the first day of the world
Authour: numen (NotThatLydia)
Retrieved from: Ao3
Words: 2798
Ship: Jimin×Seokjin
Summary:
With full dark eyes and a proud beam, Jimin let go of his hand with a quick shake. “Hyung, it was nice to meet you! I’ll see you soon,” and he pointed to the house next door to the new home, and it was the most wonderful fate.
Seokjin raced through the grass back to his mother, giddy as he pushed away his tiredness. The air was clean and he was smiling. His father had been right that maybe being eight meant there was more, not less.
He turned back just once, waved both arms over his head at Jimin’s diminishing form. The boy’s smile was still visible. “See you tomorrow Jiminie, and thank you!”
A musical return, an excited shout, “Seokjin-hyung! Tomorrow, and the day after as well!"
--
Seven hours, twenty seven minutes, and thirty-three seconds. Seokjin counted as the time ticked through to twenty eight, and then turned his head in a tired arc to the rest it against the window. They had been in the car for all these trailing hours, winding down unfamiliar roads, and for most of these there had fallen a steady drizzle on the windscreen. He had been startled from the edge of slumber by his father slamming his hands against the wheel in frustration at the traffic at least three times, and his brother was singing along to the radio – tunelessly – in the seat next to him.
When they had first departed that morning, terribly early, his brother had pinched him on the arm (”He was just teasing Seokjin-ah!” said his mother) claiming it was needed to wake him, and he reached to rub the spot that stung still now.
All their belongings had been taken from the house days before, and so last night they had slept curled together in the living room. Seokjin was restless for the few hours they had, caught up in grazing his finger along a deep notch in the hardwood floor, which he had created with a dropped sports trophy only months ago. His parents had told him moving was exciting, a house was just a house, but as he dragged his feet to leave forever, it felt like letting go of memory. The marks on the wall from where the siblings’ heights had been measured, the flowers he had helped his mother plant in the garden.
A few tears had escaped as they sped away, and it was hard to hide them. “Come on son”, his father had mumbled, soft and kind, “You don’t need to be sad to be leaving, you have a whole life ahead of you! Eight years is so little really.”
He only nodded, rubbed his small fists across his eyes. But Seokjin had an old soul for a child, could not help the creeping bitterness, the thought that perhaps eight years was but a few, yet it had still been his whole life up until now. They were moving away from everything he’d ever known, so there was still far more fear than excitement. In the seven hour journey, he had not yet moved on from this.
There was also the rather dreary view he had peered out at for the last half hour. At school back home – for it was still home – he had told the teacher and the class he was moving to Busan, and they had all spent a happy afternoon reading about sea and sand and sun. And the pain had lifted, just a little. Yet, after the briefest glance of a distant tide, the car had veered onto a side road and led them deep into the valleys. Weeks of searching for a bright part of moving away, five long hours waiting for a glimpse of the vast blue ocean, and Seokjin now realised not all of Busan was what he had briefly read in a tourist guide.
The rain had begun to cease, and through a window now less blurry, there were fields of green and mountains of tall brown. It was another world. Being eight years old felt like being very alone, as Seokjin gazed at older couples walking by the sides of the road, at family owned groceries that bore little resemblance to the big name superstores he adventured in with his mother.
