figures, as he have seen something similar in videos online. She bats her long, fake eyelashes on him before leaving.

“How may I help you?” The guy behind the cash register is smiling brightly at him and he barely reads the nametag on his left chest.

Hi, my name is Youngjae!

“Do you have an energy drink?”

“What kind of energy drink?” the guy asks, that huge smile maintaining its glaring place on his not-too-handsome face and it irritates Jinyoung. But he realizes he’s not there to pick a fight.

“Something that can give me strength to live another day, maybe?” It’s a typical reply, he thinks. People living and working in the red district should have come here and ask for that from time to time, if not all the time, but the guy blinks at him for a moment, as if this is the first time he has heard of that.

“Hello?” Jinyoung lazily waves a hand in front of his dazed face.

“I’m sorry,” the guy immediately laughs. His laugh is intriguing, Jinyoung thinks. “We don’t have a stock right now.”

“Oh.” He is about to leave. Maybe he can jump from a building or cut open his neck later. It’s amazing how easy you can take someone’s life, much more your own life.

“Wait,” the guy stops him. “I think we’ll have that drink tomorrow. Can you come back tomorrow?”

Jinyoung stares judgingly at the guy. He thinks he is glaring but he is only staring judgingly at him, figuring out if the guy is playing him or making a fool out of him. It’s neither, he decides. The look on the guy’s face is sincere and he almost believes in that drink he invented himself and that tomorrow, he can drink it.

“I’ll reserve one for you, yes?” the guy tells him, that smile returning to his face.

He opens his mouth and closes it. He thinks he doesn’t owe this stranger an answer but he still finds himself answers, “Don’t bother. I might find something better.” Maybe drowning himself would be good, too. It would take days before someone finds his corpse and that would give his family enough time to think that they haven’t done anything. He doesn’t want his family regretting his death most of all.

“But we’ll really have it tomorrow. Come back tomorrow,” the guy persists. “I promise I’ll save one just for you. It really gets sold-out immediately once it arrives.”

“Then why bother saving one for an unsure profit from an unsure customer?”

That makes the guy stop and think for a moment and Jinyoung likes how that smile that seems to be plastered on his face disappears. But not for long. His smile returns and he tells him, “I’ll still save one for you. Come back tomorrow, okay?”

“Fine, whatever,” Jinyoung mutters before turning his back on the guy and finally leaving. He thinks he won’t be able to come back for sure because tomorrow, if he’s not busy hanging himself, he’s probably out buying some detergent to mix with his coffee and die. His feet are still dead from walking five hours straight but they don’t bother him as much as his heart does.

He thinks it’s already dead but somehow, he feels it moving again.

The next day, after walking three hours straight from the city to and around the red district once more, he finds himself in the same shop that doesn’t look like a brothel. He figures it wouldn’t hurt to give it a try and if that guy is only playing him like a fool, then he’ll probably kill the guy and kill himself. That doesn’t sound like a problem to Jinyoung.

He doesn’t see the guy behind the counter.

Jinyoung looks around the tiny shop of everything the owner must have thought is going to be needed by somebody. The guy from yesterday is nowhere to be seen. However, the door opens and he sees the woman in a high school student’s uniform again. This time, she lazily brushes her arms on Jinyoung’s arms and hazily murmurs something he can’t understand.

He doesn’t know why he stands there, looking around, because he is pretty sure he has everything he needs back on his apartment: a bread knife, because he figures if he died that quickly, he still wouldn’t be able to feel something and he wants to feel something in his dying seconds.

He watches the woman buy more condoms and when she leaves, he is about to follow, too, but he comes face to face with the guy from yesterday, just entering the shop. Jinyoung stares at him and studies him because he looks like the guy from yesterday but also, a lot differently, too.

The guy is wearing casual clothes, dark denim jeans, some navy blue shirt with some print, a red jacket and sneakers. What makes him the guy who is wearing a pink apron with the shop’s name printed on it and a pink cap with the shop’s name embedded on it is his smile. It’s the same from yesterday and it turns even more brightly when he sees Jinyoung.

“Hey, you came!”

Jinyoung blinks. He is not used to this. He is not used to familiarity and the guy shouldn’t be, too, because they haven’t even properly met. They just exchanged a few words yesterday and that doesn’t count as meeting. He has exchanged a lot more words with family and friends all his life but even those doesn’t count as meeting to him.

“I – Uh,” he doesn’t know what to say.

“Youngjae, why are you late?” the person standing behind the cash register interrupts their little meeting, immediately removing the hideous cap and apron.

“Sorry, I just had to do something,” the guy – now Jinyoung is a little uncomfortable not naming the guy properly, Youngjae – says and quickly wears his own cap and apron. He doesn’t seem to be as bothered about it as the other guy who just left. He stands behind the cash register again and says to Jinyoung, “I have your energy drink.”

He doesn’t know if he should play along or not because seriously, the guy – or Youngjae – is not serious, is he? What, something-that-can-give-him-strength-to-live-another-day energy drink?

“Here.” Youngjae places an ordinary-looking bottle on the counter.

He takes a step forward and stares at the bottle. It looks extremely ordinary but when he picks it up, it says SOMETHING THAT CAN GIVE ME STRENGTH TO LIVE ANOTHER DAY ENERGY DRINK!!! He almost laughs at how weird the font is squeezed so it will fit around the bottle. And that’s not all of it, he sees, because around the bottle is also some ingredients and nutrition facts, and he is seriously wondering what is this guy.

Jinyoung sees hope, love, and fun on the ingredients and he wonders why he feels like feelings all of those without even drinking what’s inside the bottle yet. When he finally looks up at the guy, his smile is plastered on his face again like a mask but strangely, like all those other smiles he has to deal with on an everyday basis, it doesn’t seem like a mask.

“How much?”

“It’s free,” the guy answers, smiling at him.

“Free? If I come back again tomorrow and asks for this, is it still going to be free?”

End

a/n Was supposed to post last night but our connections . A bit rushed, I just wanted to write this last night and to write something GOT7/2Young. My first GOT7 fic, btw. Or the the first one I posted, that is.

The world needs more 2Young.