Slave to the Scale

Chapter 45

Jin found himself having little choice. He tried to resist but Hoseok ended up grabbing his hand and dragging him into his car.

For the first time in a long while, he was alone with Hoseok. A few weeks ago, he would've been terrified in this situation.

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"How are you doing these days, hyung?"

Hoseok seemed to be doing everything at once. Driving a car, checking the navigation system, talking to Jin, worrying about what the doctor was going to say, nothing was off-limits for this man.

"I'm fine."

Jin glanced around. The front of the car was well-designed. He was always very interested in cars. Totally.

They came to a stop at a red light.

"Really?" Hoseok asked. He glanced into Jin's eyes. "Hyung?"

Jin shook his head. Hoseok's nagging questions were going to be the death of him, he swore.

"You know that day," Hoseok continued, completely unfazed by Jin's lack of response. "That day that we had that long talk, all of us, that day."

He lifted his foot off the brake as the light turned green. He turned back to watch the road.

"That day, you know what Jimin said to me?"

"Hmm..."

Hoseok glanced at him through his rearview mirror.

"You're listening, right hyung?" he asked.

"Yeah," Jin said.

"Good. So as I was saying, I was sitting there. Namjoon called me over saying, oh, Hoseok stop being so mean and shit. And then I was like, I'm not being mean at all. Ask Jin hyung and you'll see."

Hoseok sighed. He kept his eyes straight on the road as he turned onto another street.

"And then, do you know what Jimin said? He said that I was out here, traumatizing you with how I was acting. I kid you not, he brought up every single one of my faults starting from how I acted during dance practices nine years ago, to the present day. Like, everything, I'm not even kidding."

Jin nodded along. If anybody ever did that to him, he would burst into tears. Hoseok seemed to be more put together though. He could never be such a mess.

"And you know what I did?" Hoseok paused. "Ugh, I wanted to say something smart back, but I just started to cry. Like it was so embarrassing. He just embarrassed me in front of everybody like that. I don't know if I've ever been as hurt as when he did that."

"I'm sorry about that," Jin said.

"No, but then listen." The car came to a stop again at a light. Hoseok turned his head so he could look straight at Jin. "I just started to cry. And then the others were all like 'oh yeah, stop crying, it's not like you deserve any pity'... actually scratch that, they didn't really say that... but they weren't all that sympathetic... you know?"

Jin nodded. Ah yes, poor Hoseok.

The car started moving again. Hoseok took his eyes off Jin. Jin relaxed. He glanced at Hoseok in his seat. His eyes were straight, his face only showing the stress of the past few weeks through the occasional twitch of his mouth.

"Was-was it scary?" Jin asked.

"Oh yeah, very." Hoseok sighed. "I've never seen Jimin that mad."

"Oh."

"Did you ever get the idea that I was being rude to you? At any point? No, right? That was a whole lot of overreacting from Jimin."

Jin sucked in a breath. He could almost feel the tense atmosphere of the car seep inside him. Hoseok had already been hurt a bunch of times, did he really need to be truthful, come on...