warning: explicit language
"I'm sorry, sir, but there's nothing we can do until 24 hours have past. In the meantime, you can fill out a report and-"
"No, you don't bloody understand, my boy- Jimin- my baby- he's out there, God knows where-"
"Sir, I understand you completely, but if we send out squad cars and dogs for every kid who walked by himself to the candy store, we'd be tilting at the wind."
"It's tilting at windmills you uneducated civil service worker and I don't care how many false alarms you've gotten, this one is real and it's my kid and he's out there and I don't know-"
The officer tightened his lips in a frown. "Listen, sir, like I've already said a dozen times, fill out the form and-"
"Sorry, Officer Im. He's with me," a different officer said as she walked into the waiting area. "Namjoon, lovely to see you again. Sorry it's under these circumstances, of course...although when I gave you my number, I'd imagined that you'd call a lot sooner and for a different sort of reunion, so pardon my surprise," she said as she approached Namjoon and shook his hand.
"Thank you so much, I didn't know who else to go to and this idiot won't get on board and start looking for my kid-" Namjoon began, gesturing towards Officer Im, who just had a look on his face that read Can I take my lunch break early so I can be free of this guy already.
"It's fine, I wasn't working on any major cases anyway. But listen, Namjoon. I know you're frustrated and worried, but the best way to approach this is logically. Okay? And..." The officer hesitated, looking at the five filled chairs adjacent to Namjoon. "I think you're scaring your kids a little."
Those words hit Namjoon and he closed his eyes a second before crouching down and running his hands over their heads and patting their hands and arms lightly. He needed to feel the sense of touch, to be sure that they were real and tangible and not just gone without a trace like his other son. "I'm sorry, guys. I really am. I'm...Daddy's going to try and find Jimin, and...this nice lady is going to help him, all right?"
They nodded, but none of them had said a word on the car ride over after Namjoon had made the call.
The officer smiled at the kids. "That's right. You guys may not remember me since it's been a while, but I helped Jimin when he got lost at the amusement park, and I'm going to help find him this time too. You can call me Officer Lisa."
She smiled, but the kids didn't smile back. "Well, I'm going to take you all back into the station and get your statements, okay? Don't think of this as an interrogation, but we need as much information as we can get so we're best prepared to handle this."
Namjoon nodded and herded his kids after Lisa and into the station towards a desk in the back that had a nameplate with Officer Tuan on it. "Tuan?"
Lisa looked over at him. "Yes? Oh, sorry. Tuan's my last name. Is something the matter?"
"No, I just...somebody I know has that name," Namjoon said, sitting down in the chair across her desk as she gestured to it.
"Is his name Mark?" she asked dryly, and Namjoon nodded, confused.
"Are you his-"
"Sister," she interrupted. "Nothing more, nothing less. That sounds cold but a lot of people mistakenly assume I'm his wife, which makes things a bit more awkward for an officer than has seemingly solicited invitations for an affair." She sighed before smiling at the kids. "There's lots of chairs, so steal whoever's. I wish we had toys or something, but..." She shrugged, sighing as she gave Namjoon an apologetic look. "You boys can play with anything on my desk though. Help yourselves."
The kids settled in, and Lisa grabbed a notepad and set up a small recording device before turning to Namjoon, who caught himself staring blankly at the wall before snapping back in and meeting her eyes. "I'm sorry, what was the question?"
"Just your full name," Lisa said, laughing softly, but her laugh cut off as she reminded herself than in an ideal world, there would be six kids messing with her desk accessories instead of just five. Put the job first, personal interests second. She took a deep breath and looked at Namjoon more seriously. "Sorry. Kim Namjoon, right?"
He nodded, frowning slightly.
She was tempted to say something to lighten the mood. I always remember a name. Well, just ones that go with a cute face. But she forced herself to focus. "All right, and your son's name?"
Namjoon was silent, as though he was scared to say it.
"Jimin, right?"
He nodded, swallowing. "I'm sorry. I..."
She nodded. "It's fine. This is my job. I'm used to dealing with people who aren't in their right minds. I get it. But hang in there just until I finish asking you questions."
He nodded.
"All right. Can you describe your day? Include where you went, what time things happened, and anything involving Jimin."
Namjoon sighed. "I...I dropped Jin and Yoongi off at the elementary school. That was...7:45," he recalled, closing his eyes to better envision the memories. "I dropped Hobi off at kindergarten at 7:50 something...then I dropped off Jimin and Jungkook at the preschool."
"Not Taehyung?"
"No. I just felt like he needed some alone time with me."
"Before you go on, why don't they just take the bus?"
"I..." Namjoon opened his eyes, sighing and looking past Officer Lisa to the exposed brick wall. "I was scared...that something would happen to them if they took the bus." He laughed once, but it sounded like a choked cry. "God, the irony."
"All right," Lisa said after she had written it down. "Go on. After you dropped off Jimin and Jungkook..."
"Then...I took Tae with me to the grocery store because I hadn't gone shopping yet for the week. But..."
"But what?"
"But I ended up running into my ex-wife."
"Can you tell me a bit about her for our records?"
"She left over a year ago and sent over the divorce papers not long after that. That's all that really matters."
"When did you last see her?"
"Before today? When she walked out on us. She's called a few times, though."
"We may need to get copies of those conversations."
Namjoon sighed. "Fine, if you think it'll help somehow. I could just tell you what they say." His eyes shot over to his kids and he winced, thinking of how angry their conversations had been. "They weren't nice calls. She wanted custody, I said no. And before you start thinking that she took Jimin, it wasn't her."
"What makes you say that?"
"She wanted-" He hesitated before leaning in slightly and speaking more quietly, scanning the kids to make sure they weren't listening. "She wanted Jin. Him specifically. She called and gave me some crap like that I could have the rest, she just wanted one. So if Jin was the one missing, I would say that yeah, she could be a suspect. But she never brought up Jimin."
Lisa nodded, writing everything down before she motioned for him to go on. "What happened when you saw her?"
"We...talked, just for a few seconds, really. Then I left with Tae. I was...upset. So was Tae."
"Where did you go? Details are important, Namjoon. I'm sorry to badger you but try to include them."
Namjoon nodded, sighing. "I just went somewhere else within the store. Then some lady saw me having a breakdown, and she gave me her coupon."
Grocery store witness, Lisa wrote down.
"Then I checked out and went home with Tae. We watched some movies, and then I brought Tae with me to pick up Jin and Yoongi first, then Hobi. Then..." Namjoon took a deep breath, gearing himself up. "Then I parked the car in the lot of the preschool. I usually just pull up to the curb for the other boys since they're older, but the preschool has a policy about the parents having to go into the classroom to pick up their kids. Like signing out books at a library." He sighed again and shifted so his elbows rested on his knees and his face rested on two fists, his thumbs massaging his forehead.
"Then what, Namjoon?"
"I...I remember rolling the windows down so the kids could stay in the car, and then I got out and locked the car. Then I walked into their preschool classroom."
"Anything unusual?" she asked after another one of Namjoon's pauses.
"I guess. Normally, they run up to me, but they didn't this time. But I remember thinking that it was because Tae wasn't there. He's kind of the leader of the three of them."
"Isn't Jimin the oldest?"
"Yeah, but he's very sensitive," Namjoon said, feeling his chest constrict as his heart warmed with thoughts of the child. "He gets emotional very easily, and he can be clingy because of that and needs physical comfort. I remember...he didn't want to go to school without Tae." Namjoon paused. "Tae is Jimin's protector. He watches out for him, takes care of him..." Namjoon's eyes became wet. "Like last night, I was trying to tuck Jimin into bed the way his mother used to, only I couldn't get it right, and Tae just pushed me out of the way and took over," Namjoon said, and he held up his hand to hide his crying face from his children. "Tae's always been like that, so mature and...this morning, Jimin was crying because he didn't want to be separated from Tae, and I talked to him for 5 minutes but it didn't make a difference. Then Tae came over and rubbed his back and said God knows what to him and he was fine."
Namjoon hesitates, a dark feeling settling into his stomach. "It's my fault. If I hadn't taken Tae out of school today...Oh God."
"Namjoon, this isn't your fault." Lisa hesitated before grabbing his hand and squeezing it. "Now tell me what happened when you got in the classroom."
Namjoon took a deep breath, his lashes still coated in tears. "I went in, and Jungkook saw me and ran over. He had...he had something he wanted to tell me. I don't know what. It wasn't important. But I told him he could tell me in the car after we got Jimin, but...I searched the whole classroom, Lis- Offi-"
"Lisa is fine."
"I searched the whole classroom, but my baby wasn't there," Namjoon said, his body shuddering with tears as he collapsed in on himself with every breath.
"Are you sure he wasn't-"
"In the building? We searched, Jungkook and I. We checked every room, all the bathrooms. It's not a big building, but we searched for half an hour. He was already gone."
"All right...can you tell me what time you got to the preschool?"
"It was 3:00 exactly, although I didn't go in until a few minutes after that to give the kids a few extra minutes to play. There's this radio show that always comes on, so I remember. Most of the preschoolers take either the morning class or the afternoon class, but my kids and a few of the other families do both just because we don't have time to take care of our kids all day. I work the night shift," he said, rubbing his face.
"Is it possible that you were tired from your shift and didn't-"
"I know what Jimin fucking looks like. He wasn't there," Namjoon snapped before sighing and dropping his face into his hands. "I'm sorry. I'm just..."
Lisa nodded. "It's fine. But tell me when you started searching and when you left?"
"I started searching right after- well..." Namjoon hesitated, looking up. "I searched the classroom for a few minutes and yelled at the teacher, problem 5 minutes total. But then Jungkook was upset because I wasn't paying enough attention to him, so I had to call him down, and that took five minutes..."
"So, if someone took your child-"
"Someone did."
"Okay, let's say someone took Jimin - if they took him after the afternoon class, they would have had a 3:00-3:05 time frame to take Jimin, since you didn't come in til a few minutes after 3, but then they also had to get out of the school unnoticed, and you were sitting in the parking lot. So 3:00-3:05 to grab Jimin, and then they hid before you came in and left while you were arguing with the teacher, so 3:05-3:10. Hypothetically. Unless..."
"Unless what?"
"Unless they took him after the morning session. But Jungkook would have noticed if Jimin went missing, right?"
Namjoon turned to look at Jungkook, who was tearing off sticky notes one by one and sticking them on Yoongi's cheeks. He wasn't full on smiling, but he wasn't as depressed as the others.
He would have, right?
Lisa took Namjoon's silence as its own answer and made up her mind. "Looks like I'm talking to Bunny Boy next."
depending on how this turns out in the next two chapters, i may alter the time skip
either by pushing it back or changing the year amount
but who knows