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“Jungkook.”
The man in question holds up a palm, aiming his Nikon over the two cups of matcha lattes that he had tried to arrange over the tatami in the most artistic manner he could. “Wait.”
If Taehyung had thought that Jungkook's obsessiveness with aesthetics couldn’t get any worse than this, Jungkook immediately proves him wrong by setting his camera down and scooting over the tatami towards the sliding door, pulling it open and trying to catch the falling cherry blossom petals.
Taehyung watches in muted disbelief as Jungkook scatters the petals over the tatami, then picks up his camera, trying to take pictures of the setup all over again.
“Jungkook,” there’s a soft whine wheedling its way into Taehyung's voice, bleeding out into hints of exasperation (because in Taehyung's defense, he’d made the drinks a little over an hour ago, and Jungkook won’t stop making a photoshoot of out them). “I swear to god, if you won’t drink them, I’ll have both lattes myself.”
All Jungkook does is flash Taehyung his widest smile, hoping to pull out some empathy. He catches the quiet stutter before Taehyung's next threat, but he releases it anyway, mumbling something about “the devil’s charm”, and then letting out a squawk when Jungkook asks if he should drop a cherry blossom petal into the drink so it would float on the surface of the matcha.
Taehyung wraps his hands around the cups and pulls them away, “no.”
When Jungkook laughs, time slows down, trickling into something like a stop motion film, and Jungkook tries not to read too much into the way Taehyung's eyes seem to soften when he’s looking at Jungkook, sides of his lips quirking up into a faint, almost fond smile.
Jungkook murmurs a quiet apology and lets Taehyung press the rim of his cup to his lips, catching only the top half of Taehyung's face, his shadowed eyes while he sips on the sweet milky beverage, now of a tepid temperature, and wonders what Taehyung is thinking about.
“Want to go see Mount Fuji today?”
The sky is light, bright, the breeze is warmer, and when Taehyung turns around to face Jungkook, the leaves in the cherry blossom trees part to allow the sun to outline Taehyung's hair. Jungkook doesn’t know what he’s doing before it’s already done, Nikon at eye level with a photograph of Taehyung in his playback.
(Later that night, when Jungkook's looping through all his pictures, he will come across this very one. He will trace his index finger over the halo of light blurring out part of Taehyung's head, and he will finally admit that Taehyung is no longer just a stranger. He will wonder how someone’s eyes can hold so much depth, even when blurred and unfocused.)
Jungkook smiles, says, “all right.”
It’s a three hour ride on the Shinkansen from Osaka to Shin-Fuji, and Taehyung's pressing need to just keep talking is all but foreign to Jungkook by this time. Taehyung chatters on about his childhood, about growing up in Daegu. His parents are busy people, but Taehyung loves them to bits, though he admits to being fonder of his grandmother.
