Jimin's eyes open, and there’s the moon, its shape distorted and marred by the lengthening body of water between him and the surface, but still beautiful. Still bright enough to be the focus point of his vision. When he tries, Jimin thinks that he can hear the faded sounds in the background where the majority of people are gathered at the resort, champagne glasses in their hands, dancing along to an unnamed band playing ty song covers on a raised platform.

Is this how it was with you?

He’s not supposed to be here. Jimin should be at the resort, lost in the crowd of sweaty bodies, having glitter smudged over his skin whenever he brushes against someone he doesn’t know, doesn’t want to know. Taehyung's going to shove him at another random guy, and Jimin's going to try keeping his attention on whatever they’re saying to get him in bed.

“Do it for the ,” Taehyung would say. “Do it for yourself. You can’t be this way forever, Jimin. When things are lost, they hardly ever come back. And they sure as hell don’t come back whole.”

“I’m fine the way I am. I’m not interested.”

It is always in moments like these when Taehyung would have someone to push his face into, and in tonight’s case, Jimin had noticed that he has light coloured hair, bleached white and then dyed a rose coloured hue. Also, he hadn’t had to crane his neck up in order to catch a glimpse of the stranger’s face. “Yoongi,” the hardly amused voice had introduced himself as. “Fourth year music major.” Jimin had been distracted, estimating the number of millimetres visible of Yoongi's eyes, the rest hidden by his eyelids in a sleepy, done-with-life expression.

Jimin had tried his best, but he’s not really in the mood to discuss the reinvention of classical music with a hand on his . He’s too sober. Excusing himself, he’d picked his way through the crowd and taken a cup of something that he distinctly remembers is bright pink. It hadn’t tasted stellar, but it had been alcohol all the same. He’d faded into the crowd right after, stumbling, in a daze, letting anyone drape their arm over his shoulder, and even making out with a boy he had remembered seeing in some of his neuroscience lectures. Sungjae? Sanghyuk?

Something feels heavy on his chest, and Jimin swallows in his throat, feeling the sides of his vision tinge black for a few moments before he blinks them back. The moon seems further away now. Jimin's eyes are tired, and he closes them.

He remembers sitting on the beach at 3am, with Jungkook, their shoulders barely touching, but still close enough for comfort. There had been almost no cars on the highway; everything had been quiet, silent. The breeze had been cold, but not too much so as to make a t-shirt and board shorts ensemble seem ridiculous.

“Hyung.” Jungkook's voice was a low, contemplating hum. “Where do you think we’d be if we could follow the sun down wherever it goes?”

Jimin had laughed, because it was just like Jungkook to ask childish questions, questions that everyone probably wants to ask but had decided against, for the fear of judgmental responses.

 “I don’t know, but in a very factual way, I’d say that there isn’t an ‘edge of the world’ we could fall off of.”

Jungkook loved beaches, Jimin remembers, as the first bubble wrenches past his tightly sealed lips, making his chest shudder with a gasp that sends a bloom of pain over where his ribs lay. If he could, he’d see the tears gathering in the corners of his eyes as they open with difficulty. Because it hurts. It ing hurts.

Did you hurt the same way?

The room had spun around so fast, the ceiling rushing towards the floor as Jimin struggled past the crowd to get another one of those weird too-neon coloured drinks. His senses were dulled, a faint throbbing at the back of the skull that he somehow knew would be a to wake up to.

That was when Jimin had seen him.

A silhouette that is more familiar to Jimin than his Xbox controller; a strong back, and shoulders shaking as he tossed his head back and laughed. Jimin had almost heard his laugh. Almost. It had thrown him off, panic seizing him, and when he’d called out, his voice was soft, scared.

“Jungkook.”

And then he’d given chase, following Jungkook out of the room, out of the resort, stumbling and half tripping his way down the path to the beach until he had found himself splashing into the shallow water. But Jimin had found himself alone.

Jungkook was gone.

Jimin's throat convulses, swallowing another mouthful of water, his coughs soundless and going unheard. Pain is all he knows, and even if it is no longer foreign to him, it doesn’t make it any better.

“Take a deep breath.” Jungkook had always liked to say this. He’d say it whenever he let himself into the dorm Taehyung and Jimin shares, and saw Jimin face down on the couch, mumbling incoherently into a cushion, legs kicking behind him in a tantrum. “Jimin.”

Jimin's never listened, only launching into a rant about how the workload for third years could his and he’d still be chin-deep in the assignments even if there were 50 hours in a day.

But he listens now. Choking on his own thoughts, Jimin takes a deep breath.

It happened on New Year’s Day. Jimin had been lounging around on the couch watching Madagascar with Taehyung's head in his lap, the both of them huddled at the side with a bowl of microwaved popcorn balanced precariously on Taehyung's chest, and Jimin had feared for its safety, especially whenever the orange-haired boy let out a loud laugh, his body shaking with it.

“Why do I have to watch this with you instead of kissing Jungkook.”

“ for you that your boyfriend is spending New Year’s with his friends.” Taehyung's elbow had jabbed into Jimin's stomach, dangerously close to his crotch, earning a quiet yelp from his best friend.

“Watch out for my balls!”

Taehyung had gone back to investing all his attention into the movie, with Jimin going on about appreciation and something about how the coating on microwave popcorn melts in contact to heat and that Taehyung should contemplate his life options before, quote, “the perfluorooctanoic acid gives you cancer and you die”, unquote.

“…and with all that diacetyl from the artificial butter you’re inhaling down your throat right now, I’ll be damned if you don’t get lung cancer too—”

“Will you shut the up, Jesus! I don’t need you spouting your crap right now. We’re supposed to be on a vacation break and I’m trying to watch a movie. .”

And then, Jimin's phone had rung.

He remembers their first kiss. It hadn’t been perfect, or anywhere near romantic. They’d been at one of those parties that Taehyung's friend’s friend’s friend threw, hiding away from the people and loud music at the top of the stairs, huddled together on the highest step, knees pressed against each other’s.

If anything, Jimin had been half drunk when it happened: Jungkook brushing his knuckles against Jimin's pink tinted cheeks, tilting his head before he’d dived in, teeth knocking, clumsy. Messy hair and even messier hands. But Jungkook's lips had been warm, so warm and wet, and Jimin remembers.

Jungkook had asked him once, how it’d felt like. “Like drowning,” Jimin had said. Hell, he had even thought that it was romantic as , pride tingeing in his veins when Jungkook tilted his head back and laughed in that unrestrained way of his, eyes crinkling up at the sides, his bunny teeth showing.

It is nothing like drowning.

It’s a different sort of gasping for breath, a different sort of feeling as if he can’t breathe. A different sort of struggle. Jimin inhales, and he doesn’t hurt anymore. It settles in his head, and Jimin is calm for the first time that night.

They were often on the beach past midnight, knees gathered against their chests as the gentle waves lapped up and sometimes their toes. Jungkook loved it, loved being at the shoreline with fractured reflections of the moon and where the sand glittered. Jimin had found himself distracted one too many times, by the way Jungkook's lips tilt up into a small smile as the both of them sit side by side, watching the waves follow the pull of the moon for hours on end.

“Hey, Jungkook.”

“Yeah?”

“Do you believe in parallel universes?”

Jungkook had turned to him with a curious tilt of his head, shoulders shrugging. “There isn’t a reason not to. Do you?”

Jimin does, in fact, believe in a parallel universe, quietly murmuring in earnest about how he thinks that it is a possibility that everyone has the memories of all their parallel selves, and that dreams are sometimes them remembering their past lives and all the other lives they have. When Jimin had glanced to his side, Jungkook's head was on his shoulder, slightly lolled to the front, and Jimin could hear his slow, even breaths.

Jungkook falls asleep, and Jimin falls in love.

“Yeah?” Jimin's arm had ached from where the muscles stretched when he reached out for his phone, almost toppling the bowl of popcorn all over Taehyung's face, his chest smothering the poor boy from when Jimin had bent over.

Yugyeom's voice had been at the loudest that Jimin had ever heard him, babbling quickly about something, and Jimin catches a few words here and there, mostly Jungkook's name and a mention of the beach. In the background, Bambam could be heard shouting something in Thai, and Jimin's blood ran cold, the phone frozen against his ear, because he knew that something had gone wrong.

Taehyung craned his neck from where he had been fixated on the television, the sudden lack of noise from Jimin making him curious, and it wasn’t until he caught a glimpse of Jimin's face that he had sat upright, popcorn bowl overturned and forgotten on the floor. Jimin had let Taehyung take the phone, his expression more serious than Jimin had known it could become.

But Jimin hadn’t seen it properly either, because he’d felt as if the world had shifted on its axis, and everything is sliding sideways, and the thought of it was making him close his eyes and pretend that he could wake up from it.

“Jimin.” Taehyung's grip had been firm, fierce. “Jimin, get the up, we need to go.”

“He…” His voice was a pathetic croak, and he had been able to taste the hiccups at the back of his throat even as his windpipe closed up, leaving a bitter tang on his tongue. “He might—”

“Move your ing , we’re going.” Taehyung's words had a rough edge to them, almost as if he’d been holding back angry tears, but hadn’t allowed any of them to fall, for Jimin's sake.

Jimin feels it again, the same pang in his chest that he had felt that day. But it’s a fading ache now, smoothed out over the edges that used to hurt, and Jimin thinks about how beautiful the moon is. Wonders why he hadn’t thought to look at it more before this.

They say that it takes seven minutes to drown, but in that span of time, Jimin lives through the five years he’d spent with Jungkook, and the one year he’d had to trudge by without him.

Reality is derailed tracks and Jimin feels like a train with broken brakes. Collapsed on his knees by the hospital bed was when Jimin had finally accepted the truth. It had been after kissing unresponsive lips and slipping his fingers between Jungkook's that Jimin had started to cry.

“That’s not possible,” and Jimin would never in a million years expect his voice to get so shrill. “Jungkook practically lives in the sea. He loves the beach, he knows how to swim.”

“He was drunk, hyung.” Yugyeom had spoken quietly, words almost a whisper, as if afraid that anything he said would further aggravate Jimin.

“The sea is everything to him.”

Behind him, Bambam's voice was soft, tone broken, “was”.

Jimin had said, “his lips are so cold.”

Jeon Jungkook, 19, drowns on New Year’s Day.

Jimin slept with other people after that. He spent his weekends with his mind hazed over from the alcohol, letting anyone pull him into any empty room or closet. He let them wrap their hands around his throat until he’s gasping for breath and clawing at their backs, his pleas for them to stop dying at the tip of his tongue.

He let them leave bruises, but none of them hurt enough to make him forget about warm hands and the crinkle in the smile of the one person who’d taught him all the constellations in the sky he knew.

Everything seems smaller now, and Jimin can barely make out the rippled shape of the moon, but he knows that it’s not a full moon yet, waxing to three quarters of its size. His limbs are heavy, but there’s a little spark expanding in warm waves over his chest, and he doesn’t feel cold.

The world seems so different and foreign when seen from underwater, Jimin thinks, it’s so surreal and yet so dreamlike. It’s like he’s gone into a parallel universe, where he’s going to wake up in his bed with familiar arms around his torso, and a bunny toothed smile pressed against his nape. Jimin wants to wake up soon.

The date is January 1, 00:00, and Jungkook kisses him.

His lips are warm.

Somewhere above them, away from the water, Jimin hears the muffled sounds of fireworks, and his friends cheering under the New Year’s morning sky.

“Hyung. Where do you think we’d be if we could follow the sun down wherever it goes?”

“I don’t know, but in a very factual way, I’d say that there isn’t an ‘edge of the world’ we could fall off of.”

“Then do you think, we could find our own edge?”

“Of course. Maybe we’ve already found it.”