Jimin’s voice follows him into a dream. Light, airy, slipping away from the edges of his mind.

He stands in a river with his feet ankle-deep in the water. He knows it's cold, it should be chilling, yet he doesn't feel it. Mountains and wheat fields spread all around him, almost dizzyingly captivating to any other onlooker, but him. It's all so silent, still he hardly notices.

Namjoon knows it is just a dream. But the voice is so convincing. Its familiar vibrations radiate around and through him, touching him everywhere yet not at all. So intimate that it's too real, too visceral for just a dream. He thinks he can almost touch it.

He can pretend for a while...

Tilting his head back, he closes his eyes and lets out a drawn out breath that escapes into the sweep of sky far beyond his reach...

Namjoon knows that Jimin is gone, before he even wakes, he knows it in his bones. He feels the heavy afternoon sun against his face, the weighty blanket over him through his eyelids, the ageless whisper of wind slipping through cracks. But he doesn’t feel Jimin anymore, in any corner of his awarenesses, before he even opens his eyes.

But it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t hurt. It still doesn’t mean it doesn’t completely destroy his spirit and inner organs, disarming him so intensely that he’s drowning on dry land, seasick among wrecks on beaches.

Biting back the pitiful sound of his sadness, he throws his arm over the tears he can’t hold back, crushing his eyes under the inner bend of his elbow until he sees stars bursting apart against the infinite blackness.

He doesn’t know how long he fades in and out of consciousness, only knowing when he is awake by the full-body aching heaviness that steals all the fluidity and warmth from underneath his skin until he feels nothing else.

He makes chamomile tea to induce sleep when he can’t do it naturally himself, because even the twenty minutes it takes to brew the drink, all he feels is the marrow in his bones and blood in his veins being replaced by something so inescapably stifling.

Taeyeon’s expression is so brokenly worried as she leans down to sit on the edge of his bed, brushing his sweaty bangs from his face, but Namjoon can’t summon enough energy to care.

But he still makes sure to take Jongin’s chamomile and her valerian gently from her hands, letting her rub worried circles with her thumb over the back of his hand. She leaves without his thank you, shaking her head with a knowing smile and a promise to visit again soon.

He wonders what Jimin would think of him, seeing him wasting away like this. He’d be worried, of course, because that’s just how he is, but would he be surprised or angry? Pained or disappointed? Or would he feel nothing?

But Namjoon doesn’t care, can’t care. He just selfishly wishes that Jimin could somehow know – angry, hurt, anything or not – if it meant that he would come back.

It’s a few days before he has enough strength to leave his house.

He doesn’t know how he got the energy to get out of bed, least of all to the front door, or why. But he first thought something was wrong with his eyes when bursts of color overwhelm his vision. Only when he blinks against the morning light and focuses, does he realize that there were tens – no, hundreds of flowers littering his front steps and yard.

He is beyond shocked to somewhere deep his core to see flowers and plants he recognizes and bunches of ones that he doesn’t.

But it doesn’t take a genius to know who they are from. He trembles to think where in this world did the villagers find all of these, and finds that he doesn’t care. And doesn’t care for a completely different reason than in his most recent memory.

He doesn’t cry though, even if it does threaten at the edges of his eyes.

As he wades through the flood of bundles, pots, vases, containers, baskets, of flowers, careful not to tip any over, a small glint of glass shines catches his eye. He peeks behind the large stone basin where he catches rainwater and can’t help the pained noise that escapes his throat.

One look at the small bottle of sweet peas tucked against the fern and he’s completely defeated, overcome with it all. Crumbling completely to his knees, grieving with his whole body, choking sobs ravaging his throat and chest on their way out, but he couldn’t care less. He couldn’t hear it or feel it.

He doesn’t need to see the bundle of azaleas in the same bottle to know who it’s from.

And even if he did notice, he would've seen that they were much less vibrant than usual.

Sweet pea means “Goodbye and blissful pleasure.” It also means “thank you for a lovely time.”

And azaleas mean “take care of yourself for me.”

More time goes by and Namjoon is still losing so much of himself.

He does try to eat as much as he can because it makes Seokjin and Taehyung worry less, but there are times he can’t even hold it down. If he were any less depressed, he thinks he might destroy himself from the guilt instead of the longing.

Hoseok catches him a few times trapped in his study, either staring unseeingly at the petals that are withering from his neglect, or whispering to a silent audience all of the things he didn’t get to say and still can’t say.

Then one day, when Namjoon is in one of his silent spells, something seems to break in Hoseok too. Namjoon hardly has time to react to his study door slamming open, before Hoseok is there, his face so close that the younger can see all of the dark red specks in his irises.

“What’s happening to you, Namjoon?”

The younger drops his gaze to his hands.

Hoseok’s red poppies and coreopsises are swaying back and forth, distance so small that the petals are dragging against Namjoon’s forehead.

“Is it just because Jimin is gone?

When Namjoon doesn’t respond, there is a low huff and then something thick and heavy falls into Namjoon’s lap, startling him.

It’s a simple black leather notebook with faded gold edges, a little tongue of red ribbon flicking at the bottom. As Namjoon goes to spread it open near the middle and flips through the pages, it bends easily to his touch.

Blank, but definitely used. Loved .

Namjoon glances up in confusion, his throat trying to work around the hundreds of half-formed questions he doesn’t even know where to begin.

But Hoseok seems to understand.

“He would’ve wanted you to move on,” he says firmly before turning tail and striding away, letting the door swing close with a sound that feels too final.

The quiet that now descends around Namjoon is almost deafening. Even the tears that start to fall seem contribute to the complete silence and stillness around him. It feels like the end of a long road that had eluded him during his wanderings for years. If he goes on like this, having lost Jimin in such an unresolved flash, he knows that he won't ever be okay.

It feels like a death – inevitable, darker than any other future he can imagine.

Tears contin