School starts in a flurry of new books and old friends. The March 2nd parade of clean pressed shirts and tight-pleated skirts paint the streets os Seoul in the colours of a New Start. As one, they launch themselves back into their studies, as if the tell-tale drops of winter still falling from their fingertips bear no consequence; their generation convinced they are the first to starve off sleep in the pursuit of dreams and affluence.

It is spring, and Jimin watches Yoongi smoke outside the school gates.

It’s not the cigarette that catches his eye, or the aura of mocking rebellion that the older boy emits. It’s not even the nicotine stains creeping round his fingers up to his teeth.

Yoongi has eyes as empty as a skull’s. They catch Jimin’s line of sight and hold no malice or discontent; he doesn’t look particularly happy and he doesn’t look particularly sad. The range of human emotion seems lost on him as he breathes choked fire from his lungs.

They don’t know each other, and in five minutes time Yoongi will have forgotten the slack jawed grin and eager eyesmile of a boy he’s not ready to care about, but Jimin thinks he sees something worth remembering. Somewhere beyond the angry hunch of his shoulders and the English slogans on his backpack he thinks he might just have spotted the glimmer of something genuine.

But then Taehyung’s dragging him to maths, and he lets himself be overwhelmed by the pressure of his high flying grades.



The swallows dipping across the burnished blue sky trace patterns than Jimin yearns to plot, his brain ticking through derivatives before he can stop it. Sweat sticks his hair to his face and the shouts of other boys burn bright along his bloodstream. The empty plane of the basketball courts becomes a battlefield before eyes too young to understand the heart of any conflict.

It is summer, and Yoongi is beating his whole team single-handedly.

Bare feet smack the tarmac, an extra test to prove they’re tough enough – like walking on hot coals. Yoongi runs at him, taller (just) but slighter than Jimin, a dark streak darting across the court.

The ball is rough under Jimin’s fingers; he can never quite catch it before he has to let it go again. Yoongi runs at him with cold determination seeping from his uncaring eyes. The dodges and parries of the game are as easy as dancing, a twist, a turn, duck down low, and use your height to your advantage.

He doesn’t see it happen, but a dancer’s step is not enough. In the space of time it takes to blink Yoongi rearranges matter and places himself halfway down the court with the ball in his hands. Jimin can still feel its ghost against his fingertips.

A chorus of disappointment resonates around the space, and Yoongi responds by taking the ball, fresh from his most recent basket, and spinning it atop his finger, smug smile failing to permeate the rockface of his eyes. Jimin feels himself staring but can’t look away, even when Yoongi turns to look him in the eye, his paper thin skin glowing pink in the harsh sunlight.

The air is so still, the students so sluggish. Jimin has to forcibly remind himself that the earth is still turning.

Lights flicker in the dying sockets of Yoongi’s eyes. Jimin takes a hesitant step towards him, but the air is too thick to breathe and much too thick to wade through and he misses the moment, Yoongi hurling him the ball and dashing after it fast enough to taste the wind.

They play again the next day, after school, and none of Jimin’s friends want to join them.



The mounting pressure of the November examinations weighs them all down by some measure. In three months’ time they will be done and these hellish days that consist of little more than stress and sleep will fade to memories they can rest their laurels upon till the next exam season, the scent of text books and class notes never truly forgotten.

It is autumn and Jimin spends the days hunting for free space in the school library.

The Krebbs and Calvin cycles are mercifully distinct in his mind’s eye, though trophic levels tend to confound him. Jimin has never felt especially smart, but he has always worked hard enough to compensate and this year is no exception.

“I’m going home. You should too – go home I mean,” Taehyung peers down at him through fatigue-muted eyes. Jimin shakes his head and presses further into the territory of misunderstood matrices. There’s a soft sigh and when he looks up five minutes later Taehyung is gone.

There is a certain thunder that Jimin allows to roar inside his own head. Hard work comes naturally to him and yet he still finds time to convince himself that he needs to be pushed into it, grips his pen a little too hard, presses his nose a little too close to the page. He’s never let himself drop below fifth place; he’s never let exams get the best of him.

Chemical equations cast long shadows across Jimin’s social life. He sighs. It’s getting late.

Jimin doesn’t let himself go home until the dates of Sino-Japanese treaties are swimming before his eyes. The library has emptied out into a sprawling mess of mislaid textbooks and the last worthy stragglers. He sweeps study guides back into his satchel and makes for the door, darting between tables and in an out of the librarian’s exasperated stare.

September air tastes chilly on the tip of his tongue, and even if the cold is only an illusion played by rising winds, Jimin still shivers as he steps outside. The evening wraps him in its foggy embrace and Jimin starts home.

Yoongi is sitting outside the school gates blowing puffs of smoke into the air, the same as any other night. Jimin stops and watches, blankly, unfeelingly, the way he always imagines Yoongi does everything.

“Stop staring,” Yoongi mumbles. Jimin doesn’t know where else to look.

“You look sad.” Yoongi blinks back at him. Silence.

The night is too windy for the air to be still, but the stilted conversation closes off the world around them. Jimin is reminded of summer classrooms too stuffy to breathe in and autumn libraries on lockdown.

“I’ll walk you home,” Yoongi says. He doesn’t say anything else, neither of them do. Jimin walks half a pace ahead of him because Yoongi doesn’t know the way and he keeps his mouth shut because he doesn’t want to be reminded that he doesn’t need a bodyguard. From his bedroom window he watches Yoongi scuff his feet on the curb as he stalks off back the way he came to whatever corner of Seoul he calls home and Jimin wonders if he was hoping for some company.



They batten down the hatches and hide in castles built on sand. The library is impassable, home is unthinkable, and classroom upon classroom is crammed with students throwing themselves with all their might into the tireless tedium of revision for finals. The smell of stress hits their nostrils before they’ve even dragged themselves from sleep and the only thing keeping them from slowing their work load to nothing is the nagging guilt perpetuated by the knowledge that not a single South Korean student is suffering alone.

It is winter, and Yoongi is terrified.

“I’m gonna fail,” the edge in his voice takes Jimin by surprise. Yoongi doesn’t let emotions through, doesn’t let anything through.

Jimin shoves his shoulder but Yoongi won’t meet his gaze, “You won’t fail, you worked hard.”

“I didn’t.”

“You’re smart.”

“I’m not.”

“You’re gonna be fine.”

“I won’t be.”

Yoongi’s feet scuff the dead grass sprouting from between the paving slabs of the school quad. His breath mists the air and his fingers shake too hard for shivers.

There isn’t anything Jimin can say. Yoongi doesn’t work hard or possess natural aptitude in any of the subjects that the school system dictates one must excel at to be considered an intelligent and fully rounded individual. Jimin has inched closer to him over the past few months and seen his ups and downs, the blank high of a class well skipped and the dull misery of three hours without a break.

He’s not going to do well and it breaks Jimin’s heart to so much as think it, he can’t imagine saying it out loud. The future does not look any shade of bright that Jimin knows for Min Yoongi and he wonders if he should have been a better friend, if there was more room than he remembers for forceful encouragement and gentle nagging.

Then again, Yoongi doesn’t appreciate outside influence.

The crowd waiting for the exam bell to ring grows thicker. Jimin sees Yoongi’s gaze scrape the floor and would do anything to pick it back up again.

“Look at me.” Yoongi does - eyes shot through with nerves, fear glinting off the backs of his irises; the faintest glimmer of hope too weak to make it is dying somewhere beyond the event horizon of his pupils.

There’s nothing good in his eyes, but Jimin can’t help himself. The emotion is too visceral and unfamiliar not to mark and before he can correct himself he leans up the meagre inch he’s lacking and kisses Yoongi, hard. He keeps his eyes open to watch the worry fade to surprise.

Jimin pulls away to a chorus of stunned silence from the assembled crowds. The lines of Yoongi’s face look softer than he remembers, his lips still puckered like he expected Jimin to keep going.

The bell goes, and they part in silence.



Their school bags are always lightest this time of year. The thin sunshine bursting through the cloud cover heralding the start of old things seen from new angles, the rotation of the earth’s orbit marked at 360 degrees greater than whatever forgotten statistic it had held this time last year. March 2nd paints the streets of Seoul with the myriad colours of determination sprung anew; ask any student and they’ll tell you ‘this is my year’, and in a few rare cases, they won’t be lying.

It is spring, and Jimin watches Yoongi smoke outside the school gates.

The difference is that this time Yoongi is neither unreadable nor immutable. Their eyes lock as they pass each other and Jimin sees conversations, hours of effortless speech and silence that they can share later. That they will share, now is not the time.

“We’re gonna be late,” Taehyung grumbles, dragging him along through the slipstream towards another year’s hardwork. Jimin’s ready for it, for the books and the hours of study after dark and the wars he will wage finding space in the library.

As surely as Yoongi will waste his education and do everything within his power to avoid the system at all costs, Jimin will thrive in it. It’s fine, there’s no expectation for either of them to change, and Jimin supposes it would rather defeat the point if they did. It just means that they move in different circles.

Except for when the time comes to leave. Then their worlds collide and they find their way home through the avenues of arguments they’ve been dying to have and conversations they didn’t even realise they needed. Stolen kisses and linked fingers mark their path, familiar steps a comfort in the gloaming. They talk and talk and the light in Yoongi’s eyes shifts like it never wants to sit still again.

And as Jimin leaves him at the end of his road at seven o’clock sharp, every evening without fail, he promises himself that Yoongi has walked home alone for the last time.