XV

Jimin rubs his chin in between his cold fingers, staring at the baby pink ribbon he’s trying to tie atop the medium-sized box sitting in front of him for the past 10 minutes. He’s never been good with tying ribbons – even to his own shoes, if he is being honest – and he’s kind of always frustrated when he can’t even do the simple work. Taehyung always ended up doing it for him though because, “I have long fingers, I can probably do this in a matter of second,” and Jimin thinks the boy isn’t lying when he has done it so fast. And his best friend might have joked a few more times than JImin can count that it’s because of his baby short fingers; his loud protests making Taehyung double-over on laughing so hard with his cute whines but he’s about to believe it this time.

He peered over his bedside table where his alarm clock was blaring a red 5:52pm, noting there’s still probably at least 20 minutes before Taehyung reached their apartment from his singing lesson. Sighing in a mixture of slight annoyance and defeat, Jimin reached to untie the messy bow he did earlier and tried doing it again. This time, he takes his sweet time to make sure he’ll do it – if not perfectly, at least decent enough for a gift; tip of the tongue poking in between his plump lips and eyes focused on the task at hand.

A couple of minutes later, he finally did it. Grinning so wide that if anyone ever see him will no doubt be concerned about him splitting his own face into two but will no doubt smile along with him too at how bright the smile is, eyes turning small moon crescents. It’s a simple work, it’s actually no biggie. But Jimin is struggling at the task and accomplishing it with neat baby pink ribbon peacefully sitting on the carefully wrapped gift was an achievement. He’s finally satisfied of himself. Though it took him almost 15 minutes for a simple bow. But whatever.

Jimin was soon found himself shuffling in their kitchen, pan in one hand while the other was carefully lifting the lid of a rice cooker to check the rice. He is hiding the box under his bed when his phone blasts Taeyang’s song; his best friend was on the other line, voice still slightly husky from his lesson and asking Jimin to make him food and hot chocolate if he doesn’t mind (and pulling a not very subtle best friend duty card against him) or else he’ll die in hunger and coldness. Jimin practically crawl from his bedroom to their kitchen, grumbling about his best friend being not a very best best friend a