It’s 5am on a Saturday and Yoongi’s ornery, but awake and being driven to a local Baptist church by his even less enthusiastic mother.

The car ride is quiet – neither of them is really awake. Neither of them wants to be awake. The reason they are awake doesn’t lie in the fault of either of them.

“We’re here,” Yoongi’s mother says, pulling up to the curb in front of the sanctuary. “Be good, Yoongi. It’ll make things go by quicker.”

Yoongi doesn’t say anything in return. He opens the door and gets out, grabbing his book-bag as he does so. He slings it over his shoulder and then shuts the door.

He and his mother make brief eye contact before she puts the car in drive and slowly pulls off.

Yoongi takes a deep breath and makes his way up the steps leading to the large, double doors that are the entrance to the sanctuary. One of the doors is slightly cracked open, and Yoongi pulls the heavy door open and slips inside, making sure it doesn’t fully shut.

Inside is a small area with benches and two doors on either side that have stairs that lead to the balcony. There are two more sets of smaller double doors that lead into the sanctuary. Beyond the doors Yoongi hears talking, and he peeks through the small glass windows, seeing a small group of people gathered near the front of the sanctuary.

Yoongi pushes through and a few heads turn, while others continue talking. He makes his way down the center aisle to the front and takes a seat in a pew behind a group of familiar faces.

“What is your name?” a woman asks, approaching Yoongi with a clipboard.

“Min Yoongi,” he replies.

“Thank you,” she says with a smile and slips back toward the front beside a man who is talking with a community service officer.

A few minutes pass, a couple more boys show up, and the day finally begins.

“Hello, everyone. I’m Pastor Kim of Korean New Seoul Baptist Church. It’s great to have all of you here, even under the circumstances. We’re glad to be working with the police department and all of you during your community service sentence,” a man with an all-too-enthusiastic smile says.

“This project will take place over the course of 3 months, and will take place here every Saturday morning at 5:30am. We have two projects going on simultaneously that you will be working on,” Pastor Kim says. “One will be with me, painting 5 of the classrooms upstairs in the back portion of the church. The other will be with Mr. Park re-doing the pews in the balcony. We’ve split you into two teams.”

“Team one is Min Yoongi, Park Jimin, Kim Namjoon, and Kim Taehyung,” Pastor Kim reads from a list. “You all will be coming with me. Kim Seokjin, Jung Hoseok, and Jeon Jungkook will be team two, working with Mr. Park.”

“Lunch will be served between 11 and 12 and provided by the church. Your community service officer will be present on site the entire day. We will finish up at around 5. Does this sound good?” Pastor Kim asks, looking at the group of boys in front of him.

The boys nod, still half asleep for the most part.

“Alright,” Pastor Kim says. “I’m going to say a quick prayer and then we’ll get moving.”

Yoongi immediately bows his head and closes his tired eyes. He completely tunes out Pastor Kim’s voice and focuses on how tired he is. His eyes are heavy and he’s so close to falling asleep, but suddenly there is a rush of movement as the other boys stand, signaling to Yoongi that the prayer is over and they’re supposed to begin working.

Yoongi falls in line with the other boys in his group, specifically next to Namjoon. The two exchange looks, having known each other for years. They vaguely know the other boys; Namjoon knows them better than Yoongi.

They follow Pastor Kim out of one of the front doors of the sanctuary and down a long hall that’s lined with small classrooms for Sunday school. They pass one staircase, and they go up the second on they get to.

Once they’re on the second floor the go a little further, then take a turn down another hall that has an emergency staircase exit at the end. It’s the area of the church furthest away from the sanctuary.

“Alright, boys,” Pastor Kim says. “I will now ask you to place your belongings in this classroom. Don’t worry about them, they’re safe here and your officer will make sure you all aren’t doing anything wrong. You wouldn’t want to extend your community service, would you?”

The boys shake their heads, some chuckling a bit as they do so.

“Good,” Pastor Kim says. “We have 5 classrooms we’re going to be working on. They classes that meet in them are currently relocated, so we aren’t so stressed about time, but we hope over the next 3 months with Saturday meeting’s we’ll get them done. I don’t expect it to take that long, I expect them to be done within the first month, maybe the first Saturday of the next month, but once they’re done and the balcony is done, we’ll begin making furniture to fill the classrooms.”

“Oh, cool, we get to build things,” one of the other boys says.

“Yes…” Pastor Kim’s voice trails off, but his eyes stay locked on the boy’s.

“Taehyung,” the boy says.

“Taehyung,” Pastor Kim repeats. “I hope I can learn all of your names quickly, and I hope I get to learn a lot about you all during our time together.”

“Now, down to business,” Pastor Kim says. “The 5 classrooms all have tarps down on the carpets so you don’t have to worry about dripping any paint on the floor. Just be wary if you step in it. We don’t want it being tracked all over the church.”

Yoongi chuckles at this, elbowing Namjoon in the ribs. The tall boy is so clumsy – Yoongi imagines if anyone were going to do that, it would be Namjoon.

“We’ll split up into teams, two people in a group, two people per wall. One will edge with a paintbrush; the other will go in with a roller and do the wall. You all can decide teams and the jobs within them,” Pastor Kim says. “Today we’ll be priming, and I imagine we’ll get through at the very least two rooms today – possibly 3 if we make good time. I know y’all aren’t professionals so I want to leave room for error and time to learn. Any questions?”

The boys shake their heads.

“Alright, partner up and grab your tools,” Pastor Kim says.

“You wanna be my partner?” Namjoon asks, and Yoongi nods, because who else would he choose?

“Do you want to roll or edge?” Namjoon asks, grabbing a paintbrush and a roller from the tools provided for them.

“Who in their right mind would let you edge?” Yoongi asks sarcastically.

“They