The Broken Dancer

First Sparks

The hospital had a way of swallowing sound. Even after they'd spoken their promises in whispers, even after the group slowly peeled away from the quiet corner where the resistance was born, the walls seemed to drink up everything - plans, anger, fear - and leave only the soft hum of fluorescent lights behind.

The rain outside hadn't let up. It tapped against the tall windows in soft, persistant rhythms, like a reminder that the world was still moving even when they stood on its edges. Their footsteps were muted on the polished floor. None of them said much. There wasn't anything left to say. Not yet.

Namjoon left first, jaw tight, coat collar turned up against the night. Hoseok followed him a few steps behind, his hands shoved into his pockets, his shoulders shaking - not from the cold, but from everything he was trying to hold in. Taehyung lingered in the doorway, torn between wanting to follow and wanting to stay, his eyes flicking toward the elevators and then down the corridor where Yoongi's room waited in silence.

They were all thinking it.

What they'd decided tonight was dangerous. It wasn't some whispered rebellion in the dark anymore - it had weight now. A pulse.

Jimin didn't follow them.

He stood at the end of the corridor, alone, rainwater still clinging to the cuffs of his jeans and darkening the linoleum beneath him. His hand drifted to the plastic hospital band circling his wrist - a thin, harmless thing, but it anchored him to this place. To this night. To the line that had been drawn without any way of stepping back.

The world beyond the hospital doors was waiting. The club. His father. The place where survival meant silence and obedience and learning how to make himself small. He knew he's have to go back eventually. He couldn't outrun the man forever. But the thought of stepping back into that space after tonight felt like walking willingly into a cage.

He pressed the band harder against his skin, the edges biting faintly into his palm. It wasn't the world that had changed. It was him. For the first time, the terror didn't drown out everything else. It sat beside something new - thin, trembling, but alive.

He exhaled slowly, fogging the cold hallway air.

Down the corridor, behind a thin pane of reinforced glass, Yoongi lay still.

The room was dim, one small overhead light casting pale shadows across the bed. The rain streaked the window beside him, a blurred city glowing faintly beyond. The smell of antiseptic clung to the air, sharp and clean in a way that only hospitals could be. Blood still lingered somewhere underneath it, faint but real.

Yoongi's chest rose and fell in soft, shallow breaths, the steady beep... beep... beep of the heart monitor threading through the room like a quiet heartbeat. He looked fragile in a way Jimin wasn't used to seeing - not the boy who teased him and leaned against railings with lazy smiles, but someone carved out of bruises and silence.

For a moment, Jimin imagined walking out the doors. Just going. Maybe the night would swallow him whole before his father ever found him again. But even the thought left a cold, hollow taste in his mouth. Because leaving meant leaving Yoongi here. Alone. Vulnerable.

And that, more than anything, was something Jimin couldn't make himself do.

He moved closer to the doorway, watching the gentle rise and fall of Yoongi's chest through the glass. It steadied something in him - just a little. Enough to unclench his fists. Enough to breathe.

A soft buzz from the vending machine down the hall echoed through the near-empty floor. A nurse passed by with a clipboard, nodding at him but saying nothing. Jimin didn't look away from Yoongi.