2:16 A.M. | BTS ✓

20

As soon as the woman's house comes into view, Jimin slams on his brakes, parking his car and getting out without even getting the key from the ignition. He takes off running, the necklace gripped tightly in his trembling fingers, his blood smearing over the beauty that shines even in the darkness of the night.

His heart pounds, chest heaving as he runs to the front of the house, not caring who sees him. He just wants to return the necklace. He needs it all to stop.

His running slows to a halt when he sees the yellow crime scene tape across the front door.

"Who are you?" a voice comes from Jimin's side, and his confused stare shifts from the door to the woman's neighbor walking down her front steps.

Jimin hesitates, his mind far too lost to be able to create a good lie.

Jimin is not a careless person. He always thinks things through and has an excuse for everything.

But now, he can barely think at all, much less think of a way to keep himself from being caught.

"I'm her friend," he stammers out, his finger pointing to her house.

"Oh," the woman says, nodding. "I'm so sorry for your loss."

"What...?" he asks through a breath. "What happened?"

She shrugs. "I noticed her mail had been piling up so I called the police to do a wellness check. They found her in her bed, rotting away like she'd been there a while."

"How long?" he asks, his eyes turning to look at the necklace still clasped in his hand.

"About two weeks, I think," she says, pursing her lips. "It's nothing official, but I heard they think she was murdered."

About two weeks.

"Do they know the time of death?" he asks, his fingers tightening themselves over the blood-smeared necklace.

The woman frowns. "You didn't hear this from me because I'm not supposed to know any of this. Ongoing investigation and all that, but they can't even tell because she was so decomposed."

The woman pauses, her eyes gliding up and down his form, seeing his bloodied fingers tightened around the necklace.

"You said you're her friend?" she asks.

He doesn't know why he asked that question. He knows the answer because he saw that time on his clock again and again as his life fell into a living hell.

She died at 2:16 A.M. the night he stole the necklace.

She was dead when he tiptoed through her house, worried the rain would wake her.

Someone else was in her house that night. Were they hiding just out of Jimin's view, watching as he stole that necklace?

Just as she would watch him from the shadows?

Does she blame him? Is that why she chose to do this to him?

Maybe he could've saved her. Maybe if he'd shown up twenty minutes earlier, he would've stopped a murderer and never even had the chance to take the necklace. But because he was so preoccupied with such a material thing, an innocent life was lost and a killer is going to get away with it.

She blames him because he was careless.

Because he took the one thing that everyone connected with her: the necklace. If she has any friends, any family, they will be telling the police that whoever has that necklace is guilty because she always wore it.

Jimin only saw it as a piece of jewelry he could use to better himself, but he never realized the impact of what something so small could do.

Now, because of his carelessness, he looks guilty. And she made sure he paid for his mistake.

This is his fault.

He mumbles his thanks to the woman, and she watches with her eyebrows furrowed as Jimin walks up to the front steps of the house. He does his best to wipe his blood from the piece of jewelry he once thought would change his life for the better.

But it's been the opposite.

He places the necklace down gently, knowing his fate.

It all points back to him because he's just been caught with her necklace, his blood smeared on it.

He knows people saw him running toward Yoongi's apartment. It won't take long until everyone connects the pieces together until a picture is painted.

One that paints Jimin as a murderer.

As Jimin sits down on the front steps of the murdered woman's house, he stares up at the sky.

The neighbor is long gone, and Jimin has no doubts that she's calling the police. He could see the suspicion all over her expression.

Jimin turns to stare at the house over his shoulder, darkened and empty as it seemingly stares back at him.

And he swears he can see a pair of white eyes glaring at him through the window.