Sticks and Stones • Park Jimin

xxxviii.

J-Hope smiled at Jimin. "I'm your hope, I'm your angel, I'm-"

J-Hope stopped, expecting Jimin to interrupt him, but Jimin stayed silent. J-Hope's smile wavered. "I'm your hope, I'm your angel, I'm..." he repeated, waiting for Jimin to jump in and make things normal, how they used to be, but Jimin wasn't normal and how he used to be, if he ever had been normal.

J-Hope swallowed. "I've been waiting all this time to introduce myself," he said, shocked into a quiet daze. "And now...now I don't really find that I want to."

"Why'd you push me out of the way if you were just going to screw it up?" Jin muttered under his breath, and J-Hope glared at him.

"Because! I thought..." He stopped and looked back at Jimin. "I thought...that we were friends..."

Taehyung tensed. He didn't want any of them triggering Jimin, even if they had good intentions. And judging by how upset everyone else was getting, the intervention was failing. Rapidly.

Namjoon sighed. "Jimin, we're upset that you thought that your only option was to commit suicide rather than talk to us about your problems. That's all anyone is trying to say. We're not trying to make you feel guilty or worse or anything like that. We just want you to be okay. And if you need us to give you personal space, we can do that. But if you want personal space so you can stand back on the edge of the roof, we won't leave you alone. Do you get it?" Namjoon said, straight-up.

Jimin hesitated before nodding.

Namjoon nodded back, satisfied. "So that's how it is. Now, what do you need from us to make sure you're okay and that you feel better?"

Jimin was quiet for a long moment. "I just...I just want to eat lunch with everyone," he whispered, and Namjoon smiled.

"Lunch, we can do." Namjoon unzipped his backpack and pulled out a paper bag.

Jungkook stared at Namjoon for a moment, thinking, Jimin was about to jump off the roof and now we're going to eat lunch? How does that fix anything? But then he copied Namjoon and took out his own lunch.

Everybody else moved to sit in a circle and pull out their lunch, but Jimin hesitated.

"I...didn't bring a lunch...because I didn't think...that I would be here...for lunch."

And there it was. Even if they tried to get back to the mythical land of normalcy, there was a crack in the mirror, a back to the wardrobe, a plank missing in the bridge.

Jimin had been about to commit suicide.

How were they supposed to cope with the result of Jimin's failure to cope?