A Thousand Words (Min Yoongi x OC)

Airplane

[For the sake of my sanity, and length of chapters, we're just going to pretend all of the dialogue is in Korean. There will be some instances where Korean will not be what's being spoken, and I will make sure to throw something in there so that it's easier to differentiate what language is supposed to be being spoken. Also, single words and super short phrases may have translations left off. If there are no context clues to decipher what's being said, feel free to message me and ask for a translation or copy and paste the dialogue into a translator. I personally use wordhippo.com.]

*November 27th*

The window seat rocked a bit as Mariana plopped into her airplane seat with a little huff. It'd been a long three years abroad, and she was so ready to go see her friends and family for Christmas. Due to lack of funds, Mariana would normally video chat with her friends and family for the holidays, but she'd been saving up for two years to come home and surprise everyone for a couple of months, and she was more than ready to see everyone again. Her mom would always ask her if she was ever going to stay in one place, but Mariana was currently more focused on fluently learning the five languages on her list that she chose in order to become as diverse of a interpreter as she could.

Mariana was almost 24 and already knew Spanish, French, German and Japanese along with her native English. Now she was living in South Korea and going to school to learn Korean. She'd always loved traveling and learning new languages, but now she was starting to doubt her path as a interpreter. Simply because she was ready to stay in one country, maybe actually find a boyfriend and live a normal life. But she had no backup plan yet. So for now, she kept on going with her same old routine.

She put her earbuds in, and brought up her phone, choosing a remixed song from her K-pop playlist as she felt someone sit in the seat next to her. No biggie. So long as this person didn't fall asleep on her shoulder and drool down her jacket like the last guy, that is. She looked up for a moment to see how full the plane was going to be when someone wearing a face mask, who also oddly resembled Kim Namjoon from BTS caught her attention. She looked for a moment to watch him sit in a middle seat three rows up and one aisle to the left then shook the thought out of her head. After all, there was no way that was him. That just wasn't her kind of luck. Ever.

Her music paused as the songs switched over, allowing her to hear someone directly ahead and to the left of her somewhere call someone's name.

"Namjoon!" She heard a guy calmly call, her eyes flicking up to the back of the headrest in front of her in thought as the next song started.

'Surely that's just a common name...' she thought to herself and looked up only to see the same guy from before standing again, with his whole face turned to her side of the plane. Her eyes went as wide as quarters as she recognized him; Kim Namjoon. RM of BTS. On the same plane as her. And usually, where one member was, the others were not far away. Out of curiosity, she slowly moved her eyes to her left to see who was next to her. Her eyes got even wider if that was even possible, and she had to actively attempt to keep her jaw closed as she could feel her throat tighten and her breathing tense in awestruck. Her bias, Min Yoongi, was sitting next to her on a plane scheduled for an 8-hour flight.

Mariana snapped her wide eyes forward again, just letting her thoughts roam as she turned her head to the window, looking at her faint reflection as she mouthed 'No. Freaking. Way'. Her phone buzzed with a message, reminding her she needed to put her phone into airplane mode. She brought her phone up, freezing momentarily as she realized her lock and home screens were her two favorite pictures of Suga, and heaven forbid he sees it. She watched him out of the corner of her eye for a few seconds, noting that he was paying more attention to whatever was on his own phone screen to notice her. She quickly opened her phone and pulled down the notification bar, hitting the airplane mode shortcut icon. She mentally sighed in relief as she clicked the power button to turn her phone off again, and sat back in her seat, listening to her music, trying to ignore the fact that her idol was right next to her. He was a Korean pop star, why would he want to bother himself with her anyways?
She opted for study time while she waited for the plane to take off, bringing up her backpack into her lap and digging through it for her Korean vocabulary notebook.

"크랩 노름" [Crap.] She muttered under her breath as she realized the notebook she wanted was in a checked bag. "Why in the sam hell did I do that?" She continued in self muttering.

The song paused again as it switched to the next song, allowing her to hear a quick breathy chuckle from Suga, who was apparently a bit amused at her current struggle. Mariana did her best to keep the blush from her cheeks as she kept digging in her backpack for one of her other Korean notebooks. She pulled out a small square textbook with a notebook tucked into the pages. She pulled out the notebook, and noted the page number in the book before closing and putting it back into her backpack, leaving just the notebook out for her.

She mentally sighed in defeat as she picked up her black pencil with a white outline of BTS's logo on it. 'Well. Guess I'm busted now. It's just a matter of time until he...'

"Are you ARMY?" She heard through her earbuds from her left.

She wanted to hope it wasn't Suga who had just read her mind, but even with Lucifer by Shinee beating in her ears, she knew his voice anywhere. But she still just looked at him out of the corner of her eyes to see if he was actually talking to her.

"Yes, you." He said in amusement with a little nod.

Mariana turned to actually look at him, as she took her earbuds out, the eye contact melting her from the inside.

She nodded and smiled. "Yes." She stated with a small nod and put her backpack back under the seat in front of her.

Suga had to remember how to say what he wanted to in English for a moment. "You should have said hi, we love to meet ARMY." He pointed out with a friendly smile.

Mariana bit her lips together for a second to keep her smile from growing. He wasn't fluent in English yet, but he was good at what he did know.

"나는 그것을 기억할 것이다."
[I'll remember that.]

Suga's eyes lit up with a smile when she used her Korean. "한국에서 뭐하고 있었 니?" [What were you doing in Korea?] He asked her.

"나는 여기에 산다." [I live here.]
She started confidently, but her nerves made her forget how to say what she wanted to next as she stuttered through, but gave in and fell back to her English. "For now. I'm going to school to learn the language and culture. I'm just going to my parents' for the holidays." She explained.

Suga didn't understand all of that, but he could pick out the important words enough to understand what she meant.
"Where is family?"

"Almost 4 hours outside of Chicago, in Illinois."

"How...long, have you been in Korea?"

"Almost 3 years now. It's an amazing place, I'm not looking forward to leaving." She said a bit sadly at the thought of leaving Korea. It had been her favorite place to live so far.

"Do you move homes often?"

"Every few years. I graduated high school with plans to be an interpreter, so I already know 5 languages, and Korean makes 6." She explained.

Suga's eyes went wide in surprise. "Six?"

Mariana nodded with a little nervous smile. "Yeah, six. English is my first language, and I learned Spanish, German, and French while I was in high school. A year later after I graduated, I moved to Japan through my university and learned Japanese, and now I'm in Korea learning Korean."

"Wow." Suga said with a flash of an impressed smile.

"I like to stay busy." Mariana said with a chuckle.

"I would say so." He said with a little chuckle when they heard Jimin call his name from the other side of the plane.

Suga just raised his hand so they would all know where he was, and Jimin continued looking around to make sure the whole group was on and in close proximity. Suga looked back to Mariana, but she had already gone back to reading and writing here and there in her notebook. He just watched her for a moment, speaking up when he saw her pause at a phrase that seemed to be giving her trouble.

"Would.." He started, grabbing her attention again. "Would you like help?" He asked and looked at her notebook. He wasn't sure why, but he felt compelled to keep talking to her. He was enjoying their small talk quite a bit.

Mariana smiled at him and nodded. "Yes, if you're willing."

"Definitely." He said with a happy nod and they spent a good two hours studying each other's language until the dinner carts came and they, like everyone else on the plane, fell asleep not long after eating.