Body And Soul

51. Wings of Freedom

When Seokjin and Namjoon heard what had happened, they rushed to the station as quickly as they could. Namjoon loitered a moment by the cab door to pay their fare as Seokjin ran up the steps two at a time. By the time Namjoon moved to catch up with Seokjin, the door was swinging back to greet his face. He let out an audible 'OUCH' as Seokjin stopped and turned with a blush to make sure he was okay. Seeing that Namjoon was now just loitering in the entryway with a hand over his face, he moved to slip an arm about him to guide him inside.

"I think you broke my nose," Namjoon said into his hand as Seokjin kept guiding him past the few people that stood in the entryway waiting to be waited on, looking at them oddly.

Seokjin felt badly about slapping Namjoon in the face with the door, but he had a more pressing matter on his mind at the moment. He had just gotten a call from Hobi that they had found Yoongi but that he was bad off. Seokjin kept worrying that "bad off" meant close to death and that it would be all his fault if the man died before getting his body back. Seokjin already felt badly enough that the switch happened in the first place. He definitely didn't want to feel like he was responsible for someone dying.

As they entered the crowded waiting room, Seokjin's eyes fell on Jimin who was holding a cat in his arms. Jimin's gaze was focused on the cat, only looking up when he registered them coming over.

"How is he doing?" asked Seokjin as he sank down into the empty seat beside Jimin.

"He's scuffed up pretty badly," said Jimin. "She kicked him like he was a football into oncoming traffic. He landed on the hood of a car before hitting the road."

Seokjin winced as he looked down at Yoongi. Yoongi's eyes were closed but he opened them when Seokjin looked at him as if he could sense the other one was looking at him. Seokjin figured anger or hate would linger in Yoongi's eyes. Maybe even fear. Instead he was surprised to see gratitude.

"Why aren't we getting him to a pet hospital?"

'Because I wouldn't let him,' thought Yoongi, wondering why Jimin wouldn't tell Seokjin that. He wondered if Jimin was embarrassed to say that he lost a fight with an injured cat.

Even though it hurt him to breathe at the moment, Yoongi didn't want to go to some sort of pet hospital. They would probably take one look at him and think that the best course of action would be to put him down. He didn't need to be a vet to know that getting hit by that car wasn't good for him.

Hobi - meanwhile - was sitting beside the handcuffed Yoongles in front of an officer's desk within the station. Hobi was pretending that he was Yoongles spokesperson since Yoongles couldn't speak. As they waited for the officer to arrive, Hobi thought back on what Yoongles had done shortly after Yoongi had been kicked through the air. Hobi didn't know Yoongles knew how to open car doors. Maybe he didn't and it was just some odd stroke of luck that he managed to get the door open. Whatever the case was - when the door went flying open - Yoongles went flying out of the interior. Before he or Jimin had been able to stop him, he had tackled Mrs. Kim to the ground. It took both of them to eventually get him off her.

"I understand why you did it, but you can't be doing things like that," said Hobi in a quiet voice as he looked at Yoongles. "It's against the rules."

Yoongles wasn't looking at Hobi as he spoke. He was instead still looking down at the handcuffs on his wrists. His collar had been taken off when he had been arrested. It made him feel as if he was stripped of a home and completely and utterly alone. He felt like that stray he was and he hated it. Hobi leaned forward more in his seat so that he could break Yoongles' gaze with the floor to see that his eyes were filled with tears.

"Are you crying?" asked Hobi in surprise.

Before Yoongles could look over at Hobi, the police officer came back over to them and heaved a sigh as he plopped down in his chair behind the desk. It was as if the sigh deflated his body as he gazed at the two men seated across from him.