"What?" Aika asked, leaning forward with her eyebrows raised as though Jin had spoken in a foreign language. "You're not serious, are you?"

"I don't know," Jin said, that same nervous energy that had been flowing through his veins for the past few days propelling him to get up from his seat and walk in circles around his apartment. "I just feel like, like a change of pace would be a good thing for me right now with...everything, you know. Everything that's been going on. It would be nice to just sort of take a break from it all." The last television interview he'd derailed flashed through his mind, and he winced in remembrance.

"Jin, that's not the sort of break you can come back from," Aika said, her tone cautious and her eyes wide and focused on Jin like she were talking to a child. "You realize that, right? The moment you make that call, your career – everything you've worked for – is over."

"Not necessarily," Jin said, shrugging his shoulders but letting them linger there, hunched, because he didn't really believe what he himself was saying. He'd seen it happen time and again to others who weren't any different than himself. He was nobody special. The formula would play out the same for him as it had for those before him. Desperately clawing their way up for public attention, and fading into the depths of obscurity the moment eyes turned away. The first death celebrities face is that of irrelevance. "We don't know that."

"We do," Aika said before sighing and looking down at her folded hands. "But let's just say it doesn't, okay. So you take a break. What are you going to do in the meantime? You'll have no income–"

"I have some savings built up," Jin defended. "And royalties off some current advertisements for at least a few months."

"But what if something unexpected comes up, something unplanned that you suddenly have to pay for but can't make work with a limited budget?"

Jin looked over at Aika frowning at the way her face was wrinkled in deep thought over problems that weren't even hers. "Aika," he said, sitting back down next to her and pulling her hands into his, untangling them despite her initial resistance. "I'm doing this for me, for us. Can't you see how crazy it's all become?"

He huffed out a small laugh, looking down as he traced his thumb around Aika's knuckles. Her wrist was adorned with a bracelet he'd bought her recently, a very simple but elegant band. Aika wasn't a flashy kind of girl who wanted diamonds; she'd rather invest in a person than an object. But he'd still wanted to get her something, and a simple bangle was all she'd accept (with only minimal objections). "I started off in a simple bakery. I got up at 3, made it to work by 4, and had fresh pastries out of the oven by 6. It wasn't a great shift, and it wasn't easy work, but I liked what I did back then, Aika. I liked who I was. And then when our bakery started getting more popular, those things started slipping away. I started slipping away."

He frowned, stilling his fingers against Aika's. "It was just a local newspaper article at first, then some online blogs, then a television feature...it just kept going. And somehow I ended up as the face of the bakery, not because I was the best baker or because I'd worked there the longest. It was because of my face. It was because I 'made for good TV', whatever that meant." Jin swallowed in an effort to dispel the notion that his throat was closing up. He knew that it was just in his head, but when he got anxious, his mind liked to play games with him.

"It felt like I was back in high school," he whispered, squeezing Aika's hands but not too hard. Aika was one of the strongest women he knew, but her strength seemed to come from the inside. Physically, there was a beautiful fragility about her, one that demanded respect and care. "And I thought I'd learned, I thought I'd changed, but...I let myself get swept away again. It was a different stage but the same show, and like a fool, I just sat through it, stayed for intermission, and clapped at the end." He shook his head and let it hang down so he couldn't meet Aika's eyes.

"And you know, it was my brothers that snapped me out of it in high school. They made me realize that I'd sold out all the parts of me that I'd liked so I could buy the attention of people I didn't care about. And–" The constricting feeling in his throat got worse until it felt like he couldn't get a breath in. He swallowed, trying to trick his mind into thinking he'd taken a breath, and a bit of air entered his lungs. "And I'm only realizing all this now thanks to them, again," he confessed, leaning his forehead against their hands and shutting his eyes. "But the cost was too high and it's too late. I'm always too late. Why can't I change? Why am I like this?"

Aika removed one of her hands from his and rubbed at his back, her palm warm even through his t-shirt, and suddenly it felt a little bit easier to breathe. "You've definitely changed from who you were in high school. I didn't know you back then but I'm sure of it all the same. But you're still you, hon. You don't want to change so much that you become someone else. We've all got battles that just keep coming for us no matter how much we grow. That's only natural."

"But it's a battle I lose every single time. I'm fighting myself and still I lose. How pathetic is that?"

"How human is that?" Aika rephrased softly, now running her nails up and down his back, scratching at the fabric.

"I just..." He leaned down further, and Aika hugged him from the side, laying her arm across his convex back. "I look at the people around me, and everyone's so strong. My dad raised six kids on his own. Lisa's worked as a cop for years and years. Hoseok came back from an eating disorder. Yoongi could eat nails for breakfast, and I'm pretty sure he has. Jungkook...he was heading down a path that could've gotten scary, but he changed, he worked at it and he changed his destination. Jimin–" He exhaled, trying to keep his breaths even. "Jimin went through a lot. Too much. And yet, somehow, his soul was still so gentle, I don't even understand it. And Taehyung–"

His brother's iconic smile flashed in his vision, and he squeezed his eyes shut even harder as pangs of nostalgia assaulted him. "Taehyung always worked the hardest out of all of us. He was so incredibly talented, so fearsomely intelligent, but he never held that over anyone, never talked down to us, and yet...that must've been lonely, incredibly lonely and I never really took the time to appreciate that, how isolating it must be to exist in a realm that other people can't enter. And it's only now, after he's gone, that I'm wondering if I knew him at all, if the Taehyung I knew was just a glimpse of the real him, and I hate, hate the fact that my own brother is somehow a stranger to me, even just a little bit."

Aika's grip on him was steady and warm, and Jin relaxed into it, feeling the ever-present tension in his muscles ease just enough. She was the only one he could relax around, the only one he could unburden himself to without feeling wholly guilty, but even so, he didn't want to take advantage of her like that, to use her to stabilize himself. "I'm sorry," he mumbled, followed by a short laugh empty of all humor. How long had he spent trying to break Jimin's apologetic habits? "You're probably sick of hearing about this, about them, and–"

"Jin, it's fine–"

"-how I just seem to make every issue about them, over and over again, and I'm sorry, I'm trying not to but I just can't get them out of my head, I haven't been thinking clearly lately and–" He brought his hands away from her hand to brace his head, digging his knuckles into his skin. "-I'm just constantly reliving all these memories, even just their expressions, and I keep imagining how they must have died and I can't sleep and–" He grabbed onto her hand fervently, squeezing it harder than before, probably too hard, but he couldn't process the sensation of touch at the moment. "I know I'm a wreck, and I'm sorry that I'm putting all this on you–"

"Shh," Aika said, giving his hands a squeeze back as though to remind him that she was there. "It's okay, Jin. I want to be here for you."

"But I sound like a broken record, even to my own ears," he said, trying to focus his entire mind on the feeling of her hand in his. Trying to shut away the boxy smile that kept creeping up from corners of his mind. "And I know I probably shouldn't have proposed until I was okay because I didn't want to put you through all this but...I'm sorry, I was selfish, I only knew that I needed you and wanted you and I used to think I was enough but now I know that's not true. How can I possibly be enough when I'm this broken?"

"There's no such thing as 'enough'," Aika said, intertwining her fingers with his. "And besides, if everyone waited until they were okay to get married, then everyone would be single their whole lives." At that, Jin cracked a small smile, and although Aika couldn't see it, she seemed to know because he heard a smile in her next words. "You can't worry yourself about being 'enough', Jin. Enough for what? Enough to make me happy? Enough to make me safe, to sustain me, to empower me? No one person can ever be 'enough', and that's why we're together," she said, giving his hand another squeeze. "No one person can be enough, but two people together can come close. I don't need you to be enough, I just need you to be here. If that means you're here crying, well, then I want to be the one to dry your tears."

"Sorry," Jin said, the apology rising to his lips automatically before he was able to figure out what exactly he was apologizing for. Jimin had been that way, always apologizing for things, and- Jin scrunched up his face, fighting against the memories. How long would it be like this? How long would he be comparing every second of his life to the lives of people who weren't here anymore?

"No more 'sorry,'" Aika said, pulling him into a hug.

"What, are you going to tell me 'don't say sorry, say thank you'?" Jin mumbled, and Aika laughed, and her arms drew him a bit closer.

"What's wrong with that?" she asked, smile in her voice again, like she didn't disagree with him but was baiting him, trying to draw him out of the tunnel of grief he'd stumbled into.

"It's cliché," he said, managing to sound the least bit indignant. "And you're far more imaginative than to rely on one."

"Okay, then how about this: instead of 'sorry', you can just say 'Aika, you're the best'," she proposed, pulling back so he could see a wide smile on her lips, and it had the intended effect of surprising a laugh out of him.

"Okay, then," he said, shifting his lips into a watery smile. "Aika, you're the best." He paused, huffing out a small exhale as half-formed shadow faces receded a little farther back into his brain, and he leaned over to rest his head on Aika's shoulder. "Really, Aika."

She just hummed, pulling him in with one arm and tracing shapes on his skin where his t-shirt sleeve ended. "It gets easier, losing someone" she said quietly. "At least, I think so. But when you love someone enough, it never just becomes 'easy', only less difficult. That's the price of love." She paused her shape-tracing to press a light kiss to the top of his head. "But it's worth it, Jin. It really is."

"You're the best," he whispered into her shoulder, and they passed the next several minutes in a comfortable silence.

--

published 12/04/22 (mm/dd/yy)

2123 words