Chapter Text
It’s the summer before he turns 4 when Park Jimin’s little life changes for the first time.
He registers his rear end hitting the hard dirt before he realizes what the mean alpha pups were yelling in his face.
“Just a stupid, fat omega!” they shouted as they violently pinched his cheeks and pushed him to the ground. They were older than him, old enough to know that bullying was wrong. Old enough to know bullying a pup of just 3 was even more wrong, even if he was just an omega pup.
The sting of his fall ran up his spine and Jimin burst into tears. The boys laughed as they ran off, leaving little Jimin all alone in the dirt, tears streaming down his cheeks. He sat there, the adults and other pups around the busy part of the village ignoring him, before he finally pushed himself to his wobbly feet and ran off, looking for some place to hide from the other pups. He found a mostly hollow tree just beyond the tree line. Not too far in, after all, Jimin was just a little pup and scared of everything, especially the forest. But it was far enough to hide him from others as he cried.
He snuggled in, wrapping his little chubby arms around his body, and continued crying, letting out all of the tears he had, eyes squeezed painfully shut.
“Oh, little pup, what happened?” a soft, sweet voice said from outside of the tree.
Jimin let himself open his eyes, peeking out to see a little boy, not much older than Jimin he figured, kneeling outside of the tree in the dirt. He was staring at Jimin with wide, concerned eyes, his little mouth open in surprise.
“Th-they pushed me to the ground,” Jimin stuttered through his sobbing. He squeezed his arms tighter around himself, as if he could protect himself from the anger of other pups.
The other boy pouted, his lower lip jutting out. “That’s mean! No one deserves to be pushed. Are you in any pain?” he asked softly.
Jimin nodded, pointing at his heart. “Hurts.”
The boy’s pout intensified, if possible. “Can I-is there, is there something I can do? My name is Yoongi! I can sit with you, if you want? I won’t hurt you, I promise.”
Jimin stared at him, eyes going wide in surprise. Yoongi wanted to help him? Nobody ever wanted to help Jimin. “My name is Park Jimin,” he recited as his appa had taught him. “Can you…,” Jimin shrunk in on himself a little. “Can you hold me, Yoonie hyung?”
Yoongi nodded, pushing up from his knees with a smile and climbing into the tree with Jimin. They repositioned themselves so Jimin could curl up on Yoongi’s chest. Jimin wrapped his short, chubby arms around his new friend as Yoongi wrapped his own around Jimin, pulling him as close as he could. “Just tell me when you’re hungry. Or thirsty. Or if you need to get up. I’ll hold you until then.”
Jimin nodded into Yoongi’s chest, a few more tears falling down his cheeks before he eventually found himself napping on his new friends chest. True to his word, Yoongi held Jimin tightly until Jimin woke from his nap, stomach rumbling and his body telling him he needed to pee. The boys carefully let go of one another and climbed out of the tree, Yoongi holding out his small hand for Jimin to take with his own. They walked back into the village, hand in hand, with Yoongi leading Jimin to the bathrooms, helping him with his hanbok and then helping him wash his hands afterward.
Together, they walked hand in hand to the village dining room where the ahjumma cooed over them and gave them each a small plate of food. Yoongi made sure Jimin ate enough before eating what was left over, not caring that his food had gone cold.
Neither pup lived in this particular village year round. It was a go between in the north, a place where wolves form the various northern packs could meet and trade. Jimin’s appa, Park Sehun, had brought Jimin with him for the summer, three whole months away from the Park pack, three whole months away from Jimin’s alpha eomma. Not that it was very different from their life at home. Alpha Park Chaewon was the only alpha child of Park pack Alpha Byungho and would one day take over the pack from her father. She didn’t care for omegas. Most alphas in the Park pack didn’t. Most alphas in the north didn’t.
Yoongi had come to the village with his omega appa, Min Daesong, so that Daesong could trade the various pelts his family had collected from hunting over the years. While the Min pack were slightly better to omegas than the Park pack, it was still focused on alphas. And on training their alphas to fight. Daesong had hoped to keep Yoongi from that life for as long as possible. Yoongi’s older brothers Geumjae and Kyungsoo had already begun their training.
For both pups and their appa’s, the summer was a chance to be normal. Safe. Happy.
Every day, Yoongi sought out Jimin, taking him by the hand and leading him around the village. They played together, ate together, and Yoongi started teaching Jimin how to read. And when Jimin pointed out the three alpha pups that had pushed them, Yoongi had not held back and punched the pups right in their faces.
“Violence isn’t the answer,” Yoongi had told his Minnie after they had run off to the woods, to their tree, to hide from the adults, “but I won’t let anyone hurt my Minnie and get away with it.”
“Yoonie hyung is so strong!” Jimin had breathed, his eyes wide with wonder. When he was older, Jimin would look back on this moment as the moment he fell in love with his Yoonie hyung, though he didn’t understand the feelings at 3. Back then, his heart would beat quickly and he didn’t know why. All he knew was that Min Yoongi was amazing. And his hugs could cure anything.
At the end of the summer, the pups has been forced to separate, Jimin sobbing loudly for his Yoonie hyung, not wanting to leave him for a whole year. Yoongi had taken his chubby cheeks into his little hands, looked Jimin in the eye, and told him he’d see him next summer. He had then handed Jimin a small box and told him to open it on his birthday.
Somehow, Jimin had waited. On October 13th, Jimin had crawled out of his bed in his home back at the Park pack and opened the box on the floor. Inside was a crudely whittled pair of wolves with a small note.
Happy birthday my Minnie. Hyung is wishing you a happy birthday from the Min pack today, promise. Winter and Spring will pass soon and we’ll see each other next summer, appa promised. Be good. Eat well.
Your Yoonie
Jimin wanted to make his hyung proud, so he was a good pup, ate well, and made it through the winter and spring. His excitement was through the roof as he and his appa returned to the trading village at the first sign of summer. Even though Yoongi was now 7 years old, he was waiting for Jimin at their tree. A little taller, his face a little rounder, but still his Yoonie hyung, his gummy smile spreading across his face once he first caught sight of Jimin.
Summer after summer, Park Jimin and Min Yoongi would meet for three months. No matter how old Yoongi got, he was always excited to meet Jimin in the summer. Nothing mattered once the first signs of summer rolled in except for Yoonie and Minnie.
At the end of each summer, Yoongi sent Jimin off with a box and a promise not to open it until his birthday. Never wanting to disappoint his Yoonie, even though he knew the older pup had no way of knowing that Jimin opened it early, he waited until first thing on October 13. Yoongi’s woodcarving skills got better, more refined. His letters longer and full of an emotion little Jimin still didn’t understand.
On Jimin’s 9th birthday, he opened Yoongi’s present and found a better version of the pair of wolves that Yoongi had given Jimin five years before. The wolves, according to Yoongi’s letter, represented Jimin and Yoongi, of course. They sometimes ran around in their wolf forms, playing and nipping at each other in the woods, during their summers together. Jimin put the carvings on the shelf full of Yoongi’s creations, smiling softly. His hyung was so kind to him.
He couldn’t wait for next summer.
But next summer wouldn’t happen.
A month after Jimin’s 9th birthday, his appa didn’t wake up. By spring, his eomma had taken a new mate.
She needed an alpha heir, after all.
Jimin assumed he’d still get to spend his summer in the trading village. But his new appa, a kindly omega with a soft face, was horribly sick by the time summer rolled around, pregnant with their first pup. The pup never came, though. And Jimin spent his summer crying. Crying for the sibling he’d never get to meet, but mostly crying for his Yoonie hyung.
Would Yoongi forget Jimin?
Did he care that Jimin hadn’t shown up?
Worse, did he think Jimin didn’t want to show up?
Next year. Jimin just had to wait one more year.
His 10th birthday passed with no gift from Yoongi. He woke early and ran out into the woods behind his family’s cabin and looked to the moon that still hung in the sky. He closed his eyes and pretended he could hear his hyung’s words, wishing him a happy birthday all the way from the Min pack, wherever that was.
The next summer came and although his appa wasn’t sick, he had no desire to take Jimin to the trading village, especially for the whole summer. And when Jimin begged, his eomma responded with a swift and hard backhand.
Jimin learned not to beg for anything after that.
His birthdays passed him by and the summers were a bitter reminder that Jimin was alone and that he would never see his Yoonie hyung again.
Park Jimin presented the summer before he turned 16. It was a week where he discovered just how horrible his eomma had become, just how much she didn’t care for her gross, disappointing omega son.
The Park pack had a new rule: unmated omegas were not allowed to spend their heats alone. Not even newly presented omegas.
Jimin was just 15 when he was raped for the first time. He didn’t know that’s what he could call it at the time. Didn’t know rape was a word in their language. His eomma had chosen an 18-year-old alpha for Jimin, pushing the alpha into Jimin’s childhood bedroom as the heat took over his body.
He could only cry and beg for the alpha to stop touching him.
But he didn’t. He took what he wanted, never saying anything more than the typical “take it like the slut you are” that alpha’s apparently liked to say during sex.
It wasn’t fair, Jimin thought. Yoongi was supposed to be his first time, supposed to make it special like Jimin deserved. In his quiet moments, Jimin had planned it all out. How he would tell Yoongi he loved him. How Yoongi would say it back. Yoongi would have taken care of Jimin during his heat. He would have been sweet and kind. Soft, just like Jimin needed.
Jimin didn’t get pregnant that time, to his mother’s disapproval. She was on her third mate now, her second mate having died a year prior, much like Jimin’s appa had. None of them could give the alpha a healthy pup. So she needed Jimin to get pregnant, to give her an alpha heir. Her strength as the future leader of the pack relied heavily on having an heir.
And she had none.
Hence her desperation to get Jimin pregnant.
Every four months, his heat would hit and his eomma would choose an alpha for him. With every alpha, they became more and more violent, more cruel. One alpha gripped Jimin’s hip so hard, he cut into him, leaving scars as a reminder. The worst was the alpha who started to shift, his claws digging into Jimin’s thighs, his blood pooling beneath his body as the alpha refused to stop fucking him. His eomma had been furious that Jimin had almost died. That alpha had been executed in front of the village as a reminder. It wasn’t until he was 18 that Jimin heard another omega say what the pack alphas were making them do was rape. That the omegas were being raped.
Jimin hated his eomma.
And he missed Yoongi.
He was 13 when he realized he probably loved Yoongi. That, yes they had been friends, but that friendship was the cusp of something more for them. If they had been allowed to grow up together, they would likely be mated now.
How ironic, Jimin thought. If his eomma had allowed Jimin to continue visiting the trading village, he would have found an alpha. He might have even already had a pup, given her the heir she wanted so badly.
But after his first heat, Jimin had found a book in the library that had the instructions for moon tea, to stop unwanted pregnancies. Jimin drank it before and after every heat. He would never allow any of these horrible, violent alphas to put a pup in him.
The summer before he turned 22, Jimin had had enough. The last alpha had almost choked Jimin to death at one point in an attempt to hold him down and hold him still. It wasn’t worse than the alpha who had mauled him, but his eomma had again been furious, punching the alpha to remind him of his place. To remind him that she needed Jimin alive to give her an alpha heir. Jimin’s haraboji had passed away the previous winter, making Chaewon the new pack alpha. She really needed an alpha heir and Jimin was her best chance.
He wouldn’t go through that again.
An omega in the pack that had grown up in the Choi pack had whispered to the others as they sat on the riverbank, washing clothes, that the south was kinder for omegas.
“Omegas can even have a job!” she whispered. “They aren’t forced to endure heats with alphas they don’t choose. And alphas are apparently punished for raping omegas!”
It didn’t seem real. The whole of the north looked down on omegas, though to varying degrees. It seemed unreal that there was somewhere omegas were free. Why were omegas free in the south? What made the people there so different?
Was it just a trap?
However, when Chaewon announced to Jimin that he would mate Kang Sanghoon in two weeks time, he knew he had to take a big risk. Kang Sanghoon had a reputation for being one of the most violent alphas in the north. 31, he had already gone through three mates, and they had all allegedly met violent ends at his hands. Still, he had no pups.
Jimin would rather die than mate him.
He didn’t understand what his eomma was thinking. Why would she mate him to a wolf that had allegedly murdered three previous mates? Chaewon needed Jimin to give him an heir.
But maybe she was hoping Sanghoon would get Jimin pregnant and once she had an alpha heir in hand, then Sanghoon could have his fun.
He wasn’t going to stick around to find out.
One night, after Jimin’s eomma and her mate had gone to bed, Jimin quietly packed a bag. He grabbed a couple changes of clothes, every gift and letter Yoongi had ever given him, and the last birthday gift his appa had given him before leaving, taking some fruit and bread with him as well. He had no idea what he was doing, but Jimin was determined.
He was going to get as far away from the Park pack as possible.
As he made his way through the forests of Korea, Jimin thought about finding the Min pack to look for Yoongi.
But the possibility that his hyung wouldn’t want him anymore was enough for Jimin to stay focused. Perhaps one day, when he was settled and safe, someone could help him find Yoongi. Not to mention, Jimin was sure the Min pack alpha would just turn Jimin back over to his eomma. No, it was better to just get far away.
He tried to stay near the main trade roads, but far away enough not to catch anyones attention. And no matter how much he wanted to find a place to curl up and rest for a week or longer, Jimin kept pushing. His heat would come sooner or later and he had no doubt his eomma would send alphas after him.
He had to keep moving.
Jimin walked and walked and walked. He walked through the end of summer and through all of winter. He found a cave, hidden from the roads to spend his first heat alone, burning through five days of pain and loneliness. And then he got up, bathed in a cold river, and kept moving. He stayed away from cities and villages, terrified he hadn't gotten far enough away from the Parks. He endured a second heat alone in an old abandoned cabin.
Until one day, he found himself on a road surrounded by empty corn fields, the season having not yet started, staring at a sign that read Miryang.
Was this far enough away?
Had he gone far enough south?
Only time would tell.