Chapter Text
“Hope your tires pop,” Jeongguk mutters.
“I will throw you out of this motherfucking car,” Jimin grunts.
The steering wheel is hot and an old rock guitarist is playing on the radio. It sounds like Eric Clapton, which Jimin has respect for, but is not interested in listening to on a Thursday morning. Jimin would reach to change it, but his driving is already risky.
“There’s an old lady driving looking blind as shit,” Jeongguk comments. Jimin watches him look up over his phone, but sees nothing particularly strange in the absolutely empty lane to his right.
“Where?” Jimin mutters, clenching the steering wheel. He looks away from the red light for a brief second.
Jeongguk turns back toward Jimin. “It’s you.”
Jimin throws an old McDonald’s wrapper at him. Its grey spots from grease and distinctive shape mark it as an old hashbrown wrapper. It dips in a very disappointing arc that doesn’t even cross the console. Jeongguk snorts.
“I hope he doesn’t show up today,” Jimin mutters under his breath, as he does every day.
Jeongguk ignores him. “I want a car,” he groans instead. He leans his head against the inside of Jimin’s passenger window. Jimin is thankful that it is, at least, a school day, meaning Jeongguk's hair is washed and not pressed greasily up against the glass.
“You turned fifteen like two days ago.”
But Jimin agrees. He wants Jeongguk to get a car. He knows he’s a shit driver, and that Jeongguk will be better. He's already better and he hasn't started yet.
“Four months and three days,” Jeongguk corrects.
Jimin focuses with rapt attention as the cement turn-in for St. Mary's approaches, giving Jeongguk minimal shit for his response. He pulls into his third favorite spot; not the usual, but decently close. He glances over his shoulder. Two rows over, another spot is pleasantly empty. It's the spot Jimin checks daily, and though it being empty before school doesn't mean much, he hopes it's just as empty when the final bell rings for the day.
They exit the car and file in through the door closest to the gymnasium, adjacent to the upperclassmen’s parking lot. Jimin adjusts his cheer bag over his shoulder and jogs down the stairs toward the basement and senior hall. Hoseok is already standing outside their locker.
“Hey man,” Hoseok mutters when Jimin walks up. His hair is wet and drips a little down the back of his neck. He’s looking down at his phone where Jimin sees him scroll through row after row of notifications.
“How’s your morning?” Jimin asks a little stupidly. Hoseok’s hair is hanging in dark little strands over his eyebrows.
He smiles at Jimin, though.
“It was good,” he answers. “We’re prepping for tryouts. Is Jeongguk finally gonna try this year?”
“Ah, I don’t really know.” Jimin shoves his cheer bag into the bottom of their locker along with Hoseok’s. “He’s weird about it.”
“He’d get on, though?” Hoseok’s eyebrows are lowered. He’s leaning against the adjacent locker. “And he knows it. Namjoon was talking about him, and I told him, too.”
Namjoon would definitely tell Jeongguk anything that Jeongguk would like to hear, but Jimin knows Jeongguk better than Hoseok.
“I don’t know if it’s really about getting on the team,” he admits. He won’t say anything else.
Hoseok looks at him with his eyebrows pinched. The sides of his jersey dips down. He’ll have to change before one of the Deans will see him, Jimin thinks. The uniforms are only allowed after fourth period on game days. It's a travesty for Jimin.
“Huh,” Hoseok says. He looks like something is clicking a little more. “Well, thanks for letting me know.”
Their conversation ends abruptly after two other basketball players crash into Hoseok, one hanging on each shoulder, to leave Jimin to his usual routine.
Jimin’s first and second periods are awkward but pass easily. No one in his immediate friend group is in either of them, but they’re in two of his AP classes, so he sits next to a couple of girls he doesn’t mind and scribbles in his lab notebooks. He hates both chem and physics but knows they will look impressive to his first and second college choices, and if there's one thing Jimin does mind, it's that.
“Hi,” Mira says when he sits down.
Jimin listens very patiently to her eventual rant about a rumor that Jimin knows nothing about. It lasts until Mr. Ribb talks very slowly about covalent bonds and makes poorly-scribbled diagrams on the board. Jimin stares at the whiteboard as he zones out, knowing six hours with a textbook the night before a test will serve him better than a lecture.
"So I just think it's kind of ridiculous that he gave us a paper due when everyone knows there's an AP Calc exam," Mira huffs.
"Yeah, that's not cool," Jimin agrees mindlessly. The bell has rung and his binder is shoved into his backpack again.
Third period rolls around, and for once: a blessing.
But he doesn’t know it’s meant to be a good day until well into class. Jimin slips in with five minutes to the bell behind an empty seat. He sends a prayer, like every other English period, that the seat will stay empty. He sits in the back because Mrs. Opfer forces them to sit in alphabetical order.
For some fucking reason, no one in their class has a last name beginning with ‘N’ or ‘O.’ Jimin has tried to push for a new seating chart both openly in-class and privately after school.
Next semester, Mrs. Opfer promised.
Jimin swipes upward on his Instagram feed and likes photos he doesn’t actually look at while staring up at the black long minute hand on the clock that hangs above the open door.
At two minutes, Jimin starts to get hopeful. He looks between his double taps and the clock, from the secondhand down to the doorway. One and a half minutes—the hallway is starting to clear out. Conversation is closing down aside from the occasional loud remark and the slapping sound of an athlete down on the hall monitor’s shoulder.
Jimin waits awkwardly through his neighbor’s equally awkward attempt at a conversation. She wears a faux-fur tail on her belt loop. It has a rainbow zebra print. Jimin finds more entertainment out of her snapchat stories than her conversation. The red second-hand approaches the twelve. One minute.
Jimin counts down from sixty very quickly multiple times. Every time he reaches zero he starts from the secondhand. Sixty fifty-nine fifty-eight—thirty-nine thirty-eight thirty-seven thirty-six—sixteen fifteen fourteen—the secondhand hits the zero. Mrs. Opfer kicks up the grey door stopper and lets the door fall shut while she asks for everyone to pass their homework up.
Jimin tears his homework responses out of his notebook and passes it up while class begins. He keeps his eyes trained on the clock unless class absolutely demands his focus—it never does—and waits, praying that the seat remains empty until the minute hand hits ten past the hour.
The black hand hits the ten. Anyone who would come in late would be marked as absent without a note.
Jimin sits back in his seat with a satisfied smile.
The seat stays empty, and for once, nothing happens during Opfer’s class aside from Hoseok passing in the hall and waving wildly at Jimin through the window of the classroom door.
“Min Yoongi was outta class today,” Jeongguk says before Jimin can. They both slide into the cold navy cafeteria seats, having walked in together. “Jimin was upset. He was trying to fuck.”
He makes a moderately disgusted face as he says the words, which is nothing in comparison to Jimin’s. Namjoon looks over Jeongguk in that way that makes Jimin want to roll his eyes and throw up even more, but then he looks at Jimin in between munching on the seasoned snap peas Mrs. Kim always makes.
“You wouldn’t fuck him?” Hoseok laughs over his caucasian lunch. He eats his lunch with his gum in his mouth—gross—and he also has the habit of popping his gum that Jimin can only stand in online relaxation videos.
In response, Jimin makes an aggressive barfing motion by constricting his throat and making general rasps of convulsion.
“He’s kinda hot,” Jeongguk mulls in a very unbothered and heterosexual way. Jimin knows to look straight at Namjoon, whose eyebrow twitches while Jeongguk continues, “but gross.”
“Gross as shit,” Jimin corrects. Hoseok and Namjoon’s eyes are rolling as per usual. Jimin doesn’t go into detail. Jimin has already gone into detail plenty of times.
“You brainwashed this one,” Hoseok drawls, pointing a granola bar in the direction of Jeongguk.
Jimin just shrugs. He thinks it’s more ridiculous that Hoseok would eat a granola bar with gum in his mouth. The shit would get all mixed together and no one likes that.
His own lunch is fine. He’d talked Jeongguk out of buying for once which means they can take the leftovers and split them. There’s a microwave close to their table that constantly smells like Korean food, which gets some looks whenever the line at the other microwave gets too long, but to Jimin having food that smells weird is just another part being the gay Asian cheerleader. He knows it. Jeongguk knows it. It is what it is.
Jeongguk is talking to Hoseok, so Jimin takes out his phone while Namjoon listens to and looks at Jeongguk exclusively. Jimin gives it another month before Hoseok will stop putting up with his best friend’s shit and might finally tell him to give up on Jeongguk.
“I think Wesel is better than South Central’s, but if they put in Carter, we’re fucked,” Jeongguk is saying very intensely.
Hoseok nods. Namjoon drools.
How Jeongguk can talk about all that and still attract gay men is beyond Jimin, who can barely get a man’s attention on his aggressively aged-up Tinder. Jimin thinks of himself as pretty cute, too. Namjoon just must want to hurt.
So Jimin eats and swipes left on a lot of white men while drowning out the conversation. Lunch is going peacefully until Hoseok throws a baby carrot in the middle of Jimin’s bowl.
“Chicken legs,” he mutters. “Four o’clock.”
“Why would you point him out,” Namjoon groans.
Hoseok only responds: “Entertainment.”
Jimin unsubtly turns his head to see none other than Asshole Min Yoongi strolling into the cafeteria on his very skinny and very chicken-like legs.
He puts on his best unimpressed expression.
“I love this show,” Jeongguk whispers dramatically. Namjoon snorts unattractively.
Jimin turns back around. “I hate him,” he says plainly. "Stupid goth poultry."
“Another filler episode,” Jeongguk sighs in disappointment.
“No one in high school wears a fucking leather jacket,” Jimin hisses after driving Hoseok’s extra spork against Jeongguk’s thigh. The plastic just bends against the muscle and denim. Jimin could roll his eyes at that alone, but continues: “He uses that extra leather shit to hide that he’s picking his nose in English but I have to fucking see that shit. Right in front of me.”
“I feel like everyone picks their nose,” Hoseok offers diplomatically.
Jeongguk leans back. “Good to know who picks his nose,” he announces, which Namjoon laughs at, because of course he does.
“I fuckin’ don’t do that shit,” Jimin plows on, but immediately feels a bit of regret because Jeongguk has been Jimin’s neighbor since Jimin was five, which means that Jeongguk has likely seen Jimin pick his nose.
Jeongguk, thankfully does not protest. Jimin’s shoulders relax—but only until Yoongi’s skinny legs have ambled over to the table directly across from them, where he typically sits to curse Jimin’s eyes with his presence.
The cafeteria is loud, but Jimin doesn’t even have to listen carefully to hear the sound of glass clinking against the ground when Yoongi sets his backpack down. He sits next to Kim Taehyung. The backpack clinks again. The sound can be heard across the entire cafeteria. Everyone at Yoongi’s table looks around with smirks while everyone else looks at Yoongi's table seeking gossip points.
“Discreet,” Jimin mutters with an eye roll.
“That sounded like a bong,” Hoseok comments.
“Those things are massive,” Jeongguk critiques. “No way.”
“How the fuck would you know,” Jimin critiques back. “And that shit is alcohol. No one would bring a whole fucking bong to school.”
“Kim Seokjin did last year,” replies Hoseok. The whole group goes quiet at that. “It wasn’t his, though. He got suspended for it when they got into Evan’s phone.”
Evan Miller was the one everyone bought weed from. The Dean of the school had pulled him out of a bathroom for vaping in Jimin’s junior year, and after the asshole handed over his phone, over fifty students had been called down to the Office in a systematic pseudo drug-bust. Evan had transferred into the public school district shortly after. The mention of it makes St. Mary's quiet.
“Didn’t know that,” Namjoon eventually says.
The conversation tentatively shifts to Evan and his adventures at South Central, but Jimin keeps coming back to thoughts about the leather jacket drug rug across the way and how it makes him feel real nasty. He goes on Instagram some more and double taps but mostly he just wants something to yell at, so he finally groans. Jeongguk presses his thumb down over his fist as if checking a stopwatch. Jimin wishes Hoseok had a third spork for Jeongguk’s eye.
“I’m going to the library,” Jimin finally decides. He nearly tosses his reusable metal lunch box along with his brown paper bag, but at the last second, he recovers. Jimin’s mom would make him go with Jeongguk to Sunday programming at Church if he didn’t bring that dish back—and that's almost as bad as Min Yoongi.
Jimin digs into the red and white striped KFC bucket sitting between them on his bed. They’d scrambled as quickly as they could out of their seventh period classes because Thursday is Jeongguk’s cheat day, and because Jimin loves greasy food no matter how much his stomach tells him otherwise.
“How’s it feel to have your room smell like Min Yoongi?” Jeongguk asks.
“Ew,” is all he says in response.
He has food and Yoongi was at least absent from Opfer’s class. It was a very good day, all things considered.
Jeongguk says nothing for a little while. He’s playing on his 3DS. It’s a game in the Fire Emblem series, which had interested Jimin for a bit until he had tried the game and remembered how shitty he was at video games.
“What are you gonna do about Namjoon?” Jimin asks, chewing off the crispier pieces of skin.
Jeongguk shrugs. “He’s a chill dude.”
“He gets a boner every time you do a shitty Scottish accent,” Jimin points out.
“That’s because it’s actually funny as fuck,” he corrects.
“I don’t think so.”
“You’re also not funny.”
“That’s true,” Jimin admits. Jeongguk cracks a smile.
“I want basketball season to start already,” Jeongguk whines.
Jimin does not, under any circumstance, consider mentioning upcoming tryouts or his earlier conversation with Hoseok.
“We haven’t even had any football games yet,” Jimin mutters. His toe digs into the yellow lace of the comforter his mom had temporarily made his bed with while she washed his other laundry.
Jeongguk locks his phone and unlocks it to check the amount of time left on the timer. In the ultimate cheat day move, they have pizza rolls in the oven downstairs. Jimin can feel Jeongguk's need for them on a visceral level.
“Yeah,” Jeongguk agrees. “Is your team being nicer or whatever?”
Jimin sits back against his pillows and the awkward, lumpy box on his bed full of donations in what will become the yearly clean-out process that takes over his home.
“Kinda. Melissa still won’t shut up,” he admits.
His coach is overly insistent on giving Jimin the flyer position to give a "competitive difference" from the other cheer teams. It's performative. Jimin likes flying, so he accepts the position despite that.
“She have her kid yet?”
“She’s only six months pregnant, diphthong.”
Jeongguk shrugs. “I measure time in class periods and school semesters.”
Jimin does that too, so he shuts up for a bit. He sits there, flipping through his social media and retweeting animal rescue posts by Dodo, until stress starts circling through his thought process again.
“Why do you think he wasn’t in English?”
“Doctor’s appointment?”
“He brought a bong to school. He doesn’t care about health.”
“Bongs are fuckin’ massive.” Jeongguk is pulling the upper left control vigorously. When Jimin leans forward he can see a battle taking place on the upper screen. “I thought you said it was alcohol—weed is natural anyways?”
“Did you just say ‘weed is natural’ at me?”
“Sorry, Mrs. Park.”
Jimin lies back against the pillows again.
“Maybe he got mugged,” he suggests. Something drops a little in his stomach.
“Nah,” Jeongguk says absentmindedly. “He probably just slept in. Avoided a test. He had a pass with him, didn’t he?”
“I’unno. He came in at lunch.”
“Might’ve not been caught if he did skip, then.”
That makes Jimin’s stomach turn sour again. He wants Yoongi to get caught in his stupid leather jacket. He wants Yoongi to have to sit on the bench outside the Dean’s Office where everyone can stare at him. He doesn’t care so much about the reason why the senior didn’t show up to third period after he thinks about that. He’s glad Min Yoongi wasn’t there at all.
Jeongguk’s 3DS makes the faraway tinny sound of a lost round. He closes it and grunts, scoffing.
“Why are you talking about Min Yoongi so fucking much anyways?”
Jimin’s offense to the statement blinds the realization that Jeongguk is definitely taking out his video game loss on Jimin. “What?”
“All the fucking time,” Jeongguk mutters.
Jeongguk probably doesn’t mean it; there’s something about his face and his body that shrinks up, like he realizes he’s taking something as stupid as a video game out on Jimin.
Still, Jimin feels defensive enough to say: “Well, I fucking hate him,” in response.
“Why though?” Jeongguk is pressed back against Jimin’s wall next to his window. His 3DS is shut and thrown down in the middle of the bed.
Jimin pauses. “I feel like I’ve ranted about that enough for you to know,” he grunts.
It’s awkward. Jimin and Jeongguk are the kind of best-friend-neighbors that don’t fight. Tension is usually ignored. Jeongguk is already checking the timer on his phone again. Jimin sees that they have about eleven minutes until the pizza rolls are done. They’d eaten the vast majority of the chicken on the way home, and Jimin has about two bites of chicken breast left to stall with. They both know it’s not enough.
“You ever think about telling him?”
Jimin’s eyebrow twitches. “Why would I explain—”
“Yeah, you’re right.” The words are stilted. “It was stupid. But fucking—get it out there or something.”
“Get it out there,” Jimin repeats dumbly.
Jeongguk’s fingers are pressed on either sides of his nose like his sinuses are clogged.
“Have you ever tried journaling?” He asks it in a Scottish accent.
It takes Jimin a minute to realize that Jeongguk is really just asking him to please stop fucking talking so much about Min Yoongi. And he could respond and say something to assure Jeongguk that he’ll lay off of constantly talking about Yoongi so much, although he admittedly bitches about the senior so much that he wouldn’t know what else to talk about—but instead he just says—
“Yeah.” He blinks. “I have, actually. Sort of.”
Jeongguk looks surprised, like he was expecting Jimin to lash out and bitch, which is fair.
“Sort of?”
Jimin sits back into the pillows and the corner of the cardboard box labeled Goodwill again. He thinks over it.
“I write letters sometimes,” he puts offhandedly. “It’s chill.”
Jeongguk’s lips twist. He contemplates for a second. “What kind of letters?”
“Rants.” The word comes out more forcefully than Jimin intends. He feels a little defensive and a lot like he should have already told someone. “Like, directed to people.”
“Is there one for me?”
“No,” Jimin answers truthfully. “I mostly write them like—like to guys.”
Jeongguk squints and wriggles his hips in an ugly way on Jimin’s bed. He pats the skin beneath his hipbone and above his dick in demonstration.
“Usually to like, exes,” Jimin corrects. But he hasn’t dated anyone. Jeongguk knows this well, and knows that Jimin is referring to men he’d sort of had things with—maybe. He hasn’t really had “things” either. “To guys.”
To guys that aren’t his best friend, or his friend at all. To men in general, from the gay perspective of things. Jeongguk probably doesn’t get it.
“And Min Yoongi is a ‘guy,’” Jeongguk says dubiously.
“No.” It comes out in a rush. “More like—it’s more of a hate thing. I’m just—” He looks towards his closet. “I’m just going to grab them.”
“The pizza rolls?”
“No. The letters.”
Jimin looks on the upper shelf of his closet but then remembers that he’d moved them to his desk in preparation for his mother’s upcoming spring cleanout, when the entire family packs their shit into donation boxes. She typically leaves his desk alone at all costs: Jimin is a good student, and she doesn’t want to mess with any of the handouts from previous classes he definitely does not use to study.
The black file holder from his freshman year debate class is in his third and largest desk drawer. It’s one of the ugly accordion plastic ones with an elastic and button closure. Jimin pulls the elastic back so that all the white printer paper can peek out.
“What the fuck,” Jeongguk whispers, astonished.
The papers are heavy and flop around unless Jimin keeps a firm hold on the plastic. “I know.”
He hands the accordion over to Jeongguk, who immediately pulls out the little stapled packets one by one and glances over the cover pages. Jimin is organized—he likes a good cover page on his letter. Some of the letters are only one page, and those, obviously, do not get a cover page. But he attempts to make two pages at least.
Jeongguk is reading out the names one by one. “Kim Jong—this is from Mrs. Mejia’s class.”
“I used to journal them,” Jimin admits sheepishly.
Jeongguk just waves the paper. “This is from when I was in the fifth grade.”
Jimin shrugs. It’s not that long of a letter anyways.
The accordion file folder has little letters at the top to organize by last name. Jimin doesn’t have a lot of experience with men but he has a lot of experience with bitter crushes on straight boys, so it takes a while for Jeongguk to reach the ‘M.’ By the time he gets to the letter ‘G,’ though, he notices it. The singular ‘M’ file. For Min.
“Jimin,” he’s snorting and whispering, “this is fat as fuck.”
He pulls out Min Yoongi’s letter well before the order suggests. It flops awkward and stiff in his hands, with a longer black staple than the rest.
“This is—this is like ten-point font.” He’s flipping through the pages.
“Flip back to the cover page,” Jimin suggests.
Jeongguk does. He chokes.
He flips through the packet for a little while. His eyes look a little glassy and continue to get glassier as he progresses through certain points—probably the parts that Jimin is especially proud of.
“You got all your humor from me,” Jeongguk chokes out.
“I’m not funny,” Jimin deadpans.
“I know,” Jeongguk whispers, and puts a finger up to his mouth in a ‘shush.’
Jimin keeps talking anyways: “It helps when I write it,” he zips up his hoodie, “but I always print it out too early.”
Jeongguk flashes all the pages at him as if to ask how there could possibly be any more. Jimin just shrugs.
Jeongguk continues to flip—respectfully skimming, although Jimin doesn’t really care—until Jimin sees his phone light up from where it’s trapped under his crossed legs. There’s a little under two minutes left, so Jimin straightens up.
“Pizza rolls,” he explains, and leaves his room without much else.
His socks slide over the stairs and cross the linoleum flooring of the kitchen, so he spends a bit of his remaining time sliding around on the kitchen floor with one hand on the island and the other on the sink’s edge.
The oven is definitely opened a bit early, but the pizza rolls are gold and greasy, so Jimin swipes one of his mom’s good dish towels from off the stove handle and uses it as an oven mitt. Red sauce, having oozed from a little hole where the crease of the pizza roll split during cooking, accidentally ends up smeared on the back side of one, so he has to carefully fold it over the stove handle again. He hides the stain and hopefully avoids a lecture.
Jimin transfers the food onto a dinner plate with his bare fingers, which burns him but doesn’t deter him.
Jeongguk nearly shouts when Jimin makes it up the stairs. What comes out of his mouth is more of a panicked grunt—he has a hand stretched out in Jimin’s direction, and in his hand is a smaller letter.
The gesture and shock on Jeongguk’s face prompts Jimin to look over his own self, down his body and finally towards his outstretched arm. A single pizza roll is sneaking towards the edge of the plate, threatening their perfectly even split of food. Unacceptable.
Jimin reaches for the pizza roll, pops it into his mouth, and spends the remaining walk to his bed cycling the food between his cheeks when it’s too hot.
He plops down against his pillow, pressed against the cardboard box on his bed labeled “Goodwill” that he has been sleeping around for about three days.
They don’t start eating immediately; Jimin starts to gather up the packets spread out over the bed. Jeongguk watches Jimin carefully over the edge of the letter he’s reading.
“You can keep reading,” Jimin says dismissively. “Just putting ‘em up.”
So Jeongguk digs into the food, but something crinkles beneath Jimin’s butt.
“Wait,” he says critically.
Jeongguk looks up at Jimin, freezing with wide eyes and a pizza roll between his lips. Jimin has no idea what the face is about, but he cackles at how scared Jeongguk looks.
“Your face,” he snorts. Jeongguk pauses for a long while before biting down. He shrugs.
He reaches beneath his upper thigh and lower ass, pulling out one of the thinner letters halfway stuck beneath the donation box. It must have slipped beneath when Jimin had moved around on the bed.
Jeongguk reads for a bit but not for long. Truthfully, Jimin knows that a lot of his letters are very similar and that he only really ever got to criticize Min Yoongi for anything truly substantive. He’d spent a lot of time on the other ones just being hurt and rejected. It’s a lot of “you” directed statements and not a whole lot about how Jimin felt, but Jimin’s last romantic-rejection letter had been written in freshman year and since then it had all been written about Min Yoongi’s asshole state of being.
“You’re a dick,” Jeongguk says a while later behind the flipped-up screen of his 3DS.
“I know,” Jimin responds. They’re both dicks.
Jeongguk occasionally laughs about things in his game and about things Jimin has written. Normally they’d sit until the sun turned orange through Jimin’s window and Jeongguk’s mom finally called him back for dinner, but instead, Jeongguk’s mom calls him early.
It happens right while Jimin’s mom gets back from a hair appointment. She knocks and sticks her head around the door after Jimin yells an affirmative. Her highlighted hair is flat-ironed unusually shiny against her head.
“Did you—” But her eyes drop to Jimin’s side and she gives him a flat look. “That box goes out tomorrow at six,” she scolds.
She opens the door a little wider. Jimin can see a coffee mug in her hands.
“I know,” Jimin says exasperatedly. Jeongguk is texting his mom from the other side of the bed. Jimin can tell because her text tone is a Stunfisk cry.
“I want it down in the car by nine tonight.”
“Fine.” He’ll do it in the morning.
“I’m checking before I go to bed at nine,” she warns.
“Fine.” He’ll do it at 9:05.
“I have to be back for dinner in ten,” Jeongguk interjects.
Jimin groans.
“You’re welcome to come over after,” his mom offers sweetly. She likes Jeongguk a lot because he helps with the dishes and is generally less comfortable at Jimin’s house than Jimin is in his own home. His mom mistakes that anxiety for politeness.
“Mrs. Thosat is coming over again,” Jeongguk complains. "I'm gonna have to stay and do the dishes."
Jimin and his mom have already discussed that it’s weird for someone’s parents to invite their kid’s teacher over to dinner, so they say nothing. Jimin at least knows why Jeongguk won't be able to come back over.
Instead Jimin’s mom gives him a final warning: “Clean out that desk before I go in it. I know you have lots of books to donate. Clean up your trash and put that dish,” she points with her index finger at the plate between them, “in the dishwasher. Not the sink.”
Jimin groans. Jeongguk is packing his backpack up, which he pulls into his lap and strangely messes with for quite a while before standing up. Jimin only sees him zip up his bag out of his peripheral.
His mom huffs at him. “I know you stained my good dish towel,” she adds stiffly.
The door clicks shut after her. Jimin only groans again.
"Are you okay?"
Jeongguk shrugs in the front seat.
It's Friday. It's the same school morning routine—shower, hope Jeongguk does the same, eat breakfast, crawl into the car around the same time Jeongguk rolls out of bed—but at least there's the promise of sleeping in the next day.
Jeongguk looks like he needs it more than Jimin does, strangely. He’s all curled up in the passenger seat, bouncing his knee anxiously.
"Did you play Overwatch last night?" Jeongguk's mom usually keeps it in her room and only hands it back on weekends. It's the only game that keeps Jeongguk up past five in the morning.
He's rubbing at his eyes, though. Jimin can see that there's still sleep in them, and that he generally looks like shit. They'd left fifteen minutes late because he'd slept in so much; Jimin would be worried if he didn't already know that there weren't any homework or tests in their upcoming future.
"Just feel like shit," Jeongguk mutters, clutching his backpack on his lap.
"Stomach hurt?" Maybe that might be why Jeongguk is so hunched up over his backpack.
"Yeah."
Jimin concludes: "Must have the shits. Sorry dude."
He starts wondering what Jeongguk will eat when they pull in. His mom had packed plenty of leftovers, but they aren't easy on the stomach. Jimin has smelt the afterproduct from Jeongguk's ass before and knows that his digestion won't be aided.
When Jeongguk walks away clutching his backpack and looking anxious, Jimin texts his mom to see if she can bring him anything.
She calls him right away. "I'm at work, sweetie. I can't really bring anything. Can you buy applesauce or something in the cafeteria?"
"Not really," Jimin says into the phone.
"You might try calling Jungwha," she suggests, but Jimin doesn't really like talking to Jeongguk's mom. "I'm sure he'll call himself if it gets that bad."
So Jimin sends shitty memes to Jeongguk throughout his classes, even in English, even when Min Yoongi is sitting in front of him. Jimin’s so focused on his friend that he doesn’t even look to see if the weirdo gets all scratchy during class. Jeongguk, however, never responds during class. He has read receipts on, though, so Jimin provides a steady stream of shitty jokes until lunch rolls around.
Jeongguk actually texts him before he's in the cafeteria building.
gone home got the shits, the text reads. Attached is photo evidence. Jimin locks his phone.
"Where's Jeongguk?" Namjoon asks right as Jimin sits down. His obsession is only a little annoying.
"Got the shits," Jimin answers.
He pulls out his storage container but doesn't bother microwaving it. He'd like to argue his lack of appetite from Jeongguk's photo but feeling awkward at the table sits deeper in his gut. Hoseok and Namjoon are best friends, and without Jeongguk there, Jimin wishes he could go sit at the cheer table without making himself look like an ass to the two in front of him.
Min Yoongi sits at the table across the divide in tables right around the same time Namjoon and Hoseok strike up comfortable conversation that doesn't necessarily include Jimin, which makes him wish he could sit somewhere else even more.
He can't even look at his phone the whole time; he'll look just as checked out as if he'd sat somewhere else.
"I think he's going to try out," Namjoon is offering. Hoseok looks a little annoyed by the continuous conversation about Jeongguk, too, but not as annoyed as Jimin feels.
"It would be cool." Hoseok is just placating him.
Jimin blurts: "He won't, probably."
It's the first time Jimin has openly given feedback regarding Namjoon's pursuit, or around the topic of it. He can already feel himself verging into awkward territory.
Namjoon leans back a little as he ventures, "Is he okay?"
Jimin panics.
"I told him a lot about how often practices were last year," he lies. "He just likes going to games a lot more."
"That's cool," Hoseok responds. "Nice to have people there."
"For sure," Namjoon adds.
Lunch gets a little easier once Jimin has made a contribution to the conversation, albeit a dangerous one. The shitty part of his day has probably passed.
Dude what the fuck, Jimin's phone reads.
He stares down at his text conversation with Hoseok.
Hoseok isn't—particularly close with Jimin. They're locker partners because Namjoon has a lot of sports shit and Hoseok has a lot of sports shit and Jimin, comparatively, has much less sports shit, so being locker partners allows him be next-door to Namjoon while having some goddamn room, but even after having hung out multiple times, Jimin has never done anything to consider himself close to Hoseok. He hasn't ever made him angry, or seen him angry.
Hoseok is just kind of… neutral. Chill. In a good mood.
Usually.
Jimin looks up in their conversation to see if it's a response to an old message, but the last text is from Hoseok—In the back by the window—about meeting up for food at Zips after a track meet from the year before.
He hopes Hoseok must have just sent it to the wrong person.
what? Jimin sends back.
It takes a little over a minute for a read receipt to pop up. Jimin is staring at his phone the whole time—it's his free period, and he has a worksheet due on Monday that he could probably finish, but his anxiety is taking over his priorities.
Three little dots cycle on the bottom of the screen.
I know you don't like him but this is stupid, comes the reply.
Jimin is more confused than ever. The conversation from lunch pops into his head, though, and then his stomach drops.
are you even sending this to the right person, Jimin sends carefully. And then: it's not my place to talk about what jeongguk wants to do.
You're not funny. The response is immediate.
what are you talking about?
When Jimin has nothing but a read receipt for two minutes, panic is tight in his throat.
He didn't say anything wrong about Jeongguk, he rationalizes. Jimin doesn't even remember exactly what he said but he knows it wasn't negative. He'd implied Jeongguk was too lazy to go to practice four times per week, but Jeongguk also ate lunch in his classroom sometimes when he was too tired to walk to the cafeteria. He made jokes about Jeongguk's lazy shit all the time.
He can't text Jeongguk about it, either.
Jimin turns. "Can I ask you about something?"
Sooyoung looks back at him. She has silver glitter on her eyelids and her cheer ponytail is curled. She has her uniform on for a fundraiser event Jimin hadn't signed up for. Jimin likes her because she's one of the nicer girls on the team, and because they're both pretty quiet.
But she looks at him strangely.
"I have a math quiz on Monday," she says, with only her phone out on her desk.
Jimin's gut must have wrinkles from all the twisting. "Good luck on your quiz," he offers. She nods and turns back to her phone.
He looks back at his texts. He still doesn't have a response. He thinks about texting Hoseok again but he doesn't know what he would send. It would be stupid to text Namjoon and he doesn't really have any other friends aside from Jeongguk.
After opening and closing several apps without actually looking at anything, Jimin digs into his backpack and pulls out a textbook to at least look like he's doing something. He stares at the whiteboard and at his book and firmly away from Sooyoung's direction, although he can still see in the corner of his eye that she's playing a game on her phone and occasionally texting.
The whiteboard is covered in functions Jimin had seen about a week ago in his AP Calc class. His homeroom teacher is curled fiercely behind her desk over a romance novel. There's a small group of girls by the classroom door, with just an empty seat in between. One of the girls is turned around in her seat and giving Jimin a dark look before he even looks at her.
Jimin's peripheral narrows.
He looks back down at his textbook. It's open to the middle rather than the unit they're actually covering in class.
Eventually he pulls out his phone again. No one has posted anything on his Instagram feed and he's too stressed to read so he pulls up his Snapchat and slowly watches through a few stories until the day ends.
Right as Kim Taehyung's story comes up, everyone starts to pack up.
Jimin looks at the image very, very carefully. He looks at all the white little squares first, identifying them as paper, and then he looks at the caption. It’s something that he initially writes off as very stupid—something about how bullying isn’t cool, in some poetic language that only a douche like Taehyung would write. But then, looking at both of them together and listening to the anxiety that’s had Jimin on edge, he puts it together.
The bell rings right as Jimin’s stomach drops.
Sooyoung is one of the last ones walking out of class when Jimin looks up from his phone.
Jimin sits with a ball in his stomach and in his throat and behind his eyes, like a headache coming on or maybe tears—he looks through more stories and every few he sees the same thing, the same photo taken from different angles with different captions.
He accidentally leaves his jacket in homeroom. He can't really see anything in the photos except for a few words that shouldn't be on a snap story and shouldn't be anywhere but inside the third drawer of Jimin's desk.
He feels a lot of denial but then he thinks about the textbooks in that drawer. The Goodwill box flashes in his mind and so does the feeling of throwing his textbooks into the box the night before. The image of a letter slipping into or between textbooks is too easy to picture. He thinks about how—
About how he is a very, very mean person.
The bulletin is in the senior hallway and the closer Jimin walks to it the more upperclassmen there are, meaning that more juniors and then progressively more seniors give Jimin looks that are definitely short of neutral.
Nausea cruises straight through his body when he sees the crowd in the hall and a small break in it that shows the bulletin. He knows—he can’t read the font of the papers pinned there, but he recognizes the paragraph length and the color of the printer paper, all thirty pages stapled to the cork, and the hole where the original steel staple had been ripped out of all the pages.
The pile of students wrapped around the bulletin in an arc is truly massive. A sophomore from Hoseok's team hits his friend’s shoulder. The sound of the area is one of continuous chattering, a few “ooh” and “shit”s interrupting in staccato. It continues all the way down to where the last few pages of the letter flapping awkwardly where an air vent blows upward.
Jimin thinks that maybe now is the time to dip, but he looks closer anyways, at the cover page, at the line, in all caps, in Times New Roman, with Jimin’s full name proudly announced—
“THIS IS A FORMAL PETITION FOR MIN YOONGI TO STOP SCRATCHING HIS DICK IN HONORS ENGLISH,” the first line reads.