A lot Jin’s best memories involved him and his friends not getting arrested.

And that, everyone would agree, was entirely because of Jin. Without him, they’d all be in a jail cell somewhere, awaiting trial for something truly stupid they’d done for laughs. But Jin was the oldest. He was wise and he was handsome and he had a way with cops. He always let the boys get him into trouble and then he used his charm and good looks to get everyone out.

Every group of friends had certain roles and title and Jin was, without a doubt, the leader and the protector.

Once, they’d gone to the mall to see a movie and buy some records and that, somehow, had turned into them making a mess at the food court. They had what could only be described as a food fight and Taehyung ended up dancing on the table, kicking French fries at the other guys. Jin had to admit that it was downright hilarious but when the owner reached behind the counter to grab something (could’ve been a broom, could’ve been a gun) he knew he had to intervene.

The staff was deadest on calling the police and getting their dumb asses thrown into prison for the night but Jin talked them all down with soothing words and enough cash to cover the damages.

As they walked out into the night, the rest of the lads cheered and sang their praises.

Once again, Jin had come to their rescue and kept them from being shoved into the back of the cop car.

Because of that, it surprised absolutely no one that the first thing Namjoon and Taehyung did after Jin died was get themselves arrested for vandalizing a building they had no businesses tagging.

They laughed as they got shoved against the side of a cold police car, snorting and giggling because with all their heart and soul, they didn’t give a about getting arrested. They didn’t give a about the cops. They didn’t give a about what their parents might say.

None of it mattered.

Nothing mattered.

Not anymore.

The night Jin died was the last time he’d kept them from being detained by local police.

It was a typical boys’ night out. When the sun went down, the guys liked to look for trouble and that night, they found it easy. A tunnel downtown was considered a high-traffic area and the lads could think of nothing more hilarious than blocking it off with Jin’s truck and terrorizing the other motorists.

If he was being honest, Jin thought they were going just a little overboard. They threw popcorn and soda at car windows, screamed at drivers and spit on the ground, and when Taehyung whipped out a can of spray paint and drew a fat red X on one of the windshields, Jin decided it was time to go.

He shouted for them, begging his friends to get in the truck so that they could flee the scene of the crime, but the guys insisted on running. Jin drove, very slowly, in the middle of both lanes in an attempt to keep the other cars from passing by and running down the rest of the group.

It worked and by the time they climbed back into the truck, the other six were panting in between bouts of hysterical laughter. They shouted jeers and taunts at those driving behind them and patted each other on the backs while they hooted and hollered. Jin couldn’t stop smiling and he couldn’t believe that these s were his best friends in the whole world.

They were hell-raisers, menaces, troublemakers, the kings of the dramatic, graffiti-covered underworld that existed only in their own heads, and they came alive whenever all seven of them were together.

The truck only fit five and so Jungkook and Taehyung sat in the bed. They kept the back window open so that there was no conversational lull and though it sometimes required them to shout over the sounds of the road, it kept them all in communication.

“Where to next, brothers?” Hoseok asked, his need for excitement getting the better of him as the night wore down.

“We gotta go home,” Namjoon said, gesturing to Yoongi who sat in the backseat. “Some of us have jobs, you know.”

Hoseok booed but he knew that neither Namjoon nor Yoongi, both of them wise beyond their years and stubborn as mules, would be swayed. Try as they might, the group could never convince either to play hooky. Maybe that was why they both had so much money and why they were two of the only three friends in the squad that had their own apartments. (The third was Jungkook and none of them had any idea how Kookie could afford rent. His ty basement apartment left a lot to be desired but still, that money had to come from somewhere.)

They dropped Namjoon and Yoongi off outside their respective buildings and Jungkook and Taehyung took their seats inside the truck, anxious to get out of the cold.

“We’re better without those killjoys anyway,” Taehyung teased as he took the passenger’s seat. He reached across and poked Jin in the ribs. “Though you can be a bit of a wet blanket yourself, big man.”

Swatting his hand away, Jin said, “Let’s drive around.”

To this day, no one knew why Jin’s truck had stalled. It was a nice truck, a Ford 4X4 that Jin had gotten when he turned nineteen, and until that night, he’d never had so much as a flat tire. He considered that truck his baby, his pride and joy. He got the oil changed every five-thousand miles and he refused to put anything in it but the most genuine (and most expensive) gasoline.

Jin loved that truck with all his heart.

So why, then, had it decided to stall on the downtown train tracks?

It was something out of a movie. These things didn’t really happen, right? Cars didn’t just crap out right there on the railroad tracks. It just didn’t happen.

But it did.

It had.

It was happening to them.

Jin cursed and groaned and pounded his fists on the steering wheel, begging and praying for the engine to turn over. He couldn’t lose this truck. He couldn’t. It was his livelihood and his window into freedom. It was how he got to work. It was how he contributed to the group. It was how he escorted himself and his friends around town. It was everything to him. He just couldn’t give it up.

“Jin-hyung, come on!” Jimin shouted from the backseat, pulling frantically on the sleeve of Jin’s jacket. “We’ll call a tow! If we’re lucky, they’ll be quick! Let’s go!”

“,” Jin said, slamming his hand into the dashboard. “Okay, you’re right. Let’s go.”

The five of them had made it twenty feet when they heard the whistle of an oncoming train and none of them had ever seen Jin move so fast.

“Jin, what the ever-loving are you doing?” Taehyung screamed as loudly as his throat and lungs would let him.

“I need to try again!” Jin shouted back, not bothering to turn around. “I can’t let my truck get crushed! I have to move it!”

“Are you ing insane?” Jungkook bellowed, sprinting after him.

“No, don’t!” Jimin snapped, wrapping a tight hand around Jungkook’s arm. They couldn’t all be running back to play on the goddamn tracks when atrain was coming. “Jin-hyung, get back here!”

Jin ignored all of them. He didn’t care. His truck was his priority. It was the only thing he had that was his and he couldn’t sit idly by and watch it get smashed. Besides, what would happen to the train if it collided with a pickup truck? What it were a passenger train?

“I just have to try again!” Jin screamed, his words swallowed by the train’s enormous thunder. “I’ll try again and if it doesn’t start…” His voice trailed off as he realized he had no idea what he was going to do if it didn’t start. , it had to start.

“Jin, please!” Taehyung hadn’t run back the whole way. He was ten feet from the truck, his fists balled at his sides and his heart pounding painfully against his chest.

Nothing was going to happen. This was real life, not Hollywood. Nothing was going to happen. The train would stop or something. The conductor would see them and he’d stop.

Taehyung screamed again when the train made no signs of stopping. There wasn’t enough time for it to slow down. Physically, it would be impossible. The train started blaring a new sound, probably a frantic warning from the engineer who could see the truck and had no possible way to avoid it.

“Jin, you need to move!” Taehyung demanded. From behind him, Jimin was restraining Jungkook but none of them had stopped yelling, all of them begging with everything they had for Jin to get out of his truck and run to them.

Jin could see the train was coming.

He wasn’t blind.

He wasn’t dumb.

He could see it.

But he had to keep trying. He had to move the truck.

Two, three, four more attempts and the ing thing just wouldn’t budge.

“I’m coming!” he yelled, dejectedly giving up all hope that his truck would survive the night. The train was getting too close for comfort and the enormous wave of sound was making his head throb.

He turned his body with every intention of hopping from the driver’s seat and charging towards his friends and the safety of the grass. But he could only get one leg out of the truck. In his haste, his left foot has gotten twisted up under the seat. He tugged as hard as he could but he knew the bones of his foot would give long before the seat did.

“I’m stuck!” Jin cried but he knew that his voice couldn’t match the volume of the train. It was close now. Too close. Way too close and getting closer. He yanked on his foot and when he realized that it was his boot that was stuck, he worked the laces, his shaking hands doing absolutely nothing to relieve the double-knot he’d tied earlier in the day.

“He’s stuck,” Taehyung realized quietly, his heart turning to ice and falling into the pit of his stomach. He hadn’t heard Jin’s words but he could see him now, struggling and fumbling with his foot. He didn’t care how close the train was and he didn’t care what his friends would say. He ran, as fast as his legs would take him, back to the truck and when he, too, couldn’t dislodge Jin’s foot, he grabbed Jin’s hand and pulled as hard as he could.

“Taehyung, get out of here!” Jin pleaded.

“I’m not leaving you!”

The train was so close that Taehyung thought he could see the conductor’s worried expression. Because of how hard Taehyung was pulling him, Jin’s body was halfway out of the truck, but despite all of their efforts, he couldn’t get free.

The train was practically on top of them now and Taehyung refused to let go. Their eyes were locked, the fear and panic on Jin’s face met with steely determination on Taehyung’s, and if it hadn’t been for Hoseok charging with all his might and tackling Taehyung to the ground, they would’ve still been holding hands when the train collided with the truck.

And Taehyung probably would’ve been killed, too.

It was the top story on the news for a week and a half. It got bumped from the news only when a school shooting in Seoul claimed six lives. By then, it was just another forgotten headline, another tragedy buried beneath a world of woes.

The coroner swore up and down that Jin had died instantly, the impact too much for any human to withstand, and while it provided the rest of the group with a small amount of comfort, Taehyung had never been convinced.

The train slowed to a fiery, screeching halt after hitting the 4X4 and the boys had no choice but to run after it, all of them hoping against hope and telling themselves that maybe Jin had been okay. Maybe they’d witnessed and honest-to-goodness miracle and Jin was alive. Maybe they’d be able to help him.

When they found his left arm in the grass, though, bloody and shredded by the crash, they could actually feel the hope being from their bodies as it was replaced with cold, wet reality.

Jin was dead, his body torn apart both by the train and the mangled wreck that was once his truck.

He had died instantly, the crash killing him before he had a chance to feel any pain, but the same couldn’t be said for the rest of his friends.

No, they didn’t have the benefit of dying instantly. They didn’t get to escape the pain, the agony, the grief.

The rest of the group, the other six?

They died very, very slowly and from the inside out.

It felt like the beginning of the end.

Namjoon and Yoongi hadn’t been there and so they were doing okay. It wasn’t that they weren’t empty inside and reeling from the loss of their friend and mentor. They just weren’t there when it happened and, as such, they didn’t have those images in their heads. Though he would never admit to it, Namjoon had gone on a gore site to see what people looked like after train wrecks but nothing that he’d seen online and nothing he could dream up in his head would ever measure up to what Jungkook, Jimin, Hoseok and Taehyung had seen that night.

There was a lot that they had to deal with before the funeral. They had to talk to the police about what had happened, they had to be examined by doctors and therapists and they had to talk to Jin’s parents. Then, and only then, were they able to put on the suits they normally saved for weddings and attend a closed-casket funeral for a boy they each considered to be their best friend.

And then things were never the same.

It was no question how much seeing Jin die had affected Jimin and Hoseok. They were both required (by their parents and their physicians) to attend therapy twice a week and both had been prescribed sleeping pills. Apparently watching your buddy get hit by a train was enough to keep you up at night. And if you did fall asleep, the nightmares were so vivid that it felt like you were reliving the worst moment of your life over and over again.

Jungkook wasn’t as open and honest with his parents and doctors. He lied, said he was fine, said he was sleeping, said he was eating. Really, he was just drinking. Drinking and fighting with anyone who’d been unfortunate to walk into his line of sight. He’d run into a couple thugs on one of his midnight strolls and picked a fight for no reason at all. They’d beaten the hell out of him, throwing him against the barred doors of closed businesses and kicking him repeatedly in the ribs when he fell to the ground.

Somehow, the pain was the only thing that made him feel alive.

Namjoon didn’t really know how to cope with the death of his closest friend and so he didn’t. He picked up extra shifts at the gas station where he worked, filling up every second of his day with something so that he purposely had no time to spend with his friends. He didn’t know how to be around them without thinking of Jin and he just didn’t have the mental strength to deal with it.

His heart already splintered into thousands of fragments every time he had to put gas in someone’s 4X4.

Yoongi was struggling but he didn’t want anyone to know. With Jin gone, he was the oldest and he needed to set an example. He thought he’d been doing okay until he received a package in the mail. It had been from Jin, a surprise, belated birthday present that had taken a few weeks to ship from the States.

That was the night Yoongi burned down his apartment and the reason he was currently living in Jungkook’s filthy basement loft.

Taehyung was worst of all. Every moment he was conscious was spent wracked with guilt that festered in his soul and made his bones ache and creak. If only he’d pulled harder. If only he’d managed to untie Jin’s shoe. If only he’d restrained him when Jin tried to run back.

If only.

Taehyung had been born from a drunken, abusive father and a weak-willed, unambitious mother who let the man she married smack her and her only son around like punching bags. In general, Taehyung didn’t spent much time at home but now, with his heart broken and his soul ripped to shreds like an old, bloody sheet, he only ever returned home to eat and shower.

He’d been spending a lot of time with Namjoon. They’d always been close but now they were two numb peas in an emotionless pod, neither of them dealing with what had happened. They ate most of their meals together, usually in silence, and before long, they were back to their old rambunctious ways.

They’d enjoyed getting arrested. They’d tagged that building on purpose, knowing that cops made laps around that neighborhood looking for vandals. They wanted to be punished. But the two cops who’d arrested them recognized Taehyung and offered their condolences about Jin before letting them off with a warning.

It wasn’t what they’d wanted but at least it was what Jin would’ve tried to achieve.

Once, Yoongi got into Jungkook’s liquor cabinet while Jungkook was out doing whatever it was he did on weekdays. When he returned, it came to blows. Jungkook, just slightly buzzed, tried to stop Yoongi with an embrace but Yoongi, so drunk that his vision had doubled and blurred, countered by throwing the younger boy into the wall.

“Jin hated you,” Yoongi snarled. He didn’t mean it. Jungkook knew he didn’t mean it. But neither of those facts did anything to lessen the sting or the power of his words. “He always hated you.” Jungkook replied appropriately by punching Yoongi so hard that he fell to the floor. With blood trickling from a split lip, Yoongi looked up and said, “I should’ve been with him at the end. Not you.”

Jungkook laughed, humorless.

“You think you could’ve handled it?” Yoongi was back on his feet, back in Jungkook’s face. “You think you could’ve handled seeing Jin’s guts spilled everywhere? You think you could’ve handled looking at Jin’s body torn apart?” He opened his mouth to say something else but Yoongi launched him back towards the couch and went back to destroying the apartment.

Maybe from the rubble, something else could be built. Someday.

Hoseok and Jimin had made a pact.

Exactly one month after Jin’s death, they would kill themselves. It was Hoseok’s idea. Even with counseling, even with medication, he couldn’t forget. His entire life, his entire existence centered around what had happened that night and he couldn’t take it anymore. He couldn’t take the things he’d heard, the things he’d seen. He was glad he’d tackled Taehyung but that alone wasn’t enough to keep him going. He considered Jimin his very best friend and this way, they’d go out together. They’d be free of his curse and they’d be with Jin.

Jimin, who spent most of his time looking at old group photos and listening to songs off the iPod he’d stolen from Jin’s bedroom, agreed without a second’s hesitation.

They’d overdose on the sleeping pills they’d been prescribed and they’d meet up in the afterlife.

After swallowing a handful of pills, Jimin took a hot bath and Hoseok went for a long walk. Nobody was home at Jimin’s house and he sat in the tub so long that the water turned to ice. Hoseok, meanwhile, made it to the bridge where the group had once eaten lunch and watched the cars drive by, and collapsed on the side of the road.

They both woke up in a hospital room, not the afterlife, and couldn’t tell if they were failures or not.

Yoongi had left a message on Taehyung’s phone about Jimin and Hoseok. His voice was frantic and frenzied, cracking from the stress of this dark, bloody world they’d suddenly found themselves in, and Taehyung had a hard time believing that anything was real.

He’d gone home with every intention of packing a bag and leaving the city forever but when he saw his father beating his mother for what was probably the thousandth time in his young life, Taehyung finally snapped.

There was an empty beer bottle on the table outside the living room and he grabbed it without a second thought. He rushed his father and attacked, smashing the bottle against his head and stunning him. The bottle broke perfectly and left Taehyung with solid, jagged glass. It reminded him of the Wild West movies he used to watch. It was the perfect weapon for a saloon fight and the perfect thing to end his father’s miserable life.

Because life? It didn’t matter. Jin was gone. Jimin and Hoseok were gone, too. People died and the world kept spinning so what was one more?

He stabbed his father somewhere between twenty to thirty times and by the time he was done, all the glass was either shattered on the floor or stuck up under the ribs of his lifelong abuser. His mother stood in the corner, sobbing and shouting, and Taehyung took a step back, unsure how much of the blood was his father’s and how much was his own.

It didn’t matter.

Nothing mattered.

Yoongi would’ve called Taehyung to let him know that Jimin and Hoseok were alive but he’d left his phone in the hospital waiting room and it ended up in the lost and found. He was falling into the role of team leader and sat with Jimin’s mother while she cried. He tried to tell her that he had no idea why Jimin would do something like this but reminded her that he was going to be okay. He was going to be okay and so was Hoseok and they’d make the next step together.

He didn’t know that Taehyung needed a reason to believe in life and he didn’t know that what Taehyung was planning to do next.

Otherwise, he would’ve paid more attention to his phone.

Taehyung watched a lot of crime dramas but they never showed what happened immediately after a murder was committed. He had no idea what came next, no idea what was going to happen to him, and so he ran. He ran hard and fast. He ran until his lungs felt like they might shrivel up and turn to dust. And by the time he stopped running, he realized he didn’t know where he was.

He was on the outskirts of the city. There were woods here and some dilapidated buildings that could’ve once served as someone’s home. Now, they were just crumbling walls on a cracking foundation. Taehyung decided, though, that they’d be good enough shelter for the night. There were mattresses and food wrappers inside and Taehyung assumed that this was a popular place for squatters to seek refuge. He didn’t give a . If someone showed up and got too territorial, he’d just kill them, too.

With a bottle of questionably-colored water, Taehyung attempted to wash the blood off his hands. He hadn’t realized how much had gotten on him. Had people noticed the boy in the hoodie, covered in blood, running like he was being chased? Or had he flown under the radar?

Soon, his hands were clean. They were shaking but they were clean.

He fished his phone from his pocket. He had new text messages but he didn’t bother reading them. Instead, he dialed Jin’s number. When it rang, he realized his parents hadn’t yet terminated his account.

“Hyung,” he whispered miserably when he was sent to voicemail. “I want to see you, hyung.”

He spent the night on the floor of a condemned building and when the sun came up, Taehyung wandered through the forest. Though he couldn’t understand how, he’d been dressed in a different outfit than when he’d gone to sleep. His new clothes were clean, no bloodstains anywhere, and they seemed to fit him better.

After some exploring, he found what looked like an old swimming pool, though he couldn’t understand why anyone would’ve built one so far from the city. The dingy mattress on the ground was calling to him like a song of the sirens.

Maybe some more sleep would do him good.

“What are you doing?” a familiar voice asked. Before Taehyung could open his eyes, someone was shoving him. There were five happy faces standing over him, five happy, beautiful faces that caused his heart to stop beating for just a second.

His friends were alive. They were reunited. They were healthy. They were happy.

“Oh!” said Jungkook, pointing to something in the distance. “It’s Jin-hyung.”

At first, Taehyung thought it was just a mirage. But it was Jin-hyung.

Jin with his favorite camera and his big, goofy smile. Jin with the broad shoulders and the messy hair.

Jin.

Jin, his best friend whose fingers had slipped from his grasp. Jin who had been torn away from him. Jin who’d they’d buried six feet deep a month before.

Taehyung hugged him hard and couldn’t find the strength to let go. He had a million questions. How was he okay? How was he alive? He’d seen his severed arm, seen his broken body, seen the tombstone that bore his name and the dates of his life.

But he was here.

He was alive.

Nobody else was questioning it and so Taehyung didn’t either, afraid that if he breathed too hard, he’d blow it all away like painted sand.

For one day, just for one more glorious day, he wanted to live their old lives. For one day, he wanted his friends back.

He just needed one perfect last day.

And he got it.

They arm-wrestled. They had sword fights with sticks. They wrestled. They danced. They took pictures. They hugged. They chased butterflies. They tagged walls without fear of prosecution. They laughed so hard that tears streamed down their faces.

And when it got dark, they climbed into Jin’s Ford 4X4 and drove the junkyard.

It was a popular hangout spot for troublemaking youths but that night, it was empty. They furniture, all ratty worn from use and bad weather, was free and Yoongi used his lighter and some scrap wood to start a fire.

Someone had brought beer and they passed it around, smiling and enjoying the quiet. At some point, Jin pulled a Polaroid from his pocket.

“We…” he began but stopped himself from going any further. “Shall we go here?”

The question was to Hoseok and the boy responded positively. When Jin showed the rest of the gang the picture, they did, too.

They slept in the truck and headed to their favorite beach in the morning. It, too, was free of all signs of life. There was no one to bother them, no one to yell at them, no one to scold them from doing doughnuts in the sand. They’d camped there once as kids and though it felt like it was a million years ago, Taehyung remembered every detail as clearly and as vividly as if it had happened the day before.

They giggled and cheered as they ran through the saltwater and Jin filmed all of it, preserving it for another day. The weather was so beautiful, the air so fresh, the water so clear. Everything about everything was just so damn perfect that Taehyung couldn’t even remember the misery and despair of the last thirty days.

It was as if it had never happened.

That night, they stopped for gas and groceries while Jimin slept in the bed of the truck. The lights were on and the pumps were open but as far as Taehyung could tell, nobody was actually at the gas station. Namjoon was a professional, though, and insisted he was qualified to pump gas and when Hoseok went inside for snacks, he left more than enough cash on the counter to cover everything.

They went to the pier to watch the sunrise.

They were all tired, all stiff from sleeping in the truck, but the smell of the water and the crispness of the air gave everybody a second wind. They sat on the edge of the pier as they waited for the sun, their legs swinging down towards the water, and Taehyung wanted to cry.

It had been the best forty-eight hours of his entire life and he didn’t want it to end. He didn’t ever want to leave this moment. He didn’t ever want to be without his friends. He didn’t ever want to lose this moment, this magic, this freedom.

Then he noticed the scaffolding.

It was the type of metal rig they used for construction and he’d seen it dozens of times back in the city. He couldn’t quite figure what it was doing all the way out here, especially since nothing seemed to be attached to it, but it called to him.

Because he knew they’d be alright without him, Taehyung stood up and walked away from the group, putting up his hood to shield his ears from the cold. He’d never been especially athletic but Taehyung had always been a good climber. Though his skin burned from the freezing metal, Taehyung went, one rung at a time, from the pier to the top of the rigging.

He couldn’t believe how high up he was. He’d always been a little scared of heights but none of that usual fear seemed able to reach him up here.

The sun was coming up, the sky pink and orange with the first colors of the day. The breeze that had been very slight on the ground felt much stronger this high up and Taehyung took slow, deep breaths as he took it all in.

He could hear the shouts and cries of his friends, all six of them urging him to get down and join them back on the pier. It wasn’t safe. They didn’t want him up there and, in a lot of ways, he didn’t want to be up there himself. He turned his head so that he could yell something to reassure them and that’s when he noticed.

There was nobody on the pier.

There was nobody with him.

There was nobody anywhere.

Taehyung was all alone.

It brought the saddest smile to his lips and the biggest lump to his throat.

He’d suspected it all along. In the deepest, darkest corner of his mind, he knew he’d been alone the entire time. Gone were his new, clean clothes. He was back in his white, blood-soaked t-shirt and the pants dirty from sleeping on the ground. Gone was the warm, fuzzy feeling of safety and health. His hands were shaking violently and his stomach ached and contracted like he hadn’t eaten in days.

Gone was the love and support of his six bothers.

He was all alone.

He wiped his nose with his sleeve.

This was no time to cry.

This was a happy occasion, after all. This was what he’d wanted all along. This was the way it should’ve been.

First, he took a deep breath.

Then, he took a running start.

He jumped.

As hard and as far as he could, Taehyung jumped.

He wasn’t at all intimidated by the wall of blue rushing towards him. He wasn’t worried about the fact that he couldn’t swim. He wasn’t worried about dying. He wasn’t worried about anything.

He was free.

In seconds, he hit the water. He was enveloped by total darkness and a cold like he’d never felt before that chilled him down to his bone marrow. He didn’t bother fighting it, didn’t waste his energy pumping his arms or kicking his legs. He knew it wouldn’t do him any good.

He could only hold his breath for so long and soon enough, he was swallowing mouthfuls of ice-cold saltwater. It hurt but he could take it. Besides, he knew he wouldn’t feel it much longer. Everything was getting duller, the edges of his reality softening until he could feel himself fading out of existence.

He closed his eyes…

…and then he opened them.

He was out of the water. Dry. Warm. It was dark but there was something in the distance. A line of light. Something bright enough to get his attention. Without any other option, Taehyung walked towards it. He walked until he was stopped by what felt like a door. He squinted, his eyes trying desperately to adjust to the darkness.

Yes, it was a door. He’d found the handle. The light had come from inside and it was shining through the gap at the bottom. His fingers twisted the knob and he pushed, half-expecting the hinges to creak and groan. But he was met with only silence. Until…

“Taehyung!” said Jin, his smile so bright that it illuminated this new, dark universe. Jin threw his arms around him and squeezed. Taehyung reacted instinctively, hooking his arms up to catch Jin’s broad shoulders. With the sudden light, he could see the rest of the room. There was a couch against the wall and half a dozen more doors. Jin pulled away, still beaming, and put his hand on Taehyung’s cheek. “I missed you.”

“How,” Taehyung began, “is this possible? Where are we? Why did–?”

Jin held up his hands, silencing him.

“Don’t worry about it,” Jin said. “It’s all going to be okay. I promise, I’ll explain everything.” He wrapped his arm around Taehyung’s shoulders and pointed to one of the doors. Then he looked down at him. “I was waiting for you, Tae. I had a feeling you’d be the first one here.”

“Where is here? Where are we?”

For half a second, Jin looked sad.

“It was lonely here without you,” he said, ignoring the question.

“You look so happy, hyung,” Taehyung observed. His friend’s smiles were so bright, so genuine.

Nodding, Jin reached for the doorknob.

“You can smile,” Jin said as he turned the handle, “as long as we’re together.” He threw open the door and exposed them both to a warm, blinding light. Taehyung couldn’t understand what was happening. All he knew was that nothing hurt. Not his hands, not his lungs, not his soul. There was no more pain. “And now we will be.” Jin took a step forward, guiding them both through the doorway. “You don’t have to worry anymore. We can be together, and safe, forever.”