Maybe in Another Life

Everything returns to the past in seconds

That weekend I went to London. It had always been my plan once Yoongi decided to ditch me. I wasn't about to sit around waiting for him while he was out galivanting around Versailles living his secret life. It was just now, I had an extra destination. If I happened to pass by Ruby's while I was there, then I'd go in.

By now, I had gotten pretty used to walking the streets of London, so "finding" Ruby's wasn't hard.

It looked like any other pub I'd been to. The area was in one of the more seedy parts of the city; parts that Yoongi tended to avoid when we'd come for work. But in the light of day, tucked away on the side of a larger building, it didn't seem so bad.

Considering how early it was, the place was decently crowded. Clusters of 20 and 30-somethings and even older people sat around chatting and laughing. I took a seat at the bar and waited for the bartender to approach.

"Jungkook?" I turned to see Mingyu walking out from the back and I felt a sudden jolt of relief and excitement. At least this wasn't a trap set to lure me away and murder me.

"Hi!" I say, raising a hand to wave.

Mingyu sat beside me and flagged down the bartender. "I was starting to think you only took the card to be nice."

When the bartender arrived, a short, stocky man with a name tag that said 'Lee Jihoon', Mingyu ordered two Highballs, pointing between the two of us. Jihoon looked at me wearily before getting to work.

"This place is cool," I tell him looking around at the various pictures posted on the walls. Seeing friends in the pictures and those around the bar brought a pang of sadness and jealousy. This could have been us, Tae.

"Yeah! I love this place. We've been here for like, 15...20 years? It's like a second home to me, honestly."

"15 years?! Do your parents own this place or something? Did they start bringing you here as a baby?"

Jihoon returned with our drinks and exchanged an annoyed look with Mingyu before attending to another customer. I threw some money on the bar in case he was afraid I wouldn't pay.

"It's a figurative 'we'," Mingyu said before taking a sip of his drink. I see him palm the money and hand it back to me. "It's on us... the figurative 'us'."

Hearing this, I thought back to Yoongi's house the day Jeonghan and Hansol showed up, referring to their boss. Maybe Yoongi worked here at one point or another.

When Mingyu said a figurative "we", he wasn't kidding. During the time I spent with Mingyu at Ruby's that day, he had to have introduced me to 7 or 8 of his hyungs. It amazed me that they were able to run a place like this at such a young age. But thinking about it, Yoongi wasn't that much older than me and had a successful art business. Maybe I was the one behind? Maybe the time I spent mourning Taehyung and Halmeoni's deaths, everyone else my age was making a life for themselves. Maybe this is what my parents and Halmeoni meant all that time ago.

"Are you guys hiring?"

💜

"Jungkook! You home?" Yoongi called, walking through the front door.

Yoongi returned home late on Sunday night- exactly 3 weeks from when he left. Part of me wanted to pretend I wasn't there just to see if he'd react or even care. But the other part of me wasn't sure how I'd feel if he didn't.

"I'm in the study," I called back.

I thought I'd still be fired up about him ditching me when he returned, but after the weeks that I had without him, I was starting to feel indifferent. After all, so much had changed since he left.