{warning: mentions of suicide}

Jimin opened the door to his empty home, setting down his bag on the plump love seat in the corner of the living room. He looked around the vacant space before noticing a pink postage note on the grey refrigerator door. Jimin strolled to the other half of the room into the kitchen area. They lived in a small home, but it was just the way his parents liked it. His father never really took to big houses, even though they had the money for it; he felt that big houses lead to bigger messes, and Jimin agreed.

He gently picked off the note and held it in his hands, reading over the small and neat letters Jimin had recognized to be his mother's handwriting.

Dear Jiminie!

I know you're tired from school but your dad isn't feeling well, so please look after him while I'm at work!

With love and kisses,
Mom

Jimin crumpled the paper and threw it in the recycling before slowly walking up the stairs to his father's bedroom.

"Dad!" He called, walking up to about halfway up the stairs. There was no response, Jimin stood there for a moment- genuinely confused why his father hadn't replied the first time.

He always did, even when he was feeling under the weather. Jimin's dad always replied when Jimin called out to him.

Maybe he's asleep? He's a stay at home dad, he doesn't sleep during the day. Especially around the time Jimin comes home from school.

Jimin continued walking up the stairs, reaching the top and facing the long narrow hallway. And when he approached the door at the end of the corridor, Jimin felt a cold sensation ripple through his chest. The feeling you get when you adjust to a cold room, you shiver almost uncontrollably.

Jimin couldn't hear anything from outside his father's bedroom, yet he snores while he sleeps. So he couldn't have been sleeping.

Jimin swung the door open, seeing his father laying with his back against the bed. His chest was unmoving, and Jimin watched to see that it hadn't risen up the whole time he was in the room.

Jimin's hands shook slightly, his feet felt as if they were stapled to the ground. He was afraid to move, to call out his dad's name. Apart of him wishes that he hadn't even stepped in the room at all. Jimin was fully awake, standing straight in front of his father; yet he felt like he was going through some sort of sleep paralysis.

Jimin inched his body closer, noticing little coloured pills lined up on the bedside counter in groups of ten, the bottles laying empty on the ground. Most were sleeping pills his mother used to get through the night, though Jimin could see that the pills were mixed with many others.

It was almost as if the clock began to tick again. Jimin almost felt his bones shake as he put two and two together fairly quickly, rushing up to his father, screaming for him and shaking his chest. "Dad! Wake up!"

He put his trembling fingers to his father's pale neck to find any sort of life pulsing through his veins. Yet there was nothing, it was as if Jimin's father hadn't existed at all, this morning he was here and now he was just a memory to hold on to.

Jimin ran down the stairs into the living room, racing across the floor and scrambling to grab the phone in his sweaty palms only to run back up to his unconscious father, tripping over the steps multiple times.
Jimin jumped on the bed next to his father, lifting him up and hugging him to his chest as he called 9-1-1.

His voice was beaten and battered, words jumbled and chopped up in their sentences.
"Hello? It's my dad! My dad is gone please- please help me. I don't know, I came home from school and he's lying in bed but he's not breathing and there's pills everywhere. No I don't know how many he took." He pulled his father's head back and kissed his forehead as the operator spoke, whispering soft 'please be okay's in the man's ear.
"Just please send someone here. Help me- oh my god- he's dead. My dad is dead." Jimin chanted almost like a mantra of frantic words. He dropped the phone and ran his hands through his father's hair, rocking the two back and forth soothingly.

His chest shook and he let out loud sobs as tears carved canyons into his face, falling down to damp his father's hair. Leaving tear drops on a piece of paper Jimin hadn't noticed.

The man he loved was gone, the one who taught him right from wrong. Who fed him with a bottle and changed his diapers, who comforted him when he lost one of his closest friends. Who taught him things life could never teach him.

Their days spent painting in the extra room was long gone now and Jimin could almost feel the paintings begin to drown in dust from the months that will pass before he could even step foot in there again.

The life that filled their home was gone. The love that filled Jimin's heart was gone. The light in the darkest parts of Jimin's life was gone

And as he felt arms pull him away from his father, tears streaming down him face, kicking and screaming just to hold his father one last time. As he heard his mother's cries of agony echo throughout the room- he realized;

That his life-from now on- was never going to be the same.