Wonder

Chapter 2 (epilogue)

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There's a planet out there with a boy and a book of flowers.

"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."

"Must be lonely, all by himself..." the Glietian boy says, wrinkling his nose as a petal falls on it. He goes briefly cross-eyed, staring at the tiny pink thing before he shakes his head and it flutters to the ground. Jungkook heaves a sigh and nods and tries not to think (as he has done so many nights, so many days, so many weeks and months and years) about how small Jimin must have looked curled up on that couch, wonder if Jimin sang himself to sleep that night, with his eyes squeezed shut, pretending that it's Jungkook's voice and if Jungkook had to name one regret in his whole entire life (sans the obvious one of letting Jimin--if he had only held on--if he had--if--) he would say that it was not singing more when he had the chance. Not singing for Jimin when he had asked, not singing him awake and singing him asleep and singing him through the paces and prints of every single day they had together as boys. Still as boys now.

"He has my favorite book to keep him company, and if he can see it, this whole garden in the sky," Jungkook says, and smiles to himself. Because he has to hold onto something to keep himself sane, funny that it's the very thing driving him to what the people of old would have called insanity--believing, deluding himself into--no, believing that maybe, there's a chance that Jimin is still alive, and looking up and wondering if Jungkook is there too.

"Well if these are his flowers, then where are yours?" the Glietian boy asks.

Jungkook presses his fingers over the book in his hands, tracing the tattered outline and tries to imagine sunrise. There are two suns here, and too many moons to count, so no sunrise or sunset, as the rotation of suns and moons and so many stars it's nearly impossible to chart them. He tries to imagine a sunrise as beautiful as those on Earth and can't, and then he wonders if the sunrises themselves were beautiful, or if they were made so by the way Jimin's face would light up when they happened; he tries to remember a sunrise without Jimin by his side and can't. There are none to be remembered.

"He's my flower," Jungkook says, "just the one."

"Oh," the boy says, and then recedes into silence. And then, "Then how do you know that he's still there? That the 'sheep hasn't eaten the flower', that's what the book says, right?"

Jungkook nods and places the book back in its case, lock clicking into place with a small hiss.

He looks back up at the makeshift sky, projected across the greenhouse ceiling and tries to imagine the universe beyond, the direction that Earth might be in, and he sighs, deep and heavy, lacing his fingers over his lap.

The ground below is covered in fallen flowers.

"That's why I'm still a boy... because I wonder if my flower is still there. And like the book says, that's a kind of pain, a kind of importance that no grown up will ever understand."