Chapter Text
Seoul, 2026.
The rain had been falling over the city for hours without interruption, transforming Seoul into a drowned kingdom of blurred lights and silver reflections. From the sixty-third floor of the apartment tower, the streets below looked less like roads and more like veins illuminated beneath black skin, pulsing endlessly with the sleepless movement of humanity. Cars crawled through the storm in long ribbons of white and red. Neon signs bled against wet glass. Somewhere far beneath the clouds, a siren cried into the night and disappeared just as quickly.
Inside the penthouse, however, the world felt embalmed.
The air carried the faint perfume of old paper, dust, expensive liquor, and something darker lingering beneath it all — metallic and sweet enough to unsettle the senses if inhaled for too long. The furniture was antique despite the modern architecture surrounding it: carved mahogany shelves swollen with books in dead languages, velvet armchairs faded by time, oil paintings so old their subjects had begun dissolving into shadow. There were no family photographs. No evidence that warmth had ever lived there. Only history. Endless, suffocating history.
Kim Taehyung sat near the fireplace with a stiffness he could no longer hide, one hand wrapped tightly around the recorder resting in his lap. He had prepared himself for arrogance, for madness perhaps, even for disappointment after months spent chasing rumors whispered through obscure online forums and forgotten newspaper archives. What he had not prepared for was this unbearable sense that the apartment itself was watching him breathe.
Or perhaps not the apartment.
The man seated across from him.
Jeon Jungkook rested elegantly against the dark leather sofa, one ankle crossed over the opposite knee, a crystal glass turning slowly between pale fingers that looked sculpted rather than born. He appeared young at first glance — devastatingly so — but prolonged observation created a strange distortion in the mind. His face possessed the terrible stillness found only in marble saints and corpses preserved too perfectly by winter. Black silk clung loosely to his throat and wrists, exposing skin untouched by age, untouched by sunlight, untouched perhaps by life itself.
Beautiful, Taehyung thought instinctively.
Then immediately afterward:
Wrong.
Everything about him felt wrong.
Not because he resembled a monster, but because he didn’t. Because his mouth looked made for prayer instead of violence. Because his eyes — dark and enormous beneath the dim amber light — carried the kind of sorrow no human being should survive for long.
For several moments neither of them spoke. Only the rain moved. Only the old jazz record turning somewhere in the apartment, its melody warped softly by age.
Then Jungkook broke the silence without lifting his gaze from the storm outside.
“You’re frightened already,” he said quietly.
It was not phrased as a question.
Taehyung forced a dry laugh from his throat, though it sounded embarrassingly thin in the cavernous room. “Shouldn’t I be?”
A pause followed. Long enough for the fire to crack softly between them.
Then Jungkook smiled.
Not kindly.
Not cruelly.
Almost mournfully.
“Yes,” he murmured. “I think you should.”
The honesty of it chilled him far more than a threat would have.
Taehyung adjusted his posture, trying desperately to ignore the violent rhythm of his heartbeat. He had interviewed murderers before. Politicians. Cult leaders. Men who enjoyed describing cruelty because they mistook brutality for power. Yet sitting here felt entirely different. Those men had all wanted something from him: fear, admiration, understanding.
Jungkook wanted nothing.
And somehow that was infinitely worse.
“You said over the phone,” Taehyung began carefully, “that you wanted your story recorded exactly as it happened.”
“Yes.”
“Why now?”
At that, Jungkook finally looked at him fully.
The city lights reflected dimly inside his eyes like candles burning at the bottom of deep water. Ancient eyes, Taehyung realized suddenly. Not metaphorically ancient. Truly ancient. Eyes that had watched centuries rot away one winter after another.
“Because memory decays,” Jungkook said softly. “Even for creatures like me.”
The word me lingered strangely in the air.
Taehyung hesitated before asking the question that had consumed him since arriving.
“What are you exactly?”
Jungkook’s expression darkened with something almost resembling amusement. He lifted the crystal glass to his mouth, and though the room remained dim, Taehyung could still see the unmistakable color of the liquid inside: dark red, thick when it touched the glass.
“I dislike the word vampire,” Jungkook admitted after swallowing slowly. “It sounds theatrical. Like something invented to entertain lonely people.”
“But it’s true?”
A faint smile.
“Yes.”
Taehyung’s fingers tightened around the recorder. “And the things written about you? About the murders?”
Jungkook looked back toward the rain.
For the first time since entering the apartment, his face seemed unbearably tired.
“Yes,” he answered quietly. “Those are true as well.”
Thunder rolled somewhere over the city, low and heavy enough to vibrate faintly beneath the floorboards.
Taehyung swallowed against the dryness in his throat. Every instinct urged him to leave, to invent some excuse and disappear back into the reassuring ugliness of ordinary life. Yet another instinct — darker, far more human — rooted him in place. Curiosity. The same hunger responsible for every tragedy since the beginning of history.
He clicked the recorder closer between them.
“When did it start?” he whispered.
The question seemed to reach somewhere deep inside Jungkook, somewhere old enough to ache.
For a long moment he said nothing at all.
Then, very softly, almost to himself:
“It began the night Park Jimin looked at me as though I were something worth destroying.”
— Busan, 1870 —
The first time Park Jimin entered Jeon Jungkook’s brothel, the entire room changed temperature.
Jungkook would remember that before anything else.
Not the beauty.
Not the voice.
Not even the eyes.
The cold.
The house had been loud that night — suffocatingly alive beneath velvet curtains and golden candlelight. Music drifted lazily through the corridors from an out-of-tune piano downstairs while drunken aristocrats laughed too loudly into crystal glasses stained with lipstick and bourbon. Smoke curled toward the ceiling in pale ribbons. Perfume clung heavily to the air: rosewater, sweat, tobacco, cheap powder. Bodies moved everywhere. Silk dragging across wooden floors. Jewelry glimmering beneath gas lamps. Men touching things they mistook for love.
And at the center of it all stood Jungkook, exhausted beyond language.
At twenty-three, he owned half the district and none of himself. The brothel had belonged to his father before debt and death poisoned the family name beyond repair. What remained had fallen into Jungkook’s hands like a curse wearing expensive clothing. He managed the girls, the money, the clients, the violence. He smiled when required. He drank too much. Slept too little. And every morning he woke feeling as though something inside him had already begun rotting.
That night, rain battered the windows hard enough to resemble applause.
Jungkook stood near the balcony overlooking the main salon, one hand lazily curled around a glass of bourbon while below him wealthy men devoured beauty like starving animals. One of the girls laughed too brightly at a merchant’s joke. Another disappeared upstairs with a politician old enough to be her grandfather. Somewhere nearby, someone was crying quietly behind a locked door.
Jungkook ignored it all.
He had become very good at ignoring things.
Then the front doors opened.
Not dramatically.
Not violently.
And yet every conversation in the room faltered almost instantly.
A strange hush spread slowly through the brothel, subtle enough that no one consciously noticed it happening. Jungkook only realized because he suddenly heard the rain again.
He looked down toward the entrance.
And saw him.
The man stood framed beneath the doorway as stormwater dripped from the edges of his black coat onto polished wood floors. Tall. Slender. Beautiful in the sort of way that felt deeply unfair to ordinary people. Candlelight slid across pale skin and soft silver jewelry decorating elegant fingers. His long blonde hair curled slightly from the rain, framing a face so delicate it bordered on cruel.
Every eye in the room found him instinctively.
Some men stared with desire.
Others with immediate unease.
The stranger smiled at neither.
Instead, slowly, deliberately, he lifted his gaze upward toward the balcony.
Toward Jungkook.
Their eyes met.
And something inside Jungkook’s chest turned violently cold.
It happened so suddenly he nearly dropped his glass.
The stranger did not look away.
Neither did Jungkook.
For one impossible moment the noise of the brothel seemed to disappear entirely. The music below became distant and warped. The candlelight dimmed. Even the storm outside felt quieter somehow. There was only the unbearable sensation of being seen completely by someone he had never met before.
Not admired.
Not desired.
Seen.
The stranger smiled first.
Small. Soft. Intimate enough to feel inappropriate.
Then he began walking.
Through the salon.
Through the smoke and music and bodies.
People moved aside for him unconsciously. Girls paused mid-conversation to stare after him with faint confusion. One drunken man attempted to stop him near the staircase only to freeze beneath a single glance before stumbling backward without understanding why.
Jungkook’s pulse had begun hammering strangely inside his throat.
By the time the stranger reached the top of the stairs, the bourbon no longer tasted like anything at all.
“You’re staring,” Jungkook said finally, voice rougher than intended.
The man stopped before him.
Up close, he looked even less real.
His skin carried no warmth despite the humidity lingering inside the brothel. His mouth — soft, pink, devastatingly shaped — contrasted horribly against eyes dark enough to resemble bruises beneath candlelight. There was something ancient hidden there. Something starving.
And yet his voice, when he spoke, sounded unbearably gentle.
“You looked lonely.”
Jungkook let out a short laugh despite himself. “In a brothel?”
“Yes,” the stranger answered simply. “Especially here.”
Something about the honesty of it unsettled him instantly.
Jungkook studied him carefully now, suspicion prickling beneath his skin. Men like this did not appear in places like these without reason. Aristocrats came searching for pleasure. Priests came searching for shame. Criminals came searching for bodies to ruin.
But this man looked as though he had arrived searching for something far more dangerous.
“And what exactly are you doing in my establishment?” Jungkook asked.
A pause.
Then the stranger tilted his head slightly, studying Jungkook with open fascination.
“You own this place?”
“I do.”
“That’s unfortunate.”
Jungkook frowned. “Unfortunate for who?”
The stranger stepped closer then. Slowly enough to allow retreat.
Jungkook did not move.
“I think,” the man said softly, “you possess the kindest face I’ve seen in decades.”
The words should have sounded flirtatious. Instead they landed somewhere deep inside Jungkook like grief.
Because no one had called him kind in a very long time.
The stranger’s gaze drifted briefly toward Jungkook’s mouth before returning to his eyes again. Hunger flashed there so quickly Jungkook nearly imagined it.
Nearly.
“What’s your name?” Jungkook asked quietly.
The man smiled.
Beautiful. Catastrophic.
“Jimin.”
Another pause settled between them.
Then, with rain shattering itself endlessly against the windows behind him, Jimin said the words that would haunt Jungkook for the rest of his immortal life:
“And yours?”
Jungkook should have lied.
He would later wish desperately that he had.
Instead he answered softly, almost without breath:
“Jungkook.”
Jimin repeated the name under his breath like prayer.
And smiled as though he had finally found something he intended to keep forever.
Jimin remained beside him at the balcony for some time without speaking again, and strangely, it was that silence Jungkook remembered most vividly afterward. Not uncomfortable silence, nor awkwardness, but the peculiar stillness that settles over the world moments before snowfall, when everything seems suspended beneath invisible expectation.
Below them, the brothel continued breathing through the night as it always had. Laughter rose and dissolved into cigarette smoke. Piano keys stumbled through a melancholy melody in the corner salon. Men drank too much bourbon and mistook desire for affection beneath soft amber light. Girls adorned in lace drifted elegantly between tables carrying trays of crystal glasses, their smiles polished carefully into place like jewels meant for display rather than feeling.
Life continued.
And yet Jungkook could no longer experience it from inside himself.
Not fully.
Not while standing beside that man.
Rainwater slid slowly from the ends of Jimin’s pale blond hair onto the shoulders of his black velvet coat. Up close, the candlelight softened him strangely. His beauty no longer felt sharp or theatrical but almost delicate, touched with something melancholy beneath the elegance. He leaned lightly against the balcony railing as though he belonged there already, one gloved hand resting beneath his chin while he watched the salon below with idle fascination.
Jungkook found himself staring again despite every effort not to.
There existed beautiful men in Busan, certainly. Wealthy merchants with symmetrical faces. Aristocrats raised beneath silk and privilege. Young actors painted carefully for the stage. But Jimin possessed the sort of beauty that inspired discomfort before admiration. It did not invite attention; it commanded surrender.
And worse still — he seemed entirely unaware of it.
“You own this place,” Jimin said softly after a while, his gaze still drifting across the crowded room beneath them.
It was not quite a question.
Jungkook nodded once, taking another slow sip of bourbon. “It belonged to my father.”
“And now it belongs to you.”
“Yes.”
Jimin hummed thoughtfully at that, though his expression remained distant.
The rain intensified briefly against the windows. Somewhere downstairs, one of the girls burst into loud laughter before quickly muffling herself again.
Jimin smiled faintly. “They adore you.”
Jungkook almost laughed. “They tolerate me.”
“No.” Jimin turned toward him then, calm and certain. “They feel safe near you. There’s a difference.”
The observation startled him more than it should have.
Jungkook looked away toward the storm-dark glass. Very few people spoke to him directly anymore. Most conversations around him revolved instead around his usefulness — his money, his business, his family name despite its decay. Even affection inside the brothel often arrived wrapped carefully around necessity. Survival made performers of everyone eventually.
Yet Jimin spoke as though he had known him for years already.
It unsettled him.
“You speak confidently for a stranger,” Jungkook muttered quietly.
Jimin’s smile deepened slightly at the corners. “Am I still a stranger?”
The question lingered oddly between them.
Jungkook studied him carefully then, allowing himself at last to truly look.
The blond hair falling softly past narrow shoulders. The expensive black velvet darkened by rain. The rings adorning elegant fingers with unnecessary extravagance. His face seemed sculpted from contradictions: delicate mouth, predatory eyes; softness and danger existing together so naturally they became inseparable. Even his posture carried strange duality — relaxed enough to appear harmless, perfectly still enough to suggest something watching from deep water.
And his eyes.
God, his eyes.
Jungkook had never seen eyes like that before.
They did not simply look at people. They consumed them slowly.
“You’re not from Busan,” Jungkook said eventually.
“No.”
“Where are you from, then?”
At that, Jimin’s expression shifted almost imperceptibly, touched briefly by amusement.
“A great many places.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“It’s the only truthful one.”
Jungkook exhaled quietly through his nose, somewhere between irritation and reluctant fascination.
Jimin watched him for a moment longer before turning back toward the salon below. His pale fingers traced absent patterns against the balcony railing.
“I think,” he said softly, “you’re terribly lonely.”
The bluntness of it struck harder than cruelty would have.
Jungkook’s jaw tightened slightly around the rim of his glass. “You’ve known me for less than an hour.”
“And yet.”
No arrogance lived in the statement. No mockery. Only quiet certainty.
Jungkook hated how accurately the words landed.
For a moment neither spoke again. The music downstairs changed songs. Candles flickered gently against mirrored walls. Somewhere in the distance thunder rolled over the sea.
Then, softly:
“Does it ever become easier?” Jimin asked.
Jungkook frowned faintly. “What does?”
“Pretending.”
The question entered him like cold water.
Jungkook stared at him.
Jimin remained calm beneath his gaze, almost thoughtful now, as though discussing something ordinary rather than carving directly into the center of another person’s chest.
“You smile beautifully downstairs,” he continued quietly. “You laugh when spoken to. You touch people kindly. But none of it reaches your eyes.”
Jungkook felt suddenly exposed in a way entirely unfamiliar to him.
No one had ever looked this closely before.
Not even those who claimed to love him once.
“And what exactly do you think you see?” he asked carefully.
Jimin finally turned fully toward him again.
The candlelight softened the sharpness of his features. Rain shimmered faintly behind him beyond the towering windows. For one impossible moment, he looked almost holy standing there in black velvet and gold light, beautiful enough to resemble something painted onto cathedral ceilings centuries ago.
But there was hunger inside him.
Jungkook could feel it now. Quiet. Endless.
“I think,” Jimin said softly, “you’ve spent a very long time waiting for your life to begin.”
Silence followed.
Not empty silence. Breathing silence.
The kind that changes things quietly.
Downstairs, someone called Jungkook’s name from across the salon, but the sound felt impossibly distant now.
Because Jimin was still looking at him.
Patiently. Intently.
Like a man discovering something precious buried beneath ruins.
And for reasons Jungkook could neither understand nor survive, he suddenly found himself unable to look away.
The hour drifted lazily toward dawn, and with it came the particular exhaustion unique to places built upon performance.
The brothel softened around the edges as the night wore on. Candle flames burned lower in their brass holders, their wax spilling slowly like pale tears across polished tables. The piano player downstairs had abandoned lively melodies hours ago in favor of something slower now, something mournful enough to disappear gently beneath conversation. Cigarette smoke lingered motionless near the ceiling beams. Even laughter sounded tired.
Jimin remained.
That fact alone unsettled Jungkook more than he cared to admit. Men like him did not linger in places like these without appetite guiding them toward something specific. Yet Jimin seemed content simply watching the world unfold around him with that same quiet fascination, one gloved hand curled loosely around a half-finished glass of wine he barely touched.
He occupied space strangely.
Not loudly. Never greedily.
And yet the entire room bent subtly around his presence regardless. Girls glanced toward him when passing tables. Clients lowered their voices unconsciously near him. Even the servants seemed slower whenever he looked directly at them, as though briefly forgetting themselves beneath the weight of his attention.
Jungkook noticed all of it.
He also noticed how impossible it had become to stop searching for Jimin in every room he entered.
Near midnight, another group of wealthy patrons arrived dripping rainwater and expensive cologne into the salon. Sons of merchants mostly. Men young enough to mistake inherited fortune for achievement. Jungkook greeted them politely despite the immediate irritation tightening behind his ribs the moment he recognized their faces. They visited often. Drank heavily. Tipped inconsistently. Laughed too loudly at their own cruelty.
One of them clasped Jungkook firmly by the shoulder as though greeting an old friend.
“Still awake, are we?” the man laughed. “God, you people from Busan truly are built differently.”
The others chuckled softly around him.
Jungkook smiled automatically. “Someone has to keep the establishment running.”
“Listen to that accent,” another muttered with amused disbelief into his glass. “No matter how elegantly he dresses it up, it survives.”
More laughter.
Not vicious enough to cause scene.
Never vicious enough.
Only the kind of casual humiliation wealthy men considered entertainment.
Jungkook kept smiling because he had learned years ago that dignity often depended entirely upon pretending not to bleed. He poured their drinks himself. Asked after their families. Ignored the way they occasionally imitated his pronunciation back at him beneath their breath when they thought he had turned away.
Above them, from the balcony overlooking the salon, Jimin watched quietly.
He heard every word.
Not merely the mockery itself, but the thoughts beneath it. The contempt. The instinctive certainty these men carried that Jungkook remained somehow temporary despite his success — a provincial boy permitted near luxury rather than belonging naturally within it.
And beneath Jungkook’s carefully composed exterior, Jimin heard something else too.
Shame.
Old shame. Deep enough to have roots.
It touched him unexpectedly.
Jimin descended the staircase only after the men settled fully into their table near the piano. He moved unhurriedly through the salon, pale blond hair gleaming softly beneath candlelight, black velvet coat trailing elegantly behind him like spilled ink. Conversations quieted instinctively in his wake.
Jungkook noticed him approaching immediately.
“So,” Jimin said lightly once he reached the bar beside him, gaze drifting toward the laughing aristocrats nearby, “those are the great men of Busan society?”
Jungkook exhaled quietly through his nose. “Unfortunately.”
“They seem terribly unimpressive.”
A reluctant smile nearly touched Jungkook’s mouth before he hid it behind another sip of bourbon. “Careful. They pay half my bills.”
“Yes,” Jimin murmured. “And still they speak to you as though you should feel grateful for existing near them.”
The observation landed too directly.
Jungkook looked down at the amber liquid swirling in his glass rather than at Jimin beside him.
“It doesn’t matter.”
Jimin tilted his head slightly. “No?”
“I’m used to it.”
For a moment Jimin said nothing at all. The piano downstairs continued softly. Rain pressed against the windows in silver streams. Somewhere deeper inside the brothel, a woman laughed too brightly before coughing into silence.
Then Jimin spoke very quietly.
“That may be the saddest thing you’ve said tonight.”
Jungkook frowned faintly, though exhaustion softened the reaction. “You find sadness everywhere.”
“No,” Jimin replied gently. “Only where it’s been left unattended for too long.”
The words settled strangely between them.
Jungkook remained still behind the bar, one hand resting loosely around his glass while the wealthy men nearby continued their conversation loudly enough for fragments to drift through the room. Business. Politics. Family names stretching back generations. Every sentence spoken with the unconscious arrogance of people who had never once feared losing their place in the world.
Jimin watched Jungkook watching them.
“You know,” he said after a while, voice thoughtful now, “they’re frightened of you.”
Jungkook let out a quiet laugh. “That’s absurd.”
“Is it?”
Jimin’s eyes moved lazily toward the table of noblemen. “You built this house yourself. You survived humiliation that would have broken gentler men. And despite all their money, all their breeding, all their carefully inherited names…”
His gaze returned slowly to Jungkook’s face.
“…none of them are half as loved in this city as you are.”
Jungkook blinked once, caught off guard by the certainty in his tone.
“That isn’t true.”
“It is.”
“No one loves men like me.”
The answer came too quickly. Too honestly.
Jimin grew very still then.
Around them the brothel continued breathing through the night, unaware of the silence suddenly unfolding between the two men standing quietly beside the bar.
And when Jimin spoke again, his voice had softened into something almost unbearably tender.
“Jungkook,” he murmured, “you have been surrounded by people your entire life who benefited from convincing you that you were small.”
Jungkook’s throat tightened unexpectedly.
Jimin stepped slightly closer, not enough to touch, only enough for the scent of rain and roses to reach him again.
“They mock your accent because they hear honesty in it,” he continued softly. “They mock your beginnings because you climbed farther than they ever had to. And they laugh at your kindness because cruel men always mistake gentleness for weakness.”
The candlelight flickered faintly between them.
Jungkook stared at him without speaking.
No one had ever defended him like this before.
Not openly.
Not without wanting something afterward.
Yet Jimin’s expression held no pity. Only fascination. Admiration, even.
As though he were looking at something precious rather than damaged.
“You underestimate yourself terribly,” Jimin said at last, almost to himself. “It’s astonishing, really.”
The room suddenly felt quieter around Jungkook despite the music and conversation surrounding them.
Because for the first time in years — perhaps in his entire life — someone was looking at him as though he were not merely useful or desirable or temporary.
But important.
And God help him, Jungkook realized he wanted to keep being looked at that way forever.
Morning arrived slowly over the Jeon estate, gray light slipping through tall windows veiled by lace curtains yellowed with age. The house always seemed quieter at dawn, as though exhaustion itself lived within the walls. Servants moved softly through the corridors carrying trays of tea and coal. Somewhere downstairs, the grandfather clock in the hall groaned out the hour with funereal heaviness.
Jungkook entered through the front doors just as the bells from the cathedral began ringing across Busan.
His body ached with sleeplessness. Smoke still clung faintly to his clothes from the brothel, mixed now with rainwater and the ghost of Jimin’s perfume — roses, velvet, something darker beneath it all. He hated that he noticed it still. Hated even more that part of him wanted to keep smelling it forever.
A servant hurried quietly to take his coat, but before Jungkook could even reach the staircase, his mother’s voice drifted sharply from the dining room.
“There he is.”
The words carried neither warmth nor anger. Only fatigue.
Jungkook closed his eyes briefly before turning toward the room.
Breakfast had already been laid across the long mahogany table though almost none of it had been touched. His mother sat rigidly near the windows dressed entirely in mourning black despite years having passed since his father’s death. Widowhood had calcified something inside her. She no longer cried openly. Instead grief sharpened itself into criticism, into prayer, into endless disappointed silence. A rosary hung loosely around her fingers while untouched tea cooled beside her plate.
Across from her sat his younger sister, Yuna, delicate and exhausted-looking beneath pale morning light. She offered Jungkook the faintest sympathetic glance the moment he entered. Beside her, hunched awkwardly over a half-finished sketchbook, sat Minseo.
Jungkook’s younger brother looked up immediately at the sound of footsteps.
And smiled.
Not politely. Not socially.
Purely.
“There you are,” Minseo said brightly. “You missed the rain ending.”
Jungkook’s chest softened instantly despite himself. “Did I?”
“It sounded beautiful against the windows.”
Their mother sighed quietly. “He waited up for you again.”
Guilt pressed immediately against Jungkook’s ribs. He crossed the room and rested a gentle hand briefly against Minseo’s shoulder. His younger brother leaned instinctively into the touch, distracted already by the charcoal smudged across his fingertips.
Minseo had been born wrong, according to the doctors. That was the phrase people used. Wrong. Soft in the head. Touched. As a child he spoke to empty corners of rooms and forgot names halfway through conversations. Some days he functioned almost normally. Other days he drifted so far inward even Yuna struggled to reach him. Their father had considered him an embarrassment long before illness transformed into fragility.
Jungkook had loved him hardest because of it.
“You should sleep,” their mother said suddenly. “You look sick.”
Jungkook sat slowly at the table, exhaustion pulling heavily through his bones now that he’d stopped moving. “Good morning to you too.”
“I don’t know what sort of morning God grants men who spend their nights in brothels.”
Yuna lowered her eyes immediately. Minseo continued sketching absently, unaware of the tension tightening around the room.
Jungkook reached automatically for the tea. “And yet you continue serving me breakfast.”
“That is because you remain my son despite your determination to disgrace this family.”
There it was.
Always inevitable.
His mother’s grief had become deeply entangled with religion after his father died. Every conversation now seemed to orbit morality, shame, punishment. Priests visited often. Candles burned endlessly near the family altar. She spoke of sin the way sailors spoke of storms — not as possibility, but certainty.
And Jungkook…
Jungkook had become the physical embodiment of every fear she carried about moral decay.
A son running a brothel.
A son who drank too much.
A son who never married.
A son too beautiful for his own good.
Sometimes he thought she looked at him and saw punishment from God made flesh.
“You weren’t home last night,” Yuna said softly, clearly attempting peace. “There was another episode.”
Jungkook looked immediately toward Minseo. “Was he hurt?”
“No,” Yuna answered quickly. “Just frightened.”
Minseo suddenly looked up from the sketchbook then, eyes distant beneath dark lashes. “The walls were breathing again.”
Silence followed softly around the table.
Their mother closed her eyes briefly as though exhausted beyond prayer itself.
Jungkook’s chest tightened painfully. “Minseo…”
“They moved.” His younger brother’s voice remained calm, certain. “At night they always move when the house is angry.”
Yuna reached gently for Minseo’s wrist before he could smear charcoal further across the tablecloth. “It was just another nightmare.”
“No,” Minseo whispered absently. “Father was in the hallway again.”
The room went still.
Jungkook lowered his gaze immediately toward his tea.
Their father had been dead three years. Yet Minseo continued speaking of him as though he wandered the estate at night whispering through the walls. Some doctors called it delusion. Others claimed melancholia inherited through blood. Their mother insisted demons visited weak minds more easily.
Jungkook suspected grief simply broke people differently.
Their mother crossed herself quietly beneath her breath. “You indulge these fantasies too much.”
“He’s frightened,” Jungkook answered sharply.
“He needs discipline.”
“He needs kindness.”
Her eyes snapped toward him instantly then. Tired eyes. Bitter eyes. Eyes that looked too much like his own some mornings.
“And what exactly would you know about kindness anymore?” she asked quietly.
The words landed harder than shouting would have.
Yuna shifted uncomfortably beside them. Minseo continued sketching again as though none of it existed.
Jungkook stared silently into his untouched tea while exhaustion hollowed him further from within. Usually he endured these conversations numbly. Usually the cruelty slid past him through familiarity alone.
But today felt different somehow.
Because all morning another voice kept returning to him instead. Soft. Amused. Warm with impossible understanding.
You’ve spent your whole life surrounded by people convincing you that you were small.
Jimin’s voice moved through his thoughts like silk dragged slowly across bare skin.
Jungkook hated it.
Hated how deeply the words had reached him already.
And worse—
Hated the strange heat curling low in his stomach whenever he remembered the way Jimin looked at him beneath candlelight. Not mockingly. Not critically. But hungrily. Reverently almost. As though Jungkook were something worth discovering rather than merely enduring.
Shame followed immediately afterward, swift and violent.
Catholic shame.
The kind rooted so deeply inside the body it became instinct before thought.
Jungkook suddenly pushed back from the table too quickly, the legs of his chair scraping sharply against the floorboards.
Everyone looked up.
“I’m tired,” he muttered.
His mother watched him carefully now. “You look pale.”
“I said I’m tired.”
Minseo tilted his head slightly, studying Jungkook with strange focus suddenly piercing through his usual fog.
“You’re thinking about someone.”
The room went silent again.
Jungkook froze.
Yuna blinked. Their mother frowned immediately. “What nonsense is this now?”
But Minseo kept staring directly at Jungkook, charcoal-stained fingers tightening slightly around the edge of his sketchbook.
“There’s someone in your head,” he whispered softly. “I can hear it.”
A chill passed violently through Jungkook’s body.
For one impossible second, he saw Jimin again exactly as he’d stood beneath the brothel candlelight — pale blond hair glowing gold, beautiful mouth curved into knowing amusement, eyes ancient and starving all at once.
You’re terribly lonely.
Jungkook rose abruptly from the table.
“Enough.”
Without waiting for permission or response, he turned and left the dining room immediately, his mother calling sharply after him while Yuna tried softly to calm the situation behind him. Minseo’s voice followed faintly down the hallway, distant and dreamy:
“He smells like roses.”
Jungkook stopped walking for the briefest moment.
Then continued upstairs with his pulse hammering violently beneath his ribs.
Because for the first time since meeting Jimin, fear finally entered him fully.
Not fear of what Jimin was.
But fear of how desperately Jungkook already wanted him to come back.