Mirror

T e a r

"Goodbyes are, for me, a tear. Without even knowing, it blooms around my eyes. The words that I could not bring myself to say flow down, and lingering regret crawls over my face" ~ BTS (RM), Tear

찢다

T e a r

Jimin's POV

"JAE-HYUN IS DEAD".

Ji-han's words freeze the world around me. Like pushing some unseen pause button, everything stills. Taehyung's thin arm as he goes to sling it casually around Yoongi's narrow frame. Hoseok and Jin as they double over, their shaking shoulders - Jin's noticeably more broad than everyone else's - going rigid in the middle of a bout of the kind of laughter that makes your stomach ache. Namjoon's hand as he goes to clap Jungkook on the back, their cheeks flushed a rosy pink from the alcohol the staff let us have to celebrate our winning 'Top Social Artist' at the 2018 Billboard Music Awards. All of them . . . Ji-han's sharp exhale of breath tainted by the edge of a barely withheld sob . . . my champagne flute as it slips through my fingers . . . Everything just stops.

Jae-hyun . . . He . . . he can't be dead. He promised he would try while I was away. It didn't seem like he was lying. I didn't . . . I couldn't tell, and after lying so often myself, I've found it's difficult to miss when someone is telling an untruth to my face. I might get caught in my own lie, but it's rare I fall victim to someone else's. And when he promised me that he would really try to survive without Ji-han or I there, he wasn't lying - I know he wasn't. So, he can't be dead. Jae-hyun can't be dead. But I know that Ji-han isn't lying either.

The fragile glass shatters as it hits the ground, and just like that, everything is swept back into motion. A spray of fragments slice through the air at the same time someone - Taehyung, I think, judging by the uniquely deep, baritone - lets lose a wordless shout of alarm.

I should move out of the way, but I don't. Crack-ridden shards pelt my slacks, and I can feel them like an assault of violently heavy rain drops through the fabric. But my body refuses to move. As a dancer, someone who knows exactly how to move their body and knows how they look doing it, it's scary a thing to suddenly lose the hard-earned control over my limbs, but they're locked in place, frozen by the ruinous news of Jae-hyun's death. They won't . . . I can't get them to move.

"Jimin-hyung!"

"Jimin-ssi!"

"Jimin-hyung, are you okay?!"

My name echoes through the confines of my headspace, taking on the tones of various voices. Jungkook's and Taehyung's tainted with wild panic, coupled with both Jin and Hoseok's fretful exclamations. Yoongi's is quieter but definitely still present among the cacophonous chorus - which is surprising considering he is often as loud as Hoseok - and is joint by Namjoon's loud expression of concern. Ji-han's is there too, the familiarity of his voice distorted faintly by my phone and the miles upon miles of distance between us.

My head shakes frantically and with it, my entire torso quivers. "He . . . No, he promised. Ji-han-ah . . ." I gasp for breath through my useless splutters of denial, reaching to grip the door frame in a fruitless attempt to hold myself steady. My throat itches with an oncoming sob that the suddenness of all of this can't quite sedate. Because no matter how sickenly awful the thought is, in all honesty, Jae-hyun's death is not as shocking as I wish it was.

His uncertainty of himself, the people around him, and reality - everything, left me wondering when I first met him at the Crossing how he had managed to survive so long in a place as crazy as the busy and bustling Seoul. Ji-han answered that question the moment he called me for his brother. His staggering dedication to take care of Jae-hyun never once failed to surprise me, but at the same time I bore witness to how that extreme level of loyal adherence was gradually destroying the pair of them, sucking the life from Ji-han while also leaving Jae-hyun almost entirely reliant on his brother. And then when I found out about Ji-han's enlistment from Jae-hyun himself the night he collapsed in the street and almost gave himself hypothermia - the night Ji-han asked me to watch over Jae-hyun for him because he had no one else - I had a feeling that no matter what Ji-han and I did or how much Jae-hyun tried to keep himself alive, he and all of his self-destructive intricacies just couldn't belong here - in Seoul, in South Korea, in this world - for long.