Masked men

Masked men hurrah -pt4

When Jin had said that he was making him the best meal of his life, Jungkook had thought he was exaggerating. When he had put the first slice of the Bossam into his mouth, his world exploded in colour. The tender meat was beautifully complemented by the crispness of the lettuce it was wrapped in. 

'It's kind of sad,' Jungkook thought to himself around another mouthful, 'When I leave, nothing is ever gonna taste good enough again'. 

While he focused on trying to fit as much food in his chopsticks as possible, Jin and Yoongi watched on in fond sadness. The kid was eating as though this was his first full meal in days and if his appearance was anything to go by, that was probably the case. He was so small that the shirt he had borrowed off Yoongi swamped him.

Leaving Jungkook to finish his meal after letting him know that they were going to sit down, the two elder men relaxed into the leather sofa Jungkook was previously occupying.

'Are you going to tell me how you know this kid Yoongi?' Jin asked expectantly. His brown eyes shining with a motherly sheen. Yoongi sighed as he sank further into the worn material, suddenly seeming years older, the dark circles under his eyes more prominent.

Taking a deep breath, he began to tell of the past that he and Jungkook shared.

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Yoongi was eleven when he saw Jungkook for the first time. The seven year old had just moved into the apartment next door with his older brother and parents. Right from day one, Yoongi could tell that he didn't like their new neighbours. The adults screamed at each other well into the night and the muffled sobs that came through the paper thin walls did not help him sleep. 

The yelling matches and late night crying continued for another two months before the woman moved out, swearing that the man would never see her again. She took the older of the two boys with her. Yoongi thought that was the end of all the harsh noise. He was wrong.

Granted, the yelling happened less often, it still happened and it was more often than not accompanied by high pitched wailing or yelping. At the time he was too young to really understand what this meant for the small boy living next door.

Yoongi was 15 when he actually met Jungkook for the first time. Sure, he had seen the other boy every now and then when they passed one another in the hallway outside their apartments. In truth, he felt sorry for the boy. He always seemed so sad, head hung low and arms always covered in blue and purple but it wasn't until he caught Jungkook locked outside his own home that he plucked up the courage to talk to him.

He had invited the silent boy inside and made him an orange juice, unsure of whether or not the boy would like tea as he still seemed so young. After spotting the keyboard Yoongi had set up in the corner of the sitting room, the boy asked if it was him that played. Nodding shyly, Yoongi asked if the boy - Jungkook - could play. When the boy shook his head ashamed, Yoongi leapt at the chance to get closer to the fragile child and offered to teach him after school. The grin that split his face was worth the embarrassed blush that spread across the elder's face, at least, that's what Yoongi thought.

After that, Jungkook spent almost all his time at Yoongi's, desperately trying to avoid going back to his apartment, hating the idea of having to leave the comfort of what had become his home to go back to an apartment that smelt of alcohol and sweat, an aura of misery thick in the air.

When Yoongi left secondary school to go to college, he still made time to walk home with Jungkook when ever possible, and when not, it was not unusual for him to come home to find that his mum had let Jungkook in on her way to her graveyard shift at the pharmacy.