Chapter Text
It's an unassuming Thursday when Beomgyu first walks through the streets of Seoul National University as an official student. The tail end of winter is felt only faintly, the heaviest blankets of snow already gone and the worst of its cold bite already thawed by the oncoming spring. Birds happily chirp from atop the trees wet with dew. Flowers are already blooming on the shrubs lining the walkways of the university. The morning light is warm, equal parts bright and dreary like the perfect spring day balancing the summer and winter extremes. It's a good day, most things considered.
Beomgyu begs to differ.
He's currently experiencing inner turmoil about the fact that it's his first day of classes in SNU's second semester of academic year 2019-2020. He'd lived in Daegu all his life (with the occasional weeklong trips to metropolitan cities for his father's races), but suddenly he’s thrusted onto living in Seoul for the foreseeable future after having finally shifted from a mechanical engineering course he'd long outgrown and being accepted into the prestigious music program in one of the three SKY universities. All he has to his name in this concrete jungle are a few clothes, his phone and wallet, his trusty noise cancelling headphones, some compact music equipment, three containers of his mother's kimchi, one of the many lucky keychains in his father's many racing cars, a feather from Toto, a business card from Bighit Entertainment well worn by a year's worth of time, and the musings of meeting an old friend who'd moved to Ansan a decade ago.
The day is objectively good, but Beomgyu's alarm didn't go off, and the bus came to his stop a few minutes late, and Beomgyu's mind is drawing a blank as he reads his schedule, like he hasn’t been here a few times already for transfer paperwork. He's arguably well on his way to having a shitty first day.
Beomgyu is so engrossed in his mini SNU map that he doesn't notice the slow walker ahead of him until he's effectively stopped by bumping his head against the stranger's rather broad, beautiful back, so embarrassingly hard that he falls to his ass and drops everything he's holding: a mini-map of SNU, his lyrics notebook, and his half-full cup of Americano.
"OH! I'm so sorry," Beomgyu immediately says. "I wasn't paying attention to my surroundings, so I bumped into you. I'll pay better attention next time—"
The rest of Beomgyu's words die down and he forgets lamenting his spilled Americano drink (that's half of ￦4100 literally down the drain!) when the stranger crouches next to Beomgyu and enters his line of sight.
The stranger is quite possibly the most gorgeous person he's ever seen, even including all the K-pop idols Beomgyu sees on TV and becomes obsessed with for a week. Their fox eyes, plush lips, gorgeous proportions, and black wind swept hair, tousled artfully in a way that screams effortless instead of looking like an unattended bedhead, all culminate into a face that God must've so lovingly crafted. Beomgyu feels compelled to ask their hair routine with how smooth and shiny that jet black hair looks. (Is someone with a green screen suit holding up a mini-fan over his bangs? There is literally no way his hair is swaying naturally like that.)
"... You alright?" The stranger asks. Beomgyu goes back to reality.
"Um, yes, I am," Beomgyu hastily answers. "Let me just— let me just pick my stuff up, yeah."
Beomgyu takes his now empty drinking cup as the stranger takes ahold of his SNU map. And it's such a cliche, but their hands touch when they both reach for Beomgyu's notebook, and the nerves in his stomach have now become butterflies. There's something about a beautiful stranger holding Beomgyu's metaphorical heart in their hands that reels Beomgyu's hopeless romantic heart in.
But then the moment’s over. The raven-haired stranger gets up first, and there's an awkward moment of Beomgyu scrambling to get up with two of his hands full until the stranger extends a hand to Beomgyu’s elbow and lifts him up. Literally and figuratively.
"Sorry about that," a nervous chuckle escapes Beomgyu. "I'm glad the coffee didn't spill on you."
"Oh," the stranger replies, realizing. "You're right; that's lucky. Anyway, I'm Yeonjun. I’m really sorry about your coffee, though. Let me buy you another one?"
"I'm Beomgyu!" he says, chipper voice in full contrast to the dread he was feeling just a few minutes earlier. “And about the coffee, it’s fine.”
"Oh no, Beomgyu-ssi, I insist. All the cafes are a long walk from here, and it’s such a waste that I made you spill your drink. I feel bad about not compensating you for the trouble, at least,” Yeonjun says.
“I don’t think I’ll have the time…?” Beomgyu says in reply, although his tone goes up at the end, making him sound unsure. “I have classes and I don’t know how to get to them…” He mutters.
“Oh, you’re new here?" Yeonjun asks. "That checks out. I don't think I'll ever forget seeing someone as beautiful as you on campus if I had." He winks.
Beomgyu blushes furiously. "Um, yes,” he says, rather ineloquently. “I somehow can’t read this map at all." He waves the SNU mini-map a few times, the material of it crinkling at the motion.
Yeonjun grins, saying, "Wow, okay. Well, I won't forget, now that I've seen you, Beomgyu-ssi. Do you want help locating your rooms?"
You chose the ‘I think I can manage’ option!
"As good as that offer sounds, I think I can manage," Beomgyu answers. He hopes he sounds with as much respect in the rejection as the sudden trepidation he feels.
He's aware that Yeonjun already knows that he’s having difficulty finding his rooms, so it’s really no use to pretend otherwise, but Beomgyu finds himself tongue-tied, making shit up to avoid any more interaction with this god-kissed being because his heart can’t take it. He placates himself by catastrophizing that the offer of help into something too good to be true, that he refuses to be whisked away to an abandoned building by a gorgeous person and be chopped off into organs for sale on the black market.
"Thank you anyway, Yeonjun-ssi. Hey, I think it’s that building, actually!"
"That's good…?" Yeonjun says, skeptical by the way he looks at where Beomgyu vaguely pointed, but he ultimately accepts Beomgyu’s immediate change of mind, nodding in understanding.
There's an intrusive thought of deciphering if Yeonjun's disappointed that he won't be able to harvest and sell Beomgyu's heart and kidneys, but Beomgyu pushes it out of his mind and berates himself for thinking so badly, even unwillingly, of a stranger who had only ever been kind to him, bumping accident aside.
"I better get going now," Beomgyu says when he checks his phone and sees that there were only 10 minutes left before his class. "See you around?"
"Well, my classes aren't until later, so I'll just head off to the library after I drop off something to a forgetful dongsaeng," Yeonjun muses, voice going softer at the end as if he’s just turning the idea over his head and not inadvertently letting Beomgyu know his whereabouts later. "See you sometime, and good luck on your first day!"
Beomgyu nods, then immediately turns around and walks off to a random direction because he's loath to see the back he'd bumped into earlier. He resists the urge to look back and the growing despair at turning down Yeonjun’s help in a misguided sense of self-preservation.
It's futile. Beomgyu looks back as he walks on.
He sees him, still standing where Beomgyu left him. Their eyes meet, and Yeonjun waves. Beomgyu gives a small wave back, butterflies in his stomach long dead and turned back into anxiety. Zombie-fied into despair. Why did he turn Yeonjun down? He's going to be so late.
Beomgyu's still looking back at Yeonjun while walking away, so he doesn't realize he's walking into a post at a frightening pace until he slams into it. Hard.
It's a few seconds until he comes to, for a bit. His head is spinning so bad that his eyes don't stay open for long, but he does catch glimpses of Yeonjun's face crumpled with worry, his frantic mutterings drowned out by the ringing sound in Beomgyu's ears. Beomgyu faintly feels a trickle of something wet down one of his temples, and the last thing he remembers before completely blacking out is being held in someone's arms and carried off his feet.
So much for refusing to get whisked away.
The next time he opens his eyes, Beomgyu closes them again due to the sheer brightness of the room. His head is pounding, his throat is parched, his nausea worsens with the strong smell of disinfectant permeating in what must be the infirmary, and he's never going to be able to properly face Yeonjun ever again!
A nurse comes by to check on him and promptly briefs Beomgyu on what happened (no concussion, thankfully, although he hit his head pretty hard, so a coma is unfortunately not in his cards), who brought him there (Yeonjun, who else), and what Beomgyu should do next (take half the day off and not worry about informing his professors about his absence).
Beomgyu rests back down and closes his eyes for a few more minutes to overcome the faint nausea before getting up with the goal of getting out. Upon gathering his belongings on the side table, a note on the cover of his lyric notebook catches his attention.
Beomgyu,
Had to leave before my classes.
Sorry that I won't be there when you wake up
I hope you're okay tho
Take all the rest you can
Yours,
Yeonjun
P.S. They looked your ID up for your health records and sched to notify your professors; didn’t mean to take a peek, but now I know you're 2 years my junior. Call me hyung :)
This is how Beomgyu ends up: he takes the painkillers the nurse gives him as he walks out the infirmary. He goes to his last two classes for the day and actively asks people for directions because he isn't turning down much needed help again.
He occasionally sees Yeonjun on campus. Most times, he looks away and pretends he doesn't see him, but in the rare times their eyes do meet, he waves hello. Yeonjun always waves back. Beomgyu wonders if that's him being friendly or upholding his pledge to never forget meeting Beomgyu.
Almost always, though, Yeonjun is with three other people who are all equally as beautiful as him in different ways. One of them brings a sense of familiarity, but he doesn't know why. He recognizes the other two in a few of his classes and thinks they're in the music program, too, somehow. The four of them all seem so close, but there's something about all of them together that Beomgyu can't put his finger on.
After three semesters, Yeonjun would graduate. Beomgyu would know that only because he'd be a stand-in for his sick friend in the marching band’s quint drums that day. Yeonjun's three closest friends would be there, too, holding hands together in a circle around Yeonjun and squeezing him into a tight hug. He would see one of them kiss Yeonjun on the mouth, and Beomgyu would realize, oh . He would look away immediately, feeling like a creepy stranger looking in on an intimate scene.
Overall, Beomgyu is content. He would make many friends with whom he would explore the nooks and crannies of Seoul together. He would call back home whenever he's homesick under the pretense of missing Toto, but the flimsy excuse will never fly by both his dad's endeared laugh and mom's promise to send more food.
Beomgyu's fine as he is, even though he does feel like something's missing.
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