Way Back Home

Hold Me Tight

"Even if I'm depressed?"

Chaerin's eyes immediately snapped up to Yoongi's face. She expected him to be looking up at the stars or down at the grass, or anywhere else besides her face, but he wasn't. He was looking right into her eyes.

Yoongi stared into Chaerin's earthy brown eyes, but it seemed as if he was looking through her. His face was unreadable and it was impossible to tell if he was mad or upset or simply indifferent. Chaerin just watched him for a long, silent moment, and she saw the telltale sign of tears flooding his eyes. In that moment, she had never felt so powerless.

"Yoongi..." she didn't know where she was trying to go with the beginning of that sentence, she didn't know what to say at all.

"You don't have to say anything, Chae," he interrupted her unfinished thought. "There's nothing to say—"

"No." Chaerin's voice was hard as she spat out the word. "No, Yoongi. There is definitely something to say."

Chaerin held tighter to Yoongi's hand and turned around fully in her chair to face him. Her legs were folded uncomfortably and the arm of the lawn chair dug into her shins but she didn't care. She swallowed hard and tried to find the right words to say.

"You–you're depressed," she started. "And that's okay–even though it really isn't. I understand why you feel this way, and I know you've felt it for a long while now. I suspected that you were depressed, or something like it, possibly before you realized it yourself and found the courage to tell me, and that's why—" Chaerin drew a shaky breath, holding back her own tears.

"That's why I'm not leaving you. I refuse. And you can shut me out and grow distant and not talk to me like you did that entire first year we were friends," a strained chuckle escaped her lips. "But I'm not going anywhere. You're my best friend, you always will be. And while I love that you trust me enough to tell me this, it really doesn't matter."

Yoongi's eyebrows furrowed and he glared at Chaerin with fury rising in his chest. How could it not matter to her? Did she not give a single damn about how he felt? And here he thought she was his friend. He scoffed in indignation, ripping his hand out of hers and springing up from his lawn chair. Yoongi stomped towards the house, sending wet mud flying up beneath his angry footsteps.

"No no no!" Chaerin jumped from her chair, chasing after her friend but he didn't stop.

"Yoongi stop!" He kept walking.

"Min Yoongi, you get your ass back here right now!" He halted, swiveling slowly on his heels.

His eyes narrowed at her, "You've never sworn before."

"Just shut up and listen to me," Chaerin snapped at him, ignoring his statement altogether, which made him raise an eyebrow at the younger girl.

"You are my best—and only friend. I am not giving you up for the world," at this point tears were streaming down her face. "And it doesn't matter to me if you're depressed—" Yoongi's teeth ground together.

"It doesn't matter because you're my best friend and I will help you through it." Yoongi froze completely at hearing Chaerin's words. "It won't be easy, it might even be impossible, I know that. But I am going to do everything humanly possible to make you happy," she swore to him.

"So don't you dare walk away from me when I'm trying to be a good friend to you—woah!"

A startled squeak left Chaerin's lungs when Yoongi suddenly stomped forward and lifted her up in the air, his arms constricting like a vice around her waist. It took Chaerin a good fifteen seconds to get air back in her lungs and figure out that Yoongi wasn't strangling her, he was hugging her.

Yoongi swung her around in the air, his face buried in her neck and her feet hanging uselessly above the muddy ground. Once his arms started to grow tired of holding Chaerin up, he dropped his tight hold, making her feet hit the ground and splash both of them with mud. She held on to his shoulders to stay steady on her half-numb feet.

Then Yoongi did something even less expected than initiating a hug. He grabbed her squishy cheeks and yanked her forward, placing a kiss on the top of her head. A massive grin was stuck on his face and he couldn't get rid of it; he didn't want to.

He yanked her back into his arms. "Thank you, Chae. Thank you," he mumbled happily into her coconut-scented hair.

"I don't know what I did to deserve you but I'm sure as hell glad that I did it. Thank you, thank you, thank you—" he kept mumbling his quiet gratitude as Chaerin wrapped her thin arms around his waist and hugged him back.

In that moment, they didn't need anyone or anything other than each other. In that moment he was sure that no matter what happened, this girl—this loud, annoying, cheerful, wonderful girl would to save him. There was no doubt about it.

They would save each other.