Jimin heard the phone and ran into Namjoon's room to pick it up, shutting the door after him for some privacy and quiet, as Mark and the others were playing Twister, which really meant that the others were just giggling as Mark tried to bend into odd contortions before smacking his face on the floor and pseudo-swearing ("how in the broken rectangle am I supposed to put my right foot on red without snapping off my flip-flopping leg").

"Dad?" he asked, his foot bouncing up and down in excitement as he crouched down in the small alley of space between the bed and the wall and listened to the person on the other end.

***

"Why not?" Jimin asked.

Jimin was confused by what he was told, but he nodded. "Okay..." His confusion was swept away as he heard the next question.

"How is everyone doing?"

"They're..." Jimin swallowed. He didn't know how it was possible to feel full of emptiness, but he did. Somehow, emptiness had filled every crack and crevice, every pore of his being. "We're..." But that didn't sound right either. He was part of them but he wasn't. He wasn't sure that he would ever be.

He would always be "the one that got abducted."

He would always be different, separate apart from the others. Special, in the worst way.

But it was too late to go back to they're, so Jimin had to soldier onward. "We're...we're fine," he said, but the emptiness inside of him was screaming at his words, at his lies, screaming into the silence that he'd fallen into, a silence so harsh and painful that Jimin didn't know if it was him screaming out loud or just his mind anymore.

"Jimin?"

He was sure by now that it was just in his head, or else he wouldn't have been able to hear the voice. "We're not fine," he whispered, sinking lower against the wall. He felt like he was betraying them all by admitting what none of them wanted to admit, what they refused to admit. "We're not fine," he repeated, feeling like if he said it again, maybe it wouldn't hurt so much. Maybe he wouldn't feel like he was selling them out, ratting out their secrets, stabbing them in each of their backs. "We're not...They're not...I'm not...fine," he said, his voice even softer as his eyes stared blankly at the bed sheets in front of him.

"Tell me what's wrong, sweetie."

Those words broke the dam that Jimin's misgivings had erected, and suddenly, the silence that he'd tried so hard to preserve shattered around him as he fought to spit out all the words he needed to, all the words he needed to get out to feel sane and understood and loved.

"Jin talks to himself. Well, not to himself. To me. Only, not to me. He...he has this imaginary version of me, a better version of me, and he tells that version everything even though I'm right here now and he can talk to me instead but instead he chooses that version over me even though I'm real and I'm alive and I'm back home...

"And Yoongi gets in trouble a lot. He was in suspension the other day, and it wasn't his first time. He has friends, but they can't stop him, and I know that he's only being bad because people expect him to be bad. If people just trusted Yoongi, he wouldn't do bad things, I don't think...but because they've all made up their minds already, he doesn't see the point in trying to be different, in trying to be good, so he doesn't bother. He just gives them what they want, only it hurts him so much more than it will ever hurt them...

"And Hobi...I don't know how to help Hobi," Jimin said, fighting against his tears because he knew he'd have to face the rest of them at some point in the night, and he didn't want them to know he'd been crying, but he couldn't stop himself when he thought of his hyung. "He can't eat. I don't know why, exactly, but when he's at school, he's supposed to eat his lunch, only he can't...it makes him sick...and then the other kids, they make fun of him, and that makes it worse...He has a friend, Wonpil, that's always there for him, but Hobi told him to leave because Hobi feels like he's holding Wonpil back, only Wonpil doesn't care about that, only...only I think he got mad at Hobi, and they haven't made up yet and it's so hard for me to look at Hobi now and not realize how thin he looks and how little he eats at dinner and it scares me so much...

"And Tae...he's always tried to be older somehow, to protect me and Kookie...but it's really hard on him, having to look out for us. And he feels guilty because he wasn't there that day, the day I......he feels guilty still, and it makes me feel guilty, because I don't know how I'm supposed to make him feel better or how to thank him for helping find me or anything...I don't want to cause him any more trouble because if I were stronger, none of this would have happened...I don't know...I just feel like...I have so much to live up to...for his sake...and I feel like I can't fill that hole, not now, not ever...and I feel so bad for hurting him and ruining his relationship with Kookie, even though they fixed it...it's all my fault...

"And Kookie...Kookie...there is so much to say about Kookie...I made him miserable when we were kids because I took all the attention, and even when I was gone, he still felt unloved because he thought everyone blamed him, and maybe some of them did, only he didn't deserve to feel like he was unwanted...and then...he told me a lot of things...hurtful things...saying he blamed me for everything...and even now, I can't help but think that maybe he was right...and if he was right about one thing, maybe he was right about all of them...and I don't know how I'm supposed to live with myself knowing that everything is my fault, that it's always been my fault...why do they love me if I ruin everything?

"But...there's more...I just...I can't live up to their expectations. It's too much. I'm not the old Jimin. I'm just me, but I don't know if they see that. They said that they love me, but do they meant the old me, or me me? Why would they love me? But it's not just that, there are other things I can't do...like how I can't seem to catch up to Kookie and Tae. They're off at school, and I'm stuck at home, trying to learn, trying to make myself smarter, but every time I get something wrong, it all just feels so hopeless, so pointless...I don't even know if I want to go to school...but I hate being alone, feeling like the odd one out, like everyone else is part of some secret club that I'm not allowed into. I want to be with them, but I just feel like there's so much that I can't just ignore...We're all pretending like it never happened, like the last five years didn't exist, but they did, and I can't just ignore them, even if everyone else wants to."

Jimin rubbed at his eyes, having gotten all of his words and feelings out. He felt a little better, a little less empty. He heard shouts and giggles from the other room, and he exhaled, biting his upper lip. "I'm sorry, I have to go," he said into the phone softly, delicately. Then he hung up, set the phone back on its hook, and left Namjoon's room.

***

"Who was it?" Hobi asked while flexibly stretching his left foot to yellow, and as his shirt rode up his stomach, Jimin couldn't take his eyes off of the ribs that showed ever so slightly.

"It was Dad," Jimin said before sitting down on the couch, trying to avoid the other question he knew would come.

"Why were you crying?" Tae asked, squinting at Jimin suspiciously as he looked at Jimin's red eyes.

"I accidentally flipped off the light switch and it scared me," Jimin mumbled, and Tae smirked before reaching over and tickling Jimin, who squealed and twisted, only Hobi leaped up from the Twister game to join in, and soon enough, they were just one big pile, all tickling each other (only nobody tickled Yoongi because they didn't want to get hurt).

And in that big mess, Jimin forgot about all of their problems. He forgot that Jin couldn't get rid of his ghost, he forgot that Yoongi couldn't trust others, he forgot that Hobi couldn't eat, he forgot that Taehyung couldn't be a kid, he forgot that Jungkook couldn't resolve his guilt. He forgot how fake he felt, like a replacement part when the better part - the original - had stopped working. He forgot how much he struggled to feel like he was adequate. He forgot the words that still haunted him, how he'd stolen the love Jungkook had deserved, how he'd taken the hyungs away from Jungkook, how he'd been the reason their mother had left.

He forgot about all of that, because in the middle of the pile, he felt like he was part of it. Like he mattered. Like nobody could replace him, no matter who he was.

He didn't feel like "the one that got abducted."

He felt like Jimin.