17. The Fire

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"It's Jimin

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"It's Jimin. He's hurt. They called the ambulance-"

The world began to freeze all around me, shards of ice ready to pierce my skin with the reality of Jimin being severely hurt. My ears could no longer hear what Jungkook said as the possibilites racing through my mind drowned him out.

I wouldn't have known that my phone slipped from my hand if not for Hoseok's inhumanly-quick reaction. Moving faster than the strike of a viper, he caught the device before it even came close to touching the floor, but it was the effortlessness of it all that revived my senses and snapped me back to the world around me.

Hoseok hesitantly met my gaze as he held the phone out. As I took it and returned it to my ear, Jungkook's voice finally registered.

"Will you meet us there?" he asked distractedly among a background of desperate shouts and running footsteps.

"Which hospital?" I let out the weak question as my lungs fell short of breath. Hoseok's indecipherable eyes clung to mine.

"They're not here yet - shit!" his voice faded away for a moment and I could hear Jimin moan in pain. Then Jungkook yelled at someone, and suddenly the fire alarm was blaring from both the phone in my hand and the ceiling above me. "Jangmi, I have to go! Just head to the nearest hospital!" he yelled over the alarm.

Then the line went dead.

My mind told me to move but I was glued in place. My sight lifted to the view from the window and my heart pounded harder as students began to gather, pointing toward something beyond the building we were in. Their eyes were wide, many of them backing away from what they saw.

Hoseok wasted no time in grabbing my hand and pulling me with him toward the door. "Come with me," he said as he walked briskly with me in tow, leading us out of the room, across the floor and down the stairs.

The heavy smell of smoke weighed in the air as we stepped outside. My breath hitched when I looked ahead and saw angry obsidian clouds rising from a nearby building - the same one we had been in just a couple hours earlier.

Barely detectable beneath the deafening alarm, I picked up on the wailing of sirens in the distance. Even with the realization that help had arrived to take Jimin, the nauseating fear in my gut did not ease up.

"Where are we going? Hoseok, I need to get to the hospital," I said desperately as he led me away from the burning building.

"I know, I'm going to drive you."

I was too overwhelmed to question him, so I followed him through the crowd of evacuating students, the distance to his car far too long for my liking. The ambulance surely had Jimin on the way to the hospital by then.

After what felt like ages, we reached the parking lot of the boys' dorm. We passed several rows of spaces before Hoseok fetched his keys out of his pocket and pressed a button, causing the car a few feet ahead of us to start. If I was not so worried about my best friend, I would've gawked at the foreign sports car with its all-black wheels and its clay grey paint.

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