Jimin waited around anxiously until he heard the doorbell ring, and then he jumped up from his game with Hobi to answer the door, slightly out of breath but with a smile on his face. "H-hi," he said, smiling widely but then pulling his lips back to hide his teeth as though he weren't supposed to show his happiness. "C-come in," he said, opening the door wider, and Hyungwon nodded as he passed Jimin while Jooheon ruffled his hair.
"How have you been, Jimin?" Jooheon asked while Hyungwon took off his shoes.
"You saw him like a day ago," Hyungwon said, rolling his eyes, and Jooheon ignored his little brother.
"I'm okay," Jimin said. "A-and you? H-how are you, h-hyung?"
Jooheon glared at Hyungwon. "I'd be better if he didn't make my life so difficult," he said. "But...on the whole, I'm pretty good." Jooheon paused to look around the house. "I haven't been here in..." He trailed off before looking into the living room. "Hey, Yoongi, Hobi."
"Hey," Yoongi said, not looking up, while Hobi smiled at them.
"I'd suggest something fun, but we're not really fun people," Yoongi said, looking over finally. "And Jin's not here. Not that you two are friends anymore, but whatever."
Jooheon just nodded calmly. "I know. He's at your mom's house, right?"
Yoongi nodded, looking back at the TV, only it wasn't even turned on. "Yeah."
"Do you...do you ever wish that you guys could stay in the same house?" Hyungwon asked quietly, and Yoongi stayed still.
"That's a stupid question," he finally answered.
"Why? Because it's obvious that you want to?" Hyungwon asked, and Yoongi stood up from the couch.
"Because it's obvious that it won't happen," he snapped before going into the kitchen.
"S-sorry," Jimin apologized on Yoongi's behalf, shutting the door. "H-he gets a l-little cranky w-when he d-doesn't have his m-music."
"I'm sorry, I shouldn't have asked," Hyungwon said regretfully before sitting down in Yoongi's previous seat. "Of course you guys would all want to be together."
Jimin smiled sadly as he sat down next to Hyungwon, running his finger around the hole in the knee of Hyungwon's black jeans. "B-but it c-can't happen, not r-right now. We j-just have to wait."
"It's been years, Jimin. How long do you plan to w-"
"Enough, Hyungwon," Jooheon interrupted, sending Hyungwon a look, and Hyungwon pursed his lips before nodding and falling silent. "Jimin? Is there a movie you'd like to watch?"
"I've got one!" Hobi yelled from the other room and came running in to set up his movie of choice.
Jimin just grimaced when he saw that it was one of Tae's horror movies from their room, but he didn't stop Hobi from putting it in.
"Tae said this one was really funny," Hobi said, grinning before squeezing into the remaining space on the couch between Jimin and the end.
Jimin didn't get how a horror movie could be funny to someone, but he just stayed quiet and did his best to control his heartbeat. He'd gotten better at these sorts of things. He didn't cry or latch onto someone anymore. Instead, he just internalized his fear, holding it tightly inside of himself, feeling his muscles contract with every jump scare, his breaths coming out a little shorter than usual, but on the outside, he seemed fine.
That was the game they all played these days. How to make the outside look fine. It wasn't always a challenge. Life wasn't horrible. But Jimin's memories of a better life made the present a bit duller, a bit more painful. It meant that he had to focus on playing the game, even when he didn't want to, because he didn't want to be a burden. He knew that he'd been a burden his entire life, always crying and reaching out to the others for strength, and the one thing he'd learned from ending up in his mother's custody was that the people you love and trust won't always be there for you, even if they said they would, even if they promised, even if they crossed their heart and hoped to die.
But that was life.
Jimin got about halfway through the movie before he'd decided that he'd had enough, and he got up quietly.
"But you're going to miss the best part!" Hobi whisper-shouted, and Jimin smiled.
"S-sorry, hyung, I'll b-be right back, okay?"
Jimin left the living room and went into the bedroom they all shared. He sat on Jungkook's bed and kicked his feet back and forth, taking a deep breath in through his nose and out his mouth. It calmed him down a bit, made him feel safe. Or safer, at least. His therapist made him do it enough for it to have some effect, whether it was psychological or physiological or both.
Once his heartbeat had slowed down to normal, Jimin slowly slid off the bed, landing gently on the ground and allowing him to lean back against the frame, his legs sprawled out in front of him.
He remembered when he'd shared a room with Jungkook and Tae.
How much time had they all wasted? All those days where they were mad at each other? Those mornings when they hadn't woken each other up? Those nights quiet with petty grievances?
How different would it have been if they had known that they wouldn't always be sleeping next to each other in the room, all under the same ceiling, all just a few feet apart physically?
They were like his other half, only technically they were his other thirds, but the idea was the same. He didn't feel like he was whole without them. No amount of texting could fill that gap, and no matter how good Hobi and Yoongi were to him, they couldn't fill it, either. He felt empty. Whatever he was missing, he wasn't enough to make up for it.
Jimin sighed. He didn't like thinking about pointless things. No amount of thinking would change the situation. It was just more wasted time. But it was hard not to think when he was staring at the room they'd shared, at the dresser that used to be full of his clothes, at the ceiling he'd stared at when he hadn't been able to sleep.
Jimin sighed once more and was about to push himself up to his feet and join the others when he saw something underneath Jin's bed.
He knew he shouldn't invade Jin's privacy but this was originally Jimin's room, wasn't it? He was sort of entitled, wasn't he? And it wasn't an intrusion of privacy, it was just mere curiosity...
Jimin ignored his justifications and pulled the item out of the shadows and into the faint moonlight coming in through the window.
That's when the door to the bedroom opened and Jooheon entered, his eyes first going to Jimin and then to the object he was holding.
Jooheon hesitated before sitting down on the floor next to Jimin. "That's-"
"J-Jin's old b-backpack," Jimin finished for him, frowning.
Jooheon nodded slowly, staring at the faded pink now enshrined in dust.
Jimin opened his mouth, and Jooheon expected to hear Jimin ask why Jin had abandoned it, but Jimin's question surprised him. "Why aren't y-you and J-Jin friends anymore?"
Jooheon hesitated. He was of the belief that lying was bad, but that it could be used sometimes to make situations less painful for others. "We are, Jimin, we're just busy."
"That's a l-lie," Jimin immediately said, and Jooheon felt his stomach clench. "You t-two don't even t-talk. But why? What d-did Jin do t-to you?"
Jooheon sighed, unhappy about having to explain the complications of their fallen friendship. "It's not like that, Jimin. It's...it's not that simple."
"Then t-tell me, hyung."
"Well..." Jooheon nodded at the backpack in Jimin's hands. "It's like that. When people hurt you enough because of who you are, you have two choices: to grow stronger as who you are, or to grow weaker as someone else. You're like that too, Jimin. People are mean to you, right? Because you're different. Because they don't understand you. And you had that same choice, although maybe you didn't realize it, but you did. You could have become who they wanted you to be, someone not different, someone easy to understand, or you could have kept who you are, even if it was painful. And you did, Jimin. You're so brave and strong and I'm so proud of you but...your brother...he had a harder time. He was different too, once. Kids didn't understand him. Only instead of staying as the Jin I knew...instead of hanging onto that backpack...he became someone else. A different Jin. A Jin with a black backpack, a Jin that's the quarterback for the football team, a Jin that has so many irrelevant people around him that he can't see the ones that matter."
Jooheon let out a long breath. "I can't say that I blame him or that he's wrong. It's not necessarily the easier path because I know that he isn't happy where he is. But Jin changed the things he liked about himself into things other people liked about him, and when he did that, he changed who he was."
"Is that w-why you aren't f-friends anymore? Because he's d-different from h-how he used to b-be?"
"Not exactly...it's just..." Jooheon tilted his head to the side. "It's hard to explain. Jin used to need a friend, and I figured that I could be that friend for him. But then he made other friends, and he didn't need me anymore. I figured that if he really needed me, that he would just come back and find me, but he apparently didn't need me as much as I thought he did because he didn't come back, hasn't come back."
"And w-what about you, hyung? Do y-you need J-Jin?"
Jooheon froze up. Do I need Jin? "If Jin's happy, then I'm happy."
"B-But you said J-Jin isn't happy."
Jooheon smiled painfully before ruffling Jimin's hair. "Not everyone needs happiness, Jimin."
Jimin frowned, pushing Jooheon's hand off his head and instead holding Jooheon's hand in both of his own, running his thumb along Jooheon's knuckles. "I w-want both you and J-Jin to be happy. C-Can't you do that? C-Can't you b-be friends again? Y-You're friends w-with me, aren't y-you?"
Jooheon thought quietly for a moment. "You know, I used to think that it was my job to save you guys, you and Jin."
"S-Save us?"
"Yeah. You felt all alone, like nobody knew you, like you were struggling alone while everybody else was off living their lives. And Jin, how he used to talk to you, the imaginary you, because he needed that reassurance that you were perfectly okay. I tried to fill those holes for you guys. When you started going to school and I found you crying in the bathroom everyday, I wanted to be there for you, even though I'm older than you and you didn't know me that well. And I wanted to do the same for Jin. I wanted to be his safety net. I wanted to help him, to protect him from everyone. I thought I had to choose, you know?" Jooheon laughed humorlessly. "It was stupid of me, I guess. I thought I could only save one of you, that if I helped one of you, it would hurt the other. But it didn't matter because Jin decided he didn't need me to save him. He figured out his own way."
Jooheon blinked, staring at the shadows cast by the backpack. "Maybe I could only save one of you," he murmured. "I don't know. It made a lot more sense at the time. Now I'm just wondering if I could have done more to save Jin. But maybe he thinks he saved himself. I just-" Jooheon blew out a breath. "He doesn't look happy. Not with those people he thinks are his friends, if he even thinks of them likes that. Somehow, the more people he has around him, the emptier he looks."
Jimin looked down. "I'm s-sorry."
"Sorry? For what?"
"That y-you had to s-save me instead."
Jooheon rolled his eyes before putting an arm around Jimin's shoulders. "Don't say you're sorry. Say thank you, silly."
"Thanks f-for saving me hyung b-because if y-you didn't h-help me I think I w-wouldn't have m-made it through m-my first y-year." Jimin's voice was thick with emotion.
He remembered what Jooheon had been talking about, the days he'd spent crying in the boys' bathroom, the days when he wished everything was different, the days when he wished - and he could never tell any of his brothers about it because he knew that they'd be horrified - that maybe he'd just never have been found at the Song's house, that maybe he would have stayed there forever, that maybe he wouldn't have had to go to a public school where it felt like everybody hated him for reasons he didn't even understand.
He remembered the first day he'd seen Jooheon walk into the bathroom, having come to pick up Hyungwon after school, only to find Jimin locked in a stall.
"Remember me?" Jooheon had asked. "I'm your hyung's friend. I'm going to help you, okay?"
Jooheon didn't know what to say, but after a long silence, he finally settled on, "You're welcome, Jimin."
And the two of them stayed sitting on the floor, staring at the pink backpack until the movie in the other room had finished.