It was sometime in the evening when Jin was in his room, in his bed, staring at the ceiling, his mind full of thoughts. His window was closed, but he felt cold in his room, all alone, with no one beside him. He gripped the bedsheets, as they were under his touch. Without a second thought, he faced the window, seeing how the moon was shining outside, the night taking over as the day passed. He couldn’t help but think of his life, how things changed. How things have changed so much.

The room got colder, the night got darker, and the moon shined even way more. Jin noticed it even got more silent and a thought came into his mind: he felt lonely. The only thing he could hear was his breathing in the dark as he continued to stare at the moon outside his window like it was his only friend, keeping him company. A lot of thoughts clouded his mind and one of them was Taehyung.

How is he?

Without thinking, he swallowed the lump in his throat and gripped the bedsheets that were under him, tighter. The image of his younger brother flashed right before his eyes – how his precious tears cascaded down his cheeks as he started to cry, how his dark orbs glistened with tears b at the corners of his eyes, how his lips trembled as he spoke in a low, soft whisper, how his cheeks were so flushed, and how he tried to return Jin’s gaze as he continued to speak, trying his best to hold the eye contact while talking about his parents. Shuddering, Jin closed his eyes and remembered how Taehyung embraced him ever so tightly, like he had no one to rely on but him. He was supposed to be Taehyung’s older brother, the one he looked up to, but somewhere deep inside him, he thought that he couldn’t do much for his only brother, Taehyung. Jin couldn’t even show his true emotions to him because a part of him wanted to hate Taehyung; he just popped out of nowhere stealing his parents’ attention, their love, and now, Jin found out that Taehyung was full of light and something inside of him shined which made people love him for who he was. Taehyung seemed too good to be true, and that fact bothered Jin so much because he was nothing like him. He was nothing like Taehyung.

Yet, a part of him wanted to learn how to love his younger brother.

Just as his mind got more clouded with nothing but Taehyung, a knock on his door snapped him back to reality and Jin opened his eyes only to say, not a second later, “Come in.”
 

Though it was dark, he could easily tell who it was as the person’s glasses shined in the dark, thanks to the moon’s light. His father took a few steps inside as he smiled at Jin who looked up at him from his bed. He, too, smiled at his father.

“Can I talk to you for a minute?” Jin’s father spoke up. Sitting on the edge of his bed, Jin nodded, expecting his father to sit beside him and talk about what was troubling him, but what he got next suddenly made him worried. His father rarely came up to him late at night to talk about his problems. He would usually talk to Jin’s mother, but not him, so this somehow made him feel concerned. “Can we talk downstairs?”

Before he knew it, Jin found himself sitting at their table with his father sitting at his usual place and with him sitting beside him. There was no tension whatsoever, but his father seemed to give out a certain aura that let Jin shut up before he could even talk. Sitting still, he looked at his father expectantly, not knowing what they were going to talk about, but he didn’t question. He just waited patiently, hoping it wasn’t something that would make him stay up all night.

“I figured that you weren’t asleep yet,” his father gave him a bright smile this time, patting Jin’s hand which was rested on the table. Jin looked at his father’s hand which rested on top of his and diverted his attention back to his father as he nodded. Surprisingly, he held his father’s hand, and his father couldn’t help but give him a shocked expression, but Jin asked him to continue as a chuckle left his lips. “You must be worried about your brother, right?”

That sent Jin’s smile out the window as he had a serious face this time around, Taehyung’s name repeating in his head again and again. For the nth time that day, his brain throbbed, his heart flipped, and his insides churned. By some means, Taehyung decided to stick around and tease his mind and it stayed like that the whole day ever since they left the park. In one way or another, he knew his father would bring this topic up and he couldn’t do anything about it – it was bound to happen eventually.

“What about him?” Jin tried his best not to sound too mean. So his father wouldn’t misunderstand, he squeezed his hand to assure him that he wasn’t mad. Nonetheless, he managed to continue. “Is this about Taehyung?”

They were the only ones awake at this time and Jin could’ve sworn that the tension was building up once again. Talking about Taehyung made him a hundred times more sensitive and he didn’t know why.

“I bet you’re confused, but please…just be patient with him,” the older said, sighing, yet, he continued to speak, “He’s your younger brother, so you should learn how to love him, Seokjin.”

Seokjin.

The only time his father would say his real name was when he was serious.

Jin thought that his father was taking this ‘new brother’ thing very seriously, but it wasn’t as easy as everyone thought it would be. How did everyone expect Jin to react when a random person popped out of nowhere one day and introduced himself as his new brother? What did they expect from him, really? He couldn’t just love a stranger all of a sudden like he was put in a spell, pretending that Taehyung didn’t just come from a different family, pretending like he wasn’t an outsider but a brother he should really care for. It was hard. It was really hard, Jin thought, as an image of a smiling Taehyung crossed his mind. He couldn’t just pretend that everything was alright when in fact, everything wasn’t. Taehyung came from a different family – he had parents, he had friends, he had a home, he had a past, and that alone, made them different. Jin couldn’t just say Taehyung was his brother t