Autumn Leaves / Park Jimin fanfiction

45. June 13th

Matutine
Just before the dawn.

-

Autumn's POV

I slowly opened the familiar gate, never feeling so scared to be in the place I had visited nearly every week for the past 3 years. Jungkook followed closely from behind his heavy breathing audible from the sprint we had just ran from Jimin's apartment. As if even the world knew something was wrong, it'd started pouring it down with rain, I was wet through and my teeth chattering. Jungkook had offered me his hoodie but I had refused it. I guided Jungkook through the graveyard to Yoongi's grave. The grass squelched under my shoes and I had nearly slipped on mud a couple of times. We came to a stop in front of the grave, it felt different this time, an unsettling feeling coursing through my veins. Jungkook bent down to read the inscription that I had memorised in my head.

"The date of his death is wrong." Jungkook looked up at me, his hair slicked back by the rain and the tip of his nose red from frostbite. I bent down next to Jungkook reading over the date. June 13th. "Yoongi died on June 6th, a week before," Jungkook spoke over the roar of raindrops descending down to Earth.

"That's not possible, I saw Yoongi the day before he died, he couldn't already be dead." None of this was possible, how did me and Jungkook have such different versions of his death? I sat down on the wet floor, my legs ached and I was already soaked. "Tell me everything you know about Yoongi's death." Jungkook sat down on the floor to face me. He seemed to think for a moment before answering.

"It was a normal day, I came home from school late, Yoongi was getting ready to leave the house. He told me he was meeting up with a friend and would be home later that evening. I waved to him as he drove away and went sleep as normal. When I woke up I looked for him but he wasn't anywhere, I assumed he'd decided to stay over at his friend's. It was around 3pm when there was a knock at the door and it was two police officers." Jungkook stopped talking. I didn't know if he had started crying or if it was just the raindrops running down his face. "They asked to come in and sat me down in the living room. I was terrified, I knew something wasn't right by the look on their faces. That's when they told me that they had a report of a suicide. I didn't want to believe them, I was hoping it was just a coincidence that Yoongi hadn't returned home. But he didn't come home the next day or the day after that. It's been three years since then." Jungkook finished, his whole body shaking. I stuck my hand out for him to hold, he took it and squeezed it tight.

"If they never found a body how did they know it was Yoongi?" I'd never been able to wrap my head around Yoongi's death, with no known friends or family I had no ways of finding out what really happened.

"Eye witness account. They wanted to remain anonymous. They said they had tried to stop him, tried to talk him out of it. He told them he wanted to tell me that he was sorry and then he was gone." Hearing Jungkook's side of the story, even with the extra details, the story just didn't add up, it didn't explain the wrong date of death.

"I don't know what to say." We were at a dead end. There was no logical explanation for any of it.

"Me neither, I've been trying to make sense of it for years." The rain had eased off now, slowly becoming more of a drizzle. Jungkook had become extremely pale, his lips turning to a light purple and his hand felt like an ice block in mine. He was freezing, I couldn't let him sit outside, soaking wet for much longer.

"I think we should leave, you're absolutely freezing Jungkook." I picked myself up from the ground using my strength to haul Jungkook up as well who struggled to stand on his weak legs. Practically carrying him back to my apartment I wrapped him in as many blankets as I could find, I knew it wasn't an appropriate time to think it but he looked adorable wrapped up like a burrito. After a while, the colour returned to his cheeks as his body thawed out. I handed him his fourth cup of hot coffee that I had made him drink.