smoke and mirrors | yoonmin

five.

holy shit hi

guys this hit 1k since last time! thank you to all of you c:

also this chapter is like,, lowkey not that good so i'll probably edit it going forward, but i'll put it here like this for now. i owe it to anyone who's still here sjsjsd

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The upscaled version of walking into a room and forgetting what you need was this.

Yoongi's feet turned him in circles on the grass, each house that registered in his brain looking like the last. Earlier, Minah had asked as she tossed him his cloak if he knew how to get back here, and he'd responded with an, "Of course. I knew how to get there the first time."

What he didn't know was the village itself, and now he wished he'd put more effort into burning it into his mind. Everywhere he looked, there were doors and smudged windows and worn roofs and sometimes even a third floor, but none of it meant anything to his useless brain. It was like trying to make sense of another language.

At the very least, the clearing in the middle of the village was familiar. He remembered the flickering torches and the whooping, dancing crowd, the fluttering of dresses when girls were twirled around by their partners. Then there was the tavern - just a short walk towards the trees, past a cottage with a cracked window to find a building with a slanted roof and front steps that looked like they wanted to escape from the door.

But remembering which of these houses was Jimin's - that was the problem.

A dinged-up old door didn't narrow it down much, and neither did dormant lanterns on either side of it. There was one house ten feet his left that had vines of some sort snaking onto the walls and upwards; he at least knew Jimin's house didn't look like that.

Brushing his palms against the dress hugging his body, (the deep green one he almost wore a few weeks previous) he remembered how he'd run around this place in slippers, belonging to a kid whose smile put the stars to shame.

If he could only remember which house that kid went into to get the slippers.

Letting out a frustrated huff, he swept the dress underneath him and plopped onto the grass, trailing his gaze up to the stars above, and then back down.

This didn't feel like the same village he was in before, without the noise and light. Night - without a reason to stay outside - made this place a ghost town, enough to picture tumbleweeds bouncing between the houses. It was like the castle halls at night.

Here, though, Yoongi couldn't bring himself to mind the feeling it gave him too much. He was still alone, but not as lonely.

A few crickets sang to him from more directions than one, and he closed his eyes to listen to their calls overlap like a tiny choir in the grass. And, as his vision was cut off, additional sounds around him rang clear in his head. Leaves rustling in the wind, the bucket to a well nearby hitting its post every so often.

And another noise. Not footsteps, thank god. It was distant, but rushing and alive and unfamiliar to him, and his eyes took all of a few seconds to pop open again, wanting a sight to associate with this new sound.

Curiosity took the reigns before he could stop it, making sure not to pin the dress to the ground when he pushed his palms onto the grass and raised himself back to his feet.

It was easy to tell when he rested his eyelids again that the noise was towards the trees, past the cottage with the cracked window and the low-roof tavern.