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It has been one year since the collapse of Mint Eye.It is only in the evening, after a day of work, as Jumin is eating his dinner in silence, that he remembers the anniversary.He has spent the last year trapped in a twisted time loop of memories that overlap his day-to-day activities. He is still there, in the helicopter, he is still walking into the compound, he is still hearing the screams. Before he wakes up in the morning, he knows something is wrong, even if he can’t place it. He is still trying to change the ending.Everyone looks at him with sad eyes and talks to him in repulsive tones of pity, even after they’ve finished giving him the endless sorry sorry sorries he is apparently due.Everyone treats him delicately, speaks in hushed tones, shares his personal tragedy between themselves, and it frustrates him deeply in a way he doesn’t know how to express. Perhaps what he needs to escape this horrific time loop is for someone to grab him by the shoulders and shake him hard until all the scattered pieces fall back into place. But everyone keeps pitying him, and he is still trapped.It is perhaps odd that the only sympathy Jumin can accept without resentment is Saeyoung’s. Maybe because he only gave it once, in the hospital, with a frankness most couldn’t muster. There was a strange sense of solidarity they shared, as if they were flip sides of the same coin. Jumin recognised some of Saeyoung’s anger in himself in the shape of a frustration he found hard to swallow. And, although he knows Saeyoung would never admit it, he sees the way he is similarly weighed down with grief.It has been a year since a part of Jumin died. It is a part nobody else shall ever know, could not ever know. Who is he without Jihyun to remind him?As the realisation of the date hits him, he feels a wave of nausea rush over him. He drops his cutlery and instead reaches to top up his wine glass. His hands have a slight tremor, and he spills a drop of red onto his tablecloth. He watches it spread.He drinks a lot nowadays. It’s the only way to cope with the fact that he still lives in the past. The supply at his house is constant, the evidence well-hidden. If the maid is concerned by the number of empty bottles she finds hidden under the counter, she doesn’t mention it.There is evidence, of course, but there isn’t anyone looking for it. There are strange blank gaps on his walls where once beautiful landscape photos hung, trinkets that once sat on shelves tucked away into a drawer. The books on his shelf are changing, mysticism into autobiographies. Removing painful reminders is another way he copes.Once the glass is empty, he rises inelegantly from the table and takes a step back. How has it already been a year? How is he still a bleeding wound? Shouldn’t something have changed by now?But things have changed, at least for everyone around him. He knows better than anyone how people have grown and changed over the last year. Oh, he has played healer and secret keeper and unbreakable pillar to the RFA from the moment cracks started to show.They have come far.He remembers Saeyoung calling a meeting just a week after Jihyun’s death. He had just been discharged from the hospital and seeing him so serious and unwell made him look like an impostor of the friend Jumin thought he knew. They had gotten together, Jumin, Jaehee, Saeyoung, in an empty conference room at C&R late one night and rewritten history to protect the ones still living.It was a tie. Saeyoung: firm and insistent, even if worryingly pale, needing the story to be different to protect Saeran. Jaehee: brow creased in worry and objections at the mere suggestion of lying, again.In the end, Jumin had to be the tie breaker. As in life so in death, he agreed to bury Jihyun in lies.Jumin and Jaehee were the last two to leave the building that night. They walked in silence through the dark hallways, the lifelessness of the building making the hair on the back of Jumin’s neck prickle.Only once they stepped into the lift, once the doors had closed on them, did she break. He was standing behind her, so he couldn’t see the way her face crumpled, only the sudden way her shoulders seemed to collapse inwards. He could hear her breathing stutter and her voice break.“Why did you deny him the truth?”He knew who she meant. Jaehee had assumed that, of course, Jumin would protect Jihyun’s story. But in the end, he knew the truth would break the RFA in ways they couldn’t heal from, and that was something he would not allow. Besides, there was a small part of him that knew that Jihyun would choose the lies to protect his loved ones. So, despite the twisting of his gut, he chose to lie. For all of them, if not for himself.Was it not a small kindness now, to spare them this one detail?After seeing her off, he returned home, poured out two glasses of wine and drank facing the window. It was his turn to apologise now, for the part he had played in covering up the truth. He knew Jihyun had already forgiven him, but Jumin could not forgive himself.The second glass sat out on the counter for three days before the cleaner eventually put it away. Jumin couldn’t bear to look at it.If he squints, he can imagine that the RFA is almost normal again. They can get together without conversation dwindling out into painful awkward silence – most of the time. Saeyoung makes them smile when they need him to, which is often. There aren’t any arguments anymore. At the last one, there was even talk of hosting a party again.It’s not perfect. The early days were rough. Jumin would force them all together every so often (taking advantage of all that horrible pity they had for him), and they’d sit together without saying much. Saeyoung had bruises he wouldn’t explain. Zen sat in silence, looking profoundly lost. Yoosung was notably thinner, the circles under his eyes ran darker than they ever did before and Jaehee would chew her lip till it bled.Even now, there are visible fault lines. At RFA get-togethers, Jaehee shrinks into herself. If the conversation lingers on Jihyun for too long, Saeyoung leaves the room. But, at least, Zen and Yoosung have some semblance of sanity and faith. They can look back reasonably fondly on their past without too much pain. To Jumin it looks like they are putting themselves back together.And Jumin himself? Jumin drinks and imagines these cracks will be patched up with time too.As Jumin steps away from the table, he feels a dull ache behind his ribs. He refills his glass and first moves towards the window before thinking better of it. Tonight, of all nights, he can’t sit there. Not when that was their seat. He veers off down the hallway instead, into his study.He shuts the door (sealing himself in), settles behind the desk, and pulls out his phone. It has become a habit to not check the messenger as often as he once used to. In the early days after Mint Eye, every new chatroom brought a new wave of despair and anxiety for Jumin, as well as attention on himself that he did not want. That anxiety has lingered and taken away some of the comfort the chatroom had once brought him. On a bad day, he does not open the chatroom at all until the end of the day.His phone pinged less today than it usually does, and now he finds out why. It seems like Jaehee, Zen and Yoosung have chosen to get together this evening to commemorate the anniversary. The invitation was seemingly open to the whole RFA, but it is no surprise that they are the only three who ended up meeting. As much as Jumin fights to hold them all together, today is the one day he feels like he would shatter if he had to be with them all.It is more obvious today of all days how much his grief has isolated him from his loved ones. He has always been fine with his own company. In fact, after a long day of interacting with people at work, a quiet evening with Elizabeth was always his favourite way to decompress.Today, however, his loneliness eats at him from the inside out. Despite having eaten some of his dinner, he feels hollow, as if he has been carved out from the inside with something sharp. His head spins, partially due to the wine and partially with the weight of all that he wants but cannot have. The complexity of his feelings has long since escalated from a ball of threads. His life feels like a tapestry coming unravelled. One wrong question, one train of thought he follows too far is like pulling on a string that shouldn’t be pulled, one that will reduce him into a heap that cannot be put back together.Even the simple thought of trying to explain himself to another person makes him feel ill. To have to recount all that he has been through and all he has been feeling (things he hasn’t even fully admitted to himself) in order to feel a sort of connection again feels insurmountable. Even his friends, people who has known and loved for years, feel separated from him by an impenetrable wall.Jumin desperately misses his best friend. He was left profoundly alone in the wake of his death. He is also betrayed in the deepest sense. On top of that, these feelings are all at odds with one another.Didn’t Jumin trust Jihyun wholeheartedly with his deepest feelings? It was Jihyun who listened Jumin’s frustrations with his father and his insecurities and struggles he wouldn’t dream of sharing with another person. They spent countless nights by Jumin’s window, discussing their lives. Then why, at what point, did Jihyun stop trusting Jumin to do the same for him?When did he get deemed untrustworthy?He thinks back to the year he has had. Paying off nosy journalists, hiring special security teams, throwing his influence around at hospitals so that the RFA wouldn’t struggle any step of the way. Was he not capable of handling things in a crisis?Look, he wants to say. Look what I have achieved.He has existed for the past year in a one-sided argument that will never conclude. Jumin, proving himself over and over again to a ghost that cannot ever concede and free him.He pulls out the bottle stashed in his desk and pours another glass. The room is silent, and Jumin can hear the echo of screams.