the devil skates on thin ice ∙ myg ✓

13 ↝ the overdue honesty

I should go tonight, you think, staring at your bedroom ceiling from your sprawled out position on the carpet. No, I shouldn't go. But I... I should go? Should I go?

You repeat the words in your head like an endless washing machine cycle until they are drained of their meaning and they no longer feel like words—just hollow shapes; echoing sounds. But that is the golden question, and you have been looping it around your tongue like twine, turning the muscle blue with a lack of the well-awaited answer. Because, indeed, it is Saturday afternoon and Yoongi has his grand final game in no more than four hours, and you have spent your precious time of training-less freedom mulling over Seokjin's offer to attend since lunch.

This sudden sense of willingness has built like a dam on a rainy day since your unexpected encounter with Yoongi on Thursday night. The shock of seeing him at the gym so late had stunned you like the zap of an electric fence. Even though you had quickly narrowed his presence down to some form of punishment by his coach, you had to wonder what kind of divine intervention was involved for you to literally walk into him after you had been doing everything in your power to avoid him.

But god, the way that Yoongi had stared at you—at that stupid hair scrunchie on your wrist that you have never been able to throw away—had you reconsidering everything. It made you think that Seokjin might have been right about the kiss being some dumb, alcohol-fuelled incident. It made you think that Yoongi maybe thought that he was genuinely protecting you when he punched Yugyeom, and that doing so would be able to prove to you that he cares for you most.

You know those thoughts seem like ridiculous excuses for why Yoongi did what he did. Yet, at the core of it all, it seems like such an intrinsically Yoongi thing to do—to make a mistake, and then go to such extreme lengths to earn that forgiveness back.

But what really struck you about the whole interaction were his words. Get home safe after your session. Text me if you need somebody to walk you home. He would have known that you would have preferred to risk the walk alone before you ever reached out to him, but he still said it. Though you knew it was less about the offer and more about the underlying meaning. The unspoken: I still care about you. I still want this to work.

At the sheer thought of it, you loudly groan and kick your legs like an angry child until your foot clips the wheel of your desk chair. Letting out a yelp, you cradle your leg to your chest and massage the point of impact, thumb absentmindedly skimming over the pearly scar that is slashed across your ankle as you do so. The memories of that cold, cold night linger at the forefront of your mind, solely from the feeling of the torn skin beneath the pad of your thumb. But with the frequency of those memories arising ever since you started to be... something with Yoongi again, they no longer wash your skin in icy water.

They no longer numb you, just as the lake did.

And there, with your thumb pressed to the one thing that has haunted you for the past five years, you come to terms with the fact that you might not need to go to Yoongi's game, but there is something else that you need to do.

Minah was also given the day off of training. While the Saturday is now steadily encroaching on its sundown, you have not seen her since last night. Yet, by the muffled sounds that have been filtering through her closed door all day, you can tell that she has spent this time off in the precise same manner as you: curled up in bed and binge-watching anime.

Thus, you know that she is definitely in her room when you give her door a soft knock. Once their is no responding sound of protest, you slowly open it, praying that her silence is not because she is jacking herself off or doing some kind of nude yoga.