Sometimes Jimin wonders what he looks like.  He’ll stand in front of the mirror after a shower, wiping away steam that has fogged over the mirror and pinch his cheeks and make faces at himself, but it doesn’t really do anything other than hurt his cheek.  It’s been four years since he could recognize faces, and he still struggles to cope with his disability.  It’s still strange; he has to remind himself that he has a cognitive disorder.

The faces of his loved ones were lost too quickly, and his own face had changed since his accident as a result of time and aging.  Prosopagnosia, a monster of word and disorder, had robbed him of recognition. Being out in the world quickly became a terrifying prospect; he could run into schoolmates and be completely unaware.  He often screamed into his pillow at night, regretting his idiotic decision to try to walk across the frozen lake to prove himself.  A single thwack to the back of head and he couldn’t tell his best friend from his brother.

It triggered a panic attack the moment that he returned to the shoreline after his fall.  Jungkook’s face wasn’t his face but a warped mess that had taken a place atop his younger friend’s body.  He couldn’t breathe, but his friends were trying to calm him as he clawed at the shirt that was strangling him.  Their attempts to aid him only made it worse. He was rushed to the hospital.

The doctors without faces told him very, very calmly that he’s damaged brain tissue involved in the differentiating between objects and faces rendering him face-blind, but they used the word prosopagnosia. His mother clutched his hand and sobbed loudly while trying to soothe Jimin.  All of the reassuring touches and ruffles of his hair did little to ease the dread pooling in his stomach.

Jimin was in denial for quite some time, often hoping that faces would just pop back into focus.  He was embarrassed that names became harder to remember without assigned faces.  When too many people crowded him, it became hard to breathe.  It kept him shut in his room for enough time that his friends and family held an intervention.  Even then, he wasn’t the same social butterfly as the one that had been brave enough to venture out on slippery ice.

At some point, life started moving forward, pushing Park Jimin along with it.  Pulling him towards new friends who became identified by voice and dress and their hair.  (Jimin was wary to commit to associating hairstyles with people because they constantly changed).  Slowly but surely he went on.