Jin went through the answering machine, his frown deepening with each missed message. Bills were waiting to be paid off; Jin assumed that Jimin had always taken care of those, and now that task found itself without an owner. But that wasn't an issue; Jin was salaried and had the income to support both his own apartment as well as his dad's house, and even if something changed with his job, he had savings. They'd almost lost the house once in his youth, back when his parents were still playing the split custody game and money had been tight. Maybe it was just some long-forgotten sense of spite, but Jin didn't want to hand the house over to anyone else, not after it had been theirs for such a long time, the only constant in their lives besides Namjoon.

He made a mental note to write out the check and skipped to the next message.

Hello, this is Dr. Choi's office. According to our records, Mr. Kim was supposed to have an appointment on Monday the 18th at 2:30PM, but he missed the appointment and didn't call ahead to cancel. We'll have to charge a cancellation fee, so he should see that appear on his statement. If you have any questions about our cancellation policy, please call the front office. Otherwise, please get in touch with us to let us know when you'd like to reschedule. Thank you.

A click as the message ended, and Jin frowned, more in confusion than anger this time. He wandered from the telephone over to the calendar tacked up in the kitchen and set his index finger in the middle, tracing his way to the 18th and stopping.

Library – 2:30

He presumed that note was Jimin's, but he didn't see anything for Namjoon. No wonder his dad had missed the appointment. Of course, Jimin had missed his library trip too, but for an altogether different reason. In his case, whether it was on the calendar or not had made no difference.

Jin went back over to the answering machine, making another mental note to check in with the doctor's office and find out what exactly his dad was going in for in the first place. Then he clicked on for the next message.

Hi, this is Dr. Choi. I'm just checking in to see how Jimin is doing – I didn't see him Monday, and I wanted to make sure everything was all right. Jimin, please give me a call back when you get the chance – either let the front office know or you've got my personal number, so feel free to contact me directly. Hope all is well. Thanks, goodbye.

This time, Jin just stared, running over the message in his head before hitting the option to repeat the message.

Hi, this is Dr. Choi...

There was a logical assumption staring at Jin in the face, but he fought it for a moment until he eventually just let it sink in. 'Mr. Kim' hadn't meant Namjoon; it had been Jimin they had been referencing, Jimin who had missed his appointment on the 18th. And the library – had that been some sort of diversion? A trick so that no one would know where Jimin had been going? But why would Jimin have to go that far?

The sound of the front door opening drew Jin out of his thoughts, and he looked over to see Hoseok entering. He gave Jin a small wave as he took off his shoes by the door.

"Hey," he greeted, walking over to Jin and sticking his hands in his pockets like they'd coincidentally bumped into each other at an uncomfortable social function rather than having met up in their own family home. Had it too become unfamiliar in some intrinsic way?

"Hey," Jin said, frowning as he glanced back down at the answering machine before looking over to Hoseok. "How did it go at the vet?"

"Fine, fine," Hoseok said, nodding to himself and rocking back on his heels. "She's hanging onto Toaster for a few days to make sure nothing gets infected and all that, but Toaster should make a full recovery."

"She?"

"The vet, I mean," Hoseok said with a shrug, looking down, and the two lapsed into silence for a moment, the uncomfortable air in the unfamiliar home suffocating any conversation.

"That's good," Jin said at last, and the two of them nodded and waited for some other subject to magically appear.

"I just stopped by to, well...I know you and Yoongi started going through Taehyung's apartment, and I thought...maybe I'd take a look around Jimin's room. Not pack it up or anything like that, just...you know."

A kick to the ribs couldn't have hurt nearly as bad as the pain that speared through Jin at Hoseok's words. He hadn't even thought of going through Jimin's room. Taehyung's apartment...that was different. That was business, in a way, because Taehyung had a lease and they needed to vacate the apartment so the next person could move in, but...that wasn't the case for Jimin's bedroom. Would it be so wrong to just...lock the door and throw away the key? To never disturb the one room on Earth that had been Jimin's and his alone at the very end of his life?

That would make two rooms that Jimin had unexpectedly left behind, Jin thought, eyebrows furrowing in a new sort of pained confusion as his brain tried to connect parallels back to Jimin's childhood. He'd never gone back with Jimin, but he'd heard from both Taehyung and Yoongi of a room on the second story, every surface covered in dust, the window boarded up (at least until Yoongi had decided no to that one) – a room in hiatus, in waiting. But the room in this house had to know that Jimin wasn't coming back, right? Was that what he wanted, to create some creepy little shrine, every object set just so, the bed made, the calendar frozen on one horribly awful month...

"But what have you been up to?" Hoseok asked, and Jin nodded as though accepting the new topic was an easy transition from where his thoughts had led him this time. When had things become so uncomfortable? Was it them? Was it the house? Or was it, like everything else, a byproduct of the accident?

"Just going through messages," Jin answered, hesitating for a moment but deciding to ask anyway. "I found a message from a doctor's office – some Dr. Choi – who apparently had an appointment scheduled with Jimin. Do you know anything about that?"

Hoseok exhaled, drawing back slightly – or was that just Jin's imagination? "Dr. Choi?"

"Yeah. I can't tell from the message what sort of appointment it was – I guess I can always just redial and ask the front office, but I figured I'd check with you first since, I don't know..." He'd been about to say since you and Jimin were close, but he wasn't sure how true that was, and he wasn't sure that Jimin and Hoseok were any closer than Jimin and himself.

"Well..." Hoseok paused, rubbing the back of his neck, and that's when Jin understood – Hoseok knew exactly what the call was about.

"Hoseok?" Jin straightened up, trying to maximize every inch of his height; maybe some sort of evolutionary instinct would kick in on Hoseok's end and compel him to come forth with the information. "What exactly do you know about this?"

"It isn't really my place to say," Hoseok hedged, and even though neither of them moved, the space between them seemed to expand.

"Tell me," Jin said, and that claustrophobic feeling he'd been starting to get lately was coming back, that choking feeling that he didn't know anyone half as well as he thought he did. Sure, Jimin and Taehyung were entitled to their own privacy, but that was in life. In death, there was no privacy.

"It's not a big deal, and it really doesn't matter now," Hoseok tried instead, looking down, but now Jin needed to know or else he'd have to walk away from this encounter with the knowledge that Hoseok knew something about Jimin that he didn't, and for some terrifying reason, he couldn't accept that.

"I need to know," Jin said, softening his voice, and Hoseok sighed, still looking at the ground but looking away from Jin.

"I told you, it's not a big deal," Hoseok repeated, but his voice was quieter this time in a way that implied he had more to say. "It was just his therapist. So you don't have to–"

"Therapist?"

Hoseok looked up, his frown deepening, not at his own words but at Jin's tone. "Yes, his therapist."

"I didn't know Jimin was seeing a therapist..."

"Why would he have told you?"

"Well, why did he tell you?" Jin shot back, anxiety swirling up within himself. Had Jimin not trusted him? But why? What had Jin done for Jimin to hold this back from him?

"Because," Hoseok said, huffing out a breath, and Jin could see a bit of anger under the surface of Hoseok's countenance, anger he was holding back for the moment. "Because Jimin knew that I'd gone to see a therapist about my- you know." He shifted in discomfort, the anger ebbing for a moment. "About eating more regularly. So Jimin felt like he could talk to me about it, ask for advice, that sort of thing."

"He could have talked to me about it," Jin insisted, arguing over a moot point that had apparently already been decided long ago. He wasn't even sure why he was pushing this. It didn't matter anymore, did it? And yet he felt completely and entirely betrayed by the revelation that no, Jimin didn't share everything with him, that there were things Jimin had purposefully kept secret, gone out of his way to keep secret by lying on the calendar and to his face.

"I don't know what you want me to say," Hoseok replied, crossing his arms as the anger moved into his eyes. "I'm not Jimin, I can't tell you why he made the decisions he did."

"Jimin was doing just fine, you know. He didn't need a therapist," Jin said, and after the words had left his lips, he wasn't quite sure if he'd said them because he'd meant them or because he wanted to upset Hoseok further. Something about the anger was driving away the sadness, and although he knew it wasn't good, it felt good in the moment.

"And that's probably why Jimin didn't tell you about it," Hoseok said, rolling his eyes. "You think people only go to therapy when they're broken and what, that the therapist glues them back together and that's the end of it? That they're just glorified duct tape salesmen?"

"Jimin wasn't broken," Jin said, and Hoseok stopped and just stared at him, his face blank.

"So what you're saying is that Jimin was too good for therapy, but I'm not? Jimin was perfectly fine, but I'm a fuckup?"

Jin swallowed, searching for a reply. The anger had taken him this far, but it was fading now, leaving him alone to fumble for words and apologies that would never be enough. "No, Hoseok – I didn't mean... Look, I just thought- I thought Jimin was happy. He never said anything to the contrary."

"Just because someone doesn't say they're unhappy, that doesn't make them happy, Jin."

"I know," Jin mumbled, looking at the ground, shrinking down into his frame. "I know that, Hoseok. You're right, I know. I'm sorry, you're not broken or messed up or anything of that. I didn't mean it like that."

"It's fine," Hoseok said, but his voice was flat, the damage already done as he half-turned, exposing his profile to Jin, who looked up hesitantly. "I'm going to go look around Jimin's room."

There was a pause like he was giving Jin the opportunity to say something, but Jin couldn't riddle it out fast enough, and so Hoseok left, soft footsteps growing softer until he heard the far-off click of a door closing.

--

published 12/17/21 (mm/dd/yy)

2020 words (sorry lol, pure coincidence)