Jimin peeks into the Yearbook room, roughly scanning the area before walking in. Some of the members recognize him and say hello, to which he replies with a meek ‘hi’. He finds Yoongi in the backroom, sitting on the floor with his laptop.

                  The older student greets him with a curt nod. “Hey.”

                  “Hi,” he says again. “What are you doing?”

                  “Editing photos from Halloween,” Yoongi replies, moving his stuff so Jimin can sit. “It’s a total because Seokjin wants them all filtered and . I took almost four hundred photos, goddamn.”

                  “That sounds fun.” Jimin laughs when he’s hit on the head. “Th-They look great, though.”

                  Yoongi hums, scrolling through all of them. “Hey wait… Is that you?”

                  Panic erupts through his chest as he takes a closer look at the screen. “… Oh, it’s just my back. Taehyung is there too.” The photo is of the two unicorn friends, both faced away from the camera as the antics of Halloween occur around them; it’s a little dramatic. “… That’s actually a nice photo. Can I have it?”

                  “So you’re okay with being in pictures as long as it’s your back?” Yoongi frowns. “We’re not actually allowed to let people see these.”

                  Jimin frowns too. “Oh.”

                  The other boy clicks open a browser. “What’s your email? Wait, I think I’ll send it to your Facebook instead.”

                  “Yeah.” He grins. “Thanks.”

                  “Just don’t tell anyone.”

                  “Don’t tell anyone what?” says Seokjin, who materializes in the door frame and scares the out of them. “Are the two of you conspiring?”

                  Yoongi growls at him. “ off, I’m working.” His hostility surprises Jimin; not everyone speaks to Kim Seokjin like that.

                  “You’re working with guests around?” Seokjin chuckles. “Never mind. I just wanted you to scrap the filter I told you to use. We’re going with the second template instead.”

                  He can almost hear the male next to him snap. “… What the ing , Seokjin?!” Yoongi shouts, gripping his laptop. “I already did a hundred photos, and now you want me to do it again?!”

                  “Should you really argue with me with our guest here?” The redhead gestures towards him, making Jimin shiver in his own skin.

                  Yoongi backs down with a grunt. “… Fine, just get out of my sight.”

                  He doesn’t leave. Instead, Seokjin turns to Jimin and the latter can feel his soul exiting the longer they make eye contact. “Hello, Jimin. It’s been a while since we’ve last spoken, no?”

                  “Leave him alone.”

                  “Yes, it’s been a-a while,” Jimin replies the best he can without wavering. He doesn’t want to go down without a fight, despite who he is.

                  “How is Miss Chanmi? I heard your date with her went well.”

                  Now he’s confused; why bring her up here? Regardless, he still answers with whatever confidence he has. “Y-Yes, it did. She’s doing fine.”

                  Seokjin smiles. “Good.” And with that, he slips out to leave them alone once more.

                  “I hate his ing guts,” the older sighs, not even looking to see if he was gone. “He’s so damn pretentious.”

                  “But aren’t you two friends?” Jimin asks, folding his knees up.

                  “Not really.” He remembers Seokjin saying something similar when asked the same question. “He’s just always around and I have to bear with him and his personality.”

                  “… Okay.”

                 There’s a brief pause in their conversation while Jimin watches him fly across Photoshop controls like magic. Then Yoongi asks quite suddenly, “you went on a date?”

                 He blinks. “Yeah.”

                 “… Oh.” There’s another moment of silence. “Are you two a thing?”

                 Jimin hesitates before replying. “N-No. I like her, but we’re not dating. Like, officially… B-By the way, I came to tell you something.”

                 “Oh?”

                 He grins and pulls two thumbs up. “I made a friend.”

                 Yoongi stops everything he’s doing and stares at him in genuine surprise. “Like an actual, real-life, breathing­—?”

                 “Yes, hyung, he’s real. He hung out with Tae and I on Halloween.”

                 He cracks a smile and tousles Jimin’s hair. “I knew you could do it.”

--

                 “ARE YOU CHEATING ON ME?!”

                 Jimin looks up at Taehyung, blankly gnawing on a carrot stick. “What are you going off about?”

                 His friend darts a finger towards Hoseok, who is sitting across from Jimin with an equally confused expression. “What are you doing with him?!”

                 “Um… eating lunch?” he replies, not knowing what else to say. Their books are out on the table, which sits in one corner of the bustling cafeteria. Jimin already went ahead and bought his lunch, while Hoseok is waiting for the lines to die down.

                 “But you always eat with me!” Taehyung bemoans, throwing himself onto table. He poses like forlorn protagonist in a Shakespearean play.

                 “Stop being such a drama queen and sit the hell down!” Hoseok pushes him off. “I invited you­­—both of you—to eat here with me because I heard the stairwells are off limits during lunch.”

                 Taehyung gapes. “Is it?”

                 “Yeah.” Jimin nods gravely. “Staff found too many pickles on the windows and now we’re not allowed to eat up there… so Hoseok told us to come here. Don’t you check your texts?”

                 “Oh.” The guy sits down. “Okay! I have raisin bread today. Does anyone have chips they want to trade?!”

                 Hoseok hands him a bag of Cheetos. “So Halloween was wild, huh?”

                 “Says the guy who kept screaming at every kid we ran into on the street.”

                 “You screamed too!”

                 “I screamed,” Taehyung defends himself. “You sounded like you were dying. Back me up, Park.”

                 “No comment,” Jimin says before shoving a piece of apple into his mouth.

                 “Rude.”

                 Hoseok laughs loudly. “But no, I still had fun, even though we were the oldest kids trick-or-treating that night. When was the last time I hung out with you rascals?”

                 “It’s been too long man,” Taehyung cries, reaching up to the ceiling with a pained expression on his face. “It’s… been too long.”

                 “You secretly want to be on Broadway, we get it.”

                 After a couple laughs and runs down memory lane, Hoseok decides it’s time for food and excuses himself to buy lunch. As he strides away, Taehyung faces Jimin with a really big smile. It’s borderline creepy, almost. “What?”

                 “You know what he said to me a couple months ago?” Taehyung starts, propping his head on an elbow. “I invited Hoseok to hang out with us over the summer, but he said no. Because of us.”

                 “… What do you mean?”

                 “He knows that we’re tight, you and me. Like, we are literally the two closest people on earth, and he didn’t want to get in between that. He didn’t want to be the third person, and he was worried about tearing us apart or making it awkward.” The orange-topped kid smiles. “That’s why he didn’t want to hang with us before. But after you invited him out, he was happy. Hoseok knows now that it’s okay to be around us, so he’s really happy now.”

                 Jimin tries to keep a collected attitude but bursts into grins anyway. “I-I’m happy too.”

                 “Aw, look at you!” Taehyung reaches over to pinch his cheeks. “YOU’RE MAKING FRIENDS!”

                 A few minutes later, their friend returns from the servery. “Do you guys watch the afternoon broadcasts?” Hoseok asks as soon as he sets his tray down at their table. Jimin observes the guy’s choice of lunch and realizes it’s exactly the same as his own, even down to the apple color. Now he’s self-conscious.

                 “This kid doesn’t,” Taehyung replies with a mouthful of wiener and jabs a thumb towards him. “He only watches the morning ones because he has to.”

                 Hoseok looks horrified. Jimin silently thanks his friend for throwing him under the goddamn bus. “Nah man, you have to watch the broadcasts. We do funny and besides, we’re gonna announce the trip locations tomorrow.”

                 “Trip locations?” Jimin repeats, rolling his apple under a thumb.

                 Taehyung suddenly slams a fist onto the table. “Oh yeah! All the junior students get to go on an overnight field trip!”

                 “That’s right.” Hoseok nods thoughtfully. “We’re gonna have the council on air tomorrow, they’ll tell us the locations, and we get to vote on where we want to go. I think it’s between, Jeju, Gwangju, and Boseong? Could be wrong on the last one.”

                 “Oh man, definitely not Jeju.”

                 “What’s wrong with it?”

                 “Too much water,” Taehyung says with a frown. “I can’t swim.”

                 Hoseok shoves a forkful of rice into his maws, all while looking utterly sympathetic. “That’s pretty lame, mate.”

                 Jimin raises his hand.

                 The other two look at him, raising eyebrows. “… You don’t have to raise your hand to speak,” Taehyung coughs, hiding smiles behind his sleeve. Hoseok laughs awkwardly.

                 He goes pink before he manages to ask, “d-don’t we have to be in groups of four for the trip?”

                 “Oh yeah,” Hoseok exclaims. “For hotel rooms and stuff. We need a fourth person then.”

                 “Y’know, most of our grade already assimilated into their own groups,” Taehyung mutters. “So it’ll be hard to find a spare guy. Do you think Sungjae’s in a group?”

                 “Yeah, he is.”

                 “What about Seungcheol?”

                 “Probably, yeah. Also, he’s kind of a hippie.”

                 “True.” Taehyung scans the cafeteria, watching their schoolmates bustle about in their respective social circles. “Who doesn’t have friends in our grade?”

                 “Hello, friends!”

                 The three of them still at the voice, unenthusiastically looking up at the glasses-adorned face of a certain simpleton. War scenes flash against the back their eyes, all at once reminded of the chaos created at the hands of the boy standing before them. Why, Jimin thinks, why their table, of all the others in the cafeteria? It could only be fate.

                  “Hi Namjoon,” they say, all life drained from their voices.