After standing for a minute, staring at the old building in the spot where BigHit Entertainment headquarters was supposed to be, Taehyung continued the short and heart-wrenchingly familiar walk to the dorms, until he realized that the address he had been told to go to wasn’t the address of the dorms. Nearby, according to the GPS on his phone, but not the same place.

Everything here was strange. It was as if the world had been taken and everything had been changed just slightly. It was like those movies or television shows where a person time travels to sometime in the near past and ends up changing the course of the future just a tiny bit, not enough to change it entirely, but enough to make it seem different.

But that was something to think about later.

He followed the directions his phone’s GPS told him and ended up staring up at a huge apartment building, surrounded by other huge apartment buildings. The area was colorless and stale, filled with various tones of uninspiring gray.

As he walked through the hallways and climbed flights of stairs, trying to find the room he had been instructed to go to, he couldn’t help but feel nervous. These people he had been treating him as if he was a stranger. As if they didn’t know him. That meant he couldn’t be himself around them. Or could he? How could he act like not himself? He’d never done it before. He had never had to hide who he was before, not like this.

He found the right apartment number and knocked on the door, quickly rapping his knuckles on the wood with more force than he intended or was required. He tried to force himself to calm down, but all that did was cause him to worry more. This wasn’t home. The people he was about to see were strangers, weren’t they?

He forgot this as soon as he saw Min Yoongi’s face.

Which is why he ended up falling into said boy’s arms with a sob.

~

Taehyung didn’t grow up particularly wealthy. He wasn’t poor by any means, but he wasn’t wealthy. He grew up on a farm, surrounded by his family. A simple life that he was happy to live in and often sad that he had to leave.

That being said, Taehyung did know elegance when he saw it. For example, he knew a wide variety of jewels.

Which meant that his terrified screech when two opals pretending to be eyes stared at him wasn’t entirely unwarranted.

The boy with the opal eyes, the one that looked like a doll of Yoongi with jewels for eyes, jumped back with a yelp of surprise that melted Taehyung’s heart, because the word he shouted was something that those from Daegu shouted when they were surprised. “Dammit, kid!” Non-Yoongi yelled. “Wha’s the matter with you?!”

Taehyung involuntarily grinned at Non-Yoongi’s slurred speech that sounded like home. The kind that only people from Daegu fully understood. The speech that he himself slipped into when he was upset and Yoongi would give him a small smile and offer to buy him ice cream.

“He’s smiling,” a voice that sounded a lot like Seokjin’s muttered with an air of disbelief.

“Told you he’s crazy,” a low voice added.

“Do you ever shut up?!” another voice snapped.

“Every other Tuesday at four A.M. sharp!”

A small laugh, the one that Jeongguk laughed when he was shy and nervous, chimed from somewhere in the room.

Taehyung stopped staring into space and dared a look at the boy whom he had surprised. This Yoongi’s black hair was surprisingly long, reaching far past his shoulders with the ends bleached and colored a dark blue color. His eyebrows were much the same, mostly black and tinted blue at the edges. And then there were his eyes, the iridescent opals that had shocked Taehyung. The way Yoongi was holding himself was odd, too. He wasn’t slumped, shoulders downcast like usual. Instead, he held himself up straight, with an air of regality, like someone born into royalty. Taehyung found his eyes attracted to a single gold earring that appeared to be a chain that was so long it rested on his shoulder. Very regal.

He looked like Yoongi, but this wasn’t Yoongi. It couldn’t be… right?

“Are you going to continue staring at the menu, or are you gonna order?” (Fake?) Yoongi asked, raising one strangely-colored eyebrow. A few laughs sou