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Jimin straightened his hair in the mirror for the umpteenth time. How do you prepare to meet for the first time your zero mate chosen specifically for you by your esteemed parents? Read the warnings behind the leaflet: he is not your soul mate.

So there are a million factors that could terminate everything before you start, because as far as he knew there was no handbook or personalized guides on the subject. Yes, Jimin had searched for them on internet, without success. He would have wanted to know, at least, how he should dress or what to say. His parents didn't gave him any advice but just the name of a place and a time. They had also offered a telephone number but Jimin had been too much of a coward to accept it. Or maybe he just wanted to do it the old way, as his late grandmother, rest her soul in peace, used to say. His grandmother didn't even know what those words meant, but she liked to tell him stories of days when those same words made sense.

Jimin wished they could make sense now.

In any case, he thought it would have been better to meet up without knowing each other beforehand, even if by phone. He didn't even want to see a picture of him.
If possible, he wanted for some things to be discovered. Jin would call him romantic. Jimin thought it was reducing the damages. He wanted to know this person without preconceptions. It would be two people sitting casually at a coffee shop table, trying to know each other.
It would be just Jungkook and him.

“No.” Jungkook didn't have to think twice and wondered how his parents didn't reflect about it more. He wasn't going to accept. Never.
"Jungkook dear,” his mother tried.
Jungkook wanted to get off the couch, go to his room, slam the door loudly, and hope for his parents to go away. He did nothing. His pride, his father's stare and especially the desire to be taken seriously for once, kept him from doing so.
"Mom, it's ridiculous. I don't know why you thought I would say yes. I don't need a stupid arranged marriage. I do not.”

I never wanted it, to begin with.

This was a nightmare. He should have known right away that this was an ambush disguised as a family visit. But even in his wildest dreams, he had never imagined for his family to sell his youth to the highest bidder and sentence him to the worst destiny a zero could have.
His father stared at him. Then, he shifted his gaze on the wall, sat down on the couch and sighed. Watching his father acting like that was kind of new, he had always been ready to scold him rather than trying to rationalize with his son.
"Jungkook I think you need it," he said, serious, without leaving a way out. Jungkook squirmed on the couch, because he knew where everything was heading to. He had known since he had broken that stupid screen with a stone.
On May 10th, vote yes.
His parents had moved in time, driven by necessity.
"I don't give a damn! I'm fine with myself! I work, I do what I have to! Since I became an adult, I have always done well!”
"We know," his mother interjected. "We only want the best for you, Jungkook.”
Jungkook had to look away unable to bear the look of the woman who had given birth to him.
It was an ordinary day, Taehyung had come to pick him up to go play in the yard, his mother looked at him in the same way. In her eyes, there was a deep sadness.
“Honey, why don't you try to meet them? And if you really don't get along, we won't talk about this again. I promise. Can you do this for us, for me?”
Jungkook wanted to scream. Because, if his mother suggested that agreement, it was certainly because the person they chose was decent. In the end, he had never been able to say no to his mother. Jungkook said nothing but his parents interpreted his silence positively.

They couldn't know that Jungkook had a plan. Perhaps, they assumed to have the upper hand. In any case, Jungkook wasn't going to allow anyone to deprive him of the future he had chosen for himself.
"Fix the meeting. I'll be there. And now if you don't mind, I'm tired. I want to be alone.” And only then, Jungkook stood up. He had never spoken to his parents like that. But, he didn't feel as great as he envisioned. Instead, a sense of emptiness filled him. His parents, for once, took him seriously and did as he asked. They knew they didn't have the right to ask for more.

They had already asked too much.

"Aren't you curious?" his mother asked hopefully.
"Would it make any difference?" he said, staring at her. Then, he closed the door of his room behind him, without making any sound.
He heard their steps getting further away and the quiet sobbing of his mother as she left.
Jungkook threw a punch at the door, injuring his knuckles.
Being a zero didn't mean to be nothing. It meant losing forever.

Hoseok was preparing dinner for himself and Taehyung. Given that the day before he had a double shift at the hospital, they gave him a day off. He wanted to spend it with Taehyung in bed, on the couch, enjoying the slow passing of the hours, deliciously together. But, Taehyung had piano lesson that afternoon and Hoseok had to let him go eventually. Taehyung had been as reluctant as him to part ways, which was particularly endearing.
Hoseok would get up in the morning and thank his fate every day for letting him have Taehyung as his soul mate. There weren't boring or sad moments with him and the days seemed to not be long enough to enjoy each other's presence. It was for this reason that Hoseok felt a physical pain just thinking of living a life without knowing such a joy. It was for this same reason that he was very fond of Jungkook. Yes, he had been jealous of the bond his soul mate shared with the number zero, especially when he had been in the US for the last year of medical school while Taehyung was left home alone.
However, it was then that he finally got it.
One year.
They had spent one year separated. And to Hoseok, it seemed a long endless sleep. Since then, he wondered if what he felt was even near to what zero numbers experienced for their entire lives.
The doorbell rang and Hoseok ran to the door thinking it was his soulmate, singing, "I'm coming,” as he always did. Behind it, he found instead Jungkook. He looked at him with that icy gaze of his that never warmed.
"Hyung, apparently I got engaged," Jungkook said, as if he had just commented on the weather forecast.

Hoseok could not understand, not really, after all he was a number 2. But he had seen enough to be able, at some degree, to sympathize with the younger. Hoseok didn't come from an easy family background. He didn't have a happy childhood to boast about, after all. Jungkook had often spoken of his plans and his family. Taehyung himself had filled the holes that completed the puzzle.
From the first day they met, Jungkook had stated flatly what his plans were in life and Hoseok admired him for his resolution. The marriage was not among those plans.
He abandoned any idea of cooking that night. Pizza would do.

It was almost time. Jimin had almost decided to give up, leave, fly to another country, and pretend that he had never accepted this proposal. But he had looked around his apartment, small and empty, a perfect synthesis of his life.
His gaze rested on his cat Tao, who was curled up in a chair asleep. He envied him so much. He sure had a good life.
There is nothing wrong in this. Namjoon had said. So Jimin took a deep breath, put the wallet in his pocket, and went out.
That day there was no traffic in the city, and he had found where to park the first try. The result was that Jimin was ahead of a quarter of an hour. And those fifteen minutes of waiting would kill him, assuming his companion was the punctual type. Jimin, taken by a vague sense of hysteria, decided to reject him at the speed of the light if he was not.
He got out of the car with heavy legs and awkwardly entered the coffee shop, looking for an empty table. Then, realizing that once completed this task, he had nothing to do, he randomly ordered coffee. Those were the moments he feared most, the moments of transition between an action to the other, that gave him plenty of time to think. To whirl and venture in the dark corners of his mental mazes.

He thought about everything, his parents, his best friend Seokjin, his past stories, the people he lost, and his work that awaited him the next day. For this meeting, Jimin had taken the day off. He could barely remember how to speak let alone be productive.
He honestly felt like a child all over again. Which was funny, because the last time he felt this way, he was in high school, counting the clouds while waiting for Min Yoongi to end his basketball game. God, if he was thinking of Min Yoongi, he really was in a bad place.
When the waiter brought his coffee, he carried it quickly to his lips without thinking. Obviously he burned his tongue.
Jimin wondered who Jungkook was, what he had done so far, if he was excited about the meeting, or maybe worried.
Someone cleared his throat to his left.

Jungkook had slept on the couch of Taehyung and Hoseok that night. He was sure to have ruined their romantic plans. He didn't care.
Though he told his parents to leave him alone, Jungkook felt he wanted company. But not in his house where he still seemed to see his mother on the couch, and where the echoes of silence noisily bounced between a wall and the other.
They ate pizza. They watched the Avengers. And then in front of a cup of coffee, Jungkook had told them everything.

Taehyung had held his hand all the time, almost fearing Jungkook would take off and fly out from the window. If Hoseok had been upset by the gesture, he didn't let it show on his face.

Again, Jungkook chose to not feel guilty. Hoseok was the number one of Taehyung and everything that was Taehyung, by the fringe of his hair to the big toe of his foot, was his. The same was for Taehyung, if not more.
But the hand-holding, that, would have always been a little of Jungkook’s too.
In any case, neither Taehyung nor Hoseok had found suitable words for his problem. Jungkook thought they didn't want to hurt his feelings, though he could feel his best friend being excited about the chance of this meeting. He knew every expression of that fool of his best friend, so he could read the satisfaction in the corners of his mouth.

He felt a little betrayed. A feeling that, with Taehyung, wasn't new at all. His best friend had this habit of thinking about what was best for Jungkook, more than Jungkook himself.
"We only want the best for you.”
Turning over and over again under the blankets, Jungkook wondered if this was what his best friend really thought. What he had been always thinking.
That it was best for Jungkook to have a companion, even if arranged.

The next morning, Jungkook thanked the two and left. Once he got home, he took a shower and went to class as if nothing had happened. His parents called him to ask him how he was (futile question) and to remind him the place and time of the supposed date. The moment his mother had tried to say more about the other number zero, Jungkook had removed the speaker from his ear.

He had spent the days before the meeting in a fairly boring way. He refused to see Taehyung despite the repeated calls of the latter, and instead went to the gym several times and went riding on his bike for long and exhausting hours.
Before he could realize, it was already the day of his date. Even though Jungkook had vowed his life to sabotage the whole thing, he still did his best to be decent looking. To be honest, for a moment he toyed with the idea of going to the appointment dressed as Iron Man and see what reaction would have the other number zero.

Instead, he found himself at the meeting place half an hour before the scheduled time. He was ashamed of himself but his feet had directed him to the place, attracted like a magnet to its north. Needless to say, he took refuge in the comic book store in front of the coffee shop, anything, rather than playing the role of the pathetic guy.
For a while there was a coming and going from the cafe, but no shadow of a zero number. The smiles were too dazzling even when some people were not in pairs. They screamed number two in every fiber of their being.
He had reached the fifth comic book that he opened without buying. The clerk kept watching him like a hawk, when Jungkook finally spotted him.
He recognized him by his furrowed brows and the uncertain steps. Only a number zero would behave like that.

Jungkook swallowed.

He had to refrain himself from reducing the comic book in his hands to shreds. Without being aware of the command brain to legs, he found himself crossing the road that separated them in few hurried steps, to then stop abruptly just before the entrance.
He had black hair and big eyes of the same color. He was short and was dressed in jeans and cotton tee, just like him.
He was…

Jungkook realized he could not remain standing there like a brat forever. He had definitely attracted the attention of all the number twos within 30 meters. Or maybe not. They were too engrossed by themselves to give a about something else.
He took a deep breath and pushed the front door. He walked stiffly to the table, hands in his pockets so he had something to hold onto.
The other seemed to have just burned his tongue, and it was the perfect break to announce his presence. Jungkook thought, now or never.
He cleared his throat. The number zero turned, surprised.
"You are Park Jimin,” Jungkook said in one breath.
Then he moved the chair in front of him and sat down.