Chapter Text
Jungkook woke up in his dorm, blinking the sleep from his eyes. The sunlight was streaming through the curtains, his bag was neatly packed over by his desk, and his phone was plugged in on his bedside table. He tapped it to check the time. If he got up now, he could make a good breakfast and shower before heading to his first class, and-
And–
Something was wrong.
Jungkook blinked hard, head still thick with sleep. He wasn't supposed to be in a dorm room. At university. This wasn't his home anymore.
Six hours ago, he'd fallen asleep in his crappy apartment in Seoul, after another long, stressful day at the office. He'd caught the bus home in the muggy heat of summer, boiled the kettle for a cup of tea, taken a quick cold shower and collapsed with his drink in front of his ancient laptop. He'd started an episode of his current drama in bed, and he was pretty sure he'd fallen asleep partway through like normal.
He'd lived in that dingy little apartment – his apartment – for the last six months, after graduating from university. He'd gotten pretty ok grades, and had some work experience already, but Seoul was expensive and the job market was saturated with new graduates like him. So he'd settled for a job in data entry, telling himself it would just be for a little while. It paid his rent, and his bills. Almost.
He'd left this dorm room behind over three years ago. After his first year on campus, he'd had to move from rental to rental, sharing with an assortment of unhygienic and messy housemates and getting fairly good at never leaving his room unless absolutely necessary.
It was strange to be back again. And even stranger was that he was, somehow, back.
Jungkook took a deep breath, and carefully sat up, listening intently for any sounds. There was traffic outside, but it was still early. It didn't sound like his flatmates were up. Good. He remembered them. They were dicks.
He set his feet down on the faded linoleum floor and stood. Nobody yelled at him. No terrified first-year student burst into the room and accused him of breaking in. No. This was his room, his pillowcases on the bed, his wholesale bag of sushi rice on the shelf above the wardrobe.
Jungkook grabbed his phone, yanking the charging cable out with impatient hands, and checked the date again. The third of March.
...It had been the end of a hot, humid August when he'd fallen asleep. He'd opened the windows and switched on his fan before bed, but it was one of those days where the heat never really lifted. He'd slept in just shorts.
Now he was dressed in a long-sleeved shirt and baggy trousers. He recognised them. He'd owned them since about age fifteen, and he'd kept wearing them until they fell apart sometime in his second year at uni. He'd recycled them.
And now he was wearing them again.
What in the world?
His phone didn't show the year on the home screen. It assumed he would know it, clearly, and it took him a second to calm down enough to click into the settings and view it.
Shit.
Shit, shit, shit. That couldn't be it. Four years? This had to be a dream, or he was going to be so late for work. Or well, he supposed he might be four years early for work.
He pinched himself. It hurt. He said a tongue twister, messed it up, frowned, got it right the second time. Was this not a dream, then? What else were you supposed to do to check if you were asleep? Slap himself? Eat something?
He didn't really feel like slapping himself, so he reached up onto the high shelf above the wardrobe and snagged a box of cereal. It tasted sickly and sort of gross. He couldn't believe he used to eat it. He flipped the box over and checked the sugar content. Wow. No wonder he used to have acne.
...and there was a thought. Jungkook shuffled his feet into his slippers and grabbed his toothbrush, easing his dorm room open. The coast was clear.
He flip-flopped his way to the communal bathroom, and almost moaned when he saw his face. Sure, he should probably have been more concerned about the fact that his face indeed looked about four years too young, but– really. He had three little pimples on his chin, a larger one right above his eyebrow, and several old scars dotted all over. What a way to start the day. Restart the day. Whatever.
He resisted the urge to fiddle with them and splashed cold water on his face. He used the restroom. He washed his hands. Peeked back into the corridor. There was still no-one about.
He flip-flopped back to his room, speeding up when he heard the sounds of one of flatmates banging about in the kitchen. A rice cooker pinged. That'd be either Mei or Jihoon, then.
He got dressed in his room, picking through his wardrobe to find an outfit that didn't make him cringe at his past self's lack of taste. He remembered being so convinced that he'd never care about fashion. He was studying Computer Science, for goodness' sake. Nobody cared about how anybody else looked... Four years crammed in lecture halls with very trendy, very judgemental teenagers had cured him of his blissful unawareness of what he wore.
Those jeans would do. And that jacket was nice. He still had that one, actually. As long as he kept it zipped up all the way, nobody would see the faded red button-up underneath.
He left his hair as it was. It was a lost cause - there was no point styling it until he managed to get it cut. And he had bigger things to worry about.
Taking a deep breath, he scooped up his rucksack, draped his ID around his neck, and stuck his feet into his trainers (they were so comfy, he'd missed this pair). He locked his dorm room behind him, wondering what on Earth he was supposed to do. He was stuck in the past, and he didn't even know how to go about getting unstuck. Who could he tell? It was probably better not to do anything out of the ordinary, right? There were... timelines, and things. Alternate universes. The Butterfly Effect.
So maybe he shouldn't tell anyone. Still, he couldn't see how he'd change the world by swinging by the barber's later this week to get his bangs done nicely.
He shuffled into the kitchen, ignoring Mei automatically as he bee-lined for his cupboard. There weren't many good options in there. Ew, did he really used to buy that much spam? He'd gone off that ages ago. Gross.
"Um, Jungkook? Morning?" Called a quiet voice.
Jungkook swung around, confused for a second before he realised that at this point in time, Mei had never gotten drunk on the lawn outside the dorms one warm evening in June and spent half an hour telling him what a loser he was.
In fact, he was pretty sure they'd started to become sort-of-friends in the first week of uni, before the other guys realised just-how-quiet and just-how-shy he was when he wasn't making an effort, and made it their mission to make his dorm life a misery.
"Oh, hey," he said. His voice sounded young, sort of. But it was still his, and his Busan accent was fainter than he'd expected. Faint like he'd spent four years studying and working in Seoul, instead of having just left his home city for the first time the previous week.
Mei hesitated. "Do you want some rice? I made too much."
Jungkook gave a wide grin. Thank goodness he wouldn't have to eat spam today. "That'd be perfect, actually. Tea? My mother left me some bori cha."
Mei blinked, and accepted.
He boiled the kettle and scrubbed the rice cooker pan efficiently while Mei fiddled about, trying to find clean chopsticks. They sat at the table to have their breakfast, Mei looking too tired to talk much and Jungkook trying not to panic as he flicked through his contacts, trying to figure out who he knew right now, and who he was supposed to never have met.
Oh, he hadn't met Kang Taehyun yet. He'd been a great gym buddy in third year. He hoped they met sooner this time. But he did have all of his flatmate's numbers, and a couple of people on his course that he must have met around campus while moving in. He thought about calling his mother to hear her voice, but thought better of it. She'd think something was wrong if he called just to speak to her.
Hang on– there were people in his phone he didn't know. Who was Jimin-ssi? And Jin-hyung? That wasn't his brother, and he thought he'd remember if he'd been close enough to call someone else hyung. And put stupid emoticons by their name.
He caught sight of the time before he could finish scrolling all the way through, and finished the rest of his tea quickly. He helped Mei wash the dishes and recycle some old takeaway boxes properly, and waved goodbye just in time for Jihoon and Yuxuan to stumble into the kitchen. He swanned past them with a non-committal 'morning', and spent the first five minutes of the walk to class trying to remember the password to view his timetable. Luckily, it turned out that his phone had saved it, and he quickly found his classes for the day.
He blinked when he realised that it was the first day of term. He'd been sent back not just four years, but to the exact day he'd started his life as a student in Seoul. He caught his breathing picking up, and shoved his phone shakily back into his pocket. Don't think about it. Don't think about it, don't think-
It was a lovely day to be out and about on campus. He'd been so busy with his job the past few months that he'd forgotten to miss it, but the sunlight reflecting on the familiar building windows was beautiful, and made his chest hurt in a good way. The trees lining the pathways had just unfurled their buds, and the new leaves were a bright, fresh green. It would be cherry-blossom season in just a few weeks. He'd never bothered to go while at uni, so snowed under with work.
He slowed for a second, watching a pigeon doze in the branches above him. Was he seriously just... going to go to class? Like nothing was wrong?
Well, what else was he supposed to do? He had no clues, nothing to go on. Why was he back here again? There was no great wrong he had to right. No quest he'd been meant to complete. He'd studied here, he'd passed all his classes (calculus didn't count) and then graduated. And then landed in a dead-end job. But still. Was he really about to do all of this again?
He supposed he owed it to past Jungkook not to mess up his education. He remembered that he'd worked so hard to get into SNU, late night after late night at cram school and then days of exams. He didn't exactly have a choice. Right now, he was four-years-ago-Jungkook, and that Jungkook had class.
Ugh, he hoped that four-years-ago-Jungkook hadn't woken up in the future and been forced to figure how how to do his job.
Jungkook swung off the main path, taking his old shortcut under the bridge to Building 12. He arrived 10 minutes early, and set himself up where he always used to sit, in the third row to the side. Not so close to the front that he would seem too keen, but close enough that he wasn't distracted by the students who preferred to chat through class at the back.
He was on edge as the rest of the students began to file in, waiting for someone to call out to him.
It's ok to be here, he reminded himself. Nobody knows.
He wasn't sure if that was reassuring or not. He'd never felt so lost in his life. It wasn't a question of asking at the bus station and taking two connections across the city. He could walk forever and he would never find his way back to his own time.
Jungkook startled as the projector lit up and Professor Kang welcomed them. She introduced herself and made them talk to their neighbours (Jungkook and his neighbour stared steadfastly at the floor for a whole sixty seconds), before starting to work through her introductory slides. It was all the same as before. Jungkook didn't remember word for word exactly what Professor Kang had said four years ago, but he could feel it in his chest that nothing had changed.
He opened a new page on his laptop and typed into his document absent-mindedly as Professor Kang spoke, eyes flicking round the room.
15 lectures, 7 workshops. Attendance will be taken.
There was that girl he remembered who'd fallen out of her chair in class once. She was still wearing the same long, fashionable cream coat she always had.
Group project handed out start of week 2, due week 10.
And there was that annoying guy who was taking most of Jungkook's classes. He'd often wormed his way into Jungkook's projects and refused to do any work. There was no way Jungkook would be putting up with him this time.
Assessment is half exam, half coursework. Office hours are every Thursday between 15:00 and...
And– huh. There was a face he hadn't seen before. He couldn't put a name to it. A tall young man, stood at the side of the lecture theatre, hands in his pockets. The lecturer didn't seem to notice him, or the fact that he wasn't paying attention - choosing instead to flick his gaze over the students in the audience. He looked bored. Maybe he was the teaching assistant. Jungkook didn't remember every detail of the past four years.
He half-paid attention as the introduction lecture continued, but spent most of the time recreating the filing structure he'd developed to save his files for this module under, and reserving the library books he knew he'd need for the coursework. Professor Kang was a sucker for extra reading, he'd found. This time he'd get a head start before all the library books went and he was forced to buy them. (Well, he now knew where to find them for free online, but nobody needed to know that.)
There was also no way that he was putting up with the university experience he'd had the first time he'd lived this year - months of pranks and stolen food, timing bathroom visits to avoid seeing anybody. He'd need to get a safety lock for his bedroom door and kitchen cupboard. And he'd sussed out a great second-hand technology website towards the end of university. A stylus to scribble notes on his laptop with, and some noise-cancelling headphones to block out the late-night parties would make his life so much easier this time around...
Oh, and pimple patches. They were a god-send. Had they even been invented yet? Jungkook searched up a pharmacy on his phone, and sighed in relief. He kept having to remind himself that four years wasn't really a huge amount of time for the world. For him, sure, it was enough time to define the course of his life. But it looked like he could still buy his favourite toiletries, and– ooh. Kombucha. He could so stock up. Was he getting ahead of himself, Jungkook mused? Probably. But if this was a dream, it was a rather nice one. One he could control, it seemed. A very, very realistic sort of dream.
Deep down, he knew it wasn't. His vision was sharp, he could taste and smell - the aftertaste of the tea he'd drunk, the scented cleaning products the janitors used to wipe the desks after every lecture. And he had certainly smelt his flatmates' stinky takeaway which he'd helped clear up that morning.
All in all, he was thinking far too clearly for this to be any sort of invention by his mind's eye.
And if this was a dream, he really didn't think he'd spend so much of it fuming about his flatmates leaving their rubbish out in the kitchen.
Professor Kang finished up the lecture with a fifteen-minute recap of the programming languages they'd been exposed to so far. Jungkook touch-typed a few key bullet-points just to keep his hands busy, though he actually quite enjoyed the recap.
Some of the other students started to fumble as the professor zipped through slides every few seconds, listing strengths and weaknesses at the speed of light and not bothering to wait for people to finish writing.
"–And for next week, I want you each to write me a script that plays noughts and crosses. This is university. You can use whatever language you want. But I swear, if everybody chooses Python, I'm going to go insane." This was met by groans in the audience.
"Mix it up, guys. Surprise me. Off you go."
Professor Kang grabbed her laptop and coffee and wandered out the back exit. The students blinked at the abrupt dismissal, and started to pack up. Jungkook, familiar with Professor Kang's informality and her constant rushing about, had already saved his file, slipped his laptop back into his bag and made it halfway up the stairs by the time the other students had stood up.
He had ten minutes before his next class – another module introduction, great – and the room was only down the hall, so he sequestered himself in his favourite out-of-the-way nook. There, he started poking around in his laptop's settings. Ugh. It was only a couple years old – he'd got it in highschool, and there was already so much junk on it.
He deleted a bunch of clunky old files and programmes, and scheduled his laptop to update that evening. He was going to have to spend some time setting it up exactly the way he wanted, maybe download some software licences from the university's resource page tonight.
He trooped into his next class exactly on time. It was Mr Nam's introduction to his first-year lecture series on encryption and decryption. Jungkook had used to love Mr Nam's lectures, before the cyphers got so difficult in his final year that he had cried almost weekly while trying to solve them. Cryptography required a certain mindset that had to be cultivated, and by the end of his degree the problem sets had frustrated Jungkook so much that he just wished that people would un-invent it.
He took careful, concise notes, and tried not to appear too bored. This lecture series would be fun to repeat, but the first lecture was always a dull list of admin notices and revision. It was a relief when the clock finally reached the hour, and Mr Nam let them go to lunch – not before handing out a stack of worksheets to complete for homework.
Two lectures into a degree that would take him four years. Was he really about to do this all again?
Jungkook wondered if he was going about this all wrong. Wasn't he supposed to wake up in the past with, like, a map tattooed on his hand? A notebook full of government secrets in his pocket? Wasn't there supposed to be a car chase at some point, or at the very least, motorbikes involved?
He had to be the only time-traveller in history who'd ended up in the past and decided that attending a lecture he'd already been to on the basics of cryptographic primitives was the best thing he could do.
As Jungkook traipsed out of the lecture hall with the rest of his cohort, letting the hubbub of their noisy chatter surround him, he had to admit that he wasn't exactly... opposed to the idea of repeating the next four years of his life. University was... ok, he hadn't enjoyed all of it. He'd entered his first year bright-eyed and eager to learn. Shy, of course, and no idea how to cook or do laundry. But he'd had a solid sleep schedule and the sort of quiet contentment that came from not really knowing much about how the adult world functioned. Then the work had piled up, and the imposter syndrome set in, he'd lost sleep and fallen out with his parents.
It would be nice to give it a go again, maybe. Now that he was older, and knew what to expect. He could take care of himself this time. Be more organised. Less trusting. He'd wasted so much time in his first and second years trying to find 'his crowd' – following his yearmates round bars, when he'd much rather be home playing video games. Chatting awkwardly to people from his class when he could have been finishing work and freeing up time in the evening. Cleaning up after his housemates, hoping they'd accept him into their little clique, only to realise that they viewed him as 'that weird computer nerd who thinks he's so much better than us'.
Yeah. He definitely wasn't going to waste time trying to make friends this time around. By his final year, he'd sort-of found his rhythm. Sure, it involved spending all his time in his room, working on his assignments on his laptop, mainly living on white rice, kimchi and bok choi. But it had worked for him a whole lot better than being social ever had.
So that's what he'd do. Look out for himself, enjoy living his life quietly, his way.
And just never mention to anybody that he knew who was going to be the next President of Korea in the upcoming election. Or that– Yeah. Wow. There was a lot he was going to have to keep quiet. Big things like that... if he got involved trying to change or fix world events, he could cause some real trouble.
Nobody could know.
And that was ok, because he wouldn't have anybody to tell it to anyway.
~❀~❀~❀~
By the time Jungkook's classes for the day finished, he was getting drowsy. The whole day had been soaked in a weird sense of déjà vu. His memories didn't mesh together. He remembered vaguely most of the past four years, lots of studying and playing video games, completing his Master's project, interviewing round Seoul, landing his job. The six months he'd spent working there were fresh in his mind, like they were yesterday, even though that yesterday no longer existed.
His new memories just continued straight on, like nothing out of the ordinary had happened. Two days ago, it was August and his line manager was on his back about his productivity statistics. Yesterday it was March and he attended his first ever lectures. Seamless.
He didn't know how time travel was supposed to work, but it probably wasn't meant to be like this.
It was golden hour when he decided to head to the supermarket, instead of holing up in the dorms for the rest of the day.
The SNU campus looked its best in the warm light. Students were milling about, sat gathered on walls and benches, enjoying the last of today's sunshine. There was a word for it, the pattern of light that filtered through the trees dotted around, but he'd forgotten it. He didn't need to remember to find it nice.
He trekked across campus and made his way into town, catching the bus to the district over, to a cheaper market. It felt strange to be around crowds of people again after the relative quiet of campus. He picked up proper cleaning supplies – rubber gloves for washing up, some nice cloths to wash his floor with, the good brand of mild environmentally-friendly disinfectant his mother had at home.
He restrained himself in the frozen section, limiting himself to ready-made dumplings and a log of narutomaki for ramen. The vegetables were cheaper than he remembered and he got a few different types of noodles as well. He'd treat himself to meat at the weekend if he had completed his assignments. If he was even still here.
The supermarket also had a home section, and he picked out some nicer chopsticks, a small mat for by his bed and a cute string of fairy lights shaped like fruit. What was his student loan for, after all? He'd make a budget spreadsheet to keep himself in the green.
Lugging the bags back was annoying but worth it, and he quickly made himself a large bowl of spicy ramen with veg and fishcake slices from scratch.
Back in his room, the steam from his noodle broth warming and dampening his face, he opened his laptop and navigated to the search bar.
Is time travel real?
The results were numerous, and full of nonsense. It would take hours to sift fact from fiction, and even then, how could he be sure he could trust anything? Nobody had stuck him into a time machine. He'd quite literally just woken up.
He slammed his laptop shut and bounced out of his seat, pacing the six foot space along his bed and back again. He wasn't frustrated enough to leave his noodles get cold though, so he sat down again and went back to eating.
He browsed the news moodily as he ate, quickly getting bored of the headlines and making his way over to social media. He frowned at his own posts, and flicked his account settings over to private. Then archived all his posts for good measure, and unfollowed a bunch of people from highschool who he'd never liked anyway. Jungkook from four years ago had tried so hard to make friends. Jungkook now already knew it wasn't worth the effort. He came close to deleting his account entirely, but he suspected he would probably need it at some point.
There were unread text messages on his phone too, he realised. He'd always been bad at replying. He clicked into them and then out. It was painful, seeing the kind words from his parents and brother after the falling out they'd had. Which had never happened, to them. He wasn't sure how to respond.
He finished his noodles, a little subdued, and left his bowl by the door to wash up when the kitchen was empty. He may as well crack on with his assignments from today.
He started with his encryption worksheets. Just a bunch of multiple-choice questions on basic definitions, some short answers and one or two that required some research. There weren't even any proper cyphers to solve yet. He filled it out neatly, and scanned a copy to save onto his laptop, saving it neatly in his filing structure. The paper version he dumped in the recycling. He wouldn't need it: he knew they would just mark the sheets themselves in the next class.
Woah. Was this what being organised felt like?
On a roll, Jungkook opened up his notes from his earlier lectures. He highlighted a couple key phrases, corrected a few typos, and then got to work on his coding assignment. It was ridiculously easy, but he had to be careful not to do it too well. Professor Kang liked to track her students' progress closely, and she knew exactly what students of his skill level were and weren't capable of coding. He wasn't a genius – seeming too smart now would only come back to bite him later on. Or worse, she might suspect him of cheating. Nice and simple was the way to go.
It took a while to get C# installed and loaded correctly, but once he was there, he started having fun. He spent way too long deciding on a colour scheme, and by the time he'd got a workable piece of code (with a few minor bugs left in, just to be safe), it was gone 9 o'clock and dark outside.
It was a strange feeling to be done with all his work so quickly, and have free time left over. He closed his curtains, and risked running to the kitchen for a cup of tea. Then, he installed some more new software and played with it for an hour or so, plugged his laptop in so it could charge while it updated tonight, and snuck back to the kitchen to wash his dishes. The motion-sensitive lights flickered on one by one as he made his way down the corridor, but there was no sign of his flatmates. Perfect.
The kitchen was a mess already, food and unwashed pans on every surface. He fetched down the cleaning supplies he'd bought today, cleared and disinfected a small area by the sink to use, and put his items away as soon as he'd dried them. He was so fed-up with messy flatmates. He'd spent four years dealing with their junk piled up, before. No food poisoning for him this time round, thank you very much.
He took a long shower before bed, settling into his covers feeling calmer than he had all day. An early night was probably a good idea.
Jungkook had been worried that he wouldn't be able to sleep. Wasn't he supposed to be plagued with nightmares or something? Concerned about the fact that he'd literally been shunted four years into the past? If all his vital organs were even still in the right place?
He supposed it might get frustrating, going through university again. But all in all, he'd had a really nice day.
Surrounded by his old possessions, stomach full of good food and the clean scent of his shampoo in his nose, he was out like a light.
~❀~❀~❀~
Jungkook was only mildly disoriented the next morning. He'd slept well, and been woken by the sun just before his alarm went off.
He didn't have any classes until the afternoon, and so he let himself lounge in bed for a bit. It was quiet in the flat. He was only on the second floor, so the muted noise of chatter reached him through the glass of the window, but inside was still and stifling.
He wondered if this had ever happened to anyone else. Did the universe just... break? Occasionally? Were there other people out there, wandering about, lost in the wrong time? He stewed for a bit, soaking in his own confusion. There really weren't very many options available to him. Quietly repeat the next four years of his life at uni, or tell people he was a time-traveller and spend those four years in a mental hospital.
Should he drop out? But then there was no chance of him finding a good job, alone in Seoul with no address and no degree.
What else could he do?
It was too quiet.
Jungkook checked the clock, and decided that half past eight in the morning was a perfectly reasonable time to start blasting music. He knew from experience that his direct neighbours would be the only ones who could hear it. To the room on the left was Simon, who had once slept through a fire alarm. And to his right was Jihoon, who would go on to host so many loud parties this year that Jungkook didn't feel guilty in the slightest for disturbing him.
He sang along to BIGBANG as he got dressed, deciding to spend the morning doing a spring clean. There was all sorts of grime in the dorm room, and he'd learned to appreciate having a clean and tidy space as he'd gotten older.
A visit to the storage cupboard at the end of the corridor revealed a mop and bucket, and he rolled up his jeans while he got to work. This dorm building was one of the oldest on campus, with painted brick walls and dirty laminate flooring, but by the time he'd scrubbed it twice and refilled the mop bucket three times, it all didn't look half bad, gleaming wetly. He threw open his window as far as it would go to let some fresh air in, and busied himself dusting surfaces, stacking his books neatly and refolding his clothes.
Scratch that. He was sorting out his wardrobe.
Jungkook rolled his jeans back down and went to make himself a coffee in the kitchen. Somebody was sat at the kitchen table with their back to him and headphones in, and he managed to sneak in, boil the kettle and sneak out without them noticing. Antisocial skills for the win.
He sat on his bed with his coffee while he chucked clothes into piles on the newly spotless floor. Keep, donate, recycle... He shuddered as he picked up another one of his awful button-downs, this one with a cheesy English slogan emblazoned on the front pocket... Should he make a 'burn immediately' pile as well?
He made accounts for online shopping with a couple of his favourite brands, and hummed, pleased, when he realised he could use his student discount again. Since he was a student again.
His maintenance loan money didn't come to all that much after factoring in rent and groceries, so he kept himself from buying too many items. He got a single nice warm hoody, some baggy plain T-shirts and joggers, and a beanie. He'd visit some charity shops on the weekend to drop off his donations and try and pick up some more variety.
He then went through his drawers, adding things he knew he'd never use to the donation pile. He ended up filling two large black bin bags, one to donate and the other to recycle. A lot of the stationary and paper, he knew he wouldn't need – he'd learned by second year that keeping all his files backed up on the Cloud was so much easier.
His room looked much nicer with less clutter, and he wiggled his hips as he hung up his fruit-themed fairy lights, doing a silly little dance along to Fantastic baby when G-DRAGON came in.
He took a break to make himself some egg rolls for a late breakfast, feeling pleased and organised.
The peaceful feeling stayed with him for the rest of the day, as he moved from class to class, making good notes and completing his worksheets in the breaks in between lectures. He even remembered to make his way to the library and pick up the textbooks he'd reserved. He made udon for dinner and spent his free evening playing video games. Another early night.
~❀~❀~❀~
He woke on the third day in a funk. This was... suffocating. He knew how this day was going to go already. Going to classes he'd already been to, meeting new people he'd already met, doing homework he'd already completed.
He was almost tempted to skip class and while the day away gaming, but he was worried about acting suspiciously. So he got dressed in his old clothes, and slung his old backpack over one shoulder, and skulked from class to class in a foul mood. Luckily, this was a Computer Science course, and so he was far from being the only student in his lectures hunched grumpily over their laptop with their hood pulled up.
The low feeling stayed for the rest of the week, and the weekend couldn't come soon enough. He'd been looking forward to doing some shopping, but now that he had the time, he found he wasn't in the mood.
He dropped his donations off without bothering to hunt for any new outfits, and picked up his package of basic clothes from the convenience store he'd had it sent to. He wandered through the shopping district near the SNU campus for barely ten minutes before he started to get antsy. He ended up in the campus gym, going way too hard on the weights and treadmill for his distinctly lacking de-aged muscles, and regretted it on the Sunday when he was so stiff he could hardly move.
He spent the day in bed, eating popcorn and messing around with ideas on C#, coding basic games and then playing against himself.
By the time his second week started, he was desperate for something interesting to come along.
So, in hindsight, he really was asking for what happened next.
~❀~❀~❀~
He was back in Basics of Online Life with Professor Kang, and as promised, she spent most of the lecture outlining the group coursework that was going to make up half of their grade for this module.
The specification was to design and produce a resource that could be used every day, and she gave them free reign to decide if they wanted to create a website, an app, or use other media. Jungkook remembered this assignment well. He'd had the worst partners for it – the sort not to do any real work, but still be so opinionated and full of 'great ideas' that neither did they leave him alone to do what he wanted. They'd ended up making the most awful website which was supposed to pick your outfit for the day for you, and had barely scraped a passing grade thanks to all the bugs his partners had caused by messing around with his LaTeX environments at the last minute, just when he'd almost finished it. He'd pulled his first all-nighter trying to fix it, but he hadn't gotten it done in time. He'd been so ashamed of his grade that he'd refused to tell his parents about it.
Jungkook scanned his eyes around the lecture hall, looking for anyone who wasn't the partners he'd had before, but he could already see people pairing up and–
There was a tap on his shoulder.
"Hey, Jungkook! We finally found you." Two strangers had slid into the seats next to him. One was the tall guy from last week that he'd thought was the teaching assistant – clearly that wasn't the case. The other was more slight, with perfectly coiffed hair and a beaming grin. And he was wearing a shirt with a subtle logo on the pocket for a band that hadn't debuted yet.
"Want to work together?"
Jungkook blinked several times. He had never seen these people in his past, he was sure of it now. Professor Kang was way too short-tempered to want a TA, and he was sure that he would have remembered these faces.
They were looking at him like they knew him.
Professor Kang called an end to the lecture and left as abruptly as she always did, and Jungkook made a sudden bid for the door.
A strong hand grabbed his wrist. Students filed past them without a second glance, and the lecture hall emptied rapidly.
"Kookie? What's the rush? We've got plenty of time before our next class." The tall man was staring right into his eyes, and Jungkook panicked, trying and failing to yank his hand free.
"I already have partners," he mumbled, eyes wide and breath coming heavily. These people didn't belong here either. They were like him, they had to be, but they seemed a heck of a lot more confident about it than him.
"No, you don't. Come on, Kookie. We said we'd work together? Don't you remember?" Insisted the shorter boy. Jungkook did not, in fact, remember that.
"I don't even know who you are," Jungkook hissed, finally managing to get free and bolting up the stairs.
He'd barely made it out the door before a heavy body crashed into him from the side.
He let out an oof as he was forced up against the brick wall outside the lecture building, twisting round to glare at the third stranger who'd grabbed him. They somehow already had both his wrists gripped in one of their hands, and the other hand heavy on his chest, keeping him pinned. The two boys from the lecture class ran up seconds after, panting. One of them had brought his abandoned rucksack, shoving his laptop into it as they jogged. They'd known he wouldn't get far.
"I take it something went wrong?" Grumbled the newest arrival. Jungkook wriggled for only a few seconds before he felt the strength in their arms and decided to quit while he was behind.
"Of course it did." Snipped the shortest of the three. "I told you that wormhole was a cheapskate. We should never have used Milekhin's model for calculations in a field of–"
"Shh!" Hissed the tall man urgently.
Jungkook's gaze was flicking between all three boys so quickly he was giving himself a headache.
"For goodness' sake, just ask him what he knows," sighed the muscular one. "Hey, Jungkook. This is Jin. Jimin," he jerked his head over his shoulder. "And I'm Namjoon."
"I don't know you," whispered Jungkook.
"We literally saw each other on the weekend," the one called Jimin insisted. "You beat me at Super Mario like three times in a row, drop the act."
"You drop it," Jungkook tried to cross his arms, and Namjoon let him, keeping him in place with just the hand on his chest. Jungkook did his best to pretend it wasn't there.
"Are you..." Namjoon peered at Jungkook closely. "By any chance. A little bit... displaced?"
Jungkook scowled. Finally, someone to blame for everything that he'd been through in the last week. "Do you mean if I woke up last week four years in the past? Yes, I'm a little bit displaced."
"Shit," said Jin mildly.
"Shit," agreed Jungkook.
"In our defence," said Namjoon, "you weren't supposed to notice anything."
"That doesn't really help."
There was an awkward silence. Jungkook could see Namjoon trying to work out what to say. It didn't look like good news.
Namjoon looked him in the eye. "Well. It's nice to meet you for the first time again, Jungkook. You wouldn't mind... Repeating these four years just once more, would you?"
"What," said Jungkook intelligently.
"The four years you've lived through. We yanked you back by accident. You'll have to live them again." Namjoon seemed apologetic, but Jungkook was beyond confused.
"Don't you have a time machine? You can fix this, right?"
The one called Jin started cackling when he said 'time machine', like it was funny, and Jungkook's heart sank.
"No time machine," said Namjoon placidly. "You repeating these years is the best pathway for us, like, mathematically speaking. As in, it's the only pathway. We might break this universe a little if we try again."
"Um," said Jungkook. "Let's not break the universe, please?"
"Glad we're on the same page." Jin gave a squeaky, slightly hysterical laugh.
"We've found you again. That's the main thing. Everything is going to be alright, now." Jimin said. It sounded like he was trying to convince himself more than anyone else.
"Define now," squinted Jungkook.
"I'd really rather not–" started Jin, but Namjoon interrupted him.
"Now is six minutes and twenty three seconds past eleven o'clock on Earth 724148, Leibniz sector, revolution 7. Does that mean anything to you?"
"Of course it doesn't," sighed Jungkook.
"Great! Then we've got the right Jungkook. We just seem to have had a bit of a rounding error."
Jin choked on another, even more hysterical laugh. "A rounding error? Is that what we're calling it now? I was almost eaten by a singularity. Eight hundred times."
"Hey, it's not all bad," grouched Namjoon. "We were four years out, big deal. We still did it. We still found him."
Jungkook froze. They'd been looking for him? These people had moved through time and maybe space to find him?
"Sorry you had to go through all this, Kookie." The one called Jimin pulled Namjoon off of him, and Jungkook was dazed enough to let them stuff his arms back into his coat and rucksack. Namjoon finally released him, and zipped up his coat for him.
"We're not from this time either," Jimin continued, with the air of someone who was trying not to seem incredibly panicked, while being incredibly panicked. "Yada yada yada, boring stuff, really. Let's move past that already, the thing to focus on is that we can work together on that project! We'll do a great job. And we have time to go get boba before our next class starts. It's the little things in life, right?"
Jimin gave a blinding smile as if he hadn't just turned Jungkook's world upside down and inside out for the second time in as many weeks, and gave him a tight squeeze of a hug. Jungkook hugged him back automatically.
"Ugh, I've missed you, Kookie." Jimin said, breath tickly against his ear. "Will you give us a chance, please? We've been trying to reach you for so long."
Jungkook didn't really have anything to lose.
"...You're paying for the boba, right?"
"That's my dongsaeng," sniffled Jin proudly, and Jungkook realised that this must be the Jin-hyung in his phone. Somehow, in some weird alternate universe, he had hyungs. Hyungs who cared enough to go looking across dimensions for him.
And now it seemed like he had hyungs of his own, here and now.
Now being four years in the past.
Could he really live all those years again?
~❀~❀~❀~