Chapter Text
With a lazy slap, Jungkook silenced the knife-like shrillness of his morning alarm. A stretch, a groan, a glance at the calendar that Hoseok got him every year for his birthday, another groan. Then, finally, feet on the floor.
Same routine. Same apartment. Same sunrise. Same feeling in the pit of his stomach that the world still wasn't turning correctly.
He checked the calendar like normal, and his stomach sank before the date even registered in his mind, as if he already knew the number that would be staring back at him.
12th of September.
“Fuck.”
His head dropped into his hands. A slow breath. Then another. His fingers raked through his hair for a minutes, before dropping to find his phone.
Did you know what today was when you said goodbye yesterday?
Hoseok replied instantly.
Oh boy. No, I didn’t even think. Are we going? I’ll have to ditch the clinic.
Jungkook swung himself the full length out of bed, moving at half-speed toward the bathroom.
I'm going. Will the others?
By the time he spat out toothpaste, another message blinked on-screen.
Yoongi’s off in the mountains with his students. Nobody’s heard from Jimin in weeks. Probs locked in a studio somewhere in LA. Might just be us, Seokjin, and Tae.
Jungkook wiped his mouth on his sleeve.
Suppose it doesn’t matter who’s there. We’re not going for each other.
The rest of his morning played out like muscle memory. Black t-shirt. Jeans so baggy they swallowed his legs whole. Cologne from an almost empty bottle. Beanie over hair that needed a cut six months ago. Toast from a loaf, one clock tick away from going mouldy.
Hoseok was already waiting outside, leaning against his beat-up yellow sedan, flicking sparks between his fingers to entertain himself.
“So, I take it that’s a yes?” he asked when Jungkook opened the apartment door to the street, not looking up.
Jungkook nodded, walking around and tugging the car door open. Hoseok snorted.
“You get no easier to deal with.”
Jungkook rolled his eyes as he settled into the car seat, the smell of the vanilla air freshener making his nose twitch as Hoseok’s shutting door wafted it his way. “It’s the twelfth.”
Hoseok laughed, a little bitterly as he started the car, “I know.”
Silence settled between them as Hoseok pulled away from the curb, rolling toward the flower stand they stopped at every year. Jungkook spotted a baby clematis plant and was halfway out the window to grab it before the car had even stopped. Hoseok helped him secure it in the backseat, clipping it in next to a cake box.
“You got one last year."
“I will again next year too.”
The rest of the drive was quiet. They pulled into the small plot, parking next to the only other car in the lot. Three figures climbed out, a pleasant surprise in the form of the third.
“Ah, you’re back from… wherever you were?” Hoseok asked, his smile not quite matching the brightness of Jimin’s silver-blonde hair.
“Just for today,” Jimin murmured. “Fly back to LA tonight. The tour starts next week.”
Jungkook hummed, glancing at his phone as it vibrated in his hand, a face full of crinkled eyes and gummy teeth under the text Yoongeh. He answered, holding it out so the others could say hello.
“You came?”
“You know I wouldn’t miss today for the world.” Yoongi’s voice was steady, but something in it had softened, his usual blunt delivery marred by old, bone set grief.
They walked the familiar path, stepping into the clearing where a modest rock formation stood. Seokjin knelt first, digging a hole next to last year’s clematis. Taehyung plucked the phone from Jungkook’s grip, sighing as Yoongi made his usual noise of discontent.
Jungkook settled cross-legged in front of the stones, brushing leaves aside with careful fingers. From his pocket, he pulled out a few candles, gesturing for the cake box.
Jimin handed over a lighter. Flames flickered.
They sang, voices cracking halfway through. By the time the world’s most sombre rendition of Happy Birthday had finished, Yoongi’s call had disconnected, and someone, probably Jimin, let out a quiet sob.
Jungkook leaned forward, resting his forehead against the largest rock, tears slipping onto the carvings they’d made two years ago.
“Happy birthday, Namjoon-Hyung.”
He exhaled and blew out the candles.
The rest of the day went the way it always did. Seokjin pulled out a picnic lunch. An extra plate sat untouched beside the cake. Jimin plucked lazy melodies on his ukulele. Hoseok and Taehyung wandered off, returning with arms full of wildflowers to tuck between the rocks. Yoongi called back, the camera still on despite the redness in his eyes and cheeks.
Jungkook sat against the rocks, back to them like he would have been sitting in Namjoon’s lap, absently spinning a stone between his fingers as the boys chatter became its usual white noise.
“What have you been up to, Kookie? I feel like I haven’t seen your face in months.”
Yoongi’s voice on the phone made him glance up with a dumfounded hum. Seokjin held the device at an angle that cut off half of Yoongi’s face.
“Same old. Working at the Lavender Lantern. Making coffee. Sandwiches. Mrs Hwang has us working on pastries.”
“Still don’t know why you haven’t gone into a melee school,” Jimin scoffed, swiping at a strawberry on Namjoon's slice of cake only to have Hoseok swat his hand away. “All those muscles and nowhere to use them.”
“Yeah, and you love science,” Taehyung added, balancing a clematis flower on his nose as he lay back in the grass. “You could’ve gone into artificing or wizardry by now.”
Jungkook just shrugged. They had this conversation every year.
Hoseok snapped his fingers in his face. “Kid. It’s been two years. You know he’d hate that you’re still stuck like this.”
Jungkook’s grip tightened around the stone before he pulled his arm back and let it fly, barely missing Hoseok's head. “Yeah, well, maybe we shouldn’t have let him fucking die then, and he could tell me how disappointed he is directly to my fucking face.”
Silence crashed over them with one last string pluck from Jimin's ukulele. Hoseok dropped his gaze and sat back down, looking at his lap. Jungkook sat there, fists clenched in the grass until his breathing evened out.
“We know you miss him,” Yoongi finally said from the phone, quieter than usual. “We all do. But you can’t do this forever, Kookie. Just… floating. Making minimum wage. Letting every skill you have go to waste. Mourning who you’d be if he were still alive.”
Jungkook’s head snapped up. Anger burned hotter than the grief had all day as he snatched the phone from Seokjin, staring directly down the camera.
“I don’t mourn what I could have been.” His voice cracked. “I mourn what he should have been. He was the best of us.”
Yoongi sighed. “Yeah. We know.” Silence stretched again, until Yoongi coughed, “I gotta go. Another hike. More inner balance. You all get home safe, okay?”
With muttered goodbyes, the call disconnected. Jungkook stood, slipping another stone into his pocket.
“I’m gonna walk back to town.”
Hoseok nodded, packing up a slice of cake for him to take. Jungkook held it up in wordless thanks and turned, leaving the rest of them behind.
________
Jungkook didn’t bother turning on the lights when he stepped inside, the door shutting behind him with a dull, hollow click. The bag with the cake landed on the kitchen counter without ceremony, his phone following right after as he sent a half-hearted text to Hoseok: Home.
Everything after that was mechanical. Clothes off. Beanie tossed somewhere he wouldn’t remember. Shower too cold because warmth felt like something that had to be earned, and today, he didn’t deserve it. The scent of cologne swirled down the drain, but the memory of it clung to him anyway, filling his head like a vapour. He could almost hear Namjoon’s voice scolding him for wearing too much, imagining what those words would sound like if he’d ever been able to hear them.
You know, that bottle’s one of a kind, right? Don’t waste it.
Jungkook let his head rest against the tiles with a heavy sigh. Where the fuck would he even find another bottle when it was gone? The only person with the answer was six feet under, on the edge of town, where the grass grew so much better thanks to his body.
By the time he finally made it to bed, towel-dried hair a wreck and skin too cold to be comfortable even under a set of trackpants, the silence had settled thick, oppressive. His fingers pulled the rock from his jeans pocket again, rolling it between his knuckles, over and over, until his palm ached from clenching. He barely registered the sting in his throat before the words slipped out, raw and shaking.
“I told you to dodge.” A breath, then a quieter, “I said to fucking dodge. And now all I have is this stupid rock and a bunch of people telling me to move on like I didn’t get you killed.”
He should’ve thrown this one, too. He wanted to throw it. But everything in here could break, and he’d already broken enough with his hands. So he just kept spinning it, staring at the ceiling, listening to the way his breath stuttered through the room.
Until a voice cut through the quiet.
“You’re gonna give that thing a head spin.”
Jungkook shot upright so fast he nearly choked on a hiccup, the rock slipping from his fingers as his spine hit the bed head. His lungs were ice, nails digging into his palms as he squeezed his eyes shut, then open, then shut again. “Oh, I’m losing my-hic-fucking mind.”
The voice laughed, smooth as ever. “You never had one to begin with, kid.”
Something shifted. A low hum, thick with static, and then suddenly, flowers. A flurry of purple, spectral Clematis, drifting weightlessly through the room, swirling on a wind he couldn’t feel. The air was still, hot, stifling. Standing in the corner, just as solid as the bed Jungkook was gripping onto for dear life, was Kim Namjoon.
Jungkook stopped breathing. His mouth worked soundlessly for a moment before he managed, weakly, “H-hic-how?”
Namjoon tilted his head and smiled, the kind that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “No one ever really dies.”
Said exactly how he used to explain everything. Like it was simple.
Jungkook felt his lip curl, but his hands were already itching to reach out, to touch, to prove this wasn’t some fever dream or grief-induced hallucination. “That’s just not true.”
Namjoon shrugged, stepping forward and sitting down on the bed like it was any other night, like he wasn’t dead and Jungkook hadn’t spent the last two years trying to fill the space he left behind. Feeling the mattress dip sent another wave of hopeful panic though his chest.
“I’m in the ground. Feeding the worms. Worms turn the dirt, dirt grows the plants, and plants feed people. It’s all connected.” His gaze flickered with something soft, knowing. “Ergo, no one ever really dies.”
Jungkook scoffed. “Jesus. Even as a ghost, you’re a fucking poet.”
Namjoon grinned. “Not a ghost.”
The breath that left Jungkook was shaky, but he still reached out, hesitant, fingers brushing over the back of Namjoon’s hand. Cold. So, so cold, like touching marble left out in the winter rain. His stomach twisted, throat burned, but he didn’t stop himself when he collapsed into him, face buried in his shoulder, sobs clawing their way out of his chest. Namjoon didn’t flinch. His arms wrapped around Jungkook’s back, grounding, steady, even as his touch seeped ice into Jungkook’s skin. He let him cry, let him cling, let him believe.
“I don’t have long,” Namjoon murmured, after what could’ve been minutes or hours. He pulled back, hands settling firm on Jungkook’s shoulders. “I need you to listen to me.”
Jungkook nodded, voice wrecked. “Anything for any of you. You know that.”
A slip of paper appeared between Namjoon’s fingers, neat but rushed handwriting scrawled across the surface.
Professor Park Jin-Young, Eldritch Academy.
“Find him,” Namjoon said, pressing the note into Jungkook’s palm. “Sign up for school.”
Jungkook blinked, shock overtaking any remaining grief. “...Are you fucking serious?” Namjoon’s brows lifted as Jungkook threw his hands up, exasperated. “You died, and now you’re nagging me to go to university? Did you hear the others earlier?”
“I did, actually,” Namjoon said, grinning. “You were sitting on my chest. Well, six feet above it.”
Jungkook groaned, tipping his head back. “You’re so fucking annoying. Real funny joke.”
“Not a joke, kid. Look, if you do this, if you listen to me and do everything I say, you can bring me back.”
The world fell silent. Jungkook stared. The paper trembled in his grip. “...What?”
Namjoon’s expression didn’t waver. “You heard me.”
Jungkook swallowed hard, brain racing too fast to make sense of anything. “I-I don’t have magic.” His voice was small. “I stopped looking after-”
“I know,” Namjoon cut in, gently. “That’s why you need to find Professor Park.”
Jungkook clenched his jaw. “I got you hit, Hyung.” His chest felt tight. “Hoseok could-”
“Stop.” Namjoon’s voice turned sharp, the weight of it final. “You both need to stop blaming yourselves. Nobody expected six teenagers to fix what happened to me."
Jungkook bit down hard on the inside of his cheek as Namjoon sighed, voice softer. “Just trust me, alright? Go talk to Professor Park. Ask him about Warlocks.”
Jungkook frowned. “I…Warlocks? But I…”
Namjoon’s glare was instant, the kind that used to shut Jungkook up in one second flat. Instinct kicked in, and he clamped his mouth shut, eyes wide. Namjoon huffed at that, shaking his head. “I want to give you my magic, dumbass. It’s useless to me down here.”
Jungkook blinked. “Did you go to the Hells?!”
“The dirt, Jungkook.” Namjoon dragged a hand down his face, only for his fingers to slip right through. His breath hitched. “Shit. I’m out of time.”
Jungkook grabbed at his wrist, panic setting in. “Wait, wait, please.”
Namjoon’s grip was weaker now, his fingers barely curling around Jungkook’s own. “Sign up when the school year starts. Learn. When you’re ready, spin the rock. Call me back. We’ll talk.” His voice was already fading, something pulling him away. “Got it?”
Jungkook’s head rocked. “No, no, please don’t go.”
“No choice, kid.” Namjoon’s grip slipped. “I’ll see you soon.”
And then, nothing.
The Clematis stopped their flurry, settling before vanishing from around him. The presence, the weight of Namjoon’s gaze, gone.
Jungkook sat there in the empty quiet, staring down at the very real paper in his hands, the ink blurring at the edges.
“There’s no fucking way,” he muttered, tossing it onto the nightstand before crawling under the blankets. “I’m losing it.”
Still, he clenched the rock tight in his fist. And for the first time in two years, he swore he could still feel Namjoon’s hand in his.