Chapter Text
PROLOGUE
SOMEWHERE WE FIRST CHOSE EACH OTHER
» T «
Taehyung is four, which means the world is made of rules that exist long before explanations do.
Don’t touch the hot pan.
Don’t interrupt grown-ups.
Don’t run inside.
Don’t ask for things too many times or people start looking at you like you’re being difficult.
He is good at not being difficult.
He knows these rules by heart. He follows them carefully, like stepping on stones across a stream. If you step wrong, you get wet. If you step right, no one notices.
So he sits on the kitchen floor with his legs folded badly and his socks slipping down at the heel while his mother talks to another woman at the table.
The chair legs are tall. The table feels like it belongs to a different world, one where voices float above his head and words come out long and tangled.
Sometimes the women laugh, and the laugh makes the room feel softer, like the air gets thicker and warmer. Sometimes they go quiet, and the quiet makes Taehyung press his palms flat against the tile, just to make sure the floor is still there.
The kitchen floor is cold, but it’s honest.
In front of him, three toy cars are lined up very carefully. Red first. Then blue. Then yellow. The order matters, even if he can’t explain why. He pushes the red car forward a little, then stops it with his finger. The wheels make a small sound that feels safe.
There is a doorway to the hallway. The hallway is darker than the kitchen, and the light doesn’t reach all the way in. The shadow there looks like the kind of place where toys disappear if they roll too far.
Taehyung looks at it.
Then he looks away, because looking too long at shadows feels like breaking a rule he doesn’t know the name of yet.
A sound comes from the hallway.
Not loud. Not adult-loud. Just a shift. Like the house breathing differently.
Taehyung looks up.
A boy stands in the doorway.
He is not grown-up, but he is big in a way that matters. Taller than Taehyung by a lot. His legs are long and his shoulders are narrow, and he looks like someone who knows how doors work. His hair is dark and a little messy, like he didn’t care enough to fix it or was told not to bother.
He doesn’t rush in. He doesn’t call out.
He just looks at Taehyung.
Not at the cars first. Not at the table. At Taehyung himself, like that’s the thing he was trying to find.
Taehyung freezes.
His stomach feels tight, the way it does right before you drop something by accident. He doesn’t move. He waits for someone to tell him what to do.
No one does.
The boy crouches down.
Not in front of him, the way adults do when they want you to say thank you. He lowers himself beside him on the cold tile, like sitting on the floor is normal and not something you have to earn by being small.
The boy’s knee is close. Almost touching. Taehyung can feel the warmth of him through his jeans, and it’s strange and new and not unpleasant.
The boy’s hands hover for a second, like he’s thinking very hard about where they should go.
Then he reaches into his pocket and pulls something out.
A piece of candy, wrapped in bright paper that shines under the kitchen light.
He holds it out without saying anything.
Taehyung stares at the candy. Candy is a sometimes thing. Candy usually comes with conditions. Candy is usually offered by adults who expect a smile or a thank you or a promise not to tell.
He looks up at the boy’s face.
The boy isn’t smiling. He isn’t serious either. He’s just waiting, quiet and steady, like waiting is something he’s already learned how to do.
Taehyung takes the candy very carefully.
Their fingers touch for half a second.
The boy’s skin is warm.
The feeling makes Taehyung’s heart jump, sharp and surprised, like when you miss a step but don’t fall. No one told him to take it. No one asked him to be good first.
At the table, his mother turns around.
“Oh,” she says, her voice brightening like this is a moment she’s been saving. “There you are.”
The other woman steps closer. “He didn’t want to come in at first,” she says, smiling in a tired way. “He’s seven. He takes his time with new places.”
Seven sounds very old to Taehyung.
Names float into the room, landing gently, like things being put where they belong.
“This is Jungkook,” his mother says.
Jungkook tilts his head just a little, like the name passed through him without needing to stop. His eyes stay on Taehyung’s hands, on the way Taehyung is struggling with the candy wrapper, fingers clumsy and too small.
Taehyung finally gets it open and puts the candy in his mouth.
It tastes like sugar and fruit and something bright he doesn’t have a word for yet. It makes his tongue feel brave.
Jungkook reaches out and nudges the blue car forward with one finger. Just a tiny bit. Then he stops and looks at Taehyung, not asking out loud, but asking all the same.
Taehyung pushes the red car forward in answer.
The cars meet in the middle. Plastic tapping plastic. A small sound, but it feels big inside him, like choosing something.
Jungkook’s mouth curves, not all the way, but enough to change his face.
“What’s your name?” Jungkook asks.
His voice is low, careful. Not shy. Like he thinks words should be placed properly, the same way you line things up so they don’t fall.
Taehyung thinks for a second. His name feels important now, heavier than it did before.
“Taehyung,” he says.
Jungkook repeats it once, quietly, like he’s making sure it fits. Then he nods, satisfied.
At the table, Taehyung’s mother laughs softly. “You two will get along,” she says.
Taehyung doesn’t know what that means exactly.
But he knows how it feels.
Jungkook stays beside him on the floor.
He doesn’t get bored. He doesn’t wander off. He doesn’t ask Taehyung to do anything special or funny or impressive.
He just stays.
His shoulder is close. His presence is solid. He keeps pushing the blue car forward like the world is small enough to understand and safe enough to sit down in.
Something in Taehyung’s chest loosens, slow and quiet.
The hallway shadow doesn’t look so hungry anymore.
And for the first time that day, Taehyung stops trying so hard to be easy.
He just is.
» J «
Jungkook is seven, which means he already knows how people expect him to behave.
Be polite.
Say hello.
Don’t touch things that aren’t yours.
Don’t make your mother tired.
He is good at making things easier.
That’s what people praise, when they praise him. Not loudness. Not bravery. Ease.
So when his mother opens the apartment door and says, “Come on,” Jungkook steps inside like he’s supposed to.
He lets the warm air hit his face. He lets the smell of cooking and cleaner and another family’s life wrap around him.
He takes off his shoes neatly at the threshold because rules are something you can do with your body even when you don’t know what to do with your voice.
His mother is already talking, already smiling, already using her bright adult tone.
He follows her toward the kitchen.
He stops at the hallway.
Not because he’s scared.
Because the hallway feels like the moment right before you enter a room and become a version of yourself that people have already decided is acceptable.
The kitchen is bright. Loud-bright, in a soft way. Light on counters. Light on chairs. Light on adult faces.
Jungkook doesn’t like being looked at in new places.
He doesn’t like being asked questions he has to answer correctly.
So he lingers at the edge, half in shadow, watching.
His mother doesn’t notice. Adults don’t notice edges unless you make them.
And then he sees him.
A small boy on the kitchen floor.
Not at the table. Not in a chair. Not performing.
Just there.
Legs folded wrong. Socks slipping. Palms pressed flat on tile like he’s making sure the ground is real.
In front of him are toy cars in a line. Red. Blue. Yellow.
The boy pushes the red car forward and stops it perfectly, like the stopping matters more than the going.
Jungkook feels something in his chest shift.
Not big. Not dramatic.
Just… attention.
The kind that doesn’t feel like curiosity. The kind that feels like recognition, even when you’ve never seen someone before.
Then he looks away quickly, like he’s trying not to get in trouble for thinking too hard.
Jungkook forgets the kitchen.
For a second, he forgets his mother’s voice.
He forgets the rules.
He thinks: That’s lonely. That shouldn’t be lonely.
He takes his time, because he always does. He likes to make sure a room won’t hurt him before he enters it.
But the small boy on the floor doesn’t look like the kind of thing that hurts.
He looks like the kind of thing you can sit beside.
Jungkook pats his pocket.
He has candy. He forgot it was there until his fingers find it - bright wrapper, a little crinkled. Something his mother gave him earlier to keep him quiet on the walk over.
Candy is usually for later.
Candy is usually for when you behave.
Jungkook takes it out anyway.
He steps into the kitchen.
The adults are talking. They don’t stop. They don’t turn.
Good.
Jungkook moves like he’s sneaking, but he isn’t sneaking. He isn’t doing anything wrong. He knows that. He decides that.
He crouches down beside the small boy.
Not in front of him. Beside him.
Same tile. Same cold. Same level.
The boy freezes.
Jungkook notices immediately. He doesn’t like that. He doesn’t want the boy to feel like he did something wrong just because Jungkook entered his space.
He holds the candy out.
Doesn’t say anything.
Words can ruin things when you place them wrong.
The boy looks at the candy like it’s a trick.
Jungkook keeps his hand steady anyway. Waiting is something he’s good at.
The boy takes it. Carefully. Like it might vanish if he holds it too tight.
Their fingers touch.
Warm.
The boy’s eyes go wide, just a little, like the touch did something inside him that he wasn’t expecting.
Jungkook’s mother finally turns, her smile changing shape as she sees him.
“Oh,” she says, like she’s relieved. Like she’s been watching the doorway in her mind. “There you are.”
She says his name.
“This is Jungkook.”
Jungkook doesn’t correct her tone. He lets the moment happen.
He looks at the small boy’s hands as he fights the wrapper. The boy’s fingers are too small for the plastic. He keeps trying anyway.
Jungkook likes that. The trying.
The boy gets it open and eats the candy, and something about his face changes. Like sugar can be courage.
Jungkook reaches out and nudges the blue car forward with one finger. A question without speech.
The boy answers by pushing the red car forward.
The cars meet in the middle.
A small plastic sound.
Jungkook feels something settle in him, quiet and certain, like a decision he didn’t know he could make.
This is better than standing by the door.
He turns his head slightly, careful.
“What’s your name?” he asks, placing the words the way you place something fragile down on a table.
The boy thinks, like names matter.
Then he says, “Taehyung.”
Jungkook repeats it once under his breath.
Taehyung.
It fits.
He stays beside him on the floor, because getting up would feel like leaving something unfinished.
He keeps his shoulder close, not touching, but near enough that the boy could feel he’s there.
Near enough that the hallway shadow might think twice.
And for reasons Jungkook doesn’t have language for yet, he understands something with his whole body:
You can choose to stay.
Even when no one tells you to.
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