บท 6: VI
Not even an hour later, Jimin slumped against the bookshelves, defeated. He glared up at the science books on the shelf, silently wishing they could catch fire from his hatred alone. He screamed internally and decided to give up for the day. He wasn't going to be able to concentrate on anything he read at this point anyway. He got up from the floor and made to leave the library alone. He didn't care that the librarian was glaring at him, probably for shouting earlier, but it wasn't like there was anyone else there to care about the noise.
He stepped out into the foggy streets with a sigh and then decided to stop by the coffee shop to get some lunch before trying to begin searching for Jiyong. The old woman was as welcoming as usual and was thrilled when he asked for the lunch menu.
She brought his food with a slight wink and sat across from him as had become their routine.
"You seem stressed, love."
"Believe me," he grumbled, "you have no idea."
She chuckled jovially. "Then tell me. This old lady might still have some good advice up under all the grey hair."
"You've probably already heard, but Jiyong went missing last night."
She nodded. "A problematic child, that one."
"I said I would help look for him, and now Yoongi is being an asshole and getting upset at me for it!" Jimin put his elbow on the table and rested his cheek on his palm. "I don't know what to do about him."
She leaned back in the chair. "Was he upset for a reason, love?"
"Not a good one."
"Ah, but love, that's where your opinions could be different." She smiled knowingly and set her hands in her lap.
"What do you mean?" He asked. Jimin didn't understand whatsoever. Why would Yoongi care what Jimin did with his own time?
"He simply made a different choice than you, you just need to find out why. Once you have, it might be easier to understand his perspective."
Jimin looked down at the table and fidgeted. "I know he doesn't like Jiyong much."
She hummed appreciatively. "That's a good start. Keep going."
"Um..." Jimin thought back to the last interaction the two had. "He got upset that Jiyong helped me, and told me to let him deal with things from now on."
"I see." She mused. "Is there anything else?"
"Well, he seemed really upset when he heard that I saw Jiyong last night. That's when he started being an ass."
She narrowed her eyes sternly. "Language, love. You need to think without anger."
"Right. Sorry." He inhaled deeply.
"I think," she began, "that he is worried about you."
Jimin frowned. "Why would he worry about me-" Oh. Right.
"You don't know this town well. Searching for someone if you yourself don't know where to go will only get you lost."
Jimin clasped his hands together in his lap and stared at them. She was right, but that most likely wasn't the whole reason.
Searching meant splitting up.
Splitting up meant being alone.
Being alone meant zero protection.
And for them, that could mean death.
"Don't think badly of the boy for it." She stood up slowly and walked back over towards the kitchen, bringing his empty plate with her. "He probably doesn't want to lose you."
He hesitated but eventually relented. "Maybe. I'll... I'll apologize to him the next time I see him."
"I'm proud of you, love." She seemed satisfied with his answer.
"Proud?" He was confused. All he had done was rant and confuse himself.
"Yes, proud. You reached that conclusion all on your own." She smiled at him. "You would not have liked it if I had told you to apologize, now would you?"
Fair point.
"I guess." He blushed and brushed his bangs out of his eyes, "I'm pretty stubborn."
She let out a boisterous laugh. "The best of us are, love. But you need to be stubborn at the right time or else it just gets in the way of what should be done."
"Thank you."
"For what, love?"
"For telling me what to do."
"I didn't tell you anything." She smiled as she washed the plate with warm water. "You did most of the work by yourself. I just gave you a nudge in the right direction."
"Still. Thank you."
"You're welcome, love."
Jimin left the coffee shop shortly after and he walked alone down the street, on edge as always and shivered slightly. The air outside was a bit colder than he thought it was. He probably should have worn a thicker sweater before leaving the house.
Jimin wasn't sure where Yoongi was, but he would try to find him and apologize. If Yoongi was truly just worried, he really didn't deserve being screamed at. He sighed and glanced into every shop he passed as well as asking other people if they'd seen him. Most of them had no idea where he could be and the others left as soon as hey heard who he was trying to find.
He had even checked Yoongi's house.
No luck.
Jimin sighed. It seemed that, just like Taehyung, Yoongi was the type that wouldn't be found unless he wanted to be. He gave up and slowly walked back home. If he couldn't find Yoongi, he could at least read some more of the book.
His parents seemed to be out so he locked the door behind him, vaguely wondering why they left it unlocked in the first place. They had always been huge on safety and remembering to lock up after they went out.
It was strange.
It was probably just because they knew he didn't have a key yet. Yeah, that's what it was.
He hurried upstairs and pulled out the book from inside the drawer he had hidden it in. Jimin opened it to the bookmarked page and kept reading.
There still wasn't much of interest.
Or so he thought.
After a hundred pages and several hours of reading, he paused. Didn't the book mention people going missing?
He flipped back and reread several pages before standing up and cheering.
"That's it! People disappeared before too! Maybe Jiyong vanishing has something to do with this."
His joy faltered when he read that it was only animal attacks since the village had no defense at the time.
"Never mind." He placed the book down before flopping onto his bed. "There's no way it would be that simple."
He hugged his pillow tightly and buried his face in it for a moment and sighed deeply. Why couldn't life just be easy?
Jimin pulled his phone out of his pocket and checked the battery percentage. Still above 50. It was past when he would usually eat dinner, but his parents hadn't returned yet so he decided to wait for them.
He was too lazy to hold up his phone to facetime so he just clicked call on the most recent contact and waited. It was picked up almost immediately.
"Jimin? What's up?" Someone who was definitely not Jin said.
"Kook? Why do you have Jin's phone?" He hoped Jungkook didn't take it for a dumb reason, like watching some kind of anime that he could have watched just as easily on his own phone.
"He's not feeling too well today," Jungkook answered.
"Oh. Um, can I talk to him?"
"He's sleeping right now." Jungkook was whispering, and now it made sense why. "He's had a fever since last night and I'm just happy that he's finally sleeping. He had too many nightmares before."
"I understand. I guess I'll just call Tae instead. Sorry for bothering."
"It's alright. I'll let him know you called when he wakes up, ok?" His voice was slightly muffled, but Jimin understood just fine.
"Thanks, Kook. I appreciate it. Talk to you later, ok?"
"Yeah. Come visit soon too. We all need to have a movie night like we used to."
"Will do."
Jimin paused.
"As long as it's not Iron Man."
"What!?" Jungkook seemed almost heartbroken and Jimin wanted to laugh. "Why not!?"
"Kook we've watched that so much we could all quote it word for word. Let's watch something different."
"Like what?"
"I don't know. Not Iron Man."
Jungkook grumbled but gave in. "Fine." He paused. "But Tae gets to choose the movie."
"Yeah, yeah. Whatever. See you later Kook. I hope Jin feels better soon." He heard Jungkook hang up after a quiet acknowledgment.
He hoped that he'd have more luck with Tae.
He clicked to call his best friend and waited. It rung over and over but it was never picked up.
"This is Tae's voicemail, obviously, so I'm not here right now. Leave me a message or call back later! Bye!"
In the background, Jimin could hear his own voice egging Tae on and his quiet laughter at his best friend.
Jimin frowned. He had never gone to voicemail when calling Tae before. The boy never went anywhere without his phone.
He tried again.
"This is Tae's voicemail, obviously, so I'm not here right now. Leave me a message-"
And again.
"This is Tae's voice-"
And again.
"This is-"
"Where the fuck are you Tae?" Jimin growled, hanging up after another missed call. "Pick up dammit!"
He stared at his phone and pressed call again. "If you don't pick up this time I'm giving up."
It rang. And rang. And rang.
Jimin held his breath and clenched his fists.
It rang again.
The sound was almost deafening in comparison to the silence of the house. He didn't want to breathe.
Pick up. Please. Jimin repeated these words over and over, his pleas getting feebler with every second.
"Please Tae..." Jimin whispered. His heart was pounding in his chest and the blood rushed in his ears. All he could hear was the ringing.
It rung again.
And again.
It seemed to echo over and over in his head until he wasn't sure which one was real and which was just imagination. Time seemed to slow between each ring.
A click.
Jimin gasped.
"Tae! Thank god you picked up-"
"Stop calling me."
"But Tae-"
There was a muffled voice that he couldn't place and he heard Taehyung's sharp intake of breath as the voice got louder.
"Jimin. I can't answer the phone right now. Stop. Calling. Me." Taehyung's voice was biting and was more like a whispered hiss than anything else Jimin had ever heard before.
All he heard was another click as Tae hung up the phone.
He stared at the phone in shock as it sat unmoving on the floor.
What was going on? Why was Tae acting like that?
Jimin felt tears slip down his cheeks and he wiped them away with his sleeve.
He had never heard Taehyung's voice be that... Terrifying. He vaguely heard the door close downstairs and his parent's voices but he didn't care.
"Damn it." He whispered, trembling. He reached up and hugged himself tightly.
"Damn it." He didn't even try to stop the tears this time and just let them fall. He wasn't sure what to do.
He picked up his phone and glared at it as if it was at fault for what happened. He stood up and gripped it tightly in his hand.
"GOD DAMN IT!" He screamed and flung it at the wall, not even flinching when it shattered the screen and crashed to the floor. He didn't care anymore. Why should he?
He turned and ran out into the hall, his socked feet sliding on the hardwood, and he hurried down the stairs. He stumbled a few times but didn't care.
His parents stood in the living room and stared at him with clearly worried expressions.
"Jimin? Are you alright?" His mother asked. He never answered. Instead, he turned down the hall, shoved his feet in his shoes and flung open the front door. His parents yelled at him to stop, to come back.
He didn't.
He ran out into the darkening streets, alone and without knowing where he would end up.
And the thing was?
He didn't care.
All the streets looked the same in the dark. Not that they looked much different in the light, but it was even harder than usual to tell them apart.
The only sounds he heard were the thuds of his running and the chirping of the crickets that broke the silence.
Jimin had no idea where he was running to or why. He didn't care at all.
He just had to leave.
He needed somewhere quiet to think. Somewhere where he could be alone.
Somewhere no one would find him.
He let his feet carry him down the streets and further into the darkness. Eventually, the cobblestone beneath his feet became grass and dirt, the path sloping up a hill. He slowed to a walk and cautiously made his way up to the top.
The hill wasn't too tall, but it was difficult to see with only the moonlight. He hadn't brought a flashlight with him.
He reached into his pocket to grab his phone and found nothing. He grimaced and let out a sigh.
It was still laying in a broken heap in his room.
The fog was as thick as it always was, but the feeble moonlight didn't do much to illuminate it.
He took a few cautious steps forward and then paused. Jimin squinted as he looked into the fog. There were dark shapes in there, but he couldn't quite make out what they were.
Another few steps.
Still no luck.
With every step, he got closer to them but the combination of fog and lighting were so bad that he couldn't see anything.
The figures slowly came into focus and he stopped short.
In front of him, looming ominously in the fog, was the graveyard. Jimin gulped and took a shaky step forward.
"I wanted a quiet place." He whispered to himself. "A place no one would look for me."
He glanced back at the empty graveyard.
"I guess I found it."
He gathered his confidence and walked forward into the rows of gravestones. Crosses, pillars, markers of every shape, size, and stone poked out of the ground around him and formed an aisle towards the back.
Jimin walked through the graveyard in silence. Every once in a while he could hear the cries of a crow in the distance, or the sound of the dirt and grass beneath his feet, but
there were no other sounds.
There was another dark shape at the end of the path. He hesitated but walked towards it anyways.
There was a decently large rock in the middle of an unused section of the graveyard.
The rock Yoongi had spoken of that first night.
He walked around it and sure enough, there was an opening under where the rock should have been, judging by the turned up dirt around it. It looked as if the rock had been moved fairly recently. Jimin stared down into the blackness below and backed away slowly.
"There's no way I'm going in there." He whispered to himself. "Not even if someone paid me a million dollars."
Jimin continued to back away slowly, refusing to look away in fear of what could emerge from. beneath it.
The second the rock was hidden by the fog, he turned around and ran, stumbling as he sprinted down the hill. The dirt scratched his palms and he hissed as he steadied himself.
He ran in the first direction he turned, unsure of where he was in comparison to the town.
Less and less light reached him as he ran under the trees, the leaves blocking the moon from view. Jimin slowed once he found himself back at the circle of stones.
He stepped in and curled up, back pressed against one. He just wanted to sit and cry.
He just wanted Tae back. All he wanted was his best friend back, was that too much to ask for?
He pulled his legs up close to his chest and buried his face in his arms. The wind was cold and he hadn't grabbed any extra layers before leaving. He shivered and curled tighter.
"I can't fall asleep." He murmured. "I gotta stay awake."
The tears dripped down his cheeks and fell to the ground. Jimin tried to shift so that the stone blocked as much of the wind as possible.
"If I sleep... I'll-" he yawned, "I'll freeze."
He was tired, scared, and cold.
His eyelids grew heavier with every blink and his head began to pound. More and more tears fell.
Despite his best attempts, Jimin couldn't keep his eyes open.
He cried himself to sleep that night, alone in the dark where no one could hear him.
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