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Sanduni couldn’t sleep.  I had gone to bed at ten o’clock, so Sanduni had followed suit.  We had chatted in the dark for half an hour, both over the moon to have spent the evening with the beautiful Bangtan Boys.  But somehow, I had eventually drifted off to sleep.  Afterward, Sanduni had spent an hour staring at the digital clock on the nightstand.  She’d watched the electric blue numbers climbing higher, just like the sheep she’d tried counting, but nothing had worked.  

Finally, she had given up.  She’d pulled her shoes on and slipped quietly out of the room, made her way to the elevator, and ridden it to the library level.  This hotel had a library!  She was still rather astounded by that random fact.

She entered the empty room and stared at the bookcases lining the walls.  She found a book and sat down on a couch to read.  Ten minutes later, the elevator dinged and its door opened.  Out stepped a lovely gentleman with dark, sandy hair and kissable lips.  Sanduni glanced up and nearly swallowed her tongue.  It was Jimin!  And he was alone.

The doors opened to reveal stunning Sanduni sitting on a couch, her dark head bent over a book.  His eyes brushed her long tresses all the way down as they cascaded over her shoulder, coming to rest on the opened book in her lap.  Then she glanced up, and her eyes collided with his own.  Jimin stopped breathing.  She was so beautiful.

He’d teased her all night long about kissing her, but he had actually meant every word he’d said.  He couldn’t get her out of his head.  She was why he couldn’t sleep.  He’d lain down and closed his eyes.  But it was as though they were open; he could see her that clearly.  And he could hear her laughter.  And her whispers.  Then he had remembered the lingering sadness he’d caught in her gaze every so often when she thought no one was looking.  It had haunted him.  It haunted him still…

And so, he had escaped from his room and Hobi’s gentle breathing in the next bed.  He’d wandered the hotel.  On his way back to his room, he’d decided to look for a book.  That was how he had found himself here.  Now.  With the girl he loved.

Whoa.  Jiminie.  The girl you love?  

But as he stared at her, he couldn’t help but admit that that was what he was feeling.  It made no sense.  But when had love ever made sense?  

He was so caught up in this new revelation that he failed to step from the elevator.  The doors began to close.   Woken from his stupor, he instinctively stuck his hand out, and the doors opened completely once more.  He stepped out and stopped, then the doors closed again, behind him this time.  

He simply stared at Sanduni.  His eyes caressed every lovely line of her fascinating face.  Then she turned those great, dark eyes upon him, and he felt his heart melting into a puddle to slide down his body and deposit itself at his feet.  At her feet, more like.

Sanduni gazed at Jimin across the room.  She couldn’t breathe.  This place was a shelter of intimacy from a storm of expectations on the other side of these four walls.  And Jimin had just stepped into this refuge.  Alone.  With her.

There had been another reason she hadn’t been able to sleep, a darker phantom that pursued her every night.  She’d tried to push it away with thoughts of Jimin.  It had worked, for a while.  But she could not outrun the future.  Or its uncertainty.  Not even here, in Jimin’s sweet presence.  That shadow passed over her face as she stared at him.

He came striding forward, holding his hand out towards her.  “What is it, Sanduni?  What is breaking your heart?”

She lifted her sorrowful gaze to follow his figure as he closed the distance between them until he was standing before her.  Then he knelt in front of her on the floor at her feet.  He reached for her hands and chafed them between his own.  Her hands were as cold as the wind blowing through the hole in her heart.

His compassion caused a tide of tears to rush into her eyes, momentarily blinding her.  She blinked and several tears escaped their bounds to flow down her cheeks, each racing the others towards her jawline.  Jimin instinctively knew what was wrong.  He recognized someone who had suffered at the hands of a bully.  For he had once been that someone.  And he was very afraid that Sanduni had suffered far worse than he ever had and at the hands of a far more terrifying bully.

“Sanduni?” he whispered, an aching gentleness in his voice wrapping around her heart and lending her a comfort she had seldom felt before.

She looked at him.  “He isn’t who he used to be, Jimin.  And I don’t know why.  I don’t understand how he became the monster who attacked me.  I want my real dad back.”

Jimin’s heart cracked open and bled.  Profusely.  This wasn’t a problem he could fix.  But, oh, how he wanted to!  He longed to rescue her from the pain that had fractured her heart and destroyed her security.

“Sanduni,” he whispered again, his voice breaking this time.

All he could do was reach for her.  So he gave her, in this moment, the only thing he had to give: a strong shoulder for her to cry on.  Still kneeling before her, he released her hands, reached up, and slipped his arms around her waist.  She slid to the floor in front of him, landing on her knees.  Her arms encircling his neck, she buried her face against his shoulder.  And she sobbed her heart out against his gray sweatshirt.

“He broke my heart, Jimin,” she whispered into his neck right before another sob choked off her voice.

“I know, love-uh-ly.  I know.”  It was all Jimin could think to say.  He whispered it into her hair, his heart breaking along with hers.