"You are timed to leave Park Jimin."
Jimin was sat at a gas station, the same evening he had been released.
He had been good, deceitful.
And he listened to his visitors, installing self-doubt and loss of recognition whenever he fed his previous doctors what they wanted to hear.
He lied, a lot.
But it got him his free will, outside the asylum. With no home.
He shuffled, finally taking out the cigarette given to him from another's absence.
He tucked into his knees, prying at the shadow of a man that began to approach him.
"A fine cigarette isn't it?" He spoke lowly to Jimin, seeming to have been confidential.
"Yes, it is." Jimin looked from the shadow.
"I roll my own, I don't fancy any that can be bought... Here." The man waved arrogantly at the station in front of him.
Jimin acknowledged the blue hair, looking at the cigarette.
"It's nicely done. You are the friend of the man you had gift me this?"
The man paused, seeming to have missed that Jimin didn't know who he was.
"I am. Where did you get the lighter?" He wouldn't ask, or give his name unless he was asked.
"It was just here on the cement. Don't know who it belongs to... Unless it's yours-?" Jimin laid out the lighter for the man to take.
He didn't want to posses something else that didn't belong to him. It embarrassed him before.
"Nono, I'd rather it never be mine." And the other refused.
Jimin nodded again, remembering the new stopwatch he had hidden in his pocket.
The tick was clean, suited to selective manners.
To remain strained on time.
"Want to see a trick?" The man adapted his posture, hands around a tin to take out a wrapped stick.
"Mmm? Yeah, sure." Jimin ghosted the smoke to his cigarette, flicking the ashes aside to sit over and watch the man light his own, with a match.
The man dragged for a moment, progressively inhaling to puff his cheeks out, suiting his lips to shape around to press out smoke rings.
Opaque and sublime with 'O' shapes.
"That's actually pretty nice. You do that often?" Jimin beamed his look to adore the smoke, enthralled by the minimal talent.
"Every drag I take." The man sneered, pressing out the remaining haze.
"Your face doesn't get tired?" Jimin was incorrupt with his query, and meant nothing more than to feed his interest.
The man knelt down close to Jimin, smiling.
Nothing daunting.
He was much more, 'sane' when he neared him.
"So tired that a fragment of my face might wither off." The man traced part of his face from half of his nose bridge, down and around to his chin.
"Wouldn't want that huh?" Jimin grinned, laughing at the...
Joke.
"No, no not at all." The man backed away, strung on stoicism now.
"I'm sorry, was I not meant to laugh?" Jimin couldn't understand certain social cues, and this was one of them.
He was tormented by doing the wrong thing, and hung on that fear.
"Who are you to think you do not deserve a laugh?" The man took to his cigarette again, seeming genuine enough for Jimin to lose his guilt.
"I use to be a patient right over-"
"No." He stopped Jimin, carrying no gesture when doing so.
"N-No?" Jimin stirred, moving his pointing hand down and back to his knees.
The cigarette in his hand was needed for the wave of its ashes, but Jimin fell slightly humiliated and forgot to tend to it.
"Well 'are' is present, and if you use to be a patient, that very much doesn't make you who you are now, hm?" The other was stood high now, caring for his smoke before raising his brows for a plausible response.
"Oh... Right yes. Who are you then?" Jimin had forgotten to answer anyhow, much more fascinated by the man who continuously spoke to him.
He didn't demean or punish him, he was teaching him.
Apprising him.
"I asked first." The man scoffed.
"I'm more curious."
"I'd banter with that."
"Please? You intrigue me. I want to know." Jimin dolled his eyes further up at the man, innocently pleading for his way through their conversation.
"I'm a man who merely enjoys a keen cigarette." He was blunt, slightly.
To set the idea that the man had nothing to him. Nothing Jimin would like to know.
Jimin still wanted to know.
"There is much more to you, I can tel-"
"Now,"
The man severed Jimin's wording again.
"Who Are You?"
Jimin frowned, relaxing the habit of his tightened posture to finally answer.
"I'm Jimin. Just Jimin." And he stuck out his hand, composed and naive.
He didn't have much to say. He didn't know who he was. And when he thought he did, he'd be wronged for it.
He had to live in fables just to be set out of the asylum.
"Jimin, from the 'Wonder Refuge?" The other took his hand to receive the prim introduction, firming his hold rather than shaking.
"Mhm. The asylum right along that road." Jimin's head bent, moving towards the direction of the sanctuary.
"Ah. I am Namjoon." Namjoon nodded, letting Jimin go.
Namjoon turned around, finding a man with a closing car door stepping around a gas pump.
"I bid my farewell now. I would adore to see you again. Jimin."
Jimin looked appalled, waving at the new deprivation nonetheless.
He waited, until he cherished the spearmint and tequila that started to hone his senses.
And
Rose tea?
"From 'Wonder Refuge,' I heard?" The deviant man hd hands folded at his waist.
"Yes." Jimin felt fraught beneath him.
"Worry less, I know that man. I came to bring you with me-us." He stood, a silent twist in his shoulders when he spoke.
But Jimin was supposed to follow the rabbit. Or the cat.
Yet the transport provided would be much easier. Jimin liked easy.
"Easy transportation." The man poised a serene grin.
Jimin looked up.
"That's... What I was thinking."
"Mad minds think similarly then."
"I've lost my taste for mad men."
"Ah, then humor me with a taste for me?"
Jimin sneered.
"Platonically, to specify." The man acknowledged the rouge use of his jest, promptly altering its presumed intention.
"We can get you something nice to eat. You'll need more than..." The man grabbed the wrapped paper from Jimin's lips, pulling it to his own.
"A cigarette."
Jimin mourned the drug now, pursing a lips to weigh the man to pity.
"There will be plenty at home."
Home.
"I am not going to go 'home' with a madman."
"Do I appear mad?"
"Slightly."
"But I haven't said anything so threatening."
"Mhm." Jimin took his aim away from the man, pursuing a gaze at the cement beside him.
The other inhaled, dragging himself on the lack of expectation between the two.
"Well. This conversation is going very differently. Here." A white rose was taken from behind the man.
"From a friend."
Jimin glowered at the flower, poking its petals.
"I prefer red."
The man grit his teeth down from a smile.
"But white is prettier, civil. Much like a pacifist, or someone who's affable. Am I not?" His binding teeth made it difficult for Jimin to understand,
If he held less recollection for who he was.
"You're not too bad. I still like white, I can just paint it red if I detest it that much." He held onto the rose.
"Thank you." Jimin took to the rose's aroma, peaking up to find his snaffled cigarette being put out by the other.
"Mmm, come." A hand was sloped as the man turned slightly, aspiring for the hand of Jimin.
Jimin took it, the hand favoring a tranquil hold as he was guided to the passenger side of the car.
Where there was no rabbit, nor feline.
The other sat at the driver's side, muting his movement by the starting engine.
Nobody spoke, and again the stranger grew baffled.
"Won't you ask me my name?" He looked at Jimin, an attested concern prone to his expression.
Jimin paused with the knit of Deja vu edging his head.
He's surely heard this before, with the same voice.
So he'd respond,
"You'll tell me yours if I tell you mine." That was what befell before.
Before?
Whatever the Deja vu brought him to say, he just said it.
The other man's mouth hung.
"How- Did I tell you that alrea-"
He has.
Some time ago, when Jimin was...
Asleep?
"Jimin." Jimin stared at the windshield.
"Hello... Jimin." The man kept staring, fretted by Jimin's pronounced smirk.
"Hello, Taehyung."
Taehyung stopped the car.
"Pardon?"
"It's an introduction-"
"You-" Taehyung's rose his hand, wavering it to single Jimin and finally look at his eyes.
Taehyung was pained.
To hear his own name?
"Are not Jimin."
"Then you're not Taehyung." Jimin would smiled again, careless for the agony Taehyung creased into Jimin's nonchalant tone.
Because he thought Taehyung was joking.
"Get. Out."
Jimin would just smile. "Are you afraid? I didn't mean t-"
"Afraid!?" Taehyung had his teeth slit together when he snarled at Jimin, pushing up from his seat to hover over him.
"I don't know who you are, but you need to get the fuck out."
Jimin looked over to the trees extended past the car.
A cat, and a rabbit.
He peered back at Taehyung, who looked far more appalled. Not by the conclusion of his name, but because that wasn't what he thought Jimin would know.
He was told Jimin wouldn't know. Maybe he was misled.
Because Taehyung didn't know this Jimin.
He really did not know.
"Y-You don't know me?"
"No I don't at all, and you've just set the appraisal that I wish to never get to. Out." He pressured onto Jimin's chest to reach over and open the passenger door, shoving Jimin to retreat.
"Wait, wait no, you just- You're exactly like him! Do? Do you know where this is from!?" Jimin handed over the stopwatch.
He remembered
Something?
Taehyung tore the clock, holding its chain before truly thinning his eyes to look at it.
"Where did you get this."
"A man with red hair gave it to me, he, he said follow the rabbit! You know him right!? A-And another man said follow the cat, and they're both right there! See, you see it right!?" Jimin held onto the seat, rebutting Taehyung's drive to get him to leave.
Because the rabbit and cat, had gone.
Taehyung let go, grasping further onto the watch before exiting the car, dragging around to Jimin's side.
He grabbed Jimin by his hair, dragging him across the road.
"Who are you!?" Jimin had his head pulled back, labored by the aggressive pulling once Taehyung asked.
"Jimin!" He whined, keeping his arms well and far from the hand that restrained him.
"Who the fuck are you!" Taehyung asked again.
Jimin had recognized, that he cannot be truthful and expect release. Because he simply was just, Jimin, and he wasn't let go for simply being him. Ever.
"Taehyung, listen, just listen!" Jimin continued to allow himself to be mangled as he was dragged across empty pavement.
"Who. The fuck are you?" Again.
"The other man already asked me that!" Jimin was beginning to writhe after finding a cut across his thigh.
"And did you answer!?" Taehyung stopped again, closing his glare onto Jimin.
The bushes ruffled, and they both turned.
Out came the white rabbit.
Taehyung looked back at the smaller.
"Tell me who you are, please. I fear those I do not understand." Taehyung feared him.
He feared Jimin!?
"Wait, that's not how this went, I am to fear you! You are to harass a deter my pride! Wait!"
Jimin remembered that.
Something to which Taehyung,
Did not?
Taehyung had already laid Jimin on the grass after setting something into the smaller's hand, leaving to enter his car again.
Jimin stood, ignoring what was handed to him once he trembled and ran behind Taehyung, meeting into the car beside him.
"Nonono-" Taehyung left, surging towards the rabbit instead.
Jimin followed but,
Taehyung was gone, but the rabbit, and the cat sat.
Jimin huffed, grabbing at his head to find the two animals restful, unafraid of Jimin's larger presence.
Follow the rabbit, or the cat?
Or Taehyung!?
Jimin looked to his hand.
The stopwatch ticked.
The ticking eased his dread and inclination on impulsivity.
The rabbit's song, was sang by a man who gave him the clock.
The clock.
The rabbit was the easy lead.
Jimin followed the rabbit.
And the rabbit ran.
Run rabbit, run rabbit,
Run,
Run,
Run.
Home.