Unstablecutehoe - Here For The Fics :,)

angelic

IM LITERALLY FUCKING CRYING PLS

the way you portray the emotions in this chapter (and throughout the entire fic) was so beautifully sad and tearjerking oh my goddjsjsj😩 from the confrontation with her dad, to soomins accident, to her visiting the parks at the hospital .... ITS SO MANY MOMENTS THAT MADE MY HEART ACHE SO BAD UGHHHHSKSN😭

and although i'm still a tiny bit mad at jimin , i have to admit that the way his character arc and development were written was sooo good TO THE POINT WHERE IT GOT ME FEELING LIKE SHE SHOULD TAKE HIM BACK😫 anyways !! 😭 but i LOVE the open ending omg... it made it so much more sad and bittersweet to the point where i feel so bad for jimin PLS he knows he truly fucked up and it's hard for him to forgive himself knowing that he can't have her back. and for some reason it made me even MORE emotional, thinking of all the possibilities and what could have been for the both of them, if only he never decided to cheat ..... sighhh :////

literally one of the most beautifully sad series i ever read and i'd 100% recommend to anyone who feels like sobbing djjakskdah loved this series so much !! kinda sad now it's overrrr😭

heartburn (3)

pairing: jimin x reader

wordcount: 13k

glimpse: jimin's been yearning for the day he'd get to see you again, even if it's fleeting and from afar — who would've known that the two of you would reunite under unfortunate circumstances?

alternatively, three years have already passed since jimin emotionally cheated on you six months before your wedding.

[ the finale; continuation to part one, intermission 01, part two, intermission 02 ]

[ whole load of angst, more fluff + heartwarming moments compared to the previous parts, mentions and descriptions of car accident (neither jimin's nor oc's), blood n thoughts of death, redemption arc uh-huh, emotional growth and closure (?), major longing and yearning, the type of love no one can put into words ]

notes: at the end bc i wILL get sappy :O

as i said before, this does come from somewhere and even if this is fiction, pls read with care bc this is on the heavier side <3 fair warning that i had a lot of people come into my asks and mentions saying that they've cried so if u think that this is tOO much and you’re bawling with no breaks, pls take a breather!!

as always, lmk what you think <3 thank you to every single person who's spent their time on heartburn with me; it means the most. send in feedback n love to my askbox anytime!! | series masterlist

You have no one but yourself.

You have no one but yourself and it’s what you’ve always believed.

There is no safety net installed for you on the ground, waiting for you in the event that you fall because as much as it can’t reverse the drop you take, it’d atleast soften the blow. Would atleast erode the startling pain to have edges for it to hurt less rather than to dig into you mercilessly. Would atleast comfort you into the depths of the night that the debris from your impact, the remnants of it even, wouldn’t be carried by you alone.

You used to have no one but yourself until Jimin came.

Then came Soomin. Then came his parents. Then came the safety net of the love you’ve been deprived of yet unconsciously seeking.

Your heart clenches at the thought that just maybe by the events of this week alone, you aren’t completely alone. Separated, sure, but not alone. You’re still wanted in a sense that it makes the contentment within your ribs full. You’ve gotten numerous heartbreaking pleas and apologies and it reminds you that despite the pain of it all, you’re still needed. If you close your eyes tight enough to the point you feel pressure in your ears, if you think just hard enough, you’re required.

You’re needed.

It’s been mere days since Dr. Kim relayed your annoyingly ironic condition to you and it should only be normal that your first instinct is to put your hand on your chest at the dull phantom ache. The heartburn in your chest has always been there and it’s not fatal. It’s not meant to kill you but it merely exists within you. It’s meant there to taunt you that it’s only a measure of when it would hurt the least to the point that you feel normal. Normal enough to live with it; mundane to the point that you don’t hurt any more than you should.

The lack of warmth on your sides and the grasp of what it feels like to be at home; they remind you that even underneath high ceilings, against expensive cushions, and amongst structured flowers that should radiate familiarity — at the end of today and all the tomorrows you could bring yourself to think of, you have no one but yourself.

“Where does it hurt?”

You haven’t noticed at all that your dad’s been staring at the side of your face the entirety of the time you’ve been here because all that you’ve done is to stay still. You’ve detached yourself to the point you’ve forgotten you’re even in his house, one that you’ve only stepped foot in for the first time in your life. You don’t notice the way that despite being a man who carries so much gravitas with him everywhere he goes, with you, he looks scared. He looks delicate and is even more delicate with how he handles you (if he’s even doing that or he just thinks so), reminding him at every second how he barely knows his own daughter.

It’s only been a week after everything.

The first day was when you were discharged from the hospital and Jungkook personally flew you back home, keeping his eye on you ever so often that he’s startled some of the passengers at the sight of their uniformed first officer repeatedly exiting out of the cockpit with wide and wandering eyes. Taehyung was only a little bit worried when you had to turn down the opportunity of having a private plane all to yourselves for the sake of appeasing Jungkook, but he understands wholeheartedly how startling it must’ve been for the guy at first.

The second day was when you filed for temporary medical leave from the company to your father himself, having to barely skim your letter and attached results before signing his name on it. In fact, the both of you knew that you had no idea if you wanted to continue working in the first place and the whole situation is as good as handling in your resignation letter. Everything that’s happened is abrupt and out of all the people you wouldn’t gauge why and how — your dad understands and doesn’t push you further.

The third through the sixth was when you kept yourself at your new apartment, the one that’s slightly too big for only one of you. It’s lived in judging by the somehow comfortable clutter you have going all over the place, and it reminds you that you did live a life before Jimin. You’ve indulged yourself in nothing besides rest you haven’t had in so long, barely even opening your phone throughout, going so far as to put it in one of your kitchen cabinets.

You have time and it’s all for yourself with no one to wait for or wonder what time they’re coming home. There is time and you’re the only one privy to it, not having to worry if it would still be you the next day.

The twenty-five years you’ve lived don’t feel like they belong to you at all. The time feels like it’s been borrowed and doesn’t stop, not even once, for you. It keeps ticking away and you’ve only spent most of it thinking about what you could do for the next time you hear it click in your mind, no pause in-between.

You feel like they don’t belong to you at all because it feels as if you’ve lived for everyone but yourself. You used to live for the younger version of you, resembling a hollow glass sculpture of who’s supposed to be your inner child; your inner child that doesn’t remember what it’s like to be tucked to bed or kissed goodnight.

You used to live for the future phantom of you, what could’ve been you if only you are exactly the child that your father wanted. You’ve lived through thousand of hours being exactly what he wanted you to be, remembering the short-lived gratificiation you’ve felt when he was the one that pinned your wings and your shoulderboards despite loathing them.

You used to live for Jimin, the one you love or atleast loved the most. It’s beyond futile to deny that he’s the one who occupies your mind the most despite weeks having passed. For all the people you’ve lived for, your time with him is the on you’ve felt yourself the most. It feels as if living for him is the extension of living for your own, not having felt once through the better part of it all that being with him is an obligation you just needed to fulfill.

It’s been seven days since you got discharged.

Today’s the seventh day and it’s when your father called you asking if he could see you, picked you up, and drove the two of you to his house that’s too big to be occupied alone.

You know him for his wealth. One of the distinct things you know your own father for is his material, tangible, and unmistakable wealth. You don’t know him for his love. Don’t know him for his cooking or his quirky hobbies. Don’t know him that much for anything besides his wealth because it’s only one of few things he’s reminded you of with the presence.

For the rare and handful family portraits that you have, it’s evident just how much money he has. He’s clad in unmistakably expensive suits that Taehyung’s very own clothes do not stand a chance against them. For the choreographed poses by the photographer, his hand would either be on your mother’s shoulder or on your own but the most noticeable part of it would be the watch on his wrist, standing out even in black and white photos. He’s a tall man — a tall man with an even taller stack of money for his own disposal anytime, the type to have a problem with wallets because he has too much.

“Where does it hurt?” your father asks and you blank at it, not a stray glance to his side of the couch.

He doesn’t know you. You don’t know if he knows you’re hurting or if it’s an extremely lucky guess. Does he know your habits? Does he know when you’ll cry and how should he hold you if you actually do? Does he know your hurt and how it extends further than he could think of?

You don’t know him. He doesn’t know if you know that he’s been making conscious efforts. Don’t know him enough to know that the wrinkles he has aren’t from age but from these past few years alone when he’s rediscovered you after graduation. Don’t know him enough to tell that he wakes up in cold sweats out of guilt more oftenly with the thoughts that he could’ve raised you better. Do you know how he’s worried sick, yet you can’t tell if he’s lying because you can’t discern the look on his face?

It’s been too long. Far too long that you don’t even recognize your own blood and flesh.

“I’m not hurting.”

His mouth dries, his face softening as he grasps his hands.

“You don’t need to lie to me.”

He makes you clench your jaw and it’s the most emotion you’ve felt the whole week. You think you wouldn’t be bitter anymore given the years that have passed. That you’ve long accepted your fate and yet when he says it like this, in a way that makes you think for a single second that he knows you enough to know that you’re lying, you think that you’ve never moved on in the first place.

“You didn’t need to make me grow up alone so quickly by myself.”

You realize that you were young — you were too young to go through such hurt you shouldn’t have felt in the first place. Your father cheated multiple times, that one was never under wraps. Your mother was emotionally unavailable, obviously evident how she smiles harder at a newly-bought bag rather than your nanny telling her that you’ve memorized the multiplication table.

It was either one parent at a time or none at all. They were together and yet they’re absent. Neither of them are martyrs, that much you know. Your mother’s had enough and you don’t blame her for it. You’re not mad that she prioritized herself, isolating you in the process. You’re not mad that she kept staying the night away until she eventually left completely.

“And I regret everything I’ve ever done and didn’t do,” your father’s been hoping for an interaction with you, no matter how explosive it could be. He’s been waiting patiently to prepare himself for the hurt and yet he didn’t anticipate that it would hurt this much. That even his own words feel so far-fetched if he takes everything into consideration. “I-I want to fix my relationship with you, dear.”

The endearment reminds you of Mr. and Mrs. Park but the words feels different coming from him compared to them.

The way they say it is fluid. It’s natural. It’s warm and sounds like endearment in its rawest form.

The way your father says it is foreign. It’s unnatural and unsettling. It’s stale and feels like contaminated and bitter honey on your fingertips.

“And part of it is becoming honest.”

“What’re you gonna tell me now?” you quietly fumble with your fingers, soft tone reflecting his. “That you can’t come home for dinner? That your layover’s taking longer than usual?”

It’s quiet. It’s unnerving. It’s completely silent and it should be, given how there are years of unresolved tension from his side alone before it’s combined with yours.

Your father’s uneasy and he doesn’t know if he even deserves to be uncomfortable of the truth that’s caught on the base of his throat.

A mere fact he’s known all this time and yet it’s only know that he has trouble digesting it, hurt to know that if this pains him this much, he can’t even begin to imagine yours.

He should be honest to you. He should bare everything that he’s never said to you simply because he owes you transparency in a way he can’t even fathom.

Thinks once, twice.

He knows you’re hurting but he doesn’t know the entirety of why. Doesn’t know what you’ve been going through but he wishes he did. He knows it’s selfish of him but if only you could let him in as much as he’s doing now, even if laying down the truth on you is far too belated.

“You have a brother, Y/N.”

For a moment, he regrets it.

Would you have been better off not knowing? If he does you good by letting you know, he regrets that he’s said this now.

Should’ve been more thoughtful. Should’ve been considerate. You’re hurting and yet he lays down what he assumes is as explosive as a bomb to you only a week after your discharge. He should’ve been a responsible father; he should’ve been a lot of things.

“What do you mean?” you swallow to remind yourself that your voice is caught on your throat but it doesn’t feel like your own. You don’t recognize your own. “I’m an only child.”

This shouldn’t be far-fetched. Your father sleeps around and it shouldn’t be a surprise that someone’s a product of it. Someone you’re unfamiliar with but shares the same blood as you do when you grew up thinking that you were alone.

You should’ve expected something or atleast someone from your father but you don’t know why it hurts this much. Why it hurts this much even if you’ve been long bracing yourself for the impact you think would hit you anytime — just not this.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers out, unable to look you in the eyes for all the reasons available. “Y-you have a half-brother.”

“Who came first?” the question plays out in your mind, something you want to know further because you know for a fact that you have nothing else to lose. “Me or him?”

Whatever the answer may be, it shouldn’t hurt significantly more than you’re hurting now. His silence is your confirmation. The weight of the world feels like it’s perched on your shoulders and you don’t know how you’ve managed to stay still all this time, the sudden realization making you conscious of the weight tenfold.

“Were you already married to her at the time?”

“Yeah.”

You’ve never been alone. Your brother came before you and yet you’re the one who’s supposed to be the first and only of your parents. They were already broken even before your came along. You’ve grown up alone and you had the opportunity not to.

You’re mad at your dad. For being an adulterer and having a kid. Did he ever take care of him? Did he ever take the responsibility? Or is it only you that grew up by yourself in this way?

You’re mad at your half-brother. It wasn’t his fault to be born and not once had tried to wiggle his way into your family. You would’ve hated him if he did but you would’ve loved the companionship. His presence alone would remind you, or the younger version of you if only you knew earlier, that you’re not alone.

You’re mad at your mother for never stepping up to be one. The more forgiving part of you thinks it’s irrational because maybe she never wanted to be one in the first place but it shakes you to your core. Maybe, just maybe, it was better to have lived in a lifetime other than this even if it forsakes anything and anyone you’ve ever lived for.

You were born into walls that were already loveless, and if there was love in the first place, it’s long been tainted and out of your reach.

“I’m sorry for everything.”

it’s pathetic for him to apologize and the both of you know it. It’s said out of formality and yet it seems impossible to practice it in actuality.

“You don’t need to apologize.”

He’s crying and he hiccups to see you still. Just as still as how you came here and as still as you remain to be.

“I should be used to hurting.”

You need a change of scenery, that much you know.

You need a change of everything; you’re no longer in the place you want to be.

You want to protect yourself; build your own safety net by the own reservations you make.

For today and all the tomorrows you could think of as far, you have no one but yourself.

THREE YEARS LATER

Soomin is twenty-one.

She’s grown-up well as what a lot of people have told her and praised her, either to her face or to her family or even in the occasional DM she’d get from people she barely knows now.

She’s beautiful, that’s what people tell her a lot. Often does she get complimented in the same breath as her older brother but she isn’t affected by it now, seeing how it makes sense that she’s pretty but she looks so much like him that she can’t deny her resemblance to Jimin. They practically have the same features but how they differ is their own charm, Jimin being the one who’s more outgoing and charismatic type while Soomin’s the more reserved yet loving type.

She’s smart too, that’s what her grades and professors tell her. She’s a dean lister and a full scholar. People come to her if they need help, almost rarely the other way around. She’s studious and yet she doesn’t let the knowledge of her being better get to her head; consistent enough to know what she’s capable enough, but never boastful of what she possesses.

Soomin feels like she should have it all with the way people praise her. It should elate her infinitely but she doesn’t know why it makes her uncomfortable to receive so much of it, genuinely confused if she even deserves it all.

She’s too poised to be as graceful, a have-it-all, that she feels pressured. Unworthy, even.

She’s stuck to the same routine she feels like she’s always had. Always been in a hurry to go home to be in the comfort of her house’s warmth as soon as the bell rings, making up excuses to turn down any extra responsibilities and commitments that keep her away from home. In fact, her parents encourage her to go out with her friends and of the like, but she finds no need for it. She has her home, that much is enough.

It was enough during those times.

She feels like she’s been wearing the same clothes for years. Some are hand-me-downs from Jimin that she exchanges using as her going-out clothes and as her pajamas. The colors in her closet don’t adhere to the people she knows that has an exact outfit for every occasion. Even opening her cabinets don’t feel as joyous as what she feels when she opens her friends’, being so used to seeing the same old garments.

It didn’t bother her when she was younger.

She feels like she’s had the same hair for years. The same haircut in the same natural color. The occasional long curtain bangs and side pieces she does herself that grows out before she even notices. She feels unlike herself yet she wears the same skin everyday but she doesn’t know which one of the two should she alter.

Soomin feels like she’s changed.

She’s smart and pretty and she doesn’t feel like she’s any of those things. She’s sensible and calculating but she no longer wants to.

She’s been the same person her whole life and it makes her want to grip her hair because nothing seems to ground her anymore — not even the same praises from people who preach her for being exactly who she is and has always been, making her loathe herself altogether.

Soomin is twenty-one when she lets go and no longer wants to think of the consequences, even if it’s just this one night.

She didn’t have to sneak out of the house because she tells her parents that she’s going out and according to her knowledge, they were the one who’s been encouraging her to do so all this time. She didn’t sneak out and yet it feels like at it with the way they gawk at her, soon picking up their jaws from the floor as they bid her goodbye with kisses on her cheek.

She didn’t feel guilty when she loaned a dress from her new blockmate, the one that has more skin, the one that’s more unlike her.

She didn’t feel apologetic when she comes into the already-noisy club as a part of her own crowd, most of them her newfound friends from this semester and a couple of their own plus-ones.

Soomin lets herself become reckless as she downs shot after shot and has enough to realize that she’s not a lightweight, much like how Jimin brags to be, but she definitely feels the kick and burn within her body.

She lets herself become curious when she’s offered a joint and politely takes one puff of it before passing it around in to the next one in the circle she doesn’t even realize she’s included in, happy enough to know that she doesn’t stick out that much.

She lets people bump into her without scowling at them. Lets guys put their hands on the small of her back as the most she’s done is roll her eyes at them playfully and giggling, not going any further than that.

She realizes that perhaps, it’s more fun and liberating to be this way. To not be as smart or as rational like how she strives to be at all times. She looks out for herself, of course, but not so much to the point that fending for her safety and wellbeing in a club as packed and busy as this become her main priority because if it was, she would already be coming home sober.

She’s not entirely comfortable, but she feels happy.

She’s not entirely okay with the scene of it all, but her stomach feels full and her cheeks are hurting from smiling.

Soomin lets the night be.

She lets whatever’s supposed to happen, happen. She hops on flow after flow until it comes to a stop, letting that halt become her limitation for the night.

And it does halt.

It does halt when the car she’s riding in screeches and skids, the sudden ringing in her ears and the pounding in her chest coming to her senses first before she realizes what’s happened.

Soomin is twenty-one when she feels like she’s dying.

Her mind goes out to her parents, on how they’d cope if she dies and who’d look out for them since it’s been years since Jimin moved out.

Her mind goes out to Jimin, on how he’d ever smile if she passes away at the very second.

To you, on how you’d take the news of her possible death as she’s your little sister figure, if you still think of her as such, and how you’d react.

To Miso, who’s settled into their home two years ago. Who will feed her? Who will she cuddle up to? Will she notice her absence?

To all the momentary figures she’s ever met that she serves as a passing recollection to. The childhood friends she invited a couple times to the first few birthdays of her life. The seatmates she’s had and the people she’s lent pencils to. The people she’s smiled to and thanked — will they light a candle for her?

Soomin is twenty-one when she cries while she bleeds because she doesn’t want to suffer alone.

( ♡ )

Jimin is twenty-nine.

He is twenty-nine when he realizes that he has no grand plans for his future, not even the faintest idea of it at bay.

He no longer thinks about his next big purchase or anything that’s bigger than the last thing he’s achieved. He doesn’t keep track of his aspirations because he learns that he barely has any for the far future. There’s no lists nor planners because one of the only things that reminds Jimin he’s still living for tomorrow are the emails that he sends himself that would act as his schedule for the next day.

Jimin stopped having grand plans since three years ago.

He has had no grand plans ever since you, three years ago.

He has no grandiose outline for his future and it’s the truth yet he feels empty when someone asks him about it, just either dismissing with a laugh or answering directly. Either way, he’d get looks of worry and pity and he hates being on the receiving end of them, which is why the phrase he uses now when asked is that he has no plans for the future yet since he’s present-oriented.

He’s present-oriented because the only thing in his mind is what he could order that can be considered as dinner from this newly-opened cafe that Yoongi wanted to check out and invite him to in the process.

It was weird enough that they’re eating dinner at a cafe and even more-so being in one at night when they’re actually looking for a meal, but it would suffice. Yoongi and him haven’t hung out outside of a work for quite some time, even if they spend almost everyday with each other at work.

Yoongi and him are alright. Not the best, but clearly better than how they used to be.

Yoongi was mad at him for the better part of three years and Jimin doesn’t blame him for it and in fact, his friend’s loathing for him afterwards was what grounded him. Humbled him, even. Months after the two of you were over, he could have a vaguely good day in which his lips turned into the faintest hint of a smile and all it takes is one look at Yoongi’s scowl for him to remember that he has little to no reason at all.

They were rocky, even more of a miracle that Yoongi didn’t break off his friendship with Jimin completely. He was one of the top people in his list that he apologized sincerely to, knowing that he had hurt him by his extension over what he did to you.

When Yoongi had caught news of your incident, he practically cried himself to sleep because out of all the people he knew, you should be the last person to even go through immeasurable pain after immeasurable pain. He recalls learning the news through Soomin, then seeing Jimin the same afternoon of, decking him hard enough to make him stumble back, before he turned in early and cried himself to sleep.

Especially during the first few months, they wouldn’t exactly fight — how it would go is that Yoongi would raise his voice to Jimin and the latter accepts it all, not even defending himself because he knows that he wasn’t in the right in the first place.

He would be antagonizing him further and Yoongi only felt minimal guilt in doing so. He would mumble snide comments under his breath whenever he’s near him, barely having to look at the younger’s guy down-set eyes to know that he’s heard him loud and clear.

Would be petty at times too. There were more than a couple times that he snatched Jimin’s phone whenever he wasn’t looking and would hide it, although it conflicted him when Jimin doesn’t even bother looking for it and goes home without it; he probably doesn’t even realize with the way he’s detached even from even his own self.

The two of them are still friends. There’s been a shift between them for sure but they’re still brothers to a degree, no doubt stemming from their synergy in and out of their studios.

Their cafe dinner is Yoongi’s idea and Jimin could now clearly see why when he puts down the menu and his friend’s still looking at it when normally, it would only take him a second to skim before choosing.

“We should open another business venture.”

The abruptness of words that come out of Yoongi’s mouth makes Jimin chuckle, putting his arms across his chest as he tilts his head.

“What are you talking about?” he squints, pouting while he counts with his fingers. “We signed five deals in this week alone.”

Yoongi’s had this idea in his mind for the longest time. Technically he could do it all by his own but he finds it hard to do it himself, now that he knows how much success he’s gotten just by pitching the idea of a small run-down studio to Jimin back when they were college students.

They’re friends. They’re practically brothers. If Yoongi had to pitch the most ridiculous business deal to a person to save him from a life-and-death situation in less than two minutes and get approval and support, it would be Jimin.

“Believe me, I know that,” he murmurs as he turns his face to the side, blocking the girl who’s been taking pictures of them for the entire fifteen minutes that they’ve been here. “But we can’t do this gig forever, y’know?”

Jimin solemnly nods, looking at his shoes as he becomes honest, tapping his fingers rhythmically on the table.

“I do. I just can’t think that far ahead to see the future where we aren’t producers anymore.”

Yoongi completely disregards Jimin’s reply to him, nodding and squinting as he knows he’d get him to budge sometime these days.

“I’m thinking of a cafe. It’d look so cozy and shit, it’d be sick.”

“Nice,” he snorts, leaning back to his chair lazily. “We only have a million other cafes to compete with in this block alone.”

“Oh yeah? Let’s hear what your idea is then.”

Yoongi challenges, internally excited because he’s gonna get Jimin to talk and open up eventually into agreeing. He’d be open to suggestions, sure, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he’d be accepting them.

“I do want to start something eventually,” Jimin relents much to his dismay, leaning forward to get his phone that’s vibrating from his back pocket. “I just don’t know what it is yet.”

Yoongi deadpans and is told to hold his thoughts as Jimin’s eyes skim to his phone to see an unknown number ringing him up, accepting it but not talking first in case it would just be a crazed fan of his work.

The impatience plastered on Yoongi’s face disappears soon enough the moment he sees Jimin’s features shift into something that’s heartbreakingly similar.

Something so heart-dropping.

Jimin is twenty-nine when he feels the paralyzing heartburn in his chest again that spreads all the way to the tips of his fingers.

Soomin.

Car accident.

Hospital.

Unconscious.

( ♡ )

Mr. and Mrs. Park aren’t holding up well at all.

Jimin’s dad quit smoking two and a half years ago but he feels like his lungs are caving, his eyes automatically tearing up to see his daughter in a hospital bed that looks far too foreign underneath her.

He’s tried his best to make her feel okay, ringing up the front desk politely even if he’s heaving with tears to get her what she likes. Mr. Park too utmost care in putting pillows on either side of Soomin because even when she was a kid, she wanted to be surrounded when she slept. Wanted to have a barrier so that ghosts and monsters wouldn’t reach her while she slept, the fluffy casings enough to ward them away.

Soomin’s just sleeping. She’s just asleep and tired, only this time it’s not on her bed. He wants to protect her so bad from anything that could harm her and yet he didn’t manage to protect her last night, blaming it on himself even it what happened to her isn’t within in his control.

She hasn’t been sickly nor took even a single trip to the hospital even when she was young. She was eager as a baby to take all her vitamins and didn’t loathe them just like how her older brother did. When she was learning to ride the bike, she didn’t get fussy when her dad put on every piece of protective gear he could look for, and in fact, she encouraged it even.

She has an umbrella in her bag even if the weather report didn’t say it would rain because she hates getting sick; hates feeling helpless even if it’s just a cold that makes her sinuses blocked and her head heavy. She lays to rest when her eyes strain during studying because she’d hate to pour in all the effort, only to feel the starting effects of a fatigue-induced fever the next day.

Soomin has a couple of bruises and a cast. There’s a stitch on the side of her forehead. There’s darkness underneath her eyes and she doesn’t look at peace now that she sleeps. Without those, she looks perfectly fine.

Jimin’s mom has yearly check-ups with excellent results but now she feels sick from her bones within. Her knees want to give out as if they’ve never been alright before, bearing the weight that her heart carries. This is the time that she truly feels gravity — heavy as it sinks her down to her knees and she can’t get up because the pull is simply too powerful.

Soomin doesn’t like seeing her cry. The two of them would fight the most and yet even if their arguments would get out of hand sometimes and doors would be slammed, Soomin makes sure to peek at her mom before she goes to sleep, draping a handkerchief on the doorknob for her to wipe her tears with.

She’s the closest to Soomin, not even denying when Jimin teases her about it.

Mrs. Park hurts when she sees Soomin hurt. Her heart clenches whenever she sees her daughter staring off into space with the emptiest look on her eyes, shaking it off away when she asks her if she’s okay. Her chest tightens when she knows that she can’t relieve Soomin from her pain that she doesn’t even know because she won’t tell.

Soomin doesn’t like being a burden to her family. She doesn’t want to be deadweight because she already feels guilty when her dad urges her to just get Jimin’s share of dinner if she wants more; even if it’s her brother, her family, and what family does.

Mrs. Park practically collapses on his son’s arms with how weighed-down she feels, crying to his shoulder.

“What do we do, Jimin?”

Jimin drove himself as fast as he could and yet nothing could ever prepare him for the sight of Soomin sleeping, seemingly unharmed without her few injuries but it pains him twice as much.

His sister means the world to him.

Seeing her sleeping in pain is what shakes him to the center of his gravity, holding his mother out of muscle reflex and yet he feels vacant, the words leaving him in genuine disarray.

“I-I don’t know.”

Jimin carries the weight of his parents on his arms and Soomin’s on his heart as he watches, standing in the middle of the room as he looks at them, at her.

He thought he’d never get to feel this pain again in his life and yet he doesn’t know that his hurt lasts and extends for more than a lifetime, his own tears streaming as he shakes his head repeatedly.

“I don’t know.”

Soomin’s the first person that made Jimin become a better person growing up. He hated the concept of her when he was eight years old because he thought his parents’ attention would only be on him. He’s fared for 8 years more than okay and now his parents tell him that he’s gonna have a baby sister? His mind was of a literal child’s at the time and was selfish, yet the moment his uncle drove him over to the hospital where his mom gave birth and his dad stood watch, he understood.

The moment his mom beckons him to sit beside her on the bed to hold Park Soomin, his baby sister, in what his arms could scoop up — he understood loyalty.

Jimin understood loyalty when he promised to himself that he’d never let anyone nor anything harm Soomin the moment she came into the world.

He served as great help to their parents as he practically had to shoo them just so he could give Soomin her bottle, making sure to elevate her head and support her neck. He was the one who adjusted the hot water to make sure it wouldn’t make her shriek, even if it meant undergoing through a series of trial and error just to give her a bath.

He would gather his allowance every week and eat from his friend’s lunchboxes to buy Soomin a red toy because he’s heard once that it was good for a baby’s sensory and cognitive skills. Jimin would boast about her to everyone in his homeroom class, barely even cleaning up the floors as he rushes home because he yells that his sister needs him, definitely classifying her baby babble as her signal for looking for her older brother.

Just like when she was a baby, through her toddler and teenage years, Jimin watches over her like a hawk. He’s urged his parents to atleast get something to eat downstairs to distract themselves even for a little while, making sure to call them even if his instincts feel that his little sister’s bound to wake up soon.

He’s hurt but he prioritizes her hurt first, doing everything at once while she sleeps to get to the bottom of things.

Soomin wakes up exactly at the moment her entire family is there, looking down on her with teary yet awaiting eyes.

“Hi.”

She croaks, immediately being replaced with a broken giggle when she hears the collective sigh of relief from her family.

She’s groggy. Maybe it’s the grogginess. Maybe it’s the pain.

It’s only normal that she feels disoriented because she was in a car accident merely hours ago and it’s the crack of dawn at the moment.

She does a mental headcount, clocking everyone in.

Her mom’s standing next to her dad on her left side. Her brother’s standing on her right.

They watch her intensely as they’re about to ask what’s going on in her mind, choosing to know her thoughts before asking her what had happened as they wait for the doctor and the official report.

“Where’s my sister?”

Soomin asks definitively as her head whips arounds, peering into the corners of her hospital room, oblivious to how her family reacts.

“I saw Y/N awhile ago,” she says it to herself more than she says it to them, tilting her head in confusion in a pout. “I swear.”

She asks again as the doctor comes in. She’s confused as to why her family looks like they’re seeing ghosts — how Jimin hasn’t left his spot once in confusion unlike their parents, how not a single hair on him is out of place but he’s dematerializing from the inside out.

“Where’s my sister?”

( ♡ )

Yoongi’s mind is running on nothing but concern and secondhand panic.

The moment Jimin left the cafe abruptly without even a mumbled excuse as to why, he could feel it in his bones that it was serious. An emergency that Jimin can never pass up on with the way his movements are similar, in the same way that he moved when your incident had happened.

The food’s long-forgotten because it only takes Yoongi a total of three seconds before he dashes out of the door to chase after Jimin, worried at the way he’s panicked and how he knows his friend would absolutely stop at nothing, fearing for his safety even if he doesn’t the context of why he’s in this state at all.

He tailed him all the way as he tries to catch up with Jimin’s speed, his hazard lights on as he switches from lane to lane, honking excessively to clear the path all the way to the front for Jimin, his instincts settling faster than his reason.

Yoongi has a bad feeling in his gut in the same way that he’d experience when he’s watched Jimin waste himself away due to his own faults. His friend’s long changed and this situation just felt different, different in the sense that he’s entirely frazzled with the way he’s erratic.

Yoongi just follows Jimin inside the hospital, stopping when he walks through the room with no hesitance and Yoongi realizes that Jimin must not have even noticed that he tailed him in the first place, staying rooted on the ground as he waits outside the door.

All he needed was a faint glimpse inside at the flash of the door swinging open and shutting closed, two figures that he knows so well and the sound of heartbreak, one figure lying on the hospital bed.

Soomin.

He could only piece what he had seen but it’s enough to get his mind running and his heart hurting at the thought, his ears unable to block out the sounds of Jimin’s parents cries even if the door has long been closed.

What Yoongi does is wait.

What he does is be there for Jimin.

It’s been an hour since he’s been waiting from outside the room; he doesn’t know for what or for whom. He saw Mr. and Mrs. Park leave once but they don’t recognize him as they’re clearly preoccupied in hurting as what it seems like. He keeps steady watch of the door as he watches the two of them rushingly come back to it again not a full hour later, taking a glimpse once more.

He could only hope Jimin’s okay.

This time it’s different and yet Yoongi isn’t too sure that he wouldn’t throw himself away just like the last time something as grave as this happened.

Jimin walks out of the room and straight to where he sat with no questions asked, breaking down beside Yoongi as he cries for no end.

His sobs are stuck on his throat and his fingers are trembling, shaking even more when they do nothing on stopping the barrage of tears from his eyes. He explains as he heaves, a gentle hand on his back for him to take his own pace on telling him what happened.

He stays like that for the longest time until Yoongi could hear his throat cracking but he wouldn’t stop sniffling, eyes already burning out of pressure.

“Atleast drink some water.”

He nudges him as Jimin’s head is too heavy that he rested it on his shoulder, shaking a bottle of water right in front of his face that’s meant with no interaction.

The water isn’t the problem; it doesn’t even amount to anything against the elephant of the room that he dances around, skipping by it as his only intention was to tell Yoongi what happened to relieve the pain on his chest and for nothing else.

“You should call her, Jimin.”

Yoongi addresses it while Jimin’s the least hysterical he’s been for the past hour, suddenly feeling the weight from his shoulder being relieved as he shot straight up.

His eyes are bloodshoot and every bit of him hurts but he shakes his head no, closing his eyes as he swallows the lump on his throat.

“No.”

The doctor said it was only temporary. All the necessary and precautionary tests have been done, not one result pointing to the possibility that yielded to amnesia or severe trauma.

Soomin knows all the important dates in history. She knows when her parents were married, when Jimin was born, and her own birthday. She knows all the schools she’s been to and even their chants. She knows what’s the color of their family car and breezed through the question what color was the wainscoting in their house because it didn’t have any. Soomin knows what happened, albeit blurry in a sense.

“It’s just a false memory. Soomin’s still hazy,” the doctor explains kindly at the revelation that Soomin, in fact, does not have a sister. He’s been made aware in a short explanation that the name Y/N she kept looking for is her brother’s ex, nodding in understanding. “The fog in her mind will clear up eventually.”

It’s brain fog, something completely normal after an accident like hers. Her mind’s jumbled and clouded and bears difficulty in differentiating reality, but it’s only for now.

It went as far as the doctor suggesting his professional assumption, unaware that he hit home unknowingly.

“This sister of hers probably has been a coping mechanism for Soomin when she was waiting for help, detailing to how she even saw her, not unless she was physically there awhile ago. Maybe the sister she speaks of was the last person in her mind before she passed out, and she’s looking for her now that she’s awake.”

Jimin didn’t know what to do when he had heard the doctor.

Jimin doesn’t know now what to do when Yoongi, out of all the people he’d least expect to push him into contacting you, is practically begging him.

“We’re talking about Soomin, Jimin.”

“I know.”

He knows how you love her entirely, separately from him.

Knows how you would’ve loved her as a little sister even if you hadn’t even met him.

“I don’t want her to be tied up to me,” he shakes his head somberly, fiddling with his fingers as he lays his head back on Yoongi’s shoulder. “I don’t want her to feel obligated.”

Jimin knows it’s for the best. This would be the best. His guilt can’t bear stringing you along once again even if it’s indirect, refusing to come to you and barge in as if he had the right to do so; as if you’re indebted to him and he had the right to demand you to do one more thing for him.

“She doesn’t owe anything to me.”

“Even if Soomin needs her?”

Yoongi’s frustrated because out of all the times that he knew Jimin would want to see you, be with you, and now that he has a chance to do so even if the intention is not for his own appeasement — Jimin refuses.

“Because I’m Soomin’s brother at the end of the day,” he taps on his knee in succession, inhaling once after every rotation. “And it feels beyond wrong to invite my ex that I cheated on, because my sister needs her.”

He doesn’t want to do you any more wrongs.

“It would be too selfish of me — of us.”

You’re a casualty of fate, a victim of coincidence — he doesn’t want you to be any of those.

Jimin doesn’t want to hurt you any longer, even if it’s at the expense of his sister who’d benefit from seeing you. Even if it’s at the benefit of Soomin who means the world to him, as long as he won’t get to hurt the one who encompasses his own universe.

He says it with conviction even if it feels heavy and uneasy, trying to convince himself more than he’s convincing Yoongi.

“Soomin will be okay.”

( ♡ )

You’re twenty-nine.

You are twenty-nine when you realize that you no longer want to draw the bigger picture; that you find no interest in stepping back from your canvas to see the wall that it’s hung on simply because you expect nothing to wait for you to change it.

You’re twenty-nine when you wholeheartedly admit that you refrain from having commitments and avoid them until you no longer feel the guilt when you avoid groupchats and take different seats to avoid conversation.

The three years that passed have treated you well someway somehow.

You left almost everything you’ve ever had but not everyone, not finding the heart within you to abandon them entirely.

Taehyung’s still in your life, a vital part at that. He knows your dad offered you a whole wad of money you can use to live your lifetime and still have some extra left when you handed in your official letter of resignation. At the same vein, he knows that you declined the offer.

He’s offered you the job that mixes in both of the only two you’ve ever had, only having to do it a few times but still with the gusto he thinks would suffice and it did, it does.

You’re his company’s pilot, tasked to be on-call to fly his family’s private jet when the need arises. Could be for Taehyung himself for business purposes, or if his parents simply just want to have a vacation. Could be for some of their executives that need to fly in and secure deals, could be for holiday destinations that Taehyung plans in-detail for months on end.

It’s only a few times a month, the added hours not even the same length of a week’s hours when you were a commercial pilot. The pay is good, the boss is good, and even the end of the day is good.

Jungkook remains in your life too, the whole reason why you have somewhere you can call home after you abruptly left yours. He was due to move out anyway and after knowing your entire situation, he was more than eager to rent out his apartment to you. It was purely luck that he even accepted your payment for your first month of renting because you feel like his family and he shouldn’t charge family, but you insisted nonetheless.

He was willing to drop almost everything to join you at Taehyung’s company in order to be your co-pilot, willing to leave everything he’s made progress because having you as his captain is better than any hours he’d get.

Of course you denied, making him stay at the company where he is and has been in longer than you were — you did resign, but not without handing in your letter of recommendation to promote Jungkook as captain to your father, calling it in as a favor that he immediately granted.

Yoongi, most importantly, is still with you.

You both know that he wouldn’t drop neither friendships with you or Jimin and it doesn’t bother you, knowing that his loyalty for either one of you doesn’t change his moral compass towards what happened in the first place.

You’ve seen him a couple times for the past three years and although it’s significantly less than how the two of you used to hang out before all this, what matters to you is that he’s still here with you.

You meet up with Yoongi tonight, insisting to treat him to dinner as your advance birthday present to him. You’ve talked about it weeks prior, reckoning how he’s been looking forward to it the whole time.

The two of you have never stopped being friends — you know him.

You know him when something’s plaguing his mind, a look of unease on his features that he would always have difficulty in trying to hide.

The two of you have been here for the past half hour and yet it’s only been you who’s touched the food, finally breaking into asking him rather than waiting for him to speak.

Yoongi’s pupils tremble, tilting his head as he gauges the fact that you’ve been easy this whole time because you’re clueless.

“He hasn’t told you?”

You know who he is and it settles a bitter taste in your mouth, the iron washing away when you find it in Yoongi’s eyes that he’s not just saying anything to fuck with your mind or anything of the sort.

His eyes are strangely familiar with the same heartburn you’ve felt three years ago, only this time it’s much different.

“I’m honest, Y/N,” he whispers under his breath, looking down on the floor to avoid your curious gaze. “I’m sorry.”

He doesn’t know if he’s at the right place to do this but he knows it would be wrong if god forbid anything happens to either of the people he cares about, right with the knowledge that he could’ve atleast done something.

“I-I don’t know if or how I should tell you either but it’s just,” he shakily exhales, making eye contact with you to which all he gets is the hurt in your eyes, all too familiar to him. “I’m honest.”

You listen even if the hurt persists in your chest, unknowing of the ache that’ll settle when Yoongi opens his mouth next.

“Soomin got into an accident.”

( ♡ )

The hurt you feel in your chest is unlike any pain you’ve ever experienced before.

The pain of it sticks to your skin before it penetrates your heart, leaving a trail of discomfort in its wake. It feels as if the pain is materialized into something heavy that sits on your chest proudly, making you claw at it and look down only to see nothing.

Soomin was once your family, the mildly irrational part of the back of your head confirming that she still is. She’s your personification of a sibling even before you knew you had one; even before you knew the true concept of family and how it’s harsh and unforgiving as much as it’s portrayed to be gentle and loving.

She’s the only Park Soomin you’ll ever know.

Eating dinner with Yoongi is the least of your priorities now that he’s dropped the truth on you out of nowhere, a fresh truth that merely happened just two days ago that it hasn’t even begun scabbing at the edges.

You wonder if she’s hurt.

Wondering if Soomin is hurt puts a knot on your stomach because you remember her cries when she was thirteen, recalling that it was only your third time coming over at Jimin’s family home when you hear her shriek. The two of you barely knew each other by then and yet it was only the third meeting that you saw her genuinely hurt, her tears and her whines of pain enough to remind you how you froze when you look at her.

She slipped from the fifth to the last step of the stairs and toppled all the way down from there, badly twisting her ankle that she sobs that she heard something twist and snap so badly that it instantaneously brought tears to her eyes.

It was only you and Jimin downstairs, preparing for what was supposed to be lunch, before Soomin hurt herself on the stairs.

It was too quick. It was too quick for everyone to react accordingly and realize that the moment Soomin fell in pain, the first person to reach her was not Jimin, but you.

You can’t remember the event in detail with how frazzled you were but Jimin clearly can.

He can remember it from the way your eyes snapped away from him and how they went wide, dropping the spoon on the counter carelessly.

He recalls it down to how you eyebrows furrowed in concern as you dash to his little sister, a sob of concern stuck in your throat as you lift her up slightly and assess her with trembling eyes.

Jimin saw the way you stroked her hair and wiped her sweat of panic from her forehead with the back of your hand, looking at him desperately as you ask for help to relieve Soomin’s pain.

What happened to Soomin, one that involves her being in pain, matters to you more than your own standing with her brother at the moment.

The thought of her being in pain overrules you entirely as you work in muscle memory to drive yourself to Jimin’s studio late at night when you got past the traffic from what was supposed to be your dinner with Yoongi, not stopping for anything or anyone.

You look for his studio, his shoes, just anything that would tell you he’s here, head frantically whipping around to search for him or atleast a semblance of his presence.

Until you find him.

Until your eyes finally land on him who’s just as breathless and frozen as you are.

Three years have passed and Jimin’s in front of you.

Jimin looks the same at surface-level, the only key differences from the last time you saw him is how his hair’s longer and is back to its natural color, no longer the faded blonde in your last meeting.

You look at him and you stop entirely, only a second of recognition being shared between the two of you before your anxiety over Soomin overpowers your shock for Jimin, the words tumbling out of your lips immediately.

“What happened to Soomin?”

Jimin feels like he’s underwater.

He’s underwater in the sense that he knows how to swim but he refuses to rise up to the surface, rooted down at the ground for god knows what reason. He can hear you, but he can’t talk to you. He can hear you, but your voice is muffled and having to hear it clearly means pulling himself up — and pulling himself up is what Jimin hasn’t been good at the past three years.

He’s underwater in the sense that he’s an experienced swimmer and is in a well-maintained and balanced pool that he can stay in without the need for goggles. He’s looking up at you from below the water and his eyes can see, but they sting.

He can stay down for as long as he can but at some point he needs to resurface to regain his breathing, finding himself answering you before he gets lost in the ocean of you again before he forces himself to be grounded under.

“She went to a club,” he explains as if the two of you have been seeing each other everyday to feel as casual, barely a barrier between. “She just wanted to have fun.”

Jimin adds at the end as if he doesn’t know you at all. He inputs it for good measure to be defensive as if he thinks you’re judgemental, even if he knew you wouldn’t and would be the last person to, most especially when it comes to Soomin.

You nod attentively, looking him by the eyes as if you haven’t spent the last three years not seeing his within the crowd.

You’re floating on the water in the sense that you’re not versed with swimming and it’s the only thing you can do, staying relaxed under pressure as if one wrong breath and you would be suffocating.

You’re floating on the water in the sense that you do it out of survival rather than enjoyment, the fatigue of just keeping yourself afloat about to catch up on you sooner or later that you stabilize yourself as much as you could .

“Got a couple of drinks, hopped into the back seat with her friends,” Jimin narrates from what he’s heard of the police officer in charge of the cameras, that conversation being wrapped up not even a full day ago. “The girl that was driving ran a red light through an intersection and,” his throat constricts, lodged around nothingness as he exhales sharply.

“That.”

He can’t spell it out nor can he bring himself to. Even trying to recount the events hurt enough for him that he feels as if he’s been gutted at the stomach, the pain manifesting into something much bigger than he is.

“Her side of the car was the only one that’s badly hit,” he mumbles in detail, the footage replaying clearly in his mind. “But even if, they all left her alone.”

It hurts.

It hurts the most being the witness to someone else’s pain after it had already transpired. Jimin knows he can’t do anything about it and yet he hasn’t slept even a wink for the entire time that Soomin’s been home.

He stands watch outside of her room. She lets him sleep on the spare mattress on her floor because even if she offers just sleeping beside her, Jimin says no because she’s injured and wouldn’t want to risk rolling to her side when asleep and risking hurting her. In reality, Jimin didn’t even nap the entire time that he stayed over at Soomin’s room, eyes focusing so often on her figure to see if it was rising and falling — to see if she’s still there.

Your throat is constricted and if you were once floating above the water, you’re now dunked underneath it.

“The car,” your voice croaks, “was it blue?”

Jimin’s lost for a second over what you’re talking about but he connects is soon enough, nodding at the realization that Soomin’s friend’s car was indeed blue.

It’s all the confirmation you need when you feel the bile rise to your throat, eyes widening in panic and fluttering so slowly that he panics at the sight.

He’s just about to catch you because he thinks you’re gonna faint but you whisper, your hand coming up to your mouth as your voice trembles.

“Soomin was the one in the car?”

The realization hits you before the confusion creeps to Jimin, his chest tightening at your words.

“What do you mean?”

It’s pain that you’ve never felt that surrounds you as a whole, engulfing you piece by piece that you don’t know how to ask for salvation.

He’s concerned with the way your eyes well up with tears, an emotion he can’t gauge that he’s never seen out of the five years he’s known and been with you because it’s unlike no other.

“Jimin,” your voice trembles, his name leaving you in cracks. “I was the one who called the ambulance for her.”

“I-I didn’t know,” your head’s fuzzy with the way your mind goes to your tangent of guilt, the blood circulating to your fingertips coldly. “I had a flight and I was in a rush. I-I was in a taxi so we only passed by the car.”

The accident had been so hard to notice at all.

You were called in and you remember even putting the taxi’s windows down to clearly memorize the scene as you fumble with your phone to call for an emergency, trying to relay all the details.

A blue car with people walking away from the scene, confusing enough to see everyone of the barely harmed or none at all compared to the obvious crash on the side of the vehicle.

Your guilt of not helping out is relieved when you see some people get out of their own vehicles to rush to the intersection, joined by an enforcer soon enough.

It’s misplaced guilt that you may feel but you feel so bad nonetheless. Your heart’s burning at the thought that you saw Soomin get hurt and yet unlike the time she fell down the stairs, you didn’t rush to her.

You didn’t know and you didn’t rush to her to help. What you’ve did was look on her pain, one that you didn’t even know belong to her, as witness and call someone else who could relieve it for her.

Jimin remains still, eyes blinking slowly with no anger behind them.

“You were really there?” he all but whispers. “When she woke up, she said she saw you.”

“S-she saw me?”

“She was looking for you too,” he confirms, nodding his head as the ghost of a sad smile settles on his face. “She kept asking for her sister.”

Your heart hurts more than you’ve allowed it to.

“Sister?”

“Doc said that she was disoriented at the time she woke up,” he adds to ease you but he doesn’t know if you need the reassurance in the first place because for all he knows, this upsets you more than he thinks it does. “It’s a case of brain fog, it’s normal. What she asked was somehow a false memory. Somehow a truth she believes. W-we were all just shocked.”

Shocked wouldn’t even be able to cover it.

Their mom cried even harder.

Their dad smiled, keeping his tears to himself.

Jimin remained underwater, breaking down even if he couldn’t resurface.

“I don’t know if you wanted to hear this,” he admits whole-heartedly, pursing his lips before looking at you. “I just wanted to let you know.”

Jimin feels the same sentiments he did when Yoongi got frustrated at him for not calling you, remembering his distance.

He discreetly takes a step back and yet you notice, his eyes settling on the floor as if you’ve burned him by your presence alone.

“You weren’t supposed to know in the first place.”

“You could’ve reached me.”

You’re honest when you say it. You’re sincere when you tell Jimin that he could’ve reached you and you would’ve allowed it given everything.

“I didn’t know how. I-I didn’t know where you were.”

And he didn’t — he truly didn’t know where you were or what you were doing.

He knew nothing about you and he knows he doesn’t have the right to wish for otherwise, knowing that being kept in the dark is a pain that doesn’t hold a candle to what he put you through.

“You could’ve asked Yoongi. He told me that he was offering my number to you too.”

Jimin shakes his head politely, looking down.

“I don’t want you to feel obligated to me. I-I can’t do that to you.”

“I’m not obligated to you anymore, Jimin,” you mumble but you know that he heard it loud and clear, running your thumb across your knuckles; honest with every word. “But I would’ve come if I known.”

He raises his gaze to meet yours but this time it’s you who avoids his, the truth that you know within your heart weighing much lighter than it should be that you feel unused to it.

“I would’ve come if you asked me to.”

Jimin cries.

He cries as he tearfully nods, sobbing into his hands restlessly.

“Is Soomin okay?”

You ask to get him out of it but he barely even responds, crying in front of you so hard that his hiccups rack throughout his whole body.

Your hand raises on its own before it barely grazes his arm, your head tilting in sincerity.

“Are you okay?”

It’s an accumulation of everything Jimin’s ever felt.

It is every pain combined to engulf him as a whole that it feels unreal and detached from his own heart, clueless to how he had even survived last night alone with his own thoughts.

Soomin’s the Sun that Jimin’s family revolves around to, the light of their days and nights that they don’t ever want to dull.

“Soomin’s okay. She’ll be okay,” he says throughout his sobs, trying to convince the both of you. “She’ll be okay.”

“Can I see her?”

You ask because you want to.

You ask because you genuinely want to see Soomin out of your own matters of the heart and not by obligation; not by former relations nor attachments.

“You can,” Jimin says the most surely he’s ever spoken for the past three days. “Of course you can.”

( ♡ )

“Are you sure you’d be okay?”

Hoseok, your half-brother, asks for the umpteenth time for the day.

It’s been three years since you’ve met him and not one meeting with him passed without him asking if you would be okay.

It wasn’t a question if you’re okay today — it’s a question to whether you’d be okay tomorrow.

You treasure him more than you’ve ever expected that you would come to love him as family, as someone of your own blood even if it isn’t full; even if you’ve sworn at first that you only have yourself.

You can’t even begin to describe the fulfillment that you feel when someone asks what’s your relation to him whenever the two of you would spend time together outside.

You never thought you’d be able to call someone your brother and for each time that you do, your inner child gets to sleep better at night.

“It’s been three years, Hobi.”

You were the one who reached out to him the week after your father let you know about his existence. His number was left to you out of a long-shot and yet you woke up one evening with the urge to call it, not expecting the immediate answer you would receive.

Hoseok knew about you.

He was waiting for your call.

“Time isn’t always enough,” Hoseok half-heartedly smiles because he would know; the two of you would know.

Your parents were married at one point in time (it’s a memory so distant that you can’t believe it) and had you five years later.

Despite that, Hoseok’s two years older than you, his mother being your dad’s former secretary.

He knows.

He would know.

He had drove out the next morning after you called him at night, only to blank immediately when he picked up and only managed to introduce yourself in a mumble.

The two of you have already established a relationship early on, making up for the lost time.

He’s honest just as you are. Knew how the other could be just as sensitive and vulnerable.

You know about Hoseok’s pains just like he knows yours.

“I wish I could’ve protected you earlier.”

Hoseok figures that the most logical thing he could ever describe what you mean to him, despite having only known each other properly for three years, is that you’re family.

You are his family and it’s an irrevocable truth he stands by.

“It’s none of our faults we’ve met this late into our lives,” you shake your head at him, telling him a truth you no longer blame yourself for. “If I hadn’t ended up in the hospital, who knows if I would’ve ever gotten to know about you?”

Hoseok brings out his resemblance with you with the way he deadpans, scoffing to the full effect.

“2/10. Not funny at all,” he playfully roll his eyes with no real harm to it, pushing you by your arm as he knocks down your racks of tissue paper on the bar to annoy you.

Hoseok is your family.

You have a brother, and you have a family of your own blood, regardless of its entirety or even the half of it.

“You could still protect me now.”

He smiles sweetly, ruffling your hair. “I know.”

Hoseok knows about your pains and he stand from afar to be your safety net, letting you figure it out alone as you’ve always done, but this time with a cushion to soften your fall.

“Guard your heart, Y/N,” he hugs you in your kitchen counter, the warmth of familial love being something you still need practice on to receive without bawling the next minute. “Let it be yours before you share it again.”

Hoseok, as your brother, sets himself up to be your safety net in the event that what you’ve decided on now — to see your ex-fiancé’s family and specifically his sister.

He won’t tell you what to do.

What he can do is try to protect you, even if it means letting you fall a few times.

“No one should be a saint.”

( ♡ )

Soomin is recovering.

She’s in recovery as she lays in her room, her head propped up as she watches from the new TV that Jimin’s gotten her because the last one got outdated so quickly, having to wack it by the receiver in order to lower the volume.

She’s gotten most of her strength for the most part. The only noticeable injuries she has is her cast that’s soon to be removed and the faint stitch that she has on the side of her forehead, choosing to just look at her reflection from the side whenever she looks at the mirror.

She knows everyone by their footsteps. She has them committed to memory infinitely since they’ve only entered her room for about a hundred times each within the past week, even memorizing Miso’s silent steps.

But Soomin thinks, she just thinks that her mind’s playing games with her when she hears a familiar set of steps, one that’s beyond familiar yet one that she hadn’t heard in years.

She’s about to bolt out of her bed as quickly as she could, effectively stopped when her door creaks open to reveal exactly who she thought it was.

“Surprise.”

You didn’t know what to expect when you show up at Jimin’s family’s house to visit Soomin and lift her spirits even for the tiniest bit, but you know that it was somehow this.

It was somehow this, along the same vein of warmth you’ve expected because Soomin practically jumped on you and embraces you so dearly, so warm to the point you swear you could feel damp droplets the crook of your neck.

“I missed you.”

She admits even if it’s never been a lie in the first place.

For three years, the two of you exchanged messages occasionally. The birthday ones and the holiday ones, the checking-up ones at the middle of the morning, the silent confessions of how she misses you to the point that it’s not even funny anymore.

“I missed you too, Minnie.”

His parents welcomed you long ago as soon as you arrived on their property, welcomed by hugs as their son stood the respectful distance away.

You don’t know where they are now but they excused themselves, if only you knew that they’re in their room uncontrollably happy to have seen you again and for you to be there for Soomin, no hidden agenda elsewhere with their son.

You had talked about this with Jimin. Talked to him about the prospect of visiting atleast one and staying only until dinner.

That’s your only plan.

Jimin thought he would’ve been content with that plan alone but when he peeks at Soomin’s door and sees the two of you hugging; the two of you happy and beaming, he realizes that Jimin only wants one plan for his future.

He feels happy in the sense that he’s never expected to see a sight like this again or for this day to ever come, regardless the context that it’s in. He feels empty however, in the sense that he finds himself wanting more, even if this single visit alone means the world to him.

It’s nearing dinnertime when you come downstairs to the sight of Jimin sniffling, the furthest thing away from even getting started on cooking family dinner in which you sit on your chair.

“I haven’t properly apologized to you in person for everything I’ve done to you,” he says sincerely, knowing that his letters to you in your voicemail wouldn’t count as much as this does. “I’m sorry.”

He apologizes the whole night, even through his gaze at the dining table.

Even through his waves goodbye to you as you pull your car out of the driveway.

Even through his curious glances when Soomin pulls you to her and pleads that you visit again.

( ♡ )

You think you will.

You think you’ll visit Soomin again.

The drive back to your apartment to freshen up just before your planned flight schedule does more than wake you up.

You haven’t drank anything and yet you feel like it sobered you completely. It’s opened your eyes in a way you can’t even fathom to be so aware of what you were doing.

It’s in the early morning as you stand by the entrance of the plane, customer service smile on display even if it isn’t Taehyung nor his family that you’re flying out.

You bow your head as the Head of Public Relations and what seems to be his plus one pass by you, only lifting your head once they go their ways to their own private cabin that’s separated.

It’s only after you flew the short distance and the sun rises that you’re thinking clearer than you used to, saying your customary greetings upon arrival.

It’s when the passengers’ cabin opens that you see her.

Eunji, all along, was the arm candy of the Head of Public Relations on your flight.

He’s married.

And it’s not to Eunji.

She recognizes you the moment her eyes lay on you, eyes widening in realization.

She’s intimidated. Much more intimidated than she could be.

“You must be Y/N.”

Her voice snaps you out of your thought process, unnerved to look at her which confuses her even more.

Shouldn’t you know who she is?

And yet you smile, shaking your head, rattling Eunji by barely pouring in the same effort that she does.

“And you are?” your brows raise, tilting your head as the both of you wait for the executive to gather his things, a faint smile on your lips.

“Sorry, I don’t know you by your name.”

People like Eunji never change, that much you could think of. She’s a flat personality with no development because it’s who she is, regardless of the guy she’s with.

It’s in her system, something she hasn’t managed to shake off.

It’s sobering to meet Eunji for the first and last time.

“I only know you by who you are.”

( ♡ )

Loving someone doesn’t necessarily mean loving every bit that comes with them, but in your case nothing about you was unworthy of the same love that he gives you.

It’s all too domestic, all too warm.

Having someone to take care of is something he’s already tried before. Loving you and taking care of you intimidated at him first because he didn’t know if he was loving you in the way you deserved to be loved. Your heart has far too much space to carry love for others and yet only the small bit of it was allotted to receive it, already filling to the brim with how he knows that his family fills it up.

He’s spent five years with you and three years without, yet there was not one moment that Jimin didn’t stop loving you — even in his sins, even through his despair.

“I’ve already made my peace. Forgive yourself, Jimin.”

You had only told him minutes ago downstairs when you walk down on him crying again. He tells you that he’s crying out of happiness; out of selfishness at the flip side.

He’s crying because he feels so warm having all the people he loves and loves most underneath the same roof, so much so that he wants to forget everything forwards besides now.

It’s when he peeks at Soomin’s room and asks if he could sleep over but she looks over to you before she answers him, a gentle smile on your face.

“You call the shots, Minnie. This is your room anyway.”

It feels all too familiar — all too warm again.

He feels sure, he feels infinite within your roots regardless if it would forever be drought for him.

Jimin’s only one plan in the future is to have you in his hold, just once more, even if it would be the last thing he’s ever feel. He would be yours, and yours alone.

Maybe not now. Maybe it’s in the future.

Jimin doesn’t know tomorrow but he knows now.

Now when he pulls up the spare mattress to sleep on the floor, adjacent to your side where you lay next to Soomin on her bed.

Now when he turns off the nightlight and tucks the comforter neatly to both your sides.

Now when he says good night and gets one right back.

You are Jimin’s favorite pain; his favorite ache and his favorite grief.

You are his favorite roof and his favorite warmth.

You are the only grasshopper.

You are his favorite lifetime if there are four — a lifetime with you is a lifetime he’s pick four times over; one that sows, one that waters, one that reaps, and one that consumes.

He can love you from afar.

You are Jimin’s religion.

There is a home within you.

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that is it for heartburn :)) i can't even put into words nor begin to thank everyone who's spent their time on heartburn and let me know their own hearts in the process. thank you for being here! my askbox is open for you <3

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