*check bottom of post for translation credits* The truck. We've seen it as far back as HYYH era -- Seokjin driving all the boys to the beach while they hang out in the bed of the truck. We've seen it through Love Yourself era -- Seokjin and the girl. We've even seen a similar truck in unrelated videos, like the decomposing truck from MIC Drop. This truck's been through a lot. But did you know it's been through...an accident? I'm sure you all remember this clip from Euphoria MV? On the night of May 22nd, Year 22, Taehyung and Seokjin got into a fistfight at the beach. All the boys went home that night separately (Hoseok mentions in a separate Note that Seokjin left first), and on his way back Jungkook was hit by a car and taken to the hospital. I have long thought that the one that hit Jungkook was Seokjin, also returning from the beach. "But," you cry in outrage, "how could he!? He didn't even know Jungkook was hit!" In the immortal words of Hobi, "calm down, calm down, my daughter." I'm going to get to that. But first, context. Evidence from music videos: 1) Euphoria MV 2) I NEED U (Original Ver.) MV Now, the analysis. Hold on to your seats. There is a Note (HYYH The Notes 1) from the night that Jungkook was hit (May 22nd, Year 22), and it's from his point of view. It goes into a (mildly) detailed description of directly after the crash, and includes a tidbit about the Odd-Eyed Cat. (See also: Cats in Lore - BU / +U Theories) The important part (for this at least): Something shimmery caught my eye [...]. At first, I thought it was a light, but it wasn't. It was bright and big and blurry, and it hung in the air motionless. I kept staring at it for a while, and it began to take shape. It was the moon. After that, he can't really remember very much until he wakes up from a coma on June 1st, Year 22. Ten days have passed since the accident. The boys don't find out until June 13th. There's a Note (MOTS:7) from the day the boys visit, entailing Jungkook's dreams and the moments after. Read here: [...] I dreamt about the night of the accident. The headlight became a moon. Suddenly it changed to green and blue marble-like light. [...] Then I woke up [screaming]. The bed sheet was soaked with sweat [and] my breathing was fast and felt nauseous. That moment. I remembered what I had forgotten. Someone’s voice. ‘Living will be worse than death.’ [...] I turned around and asked the doctor. ‘Who was the person that hit me?’ Obviously, Jungkook can't remember the driver of the vehicle. We don't get to know the doctor's response, of course -- that would be too easy. Instead, we have to piece the answer together ourselves. I'm guessing he answered that he didn't know, but we can still make some educated guesses to the actual culprit of the hit-and-run. (And, it was a hit-and-run.) First of all, the headlight turning into a moon turning into green and blue lights is very Odd-Eyed Cat-like behavior. I believe that the voice speaking to him is mostly likely the OEC as well. (See also: Cats in Lore - BU / +U Theories) But him asking the doctor who hit him is incredibly intriguing to me. Perhaps he has partial amnesia, where he only forgot certain details about the crash? Or perhaps it's just the trauma of the accident. Either way, he can't seem to remember, and it's obviously tugging at him. (Euphoria MV) In Jungkook's Note from June 13th, Year 22 (HYYH The Notes 1), the day that the boys came to visit him, he mentions the dreams he'd been having. As soon as I came to myself at the hospital, I thought of them. If I would've been able to think straight, I would've called them first. But my mind was blank, and I was in pain. The sedative they gave me was so strong that reality, dreams, memories, and illusions all seemed to be knotted up in my head and were impossible to disentangle. The unbearable pain finally subsided, but the strange images that flashed before my eyes while suffering from fever and insomnia kept coming back. I wasn't sure whether those scenes had actually happened or [if] they were just twisted nightmares triggered by severe pain. I couldn't trust my memory. He has been reliving the accident over and over in his dreams, and he's starting to find it hard to separate fiction and reality. Perhaps that is because he keeps seeing something he can't believe -- that he doesn't want to believe. Perhaps he does truly remember who was behind the wheel that night. (Blood Sweat and Tears (Japanese Ver.) MV) Here, we cut forward almost a whole month to July 16th, Year 22. (HYYH The Notes 1) Hoseok has sprained his ankle and been at the hospital for a few days to get it to recover. He and Jungkook end up talking and Hoseok flips through Jungkook's sketchbook. He sees Jungkook's sketch of the night of the accident, but neither of them mention it, until Hoseok turns to leave. Before he can, Jungkook asks him a question. "Hey, that night..." Jungkook started to say as we got off of the elevator and headed for the front door of the hospital. His gaze was focused on something outside. He didn't seem to actually be looking at anything. He was just blinking his eyes as if he was trying to recover an old memory. "Does Seokjin talk about that night? I mean, has he said that he saw me or...?" Jungkook stopped talking. "Seokjin? Saw you? Where?" [Hoseok] asked, but he didn't open his mouth again. It definitely sounds as though Jungkook has pieced together some information about the night of the accident. Unfortunately, I think he wants to think that it wasn't real -- that it was part of the fiction and illusions from the hospital's drugs -- and so he refuses to ask anyone -- we can see how just asking Hoseok that question took a lot of courage for him to do. In a Note from Jungkook on July 26th, Year 22 (MOTS:P), he notes that he was released from the hospital that day. The boys all go to Namjoon's container for a party, but things don't end up going as planned and Seokjin, annoyed with the others, leaves early. Jungkook watches him get into his car and leave, pointing out some details he notices. From behind all the hyungs, I watched Seokjin get in his car. The car reversed easily, and then sped off. The light from inside the container skimmed over its frame. The marks of an accident on the bumper were briefly visible before they were covered by darkness. What was strange was that seeing [it] felt like nothing, even if it were a confirmation of what I already knew. It seemed that in front of a hard truth I might feel something complicated or at least be shocked, but in reality it wasn't like that. The sight of Seokjin's car disappearing into the darkness was overlaid by the image of the headlights that had come toward me that night. The feeling of my body floating, the moment of being unable to swallow or breathe, the seizure of terror that had shaken my whole body, the unbearable chill I had felt as my consciousness scattered. The shadow of death. The marks of the accident on that car's bumper. [...] Suddenly, I felt an ache in the leg I had hurt in the accident. The hyungs didn't even think about coming inside. They were talking about something I didn't know. It certainly sounds as if Jungkook is suspecting Seokjin. Even if he's not one-hundred-percent sure of himself, he definitely feels like it's true. And the fact that there are marks of an accident on Seokjin's bumper could be one of only two accidents -- The one from the webtoon and a past loop, where Jungkook, Seokjin, Namjoon, and Taehyung all were injured on their way to finding Yoongi, or, more likely... This one. In a Note from July 26th, Year 22 (LY:A), two days after Jungkook's discharge from the hospital, he recalls the accident yet again, recounting it for us, the readers. I remembered that night. The day the big moon floated in the night sky, a flipped world, headlights coming to me from a reverse view. The shape of the car that passed me, the tail light, the familiar engine sound. I didn't want to make any assumptions. But still, that moment kept coming to mind. "A familiar engine sound." Sort of like...the engine of a truck? Maybe...a black truck? Perhaps...Seokjin's black truck? Which he has ridden in multiple times to and from multiple different places? And would definitely remember what the engine sounded like? (I NEED U (Original Ver.) MV) Jungkook actually has two Notes from this day, so this is, once again, going back to July 26th, Year 22. In this Note, he goes back to the site of the accident, similar to how Jimin decides to return to the Arboretum. I hadn't planned [to get on that bus], but maybe I already knew in my heart that I had to go back to that place. I had to know the meaning of what [had] happened there. I looked out the window at the passing summer weather and thought to myself, could I trust the hyungs? [...] I walked slowly towards the site of the accident, [thinking] about that night. The huge moon hanging in the sky, the world upside-down, the headlights that came towards me in my reversed vision, the shape of the car that passed me and disappeared, the lights of the tail lamps...an engine sound that seemed somehow familiar. I laid on the asphalt just like I had that night. I tilted my head and looked up at the sky. It was getting dark, but I couldn't see the moon. It was a quiet street, but if a car were to come, they might not see me and I could have another accident. As I thought that, I asked myself once again: if I [can't] trust the hyungs, who [can] I trust? During the first half of the Note, Jungkook states once again about the familiarity of the car from the accident. He talks about the engine, the shape of the car, the tail lights -- all of which he has mentioned previously. Obviously, he thinks he knows who it is. You can also understand that by the way he keeps mentioning "trust" in the second half. If I can't trust the hyungs, then who? Can I trust them or not? The accident has messed up his entire life, and he is once again losing his only family. He just wants to sort out his feelings and the truth so that they can go back to normal. I feel bad about that because I think that, after all of this, they will never be normal again. Finally, Jungkook's Note (MOTS:7) from August 3rd, Year 22 is also quite intriguing. In it, he is playing an online computer game, an FPS like PUBG or Fortnite. He's going along, enjoying the game with some friends, until he realizes that not everything appears to be...normal. When he looks at the map to decide which direction to go next, he realizes it looks a lot like Songju's container town near the train tracks where Namjoon lives. When he's shooting the enemies, he realizes they vaguely resemble his hyungs. When he goes to get inside of one of the containers, a man steps out. He shoots him right away and immediately finds himself wondering if it was Namjoon. When he's shot in the shoulder, he whirls around to see who it was, and it was Seokjin. It feels like, once again, his brain is messing with him. Now, I don't know if he was truly playing an online game and his memories were simply twisting the characters or if the whole experience was a dream. That, as of now, is left up to debate. My final piece of evidence is Seokjin's Note (HYYH The Notes 1) from the 15th of August, Year 22. In it, he says: I went to see Jungkook at the hospital but stayed there for only about ten minutes. I rarely even talked to Jungkook when I was there. For some reason, Jungkook was tense and kept his guard up against me. You may not be sure how to interpret this note. There are probably a few ways that you could read into it, some deeper than others. I think there's a lot of psychology that plays into Jungkook's plotline as well as Seokjin's -- between the time-traveling and the accidents/deaths, the two of them definitely have some issues. But the way I see it is this: Jungkook may not fully understand what has happened to him yet. He may not be able to sort out his thoughts, or even might still be confused about what actually happened and what didn't. But he quite obviously knows Seokjin is somehow related to it all. He's trusting his gut instinct, which is telling him something is up. Can I really trust the hyungs? he asks himself. The question is, can he? Most people like to refute this theory with the Note (HYYH The Notes 1) from the 13th of June, Year 22 by Seokjin. In it, Hoseok calls him to let him know Jungkook was in a car accident. It's seemingly the only way Seokjin finds out about Jungkook's accident. I would like to direct everyone's attention to Seokjin's Notes from August 3rd, Year 22. (MOTS:7 and LY:A): Memories. What Taehyung called memories were stories that did not mean anything to me. That I had done such things -- that there had been such things that happened to me, that we had done such things together -- such stories. It could be that those things were true. It felt like they were. But remembering is not the same as understanding or accepting. Experiences are not things you can simply hear and figure out. They are things that have to be rooted in your head, heart, and spirit. - Love Yourself : Answer Moments overlapped with moments, and when videos compiled with videos it felt like something that I didn’t know was freed from inside me. [...] As something that had been blocked in my head crumbled, memories poured out like a firework explosion. [...] ...memories swirled all around. Looking at them I felt like I couldn’t believe it. How could I forget all these moments? - MAP OF THE SOUL : 7 Doesn't it sound as though Seokjin lost his memory? In Seokjin's Note (MOTS:7) from April 11th, Year 22, he mentions a voice talking to him and saying that a "hint [the hint being The Map of the Soul] comes with a cost." Perhaps his memories are the cost? I also see a lot of people asking how could he have lost his memories. There's a mechanic in a piece of media I saw recently that explains this quite well, but for the life of me, I cannot remember what it is. If anyone knows, please, leave a comment down below. The point is that the more Seokjin goes back in time, the more his brain becomes frazzled and jumbled with the amount of time loops. It's natural to believe he'd forget some things...right? "But not something as big as that!" you cry. Well, trauma from the accident could play into that as well. We know time didn't reset after the accident, which means that the person in control of the time loop knew he wasn't going to die. Still, it would've made more sense for them to stop the loop there, would it not? And if you're still not convinced, it turns out that BTS Universe Story's game trailer is here to explain it all. It shows us the night of May 22nd, the night of Jungkook's accident. The security camera footage in the video shows us a black truck coming to a screeching halt in the middle of an empty road. A moment later, the truck drives away with no hesitation. To sum up everything, because of the reasons above and the evidence given, I do believe that Seokjin is the one that hit Jungkook. I do not in any way believe it was intended, of course -- I'm almost positive Seokjin didn't leave the beach and go "oh, let's run over the maknae." No. But whether or not it was intentional, the fact remains that he might have done it. And this could have drastic implications on the BU timeline. Thanks for reading! - Ilona O'Connor <3 (Translations: @BOMHARU1230 on Twitter (MOTS:7, LY:H, LY:T) @papercrowns / @origamifirefly on Twitter (MOTS:P) @btscookybunny on Amino (LY:A) All credit to these amazing translators! I couldn't have compiled all this information if it wasn't for them sharing their translations with all of us here on the Internet. A huge thank you to them!) UPDATE OCT 2020: I have backed off my stance on this slightly because I recently thought of something: We do not specifically know that Seokjin was in the truck. There are many other clues that point to Seokjin, yes, but I'm wondering if it might have actually been his father, Kim Changjoon. It would not be the first time Changjoon tried to take out one of Seokjin's friends, specifically Jungkook, actually. In BTS Universe Story, in Jungkook's chapter ("The Boy on the Threshold"), Changjoon tells his...assistant? butler? to "take care of the Jeil High student." Not long after that, Jungkook "changes schools." Seokjin later finds out that Jungkook is now at a boarding school. (His mother doesn't care since she's rarely ever present.) Just saying, it is possible. :(
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