Chapter Text
When Taehyung swims vaguely into awareness, his distant realization that this isn’t his bed or his room isn’t as startling somehow as the fact that his lip isn’t throbbing. He’d made the mistake of calling his sister for dinner too loudly yesterday, not that his father had needed that as a reason, of course. But his lip had split and swelled and stung all day, and he’d thought it would keep him awake that night, but - Taehyung frowns, squeezing his eyes shut. He didn’t fall asleep. He doesn’t remember going to bed, he doesn’t remember crashing at anyone else's despite the fact that he sometimes has in the past when it was particularly bad, but if he hasn't this time then - what happened? What was the last thing that happened?
He bolts upright, then freezes and stares. Even less makes sense, because he’s clearly in a hotel room. In any other context, that would be wildly exciting, as Taehyung has never been in a hotel lobby much less afforded a hotel room, and it looks just like it does on TV. But like this, it’s ominous, unsettling, and veers into downright frightening when he realizes he isn’t wearing his own clothes. He scrambles off the thick, luxurious covers he'd been laying on and stares down at the too soft, white pants and light shirt he’s wearing. His heart thuds when he sees his name is stamped in bold letters across the chest of the shirt, and just below that: 6/7
His heart leaps into his constricting throat, and he has to close his eyes again and fist his hands in his hair to press down the increasing terror. He doesn’t remember anything, and someone who knows his full name changed his clothes without his being aware of it and put him in a hotel room, laid him on this bed. And Taehyung isn’t stupid, and knows what he looks like, and has heard stories of the bad things that can happen to boys his age, and every single one of those horrible, disgusting stories is flitting through his head right now as his hands shake and he throws himself against the wall away from the bed, hands trembling as he yanks up the shirt and tugs at the pants and looks for any signs that anything - that anyone -
There’s a muffled yell from somewhere beyond his walls, and he freezes. His heart races, and he lets his shirt drop back into place over his unmarred, untouched skin - wait. He yanks his sleeve up and stills, staring at the unbruised skin. It’s impossible. He prods gently at his lip with his tongue and gasps. It’s healed. It’s healed, all of it. The bruised outline of the handprint on his forearm, the scratch on his index finger, his bruised lip. He traces along his hairline for the distinctive scar just past his eyebrow - nothing.
His heart is thundering in his chest now because this doesn’t make sense, none of this makes sense. He’s barefoot, and that shouldn’t stand out to him as much as it does, but he was wearing shoes, wherever he was, was wearing clothes, and now they’re gone and he doesn’t remember why or where he is, and this is the worst time to panic, the worst time to cry, but the tears are welling up and his throat is closing before he can push it down. He scrambles to the window, desperate for fresh air, for something to calm the spinning building behind his eyes, but the surprise jolts him out of the building panic when he gets to the window and it's… blank.
Beyond the glass is an endless, empty white plain. It isn't that the window isn't transparent or that the window faces something white or is obstructed, and his jaw drops as he stares, not comprehending. There's a vague relief registering that at the very least, if he has been abducted or something, it definitely isn't by… people. He presses a hand against the glass distractedly, and it's cool to the touch like he expects, but there's no latch, no hinge, no way to open it.
He absently traces down his arm and across his jaw for scars- nothing. He's completely, unnaturally healed, no cuts or bruises or even scars where there should be. He spends several more moments blinking hard and pressing his hands against his eyes and trying to see anything, anything at all, other than the unchanging lack of landscape out the window. He can't just not be… anywhere. He can't just have woken up with all his scars gone and all his wounds healed in a strange hotel in a giant blank plain with no one and nothing. And he's always believed in other worlds and maybe magic and even aliens but this...
He whirls to face the rest of the room, just a dresser and a bed and undeniably a hotel room like those he's seen on shows. Every drawer is shining and looks brand new, completely empty, and there are no other doors apart from the one into the hall, which he isn't sure he's brave enough to dare try yet. If there's nothing out the window and nothing out the door and he's trapped in this room - he doesn't know what he'll do, and he doesn't want to find out.
It's several frustrated huffs later that he gives up on finding anything of use in the room, and he reluctantly returns the mattress he's tipped over back to the bed frame and straightens and shoves all the drawers closed warily. The door looks so, so ordinary, just polished wood and a neat silver handle, a small peephole, but nothing can be ordinary when he woke up here in different clothes and without memory of having gotten here and with a window looking out at - nothing.
He sucks in a nervous breath before pressing himself against the door to look out the peephole, then exhales in relief, feeling it shudder all the way through him. At the very least, there is a hallway, there's an identical door to his across what looks like an unremarkable hallway of any hotel, and when he reaches for the door knob, he only hesitates for a moment before he grasps it firmly and yanks. The door opens easily, nearly knocking him over with the force he pulled with, and the relief almost has him staggering into the door frame. The hallway is richly carpeted, soft under his bare feet, and there's a shining number 6 on the door to his room. He glances down at the matching 6/7 on his shirt, and frowns. The door across from his has a number 5, and he wonders-
He jumps at the sound of a crash from down the hall, but before he can even consider whether he wants to move towards or away from it, the door beside him is flying open. The boy that stumbles out is shorter than him but doesn’t look any older, and his hair is a bright vivid orange, his sharp features drawn in the same terror Taehyung feels must be evident on his face as he whirls to face him. Park Jimin is stamped across the boy’s shirt, right over 5/7.
“What’s going on, do you - do you know what’s happening, where we are or - or how we got here or -” The boy’s voice is higher than his and sounds just as anxious and thready, and Taehyung can’t speak, can’t bring himself to shake his head or try to reassure him. They both flinch when doors slam open down the hall, and a tall dark-haired boy stumbles out of a different room just as a broad-shouldered light-haired one peers cautiously out of another. Taehyung glances warily at the boy beside him before stepping forward tentatively, enough to see that the others have emerged from rooms 1 and 2. They’re both dressed in the identical white, both barefoot, and seem to be in the same situation and Taehyung is bewildered. Who are they? Where are they?
The dark-haired one strides towards them, glancing at the still-closed 3 and 4 doors, and Taehyung can see Kim Namjoon and 1/7 stamped across his shirt. Behind him, the one with Kim Seokjin and 2/7 has his hands wrapped around his doorframe and isn’t moving, staring at them warily.
“How many of us are there?” The taller boy is muttering as he gets closer to them. Then his keen gaze is on Taehyung, and he wants to shrink away from it as he steps closer to the wall. “Do you know-” He breaks off at another loud noise from one of the rooms.
The crash seems to have come from room 3, and another loud thud rings out from behind the door as Taehyung steps back hastily, even as the boy beside him from room 6 drifts forward. The boy from the first room is reaching hesitantly for the door knob, and Taehyung feels a prickle of worry at the prospect of it being unlocked, of anyone having been able to enter the room when he was asleep, when he was unconscious and couldn’t remember it.
“You should…” Taehyung hears one of them quietly begin, but they break off when the tall boy jumps back as the door is yanked open. The boy who stalks out has a fiery aura about him, glaring venomously from beneath bright green hair, pale skin looking particularly washed out in the dim fancy hotel hall lighting.
“Where the hell are we?” He snarls, and doesn’t wait for an answer. “What is this, how did we get here?”
Taehyung doesn’t think any of them have any more of an answer, and he’s intimidated by the fierce aura surrounding the boy. None of the others look much older than him, but the boy from the room beside his has backed away as if similarly nervous around the boy with Min Yoongi and 3/7 stamped across his chest. Taehyung's eyes widen as he sees that the crashing sounds must have been room 3 being torn apart. The mattress is thrown against the wall, the dresser has been knocked over and its drawers are scattered across the room, and the nightstand lamp is in pieces on the ground. The last door swings open beside them then, and the gentleness in the eyes of the boy that steps out of room 4 almost makes Taehyung inadvertently relax. His shirt says Jung Hoseok and has 4/7 on it.
“I don’t think any of us know anything.” He says as if in answer, and Taehyung wonders if he’s been watching from the peephole or just listening against the door. There’s a rippling surrealness to this, standing with 5 boys he doesn’t know all dressed identically in bright white, huddled around in a hotel hallway they don’t know how they ended up in and that he isn't fully convinced actually exists in the real world - somehow.
“I… I thought of human trafficking or something, some… some abduction but then…” The orange-haired boy from room 5 murmurs before trailing off and swallowing hard.
"Then you saw the window." The sandy-haired boy with the number 4 on his shirt sounds sympathetic, though his eyes look wary.
“We’re dead.” Min Yoongi’s voice is hard as his clenched fists, but his eyes are strangely dull where they bore into the carpet. "We must have died."
Taehyung should feel the shock radiating through him when a few of them gasp, but relatively, it almost makes things feel like they could make sense again, somehow. And it isn't as though he never thought it might happen, even as a bitter feeling twists through his lungs and lodges in his throat. He bites at the inside of his cheek and sends a fierce apology to his sister, a desperate hope that she just leaves now, that she finally gets away like she could have so, so long ago if she didn't feel so horribly duty-bound to stay and protect him.
Some of the boys around him look faintly sick, and he feels a pulse of pity that they have to be in this situation, that they might have died like he did or any other way, and he forces his gaze down to their shirts, where the block letters spell out their names. Park Jimin’s head shoots up and he looks around at them. “I was…” His voice is contemplative. “I was in hospital.”
Jung Hoseok’s eyes widen. “I was in hospital too. And I was fine, but…” His hand reaches up to rub at his head, tone hesitant. “Maybe… maybe we are dead.”
Taehyung smooths a hand down his strange, starkly clean clothes, then twists his fingers together, feeling the unnaturally healed smoothness of his usually dry and scratched skin. “My skin feels real.” He murmurs, and the weight of their gazes feels heavy on him as he shrugs. “All of this feels real.”
“I was in a car accident.” Kim Seokjin offers abruptly, then clenches his jaw and drops his gaze. “And I… I wasn’t the one hurt, I… but I guess maybe I could’ve…”
“I was at work.” Kim Namjoon muses aloud, still looking between them, unsettlingly assessing. “There was an angry customer… did he kill me?”
“My dad probably killed me.” Taehyung says bluntly, and tightens his fists at the gasps and flinches and shocked expressions. He doesn’t protest when Jimin whispers a quiet apology, then another, and reaches slowly for his hand, linking their fingers together. The contact is grounding somehow, in the midst of all of this. They’re silent for a moment, and something dark is burning in Yoongi’s eyes, but he shakes his head as he looks up at them.
“So the afterlife is just this hallway?” Yoongi asks brusquely, but Taehyung wonders if that’s fear colouring his words.
“I tried leaving right when I woke up.” Hoseok shares, turning to look past them at the doors lining the hall. “All six doors are just our rooms, and I didn't try your doors, but the windows don’t even have latches to open. And if they did... there's nothing out there."
“Who’s the seventh?” Namjoon murmurs quietly, and Taehyung tilts his head at the question.
“Do you think it’s the order we died in? The numbers?” Jimin asks, and Yoongi exhales slowly.
“Maybe the 7th didn’t die yet.”
“I wasn’t badly injured in the car accident, but I hurt my arm and…” Seokjin flexes his fingers, looking down at his elbow as it bends easily. “I’m completely fine now. I’m not hurt at all anymore.”
“I don’t think any of us are injured. Or even hurt in any way anymore.” Namjoon says thoughtfully, and Jimin and Hoseok glance at each other.
“Or sick.” Jimin adds, subdued, and Hoseok nods. Namjoon looks chastised, and bows his head.
“Or sick.” He corrects respectfully.
“My scars are all gone.” Taehyung whispers.
“So.” Yoongi scuffs his pale foot against the pristine carpet. “We died. Now what?”
“We could try to go back to sleep.” Taehyung suggests, thinking of waking in the enormous, soft bed, the way it had felt off, right from the start. “Maybe that’s how we… move on?”
“Aren’t we way too young to be handling this so well, all of us being dead?” Hoseok mutters miserably.
Taehyung runs a hand down his arm before pinching the side of his wrist. “I mean, it still hurts. So this can’t be a dream.”
“I’m only 20.” Jimin whispers sadly, and Taehyung feels his heart sink, tightening his grip on the small hand within his.
“I’m 20 too.”
Jin looks heartbroken, and Hoseok’s face falls even as he quietly offers, “I’m 21.”
“I’m 21 too.” Namjoon supplies, not looking up from the plush carpet, brows furrowed.
“22.” Yoongi murmurs, and Jin sighs.
“23. We’re all too young to be dead, we…”
Hoseok leans back against his door behind him, then straightens, alarmed. He spins to face his door, yanking at the doorknob, and Taehyung watches in surprise.
“My door won’t open anymore.” Hoseok says, shocked, and Yoongi spins to his own door, right across.
“Mine either.” Yoongi looks concerned, but Namjoon just looks interested as he steps over and tries his own door, to no avail. Taehyung’s doorknob won’t shift at all as he tugs at it, disconcerted. They drift back towards each other, confused, and Namjoon is just voicing another question when Jimin’s hand latches onto Taehyung’s sleeve, and when Taehyung follows his wide eyes, he freezes.
There’s a door at the end of the hall where a moment ago there wasn’t. It’s identical to their doors, a brass number 7 hanging above the peephole, and when Hoseok inhales sharply and steps towards it, Taehyung feels a pulse of trepidation. There wasn't a door there, there definitely wasn't a seventh door and suddenly there is, and this can't be a real hotel but it looks like one, and there's absolutely nothing but empty space beyond the windows, and he doesn't understand anything anymore. They exchange anxious looks, but they’re silent as they creep down the hallway, Taehyung’s hand tracing the intricate molding and wondering again if they could really possibly be dead, if this is really what happens after death, if this is really what his mother-
The door opens easily when Seokjin hesitantly tries the doorknob, and Jimin’s hand latches back onto Taehyung's and squeezes, his eyes looking frightened when he glances at him. The hotel room clearly looks like theirs even from the narrow sliver they can see so far, identical cream-coloured paint and polished furniture and spotless carpeting. Yoongi is shrinking back beside him when Hoseok takes a deep breath beside Seokjin and carefully pushes the door all the way open, and Jimin lets out a strangled cry, Taehyung gasping and Namjoon covering his mouth.
The first thing they see is the blood. There’s a boy on the bed lying on the covers, identical white clothing just like theirs but viciously stained in red, his torso dark with blood. His face is starkly pale but unharmed beneath dark hair, laying still as death. Through the scarlet blood he’s covered in, the bold lettering across his chest on the shirt is still clear, even across the room.
Jeon Jungkook
7/7