C11 - Villaintine

Somehow I went for years without seeing Kim Taehyung. He hovered low in my mind, the same quiet and insistent worry that I have knowing children in the city are hungry, knowing animals are in pain.

He wasn’t my waking thought, my nighttime prayer. He didn’t take up every moment.

The next five days may as well be eternity.

I stay locked up with Jimin in Yoongi’s home, which may as well be a castle for how heavily guarded it is.

It’s hard for me to eat, to sleep, because I know that Kim Taehyung is on the verge of something horrible.

Jimin takes very good care of me, like Taehyung thought he would. He doesn’t question my worry or my lack of appetite, thinking I’m still recovering from the trauma.

My body heals more every day. There’s something I want more than my strength, than my pale skin in its former smoothness.

Only the guilty can understand this.

I want redemption. There’s an emotional debt more pressing than money. It was one thing to give Taehyung up when I was a child, alone in the trailer. Another when I’m almost a grown up.

I need to get out of this place, but I can’t do it alone, not with trained guards patrolling the perimeter. I watch them out the window when Jimin thinks I’m mostly comatose, but that doesn’t reveal any answers.

They seem to vary up their schedules, as if they know someone might try to enter. As if they know someone might try to escape. Jimin doesn’t mean me any harm, that much I believe.  But he’s as much a prisoner here as I am.

Neither of us can leave.

He’s the only one with any access to the outside world—a cell phone that he carries with him almost everywhere. I know he texts his friend from college, because he tells me about some of them. Other times his brow furrows, worry tinting his hazel eyes.

He doesn’t tell me what he texts when he gets like this. I don’t know what he’s afraid of, but it’s something. He looks up from his phone, his gaze beseeching.

“Come for a walk with me,” he says.

It’s something we’ve done before. Walks around the mansion. Through the garden. There’s even a maze made out of hedges.

I swear, the things rich people think of to get rid of their money. It’s like they don’t know what to do with it all. But I don’t know why he’s whispering.

Who does he think will hear him?

The line of his throat moves as he swallows. “I want to find out where the voices are coming from,” he says, his voice shaky. “Will you help me?”

A shiver runs through me.

What voices? I haven’t said much. Only Taehyung seems to thaw me enough to speak, but I know this is important. Important because I can help him, maybe. The way he’s been helping me.

Important because I can help Taehyung, who’s out with Yoongi in the bowels of the city, searching through rundown tenements and alleys for a modern-day dragon.

Smart people don’t always have perspective.

It had been a declaration.

Does Taehyung love me?

As a lover or as a child?

I’m not sure he knows, not sure it matters what name we put on it.

It was the most unassuming gift he could have given me, one without any expectation that it would be returned.

Thinking that I’m too young or maybe just too innocent to give it back. Except I’m not the only smart person without perspective. He knows I need him, but the truth is he needs me, too.

Jimin leans close, something close to panic in his eyes. “You don’t hear them, do you?”

I’m afraid he might fall apart if I tell him the truth. The house is painfully silent. It hurts me, that’s how silent it is. The lack of sound a physical presence, as if the world has become muted. We’re underwater here.

I’m desperate to find a way to his phone. The words to confide my plan on the tip of my tongue. I don’t think he’ll want to go along with me—his faith in Yoongi is too complete. Aid comes from one of the least likely places. One of the guards appears in the doorframe.

“Someone’s at the gate,” the guard says, making it clear he’d rather turn them away.

Some old friend of Jimin’s has come to visit him. More than a friend, if I read his hesitation right. It would be an entertaining power play to watch—the guard who could probably bench press three hundred pounds and the young man with his quiet control. And it’s the perfect cover for me to slip his phone beneath the pillow.

My hand moves maybe two inches. Neither of them notices.

“I’ll stand outside the room,” the guard says, deference winning. “With the door open.”

Jimin’s voice is kind, gracious in his victory. “Thank you.”

It takes forever for the guest to be searched for weapons. So long I’m afraid that Jimin will look for his phone. I can’t let him notice that it’s under the pillow. He wouldn’t suspect me of anything, mostly because he thinks I’m half brain dead. But it would ruin my chance.

I have to distract him. “Who is he?”

“An old boyfriend,” he says, his cheeks turning pink.

“Oh.”

Yoongi won’t be happy about that when he finds out, I’m sure of that.

His eyes look lighter when he’s curious. “Do you…do you have one? A boyfriend?”

I’ve been so deep underwater that I haven’t even thought about him. Guilt whispers through me. Eunwoo would have worried about me.  The first night, the second. It’s been five days.

Does he think I’m dead?

Dad must think so, when I left with Kim Yongdae and didn’t come back. I don’t feel as bad about that, since he’s the reason I’m in this mess. Encased in ice, I could spare myself that acidic mixture of worry and shame. Now it comes rushing back like bile, promising that every step on land would hurt.

I could transform into a human again, but I would pay the price in pain. There’s too much blood in the water to emerge unscathed. When the security guard takes Jimin away, I don’t waste any time.

The number comes from memory. My fingers don’t tremble as I dial the number. That’s the only nod to confidence. Inside I’m a mess of fear and dread and worst of all hope.

“Hello?” The hoarse word tells a long story of the past five days. “Dad, it’s me.”

The pause that follows hangs heavy overhead.

Storm clouds.

North winds.

“Is it—how are—oh God, Jungkook. I didn’t know if you were—” He can’t seem to finish a sentence.

The worst part is that I can’t finish it for him, not with the knot in my throat. Not with the tangle in my mind, where familial love crosses accusation, a biological short-circuit.

“I’m alive,” I manage to say.

“Where are you? Can you come home?”

Home.

The word pings around inside me, unable to land anywhere.

In the apartment with weak locks and cracks in every window?

The lumpy armchair where Dad sits each night?

The Rubik’s Cube. That had been home for a little boy desperate to find himself.

“Did you bring the money to Kim Taehyung?”

A terrible pause.

“I looked for him, Jungkook. I swear I did. He went underground. Everyone said he couldn’t be found when he didn’t want to be.”

“And then you spent it.”

There’s no anger in my voice, not anymore. Only resignation.

“No,” he says, urgent and sincere. “I tried to find Kim Yongdae then, to give the money back to him. To tell him the deal was off. To find you. But he was gone, too.”

Uncertainty wraps itself around me, warm and almost… comforting. Maybe ten thousand dollars doesn’t matter in the large scheme of things, but it feels like I earned that money. It feels like it matters.

“Where’s the money now?”

“It’s here. God, I’ve been so afraid that someone would know. That sounds crazy. It’s not like I could ever hold onto a dollar longer than an hour. But I just…I’ve been sitting here, keeping it, thinking you were dead.”

His voice breaks, but it doesn’t sound like the end. It sounds like a continuation. This is where we’ve always been. I can’t walk away from the only family I have, from a person who actually cares about me.

When Taehyung braced his body above me in his bed I had felt alive, grown and even sexual. Now as I cling the phone I’m painfully aware that I’m sixteen. That I’m only a boy who dreams about having his Amma back.

That I want nothing more than a family who loves me.

Who am I to dream I could save Kim Taehyung?

Who am I to dream at all?

!~~~~!

He finds me on the balcony, a wide marble-floored space with a carved stone balcony. From here I can see the expansive grounds—a lush garden and elaborate hedge maze. Rolling green hills and woods beyond.

A view that carefully hides security cameras and armed patrols, an electric fence hidden in the tree line.

Such deadly beauty.

I feel him before I see him, that prickling awareness that can only be Kim Taehyung. I’m sitting on an ornate metal chair, carving of Olympic gods cradling me with surprising comfort. Footsteps come close and then stop.

It must be my imagination that senses his heat. He’s still a few feet away at least.

How can he heat me up like no one else?

“Jimin says you aren’t eating,” he says finally.

Jimin worries about me, which is sweet. I don’t really know what to do with that. I’ve had no friends only one, Jessica, even she was just my neighbor with a kid. Even Eunwoo, but there’s always a careful distance. Growing up in the west side, we all know not to get too close.

“I’m eating enough.”

“Jimin says there are nightmares.”

“Aren’t there?” I ask softly.

“For you?”

That finally brings him around in front of me. It’s a shock to see him in daylight, maybe for the first time. The sunlight makes his black hair gleam. His eyes look almost luminous out here, but calming, the contrast to the sun a relief.

“I’ve had nightmares,” he says, his voice distant. Unemotional, even though I know that’s a lie. No one experiences what we have and comes out unscathed.

Jimin talked to me about seeing a counselor, asked if I wanted one, but I can’t imagine what acceptance would look like.

Oh, that black pool with green tiles? Sure, I had a rough time almost drowning. I’m over it now.

Anyone who says that is lying, so what’s the point?

He looks cold and removed, like he has somehow achieved the impossible. It makes me want to tear him down.

“Tell me,” I demand.

For a moment I think he’s going to refuse. He’s going to keep that wall between us, thin now but crucial. Whatever we were before this—friends, potential lovers.

Enemies.

We’ve shared something now.

We’re both survivors.

Then he sits down, the softest sound of his breath releasing. And in that sound I hear the wall come down. I feel it, erased from existence—if only for this moment. It makes every nerve ending tingle along my arms, my stomach. He’s been nearer to me than two feet away, but never as truly close as this.

“It started when I was five,” he says, breaking my heart in that one emotionless statement. “I’m not sure what happened before then. Nothing good, I’m sure. But I remember the training that started at five.”

“Training?” I say, horrified, terrified, but needing this.

This connection.

“He said it would make me stronger. That people out in the world would hurt me. That I had to get strong enough to withstand them.”

My stomach turns over. “I’m sorry.”

“We practiced every day in that pool. There were other parts of the training. Other things I had to be ready for. In the other rooms, there’s equipment that—”

“Please stop.” I’ve heard enough for today.

For a lifetime.

And you only have to listen. He had to live through it.

“How do you live with it?”

He looks at me then, his brow cocked in question. “What other choice is there?”

Dying, but I don’t say that.

It sounds too dramatic, and besides, I don’t want to die. That’s not what I’m really asking. I’m asking how to stop the nightmares.

“I feel safe when you’re with me.”

Because he’s the only one who understands. No, that’s not entirely true.  Even before this happened I felt safe when he was around. Not safe with the way he made my body feel or what he let my father borrow. Safe in that I know no one can touch me when he’s around— not even his father.

Taehyung is the only man on earth who would be glad to see Kim Yongdae. That would mean he could kill him.

Or worse, probably.

He might use some of that equipment.

“You shouldn’t,” he says, his voice hoarse. “I let you down.”

“No, you got me out of there.”

“Don’t. Don’t pretend like I did you any fcuking favors. What you went through before I got there…That’s been harder to live with than anything that came before.”

It’s more than feeling safe.

I finally feel warm when he’s around, my very own heat source. And it wasn’t my body that came out of that pool. It was something reptilian.

Cold blooded.

I can’t keep myself warm; I need him to do it for me. “Stay with me,” I ask, my voice breaking. “Like that first night. When you were with me, I didn’t have the nightmares. You keep them away.”

You keep him away.

“It’s during nights that he comes out of hiding,” Taehyung says, his voice tortured. “That’s when I need to look for him. It’s my only chance to find him.”

“I need you more,” I whisper.

He makes a low growling sound. “Don’t fight me on this. I almost lost you.”

“You’re losing me now.”

His jaw clenches, a muscle moving beneath three days’ growth. “Once I’m done I’ll stay with you. I’ll protect you. But I need to do this first. I need to kill him.”

He can’t let it go. His anger has dug a hollow through him, as surely as little feet beneath the swing.

“More than kill him, I’m guessing.”

It’s a merciless smile he gives me. “More than that.”

This is his addiction.

No needles or cards.

Hating his father.

Hunting him.

And he was choosing it over me.

“No,” I say, almost desperate. “If you do this you’ll become him. That’s what he wants. That’s what he’s always wanted.”

“Maybe I could have escaped it,” Taehyung says, almost melancholy. “Except he touched you. And there’s no way I can let that stand. No way I can let him live.”

Which is exactly why Kim Yongdae had taken me.

Somehow, he had known that.

Taehyung stands, almost pushing back against the sunlight, as if the rays hurt him.  And I realize with horror that they might.

How much sunlight did he get as a child?

“I hope one day I’m the man you deserve.”

“And until then?” I ask, the knot in my throat so thick and so rough.

“Until then I’ll make this right the only way I know how.”

!!~~~~!!

Min Yoongi’s house is a sprawling modern mansion, designed with so many twists and turns they must be intentional. He wants people to be lost, to be intimidated, and it works.

I have a path of breadcrumbs using the abstract art decorating the cherry wood walls—splashes of red against swaths of black.

Pops of yellow.

I can make it to the kitchen on my own, not that I go there often. And I can find Jimin’s room when I need him, although I never do at night. Yoongi keeps him well occupied in the evenings when he returns from searching for Kim Yongdae.

Whether I have nightmares or restless insomnia, I don’t follow the hushed words and the moans down the hallway. Those times are the hardest, when I feel so alone my chest aches.

This is what I always feared.

Amma leaving me. Dad, too. He chose his addiction over my safety. I can’t decide whether that makes him weak or just human. My only solace comes from a stack of books on the side table. The only books remotely mathematical in nature are about stock charts and economics.

They’re even more dry and obtuse than the automotive books, but I revel in them like they’re sun after a long rain. There are a few books I remember were on the syllabus in English class this year.

Grapes of Wrath doesn’t hold my interest, but I keep it there anyway. It serves the same purpose as my self-enforced bedtime in that trailer—pretending like there’s a grownup to guide me.

I wander down to the library after lunch, carrying the stack of books. A fire crackles beneath the large marble mantel. Someone must be here. I take a step backward, prepared to leave.

Jimin peers around the wide leather wing of an armchair.  “Hey, you. Don’t go.”

Hesitant, I hover beneath the arched doorway. Jimin’s been incredibly kind to me, even nurturing, but it only makes me conflicted. I wanted that kind of nurturing from Amma. And occasionally I’d even get it, when he was between boyfriends.

But I learned not to trust in it. It would be snatched away when I needed it most.

“What do you have there?” he asks, looking at my books with interest.

The urge to share with him is too strong, to show him what I like and find out what he does. I approach the rug with slow steps, feeling almost shy. The library is massive, two stories connected by a carved spiral staircase. And on the second floor, the shelves go so high you have to use a ladder to reach the very top.

Small leather benches set off the different bookcases, which is where I would usually sit. In the center of the room is a plush rug that holds two oversized armchairs and a circular table. An intricate carved chess set sits there, positioned so the people in the chairs can play.

Jimin points to the empty chair beside him.

“Join me. Please.”

In a rush I settle into the cushion, sinking deep. “I’m sorry. I don’t want to disturb you.”

“You’re not.” He tilts his head, reading the spines of the books I’m holding. “You found Yoongi’s financial books.”

“Do you think he’d mind?” I ask, holding the books tighter.

He laughs. “I’m sure he wouldn’t. In fact, he’d probably love to discuss them with you. He’s kind of a numbers junky, but it’s all over my head.”

There’s a book in his lap, with plain text on the front.

“Athenian Vase Painting,” I say, reading the cover aloud.

“It’s my guilty pleasure,” he says, not sounding very guilty.

“The classical section of the library is incredible, if you’re interested in the subjects. I can point out some of the more accessible books. This one’s a little dense.”

“Does Yoongi like ancient history?”

“No, but he likes making me happy,” he says with a private smile. “It used to be my major in college. Before I—well, before I left.”

“Why did you stop?”

Jimin sucks in a breath as I realize my mistake. I’ve cared too much, revealed too much. And worst of all, I’ve reminded him of something dark.

“I’m sorry,” I add quickly, starting to stand. “Never mind.”

“No, please. It’s not your fault.” His hazel eyes look so sad I have to sit again.

And I recognize something in his words, that longing.

Loneliness.

“I had to leave when my dad lost his court case. And he was hospitalized. Long story short I used my college fund to help us keep the house as long as we could.”

I look away, remembering that story in the local news. Everyone had been talking about it.  The famous businessman and politician, known for his works of charity, convicted of embezzlement.

And despite that he had escaped jail time.

The benefits of being rich.

“You’ve heard the rest of the story,” he says, reading my expression.

“Not really,” I say quickly. “People talk, but I don’t believe them.”

“In this case they were probably telling the truth. I approached Kim Taehyung about a loan. Which he wouldn’t give me since I had no way to pay it back. Yoongi was there. He suggested that I auction myself.”

A memory uncoils inside me, stealing my breath.

‘You know he doesn’t have a way to pay you back. How dare you loan him money?’

‘Would you have preferred I told him no? He would have gone straight to my father, who would have charged him higher interest than I did.’

I had been so furious then, so sure of my rightness. And now? I didn’t know the answer. There was no solution to my father’s addiction. There was no proof against heartache.

“So that’s how I ended up here,” he says, gesturing to the library, the mansion itself.

I’ve seen him and Yoongi together, the way Yoongi looks at him, as if Jimin owns him. He isn’t forcing him to do anything. At least, not anymore.

“Do you ever think you’ll leave?”

His expression turns faraway. “I’m not sure. I mean, don’t get me wrong. I’m happy here. It’s beautiful and luxurious and safe. But sometimes I miss school so much it hurts.” He glances down at the book in his lap. “Books aren’t the same. They’re nice, though.”

I reach across the chess board and take his hand. He looks up at me, his eyes wide with surprise. It might be the first time I’ve touched him. The first time I’ve touched anyone, since the attack.

Footsteps startle me, and I turn to see Yoongi stride into the library. He makes a straight line toward Jimin, a living and breathing shortest-path algorithm. He bends down, one hand behind Jimin’s neck to keep him close. A kiss on his plump cheek. A whisper in his ear that makes Jimin blush.

Only then does Yoongi straighten and give me a kind, “Hello, Jungkook.”

I’m a little disappointed Taehyung isn’t with him. Maybe a lot disappointed.

“Hi.”

“What are you two doing?” he asks.

“Talking about Taehyung,” Jimin says, before I can respond. “And how he auctioned me off.”

It shouldn’t surprise me that he’s keeping secrets—even if those secrets are only what’s in his heart. Jimin doesn’t want Yoongi to know that he longs for school.

Because Yoongi would be angry?

Or because maybe Jimin would feel disloyal?

I’m hardly one to judge.

I don’t share what’s in my heart very much. I barely know what’s there, most of the time. For me that’s the top-most shelf, full of dust, requiring the use of a special ladder just to reach it.

Yoongi gives a small smile, completely unrepentant. “Tae gave me a lot of grief for that.”

“Did he?” I ask, uncertain why Taehyung would mind. It made sense that Taehyung wouldn’t want to give Jimin money if he knew Jimin would never be able to repay.

But how could he mind the auction?

I have no doubt that he profited from it.

“He can be a little protective. He’s been that way for as long as I’ve known him.”

Something about Yoongi’s golden eyes invites me in, as if he’s imparting an important secret.

“But he owns a strip club.” I say.

“More than one,” Yoongi says with a nod. “And for a person especially those who are in a desperate situation, there’s no place safer or more lucrative for them to be. You should have seen how selective he was about the guest list for the auction.”

“Really?” Jimin says, sounding surprised.

Dark flecks of gold glint in Yoongi’s eyes. “I don’t think he knew whether to be relieved or worried when I won. He warned me that if I hurt you, I’d have to answer to him.” Yoongi replied unhinged.

“Well,” Jimin says, his voice arch. “Then there are a few things I’ll have to tell him about.”

The smile flirting with his lips says he’s only teasing.  Though I suspect if I were to dig, Yoongi has done one or two things that hurt Jimin. Yoongi clenches a fist in his hair, pulling him back to whisper something else in his ear.

Jimin’s scarlet by the time Yoongi led him upstairs, giving me a short, “We’ll see you tomorrow. Mrs. Bo is in the kitchen if you need anything.”

“Go to bed early,” Jimin says, his voice trailing into the room as he’s led away.

“I know you’re feeling better, but your body is still recovering.”

I put my hand over my mouth to hide my smile, but it’s there, blinding and unstoppable.

They’re so sweet together.

Almost enough to break through the ice around me, even without Kim Taehyung around.

Almost.

!!~~~~!!

I read a well-worn copy of Quantitative Risk Analysis late into the night, past dog-ears and highlighted lines. Yoongi knows this book well. Only a few times do I stop and leave notes in the margins, adding to what his sprawling script has written.

Once I correct him, laying out my argument in a few lines, wondering if he’ll ever find this. They’re a different kind of breadcrumb.

My kind.

By the time I get to the chapter on volatility in valuation, it’s midnight. My eyelids slip lower and lower with every slow blink. I can’t think anymore tonight. Can’t use the numbers to keep away the loneliness. I reach over and flip off the lamp, dousing the room in shadows.

I keep the bathroom light on all night, a holdover from the first days after the attack. From longer than that, if I’m honest. The light that slid between my plastic blinds was a comfort.

And the heavy drapes in this house, the tinting on the rooms, the luxury of darkness that rich people seem to crave sometimes feels like a muzzle. Sleep laps its gentle waves against me. There are no strong currents on the surface.

It’s deceptive, how softly it lulls me.

How many times will I believe and hope and pray to find peace there?

To drift on the lazy river of my mind. No matter how softly it begins I’m always dragged under. The dream comes in a tidal wave, wrapping my body in terror. In my dream I’m back in the mental hospital.

In my dream, I never left. The walls are coated with something black and pungent, the floor slick.  Pain slices my scalp as he drags me by my hair. He strides with cool familiarity through the hallways, like he’s been here a million times.

Like he lives here.

My body may as well be on fire, that’s how much the pain and fear scorch me, that’s how much I scream. In the molten center is the certainty that Kim Taehyung went through this.

Not something similar.

This exactly.

In this horrible place.

He knows these walls.

These floors.

He knows the cracked placard that says Recreation Room in front of us. There are a million funhouse horrors that a recreation room might hold. They flash through my brain like a demented slideshow, promising that this will be worse than what came before—worse than the stabbing pain in my body and the shame in my heart.

And even so, I could not have predicted this. I could not have foretold about the pool. It’s large and rectangular, like the kind at my some hotel. Only instead of pale white concrete it’s made from tile, green and thin and cracked in a thousand places.

Nothing that could be operational today.

And it’s not operational, strictly speaking.

There isn’t water.

There couldn’t be water, not with the thick cracks in the concrete.  As if the whole foundation has shifted over the decades, nature reclaiming what was hers. I want to slide into the cracks, even though they’re a couple inches wide.

I want to disappear into the center of the earth.

He told me I’d want to die, and he’s right, he’s right, he’s right. He tosses me into the pit. My knees make a loud crack with the fall. I know there’s pain, but it doesn’t register. Not with anticipation clawing at my throat, knowing what will come next.

The pool may be empty, but there’s something a little damp down here.

A little slippery.

I stagger, trying to stand, struggling to find that sliver of hope that says I’ll make it out alive.

“Don’t worry,” he says, soft enough I almost don’t hear. “This will help you, too.”

In the corner the thick roots of a tree have broken through the tile in the far end, leaving a wide chasm. That split narrows to a thick crack near the bottom.

A little more and water wouldn’t hold. The monster above me turns a knob. A steel pipe juts out of the wall. It pours water into the pool, leaving a small puddle at my feet. My heart beats a slow rhythm, like it can’t believe this. Like it knows better than to panic. Like this can’t possibly be real.

When I was little I fought the current. I kicked and paddled, struggling to get to the surface. Now I stand very still as the water rises to my ankles, knowing it won’t possibly help. There aren’t sharp rocks at the bottom.

 Only a dark vegetation grown over tile. Water rises, dark in the ancient Recreation Room, almost as black as the bottom. The mermaid tank was beautiful, mostly because the water was clear. And I knew the river was different because it was dark.

Like this.

And then Kim Yongdae reaches for a lever. There’s something metal and thin leaning against the wall above me. My mind can’t process what it is. My mind doesn’t want to process what it is, even as he lowers the grate over the top of the pool.

Some dark part of me recognizes it as some primitive safety device. That dark part of me laughs. The water level will rise. The grate will keep me under water.

“Please no,” I whisper, unable to stop myself. There’s no way it will work, no way I can stop myself from trying.

He looks almost sad. “Don’t panic. You’ll only lose your head.”

My nails press so hard into my palms they draw blood. There will be crescent shaped wounds in my hands, but I won’t be alive to see them.  “Don’t do this to me,” I say, my voice shaking. “I’ll do anything. Anything.”

“You’ll do everything, lovely peach.”

What does he want from me?

What does he want from Taehyung?

The water tickles my knees, weirdly harmless as it rises. Deadly once it’s done.

“I’ll make the money back. Work in the clubs. For sex. Anything. Don’t do this to me. Please.”

“Do you know, when I first got here, they still did leucotomies. How barbaric is that?”

“This is barbaric,” I scream at him. “Let me out. Oh my God, let me out of here.”

Leucotomies.

Is that what happened to him?

Is that why he’s insane?

He smiles a little, like he can read my thoughts. “They did many cruel things, but not this. This was beautiful. I fought it at first. That’s the weakness inside us. It’s a gift to make you stronger.”

This is how Taehyung learned to hold his breath so long. This is what he ran away from. This very pool with its green tile and black water. And this is why I deserve what’s happening. Because I sent him here. He came back to this for me.

And then the darkness engulfs me as my screams and shrills turn from panicked to dreadful in the silence of the night.

 !~~~~!!!!~~~~!