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pennedbylisse · 11 months ago

Text

OPERATION CUPID | ep. 2

ep. 1 | ep. 3 |

wc: 4.4k

tracklist: 'halley's comet' by billie eilish

tense and POV: present and 3rd person

OPERATION CUPID Classified Excerpts

Jimin holds his phone at head-level and poses for what appears to be a selfie amidst an empty diner.

He attempts for it to be discreet, something dismissible by Namjoon marching to and fro.

The tall and broad man is far too preoccupied with restocking to notice the camera lens purposefully aimed at his frame, over Jimin's shoulder. It's not unlike him to become so hyper-fixated on a task that he blurs the surroundings. His eye sight is healthy, but prone to tunnel-vision.

It's a slow day at Halley's - has been such for a number of weeks now. What normally would be Wednesdays, which passed on as slow as molasses with the arrival of two, five, ten (if lucky) clients, had now ulcerated into slow weekends.

To a company, there's nothing as frightening as a slow Friday evening.

False comforts could be summed up with the phrase "Snow Season is the Slow Season” which they would recite to one another in the stillness. An acknowledgement of the fleetingness of seasons. A promise for a better tomorrow, of hope for prosperity somewhere in the vast horizon.

And, like the old remedy of honey for a sore throat, it would do the trick. It would soothe their unease long enough for the skies to darken, which during the winter isn't long at all.

Only the hours of daylight have started to extend with each day that's strikethrough on the calendar hung up on the wall, the chill in the weather easing with grace. There hasn’t been snowfall in weeks.

Economic discrepancies have started to become pervasive - like cracks on a ceiling letting in rain. Drips amassing to puddles on the tile floor.

They can be ignored and evaded until you misstep and slip, landing on your tailbone, forced to face the truth of the matter. To hold its weight in its entirety and try not to cave in under the gravity.

It’s not for a lack of trying. Namjoon is as analytical as he is determined, and there’s no one more appropriate to run the diner, but even with his creative solutions, progress is scarce.

Even if he were to lay out and repurpose a hundred kitchen containers to catch the flood, the persistent dripping would continue to echo the unspoken worries. Enough to drive anybody mad with the promise of overflow, of nearing a point of no return, a snapping point.

Problems keep materializing out of thin air, new cracks being torn across the ceiling, water dripping less sporadically, more consistently. Namjoon's having a hard time keeping the tally, though he doesn't let it show past the long hours he subjects his body to.

He justifies the severe degree of self-sacrifice and self-discipline with the generalization that such is the life of a small business owner. His grandparents, when at their prime, had made it seem almost easy.

It's been rough attempting to fill in their shoes over the past couple of years. Namjoon can't get over the feeling that he's drowning all the time.

He wonders if it'll always feel like this. If there will ever come a point where he could recline with a long-held exhale of relief, long enough to take in the progress made before diving back to tune-up the fine details.

Norah, who is significantly more discreet than Jimin, disguises her phone with her half-opened hardcover book. Though, it should be said, that in preoccupying herself with the perfect cover-up, she’s neglected the fact that her phone is not muted.

She cringes at the click of a captured image, slides down her phone along the textured surface of page 122, to collect on her lap. Shrinks into herself and apologetically bows her head in Jimin’s direction. Today, she could be the sole reason the operation blows.

Making a quick adjustment in correction, she places pressure on the metal button along the frame of her phone. The device's vibration is muffled on her lap.

But it's too late to salvage the situation.

Namjoon's head is turned her way. His analytical gaze narrows on her figure.

She turns a page, making note she'll have to go back to actually read its contents much later, when her ears aren't burning, her mind not racing.

Momentarily peering up over the frame of the book, she realizes Namjoon's gaze has laxed and lifted to look over her figure. It then rounds across the diner, sliding swiftly over vacant tables and unclaimed stools.

He stalls over Jimin, who's drawing circles over the spotless surface of a table with a tattered rag. Admittedly, the rag's in poorer condition than the table.

Namjoon's eyes narrow for a second before he averts his attention back to the task at hand - attempting to open a shipment box without slicing his fingers with the carton-cutter blade.

Nearing closing time, upon completing inventory, Norah's loading a cardboard box into a crowded storage closet. A skinny, crammed little thing with enough shelves to be repurposed for climbing like a ladder.

Her hands slowly retract around the edges of the box. She gently and measuredly presses her weight against the better half that still protrudes off the shelf, thrusts her hips once, twice, until it it shoves into place with a sigh.

Once secured, she claps her hands to rid them of gathered dust and backsteps out of the closet, all the while, maintaining her gaze fixated on its silhouette, cautious and apprehensive.

Barely blinking, her brows furrow with worry as she imagines her efforts collapsing forward onto the tiles, the contents of the box exploding. Pictures how that single disturbance could potentially bring down the rest of the crowded shelves toppling over her.

She makes herself small under the imagined outcome, rounds her shoulders into a make-shift shield, just in case.

Though her backsteps are light and delicate, she clumsily collides with something solid.

The sudden contact causes her to flinch and further shrink in on herself. Her eyes, now, though squinted half-shut from the surprise, remain cast on the wobbly shelf. The snagged and rusted nails holding it together.

Repeatedly, mantra-like, she whispers, pleads "Stay, stay, stay..."

Suspecting she'd made an error in her stepping, but without turning to confirm, she glides her booted foot towards the right and gradually shifts her weight over it, continues to retreat, but again collides with an opposing force. It's no longer startling, more of a source of great frustration.

Her suspicion grows at the coincidence of striking the force once more, and that's when her mental focus on the shelf wanes long enough for her to grow aware of the characteristically animate warmth flanking her.

A warm breath makes itself known on her nape, the way morning mist hovers glass blades during dawn. Only less graceful. It sputters.

Hurriedly, she swivels to find Jimin dissolving into a snicker, cheeks flushed rosy, the way she would envision a mischievous cherub. Love incarnate.

In this intimate proximity, her focus starts to blur. She no longer holds the image of the toppling shelves center focus, rather it obscures and falls out of frame. Replacing it are his lips, plump, round, bottom-favoring, which her gaze sporadically flutters back and forth from.

With a face commanded with startle, brows rounded and raised, eyes widened, she retreats back into the closet she'd originally been trying to escape from.

Contrarily, Jimin encroaches. He's fluid and swift, as he always is. The way he makes any interaction into choreography, contemporary lyricism. While she's solid and stiff like stone, he can't bear to be more opposite.

It seems a bit contradictory, but water holds a natural power over stone. With enough exposure, it starts to erode, to cave, to part.

Norah's frightened he's too similar to water. Too fluid. That she's eroding under his influence. It sends alarms blaring loudly within her. Abort. Flee. Escape.

Jimin lightly places a graze on her torso, in a way that's meant to reassure, and comfort, and somehow gauge a response all at once.

His gaze dances between her wide eyes, further gauging as he shuts the door behind him, albeit with a lack of gentleness compared to the way he holds her.

Norah flinches as though the slam physically hurts her when its brunt echo rattles the shelves immediately behind her and distresses dormant dust above.

It falls over her like snow.

Briefly, Jimin becomes captivated by the sight. The flurry specks dancing in the cone of light of the single bulb hanging overhead. Cascading and collecting on the top of her head.

Her round watchful eyes cast upwards at him.

The absolute privacy offered by the space. The knowledge that he'd only need to take one stride forward to be flushed against her.

It's brief, the moment, abruptly interrupted by the croak of her voice "What are you doing here?"

He clears his throat, moment gone, and digs something out of the pocket of his black apron.

An envelope.

"I did something bad."

"What? How bad?"

"It depends," he shrugs slowly, not very convincing of his innocence in the matter. Really resembles a turtle secluding into its hard shell. He wouldn't feel the need to hide if he didn't doubt his character in the moment. If he didn't suspect a scolding. "From some perspectives, it's bad, from others it's good. So I guess it depends on how you look at it."

"And, just what perspectives are those?"

"Bad-" The envelope tucked between his arm and torso, he mimics the plates of a weight-scale, cupping air in both hands on either side. He tips their height as he speaks. "- for the Namjoon that's self-sufficient and oblivious to our plan. Good - for the Namjoon who secretly wants - needs - help but can't bring himself to ask."

She holds out her hands expectantly. Attempts to assess the damage.

He places the envelope in her hold. Its face sports elegant cursive. A flower-pattern stamp on its upper corner. Exudes an aroma of lilies and something sweet like pastries. Its hem has been cleanly sliced through.

Hurriedly, as if their minutes of privacy are counted, she unfolds a letter through the cleanly sliced margin atop the envelope. Her eyes race across the page. "This is bad, Jimin."

"It's bad?" He braces a hand on his hip, feeling the sudden-onset of queasiness with the knife of guilt twisting further into his gut. "So bad-bad? As in bad from all perspectives?"

She nods, but continues to skim the writing.

"Ah, shit." He rakes his other hand through his hair, tossing it out of his sight and coming it back. "I only stepped into his office for the keys to lock the back door. I caught sight of it. My hands were on it before I could will myself against it. I couldn't put it back down, tormented with curiosity."

"Well, you should've." Concluded, she folds the letter back on its creases, stuffs it back into the snug envelope.

"That's when I heard him approach, so I panicked. When he opened the door, I stuffed it into my pocket - pure instinct - so that he wouldn't see me holding it and suspect something."

He means to pace, but the space is limited. Instead, he braces both arms against a shelf. Needs to feel reminded of something sturdy, stable, lest he hurl.

"I meant to return it, I really did. The longer I held it, I just couldn't help but think how useful it could be to know what's inside. A means to ensure both ends of communication coincide. To make sure the staged Namjoon social media discussions aren't mentioned in the letters. To...to...-" He's stammering for justifications but falling short. "Knowing what sort of things they talk about could make our play of him more like the real thing, right?"

Norah shuts her eyes and hangs her head, arms limp by her sides. "You have to dispose of it. He can never find out." She hates to rob Namjoon of the contents he likely never got to read. Hates to make this a ripped page of their love-story.

"But, why?" He turns to face her. "I could just shove it beneath the stack he keeps atop his desk."

"Namjoon rarely sponsors the impractical." Her eyes flutter open. She traces the sliced margin for punctuation. "He uses his nimble fingers to slice through his envelopes. He's haphazard, like that. Thinks it more genuine, more lived. Thinks it impractical to invest in a piece of metal whose sole purpose is to slice paper, only to misplace it when he knows he could just pop a kitchen drawer open and find the same thing, or use his fingers."

"He might not notice," he's dubious to her argument. "He's got enough things on his mind to not notice."

"Do you really want to take the chance?"

He resumes his squared position against the shelf. Feels a dense lump materialize in his throat. Tries to swallow it back, expecting the nausea to wane.

Norah voices his conscience, "We are playing with hearts here. Are you sure you want to continue?"

She can voice her loud opinion all she wants in a bid to sway him towards a desirable response, but she doesn't. She vows to be his willing accomplice.

The thing is that Jimin is more similar to Namjoon than either care to recognize. They are both over-workers with too much piled over their plates to notice the grapes that roll off the edges, bouncing on the floor by their dashing feet.

Jimin wants to find Namjoon someone to lean on.

Norah wants to be that for Jimin. It's not a spoken thing. Frankly, it might not even be that obvious to Norah herself. She just finds herself tangled up with him in the self-made chaos. Finds it good reason enough for it to be for him.

"I mean good, Nor. I really do."

"I know you do. It's just a dangerous game we’re playing. I want you to be conscious of that."

"I am."

As a consequence of being a college drop-out, who stayed complacent in his small hometown, and knocked up the first girl he ever developed feelings for, Jimin juggles two jobs on the regular, a means to an end, to adjoin paychecks with the demands of life.

He'd juggle three if sleep weren't collecting interest, indebting him at an exponential rate.

The kind of fatigue that has no decency in waiting until your face collides with the cool pillow at night. The kind that commands and gets what its due whenever, wherever, however.

Mondays through Thursdays he works at Halley's, then rushes home to spend quality time with his daughter, run groceries, comply with the daily upkeep of home and its chores.

On the weekends, when he gets off Halley's - around 5 PM - he boards the public shuttle to bartend at a local bar. That bar shift runs until midnight, sometimes later, depending on the need for coverage, and the willingness to sacrifice a couple hours of sleep for a healthy tip.

Tonight, he's heavy with fatigue, sleep debt compounded in his brain, slowing the traffic of thoughts, comprehension. Still, he doesn't let it show past the obvious taxes on his physique - sunken dark circles beneath the eyes, small capillaries angered against their whites.

He sighs, "Hey," mirroring Norah's greeting from across the apartment. Locks the door behind him with a symphony of clicks and strolls her way in a practiced sequence.

In a way that resembles a paper being folded by the grooves and creases into origami, the edges of his mouth fold into a kind, but tired smile. The kind of paper that's been folded enough times to near tearing at the next crease.

Norah's hands are steady and delicate, as is her tone. "Tired?"

"I'm ok." He always says that, though, and always drifts into deep sleep right next to her on the couch, laptop still laid on his lap.

"Should we call it a day? We can always raincheck."

"It's nothing a shower can't fix." He shakes his head, hair stirring over dim eyes. A sudden yawn commands his mouth.

Unfolding her legs and draping them over the edge of couch, she starts up. "I'll start whipping something up to keep us awake."

As she clicks the switch of the kitchen lights, and bathes in the sudden flash of illuminance, she hears the thud of Jimin's knees against the wood floor accompanied with a long-drawn sigh, "My baby Byeol."

He flushes the bridge of his nose against the plump cheek of the baby. Inhales the untarnished scent of youth, of purity, of her hypoallergenic bodywash.

He realizes he'd been wrong earlier.

A shower wouldn't fix anything, but this, this little creature could dismiss all the ache in his joints, lax all the tension held in his muscles.

"You finish that set of monarch earrings?" Jimin tosses a towel over his head, grips at the frayed ends on his nape, on his forehead, extracting excess moisture. The excited drops splatter onto the collar of his sweatshirt.

Norah lays Byeol into her crib. Combs the silky, floss-like hair at the top of her head. Grabs a baby monitor radio from the adjacent nightstand.

"Most of it-" she bites a yawn." Only need to take pictures and edit them for upload."

A sudden pop emanates from his knees as soon as Jimin crouches by the coffee table of his living room. The wooden face of it is superimposed by clutter - Byeol’s enrichment toys, baby bottles, two different sets of binkies, unopened mail, uncategorized purchase receipts and jewelry beads.

Norah joins him, resting her weight on knees that will quickly grow sore. Starts picking at the clutter, shrinking it item by item, starting with her jewelry-making kit.

The click of the colored bead collapsing into its plastic compartment resounds through the quiet space. It grows dense, shies away from echoing, the more beads are added.

Jimin tears an envelope and is reminded of the day’s earlier events. Of prying open the private exchanges of Namjoon and his pen-pal girl. Parallels, only he’s not as ginger with his water bill as he was with his friend’s heart. Instead of slicing it thinly with a blade, he digs one finger into the cleft on the edge and rips haphazardly, mentally guessing how high it’ll be this month.

He’s got his brows creased into a pinch that resembles the one at the collar of his laundered shirt. He’d always ensure to prioritize keeping up with laundry, the same could not be said about folding and sorting the laundry. Too much like Sisyphus's burden. Instead, he’d let the laundry pile on the drying racks.

They’d be stale and stiff by the time he got around to claiming them. But at least they no longer reeked.

Lips into a robust pout, his eyes skim the content of the letter. Quickly, urgently, not bothering to hone in on the formal headers. They land on the end of the page resolutely. He holds the amount in his vision for a second, two, shuts his eyes with the raise of his brows, and folds down the letter like an accordion. Insert it back into its envelope.

His figure is cast in the indiscreet yellow light from the ceiling fixation. It pours over him like honey. Its shadows casted onto the sunken spaces of his under eyes.There’s a flurry of freckles over the bridge of his nose. Partly from age, partly from the sun, and partly genetic in origin.

Though tired, his hands are steady while collecting and assorting beads. Helping her with the burden.

They huddle up on the couch once things are assorted into semi-coherent piles on the coffee table.

Norah made iced lattes to power through. From prior experience, she knows the high will only last until about 3:30 AM, which isn't too far off. So if they want to make any progress on this Namjoon operation, they have to hone in focus. Short bursts of significant productivity.

It's hard to, though, when sleep seems so much more enticing. When Jimin's warmly pressed into her side. When all she wants is to rest her head on his shoulder and let her eyelids droop.

Moisture clings to the pads of Jimin's stubby fingers from having held his drink. He mindlessly wipes them onto his shirt. Resumes impatiently pressing keys on the old laptop, attempting to start it up from the depths of inactivity.

Its every inch is covered with stickers and logos accumulated through the years. Within ten minutes, it starts to burn Jimin's lap.

He positions a cushion beneath it to remedy the problem, just as the loading circle disappears and the screen finally illuminates with the home screen.

Opening a search engine, he navigates to Instagram. Namjoon's new social profile. He'd hurl if he came to know, having been against the capitalist agenda shoved down throats by brands and trends there.

Ironically, he's a part of that capitalist economy. Makes a living off convincing people to purchase his (food) service. But he'd argue he's in the business of selling an experience, of cultivating memories, not in the greedy selling of an overpriced product.

Maybe the diner would be better off if he would only bend down, comply with the trends of the modern day, learn the language of the 21st century.

"But that's exactly what I want to gift people," he'd say, caught in the passion of his mission, eyes glassed over and distant. "Nostalgia. Pre-internet innocence. The antiquity of a used book in your hands, the texture of the stained parchment. The raw sound of a record on a turntable. The crackle of the jukebox as soon as the coin descends into its slot. Something they can only experience and live, not fabricate on their phones."

As the puppet masters, Jimin and Norah's jobs are to funnel the connection between Namjoon and his mystery girl. Act like catalysts for something that's been building at a a snail's pace over the course of months through letters. Though romantic, indirect and impractical, so Jimin views it.

He'd attempt to establish a connection with mystery girl via direct messages. Arrange for a date where her only job is to show up. Namjoon would be there, oblivious. He hasn't quite figured out the specifics of it like how exactly he'd manage to declaw Namjoon from his busy schedule long enough to take time for himself, for being idle, for exploring the town. Or how he'd keep him from turning around after catching on to the situation.

"We'll cross that bridge once we get there."

"What do we do tonight, then?" Norah sips her drink. Places it back on the ring of moisture on the coffee table. It's starting to take effect. A heat unfurling and holding in her chest, quickening her pulse. Thoughts materializing in her mind faster than she can keep track of the streams of reason.

"We start uploading the pictures we've taken of him. Make his profile believable. But not all at once because then it would seem too much like a spam account."

"This may sound entirely evil and conniving, but what if we upload a quote from the book they mentioned in the letter you tore-"

He gawks.

"You know what you did," she scolds him with a stern look that makes him shift his attention back onto the screen.

"For someone who holds herself on a high moral horse, you sure seem experienced. Hidden mastermind in there, huh?"

"Respecting your friend's privacy is not high morality. It's basic knowledge." She flicks his forehead with her middle finger.

"Alright!" he throws his head back against the couch. It rebounds lightly against the cushion. He'll never live that down. "I fucked up. I shouldn't have even stepped into the office. I should have left the back door open for anyone to sneak in."

Baby Byeol's fast asleep on the monitor propped up on the table across from the couch. Chest rising and falling in a steady but swift pace. Tiny little set of lungs working hard through the night.

The coffee is now more parts water than caffeine or milk. The contents diluted by melted ice. They'd meant to finish it, just as they'd meant to upload at least two posts, but their eyelids had grown leaden with slumber.

Norah had spiraled down a rabbit hole on the internet trying to find the perfect book quote to caption the first post.

Jimin's wrist had grown sore flexed over the keyboard. His lap had become sensitive to the heat of the cushion and the ancient machine. He'd repositioned it onto the seat beside him and their necks started to hurt instead.

Now it's possibly the darkest hour of night. The pitch-black stillness caught between dusk and dawn. Not a single sound of the activity of civilization making itself known, not even a stray car whirring outside the front windows.

Only the soft breath of Jimin on Norah's cheek.

Dimming the brightness on her phone, she confirms the time she'd suspected. Attempts to stir out of his hold without interrupting his sleep. She has to her benefit the fact that he's a deep sleeper, and that sleep's collecting its debt.

Just as she thinks she's about to get away, slip out the front door with the swiftness of a night-cloaked thief, there comes a gentle tug at her wrist.

"Stay," Jimin's voice croaks, all groggy and thick with rest. "It's too dark. Too late. Sleep here."

"That will be the third night this week. I need to visit home. Shower."

He stirs, propping his weight onto his elbow to make sure he doesn't let his eyes drift shut before he convinces her to stay. Sure, this conversation might seem hazy like a dream, ambiguous as to whether its real, but he won't take the risk of her leaving so late. "There's a bathroom here. Steal clothes from my closet. Just stay. Home will be there tomorrow."

Something in her stirs. Something about this exchange makes her think otherwise.

Home's here.

Home's him.

"Fine." She drops her bag from her shoulder.

Jimin smiles, eyes closed.

Slides off the couch. Sleep-drunk, he stumbles down the corridor leading to his bedroom. Norah follows.

He takes the opportunity to lean down and check on Byeol. An angel cast in the moonglow streaking in through the windows.

𓍢ִ໋🌷͙֒ i'm not entirely convinced with the last third of this chapter. might come back later and change alot of it but for now it is this or nothing.

𓍢ִ໋🌷͙֒ if you're a oth girly, and if you care to know, i realize jimin and norah's actions are reminiscent of brooke setting peyton up on lustfactor in S2 and i think it's hilarious that oth is bleeding into my subconscious from how much i rewatch it

𓍢ִ໋🌷͙֒ shoutout to that clever army that once pointed out how jimin was made out of love and not a quick nut. sista, you were speaking facts!

𓍢ִ໋🌷͙֒ the ode to jimin continues >>

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pennedbylisse · 1 year ago

Text

OPERATION CUPID

howdy :) so, the characters you're about to read sort of sprung out of their own volition as I worked on a namjoon fic. I wanted to see how these scenes would do as standalones, as little slices of life, peeks into the daily ups and downs of the cast. scenes proceed in no particular order. sometimes chronological, sometimes as time-skips. I'm just going with the flow, wherever the tide takes me.

wc: 3.0k

tracklist: 'halley's comet' by billie eilish, 'pink skies' by lany, 'safety net by ari g

tense and POV: 3rd and present

ep. 2 | AO3

OPERATION CUPID Classified Excerpts

Jimin is lean, and comparatively small when standing next to Namjoon. His hands are chubby, and his fingers are stubby. None of this, however, subtracts from his agility and his swan-like elegance even as he glides across a fifty-year-old, small-town diner at rush hour.

It's the kind of awe-inspiring grace that belongs on stage, spotlit amidst tule skirts and disciplined ballet point shoes. The kind of grace that is chiseled to perfection through years of arduous practice and patience.

Norah, who is sat on a swivel bar chair behind the register, takes inventory of crinkled green bills. Between lining the bills with a few taps against the counter and reaching over to scribble on a tracking sheet, she steals glances his way.

She wonders just how many falls it had taken him to trust his quick and light footing not to betray him. How many bruises he'd acquired and endured to no longer fear pain.

Jimin never seems to catch on to her stray glances, or the twinkle in her gaze every time he comes into frame from behind the shoulder, or broad back, of a customer that shuffles in, or out, of the establishment.

He's used to having eyes affixed to him; feels comfortable in the spotlight, in crowds. Naturally charming and approachable, he makes friends left and right, and talks to them as if they are years-long acquaintances meeting over dinner. How's your family doing? My, that must have been so hard for you! Say what, here's a plate of Saturn rings, on the house. He'd wink and utter something, while holding a hand to their shoulder, about keeping it a secret from the boss, Namjoon.

Norah would wince. It's not like they are financially flexible enough to afford freebies.

As for Namjoon, he'd pretend to have not seen anything.

Jimin gently sets down a tall glass of strawberry milkshake, adorned with a dollop of white foam and a single, shimmering cherry on a table where a customer is hunched over a book.

He'd noticed, on his glide her way, that she'd been pensively entranced, entirely engrossed in the blotchy ink of the pages, brows pinched beneath the slight part between her curled bangs.

He didn't want to interrupt her careful consideration. It appeared of utmost importance, and if not that, than at least of utmost enjoyment. In the case of the latter, she had a peculiar way of displaying it (enjoyment).

At the drum of the glass's rim over the wooden table, the woman snaps her head to capture his studious gaze.

The pinch of her eyebrows dissolves, much like the foam atop her drink, and becomes replaced with an appreciative smile.

"Is it any good?" He glances, suggestively, at the book she'd hurriedly closed over her forefinger, which she'd been using as a make-shift bookmark.

Her cheeks and ears grow flushed, as if it were a shameful thing to enjoy reading.

Jimin wonders if it's the nature of the text that makes her so bashful, hiding her blush by flattening her bangs.

Regret hardens like cement over his feet, leaves him paralyzed to assess her response.

"Ah, this?" She drums her fingers over the hardcover, and it resonates wonderfully crisp. "Quite unexpectedly, yes."

Jimin's smile returns, as does his graceful fluidity. There's a single crooked tooth that peeks through when his smile reaches his eyes. It's just barely noticeable. It's Norah's favorite detail.

Unaware, the woman elaborates further: "You see, a friend of mine-" She halts as if holding a mental debate over whether that was the proper term for it. She shakes her head, dismissing the flurry of questions and doubts brought forth by a simple six-letter word. "It was his choice for the month. We have this thing where we trade books after each turn. We read each other's margin annotations, and sometimes try to identify doodles done in the likeness of classical art pieces. It's our way of getting to know each other."

"It's unexpected because," she explains in a sort of round-about way, "he knows, and knew while picking out this title, that I loathe Nietzche."

"Ah, that's lovely! It's a clever take on penpal-ship," Jimin quips.

"Oh!" She chokes a chuckle down, not meaning to sound so excited.

She hadn't been able to conceal her smile at the mention of the friend; Jimin had caught on to her wandering, dreamy gaze falling down at the book's cover amidst her recollection. "I hadn't thought of it like that, but now that you mention it, it is, isn't it?"

Perhaps only now made aware of her rambling by the holler of a nearby customer for Jimin's attention, does she let her voice diminish and takes up interest at the glass before her. Condensation dotting her fingertips.

"In short: Yes, it's good." She takes a decided sip of her drink, the foam smearing her upper lip only for a second before she licks it away. Her eyes expand and soon enough she's eager for another sip of the decadent drink. "As is this!"

Jimin's turning to tend to the customer who had been hollering and whistling for his attention. He halts mid-step, and swivels back to face her, doesn't leave her table until he prompts: "You should tell him you like it over coffee, chocolate, or even a milkshake sometime. Step out of the pages, the margins."

"No-" she stammers. "No, no." It's more a bid to persuade herself out of pointless delusional than it is an attempt at shutting him up.

"We've never talked about meeting," she adds. "I think it's a mutual desire to keep it anonymous. It's perfect like this, safe from external pressure to be anything more than two friends bonding over literature and internal jokes."

"Perfect's not real," Jimin responds. "Forgive me for being pushy, here, but if you like him, as you appear to, why only limit yourselves to footnotes in each other's lives?"

"That's a preposterous proposition!" She hides her blush this time behind the rim of the glass she brings up to her lips, and what little frothy cream is left. When she sets the mug down, a triumphant smile momentously strikes her face like lightning at the realization she'd weaved in her word-of-the-day so subtly, and with added alliteration.

She continues, reigning in the smile (Jimin wouldn't get that inside joke): "How can you like someone you haven't even met?"

"Haven't you, though? Met him, in a sense? I'd argue you're intimately aware of all the pages of his life, like that little book of yours." He taps the sturdy cover lying on the dinner table before bowing away, leaving her to ponder - not before slipping a circular coaster beneath her drink as it had already started to condense.

Namjoon would get on him about the wood, how old it is, how delicate, how financially inflexible they are.

For, possibly, the first time in her life, since she was an infant, she sits in silence. The concerto of intriguing words playing in her mind falls mute. All diction and syntax is replaced with a profound note of realization. A note she ushers to silence, lest anyone else hear. A note that's her secret - like a bookmark, or dollar bill, sticky note, or receipt shoved between pages and preserved over time.

After tending to the demanding customer with an unwavering smile, Jimin glides around the counter and rubs shoulders with Norah, who is still hunched over the register — has been for the past half-hour, impatiently stabbing her fingers over its blank screen.

Fucking Mercurcy retrograding; it always had to cause some sort of glitch. She always happened to find herself dead-center to its discovery.

The register had functioned fine for Namjoon just an hour ago. Now, it'll appear as if it was her doing. How much of a deduction would that be from her paycheck?

Oblivious to her inner turmoil, Jimin whispers over her shoulder: “It’s her.”

At Norah's lack of enthusiasm, he repeats himself, only now forcing her gaze onto his suggestive one.

Norah's face twists with bewilderment. "Who?"

Jimin casts his eyes at the star-dotted ceiling with an exasperated roll. Then, he slams his shoulder cloth down on the counter (more for dramatic effect than intimidation) and subtly nods in the direction of the bibliophilic woman.

Norah squints. Unamused, she blankly stares back at Jimin. Irritation is starting to settle on her face.

"Namjoon's penpal," he finally comes out with it, spells it out with each syllable as if it had been painfully obvious all of this time.

At that, her chocolate eyes light up, the way they do after her first espresso each morning.

Jimin crafts up this "amazing" (his words, not Norah's), and densely convoluted plan to stich the two up. He's convinced that just because they don't glide at his swift pace, they are helplessly in need of intervention, lest they waste their youth away pining and brooding aimlessly.

Norah holds her refutes deep in her chest, merely lends a curious ear to his inspired rambles. An assumption bubbles to the surface of her mind that this hyper-fixation with establishing a romantic interest for Namjoon was only a projection of Jimin's own scarcity in the love department. Even since he'd become a single father, he'd not had much time, space or privacy to afford a fling.

And even if a desperate fling did happen to materialize itself at his front door, he'd kindly decline; stringless hook-ups are no longer his thing. He's looking for something solid, something long-term. Thinks baby Byeol will benefit from a feminine role-model.

He's trying his best as a father, and in his defense, that's more than most absentee fathers out there, but he's fearful that as she grows, he'll be of less use to her. All he has to worry about now is feeding her, bathing her and providing a roof and clothes. Later, he'll have to procure answers to increasingly difficult questions.

Regardless of the intrinsic motive, Jimin's buzzing, talking a mile-a-minute as he walks circles around the diner.

Norah furrows her brows as she hoists a chair onto its corresponding table.

Jimin likes playing Cupid a little too much. He forgets that those red-tipped arrows are sharper than they seem in folklore. Perhaps Cupid wasn't born blind, rather his own carelessness with those arrows blinded him before he learned fates weren't something to toy with when bored and idle.

Jimin's first warning arrives in the form of Norah's apprehension. "I don't know, Chim," she whines.

His eyes round with quiet concern, and he cranes his weight onto the edge of a table. Crosses his arms over his chest, a stained rag dangling between his hold.

"Why? Why not? Don't you think Nam deserves some excitement? All he ever does is overwork himself and play the same miserable song over and over. " He shoots a deathly glare at the vintage juke box at the edge of the bar at the mere recollection.

"He's young. Has a build most girls would gawk over." He's listing the attributes on his stubby fingers. "Smart, kind, generous- I mean, do you think any other boss would put up with my BS on a daily? The man's an angel."

In the dim light of the overhanding star lights, Jimin's eyes glisten, and he averts his gaze, fearful his composure will crumble.

"He deserves happiness, Nor. if this all goes up in flames, he deserves a speck of happiness to carry him through it, guide him to a new horizon. This can't be his everything, because as soon as it falls, so will he."

"You're saying he needs a safety net."

"Yes, exactly! A safety net." He recites the term, weighing its shape on his lips, surprised at how properly it fits.

Norah weakly hoists the last of the chairs. "I thought that was us. You know? Us three, to the end?"

"Nor..." he frowns, launches his weight off the table he'd been reclining himself against, and saunters his way through the maze of stacked chairs to Norah. "We will always be there for one another, but you and I both know there are things he carries in secret. Things he keeps from us, for our sake. Maybe she'll crack through his shell, and make it less..." He looks for the word somewhere over and past her head, and physically palpates the air for its shape. "Less...you know...less heavy." He's not please with the selection, but it's the only word that comes to mind in that instance, and bears resemblance to the abstract idea of his mind.

"Maybe he'll allow her, unlike us."

"I get it. I hear you. I just don't know how to feel about this. What if it blows up and he hates us for it?"

Jimin takes up the role of devil's advocate, an un-orthodoxically hopeful one: "What if it works out wonderfully well?"

"Fine," her agreement falls flat, but he makes up for her lack of enthusiasm by doing a little fist hoist in the air.

She grabs his wrist and forces his gaze back onto hers. "This is Nam we are talking about. We need a good plan and an even better execution. Absolutely no room for fuckups."

"Hey, Jimin?"

"Hmm?" His gaze flies up at the sound of such formality, and the absence of the familiar 'Chim.' His furrowed brows frame a set of eyes rounded with concern. They scan her countenance, attempting to pick up on subtle, unspoken moods that could explain that sudden change.

"Whatever happens -if this place goes belly-up..." Norah does a motion with her forefinger, its silver band reflecting in the waning amber of evening. "We'll still be..." her gaze dances, unsteady between his steady and attentive one, but she proves incapable of holding it.

Circling the bands around her now clammy fingers, she orders her thoughts, lines her words over the plateau of her tongue. Like perfectly placed and aligned dominoes, she intends to let them charge forth with unbridled momentum.

But instead, they clank awkwardly and with no set rhythm as she stammers between what should be said, and what should be censored, eternalized to secrecy.

"It'll be us three, forever, right? Nothing will change?" Of course things would change, drastically. Namjoon alone would have to uproot his life to comply with the terms of agreement he'd established with his parents in allowing him to take-up the risk of running the diner. That alone would suggest him moving away. Communication between the three would fall, their bond crafted over years would loosen and come undone like an improperly fastened knot, or one that just wore away, sun-bleached and tattered.

He wants to procure a worthy response, to at least undo the tears starting to form on her lash-line, but he can't bring himself to lie to her. Nothing was certain. Not ever, and certainly not now.

He would be lying if he denies having scouted for jobs online once he puts Byeol down to bed each night.

It's less about holding different jobs than it is about the distance between those routines. The fall-out wouldn't be palpable during the first few months as they would make every attempt to overcome the discrepancy, to meet and chat, with everything being freshly new. Once they were to give into monotony and convenience, though, those meetings would shorten into oblivion.

Perhaps this is why Jimin is so adamant about helping Namjoon conquer love; it's his way of leaving an impression that will outlive his presence in Namjoon's life.

Instead of voicing his reasonable suspicions, he coos, much in the likeness of the tone he uses to calm Byeol. "Hey, hey... It's okay. It'll be okay."

He encroaches with outstretched arms, ready to collect her before she shatters into a million pieces right before him. His small, delicate hands hold her head and stroke her hair.

Norah renders her guard useless, and sheds it with a few tears that stray from her shut eyes. She nuzzles the bridge of her pierced button bose against the side of his neck.

No longer looking into her eyes, he musters a pretty, white lie, sweet like cane sugar, to coax the bitterness of medicine, of reality, of life: "Until the stars burn out."

She wants to call him out on the lack of accuracy in that statement; processes it's fallacy, but stops herself from speaking. Instead, she relishes the embrace as if it were the first and the last.

She allows herself to enjoy the imagery of the sentiment and locks her hands behind his back, just in case the stars do burn out in that instant. In case they drift off into the void together, to face that dark unknown together.

Norah's unspokenly ambitious, hazardly competitive. Rather than boasting about how she's the very best, she'll take up any and every opportunity to one-up her opponent in the most obscure trivia, a match of chess, tennis (you name it).

Her ambition is merely a deep, infiltrating greed that courses through her like an infestation. She's conditioned herself to fear coveting something. Taught herself that to want is to lose; and that vulnerability is dangerous.

She's recited a million times over in her head declinations of her blossoming feelings for Jimin. Every bud that blooms in daylight, she snips in moonlight.

She wants it all. She wants him. She wants forever. She doesn't merely want to buy an extension for the inevitable. She doesn't want to convince herself out of the want. Not with this want.

Something deep inside her is gnawing with want - not the lustful desire kind, rather, the I've been alone for so long that I am touch-starved, and wholly lonesome and tired and I just want a place to rest.

She wishes on every lash of her eyes that Jimin could one day be that for her, and likewise, her for him.

A safe place.

But she also wishes incessantly for the diner's success and Namjoon's happiness, yet the bills continue to pile. With winter unfolding, the crowds are thinning, the diner grows quiet and stale.

Wishing has never proven to suffice. It never has been the magical remedy. Stars are just pretty orbs of light in the sky, not wish granters.

𓍢ִ໋🌷͙֒ this teeny series is lowkey a love letter to jimin for being such a loving, warm person. a literal angel x

𓍢ִ໋🌷͙֒ also, probs unconsciously influenced by peyton x jake oth dynamic (we were robbed!)

𓍢ִ໋🌷͙֒ the ode to jimin continues >> ep. 2

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