The legend of Yoongi had, in his opinion, been vastly exaggerated. It wasn't that he minded the admiration or the free food that came with his apparent passing into myth. It was more that he got sick of hearing things about himself that even he didn't know.  Often these stories held some semblance of truth that had been vastly blown out of proportion. For example, his mail from home did, in fact, have to chase rumors and inn ledgers to find him. It did not, however; get so lost that it found him years later. Or contain the tragic death of a family member. 

Both of his brothers were very much alive. As were his parents and even his sister. Sure it had been years since he had seen them, but he heard from them most every week. Even if the letters came in no particular order. They were all at least dated. 

It was also true that he had gone to a lot of uncharted places (he liked shortcuts okay? Even when they turned out to be...not so short cuts...) but it was a vast over estimation to say that he had filled in nearly an entire continent's worth of map. He would have to go much farther off the beaten trails that he did to fill in that much. He supposed it was okay for people to exaggerate that though, because he didn't share all of his map. There were some places he preferred to keep to himself; and he'd be out of a job if he gave away all of his trade secrets. 

His lifestyle was a-typical for a currier. Most people found the contracted routes they liked and made the contracts permanent. Set up a home base. Stayed around the same hub. Yoongi did not. He and  Vermillion, his shaggy, currently matted up sheepdog had traveled far and wide. Taking up high risk contracts everywhere. No one place claimed him. No one place was home. He was the first of his kind. The only man with no permanent contract. He and Vern just walked from one place to the next, through jungles and forests, up steep stepped mountains where the air grew thin and down the long coastline on the other side. 

Hence the legend. 

True story, this supposed choice had come to fruition when he'd first decided upon a large dog rather than a horse and then slept through his six o'clock sharp alarm on his first day out of training. Not that it was impossible to have both a dog and a horse,  really Yoongi just didn't like horses. A one hundred and twenty pound dog was hard enough to deal with.   

He remembered the panic of waking up and realizing it was nearly one in the afternoon that day. It seemed like a thousand years ago. Vern had been eight months old. Barely eighty pounds. And the freshly trained Yoongi had been perhaps a little bit more headstrong that he should have been. Drinking the night before his first day as a real currier had been a terrible idea. 

It was Vern who woke him rather than his mechanical alarm...or any of his fellow trainees. 

Traitors. 

Self serving traitors. 

Did six months of relative torture learning survival skills mean nothing?  

A wet nose to the face and a slimy tongue that smelled like dirt and rotted dog food slicked across his exposed cheek in the sticky heat. The realization that the sun was up threw him out of bed in a tizzy, falling to the rickety floor on his knees. If he'd been a scarce half an inch taller his head would have slammed into the bunk above him. 

He wound up in a heap on that floor, bedding and all, cursing at his dog and his supposed companions as he shook his head clear of sleep.

Suffices to say he'd never rolled a bed roll that quickly in all of his life. Or packed a travel pack that swiftly. Dust that hadn't been disturbed in thirty years flew behind him as he threw his ridged pack over his back and strapped Vern's travel bags on. Downside number eight billion to not having a horse, less hauling power. Oh well, he shrugged at the thought, and thanked his Goddess in the Stars that he'd had the drunken foresight to pack all of his non-bedding related items. He'd also slept in his clothes. Which was a habit he'd not shaken since. 

Racing down the stairs had his sheepdog barking loudly and chasing after him. There was a good chance it was the first time he had run that fast in his entire life...no...on second thought, it was like the third time he had run that fast in his entire life. Not that he cared to recount any of the other times. 

He sprinted through the emptiness of town until he reached the dead center. Every hub worked differently, at Heenim's the sorting building was the center of town and the contracts were passed out there. 

The commissioner gave him such a look as he rounded the corner between two driftwood buildings and  approached the cracked up wooden counter. Yoongi could only see because he came in from the side, there was a crowed gathered around front. All of the big men, at least a foot taller than him, with wide shoulders and big hands. They were the ones with huge horses that finished their morning routes early once a week so they could go out on a high risk adventure of a little extra cash. That was how it worked. 

A sigh pressed through Heechul's prefect pink lips, and the younger knew that his commissioner would have had to forced out if he could hear it over the clatter all around him. There were people of all sorts back behind the counter shuffling around, passing bins filled with paper, running them rickety old conveyer belts and there were shelves from floor to ceiling in tight aisleways all with bins stuffed to bursting. The fledgeling mailman would never understand how that much mail existed in the world; or how it managed to be nearly the same at every hub (or so he had been told at that point. Big generators swooshed and pipes howled running cool  air lines though vents to keep the paper safe. 

“Well,” Heechul straightened his back and shouted “All of the usual risky routes have gone out now. Thank you Chansung for taking the high pass on his way back to JYP.” 

All of the men grumbled

Yoongi's heart sank. Intellectually he had known there would be nothing left but he held out hope that maybe Heechul had set something aside for him. The older man...Heechul had always seen something in Yoongi that no body else did; it was peculiar. Perhaps it was because he and Hangeng had never had any children of their own.

Chansung stepped forward from the masses, slicked a hand through his black hair and took a pen out of his pocket.  He actually lived and worked out of JYP, he had an exclusive contract for three of the  normal routs out there but his family,  Kyungsoo and his baby Sanduel, lived in Heechul's station. So he took a high risk route out and one back once a month or so. It wasn't terribly uncommon for things like that to happen in the mail currier community it seemed.

“I have one contract left,” Heechul continued with another sigh, “You all know the one, it's that time of year. It's under than name Hakyeon. It's six weeks out. Off the roads to the west and down in the jungle along the river.”

The men were grumbling again. 

Six weeks out meant six weeks back too. It meant twelve weeks in the jungle without a horse and no way to carry enough food. It meant hunting and gathering and legends of man eating fish and talking trees and yes. This was exactly what Yoongi had signed up for. Six weeks from Heechul's mail hub. Six weeks of dripping heat in the vast uncharted wilds where vines grew like snakes and snakes were as long as vines. His feet pulsed, his heart pounded and he could feel the world beneath him. He put a hand on Vern's head and straightened his back; collecting his resolve. 

The men kept grumbling. 

“Someone has to take it,” Heechul sighed, “Come on guys. Only two people have actually died on this route.” He neglected to mention that no one had ever taken it twice.

Finally Yoongi found that place inside himself that survival training had tried to snuff out. Every teacher he'd met had explicitly told him that he was not here to go on an adventure, but he was. He was here because he knew the Heart of the World and he wanted to know the rest of it. So his hand shot up, “I'll take it,” he said. 

A crackle of laughter spread through the crowed as they turned to him with wide, curious eyes. 

With a sigh of oddly impactful courage the mint-haired currier and his dog approached the counter. Despite the apparent humor the men parted ways for him. Silence began to fall (as much as it could) when he came to stand before the commissioner who had brought him here. 
 
“Yoongi, do you even know how to swim?” Heechul tried to ask in a hushed tone but nothing got to be hushed in the town square. For his part as a mentor he didn't seem terribly concerned outside of that. He was probably just worried about no one taking the contract. 

“Sure,” He shrugged, “I learned last week.”

The renewed laughter bit into him like a fish hook but he broke it off the line. It hung in his back stinging up it didn't stop him, “I don't see anyone else jumping up to take it.” 

And no one did. He took that contract and left that day. Fate charged out to meet him in the form of one last high risk contract, for a little town in the deep rain forest along the river. Six weeks out they said?

He'd made it in four.

Swam across the river of blood thirsty fish that weren't actually that blood thirsty, and learned that the the trees don't really talk back but the birds do. In fact, he had perhaps passed the days teaching one particularly curious red feathered beauty how to squawk out a song his mother had sung to him when he was little. The mint haired mail man had perhaps also taught said macaw how to swear...maybe.

He'd gotten lost once on that trip. Distracted by the promise of food when he was nearly four weeks out and wandered off into the deepness of the night. Everything melted together and looked the same. His heart had rammed in his chest, burning with the regret of forgetting his training. In that moment he had thought for the first time in his life that he might just die. Through his tears and desperation he felt something akin to lightness. Something like sleeping on a glass case in a cave. In a desperate bid for understanding he laid down. Ear to the ground. And listened for the Heart of the world until his feet throbbed with new direction. 

He'd never been lost since. 

 The World is not such a scary place when you have stared into its heart a thousand (or a million, who knew?) times. Or when you speak to it everyday. Or when you have a big dopey sheepdog to listen when you can't. 

Not so long after getting lost he found himself standing in the square of a small town with a tall, slender, tan man named Hakyeon. Bright and wise beyond his years this man stood reminding the mint-haired currier of something his heart had often told him in the passing months. Hakyeon was the son of currier; offered jobs and routes and training from all of the largest but prestigious hubs. The older man had been offered everything most people dream of; and he'd walked away. Yoongi'd forgotten somewhere in the seriousness of the jungle that his life was his; and no one else's. He didn't want to go back the way he came. There was too much World to see. So Yoongi made the unusual choice to go south instead of back west. South was to the little hub at TS and then from there he could pick up another contract and travel east. Southeast was to the port of JYP,  where Chansung came from. Yoongi had wanted to see the port since he had heard of it. He'd never imagined what boats big enough for whole villages looked like and he wanted to know. And maybe...just maybe he could do this all of the time instead of going back and forth. Maybe he didn't have to. Maybe he could just go where he wanted to.

He could get a lot of places other people couldn't; not because he was small, but because he wasn't afraid and he didn't need to go back, he didn't have to have a home base. Strange that no one had thought that before.

So here they were. Almost four years later, three and a half out of training, traveling places only he knew.  Having just come off a route that took him up the high mountain pass it only seemed logical to stop in and see how things were going on the high road  before he continued on his way elsewhere...wherever the next contract might take him. Yoongi was as far north as the YG mail hub. The holy bulwark of the north they called it. With more moving parts and pieces than most of the jungle hubs. In fact it was a whole city not just a mail hub or a town and Big Bang had built it from the ground up. 

Town was cold and dreary in the later hours. Seven in the evening was late by mail service standards. All of the second wave standard contracts were out by six pm so the place was ghostly quiet. Everyone had either left or holed up for the night to keep the cold out. The ground was near frozen, the air had a snap to it that gave him smoking dragons breath in the dusk. He and Vermillion were the only breathing thing out on the street. Padding along relatively unburdened was a rarity, especially in busy places, so he cherished his moment to look at the sky. The stars were bright in the mountains, glittering like silver dust against a burning blood orange stain. Painted as precious stones that would never fall loose from their finding. “It's always pretty in the sky isn't it Vern?” he asked. 

The creature in question had dragon breath too, fuming out his panting in short staggers. When Yoongi had first gotten his pup, years ago, the constant panting had alarmed him. The mint haired mail currier had thought his poor dog was over heating in the jungle humidity but it turned out Vern just loved to smile. Smile and slobber. Yoongi swore he'd never met something with so much love in its heart, except maybe the World that gave it to him in the first place. 

He rested a hand on Vern's fluffy head as the walked the desolate street. The ground was made of as many hills and valleys as the ridged spine of the mountain, dips and craters carved from sloppy footprints. Immortalized for the long haul of night where mud had begun freezing over. It crunched and snapped under his weight. 

The sorting hub there wasn't in the square, it was by the oldest inn. They all pretty much looked the same with varying degrees of extravagance, and different fixtures to suit the climates. This one was on a small stage up off the ground.  The heaters were blasting, loud clanging noises erupted from behind ominous granite counter top, but the snow shields and blinds hand't been pulled so that meant someone was in. The mail currier un-hooked his dog's saddle bags and heaved them onto the counter, climbing up so he could reach over to the other side (which he had explicit permission to do) and flip the switch underneath the smooth top. Dingy yellow lights started to flicker red and he scooted backwards until his heavy boots hit the old flooring again.

There was another loud bang, metal hitting something and from the left a man stumbled out, “It's alright Dae, it's Yoongi,” the familiar older man shouted over his shoulder, flipping the switch off. 

A glimmer of recognition and relief rattled through the younger man “Hey Ji!” the mint haired mail currier exclaimed, taking in the fine features of his favorite senior in the whole of YG. Ji as in JiYong to clarify. Yes, that JiYong. Flaming red haired JiYong of legend. Not an actual dragon like myth insisted but a pretty cool guy nonetheless. 

Yoongi didn't go there terribly often but he had saved the slender commissioner's life on at least one occasion so he got to stay free in the really nice places when he wanted to. His inner twelve year old certainly did not think it was the coolest thing ever....

A smile slicked across the very human dragon's pink lips, “You are the only person that gets to put muddy mail bags on my granite counter,” He stated, grabbing at the grimy bag. The whiney candor in his voice wrestled with a laugh for a moment as he opened it and started to shuffle through the contents. 

“Anything for me?” The red haired commissioner asked. 

Yoongi shook his head, “No but I have one for Seughyun...Choi.”

“Ah good,” Ji noted, pulling a cream envelope out and turning it over in his slender hands. “Seughyun has been waiting on this one.”

A fluff of honey blond hair poked out from one of the dim lit aisles, “Hey Yoongi!” Daesung shouted and waved. 

“Get the three for  Yoongi,” Ji's gentle nasal tone offered over the clattering rustle behind him. Daesung and JiYong were by no means obligated to do this part of the job anymore. Sorting mail was for trainees and retirees a lot of the time but Ji had said once that always liked it so here they worked every Wednesday after the town had emptied. Apparently it was a Wednesday. 

The muscular currier gave a thumbs up and disappeared again for a fraction of a moment and then popped aback out from another aisle of shelves and bins. The mint haired mail currier was making a desperate effort not to get too excited when he found that stations had mail for him but he always hoped somewhere in the fan mail he would find something from his family. Letters from home were his gift for a job well done. 

Daesung sauntered up behind JiYong and wrapped himself snuggly around the older man, reaching out around him with three precious envelopes. The wet smack of a kiss resounded but Yoongi was too busy looking down to notice the actual interaction. He scanned the fronts for names and found that they were, surprisingly, all from home. One from his parents, one from his sister and one seemingly from Jimin. He swore he wasn't going to cry even though his eyes began to tear up. “What, no fan mail?” he sassed. 

“Dae makes sure that gets a separate bin now,” Ji explained, laughing a little as Daesung nuzzled into the soft skin on his neck. 

“How'd you even manage to get your hands on them?” Yoongi snorted, “I hear my mail gets traded like gold these days.”

“MinJun sent up a bunch of stuff from the port,” the elder explained with a delicate shrug that didn't disturb his clinging lover in the slightest. “Chief among them, a warning that you had taken three contracts along the pass. One month each he said. I figured in Yoongi time that meant about a month and a half, two in bad weather. You always come here off the pass.”

“He sent for all of the mail you had along the coast and up the steppe up until this week,” Daesung mumbled into his beloved's shoulder. “This was what we got....well this is what we got from your family...and Jimin.”

“Jimin counts,” Yoongi affirmed, flipping the letter from his middle brother's soul mate over but he stopped short of opening it for a moment because...it wasn't from Jimin. The wax seal that held if closed was wrong for the short orange haired fireball. Hobi had always had a flare for the dramatic so he closed his letters with opalescent white wax and the imprint of a heart. Jimin's were usually red with a JM. 

The wax seals were how Yoongi's personal mail were differentiated from his fan mail. Everyone that knew him well knew to send him mail with a wax seal. 

“The address says Jimin but its from Hoseok,” the mint haired man informed as he popped the seal, “White wax.”

“Huh,” Daesung puffed, “I'll try to remember that for next time.” The way he was draped across JiYong's narrow shoulders made him look much bigger than he was. 

Yoongi did not make a habit of opening his mail in public; but he was oddly drawn to this particular letter. So he slipped the contents out in plain view of his older friends curious eyes.  The first thing to hit the counter was a picture, the glossy finish caught a glare in the yellow light.

It was a picture he had taken the day he'd met Jimin. 

~~~~~~~~

Hey everyone! I'm so sorry for the long hiatus. My life has been crazy. Late winter/early spring are the bussiest months of the year on the tiny farm I own. Anyway! I love you all, thank you for reading and let me know what you think in the comments! I am so excited to keep moving on this story. Hopefully the next chapter wont take four months to work on. 
Thank you for sticking with me! 
Much Love
~RFL