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Tae didn't know what was wrong with Jimin after Jimin had abruptly hung up the phone on him. But he figured that if Jimin really needed his help, if it was really serious, then he'd tell Tae and ask for his help. So he decided to let it go.

Jungkook was slightly pissed at him about the robot thing, but that was nothing new. The two of them bickered back and forth, but at the end of the day, they were still brothers, and glad of it. They always had each other's backs. Unless they were harassing each other. Then it was all bets off, no holds barred.

In truth, Jungkook was worried about Tae. Since before Jimin had entered high school, Tae hadn't made any effort to really make friends, and after Jimin came back, Tae had stuck with him and Jungkook. But as time went on, Jungkook had grown more social, often hanging out with Yugyeom, BamBam, Sehun, and a few other friends, while Tae had turned to the internet for online friends.

Jungkook didn't think it was a bad thing. Some people online were nice. Maybe they could be there for Tae in a way that the kids in their high school couldn't. Maybe they filled a void in Tae.

But Jungkook didn't like the way Tae spent all of his free time in front of a screen, chatting with people neither he nor Jungkook had ever met, people he didn't even know the real names of. Anonymous strangers, talking with Tae.

Jungkook wondered what they said, what they talked about. He supposed it didn't really matter. It could be gossip or just casual conversation about what went on in the day. It was fine, he supposed. But he still felt like Tae was lonely, and what he needed wasn't a group of people behind screens with fake names and photos spread out across the world.

He needed a human. A real, live, 3D, physical human.

And Jungkook remembered something.

He knew a human that might be interested.

***

"No," he said, shaking his head and frowning at Jungkook before looking down at the ground. "I don't think that would be a good idea."

"Please?" Jungkook asked, more like begged. "It's just that he doesn't have really any close friends at school, and if he had just one, I feel like he'd be a lot happier and maybe he'd open up more, you know?"

"And you want me to be that person?" he asked, skeptically.

The hallway was empty. It was just the two of them, talking next to the lockers. Jungkook had made sure to send Tae on ahead of him for lunch.

"Yeah," Jungkook said after a moment. "Because you wanted to be that person before, right?"

The other boy shifted uncomfortably.

"Right?"

"I wanted to be his friend," the boy said cautiously. "Mainly because he helped me out once, and I thought he was kind. And I'd thought - I'd thought that he'd forgiven me. I'd thought that that was what the gesture was. Him helping me out. Like a sign. Saying, I know what you did in the past was bad, but I'm past that. But he wasn't. That became clear to me pretty quickly."

"Tae...can hold grudges," Jungkook said, shifting his weight from his left foot to his right foot. "He's sort of protective like that. And to be honest, his grudge is pointless. Pre-school? Who even remembers pre-school?"

"Me," the boy said, pointing at his own chest before pointing at Jungkook. "You. Tae. Everyone in that class. It's not every day a kid gets abducted. Nobody forgot about that. Nobody."

"But even so," Jungkook tried, determined. "It was pre-school. So you knocked over Jimin's blocks. So what? That's not a big deal. Tae knocked over Jimin's blocks too."

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