"NOOOOO!" Hoseok yelled, attempting to get up to stop Jungkook but painfully falling back to the ground, unable to stand. 

     "Jungkook, stop it!"

     Han jumped up and grabbed Jungkook's hand, preventing him from pushing the needle any further. Blood was dripping from his wrist where the needle had been violently torn out and on his back, his hospital gown pierced by the needle at the level of his bandaged wound was also soaking with blood.

     "No, let me do it!" Jungkook cried, trying to get out of Han's grasp. "I want to do it!"

     "No, I definitely won't let you, so stop this madness."

     Han spoke calmly. He didn't loosen his grip and with one hand he pressed the emergency button. A nurse didn't take long to appear in the room. 

     Her eyes widened in amazement as she saw the scene unfolding before her eyes: Jungkook, covered in blood, holding the needle torn from his drip and struggling, Han holding him down, Hoseok on the ground, staring at them in horror as he held his injured knee.

     "Mais... qu'est-ce qui se passe ici?!" she started in french before before exchanging French with English : "but what is going on here?!"

     "He is emotionally unstable and he is hurting himself could you please give him a sedative or something to calm him down and also refill his drip?" Han asked urgently in english before adding : "ah, and treat his back injury cause it reopened." 

     The nurse quickly recovered from her stupor and acted professionally.

     "I'll bring something to put him to sleep, I'll be right back. Keep holding him," she said before hurrying to fetch the necessary supplies.

     "No, I don't want to sleep, I want to die!!" Jungkook yelled, struggling harder.

     "Jungkook, can you hear yourself talking?! Please, stop saying that, you're scaring me," Hoseok pleaded, whining as he saw the younger boy keep wanting to pierce his skin with the big needle.

    Jungkook started to cry again in the face of Hoseok's tears and with his hand, which did not hold the needle, he struck his chest.

    "B-But it's too hard, Hobi hyung! I can't live with... with this... this hole in place of my heart, it hurt too much!" he sobbed, letting Han to grab his wriste to keep him from hitting himself again.

     "I know Jungkook, believe me, I know!!" Hoseok sobbed, clutching his injured leg harder than before like the hug he would have liked to give Jungkook to prevent him from wanting to die, "but for now it's just you and me, we don't even know what happened to the others. We were seven and now... now it's just us..." he repeated in a broken voice, crying louder. "It's already too hard like that but if you leave too you, leave me all alone... What am I supposed to do alone? You can't leave me too, JK!" 

     "Boys listen to me," Han intervened attracting their attention. He was still holding Jungkook and remaining alert even though the younger one seemed to be struggling less, "being missing doesn't mean being dead,

    "I- I know," Hoseok sobbed, "for the others we can still hope, but for Jin hyung..." 

   "I told you earlier that there was hope and if Jungkook had let me finish," the manager replied before sighed, "I would have told you why."

     "W-what do you mean?" Hoseok wondered as Jungkook suddenly lent an attentive ear to the manager. 

     "There is still a thin hope that Seokjin is alive and for now we have to hold on to it."

       The two stunned singers exclaimed:

      "REALLY?!"

     "I don't want to give you false hope, but yes. At first, like Jungkook, I also thought that Seokjin-"

     But he didn't have time to give his explanations because the nurse chooses this exact moment to come back in all haste and make the three men turn around. 

    "Please, hold him tight," she told Han as she uncapped her syringe.

     "Alright," the Korean replied, forcing Jungkook to stretch out his arm.

    "NO!" Jungkook cried, starting to struggle again as the nurse disinfected a small area on his arm, "Stop her from sedate me, you can't do this to me now, you have to tell me what happened to Jin hyung, I'm listeni- ouch!" 

    Jungkook looked at his arm and then the nurse with a look of outrage. The woman, absolutely not understanding what he was saying in Korean to his manager, had just pricked him roughly with his syringe filled with sedative.

    "Stop!" He said pushing away the hand of the nurse who gave him an apologetic look.

    "I'm very sorry," she said, placing the used syringe on a small tray she had brought. 

    "It's for your own good Jungkook," Han said, who didn't have the same sorry tone as the nurse and Jungkook gave him a venomous look.

     Almost immediately, the sedative spread throughout his body, which began to go numb as his breathing, which had suddenly quickened, slowed excessively. His eyelids soon became as heavy as the rest of his body and he felt with frustration his mind drift.

      Han felt that he stopped fidgeting in his arms but he didn't let go of him right away, waiting for him to come to a complete stillness. Before losing all his strength, Jungkook grabbed Han by the collar of his coat:

     "N-No, b-before... you have to t-tell m-me hyung..." he stuttered, struggling to find his words "w-why there is hope...?" 

     "It's because-"

     But Jungkook did not hear the end from Han's answer because he lost consciousness before. Thus, his hands loosened and his arms fell limply. His tense, frowning face finally relaxed. 

     "It's okay Jungkook, you'll have time to hear it later," Han sighed in, laiding him on his side to let the nurse treat his back injury and refill his drip.

     He then went to help Hoseok, who was drying his tears, to get back into bed.

     "Hyung, is Jungkook going to be okay?" the rapper asked worriedly, as Han sat at the foot of his bed, and both turned to look at the younger.

     "Yeah, he didn't stick the needle far enough to hurt himself badly he should be fine. What about you, how are you? When the nurse is done with Jungkook, we'll ask her to look at your knee."

     "Hyung... what do you mean there is still hope for Jin hyung?"Hoseok asked feverishly. "You said his heart stopped and you left him, don't you?" 

     "Yes, but I went back there as soon as possible, when I was certain that Jungkook could survive until his exfiltration by the rescuers. And when I came back, Seokjin was gone."

    "G-gone?"

    "Yeah, paramedics were already in by then, he had to be evacuated quickly because it didn't take me that long to come back." 

    "T-That would be amazing," Hoseok stammered, "but that sounds crazy." 

    "I know, that's why I I hesitated to talk about it. However, if there was no hope, Seokjin wouldn't have been taken away so quickly as priority was obviously given to the living people." 

     "So you think he's still alive?" Hoseok asked hopefully. 

     "I think he was when he was taken away," Han corrected. "He had to be resuscitated by paramedics or someone else, which is a miracle in which considering condition he was. But we must not forget that he was in a critical condition despite everything and it is really not certain that he survived. Jungkook may not recover if this is the case but in the meantime, I prefer to keep hope. It's better than burying two people today with certainty."

       "I'm sorry that I thought you abandoned Jin hyung," Hoseok said, suddenly ashamed. "I understand that you really tried to save him. And that you definitely saved Jungkook. Thank you so much." 

    "No need to apologize or thank me. I did what I had to do. It's my job to take care of you. I'm not here just to make you work."

     "It was not obvious to me,"  Hoseok confessed. "I thought you wanted us to die of exhaustion."

     "Setting you back on the right path to achieving excellence," Han corrected, "not killing you."

     Hoseok smiled at him. Something had just come unstuck between them. With Lee, an almost friendly relationship had long been possible because he was sociable when he wasn't angry with them, but with Han, relations had always been more complicated, there was almost no conversation between them and they concerned all the work. 

      Han's apparent coldness had never allowed it, but maybe in the future, he would enjoy working with Han and forming a real brotherly relationship with him. Even if for the moment, his working methods tinged with too much rigor were certainly not yet to Hoseok's taste. Maybe the events at the Stade de France would help to change that?

     "Hyung?" Hoseok suddenly asked, thinking of his second manager, wondering if something bad had happened to him.

    "Mmmh?"

     "Where is Lee hyung?" 

    "Along with the rest of the staff, still looking everywhere for the other members, he has not yet sent any reassuring news. I should join them too but I don't know if I can leave you all alone here considering Jungkook's condition."

    Hoseok and Han turned to Jungkook and watched him sleep while the nurse cleaned, stitched up, and rethought his wound. 

   "You can go hyung, I'll take care of Jungkook and can tell him what you told me to calm him down," Hoseok offered. 

     Han thought for a few minutes. 

    "Can you do that?" 

     "Of course. I can't walk but if you ask the security guard in front of the door not to let Jungkook go in case he decides to leave the hospital to pick up Jin hyung, it should be fine."

   Han was about to say that sounded like a good plan when his phone rang.

     "It's Hyun-Jung, I'll answer," he said to Hoseok who nodded. "Yes Hyun-Jung? Why? What happened to him?! Okay okay, I'm going to watch." Han turned to Hoseok who remained alert, realizing that something had happened and it had to do with one of the other members. "Hoseok, quickly turn on the TV, find a news channel."

    Hoseok rushed to do so and the two stood in shock at what they saw, losing all their colors.

    A clamor was arising from the television set, and they focused sharply on the exclusive new information that had just been broadcast. The noise caught the attention of the nurse who looked up as she finished bandaging Jungkook's back.

     A broadcast amateur video showed a hysterical crowd entering a hospital room where there was a young blond man curled up on a bed, one leg in a cast from the foot to the top of the thigh, his face covered in bruises barely concealed by disheveled by his messy hair. And he wore a terrified expression.

    "Oh my God, it's Jimin!!" Hoseok exclaimed, horrified and yet relieved to know his dongsaeng was alive.

     "Yes, I'm seeing that", Han replied coldly of stress, "Yes, Hyun-Jung, I understood that I'm the closest, I will look for him! No, don't go their, you have something else to do : you have to go talk to the prefect of police, they absolutely want to question him now so that the investigation can progress more quickly but Jungkook is not in a state. They will all land here in a short time if we don't do something. Yeah, do that. Okay, I'll call you later, good luck to you too."

     He hung up quickely. 

    "I'll go get Jimin and I'll bring him here," he said to Hoseok. He rummaged in his pocket : "Here, I brought your phones to Jungkook and you, take them and reassure your family. I have already contacted them but they will be relieved to talk to you. Try to contact Jungkook's parents too. It'll allay their concerns as their were ready to jump on the first plane to come see him. Since we will return to Korea as soon as possible, and in the meantime your visitors are extremely limited, there is no need for them to make this trip."

    "O-Okay," Hoseok stammered for whom the information arrived too quickly. "Please, bring Jimin back here quickly."

    "As soon as possible," Han promised, rushing out of the room as the nurse looked on and then walked over to Hoseok to examine his knee.

    "Hoseok?"

     The rapper looked up and saw that the manager was standing in the doorway next to the security guard to whom he had just given instructions to follow in his absence.

    "Yeah?" 

   The manager hesitated, struggling for words, probably because he was going to say something nice and he wasn't used to it.

    "Jungkook really fought hard hoping to see all his hyungs around him again and it saddens me to see him desperate like this now, to the point that he no longer wants to live. Make sure he doesn't lose hope. There were only two of you a few minutes ago and now there are three of you, it's still encouraging. There are only four left to find and that's what we're going to do : find them."

    Hoseok smiled and was about to answer but he saw that Han had already gone and the security guard closed the door behind him.

    "Of course I will keep him from despairing," he whispered. "After all, I am Hope. But above all, I am his hyung. I won't let him give up on life."

_______

Author's note : The title of the chapter is a reference to the book "And Then There Were None," by Agatha Christie . Do you know this story? =)