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His eomma would trace the edge of his school-issued black mask, as if it were hurting him. Seokjin would still his body for it, appropriately solemn.
“It’s not fair,” she had said to him many times, and to any others who would listen. “I didn’t want this for you.”
Seokjin can’t imagine how it must’ve been for his parents when they found out about him. They were both Capes, coming from a long line of them.
“Except for my grandmother,” his aunt had told him once, flipping through the sticky plastic pages of an old photo album. “She wasn’t.”
Next to her, Seokjin had tucked his legs under himself on the dining chair and leaned further in for a better look.
“There,” his aunt had said, and there she was. Her mask, dark in the black and white portrait, had sat wider on her face than his had done: lower down her nose and higher up her forehead. Beyond that, it had stuck out of the sides of her face in voluminous angles, hiding the shape of her cheeks. It had looked big, bold, uncomfortable, and unlike anything Seokjin had known a Veil to be.
“I wanna see more!”
His aunt had hummed and skimmed through the album faster. “I don’t think there’s any more of her, baby,” she’d shrugged. “Probably camera-shy. You know how Veils are.”
Camera-shy, Seokjin had understood to an extent even then, was his aunt’s nice way of saying she was secretive. Always having something to hide.
Seokjin had tried then, to stop her quick hands and push at the pages of the album until she took the hint and flipped back to the photograph.
A Veil, in his family. Another one, just like him. But not anything like him at all.
Next to her, a man sat with his face bare and his cape draped cleanly over the back of his seat.
“That’s your great-grandfather. See that?” she’d said, tracing her finger over the recurring pattern of birds dotting the edges of his cape. “Just like your appa’s”.
His appa, Seokjin knew, had birds just like these, long-tailed and proud, scattered along the base of his own cape.
Disappointment had sunk his heart as he’d leaned back into his chair and away from the masked woman in the photograph.
Nothing like him, no.
::::
They take the same bus in the mornings. He’s there before Yoongi gets on and there still when he gets off. Yoongi knows him by his seat—always four rows behind the bus door—by the Super Mario pin on his bag, and by his masks.
Yoongi isn’t a traditionalist. He doesn’t think Veils need to shrink away into corners, just like he knows he’s not a showy peacock, swishing ornate capes around. He’s happy in his durable, monochromatic, ankle-length capes, thank you very much. He doesn’t need to be hunched under heavy fabric or tripping over them.
Even so, this guy’s masks are a little unusual.
Two teenagers board the bus a few stops after Yoongi has settled into his usual seat at the back, exchanging glances and suppressing smirks as they pass the man wearing a paper plate cutout mask—a large, painted pink heart strapped around his head.
Yoongi hadn’t even blinked. Nothing has fazed him since he boarded the bus a while back and saw a horse head mask perched on broad shoulders.
Yoongi blinks away from the back of the man's head at the memory, embarrassed by how obvious his shock had been then. The man had jolted in his seat to apologise, equally embarrassed and only making it worse.
That was the last he saw of the horse.
It’s the fourteenth. Yoongi knows the man enjoys a festive-themed mask. He’d had on a sparkly tinseled hat with a star shaped bobble and a full, cottony white beard, just weeks ago for Christmas. Yoongi wonders if today’s rough, D-I-Y look is intentional, part of a creative concept, or if this is a last-minute look stitched together.
One of the teens slides into a seat a few rows ahead, while the other lingers near the pole, phone angled just so. A quick tap, and then a barely stifled giggle.
When she joins her friend, Yoongi can’t help but listen in on their indistinct whispers, his ears cautiously pricked for the ugly names people still use.
Yoongi doesn’t miss the red curve of the man’s exposed ears; the only sign he’s noticed too.
Yoongi rests his head and his gaze on the cool window, pulling his cape tight around himself. He tells himself he’s not watching for the man’s reaction in the reflection.
In front of him and to the left, the man adjusts the homemade straps at the back of his head to keep them from slipping.
::::
“Excuse me?”
Yoongi groans in his sleep, then peels an eye open. A pink heart peers at him. Yoongi frowns.
“Your stop? You just missed it.”
Yoongi blinks sluggishly, brain still half-fogged from sleep. He straightens in his seat and turns to the window at the back of the bus. Sure enough, his stop is receding into the distance.
“Shit.” He scrubs a hand over his face. “Thank you.” He cranes his neck looking out of the window again.
When the bus finally stops, too many winding roads and turns later, Yoongi is lost. The sun has gone down, and it is hard to make out where he is, though he knows he can’t be far. He sighs and thinks of the beer waiting in his fridge, and how quickly the night is taking over. He pulls his phone out of his pocket, ready to search for a route back.
“Excuse me,” he hears a second time. He wasn’t the only one to get off the bus.
“Your stop isn’t too far from here,” the man tells him. “There’s a short way back, if you–” he continues, twirling a finger in front of him and mapping an invisible trail back to the previous stop, through the buildings and homes in front of them. “It’s hard to explain. I can show you?”
Yoongi stares.
His voice is gentle and bright. Yoongi had been too sleep-muddled earlier, and then too distracted to pay attention. Though Yoongi senses his hesitation, there is a sincerity under it that catches him off guard.
“You don’t have to,” Yoongi says after a beat, remembering his manners.
“I know,” The man shrugs. “I’m going the same way.”
Yoongi nods.
They walk in silence, broken only occasionally by a passing car. Streetlights stretch their bodies long and thin over bricked pavement.
It’s not comfortable, this quiet. It itches under his skin, begging to be broken, and Yoongi can’t understand. He doesn’t even know this man. He turns to his guide, wondering if it’s just him.
The man looks back, an impulse to being watched, and turns quickly away when he’s proven right. He brings a hand up to his paper plate face, adjusting it in a nervous habit.
It’s too dark to tell if his ears have turned red like they did earlier. The thing under his skin takes on a new form, dulled and shamed. He doesn’t want to add to whatever the kids on the bus might have started.
Yoongi opens his mouth.
“Here. Straight down this path and turn left at the first 7-Eleven you see. That’ll get you to your stop.”
Yoongi closes his mouth and blinks at his surroundings. He was right. It had been a short walk.
“I’m headed this way,” the man tells him. He points at an opposite route through some apartment blocks.
Maybe Yoongi’s the only one finding this awkward, a kind gesture from a stranger undeservingly marred by his own selfish guilt.
Yoongi takes in stiff shoulders and hands locked around the straps of a bag. Maybe he’s made it weird for the both of them.
He exhales, rocking from one foot to the other, trapping them both in the weirdness a little longer.
The man starts to adjust the straps over his ears again. The slight tremor in his fingers settles heavily in Yoongi’s chest.
“I like your mask,” Yoongi says, finally.
The man stills. His hands pause, the paper plate shifting just slightly. He tilts it down like he’s ducking his head, but the jagged heart doesn’t let Yoongi see his face.
For a second, Yoongi thinks he might not answer. Then—
“Thank you.”
Yoongi nods, shifting on his feet again. He can’t see the man’s expression, but his tiny movements seem a little more fluid than before.
“You make them yourself?” Yoongi asks.
The man hums, thumb tracing an especially rough point of the heart.
“Yes. Not all of them, but… I guess it’s obvious.”
Yoongi shrugs. “They’re good.”
The man tilts his head, like he doesn’t quite believe him. “It’s fun,” he says instead. “I like making them. I like them.”
Yoongi glances at the mask again, the thick brushstrokes, the wobbly symmetry of the heart. Imperfect and uneven, but still standing out. Made to stand out.
“Any ideas for the next one?” he asks.
A small shift in posture, a surprised blink behind the mask. Then, after a beat: “Oh. Something for spring, maybe?”
Yoongi considers. “Cherry blossoms.”
The man makes a thoughtful noise. “Maybe. But that feels too... expected.”
Yoongi raises an eyebrow at his pink-hearted face.
He hears him laugh for the first time—a brash gasp, cut quickly short, that has Yoongi smiling back.
“Touché.”
For a moment longer, they stand there, quiet in a way that isn’t as uncomfortable as before. This time, it doesn’t feel like Yoongi’s the only one keeping them there.
“I’ll think about it,” the man says. His smile hasn’t left him. Yoongi hears it in his stretched vowels. He sees it too, in the squished corners of his eyes just peeking through two holes in the center of his heart.
“Well.” Yoongi nods toward the street. “Thanks for this.”
The man bobs his head. “Sure.”
Yoongi glances at him once more before stepping away.
“Uh–”
He looks back.
The man’s fingers are back around the straps of his bag, tap tap tapping.
This time Yoongi finds himself warmed by them. He tilts his head. “See you tomorrow?”
The man’s eyes squish again. “It’s the weekend.”
“Ah,” Yoongi says, flustered by the slip up but unable to mind very much. He tries again. “Next week, then.”
The man nods. “Of course.” His voice is low, steady, but his fingers continue their tapping.
When Yoongi walks away this time, it’s with the feeling, the hope, of being watched.