Twinkle Twinkle Little Star | BTS FF. JM.JKFF |

Chapter 4

"But you said that was a really long time ago."

Jungkook glances down at the Glietian boy and reaches out a hand to ruffle his hair. It is thick and dark and feels like tendrils of a long ago night, when stars still used to paint the skies.

"It is," Jungkook replies, and though it has been too many Earth years, he still can't quite shake his accent. His words are rounder, softer, slurred in a way that Glietian isn't.

"Then how is he still a boy? Shouldn't be a--a..." the Glietian boy frowns, features startlingly similar to a human's. Jungkook wonders if either of his parents were human but that's still rare, and genetic testing is at a standstill.

"Grown-up?" Jungkook supplies with a little laugh, leaning back in his chair, his head hitting the trunk of one of his beloved cherry trees. He points up at the greenhouse ceiling, a thin sheet of shifting plasma keeping the oxygen in, the nitrogen out, projecting the universe across this particular expanse of sky.

"Yeah, one of those things."

"Because I don't know if he's chosen to grow up yet," Jungkook says, "I sure haven't. I'm still a boy."

The boy frowns, "What do you mean?"

Jungkook presses a few buttons on his chair and it spins into life, wheeling over to the edge of the huge greenhouse, where an entire wall is covered in books behind carefully monitored cases as to prevent decay. He reaches in and tugs one out, a particular book, a thin book, with the picture of a little boy and a flower on the cover.

"You've read that book to us," the Glietian boy trills, clapping and grinning.

"It's my favorite, well no--my favorite book is with that boy on Earth."

"What's his name?"

Jungkook pauses, Jimin's name on his tongue like a prayer, a pearl, a perpetual promise of maybe, "I forget--like I said, it was a really long time ago. But I like to think of him as the keeper of memories."

"Keeper of memories," the Glietian boy echoes, voice thrumming soft and round, trying to imitate Jungkook's accent. Jungkook flips open The Little Prince and points at a passage about seeing and hearts and flowers and he reads it out loud, translating as he goes. The boy stays quiet till the end and quirks his head.

"So are all these flowers for him? So he won't have to wonder if a sheep has eaten his flower? There are too many flowers for any sheep to eat here!" and as if to illustrate, the boy waves his hands towards the massive expanse of the greenhouse, acres and acres of land, acres and acres of cherry blossoms.

Jungkook laughs, "Smart--yes. These are for him. So he can look up at the sky and see the stars a-bloom with flowers."

To be continue....

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