He was sitting back on his kitchen table again, staring at the set of knives. Knives were sharp. They were used for cutting. Why was he even thinking about this right now? About something so apparent. As apparent as the fact that he couldn’t sleep. That was apparent as hell.

Yoongi had taken a shower not because he realized he needed to, but because he couldn’t stand the smell of his own vomit that still hung around him as a result of his stupid action last night. He didn’t know how many times had passed like usual, except for the fact that the sun had set already. Jimin had left hours ago. He had ended on the kitchen table, eating anything that he could find in the cupboard and tried to settle his grumbling stomach.

And that was when his view ended on his life-long old friend, the knives. He wasn’t very close to them, not having the proper time to spend with, not like what he did with his laptop and dear lover the couch. No, he seldom ever touched them, but both of them knew that they had a relationship once. They were something before. A one night stand went horribly wrong. A secret paramour whose name inked on his skin because of one drunken night and wobbling steps to the nearest tattoo parlor with their laugh hanging on the air. A secret long forgotten, an unspoken sin he hid from nearest eyes.

Maybe one day they would be lover again, rekindling their old flame. When it happened Yoongi didn’t know how bright would that fire be. Would it flicker for a minute before dying in his hand? Or would it explode like the star, loud, bright and destroying everything in its path?

Why would such epiphany always happen in front of the knives? Why would it always have to be interrupted by the door knocking? But then again lately, a knocking door was the most exciting thing that could happen to Yoongi’s life.

Namjoon did come like he had promised him to. He even bought him groceries like he had requested and he made a mental note to thank his friend when he was finished with the car as well. He would fix it on his own but the idea of stepping out of his room and behind the steering wheel didn’t appeal whatsoever to him. As easy as that he fell back to the routine of sitting on the kitchen table with few people he got to call a friend. Not with Jimin, though, because the boy would prefer the couch. Talking of which, Yoongi had his eyes on the door during another one of Namjoon’s philosophical rambling, wondering whether a knock would come and it would be Jimin behind it. 

“I take it back, you don’t seem better right now, hyung,” Namjoon said, probably talking about the conversation on the phone earlier.

“I’m never worse nor better. I’m always like this,” he boringly answered.

“The old Min Yoongi would spend his days cooped up in his apartment because he got a song to produce. The old Min Yoongi wouldn’t sleep for three days straight because he was stupid enough to pile his assignments to the last day possible.”

Yoongi scoffed. If he wasn’t thinking too much about how wrong he was for yelling at Jimin right now, he would have probably done the same thing to Namjoon.

“I think that you’re better last night. Depressed people don’t go to clubs,” his friend commented. At the back of his mind he wanted to make clear how Namjoon wouldn’t probably know how does it feel like to be depressed, thus having no right to say such things. But then again, so did he.

“Because I’m not depressed.”

“Then what is this, hyung?” he asked.

He didn’t know. He wanted to know about it as bad as Namjoon. He remembered Seokjin’s words. He wanted to fix him. He wasn’t broken now, was he? He didn't need fixing.

“I don’t know,” he said.

Namjoon sighed. He of all people knew that prying too much would only result to Yoongi’s anger and Namjoon understood him that way. He was closest to him than to his other friends and the Kim understood him well enough as the back of his own palm. 

“Maybe you need a change in your life. Meet someone new,” the younger changed the topic instead, knowing that he shouldn't pry too much.

“The last time I met someone knew I crashed on him. So no,” he commented. Jimin. Where was the boy now? Did he come back to his house? Would he ever see him again? He had this urge to apologize to the boy for saying such thing. Guess he wasn’t that numb after all. Guilt still came eerily and unnecessarily natural to him.

“How's the boy you hit by the way? You manage to give the handkerchief back?"

After all this time and the fabric was still laid on top of his cabinet, forgotten. He forgot to give it to Jimin and the boy had seemingly no interest in gaining it back. Still, having Namjoon asking him about Jimin got him biting at his lower lips. He took a glance towards the door again.

"He actually came again," he said. Twice, actually.

"Well from where I see it, i think you need to crash on more people, hyung. You make friends with one hell of a way."

Yoongi snorted. "He's not my friend."

Of course he wasn’t. Park Jimin is just a stranger that he crashed on.

.

He walked Namjoon towards the door, the younger smiled and said how he missed seeing Yoongi on campus. He didn't think much about it, not even wanting to in the first place. The other boy just smiled, showing his dimples, but his eyes spoke exactly like Seokjin's. Yoongi tossed him the car’s key, telling Namjoon to fix it for him. He groaned and practically shooed the other man afterwards when fate somehow had him bumping on Taehyung instead. Not exactly bumping, since he was standing between his apartment’s door with Namjoon in front of him and his pesky neighbor was just walking out of the elevator with another raven-haired boy behind him.

Upon seeing the huge smile, he could guess that he had to bear one or two sentences to hear. Taehyung was smiling loudly and of course he wouldn't just walk pass his door towards his own. He had to stop in front of his and tried to make conversation. Pesky conversation.

"Hey, Yoongi-hyung. Guess I manage to remember my keycard today," he said, grinning, bobbing his body up and down as if waiting for the older’s compliment upon his stupid achievement.

Taehyung's other friend just stood there behind him. The boy was taller but somehow looked much younger. He clearly didn't want to pay attention to the other boy, but the raven-haired kid somehow ended glaring at him. He got this constant gaze that Yoongi hardly saw on anyone else. It was exactly the gaze that had Yoongi raising his eyebrow, because this particular foreign and unfamiliar kid was looking at him straight in the eye as if he was-

"Where's Jimin? I can't wait to play with him!" Taehyung said again, bouncing.

"Who's Jimin?" Namjoon asked.

"It's the boy i crashed on,” Yoongi muttered back.

Namjoon was probably going to ask how the boy he crashed on managed to befriend his crazy loud neighbor that he abhorred  whenTaehyung turned his head towards Namjoon instead, saying something along 'Are you one of Yoongi-hyung's friends as well? You look really different drom Jimin. I'm Taehyung, his lovely neighbor.' Yoongi though. ended up looking at the other boy again. Why was he looking at Yoongi like that? No, it wasn't clearly Yoongi that he was looking at. He was seeing something else, pass him. As if someone was standing right behind him. As if there was someone else in his apartment, peeking right through the door behind his back. And the kid, he really looked-

"Taehyung-hyung, let's go inside," the boy suddenly said, tugging towards Taehyung's shirt.

"Awh but Jungkook, i haven't introduced you to Yoongi-hyung," Taehyung said, whining, pointing towards Yoongi.

Jungkook or so the boy was called had pried his eyes from Yoongi's direction, turning his body slightly and looking at Taehyung's door instead, as if there was something that he didn't want to see and turning slightly would only reveal that.

"Can we please just go now?" the boy said again, his voice suddenly turned a slight bit serious and demanding.

The grin on Taehyung's face disappeared, replaced with a pout until he pulled Jungkook wrist and walked towards his own door, looking kind of disappointed.

"Yha, Jungkookie isn't feeling so well right now so we'll probably play later. Bye hyung," he said, waving at them energetically. The boy disappeared behind his own door and Yoongi turned his attention towards Namjoon and sighed.

"You've got one hell of a loud neighbor," Namjoon said, chuckling. He had once told his friends respectively about the agony he had gone through because of a certain bouncing neighbor that kept on forgetting his keycard and practically being a toddler he had to babysit from time to time.

"Believe me I don't want him to meet Hoseok, ever," Yoongi said.

Namjoon went home not so long after that, disappearing from behind the elevator's door. With that he sighed, closing the door and went back to his favorite spot like always, head slumped and eyes staring at the ceiling. He thought about Jimin, thinking that maybe the boy wouldn't ever come back. He thought about Namjoon who'd always been the only one who knew how to handle him. He thought about Taehyung and his annoying act. With so many people that he met these last few days, his mind wandered suddenly towards Jungkook, that weird friend of Taehyung.

The boy was staring at him. Why?

And he remembered the stare.

The boy was looking at him with fear in his eyes. He was scared, looking right at Yoongi with eyes wide and filled with horror. No, he wasn’t actually looking at Yoongi. He was seeing something else, wasn’t he?

As if he could see something standing behind Yoongi and it terrified the life out of the boy.

.

When Jimin left all he could think of was how he should apologize. He thought how he shouldn’t actually say those words that he said. More than that he thought that he should have stopped the boy from walking outside. Guilt was building at the pit of his stomach and he thought that he wouldn’t get to feel that emptiness he detested again, because having it replaced with guilt wasn’t actually the nicest thing to feel.

Yoongi was wrong.

Fear was even worse.

When Jimin left all he could think of was how the telephone would ring any minute soon and another voice would replace the static as soon as it got into the answering machine, repeating the word he very much feared. Not being able to sleep had somehow become a blessing, because even the slightest moment that he managed to, the same scene would be repeated over and over again in his head. He would be in that same intersection, driving his car, before the headache came rushing in. Before he knew it he had crashed on someone, the body flew towards the hood of his car and he didn’t even manage to feel the impact. But he did hear the word, not only whispered now, but screamed towards his ear until all he saw was white upon noise and all he felt was his heart beating like mad. That was the moment when his eyes shot open and he woke up with body trembling.

Seokjin called but didn’t come, probably giving him space like he had always been yearning for. Funnily enough Jimin left when he asked to and the same thing had somehow applied to his friends. They stopped coming towards his door and for once he was thankful for that, if only phone calls and nightmares weren’t something he had to deal with now. He rather had his friends than this.

One day Yoongi woke up from a two hours nap that didn’t feel like sleep at all with heart racing and palms sweating from another nightmare. He woke up from his bed and walked towards his bathroom to see the word ‘murderer’ painted across the mirror with a red paint. His body froze in horror and he blinked, only to find his own reflection staring back at him with face horrified. He was daydreaming, wasn’t he?

Other day Yoongi woke up from a two hours nap that didn’t feel like sleep at all with feet standing inside of the elevator, face staring at the opening elevator door as Mrs. Kim stepped into it, stealing him a glance of confusion. He blinked twice, as the door closed and realizing that he was somewhere he didn’t remember himself to be. The last thing he remembered was sitting on his couch and now he already found himself in the ing elevator without memory of how he got there.

The moment he got back to his apartment Yoongi slammed the door shut, having his back against it and slumped down towards the floor, face buried in his own palm. He was starting to go crazy now, wasn’t he?

The horror didn’t stop there. The phone rang and his body tensed. No, this wasn’t happening to him. Was he having a nightmare or he was simply living one? He didn’t wait for the eighth ring to resound. He didn’t even wait for it to get into voicemail, because Yoongi had got up and ran towards the phone, pulling out not only the power source but also the cord along with it. He grabbed the phone and pulled it free before throwing it towards the wall. The cord snapped and the phone hit the wall with a crash, the main body snapped and broke into chunks.

They would stop now, wouldn’t they? There would be no phone calls. There would be no voices.

And the television lit up.

He stood there dumbfounded, eyes watching the TV screened lit up, grains and buzzing noises, static white and black filled the screen. He watched in horror as the TV that he’d been seeing his reflection on for days without him laying a finger on the remote. There was static, once again, coming from the television, as it always did with the receiver. He should have charged forward, did the same thing as he did with the phone. Instead he just stood there and waited. Seconds seemed to stop but he felt that time had always done that to him.

He waited and waited, and there he could hear it. A voice. The same voice. The one he’d always heard. The one he’d grown to fear. It was there, on the television, not the phone, because the phone was broken, lying at the end of the room, its cord pulled and its body snapped into pieces. It was spoken through the static on the television, being as loud as it could.

“Murderer.”

And that was when the phone rang again.

Yes, the broken phone rang.

Again.

.

"You're fine."

And the phone rang.

"You're perfectly okay."

And the television lit up.

"You're fine."

And there was a word written on the wall with something that looked like a red paint.

"You're perfectly okay."

And blood soaked his bed sheets.

Yoongi was sitting on the corner of his bedroom, palm covering his ears and heads tugged between his knees. His eyes were closed shut and he was biting his own lips so hard to the point where it started to bleed. He didn't know how many days had passed, but it seemed like none actually did.

The only real voice that he heard was his own. It wasn't really soothing, but it was the closest that he got to anchor his sanity. So he kept on repeating the word like a broken record, trying to drown out the voice telling him over and over again that he was a murderer. He didn't dare to open his eyes as well, because he would see it written on the wall, the red of blood against the white wallpaper, even up to the ceiling, covering the cracks that he'd spent weeks staring at. It would be written everywhere as far as his eyes could see. He didn't dare to fall asleep as well, because he knew the nightmare that awaited him. It wasn't like he could sleep as well, actually.

And so he tried his best to remain sane, tried his best to feed the word that felt more and more like a lie to himself.

He should have gone out. He should have walked out of the door and left the apartment, but something inside of him said that he wouldn't be safe outside either. Where could he possibly go as well? The voices would always find its way to reach him.

He was sweating and fidgeting. Yoongi didn't even realize that. He always said how he couldn't feel anything. He finally got what he was asking for, since he never felt this scared before in his life. Even the darkness and the ghost stories didn't scare him. This one did, terribly. Yoongi didn't believe in ghost. It couldn't be. This was just a lack of sleep, him seeing things, right? This was him eating something bad. It wasn't like he had really killed somebody, right? He wasn't a murderer, was he?

His wrist itched.

He thought about the knives again.

If it was killing a person, it might have been himself that he'd killed. He came upon that realization. If one day he really did take a life, it would probably be his own. 

Yoongi pried on his wrist, scratching them. They started to itch now. Weird. He scratched on them slowly, grazing his thumbs against the skin, feeling the thin scar that was engraved on it since time long ago and tried to rid of the itch. Scar. He had them, of course, sculpted on his body in place people wouldn't really think about. 

That was when he realized that everything was too quiet.

He couldn't hear the phone. He couldn't hear the television. There was nothing, just his own heavy breath resounding throughout the room. The silence was unsettling. He felt like he hadn't had this in a long time, it felt almost too hard to comprehend. 

That was when he heard the knock on the door.

Yoongi was cautious. He could hear it faintly from his bedroom, the knock faint but steady. He shouldn't have answered it, shouldn't have gotten up to open it, but the knock now felt like the only real thing that he got to sanity. It was real and it wasn't his phone ringing. It wasn't a voice coming through the static. It was a knock. A genuine thumping on his wooden door.

He got up, walking out of his bedroom and passed the hallway. He stopped right in his living room, thinking how it could be another trick that his mind had been pulling for him. It could be another nightmare. He could easily be in one right now. He would open the door to see someone standing, bloody and twisted, saying that he was a murderer. Or rather it could be no one, just something that his mind had made up to make him feel better, just a voice that his mind had conjured.

"Hyung."

That was until he heard the voice, sounding like a soft plea and he knew who it was. He knew too well who it was.

Jimin.

Yoongi raced towards the door, opening it with a force in such a quick action. He'd been feeling guilty about Jimin, hadn't he? All of this nightmares had turned to reality the moment he blew up on the boy. Was this all karma or some sort of? He didn't know and he didn't care. He just knew that he needed to apologize. He was wrong for yelling at Jimin. The boy didn't deserve that as much as whatever the problem he'd been having back at home. He would apologize, buy him a pizza and let the boy spend the night again. He must be running away again right now, explaining the ungodly hours in which the boy always ended up in front of his door. He would probably see him again with eyes red and swollen. 

And that was when he opened the door and he saw Jimin standing in front of his apartment, bleeding.