Magic Shop

Part 11 - The Fifth Calendar

"Jungkook? Hey, Kook? Kook, wake up!" The young man's eyes flew open with a start. H was sitting on a bench with a heavy book open in his lap. Someone was waving a hand in front of his face.

"Stop it, Tae! He's awake now," Yoongi snapped at the wiggling hand.

"Are you alright, Jungkookie?" Seokjin asked in concern, shaking his friend's shoulder.

"Y-yeah, I'm fine..." the youngest answered. "What happened?"

"Wes topped trying to meditate because nothing was happening," Hoseok explained. "But you didn't open your eyes for ages!"

"Almost a whole minute," Namjoon added.

"You timed it?!" Seokjin scoffed.

"We were actually starting to worry!" Jimin exclaimed. "Did you fall asleep, or something?"

"Uh... yeah!" Jungkook replied, blinking. "Something like that..."

"Phew," Taehyung breathed. "we don't have to take him to hospital."

"So, was that book a load of rubbish, then?" Yoongi suggested, raising an eyebrow.

"I guess so," Jungkook shrugged. "I'll probably take it back to Lost Paradise tomorrow. I'm kind of tired today."

When Jungkook arrived back at his flat he flopped onto his sofa with a gigantic sigh. So much had happened that his head was throbbing too hard to process it all! He had travelled to some sort of alternate dimension via a series of somewhat dodgy meditation methods, where he had met exaggerated versions of his six friends, and they had helped him find a "magical remedy". Crazy, he chuckled to himself. For a while he mulled everything over in his mind. Then he remembered everything.

He remembered the letter, the photo frame, the paper bag, the six most interesting and brilliant people he had ever known. And the five years between them. Leaping to his feet, the young man whipped out his old sketchbook from a drawer and found a random pencil on the floor. Sketching had been a talent of his from a young age, but he hadn't had a reason to put that skill to use as of now. He put pencil to paper, and started to draw his memories, hand skimming across the page like a figure skater.

He drew the shop front, with its sign and its purple lantern and the warm light flooding through the door. He drew the couch from the front room, with the embroidered cushions and the fluffy mauve blanket. He drew the letter and the photo frame and the paper bag on the little glass table, and the mahogany receptionist's desk with its piles and piles of paper.

When he had finished his sketches he pulled his calendar down from the wall, flipped forward through every month for the rest of the year and circled the current date on every page. then he drew up his own calendars for the next five years and marked the date on every month on them, too. Throughout his feverish period of scribbling and scrawling, the only thought Jungkook had was 'must remember, must remember, must remember!'

Finally, he reached the the current date of the current month on the fifth calendar. He highlighted it with the first neon coloured pen he could find and drew tiny stars around it. Satisfied, he sat back and exhaled in relief.

"That's the day," he told himself with a smile. "That's when I go back to them."

Yes, that was another random picture I looked for online by searching "paper on floor".