I FOUND FUTURE IN YOU | KM [✓]°

3

A month had passed since that night. Jimin's world had become a monotonous blur of guilt, pain, and the hollow absence of his brother. The morning sunlight filtered weakly through the blinds, casting a pale glow over his room. The alarm clock on his bedside table blared, its shrill sound a reminder of another day he had to face, another day he wasn’t ready for.

He lay there for a moment, staring at the ceiling, his body unmoving under the weight of his thoughts. He wasn’t ready to get up. He wasn’t ready to face the world. Every day felt like a slow, suffocating march, and school—school felt like the cruelest reminder of everything that had gone wrong. He hated it. He hated the stares, the whispers, the hollow looks from classmates who had no idea what he was really going through. But he had to go.

He had to do it for his parents. They had already suffered enough because of him. They had already lost Jihyun. The least Jimin could do was try to live up to the responsibility of taking care of them, even though the weight of his actions made him feel like he was drowning.

With a sigh, he finally swung his legs over the side of the bed. His feet hit the cold floor, sending a shiver through his body. He rubbed his face with his hands, trying to shake off the haze of sleep, but the heavy sadness always lingered. Jihyun’s absence felt like a constant ache in his chest.

He trudged to the bathroom, mechanically brushing his teeth, though he hadn’t eaten in days. The mirror in front of him barely registered, his reflection a blur as he focused on the repetitive motions. But his gaze inevitably shifted down to his legs, and a knot twisted in his stomach. The scars on his thighs stood out—some old, some fresh. The marks were proof of the war inside him, proof of how he'd tried to cope with the unbearable weight of his guilt.

He ran his fingers over them, the skin rough and uneven under his touch. Some were small, self-inflicted, while others were deeper, remnants of nights when the pain had been too much to handle. The newer scars burned with fresh regret, reminders of the times when the pain of losing Jihyun had threatened to swallow him whole. He thought of his brother, of how Jihyun would have looked at him now.

Jihyun would be angry. He would have been disappointed. The thought stabbed through Jimin like a blade.

He wanted to be stronger. He wanted to be like everyone else, to feel normal, to not carry this dark, suffocating cloud with him every waking moment. But he didn’t know how. So, he kept doing what he knew—what had numbed him before. Cigarettes, drugs—whatever he could get his hands on to silence the storm inside. He’d tried to quit after Jihyun’s death, tried to make things right. But the emptiness was too much. A few days had passed, and he had started again.

The faint burn marks on his arms from the cigarettes were harder to see now, fading like everything else in his life. He needed more. He needed something to take away the guilt, the shame, the grief. He’d even considered stealing more cigarettes from his father’s room, but he hesitated.

What would Jihyun say? The question haunted him, but he didn’t have an answer. He was too lost in his own self-loathing to find one.

"I should go now..." he muttered to himself, as if speaking the words out loud would make them real. They didn’t feel real. None of it did.

He stood under the hot water of the shower for a long time, the steam fogging up the mirror, the warmth on his skin doing little to soothe the cold inside. Afterward, he dressed quickly, pulling on his uniform with mechanical motions, like a puppet controlled by strings he didn’t have the will to sever. He grabbed his backpack, the weight of it a small but constant reminder that he still had to live this life, still had to go on.

When he stepped out of the house, the chill of the morning air hit him hard, a stark contrast to the warmth of the shower. He walked to the bus stop with his head down, shoulders hunched, trying to hide from the world. The streets were quieter than usual, the sound of his footsteps echoing in the stillness. It was like the whole world was holding its breath. Jimin tried not to notice the cars and people around him. He tried not to notice how they moved through life without him, as if he didn’t exist, as if nothing had changed.

At the bus stop, he waited in silence. The same old routine. The bus was late, like always. He glanced at his phone, but there were no messages, no calls. He was used to the emptiness by now.

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Chapter 4 got mixed because of watty glitched.