My Light, My Jimin

Chapter 38: Backpack

JIMIN

It's early January, right after the new year, and I spend my vacation at home back in Busan. As soon as Eomma packed everything up from my dorms, we drove all the way back that night, as if the campus was plagued with diseases crawling and working its way into me, her innocent son.

I've already paddled through the internet, searching for anything related to Min Yoongi and the heroic way he saved a student's life in a lockdown. Most articles are pointed at the crime scene than the aftermath: Kim Young-sang, a former Daegu University student had slipped through security in an attempt to find the daughter of a former classmate. His intentions with her are unknown.

It sickens me, what men like this will do. Though, in the public's eye, Yoongi is skating down that path, too.

Closing my laptop, I stand and stretch, my life basically paused until someone magically comes in and says "hey, you can come back to Daegu! Everything has been taken care of!" I rub my eyes and glance over to the edge of my bed and freeze. I'm missing my backpack.

Downstairs, Eomma sits alone at the dining room table. It's covered in bills, a calculator with stacks of paper. Since bringing me home to work online, the electronic bills have steadily risen to an alarming rate. She often drops hints for me to work a summer job when I'm finished, but that will happen later in the year.

"Did you go into my room?" I ask.

She looks up from the calculator, her face tired.

"My backpack's missing," I say. "Do you know where it is?"

"What's in it that's so important?" she asks.

I take a breath. "My school papers."

She blinks, looking down at the bills. "You were doing just fine without them."

I clench my jaw, and my stomach tightens. Yes, there is paperwork in there, but it's also where I stuffed my clothes Yoongi bought for me, and the ones I borrowed from him, and the yellow blanket I don't dare show to the light of day. "It doesn't matter," I say. "It was mine, and you have no right to take it."

"Well, it was garbage anyway," she says. "It's pointless keeping something that unsanitary."

My heart pounds as I watch her shuffle through the papers. She knows about the dirty clothes. She saw everything. And now my everything is missing; gone.

"I can't believe this," I say.

She looks up, her eyes sharp. "Jimin, I'm not getting into this with you right now."

"What? Are we going to talk about how you threw out my important things? Stuff that means something to me? You don't know where any of it came from."

"I know where it came from," she says sharply. "It's disgusting. He dressed you up like his own doll and took you god knows where."

I shake my head. "How many times do I have to say it? I wanted that!"

She takes a breath, as if to speak, then she exhales and lets it go. She stands and moves to the kitchen, to get away from me. I follow behind. "Eomma, I'm not like those other kids. I wasn't abused or raped at all!"

She turns on the sink, using the water to drown me out. I keep talking over it.

"I'm not brainwashed. I know there are reasons why teenagers shouldn't be with middle-aged men, but it's not like I actively seek out older men to date. With him, it was special. He was careful and kind and good to me. . . "