(Hoseok POV)

This felt wrong. Beyond wrong.

It felt terrifying.

He was leaving me behind, he said. 

But to go where?

I paced around in his bedroom, calling his phone and leaving voicemail after voicemail. But instead of his voice, all it came was the automatic response of, "please try again."

Could he be at the pharmacy? Purchasing another bottle of prescriptions?

No, he was pocketing the full bottle of pills this morning, barely empty at all. 

please try again

The doctor's clinic, perhaps. A regular check-up. Maybe he was requesting another medication for himself. Maybe h--

please try again

please try again

please tr--

I closed my eyes, the forlorn atmosphere clawing at me, picking at scabs of hope, bleeding in the terrain of fear and doubt. 

Where could he possibly be?

"you know how Stephen Hawking said that at the other side of a black hole, there's a way out? Well, what if at t--"

". . .the bottom of a lake. ." I finished his previous words. 

My eyes widened.

"He couldn't be at that lake." I murmured to myself, fingers frustratedly running through my hair, strands pulling from my scalp and hurting. My headache was back again, but despite it not being so painful, my body was shivering. I was turning sensitive to even the slightest sensation.

I couldn't take chances. 

Barging out the bedroom, I plucked my coat from the sofa. But as soon as I did, it slipped through my fingers and away. I flexed them again, but they weren't responding and moving as well as they were before.

'The tumour will decrease your motor skills over time, you know.' 

I gulped down my tears, blocking out Taehyung's words from a month ago. 

Bending down, I shifted my hand underneath the coat, grasping a hold of the fabric. It slipped through again.

"Fuck. ." I bit down on my lip.

My fingers unfurled again, picking at the threads of the coat, vision blurring momentarily. 

Yoongi, Yoongi, Yoongi — he was all I could think of. He could be somewhere, swimming to the bottom of a lake to God knows where, to most probably, his death. And here I was, not being able to pick up my fucking coat of the floor, let alone slip it on.

please try again

I banged my fist on the flooring, over and over, trying to get my hands to stop shaking and do what they were supposed to do.

please try again

With my fist closing around the fabric, I stood up, stars shooting through my head, and I slipped it on, breathing harshly.

Not now, not now, don't puke now

I ran through the apartment's corridor, hands trying to steady myself as they touched walls of peeling paint. Stumbling through the elevator, I pushed the floor level button, doors closing with a ding.

He had to be going at that lake. The lake where he had brought me to show me the stars upon the water, where he had proven to me that a soon-to-be astronomer could not just research about stars, but could touch them himself — without burning. 

But he was wrong. I had burned, from the ones in his eyes. From the ones in his eyes whom could explain to me that no equation or theory could prove the exact moment where gravity wasn't real when those stars were staring at me.

It had to be that lake where he had held my hand and we jumped from the cliff, laughter and screams dissolving in the sunset coloured water. Where the skies' saturated colours bled into hues that complemented you and I. That lake and its water where you had wrapped your arms around me and told me to stop counting and I had. 

The person whom only had two months to live stopped counting their days over the mere moments they'd experienced and shared with someone else. 

The moments that which time itself couldn't justify its concepts because when I'm with you, time itself seems to hold no value. 

It had to be that lake where you told me to write on a paper star about the things I loved and hoped and feared and I had chosen to wrote you, the name of your existence, you, Min Yoongi, the reason for my reason to not just live, but to live in the liveliest way of all.

But it couldn't be the lake where you were leaving.

I tripped over something, stumbling and steadying myself. I grabbed on the tree, looking down to see what I had tripped over.

Nothing. I had tripped over nothing.

It wasn't the ground, it was my feet, losing motor ability.

"Taxi!"

___

The cab pulled away. Maybe I should've asked the driver to stay. 

The night sky slowly and quietly rolled away, dripping with stars and their light. I walked down to the beds of rocks which surrounded the lake, water crashing against them. 

The navy blue softly rippled and I took off my shoes and socks, rolling up my jeans slightly. I took out my phone and placed it in my shoe. I stood on top of the rocks. They were slippery, the evening's drizzle coating them with wet moss. 

I stared down at the water, the perfect specular reflection of the sky peering back at me. The night was far from dark, far from the black chambers. The blue and white and whichever other colours that were shining all at once were there. They were there. Everything was there — and continued to be.

It was too soft. The world crashing was too soft as I plunged into the water. Body escaping into the ice water, headache inching back into me. For a moment, I panicked and tried to swim back up to the surface. Head underwater, face staring up, I paused and held my breath. For a moment, I ignored the headache and burning in my lungs. 

For a moment, I saw the world through his eyes.

For a moment, the night sky from underneath the water was the moment itself. 

If this sky was the sky you could only see when your lungs burned and gasped, then it was worth it. It wasn't enough, but it was worth it. 

My head snapped up as my body brought me up the surface again, mouth in-taking oxygen before plummeting back into the water again. I swam deeper and deeper, eyes open and searching. The deeper I went, the more the moonlight faded, the darker everything came.

I swam back up again, swallowing oxygen, then swam back down. Each time, deeper. Each time, bluer. The fifth time I swam back up again, I paddled out the water and collapsed onto the rocks. With a rumble in my throat, I vomited right there. If I hadn't been numb that time, I would've realized that I was on the quick verge of getting pneumonia, tumour side effects and all.

With a shudder, I dove into the water again. 

My lungs ached and burned, screaming to me that they couldn't hold on any longer, telling me that they weren't like Yoongi's whom had practiced in the bathtub numerous times. They weren't like Yoongi's whom had compared this water, this deprivation of oxygen, to a black hole. 

I swam the most deepest I had gone. A single pinprick ray of moonlight had still managed to reach me to this level of water and it illuminated a shock of blonde hair.

Swimming back up, I crawled along the beds of rocks, reaching for my phone. Dialling 911, my fingers curled around the rocks. 

"911, what's your emergency?"

"I-it's not really an. . .emergency." Hysteria. "It's just that I w-was swimming and," I gulped and gasped, "I think my boyfriend's sleeping down there." 

I told them you were just sleeping down there when the ambulance and police cars rolled up. I fumbled for the officer's hand as he placed a blanket around my shoulders, whispering to him that you were just tired and was taking a nap down there, down where the moonlight was present enough to be a nightlight for your slumber.

Five men had swam down there and I yelled to them to be careful, to not wake you up because you were tired from looking for the way out of the black hole.

When two came back up, I thought that you had disappeared down there, that maybe you had awoken and escaped out of the black hole, like how Alice did in her story, but this wasn't Alice's story, this was your story, Min Yoongi and the Black Hole.

When the other three came up, they held a blue body. It was so blue, even in the siren's red and blue and white lights, even in the star's white and blue and all the colours at once, it was so blue that I thought it wasn't you.

If it hadn't been for the same blonde hair and the same tattoos lining your arms and neck, if it hadn't been for the same shirt and same jeans you were wearing when you had left me, if it hadn't been for the same smile that I swear you were wearing, if it hadn't been for the same sun imprinted near your collarbone, I didn't think it could've been the same you, Yoongi.

You stayed in the blue water just long enough to become it.

I ran to you. The blanket slipped off my shoulders. They let me touch you, they let me slap your face, they let me scream,"WAKE UP!" over and over again to you, but you weren't waking up and I knew you weren't because you always have the tendency to not listen to me. You didn't listen to me when I told you stop smoking, you didn't listen to me when I told you to take your pills.

They asked me if I could identify if it was you, but I wasn't so sure anymore it was you. This crippled and blue body with skin so translucent, you could mark cities on its veins and make it a map that could perhaps lead me to the place where you were dreaming and dying to be.

The rush of sirens came back again and my ears took in their sound, the officer's speaking into their walkie-talkies, the water crashing against the rocks now, the wind howling, the blood roaring in my ears.

"Can you tell us if he had any friends or family? Their contact information?"

"Had?" I turned to you. "Yoongi, wake up! Th-they think you're dead! Wake up. . please. Please!" 

I yelled out to you and they rolled you away on the stretcher. The officer held me back, whispering that it was okay. 

But it wasn't okay. How could it be okay when they were saying you were gone? 

You weren't gone, but you weren't here either. You were somewhere in-between. 

And I knew, that not in this moment, but in moments several minutes ago, several swims ago, several burning lungs ago; you had found that in-between.

You had escaped the black hole.

___