SUNSHINE, jihope. [fin.]

17; please don't

FOUR MORE CHAPTERS Y'ALL

It takes exactly six steps to walk from Taehyung’s couch, which has doubled as Jimin’s bed of late, to the half-open window. He knows because he has paced those six steps almost a hundred times. A gentle spring breeze floats inside; the sun shines in a nearly cloudless sky of deep blue. Outside he's calm, but inside Jimin’s mind a riot of thoughts swirl until he bangs his head against the wall in the hopes of stopping them. His phone buzzes nonstop. He envisions the panic backstage, his dance professor ordering students to contact him, searching desperately for a means to replace his solo stage if he doesn’t show. He can almost hear her shrill voice. Where the hell is Park Jimin?

After practicing with Hoseok, he had nailed the climax of his dance—the flip. But in the weeks away from Hoseok his confidence diminished until suddenly one day he couldn’t do it anymore. He knows he can because he’s done it before, multiple times, but now he can’t. So instead of joining the hustle and bustle of the dressing room before the performance, he paces Taehyung’s living room.

He’ll ruin the whole performance by not going. There are a number of group dances that depend on formations that will be incomplete without him, and they aren’t prepared for that. In order to cover up the time slot where his solo stage should be, they will have to move everything around. The other dancers are talented, Jimin tells himself, they’ll figure out a way to do everything without him. They have had discussions about what to do in case someone doesn’t show last minute.

They’ll survive.

But they shouldn’t have to. And he’ll fail his dance performance class, that much is certain. He may even be suspended from the university, depending on his professor’s anger. It’s like the day he dropped Japanese class all over again. The consequences of his actions are clear and terribly, terribly serious, but he can’t find it in him to care.

He’s shaking so bad he wouldn’t be able to dance, anyway.

Hit with the sudden fear that Taehyung will come back home to look for him, he flees the building. His footsteps lead him toward the Visual Arts terrace but he reroutes because the last thing he wants to do is remember Hoseok holding him, lips in his hair. Breathe, baby, breathe. Hoseok isn’t here and Jimin can’t breathe at all.

He curls up on a bench in a secluded part of campus, arms tight around himself. He doesn’t ever want to go back. At least I'm not running away from my problems like a damn coward. Hoseok was right. He is running away. But Hoseok was also wrong, because he’s not a coward—but he has a problem, and he needs help.

Jimin lays there all night, thinking. He hates thinking. It fuels his anxiety. But maybe he needs to start doing more of it, thinking about how he feels and the things he does so that he can change them. So that he can change himself.

At some point he falls into a fitful sleep, and when he wakes he gets up and starts walking because he can’t run away forever and Taehyung is probably worried out of his mind. On the way back he passes a flyer pasted on a lamppost, half torn. University Mental Health Services. Free counseling for students.

He tears the rest of it off and stuffs it in his pocket.

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yAy our baby is finally getting some help :')