"The only thing you wanted was to see him, and if there existed the slightest bit of a chance for you to see him you would come"
✔︎ Summary: Park Jimin was your friend. Yes, the Park Jimin. There was a moment in time when you and him used to be inseparable, then he went away to make his dreams come true, to become a superstar, and you stayed in the same place, same city, hoping he was still someone you used to know.
✔︎ Word Count: 4.3k
✔︎ Inspired by: When we were young by Adele.
✔︎ Topics: Idol! Jimin, Best friend Jimin! x reader, High school reunion 15 years later, ex best friends to NOTHING, reader was in love and still is.
✔︎ Warnings: A.N.G.S.T. (that's it, that's the warning)
✔︎ thvlouvre's note: it's funny 'couse every time I hear this song I always pictured an old friends/high school reunion, and someone having everybody's full attention because of how grandiose and special they turned to become, I wrote this a few months ago when I was really down, this song showed up shuffle and I wrote it down; and for some reason the idea of not being in reader's shoes made me happier (jajaja i'm sorry). like fr, if I was friends with him I would have cry everyday; anyways I hope you like this one, I know it's short but it's also bittersweet, extremely sweet.
Some things never change, you are one of them.
Your current position against the gym wall of your old high school used to be the same during proms, homecomings, and congresses. You never stood out too much, you were never the top-notch kid of the class whom all the teachers and administrative of the school knew was going to get far in politics changing the laws for women, or in a chemistry lab making new discoveries of diseases that might help the entire human population. You also weren’t the athletic type of girl, you never auditioned for the cheerleader squad or the lacrosse team mainly because you sucked at sports.
Your social abilities weren’t also remarkable, just the quiet kid at the back of the classroom that never got in trouble but also no one remembers; during your entire high school life you were just there. Co-existing, flowing and trying to figure it out what you were going to do with your life. It saddens you, to know that you have no remarkable memories of extraordinary parties, friends, mess ups, break ups or pure recklessness. Nothing except one person, but he left on senior year unexpectedly, so you never stay in touch with him.
Eventually you graduated and, by the lack of a passion or talent in your life, you decided to go for a random degree in college. You studied, you graduated, you fell in love normally, nothing too intense but enough to settle down and get married, you had kids and by your thirties you realize that you were living the same life your parents lived. You never traveled, you never fail at anything, you never took a risk in your life and even the safe choices in loving were the ones that made your marriage fail. Now here you were 35, divorce and with a six-year-old kid waiting for you to go home and share him a bedtime story as always.
Some things never change, your invisible identity in between your former classmates is one of them.
The gym and its worn paint are also one of them.
You don’t know exactly why you decided to come to your high school reunion fifteen years later, especially since you knew no one there would remember you. You never stood out, you never made any friends and lived mainly in the silence and shadows of being a wallflower during school events. Maybe because of hope. A deep, profound, and sincere hope laid in the cabins of your heart made you come. This anticipation couldn’t come from anywhere else than your heart because your brain was too cold to react about it.
The only thing you wanted was to see him, and if there existed the slightest bit of a chance for you to see him you would come.
You would have never forgiven yourself if you heard he actually came to the reunion, but you ignored it. So here you were, leaning against the wall behind the snacks bar watching everyone interact and brag about the amazing jobs, marriages, and achievements. Someone made it to the NASA, some others are the CEOS of big companies and a few others decided to work hard for a few years and use their savings for traveling around the globe with a backpack on their backs.
You started to feel disappointed when ten o’clock hit and there was only half an hour to the meeting to end and there was no signal of him. Of course, he was a busy man now, it would have been too much of a dream for him to make time out of his hectic schedule and come.
You remembered him well; he was the only thing about school that made you smile.
You met Park Jimin in biology class. He was shy, bubbly, and friendly. You were the only two left without a couple for the annual biology exposition fair, so you gathered and did the homework. You didn't win the prize but you two were inseparable by the end of that month. He was a good student, for a reason everybody knew who he was, even when he wasn’t especially loud or popular for everyone to notice him. He was remarkable. Memorable.
The kind of man with so much shine inside them.
It was something on his face, he was good looking even with the teenage fat and the glasses. Or it might have been something on his manners since he was caring and kind to absolutely everyone yet strong to not take anybody’s shit. He was fair, and direct, you will never forget how he defend Jacob, a small and naïve kid younger that often got bullied by older kids. He wasn’t afraid of anything; he looked right in front of the abuser’s eyes and told them to fuck off.
Jimin was also funny, he liked joking around and prank you in your part time jobs every time he got the chance. But the one thing that was the most memorable on your brain was his ambition. You remembered the night he showed up at your house, throwing rocks to your window so you would come down and talk to him.
“I will leave high school and move to Seoul” he said solemnly, you froze for a second not really knowing what to say because that meant one thing and one only: he got accepted on the group he auditioned for. He said something to you a few weeks ago bout a new pop agency that was in town recruiting trainees for their new projects. He mentioned it vaguely, about not knowing if he should try it or not, but you in your constant careless and distracted answers accidentally encouraged him to go.
“Oh, wow” was the only thing you managed to say at the time, you were trying to force and hold the tears back because he was your one and only friend. The last year on school was only manageable because of him, because you finally had someone and now, he was leaving.
“You did it, you made it. Congratulations” you moaned, fake happiness leaking in your voice.
You were trying not to be selfish and be happy for him. He have had dreams of being an idol for years, before you two even met, and you knew he was talented. You went to see him dance once when his dance academy did a Christmas recital, and he was mesmerizing to watch. That night, when you saw the extroverted and magistral part of him moving and flying through the stage, showing off his muscles like the walking piece of art he was you finally realized you were in love. You had a crush on him.
He looked down. He felt terribly bad because he knew you had trouble for making friends, and face challenges for yourself, and in the later year he grew fond of you. But his dreams and ambitions for life were bigger than the appreciation he got for you. He hold you and hug you long that night, and he promised he would stay in touch and the first weeks he did.
He sent pictures of his roommates, the apartment he was now living, the city and the other trainees that were competing alongside him for a space in the group. He texted you a little, asking about your day and trying to keep himself interested in your life, but with the pass of the months and the harder he trained it was more difficult to find time to relax. All he wanted to do on his free time was to train even harder, and when he finally debuted, he realized that the real war was just beginning.
You forgot about him for some years, maybe two or three. In college you became obnoxiously devoted to your routine of studying, working and sleeping; with the years fading by you got over his absence and try to figure your life out in your own. But one night, when you were coming home from work you stopped by a Italian restaurant that had the best pizzas in your area, and since you did great in your exams you decided to celebrate and buy one for your family.
You waited for about fifteen minutes, sitting alone inside restaurant when something loud and harmonic played in the tv they had hanging from the wall. It was a pop group performance, and the ceremony broadcasting was somewhere in China, you were enjoying the song that was catchy and playful until you saw him. His hair was bleached, his body was thinner and his movements sharper but his voice, and eyes were still the same.
The waiter had to go to your sit with the pizza box on his arms to pull you out of your trance, and as soon as you got home you searched his name on the internet.
So he made it, you thought. He actually made it to the group, and he was paving his own way.
Even more years passed by, and he became like a ghost in your life. The remembrance of him was blurry and surrealist, you could have told many people you were friends with Jimin of BTS, but your friendship was something fugacious and fast, something just you and him would know. He became someone you used to know.
You often wondered if deep inside him, setting aside his exorbitant fame and fortune, his looks and unmatched talent, was he still the same. The little kid that liked to joke and flirt around, the kind and friendly kid that could even make laugh a piece of wood if he had to. You tried to get over the fact that you no longer knew him, he was different now, but for some weird reason the more you tried to ignore the memory of him, the more you saw him everywhere. Advertisement, award ceremonies, tv shows, radio, billboards, magazines, on the news, he was everywhere.
He went to the Grammys, he made world tours, he went solo, he did amazing things with his career and yet you were still in the same place, same city, same house. Maybe you stayed there unconsciously in case he wanted to comeback.
Somethings never change, you holding to the hope of meeting him again was one of them.
Jimin didn’t wanted to go to his high school reunion.
But unfortunately, the invitation arrived to the HYBE offices and got misplaced with Seokjin’s mail. He posted a pictured of the invitation on the group’s chat and everyone, including the younger ones started to bully him and texting him that he would be an arrogant asshole if he didn’t go.
So he arrived, he tried to look casual and go unnoticed, just saying hi to a few people and leaving with just fifteen minutes in there. But not even on his dirtiest and oldest clothes Park Jimin could go unnoticed. As soon as he stepped in, the crowd of people he was supposed to remember went silent and he could feel the eyes following on every move. The thing with Jimin was that even when he wasn’t the most popular kid on high school, he still had a reputation of being cool and friendly.
People started to gathered around. Just two girls, at first. Well, ladies. He remembered them, they were cheerleaders and usually invited him to many parties he never went. Then there was the lacrosse captain that hugged him as if they were friends since kinder garden. He greets everybody still, not denying a picture and trying to answer all of their questions.
You were so deep in your thoughts you didn’t notice the mess people started to make, but then someone moved abruptly on the small ball of people, and you had a glance of him. This people were supposed to be old classmates but they were all over him asking him pictures and autographs. Fortunately, the organizers warned that if people couldn’t let him enjoy the meeting, he would go so everybody understood that inside the gym walls, he wasn’t Jimin of BTS, he was Jimin the dancer kid again.
Jimin liked that. Someone telling he wasn’t Jimin the great in there, he was just Chim.
The sudden situation made Jimin a little thirsty, so he walked to the snack bar where he saw some sodas and there, in a corner he saw you. He couldn’t process it at first, when he saw a mistic silhouette leaning against the wall, she looked solitary and bored. The exact same words he thought of you when he first saw you on the biology class. He took a few seconds to come to realize it was you, so he took his coca cola with him and pass the snack bar with a smile on his face.
It had been a while.
The last memory he had of you was that Sunday evening when he went to your house and told you he was accepted in the company and needed to move to Seoul to become a trainee. The guiltiness strokes him out of nowhere, that was the last time he talked to you. He considered you his friend and yet you didn’t hear of him in fifteen years if more. He didn’t feel so brave to go and talk to you now, but it was too late he was already halfway, and you had seen him coming.
“Hi” he greeted timidly.
You felt your heart pulse rising, you felt like seventeen again and it was ridiculous, but you couldn’t believe he was actually here, and that he remembered you.
Some things never change, Park Jimin humility was one of them.
He, on the other side was feeling one hell of a bad friend, just a few weeks of chatting with you when he got accepted and then he completely forgot about you, but not because of you. Not because you weren’t important to him back then, because he got so obsessed with himself and his career he didn’t even bother to stay in touch with his friends. You weren’t the only one in case that could make anything even better.
“How is it going?” you asked graciously, knowing hell well how his life is been going.
He catches you up quickly, your old and rusty dynamic dusting off.
“I became a doctor” he moved his eyebrows in a painful expression, as if he was tired of seeing the lows and flows of life in general.
“Really?” you followed him around “Yeah I remember you wanted to be a cardiologist, am I right?”
“Neurologist” he corrected you.
“Oh. My. God. Did you convinced your father of being a neurologist instead of a cardiologist?” you put a hand on your chest, dramatizing on a funny manner.
“He was very disappointed at first, but I won him over” he laughed, opening his soda, and taking a simp before asking “What about you?” and you felt in his tone that he was done joking. He actually felt curious, all of those years and he suddenly started to remember you, and questions flooded his head about your life and your destiny.
You didn’t want to tell him about your boring life. He also didn’t need to know about your failed love life, so you decided to keep joking. Just to gain time and see what else you could say.
“I became a stripper” you said, and he spit his cola, the laughter scaping.
“Careful, you can choke” you caressed his back as he kept coughing.
“A stripper?” he finally asked, that funny shine illuminating the orbits of his eyes.
“Why so surprised?” you asked, passing him a Kleenex and a dry towel. He cleaned up, shaking his head in denial, knowing that you’re lying but grateful that your sense of humor was still unmatched.
“It’s always the shiest ones the ones that end up surprising you, isn’t it?” of course he didn’t believe you, of what he remembers you couldn’t dance if your life depended on it.
“You should have seen it coming. At the end of the day, thanks to you and your hip hop addiction that I became addicted to shake my-“ you couldn’t end the sentence because someone abruptly came interrupting the conversation to ask Jimin for an autograph.
Everybody was watching him; you came to realize.
The room might been quitter after they all relaxed, but you could still feel every pair of eyes pendent on him. Cause everybody loved him and what he did, the way he moved, the way he talk, the way his hair flow graciously on his forehead. You scanned his thick and soft black hair, it looked exactly as the day he left. You had seen it change its shape, color and length through a screen over the years you almost came to forget that he was naturally black haired.
You remember all the times you used to stroke his hair when he said something stupid or when his jokes were actually funny.
“Sorry!” Jimin said when he finally got rid of that one guy making him sign like ten pictures, he started to feel like people just showed up to see if he would go or not. He couldn’t remember half of the names and faces he was watching there, the only living memory of friendship laying on the woman in front of him. He felt a little hurt, since he politely asked you about your life and you dodged the question, he noticed.
He stayed silenced, watching you, for some weird reason you felt like home.
You stayed silenced as well, knowing that he was your home and ever since he left you, you were an outlander in your own city, your own house, your own skin. You stared at his eyes, those majestic big black eyes, and before you could contain yourself you asked:
“Did you come alone?”
He took a minute to respond, not really knowing what you were asking; if he was alone in that party or if he was alone in general. The answer was positive for both questions, he was alone all the time.
“Y-yes” he said, looking at the floor “I came alone, what about you? You brought your husband?” he really tried to make himself sound smooth and discreet with that question, but he really wanted to know about you since he and his life was an open book to everybody.
“I’m not married” you laughed bitterly, looking away with remorse.
“You’re not?” he asked surprised.
“No. Not anymore”
“Oh” was all he could articulate, he should have been more considerate, maybe you didn’t want to talk about it because it was a hard topic for you to touch.
“I’m a mother” you said happily, your son was the only thing you were truly proud about in your life. He was the light that illuminated the course of your life, and you didn’t regret anything because all the decision you’ve made lead you to him, “Isn’t he beautiful?” you asked showing him the screen of your phone where a video of him was playing, your son was playing in the garden and laughing.
“He is” he said smiling to the phone “He looks like you.”
“Of course, he is a handsome little boy.” You smiled, already missing your little piece of person that was probably sleeping at home now.
“How old is he?” he asked.
“Six.”
He was about to speak again, saying how good he felt about you having a family life when one of the organizers came and warn that the gym was about to close, so the reunion was finishing now.
“It’s okay” you responded to the guy, picking up your bag and your keys “It’s getting late, I need to catch a cab anyways.”
“I can drive you” Jimin suggested, not wanting to finish the conversation.
“Oh, no. I’m okay” you denied, even when every bone of yours was craving to say yes and spent some more time with your impossible crush “I live a little far”
“Let me take you to the parking lot then, I’ll wait until you’re in the cab” and you couldn’t deny that for him. Now you were both walking out the high school parking lot, the lantern's white lights illuminated your way to the street were your cab was waiting.
“So, what advice do you have for this lonely helpless soul?” he asked dramatically as he put his hands on his chest, right where his heart was “Do I still have hope for getting married?”
You laughed, knowing that his chances of getting married depended on him, since you would bet there was a mile of people lining to have a something with him.
“Of course, you do” you calmed him, and it hurt. Suddenly, pictures of him getting married to someone else flooded your brain and it hurt you “My only advice will be don’t get married just because you feel like you need to get married, or you will end up like me”
"How is that?"
"Just get married because you want to do it, don't rush just because you're feeling alone" because no one than you knew better what is like to try to fill those empty spots of love with someone who is not what you truly want, someone you will be willing to love and suffer for.
"But I am lonely…" he admited, now that he was on top of the world he knew that many people would be on their knees for him, but the thing for him was that he needed to make sure the person he will be compromising to would be there for him even if he wasn't The Park Jimin, just Jimin.
"Everybody is lonely, Jimin" you pointed, sounding bitter and maybe projecting yourself a little too much "Just make the wait worth it, that would be my advice" because you didn't wait for him, you couldn't. You would have loved wait fifteen years if you have know you and him had a chance, but unfortunately you couldn't hang on on something that wasn't there, he never loved you that way and most likely he will never love you like that.
"I should wait then, because I'm starting to feel that no one will handle a life full of my absence, I'm a workaholic" he laughed, dismissing his own concerns.
You shut your mouth, once upon a time, a long time ago you encouraged him to go after his goals and dreams and you lost him. You were younger and naive back then, now that life had turn you bitter and resentful you wanted to be selfish at least once, and try to keep him for yourself a little longer.
"Can I take a picture of you?" you asked and pull out your instant camera. He was a little disappointed that you asked him to take a picture with you after that deep intimate conversation, but he understood.
"Yeah, sure. Come here" and he opened his left arm to hug you so you could capture the selfie.
"Don't be silly, I just want a picture of you" and you started to shot your camera to him, capturing his surprised frown.
"I thought you wanted a picture with me" he said.
"What am I? Your average twenty year old fan? Why would I want a picture with you?" you asked with the camera covering one of your eyes, your finger clicking.
"I don't know! To show it off maybe…" he laughed confused, because that's why fans asked them pictures right?
"And what would I say then?, 'look I was friends with Jimin of BTS!', no sir, you know I'm not like that" you started to walked backwards and try to take a photo of him under the streetlamp "Let me photograph you in this light in case this is the last time I see you"
That broke him.
"Of course you're going to see me, don't say that" but deep down he knew what you meant.
"Am I seeing you again?" one of your eyebrows raised, in a fun but sad gaze. Like you were trying to take funny how he will probably disappear once again after that night.
Just when he was about to defend himself, a honk on the other side of the street sounds and you are starting to walk to the taxi.
"I promise I will stay in touch from now on" he said when he opened the door for you, and at least in that moment you allowed yourself to believe him just like the first time he said that.
"Okay" you said before entering the car, and closing the door "I'll send you the pictures when you text me" you said over the window and he nodded happily, he was happy that he talk to you in years.
You went back to the boring monotony of your life, and he went back to his hectic lifestyle. You returned to your mundane habits, and he put himself out there, trusting your advice on not forcing love and just do it if he felt like it, and you keep on waiting his call, his message and even an email, something. But they never came.
Some things never change, you being replaceable in Park Jimin's life was one of them.
✔︎thvlouvre's p.s. I'm so sorry everybody, I hope you like it and let's be happy that we are not y/n! I warned you all this didn't have a happy ending 🤡 Let me know if you liked it and please ignore any grammar mistake, english isn't my first language. Take care and stream park jimin💋
