At St. Louis Hospital, Namjoon and Taehyung had finally learned everything about what had happened the previous night and they now knew how the rest of their bandmates were doing, which was a huge relief for them, despite the distance that separated them.

     Seeing the images of the horrors that they themselves had experienced without having an overview of them had hurt them a lot and Namjoon felt particularly guilty in front of all these innocent victims.

     The definitive human toll of this tragedy had not yet been established, but the number of victims was very high and many people were already beginning to point fingers at the potential culprits but also at the excesses of kpop, for people who also discovered the extent of the enthusiasm of the young generation for kpop but also the existence of sasaengs and particularly dangerous haters without equal in the global entertainment industry.

     The two boys, like the rest of their band, knew the world was looking forward to Big Hit's communication but more importantly, theirs. Speaking in public to come back to what had happened was the last thing they wanted to do right now, but they knew it would be inevitable: they would not be given a break.

     The evening being well advanced, the injured leader of BTS had ended up falling asleep and for his part, Taehyung had finally been authorized to go to the room of the intensive care unit where Jin was.

     If he had been allowed to visit the eldest, it was because his condition had stabilized according to his doctor. He hadn't had a relapse for several hours and it was a relief for Taehyung because even though Jin was still in a coma, it meant that his chances of getting out of it were greater than a few hours before.

     In this small, empty of decoration room , there was only one bed, next to a heart monitor which beeps at regular intervals, an artificial respirator and an transfusion pole. It was all connected to the inert occupant of the bed.

     Jin lay there, intubated, unconscious. 

      His face where traces of dry blood poorly cleaned remained, was pale as death, partially bandaged and seemed contorted in an expression of pain. Or out of fear.

     It was an unsustainable sight for the youngest. Taehyung couldn't tell but seeing either of these emotions on that once joyful face was intolerable to him. Because now, in addition to the sufferings of the day before, the young singer was now sure to read there a previous suffering, a longer suffering, lived in solitude when he should have been able to count on them all.

     With a lump in his throat, the singer grabbed Jin's bandaged hand, the one that didn't have a catheter on, and squeezed it gently in his own. The previously blood-soaked cast had been replaced with a new, immaculate one. Jin's bare arms were like his own, covered in bruises, scarred from those who crushed him but to that were added old scars as well as - the doctor hadn't invented anything - burn marks.

     Taehyung would have cried if he hadn't had Namjoon's words clearly in mind. He had to stay strong for Jin. For a moment, he just watched his chest rise and fall with the rhythm of his artificial breathing, as if to make sure he was alive, letting himself be hypnotized by the steady sound of the heart monitor.

     Beep.......... Beep.......... Beep..........

     Then, he murmured :

     "Hyung, I was totally unaware of what you were going through for months and that made me helpless. But now that I know everything, I am still helpless, can you believe it?"

     Beep.......... Beep.......... Beep..........

     He didn't know if Jin heard him but he was above all emptying what he had on his conscience through this monologue.

     "Will you wake up if I ask you insistently and talk without stopping until it piss you off and you want to yell at me to shut up?"

      Beep.......... Beep.......... Beep..........

    "Or... or what's still hiding in my eyes is so horrible you never want to open your eyes or forgive me again?"

     Taehyung's eyes slid from his face to his neck where light marks barely hidden by the collar of his hospital gown were already visible. The doctor said it was strangulation marks, which made Taehyung shiver with horror. Was it simply a means of torture where Lee had really tried to kill him?

    "I'm sorry hyung, I know you're shy when it comes to your body but I have to see with my own eyes, okay?" Taehyung asked looking at Jin's face as if waiting for his approval but it only took him half a second to remember that Jin couldn't answer him. "Oh... right, you can't answer me..."

     Finding it increasingly difficult to contain his tears, he gathered his courage and lifted the sheet covering Jin's body.

     When he let him fall back to the foot of the bed, Taehyung could only imagine the injury to his shoulder blade but was able to discover with his eyes both the broken ankle which was now in a cast but also, after a closer examination, the traces of laceration which had been spoke the doctor and old bruises and scars under and on his legs left bare by the hospital gown.

    The laceration marks, still red and inflamed because they had not been treated immediately, could only be a few days old. That is to say that he had been whipped during the tour. And that he had to dance as if nothing had happened while he was suffering. He would know how old it was by carefully watching the videos of the tour, he was sure of that. 

     "How dare he do that while the tour was already so tough?!" Taehyung exclaimed in rage. "He's a fucking monster, how could I be fooled by him?!"

     Why had Lee done that? Why did he hit Jin so hard like that in the middle of the tour? Taehyung then recalled what Namjoon had told him: when Lee got angry at Jin and Jungkook after Jungkook collapsed, they both looked terrified. Had Lee whipped them both as punishment? 

     "And I dared to defend him in front of Namjoon hyung, how ashamed I am..." he whispered. 

     By sliding the shirt that was completely unbuttoned in the back following his operation over his shoulders, Taehyung was able to access Jin's chest and abdomen covered by electrodes which, however, did not hide the hematomas, brues and scars. And also in various places, traces of bites.

     First there was the line of bites that followed his collarbones and that he had already seen in the dressing rooms when he accused Jungkook. The bite marks were now less definite scars, having faded somewhat after several months. It was to be hoped that they would completely disappear over time.

     But those weren't the only bite scars. Others spread this time in a vertical line along Jin's flank. They were much more visible, with crusts here and there, and therefore, more recent. 

     All Jin's other injuries in his back, Taehyung had to imagine them. And it hurt him. A lot.

      "He hit you. He whipped you. He bit you. He burned you. He broke your finger. He strangled you. He raped you..." Taehyung enumerated, letting his finger slide over his wounds as his list grew longer. "And he made you not tell anyone."

      Faced with this odious spectacle revealed to his eyes, he ends up breaking down; he could not hold back his tears and loud sobs. Jin had suffered so much, it was unfair. He had never done anything wrong to deserve such a horrible thing. Why had this happened to him? Why had Lee come into their lives? But above all, why had he targeted Jin? 

       "Why..." he sobbed, "why did he do this to you, hyung?"

       Jin did not react and Taehyung delicately readjusted Jin's shirt and covered him with the sheet again before addressing his sleeping face while crying:

      "Hyung I am so, so sorry! Please open your eyes so I can tell you out loud. Please..."

      Silence, cold as the December night wind blowing outside, answered him. 

      Taehyung had seen movies in which some people in comas didn't want to wake up so they wouldn't relive the difficult life they had lived before their accident. Was Jin too afraid of reality to wake up? Did he feel too lonely, too helpless? 

      "This time, I will know how to protect you hyung, you will not be alone anymore I promise you then... you can wake up without fear."

      But Jin didn't wake up, much to Taehyung's despair. He remained inert, a marble statue on which Taehyung pulled up the white sheet which then looked like a dead man's shroud.

      A shiver ran down his spine and up his aching neck when he realized how close they had come to losing their eldest forever, as Jin was currently only surviving on machines after someone who wasn't even Lee stabbed him.

     Taehyung would then have been not in a hospital room near a person still harboring a breath of life but in the morgue, talking to a dead body, emptied of all the life it had sheltered. Yet, for now, Taehyung was struggling to be genuinely relieved as his word kept going unanswered.

      "Hyung, I just want to hear your voice... you've been healed so why aren't you waking up? You really don't trust us to protect you anymore? D-do you really don't want to come back to us? "

     The silence answered his question and hurt him very much.

     "B-but I'm not ready to let you go, please stay with me..."