Starboy
I almost died to get you this.
It started as nothing but a mild ache in Jimin’s chest which he promptly shrugged off as the byproduct of exhaustion and poor eating habits. And truth be told, Jimin was the type to avoid doctors like a vampire avoids crucifixes and he hadn’t set foot in a doctor’s office in quite a few years. Not that he was afraid or felt nervous about all the gadgets and gizmos touching his body, some in unholy places; it was more that Jimin was the kind of man who liked to think of himself as tough, made of stone and iron, strong like a diamond and almost immortal. He truly believed that he was indestructible and no illness in the world could take him to the next.
However, after one entire month of that burning sensation in his chest that kept getting worse as days went by, he finally decided to swallow his pride and see a professional about it. The diagnosis couldn’t have been any more concerning: Jimin had a literal fire burning in his heart.
Jeon Jungkook, or Kookie as his friends would call him if he had any friends, had been Jimin’s neighbour for many years and they had been very close many lives ago when they were kids. Kookie was quiet, shy and fascinated by the universe. He couldn’t stop talking about the stars and the planets and that year he got a telescope for his birthday, him and Jimin had the time of their lives looking for constellations and not finding any - despite Jimin being sure he had spotted Gemini.
Life, however, sometimes gets in the way. Jimin dropped out of school and Jungkook went on to university to study Astronomy, so the two eventually drifted apart and all that was left of that once flourishing friendship was a small smile and a nearly whispered “good morning” whenever their paths happened to cross, which seldom happened anyway. But Jimin had kept a close eye on Kookie all those years, mostly through his Polaroid camera. He had a shoebox full of candid polaroid pictures of Jungkook in his bedroom and every night he looked at them and dived into his fantasy world where the pair went on adventures together while slowly falling in love as if distance had never taken the best of them.
The cure for his illness seemed simple enough: you either fall out of love or you somehow get the object of your affection to love you back. But of course, that would have been too easy so, to spice things up, Jimin had about two weeks to accomplish either before the fire burning inside of him caused his thorax to explode. Whatever Jimin decided to do, he needed to act fast. Or embrace his own death. He preferred the first. And he knew just what would win Jungkook’s lonely heart: a star. A real, burning star.
~
Truly a magnificent sight it was indeed, the colossal mountain of various objects of all kinds, from used office chairs to miscellaneous kitchen appliances, bathtubs and even shoes that stretched up into the heavens, so tall the top could not be seen by the naked eye and one would need a pair of binoculars to try and figure out just where the top actually was.
Perhaps even more impressive than the structure itself was the fact that it had remained pretty much unnoticed in town for however many days it took to build. It was like it simply appeared, out of the absolute blue, and nobody paid it any mind as if a massive stairway to the sky made of all kinds of stuff had just always been there. The first to notice such monstrosity was none other than Jeon Jungkook. He alerted his mother to which she simply shrugged in response, adding that she had no idea what he was talking about, there was no such thing as a massive stairway made of garbage and dirty clothes in the middle of the street.
Knowing full well he had to take matters into his own hands, Jungkook decided to pack his telescope and call his neighbour, the boy who used to love the stars as much as he did. At that moment, it didn’t matter that they hadn’t spoken in years or that their friendship had deteriorated, Jungkook needed Jimin. But the boy wasn’t in the house, his mother said he hadn’t slept over in a couple of nights, “I think he has a girlfriend now”, she said before Kookie excused himself to his friend’s room which, unsurprisingly, was empty. The boy was nowhere to be found but on the bed, something else caught Jungkook’s attention: dozens of Polaroid pictures and a huge piece of paper spread out on Jimin’s double bed - a detailed drawing of a stairway made out of various materials with annotations on the sides, in Jimin’s messy and incomprehensible handwriting.
Jungkook’s eyes widened at the sight, lips apart in shock as he examined all the candid polaroids of himself, his mind hazy but, in the back of his head, he knew what was going on. And he needed to get to the mountain of clothes as quickly as possible.
“Have fun, dear,” Jimin’s mother voiced as Kookie ran out the door, grabbing Jimin’s skateboard and speeding to the stairway to heaven, uncertain of what he would find but one thing he knew for sure was that all the pieces all fit.
But it was too late. The structure had collapsed and the boy was nowhere to be seen. All there was left was scattered debris everywhere, broken appliances, shards of glass and plastic all over the asphalt.
“Jimin!”
He called the boy once, twice, twenty times, his voice getting more and more strained every time, tears staining his cheeks, his heart heavy and uneasy. His childhood friend, the person he held so dear, despite the distance and the barriers, was nowhere to be found, possibly buried underneath all that garbage and crushed by the stairway he had built.
“Jimin!”
Rummaging through the wreckage until sunset, Jungkook found absolutely nothing, no sign of his friend. Villagers would pass by and ask what he was doing crawling in the asphalt like that, on his hands and knees, kicking the air. It was as if they couldn’t even see the wreckage around him!
Several hours passed and Jungkook was on the verge of giving up, lying down on the ground, eyeing the full moon and all the stars above him, reminiscing back to a time when everything was easy and he didn’t have any dreams of owning the night sky. Back then, having Jimin was enough. But he wanted to touch the sky so bad that he forgot about the beauty there is down here. He would give anything to see his friend again and hold him, pretend like the years didn’t take a toll on them.
The memories of a time when they were inseparable, two peas in a pod, burned at Jungkook’s chest so intensely he could feel the fire in his heart and, in that moment, as he lied down on a pile of old clothes that had fallen down when the stairway collapsed, he saw it: a star. A real burning star right in front of him, glistening white like it had just been captured from the night sky. The hands that held it were all too familiar to Kookie: Jimin.
“I almost died to get you this…”
Apart from a very messy head of hair and a few stains on his hoodie, Jimin seemed absolutely healthy and alive, as alive as he had always been.
“You didn’t have to,” Kookie mumbled, his hands holding the star that somehow didn’t burn his skin but instead emanated a comfortable warmth.
“If this doesn’t make you fall in love with me, I don’t know what will,” the boy smiled somehow bitterly, being reminded that if his plan didn’t work, he was on the verge of death. If Jungkook couldn’t love him back, his heart would explode and he would turn into stardust.
Unsure of how to respond, the only way Jungkook saw fit to prove to Jimin that he felt the same was to join their lips together in a gentle kiss, holding the star to Jimin’s chest and pressing it against his flesh until it disappeared into the boy’s body.
“You have a star for a heart, now we are immortal,” Jungkook chuckled, wrapping his arms around his lover. “Thank you Jimin.”
However, after one entire month of that burning sensation in his chest that kept getting worse as days went by, he finally decided to swallow his pride and see a professional about it. The diagnosis couldn’t have been any more concerning: Jimin had a literal fire burning in his heart.
Jeon Jungkook, or Kookie as his friends would call him if he had any friends, had been Jimin’s neighbour for many years and they had been very close many lives ago when they were kids. Kookie was quiet, shy and fascinated by the universe. He couldn’t stop talking about the stars and the planets and that year he got a telescope for his birthday, him and Jimin had the time of their lives looking for constellations and not finding any - despite Jimin being sure he had spotted Gemini.
Life, however, sometimes gets in the way. Jimin dropped out of school and Jungkook went on to university to study Astronomy, so the two eventually drifted apart and all that was left of that once flourishing friendship was a small smile and a nearly whispered “good morning” whenever their paths happened to cross, which seldom happened anyway. But Jimin had kept a close eye on Kookie all those years, mostly through his Polaroid camera. He had a shoebox full of candid polaroid pictures of Jungkook in his bedroom and every night he looked at them and dived into his fantasy world where the pair went on adventures together while slowly falling in love as if distance had never taken the best of them.
The cure for his illness seemed simple enough: you either fall out of love or you somehow get the object of your affection to love you back. But of course, that would have been too easy so, to spice things up, Jimin had about two weeks to accomplish either before the fire burning inside of him caused his thorax to explode. Whatever Jimin decided to do, he needed to act fast. Or embrace his own death. He preferred the first. And he knew just what would win Jungkook’s lonely heart: a star. A real, burning star.
~
Truly a magnificent sight it was indeed, the colossal mountain of various objects of all kinds, from used office chairs to miscellaneous kitchen appliances, bathtubs and even shoes that stretched up into the heavens, so tall the top could not be seen by the naked eye and one would need a pair of binoculars to try and figure out just where the top actually was.
Perhaps even more impressive than the structure itself was the fact that it had remained pretty much unnoticed in town for however many days it took to build. It was like it simply appeared, out of the absolute blue, and nobody paid it any mind as if a massive stairway to the sky made of all kinds of stuff had just always been there. The first to notice such monstrosity was none other than Jeon Jungkook. He alerted his mother to which she simply shrugged in response, adding that she had no idea what he was talking about, there was no such thing as a massive stairway made of garbage and dirty clothes in the middle of the street.
Knowing full well he had to take matters into his own hands, Jungkook decided to pack his telescope and call his neighbour, the boy who used to love the stars as much as he did. At that moment, it didn’t matter that they hadn’t spoken in years or that their friendship had deteriorated, Jungkook needed Jimin. But the boy wasn’t in the house, his mother said he hadn’t slept over in a couple of nights, “I think he has a girlfriend now”, she said before Kookie excused himself to his friend’s room which, unsurprisingly, was empty. The boy was nowhere to be found but on the bed, something else caught Jungkook’s attention: dozens of Polaroid pictures and a huge piece of paper spread out on Jimin’s double bed - a detailed drawing of a stairway made out of various materials with annotations on the sides, in Jimin’s messy and incomprehensible handwriting.
Jungkook’s eyes widened at the sight, lips apart in shock as he examined all the candid polaroids of himself, his mind hazy but, in the back of his head, he knew what was going on. And he needed to get to the mountain of clothes as quickly as possible.
“Have fun, dear,” Jimin’s mother voiced as Kookie ran out the door, grabbing Jimin’s skateboard and speeding to the stairway to heaven, uncertain of what he would find but one thing he knew for sure was that all the pieces all fit.
But it was too late. The structure had collapsed and the boy was nowhere to be seen. All there was left was scattered debris everywhere, broken appliances, shards of glass and plastic all over the asphalt.
“Jimin!”
He called the boy once, twice, twenty times, his voice getting more and more strained every time, tears staining his cheeks, his heart heavy and uneasy. His childhood friend, the person he held so dear, despite the distance and the barriers, was nowhere to be found, possibly buried underneath all that garbage and crushed by the stairway he had built.
“Jimin!”
Rummaging through the wreckage until sunset, Jungkook found absolutely nothing, no sign of his friend. Villagers would pass by and ask what he was doing crawling in the asphalt like that, on his hands and knees, kicking the air. It was as if they couldn’t even see the wreckage around him!
Several hours passed and Jungkook was on the verge of giving up, lying down on the ground, eyeing the full moon and all the stars above him, reminiscing back to a time when everything was easy and he didn’t have any dreams of owning the night sky. Back then, having Jimin was enough. But he wanted to touch the sky so bad that he forgot about the beauty there is down here. He would give anything to see his friend again and hold him, pretend like the years didn’t take a toll on them.
The memories of a time when they were inseparable, two peas in a pod, burned at Jungkook’s chest so intensely he could feel the fire in his heart and, in that moment, as he lied down on a pile of old clothes that had fallen down when the stairway collapsed, he saw it: a star. A real burning star right in front of him, glistening white like it had just been captured from the night sky. The hands that held it were all too familiar to Kookie: Jimin.
“I almost died to get you this…”
Apart from a very messy head of hair and a few stains on his hoodie, Jimin seemed absolutely healthy and alive, as alive as he had always been.
“You didn’t have to,” Kookie mumbled, his hands holding the star that somehow didn’t burn his skin but instead emanated a comfortable warmth.
“If this doesn’t make you fall in love with me, I don’t know what will,” the boy smiled somehow bitterly, being reminded that if his plan didn’t work, he was on the verge of death. If Jungkook couldn’t love him back, his heart would explode and he would turn into stardust.
Unsure of how to respond, the only way Jungkook saw fit to prove to Jimin that he felt the same was to join their lips together in a gentle kiss, holding the star to Jimin’s chest and pressing it against his flesh until it disappeared into the boy’s body.
“You have a star for a heart, now we are immortal,” Jungkook chuckled, wrapping his arms around his lover. “Thank you Jimin.”