Namjoon disappeared. By the latter half of February 2019, Taehyung had not gotten any sign of life from Namjoon in over a month and he was convinced something was suspicious about this disappearance.

Every time Taehyung called Namjoon, he would get the “The number you have dialed is not in service” message. Namjoon’s social media accounts were deactivated and his apartment was up for sale, although Namjoon had just finished paying the bank installments for that apartment the year before.

Sometime during January, Taehyung had a violent breakup with the man he was sleeping with and living with in the latter’s apartment. With fresh wounds, only a backpack full of personal belongings and no idea on where he was going to stay now, Taehyung called Namjoon, whom he considered his only real friend, but he got that disheartening message instead. Since Namjoon didn’t at least call back later, Taehyung held a small grudge against him and didn’t contact him at all for the following 2 or 3 weeks. Now, Taehyung felt guilty about that because he realized that Namjoon might be in more trouble that Taehyung had ever been.

Namjoon worked as a general internal medicine doctor in a private clinic and in a state hospital and he was part of an academic research circle at his former Med School. However, he had handed in his resignation during December of the year before at the first two places and announced his temporary departure from the academic research circle. Taehyung had gone to the clinic, the hospital and the college to look for Namjoon and learned from the people there that Namjoon regretted leaving, but apparently he had some very time-consuming, personal research he needed to invest himself fully into during the near future, stating also that he would like to come back when he was done with that.

Furthermore, when Taehyung contacted Namjoon’s family, he learned that they had received a letter from Namjoon shortly after New Year in which Namjoon stated pretty much the same things he also said in his professional and academic spheres, that he was going somewhere undisclosed for an undefined amount of time and that he won’t be able to contact them or be contacted since there was no phone signal or internet in the place he needed to go to for his research.

Namjoon’s family were pretty laissez-faire, so they never even slightly prohibited Namjoon from doing whatever he wanted, including being friends with someone like Taehyung, who was a lot of trouble in high school when they first started interacting. So they didn’t really question Namjoon’s decisions and behavior, branding the whole thing as “just a weird whim”, and were only going to question him when he got back.

No one really questioned Namjoon’s decision to remove himself from all aspects of his life, even though he had been vague about the reason and his future plans, which was atypical for him.

Taehyung, however, questioned it a lot and he didn’t like it one bit how foul everything smelled to him.

The reason Taehyung was more suspicious than anyone else was because he knew what Namjoon’s research was most likely about – he was searching for Seokjin.

Seokjin, more commonly known as Jin to those close to him, was a very good friend of Namjoon’s and, in April 2018, Seokjin went missing.

Until the first few weeks of 2018, Seokjin had been the founder and CEO of a company that imported medical equipment and distributed it to clinics and private practices within the country. Seokjin had been Namjoon’s colleague for the first 2 years at Med School where they first became friends. Then, Seokjin decided that becoming a doctor was not the path for him and started learning management. Afterwards, because of the type of business Seokjin had started, he and Namjoon often met in professional contexts and started meeting up regularly for dinner and beer.

However, between 2016 and 2017, an economic crisis had hit the country and it was still affecting people in the present in many ways. After the crisis hit, many businesses closed, many people became unemployed and many businesses and people alike found themselves unable to pay their debts.

Clinics and private practices also closed or couldn’t pay their debts. As such, Seokjin’s business entered insolvency in the second half of 2017 and, ultimately, he was forced to file for bankruptcy right after 2018 started. With the help of a debt counseling firm, Seokjin sold all assets and managed to pay off the debt his business had ended up accumulating. Namjoon had never seen Seokjin as gloomy as he had been during that time.

However, around 2 months after declaring bankruptcy, Seokjin was looking lively again and making jokes about becoming a farmer, enjoying a simpler life in which you don’t get tossed around so much by changes in the economy and being closer to nature, which was notorious for having a calming effect.

Namjoon was happy and relieved to see this change in his friend and humored all these jokes and ideas.

However, in April 2018, Seokjin disappeared and something just didn’t sit right with Namjoon about it, so he started searching for him.

Like Taehyung was doing with Namjoon in the present.

After checking with Namjoon’s work places, academic research circle and family, Taehyung contacted the real-estate company that was handling the selling of Namjoon’s apartment. He learned that the real-estate company had received a contract signed by Namjoon and approved by a notary to sell Namjoon’s apartment and all the assets within it at a list of indicated minimum prices, then transfer the money to an indicated bank account.

Things were looking more and more suspicious.

So Taehyung decided to go to Namjoon’s apartment one night, pick the lock on the front door and search for whatever he could find there. He found that even Namjoon’s laptop and clothes were still there. After a more thorough search, he found that many things were still there that Namjoon would’ve surely taken with him no matter where he went and especially since he supposedly went to a remote place where he couldn’t be contacted or easily come back from.

T: “It’s like you were spirited away or something… But you made all those preparations for leaving, so what the hell happened to you, Joon?”

Taehyung then decided to sit at Namjoon’s desk and press the power button of his laptop. The screen lit up and a field for entering the password appeared, making Taehyung snort at his own foolishness, since he didn’t know computers well enough to bypass this kind of thing and he didn’t know Namjoon’s preferences for passwords. His gaze then wandered through the room and came across a Ryan plush doll. On a whim, he entered the password “Ryan12.09” and… it was correct.

T: “Seriously, Joon?! Seriously?!” Taehyung shouted in disbelief over the fact that his friend used the name of his favorite character and his birthday as a password. “So much for being a genius…”

Overcoming the disbelief, Taehyung transitioned to joy because he was now able to look for clues on Namjoon’s laptop. However, he couldn’t access Namjoon’s email, his Google Drive or other such things because those also needed passwords, Namjoon had not saved his credentials in any of the browsers and no variation of “Ryan12.09” was correct. Since Namjoon had terminated the contract with his internet service provider before leaving, Taehyung had to use a hotspot created with his phone. But, since he couldn’t access any of Namjoon’s internet accounts, he turned the hotspot function off and sighed while leaning back in the desk chair and feeling deflated.

---

N: “Violence is not the solution, Taehyung.” Namjoon said to Taehyung one time when they were doing their 10^th grade math homework together and Taehyung got so frustrated with a set of equations that he ripped the paper from his notebook, crumbled it up and threw it on the floor while cursing.

T: “Then what is the solution?” Taehyung asked him in a cynical tone.

N: “2.4(3).”

T: “Smartass…”

N: “You still need to write down the process through which you reached the solution.”

T: “Why do we even have to do this ? It’s not like I’ll use math or solve complex equations after I’m done with high school.”

N: “Maybe not, but that’s not why we’re learning this.”

T: “Then why? Enlighten me.”

N: “We’re learning how to solve math problems to learn how to solve any type of problem. The process is this – You look at the elements you have…” Namjoon started, pointing to the equation on the paper. “You remember the rules and shortcuts for the elements you have and you apply them. This is how you reach a solution. If you screwed up during the process, you’re solution will be incorrect. But if you handled the 3 steps as you should, the solution will be correct. While we’ll learning math, we’re training our brains to find correct solutions.”

T: “Sure…”

---

T: “Alright!” Taehyung let out as he clapped. “What are my elements? Programs, folders, files… That’s all I’m seeing here…”

The word “seeing” gave Taehyung an idea, so he googled how to see hidden files or folders on a computer and implemented the instructions. But there were no hidden files or folders and he sighed.

T: “Do I have to go through everything? I don’t even know what I’m looking for…”

The phrase “looking for” gave Taehyung another idea, but this time he didn’t have much hope for it. Namjoon was looking for Seokjin, so Taehyung introduced “jin” in the search bar and the computer started looking for and displaying everything matching that keyword. It was going to take a while till everything would be displayed and, by the looks of it so far, Taehyung would have to filter through things like pictures and other most likely irrelevant files, so he took that time to look for an external hard drive, in case Namjoon had something like that, so Taehyung could transfer everything on Namjoon’s laptop on it and go through it at home, because he risked getting discovered if he stayed in that apartment for more than a few hours.

The first place where Taehyung looked was the drawers of Namjoon’s desk. In one such drawer he found a bunch of flyers and brochures and he closed it before opening it again and thinking about Namjoon’s habits. Namjoon would take any advertising material offered to him and look over it out of courtesy. If he wasn’t interested, he would throw it away. If he thought someone else might be interested, he kept it and gave it to that person. If he was interested, he would take it home or to the office with him. So these flyers and brochures might be relevant.

Taehyung took them and skimmed through them. Invitations to various seminars, anti-capitalism and anti-consumerism propaganda, advice on how to deal with debt, all kinds of things that didn’t seem related at first sight. Taehyung threw them into his backpack to look over them later. Then he started taking notebooks, notepads, post-its, everything he could find in the drawers of Namjoon’s desk and shoved them into his backpack. He finally found the external hard drive and he also found a plastic folder filled with Namjoon’s documents. Among things like work contracts and diplomas, the folder also contained Namjoon’s birth certificate in its original form.

T: “So you go somewhere and tell a real-estate company to sell your apartment with everything in it, but you leave all your important documents behind?”

Taehyung tried not to think then of what types of disappearances could explain this behavior, shoved the plastic folder into his backpack and connected the external hard drive. It looked like the computer was done searching, so Taehyung skimmed through the results displayed. His eyes landed on a Word file titled “Looking for Jin log” and Taehyung shot up from the chair with both fists in the air and a gasp.

T: “Thank you! Thank you! Thank you, Joon’s parents for making your son so chronically organized!”

Before anything else, Taehyung clicked on the file to open it and, as it loaded, he saw that it had well over 100 pages. Taehyung felt himself going pale.

T: “This is you punishing me for ignoring literature class, isn’t it, Joon…”

Taehyung closed the file and started copying all folders and files on Namjoon’s laptop onto the external hard drive that conveniently happened to be empty. This felt like it was taking forever, so Taehyung went to get some food out of Namjoon’s fridge out of reflex. When he opened the fridge door however, a foul smell hit him and prompted him to close the door immediately. Namjoon hadn’t been paying his electric bills, so the power was off and the food had gone bad inside the fridge. It hit Taehyung then that, even though Namjoon’s laptop was plugged in, it wasn’t charging and it might die before finishing copying the data. He went back into the room to check the battery level and breathed with relief that there was still 70% available.

Then another idea hit him and he went back to the fridge. He held his nose as he opened the fridge door and started looking for products that expire really fast. When he found one such product – a packaged, pre-cut salad mix – he checked its expiration date. It was January 9.

Namjoon was not good with cooking and he didn’t have a lot of free time, so if he could buy the salad instead of making it, he would definitely buy it. Namjoon also didn’t normally let food go bad inside his fridge. He would either eat it on time or throw it away a week at most after the food would reach its expiration date.

T: “The last time someone saw you was January 7. You still went grocery shopping during that time, so it seems you had to leave earlier than anticipated. Most likely during the second week of January… That was before that call of mine that you didn’t answer… More than a month has passes already…”

Taehyung put the expired salad back and closed the fridge. The whole apartment showed signs of a sudden and suspicious disappearance, but not signs of struggle. If someone took Namjoon away, they didn’t take him from there.

All of Namjoon’s files had been transferred onto the external hard drive and Taehyung deconnected it before barely finding a place for it in his back pack and shutting down the laptop. He threw one more look around the room, wondering if there was anything else he should have checked, and his gaze landed on a picture of him and Namjoon winking and showing peace signs while they were on a trip a couple of years ago. Taehyung took the photo in his hand and stared at it.

T: “I don’t know if you’re in heaven, hell, outer space or at the end of the Earth… But without you, I might become a psycho serial killer so, for the good of mankind, I’m getting you back.”

Taehyung took the photo with him and left the apartment, getting to his own rented apartment at nearly 4 a.m. He connected the external hard drive to his laptop and started copying the files onto it. After unloading what he had in his backpack, he went to sleep for a couple of hours because he would soon have to go to work.

After waking up and cursing every ray of sunlight and almost falling out of bed, he sent the “Looking for Jin log” Word file to his phone, took care of his mourning routine and went to the salon where he worked as a hairdresser. Getting up early was usually hard for Taehyung and, on most days, he would sleep on the bus he took to work, even while standing. On that morning, he half-slept even while walking to and from the bus station.

He had planned to read a bit from the “Looking for Jin log” file in between tasks, but that day turned out to be so hectic that he barely had time to drink the 3 coffees he usually needed.

So he only started reading on his laptop after getting home at around 7 that evening.

N: August 5, 2018 – I have come to realize that looking for Jin will prove itself to be a complex endeavor and it’s inefficient to rely strictly on memory power to keep track of all the information pertaining to it.

T: “Great… Already pretentious wording…”

N: So I shall record all such information within this log to the best of my ability.

To the extent of my knowledge so far, Jin was last seen on April 17. On April 16, Hoseok had suggested getting together for a drink, so him, me, Yoongi, Jimin and Jin went to Pubbling and had several types of alcohol while talking between 8 and 11:30 p.m. Jin was joking again, as he had been doing since sometime during March of this year, about becoming a farmer and living closer to nature, in a simpler and more relaxed way. At that time, I was just glad he didn’t seem so down about what happened to his business anymore. But, looking back on it now, I realize those types of jokes were frequent and they might not have been jokes.

In the following I will attempt to write down everything I can remember him telling me about what happened to his business since the economic crisis hit halfway through 2016.

Taehyung was incredibly tempted to skip forward, but he forced himself to read every word until his forehead hit the table and he woke up, confused and not knowing what paragraph he was reading when he fell asleep. He continued reading, but his vision was getting blurry and his back was starting to ache, so he moved with the laptop to his bed to continue reading there. That proved to be a bad decision, since he fell asleep after just 3 more paragraphs. That night, he dreamt of Namjoon and of past events.

---

N: “Do you know what’s the number 1 thing you need for survival?”

T: “Money.”

N: “Flexibility. No matter how the winds blow, if you can bend in accordance, you’re less likely to break.”

T: “Joon. You’re a doctor. Why are you constantly trying to be my spiritual guru?”

N: “I’m just trying to help you handle your current crisis.”

T: “Well, with this flexibility , you might have ended up giving me a good idea on what to do.”

N: “What?”

T: “Get a sugar daddy.”

N: “Oh, boy…”

When the economic crisis came, the salon where Taehyung worked also closed down and he found himself jobless and unable to pay the following month’s rent. He managed to find work at another small salon where the pay was absurdly low, but he also took on a delivery job that let him work according to a very flexible schedule, so he got by financially. However, later on, he still found himself a sugar daddy and resigned from the delivery job. The man was neither handsome, nor young and he didn’t even have that great of a personality, but he had money and a set of strange es that Taehyung was willing to help him enjoy.

With a sugar daddy in his life, Taehyung could save up the money he would have normally spent on rent, bills, food and cosmetics. He didn’t let the man buy him anything that wasn’t consumable thought, because he would have to give it back when they would break up. However, instead of admitting something like that, Taehyung put a spin on it and said things like “You’re already so good to me, I don’t need anything besides what we have.” This, of course, made the man even more generous in spoiling Taehyung. And Taehyung used that in what he thought was a clever way – he made the man believe that he really loved gambling. Since the man wanted to spoil Taehyung and he didn’t accept gifts, he gave him money to gamble with and in 6 times out of 7, Taehyung acted heartbroken about losing, which increased the likelihood of the man giving him money again, when really Taehyung just deposited the money into his account.

When his sugar daddy found out about Taehyung not even going to the gambling house, he confronted Taehyung aggressively and, to get himself out of a ty situation, Taehyung said “You know what – I chose this method to not make you feel bad. Because you really should be paying me for all the stupid and sick I have to do for you in bed.” He then went on to belittle the man’s preferences to turn his focus completely away from the fake gambling issue and, in all honestly, he was asking for the violent breakup that followed. Before leaving, Taehyung threatened to expose the man’s unconventional preferences if they ever crossed paths again.

After Namjoon didn’t pick up Taehyung’s call, it hit Taehyung that even though he had fresh wounds and only a backpack full of personal belongings, he still had savings. So he picked himself back up and looked for someone to stay with until he found very cheap rent.

N: “I know you heard this thousands of times already, but when will you grow some morality?” Namjoon asked him when he first found out about the fake gambling addiction scheme.

T: “When morality will be more necessary than flexibility for survival.” Taehyung said merrily. “Or… when there’ll be a plant called “morality” that people can roll up into joints.”

---

That morning, Taehyung rediscovered the value of flexibility, since the position he had fallen out of bed in when his alarm rang would have definitely broken him if he weren’t flexible. Luckily, the laptop was still on the bed and still intact.

The cheap rent Taehyung had found after the breakup from over a month ago consisted of a 11 square meters room that merged bedroom with hallway and kitchen, while the bathroom barely fitted a toilet, an extra small sink and a shower. He didn’t really dislike it, since at least he lived alone within that small and cramped space, but he thought he should try to get that delivery job back.

But now things have changed. He needed time and energy to go through Namjoon’s files and search for him, so he couldn’t take on a second job again. Therefore, he would have to live frugally.

That evening, he re-read the first pages of the file and continued to read while slapping his cheeks twice for every page so he could concentrate and memorize information. Namjoon went into a lot of detail about the struggles Seokjin’s business had faced and about the processes bankruptcy entailed. There were some words that Taehyung didn’t understand and it was hard to stay focused because everything was about Seokjin.

Taehyung had met Seokjin once, when he accompanied Namjoon to the same pub mentioned at the start of the file and with the same people mentioned at the start of the file, but all those people had professions similar to Namjoon’s and Seokjin’s and it made Taehyung feel like he was part of a different world compared to them, so he avoided going to other such gatherings.

As such, he wouldn’t even have remembered how Seokjin looked like if it weren’t for the pictures he had taken from Namjoon’s laptop and he couldn’t make himself care about anything related to Seokjin. The only reason he was reading and trying to memorize all that information was in case it would serve in finding Namjoon.

Apparently, Seokjin had not been at all close to his parents after the huge fight they had following Seokjin’s decision to quit Med School and attempt becoming an entrepreneur. Initially, they weren’t even aware of Seokjin’s disappearance. Namjoon had also not noticed initially, since he was too caught up in things going on in his own life in that period, until Hoseok called him to ask if he had heard anything about Seokjin or why his phone number was out of service and his social media accounts have been deactivated.

T: “Hang on… What?”

Taehyung was now fully alert as he discovered that many details related to Seokjin’s disappearance were similar or identical to details related to Namjoon’s disappearance. So he continued reading.

The person who first noticed Seokjin’s absence and the suspicious circumstances surrounding it and who also went to the police to start a missing person investigation was Seokjin’s biological cousin and legal brother, Jungkook. Seokjin’s parents adopted Jungkook when he was 9, after Seokjin’s uncle and aunt died in a car crash and left Jungkook as an orphan. Jungkook and Seokjin were close and Jungkook chose to leave the city where their parents were and move to the one Seokjin lived in because Jungkook considered Seokjin as the most important member of his family.

After learning from the police about the missing person investigation that apparently did not lead anywhere, since everything indicated that Seokjin voluntarily left and went somewhere to start a new life, Namjoon tried contacting Jungkook. He had met Jungkook enough times to have his phone number, but he couldn’t get in touch with him in any way, even though it didn’t seem like Jungkook had followed in Seokjin’s steps.

T: “Jungkook… Great. Another name to remember…” Taehyung let out bitterly, then wondered: “Wait. Why didn’t the police contact Joon to ask about Jin if a missing person investigation had started? It was Hoseok who contacted him first, right? Was it an issue of timing?”

After scrolling several times up and down through the document, checking dates and time frames, Taehyung concluded that it was most likely an issue of timing.

T: “Joon saw Jin on April 16. When he went to the police, he learned that Jungkook talked to Jin on April 17, since Jin had stayed at Jungkook’s place after selling even his own apartment to cover the debts. The police investigation officially started on April 22. According to what the police told Joon about what Jungkook told them, Jungkook didn’t find it odd to not see Jin at all for a day or two, so he only thought something was wrong on the evening of April 19 when he couldn’t contact Jin at all and he probably had not been home in over a day. When he saw that even Jin’s social media accounts were deactivated, he thought things were way too weird and went to the police that night. A certain number of days has to pass before a missing person investigation is started, so they started on the 22^nd. Hoseok also called Joon to ask about Jin on the 22^nd. Joon went to the police station on April 23 in the morning. The police probably would’ve contacted Joon very soon if he had not gone to them…”

Taehyung stopped to think. It all seemed very plausible, but something was bugging him, although he had no clue what. Then he wondered:

T: “Should I also go to the police? If I asked them to start an investigation on Joon, they’ll just conclude he also voluntarily left, since a lot of things point to that… Should I also try to contact this Jungkook guy? But Joon couldn’t contact him even if he knew the guy’s phone number…”

Then it hit Taehyung:

T: “Wait a minute… Why wouldn’t you let yourself be easily contacted while an important family member is missing? Especially by a person whom you know through that family member…”

Something seemed fishy about Jungkook, so Taehyung continued reading, hoping that Namjoon had left clues or even specific contact information on how to find Jungkook because Taehyung also wanted to find him.

However, Namjoon was now talking about something else in the file.

Apparently, Seokjin had used the help of a debt counseling firm when his business was in insolvency and, later on, when he filed for bankruptcy. Throughout these processes, he had become friendly with the counselor helping him. As Seokjin had mentioned to Namjoon, this counselor helped him change his perspective, giving him hope and enthusiasm along with the prospect of a better and simpler life.

Namjoon carried on explaining his process of getting in touch with that counselor and the conversation he had with him. Among other things, the counselor said that Seokjin had growing interest in an alternative lifestyle and expressed his desire to participate in seminars related to such topics.

T: “Wait… Seminars?”

Taehyung pulled out the bunch of flyers and brochures he had gotten from Namjoon’s drawers. He looked through the invitations to seminars, and also through the other materials, and saw one organization name that kept popping up on the printed materials as well as in Namjoon’s file.

T: “New Life Initiative? What the hell…”