— "everything is out
of my control!"

NOVEMBER 5:
KIM SEOKJIN

==

"taehyung. taehyung, deep breaths."

he's sweating. gasping for air. on the verge of tears. from his expression and demeanor, it's the symptoms of someone who's just woken up from a harsh nightmare. seokjin knows the feeling. he's handled far too many nightmares (though his can never compete with taehyung's, he's sure of it); leaving a nightmare is like leaving a dark, swirling ocean, straining for oxygen once you reach the surface.

clearly, seokjin realizes with a numb pain, taehyung's coma was far from peaceful.

"alright, kiddo," jae soothes, rubbing his shoulders consolingly. taehyung's breaths begin to slow, swallowing shakily and softly breathing out a few unintelligible words. "it's okay, look at me, look at me? i'm here. linnie's here. mom—" she points to mrs. kim— "and seokjin too, we're all here, okay?" she turns to the latter. "where's the nurse? get a doctor, quick!"

stumbling from his seat, seokjin nods quickly and pushes past the door. he can hear the muffled, strained words mrs. kim utters next, holding onto her son's cheek and nodding bittersweetly when he whispers a small "mom" into the air.

soon after the doctor enters taehyung's room, fixing his glasses, seokjin sends a singular text to the five others:

he's up. come quick.

==

taehyung greets seokjin along with hoseok, jimin, and namjoon when they arrive with urgent embraces, grinning into their shoulders and laughing at their witty remarks ("took you long enough, i've been using your netflix account the entire time you were asleep"). his voice is raspy from lack of use, but eventually enough he regains his tone. for a moment, they forget everything behind them. they focus only on taehyung and those in the room.

then the moment is gone, and the doctor brings them back to the situation.

"t-two weeks?" taehyung says. "i've been asleep for more than two weeks?"

"we honestly thought it would be longer," mrs. kim admits, clasping his hands together. jimin has an arm slung over taehyung's shoulder, careful to give the doctor standing in the corner a sharp glare (he and the nurses wouldn't give taehyung a single second to breathe after he had woken up, instead performing countless medical tests and asking barrages of easy, obvious questions "to asses his sensory nerves and ability"). "the doctors weren't sure when you'd wake up."

"it's...astounding how quickly you've regained your conscious, comprehending state of being," the doctor marvels. he clicks his pencil against the wood of the clipboard. "it usually takes the patient several weeks, if not months, to fully...get back to reality, is the term. it's almost like you were merely in some sort of deep, lengthened sleep."

well, that wasn't a normal coma. not at all.

"for now, it's important that you take everything slowly: eat plenty, sleep well, gradually get back to your feet, you know—"

the door to the room suddenly bursts open, revealing out-of-breath and winded jeongguk and yoongi. their jackets are soaked in tiny water droplets (the storm seems to have not ceased yet) and their hair is tousled in every direction, but taehyung immediately breaks out into a wide smile.

"hey," protests the doctor, "no visitor clearance until—"

"we're family," jeongguk dismissively breathes out (making the rest of them chuckle in amusement). he throws his jacket onto a chair near jae and shakes his head of excess droplets.
"hey, tae."

"shit, what an entrance," hoseok laughs, and taehyung is about to speak when he's cut off by jeongguk swooping him to his feet in a very quick and very unexpected embrace. it catches all of them off guard. jeongguk is shy to show his emotions, especially in front of groups of people like right now. sure, seokjin has seen him cry, seen him pour out his feelings under late skies and the buzz of alcohol, but because he bottles them. seeing him hold onto taehyung, just like everyone else did, makes seokjin smile even wider than before.

he turns to yoongi, who chuckles, nods, and joins the embrace in return.

"hey, hey, be careful," says the doctor urgently, "he's just woken up from a coma—"

"hi jeongguk," taehyung responds, weakly chuckling. "hi yoongi."

"been a wild two weeks, huh?"

seokjin laughs. "you're a piece of work, yoongi."

"i've heard that one plenty before."

pulling apart from the embrace, taehyung purses his lips back into a line and turns to face the doctor. "can i have some time alone with everyone for a moment?"

"of course, but i still have a few more tests to—"

"for god's sake, the kid just woke up from a coma," jimin sighs, exasperated. "give him some time before you shove another stethoscope through his heart, alright?"

==

"and that's where jae found me, sitting against that old brick building. she took me back and fixed me up, but i couldn't remember anything. abraxas took all of my memories and intertwined us in that one night."

for a long period of time after taehyung voices that last word, the room is enveloped in stiffening silence. seokjin chews his lip as he takes in everything. he doesn't know what he was expecting; obviously, taehyung's last memory, the one of that night, wasn't going to be easy to grasp.

"abraxas used the version of me from that night not only to form its physical form, but also the decoy body—meaning my clothing, my appearance, every minuscule detail. since i was wearing a winter cap, black pants, and a white shirt, its physical form four years later also was, and the decoy left that night. i don't even know how i understand this," taehyung swipes a tongue over his chapped lips, "or how i know this. i feel...i don't know, it's like my coma made me suddenly piece everything together, y'know? like the last memory made all of these connections with things i thought had no correlation. and i can only blame it on abraxas's doing."

jimin rubs taehyung's shoulder in some sort of consolation. it's the best any of them can do right now—there's no way to respond to that.

"and after the decoy was buried, abraxas made it disappear. it focused the rest of its strength on cultivating the physical form." taehyung turns to jimin. "but my shoes—those white adidas, they stayed. and...and i think it has something to do with me. remember how haewon and iseul said that i could penetrate abraxas's conscious with my own actions, without my own realization? i think i made the shoes stay. i held them with so much importance that somehow, i kept them there—in the grave, but still there."

"you made them stay," jimin breathes out, his voice in awe. "god, taehyungie."

"but the blood on the shoes..." yoongi's face hardens. "was that abraxas's?"

"the decoy was depleting fast and using its energy, so yeah, i would think so."

that's why it was so dark.

the broken window. the steak knife. the decoy body. the white shoes, the clothes. it finally pieces together.

"so, just like that?" namjoon finally says. "it took your memories and spent the next four years cultivating its power?"

"yeah, with my memories...and i think my blood, too. i-i remember that abraxas kept circling my pool of blood, and it kept dipping its talons into it. clearly, it was important to whatever abraxas needed to accomplish."

taehyung points to a part of his neck where a faint, darkened scar resides. "i got this that night, when abraxas entered my house. i remember it burned my skin or something, and i felt this...this warm, thick liquid before i blacked out. and when i woke up again, outside of the warehouse, i put my fingers to the wound and drew back black blood. abraxas's blood." taehyung pauses, swallowing. "i don't know how, but i think our blood is what intertwines us, alongside my memories."

"and that's why you kept throwing up blood when you were gaining memories?"

"i would guess so. i thought that meant that i was escaping the intertwining, but...from what you guys have told me, what with abraxas still being there its true, physical form at the parking garage..." taehyung looks to the side, growing quieter. "i don't think i ever lost it."

"what? why not?" hoseok asks.

"abraxas was supposed to disappear the moment i gained my last memory, right? our 'bond' was supposed to disappear when it ran out of power, and the cycle was supposed to continue. but it didn't. abraxas simply evolved into a physical form."

"so what does that mean?"

taehyung pauses again, his voice quivering. "it means that i'm still intertwined to abraxas."

seokjin loses his breath.

"what? no, you can't be." jimin shakily gets to his feet. "you—you kept throwing up the blood, remember? a-and you kept regaining your memories, and that's what intertwined you and abraxas together, right? you're not intertwined anymore. you can't be. it's impossible—"

a ring in seokjin's ears begins to pulsate, growing louder by the moment. still intertwined to abraxas.

no, that means—

"how else is abraxas still here, still visible, still ruining? how else am i able to understand and and know so much? we're still intertwined, chim—i don't know how, but we are."

"but it's in its true form! it has no trace of you in its form anywhere, and—"

"but it's in a physical form," seokjin manages to croak, and everyone turns to face him. "it's in a physical form, so taehyung and abraxas are still intertwined."

no one says a word.

"o-okay," jeongguk swallows. "so? what does that mean? what should we do?"

they look to taehyung, desperate for an answer. he wrings the hospital bedsheet underneath his fingers, a tiny crease forming between his knit eyebrows and lip tucked between his teeth. after a moment, he opens his mouth with a tiny croak, but no words come out.

he can't give them one.

==

2018 is almost here lads

this is it guys the absolute Worst written chapter of afflicted!! damn it be ya own author😔🤧
ive been traveling so im super sorry for this late update but have a wonderful day!!