Hobi pushed open the door to their bedroom slowly, his eyes immediately falling upon Yoongi's figure, which was sprawled across his bed. Yoongi's phone was turned face-down on the mattress next to him, and he was staring at the bed sheet.

"Yoongi."

Yoongi grunted but didn't look up.

"Yoongi, look at me," Hobi said, and Yoongi's eyes slowly rose to meet Hobi's.

Yoongi didn't like what he saw - a still Hobi. An angry Hobi. Angrier than he'd been in a long time.

"Did Jin come to visit me in the hospital?"

Yoongi nodded.

"And when I asked why he wasn't there, you just...lied to my face?"

Yoongi hesitated before nodding.

Hobi's frown tightened. "Damn it, Yoongi! Why did you do that?!"

Yoongi flinched, unaccustomed to Hobi lashing out, but it wasn't as though he hadn't expected it, hadn't been preparing himself for the past few minutes to deal with this. "I did it because I thought it was the right thing to do."

"For who?" Hobi asked, crossing his arms, his scowl still etched deep into his face. "For me? Or for you?"

"For all of us," Yoongi said, slowly sitting up and letting the wall support his spine. "For you, for me, for Jimin, for all of us."

"Who asked you to make decisions for us?" Hobi shot back, and Yoongi just stared at him.

"Nobody ever told me to, Hobi. It's what I've been doing for a long time. Doing what I think is necessary to protect the both of you."

"To protect us? From Jin?" Hobi asked, laughing sharply and clearly not buying it.

"Yes. I wanted to protect you. From Jin."

"He's our brother," Hobi said, shaking his head incredulously. "Our hyung. What could we possibly need protecting from-"

"He'll hurt you," Yoongi interrupted, and Hobi stared at him, silent. "He already has. He's hurt all of us. You see that, right? I don't know if Jimin does because he's younger and he's sort of a special case, but you understand, don't you? How he's abandoned us?" Yoongi paused, giving Hobi time to think over his words. "There was a day when Jin would fake a cold to stay home sick with you and take care of you and hang out with you. Do you think Jin would do that now? Do you think he would sacrifice his time with his friends? Do you think Jin would even know if you were sick?"

Hobi didn't respond, couldn't respond because he knew Yoongi was right. The words resounded in his head, echoing and piercing his mind sharply with each additional iteration. Hobi thought back to the texts he'd sent Jin. He'd known. He'd known for a long time that Jin - their Jin - was gone. But Hobi was always the middleman, the peacemaker. He was the happy one, the one that dissipated conflict before it could occur. He wasn't the charging-into-battle type.

And yet that's what he'd done. He'd broken the peace through his words to Jin. Whatever false premise of brotherhood that had held their relationship together was gone now, blown straight out of the water. The smoke was gone, the mirrors shattered. Illusion had long been driving the show, but reality had taken back the wheel.

"You lied to me," Hobi bit out after a long moment. He couldn't argue with Yoongi about Jin, but he could still pick a fight about some of the other details. "And don't give me that it was just an omission bullshit. You knew what it meant to me, and you said nothing."

Yoongi nodded slowly. "You're right. I lied. I didn't tell you that Jin came."

"Why not, hyung?" Hobi asked, his voice a desperate whine, his anger quickly fading into despair.

"Because," Yoongi said softly. "Sometimes hope hurts the most."

Hobi was silent, and Yoongi took that as his cue to continue.

"If I had told you that Jin showed up, you would have been ecstatic, right? Because no matter how crappy of a brother he's been lately, he showed up this time, and that's what counts, right? One good moment to cancel out a hundred bad moments. One time that he showed up to cancel out the hundred times that he didn't. And because it would cancel out, he would be free to keep doing what he's doing, to continue cutting us out of his life, to disappear from our world one day at a time, and then somewhere down the road, he'd make an appearance, and it would cancel out again, and we'd be stuck in the same cycle, over and over and over again. For every birthday he missed, every dinner he skipped, every graduation he failed to see - all it would take is five minutes with him to erase all of that. Can't you see that, Hobi? Can't you see the loop we're stuck in? It's not fair. It's not fair to any of us. And I didn't tell you because I want to break us out of that loop. Even if it's painful now. Because the sooner we get out, the less it'll hurt in the long run."

Yoongi stopped to let his heart slow a bit. It was beating too quickly because he felt so personally affected by every word that he'd uttered because they were words he'd thought to himself night after night, words that trapped him and devoured him and consumed him. "It's less painful if we just don't care," he whispered, and Hobi looked up at him with doleful eyes.

"I can't just not care about Jin," he said, his voice as soft as Yoongi's. "He's - he's Jin."

Yoongi nodded ever so slightly. "All right. Fine. Maybe you can't stop caring. But you can stop letting him hurt you every time he comes into your life for a quick visit before he leaves again and lets the door slam on his way out while he rushes off to whatever it is that's more important than you and me and Jimin and all of us."

"Yoongi?"

"Yes, Hobi?"

"Why didn't you even let Jin come in to see me? I get...I get why you lied about it, but...couldn't you...couldn't you at least let me see him? I really needed him then, Yoongi," Hobi whispered, his voice catching and breaking more than once, and Yoongi had to swallow to even out his own.

"Because I knew he'd figure out the one thing to say to make it all go away," Yoongi said sadly. "He'd say whatever he had to say to make you believe that he cares and that he's so sorry that he hasn't been there for you and that he'll be there from now on, but they're all empty promises, Hobi. And even if he didn't find the perfect thing to say, you'd say the perfect thing to him to make him think that it's okay to treat us like storage, there when you need it and gone when you don't. And he'd walk out of your hospital room and go about his day and never even stop to think that he's part of the problem. At least I made sure that he knows exactly where he stands with us."

"And where is that, hyung?"

Yoongi tightened his frown. "He doesn't stand with us at all." Yoongi closed his eyes for a moment before sighing. "Hobi, we can talk about this some more, but close the door, all right? I don't want Jimin hearing all of this."

Hobi closed the door just as a head poked out from the top bunk bed. "I'm r-right here," Jimin said softly, and they both startled, looking up at Jimin, who had been lying unnoticed in his bed.

They were both silent, waiting for Jimin to say something, and after a moment, he did.

"Are y-you all r-right, Hobi-hyung?" he asked, and Yoongi blinked, having expected questions about Jin.

Hobi just nodded slowly. "I'm fine, Jimin..."

"Y-Your eyes are r-red."

Hobi wiped at them quickly as he looked away. "Allergies," he mumbled, and Jimin just blinked.

"Aren't you..." Yoongi hesitated. "Aren't you upset? About what I said about Jin?"

Jimin looked down at Yoongi, averting his eyes slightly, an indicator of his discomfort. "I'm upset b-but n-not because I d-disagree. I'm j-just worried about H-Hobi because it hit h-him the hardest." He paused. "M-Maybe instead of b-being upset with J-Jin-hyung for not being a g-good brother, we should j-just be grateful for all the t-times he w-was."

Yoongi thought about Jimin's words and sighed.

He wanted to agree, but doing so would mean that he'd given up on Jin, that that was the old Jin and this was the new Jin, that they were different, that they'd never be the same.

But Yoongi held a small hope deep within himself.

That Jin would change.

That their Jin - the one from their childhood - would return.

But it was as Yoongi had told Hobi.

Sometimes hope hurts the most.