"Almost there," Mingyu said, a grin on his face, and Jimin smiled out the car window, watching the landscape fly past. Mingyu fiddled with the radio until a song they both vaguely knew came on, and then he and Jimin took turns singing the few words the knew and just bobbing their heads along with the rest.

Finally, Mingyu decelerated and pulled over, and Jimin stepped out of the car and onto the beach.

"This is going to be awesome!" Mingyu cheered as he locked the car and hurried around the front to Jimin's side. "I've been waiting all spring for it to get warm enough."

"Thanks for the ride," Jimin said, smiling at his tall friend.

Mingyu just parted his lips in a wide, genuine smile. "Hey, no problem, bro. I get it, my brothers were always too busy to take me places too." At the mention of the Choi clan, Mingyu paused before waving at the small figures in the distance. "C'mon Jimin, it looks like they're already out there!"

Jimin and Mingyu ran across the sand, their shoes in their hands, and they finally made it to the others.

"What took you guys so long?" Jeonghan complained, his long hair tied back in a ponytail due to the heat. "We're burning up out here."

"Yeah," Yoongi agreed, crossing his arms. "We already buried Tae in sand, and he asked us to write his epitaph, but we couldn't find any stones large enough." He paused. "Actually, I don't remember us digging Tae out..."

"Traffic," Mingyu said carelessly, shrugging, and because all of his brothers held a soft spot for their sweet brother, they let it fly. Mingyu winked at Jimin, giving him a thumbs up.

"All right," Jin said. "Let's get this thing going. Jimin, get over here, on our side."

"Okay, hyung!" Jimin said, hurrying over to the Kim family side while Mingyu went to join his brothers.

"Aren't you going to get hot, Jimin?" Jungkook asked. Everyone else who had already been at the beach before he and Mingyu showed up was shirtless, their shirts thrown off to the side in the sand.

"No, I won't get h-hot," Jimin said, tensing slightly. His stutter had almost vanished over the past year, but it flared up every now and then when someone hit one of his triggers.

Hobi put a reassuring hand on his back. "It's okay, just drink lots of water, yeah?"

Jimin looked up at Hobi, smiling, and Yoongi looked around, a hand over his eyes.

"Where is he?" Yoongi mumbled. "Guys, did anyone remember where we buried Tae?"

Everyone groaned, and Jungkook rolled his eyes before jogging off to find their sixth member. Meanwhile, Yoongi held up two fingers to his mouth and whistled, and it wasn't half a minute later before a dog came bounding over across the sand.

"Good boy," Yoongi said before pointing to a spot off to the side by their discarded shirts. "Sit. Stay."

The dog sat, his tail wagging back and forth, mouth open and tongue hanging out as he stared adoringly at Yoongi. The dog had been trained as a service dog for patients with epilepsy, but even his obedience training didn't explain his attachment to Yoongi. The dog loved him. Probably because as grumpy as Yoongi usually seemed, he was actually very caring, and he always looked out for his dog.

"Good boy, MW," Yoongi said, patting his head before jogging back over to the others.

"Just MW?" Hobi asked, grinning, and Yoongi grimaced.

"It's embarrassing calling him Microwave in public."

"But it's our pet concept!" Jimin insisted. "Toaster, Microwave, and if we get a goldfish, I want to name it Blender. Or maybe Oven."

"...Yeah, no."

Just then, Tae returned with an extremely sandy Tae who didn't look at all pissed off that they'd abandoned him stuck in a tomb of sand.

"Hey guys, long time no sea," Tae said, and there was a long moment before Jin started windshield laughing. They all groaned but chuckled a bit. It was sort of odd; it had used to be Jin making the jokes, but now they went out of their way to make him laugh, mainly because they wanted him to feel completely included. They knew he still felt guilty, and they didn't want him to.

"You wimps ready for this?" Joshua shouted from the other side, Wonwoo melting under the sun next to him, sweat already dripping. Dino smiled, hopping up and down lightly to warm up as Woozi looked back toward the car with a look of regret at having stepped out in the first place.

Mingyu grinned at Jimin, waving. He'd kept his shirt on too. Jimin suspected it was to make him feel less bad. Jimin grinned back.

"Always ready!" Jin shouted back, some of his previous sports-team energy shining through.

"All right!" Joshua turned to his brothers, and they all yelled together, "SAY THE NAME! SEVENTEEN!"

"But- but there's only six-" Jungkook began, but Yoongi shushed him.

"You failed math, I don't want you worrying about it," Yoongi said before looking at Jin, who was scratching his head.

Jin turned to his brothers. "Guys, what was the call we made up? Anyone remember?"

They huddled for a moment before turning back to the Choi family.

"COME AND GET IT! BTS!"

"What's BTS stand for again?" Jungkook whispered to Tae.

"Beautiful Teenage Studs?" Tae asked aloud. "Or was it...Better Than Seventeen? I think it was one of those."

And so the fated six-on-six Choi family vs. Kim family volleyball game began.

***

The summer had come quickly after the night that had changed everything. Their step-father had been subdued by Lisa and taken in for questioning. Soon after, he was charged with domestic violence along with several lesser charges. He was found guilty on all of them, and he was currently being held in a prison not far from them.

As for their mother...

***

"That's right, where is Mom?" Yoongi asked once they'd quieted down.

Namjoon shifted uncomfortably, sending a distressed glance to Lisa, but her sad eyes were of little help to him. "Your mom is..." Namjoon sighed. "I'm sorry, Yoongi."

"Why are you sorry?" Yoongi asked, frowning. "She's fine, right? Tae said he thought she'd cracked her rib. Doctors can fix that pretty easily, right? So why are you sorry, Dad?"

"She's gone."

Yoongi blinked, feeling his heart slow for a second before Namjoon hurried on.

"Not...not gone gone, not...you know...dead, just...gone. Not here."

"What do you mean she's not here? They took her in an ambulance-"

"She left the hospital, Yoongi," Namjoon said softly, and although he was talking to Yoongi, everyone was listening in.

"What?" Yoongi was stunned. "No. No, she wouldn't do that, she wouldn't leave us-"

Namjoon's silence angered Yoongi.

"She wouldn't do that to us! She wouldn't leave us again! She promised! She wouldn't- Mom wouldn't do that!"

Lisa crept towards the door, but a hand on her jacket sleeve stopped her.

"Where are you going?" Hobi whispered.

"I just thought that you guys might want some alone time with your dad. You know, as a family," Lisa said softly, not wanting to disturb Yoongi, but Hobi shook his head.

"Stay," he said. "Please. You are family, Lisa. And you saved Jimin's life. He's going to want to thank you when he wakes up."

Lisa bit her lip before nodding and sitting back down, her eyes wet.

Is this what she felt?Lisa wondered about their mom. When they started to accept her as their mother, as their family? Is this the joy she felt? Because I can start to understand why she did what she did if that's the case.

Yoongi, meanwhile, was still yelling at Namjoon. "She wouldn't leave us behind! She said she was here to stay, here to be our mom again! She can't leave! She wouldn't leave us! I don't believe you!" he said, but the mere fact that he was yelling was proof that he did indeed believe Namjoon, even just a little bit.

"I'm sorry, Yoongi, I know it's hard news, but...it's not that your Mom doesn't love you, she just...she probably blames herself for letting things get this bad. You know your mom just wants you all to be safe and happy. I think she thought that if she stayed, she would jeopardize that."

"That's bullshit!" Yoongi yelled back. "If she wants me to be happy, then why did she leave again?"

Even Jungkook looked upset, shifting his away down to his right so he didn't have to look at anyone.

Namjoon wondered sadly how Jimin would take the news when he woke up.

Of everyone, Jin seemed the least affected, simply because he hadn't experienced any of the horror that the other kids had lived through. Even Yoongi and Hobi had had to deal with their step-father on a fairly regular basis, whereas Jin had been largely uninvolved.

Yoongi eventually just bit his lip, trying to hold the pain in. He'd find their mom, one way or another. He'd find her, and he'd bring her back, and-

***

-and six months later, there'd still been no news of her. She'd switched cell phones, changed bank accounts, maybe even names as well. As far as the world was concerned, their mother had never existed.

But she had, and her kids knew it.

They knew that she still existed, too, because each month without fail, a check would come in the mail with a short postcard.

Namjoon would handle the check, but the kids kept all the letters in a shared box that they opened every now and then. In addition, on their respective birthdays, a different sort of card would come in the mail, a special card that each child hid in a secret place.

Each birthday card held a memory from when they were little, memories they'd never heard about from a mom who hadn't been around. Slowly but surely, memories were being returned and reunited, and even though it pained them all that a member of their family was living an invisible, foreign existence, those cards grew to be their most prized possessions.