Where Lost Souls Wait || yoonmin

chp 1: The Street That Didn't Exist

Here with my first ever yoonmin book, let me know how u like it!!!

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There is a precise psychological threshold where logic fails to account for the physical world.

In his third-year cognitive neuroscience lectures, Park Jimin had been taught that the human brain hates a vacuum. 

If a memory is corrupted, the subconscious will meticulously forge details—a color, a face, a timezone—just to keep the individual from looking directly into the empty space where the truth used to be. It is a defense mechanism. 

A beautifully orchestrated lie.

But as Jimin stood beneath the freezing stone archway of the university library, his fingertips buried deep within the sleeves of his oversized cream sweater, he couldn't shake the distinct sensation that the script of his own life was missing a page.

The downpour had been relentless since late afternoon. It transformed the campus into a blurred watercolor of bleeding gold streetlights and fractured silver pavement. 

Normally, the harsh Thursday night weather would have driven him back to his apartment hours ago. 

Yet, he had lingered in the deepest, dustiest corners of the historical archives until the security guards literally turned the lights out on him.

He didn't want to go home. 

He never really did. The apartment was always too quiet, the rooms holding an uncomfortable, spacious stillness that made him feel like an intruder in his own skin.

With a soft sigh that fogged into the freezing air, Jimin adjusted the damp strap of his backpack and stepped out into the dark.

The avenue was practically dead. 

Across the slick asphalt of Crescent Street, an old bookseller was turning the heavy iron keys to his storefront, his movements carrying the slow, rhythmic exhaustion of someone who had done the exact same thing every night for a century. 

Further down, a young couple huddled beneath a single black umbrella, their shared laughter muffled by the steady roar of the rain. Jimin watched them pass, his chest tightening with a strange, sudden ache—a phantom weight so specific it made him stop walking entirely.

His phone buzzed against his thigh, the sharp vibration cutting through the numbing cold. He pulled it out, a small, genuine smile tearing through his exhaustion as the screen illuminated the dark.

Jungkook Calling.

"Look who finally remembered I exist," Jimin murmured into the receiver, stepping beneath the shallow canvas awning of a closed bakery to escape the wind.

"I always know you exist, hyung," Jungkook's voice crackled through the line, accompanied by the distinct, frantic clatter of a busy police precinct. 

"But Taehyung just walked into the breakroom and swore you were still buried under a mountain of research when he left the library. Did you skip dinner again?"