Yoongi and Seokjin had a promise.

They would find each other when things get weird, uncomfortable and even confusing in their homes. They promised that they would find respite in each other's arms. They promised that at whatever age they find themselves trapped in the reality of life, they would find each other in the lush forest greens. Safe behind the towering trees, away from the noise of the world.

A bunch of children playing in the forest. A game of hide and seek. A game of faes played in the forest of the lost.

"Promise you'll come see me?" the boy, pale as the moonlight, pleaded to the other. His hair, dark as night, fell over his face, hiding the way his brows shot up. Hiding his pointed ears. The other, a boy with sun-kissed skin, only smiled and nodded at him.

Intertwining their fingers together. "I will." the boy with the sun kissed skin promised.

And he does.

The two boys meet each other twice--sometimes even thrice a week, at the clearing in the forest. They meet by the tallest pine tree that stood in a circle of corsican mints. It goes on for a month, then two, then three.

On the fourth month, the child of night doesn't see the other for more than five days. And through the years, the frequency of their meetings decreased like the leaves on the pine. Until on the sixth year, when the pine needles are gone, they don't see each other.

"You should really stop going here. It's too dangerous, Yoonie." his younger brother said, calling him by the endearment their mother used on him. The boy, pale as the moonlight with hair dark as the night, was now a man. Still a little short for his kind, but he was, by all means, a son of the night.

"Don't you ever want to go out there, Chim?" He asked, voice rough as the ground they walked on.
"No. It's too chaotic out there." The younger responded and grasped his brother's arm, tugging at his garbs to the direction of the hollow.

Maybe Jimin was right. Maybe he was just curious. Maybe he was tired of the forest. Maybe he really just missed that mortal boy who used to play with him, back when the city was just a town. Back when the hallowed ground was marked by the tallest pine.
Yoongi remembered the day they first met.

He's not of the forest, that much he knew. From the way his hair was parted and the way he held his gait. Perhaps his clothing was enough an indication that he wasn't from around the Hollow. The boy with plump lips, big doe eyes and a skin different from his pale ones, was kicking pebbles into the the hallowed pond. The same pond where the moon and sun danced in their own time.

Yoongi doesn't miss the way the boy's pout made his lips fuller than it actually is. The way his brows creased in a frown.

He only watched the boy in a safe distance, afraid of showing himself to a mortal. The stories of the old lingered in his naive mind. How the mortals hunted the faes.

But it goes on for days, when the boy would openly scream and sulk in the forest. Always by the hallowed pond.

Then, on one of those days where Yoongi found himself creeping behind the pine as he waited for the boy to come. The boy doesn't disappoint for in a minute or two, he appears in the clearing, a frown etched on his face. Yoongi watched him sit by the pond, looking over morosely. He found it odd that the boy always came here feeling upst. The hallowed grounds were a place of peace and happiness.

It was where the faes gathered every fortnight to sing in merriment. So, the young fae did the unthinkable: he approached the boy.

"Hello," He says in the language of the fae, but magic always helped and it would always translate to the first language the listener knew.

The boy looked up with tears in his eyes, eyeing him curiously.

"Why are you sad?" Yoongi asked as he took a sit beside the boy.

"Mom and dad are fighting." The boy answered with a shrug. Yoongi hummed in understanding. he didn't really know how bad fights were in the mortal world. But he knew fights were never good. That was what his mother taught him.

"Do you wanna play hide and seek?" He suggests after a few moments of silence.

"Uh, sure? I'm Jin. What's your name?" The boy called Jin said as he stood up and continued to eye Yoongi.

"You can call me Suga." He said, remembering his mother's warning of never revealing his true name to anyone, unless he already knew who they were.
"Suga like the sweetener?" Jin asked, a shadow of a smile on his lips.

"Yup!" Yoongi's voice rising an octave or two.

He missed the sad looking boy who always came to visit him in this very same place where he and his brother stood. He missed cheering up the boy who always came to unload a burden from the world beyond the forest's reach.

The forest was denser now. The lush forest greens were now turning a mossy shade with flecks of dust and rot falling like a veil over it. The forest of the lost is now forgotten. Or developed. It depended on which mortal they'd ask.

There were days when Yoongi walked with mortals under the guise of a young traveller, asking for directions. The locals, as what they call themselves, first frowned at him before telling him that 40% of the forest was developed into a park. The rest were protected by the government. He wouldn't get lost in there now that it's denser.

And that's how the tall needleless pine with a bunch of corsican mints at it's foot became the entrance into the forest.

Maybe that's the reason why Jin never came back, all these years. Because he couldn't find the hallowed grounds with the corsican mints and the pond where the moon and the sun danced.

Or maybe he's happier now, where he didn't need the respite that the forest offered.

Yoongi only hoped.

———

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