They find Hoseok four hours later. By ‘they’, it doesn’t mean Seokjin. 

Seokjin is frantically searching the streets when he gets the call. The phone is already in his hands and it’s easy to slide a finger over the answer button and list the phone to his ear in seconds. He doesn’t even check who is calling before he answers it.

He recognizes the voice immediately.

“We found him,” says Yoongi, words short and straight to the point. Seokjin’s legs sag with relief. He has to put a hand to the wall to hold himself up. “Come to the clinic two streets down from the camera store.” Then the phone clicks off.

Seokjin is quick to throw his phone into his pocket and breaking into a sprint. In the five months he’s spent here he’s memorized the layout of the town well enough. He’s never had reason to visit the tiny clinic tucked away between the rows of old residential houses but he has a pretty good idea of where it’s located.

He passes the camera store and heads two streets down, nearly bumping straight into that mother of the three year old on her way home from grocery shopping.

“Seokjin-ssi?” she says, sounding faintly surprised at being nearly bowled over. “What are you in such a rush for?”

“The clinic,” Seokjin says between breaths. “I need to get to the clinic.”

“At the end of the street, the small brown building on the left. There’s a plaque at the front you can’t miss.”

“Thank you!” Seokjin says with a hasty bow and dashes off again.

The clinic is a small unassuming place. It’s the same brown bricks like everywhere else, two stories and only distinguishable by the rusting plate outside. Seokjin throws open the gate and hurries in.

From what Seokjin has heard, the place is run solely by one doctor, a male in his late forties.  Seokjin has seen him once when Namjoon had pointed him out on one of their walks and that’s how Seokjin recognizes him now as he bursts through the front door noisily.  

The doctor gives him a cool look and then jerks his head roughly to the open door to his right. “He’s in there,” he says as he pulls the unlit cigarette out from between his lips. He has bloodshot eyes and an unshaven chin, the grizzle greying in certain patches. He wears a grimy white coat. He looks to Seokjin’s practiced eyes, extremely unsuited to be a doctor.

Yoongi appears at the door. “Get in here,” he says in a dark tone and vanishes behind the wall again.

Seokjin gathers his breath and forces himself to walk in calmly. His legs shake and his shoes click against the linoleum, the ringing ominously loud to his ears. He can feel the doctor’s eyes bore into his back as he walks into the room.

Hoseok lies on one of the three patient’s bed in the room, the sheets pulled right up to his shoulders. From the doorway Seokjin can make out the dark wash of his hair and the lack of colors in his cheeks. His chest barely rises and falls under the sheets.

“Is he-“

“Shut up,” Yoongi snaps, eyes flickering dangerously. “He’s going to be okay.”

Relief floods his system. “That’s good-“

“No it isn’t,” Yoongi hisses.

Seokjin is taken aback. “What do you mean…?”

“It means that things are only going to get worse from here on now Kim Seokjin-ssi,” the doctor says lazily as he steps into the room, his slip on shoes clicking as he walks. He may not have been smoking that cigarette but this close, Seokjin can smell how the stench of smoke haloes him. It makes Seokjin recoil away, his nose wrinkled. The doctor sees his reaction and a smirk plays at the corner of his lips.

“What happened to him Yoongi?” Seokjin asks, redirecting his questions to him. Yoongi stands at the bedside, staring down at Hoseok with a terrible kind of anger in his eyes.

“He collapsed,” Jungkook says mournfully. It’s only then that Seokjin realizes he’s there, sat in another one of those tiny stools at Hoseok’s bedside. He had been resting on the bed, still seated but his upper body pressed to the sheets. As he speaks he raises his head and looks over at Seokjin with dark, dark eyes. “Someone found him passed out on the pavements.”

“He… fell asleep?” Seokjin finds himself echoing with no comprehension whatsoever.

“It’s complicated unless you understand the foundation of the cause,” the doctor says that smoke scratchy voice of his. “Get that one to tell you everything.” He points one long finger at Yoongi.

Seokjin’s heart thumps again, this time not from physical exertion. Does this mean…?    

Yoongi sighs and one hand rifles through his hair, messing it up completely. He looks exhausted. “Yeah, I guess so,” he says shortly. He looks over at Seokjin, his eyes terribly dark. They’re like storm clouds, the kind that roil with smoke and anger and lightning bolts hidden somewhere deep in their depths, ready to strike when you least expect. You only ever hear them when it’s too late.

Seokjin his lips. His brother always did say he liked danger a little too much.

“This is your last chance Seokjin,” Yoongi says, his voice low and velvety. “You can still step out and leave. Leave and never come back.”

“Or?” Seokjin can’t help but say. He’s always liked pushing Yoongi to the very edge, watching as he lights up with anger but never fear. Yoongi has always been the kind of person who fears or others but never himself.

“I told you before didn’t I?” Yoongi says, voice terribly soft and this is, the moment Seokjin’s always read about in the books: the one they call the calm before the storm.

“Hope,” Seokjin says softly at exactly the same time as Yoongi. The difference is that whilst Seokjin says it with a gentleness, Yoongi speaks it with vitriol.They both look at each other over Hoseok’s prone body, trying to figure out what the other is thinking, but they are two different people and this is impossible.

“That may not be strictly true,” the doctor says suddenly, breaking the silence.

“What isn’t?” Yoongi asks sharply.

“Hope being a cost,” the doctor says.

Yoongi’s eyes narrow. “Why?”

“You tell him that story first, then I’ll tell mine later.”

Yoongi frowns but the fire seems to die out. “Fine,” he says shortly. “Sit down and I’ll speak.”

Seokjin blindly reaches for a chair. “Everything?” he says.

Yoongi rolls his eyes. “Yes,” he says tiredly. “Everything.”

His fingers find their way around his little Clipper, tightening around the length, knuckles standing out starkly under his skin. In the clinic he doesn’t light it up, a little like how the doctor doesn’t light his cigarette.

When he speaks his voice is like smoke – suffocating.

Not once throughout the entire tale does he look at Seokjin.

===

They call it the ‘Fade’ phenomenon. It is named exactly as how it occurs.

It all starts with the sensation of detachment, of one minute you feeling grounded, your feet lead that weighs you firmly to the ground, and then the next you feel as if you might not quite exist entirely, your sense of self half here, half elsewhere.

That is just the start.

Stage two can take place anywhere from a month after the symptoms of stage one to several years later. Maybe it begins with your fingers, maybe the tip of your nose. Sometimes it’s a patch at the back of your leg that you won’t notice until the numbness of stage three. Stage two though is where your body literally starts to fade, your skin and bones and the sinews in between slowly losing hold of reality and turning transparent.

The Fade doesn’t spread. It appears on your body in tiny patches and scatterings, easy enough to cover up with fabric or a well-placed bandage. Unless you know what you are looking for, it does not stand out to a stranger’s eyes.

Some think that the fade can be ignored then, that it’s troublesome but they can adapt around it, continue on with their everyday mundane lives.

That is partially how the Fade ever began. The inset of routine, the lack of life, the way hope slowly slips out of your grasp and you wonder, what am I still doing here?

It is then that stage three takes over, at the time when you least expect it and when you have given in the most. It’s described as a sense of numbness filling the blank spaces and then spreading to the areas faded and unfaded and in time the you who thinks you are nothing starts to feel nothing and eventually when you hit stage four, your truly become nothing.

The Fade is never the same for any two people, not where it starts or where it ends, nor how long it takes or how painful it is. The Fade after all is based on one’s own mental strength. Those who fight it last longer; those who don’t vanish faster.

But in the end everyone fades. And that is the only certainty of it all.

“Then Hoseok is…” Seokjin says, horrified as Yoongi finishes the story.

“He’s fading,” Yoongi says bluntly. “We found the Fade patch behind his ear. He covered it by growing out his hair. There’s another on the lower half of his back; that one’s a lot bigger. More will probably appear from hereon now. At the most we think he has three months.”

“What can we do for him then?” Seokjin says, his voice growing higher and faster as he speaks, panic overriding. “Is there some medicine we can get for him? I can help pay if money is the problem. Should we take him to a bigger hospital or something?”

“There is no cure,” the doctor says, his voice blunt. 

Seokjin freezes. “What do you mean?”

“It means exactly what it means,” the doctor says, no change to his tone or mood. It’s as if he’s stating the facts straight from a textbook. You are going to die and I’m very sorry but nothing can help you. “There is no cure for the Fade, no drugs, no therapy, nothing. You start fading, I confirm it, you fade.”

“But-“

“It’s not a disease,” the doctor says before Seokjin can even argue it out. “It’s no illness known to mankind. It’s simply a unique and unknown phenomenon that has been occurring in this town of ours for hundreds of years and well, how do you cure something this supernatural?”

The rooms fall into silence, Hoseok’s even breaths the only sound.

“So then what?” Seokjin stares. “We just let him die?”  

They all look back at him, Yoongi, Jungkook, the doctor. Their faces are calm and collected. It’s weird, it’s abnormal. They look at him like he’s the strange on to be panicking. And of course they would: they’ve known this was coming from a long time back. Only he didn’t know and it makes his insides twist bitterly.

“Fade,” the doctor corrects him like that’s the most important thing to do. He watches Seokjin carefully, almost as if he’s assessing him like a lab specimen, his reactions important data. Seokjin decides he dislikes him there and then.

“It’s the same as death isn’t it?” Seokjin says incredulously.

The doctor shrugs. “Depending on your perspective.”

“You said he’s going to disappear right? Completely? Physically? Isn’t that what we call death? When you’re gone from the face of this planet?”

“By that definition then yes, he’s going to die,” the doctor says, his voice that infuriating cool and collected tone. It makes Seokjin want to grab him by the collar and rattle his entire being until he starts to see sense.

But Seokjin’s been raised with manners thank you very much and so instead he whirls on Yoongi, his eyes flashing. Jungkook watches with something akin to fear as he shrinks into the bedsheets below his chin. Any other day Seokjin would berate himself for scaring the younger but today is the day of exceptions for everything it appears.

“And you’re okay with this Yoongi?” he hisses. “You’re just going to let this happen to Hoseok?”

“What do you want me to do Seokjin?” Yoongi says flatly. His eyes look so dark that not even the bright light of the ceiling above reflects there.

“I don’t know,” Seokjin snaps, frustration getting the better of him. His hands fist into the hem of his shirt, twisting and turning. “Something, anything, don’t just- just give up like that.”

“Seokjin, don’t you think we’ve tried?” Yoongi says. He no longer sounds angry, just tired, resigned almost.  “We’ve all gone through this: learnt about the Fade, tried to deny it, think up a cure, find a way to stop it from happening. Everyone in this town has tried it, but no one, not a single one of us, has found a way to stop it. What makes you think that if we try now we’ll magically find a solution all of a sudden?”  

“All of you?” Seokjin echoes, feeling the horror build by the second.

Yoongi sighs, his eyes fluttering shut. He massages the bridge of his nose with one hand like he has the mother of all headaches and its name is Kim Seokjin.

“Yes, Seokjin,” he says sounding like he’s exercising the extreme limits of his patience right now. “Every single person in this town is going to Fade at some point of time. Why did you think we were trying so hard to make you leave? We didn’t want the same to happen to you.” 

Seokjin stares at him, then at Jungkook’s who expression is equally as forlorn.

“I’m going to Fade as well?” Seokjin whispers. The room is so very silent. Jungkook looks up at him with mournful eyes.

“Probably not for a long time but some day, you will,” Yoongi says, his voice devoid of emotion like he’s trying to stop himself from feeling. His eyes are open and they are black holes, fathomless, bottomless. Seokjin drowns in them. “This town of ours, it’s a dead end town. The people who live here, the people who come here and stay, they’re all here for the same reason and that is to Fade.”

“But I didn’t come here for that,” Seokjin finds himself saying in a tiny voice.

“That’s what you may think but it’s a subconscious thing,” the doctor says. He points one long finger straight at Seokjin who does his best to not flinch. “The people who come here from the outsider world, they don’t realize it consciously but somewhere along the way they lost their will to continue living their everyday lives and they then get drawn to this town where they’ll begin to Fade.”

“Are you sure it’s not just a coincidence or something?” Seokjin says nervously.

The doctor’s lips part into a crooked smirk. “I’m sure that what you want to think but the numbers and the stories are all the same with everyone who comes to stay. Why do you think it took everyone so long to accept you? Because we weren’t certain if you really were here to stay or if you still harbored thoughts about leaving.”   

Seokjin’s hands shake at his side. “You make it sound like I can’t leave anymore.”

“You can’t,” Yoongi says, short and simple. “To those who start Fading, they become unable to leave.”

“But I’m not Fading yet, am I?” Seokjin says nervously.

The doctor eyes him. “It depends on whether you’ve felt the detachment yet. Some people don’t realize the sensation but the moment you feel it, you become unable to leave this place. It’s like this wall appears around the boundaries of the town and the minute you try to cross it, you lose all the will to do so, and thus you are trapped.”

The room suddenly feels like its swirling, the floor below him tilting. Dizzy, Seokjin shakes his head. “If this is a joke-“

“Do you think we’d be joking about something like this,” Yoongi snaps, his eyes suddenly flaring wide open, eyes ablaze. This is no Clipper light; it burns far stronger. “Do you think we want to Fade? To just disappear? Maybe there’s one or two who do, but not all of us like knowing that someday we’re just going to vanish and that’s the end of our short lived lives.”

“Enough Yoongi!” Seokjin shouts and Yoongi quietens, a simmering fire, the anger still in the background. “Cut me some slack Yoongi,” Seokjin continues, his voice more level and in control now. “This is a lot to take on board, okay? I get you don’t want to Fade which is why I don’t get how you can just let it happen!”

He looks Yoongi deep in the eyes, challenging him to say something more.  

It’s Jungkook instead who speaks, his voice thin and reedy. “Hyung, I get it must be difficult for you to get your head around, but to those of us who are born here, this is normal. We don’t like it but we’ve kind of accepted there’s nothing we can really do.”

Seokjin takes a step back, hurt. “But you’re going to die. Are you really okay with that?”

Jungkook blinks softly at him. “What other choice do we have?”

It hits Seokjin then. Of course they’ve given up – they’ve grown up with it, seen people Fade, and now there is Hoseok, proof of the closest kind. It’s a painful way of life but it’s their way of life. How do you force yourself to go against that?

But Seokjin is different. He’s not brought up with this way of life and for the first time since he’s entered this town, he’s grateful for that fact.

He turns to the doctor. “You said this has been happening for hundreds of years right? There must be documents and reports right?”

The doctor looks at him thoughtfully. “There are. The previous doctors that ran this place kept extensive records.”

“Then?” Seokjin breathes hopefully.

The doctor gives him a warning look. “I’ve been through them all. There are no suggestions to a cure in them.”

Seokjin doesn’t want to give up like that. “Still, I want to have a look,” he says levelly. “Maybe all you need is a different perspective.” He feels viciously satisfied to throw the words back in the doctor’s face.

The doctor’s mouth twitches once and then he throws his head back and laughs, wild and in short spurts a little like a dog’s rough bark. He looks thoroughly amused when he tips his head back down, a smirk plastered on his face. He’s looking at Seokjin like he’s an outlier, data who does not fit the pattern and hm, how intriguing, I should observe for a little longer.

Seokjin shivers.

“Yoongi, I’m going to borrow your friend here for a moment,” the doctor says, not even looking at Yoongi. “We’ll be in the next room over. Holler if Hoseok wakes up.”

Yoongi nods once his assent but Seokjin can see in his eyes the dark disapproval. He doesn’t stop the doctor though, just leans back against the pillar and watches Seokjin with an impenetrable gaze.

“Come with me boy,” the doctor says, brushing past him on his way to the door, his long coat swishing behind him. Yoongi’s glares bounce right off his thick exterior. The doctor, it seems, cares little for other’s opinions unless when he asks for them.

Seokjin follows apprehensively, his eyes darting back to see Jungkook tilting his head up to Yoongi, asking something that Seokjin can’t hear. Jungkook looks down again just as Seokjin slips through the threshold and his eyes are… Seokjin fumbles for the word.

He steps through the door and it comes to him – worried.

Hoseok is the one lying in bed, a life sentence of three months left and the one that Jungkook is worried about is him?

“Boy,” the doctor says, addressing him as he leads him through the lobby and into a darker room. “Do you know what a phenomenon is?”

Seokjin frowns as he watches the doctor fish out a brass key and unlock a door at the back. “A situation that is unexplainable.”

“Good answer,” the doctor says. There’s a click as turns on a light and they’re standing in a room filled floor to ceiling with books. “Now tell me, what makes you think a cure exists for something with no understandable cause?”

Seokjin’s frown deepens. “So what? There are plenty of cases of cures being miraculously found. Circumstances like everyday plants suddenly being found to help this illness or that disease and they don’t even know why. You don’t always need to know the cause; sometimes you find the cause by investigating the cure.”

The doctor gives a nod as he wanders over to one shelf, his fingers running along the spines, dust falling from some of them in a soft fall to the floor. 

“Okay, so my next question: what makes you think that you can find a cure when everybody else who has tried has failed?”

Seokjin’s brow furrows. “Well I don’t think that it’s because of who I am or anything, it’s just that everyone else seems to have given up and I don’t want to do the same, not without at least trying first.”

The doctor pauses and turns his head to give Seokjin a long, appraising look. “Interesting,” he says and turns back to the shelf.

“What does that mean?” Seokjin asks suspiciously, unsure whether to take that as a compliment or offense.

The doctor slides out a thick black file. “It means what it means,” he says ambiguously. “Now look at this.”

The doctor holds out the file to Seokjin. He takes it and flips open to the first page. It’s one of those bound books, the contents a hundred or so aged pieces of paper, yellowing and crisp at the corners. The text is all handwritten.

He flips to a random page, a record of a patient. Choi Junsu, age 25, faded 21/04/89, first diagnosed 08/09/87, time taken to fade: roughly two years, IHL: 144. The list continues.

“What is IHL?” Seokjin asks, looking up from the book to find the doctor with the cigarette back between his lips. The doctor smiles, long and wicked.

“Initial Hope Levels,” he answers, each word punctuated with a kind of satisfaction.

Seokjin frowns. “What’s that? I’ve never heard that term before.”

“You wouldn’t have,” the doctor says as he pulls the cigarette out from between his teeth. “It won’t appear in any other medical record than here.”

“It’s related to the Fade?” Seokjin guesses.

“Correct,” the doctor says as he leans back, arms crossed, cigarette hanging loosely between two fingers. “Let me tell you something boy. I’m the doctor of this town just for my degree or anything. I’m the doctor because I have a certain ability.”

He takes a stride forwards until he stands a foot away from Seokjin. Up close the stench of tobacco is stronger. His face is scruffy and his hair greasy like it hasn’t been washed all week. There really must be more to him if he’s the doctor that this town chose to hire out of all people.

“Do you remember what you said earlier was the cost for staying in this town?”

Seokjin blinks. “Hope.”

The doctor smiles, then lifts one hand – the one with the cigarette – and taps the spot right above Seokjin’s heart.

“I’m the doctor of this town because I can see how much hope a person has in their hearts.” He pauses to let Seokjin digest that. “Don’t ask me to explain how it works because it’s all part of this unexplainable stuff. All I know is that if I do this-“ and he forms a circle with his index finger and thumb and brings it to his eyes, peeping right through it, “-and I can estimate how much hope one has.”

He leans back, settling onto some low black desk, long legs crossing at the ankles. “My predecessors all had this ability as well and somewhere along the way they managed to quantify the levels. We use it now to sort of measure how close one is to Fading.”

Seokjin blinks twice. This is a lot to digest. “So the initial hope levels,” he says, tapping at the page, “that’s when they’re first diagnosed with the Fade?”

“Correct,” the doctor says with a lazy swish of his hand. “I’ve found that if their hope levels drop below the two hundreds then they’ve entered stage one, stage two is the hundreds, three is around seventy to forty, and I’m sure you can guess what is stage four. From then on though it’s completely up to the patient on how fast their levels decline and how quickly they proceed through the stages. My predecessor had the idea to chart it so you’ll find graphs for that sort of thing from a decade or so back.”

Seokjin flicks forwards and the pages progressed to printed sheets instead of the yellowing pages. Sure enough at the bottom of each record is a graph. At a glance Seokjin can see that regardless of the initial hope level, the decline of hope varies greatly between patients. It however correlates strongly with the length of period between stages two and three.

“Doesn’t this mean that hope is the cause of the Fade?” Seokjin says carefully. “I mean you said it yourself, when hope drops beneath a certain level the Fades starts and progresses. And if we know the cause, surely that helps us with a cure.”

“Not exactly,” the doctor says. “Just because there’s a strong correlation between the two factors doesn’t definitely mean that hope is definitely the cause. And if that were the case, then tell me boy, how would go about restoring hope?”

Seokjin flounders. Well that is true, how would one go about restoring lost hope? Hope is such a broad and ambiguous term. It belongs to a state of mind, a state of being, and well in the first place this whole phenomenon seems awfully ambiguous.

How does one go about losing faith in the world, enough to cause their physical self to start fading? And how do they get drawn to the town? And why only this town?

“That being said, hope is probably the cause,” the doctor says casually as he rolls the cigarette between two fingers.

“What?” Seokjin blinks.

“One of my predecessors attempted to see if they could create a cure based on that hypothesis that the cause was indeed a loss of hope. To cut the story short, they failed but they came up with this instead.”

The doctor pulls out a round bottomed glass from one of his coat pockets. The lid is white plastic, the body filled with tiny white pills. They look unassumingly innocent in the jar.  

“What is that?” Seokjin asks, flipping the file close and putting it on a shelf so he can peer more closely at the bottle.

The doctor hands it over and Seokjin takes it carefully, weighing the bottle and rattling it gently. It looks and sounds and appears for all intents and purposes like any other pill.

“There’s a file somewhere with a comprehensive breakdown of the exact contents and how it functions, but the bottom line is that it can slow down the Fade.”

Seokjin’s eyes widen as he grips the bottle tighter. “Seriously? So if we give this to Hoseok it should stop him from fading.”

“Slow it down, I said,” the doctor says impatiently. “I never said it’ll stop it completely. It’s a temporary measure, not a cure.”

Seokjin’s face falls. “Then…”

“He’s still going to Fade boy. I can put him on the medication now but at the most it’ll give him another two months or so. And…” the doctor frowns here, the first time that Seokjin has seen him do so. He gives Seokjin a serious look, “there will be side effects.”

Seokjin feels his mouth dry. “What sort?”

“The drugs work by enforcing one’s emotional state. The thing about the Fade is that it occurs because people lose hope, they lose the will to live and eventually they lose themselves. My predecessor thought to combat this by trying to make people feel more, so that they could stay in contact with this place. He did that by giving them these drugs that make them less inhibited, more emotional, and therefore the downside is that they behaviors tend to become more… irrational.” 

Seokjin’s eyes widen.

The doctor continues. “It varies with the patient as it depends on their emotional composition to begin with but they may be more liable to anger, depression, paranoia, excessive happiness, so on. Whatever they’ve suppressed deep inside will come to the surface and sometimes that’s an okay thing and sometimes it’s not.”

“But Hoseok…” Seokjin croaks. “He’s the sweetest person ever. He should be okay with it right?”

The doctor gives him a long, almost condescending look. “Boy,” he says slowly, leaning back against the table. “If there’s one thing I’ve learnt the twenty or so years of my career, it’s that the happiest ones tend to be the ones with the most to hide.”

Seokjin swallows.

“I’m not saying that’s the case with Hoseok, but I’m just saying, don’t think that you know those boys as well as you think you do.”

The saliva slides down Seokjin’s throat with a kind of foreboding heaviness.

“Do you know something about Hoseok that I don’t?” Seokjin asks him carefully.

The doctor gives him a long, lazy look. The cigarette is back between his teeth. “Even if I did I’m not going to tell you. You may be his friend and you may be trying to help him, but this is Hoseok’s personal problems, and if you want to know those, you ask him yourself.”

Seokjin his lips and backs away. “Noted,” he says.

There’s a knock on the door. Jungkook pops his head around it. “Doctor,” he says as he eyes the two of them and the tense atmosphere. “Hoseok’s awake. Yoongi sent me to get you.”

The doctor pushes himself off the table and slips his cigarette into his pocket with several other pens and what looks like a wrapped lollipop. “Got it,” he says shortly. “I’ll be there in a second.”

Jungkook nods and scampers off.

The doctor glances at Seokjin again. “Take the files,” he says. “If you’re still interested in finding a cure you’re going to need to read up. Drop by when you’re done with them and if there’s anything else you want to look at.”

“Are you helping me?” Seokjin says, his heart leaping in his chest.

The doctor shrugs. “I’m not helping. But I’m not stopping you either. And who knows, you may be right.” He gives Seokjin a crooked grin. “Maybe we do need fresh perspective.”

He’s got one hand on the door when Seokjin stops him. “Earlier,” he says in a rush. “Earlier you said that it wasn’t strictly true, that hope may not be the cost. What did you mean by that?”

The doctor pauses, a frown on his face. “That,” he says as he eyes Seokjin. “Boy, for years we’ve understood that those who come to this town and those who stay will inevitably lose hope. It’s just the way it is. But you-“ he raises his hand again, making the circle with the thumb and index finger, “-you are not like that.”

“What do you mean by that?” Seokjin stares.

The doctor gives him a long look. “It means what it means,” he says soberly as he drops his hand. “It means that when you entered this town, you did not follow the same fashion as everybody else. It means that instead of losing hope, five months ago when you first came here, you started to gain hope.”

Seokjin is silent. He’s trying to absorb what the doctor’s just said, but it’s bouncing off and he can’t fully grip it.

The doctor smirks, all yellowing teeth and sharp canines. “And that boy,” he says with a wide grin, “is what I call interesting.”

With that he slips out of the door, leaving Seokjin there, heart thudding and hands still gripped about the tiny glass bottle, his head throbbing with far too much knowledge in far too short a period of time.  

===

Hoseok is sitting upright when Seokjin finally re-enters his room. His face is still pale but his chest rises and falls more emphatically now. The doctor sits in front of him on a tiny stool, a stethoscope in one hand that he presses to Hoseok’s chest.

Jimin and Namjoon seem to have arrived in the period where Seokjin was in the records room. Namjoon stands behind the doctor, watching over his actions like a hawk. Jimin sits next to Jungkook, his hands cupped around Hoseok’s left hand so tightly it looks like he’s cutting off the blood supply there.

Yoongi’s eyes flicker to Seokjin as he enters the room. His lips purse when he catches sight of the glass bottle and the file under his arm but he doesn’t say anything, just glances back at Hoseok and the doctor who’s forming a ring with his index finger and thumb and peering intently at Hoseok.

“Okay,” the doctor says, dropping his hand and looping the stethoscope back around his neck. “There’s not much to say. Your hope levels have dropped to a dangerous level but I’m sure that was clear enough already. You collapsed because you felt a numbness didn’t you?”

“My left leg,” Hoseok admits ruefully, his voice soft and quiet. “I was walking and it froze on me. When I fell down I hit my head and I think I passed out then.”

The doctor scribbles something down on a clipboard then. “I’ll increase your Fade dose. Take three pills every night and come round for a checkup every week, okay?”

Hoseok nods.

“Good.” The doctor puts the clipboard down on his lap. “Rest up for a while then. You can leave when you feel strong enough to. I’ve given Seokjin over there an extra bottle of the pills for you. Meanwhile I want to check over everyone else.”

He glances at them all. “Where’s that noisy kid Taehyung?”

Namjoon glances nervously over at him. “He didn’t want to come,” he says hesitantly.

The doctor snorts. “Of course he wouldn’t. The kid’s scared of me. Never mind, I’ll hunt him down later. You first then Namjoon.”

The doctor makes Namjoon sit down and examines him, stethoscope, questions and of course the ring. Seokjin wanders over to Hoseok’s bedside and crouches down.

“Hey Hoseokie,” he says softly and is rewarded with one of Hoseok’s brilliant smiles. “How are you feeling?”

“Okay,” Hoseok says, though his speech is slower than it’s normal bullet pace and his movements slow, like tiredness drags at him. “Sorry if I scared you. Jungkook told me that Yoongi and the doc told you everything.”

“Yeah, they did.”

Hoseok’s expression twists into something akin to worry. “Hyung…” he says quietly and Seokjin feels like he knows what is coming. “You should leave this town soon hyung,” he says.

“No,” Seokjin says roughly, shaking his head.

“But your hope levels are still okay aren’t they? If you leave now you might be able to escape fading.”

“But…” The option hadn’t crossed his mind. He’d been so preoccupied with worry for Hoseok, anger at everyone’s resignation, and determination to find a cure that not once did worry for the knowledge that he was going to Fade come. The more he thought about it, the more he put it down to the fact that it hadn’t sunk in yet.

“He’s right you know,” the doctor says over his shoulder. Yoongi sits in front of him now, Namjoon standing again and smoothening down the invisible wrinkles in his shirt. “Your hope levels are way above the danger levels. You could leave and probably be fine.”

His heart thumps wildly. Sure it’s an option but at the same time it isn’t.

“I can’t,” he says, shaking his head.

The doctor pauses, actually looks over his shoulder now. “Why not?”

“This place is home,” Seokjin says simply.

The doctor’s mouth curves into that smile again, like he loves how different Seokjin is. Sure any other person with a proper sense of self-preservation would leave immediately, maybe with some reluctance and some guilt, but they would leave all the same. But Seokjin can’t leave, and in a way it’s also for a self-serving reason.   

Never before has he felt so comfortable in a town. It’s less the town and more the people, Seokjin isn’t disillusioned enough to admit that much.

The people here have a strange brand of rough friendliness but when you strip down the edges and look far in, you can see how much they care about the people around them. It doesn’t extend to the town as a whole, but to their circle of friends and family, Seokjin has never seen people more protective.

And for him, it’s these six boys. Therefore he could never, ever, leave them behind, not now that he’s had a taste of that friendship.

The doctor just shakes his head with amusement and turns back to inspect Yoongi. Seokjin looks up and he gets a perfect view of Yoongi’s face, hard and stony with anger.

Seokjin turns back to Hoseok with a huge lump in his throat.

“You don’t need to make excuses hyung,” Hoseok says gently, reaching out with his right hand. Seokjin puts down the file and the bottle on the end of the bed and takes his cold hand between his own, rubs it firmly to warm him up. “We won’t hate you if you want to leave you know.”

“I know,” Seokjin says solemnly. “But it’s not a lie. This place is my home now. You guys are. And I’m going to find a cure to make sure it stays that way.”

Hoseok trembles, Seokjin can feel the way his fingers quake. Seokjin clasps his hands about Hoseok, lifts it to his right below him chin and peers up at Hoseok.

“Thank you hyung,” he says so softly that Seokjin has to strain to hear him. “Thank you.”

That’s all that Seokjin needs to hear.  

===

Seokjin leaves first. He doesn’t get any further than outside the clinic when Yoongi stops him, a hard hand to his shoulder, his grip tight. Seokjin turns to meet the hard glint of his eyes, the kind you see when the moon reflects off the ocean by night.

“You’re giving him false hope Seokjin,” Yoongi says in a growl.

“You don’t know that,” Seokjin replies calmly. The folder is tucked under his arm. He plans to head to a café and study them intensively first. Then he’ll make a plan of action: see what else the doctor knows, learn all he can about the Fade, find out what else the town people know.

“Neither do you,” Yoongi retorts. “You should just leave.”

“I can’t do that Yoongi. If I do I’ll regret it for the rest of my life.”

“You’ll learn to,” Yoongi says harshly. “You’ll forget about this place and all of us in time. Humans are good at doing that.”

“I won’t,” Seokjin says seriously. “No matter how hard I try to I could never forgot you all.”

Yoongi sighs. “You say it with such determination…”

“Of course,” Seokjin says simply, “This is the first place I’ve actually felt like calling home. I could never forget such a feeling.”

Yoongi’s eyes sharpen. “You said you’ve travelled all around South Korea. You told us stories of Busan and Gwangju and Jeonju. You actually have a proper home all the way in Anyang. And you still say this town, this little tiny seaside town where people literally vanish every day, this place is more of a home than any of those places have ever been?”

“Yes.”

Yoongi slumps over, the fight fading from his eyes. “I give up,” he says grumpily. “Do what you like. Just don’t come crying when you start fading. Like I didn’t warn you.”

Seokjin smiles and pokes Yoongi in the forehead. “Don’t be so pessimistic Yoongi.”

Yoongi’s eyes flash. “You’re just too optimistic,” he responds.

“Then together we’d make a brilliant team wouldn’t we?” Seokjin says with a wide smile.

Yoongi stares, his nose scrunching up in disgust. “I don’t know why I ever let you join our group I should have just kicked you out of the pub on day one.”

“That’s because deep down you actually love me,” Seokjin coos, tickling Yoongi under the chin with the tips of his fingers and Yoongi’s eyes widen alarmingly so.

“Try that again…” he growls, teeth flashing.

Seokjin wiggles his fingers again and Yoongi raises one hand threateningly.

The doctor sticks his head out the door of the clinic. “Please don’t kill anyone outside of my clinic. I am legally obliged by my job to try and save them, and I haven’t done anything more than stich up a cut in over ten years.”

Yoongi rolls his eyes. “Get going then princess,” he drawls, shooing Seokjin away with one hand. “Before I get tempted to do anything else.”

“Princess?” Seokjin echoes, sounding affronted.

Yoongi smirks, deep and dark. “Of course. Your Royal Highness doesn’t seem to listen to anything but his own sweet voice.”

“Why princess though? Why not prince?”

“Who’s the one that loves pink and fluffy animals and those – how did you describe it again –“ Yoongi clears his throat and tries to mimic Seokjin’s higher pitched voice. “adorably cute croissants which are to die for.” He gives Seokjin a long, triumphant look.

“Hey-“ Seokjin starts to say, raising his chin and preparing his comeback.

“Hyung,” Jungkook pops his head out, interrupting the two of them. “I need to get going soon. Are you going to stay here or come with me?”

Yoongi turns, his whole demeanor softening immediately. “I’ll walk you there then,” he says quickly. “Let me get my stuff.”

He disappears indoors, leaving Jungkook and Seokjin awkwardly staring at one another. Seokjin fishes for a topic but it’s Jungkook who speaks first.

“Thank you hyung,” he says softly. “For trying.”

Seokjin blinks. “Of course.”

Jungkook’s looking at him nervously, like he’s uncertain about saying what he’s about to say.

“What is it?” Seokjin prompts.

“I-“ Jungkook’s voice catches. “Um, did you mean what you said back in there?”

Seokjin tilts his head. “Which part?”

“The um,” Jungkooks’ cheeks color, “the part where you said we’re friends and um, practically family.”

Oh, that bit. “Of course,” Seokjin says easily and Jungkook’s eyes widen, his teeth furrowing at his bottom lip. “Why, did you not like that?”

Jungkook shakes his head violently. “No… I, that,” he takes a deep breath, “that made me really happy,” he says quickly and Seokjin smiles.

“Yeah?”

Jungkook looks up shyly. “Yeah,” he nods. “I… It’s always been just Yoongi-hyung and I for the longest of times. Then we met the others and it was really nice, but it’s nice to have you around as well hyung. You’re kind of like what I think a mother would feel like.”

Seokjin frowns. “Do you not have a mother?” he asks.

Jungkook shakes his head. “My mom faded when I was really young. I don’t really remember my dad either. Most of us don’t have our parents around anymore, maybe just Jimin?”

“Then who took care of you when you were growing up?”

“The town in general looks after the kids whose parent’s fade when we’re really young. They make sure we have food and places to sleep and when we’re old enough we work to make money. We also look after one another. Some of us form groups, others kind of form sibling relationship. That was Yoongi and I. He started taking care of me when I was around eight.”

Seokjin’s eyes widen. He knows Yoongi and Jungkook are close but this goes further than just mere brothers. It’s more like they’re bound by survival.

“But the adults, they don’t adopt you or anything? They just… give you a place and that’s it?”

Jungkook nods, a quick duck of the head. “I mean what if they fade too? Then we’re back to square one. It makes more sense to just gather the fade kids and give them the necessities. Most of us won’t fade anyway so form proper relationships that way.”

“At what age do people start to fade then?’

Jungkook thinks on that. “I think it starts at about fifteen? Anywhere then and above? I think before then it’s really hard for kids to grasp the concept of fade and hope. We’re all pretty young and think we’re invincible and all. There are a few cases where younger kids fade but it’s really rare.”

“Huh…” Seokjin exhales.

Their conversation ends as Yoongi emerges again. “Sorry, I was talking with the doc. Let’s go.”

“Okay hyung,” Jungkook says agreeably and Seokjin sees it now, the worry in Yoongi’s eyes as he watches over Jungkook. He gets Yoongi’s protectiveness now. He’s worried they’re all going to fade and even though he doesn’t believe in a cure he’s trying as hard as he can to stall the fade by ensuring they’re happy, healthy. This is Yoongi’s quiet brand of care.

“Yoongi,” Seokjin says as they walk past him, on their way to wherever. They pause and Yoongi looks at him. “I’m going to find a cure,” he says and Yoongi just shakes his head.

“I’m not stopping you,” he says as he pushes Jungkook to walk first. As he passes Seokjin hears a quiet “good luck” and it makes him smile. Yoongi never was that great with words.

Seokjin should have remembered there and then that in all fairness, he was never all that great at saving people either.

===