Although he was well into his thirty-ninth hour without sleep, Yoongi had never felt more alive.  Highlighters, textbooks, and half-eaten beef teriyaki skewers were scattered on top of the recording equipment he had up in his dorm room.  His desk was stacked high with composition notebooks, all of which were filled with copious notes.  The notebooks weren’t actually his-- he had borrowed a classmate’s notes because he had never taken any of his own.

Taehyung strolled in and rapped on the doorframe.

“Special delivery for our aspiring musician,” he said in a sing-song voice, holding up a plate of sliced apples.  There was no response from Yoongi, who was still hunched over with his nose buried in a textbook.

“Earth calling our aspiring musician…”

“ off, I’m busy.”  Without even looking up, Yoongi slammed the book shut, pushed it off to the side, and opened another one.

“Rude.  I swear, when you’re famous and even richer than you already are, I’m gonna tell everyone I know that the real Min Yoongi is a complete douchebag and treats his friends like crap.  I’m gonna make your fans hate you and ruin your reputation for life.”

“I won’t even have a reputation to ruin if you keep bothering me.  Maybe it hasn’t crossed your mind because your midterms are over, but my midterms are at 9:30 A.M sharp and right now it’s four freaking o’clock in the mor--”

“Wrong.  It’s five freaking o’clock,” Taehyung said with a shake of his head.  “See what I mean?  If you can’t even read a clock correctly, how do you expect yourself to read about tropophotism?”

“It’s phototropism,” Yoongi corrected him in an annoyed tone.  He put down his pen and glanced up before frowning at the plate of apples Taehyung was still holding.  “And I thought I asked for a coffee refill, not the chopped-up ovaries of an angiosperm.”

“The what?”

“The chopped-up ovaries of an angiosperm,” Yoongi looked back down and resumed his reading.  “Angiosperms are flowering plants.  Apple trees are flowering plants.  Fruits are angiosperm ovaries.  Apples are fruits.”

“Someone’s been studying hard.”  Taehyung grinned at him and set the plate down where Yoongi could easily reach it.  “I brought you apples because if you aren’t planning on sleeping, you need something healthy in your system.  Apples have natural sugars that’ll help you stay awake, whereas too much coffee is going to get to your head and hurt you more in the long run.”

“Don’t need them.  After I finish taking these goddamn midterms, I’m gonna hibernate for the next few days  Coffee will be enough to keep me going for the next eight or nine hours.”

Yoongi rubbed his eyes and heaved a sigh as he leaned back in his desk chair, his head lolling back onto the leather headrest.  He groaned loudly as he swiveled around to face Taehyung.

“ me already,” he complained.  Taehyung looked disgusted.

“Eww.  Not on your life, you prissy cabbage.  There’s only one person I’m currently interested in ing and I’m sorry to stomp on your fantasies, but that person isn’t you.”

“I didn’t mean that literally, Taehyung.  I’m just so done with all this crap.”  Although his eyes were still closed, Taehyung saw a faint glint of red and pink underneath the lids.  Hoseok’s drugs and their effects on Yoongi were still holding, but Taehyung knew that it wouldn’t be long until they wore off again.  As soon as he had gotten hold of a fresh supply, Yoongi had been taking the drugs almost nonstop.  A significant increase in dosage had been needed to yield the same results, reminding Taehyung of just how much willpower it must have taken Yoongi to concentrate on his goal.  Hoseok’s batches usually lasted around a month, but Yoongi was running low after just under two weeks.

Taehyung knew what would happen after midterms were over.  The power of the drugs would sap Yoongi of his remaining strength and extinguish those fireworks inside him.  He would revert to his “I don’t give a ” attitude, and a few days later, another one of his professors would scold him for falling back into his terrible study habits.  Even though Yoongi always acted like it didn’t bother him, any mention of his grades and his future never settled well with him.  He would get so desperate to find some sort of motivation that he would begin smoking again.  As Yoongi had been quoting from his biology textbooks, this whole business was called a “positive feedback loop”.

He watched tiny red and pink sparks trickle their way out of Yoongi’s eyes, which were no longer shining with energy and ambition, but flickering unsteadily.  The whites of his eyes were dull and bloodshot.  The leftover sparks hissed softly as they fell onto the wooden floor, but then disappeared rapidly without leaving marks of any sort.  The effects were beginning to wear off and Taehyung knew that neither coffee nor apples would help him.  Yoongi would need another dose of those godforsaken chemicals to last him through his exams.

With a shake of his head, Taehyung left the room to get the emergency stash Yoongi kept on top of the leftmost kitchen cupboard.  Harrowing as the effects were on Yoongi’s physical and mental health, there was no way of reversing or altering the cycle.  Taehyung didn’t know how else to keep him from burning out completely.

“Is that all you got?  Because if that’s all you got, you might as well get outta here ‘cause I can’t help you if that’s all you have to offer me.  You gotta really feel it, you understand what I’m saying?”

Yoongi fell back on the mattress with an angry shout.  He stared up at the ceiling.  The lackluster, straw-colored paint was peeling, and the ceiling itself had a series of spider cracks across the surface.  He imagined that was what his head looked like right now-- like someone had tried to crack his poor skull by driving a sledgehammer into it.

“Listen, I understand.”  He covered his face with his arm and lay there for a minute.  His chest rose up and down as he fought to keep breathing.

“If you understand then do it.  You’re only wasting my time right now, you hear me?”  The man barked, yanking Yoongi to a sitting position.  He stared at Yoongi’s exhausted face through dark brown, almost black locks that were on the verge of covering his eyes.

“Please, just give me five minutes.  I’ve-- I’ve been going through rough times and I just need a bit of time to--”

Hoseok snorted at the protest.

“Rough times?  All the more reason you should be able to get through this more easily.  Pull yourself together, will ya?”

“Pull myself together?”  Yoongi half-yelled, wincing at the effort it took to raise his voice.  His head was still throbbing and he found it difficult to concentrate on any one thing.  “Don’t give me that, you don’t know how hard--”

“Oh, yes I ing do,” Hoseok’s eyes grew dark with menace as they drilled into Yoongi’s.  “I should be the one telling you not to give me that crap.  I should be the one telling you that you have it a lot easier than many people in this world.  You should be grateful I even agreed to do this for you, so you better shut your damn mouth before I make it so you can’t talk no more.”

Yoongi flinched visibly and his eyes lowered.  The ramshackle motel room fell silent as Hoseok stared him down.  Yoongi’s eyes darted to the neon street sign outside the window, then to the broken air conditioner, then to the cheap, dusty carpet underneath his bare feet.

After a while, Hoseok let out a long exhale and clapped his hand against Yoongi’s back.  Yoongi’s breathing was still uneven, and Hoseok could feel the sweat that was causing his white t-shirt to cling to his skin.  Even though his face was in shadow, Hoseok could see the beginnings of frustrated tears in Yoongi’s eyes.  He softened at the sight, his expression changing from icy to warm as his entire demeanor made a 180-degree turn.

“Hey,” he said more gently, a voice vastly different from the snarls he had directed at Yoongi just moments prior.  “It’s alright, there’s nothing to worry about.  I’ve seen you do this dozens of times and I know you can do it again.  You just need to push yourself a little further, dig a little deeper.  Find that strength inside you.”

“I don’t have any strength left, that’s the whole reason I had Taehyung comb the city for any hint of where you’ve been staying.  It wasn’t easy.”

“Of course living as a fugitive isn’t easy,” Hoseok laughed out loud.  “I never stay in one place for too long or else someone’s bound to A) report me, 2) beg me to make them their own specialized drugs, or D) do both.  Kids’ movies and Saturday morning cartoons say otherwise, but living on the streets ain’t all fun and games.  Dodging cops 24/7 isn’t my idea of an adventure if you ask me.  I can’t be bothered wasting away my life in jail or doing this for any old Joe on the street who approaches me with their stupid problems.”

“Yet you’re doing it for me.”  Yoongi’s mouth turned up in a weary smirk and Hoseok chuckled.

“I do it mostly ‘cause you’re my friend, not ‘cause you pay me well.  And speaking of money, time’s up.  Let’s get back to it.”

“How does that relate to money?  And are you sure you weren’t counting by twos?  Because that was not five minutes,” Yoongi protested.

“Doesn’t matter.  We’ve been at it for hours now and we still haven’t made any progress.”  Hoseok held up a ziploc bag that contained what looked like small, white, deformed lily petals and leaves.  “This is nowhere near what the final product should look like, and it’s certainly nowhere near enough to get you through the next month.  This’ll last you half a week at most.”

“But--”

“Get up, Min.”  Hoseok’s tone of voice grew cold and impatient again.  Yoongi watched him pace the length of motel room and was suddenly reminded of what things had been like before he had found him again.  Hoseok had always been ridiculously innocent and naive about the “real world” when he was in middle school, which was where the two had met.  After they graduated, they went to separate high schools and remained out of contact for years.  During that time, Hoseok changed.  Yoongi still didn’t know the full details because Hoseok changed his story every time he asked, but from what he understood, Hoseok had somehow become one of the most wanted criminals in the country-- charged with creating, selling, and using a new type of drug that allowed one to be able to concentrate very intently on their one true goal in life and block out distractions of any sort.  The courts had thrown his friend in jail and made the drug illegal, ruling that possessing such an extraordinary amount of ambition (as well as drugs in general) was too dangerous.  Who knew what someone could do with that incredible amount of willpower?  But Yoongi needed that willpower.

If he hadn’t downed one too many shots of vodka at a party he attended in his freshman year, he wouldn’t have wandered into the subway station at two in the morning.  He wouldn’t have ran into Hoseok, who wouldn’t have told him that he was on the run for drug dealing,  Yoongi would never have gotten the luxury of periodically wiping his mind and reminding himself of the person he wanted to be.  If Hoseok hadn’t spent the past few years producing that drug for him every time he asked for it, Yoongi would have lost all hope long ago and dropped out of university.

“I’ve told you countless times already that the key to making these drugs work is to find certain parts of you to add to the leaves.  Something important, something about you that’s purely Yoongi.  As you already know, each concoction is unique to the individual.”

“Music,” he answered right away.  He always gave the same response every time Hoseok asked,.

“Yeah, I know that by now.”  Hoseok’s lips turned up in a half-smile.  “We’re going to try again.  And as I said before, try to harness every emotion, every memory, anything you have that can somehow be tied to music.  Bring it all to the front of your mind and this time, focus.”

Yoongi winced as Hoseok spoke the last word through gritted teeth.  He knew by the way Hoseok chewed on the inside of his cheek that his patience was wearing thin.  Yoongi didn’t understand why things weren’t going very well even though he already was trying his best to focus.  Normally, drawing out the things he was passionate about wasn’t nearly this difficult.  No matter how hard Yoongi concentrated on visualizing the music career he wanted so badly, Hoseok could not coax out the right emotions.  It was three in the morning, and both of them were exhausted.

“Come on, get your together,” he reprimanded himself under his breath.  Soon, he began to feel Hoseok sifting through his thoughts and poking away at the inner workings of his emotions.  As soon as he did, Yoongi closed his eyes and began mentally screaming out the lyrics to a song he had recently composed, thinking that maybe if he screamed loudly enough, Hoseok would be able to hear him and find what he was looking for.

“I have a long way to go but why am I running in place?”

“I scream out of frustration but the empty air echoes.”

“I hope tomorrow will be different from today… I’m just wishing.”

The first thing Yoongi did when he woke up was yell at Taehyung for eating Korean barbecue without him.  He had just woken up from a day-and-a-half long nap and he was hungry enough that he could smell the pleasant aromas all the way from the bedroom.

“Am I really such a horrible person that you don’t think I would save some for my best friend?”  Taehyung put his hand to his heart and began to sob melodramatically.  “I’ve never been more insulted in my life!  This an outrage, I tell you!”

“Shut up.”  Yoongi rubbed his bleary eyes and the table of food slowly came into focus.  It was already well past midnight, but since he had been asleep for a long time, he was famished.

“I’ll give you something that’ll shut you up.”  Before Yoongi could say a word, Taehyung shoved a piece of pork wrapped in cabbage into his mouth.  His eyes widened in protest, but then he smiled as he chewed the meat, savoring the flavor.  There was just the right amount of sesame oil, just the right amount of onions.  He sighed in pleasure as he swallowed and looked up at Taehyung.

“Is this takeout?  Or did you make it yourself?”

“The latter.”  Taehyung scowled at his shocked reaction.  “No need to look that surprised.  Contrary to popular belief, I do know how to cook.”

“Congrats, this is the third time you’ve managed to cook something I’m actually enjoying.”

“So much for shutting you up, you soggy avocado. And congrats to you for surviving another round of midterms.  Your professors posted grades this morning and I took the liberty of checking them for you ‘cause you were out cold.  You’ve managed to pass all of them by some miracle or another, so you’re good for another half a quarter before you have to go through this again.”  Taehyung’s words seemed nonchalant, but his voice certainly wasn’t.

Yoongi was too busy stuffing his face with barbecue to pay attention.  Or rather, he was trying not to pay attention.

“It’s costing me a lot of pride to admit it, but I’m serious.  Where did you learn how to cook this well?  The last time you tried to make jjamppong, it wasn’t even edible because you ed up and turned all the seafood to mush.  Not to mention you added enough pepper flakes to set my tongue on fire.”

“Actually, Jungkook’s been teaching me.”  A wide smile spread across Taehyung’s face as he popped another piece of meat into his mouth.  “Remember how I told you a while back that he got another part-time job at this café down in Busan?  And how I ditched classes for a week so I could go visit him?”

As a successfully distracted Taehyung launched into a lengthy story about learning how to make jajangmyeon from scratch, Yoongi smirked and nodded on occasion in between mouthfuls of pork.  It really was delicious, but Yoongi’s heart wasn’t in eating anymore.  Despite having slept for over an entire day, he was still exhausted-- even more tired than he had been in the two weeks he spent cramming for midterms.  Yet he was restless at the same time-- his eyes were going in and out of focus every few minutes, and there was a dull ache in his chest.  It felt like a house was suspended along the bones of his rib cage.  A house that housed not only his heavy heart, but also the enormous weight of his dreams.  His eyes narrowed as he processed the thought.

“We made such a huge mess, you should have seen it,” Taehyung slapped his hand against his thigh as he recalled the memory with a faraway look in his eyes.  “Jimin was furious at us and we ended up having to stay after closing hours to scrape crab shells and chicken gizzards from behind the stove.  Holy hyper wontons, it was disgusting.  Kook dared me to eat one of the gizzards off the ground for twenty bucks and when I refused, he pushed--”

“Hold up.”  He jolted upright as the right words suddenly fell into place and his worn-out brain smoothed out the last of the awkward phrasings.  “Be right back.”  He rose from the table and ran back to his room, hastily clearing away the textbooks that were still on his desk.  At last, he found his notebook and a spare pen.  Taehyung crept up behind him and silently watched from the doorway as Yoongi wrote down the lyric fragments that had just popped into his head.  The silence continued even after he finished and threw his notebook back onto his bedspread.

Taehyung’s jovial mood faded as his gaze swept over the biology textbooks scattered on the floor and he remembered what he had wanted to talk to Yoongi about.  He recalled how hard Yoongi had had to push himself in order to cram weeks worth of material in such a short period of time and how he had returned to the dorm, having just finished taking his last midterm, and fainted out of exhaustion.  Sure, Yoongi almost always seemed tired, but Taehyung had never seen him collapse after exams.

If the drugs didn’t kill him first, his study habits would.  Taehyung couldn’t and wouldn’t allow him to die of stress and fatigue.

“Look--” he started, gesturing to the pile of textbooks on the ground.

“I know,” Yoongi replied before he could get out another word.  “I have my own methods and I’ll figure out something.  I always do, don’t I?”  He sighed and picked his notebook up again, brushing past Taehyung on the way out.  As Taehyung watched him run his fingers through his hair and sigh a second time, he froze and a small gasp escaped his lips.

Yoongi’s mint hair had faded to silvery grey.  Obviously, his natural hair color wasn’t really mint green, but Taehyung could have sworn that just it hadn’t been like this a few days back.  What could have triggered such a noticeable physical change?  If not a drug overdose and the immense internal strain he had been subject to for the past few weeks, then what else?  Taehyung opened his mouth to say something, but not before Yoongi interrupted him again.

“I’ll be back later,” he said as he walked to the front door and grabbed one of his jackets off the hook.  He shrugged it on and put his notebook in his pocket, making sure he also had his phone and his keys with him.

Taehyung’s eyes widened as Yoongi pulled the door open.

“No!  This isn’t what I meant when I said that you need to get your together.  I need you to find another way to--”

“There is no other way.”  Yoongi’s voice was laden down with resignation.  He turned back to Taehyung and rolled his eyes.  “I’m 100% fine with this, trust me.  I’ve been doing this for years now and nothing terrible’s happened to me, so I’m living proof that not everyone who takes drugs transforms into the walking dead.”

“Well, I’m not 100% fine with this,” Taehyung said indignantly.  Taehyung wasn’t the type of person to lose patience easily, but right now he was on the verge of doing so.  He could only take so much-- no, Yoongi could only take so much.  He had spared him one of these lectures while he had been studying for midterms, not wanting to disturb him, but now that midterms were over, Taehyung had to do something before it was too late.  The problem was, Yoongi rarely listened to what he had to say about Hoseok’s drugs.

“Don’t wait up for me.  It’s already late, but I don’t even know if Hoseok’s still staying at that motel.  You know how the guy is and how hard it is to flush him out.”

“Min Yoongi, get your back here and--”

The door slammed closed and Taehyung was left hanging.  He had the sudden urge to chase Yoongi down and try to persuade him for the thousandth time to find another method to deal with his problems, but he knew that Yoongi wouldn’t listen to him.  He was too damn stubborn.  Taehyung’s nostrils flared as he muttered angrily under his breath, cussing out the heavens for giving him such pigheaded friend.

He headed back to the kitchen to cool down and sat across from the seat Yoongi had been in.  He speared the remaining slices of pork with his chopsticks and as he ate in silence, he prayed that Yoongi would get hit over the head and suddenly realize that drugs were not the only solution to his dilemma.

Perhaps the gods heard Taehyung’s wish, or perhaps it was just a coincidence.

It took an entire two weeks for Yoongi to come back.  But when he did return, a very relieved Taehyung learned that for some unknown reason, Hoseok had disappeared without leaving any trace at all, save for a burned-down motel.  Yoongi had spent days searching for him before he was finally forced to give up.  He was in a very bad temper when he came back to the dorm, spilling out the news in a panic and throwing a very frustrated tantrum right afterwards.

Somehow, Taehyung knew that neither of them would ever see Jung Hoseok again.  He saw the perfect opportunity fly by right in front of his nose, and took it without a moment’s hesitation.

Hi my readers/subscribers ^^

I really shouldn't be working on this right now because I have a big history presentation on Friday that I'm nowhere near ready for ._. I literally started it today it was assigned two or three months ago so hurray for procrastination ._.

I was kinda scared about publishing this chapter because I feel like I set the expectations pretty high with my first two chapters, and I'm not that confident in my writing skills... so I'm afraid that my next chapters might not meet everyone's expectations... hopefully this wasn't too cringeworthy and I hope you still enjoyed it?  XD

I'm pretty bad at trying to incorporate song lyrics into fics ._. but Tomorrow is one of my favorite BTS songs because of the meaning behind it.  Yoongi actually became my third ultimate bias and my ultimate BTS bias after I found out that he composes a lot of their songs.  One thing that I really love about BTS is the fact that some of their songs are about legit issues in society, and the meanings behind their lyrics are really deep.  AND THEN THERE'S STUFF LIKE THIS:

"ABCDEFGH Hakuna Matata"

"You look fresh like a salad, so smooth"

"After fighting my hormones again today, I'll pop my pimple"

AYO LADIES AND GENTLEMEN I PRESENT TO YOU BTS

I love lengthy comments and just comments in general so please do comment?

Thank you for reading, comment, subscribe, and upvote if you haven't already, and have a lovely day everyone ^^