BTS Kidnapped

Part Thirty-Six

T/N: KOREAN VOCABULARY LESSON!!! WOOHOO!!!!! Here are the new words we used this chapter!

l yeong-wonhi: 'forever'

~oooOooo~

In each of their separate rooms the boys were reduced to tears as their minds ran a million miles an hour, trying to process everything that had happened, each moment a fight not to imagine the worst, no matter what they thought or heard.

~oooOooo~

Namjoon stood frozen, staring at the spot where Jimin had been, his mind struggling to comprehend all that had just happened. He had stopped trying to fight the darkness off. It had won.

His brothers were dead. They had to be. He had heard the shots go off. He heard the shots...

Poor Jungkookie on the floor dead. Dead because he followed Namjoon to BTS instead of signing on with another agency... If he hadn't... if he hadn't, he would still be alive...

Yoongi gone, that keen ear deafened now by a single shot.

Jin-hyung, his brave brother, gone... the most soothing tenor he had ever listened to just gone...

Taehyung with his natural ability to make the best out of every situation, the one who always made him think up new solutions to problems and never give up, an empty shell on a cold floor.

And Hobi... Oh God, his Hobi... the one he could watch dance for hours, the one he would stay up all night to talk with or cuddle with or watch the stars and the moon with... the one he wanted to be with for the rest of his life... Had he been afraid? When the moment came, had he stared down the barrel of the gun and dared the guard to shoot or had he curled into himself, shielding his eyes? Namjoon sobbed at the thought that he wasn't there to cover his love's eyes, to hide the reality of what was to come from view, wasn't there to hold his hand or kiss his lips. Yet there he stood, alive and well, breathing precious air, his body going on like nothing had happened. He hated himself for that. He would hate himself forever, with each and every breath he took.

And what about Jimin? What had happened to him? Jimin had fought for them, breaking free from the one who had him in his grasp to attack the guards. Namjoon remembered the brawl. They had all thrown punches the best they could, swinging blindly in many cases, protecting each other with everything they had.

All for one and one for all.

That really happened, right? He hadn't imagined it... had he?

Namjoon wasn't sure about anything anymore.

Jimin had seemed so cold after the shots, after they had been shot, after-

They had all been shot.

'Annyeong,' Jimin had said.

That was all he said, even when Namjoon called to him, implored with his eyes to acknowledge his only living brother. Namjoon needed to feel Jimin's arms around him, he needed to put his own arms around the only other living person with whom he had sweat and struggled with, but Jimin wouldn't... he wouldn't...

No, Namjoon realized with sudden clarity. That wasn't all Jimin had said. He had said 'Ap annyeong'.

Ap.

It went over Namjoon's head because he never used it - no one in Gyeonggi province did. It was a Busan thing - a word he had gotten used to hearing in the dorm when someone ate all of Jungkook's snacks or turned the TV away from something Jimin was watching, but not something he had grown up with.