smoke and mirrors | yoonmin

two.

These hallways had the worst echo, but Yoongi did his best to keep his footsteps noiseless as he ran through them. His parents were no doubt asleep. On any given night past dusk, they were nowhere to be found but curled up in bed facing opposite directions.

Yoongi was a creature of the night, had been all his life, so this was normal except for the part where he was running.

Still, a slight gnawing feeling jumped in his stomach every time his feet hit the floor and cast that reverb down the hall, and he kept a few breaths trapped in his lungs. This was wrong, when it came down to it. Or was it?

And if it was, did he care enough to not do it?

Before he could decide, he arrived at the door at the end of the hall, and his boots scraped across the carpet as he halted himself to a clumsy stop that almost had him on his knees.

Waiting behind that tall, oak door was stacks and piles of everything he could imagine, he knew. His mother hoarded like she was gathering clothes and old furniture for hibernation. No wonder she needed a separate room for her possessions.

Yoongi also knew beyond a doubt that there would be dresses. Pretty things - pinks and purples and blues, gold and silver chains - were her favorite. When she knew there was a baby in her stomach, she prayed every night (at her bedside) for a daughter that she could make beautiful. Yoongi used to listen to that story and wonder if his birth was karma for something in her past.

Quietly, he made his entrance, wincing at the creak of the door as it opened in front of him, but his expression quickly broke into shock by the sheer size of the room. His mother must have lived a thousand years to collect this many things - furniture, chests, sculptures, books (that he might read in the future, who knows) and an old wardrobe, stood proudly against the wall furthest from him.

An I-knew-it smirk upturned his lips.

That had to be it.

His footsteps were light as he padded up to it. They weren't too quick, either, as to not trip over the trinkets that littered his path.

As he opened up the wardrobe's doors with care, his smile widened, almost creating dimples he didn't have. Barely seconds into his search, and there they were in front of him - his mother's old dresses.

After one quick glance over the dozens of colors and fabrics, lined up one by one and pressed together like peas in a pod, he began to flip through them and train his eyes over each one.

Formal wasn't his preference, but the majority of them weren't. Most of these were from the years before she had become queen. The idea was odd; his mother, a simple farm girl. Like from a storybook.

A deep green dress that he came across seemed simple and practical. It was the color of the shadows on the leaves when he looked through his windows, and soft to the touch. He held his palm against it to mark it.

But then his fingers brushed over a mauve dress that caught his eye like the others didn't. It was tied by dark string over the chest and looked like petals on the bottom, spilling out from the waist. Slowly, he pulled it from its confinement, and he noticed the fabric felt nice in between his fingers. Not nice like the expensive silk his mother wore now, but nice like something he could rub his cheek against and feel contented.

Without so much as thinking, he slipped out of his clothes, including his god-awful boots, and stepped into the dress. A slight squint narrowed his eyes as he dropped the skirt of it over his hips. It was a bit of a strange fit, but it was loose, and far from uncomfortable.

But the dress wasn't the extent of this. There were things missing - tonight, his appearance was a puzzle that he needed all the pieces to. He wasn't going to fool an entire town of people looking like this.