"You're fuckin' kidding me, right?" Min Yoongi squinted at the couple in the doorway in disbelief, arms folded tightly against the uniform black of his graduation gown, eyes dark and cynical. "You're throwing me out. To fend for myself." He cocked his head of charcoal hair to one side of his milky neck, his words at once abrasive and accusing.
"Suga, hun, we don't have money," His mother began, cold eyes trained on the camellia-tinted boy arranged haphazardly on her doorstep. "You're eighteen. A proper adult. We have your savings right here," She held up a rusty old lunchbox, and passed it roughly to her son. Wiping her hands on her paisley skirt, as if she had just touched something distasteful, she added, "You'll be alright." Behind her, the hulking shadow of his father echoed her words with a curt nod; his milky eyes stared, unseeing, past Yoongi. Just once, the boy wished his father could see him; of course, he could not, and 'twas always thus. Instead, Yoongi spat on the ground at his mother's feet, smirking in satisfaction as her pointy black shoes (which had always reminded him of witches' boots, and for a good reason), scrambled to get out of the way.
"Don't call me Suga, Astrid," He spat, making sure to use her first name, which he knew she hated. "Only friends and family have that privilege. And, since you're kicking me out with what, half-a-million won, I guess don't fit either description." He spun on one heel, eyes trained on the stone steps in front of him, willing himself not to cry. At least not in front of them. Prickly green fingers of thyme and rosemary brushed half-heartedly against his pale heels, pleading for him to stay, for him to come back to the house in which he had grown up. It was funny, he thought, that his mother's plants seemed to love him more than she ever did. He reached the sidewalk, shoes ghosting over cracks and crevices where moss ran rampant and uniformity was but a distant memory. He didn't care that he looked ridiculous, stalking off in a billowing graduation gown and cap with a shoddy lunchbox clenched angrily in his hands. He just needed to get away, far, far away from that blue-and-white house shaded under the stoic branches of a dozen leafy trees.
Eventually, he checked over his shoulder; not even his street, let alone his house, was in view. Taking a deep breath, he reached into the folds of his gown, intent on finding the phone nestled comfortably in his back pocket. He dialed the first number in his contacts and held it to his pale face, eyes squinty with repressed anger as he stared at the street in front of him. Heat rose off the dark concrete in trippy waves as he waited for someone to pick up, which was unlikely. Most of his friends were busy partying, celebrating their graduation.
The speaker crackled as somebody finally answered. "Yeah? Wassup?" The voice on the other line was deep, drowning in cackling laughter, indignant protest, and other such background noises. "Suga?"
"Tae, my parents are kicking me out," He yelled so his friend could hear over the obnoxious babble of the partygoers he was so obviously surrounded with, fully aware of how utterly comical he would look to any hapless soul who had the misfortune to pass him. "I hate to be a drag, but could I bunk down with you tonight?"
Yoongi could hear a displaced murmuring, knew the harsh curve to their enunciations meant that Tae was swearing enough to utterly ruin his chance at whatever salvation might await him. "We'll meet at my house in ten, okay?" He could hear the annoyance in his friend's deep voice; he knew taking care of his sorry ass wasn't exactly the highlight of Taehyung's day, and the younger boy had to be there a lot for him; when his mother came home drunk and dangerous, when his father had his relapses, when Yoongi himself just didn't feel safe staying with his parents, it was always Tae who was there to keep him on his feet- and, sometimes, sweep them out from under him. But the good outweighed the bad, and Yoongi was tough enough to bear what negatives came with a near-guaranteed sanctuary away from his cracked-and-crumbling home.
