Jimin woke to the scent of vanilla and faint citrus.
The kind that lingered on skin. On sheets. On memories.
"Celine?" he called out, voice rough with sleep.
No answer.
He sat up, stretching an arm across the empty side of the bed—cold. He blinked the sleep away, rubbing his eyes as he stood, calling her name again. Still nothing. He padded to the bathroom. Empty. Balcony? Nothing.
"Celine?" he called louder this time, panic sneaking in. His voice cracked. He checked his phone. No messages.
Something felt off.
He walked back to the bedroom—and that's when he noticed it.
Her bag was gone. So were her shoes by the door. Her jacket, folded neatly just yesterday, had vanished. Even the little bag of random candies she brought home two days ago—gone. It was like she'd vacuumed herself out of the space. Like she was never here.
No note. No goodbye.
Just her scent.
And the hollow echo of her absence.
Jimin's chest constricted. He dropped to his knees, pulling open drawers, closets—nothing. Not even a damn hair tie. His hands shook as he called her phone.
Number unreachable.
He called again.
Again.
Still unreachable.
No voicemail. No text. No breadcrumb to follow.
Just silence.
And suddenly the walls of his hotel room felt too close. The air too thin.
He threw on a hoodie, barely managing to shove his feet into his shoes as he rushed into Milan's morning. He searched. Cafés. Side streets. The bookstore she liked. The metro station. He even asked the concierge.
Nothing.
The longer he searched, the faster his heart thudded, panic clawing at his ribs. How could she be gone? She was just here. He had held her. Kissed her. Laughed with her. She stole fries from his plate last night.
How could someone disappear so thoroughly?
And then the betrayal hit him.
It wasn't anger that rose. It was heartbreak. Bitter and sharp.
She left him again.
Without a word. Without letting him fight for her. Without giving him a chance.
Tears burned in his eyes, but he didn't let them fall. He just stood on beneath the glasses of Galleria Vittorio Emanuele, breathless, eyes scanning strangers that would never be her.
And all he could think was:
She disappeared again. And this time, she took all the pieces he gave her.
He searched until he had nothing left. No leads. No hope.
Days blurred into nights. His phone never left his hand. He kept trying. Checking. Hoping. Praying. Maybe she'd call. Maybe she'd say something—anything. Even a cruel goodbye.
But Celine vanished without a trace.
When the call came—"You're due back in Korea tomorrow"—Jimin didn't argue.
What was the point?
He returned with a suitcase full of clothes and a heart that didn't beat the same. Not anymore.
The moment his plane touched down in Seoul, the Jimin who stepped out wasn't the same man who once laughed on a hotel terrace with someone he swore he'd never fall for again.
This Jimin was hollow.
This Jimin drank.
Hard.
First it was wine. Then whiskey. Then things that burned going down, just to feel something.
He stopped replying to messages. He skipped rehearsals. Missed dance practice. Management spun stories, blamed "fatigue," while his name trended online for the wrong reasons. Always the wrong reasons.
Bar fights. Club slips. Unverified photos of him slumped in a corner booth. Lips locked with strangers. Red-eyed. Absent.
Behind every blackout, there was a memory.
Her laugh.
Her scent.
The candies she never used to like.
The Galleria.
Paris.
Milan.
The quiet sob he thought he heard that one night, now echoing louder than ever in his memory.
His company slapped NDAs like duct tape over every crack. They patched things, issued statements, deleted evidence. But they couldn't fix what was rotting inside him.
And when he reached for JungKook, hoping to at least have one friend still tethered to sanity—
He found silence there too.
JungKook was gone. Trapped in Sayuri's chaos. A ghost of the brother he knew.
They were both spiraling.
Only Jimin was doing it loudly.
No one could reach him.
Not the stylists. Not the CEO. Not even the guys from his own team who tried and failed to knock sense back into him.
So much for love, he thought one night, wiping blood off his knuckles in a dirty club bathroom after a fight he didn't even remember starting.
Love didn't save her. Love didn't save me.
It only left ruins.
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
She was gone.
Like a vapor that never belonged to solid ground. Like a scent that lingered on his sheets but not in his arms.
Jimin woke up to her absence the way one wakes from a dream too beautiful to be true. Except this dream had left with her clothes, her charger, even the candies she bought the other day. Candies she never used to eat.
Even the trash was empty. Cleaned. Erased.
Not a word. Not a trace. Not a fucking goodbye.
The doorbell rang. Once. Twice.
Jimin didn't move.
It wasn't her. It was never her.
But the knocking turned into banging, loud and sharp, followed by a voice rougher than the cold Seoul wind outside.
"Jimin-ah."
Jimin's brows furrowed. His stomach lurched. Too much liquor still in his system. He dragged his feet to the door and cracked it open, barely registering the figure in green before him.
A uniform. Military boots. Black cap pulled low.
"You gonna let me in or collapse right there?"
Jimin blinked.
"...Hyung?"
It took him a second. Maybe more.
But when Yoongi stood there on his doorstep, the warmth of familiarity hit harder than the alcohol ever could.
Yoongi came. Not for a reunion. Not to check in out of duty.
But because somewhere between his week-long leave from the military and his decision to go home to Daegu—he didn't.
He came to Jimin.
He looked around. Dimmed lights. Empty bottles on the floor. A cracked phone screen. Jimin's sunken cheeks. The yellowed bruise by his jaw. The busted knuckles.
"The fuck happened to you?" Yoongi asked, calm but sharp, like only he could be.
And Jimin barely recognized him. The green uniform. The rigid posture. But the voice?
Unmistakable.
Because he had.
Only this time, it wasn't his own war. It was Jimin's.
And he didn't even hesitate.
Jimin barely moved, stepping aside with a shrug. A part of him hoped it was her at the door.
But it wasn't.
It was a brother.
And Yoongi didn't wait for an invitation. He walked in, unbothered by the mess, by the silence, by the haunted look in Jimin's eyes.
He didn't ask anything more. He walked in. Took off his boots. Rolled up his sleeves.
Cleaned up.
Made tea.
He stayed.
The first three days? Jimin was a shell.
Eat. Sleep. Drink. Repeat.
Yoongi made sure there was food in front of him. That his phone was charged. That he didn't leave the apartment.
He made a quick call one night. "Yeah. I'm not coming home this week. Jimin needs me. No, don't worry. I'll just be here for him."
And he did. In the only way Yoongi Min knew how.
By being there.
He didn't talk much at first. But when he did, the words came like knives. Blunt and deep.
"You're an idiot."
"She's not your responsibility."
"She was cracked before you. You didn't break her."
"You love to bleed for people who can't even find the bandage."
And Jimin?
He took it all. Word by word. Like medicine that tasted like poison. Because Yoongi wasn't coddling him.
He was dragging him back to life.
On the sixth night, Jimin broke.
"She didn't even fight me, hyung. Didn't argue. Didn't cry. Didn't yell. Just left."
His voice shook.
"I don't know what I did. Maybe I was too much. Maybe I wasn't enough."
Yoongi leaned back, arms crossed, voice low.
"Maybe it wasn't about you at all."
That silenced him.
Yoongi continued, slow and deliberate. Every word a hammer.
"She was fighting a war, Jimin. An inner kind. One you weren't even drafted for. You didn't cause it. You couldn't fix it. You were just collateral damage."
He looked at him straight in the eyes.
"She needed help. Not from you. From someone who could handle the kind of pain that doesn't come with instructions."
"A therapist?"
"A damn good one," Yoongi said. "One that can mend the un-mendable. And guess what? That's not you. You tried. But some people aren't built to be saved by love. Based from what you just told me. How deep her resentment is. Starting from her mother. She was just a child then. That kind of deeply rooted crack was the first strike. Now, imagine a teenager, coddled, felt secured, trust, felt a change of fate but get mauled by it. Imagine her screaming in that van and no one could hear her. That kind of pain is like a sword stuck in a boulder. Cemented there permanently. Add little knives here and there because life happened. You think you're some kind of a heroine that when you take out that damn sword, the heavens open and sing hallelujah? You're a fucking idiot then."
Jimin blinked, throat tight.
"Every knives stuck there, even if you successfully plucked those out, a scar still remains. A cut. A bruise. Not you nor her can heal."
Yoongi wasn't done.
"You thought you could wait for the storm to pass. But it was never a storm. It was a bomb. No countdown. No beeping. It just... exploded."
Jimin let those words settle. Let them bruise and sink. Let them wrap around the guilt and wring it out.
He didn't cry. He didn't scream. He just sat there, staring out the window.
And for the first time in weeks—he breathed.
On the eighth day, Yoongi left.
Back to the base. Back to the silence and discipline of service.
But before he left, he looked at Jimin, voice soft now. Like the calm after a thunderstorm.
"You're not broken. Just bruised. Heal right."
And then he was gone.
And Jimin?
He sat in the quiet.
The real kind. The kind without chaos or clamor.
Still hurting.
But for the first time...
Not running.