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I watched the time on my phone change from 11:47 to 11:48 as I stepped inside the recording facility from the darkness of the night coating the SKEES grounds. I pushed through each door shoulder-first, each of my hands preoccupied with its own cup of coffee. I nodded at the man behind the security desk, whose reciprocated nod served as a non-verbal sign of permission to proceed.

I paid very little attention to anything on my way, my feet acting by their own accord as they brought me to Studio 7. I didn’t bother to knock as I pushed open the slightly ajar door, a sign that my presence was expected. When I stepped inside, I was surprised to see only one hunched figure sitting at the computer instead of three, its head resting down against the desk.

“Mylo and Joon Yeong left already?”

“Yeah,” Anna mumbled, her body not moving an inch. I purposely placed the coffee down directly in her line of sight.

“I know you prefer tea but I thought you might need something a little stronger,” I explained, taking a seat in the chair beside hers.

“Correct, as usual,” she groaned, despising the reality of my words. She lifted her head and took the cup in her hands, taking a lazy sip of the caffeinated drink. A deep sigh escaped her lips after swallowing it down.

“Whoa, there. That didn’t sound like just a tired sigh.’

“It wasn’t,” she sighed yet again, placing an elbow on the desk and leaning her head on her hand. “I’m stressed as hell.”

“Well, yeah. You’re producing a mini-album on top of all the other SKEES stuffs into our schedules. I’d think you were crazy if you weren’t stressed,” I pointed out. She shook her head.

“It’s not the workload. It’s my work.”

“You don’t like the songs you’ve made thus far?” I asked, not quite understanding what she was saying. She hadn't voiced any such complaints within the past few weeks so I wasn't really sure where her sudden doubts were coming from all of a sudden.

“No, no, I do,” she assured but paused to think. “Okay, a few of them need some work. But the music production in general, I’m really happy with. It’s me that has me unhappy.”

“What do you mean? Your singng?”

“Yes,” she groaned. “I sound terrible.”

I rolled my eyes. “Of course you think that. We haven’t finished editing your vocals yet.”

“I’ve been messing around with them for the past hour and they still sound like .”

I gave her a look but at this rate, she didn’t seem to be lightening up on her own any time soon. “Alright, I say we leave the vocal editing to the professionals. You may know this software but you don't know how to mix vocals like they do. Let them do their thing and then you can go and criticize how you sound,” I concluded, scooting my chair towards her laptop and shutting it.

“What are you doing?” She snapped, my abrupt action sharpening her up.

“You’re getting too mopey. It’s late, you should relax.”

But she wasn’t having it. “Yoongi, I need to work- Yoongi! Stop texting while I’m talking to you, you rude-”

Anna was cut off, even flinching slightly, as the door was pushed open and a chorus of off-pitched voices flooded the space.

“Happy graduation to you! Happy graduation to you! Our Anna’s graduated! Happy graduation to you!”

I witnessed Anna’s face make a complete 180, a disbelieving smile spreading over her lips as she watched our friends enter with a small cake in her honor. As soon as they finished their ironically inharmonious singing, everyone broke into excited applause and laugher. Hoseok ran over to her, wild laughter escaping his lips as he and smothered her with love.

“You should’ve seen your face,” he laughed, suffocating her with a huge hug. “That was priceless.”

“Yah, you jerk,” she complained, half-heartedly trying to push him off of her. “How are you even here? Aren’t you supposed to be promoting in Japan?”

“I literally just got back. I had my manager drop me off here instead of at the dorms. Though, I guess the dorms are just a few buildings away…”

“You did what?” She asked him incredulously, staring at him like he was a madman. “You’re probably exhausted! You didn’t have to come and do this for me!”

“Maybe not, but it’s not everyday that one of our favorite people graduates from college! In the top percentile of her class, no less!”

She furrowed her eyebrows together, a faint blush flushing over her cheeks. “Who told you that?”

She was never one to brag about her achievements. Besides her family, a few staff members, and a very small number of artists, she had kept the news to herself. She took pride in it on her own.

“That hyung over there,” Hobi’s finger landed in my direction, making a pair of wide, brown eyes do the same. “He set this whole thing up, too.”

“You did all this for me?” She asked in even greater surprise than before, looking so unbelievably touched. It created a pressure in my chest, stronger than any of my other experiences with this feeling thus far. But I gave her an amused smile and nodded, beyond pleased with her reaction to my long-awaited plan.

“Thanks for not telling me, by the way. I was only your first friend here,” Hoseok complained to her, giving her his best pout. She chuckled at him, cuddling up against his side in apology.

“I didn’t tell that many people,” she assured him, only momentarily easing his mind.

“She told me,” Chun Hwa chimed, not that it shocked anyone.

“She told me, too,” Namjoon added from beside her.

Now that was a bit more shocking. Hoseok practically leaped away from Anna, looking at her like she had committed a monstrous betrayal.

“You told Namjoon, but you didn’t tell me?!”

“He was with Yoongi when I told him!” She immediately defended, trying very hard not to laugh.

“So you would’t have told him otherwise?”

She shrugged, not thinking about the bad position he had unintentionally put her in. “I don’t know, probably not.”

“Wow, harsh,” Namjoon commented, clearly just trying to push her buttons- which he did. Anna groaned and threw her hands up in exasperation.

“You guys are killing me,” she groaned. Hobi grinned mischievously and reattached himself to her with a loop of his arm around her body.

“But it’s all out of loooooooove,” he sing-songed obnoxiously. Anna rolled her eyes in a way more commonly seen on myself.

“Gee, thanks.”

“Yes, alright, we love Anna very much. But right now, I love cake and sleep more so how about we get this thing moving?” Chun Hwa aggressively suggested, snatching the cake out of Jimin’s hands and setting it down on Anna’s closed laptop.

“Chun Hwa!” The girl of honor looked at her best friend with a smirk-resisting dropped jaw.

“Blow out your candles, make a wish, do... I don't know, whatever people do with their graduation cakes,” she continued, already hovering the knife over the cake.

“You’re really the worst, did you know that?” Anna teased and grinned up at Chun Hwa, earning a similar look of mischief in return. Nonetheless, she blew out her candles as requested and leaned back to let her friend carve out enough small slices of cake to feed all of us. I was grateful that no one was enforcing a diet at that moment.

Unfortunately, Chun Hwa wasn’t the only one who was anxious to be reunited with her bed and the night ended all too soon. Everyone offered their final words of congratulations to Anna as they left, some more dramatic than others, until it was just the two of us again. A small, content smile played at the corners of her lips as she pushed around the remnants of her cake with her fork. I simply observed her as she did so.

“I…,” she started before shaking her head with a smile. “I don’t know what to say.”

“People typically say thank you,” I joked, making her chuckle once.

“I know,” she nodded. “It just doesn’t seem like enough.”

“I know what you’re gonna say.” I held up a hand, stopping her before she could start. “And I promise, you still don’t owe me anything.”

“Yoongi,” she whined, giving me a pout. “How can you expect me to do nothing for you when you do so much for me?”

“You do things for me,” I urged. “They may not be like the things I do for you but they’re things that matter to me nonetheless.”

She frowned. “Like what?”

I hesitated momentarily, wondering just how much I should say. Part of me wondered when I ever chose not to say what I felt or thought and asked why I was starting to be like that then. The other part didn’t want to scare Anna away or make what had become a solid friendship awkward. But on another thought, how could things have a chance of going anywhere if I held back?

“You have a way of making me feel important,” I revealed slowly, choosing my words carefully. “Most people would think it’s impossible for me to not feel that way with the career I have. But the attention I get from fans is different from that of someone who’s completely on my level. You see me as just Yoongi, not Suga. Not some dressed up, scultped-to-perfection idol. With you, I'm just a guy that makes music and I know that's all you expect of me. And that’s… that’s really special to me.”

“It’s because you are special, Yoongi,” she admitted honestly. “And I’m glad I make you feel like that. Because you deserve it.”

That wasn’t the only way she made me feel. But I wasn’t quite sure how to approach those other feelings yet so I chose to refrain from taking it that much further.

“Thank you,” I smiled, hiding my embarrassment with the drop of my head. “Oh, you did something for me and I said thank you. That must mean I owe you, right?”

She laughed, appreciating the joke. “According to my standards, I guess so,” she agreed. Her eyes lingered on me for a moment, something shifting in them. “Thank you for tonight, Yoongi. I really needed all that and it really meant a lot to me.”

“Of course, you’ve done something great. Graduating from college isn’t an easy feat- especially not in your life. You deserved a little celebration.”

“I guess so. I just didn’t expect one.”

“Well, that’s very sad,” I pointed out, amusing us both. I then turned my wrist to look at my watch, the hands on its face telling me it was already halfpast one. When I shared that with Anna, she yawned on cue, serving as a wordless indicator that it was probably time for us to head out.

We walked out of the building side-by-side, exchanging casual conversation and adorning smiles the whole time. I felt so incredibly comfortable in her presence and it seemed the feeling was mutual. I didn’t think twice about sticking by her as we walked past the boys’ residential building and I continued on to the girls’ building with her. She didn’t ask about it, either. We came to a slow stop at its front door.

“So, do I even say thank you for walking me here? I’m beginning to feel like I say it too much,” she admitted.

I raised an eyebrow at her. “You’re only beginning to feel that way?”

She laughed and looked down at her feet. “Alright, well, at least let me say it one last time.”

I sighed dramatically. “If you insist.”

Maybe I shouldn’t have given her that permission. She gave me a deep grin before aggressively unleashing her true colors.

“THANK YOU, MIN YOONGI, FOR BEING THE COOLEST AND BESTEST FRIEND EVER!” She yelled out, despite the current time, and enveloped me in a huge hug.

“Would you pipe down? Nobody wants to hear your yelling at this hour,” I scolded yet laughed loudly myself, wrapping my arms around her shoulders anyway. I did my best to reciprocate how tightly hers were around me. “You sure are one crazy American chick."
 

“Maybe you’re just a boring Korean dude,” she countered, pulling her head out of my shoulder to look at me face to face. And my god, was she so unbelievably close. It didn’t seem like either of us were expecting to ever be in such close proximity.

“Maybe,” I echoed softly, my voice betraying me. I’m sure our stare-off didn’t last more than a few seconds but it felt like minutes to me.

For a moment, I wondered whether we were going to kiss right there on that front path. We came very close, actually. But something must’ve switched off in Anna’s mind as she leaned back just slightly. She was still held close in my arms but she suddenly felt far enough for me to infer that she was against a kiss like that right then.

But I still couldn’t help myself. We had been so close- too close for me to resist her. But I wasn’t an . So instead, I leaned down to press my lips against her cheek. It was casual enough to be considered friendly but both of us knew it was not. But the touch was gone as soon as it had appeared and we found ourselves stepping away from each other seconds later. Not even the dark of the night could hide the redness of her face.

“So, uh, I’ll see you on… Wednesday, I guess?” She began her parting words, the small smile she couldn’t keep off her lips leaving me feeling encouraged. That look could only imply that she had good thoughts about my forward action, right?

Wait, Wednesday. What day was it today, then? Monday? Yeah, Monday, the start of the fourth week of her album’s production, that’s right. So I had a full day to recover from the events of the day. Perfect.

I nodded. “See you Wednesday.”

We gave each other awkward smiles before she swiped herself into the residential building. I my heel to head to my own, my eyes immediately landing on the outer gate down the street that separated us from the rest of Seoul. I realized that not once were we cautious of any outside eyes and that if it weren’t for the late hour and dim lighting, Anna and I could have very well set off a spree of rumors- all of which would’ve most likely been backed by photos. It was a relief to see nobody standing there watching but it was still unnerving that I had been so thoughtless. Anna was still on the new side here but I knew better.

So, as I stepped into my own building, I made a note to myself to be more wary of possible observing eyes in such moments. I just hoped there were more moments like that to come.