Threads of fate

Chapter 33

His voice was calm, but there was an emptiness in it that sent a chill down their spines. "What do you want to ask?"

The directness of his words stunned them. They had expected anger, tears, maybe even a scolding-but not this. Not this cold, hollow version of Jin.

Yoongi stepped forward, his tone hesitant. "Hyung, how are you?"

Jin said nothing. He didn't even look at him.

Taehyung took a step closer, his brows furrowed with guilt and pain. "Why are you acting like this, hyung? We know we messed up… but can’t you even look at us now?"

Namjoon, who had been holding back until now, finally spoke. "We know, hyung. We know we hurt you. We know we made a terrible mistake that day. And we regret it every single second. But please, don't do this to us."

Hoseok’s voice was thick with desperation, pain clinging to every word. “Hyung, we all made mistakes. We didn’t understand back then—not fully—but we do now. We saw it… how broken you were, how much pain you were carrying because of what happened with Jungkook. And still… we didn’t do enough.”

"We were too caught up in our own mess to reach out properly. We were breaking too—each of us, in our own way. The performances suffered, the energy was gone, and deep down, we knew why. It was because we let you suffer alone."

His voice cracked as his eyes brimmed with tears. "And when we finally opened our eyes and wanted to make things right… you were already gone. You didn't even tell us you were enlisting—we heard it from the company. We waited, hyung. We waited so long for you to come back, to give us a chance to fix this… but instead, we got news that you were leaving the group."

His voice broke completely now, raw with guilt. "You were always the one who held us together… and we let you go without even fighting for you."

Jin listened quietly, his expression unreadable, eyes fixed on the floor as Hoseok’s voice echoed in the silence. The raw emotion, the regret, the desperation—it all hung heavily in the air. But Jin remained still, his face calm, guarded.

He didn’t flinch. He didn’t speak. Not a single word left his lips.

Even as his members stood before him, pouring their hearts out, breaking apart with guilt and sorrow, Jin just stood there—silent, unmoved.

He heard everything. Every word. But he gave them nothing in return.

Yoongi sighed, his gaze dropping. "We weren't there when you needed us the most, hyung. We see that now. And we're sorry. We're so sorry. Please ... forgive us."

Throughout it all, Jungkook had remained still, staring at Jin as if frozen. He didn't say a word, but the pain in his eyes was evident.

Then, Namjoon asked the question that had been burning inside him. "Was it really that easy for you, hyung? To leave the group? To leave us? You always said we were a family. You always said BTS came first-even before your relationship. So why?"

Jin finally looked up at them, his gaze sharp, his face unreadable. "You think it was easy?" His voice was calm but laced with bitterness. "You think leaving the people I loved the most was an easy decision?"

Silence.

Jin let out a humorless chuckle. "We weren't just a group. We were family. I believed in that. I lived by that. But the words you all threw at me that day... they tore me apart. I told myself I needed time away, but the pain never stopped. Each day, it only grew worse. And it wasn't just the things you said-it was what someone continued to do even after that day." His gaze flickered for a second, but he didn't say who he was talking about.