daybreak | yoonmin

february 10th.

7: 15 a.m.

"So, where do you work?"

Yoongi smiled smugly, as if winning this would do more than just satiate his ego. "I work at Ochoa."

"Oh, I've been there before."

"Must be fate."

Jimin sighed and rolled his eyes, his tone reverting to its normal boredom. "So you're a chef?"

"Yeah."

"Hm."

The train doors closed again. The next stop was Tower Street, where Yoongi would have to get off. That's just what Jimin noticed after three weeks of taking the monorail together. Who wouldn't notice that kind of thing? If a toddler was yapping in your ear nonstop for thirty odd minutes every morning, who wouldn't pray for their parent to come pick them up?

"You should come by sometime if you ever have a day off. Work is boring as fuck most of the time, and I can hook something up for you."

"Damn, a boring job? Couldn't be me." Jimin answered monotonously, turning the page of his book. He would finish it by the end of the ride home and planned to have selections from In Search of Lost Time in his hand by day's end.

"I mean, cooking isn't boring but the actual job is. Either way, all work is boring." Yoongi's eyes narrowed.

"Maybe your job is, sweets. But let's not make assumptions about the rest of us."

"If you say so."

"I do say so, that's the thing. I spend my work days editing manuscripts." Jimin argued, taking off his glasses to wipe them clean. "I read all day for a living. If you haven't noticed, reading is kind of my thing. Some of us are lucky enough to have our dream career."

Reading was definitely his thing and, like bad eyesight, it was in his blood. His brother, Jihyun, was a columnist for Vogue Korea, and Auntie Nabi had a stack of books in the corner of her bedroom from the floor to the ceiling. Minhyuk learned to read right after he turned two. When Jimin was little, a woman named Yoko and her husband, Haru, used to babysit him and his brother sometimes and make them tell him stories. She was a friend of Great-Auntie Hyesu from her university days.

One day Haru showed up at his family's front door complaining about how tired he was from signing copies all afternoon. Then he ruffled Jimin's hair, asked if he watched the baseball game, ate dinner, had a drink with Appa and left. Jimin asked Eomma what Kafka was. Appa told him to look it up.

That was the night Jimin found out his babysitter "Haru" was award-winning and internationally bestselling author Haruki Murakami. It is an oft-repeated story at the Park home. He almost thought to share this with Yoongi, but was interrupted before the parting of his lips to tell.

"Well, you can read my lips, Jimin." Yoongi got up from his seat, "Because all work is boring. All of it. And nobody actually has a dream job, Jimin, unless you're getting paid for being alive. Like an influencer. You're just so conditioned to capitalist ideals that you think dream jobs are real. Dream job means work doesn't feel like work. Maybe you enjoy that you read at your job at best. But I'm sure you-- just like me with cooking-- have had the fun sucked out of your passions by your career some days. You love the reading, but do you love the paperwork? The late nights at the firm? No. Because that's how jobs work. There are more parts of your job that you don't enjoy than there are parts that you do. If that's the case, that's not your dream job. That's just a job rooted in your interests."

Jimin nodded. Admittedly, he was impressed. He never looked at it that way. 

He cocked his head, his eyes pressed back against the page. "Well put."

Yoongi scrunched his nose playfully, tilting his head, "But you know. I digress."

He looked over his shoulder and the train slowed, jolting to a stop. The doors slid open.

"I'll see ya tomorrow."

Jimin looked up now. He watched his silhouette, the boxy frame of a peacoat and baggy jeans and Air Jordan 1's, blur out of focus. Too far now. Again, nearsightedness: a curse.

He continued wiping his glasses clean, and put in the second AirPod he'd learned not to wear while in Yoongi's company. He wiped, wiped, wiped. Jimin sighed and put on his glasses.

He thought about smiling, but didn't.

But he thought about doing it. And that's never happened before.