Would sleep make things better?

Would time make it better?

After almost sixteen hours of sleep Yoongi still felt like he was withering away like the dulled afternoon that was falling into the arms of a blue evening.

An evening filled with coldness, the air stiff around the city who itself had frozen up, the sterile winter occasionally sighing on Yoongi's shoulders.

The streets were barren without any people passing by. Yoongi walked and walked with his eyes fixated on his tattered converses, beaten with time just like him.

Why was he here? Walking around mindlessly?

He was absent both physically and mentally. Absent from work and university too. His lethargic brain or physique could barely care anymore.

Hands were cold, fingers were numbed, his pallid face dead under the freezing weather. Maybe he should buy new converses? Should he?

His family needed that money. Just when Yoongi thought he couldn't care less he had found himself back to square one and back before the gate of their dorm. The sky had bathed itself in azure now, solemn and dark.

Yoongi noticed the female figure standing outside the rusted, metal gate. A girl with a red scarf around her neck and a bag in her hands.

Yejoo was slightly trembling in cold, red lips quivering, with her every breath a puff of smoke came out and embraced her scarf. She tucked a strand of her shoulder-length hair behind her ear when Yoongi stood before her.

A defeaning silence fell. The girl looked away. "Mom made some dumplings today and wanted to share with you. I called, your number was out of reach."

Yoongi's phone was dead and out of battery, lying on his cold bed in his room. He didn't bother to plug it with the charger.

When she held out the bag, a basket with a orange colored clothing wrapping it in, now that Yoongi had noticed, he realized too how unusually pale she looked. Her face gray and chalked under the weather.

"You should go home," he murmured taking in the bag. Her cold fingers brushed his own and she immediately didn't retrieve it but her hand lingered there, skin on skin.

"I will choose to be a med student," her voice wavered and she took her hands back, clasping them in front of her while looking down.

A flake of snow fell down from the azure sky to her hair, more followed. Yoongi sighed and wondered why it did not make him feel anything when he saw a silent tear roll down her pale cheek.

Yoongi really was becoming numb, just as bleak as the winter. Then he remembered himself crying out of hysteria last night and thought, maybe not.

He wasn't becoming ice cold yet. "You shouldn't come here either. One of my dorm mates are afraid of girls." And it's an inconvenience on itself, he didn't say it aloud. He was already harsh he knew, but he couldn't help it.

Life had its rough, skeletal fingers gripping on his throat every second of the day for almost a decade, Yoongi couldn't even try and be more civil than this.

"I won't." A whimper followed. Yejoo turned and left hastily, as if standing in front of him another second would bring a disaster.

Yoongi knew that maybe she would cry today too, but it was for the better. Life was always cruel, no one ever gets what they want.

The snow fell shyly, first time of the winter which in later days would turn hostile. Like Yejoo constantly blushing in front of Yoongi when he first started tutoring her a few months ago, her writing their names together in the back of her notebooks which Yoongi ignored despite accidentally seeing it, then it turning into a passionate infatuation of the teen years where she would find herself making her adoration visible.

Maybe Yoongi should've put an end to it when he first realized her fondness towards him.

He thought he didn't care but here he was.

Inside the dorm it was warm and full of light that reflected on the tiled floor and wooden walls, unlike the icy atmosphere outside. An aroma of freshly made food wafted inside and Yoongi noticed Jin working behind the kitchen stove, Jimin and Taehyung by his sides.

As Yoongi made his way forward and placed the orange bag on the dinner table the other boys turned to him. A sheen of sweat glistening on Jin's forehead but his full lips were pulled into a smile. "Good thing you're present today. I'm making dumplings for the cold weather."

"He's teaching us how to cook dumplings!" Taehyung beamed, his youthful face filled with glory just like Jimin's.

Yoongi silently unwrapped the colored satin to reveal a bambood cascate and Jimin and Taehyung both squealed out loud, Jin shrieked as well, "We are going to have a feast tonight!"

Later in the evening the weather got colder, a blizzard was passing by and the news constantly talking about it. Seemed like the snow had broken its shy barrier already.

The boys were huddled together in the dining table. Inside it was warm, the food even warmer. Hoseok opened up the beer bottles for everyone, Taehyung and Jimin continuously bickered while relishing in the dumplings, Jin was discussing about a cooking book he had recently come to like with Namjoon who was intently listening to him.

Only Jungkook was missing, albeit his empty seat was there at the table.

"Where is Jungkook?" Yoongi couldn't but ask, all attention turned to him.

"I think he went out." Jimin answered first, Taehyung nodded affirmatively.

"Yeah. His room is empty. He didn't even lock it."

"That's strange, I've never seen him going outside by himself at this hour," Namjoon said with a thinking look. Their eyes gazed up at the ajar door of Jungkook's room in unison.

"I forgot to tell him about his package that came yesterday." Jin absentmindedly poked on a piece of dumpling with his metal chopsticks. "I think it was a new playstation, or Xbox, I'm not entirely sure. But I kept it behind the kitchen counter. It's still there."

Again their eyes trailed off to the counter. Yoongi couldn't help but feel a bit nervous, he didn't entirely know why. Probably because the joyful stupor of the others had been vanquished with worry and crippling anxiety. The blizzard outside was probably raging in fury now, the wind rapidly knocking on the walls of the dorm.

"Probably banging his girlfriend, who knows?" Hoseok chimed in.

Immediately Jimin and Taehyung laughed, Jin coughed up a little and Namjoon cleared his throat and started to speak, "Isn't he not in good terms with the female species, though?"

"We'd never know." Hoseok shrugged putting down his chopsticks with a loud clank and folding his arms over the wooden table. "Don't you remember he once said that he could be dating? When we threw a drinking party for Jimin after he came back from the hospital?"

"My memories are hazy but that's entirely impossible," the blue haired boy retorted.

"He's probably fine, somewhere," Jimin said with a look of uncertainty etched on his face.

"Yeah," Hoseok said, "The one who's not fine is me. I volunteered at a Kid's hospital today and thank God it was shortened because of the weather. Those little demons pulled on my curls."

Namjoon surveyed Hoseok's face intently. "I thought you would be fond of kids."

"I ain't." Hoseok shuddered to himself the instant. "Apparently, I don't like a lot of people but I don't show it."

"That's kind of scary," Jin commented.

"Hoseok hyung is always scary!" Taehyung added making his eyes bigger to put an emphasis.

"Thanks for the compliments, sunshines," Hoseok only replied smugly. Yoongi was listening to it all with his leaden eyes and occasional sips of the beer, occasional small bites on the mushy dumplings that were on his plate.

It was fantastic in taste, both Jin's and Yejoo's mom's cooking. But he could barely luxuriate in the food or the animated conversation playing on the table. His mind was blank, his limbs barely moving, again he was feeling lethargic and sleepy.

Would sleeping a lot like this would ease his pain caused by years of misery?

It had been so long since he had enjoyed good food or a good time but even now that it was all in front of him, Yoongi couldn't, not because his shoulders were filled with burden but because they were battered bearing it for years that even when he thought he couldn't care less, he knew he actually did.

And he would for the rest of his life.

"Hyung, are you okay?" Yoongi heard Jimin leaning closer to him to speak, others till immersed in their own conversation.

Yoongi nodded and reclined on his chair a little more, his eyelids closing off, the chattering of the boys, the clattering of the chopsticks and the plates, the aroma of dumplings, and the warmth of the space lulling him to sleep.

This wasn't so bad. He could at least sleep, he could feel his breathing relax, chest heaving up and down, the pulse on his neck throbbing in rhythm, the sounds and the scents filtering away.

Before Yoongi fell asleep in the dinner table, curled up in his chair, surrounded by the boys who were helping him rest by toning down their voices, Yoongi knew the moment of relaxation was not going to last forever.

He couldn't keep himself away from his responsibilities and heavy burdens for long, he wouldn't be able to.

He knew he would be running again, sleep and food deprived again, tomorrow or the day after. Because he still cared.

He cared for himself a little too, though he thought he never did. If he didn't he wouldn't have taken this break.

None of that mattered because right now, at the damn dinner table he was going to sleep and no one was going to stop him, not even himself.

It was not possible for Yoongi to live in the moment like Jimin had said the night before. It had been years since Yoongi had gotten tired, exhausted with his life and the couldn't change. Even if he couldn't he could at least let himself loose for a few hours like this.

Because tomorrow or the day after, Yoongi was going to be skating on the thin ice again, with his haggard and bleeding feet wearing his torn converses.

The blizzard brewed outside, snow steeping up into piles over the roads.

The winter had to end someday. The ice on the rink had to melt till the green grasses could be seen.

Until then, Yoongi would keep skating, and skating just so the ice wouldn't break. Before he completely fell asleep, Yoongi sang the lyrics of his own written song called 'nevermind' inside his head.

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A/n: asking this question for the last time, whose arc is next?