vớ vẩn 3

22: Not Children

Namjoon woke up but not to the usual sound of his friends all loudly yelling about nonsense like they always did. He was not shaken awake roughly by Jungkook's hand so that when he opened his eyes he saw the sight of him grinning down at him happily. No, this morning he found himself waking up rather peacefully instead. It was the softest sound of voices coming in from the building outside and the scent of something cooking that caused him to open his eyes. The first thing he saw through his squinted eyes was the bump of the leather armrest and so he lifted his sleep-heavy head.

Inside the building was rather empty right now. In fact only he, Seokjin and Jungkook were inside. That meant that Taehyung, Hoseok, Yoongi and Jimin were outside. He faintly recalled the sight of Yoongi climbing onto flatbed last night, one of the last memories he had before he had ended up falling asleep. Of course Yoongi had done that for Jimin had been asleep in there after they had watched all of the recordings: the camcorder recordings. From that point he had went inside the building to rest but Taehyung and Hoseok had also stayed on the backseat that they had dragged outside. That was where the others were, sleeping outside in the open air with the sun starting to rise on the horizon.

The camcorder memories.

Namjoon yawned and reached up to rub at his heavy eyelids, trying his hardest to get them to stay open. He didn't know what time it was but it only felt early. He wouldn't at all be surprised if the sky was still a very pale shade of blue that signaled the sun was still rising. After all the interior was only dimly lit enough to create strong shadows and a little illumination. Namjoon dropped his hands back to his lap and he studied the worn knees of his jeans for a moment as he collected his thoughts. It felt like there was something at the back of his mind that he just couldn't grab hold of, something that required snagging with a hook to be pulled to the front.

Ah, the camcorder! That was what he had been thinking of before his yawn had dislodged the thought. He had been thinking about how last night had been good, or at least mostly good. There had been a few bad things here and there, like the drunken yelling Taehyung recording and he supposed the one with Soonshim, but mostly the memories had been good. Had been refreshing. Namjoon would be lying if he said that he suddenly felt everything was fine again. It wasn't, wasn't even close, but it felt better and that was all that mattered. Yes, they still had many hurdles to get over and much dialogue to be had but at least some of the tension had faded from the air.

He had been amazed to find himself forgetting quite a lot of what he had seen last night. From the day at Han River and the "Yoongi Fish", to Hoseok's birthday bike. But mostly, Jungkook's graduation. How had he forgotten most of that? It had only been a few years ago, when he had been in his final year of high school set to graduate too, Hoseok lagging behind by a year for his misbehaviour. How had the sight of Jungkook in his middle school uniform escaped his mind already? That same sensation of feeling older than he was had returned once more. Well, he supposed that it was only natural that he had ended up replacing some of these memories with new ones after what had happened last year; the adventure.

But still, it didn't feel right. Namjoon felt that he should have retained those memories instead. He should have held onto things like Jungkook's graduation and learning to play poker for the first time, not racing to hospital in the very early morning hours to see if Jimin was still breathing or burying the dead body of a friend's father. He supposed that the bad memories always lingered no matter what else happened, pushing away the good in favour of the bad. Taehyung was a prime example of this. Namjoon let his breath out in a heavy sigh and then he lifted his gaze to look across the room.

Seokjin was currently awake across the room, squeezed onto the other single broken car seat beside Jungkook. The boy was still sleeping from what he could see, chest rising and falling softly under the blanket. Seokjin had one elbow cocked up so that he could rest his head in the palm of his hand, and his other hand was currently playing with Jungkook's hair. He didn't look that tired from what he could see, just seemed to be deep in his thoughts as he twirled a lock of dark hair around his forefinger tightly and then let go of it; leaving the black lock slightly kinked.