“And do you have someone special over there?” his grandmother said, her tone eager and a little bit devious. Jimin could already imagine her notorious smile against her face, baring her missing front teeth.

“What do you mean by someone special, halmeoni?” Jimin said, holding the wireless phone with his cheek and shoulder while having one hand opening the cupboard to take out the bag of tea. Calling his grandmother over tea was some sort of a ritual for him, considering he knew that the old Park was definitely sitting in her kitchen with her own hotly brewed ginseng.

“You know, Jimin, something like a new boyfriend,” she said, chuckling at the end. “I would really love to see my grandson's wedding before I die.”

Jimin couldn't help but to chuckle back. For the last couple of weeks, his grandmother had been persistent on asking him about his love life. Their weekly call was soon filled with Jimin shying away and embarrassingly said that he was 'currently single and super busy with university life'.

“I can't promise you on the wedding part. I think the majority of people in South Korea wouldn't be too keen on seeing two men exchanging vows.”

“Oh hush, Jimin. It's their loss. I would be glad to be the guest of honor.”

“You would be the only one, halmeoni,” Jimin joked back as he turned towards the stove to fetch the boiling water.

Both of them broke into laughter before Jimin finally sighed. “I wish I could see you,” he murmured. The last time she went to Seoul was spring, which was months ago.

“I wish you could come visit me in Yeoryang-myeon,” she replied.

Ever since Yeoryang-myeon, he had grown incredibly close with his grandmother. She had visited him several times in Seoul for the years and they have talked about every possible thing in this world but one.

“Maybe one day, halmeoni,” he answered softly.

Because he too had a reason why he didn't come back to the town for a quick visit, why he couldn't come back, even though all it took was a simple train ride away. In a way, it seemed a bit unfair to have her travel all the way to Seoul, but she too understood his reasons, the same one that had him living in a windowless apartment.

“So, there's absolutely nothing new?” his grandmother asked once again.

There was one, actually, an underlying fact that had been troubling his mind for the last few weeks. Jimin turned his head slowly towards the kitchen window and sighed. He was glad he had the blinds on.

“Well actually, you wouldn't believe I met Jung Hoseok in my dance practice the other day,” he finally said.

“Jung Hoseok? Is it the boy who used to scream so loud? He's one of your friend from basketball practice, isn't he?” his grandmother answered.

Jimin laughed to the comment. “Yeah, that one. He still screams loudly as well when he saw me,” he said. “You have one hell of a great memory, halmeoni.”

He could hear his grandmother scoffing before she answered. “Don't underestimate me, grandson. I have lived long enough to gather all the dirt from the people of Yeoryang-myeon, they didn't call me the gossip queen back in the days for nothing.”

Her words got Jimin honestly laughing. He couldn't imagine the old Park back in her prime days, possibly being as much as a beauty like Minju.

“How's this Hoseok doing? I guess the Jung's here are doing fine, though more and more young people have been leaving us,” she said.

“It's actually a coincidence. He got in the same dance group as I did, not knowing that I was there. We've talked a bit in practice but I'm too busy with university, we haven't gotten the chance to hang out.”

Or more like Jimin purposely didn't have time for that, since Hoseok had practically been pestering him for the last weeks. On the other hand, Jimin kept on saying how he had things to do. He knew how much of a lie it actually was. He would be glad to spend his time with the cheerful Hoseok that he missed. Meeting him was probably a blessing, since Hoseok was oblivious about everything. Yet because of the very same reason, he dreaded the conversation that they would have, the memories that would arise and the names that would be mentioned.

“I think he's a good kid, Jimin, or at least his grandfather was. As much a screamer as his grandson, but I bet you two will have fun,” his grandmother said.

Jimin chuckled to the mention of Hoseok's predecessor, knowing that his grandmother was trying to cheer him up. Everything was easier with Taehyung and his grandmother because they knew what to say. They knew which topic to avoid, which wound not to prick. But Hoseok-,

“What's troubling you, Jimin?” his grandmother spoke softly.

Even though she wasn't there, even though it was nothing but a phone call, his grandmother could always tell, could always know if something was troubling his mind. Jimin smiled softly and leaned back against the kitchen counter, having his head raised against the ceiling. He was glad the ceiling was there, hiding the sky from him.

“Hoseok told me that Yoongi is here,” he whispered. “Yoongi is here, in Seoul.”

He hadn't mentioned Yoongi's name in a long time to his grandmother. It hadn't bothered him as well, as long as he was there behind the confinement of his cemented ceiling and windowless wall. But now, as easy as a simple fact uttered by Hoseok, Jimin started to think that maybe living in a basement wouldn't be really bad after all.

“Are you going to look for him?”

Frankly, Jimin didn't know what to do.

“Of course I'm not,” he answered.

He honestly felt invaded. There was never a Yoongi in his Seoul, and now he was threatening the script he had slowly built, the setting he had rid of stars. It was Yeoryang-myeon that should always be about Yoongi, not Seoul. He had done his best of running away only to have the said ghost catching up to him.

“It doesn't matter,” he said again. “After all, Seoul is a big city,” he continued with a strained chuckle at the end.

There was silence between them once again.

“I just want you to be happy. You know that, don't you Jiminie?” said his grandmother, finally breaking the silence.

Jimin answered back with a small hum. Of course he knew that.

“But honestly, Jimin, if you allowed me to be selfish, just for a second,” she continued, her voice turning more into a whisper, “I kind of wish I could eat dinner together with you and Yoongi again, just like back then for the last time.”

Just the three of them, sitting in the kitchen with huge smiles on their faces, listening to his grandmother stories of old lovers and lasting memories of the town they grew to love.

“I know, halmeoni.”

Me too.

+.-.+

Jimin said his farewell to each member of the group personally, simply because he couldn't stand the fact of standing there surrounded by the people he loved, looking back at them whilst having each beautiful moment they shared being played on repeat in his head. It too wouldn't work with how Jimin would only be reminded by a certain someone who would certainly be missing from their meetings and another pair of eyes that would refuse to gaze at his.

Hoseok reacted with a scream, as always, burying him into a hug the moment he realized that Jimin wasn't joking. Most of his friends were surprised by the sudden news, how Jimin would be leaving just shortly before new year.

“But you're definitely going to come back for graduation, right? I mean, it's just a few hours ride from Seoul to here,” Hoseok said to him.

Jimin never thought saying goodbye would be this hard. A part of him regretted his decision of even trying on the first place, thinking that maybe just disappearing would be something easier to live with instead of this painful farewell and the hundreds of questions Jimin would rather not answer.

“I don't think I can,” Jimin whispered back.

To all the question of why, Jimin simply shifted the blame to a parent's order and a son's inability to make a choice. After all, from Jimin's meek way of answering and the head he kept faced on the ground, all of them seemed to get the message that he too wasn't in the mood of explaining. He simply hoped the other realized how hard it was for him to say his farewell.

Hoseok buried him in a hug whilst screaming, saying something about visiting him some time later in Seoul if he got the chance. Seokjin proposed that the group spent that day for the last supper in his house as usual before Jimin made an excuse of having to pack. The look of disappointment on Seokjin's face broke his heart.

Taehyung was the first from the group who had head about this decision. The only thing Jimin could be glad about was how his parents just quickly arranged the trip to pick him up after he accepted their long proposed offer over the telephone. He knew that both his grandmother and Taehyung would love to have him around, but none of the two were against his final decision. In the end he realized that they too had seen how leaving was indeed the best for him.

He had went to Hoseok and Seokjin's house when he remembered about Jungkook. That boy was the first one from the group that he befriended, and yet right now he had become the one he wanted to avoid the most after Yoongi. Knowing that this was probably the last time he got to meet him, Jimin just clenched his fist and thought that giving it a try wouldn't hurt.

When the boy walked towards the door after his mother's call about a visiting friend, Jimin just held his breath, hoping that this wouldn't be a mistake. Yet from the sharp eyes and scrunched eyebrows that he met as Jungkook realized who his visitor was, Jimin could only turn his head towards the ground. Jungkook had his jaw tensed and lips shut tight, looking back at Jimin as if he was a stranger, giving no sign of the kindness and smile that he suddenly remembered too clearly from the first time the two of them spoke.

“What do you want?” Jungkook simply asked, standing by the door.

And Jimin lost his voice, because he couldn't see the boy that raised his head and apologized after bumping into him, the kind eyes completely gone, all that was left was cautiousness and the distance it were trying to build.

“I just-,”

He tried to explain in broken words, about him leaving, about the lie that was his parent's order. And along it all he knew this was indeed a mistake because Jungkook didn't utter a single word in between, just looking back at him coldly. He didn't even know that the kind Jungkook that he knew could look at him with such gaze.

But then again, after Yoongi and everything, he should have known that everyone was capable of indeed everything.

So when he was finally finished and it was just silence between the two of them, Jimin tried to lift his head, waiting for a word from the boy, a reaction of some sort that was more than just the chilling gaze that he gave him.

“Just do what you want, hyung,” Jungkook murmured, his tone low. It was all that he said before the boy turned around, leaving a speechless Jimin and shut the door. Jimin's head was buzzing for a few seconds, trying to look for a meaning behind the words, wondering whether there was indeed something more than it really was.

But of course there wasn't any, and he realized that he had indeed lost Jeon Jungkook long before he lost Min Yoongi on that snowy day upon the bridge.

He went to Namjoon last and their leader was as surprised as the other, asking the same question while hearing Jimin's explanation until the end. At first he thought that it would be the end of it all, until Namjoon raised another question that he didn't see coming.

“What did Yoongi do?” Namjoon simply asked.

Jimin wanted to bite his lip at that moment, because there came that sudden urge to throw up once again.

“It's because of him, isn't it?” Namjoon said again, getting more convinced upon Jimin's answer of a silence.

He could lie again, repeating the same explanation that all of this was his parent's doing and he didn't have a say in their selfish order. But instead, he just kept his head towards the ground this time, realizing that he didn't have the strength to lie anymore.

“I don't know what happened between you two, but don't you think we can work this out, Jimin? None of us would be happy to see you leave.”

But that was a lie, because Jungkook would certainly be happy to, and Yoongi definitely would.

“No, hyung. Believe me, this is for the best,” he whispered.

“What do you mean this is for the best?” Namjoon quickly asked. Jimin realized that the boy was trying to get through to him, to find out the things he was hiding but Jimin just shook his head in return. “Isn't there anything we can do to help?” their leader asked again.

Turning back time would be nice, Jimin thought for a while. If only he could go back to the day when the seven of them could lounge together without any worry, when the love he had for Yoongi was nothing more than just a longing gaze. Back then, even as much as he was hurting from the love he couldn't grasp, everything was still thousand times better than having his sky void of stars.

“Can you please not mention this to Yoongi?” he whispered.

“What?”

Jimin closed his eyes and took a deeper breath. “Just don't say anything about me leaving. Just-, leave everything like this.”

“That doesn't make any sense.”

It didn't, and Jimin too didn't know why he asked this out of Namjoon. Perhaps he just didn't want to have everything going worse than this. He used to think that what he experienced was always the worst, only to be remonstrate later on by the universe, who somehow always had a way to throw him back to the ground and crushing him countless time despite of his already broken bones and shattered heart.

“I'm just tired, hyung, I really am. I just want all of this to be over,” he said. “So please, don't stop me, hyung. That's all that I ask.”

Maybe he was finally being the one who got through to Namjoon, because their leader just looked back at him perplexed before he shut his mouth and let him walk away with a heavy heart.

Taehyung came to his house almost every day since then, keeping him company with his usual antics and jokes, even though the most Jimin could do was giving his remaining best friend a sad smile for the given effort. When none of Taehyung's jokes could cheer him up anymore, when the bags were packed and the room he had stayed in for almost a year turned bland once again, the wardrobe empty save for a certain folded basketball uniform left on the corner, Jimin would just lie on his bed feeling completely exhausted.

It felt like the very beginning once again, as he came to the foreign town, feeling empty and completely destroyed. Funny how he was going to leave the town feeling the same way as he first came. Taehyung stayed with him when it was the worst, wrapping his hand around his waist and slept on his bed until morning without Jimin having to ask first.

It was the 31 ^st already when we woke up one morning, thinking about taking one last stroll through the town. His parents would come later that night, saying something about how the traffic would be less crowded when people would be gathered on city center to celebrate the new year.

The sun was just rising as he slipped out of the house without his grandmother knowing, taking small steps through the chilling winter air. He went down the road of Songcheon-gil, through the Auraji Bridge and into the town, its people slowly bustling with activities on the last day of the year. Yeoryang-myeon was a beautiful little town, Jimin had to admit, and he knew how a little part of him had indeed fallen in love with its simplistic beauty and its kind people.

That morning of 31^st December, Jimin somehow had woken up with a heart numb enough to have him retracing the very steps he had taken for the last months with the people precious to him. His feet somehow brought him closer towards the school instead, even though he knew that it was closed for the day. Yet he just kept on going, walking through the gates and across the empty fields into the abandoned hallways on weekend.

Stopping in front of his old classroom, he realized that maybe it was his old self that called him back there, the old Park Jimin who spent his days crying after the lesson had over. So he sat there on his old chair inside of the empty classroom like he always did back then and waited for his emotion to come rushing back like it always did, turning him into a complete mess of tears and ugly sobs. But somehow the tears didn't came, as if something was blocking his heart, stopping him from feeling anything at the moment. That time Jimin only thought that maybe he had finally grown tired of it all.

He was about to leave right then, taking one last good look across the classroom, when he realized something on the table right in front of him, as if calling him near just how he was dragged into the classroom without him even realizing it.

Just like back then it was curiosity that had his hand reaching for a forgotten book in the shelves right in front of him, a very familiar black covered notebook with a broken spine and tattered sheets. He knew exactly what it was and still he opened the pages.

He was weird. I walked into him crying alone in the classroom.

Jimin remembered how it happened, the day he didn't really think as remarkable or important enough, when Yoongi walked into him crying. He also remembered that time he took out Yoongi's notebook from his desk because he simply didn't want to be disturbed. And he wasn't the only one remembering all of those little memories, because turned out, Yoongi wrote every single one of them in his notebook.

Even after paragraphs of cuss words and complaints about society and confining lives that he had, Yoongi always had the time to write a little sentence about himself at the end of it all. Whether it be him laughing, or the day they all spent in Gangneung, each one of them were carved in bold letters for Jimin to read.

And suddenly he wasn't numb anymore, the emotion he was waiting for come pouring out like a waterfall as his fingers tremble and lips quiver, because Jimin simply couldn't understand. Suddenly everything became confusing once again, his world spinning around him with all those little memories flashing in front of his eyes.

Because right there on the notebook was the Yoongi he once knew, the Yoongi who cared about him but confessed otherwise, the Yoongi who told him not to cry, who walked down the road each day with him talking about dreams and stars. That was the Yoongi he had fallen in love with. Yoongi had been writing everything about him from the day they met, yet it all still came down to this, still came down to both of them tearing each other's hearts apart.

Somehow despite the beautiful words and the promise, it all still went wrong and Jimin didn't know at what point did their story turn into a nightmare. He couldn't understand how someone who cared about him as much as Yoongi could break his heart just as hard. He couldn't understand how someone who wrote all of this could turn into the Yoongi he met on the Auraji Bridge on that snowy day.

But most of all he didn't understand what had he done to deserve all of this. Because somehow despite everything that had happened, the single thing he knew a Park Jimin didn't deserve to have is a happy ending.