You knew Namjoon was gone before you opened your eyes. The foreboding feeling made you clamp your eyelids together instead, refusing to face reality just yet.

Although you had been concerned with how you would cope without Namjoon in your world, as you laid as still as you could possess, your mind ran towards thoughts of his safety. Was he alive? Did he find himself in a place he was familiar with? Was he trapped in another dimension?

Blindly searching for signs of his disappearance, you gasped when something sharp pierced your skin, snapping your eyes open. There, embedded into your finger and allowing the crimson blood to trickle from the wound was a shard of crystal.

Your emotions flooded you then. Collecting up the pieces of the shattered stone, you rocked back and forth, clutching them to your chest. You wailed out in pain for your loss. You screamed to the heavens in anger. You silently allowed the emotions to fall from your eyes, feeling numb from the whole experience.

Eventually, you lost consciousness.

“Y/N? Y/N!” a voice called out and groggily you peered through an eyelid, a panic-stricken Yoongi appearing before you.

So, it wasn’t all a horrible dream after all.

“Are you okay?”

Holding out your hand to show Yoongi the shattered state of the stone and your heart, you blinked when your palm came up empty. Sitting up hurriedly and looking around yourself, you found your space void of any signs of Namjoon and the stone.

Yoongi sighed. “It’s probably whole again.”

“Bastard rock.”

“It’s been three days since I saw you. I don’t know why I didn’t come sooner. I just felt this strong urge to come and check on you. It was almost as if Namjoon infiltrated my mind. Sounds really crazy, doesn’t it?”

You attempted to laugh hollowly. “Yoongi, hasn’t everything we’ve experienced for the last few weeks been unreal?”

“I guess you could say that.”

“I’m glad you remember him,” you admitted in a small voice, swallowing down the growing lump in your throat. “I was worried life would return to before he arrived here and I’d go insane being the only one with the knowledge that he existed.”

---

 

With time, life did recover some normalcy. After mourning for another week, you managed to pull yourself up every morning, consume a mug of coffee to help battle with the fatigue you were experiencing and returned to your job. You ate the same foods you had with Namjoon, and with some time, you began to smile with the fond memory as opposed to tearfully choking the spoonfuls down. You did the things you wanted to with Namjoon one by one, hoping that ticking them off your list honoured his short and tumultuous stay in your world. You kept a journal, but unlike the one Eliza had avidly written with Namwoo at her side, you chose to document the things you did without Namjoon. It held you accountable for keeping to your promise.

It was hard to live without Namjoon, but you were determined to do so.

Still, nights were the worst. You still dreamed of him. His touch felt real within your slumber, the sensual sighs and whispered love confessions lingering even after you became alert. It was difficult to grapple with what was real and a faint memory when you opened your eyes for the first time each morning. Swallowing down the disappointment when you realised your bed was cold and empty of his presence grew harder the longer he was away.

You had endured six months without the man who had turned your world upside down with mere weeks together.

Strangely, the ring had also gone missing. When the stone had left it just a silver shell that you had placed within the drawer of your bedside table. After several weeks of recovering from Namjoon’s disappearance, you had opened the drawer to look at the ring. Even after emptying all the contents onto your bed, it had eluded you. You had searched your entire home upside down for it, even going as far as to check at the comic store as well.

The ring had gone just like Namjoon had.

“What do you want to do with all of this?” Yoongi asked when you visited him again, pointing to the stack of books. You eyed them curiously until you realised what they were. Thinking back to the day he had walked out of your apartment carrying them all, you sighed heavily. You had been so optimistic that Yoongi would find an answer in them.

And he had. It was just not one you had hoped for.

Grinning, you shrugged. “Should we burn them?”

“You want to close that chapter of your life for good?” Yoongi wondered and you shook your head. “I didn’t think so. Why be so dramatic in answer then?”

“Weren’t you the one who claimed this was all sounding a bit like Lord of the Rings? Doesn’t Frodo throw the ring into the fires of Mordor?”

“You don’t have the ring anymore to throw out even if you could.”

“No, the ring left its owner. I hope it’s not harassing another poor soul with the idea of love. It needs to be destroyed for good.”

“Perhaps Namjoon took it with him.”

“I strangely miss it,” you murmured, looking at your finger. Despite not wearing it for some time, the indent it had made upon your skin remained. It made you shiver, feeling a sense of emptiness.

Distracting yourself from the depressing concept, you reached for the stack of books, dragging them towards yourself and off the countertop. Yoongi appeared at your side, gauging if you needed his help to balance them. After rearranging the bunch a little, you shot him a satisfied smile. “I’ll take them back home. I’m sure they’ll find their places upon the bookshelves again.”

“Having them back might help with more closure to the situation,” Yoongi offered and you shared a hopeful smile before heading out into the bright afternoon.

Once home, you struggled down the hallway to your final destination, guiding the bottom book up onto your desk. Relieved to let go of the weight, you wiped at your perspired brow and removed a layer of your clothing, staring at the stack of ancient texts dejectedly.

“Why did I bring you all back here?” you asked yourself before reaching for the book on the top, taking it over to the bookshelves upon the wall and finding it a place. You repeated this task until all of them were house away neatly.

“Dinner,” you mentioned when your stomach began to grumble. After making yourself a bowl of ramen, you returned to the study to spend some time on your computer. It was about an hour into your online perusing that you heard a thud behind you from the shelf. Spinning around in the computer chair, you noticed a book had fallen to the floor. Getting up to retrieve it, you stopped when you realised what book it was.

It was the one that held the information about the ring. Gulping as the hairs stood up on your arms, you gingerly reached out for it, picking it up and cradling its spine. “You belong on the shelf now.”

Hesitating to place it back, you instead found yourself flipping through the book, ending up on the page that had changed your world all those months ago. the ancient ink gently, you winced at the pain forming in your chest and shook your head. “It’s too early for me to contemplate this fondly.”

Placing the book back on the shelf, you turned around, stopping a second time when your gaze caught something on the floor reflecting under the lights.  Stooping down to retrieve it, you couldn’t believe it.

“You weren’t here before, now were you?” you asked of the ring, rapidly looking around the room.

“No, but nor was I,” a voice mentioned with a hint of amusement and you stopped searching when your eyes landed on the purple-haired man in the doorway. Namjoon smiled and nodded as if to answer your disbelief. “I’m back, Y/N.”

---

 

It had appeared again.

This time, however, the stone hadn’t arrived alone before him. It was firmly embedded in the silver that you had once shown him and after staring at it for some time, Namjoon boldly reached out to pick it up.

After everything he had gone through because of this stone, he was no longer scared, if anything, he hoped its arrival meant something would happen to take him back to you.

It wasn’t hard to fall back into routine at home. Marian had during his disappearance turned to the local farmer’s son for support and now that Namjoon was back, he hardly saw the girl. It came as no surprise to him when she came home proclaiming she would marry Jungkook. And once she was married, the house felt fuller than before.

Namjoon yearned to leave again. He was satisfied his sister would have someone to cherish her for always. Admittedly, their shy love for one another only made him crave you. His heart ached more often than not and so to avoid their newlywed bliss, Namjoon spent from dawn to dusk working in the gem studio. But even they didn’t amaze him as much as before either.

The ring appearing whole certainly piqued his interest though. “Are you here to take me home?”

Inspecting it up close, he noticed it no longer glowed. The stone was no longer red even. It was golden, affectionate and inviting. It felt warm and fluttered when he closed his palm around it. He smiled, letting out a laugh soon after. Holding the ring made him feel connected to you again as if he was close enough to reach out for your world and dive back into it.

Closing his eyes, he found the warmth in his palm turning scorching hot, letting it go instantly. Hearing the ring clatter to the ground, Namjoon opened his eyes and looked around himself.

“Where did you go?” he wondered, dropping onto his hands and knees on the floor, searching under the desk for the ring. Crawling through the gap to the opposite side, he frowned when his hand touched something fluffy and soft. Blinking rapidly, he gripped onto the fibres before leaping to his feet and wildly glancing around himself.

“I’m not dreaming right?” he murmured, feeling all over his body for any telltale signs. And then he grinned, staring at all your homely clutter. He hadn’t realised he had missed it all until he soaked them in with his stunned focus, even dropping onto the couch to hug it. “I’m home!”

It was then that he realised he hadn’t found the ring yet. Going along the hallway, Namjoon’s breath halted when he saw the light on in the study.

Hearing you talk to the books made his chest swell and he stopped just before the door, listening on for some time. It seemed you found the ring that had granted him passage back here and after listening to you a moment longer, Namjoon stepped forward, finally catching your gaze.

“You’re real?” you asked after he told you he was back and Namjoon merely opened his arms, waiting for your impact.

Dashing across the room to enter his waiting embrace, he held you tightly to his chest once you collided against it. “I’m back. This time for good.”

“How do you know?” you wondered, looking up at him earnestly.

Namjoon reached for the ring you had in your grip and held it up. “It brought me back here. And look, it’s no longer the stone of blood.”

Inspecting the golden colour, you then glanced at the book and paled. “It’s something else now?”

“Maybe for this lifetime it’s just happy to finally succeed in bringing two lovers together.”

“I don’t trust it just yet but if it brought you back to me, then that’s something.”

Laughing, Namjoon placed it upon your finger. It glowed once before it settled completely. You eyed him suspiciously and Namjoon shrugged.

“I expect a proper proposal when the time comes.”

“You know I’ve had a long time to piece one together during my wait to see you again.”

“You know what else I’ve had a long time to think over?” you asked and Namjoon waited for you to continue. “What it truly feels like to have you kiss me once again.”

Leaning down to meet you midway, love blindly led you both into a realm of passion and reconnection during the embrace. He felt his heart soar and then collide into yours, firmly embedding itself there much as the stone had into his chest once. This time though, he knew there was nothing that could shatter this bond.

You were his truest love.