A Walk To Remember

It's The One That I've Tried To Write Over Again

Yoongi sweeps at the floor during the Star Club open house. A dozen nerds, including Park Jimin (wearing his brown sweater), stand at astronomy exhibits. Students wander in, listen and look.

Jimin answers a question. "Saturn's fifteen degrees to the right of red Antares and much brighter." To his small audience, he holds up a contraption made from a wire coat hanger. "This is a very simple device made from a coat hanger, plastic wrap and typewriter correction fluid. Does anyone know what it is?"

No one does.

Yoongi mumbles, barely audible. "A star frame."

But Jimin hears. He regards him a moment, then keeps going. "This is a star frame." Jungkook and Hoseok enter, checking on Yoongi, glancing at Jimin. "A star frame will help you locate stars and planets with your naked eyes -"

Jungkook scoffs, setting him up. "Did God create the sun?"

Jimin takes him seriously, however. "Yes, God created the universe and all it's physical laws. Even Einstein said it's a miracle that our world is comprehensible -"

Hoseok interrupts him. "If God can do all that, why can't he get you a new sweater?"

Yoongi laughs loudly, and members of the club look at him. "That was a joke. Laugh."

Jimin smiles. He can laugh at himself and he finds Yoongi funny. 

In the evening Yoongi washes up while his mother sets the table. The microwave hums in the background. 

"Your father dropped off an extra check."

Yoongi sighs. "I don't want his money."

"It could help with a new car -"

"- I like the car I have." Yoongi picks up the envelope with wet hands. Without looking inside, he rips it in half. Cho smiles, quietly happy.

On Saturday morning, there is enthusiastic preppies, richies, and other do-gooders singing 'Karma Chameleon' on the school bus. Jimin sits in an aisle seat, reading, not singing. He turns around to look at Yoongi who rides at the back row, staring out the window, wearing a Sony Walkman, looking glum.

Out of the window, Westwood High School comes into view, with bars on every window, a chain-link fence around the parameter, and no grass.

Westwood's library is a big room with tables and chairs but few books. Pairs of heads are bent over textbooks and notebooks. Yoongi sits with Lee, a freshman boy of mixed ethnicity. There's a geometry text book between them.

Yoongi reads off the book. "So what is the measure of angle x if A and B are similar triangles?"

Lee is lost and feels intimidated.

"Know what 'similar' means?"

Lee shrugs and looks down at the book as if for the answer, then back up at Yoongi, hopeless. He gets up and walks off leaving Yoongi behind, sat in disbelief. He catches Jimin staring at him from a nearby table with his student, Inhye."

At noon, the school bus arrives and Yoongi is the last one on. The door swishes shut behind him as he hops aboard. He's late and heads for the rear bench seat.

Jimin is sitting there and there is no vacant seats save next to him.

The bus begins to roll and Yoongi lurches forward, so Yoongi sits. The bus is moving through Busan, and Yoongi tries to ignore the fact he's sat with Jimin and plugs his earphones into his mobile phone. His body is turned away from Jimin who is reading a book.