in a dead language - vmon

iii.

On that day, I went home after school the way I usually do. When I got home, my mother opened the door, her arms, and the floodgates in her eyes all at once.

"Mama? What's wrong?" I ask and I feel like a child, wishing I'm as oblivious as one, wishing I'm asking because I don't see it coming; another fallen star, a kid that fell so hard, leaving a burning bright light, a dark shadow, and radioactive craters in the chests of everyone who has ever loved them.

"Your friend," she cries, "Park Jimin—"

And it makes sense why he was absent today, and why he wouldn't pick up the phone when you called him. "He probably slept in," I've said earlier, and now I know I wasn't lying. He slept in, and he won't be waking up anytime soon.

"Namjoon," she cries, "promise me—"

"I promise. Don't worry," and I mean it. I'm smart.

"I know," she won't stop crying. "You're smart. You're careful. Don't give them a reason to kill you, and give them reasons to keep you alive if you can. Please, Joonah, he's — he's your age, he's in your class, isn't he?"

"Taehyung's," I say, and I only realise I'm crying too when I hear my voice crack and it takes me a moment to realise it's my voice, when I lick my lips and I taste salt and I know it's not dust. "They're friends. Were."

"Poor Taehyung," she murmurs, then pulls me into her arms again. "Does — does he have siblings?"

"A younger brother. Jungkook's age."

"It's just the two of them?" She whispers. "Their mother, that poor woman. Their father. God, nothing is as painful as losing your child."

That night, I don't fall asleep because her voice is too loud in my head to be drowned out by my headphones or by words in books boys my age shouldn't be reading. "Don't leave me, Joonah," she begs in my head. "Don't give them what they want. It'll be over soon, you just have to survive."

Her voice is nothing like yours, but I can't stop thinking about you anyway.

The night passes and I find myself strolling down the street heading to your place thinking about how useless the promise I gave to my mother, and how it's precisely what I want to beg of you.

(It'll be over soon, Tae. Just stay with me.)