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He could lie and say it started as morbid curiosity, but Jimin isn’t a liar. He knows why he attempts the unattainable, and that the knowledge shreds away at him bit by bit with each failed endeavour to tempt his fate.
“Jimin-ssi?”
He can hear his name if only indistinctly, registers the rise and fall of syllables, the stresses, the voiceless velar stop of the k. But he’s drowning, drowning in his thoughts because he can’t drown in bathtub water anymore. Because Taehyung –
killed himself, no wait –
died, yeah, okay –
drowned, that’s better –
and it’s all he can think about.
Again.
“Jimin-ssi?” asks the doctor. She’s a petite, middle-aged woman with shocks of gray running through her otherwise black hair. Very much unlike women of her age group who run to the hair dye aisles to cover up their ageing imperfections. She waits patiently until Jimin resurfaces from his thoughts, the ones that pull him under, pull him to Taehyung at the very bottom of the endless depths.
“What was the question again?” he asks.
“I asked if you know why you’re here.”
--
It starts to fall apart before any of them can even grab a hold of anything to ground them.
It starts when Seokjin disappears. They wake up one day and as if he were spirited away, all traces of Seokjin vanish, but nobody notices right away. Nobody notices until Namjoon doesn’t answer Taehyung’s one phone call, until Hoseok has to go and bail out Taehyung with whatever he can scrape together, after Yoongi sells his keyboard to make up the bail money difference.
Taehyung falls into Jimin’s arms as soon as he gets home, silent and pliable, like a cheap plastic doll that has melted after being left in the summer sun. Quickly, quietly, Jimin whisks him off to the bathroom to get cleaned up. He seats Taehyung at the end of the tub, cleans the broken skin at his knuckles, strips him bare before methodically showering off every last speck of blood until Taehyung breaks, sobbing into Jimin’s ear amidst the steady flow from the showerhead.
They don’t talk about it afterwards.
Taehyung throws himself into odd jobs and adds, bill-by-bill, to their collective jar. He’d depleted it and then some, and he still can’t look Yoongi in the eyes. Half of the time, though, it’s because Yoongi isn’t even home, and when he is, they pass by one another, Taehyung reeking of regret and Yoongi thick with the smell of burning.
--
Jungkook is the first to notice, however.
“Seokjin-hyung is gone.” It comes out as a mere comment, but his eyes well up with tears and overflow before he even has a chance to take a breath. Yoongi grabs his hand and tugs him into their room without so much as a word.
Namjoon, ever idly occupied with a lollipop, crunches hard on the candy, thereby disturbing the silence. “He said ‘goodbye’ to me last week,” he supplies.
“And you didn’t notice until now?” Hoseok asks beside him, sleepy-eyed.
Namjoon turns and fixes the other male with a stare, takes in the dark smudges staining the thin skin of Hoseok’s undereye. “Did you?”
--
Seokjin had cautioned him the first time when his talk of free-falling and jumping started to consume him.
“What’s this fascination with wanting to fall?” he’d asked.
Taehyung had shrugged, then, just spellbound with the idea of gravity leading the way until he could collide with something else, consumed with curiosity to find out of anything in this world could ever be bottomless and if he could just fall forever.
“This isn’t healthy, Taehyung,” Seokjin had said quietly, hand reaching out to clasp the younger male’s tightly.
He’d smiled then. “You’re right – it isn’t,” he’d replied, although it wasn’t how he’d felt.
But when they’d all gone to the beach to greet the sunset at Seollal, Taehyung had jumped from the skeleton of an abandoned lighthouse just to see what it was like.
“Hyung, that was awesome!” Jungkook had exclaimed, giddy with wanting to try. Yoongi’s tight grip had held him back, however.
Dripping with water and shivering, Taehyung had sidled up to Jimin, his human heater, and pressed cold lips to the dancer’s temple before whispering, “Happy New Year, babe. I love you.”
--
Jimin’s lying prone and drugged up in a hospital bed, but he’s lucid enough to catch snippets of the doctor’s hushed tones with the shift nurse – several attempts to drown himself, no clear reason as to why, no family contact available, admitted by an acquaintance, refuses to talk about it.
It’s not that he refuses to talk about it. It’s that Jimin doesn’t think there’s anything wrong with what he’s doing. Taehyung wanted to fall and Jimin wants to chase that feeling to see what it’s all about. The only way he knows how to do it is with a bathtub.
--
It takes months for Taehyung to bring it up.
“He was beating her.”
They’d been sitting together watching a movie that had been popular five years ago when Taehyung finally speaks.
Jimin turns to face the other male. “In the movie?” He’d seen this one at least three times before and there’s no part that he can recall a man beating a woman.
“No, my dad. He beat her, so I killed him.”
The truth is, they all knew. They’d known when the police had shown up to question them individually about Taehyung, his whereabouts, whether the attack was premeditated or not.
Namjoon had asked the officer, “Define premeditation for me and then I’ll tell you if you think a boy abused by his father, witness to his mother being abused by the very same person, could have planned this all. And then tell me if you can blame him for what happened.”
The thing is, they all knew about the abuse, too, but Taehyung had kept smiling through it all and had only ever talked about how relieved he was to have a place to escape from it. He’d said then that it was because his dad was upset over getting laid off from a company he’d worked at for over fifteen years, so it was understandable that his father raged every now and then. He’d said it was okay because his dad didn’t mean it. And because they were all preoccupied with their own issues, they’d believed him.
“I know,” Jimin replies quietly. “We all know.”
“I’m a monster, right?”
Jimin threads his fingers with Taehyung’s and squeezes, warm and assuring.
“No. And even if you were, you’re my monster.”
--
“Why does nobody talk about things?” Seokjin had asked Namjoon once, a long time ago.
The younger male doesn’t look up from his phone. “What’s there to talk about?”
“Aren’t we all hurting in some way? Shouldn’t we trust one another to open up and talk about it?”
Namjoon shrugs. “Isn’t it enough that we trust each other with the knowledge that we’re all hurting? Isn’t it enough that we respect each other not to ask?”
Seokjin had walked away from that conversation, but not without adding, “Aren’t we just confusing respect with cowardice?”
--
The next time Taehyung jumps is his last time, although he himself doesn’t know it.
Predictably, or at least according to Namjoon, the trial ends in Taehyung’s favour. It’s a son protecting his mother from an abusive father. Take the abuser out of the equation and it’s solved. But nothing is ever that clean-cut in real life. Taehyung has a criminal record now, even if it’s in self-defense and in reaction to saving another person from potential harm.
Taehyung walks away with a criminal record and the judge’s words ringing like tinnitus in his ears.
That night, instead of celebrating, Taehyung kisses Jimin just once and tells him that he’s going to the convenience store. He doesn’t go, of course. Instead, he takes the train from Nonhyeon to Ttueksom and walks the few hundred metres to the Han.
Shivering in just a thin, long-sleeved tee and ripped jeans, he pulls his phone out and types a quick, “Love you” to Jimin before he sets the device aside, rids himself of his shoes, and plunges into the freezing water. He doesn’t get to jump like he’d wanted.
“Kim Taehyung, you are found innocent of manslaughter due to years of sustained and systemic abuse. You may be free, but you will have to live with the fact that you took a life to save a life. My only hope is that you seek help before taking dire measures into your own hands.”
Taehyung’s last thoughts before he loses consciousness, before his lungs burst from the pressure, is that it’s only logical to remove himself from the equation, too.
--
“He drowned.”
Dr. Lee scoots forward in her seat. “Who?” she asks.
“Taehyungie. My Taehyungie,” Jimin replies, eyes glassy and unfocused.
“Who is ‘Taehyungie’, Jimin-ssi?”
Jimin smiles weakly at the linoleum. The printed wavy lines on the tiles seem to re-form themselves and Jimin sees Taehyung smiling back at him on the floor of a room that reeks of antiseptic cleaning agents.
“Mine.”
--
It may have all started to fall apart after Seokjin leaves, but it really shatters after Taehyung dies.
“Where are you going?” Jungkook asks Yoongi. There’s an edge of hysteria to his voice even though he’s trying to keep it together, even though none of them really can at this point.
The older male says nothing, just quickly shrugs himself into a jacket before walking out the door.
Wordlessly, Hoseok pulls their youngest into a tight hug and lets Jungkook cry out his frustrations about how Yoongi comes back smelling of burned wood and how he won’t talk, can’t talk.
Jimin thinks he hears Hoseok say something about how Yoongi must feel partly at blame, something about the loss of the blonde’s first love, and how he’ll never play the piano again now that Taehyung is gone.
And what about Jimin?
Yoongi refuses to play the piano because of Taehyung, but Jimin has nothing to give up after having long foregone dance for his mountain of imperfections.
You’ve got such squishable cheeks.
If you lost a bit more weight, you’d look great.
At your height, it’d be ideal for you to stop trying to bulk up because it’ll just make you look wide.
Look at those cute, chubby fingers! You’ve got adorable baby hands.
It occurs to him, then: in water, he’s weightless.
Sure, he’s lost Taehyung, is perhaps only marginally less broken than the rest of them yet still in pain, but water will solve his problems like it solved Taehyung’s. And maybe if he can’t diet away the fat that he sees everywhere, that plagues him until he wants to tear down all of their mirrors, maybe he can float and be weightless in water. Maybe he can understand why Taehyung was so drawn to water.
Jimin tries it that very night - fills the bathtub to halfway and submerges himself fully dressed because he’s too excited to see himself suspended in water.
It’s fascinating, really, to watch oneself submerged in a tub of water, to look at the tiny bubbles that cling to the skin, that erupt from even the smallest movement beneath the surface. The fluorescent bathroom light gives the water a strange lime tint, counteracts the pink in his skin and turns him nearly colourless, just some shade of light gray.
And then there’s the sound, or lack thereof. Things get muffled and all he can hear are the sounds in his head.
I love you.
Jimin lets his eyes slide shut, hears his heartbeat slow in his eardrums, feels his lungs hammer at the rungs of his ribs. Behind his eyelids, he sees Taehyung submerged in water, his head turning back to lock eyes with Jimin who’s somewhere there in the water with him, like they’re searching for each other in a metaphysical ocean that separates them by both life, time, and space. It’s enough for Jimin that they’re there.
But before he can say those words back to Taehyung to affirm, “I love you, too,” he’s being wrenched out of the water by Yoongi, being stricken with words like slaps about what it is that he’s doing.
--
“I just wanted to be with him.”
It’s been an hour and Dr. Lee shows signs of fatigue at having to wait for an answer. Still, she doesn’t give up. It’s been this way every day for the past two months.
“You wanted to be with Taehyung,” she says by way of confirmation.
Jimin’s eyes are still trained to the floor where the lines form themselves yet again into that image he’d first seen of Taehyung turning to look at him beneath the dark water.
“I can only see him underwater.”
--
Again, they don’t talk about it, but it’s more like they have no time to talk about it.
Yoongi has been missing for three days.
“Jiminie, come here and help me with him for a sec,” comes Hoseok’s voice from across the living room. In his arms is Jungkook who is inconsolable, crying his eyes out after having driven Yoongi away as a result of their latest fight.
Silently, hollowly, Jimin nods and crosses the short distance, brings Jungkook into the circle of his weak and tired arms and just holds the younger male.
“Thanks, I’ll be right back,” Hoseok says quickly before darting into the kitchen, presumably to cook up something for them to force-feed Jungkook. They’d given him enough leeway with acting out after the fight, but Namjoon had yelled, “Enough is enough,” when Jungkook had collapsed weak and dehydrated earlier that morning.
“I don’t want us to end up like you,” Jungkook mumbles, eyes closed, pasty-skinned.
Jimin nods. “I don’t want that either, Kookie.”
They receive a call the next night from detectives looking into a series of arsons, but it’s not a call about suspicions so much as it is to inform them of a death. They’d found a partially melted driver’s license belonging to one Min Yoongi.
“Everyone leaves,” Hoseok says teary-eyed as he slips a sleeping pill into Jungkook’s drink.
Jimin watches soullessly, devoid of everything, as Hoseok presses a dry kiss to Jungkook’s temple and tells the younger male to get some rest, that he’ll be there anytime Jungkook feels the need to talk.
Hoarsely and between sobs, Jungkook manages to rasp out, “I want Yoongi-hyung. You’re not him.”
Hoseok nods gravely. “I know. I’m not trying to be.”
Jimin finds his head turning automatically to the bathroom, his ears attuned to the siren song of the bathtub, his heart longing to see Taehyung once more.
“I’m gonna take a shower.”
--
“I’m getting the sense that you kept returning to the bathtub after traumatic events,” says Dr. Lee.
Jimin cocks his head at the observation. “I never really thought about it. Just, sometimes it felt like the water was calling me, you know?”
Dr. Lee jots the information down. “I don’t know. If you’re up for it, why don’t you tell me more?”
--
This time, Taehyung smiles at him. Jimin grins back and tries to move forward, to broach the space that separates them, but he can’t. He watches as Taehyung tries to do the same, watches as his best friend struggles in the invisible confines of the water to get closer.
Jimin doesn’t have another second to spare a last glance before it’s Namjoon who yanks him out this time.
“What is wrong with you?” the older male growls, shaking Jimin roughly in his hold.
“Joon, I think you’re hurting him,” says Hoseok. He has two big towels in his hands, one spread open to receive Jimin like he’s an adult-sized baby being delivered from the amniotic womb of the bathtub.
Red-eyed, Jungkook stands in the doorway, helpless but still present.
"We need to take turns watching him whenever he disappears into the bathroom. We’re not losing anyone else,” Namjoon says resolutely. He shoves his way out, cursing up a storm and tracking water everywhere.
Gently, gingerly, Hoseok cradles Jimin’s sunken cheeks in his hands. “Please, please talk to us, Jiminie. We’ll share the burden with you.”
It’s just that they can’t shoulder the burden when some of them refuse to talk.
When they get the call that Jungkook’s been hit by a car, nobody notices that Jimin has disappeared into the bathroom.
--
“What was it like this time?”
There’s a lot that Jimin has forgotten in his underwater explorations, but what he loses are memories that have happened on land. He remembers all the times he’d submerged himself, down to the smallest details, the stark contrast of his clear water with Taehyung’s deep-sea darkness.
“One of the best times,” Jimin replies softly. His eyes search the linoleum for Taehyung’s smile.
--
There’s a tiny part of him that prides itself on how well he can hold his breath underwater. He’d had dancer’s lungs to begin with, so surpassing one minute felt more like a handful of seconds. It’s when he pushes himself into two minutes that the borders around what he sees get fuzzy, when his focus on Taehyung suspended in dark liquid starts to waver.
This time, he seeks solace immediately, as soon as Hoseok and Namjoon run out the door, Hoseok at the wheel of Seokjin’s truck on their way to the hospital. Jimin isn’t even the least bit offended that they’ve forgotten him. In fact, he takes it as a sign that after months of being watched and reminded that it’s his chance to see Taehyung again.
Hoseok had once told him of an old wives tale about how dreaming of the deceased meant that he or she loved the dreamer, but Jimin hasn’t seen Taehyung once in his dreams and he’s certain that they loved one another.
Jimin shakes his foot rapidly while waiting for the tub to fill, not even caring to check the temperature. For all he knows, he could be stepping into scalding hot water and in all honesty, he doesn’t even think he’d really mind if it brings him to Taehyung faster.
He swats at the knobs as soon as the waterline reaches the halfway mark; Jimin doesn’t need more than that, anyway.
This time, it starts the same: he sinks until he sees himself eye-level with Taehyung, they exchange smiles, and both of them fight their invisible underwater prisons in futile attempts to reach one another.
This time, however, it’s different.
You need to go. I love you, but you need to go.
Jimin is good at reading lips, watches the shape of Taehyung’s mouth move into each individual word without the aid of proper enunciation. The message comes out in satoori and he understands it clearly as if it were actual sounds and not just the shape of the words.
But this is the only way I can see you. It’s been months, Taetae, he mouths back, desperate.
Again.
You need to go. I love you, but you need to go.
Jimin surfaces on his own, to an empty apartment and water all over the bathroom floor.
--
Dr. Lee nods emphatically as she writes down more notes in Jimin’s file.
“Okay, so you rescued yourself this time.”
Jimin shakes his head. “Taetae saved me.”
“Right. Taehyung saved you this time,” she corrects herself.
Finally, Jimin breaks his gaze with the floor. “Can I see him again?”
Dr. Lee blinks for a moment, silent. “How do you propose we do that?”
--
Jimin doesn’t know it, but the next time he sees Taehyung is also his last for an indeterminate length of time.
“Jimin!” Namjoon shouts from the living room.
Jimin sticks his head out of Jungkook’s room where he’d been spoonfeeding the younger male lunch. “What’s the matter?”
“I’m not imagining it, right? He’s still breathing, right?” asks Namjoon frantically as he cradles an unresponsive Hoseok in his arms.
Jimin rushes out to the sounds of Namjoon breathing heavily, muttering, “Hey, come on, wake up,” while he leaves behind Jungkook who’s yelling, “Hey, tell me what’s going on!”
Hoseok is clammy but breathing shallowly. Jimin’s fingers on the other male’s pulse tell him that Hoseok’s heartbeat is irregular – it’s too slow, too weak.
“I’m calling 119. Hyung, can you talk to the operator or should I?”
Namjoon shoves his phone into Jimin’s hands. There’s no way he has his wits about him to talk calmly into the receiver, not when Hoseok is suffering in his arms. And it’s not like Jimin doesn’t know what transpired. Like with everything that’s happened before: they all know but haven’t done much about resolving problems.
“This is 119. How can I help you?” comes the tinny voice through the earpiece.
“I’m calling to report an emergency. My friend is unconscious. He’s an insomniac and he overdosed on sleeping pills. Please, please send an ambulance right away.”
The operator sets them both to different tasks to check on Hoseok and report their findings before she then asks for their address and for them to remain as calm as possible.
“It’ll be okay, hyung,” Jimin offers, smoothing his hand over Namjoon’s hunched shoulders.
Out of all of them, Hoseok is probably the least drawn to flirting with death. It’s just that he had such terrible trouble with insomnia and having been thrown into a vicious cycle of sleeplessness and poor judgment, Hoseok had made the wrong choice this time.
“Hyung!” Jungkook shouts from where he’s bedridden. “What’s going on?”
Jimin makes the executive decision to stay at home with Jungkook while the ambulance whisks Hoseok off, Namjoon in tow to provide any necessary details. He knows that right now, Namjoon might be letting emotions rule any decision-making skills, but that he’ll be fine again with time and solid proof that medical professionals can and will help Hoseok.
After twenty minutes, Jimin returns to Jungkook’s room.
“Sorry.”
Jungkook glares at him, completely unable to do anything about his frustration except fling whatever he can reach at Jimin. After all, his legs are rather useless after having been hit by a car.
“You can’t leave me alone like that.”
Jimin seats himself beside the younger male and grasps Jungkook’s hand in his. “I know. I’m sorry. Hobi-hyung won’t wake up so they took him to find out.” He says this knowing full well that Jungkook could probably hear his conversation with the 119 operator.
“What’s wrong with us?” Jungkook asks forlornly.
Jimin is silent for a long moment before he answers, “Nothing. Everything. Who knows?”
That night, without even thinking, Jimin draws a bath long after Jungkook’s fallen asleep. There is no Namjoon or Hoseok to keep time.
This time, it’s still the same three scenes: meet Taehyung, exchange smiles, struggle to cross the invisible divide between their watery prisons.
This time, however, Taehyung makes it across.
You’re here. How are you here? Jimin mouths, hands grasping for the thin, soaked cotton of Taehyung’s long-sleeved tee.
We don’t have a lot of time. You need to listen to me, Jiminie.
Jimin nods profusely, would rather stay silent for the rest of his days as long as he can continue to feel Taehyung in his arms.
You can’t keep doing this.
He’s about to open his mouth to ask why not, but Taehyung’s already slipping from his embrace.
I love you.
I know, Jimin mouths back. If there are tears, they’ve already mixed in with the water surrounding him. I love you, too.
I know. Goodbye, Jiminie.
--
“And this was the last time, correct?” asks Dr. Lee. “Before Kim Namjoon had you admitted here.”
Jimin nods slowly.
“I’m going to ask again: Do you know why you’re here?”
Jimin chuckles softly, stretches his muscles after having been in the same seated position for what his body feels like is too long.
“Because Namjoon-hyung put me here.”
Dr. Lee bends forward and tries to catch Jimin’s eyes. “Yes, that is one way of putting it. How does that make you feel?”
The lines in the floor tiles no longer move and Jimin frowns at that. How is he supposed to find Taehyung now?
“Jimin-ssi?”
This can’t be reality, Jimin thinks. His reality is one in which Taehyung loves him. This is all just a huge, cosmic lie. Yes, okay, this makes more sense to him.
“Like I’m caught in a lie.”