Chapter 118

Meanwhile. With Jimin and Tae.

Jimin drove. Tae sat in the passenger seat, elbow resting against the window, face turned away watching the city blur past without really seeing any of it. His eyes were dry now but the sadness was still there, sitting in every line of his face, in the set of his shoulders, in the way he hadn’t said a single word since they got in the car.

Jimin kept glancing at him. Every few minutes a quick look, then back to the road. Taking stock. Saying nothing yet.

He sighed quietly to himself.

Thirty minutes passed like that. Just the sound of the engine and the city fading behind them and the comfortable, heavy silence of two people who had known each other long enough to not need to fill every quiet moment.

Then Jimin pulled the car over.

Tae looked around. The hill. Their favorite hill the one he and Jimin and Jungkook came to after university when everything felt like too much and they needed somewhere that felt like breathing.

He looked at Jimin. Jimin just said “come” and got out of the car.

They walked to the grass and sat down side by side, looking out at the sunset spreading itself across the sky in warm golds and soft oranges unhurried, indifferent, beautiful in the way the world insisted on being beautiful even when everything was falling apart.

Tae lay back on the grass after a moment. Arms loose at his sides. Eyes open to the sky.

Jimin looked at him. Said nothing. Just placed his hand gently on Tae’s shoulder.

A long pause.

Then a tear slipped down Tae’s temple slow and quiet disappearing into his hair. “I wish eomma was here,” he said.

His voice was soft. Not dramatic. Not breaking. Just honest. The way things came out when you were too tired to dress them up. Jimin looked at the sunset.

“If she was here….” Tae continued, his voice staying at that same quiet, unadorned level. “Appa would never have done any of this. Kook wouldn’t be like this. Hyung would have been happy.” He paused. “We all would have been happy.”

Simple. Certain. Devastating in its simplicity.

Jimin’s tears fell without announcement. He didn’t wipe them immediately just let them go, looking out at the horizon.

They stayed like that for a few minutes. Neither of them speaking. Just sitting and lying there together in the grass while the sun went down letting the quiet hold everything that words couldn’t.

Then Jimin stood up. He didn’t say anything. Just left walking back toward the car without explanation.

Tae didn’t ask. He just lay there, eyes still on the sky. He knew.

A few minutes passed. Then footsteps returned. Tae turned his head.

Jimin was walking back across the grass carrying a tray spicy chicken, ramen, two cups of ice cream balanced carefully his tongue peeking out slightly with the effort of not dropping any of it.

Tae stared at him for a second. Then he chuckled. Soft and genuine and surprised out of him. He sat up. Wiped the tears.

Jimin set the tray down on the grass between them with the quiet ceremony of someone performing an act of great importance. Because for them this was. This had always been their language. When words ran out, when comfort felt impossible, when everything was too heavy they ate together. They always had.

“I know we are all going through so much right now,” Jimin said, picking up a piece of chicken and looking at it seriously. “And I promise you every single person who made our Kook like this is going to regret it.” He pointed the chicken piece vaguely at the air.

“All of them. They made you cry. They made him suffer.” He sniffed once. “Especially my Jin h-hyungie….” his voice cracked slightly on the name before he steadied it again”I am not forgiving any of them.”

He put the chicken in his mouth and looked pointedly away, chewing with great dignity.

Tae just sat there. Looking at his best friend this person who had driven him here without being asked, comforted him without any assuring things just there. Still with him. Silently being there with him. Like always.

Tae chuckled looked at jimin’s puffed cute cheeks and his plumpy lips. Low and warm and genuinely fond.

Jimin turned and looked at him. “YAHH.” He pointed. “You moron! should I shove the chicken into your mouth myself? Is that what you need? Huh?” Tae laughed a real one, short and bright and reached over and picked up a piece of chicken and bit into it.

The spice hit immediately. His eyes went wide. His face flushed red within seconds. His hand flew to his mouth.

“AHHH SHIBALL!!” He made a sound that was somewhere between pain and betrayal, fanning his tongue. “It’s so SPICY!!!”

Jimin lost it completely. His whole body shook with laughter the loud, helpless kind that he couldn’t contain reaching over and holding out one of the ice cream cups with a hand that was trembling with amusement.

Tae snatched it and took an enormous spoonful. The relief was immediate and visible. He exhaled like a man whose life had just been saved.

Jimin was still laughing.

Tae looked at him red-faced, ice cream spoon in hand, sitting in the grass on their hill in the golden last light of the evening and felt something loosen in his chest. Just slightly. Just enough.

Not fixed. Nothing was fixed.

But for this moment just this small, ordinary, ridiculous moment it was a little easier to breathe.

Two best friends sitting in the grass. Eating spicy chicken and ice cream.

Comforting each other in the only language that had always made sense between them.

With Jin.

Jin stirred.Slowly. Reluctantly. Like his body was trying to hold him under just a little longer.

He winced at the light squeezing his eyes shut again for a moment, one hand moving automatically toward his head where a dull, persistent ache had already settled in. He lay still for a few seconds, blinking at the ceiling, letting the room come into focus.

Haein was beside him. Asleep in the chair her head resting near their joined hands, her fingers wrapped around his loosely even in sleep. Like she hadn’t been willing to let go even when exhaustion finally took her.

Jin looked at her for a moment.

Then everything came back.

Not gradually. All at once rushing in with the particular cruelty of mornings after terrible nights. Hyunwoo’s voice. Every word. The scars. The basement. Suho. The pills. Jungkook at eighteen, alone on a hospital bed, not speaking to anyone for a year.

Jin sat up. The pain shot through his head immediately sharp and bright and insistent. He ignored it completely. His feet were already moving toward the floor.

Haein stirred at the movement. Her eyes opened disoriented for just a second and then she saw Jin upright, already reaching for the IV line in his hand.

“Jin…” she spoke bht jin pulled it out. The blood welled immediately, running down the back of his hand in a thin line.

“Jin!” She was on her feet. “You are not well you need to rest, please!” “I want to see Kook.” The words came out before he had fully decided to say them. Quiet and automatic and completely certain.

“You can…. you will! but first sit down, calm down” Haein reached for his arm.

Jin was already standing. Already moving toward the door. The dizziness hit him the moment he was fully upright the room tilting slightly, his hand shooting out to the wall but he steadied himself and kept going.

“Jin please—-” before she could stop him He walked out. Haein grabbed her jacket and followed immediately, staying close in case his legs decided to give out on him.

The corridor. The familiar hospital sounds. Jin moved through them with his eyes already fixed ahead on the door of Jungkook’s room at the end of the hall and nothing else registering.

He pushed the door open. And stopped.

Kim was there.

Kim Yoonseong was there.

Standing beside the bed. Beside Jungkook. Close too close and Jungkook was pressed back against the headboard with tears streaming down his face and his whole body trembling and his eyes wide with the specific, unmistakable terror of someone who had no way out.

Jin felt it move through him like something igniting.

Not the cold, controlled anger he had used as a weapon his whole life. Something heaver than that. Something that burned at the back of his throat and behind his eyes and in the hands that had gone rigid at his sides.

His little brother. Trembling. Crying. With their father standing right there. Who litrelly destroyed his life.

.

.

.

Few minutes ago.

Jungkook was awake.

He lay there quietly eyes open, staring at nothing in particular, the exhaustion sitting so deep in him it had stopped feeling like tiredness and started feeling like weight. He didn’t speak. Didn’t move.

“I’ll go and get some food for you, hmm?” Hyunwoo said, shifting in his chair. Jungkook shook his head immediately.

“Just a little,” Hyunwoo said gently. “I’ll bring banana milk too. Only light things nothing heavy.” He smiled at him warm and unhurried, not asking for anything back. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

Jungkook didn’t say anything. Hyunwoo stood, squeezed his hand once, and slipped out the door closing softly behind him.

The room settled into quiet. Jungkook turned his head toward the window.

Outside the world was going on the way it always did, completely indifferent to everything that had happened in the last forty eight hours. Bright sky. Soft clouds moving slowly. Birds somewhere beyond the glass, their chirping reaching him in muffled fragments. The colours out there were warm and alive and entirely disconnected from the white walls and the beeping monitor and the way his chest ached when he breathed too deeply.

He looked at it for a moment.

Then his gaze dropped. To his hands. Resting in his lap exposed, visible, the thin hospital blanket not covering them anymore.

He stared at them.

The scars ran across both old ones pale and settled, newer ones still carrying their colour. Ugly against his skin. Ugly and permanent and completely, undeniably visible to anyone who looked. And they had all looked. Every single one of them had seen.

They all saw it. The thought hit like a fist. They all saw it. Every single one of them.

“I don’t want it….” he whispered. Barely sound. Barely even a word.

A tear fell slow and quiet landing directly on the scar on the back of his hand. He watched it sit there for a moment before it ran sideways and disappeared.

Then the door opened. Jungkook looked up. And every muscle in his body seized at once.

Kim Yoonseong stood in the doorway.

The trembling started before Jungkook had even fully processed what he was seeing moving through him from the inside out, his hands shaking first, then his shoulders, then everything. The monitor beside him registered it immediately, the beeping climbing faster without a sound from him.

He just stared at his father. And shook.

Kim stepped further into the room.

The monitor responded immediately the beeping climbing faster, louder, keeping perfect time with the panic rising in Jungkook’s chest. Jungkook pressed himself harder against the headboard, his hands gripping the blanket on either side of him, knuckles whitening.

He looked at his father with wide, frightened eyes. “Kook-ah….” Kim’s voice came out soft. Careful. “It’s me. It’s appa.”

The words hit wrong.

Because somewhere beneath the hospital room and the white walls and the present moment other words echoed. Older ones. The same voice, different tone entirely.

“It’s appa.” Loud and sharp, cutting through a room that smelled like fear. “Say it properly. Call me appa.” The sound that came after. Jungkook’s whole body shook.

“Kook-ah….” Kim took another step forward.

“No….” The word tore out of Jungkook fast and fractured and desperate, his voice trembling so hard it barely held its shape. “Stay away.”

Kim stopped. “Kook…. It’s me. It’s appa. I’m not going to—-” “You are NOT!!” Jungkook’s voice broke completely, cracking down the middle “LEAVE ME!” The scream echoed in the small room.

Raw and terrified and the voice of someone who had run completely out of the ability to hold anything back. His chest was heaving. Tears were streaming. He sat against the headboard shaking so visibly that the whole bed trembled slightly with it.

Kim stood there. Completely still.

The shock on his face was absolute not the shock of someone who hadn’t expected to be feared, but something deeper. Something that looked almost like the moment a person finally, fully understood the damage they had done.

Jungkook sat there shaking, crying, eyes fixed on his father with the desperate, cornered look of someone who had nowhere to go.

Then the door opened.mJungkook’s eyes moved to it instantly.

Jin stood in the doorway.

He took in the scene in less than a second his father standing in the middle of the room, and his youngest brother pressed against the headboard with tears streaming down his face and his whole body shaking with fear.

His eyes moved from Jungkook to Kim.

And something in his expression went very, very still.

“Kook-ah….” Jin crossed the room immediately instinct, just pure instinct moving toward his brother without thinking.

Jungkook flinched so violently the whole bed shook. “No….” His voice cracked instantly. “No stay away leave me alone….” Jin stopped mid-step.

Jungkook had pulled his knees up to his chest wrapping his arms around them, making himself as small as physically possible. His eyes squeezed shut. Both hands flew up and pressed hard over his ears, fingers white with the pressure.

He was crying hard now not the quiet, leaking kind from before but something louder and more desperate and his lips were moving, mumbling something over and over beneath the sobs that no one could quite hear.

Jin stood there..Completely still. He had stopped breathing for a moment without noticing.

Haein slipped into the room behind him  took one look at Jungkook curled into himself on the bed, shaking and crying and covering his ears and her face went pale.

Jin tried again.mHe moved forward slowly this time, carefully, one step and reached out and placed his hand gently on Jungkook’s shoulder.

Jin started speaking softly “Kook-ah. It’s me. It’s hyungie….” he stopped abruptly when jungkook screamed.

“NOOO!” Jungkook recoiled like the touch had burned him. “LEAVE ME! DON’T TOUCH ME! PLEASE!” The scream tore through the room. Raw and broken and soaked in pure terror.

Jin yanked his hand back.

He stood there arm still half extended, hand now hovering in the empty air where his brother had been and felt the tears come before he could do anything to stop them.

His brother was scared of him.

Not just of Kim. Not just of the room or the situation or the memory of last night.

Of him. Of Jin.

He stood there and felt that land felt the full weight of it settle somewhere deep and permanent and couldn’t move. Couldn’t speak. Could only stand there with his hand slowly dropping back to his side and his vision blurring and his brother still crying and covering his ears on the bed in front of him, shaking like he was bracing for something inevitable.

Haein pressed her hand over her mouth.

Kim hadn’t moved from where he had stopped. He stood slightly behind Jin now watching Jungkook and for once there was nothing readable on his face at all. Just something hollow. Something gutted.

And Jungkook stayed curled into himself knees to chest, hands over ears, eyes shut crying and mumbling and completely unreachable.

In a room full of people who loved him. Completely alone inside his own fear.

The door burst open.

Hyunwoo took one look at the room Jungkook curled and shaking on the bed, Jin frozen with tears on his face, Kim still standing there and the food bag dropped from his hand without him noticing.

He was at the bedside in seconds. “Kook-ah” Jungkook flinched at the voice then stilled. Something in him recognising it even through the panic.

Hyunwoo didn’t hesitate. He reached in and gathered him both arms wrapping around him firmly, pulling him close, one hand going immediately to the back of his head.

“It’s me. It’s samchoon. Nobody else. Just me.” Jungkook pressed into him completely, desperately hiding his face against Hyunwoo’s chest, fingers twisting into his shirt. He was still crying. Still shaking. But the wild, cornered quality of it began just barely to shift.

“I’m sorry….” he mumbled against Hyunwoo’s shirt. Unconscious. Automatic. The words coming from somewhere that had been saying them for years. “I’m sorry…. please… I’m sorry!”

“Shh.” Hyunwoo’s hand moved in slow circles on his back. “You have nothing to be sorry for. Nothing. I’m here. You’re safe. Its okay”

He kept going soft words, steady hands, the same unhurried rhythm holding Jungkook through the shaking, through the mumbling, through all of it.

Jin watched for one more second. Then he turned. His eyes found Kim.

And whatever had been simmering in him since the moment he walked through that door since the moment he saw his brother pressed against the headboard with terror on his face finally broke the surface completely.

“Get. Out.” His voice came out low. Completely cold. The kind of cold that had nothing to do with calm.

Kim looked at him glaring “why should I? I came to see my son” The next second Jin moved. He crossed the space between them in three steps and grabbed Kim’s arm amd pulled him out of the room amd shoved him away. Hard.

Kim stumbled backward through the doorway into the corridor, catching himself against the wall with a grunt. The guards outside reacted immediately hands going to weapons, two gun barrels swinging toward Jin in an instant.

Kim raised his hand sharply. They lowered their weapons.

Jin stepped out into the corridor, letting the door fall almost shut behind him. His chest was heaving. His eyes were red and blazing and completely done with every pretence of control.

“DON’T.” He pointed at Kim finger steady despite everything else that wasn’t. “Don’t you dare go back in there.”

Haein stepped out quietly behind him, staying near the door.

“He is my son, Kim Seokjin!” Kim started, straightening, his voice finding its familiar edge.

“YOUR SON?” Jin’s voice cracked through the corridor like something splitting. “Don’t you dare call him that. Don’t you dare put that word in your mouth after everything you….” he stopped. Jaw clenching. Eyes burning. “You don’t get to call him your son anymore. You lost that.”

Kim looked at him. The muscle in his cheek moved the slow, controlled grind of someone holding something back.

“He is my son,” Kim said again. Quieter this time. But certain. “After all of it he is still my son. And you know that. And Kim Seokjin you don’t get to stop me from meeting my own son “

Jin stared at him. His hands were shaking at his sides. “He is not your son anymore,” Jin said. “Get out. Before I kill you right here.” His voice was completely steady. Not loud. Not shaking. Just cold the kind of cold that meant every single word.

Kim scoffed. He opened his mouth but closed when jin spoke.

“You failed as a father, Kim Yoonseong.” Jin’s voice cut through whatever was coming. Quiet and deliberate, pressing down on every single word like a blade finding the exact right place. “I’ll say it again. leave. Before I do something we both know I’m capable of.”

Kim’s eyes narrowed. He looked at Jin for a long moment measuring, calculating, the way he always did.

Then he said, “And if I say no? What exactly are you going to do?”

Jin moved. He crossed the distance in one step hand closing around Kim’s collar and drove him back into the wall hard enough to make the plaster crack slightly with the impact.

The guards reacted instantly. Three of them weapons up, pointed directly at Jin’s head, the click of safety mechanisms releasing cutting through the corridor silence. Jin didn’t even look at them.

He kept his eyes on Kim’s face inches away jaw tight, breathing hard through his nose, holding his father against the wall by the collar of his shirt. Holding the most feared business man and the merciless mafia king by collar.

Haein pressed herself against the doorframe, hand flying to her mouth.

“Don’t you feel any shame?” Jin said. His voice had dropped even lower. The quietest it had been. “Not even a single moment of it?” He held him there for one more second then let go. Shoved him back against the wall with his open palm and stepped away.

He turned slightly. His chest was heaving. Then he said it low and calm and filled with something called disappoint filled relief “I am glad eomma died before she had to witness any of this.”

The corridor went absolutely silent. Kim went very still.

“What did you say?” His voice came out low. Dangerous in the way it only got when something had actually reached him.

Jin turned back to face him fully.

“I said….” his voice didn’t waver “I am glad for her. That she didn’t have to see it. That she was spared from watching the man she loved the man she trusted with everything, the man she died giving  her child to take that child and spend the next decade making his life a living he ll.” His voice cracked slightly but pushed through it.

“She prayed for him. Every single day she was alive she prayed for him to survive, to be healthy, to be happy. She cried praying for him before he was even born.” He exhaled sharply.

“And the same father she trusted to protect him the day after she was gone became the person he needed protection from.” His eyes burned. “She didn’t have to see her husband turn into a fucking heartless monster and a merciless monster who don’t even know to show little mercy to his own son. And for that….. I am glad she died when she did.”

The words landed like something physical. Kim moved.

He crossed the space and grabbed Jin spinning him around and slamming him into the wall, forearm across his chest, and the next moment a gun was pressed directly to Jin’s forehead. Jin whimpered at the sudden movement.

Haein gasped at it. The metal was cold against his skin. Jin looked at his father. And scoffed. A short, broken, completely humorless sound.

“Do it,” he said. His voice was completely even. Eyes locked on Kim’s unflinching, unafraid, burning with everything he had ever swallowed and never said. “Go ahead. Kill your own son. Kill me right here in this corridor because I told you the truth.” He held his gaze steadily.

“Pull the trigger, Kim Yoonseong. Let’s see how far gone you actually are.” He spoke but kim saw saw the tears in his son. Anger. Betrayal. Disappointment. Acceptance. Love. Longings. Every emotion screamed in that blood shot teary eyes.

The gun didn’t move. Neither did Jin.

They stood there father and son with a weapon between them and twelve years of everything unsaid filling the space around them like smoke.

And Jin didn’t look away once.

I’m sooooo disappointed in you all! Why don’t you all just complete the targets, huh?

Fine… you were at a loss! You didn’t get a double update! Not my fault!

Anyway, how was the chapter? Good? Bad? Emotional?

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And guys… what is your favorite thing or any specific part you love about this story?

Which character is your favorite?

And what should I improve? Be honest, all!

The target is 65+ comments.

I swear… I literally wrote and have a draft for like 6k+ words! Just complete the target, and I’ll update!