KAIROTIC

by metastacia

Summary:

The Grim Reaper, they called him. He was the weird kid in school who knew exactly when someone’s mother was about to die. They didn’t believe him when he’d said it, and they didn’t believe him when he said he wasn’t a psychic, and they didn’t believe him when he said he didn’t cause her death.

The Grim Reaper, they still sometimes call him. Legendary trial lawyer who became known for weeding out the bad guy no one else suspected and putting them in prison. It was almost like he had a sixth sense for it. Like no one was safe from him. Like the black cloud of death still follows him around and no matter how much he tries to shake it off, it doesn’t let go.

Seokjin wonders at what point death had stopped following him around, and at what point he’d started to become death itself.

in which Seokjin can see everyone's lifespan floating above their heads, numbers steadily counting down to their deaths. the numbers never change, or so he thought.

Notes:

• Translation into Tiếng Việt available: KAIROTIC by lishrayder

the vietnamese translation for this fic is now available!

specific trigger warnings:
- blood
- injury detail
- gruesome descriptions of death/murders
- death of loved ones
- kidnapping
- one incident of seokjin being kissed against his will by a minor character
- allusions to rape
- psychological trauma

NO MCD

Chapter 1: Fleeting

The tie around Seokjin’s neck suddenly feels like a noose, so he pulls at it and opens it up. Lets the knot unfurl and the tie fall to the table. With that hand he picks up his beer, brings it to his lips and tips as much as he can allow down his throat before he drowns himself in it.

“Slow down, will you,” Yoongi muses as he picks up another fry and pops it into his mouth. “I don’t wanna have to drag your big ass back home. I’m too old for that shit.”

Seokjin watches with dull amusement Yoongi’s expressionless face, his steady and convinced acceptance. “You’re younger than me, you know,” Seokjin snorts, his hand curled around his glass paused by his lips.

“Yeah, and not everyone looks like a fifteen-year-old when they’re twenty-seven like you,” Yoongi grunts out, and huffs a laugh like he’s sharing a joke with himself. It doesn’t last long, though as Seokjin quickly lobs a fry at his brow.

“What did I say about mentioning you know what?” Seokjin hisses, his hands now curled around the edge of the table as he leans forward. His teeth are clenched and his eyes dart right and left, making sure the coast is clear, making sure no one heard.

“What, your age?” Yoongi asks slowly and wearily. His hand hovers over the top of his glass, his index finger circling the rim as he looks on at Seokjin’s face, but then he lets go and laughs when Seokjin nods furiously. “God, you’re so dumb.”

“Call me what you want,” Seokjin replies, closing his eyes and huffing indignantly, “but I will not accept slander on my age.”

“There’s literally nothing wrong with being twe-“

“Shut the fuck up, Min Yoongi.”

He reaches forward and grabs a handful of the fries from the plate in front of him, and there’s only so many he can fit into his clenched fist before some fries are poking out from between his fingers, and some are threatening to fall from his hold, but Seokjin is nothing if not an expert eater – he shoves the handful into his mouth and chomps down.

Yoongi is leaning forward, elbow digging into the wooden table, chin resting in the cup of his hand, watching Seokjin with amazement and wonder. “How the fuck your assistant tolerates you is beyond me,” he muses as he watches Seokjin chew.

“Easy,” Seokjin says through a mouth full of half-churned potato, the sounds coming out muffled and strained. “I’m cute.”

The look of disgust on Yoongi’s face speaks volumes and Seokjin angrily lobs another fry at him.

 

The early winter is chilling, made even colder by how warm the beer had made him feel on the inside and how quickly that warmth is sapping out of him. He pulls his jacket closer around him to try fight the cold out, to no avail. Yoongi tightens his hold around Seokjin’s arm from where he’d looped their arms together, walking along the cold dark streets together. Yoongi is singing something, and Seokjin can’t make out the words until he leans over, a little closer. He blinks his eyes to try and hear better against the sounds of the cold winds but it does next to nothing in clearing up Yoongi’s blurred and muffled singing, so he leans a little more over, a little more, until Yoongi’s little frame can no longer support him and they topple over together, a mess of limbs and incoherent shouts as they fall.

Yoongi is complaining underneath Seokjin who pays no heed to the fact that they’d just fallen over into the road – he’s not complaining, in any case, because Yoongi had been under him to break his fall, until he hears the sounds of tires on asphalt and the sound of an engine, and before Seokjin even darts up to find the source of the sound and get the fuck out of it’s way, he looks down at Yoongi still groaning on the ground.

Fifty-three years, one hundred and fifty-two days.

His heaving, relieved sigh comes moments before Yoongi plants his hands into Seokjin’s chest and shoves him off, and then together they scramble off the side of the road and out of the way of the car that rushes past them, whipping up the cold wind around them and their coats flutter.

Vaguely, he registers Yoongi yelling at him, his voice equal parts anger and drunkenness. Vaguely. What he registers much, much more vividly in a way the alcohol doesn’t dampen or simmer down are the numbers floating above Yoongi’s head. The fact that they haven’t changed.

What were you thinking, Seokjin? he thinks to himself, berating himself for letting his heart jump up in his chest and temporarily wreak havoc inside him like a wrecking ball. The numbers don’t change. They never change. Seokjin has learnt that in the worst of ways, possible. He swallows down his fear and his anxiety and feels his inebriation slip from him. Yoongi is still yelling at him, but he only vaguely registers that. Pushes his hands into the pockets of his jacket and focuses his attentions on making it back home.

The numbers don’t change, he thinks all the way back to his apartment where he loosens his tie from his neck, lets it drop to the floor. Unbuttons his shirt and flings it over the back of his sofa. Unbuckles his belt, drops his pants to the floor, and then walks to his bathroom in nothing but his boxers and stands in front of the mirror above the sink. Today, again, Seokjin doesn’t see any numbers attached to him.

He showers, the water too hot to be justified, and then falls into his bed.

 

“Fuck off,” he groans to the sun filtering in through his curtains as he rolls over, his bedsheets tangling with his limbs, holding him down. He presses his face into his pillow, letting sweet darkness reach him once more, just before he realises that shit, the sun is up. He shoots up, scrambles about the bedsheets until his fingers make purchase on his phone, and he brings it up to his face. He’d overslept.

To: cute assistant
get me coffee I’m gonna be late

To: cute assistant
and a pastry or smth

He throws his phone into his bag before he runs to his shower and cleans himself while simultaneously brushing his teeth all in one and proves that men, can in fact, multitask. He’s clean and smelling okay within five minutes, pulls on a shirt and pants and his belt, tie and jacket he grabs in one hand, his bag in the other, as he runs out of his apartment.

The adrenaline from rushing in the morning doesn’t simmer down until he’s finally hit a red light and all he can do is tap his finger along the shell of his steering wheel, his foot buzzing on the gas pedal. He watches, anxiously, as pedestrians cross the road slowly, surely. He watches the numbers above their heads. He looks out for anomalies. Smaller numbers. Anything out of the ordinary.

His knuckles go white from where he’d been clutching his steering wheel tightly, tightly, and he hadn’t even noticed. His phone buzzes and suddenly he’s back on earth and the light has just turned green and he hits the gas. His assistant has texted back but Seokjin is a good driver; he ignores the text until he’s parked his car in the garage of the company building. Pushing the door shut with his ass, pressing on his key to lock his car, he looks at the text.

From: cute assistant
where tf are u

He stuffs his phone back into his pocket.

 

Namjoon catches Seokjin’s bag the second he walks into his office as if he knew it was coming from the moment he’d heard Seokjin’s footsteps leading up to the door. Namjoon opens his mouth to complain but Seokjin just groans, sits down at his desk, and drops his head into his hands. “Where’s my coffee?” he asks, face down.

“Do I look like a fucking personal assistant to you?”

Seokjin raises his head like it’s the heaviest thing in the world, and confusion contorts his face while Namjoon scoffs and hangs Seokjin’s bag up on one of the coat hangers. “Are you not my personal assistant?” he enquires innocently, lips pursed in confusion.

There’s an ugly sneer on Namjoon’s face as he crosses his arms. “I’m your subordinate. You know, like I was hired to be.”

Stretching up and outwards, the segments of his spine clicking embarrassingly as he goes, Seokjin sits back. “Po-tay-toe, po-tah-toe. Did you get my coffee or not?”

“No.”

Seokjin flickers his eyes up to Namjoon’s, mustering up all the danger and warning he can in his exhausted body just before he releases his hold on the gaze and sighs, looking out of the window. “Fine. You’ll regret this when you realise how difficult I can be when I haven’t had my coffee,” Seokjin muses as he inspects his nails.

That seems to wake Namjoon up a little. “You mean, up until now you’ve been pleasant and easy-going?” he asks, his voice seeming to draw back on itself, growing smaller and weary.

“Yes.”

“I’m on it.”

Seokjin watches with a shit-eating grin on his face as Namjoon grabs his jacket and runs out of the office. He watches the door as it slowly swings shut, slowly, slowly, and then his grin slips off his face. His eyelids hang low over his pupils. The corners of his lips drag down.

The little girl, all those years ago. The first time Seokjin ever thought the numbers could change. The way he ran, towards the little girl whose numbers were counting down to zero faster than Seokjin knew the truck could slow down to a halt. The little girl who was too young to die; she was too young to have numbers as low as that; numbers that were hurtling towards zero-

And Seokjin, for the first time, thought the numbers could change. That he could change them. He ran for her, too fast to think about anything other than getting out of the road; he’d grabbed her and tackled her to the ground and rolled out of the road and onto the edge, and the truck rushed by them. Seokjin had looked down at her, tears in his eyes because he thought he did it, he thought he saved her, but her numbers hadn’t changed and they were still counting down – she was squirming and clawing at her throat like something had gotten caught in it –

Three. Two.

One.

Zer-

The door swings wide open and Namjoon is back, a styrofoam cup of coffee in his hand. He walks over, his brows low and angry over his eyes, to Seokjin’s desk and slams the cup down so hard some of the liquid splashes over and hits his hand. He hisses and quickly draws his hand back to him. Kisses it as he curses under his breath and takes a seat back at his own desk. Wordlessly starts typing at his computer.

Seokjin sighs and brings the cup up to his lips and takes an absentminded sip. It’s bitter; he sticks his tongue out. “Hey, Namjoon. Where’s the sugar?”

“You didn’t ask for any,” Namjoon replies without looking up from his screen.

“Why don’t you be a good boy and fetch me some, then?”

“Am I a dog?”

“I’ll give you a pat on the head if you give me some sugar,” he tells Namjoon, and when Namjoon sighs dramatically and leans back in his chair to look up at Seokjin across the room, Seokjin wiggles his brows at him. “Give me some sugar,” he repeats.

Another dramatic and heaving sigh leaves Namjoon as he slams his hands down on the edge of his desk and pushes himself up, pushing his chair out. He shoots Seokjin a look that speaks volumes of murderous intent before he leaves the office and heads down to the kitchen to grab sachets of sugar.

That was the first time Seokjin had ever thought the numbers could change. That he could change them. That was the first time someone had ever died in his arms. It’s been thirteen years since then, but there’s never a day that goes by that Seokjin doesn’t dream about it at night. Sometimes he wonders about what he could’ve done differently. If there was, indeed, a way to change that little girl’s fate. Other times, he wonders when it’ll stop haunting him.

And always, he wishes that he was never able to see the numbers to begin with.

When Namjoon returns with the sachets of sugar he makes his way to Seokjin’s desk, offers Seokjin the fakest smile known to mankind, and rips open two of the sachets and pours them into Seokjin’s coffee. With a mixer he’d remembered to equip himself with he begins to stir the hot drink. “Is that all, master?” he asks.

Seokjin reaches up and pats Namjoon’s head like he’d promised. “That’ll be all, Namjoonie.”

Namjoon swats Seokjin’s hand away and returns to his seat. He wastes no time in furiously typing away at his keyboard while Seokjin watches him, a little red in the ears, and then realises that oh, yeah, he’s come to work for a reason. To work.

Sighing like a man on the cusp of retirement, he raises his arms and angles himself slightly at his desk to face his desktop and start working on the reports from the last case he’d yet to finish typing up.

 

“By the way, Namjoon,” Seokjin tips his chin up, but keeps his eyes on his screen, “you do realise you’re my only subordinate, right? You can’t submit anonymous complaints about your superior, me, without making it totally un-anonymous.”

Seokjin still has his eyes on his screen as he types but from the extreme periphery of his vision he notices Namjoon snap his head up to look at him. “Fuck,” he hears Namjoon whisper.

He tries not to smile. Keeps his lips as small as possible. “I’ll overlook the complaints you made,” Seokjin offers to him lightly, before he angles his head towards Namjoon. “Because you said I’m pretty.”

Namjoon’s ears are red again. “I said you’re pretty dumb.”

Seokjin waves his hand dismissively and returns his attention to his report. “Oh, and you said I have pornstar lips. That was very sweet of you, thanks.”

He nearly chokes on his laugh when he hears Namjoon squeak.

 

“Sir,” Namjoon starts, looking down at the watch on his wrist as he quietly shrugs his suit jacket back onto his shoulders. “Time for the briefing.”

Seokjin raises his brows and looks at Namjoon from where he’s half-slumped over his desk. His cheek, that had been pressed against his fist, hurts when they finally disconnect. “Already?” Seokjin mumbles. He watches as Namjoon nods and stands up from his desk, clears away a few of the papers on it, and then Seokjin sighs and decides that he, too, must get up. He takes his time in plucking his suit jacket up from where he’d slung it across the back of his chair and then shrugs it on.

“I’ve already got the case records and the notes you made on it all here,” Namjoon tells him as Seokjin circles around his desk, raising the file in his arms to show him.

“Are you sure you’re not my personal assistant?” Seokjin tries to ascertain, but the quizzical quirk of his brows are anything but genuine, and the way Namjoon scoffs tells Seokjin that the smile he’s fighting off his lips didn’t go unnoticed. Namjoon doesn’t make a sound further than that; he just leads the way out of the office and down the hallway, and into the office of the chairman. The other attorneys have already filed in, have already seated themselves at the sofas facing each other on the other side of the large desk at the front of the room. Seokjin nods and gives his quiet greetings to the chairman and finds himself a seat.

Namjoon softly takes a seat beside him. Quietly hands him the file. He rifles through it quickly and sparingly just before the chairman seats himself at the armchair at the foot of the two sofas and gives a briefing on the case that Seokjin already knows about.

He listens quietly to the discussion, the ideas being thrown back and forth between the different attorneys with his eyelids low over his eyes, fixated on his own copy of the case record and his notes scribbled on the pages in multicoloured pens, until he hears his name, and he startles. “Is there anything you would like to add, Seokjin-ssi?” the chairman adds.

Seokjin looks up and blinks a few times before he presses his lips together and shakes his head. “Nothing that hasn’t already been mentioned, sir,” he answers mildly with a pleasant smile.

“Are you sure? There’s always something you’re able to pick out,” the chairman prods.

The case record in Seokjin’s hands has been scrutinised and dissected several times before Seokjin had turned down the chance to stand as the defendant’s defence attorney. He can feel the chairman’s eyes on him, the eyes of the other attorneys, as they pick him apart with their gaze. But they know already that Seokjin will never take on a case if he doesn’t entirely believe in his client. And in this case, he doesn’t. The notes he’d scribbled in on his copy of the case records, over the black ink and in the margins, aren’t just notes that his colleagues must have also picked out. They’re notes that aren’t in favour of the client.

There’s a yielding smile on the chairman’s lips as he looks away from Seokjin. “I’ve always said, you should’ve been a prosecutor.”

Seokjin licks his lips and looks back up. And smiles. “I just have way too many talents,” he laughs light-heartedly.

He stays for the rest of the briefing and taps Namjoon on the knee as soon as it ends, standing up with him before any of the other attorneys. Namjoon follows him quietly and closely and Seokjin gets halfway out the door until he hears something he wishes he hadn’t.

“He’s so arrogant. You know,” one of his colleagues whispers in a voice that’s too loud for whispering, “they call him the Grim Reaper.”

Seokjin pauses at the door when he hears that name. Namjoon bumps into him from behind but he doesn’t complain, doesn’t yell at Seokjin the way Seokjin would’ve expected him to. He only puts his hand on Seokjin’s arm, squeezes, and pushes lightly to get Seokjin to keep walking.

They don’t talk on the short walk back to Seokjin’s office. They don’t talk but Namjoon doesn’t walk behind Seokjin like he usually does – instead, he walks beside him, opens the door to his office for him, and takes the file from him just before Seokjin sits down at his desk. He lets his suit jacket fall from his shoulders. Watches as Namjoon sits on the edge of his desk, his arms folded over his chest, as he watches Seokjin.

Seokjin looks up at him.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” he asks.

“Can I ask you a question?” Namjoon bats back.

“You just did. Now, back to work.”

Namjoon sighs and closes his eyes like he’s dealing with a little child and he’s losing his patience. “Seokjin-ssi. I’m serious.”

Flickering his eyes back up to Namjoon, Seokjin lets his shoulders sag. “Go on,” he allows, and rests his arms atop his desk, his hands clasped together.

His subordinate shuffles a little from where he sits on the edge of his desk, his long legs anchoring him. Namjoon licks his lips. “Why don’t you accept cases unless you’re one hundred percent sure you’ll win? Are you afraid of losing?”

A hapless smile finds its way onto Seokjin’s lips before he can even stop himself. “Yes, I’m deathly afraid.”

“I can practically see the sarcasm dripping off your words.”

Seokjin sighs a big, heaving sigh. His chest feels light. “I don’t want to be biased,” Seokjin replies, pulling his gaze away from Namjoon to fixate on something else; something on his desk – papers that need to be tidied up, pens that need to be put back in his little stationary cup. “Or ever get so caught up in defending my client that I do something I shouldn’t do.”

“Don’t you think you should get over that?” Namjoon refutes. “How do you think the other attorneys do it, here? You’re the only one here who has never lost a case.”

“I’m also the only attorney here who has never done anything… underhanded.”

There’s a pause in the air, and for a moment Seokjin hears nothing. The air feels heavy, pregnant, and it almost feels like there’s not enough oxygen until he looks up, and he meets Namjoon’s dull and weighted gaze. “I see,” comes Namjoon’s quiet reply after a moment. He doesn’t release his hold on Seokjin’s gaze, either, until another heavy moment passes by and he exhales, looking down and away to circle around his desk and sit at it. He pulls his chair in, gets comfortable, and then looks across the room to Seokjin again. “By the way, I’ve heard people call you the Grim Reaper before. What’s that all about?”

Seokjin lowers his head and laughs, a hand reaching up to ruffle at his hair uncomfortably. He licks his lips, and suddenly, his throat feels dry. He tries swallowing, but that doesn’t help at all. The smile fades from his lips and he stares at his desk, his eyes unsteady as he tries to come up with an answer that he can give to Namjoon, an answer that makes sense, an answer that is a total lie that Namjoon would buy, when he realises that he doesn’t have to. He looks up. “You asked for one question, Kim Namjoon,” he berates suddenly. “In this field of work you have to be careful with your questions and how many you ask.”

Namjoon gives him the stink eye before he returns his focus to his screen.

 

The case is won. The client has been proved innocent. Sure, it was a petty theft case. Sure, no one was hurt. But that doesn’t matter. What matters is that Seokjin is nearly one hundred percent sure that the client was not innocent. When the team go out for drinks after the case to celebrate the win, Seokjin can’t keep those thoughts from marring his face. The words of his colleague ring in his ears like a broken record, he hears them, ringing “he’s so arrogant,” in his ears. Seokjin guesses they’d think that. He can’t help it.

He accompanies the rest of the team, anyway, to the small family restaurant and loosens his tie as he knocks back a shot while the meat grills in front of him. He’s talking to one of the girls who’s a little pink in the cheeks and he isn’t even thinking about what she’s saying because all he’s focusing on is how to eat as much meat as possible without seeming like he’s eating so much meat. He knows, either way, that if he does start to wolf down too much meat to be justified that Namjoon will stop him. Probably call a cab for him, too, because he doesn’t want Seokjin to drive home drunk. Thank god for Namjoon. Seokjin can’t imagine life without him.

 

Seokjin really can’t imagine life without Namjoon. When they finish eating and the meal has been paid for, Namjoon helps Seokjin pull his jacket on, fishes for some gloves in Seokjin’s bag so that he can wear them and protect him from the cold. It’s only after Seokjin’s all bundled up while they wait for the cab that Namjoon bundles up after. It’s cold, the sky is pitch black, and there are a few small flakes of snow coming from above. Nowhere near enough to create a thick layer of white on the ground, but just enough that when Seokjin shuffles a little closer to Namjoon, the younger male doesn’t step back. Sure, he doesn’t exactly wrap Seokjin in his arms and offer to share body heat (like Seokjin would’ve loved), but he doesn’t move away either. He stays rooted to the spot and lets Seokjin stand as close to him as is appropriate.

It’s cold, and he’s a little drunk, but not drunk enough that he needs to be accompanied until the cab arrives. Not drunk enough that he can’t wear his own jacket or his gloves. He won’t say anything, thought, opting instead to just bask in the care and warmth of his subordinate he’s almost half certain finds him completely intolerable because he knows that tomorrow morning he’s going to hear an earful from Namjoon about something or another. Oh well. He hears an earful almost every morning.

Instead, he looks up at the inch or two Namjoon holds over him and smiles widely at him. Namjoon notices Seokjin’s attention on him and he looks back down at him, and though Namjoon isn’t smiling back, he can see the minute way in which his eyes soften, his lips aren’t as taut. “You okay?” Namjoon asks mildly.

Seokjin is drunk, but not drunk enough that he’ll do something completely stupid – something he wouldn’t do if he’s sober. But Namjoon thinks he is drunk, so he decides to make the most of it by reaching up with both hands to poke his index fingers into Namjoon’s dimples. “I’m totally fine,” Seokjin replies in a sing-song voice. “Because I have you!” He takes Namjoon’s cheeks into his hands, cupping them, squishing them.

Namjoon’s cheeks under Seokjin’s hands start to flush, ever so slightly. And Seokjin pinches his cheeks again, letting go just as the cab that Namjoon had called for him arrives. He grins at Namjoon, thanks him, and then climbs into the back. Namjoon knocks on the window on the driver’s side, waits for the window to roll down, and then relays to the driver Seokjin’s address. Faces Seokjin once more. “Get home safe,” he tells Seokjin.

The engine comes alive, Seokjin settles back into the leather seats, and Namjoon backs away from the window. One final glance towards his subordinate shows Seokjin something he first thinks he'd hallucinated, but he squeezes his eyes shut, blinks a few times, and then looks again. The numbers above Namjoon’s head flicker, and then, they change. Where they once read sixty-one years, they now read ten seconds.

The car pulls out of the curb but Seokjin throws all caution into the cold, wintry winds as he rips the door open and jumps out. Namjoon turns back to look at him, eyes wide and bewildered. Lips parted to ask him why on earth he’d just jumped out of a moving car.

Seven seconds.

Six seconds.

Five.

Notes:

hope you enjoyed this first chapter! I've got quite a bit planned for this fic so i'm super excited!!! also, i know that the idea of being able to see how long people have left to live isn't original, but this is my take on it so i hope y'all like it!

leave kudos and a comment if you did

EDIT I've added the "Angst with Happy Ending" tag so things look bleak I know, but it'll be ok in the end! I promise!

 

 

 

twt

Chapter 2: Capricious

Summary:

Five seconds left to live, and till now Seokjin has never believed that the numbers could ever change.

Notes:

first of all that cliffhanger was a dirty move lol sorry not sorry

thank you so much for the reactions on the first chapter! it's always so nerve-wracking to write it and i was so unsure about the reception of this fic in general but I guess my worries were unnecessary. I know this chapter comes out exactly a week after the first but I can't guarantee a regular update schedule so don't get your hopes up too high lol

hope you enjoy this chap~

Four seconds. Seokjin’s feet don’t quite find their balance when he stumbles out of the car and they stutter on the asphalt for a moment, but he doesn’t have time. He doesn’t have time to trip over himself. He doesn’t have time to fall.

Three seconds. Namjoon’s eyes are wide – in surprise and in incredulous curiosity at Seokjin, but when he sees the serious pull of Seokjin’s brow in and down his expression hardens, it becomes serious, and he parts his lips to ask what’s wrong.

Two seconds. Seokjin’s determination and the way his heart is slamming against his ribs isn’t enough to stop his feet from stuttering. He begins to fall forward and he can’t even yell; there’s nothing in his lungs save for utter, utter desperation. Namjoon reaches forward, and so does Seokjin, and their hands connect. Namjoon quickly dips and lets Seokjin fall into his arms.

“What the-“ Namjoon begins, confused, a little breathless. One second.

Seokjin forces his body to reorient as Namjoon grips his elbows. He pushes Namjoon back, back, away from the edge of the pavement just in case it’s a car that’s about to take his life. He rips his arms away from Namjoon’s hold and throws them around Namjoon, restricting him. He snaps his head left, right, but they’re alone on the street. Seokjin can’t figure out what it could be: what could be the deciding factor of Namjoon’s life, his mind can’t focus and his wits are all about him, nothing is making sense, he can’t save Namjoon, someone is going to die, again, in his arms, he’s going to have to watch someone die in his arms –

Two hands clap over his cheeks and put a halt to the chaos and tornado of devastation inside his head and his chest. It stops. His breath stops. They’re on an empty street under a lamp and it’s approaching winter, so it’s cold even though Seokjin’s all bundled up. He feels the wind against what skin of his is showing. He feels it against his tear-soaked cheeks. He feels Namjoon’s hands holding his face. And he looks up.

“Hey, it’s okay. You’re okay. Just breathe, Seokjin-ssi. It’s going to be okay,” Namjoon is telling him, slowly, quietly, gently. He’s breathing, animatedly, forming a circle with his lips like he wants Seokjin to copy him. He takes a breath, holds it, and then releases it through the circle of his lips. Seokjin realises how staccato his breaths are, now, so he tries to follow Namjoon. It takes a few moments (a few seconds, seconds that Seokjin doesn’t have – seconds that Namjoon doesn’t have) but finally his breathing seems to match Namjoon’s. And when it does, he looks up.

The numbers have changed, again.

 

(It’s fine, Seokjin tells himself as Namjoon calls back the cab and apologises to the driver – words Seokjin can’t hear over the sounds of the cogs and gears in his mind rattling to life and creak against each other. It’s fine, Seokjin tells himself as he now sits in the back of the cab, his back straight and firm against the leather upholstery, the window at his side. On his other side, a gap, and then Namjoon. It’s fine, Seokjin tells himself as he tries his damned hardest not to focus on Namjoon. The silence between them, the quiet after Seokjin’s breathing had returned to normal after apparently hyperventilating, is now holding them both back.

Namjoon knew what to do, exactly, when he clapped Seokjin’s cheeks in his hands and guided him through his breathing. He knew exactly what to do when he rode with Seokjin in the cab back to his apartment to make sure he stays okay. He doesn’t, however, know what to do now to fill the silence between them. It’s fine, though, Seokjin tells himself because he doesn’t know either.)

He doesn’t look at Namjoon – or at the very least, he doesn’t let his gaze drift any further up above Namjoon’s neck when he glances in his direction when they arrive outside Seokjin’s apartment complex and Namjoon climbs out of the car, too, and walks quietly beside Seokjin until they reach the front door, while they’re in the elevator going up, until Seokjin is unlocking his door with his keys. His fingers fumble, shaky and hesitant and momentarily Seokjin wonders how he could’ve drunk so much, but finally the lock clicks open and Seokjin steps inside. Namjoon stays outside.

So he turns and he faces Namjoon.

“Text me if anything happens, okay?”

Seokjin nods.

“I mean it. As insufferable as you are, you’re still my superior. If you don’t work, I don’t work, and I’m too poor not to work.”

That earns a little smile from Seokjin. The heavy creasing between his brows lightens, eases up a little, and Seokjin finally raises his chin enough to meet Namjoon eye to eye like he did when he’d seen, for the second time that night, that Namjoon’s numbers had changed. The first time, they’d plunged down to ten seconds.

The second time, they were set for one hundred days. Seokjin didn’t dare to look at Namjoon again after that, had spent the entire cab journey in silence and never looked at Namjoon above his neck, until now.

Ninety-nine days, twenty-three hours and forty-four minutes. The seconds are ticking down, trickling away from his lifespan as Seokjin just watches them go. The tiny smile Namjoon earned fades from Seokjin’s lips again. “I’ll make you work, either way,” he says quietly, but without his usual boisterous and annoying tone, the effect isn’t the same. He coughs and clears his throat. “You can do all of my paperwork.”

“I do your paperwork anyway.”

“Did you walk me to my door to complain or to be a gentleman?” Seokjin asks, his brows lowered in a way that doesn’t look serious, like there’s a million things on his mind that are weighing him down. He lowers them in a way that he knows will elicit a reaction from Namjoon. And it does. He just sighs.

“I was trying to be a gentleman because you didn’t look so good earlier, but now you seem just fine. Go to bed,” Namjoon instructs him, his tiredness finally making itself known on his face, his eyelids. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Ninety-nine days, twenty-three hours and forty-one minutes. Seokjin burns the image of Namjoon’s lifespan into his memory. It leaves a scorched impression in his mind. It hurts. But he holds it tightly and he doesn’t let go. Not when Namjoon urges Seokjin inside, closes the door. Leaves Seokjin on his own in his apartment. Not when he changes into his pyjamas and forgoes a shower to drop straight into bed. When sleep claims him, those numbers are still plaguing him.

 

(Briefly, Seokjin wonders if he’d dreamt the whole thing. Wakes up several times during the night unsure if the numbers etched into his mind are a product of the hounding nightmares he gets every night or if they were actually real. It’s horrific, but in the morning Seokjin wakes up like he does every other day and showers, dons his suit, and drives to work.

The clock hand on his watch on the back of his wrist when he looks at it against his steering wheel at a red light look like they’re glitching. Seokjin blinks a few times, they’re still flickering, and then the red light changes. He looks away and presses his foot down on the gas pedal.)

 

“Namjoon,” Seokjin announces when he blasts into his office ten minutes late. He shrugs his suit jacket off, nearly chucks his bag onto the floor, and drops with a resolute huff onto his chair. “I need to get my eyes checked. Book an appointment for me.”

“I’m not your personal assistant,” Namjoon reminds him calmly and flatly as he keeps his eyes on his computer screen. “Book your own damn appointment.”

Seokjin rolls his head back against the headrest of his chair and looks over at Namjoon who’s still fixated on his screen. He stares at Namjoon through his low-lidded eyes from across the room for a few seconds, blinking hard at first and then slow, sluggishly, like he’s trying to confirm if his eyes are playing tricks on him. Like he’s given up on fighting against it.

Ninety-nine days, twenty-three hours and forty-one minutes are the numbers seared in Seokjin’s mind. The numbers he sees now floating above Namjoon’s head read ninety-nine days, fourteen hours and fifty-seven minutes.

He sighs heavily and rolls his head back against his chair again and stares up ahead, his eyes unfocused and still. “Guess I’ll just dig my own eyeballs out,” he muses in a way that sounds like he’s mumbling to himself but is purposely loud enough for Namjoon to hear. “Like Itachi tried to do to Sasuke.”

This, finally, earns Namjoon’s attention. There’s the same look of endurance on Namjoon’s face as he meets Seokjin’s eyes, and Seokjin knows he’s being annoying, even if Namjoon looks like he’s trying his best not to react. Seokjin almost smiles despite himself. “Are you okay?”

“No,” Seokjin whinges a little.

“Do you want to see a doctor?”

Seokjin sighs loudly and exasperatedly as he heaves himself up off the backrest of his chair and turns the monitor of his computer on. Waits for it to start up, opens up a browser. “I’ll just Google my issues.”

“As an educated man you should know to never Google your issues,” he hears Namjoon warn him over the sounds of his own typing. “Before you start believing that your aching foot means you’ve got gangrene and your toes will fall off in a couple of days.”

This causes Seokjin to snap his head over to Namjoon and narrow his eyes at him, scrutinising him like he would at a fresh case record he’s seeing for the first time. “That’s oddly specific,” Seokjin points out slowly, “did that happen to you?”

Namjoon’s eyes go wide as he looks at Seokjin like a deer caught in headlights, and then his ears turn a little red before he quickly plasters his attention onto his screen once more and furiously starts to type.

Seokjin wants to watch him type like he’s trying to distract himself, wants to watch his little red ears fondly, but he can’t make himself blind to the numbers above Namjoon’s head. He can’t stop his eyes from drifting upwards to look at them.

He does, however, Google his issues. He types in whatever words he can think of to describe the things that have been happening to his vision. He remembers once searching up possible reasons why he could see lifespans floating above each and every person’s head and was only ever met with works of fiction with premises similar to his own affliction. Some of them he’d outright ignored, some of them he actually enjoyed. He remembers watching Death Note and likening himself to the main character, Yagami Light. With better hair, of course. His days of looking like that are long over.

(That, and the fact that Seokjin isn’t a bad guy. Mostly.)

Soon, he’d gotten accustomed to the fact that he can see how long people have left to live. Learned how to ignore it if the numbers were high. Is still learning how to not be affected by smaller numbers. But never has he ever seen the numbers flicker, glitch, and then change. Briefly, he wondered if that flickering was contained only to the numbers above Namjoon’s head, but in the morning the clock hands on his watch had flickered too, didn’t they? He searches that on Google.

Anti-climactically, Seokjin finds out that he doesn’t, in fact, have some form of terminal eyeball tumour. It’s just stress and visual migraines. Still, he makes a note of getting his eyes checked, soon.

He looks back over at Namjoon. His ears are no longer a bright, embarrassed red and his expression has softened back down as he’s looking back and forth between his computer screen and some papers on his desk. He watches Namjoon for a while, his chin pressed into his palm as he watches. Was yesterday’s incident a product of Seokjin’s drunkenness? His visual migraines? Was there ever a point where Namjoon’s lifespan read ten seconds?

And even if Seokjin had hallucinated it all, nothing can explain why Namjoon once had sixty-one years left to live, but now only has ninety-nine days. What was going to happen to him in ninety-nine days? Would it be an accident? A sickness? A murder?

Would it be something Seokjin can change?

Can Seokjin even change lifespans at all?

Namjoon wrinkles his nose, once, twice, and then he looks up to meet Seokjin’s gaze. “Sir, may I ask why you’re staring at me so intently?” he asks calmly, his voice low and steady.

“No, you may not. Get back to work,” Seokjin replies. Namjoon presses his lips and accepts the diction, lowering his head back down. Seokjin returns to scrutinising Namjoon, and then realises he needs to dig a little deeper if he wants to figure out what could possibly take Namjoon’s life in ninety-nine days. “I’ll be back in a bit,” he tells Namjoon.

“Okay.”

He doesn’t bother to put his suit jacket back on as he stands from his chair. Walking around his desk he re-tucks his shirt into his pants, flattens his tie against his abdomen, and then walks past Namjoon’s desk and out of his office. Whistles down the hallway as he makes his way to the admin’s small office. Knocks twice before she allows him in.

Hanyu spins around in her chair to face Seokjin when he walks in. “Hey, Seokjin. What’s up?” she asks as Seokjin enters the room and walks up to her desk, leans his hip against the edge of it.

“Is it too late to quit work and be a trophy husband? I’m not getting any younger,” Seokjin sighs.

“No, it’s too early,” Hanyu replies with a knowing smile dragging on one side of her mouth. “We promised to marry each other if we’re forty and single, remember? You can be my trophy husband then.”

Seokjin sighs, closing his eyes as he does. “I sure as shit won’t be looking like a trophy at that god-forsaken age.”

Hanyu laughs a short laugh. “So, what did you come down here for?”

“Right,” Seokjin straightens himself back up. “I need the files you have on Namjoon.”

“Your good-looking subordinate?” Hanyu asks with a look that’s equal parts innocent curiosity and amusement.

“Yes,” Seokjin huffs. Hanyu stands from her chair and tucks a piece of her hair back as she makes her way over to one of the filing cabinets in her office. Pulls one of the drawers open and starts rifling through the papers stored in there. “I need them. For, uh, research purposes.”

Hanyu pauses her search to look at him over her shoulder and wiggle her brows at him. “Research,” she repeats before returning to her files. Within the next five seconds she plucks out a thin document wallet that she brings over and hands to Seokjin. “His photo isn’t the most flattering,” she says as Seokjin inspects it.

“Yeah, he was just about to sneeze when it was taken and I didn’t let him redo it,” Seokjin replies as he tucks the document under his arm. “Thanks, Hanyu. I’ll bring it back a little later.”

Hanyu blows him a kiss before plopping herself back down on her chair as Seokjin sees himself out. He strolls back to his office.

Slaps the file down onto his desk when he walks in, and Namjoon only slightly acknowledges his entrance. Seokjin doesn’t waste any time in sitting down, pulling the pages out of the document wallet, and plunging deep into scrutinising every inch of it. The photo attached to it, of course, is wildly unflattering and it’s the same photo printed on Namjoon’s ID card that he wears on a lanyard around his neck, and it nearly makes Seokjin laugh at just the memory of it. He stops himself.

Surname: Kim. First name: Namjoon. Date of birth: twelfth of September, nineteen ninety-four. He’s two years younger than Seokjin. Graduated from the same law school Seokjin did. Seokjin furrows his brows as he reads the name of the university that’s familiar to him and wonders why he’d never seen Namjoon there. As someone who’s only two years his junior, shouldn’t he have seen Namjoon around?

He reads on. There isn’t anything else that stands out on his file. No recorded physical or mental conditions. No spent or unspent convictions. Doesn’t even have a driver’s license.

No matter how much of Namjoon’s unspectacular file he reads or how deeply he reads into it, Seokjin can’t find anything that would cause red flags to pop up in his mind. Nothing to suggest that he’ll die in ninety-nine days.

“Seokjin-ssi,” comes Namjoon’s voice, deep and inquiring. Seokjin blinks and looks up from the file to meet Namjoon’s nonplussed face. “Do you remember when I would sometimes say that it suddenly smells like roasted chestnuts in this office for no reason and it drove me crazy trying to figure out where it came from?”

Seokjin doesn’t say anything and only leaves his open expression and his raised brows to let Namjoon continue with his enquiry that Seokjin couldn’t care less about.

“I think I figured it out. It’s you. You smell like roasted chestnuts whenever you’re thinking really hard about something.”

Seokjin licks his lips. “It’s my omega pheromones,” he replies and looks back down at his documents.

“Y… your what?” Namjoon stutters. Seokjin glances up at him without moving his head. “Actually, I don’t want to know.” He shakes his head and focuses on his screen again.

Seokjin picks up each sheaf of paper outlining Namjoon’s brief profile and his terms of employment before slipping them back into the document wallet and popping it into one of the drawers along the side of his desk. He gives Namjoon one last glance, at his lifespan, and returns to his work.

 

“Hey, Namjoon,” Seokjin begins when his stomach growls and he glances at the clock to find that it’s reaching up to lunch time. Namjoon raises his head. “Do you want to grab lunch with me? I’ll pay.”

Namjoon’s eyebrows rise. “Well, if you’re paying.”

Seokjin parts his lips to make a joke or say something equally stupid but he doesn’t want to scare Namjoon away. Not right now, anyway. Instead, he smiles. “Okay, let’s go.”

He follows quietly after pulling his coat on and zipping it up. He doesn’t say much on the short walk to the elevator, and only opens his mouth when Seokjin presses on the button that’ll take them down to the parking lot. “Are we going far?” he asks Seokjin once his finger comes away from the button that’s now lit up.

“Eh. Not really. There’s a nice Japanese place that’s like, ten minutes away. I can’t be bothered to walk there.”

“Fair shout.”

He straps himself into the front passenger seat comfortably at the same time that Seokjin does, and while Seokjin quickly checks if his mirrors are positioned correctly Namjoon adjusts the seat and pulls it back a few notches. Seokjin pauses and looks at him.

Namjoon looks back. “Sorry. My legs are too long.”

The hand Seokjin has already curled around his wheel tightens a little as his eyes confirm Namjoon’s claim. “Yes, they are,” he says, and physically has to swallow the rest of the words his greasy brain supplies him with, lest Namjoon unbuckles his belt and returns to the office to eat alone and away from Seokjin.

Seokjin turns the engine on, flips the handbrake and pulls out of neutral. Does so in such a fluid and overly dramatic fashion that Namjoon’s bound to realise that he’s trying to impress him. And Namjoon is, Seokjin notices when he looks into his side mirror, watching him pull these manoeuvres like he’s fascinated. Seokjin allows himself a tiny smile that only lasts long enough until he pulls out of the parking lot and onto the streets, and from then on he can’t think too hard about the fact that this is the first time Namjoon’s riding in his car because he’s got to stay focused on the road ahead. On the numbers above every head he sees.

It takes about ten minutes for them to be seated when they reach the small family restaurant and Seokjin immediately picks up the menu set down by their server. He scans it as Namjoon gets comfortable opposite him. He’s already decided what he wants by the time Namjoon picks up his menu.

So he watches Namjoon intently as his eyes pan up and down the menu, eyelids low over his pupils. Seokjin watches him intently, and it’s only when Namjoon looks up to meet Seokjin’s gaze that he realises he hadn’t been focusing on Namjoon’s lifespan. “Have you decided already?” Namjoon asks.

Seokjin nods. “Their cold udon is really nice. I always get it whenever I come here.”

Namjoon gives his menu another glance. “Hmm. It’s cold out… so I’ll get something hot. Maybe the gyudon. But next time I’ll get the udon.”

“Next time?” Seokjin asks.

His eyes flicker up from the menu once more. “That is, if you want to treat me to lunch again.”

And then they flicker back down to his menu. Seokjin allows himself the smallest of smiles just before Namjoon makes up his mind on the gyudon and closes the menu, setting it back down on the table. He raises his hand mildly and waits until one of the servers approach their table. Namjoon extends his hand out to Seokjin, first, gesturing for him to give his order first. It takes a second for Seokjin to kickstart his brain and wipe the tiny little smile off his lips and quickly recite his order to the server who scribbles it down on his notebook. She takes the menu from Seokjin. Then, she looks at Namjoon and Namjoon tells her his order.

He looks around the small restaurant, his neck craned out as he takes in the sights of the traditional Japanese artworks hung up on the walls, the pretty lightings, the tatami mats. Seokjin’s been here many times before to know exactly what the restaurant looks like, so instead he watches Namjoon. He watches him intently, with focused eyes, until Namjoon’s eyes flick back to him. “You’re being awfully quiet,” Namjoon notes with a quizzical quirk of his brow.

Seokjin licks his lips. “Do you like me when I’m loud? That’s not a very appropriate thing to sa-“

“Jesus-“ Namjoon quickly brings his hands forward like he’s trying to stop Seokjin. The tips of his ears are red again as he looks around cautiously. “Please, keep it to the office where no one can hear you.”

“No one but you?” Seokjin asks. He can see Namjoon’s ears turning redder and redder but the mischievous excitement in his chest only grows and he can’t stop himself. He’d held himself back for so long because he knew Namjoon would’ve turned down his offer for lunch if he hadn’t, but now that Namjoon is here Seokjin thinks he can let go, just a little. Well, as much as he can push it.

Namjoon pins him with a piercing look in his eyes that screams danger and warning. Seokjin, however, finds it insanely hot. “I swear to god, one of these days I’m going to file an actual complaint against you.”

He spends the next few moments, though, sobering himself and getting down from his short burst of giddiness. “Why don’t you just quit, then?” he asks, voice returning to its low tone. Namjoon raises his brows like he didn’t expect the question.

“I like being able to afford things,” is Namjoon’s short answer when his eyebrows come back down.

“You’d be hired anywhere. With my recommendation, too, you’d find another job in no time. Some of the other attorneys at our law firm, too, want to take you from me.”

The server reaches their table and carefully sets down Seokjin’s bowl of udon and Namjoon’s gyudon. Arranges a set of chopsticks by each of their bowls, some napkins, and then glasses that she fills with water and leaves the dainty vessel on the side of the table. Seokjin thanks her with a blinding smile. “Enjoy,” she tells them.

Namjoon thanks her for good measure and looks at Seokjin before looking down at his steaming and delicious-looking bowl of gyudon. “Are you trying to get rid of me?” he asks as he picks up his chopsticks. Positions them in his hands, straightens them up.

“No,” Seokjin replies as he holds his chopsticks too, and looks down to pick up a few thick noodles. “I want to keep you for as long as possible,” he says as he brings his chopsticks up to his lips and flicks his eyes up ever so briefly to look at Namjoon’s alarmingly short lifespan. He looks back at his chopsticks and takes the noodles between his lips, and he slurps it up. “But if you’re not happy here, I won’t force you to stay,” he says after he swallows.

No one speaks for the next minute. Namjoon has already gotten started on his meal, and Seokjin takes the silence as his cue to just shut up and eat and promises himself that for his good behaviour and hushed mouth now, he’ll tease Namjoon extra hard when they get back to the office. “Well, I plan on staying for a while,” Namjoon muses suddenly in the midst of his chowing down. “Might sue your ass one day, but I won’t quit.”

And then, he gives Seokjin a sort of half smile before he angles his face back down to continue scarfing down his gyudon.

Seokjin’s tiny little smile is back on his lips as he lets his eyes linger on Namjoon’s face for as long as he’ll allow himself in this moment before he returns his attention on his udon, and as he does the numbers above Namjoon’s head flicker and glitch. Seokjin’s heart jumps up in his chest, but when his eyes focus on the numbers, they remain unchanged.

He really needs to get his eyes checked.

 

There’s someone waiting outside his office when Seokjin returns at the end of their hour break. “Ah, Seokjin-ssi, I was just about to try again later,” says the assistant of the chairman. He has in his hands a fairly substantial looking file. “The chairman wanted you to have a look at this case report. See if you wanted to take it on.”

With a pleasant smile Seokjin takes the file from his hands. “Thank you. I’ll read through it now, and I’ll let you know a little later on.”

“Thank you.”

The assistant, having delivered the file, nods to Seokjin and Namjoon behind him and continues on down the hallway. With one hand clutching the file, Seokjin opens the door to his office and walks straight in and places the file onto his desk. He slowly strips his coat off and hangs it up before returning to his desk and sitting down at his chair. Namjoon retires to his own desk but he watches on curiously, waiting for his turn to read through the case report.

Seokjin flips open the file and begins to read through the report. It’s a homicide. The defendant, a student by the name of Park Jimin, has been accused of the murder of another student from the same university, Kang Dowoon. It seems as though they’d both been dating the same girl, and in a fit of jealousy, the defendant had pushed the victim down a stairwell where he fell to the ground and snapped his neck. The defendant, at this current time, pleads innocent.

He places the file back down onto his desk once he’s read through it several times and looks up to find Namjoon staring at him, waiting. “So? You wanna take it on?” he asks Seokjin curiously with his brows raised.

There are thoughts floating freely in Seokjin’s mind as facts, evidences, and conjecture start to piece together and paint a picture. His mind sparks up but he puts his hand down and smooths it over the cover of the report. Picks it up and holds it out. “I think,” he begins, meeting Namjoon’s inquisitive gaze, “you should take the lead on this case.”

Namjoon’s eyes snap open, wide. “M-me?”

Seokjin nods.

“But I’ve- I’ve never led a case before. Are you sure?” he asks, his voice battling between tones of insecurity and excitement. “Wait, are you just saying this because you think the defendant is guilty?” Namjoon bites back, doubt beginning to inject itself into his composure.

“No, I think he’s innocent. Here, have a read for yourself,” Seokjin offers as he circles around his desk and approaches Namjoon’s. Hands him the file which Namjoon takes quickly and skims through it as quickly as he can while Seokjin stands by his desk and waits. When Namjoon finally looks up Seokjin’s heart almost melts at the look on his face. He’s looks like a kid who just got accepted into the school of his dreams. “So? You think you can handle it?”

Namjoon presses his lips together like he’s trying to hold back the two extremes of his emotions. His excitement and his insecurity. “I… I don’t know. What if I mess up?”

“I’ll be right next to you the whole time,” Seokjin promises him. “If I see things are looking rough I’ll step in. But I believe you’ll do just fine anyway.”

“Are you sure?” Namjoon asks, his full bottom lip pushing out ever so slightly and his brows hanging low over his eyes.

“Yeah,” Seokjin nods again and smiles. “I know you can handle it, but I’m going to help you the entire way. I promise.”

He presses his lips together, a little unsure of himself, as he looks down at the file in his hands for a few moments. Seokjin waits patiently for Namjoon to make a decision, quietly while he can feel Namjoon mulling it over, silently as the seconds on his lifespan continue their slow descent towards zero. Finally, Namjoon looks up. “Okay. I’ll do it. Shit, I’ll do it.”

Seokjin holds his hand out to Namjoon, who reaches up and takes it graciously, and clasps hard as they shake hands. “I like a man who knows when to take charge,” Seokjin tells him. Namjoon lets go of Seokjin’s hand immediately and sighs.

“Jesus Christ.”

Notes:

in my original plan for this fic, seokjin was meant to be a jobless 20-something year old what was a i thinking

leave a comment, let me know what you think!

 

 

 

 

twt

Chapter 3: Exigent

Summary:

Park Jimin, accused of the murder of another student. Namjoon's first trial.

Notes:

this chapter is going to be very dialogue-heavy so get ur reading glasses on

disclaimer: the court proceedings in this fic won't strictly follow every rule and protocol of how they should be due to the fact that it would probably be a lot more boring to read if it did lol

“Shit. Oh, fucking cock shit fuck.”

Seokjin flickers his eyes over to where Namjoon is having a nervous breakdown over his desk, his hands holding his head up where he looks like he could drop it and maybe smack his forehead into the desk a couple of times. He wants to tell Namjoon to stop with the profanities, maybe remind him that they’re in an office, a professional setting, but the truth is that it’s wildly entertaining. “You okay there, bud?”

“No,” Namjoon replies, huffing and pulling back to let his arms drop onto the desk over his papers. “I’m gonna fuck up. I’m gonna make a fool out of myself in front of the court.”

“You’ll be fine,” Seokjin half-asses, his voice holding no comfort whatsoever. Namjoon sighs once more and looks over at him from across the room, his eyes tired and worried.

“Are you sure?” he asks desperately. “It’s a homicide. Am I really good enough to do this?”

Seokjin nods. “You’re more than capable. You know, you’re just like the heroine in any popular anime. You’re smart, you’re hot, you’re responsible, and you’ve got massive tits.”

The look on Namjoon’s face changes so fast Seokjin almost missed it just by blinking. His brows come down and there’s a disgusted pull on the corners of his lips. He blinks a couple of times, parts his lips like he wants to say or yell something, and then closes them. Parts them again, closes them, and then looks down at his own chest. “They’re not that big.”

“They’re pretty big.”

Namjoon sighs deeply through parted lips before directing his gaze back to his papers. “I would’ve reported your ass long ago if you weren’t such a good attorney,” he tells Seokjin just as he picks up another sheaf of paper.

Seokjin licks his lips. “You could do something else to my a-“

“Don’t finish that sentence. I beg you.”

He throws his head back and laughs as Namjoon tries to shake out the thoughts in his mind that Seokjin undoubtedly put there. He laughs a little and then sobers down. Looks back at Namjoon, who has already forgotten about it all and has continued to go through papers with a pen. Seokjin watches the numbers above his head. Ninety-four days left.

When lunchtime hits Seokjin glances over at Namjoon who’s furiously polishing his badge. “Namjoon, I’m going to get my eyes checked,” he tells his subordinate who only barely glances at him. “Text me if you need anything.” Namjoon only nods at that and returns to his work.

 

Seokjin stares at the vision of the man in front of him, completely entranced by the beauty and confidence that radiates off him. His eyes are steeled and focused, his brows thick and dark. Seokjin wouldn’t want to mess with that man. Not when he’s standing there, looking like he could buy the place and everyone in it. His crisp white shirt is tucked into his tailored black pants. A thin silver chain connects the tips of his collars. A long black coat rests on his shoulders and flows down to his ankles, and Seokjin has no doubt that when this man walks through the halls of the courtroom, all eyes are going to be on him. Yes, Seokjin thinks at the sight of his own reflection in the mirror. I look good.

The sound of the door swinging open forces Seokjin to put a halt to admiring himself and he tears his gaze away from his reflection to find Namjoon walking into the office. He’s fixing the cufflinks on one of his wrists, the other still open. “Seokjin-ssi, can you help me?” he asks absentmindedly.

He smiles. “Sure,” he accepts quickly and walks over to Namjoon and takes one of his wrists into his hands. He fastens the cufflinks together and takes Namjoon’s other hand and does the same.

“Thanks. I’m so fucking nervous,” Namjoon laughs sheepishly as he runs his hand through his coifed hair, and when he does Seokjin watches it run through, shakily, through the strands of dark hair.

“It’s gonna be fine, I promise.”

A shaky breath escapes Namjoon’s lips like a whistle. He shoves his hands into the pockets of his dress pants and looks down at Seokjin. “Seokjin-ssi. What was your first trial about?”

He purses his lips and looks away to remember. “Hm… I think it was a hit and run. Basic stuff,” he answers mildly.

“Were you as nervous as I am now?”

“Of course,” Seokjin laughs. “But looking back I realised I didn’t need to be. That’s why I’m telling you that you’ll be okay.”

Namjoon draws in another shaky breath. “Guess I’ll just have to do this and find out whether I’ll be okay or not.”

Seokjin can only smile at Namjoon as he walks over to his desk and files away the papers he needs and puts them in his bag. The sight of him, looking far more worried than he should be, brings nostalgic memories back to Seokjin. His first time leading a trial, and then his first time leading a homicide. He would’ve wanted Namjoon to build his confidence up gradually, naturally, but Namjoon doesn’t have enough time left to do it the way Seokjin did. He only has ninety-two days left to live. What other firsts did Seokjin have to get to where he is that Namjoon wouldn’t experience? Would Namjoon even get to where Seokjin is now before he dies?

What other things are on Namjoon’s list to do before he dies that he won’t get to cross off? Seokjin chews on the inside of his lip. If he tells Namjoon then maybe he’ll have a chance to tick those things off. Try and cram the sixty-one years he should’ve had into ninety-two days. Seokjin doesn’t know if telling him is the right thing to do. He doesn’t know if Namjoon would want to know. All he can do on his end is to try to make this career Namjoon’s picked as fruitful as possible before he dies. Namjoon finishes compiling his papers and files and joins Seokjin at the door, and together they ride the elevator down to the parking lot where Seokjin drives them to the courthouse.

 

Namjoon doesn’t stop fiddling with his cufflinks in the lobby outside the courtroom. Seokjin just stands beside him, quietly, and decides to forgo trying to comfort and ease his worries, now. This would just be something he’d have to go through. Pre-trial nerves and last-minute doubts in his own abilities was something Seokjin knew well, and he knew Namjoon would have to know them too. He keeps an eye on Namjoon, anyway, until the bailiff calls them into the courtroom. Like a man called to his gallows Namjoon walks stiffly like he’s forgotten how loose his joints should be, into the courtroom with Seokjin following behind him. He walks up, past the gallery to the defence’s side and pulls a chair out. Sits down. Takes a deep breath.

“You ready?” Seokjin asks him quietly as he sits down beside him. Eases his coat off and straightens up his suit.

“No. Fuck,” Namjoon murmurs back.

Seokjin gives a soft laugh as the courtroom begins to fill with audience and the jury takes their place. He can feel Namjoon overthinking and panicking next to him, but he doesn’t say anything. He just watches as Namjoon’s hands clasp his knees, trying to still them, but they still shake like he’s too nervous to contain himself. Seokjin doesn’t say anything, because he’s been there, done that. He’s already experienced his first trial, has been through everything Namjoon is going through now. But like Seokjin had turned out to be, then, he knows Namjoon will also do just fine. He just nudges the bottle of water on the table towards Namjoon to remind him to drink. Namjoon does.

“I’m nervous as shit,” Namjoon whispers just before he brings the neck of the bottle to his lips. He gulps down way too much water.

“Careful,” Seokjin warns him, “before you piss yourself in front of the judge.”

Namjoon brings the bottle away from his lips and gives Seokjin a side-eye. “I think I’ll piss myself either way.”

Finally, a door opens at the front of the courtroom and the judge walks in, and all hushed conversations come to a standstill. He walks up to his elevated seat and becomes comfortable. Sets aside his gavel. Then, he scans his eyes across the two tables in front of him, and the audience. And he smiles. “Looks like we’re going to have another legendary Jung vs Kim trial today,” he says.

Seokjin can feel the prosecutor’s eyes on him, but he just smiles and returns the judge’s look. “It’s a different Kim, today. My subordinate, Kim Namjoon, will be leading for the first time.”

He watches as the judge’s eyes, that have yet to fixate on the person sitting next to Seokjin, finally find him. They widen slightly like he hadn’t noticed him until now. But his surprise is short lived and he smiles again, at Namjoon, and Seokjin almost feels Namjoon unwind some of the tension he’d been building up in his body. “You’ve been thrown into the deep end with a homicide, haven’t you?” the judge asks Namjoon. Namjoon just presses his lips together, unsure whether to agree or not. Instead, he keeps his mouth shut.

“You’re Kim Seokjin’s subordinate, I won’t go easy on you,” the prosecutor pipes up in a pleasant, yet challenging tone. Seokjin glances over to the prosecution and meets his eyes.

“You don’t need to go easy on him, Jung Hoseok,” Seokjin replies airily, tipping his chin up ever so slightly and haughtily as he faces back to the front. “He’s more than capable.”

Seokjin can feel Namjoon’s eyes on him, but he’s sitting on the farthest end and looking towards Namjoon would mean looking towards the prosecution, and he can’t let up his air of conceit just yet. There’s a few more minutes of people shuffling in their seats, of the judge organising his papers, until the trial starts.

“Court is now in session,” the judge begins, bringing silence to the courtroom. “For the trial of Park Jimin.”

“The prosecution is ready, Your Honour,” Hoseok states calmly, straight-laced and without any of his usual annoying cheeriness.

There’s a pause, a few seconds where no one says anything, until Seokjin knocks his knee into Namjoon’s. “The defence is, uh, ready. Your Honour.”

Seokjin licks his lips and glances at him from the corner of his eyes and zeroes in on the anxious creasing between Namjoon’s brows, the way his lips are pressed together uncertainly. He bites down on his lip and looks back up at the judge, who seems to look past Namjoon’s moment of nervousness. Thankfully.

“Jung-ssi. Your opening statement, please,” he says as if Namjoon’s little stammer never happened. Hoseok nods and stands up, taking into his hands a paper retrieved with swift organisation from the table.

“Yes, Your Honour,” he begins. “As we’re all aware, the defendant, Park Jimin, has been accused of the murder of Kang Dowoon. The prosecution will prove that the guilty party is, in fact, our defendant.”

“Very well,” the judge accepts with a nod. “Please call in your first witness.”

“Right. Please bring Officer Jeon to the stand,” Hoseok requests, flattens his sweater against his abdomen, and sits back down. Drinks a sip of water and glances at Seokjin through the corners of his eyes as Jeongguk, clad in his uniform, takes up the witness stand.

“Please state your full name and occupation to the court,” the judge orders, and Jeongguk nods to him before returning his gaze forward, his eyes falling on Seokjin as he does.

“Jeon Jeongguk. I’m an officer in homicides down at the precinct, Your Honour.”

Namjoon leans in towards Seokjin ever so minutely, and if it wasn’t for their shoulders grazing Seokjin wouldn’t have noticed it. “Isn’t he your little brother?” he whispers quietly to Seokjin while looking straight ahead. Seokjin just nods.

“Officer Jeon,” Hoseok addresses, stealing his attention. “Please describe to us the details of the murder.”

“Of course,” Jeongguk straightens up in his seat, looking just as stiff as Namjoon does as he tugs on the short sleeve of his police shirt. “The murder occurred on the third of December, at thirty-three minutes past eleven in the morning. The victim, Kang Dowoon, was pushed down a stairwell from the third floor inside the university, where he snapped his neck upon landing.”

Seokjin watches as Namjoon take the case record in his hands mildly as if to check that Jeongguk’s words match what was written in the records. Seokjin wants to tell him to calm down, to relax, but he knows that it’ll be useless to do so, so he just stays silent instead. Hoseok rises, his posture calm and relaxed as he takes a stand at the podium. “The time of death was very precisely recorded, wasn’t it?” he asks.

Jeongguk nods. “The victim wore a watch on his wrist. It stopped working from the impact when he landed. The victim’s neck had snapped so it was estimated that the death was instant, and so the time of death was recorded at the time the watch was frozen on. The autopsy which was carried out also confirmed this.”

Hoseok places an A4 sized photograph under the projector to the side of the podium, which shines onto the screen to the side of the courtroom an enlarged image of the photograph depicting the victim, facing down on the ground at the bottom of a stairwell. “This is a photograph of the untouched crime scene. Officer Jeon, please tell the court what was found upon investigation,” Hoseok requests.

“Under the victim’s body was a pair of smashed glasses. He grabbed them from the criminal’s face before being pushed to his death,” Jeongguk answers.

“And these glasses…?”

“We believe they belong to the defendant, who has admitted to having poor eyesight.”

“Thank you,” Hoseok smiles, and steps down from the podium.

For a moment, nothing happens, and the judge parts his lips to comment when Seokjin knocks his knee into Namjoon’s knee, kickstarting his attention. He almost jumps up and out of his seat before he takes a stand at the podium. Coughs into his fist, first, to clear his throat. “Are you sure the glasses belonged to the defendant?” he asks, and Seokjin swallows. He still sounds so nervous and unsure of himself. Seokjin clenches his fists and hopes for the best.

“The victim did not require any form of spectacle correction. The glasses found underneath him contained prescription lenses,” Jeongguk answers.

“Couldn’t they have belonged to someone else? My client wears contact lenses every day,” Namjoon counters.

Jeongguk purses his lips. “I don’t know if he was wearing his glasses on the day or not, but a pair was found with the victim and the only person it could have belonged to was the defendant.”

He shuffles in his seat and Seokjin watches as Namjoon seems to fumble for a moment, and he bites the inside of his lip. He bites hard and he wonders what Namjoon’s next move will be, but suddenly Namjoon steps down from the podium. “Thank you, that’s all,” he says quietly as he comes down and takes his seat next to Seokjin once again.

“What went wrong?” Seokjin whispers to him, leaning in as close as he can get. Namjoon just shakes his head, a taut pull on the corners of his lips. He brings his hands together and clasps them.

“Thank you, Officer Jeon. You may step down from the witness stand,” Hoseok pipes up, and Jeongguk nods to the court as he gets up and extricates himself from the witness stand. Seokjin watches Hoseok, a small yet smug smile on his lips as he waits for Jeongguk to leave. “I’d like to call the defendant, Park Jimin up to the stand. Jimin, if you will.”

Seokjin licks his lips as he watches their client take the stand, and once he’s comfortable and looking scared beyond his wits, he looks at Namjoon. Namjoon isn’t looking any better. “Breathe. Think calmly and logically, okay?” Seokjin whispers to him, and Namjoon only nods. He’s sure that at this point anything he tries to say to Namjoon to calm him down is useless.

“Please state your full name and occupation,” the judge orders. Jimin seems to draw in on himself a little, his hands clasped together nervously.

“My name is Park Jimin. I’m a full-time student,” he answers, his voice thin and a little high-strung. Nobody seems to pick up on it, because Hoseok wastes no time in standing up at the podium once again.

“Please tell us what you were doing on December the third, around the time of the murder,” he requests.

Jimin takes a deep, shuddering breath, but his eyes remain steeled and focused like he’s run through this story many, many times. Seokjin notes the dark circles under his eyes, his pale and tired skin. He wonders just how much this accusation has shaken him up. He wonders if he feels as bad as Seokjin did when that little girl died in his arms. “I was in a lecture that started at eleven and was due to end at one. I had overslept that morning and didn’t have time to put my contact lenses in. I was sat at the back of the hall and couldn’t see the screen, and there were no more seats available closer to it, so around eleven-thirty I walked out from the back exit of the hall so that I could go into the toilets and put a pair of lenses in before returning to the lecture.”

“Did you have your glasses with you?” Hoseok asks, looking down at his papers on the podium. Jimin presses his lips together.

“No.”

“But you remembered to carry a pair of contact lenses with you?”

“I always keep a box of them in my bag. My glasses stay in my dorm. I never wear them outside,” Jimin answers.

“So in order to not be seen wearing your glasses you decided to attend your lecture even though you wouldn’t be able to see anything? What if you’d come in wearing your glasses, felt too uncomfortable in them, and left to wear your contacts at which point you met with the victim and he pulled your glasses off?” Hoseok questions.

“I didn’t have my glasses with me on that day,” Jimin maintains.

“Well, we didn’t find any in your dorm, either,” Hoseok replies with an unimpressed look on his face.

Jimin presses his lips together. “I accidentally broke them the day before. I didn’t have any glasses to wear on the day of the murder. I would’ve worn them if I did,” Jimin tries to refute, but the knowing smug look on Hoseok’s face tells Seokjin that his claim has not left even a dent in Hoseok’s case.

“Can you prove it was you who broke the glasses the day before? Or the victim when you pushed him?”

His lips part, and then close, and Seokjin watches as his eyes widen a little in fear. Like a mouse trapped in the corner, with nowhere to go. He watches as Jimin swallows, palpably, his hands that are clasping each other shivering with hesitation and fear. Seokjin looks over at Namjoon.

His eyes are wide, his lips pressed together in a straight line.

“Defence? Your cross-examination?” the judge prods him, but Namjoon doesn’t budge.

“Hyung,” Namjoon whispers as he stares at Jimin through despairing eyes. Seokjin’s eyes snap open wide. Namjoon has never called him hyung before. His lips part slightly. “I’m screwed.”

Seokjin swallows thickly, his brows drawn so deeply that he worries about forming wrinkles on his forehead. He swallows again and stands up, walks around Namjoon who watches him through surprised eyes. He walks up to the stand.

“Park Jimin,” Seokjin addresses him. Jimin looks up at him through devastated eyes that seem to cry out for help. “It’s tough having bad eyesight, right?”

“H-huh?” Jimin mumbles.

“I know your struggles. My eyes are trash, too. I wouldn’t dare leave my apartment wearing my hideous glasses.”

Jimin lowers his head a little and presses his lips together like he’s too afraid to appreciate what Seokjin’s doing. Like he won’t be eased into comfort at all. Seokjin understands. His life is at stake. Seokjin doesn’t give up, though, he just smiles and keeps going.

“I had my eyes checked again recently, and I went to see the same guy you see! And I requested your clinical records – with your permission, of course, you remember that, don’t you? – and I had him explain to me the nature of your prescription. You’re short-sighted, aren’t you?”

“Y-yeah…” Jimin mutters.

“Prescription lenses for short-sightedness look very different to lenses for long-sightedness. For example, lenses for long-sightedness are magnifying. And,” Seokjin pauses to retrieve a clear bag that contains a smashed pair of glasses complete with whatever pieces from the lenses that could be salvaged. “As you can see from the bigger pieces, these glasses are for long-sighted prescriptions.”

He places the bag back down and looks pointedly at Hoseok.

“These glasses do not belong to my client. The victim pulled a pair of glasses off the face of the person who pushed him, yes, but that person was not Park Jimin.”

And with that, Seokjin steps down from the podium and returns to his seat besides Namjoon.

The judge brings his gavel down to quieten the gallery and bring attention back to the proceedings, but Namjoon is still staring, awe-struck, at Seokjin. “We’ll take a short twenty-minute recess before we call the next witness in,” he announces, and Seokjin stands up once more. Namjoon’s eyes follow him.

“Come on, it’s break-time,” Seokjin taps his shoulder. Namjoon blinks, presses his lips together, and then stands. Swallows thickly.

“R-right…”

 

Namjoon releases a deep sigh, right from the bottom of his chest, when they’re out in the lobby again. Seokjin raises his hand and lets it rest on Namjoon’s arm, he parts his lips to say something, anything, to try and control his nerves but the chance to do that is stolen by one Jung Hoseok, who saunters up to them with his hands in the pockets of his dress pants, pushing his coat backwards. “I told you I wouldn’t go easy on you,” he grins at Namjoon.

There’s a constipated look on Namjoon’s face that makes Seokjin want to both laugh out loud and take Namjoon into his arms to pat at his hair. “Good. I don’t want you to go easy on me,” Namjoon replies unwaveringly.

“That’s big talk coming from someone who needed Seokjin to step in for you,” Hoseok tips his chin up haughtily, “which, by the way, was super hot. Thanks for that.”

Seokjin scoffs and looks away, folding his arms over his chest. “Do you mind being greasy somewhere else? I want to talk to my subordinate.”

He flicks his hand at Hoseok to shoo him away when Hoseok doesn’t budge. When, finally, he leaves Seokjin alone with Namjoon, he looks up at Namjoon and takes in the harsh pull of his brows, the way his chin is jutted out in quiet frustration.

“You look like you’re gonna murder him,” Seokjin jokes in an attempt to ease the tension pulling his face taut.

“I’m not pissed off at him,” Namjoon replies, his voice calm and stable. “I’m pissed off at myself. I have a law degree, and yet I looked like an idiot up there.”

Seokjin places his hand on Namjoon’s arm and rubs it a little. “We all start out like that, I promise. Nobody thinks you’re not capable. They just think this is your first time leading a trial.”

Namjoon sighs heavily, and then looks down at Seokjin. “Thanks. For stepping in. You were really cool.”

A shy smile finds its way onto Seokjin’s lips. “Yeah? How cool?”

He looks tired, like leading the trial has sapped all of his energy from him. Seokjin can tell because he’s not pulling his arm away from Seokjin’s hand, instead, he’s leaning in a little towards Seokjin. When he looks down at Seokjin there’s exhaustion in his eyes, from days of studying and being nervous, but there’s something else there. Something that looks a lot like admiration. Seokjin hasn’t seen that in Namjoon’s eyes in a while. “Very cool,” Namjoon tells him. “Reminded me of the reason why I wanted to learn from you, and only you.”

His brows rise. “Is that why you won’t quit?”

Namjoon nods. “I want to be a great attorney, just like you. So I’ll endure all of your weirdness for as long as it takes.”

As long as it takes, he said. Those words echo in Seokjin’s mind as he glances up at the numbers above his head. As long as it takes, he said, not knowing that he only has ninety-two days to reach that goal of his. His hand on Namjoon’s arm squeezes, just a little, and Namjoon steps closer, fractionally so.

“Hyung!” a voice makes him let go of Namjoon’s arm. He whips around to find Jeongguk approaching him. “Why didn’t you tell me you were on this case?”

When he reaches them, Seokjin pulls him in by the shoulders and wraps him in his arms. Jeongguk turns a little stiff, and as soon as Seokjin feels like he lets go. “I’m not leading it, this time. My subordinate is.”

Jeongguk looks up at Namjoon and mumbles his greeting before quickly returning his gaze to Seokjin. “I was going to leave after I’d said my bit, but I’ll stick around for the rest of the trial. Do you want to visit mom with me afterwards?”

He’s still holding Jeongguk’s shoulders, he realises, so he drops his arms and lets them return to his side. “Sure. I’ll just have to drop Namjoon off home first, and then I can drive us up there.”

“You don’t drive?” Jeongguk asks, his brows raised enquiringly at Namjoon, who only presses his lips together and shakes his head in denial.

“Nope,” he replies flatly, smacking his lips together. “Can’t drive, can’t cook, can’t do basic lawyer shit-“

Seokjin hits him in the stomach. “Don’t listen to him. I didn’t bust my ass raising him so that he could say shit like that.”

When the bailiff calls them back into the courtroom to signal the end of their recess, Namjoon is still clutching his stomach but Seokjin worms his hand into Namjoon’s and pulls him along until Namjoon stops complaining in Seokjin’s ear and starts to walk on his own into the courtroom. They take their seats again, Namjoon downs way too much water, and then he leans in towards Seokjin again. “If I pass out, don’t let my head hit the floor. I’ve already got stitches on my scalp from the last time.”

“What?”

“Court will now reconvene,” the judge announces with a resolute hit of his gavel. “Jung-ssi, please call your next witness.”

Namjoon straightens up and away from Seokjin, clearing his throat. “Yes, Your Honour,” Hoseok answers. “I’d actually like to call Park Jimin back to the stand. I have a few questions I didn’t get to ask because we all became fixated on just how poor his eyesight is.”

It sounds like a direct jab to Namjoon but Seokjin doesn’t react, and neither does Namjoon. Jimin doesn’t protest; he silently stands up and walks to the witness stand, obediently, and sits down to wait further instructions. He doesn’t look as distraught as he did earlier and Seokjin hopes that, with the proceedings just before the recess, Jimin has a little more faith in his defence. That he’s in safe hands.

“You said you left the lecture hall at about eleven thirty to go to the restroom so that you could insert your contact lenses, correct?” Hoseok asks, looking down at a sheaf of paper in his hand.

“Yes.”

“And that you went, inserted your lenses, and then returned to the lecture hall?”

Jimin pauses for a second, his brows low over his eyes now, before he responds with “yes,” again.

“I’ve got a record of messages from the victim’s phone,” Hoseok announces as he slips what looks like a log of text messages under the projector for everyone to see. “If you look here, dated third of December at thirty-one past eleven, there’s a message sent to your phone number. You replied, informing him that you were going to the restroom on the third floor of that building. Is that correct?”

Jimin’s lips are pulled into a straight line, his eyes holding something close to contempt as he looks at the image of his logged conversation with the victim. “Yes, that’s correct.”

“What I want to know,” Hoseok starts, pulling the paper down from the projector and back onto the prosecution’s table, “is why you were going down to the third floor restrooms when your lecture hall is on the fourth. As I understand, there are restrooms for both men and women on each floor, so why did you enter the stairwell to walk down to the third floor? If you were only planning to go to the restroom to insert your contact lenses?”

Jimin parts his lips, draws in a breath, but before he can get a word out Hoseok is already speaking again.

“We know the exact time that the victim hit the ground and passed away. But we don’t know what time you left the lecture hall. You replied to him at thirty-one past eleven, but did that reply come before you left the hall? Or after? Was it sent so that you could meet with the victim and push him down or was it sent while you were on your way, and the truth is that you’re innocent and just happened to use that route?” Hoseok asks, his hands gripping the sides of the podium tightly. Jimin’s lips are parted, there are words on the tip of his tongue but he can’t get them out, can’t figure out what to say, because Hoseok doesn’t give him any time. “Why did you use that route? Why did you text the victim? What could you possibly say to worm your way out of this one?”

“Objection!” Namjoon calls out, a little loud and sudden that it causes Seokjin to jump in his seat. “The prosecution is badgering the witness.”

“Sustained,” the judge accepts.

Hoseok drops his head down, pauses like that for a moment before he brings his papers back together. “That’s all,” he says flatly and steps down from the podium and returns to his seat. Namjoon rises quickly and takes a stand there, clears his throat.

“Jimin,” he addresses, and swallows thickly. “Do you remember which lecture hall you were in that day?”

“Yes,” Jimin replies quietly, his eyes low and not meeting Namjoon’s. “Lecture hall 4A of that building.”

“So, the number four means the fourth floor, and the letter A is in relationship to the order of halls along that hallway?”

“Yes."

“So 4A means it’s the first lecture hall along that hallway?”

“Objection,” Hoseok calls out in a bored tone, “relevance.”

“Get to the point, please,” the judge requests of Namjoon.

Seokjin watches as Namjoon nervously clears his throat into his fist for the nth time that morning. “There are two restrooms on every floor, correct? One male and one female restroom. Located on either ends of the hallway. They alternate by each floor.”

“That’s correct,” Jimin replies, and he looks up at Namjoon. His brows are raised, ever so slightly, and Seokjin looks over at Namjoon, wondering for just a brief moment where he’s going with this and why Jimin seems to be reacting, when it hits him. And he smiles to himself.

“Lecture hall 4A, which is on one end of the hallway, is next to the female restrooms, am I right?” Namjoon asks. Jimin nods. “And directly beneath it, on the third floor, is the male restrooms. Now, tell me, Jimin, from lecture hall 4A which is closer: the male restroom on the fourth floor or on the floor below it?”

“The floor below it.”

Namjoon smiles. “Thank you. That’s all.”

He’s still smiling to himself when he returns to his seat next to Seokjin, and when he sits down Seokjin clasps his knee under the table, giving it a squeeze. “Well done,” he whispers to Namjoon. Namjoon leans over slightly towards Seokjin.

“I learned from the best,” he whispers back.

Seokjin’s face grows a little warm and he can’t hide the small, proud smile that worms its way onto his lips even as Hoseok rises and takes a stand at the podium. “Right,” he discloses to bring silence to the gallery, “we’ve established that the defendant can’t see well, and went to the restroom on the floor below to insert his contact lenses. It doesn’t change the fact that he did, still, meet with the victim in the stairwell on the third floor. Or the fact that he pushed him down.”

Silence settles in through the courtroom and Seokjin chews on his bottom lip in anticipation. He can feel Namjoon do the same, can feel him ruminating in his mind and prepare himself for the worst. His hand, he realises, is still on Namjoon’s knee, and he’s just about to retract it when Namjoon’s hand darts out and clasps it.

“I’d like to call in my next witness,” Hoseok announces as he dismisses Jimin from the stand. “Song Gunho, another student who witnessed the exact moment Jimin pushed Kang Dowoon over.”

Namjoon’s hand holding Seokjin’s under the table squeezes, hard. “Fuck,” he whispers under his breath.

Notes:

that was fun to write i hope y'all enjoyed it

leave a comment if you liked it!
 

 

 

twt

Chapter 4: Arcane

Summary:

Hoseok introduces a new witness, who claims he saw Jimin push the victim down to his death.

Notes:

again, another dialogue heavy chapter

and as before:

disclaimer: the court proceedings in this fic won't strictly follow every rule and protocol of how they should be due to the fact that it would probably be a lot more boring to read if it did

The student, Song Gunho, takes the stand. Seokjin can almost feel Namjoon’s breath stutter next to him. Almost. What he feels, more, is Namjoon’s hand holding his under the table tightly, uncertainly. Seokjin furrows his brows and bites lightly against his bottom lip. Was this a mistake? Was Seokjin hasty in his decision to let Namjoon lead this case? Was Namjoon truly ready for this?

Because sure, Seokjin had told him he’d be there to help, and he had told Namjoon that he would step in if Namjoon needed him to. But what he didn’t anticipate was that Namjoon would refrain from asking for help, would want to interview Park Jimin by himself. What he didn’t anticipate was that Namjoon would want to feel like he was worth the trust Seokjin placed in him. Like he wouldn’t let Seokjin down.

What he didn’t anticipate was Namjoon blanking out in the middle of the trial, with a judge before him and a prosecutor waiting to tear him a new one. He didn’t anticipate it at all.

The number above Namjoon’s head had clouded Seokjin’s judgement. The countdown of a lifespan had once again ignited chaos in his mind.

Song Gunho sat down and stared, expressionlessly, at Namjoon. Namjoon stared back, equally as expressionlessly. As Hoseok rose and took a stand at the podium, Seokjin felt Namjoon’s hand slip from over the back of his. He quickly withdraws his hand from Namjoon’s knee. “Please state your full name and occupation to the court,” the judge orders of the witness.

“Song Gunho, student,” comes his short, clipped reply.

“Thank you,” Hoseok replies and places his hands face down on the podium. “Please describe to us what you witnessed on the morning of the third of December.”

After clearing his throat into his hands, Song Gunho shifted and readjusted himself in his seat. “I walked into the stairwell of that building and heard two people arguing from a few floors above. I couldn’t see them when I looked up. I didn’t get to reach the stairwell before Dowoon suddenly dropped to the ground.”

The air seems to still for just a second; perhaps less, while Gunho’s eyes flicker between the defence and the prosecution. Namjoon presses his hands into the table, and Seokjin’s eyes zero in on the way Namjoon bites down on his lower lip. He looks nervous, and all of Seokjin’s doubts come rushing back to him. Was this the right choice? Is Namjoon ready for this?

Those doubts continue to fester and grow even as Namjoon takes a stand and clears his throat into his tightly clenched fist. “Song Gunho,” he addresses first, and clears his throat once more. “How did you know it was the defendant who pushed the victim if you didn’t see them?” Namjoon asks. Gunho’s expression doesn’t shift – as if the question didn’t faze him at all. Like he knew it was coming.

“He looked over the banister after Dowoon fell, and I saw his face,” Gunho answers mildly.

“What did he look like?” Namjoon follows up, and Seokjin bites down on his lip. His hands curl at his knees under the table, desperately, his doubts swirling around in his mind.

“What do you mean?” Gunho furrows his brows as his eyes flicker quickly over to Hoseok before returning to Namjoon. “He was quite high up. I couldn’t see him too clearly. He was only there for a second before he disappeared.”

A heavy sigh falls past Namjoon’s lips, and with that comes the insecure ruffling of papers. “What did you do next?” he asks, his voice flat.

“Dowoon wasn’t moving, so I ran out of the stairwell to call the ambulance.”

“Straight away?” Namjoon quirks a brow.

Gunho presses his lips together, too quick to come and go for anyone to point out. “I guess,” he replies unsurely. He swallows thickly, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down in his throat. Seokjin looks up at Namjoon, who pulls out a sheet of paper and looks down at it.

“The ambulance was phoned at eleven forty-five. The victim hit the ground at eleven thirty-three,” he recites from his notes with eyelids low over his pupils. Then, he places the paper down, and looks up to meet Gunho’s face. “What were you doing during this time?”

Seokjin feels Hoseok standing before he rises to his feet and the words “Objection! Speculation,” leave his mouth. “The witness saw someone hit the floor. He was in shock.”

Namjoon looks over at Hoseok. “For twelve minutes?” he asks, his voice bordering along incredulous just before he redirects his gaze to Gunho. “What were you doing for twelve minutes? You just told me you called the ambulance straight away.”

This time, Hoseok stands up and angles his body towards Namjoon. “No,” he begins. “You said it. The witness merely agreed – but you were the one who put those words in his mouth. Please do not confuse my witness.”

A quiet, almost inaudible shuffle pulls Seokjin’s gaze away from Hoseok to look over at Gunho sitting at the witness stand, a smirk so small that it almost goes by unnoticed.

“Dowoon, please restate your testimony,” Hoseok requests, and Gunho parts his lips to oblige but the sound of the gavel shuts him up once more.

“We shall reconvene after a twenty-minute break,” the judge orders, and curious chatter fills the courtroom as Namjoon hangs his head slightly before stepping down and joining Seokjin. The gallery empties out, the chatter exiting with it, and Hoseok walks past their table with a silent hand on Namjoon’s shoulder before leaving the courtroom.

“Come on, let’s go outside for some fresh air,” Seokjin tells Namjoon quietly, and Namjoon nods.

The people who were in the gallery stare at Seokjin and Namjoon as they leave. Once outside Namjoon releases the tension in his shoulders, letting them sag. He takes a deep breath and looks at Seokjin. “This is going worse than I expected,” Namjoon replies quietly, despairingly. “The prosecutor is too good.”

Namjoon laughs lightly, sadly and self-depreciating. “He is really good,” Seokjin replies mildly. “You just have to keep your cool. Even I struggle with him.”

“I know, but,” Namjoon shakes his head a little and looks down at the concrete floor, at the steps leading downwards. “You’re Kim Seokjin. You’ve never lost a case.”

“Not true,” Seokjin laughs and runs an embarrassed hand through his hair. “I’ve lost, before. To Hoseok.”

Namjoon angles his body towards Seokjin, brows raised in curiosity. “Really?”

“I’m not psychic,” Seokjin replies, looking away from the numbers blaring at him above Namjoon’s head. “Sometimes I’m wrong. I’ve lost to Hoseok, and I’ve won against him, too. But it’s not about winning or losing, it’s about putting the bad guy behind bars so that they can’t hurt anyone else.”

He counts the seconds that trickle away from them as the cold winter air starts to affect them, as they trickle away from Namjoon’s lifespan. “Right. It’s not about winning or losing,” Namjoon echoes. “I just… need to stop freaking out.”

Seokjin places a hand to Namjoon’s back, his touch soft but firm. “It’ll be fine. Just picture everyone naked, you’ll feel less nervous.”

Namjoon shoots Seokjin a pointed look, his expression dripping with incredulous curiosity.

“Don’t picture me naked, though,” Seokjin adds, “because I have the body of a Greek god and you’re probably going to bust a nut in front of the judge.”

Namjoon sighs. “Do you ever run out of bullshit to say?”

“It’ll be a cold day in hell if that ever happens.”

Namjoon just sighs once more before turning on his heel to walk back into the court. Seokjin follows suit and walks closely along with him before they return to the courtroom and Namjoon silently begins to organise his notes as Seokjin watches him with concern filling up all his senses. He ruminates quietly to himself until the gallery fills up once more, the jury take their seats, and the judge enters the room. Song Gunho takes a seat at the witness stands once again, hands clasped together tightly, knuckles turning white. “Please, give us your testimony again,” Hoseok requests. “Tell us everything you remember.”

Gunho takes a deep breath, smacks his lips together. “I entered the stairwell around eleven thirty. Something like that. I heard two people a few floors above me arguing over a girl named Seha. I had just about reached the steps before someone fell to the ground. I looked up and saw Jimin looking down, squinting at me. When he saw me, he ran away. Dowoon was holding a pair of glasses with him. I tried talking to him, but he didn’t respond. I put my hand in front of his face, but he wasn’t breathing, so I panicked and I think I zoned out. I don’t know. I called the ambulance after.”

“We know already,” Namjoon begins after he pulls in a shuddering breath, “that Jimin couldn’t see clearly, which explains why you might’ve seen him squinting. The glasses, however, did not belong to him.”

Gunho just shrugs, looking bored. “I don’t know. I couldn’t see very clearly.”

“Just tell me what you know you saw, not what you think you saw.”

“I saw the victim fall. He had glasses in his hand.”

Silence befalls the courtroom once again, and just as the silence slowly begins to fill up with quiet chatter from the gallery, Namjoon clears his throat, and takes a step backwards. When he parts his lips, Seokjin knows exactly what’s going to happen. He’s going to stop his cross-examination.

“Stay there,” Seokjin whispers. “You’re not finished.”

Namjoon looks down at him, mouth open and confused. He takes another step towards Seokjin but Seokjin flicks his hand towards him, shooing him, keeping him at bay. He pulls his brows down, his lips taut, trying his best to keep Namjoon on the stand without raising his voice above a whisper. “There’s nothing else-“

“The glasses!” Seokjin hisses at him. “Look at the autopsy!”

Quickly rifling through the papers he’d brought with him to the stand, the murmurs from the gallery building up, Namjoon’s eyes begin frantically scanning page after page. The judge coughs, clears his throat, and Seokjin watches from the corner of his eyes as Hoseok starts to rise to his feet, but just before Namjoon loses it all, he snaps his head up and meets Gunho’s gaze. “The glasses,” he begins, and Gunho’s brows rise in anticipation, “were found underneath the victim’s body.”

The courtroom goes silent once again, and something grows thick and unpleasant between Namjoon and Gunho. The witness isn’t speaking, has his lips pressed together tightly and unwaveringly, despite the creases between his brows. He swallows, but he doesn’t speak.

“The glasses were found underneath the body,” Namjoon repeats, his voice lower and louder now. More confident. He grips the sides of the podium. “The only way you could’ve seen the glasses would be if you had tampered with the body – which I guess you could’ve done in the twelve minutes you were unaccounted for, or if you were on the third floor, in front of the victim… before you pushed him and he pulled your glasses off? I recall twice, now, you’ve mentioned that you couldn’t see clearly.”

Conversations erupt through the courtroom, but while the indiscernible voices fight for attention, Namjoon’s eyes remain focused and sharp on Gunho’s, and not even the sound of the gavel silencing the courtroom can make Namjoon look away. Seokjin allows himself a smile as he watches Namjoon, proudly.

“Please tell the court about how you managed to see the glasses.”

It takes Gunho several moments to recollect his thoughts. He clears his throat twice. “I, uh, heard him. Jimin. After Dowoon was pushed, he said something like, ‘shit, my glasses’.”

Namjoon shakes his head. “We’ve established already that the glasses can’t have belonged to him.”

“I-“ Gunho begins, stuttering frantically before clearing his throat again, “I saw them fall with him. Just before he fell on top of them.”

“The average height of one floor is about three metres,” Namjoon begins calmly. “And the victim fell from the third floor to the ground floor. That’s four floors in total. Or in height, roughly twelve metres. As you fall, you get accelerated by gravity at nine point eight metres per second, squared. Which means that for every second you fall, you accelerate more and more.”

The courtroom is dead silent, and though the numbers spilling out of Namjoon’s lips mean nothing to Seokjin, he’s still mesmerised beyond words.

“So the longer you have to fall,” Namjoon continues unwaveringly, “the faster you fall. If you work it all out, for something to fall four floors, or twelve metres, it’ll take one and a half seconds, and at the point of impact the speed will be just above fifty-five kilometres per hour. Tell me, Song Gunho, from where you claim you stood, how you were able to see these glasses with the victim as he fell?”

Gunho’s open mouth gapes as he struggles to talk his way out of this.

“Objection,” Hoseok pipes up, his hands flat against his table and his brows harsh over his eyes. “The defence is badgering the witness.”

“Sustained,” the judge accepts, and Namjoon gracefully steps down from the stand. Hoseok flattens his tie against his abdomen and replaces Namjoon.

“Witness,” Hoseok begins, his voice low and dangerous. “The defence has made some incriminating points. What do you have to say about this?”

It takes a moment for Gunho to recollect his thoughts. Namjoon remains stock-still in his chair, and Seokjin stares at him. His eyes, Seokjin can’t look away from, are wide and livid, like they’re buzzing with energy. Seokjin doesn’t care about the witness, right now. He can’t think about anything other than Namjoon.

“I-“ Gunho starts after a moment too long to be justified, “I don’t have any reason to have killed Dowoon. I didn’t even know him or Jimin.”

Hoseok turns his neck to look at Namjoon. “The witness doesn’t have a motive. He didn’t know anyone involved.”

Namjoon rises once more and take the stand. Hoseok steps down when he sees Namjoon get up. “Perhaps he didn’t know the victim or the defendant. But he mentioned the name of the girl who apparently was the object of desire between the two men,” Namjoon brings to attention. The gallery begins to murmur again, but when Namjoon clears his throat he brings silence with it. “You knew the girl, didn’t you?”

Gunho squirms in his seat.

“Answer me, Song Gunho. Did you, or did you not know this girl before the murder?”

Gunho doesn’t answer. Hoseok stands up once again and Namjoon steps down respectfully. “The witness and Seo Seha attend the same classes at the university,” Hoseok supplies, and Namjoon’s eyes snap open wide as he looks over at Hoseok. Hoseok looks back at Namjoon with a blank expression in his eyes, but when Seokjin sees that expression he knows exactly what’s going through his mind. Seokjin smiles to himself.

“What was your relationship with Seo Seha before the murder?” Namjoon asks.

“She was just a girl in my class,” Gunho replies, his voice clipped and curt like he’s forcing it to be. His expression is taut like he’s trying his best to keep his poker face up.

“Have you ever had any kind of special relationship with her?” Namjoon follows up.

Gunho looks down and grits his teeth, his poor excuse of a poker face completely falling apart. His hands clench by his side. “I… I didn’t have any special relationship with her.”

“Your shift in demeanour just now suggests otherwise.”

Seokjin’s eyes flicker over to where Hoseok is sitting, his elbows digging into the table and his fingers weaved together. His eyelids are low over his pupils and he looks like he’s watching the trial unfurl before him. He doesn’t look like he’s going to stand and make an objection.

“I like her,” Gunho admits. “But I didn’t have any special relationship with her.”

“So on the morning of the third of December, you walked into a stairwell and heard Kang Dowoon and Park Jimin talk about Seo Seha,” Namjoon confirms while reading from his notes, and though his tone and inclination sound smooth and confident, there’s something stringing a little too tightly, a little too thinly behind his voice. Seokjin furrows his brows and keeps watching him. “At eleven thirty-three, Dowoon is pushed to his death, with a pair of glasses he’d pulled from the one who pushed him. They didn’t belong to Park Jimin. You knew about the glasses because you had either tampered with the body before the ambulance and police had arrived, or you were the one to push Dowoon.”

The courtroom remains silent for every second that ticks by that Gunho doesn’t speak.

“What is the truth, Song Gunho?” Namjoon asks, putting his papers down on the podium to grasp the sides, tightly, and challenge Gunho with his steeled eyes. “Kang Dowoon was apparently dating Seo Seha, and up until now we believed that he and Park Jimin fought over her before he was pushed. But now we know that you were somehow involved, and that you harboured feelings for her. What is the truth,” Namjoon repeats, “Song Gunho? Were you the one that fought with the victim? Did you push him down?”

“No,” Gunho trembled, his fists by his side shuddering as he clenches them tight. “No. I didn’t push him. It was Jimin. Jimin was dating her behind Dowoon’s back, so he pushed him down.”

The soft flesh of Seokjin’s palms begin to hurt as his nails dig in from how tightly he’d curled his fists under the table. He releases a breath – he hadn’t realised how short his breaths had become as he, and the rest of the court, watches the exchange between Namjoon and Gunho. But Namjoon’s clenched teeth, his pale knuckles – they were things only Seokjin was looking at. His struggles, and his determination, only Seokjin was noticing. Namjoon’s reasonings meant nothing if Gunho didn’t admit to it. He’d gotten so far, but it would mean absolutely nothing if Gunho didn’t admit it.

The tension filling up the air in the courtroom feels suffocating. Namjoon isn’t giving in, and neither is Gunho. “He was dating Seo Seha behind Dowoon’s back,” he repeats, his voice calmer now after breathing slowly for a few seconds, “and they fought. He pushed Dowoon down. I don’t know about the glasses. Maybe Dowoon was carrying them for a friend of his. But the facts are these: Dowoon was dating Seha, and so was Jimin, so Jimin pushed him down the stair-“

“Wait!”

Seokjin startles, and spins around in his chair to find the person who’d yelled out just now. The face behind the deep voice. For a moment his eyes find nothing amongst the gallery until he sees someone stand, and the bailiff nearest to him tenses up, ready to escort him out if he becomes a nuisance. But the boy remains still where he’s stood, fists clenched by his sides.

“Please, wait,” he says again. His voice is deep; much deeper than his pretty face lets on. “Jimin wasn’t dating any girl.”

“And who are you?” the judge asks, his brows furrowed down, harshly.

“Kim Taehyung. Park Jimin’s friend.”

“And can you prove that the defendant wasn’t involved with Seo Seha?”

“Because he’s gay!” Taehyung yells. “Park Jimin is a flaming homosexual!”

“Jesus Christ,” Seokjin hears Namjoon mutter, and once again the courtroom erupts into confused and excited chatter. The judge smacks his gavel down, once, twice, but still the conversations refuse to die down. Seokjin readjusts himself in his chair and faces down at the table and has to hold back the urge to laugh.

Once silence and order are finally brought back to the courtroom, Kim Taehyung is brought up to the witness stand. His thick brows are drawn, determinedly, over his large eyes. Hoseok takes the stand, his eyes are tired and dreary, but he pinches the bridge of his nose and sighs. “Please tell us about Park Jimin’s sexual orientation,” Hoseok huffs.

“I mean, I didn’t want to say anything,” Taehyung begins, squirming slightly in his seat, “because he hasn’t come out yet. But I couldn’t sit back and watch anymore. I’m not letting him go to jail for murder because people think he’s straight.”

Seokjin’s lips curl backwards and it’s taking every ounce of his strength not to laugh out loud. He feels it bubbling up, but he supresses it down.

“And how can we believe you’re not just making this up as a desperate final move to let your friend walk free?” Hoseok asks. Namjoon slowly slides back into his seat next to Seokjin.

He leans slightly towards Seokjin. “What the fuck is happening?” he whispers.

“I don’t know, but it’s brilliant,” Seokjin whispers back.

Taehyung shoves his hand down the pocket of his jeans, producing his smartphone. “You can look at my text messages with him. Last week he was telling me he was scared about coming out to his parents. It’s all there. Have a look,” he says, and offers his phone to the bailiff that approaches him. Then, he looks over to where Jimin is sitting. “Sorry, Chim. I didn’t want to out you, but I had no other choice. I’m not letting them take you away.”

A brief interlude in which Taehyung is escorted out of the courtroom for further questionings leads way to Jeongguk stepping forward to approach Song Gunho and usher him towards the witness stand once more. His brow is slick with sweat, now, and there’s a harsh look in his eyes accentuated by the creases between his brows. Namjoon sucks in a sharp breath. “Is there anything else you would like to say?” he asks, his voice thin and strained.

“No,” Gunho replies through gritted teeth. “I don’t think there’s anything left that I could say. The glasses are mine. I heard Dowoon and Jimin speak about Seha, and after Jimin left I approached Dowoon. We argued, and in the heat of the moment I pushed him. I didn’t want him to die.”

Namjoon nods slowly as Jeongguk approaches Gunho at the stand, and motions for him to stand. Gunho obliges weakly. “You are under arrest for the voluntary manslaughter of Kang Dowoon,” Jeongguk tells him, his voice heavy and hooded. Seokjin swallows thickly as Namjoon sinks back down in his chair. Lets his shoulders sag. Listens quietly as Jeongguk recites to Gunho his rights just before he is cuffed and taken away.

A short reprieve sees Kim Taehyung, Park Jimin and Song Gunho escorted out of the courtroom followed by the judge and the jury. The people in the gallery begin talking, loudly, but Namjoon just leans forward and drops his head onto the table. Seokjin presses his lips together, watching him with restrained amusement until Jung Hoseok walks over to their table.

“Shit hit the fan,” he whistles as he parks his ass on the edge of the table in front of Seokjin and Namjoon. “That was the best thing I’ve ever witnessed in court.”

Seokjin bites down on his lower lip to stop himself from giggling. “Flaming homosexual,” he echoes, and Hoseok snorts in his attempt to put a leash on his impulse to cackle.

“Please,” Namjoon groans, and slowly lifts his head up from the table, “this has been a nightmare.”

The judge re-enters the courtroom and Namjoon heaves himself up, forcing himself to erase the strain on his shoulders and refresh the expression on his face. The jury takes their place, and Park Jimin sits at the witness stand. “Have the members of the jury reached a verdict?” the judge asks, and a woman from the section rises to her feet.

“We have,” she answers, and hands a piece of paper to a bailiff who takes it to the judge.

He takes it in his hands, reads it, and Seokjin hears Namjoon suck in a sharp breath.

“Park Jimin,” the judge addresses, and Jimin stands as soon as he hears his name. His hands are holding the bottom of his sweater, balled into tiny fists swallowed by his sleeves, and his lips are pulled down in nervous patience. “For the charge of first-degree murder, the members find the accused not guilty. For the charge of voluntary manslaughter, the members find the accused not guilty.”

There are cheers somewhere in the back of the courtroom and Seokjin stands, too, and begins to clap for Namjoon. Namjoon looks up, his eyes wide and surprised, as Seokjin applauds him with a smile on his lips. “Well done. Your little physics lesson was totally unnecessary but extremely hot,” he tells Namjoon, who doesn’t look any less astonished. Hoseok approaches them, a smile on his face, and congratulates him sincerely. Seokjin ushers him up anyway and leads him out of the courtroom and out into the lobby where Jeongguk jogs up to them and congratulates them again. Namjoon remains blank-faced.

He still looks like a deer caught in headlights when Jimin and Taehyung run up to him and jump onto him, making him stumble a few steps backwards. They're clinging onto him with huge smiles on their faces even as Namjoon snaps out of his reverie and starts yelling at them, trying to peel their arms away from around him. When the two friends finally subdue in their laughter and joy Jimin presses his hands to his cheeks. “Thank you so much!” he gushes. “You literally saved my life!”

“Uh, you’re welcome…?” Namjoon mutters after straightening himself up and patting down his shirt, making sure it’s tucked neatly into his pants. “Sorry that you, uh. Got outed without your permission.”

Jimin laughs shyly. “It’s okay, it’s not your fault. I’ll deal with it somehow. It’s better than being taken away for a murder I didn’t commit. Well, unless…”

His eyes pan over to where Jeongguk has been quietly standing at Seokjin’s side, and his eyes turn wide at the sudden fall of attention on him. His lips remain pressed straight.

“Unless it’s you cuffing me,” Jimin finishes off shyly.

Seokjin almost gags, and has to turn his eyes away from the sight of Jeongguk turning bright red. He shakes his head like he’s trying to force the image of his baby brother in a relationship out of his mind and finds Namjoon looking at him with some kind of light amused grin on his lips. “Do you want to get out of here?” he asks.

“Yes, please,” Seokjin replies quickly. Namjoon gives Seokjin a flick of his chin, gesturing for Seokjin to join his side. “You should have a picture taken of you. You know, to commemorate your first trial and first win.”

“Um, sure.”

As Seokjin reaches into his pocket to retrieve his phone, Kim Taehyung worms his way in front of the two of them with a camera in his hands. “I heard you wanted a photograph,” he begins, gesturing to the camera in his hands. “Why don’t I take it for you?”

Meeting Namjoon’s gaze as if asking silently for permission, his eyes asking is that okay with you? Namjoon nods with a shrug that says why not? and is followed up with the two of them walking behind Taehyung as he leads them back into the courtroom they’d just exited. It’s empty now, but Namjoon’s chest heaves weightily as the events that transpired here run through him once more. Seokjin can’t keep his eyes off of him, but he takes a deep breath and puts his hand to Namjoon’s back. “Go on, stand in middle there,” he points towards the middle of the courtroom.

Namjoon quickly shakes his head. “I don’t want to be on my own,” he protests, remaining stock-still even as Seokjin tries to push him.

“Why not? This is your win.”

“First,” Namjoon breathes, spinning around and out of Seokjin’s grasp, “I wouldn’t have won without you. Second, I don’t know what the fuck to do with my hands. I’ll feel less awkward if I have someone in the picture with me.”

Seokjin’s initial thought included the directive to push Namjoon and tell him to suck it up, perhaps give him a lesson or two on how to pose for the camera (and slip in with a wink the fact that Seokjin once modelled) but those thoughts are blasted out of his mind when Namjoon grabs Seokjin’s wrist and pulls him into the centre of the courtroom with him, turns him so that they’re both facing Taehyung, and then circles one arm around him. Hooks his hand over Seokjin’s waist. Is this what you wanted to do with your hands? are the words Seokjin’s brain tells him to say, but before the commands are executed his mind short-circuits and his face grows warm and Taehyung tells them to smile, so Seokjin shuts his mind up and smiles.

“Damn, you look more awkward than I do,” Namjoon snorts when he sees the photograph on the screen of Taehyung’s camera. “This’ll do. Thanks, Taehyung.”

“No problem. I’ll have this put in a frame and sent to you guys,” he promises and turns the camera off before stuffing it back into his case and securely into his bag. “Thank you for everything. I better go find my best friend,” he murmurs with a sullen look on his face.

“And I need to find my brother,” Seokjin mumbles, equally as sullen. He walks beside Taehyung as they exit the courtroom together, Namjoon following closely behind. They don’t walk far down the hallway before happening upon Jeongguk talking to Jimin. They cease their conversation as soon as Jeongguk notices them approach.

“Come on, Chim. Let’s go,” Taehyung says, his lips pulled down palpably.

“What’s wrong?” Jimin asks, eyebrows pinching together in concern. He quickly draws away from Jeongguk and returns to Taehyung’s side.

“Nothing,” Taehyung almost spits. “Have you finished flirting?”

Seokjin almost snorts at the look on Jeongguk’s face. Embarrassment and confusion clash together in a fit of red across his features. “Are you two… dating?” he asks slowly and apprehensively.

“N-no,” Jimin replies quickly.

“Gee, thanks for hesitating. Am I that repulsive?” Taehyung crosses his arms.

“Jesus Christ,” Namjoon breathes.

“Tae, what’s going on? I’m confused,” Jimin pouts, his hands coming up to hold Taehyung’s arms.

“You and me both, brother,” Namjoon whispers.

Jeongguk looks like he’s about to cry, and Seokjin takes a step back – just in case he needs to laugh.

“I’ve had a massive crush on you for like a year and I saved your damn ass in there, but you take one look at the hot police officer and you’re all over him!” Taehyung almost yells.

Seokjin feels a hand curl around his wrist once more and he snaps his head up to Namjoon. “Let’s… let’s wait outside for them,” he urges, and Seokjin parts his lips to protest because he wants to watch the rest of this unfurl before his eyes for entertainment, but Namjoon squeezes on his wrist. “Please,” he says, and Seokjin finds himself nodding before he even starts to realise what he’d be missing out on. He follows Namjoon out of the building, out into the cold winter air, where Namjoon takes a deep breath. “Today has been a fucking rollercoaster,” he sighs.

“Are you glad it’s over?” Seokjin asks.

“Don’t know,” Namjoon replies vaguely as he looks ahead of him, watching the courtyard in front of him. “Because once we return to the office I’m gonna have to put up with your bullshit again.”

“What was it you said,” Seokjin mumbles, touching his chin like he’s deep in thought. “That you couldn’t have done this without me?”

“Yeah,” Namjoon laughs. “That’s true. I need you. I also sometimes want to tape your mouth shut.”

“Kinky.”

Namjoon sighs deeply, and Seokjin peels his lips backwards to laugh, but they’re soon joined by Jeongguk, followed closely by Jimin and Taehyung. Neither of the two look upset as they had been just minutes before, and they thank Seokjin and Namjoon once again, bowing deeply before taking off. Jeongguk heaves out a sigh and turns to face Seokjin. “Shall we get going to visit mom?” he suggests.

“Not so fast. What happened in there?” Seokjin asks.

Jeongguk shrugs nonchalantly but the way his face colours ever so slightly red is anything but nonchalant. “In the end, I got both of their numbers. The three of us are gonna go on a date sometime soon.”

“What?!”

“I put the bi in FBI.”

“Oh, Jeongguk, sweetie, no.”

Jeongguk furrows his brow. “What?”

“Bi means you like both men and women, not that you’re dating two people. The word you’re looking for is polyamory,” Seokjin explains.

“Alright, noted.”

He leads them towards where he’d parked his car, and Jeongguk takes the front passenger seat while Namjoon climbs silently into the back. He doesn’t talk much on the drive back to his apartment, and every glance Seokjin takes at his rearview mirror shows him a scene of Namjoon looking out of the window, a blank and unreadable look on his face. Seokjin expected him to look happier.

“Hey, Namjoon,” he says as his navigation tells him he’s almost at their destination. Namjoon raises his brows and looks forward at Seokjin. “We’ll go out to celebrate your win properly on another day, I promise.”

Namjoon shakes his head. “It’s fine. We don’t-“

“I know you like grilled meat. I’ll buy you loads of it.”

He settles back into the leather seats of Seokjin’s car and breathes out. “Alright,” he gives up easily, and when Seokjin pulls up outside his apartment, he thanks Seokjin for the ride home and offers his farewells to both Seokjin and Jeongguk. He climbs out of the car and Seokjin watches with heavy eyes as he walks up to the entrance of his apartment complex, and he disappears.

Another day will tick by on Namjoon’s lifespan, and Seokjin isn’t any closer to reaching the truth of it. He sighs out a heavy breath and inputs his mother’s address into the navigation, pulls out of neutral, and starts driving again. When he turns at the end of the road, Jeongguk pipes up. “How long does she have left, now?” he asks quietly, his eyes facing the road ahead.

Seokjin doesn’t answer, not for a few minutes. “Not long left, now.”

“I can’t imagine it,” Jeongguk replies quietly, settling into the seat. Seokjin keeps his eyes on the road and he drives, his hands gripping the wheel tightly and his legs tensed. “How is it going to feel? Knowing exactly when she’s going to pass?”

Seokjin licks his lips. “It’s not going to be any easier or harder. But at the very least, we’ll get to be with her in her last moments. She won’t be alone.”

Jeongguk nods. “I wish I was there when dad passed away,” he murmurs quietly, and Seokjin tightens his grip on the wheel. His nails feel like they’re pressing too sharply into his palms. Jeongguk’s father – Seokjin’s step-father, had passed away too young. Just like Seokjin’s own father did. And he was too young to realise that a father is a father no matter what the blood connections were, so when his mother remarried when Seokjin was five, he had inexplicably thrown himself into the mindset that he wasn’t allowed to like his step-father. He warmed up to him, of course, but that man was always the one that replaced his own father. Even when Jeongguk was born. Even though his step-father was a good man.

What a load of shit, that was. Seokjin liked him, he really did. But he had, as his mother did, ignored the numbers. That was the only option Seokjin had available to him. He couldn’t change the numbers, and neither could his mother. The only option was to ignore them and try to live as normally as they could. Neither of them brought light to the fact that Jeongguk’s father was dying. Because Seokjin knew what it felt like to believe he could change someone’s fate and be proven wrong in the worst of ways. He didn’t tell Jeongguk. He didn’t allow himself to look sad. He didn’t give Jeongguk the chance to say goodbye one last time.

It was only years later, when Seokjin was eighteen and a few days away from moving out that he’d gotten absolutely smashed and came home at some ungodly hour and cried to Jeongguk about it all. About the numbers that he sees. About how he knew that Jeongguk’s father was dying and he said nothing. That their mother didn’t say anything either.

He spilled it all to Jeongguk and regretted it deeply the next morning.

But Seokjin is glad that Jeongguk is his brother. It had never felt like there was ever a gap in their relationship just because they’re only half-related. Jeongguk was so understanding and wasn’t upset with Seokjin or their mother at all. Instead, he felt sorry that they had to carry that affliction around by themselves. Wondered why he wasn’t also able to see lifespans. Seokjin, instead, was glad that he couldn’t. That apparently, it was only passed down to the firstborn.

The curse, as Seokjin thinks of it, will die with him. Discovering that he’s gay brought about the relief that he wouldn’t pass on his genes to a child, and that his child would not have to suffer the way Seokjin had, the way his mother did, the way everyone who came before him did. It will end with him. His mother, though they’d agreed to keep their lifespans a secret from one another, was undoubtedly dying. She knew it herself. She could no longer see and relied on a caretaker several hours a day. Seokjin visits her with Jeongguk as often as he can, but there’s nothing he can do for her. He can’t change the numbers.

The drive takes nearly two hours, in which Jeongguk had quickly changed the subject, turned the radio on and spent the rest of the drive singing along to songs on the radio. They push all the bad thoughts out of their minds as best as they could. Seokjin tries not to think about every mistake he’s made in his life. Like Jeongguk had told him all those years ago, it wasn’t his fault. He can’t change the numbers. He only sees them. He’s powerless to do anything about them.

It’s cruel.

He counts his blessings, though. Jeongguk had quickly told him that he didn’t want to know how long he had left to live, and Seokjin was quick to oblige – only because it was easy to do so. Jeongguk had a long life to live. That was a blessing Seokjin always reminded himself of.

But – but Namjoon. Namjoon only has ninety-two days left.

Seokjin tries not to think about all the mistakes he’s made in his life, but there’s a thought at the back of his mind, eating away at him and growing bigger with every day that drops from Namjoon’s lifespan that this might be his biggest mistake yet.

It’s cruel.

When they finally reach the house Seokjin unlocks the door with a key that he and Jeongguk both possess, and they remove their shoes before walking down the hallway of the house they grew up in.

“Mom?” Jeongguk calls out as he overtakes Seokjin and runs up the stairs.

“My sons?” she calls back, and Seokjin picks up the pace and lets his feet take him to her room, where she’s sitting at the armchair in the corner of her room. She faces them at the door and smiles as Jeongguk approaches her and wraps his arms around her.

She squeezes her eyes shut and she hugs Jeongguk, and then holds her arms out to where she knows Seokjin is standing. Beckons him towards her. Slowly he reaches her side, tries to ignore the way his throat is closing up at the sight of her numbers that are so painfully low, and he hugs her.

She draws back and faces him, her unseeing eyes looking deep into his own. “Seokjin,” she falters slightly. “You feel different.”

“What do you mean?” Seokjin returns, his voice dropping with uncertainty.

“I don’t know,” she replies. “But something isn’t right. Something’s changed.”

Seokjin had always believed that there was nothing that could ever change the numbers he sees above everyone’s heads. They were absolute. He couldn’t change them no matter how desperately he wanted to.

But there was Namjoon, whose numbers changed right before his eyes.

From sixty-one years to ninety-two days and dropping.

Notes:

anyway there's ur dose of angst lol stay tuned for next week where i hit u with even more

let me know what u think! drop a comment

 

 

 

twt

Chapter 5: Caustic

Summary:

Namjoon has just won his first case, and there's something different about Seokjin.

Notes:

sorry for not updating last week! got a bit busy lmfao

Their mother is oddly unsettled.

When Seokjin wakes in the morning in the bedroom he grew up in, he feels a weight lifted off his shoulders. Somewhat. Sunlight streams in through the pale curtains, bright and harsh against Seokjin’s eyelids amidst the cold winter temperatures. He pulls the bedsheets closer around himself, he curls in on himself, and reminds himself that it’s the weekend, and he doesn’t need to get out of bed right now. He curls in on himself, pulls the bedsheets closer around himself, and he tries to let go of the rest of the weight on his chest.

But there’s something that doesn’t want to let go. Doesn’t let Seokjin drift back to sleep. It holds him back, stops his body from releasing itself back into nothingness, stops him from detaching himself from his mind that never stops running.

Numbers. His mind never stops churning those numbers out. His mother is dying, Namjoon is dying. Everyone is dying around him and he’s only a witness to all of it, powerless to do anything about it. The numbers keep counting down, unrelenting and powerful against Seokjin’s wishes.

He swings his legs off the side of his bed, his legs feeling oddly weightless as he slips out. He plucks a light shirt from the back of his chair at the desk he used to study at and pulls it over his shoulders. His fingers fumble in his half-awake attempt to button up the shirt, and then he raises his fists to rub away at the sleep gathered there; the sleep that feels like it was too much but at the same time, not enough.

Stumbling down the hallway with feet moving only by memory, he reaches the bathroom, and he forces himself to shake out the rest of the weight that’s clinging onto him from his half-finished sleep.

Jeongguk is in the kitchen, an apron tied around him as he helps their mother prepare breakfast. Sunlight streams in from the windows overlooking the sink, the dishes and frying pan that have yet to be washed. The sky is a frosty blue, the light is harsh in the winter morning, and Seokjin feels oddly unsettled.

“Hey, he’s awake!” Jeongguk notices him. “Get in here, these pancakes are turning out like total shit.”

He laughs a little and walks into the kitchen. Their mother is sitting at the table, facing them with wide and bright eyes that see nothing any more, and she listens to Seokjin help Jeongguk in making the pancakes.

The sunlight streams in through the windows, the air smells like sweet batter, and Seokjin wonders about the weights on either of his shoulders, pulling him back into something dark, something he doesn’t want to think about. He wonders about how standing here, in the kitchen of his old home making messy pancakes with his little brother and his mother, would feel in the summer. The sky outside is a frosty clear blue, the sunlight is harsh, the air is cold. Seokjin wonders what will be different in the summer.

Their mother is going to die on new year’s eve. Seokjin works it all out in his mind, and he watches Jeongguk serve the pancakes out on the kitchen table. He digs in, but he can’t stop himself from glancing at his mother at every chance he can find. She can’t see it, of course, but she knows already that she’s dying. She doesn’t know when exactly she’ll die, and Seokjin has promised her already that he won’t tell her. And she had promised him that she wouldn’t reveal Seokjin’s lifespan, either.

He and Jeongguk split the cleaning between them.

 

“Hey, hyung, did you know Gandalf had babies?”

Seokjin’s brow comes harshly down, tension aching along his forehead as he tries to decipher what Jeongguk is trying to tell him. His lips are pulled taut, he purses them, and then parts them. “What the fuck?”

“Come on,” Jeongguk complains, and then pokes his head around the doorway of the living room, gesturing with his hand for Seokjin to follow. “Mom’s cat, Gandalf. It had babies.”

Oh, Seokjin’s mind clicks into focus. Their mother had adopted a cat a few years back, this beautiful white cat with a grey back and had taken a photo of it, sent it to her two sons, and asked for a name. Jeongguk had replied first and requested to name it Gandalf. Seokjin had wanted to name the cat something else, something that would complement the beautiful cat better, but Jeongguk had called dibs on the name. It was just a shame that he was high off of his mind at the time.

He follows Jeongguk into one of the empty rooms in the house where their mother is sitting in an armchair, rattling a toy over one of the tiny kittens on the floor. She looks up when they enter, and smiles.

Gandalf is lying on the ground, watching her babies play, her head following along as Jeongguk picks up one of the kittens. “This one hasn’t got a home, yet,” he tells Seokjin.

His eyes zero in on the kitten that’s now chewing on Jeongguk’s thumb. “Are you gonna take it?”

“I can’t,” Jeongguk says as he raises the kitten to his face to nuzzle his jaw against it’s soft fur. “My job’s too unpredictable to look after it properly.”

Seokjin presses his lips together. “I guess… I guess I could look after it. Is it a boy or girl?”

“A girl,” their mother chimes in. “She’s kind of… bitey.”

“I can see that,” Seokjin laughs as he watches the kitten continue to chew on Jeongguk’s hand. He doesn’t seem to mind, of course, doesn’t even seem to notice the tiny animal chewing on him. Seokjin moves towards Jeongguk, his hands out gently to take the kitten. She mewls as Jeongguk passes her on to him, and Seokjin quickly cradles her against her chest. “I think I can look after her,” he repeats as he looks down.

He hears his mother suck in a harsh breath, and when he looks over to her he sees her shuffling and shifting in her chair. “Mom? What’s wrong?” Seokjin asks, his voice thinning ever so slightly.

“I don’t think,” she begins, shaking her head lightly, “that taking the kitten is a good idea for you.”

“Huh?”

Instinctively, Seokjin begins walking towards his mother, the kitten in his hand and now chewing on the side of Seokjin’s palm but he doesn’t register any pain to go with the feeling of her tiny little teeth. He reaches his mother’s side, and her expression turns sour.

Seokjin is oddly unsettled.

“You feel different,” his mother says to him quietly, her expression tense. “I have a feeling you won’t be able to look after her.”

“Why not?” Seokjin asks, his voice equally as quiet but miles stiffer and more strained. His eyes are wide but he doesn’t know why; can’t pinpoint a reason behind why he feels so on edge. “In what way do I feel different?”

“You…” she begins and takes a deep breath. Squeezes shut her unseeing eyes and pinches her lips together. And then releases her high-strung breath. “You feel like death.”

The Grim Reaper, they called him. He was the weird kid in school who knew exactly when someone’s mother was about to die. They didn’t believe him when he’d said it, and they didn’t believe him when he said he wasn’t a psychic, and they didn’t believe him when he said he didn’t cause her death.

The Grim Reaper, they still sometimes call him. Legendary trial lawyer who became known for weeding out the bad guy no one else suspected and putting them in prison. It was almost like he had a sixth sense for it. Like no one was safe from him. Like the black cloud of death still follows him around and no matter how much he tries to shake it off, it doesn’t let go.

Seokjin wonders at what point death had stopped following him around, and at what point he’d started to become death itself.

He settles the kitten down with her mother and presses his lips together, tightly. “It’s me, isn’t it?” he asks quietly, almost too quietly for his mother to hear. “It’s my fault that everyone is dying around me, isn’t it?”

Seokjin doesn’t want to be called the Grim Reaper. He’d always hated that nickname. It made him turn cold from the inside out and he’d spent all of his adult life trying to avoid it. Learning how to ignore the numbers above everyone’s head that counted down to their death if the numbers were large, and learning how to keep a straight face if the numbers were small.

He’d always believed that he had nothing to do with those numbers. He was only a witness to them.

Somehow that’s not the case anymore. Seokjin is no longer a witness. He’s a criminal.

 

He almost throws his coat and his bag onto his desk when he walks into the office on Monday morning. Namjoon had just watched him walk in with raised brows, the barest hint of interest on his otherwise uninterested face. Seokjin plops down at his chair, arms thrown haphazardly onto the armrests, and he huffs.

“What’s up?” Namjoon asks as he returns his gaze to his screen.

“Do you ever feel like a plastic bag?” Seokjin mumbles out into the open space of his office.

“Are you asking me or are you quoting Katy Perry?”

Seokjin rolls his head against the rest of his chair to stare at Namjoon, who’s still got his eyes glued to his screen accompanied with a blank expression that gives way to absolutely nothing. It brings a smile to Seokjin’s face that he didn’t know he had in him. Then, he laughs. “Oh, Namjoon. What would I do without you?”

This earns a look from Namjoon. His hands are paused over his keyboard. “Combust, probably,” he answers flatly. “You’d have no one to annoy. Your pent-up bullshit energy would just keep building until you combust.”

“It’s not bullshit energy,” Seokjin replies as Namjoon returns his gaze to his screen. “It’s sexual frustration.”

Namjoon cuts his eyes at Seokjin. “Are you saying that if you got laid you’d stop being so irritating?”

Seokjin shrugs. “I mean, that’s a valid hypothesis. Wanna test it out?”

“Fuck my life,” Namjoon laments as he shakes his head and returns to his work. He brings one hand up and uses his fingers to massage his temple for a few moments before he straightens back up and looks at Seokjin. “Oh yeah, Seokjin-ssi. Someone wrote an article about the trial,” he informs before rifling through the papers on his desk to prepare a newspaper clipping. He rises from his chair and crosses the distance between his desk and Seokjin’s to hand it to him.

He starts reading it straight away as Namjoon half-parks his ass on the edge of Seokjin’s desk.

Another legendary Jung vs Kim trial, they called it. And even though it was Namjoon leading the trial, even though it was Namjoon who’d won the case, there’s still a substantial amount of the article dedicated to Seokjin.

Dedicated to the Grim Reaper.

“So that’s why they call you the Grim Reaper, huh?” Namjoon muses from besides him, looking down at the article in Seokjin’s hands. “That’s badass.”

Seokjin doesn’t look at Namjoon. Because sure, Seokjin is good at what he does. He proves his client innocent and exposes the true criminal when no one suspected them. But he’s not a psychic, he doesn’t have a sixth sense. He’s not the Grim Reaper who knows who the bad guy is so that he could send them to hell. He’s just a good lawyer, who knows what types of evidence he needs to look at.

Kim Seokjin, the Grim Reaper, the article says. A nickname borrowed from his childhood.

He licks his lips, and then Namjoon speaks. “Where did that name come from, though?”

It takes all of Seokjin’s willpower to not look at the numbers above Namjoon’s head, to focus on his innocent and enquiring eyes, but he fails. Eighty-nine days left. “Just some… playground rumours.”

For a moment, the office is silent. Seokjin has since returned his attention to reading the rest of the article, but Namjoon doesn’t budge from where he’d perched himself on the edge of Seokjin’s desk. “I can’t tell,” Namjoon begins slowly, breaking the silence, “what goes through your mind sometimes. Sometimes you’re loud and annoying, and other times you look so serious and grave.”

Seokjin blinks a few times and looks back up to Namjoon. He’s now got one hand planted down on his desk, leaning over slightly towards Seokjin. “Which version of me do you like better?” Seokjin asks.

“It’s not about which version I like better,” Namjoon replies, leaning back again to fold his arms over his chest. “It’s about which version is the real you.”

“Do you want to find out?”

“Yeah. It would be interesting to take a dive into the great mind of Kim Seokjin,” Namjoon ventures as he leans back in again. There’s just the barest hint of a smile on just one corner of his lips. “There’s a reason why I wanted to learn from you, and only you. I know that whatever is going on inside your head is pure gold. But you know, with layers of bullshit guarding it.”

If it wasn’t for the way Namjoon was leaning in and smiling Seokjin would’ve laughed. His heart, instead, picks up speed. He swallows. “Do you really think that?” he asks.

Namjoon scoffs a laugh and leans back once more, pushing himself up off the edge of the desk. “You’re the most confident person I’ve ever met, why are you asking me?”

Seokjin coughs into his fist and flattens his tie against his chest. “Well, I mean, I know I’m brilliant. I was just, um, making sure that you know I’m brilliant, too.”

“Anyone with a brain would know,” Namjoon replies mildly as he walks back to his desk. He sits down, releases a soft breath, and then meets Seokjin’s eyes. And smiles.

Fuck, Seokjin thinks to himself. He quickly tears his gaze away from Namjoon and launches a browser on his computer screen, opening up several tabs as he goes. His fingers get to work on the keyboard immediately.

How to tell if he likes you

Is he gay

Does he like me back?

Watch Love, Simon online free

While Namjoon works hard on writing reports, Seokjin watches a movie he hasn’t paid for.

 

When Seokjin returns to his desk from lunch he finds Namjoon in the office, standing in the middle with one hand in the pocket of his pants, one hand holding up some papers that he’s scrutinising. He raises his brows at Seokjin when the older man walks in, and licks his lips. “Seokjin-ssi. Do you have some time?”

Keeping his eyes on Namjoon as he peels his coat off, he circles his desk and sits down tentatively. “What do you need?” he asks openly.

“I’ve written up a report on the trial,” Namjoon begins, shaking the papers he’s got a hold of. Seokjin’s eyes travel down to them just before Namjoon slaps them down on his own desk and takes a seat at his chair. “But I was hoping to get some constructive criticism from you about my performance in the courtroom.”

“Oh, yeah,” Seokjin looks away and starts to fish around his desk for certain sheaf of paper he’d left somewhere for a second, checking in the drawers along the underside of his desk, and after a minute of fruitless searching he finally finds what he’s looking for tucked into one of his notebooks. “I made some points. I wanted to go through them with you, but it slipped my mind. Sorry.”

Namjoon shakes his head to dismiss Seokjin’s apology.

Seokjin pushes himself up off his chair, taking his page of notes with him over to Namjoon’s desk. It’s clear and tidy (unlike Seokjin’s desk) save for the report Namjoon had just written up, so he hoists himself onto it, sitting comfortable next to Namjoon. Namjoon looks up at him and waits patiently. “So,” Seokjin begins as he looks down at the messy scrawl of notes he’d penned during the trial, “firstly, you need to be more confident.”

To Seokjin’s surprise, Namjoon laughs. His lips peel back and he lowers his head and laughs. “And here I thought you were going to say I was overconfident.”

“Really?” Seokjin cocks his head to the side.

“Mm,” Namjoon nods and cranes his head up to meet Seokjin’s gaze. “I badgered the witness a lot. Hoseok called me out for it a lot.”

“If you’re talking about the times that you knew where you were going with your line of questioning, or the times where you laid down solid facts, I wouldn’t call that being overconfident,” Seokjin muses, hands gripping the edge of the desk besides his thighs. “Perhaps you got a little over-excited with it, but your confidence there was justified.”

The ghost of Namjoon’s laugh lingers on his lips. “Really? So I wasn’t being, like, cocky and arrogant? What about when I was giving a maths lesson to the court?”

“That was the best part!” Seokjin laughs. “If you know what you’re talking about, then what’s the harm in showing how smart you are? If you come across like you’re unsure, the prosecution is going to tear you apart. And like I said, it was hot. Confidence is sexy.”

He expects Namjoon to scowl at him, to show a little bit of disgust, or at the very least sigh exasperatedly as homage to the fact that Seokjin tries, very hard sometimes, to annoy Namjoon. That’s what he expects because that’s what he’s almost always met with, but today Namjoon holds his stare and the corners of his lips quirk upwards. “Thanks,” he replies, the tone of his voice just a fraction lower than it had been. Barely detectable, but enough to make Seokjin gulp nervously. “I was always the ugly, nerdy kid in school.”

“Ugly, where?”

“On my face, I think.”

Seokjin shakes his head vehemently. “Bring those fools to me, I’ll convict them of defamation and send their asses to prison.”

For the second time, Namjoon laughs. Brings one hand up to hide his mouth as he laughs, and when he subdues that hand comes down and rests on Seokjin’s knee. “Good to know you have my back,” he says just before his hand slips from Seokjin’s knee.

“Well, of course I do,” Seokjin replies quickly, his hand nervously rubbing at the back of his neck. “I’d be a shitty mentor if I didn’t.”

Namjoon parts his lips, closes them, looks down at his report and then back up at Seokjin. “I was going to say you’re a shitty mentor anyway,” he confesses. “Sorry. It’s like a reflex to be mean to you whenever I can.”

Seokjin just shrugs. “You can be mean to me in the bedroom, I wouldn’t mind.”

“I set myself up for that one, didn’t I?” Namjoon laughs again. He shakes his head and then plasters his eyes to his report on his desk in front of him. “Let’s continue with the feedback.”

Clearing his throat, Seokjin picks up his page of notes once again to identify the next point he’d scribbled down on it. Throws a brief glance out of the corner of his eyes at Namjoon staring down at his report before he swallows and reads out the next point on his notes. Namjoon listens intently, nodding along to every bit of feedback Seokjin gives him whether good or bad. He takes everything on board, and when Seokjin’s exhausted his list he stretches upwards, and then jumps off the desk. “With all of that said,” he breathes as he dusts himself of, “you did an excellent job. You fought hard and I’m proud of you.”

A shy smile finds its way onto Namjoon’s lips as he looks, somewhat abashed, down at his report and the sheaf of notes Seokjin had let him keep. “Thanks,” he replies.

“Now we just have to celebrate your first win. How does tonight sound?” Seokjin rubs his hands together as he saunters back to his own desk and plops down at his chair.

“Oh, right,” Namjoon raises his brows like he’d just remembered something, “Hoseok messaged me this morning about going out to celebrate.”

“Huh?” Seokjin scowls. “Hoseok? Why is Hoseok asking you?”

This earns a nonchalant shrug.

“That sly bastard. Accept his invitation and tell him I’m coming too. I need to show him who’s top dog around here.”

Without a care in the world about whatever feuds Seokjin has with Hoseok, Namjoon nods and replies to Hoseok, setting his phone down quickly after his short reply to the prosecutor. Not a minute passes by before his phone vibrates. “He said he was expecting you would come, anyway,” Namjoon informs Seokjin after he pockets his phone.

“Asshole,” Seokjin mutters.

 

He watches as Namjoon runs his hands through his hair, pushing it all back to expose his forehead just before he and Seokjin walk into the small restaurant Hoseok had invited them to. A few strands of his hair fall back over but Namjoon doesn’t seem to notice them, or the way Seokjin stares at him so intently. If he does, he doesn’t react to it.

Hoseok waves them over when he spots them walk in, and Seokjin notices that they’re joined by a few familiar faces smiling at him. There’s his brother, Jeongguk, and his friend Yoongi, but they’re also joined by Park Jimin and Kim Taehyung.

There’s a spot next to Hoseok that he pats and pulls Namjoon down into. Patting his back jovially as Seokjin sinks down beside Namjoon he begins to fill the shot glass in front of him with soju, and then Seokjin’s. “Here’s to Namjoon’s first win!” Hoseok begins straight away, and he raises his shot glass. The rest of the table follows suit, so Seokjin grumbles and does the same.

Glasses clink together, Seokjin downs the soju in a second, and then places the shot glass back down on the table. He smiles and greets everyone on the table before he lets his eyes fall on Hoseok, and he musters up all the evilness he could in his eyes.

“Looking good as always, Seokjin-ssi,” Hoseok flashes him a wink.

“Stating the obvious, but go off I guess,” Seokjin tips his chin up slightly and looks away. He hears Hoseok chuckle for a short second, and then he begins to talk to Namjoon. Seokjin bites his lip and brings his chin back down, glancing through the corner of his eyes as Hoseok praises Namjoon, his hand on Namjoon’s back. As Namjoon smiles back at him.

He pouts a little to himself.

“Hey, hyung, why the long face?” Yoongi asks, catching his attention. Seokjin snaps his head back up and finds Yoongi’s concerned eyes and he just sighs, smiling a little as he goes.

“Nothing. I’m just being childish,” Seokjin replies as the server brings over cuts of meat that Jeongguk gets to work on grilling in the middle of the table. Taehyung helps him lay down the thin slices.

“He’s good at that,” Jeongguk pipes up, his attention focused on the meat but flitting back and forth between the grill and Jimin. “Acting like a child even though he’s a grown-ass man.”

“I’m sorry,” Seokjin touches his hand to his chest, “but aren’t you, like, fifteen years old?”

His little brother laughs. “Whatever, old man.”

Seokjin scoffs and pours for himself another shot glass, downing it by himself. He licks his lips and starts to serve for himself some meat, alerting to the others that it’s ready to eat. Namjoon and Hoseok halt their conversation to eat, but once their plates are loaded they return to talking. Yoongi, who’d seemed uninterested up until now, joins them. He introduces himself to Namjoon first as Jeongguk’s superior, and then as Seokjin and Hoseok’s friend. It almost brings a smile to Seokjin’s lips how desperate Yoongi is for respect.

“So, Jeonggukkie,” Seokjin sighs as he forces himself to look away from the catastrophe that is Namjoon becoming friends with Hoseok and Yoongi without him, closing his eyes for too long to be called a blink. “How’s your relationship coming along? Having any problems?”

The three of them look up, their mouths stuffed with meat. Jimin’s got his hand curled around an entire bottle of soju. Jeongguk swallows down, coughs into his fist, and furrows his brows. “Honestly, it’s none of your business.”

Jimin continues chewing, but a little slower now as he glances back and forth between Jeongguk and Seokjin. Seokjin almost smirks at the way he looks like a deer caught in headlights, at the way Jeongguk’s face is a little red from the soju and from his blush. Seokjin picks up another cut of meat with his chopsticks and brings it up to his lips.

“If you really want to know,” comes Taehyung’s lamenting voice, forcing Seokjin to pause his endeavours in eating meat to take in the way Taehyung looks absolutely smashed from what little alcohol he’d consumed. “I’ll tell ya. I’m a lil jealous, Jeonggukie thinks he’s an outsider because me and Jiminie have been friends for years, and Jiminie isn’t sure if he can take two dicks at once.”

Jimin spits his drink right out of his mouth and Jeongguk lowers his face into his hand.

“W-wow,” Seokjin stutters because there’s absolutely nothing else he can think of that’s a suitable reply to Taehyung. “I’m glad you feel comfortable enough to share that with me.”

Taehyung nods solemnly. “You’re welcome.”

With wide and unbelieving eyes Seokjin turns away from the three and whispers what the fuck to himself. He grabs the nearest bottle of soju and starts chugging because there’s no way he’s going to suffer through this ordeal while remaining sober.

 

Namjoon pulls Seokjin’s coat up tight around his neck, and zips it up. “I feel like I am your personal assistant,” he mutters to himself. “You can’t even bundle up properly when you’re drunk.”

“It’s not that cold,” Seokjin whines in response, his eyes fluttering shut as his coat turns into a warm cocoon around his body. His cheeks, though exposed to the elements, are warm. His nose is a little runny, but he wipes the bottom of it on the sleeve of his coat.

“It’s four degrees,” Namjoon replies flatly, and zips the coat all the way up so that it covers Seokjin’s mouth. He pulls the hood up and over Seokjin’s head, and then he laughs. “You look cute.”

“Cute on the streets, sexy in the-“

Namjoon presses his hand against the part of the coat that covers Seokjin’s mouth, turning his words into a muffle. “Hoseok’s here,” he says, and lets go of Seokjin’s mouth, grabbing his shoulders instead to turn him around and push him towards the car that had just pulled up besides them. “AKA, a responsible adult who knows what his limits are so that he can drive himself home.”

He gets forced into the back of Hoseok’s car, stumbling as he goes and sprawling across the back seats unceremoniously. When he’s at least half-aligned properly Namjoon shuts the door and circles the car to take a seat in the front passenger seat. “Ready to go?” Hoseok asks.

“Nngh,” Seokjin mutters as he tries to sit up in the seat.

“Ignore him,” Namjoon replies, clicking his seatbelt into place.

Hoseok laughs as he switches gears and pulls out of the curb. “Seriously though, Namjoon. Consider my offer. Come and be my subordinate. I’ll give you everything Seokjin gives you and more. I mean it.”

A wakening jolt blasts through Seokjin’s drunken mind and he lurches forward, grabbing the backrest of Hoseok’s seat. “Don’t you fucking-“

He claps his hand against his mouth when his stomach heaves a little and begs him to bend over to hurl all over Hoseok’s seats. He bites down on his lips to force those waves back.

“Thanks,” Seokjin hears Namjoon begin over the chaos of trying to keep his food down, “but I’m gonna stick with Seokjin-ssi.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah. He’s the one I want to learn from. He’s the one I’ve looked up to ever since I started law school.”

Seokjin’s hand slips from his mouth as he stares at the back of Namjoon’s head. The numbers above his head mean nothing, right now, and though Seokjin’s mind is cluttered and tripping over itself he can’t stop himself from being more and more in love with Namjoon.

Notes:

bit of a short chapter for having 2 weeks spent on it lol sorry sorry

leave kudos n comments lemme know what you thought!

 

 

 

 

twt

Chapter 6: Efflorescence

Summary:

Namjoon has eighty-eight days left to live, and the black cloud of death is only getting bigger and bigger.

Notes:

anyway please enjoy this chapter!

There are many things Seokjin could be doing right now. He could be writing the reports he needs to write, he could be going over the reports that Namjoon has written. Instead, he watches some drama Hanyu had told him about on the screen of his monitor on his desk. He’d sent Namjoon out for a full health check-up, just in case there was a reason behind the sudden drop in his lifespan that a doctor could put a name to. Perhaps treat.

The chances of that, Seokjin knows, is slim. If Namjoon was to die of an illness his lifespan should’ve accounted for that from the moment he was born. He should’ve always only possessed twenty-five years of life. It didn’t make any sense that up until now he was supposed to live until eighty-six. Lifespans don’t change. Everything is predetermined.

Everything is predetermined, Seokjin has always believed. The passing of his father, the passing of Jeongguk’s father. The passing of that kid’s mother when he was still in elementary school and the birth of the nickname the Grim Reaper. The passing of that little girl in his arms when he was thirteen. His own mother’s death that is coming in a week. It was all predetermined. It is still predetermined.

So what made Namjoon different?

Namjoon walks back into the office, peeling his thick coat off, his scarf from around his neck. Plucks his gloves off his hand. “Shit, it’s cold out there,” he complains as he rubs his hands up and down his arms on his way back to his seat. Seokjin’s eyes follow him as he goes.

Eighty-eight days left.

“How was the check-up?” Seokjin asks mildly as he brings his attention back to the drama he’s watching.

“Yeah, everything’s fine. I’m a healthy boy,” Namjoon replies as he huffs into his hands in an attempt to warm them.

Seokjin doesn’t realise he’s staring at Namjoon until the younger male notices and looks up at him from across the office, brows raised and curious. It almost startles him, and he wasn’t ready for it, so he quickly pulls his attention away and back to his screen. Tries to continue watching.

But for some reason, the sounds of Namjoon rubbing his hands together is loud enough to draw his attention away from his screen. He looks over at Namjoon, at the way his cheeks are puffed out so that he can blow warm air onto his hands. At the way the veins under his skin on his forearms run over his muscle.

“Hey, Namjoon,” he calls, unable to stop himself from stealing Namjoon’s attention. Namjoon looks at him, eyes wide and curious. “Do you want to play a game of would you rather?”

“Not really,” Namjoon responds immediately and returns to warming his hands up.

“Okay, you go first,” Seokjin dictates, ignoring Namjoon’s response entirely. The younger male huffs like he knows Seokjin wasn’t going to respect his wishes in this at all. He closes his eyes for a second, and then meets Seokjin’s eyes.

“Would you rather shut up and have me shut you up?”

Seokjin parts his lips as an auto-pilot action to respond, but then he quickly snaps his mouth shut and tries not to smile. The result? A wry smile that irks Namjoon and makes him scowl. He sighs heavily and rubs his forehead. “I mean-“ Seokjin begins, licking his lips before stretching them into a wide grin, but Namjoon shushes him.

“Don’t,” he warns, “or I will throw my shoe at you.”

Seokjin clears his throat into his fist. “Moving on,” he quickly dismisses, and watches with mild amusement as Namjoon’s irritation slips easily from his face. “Would you rather know exactly when you’re going to die, or never know at all?”

To this, and to no surprise at all, Namjoon raises his brows. He pulls his lips down for a moment, like he’s considering it, but only for a second. He doesn’t hesitate as Seokjin thought he would. “I’d want to know,” he says.

Eighty-eight days, Seokjin’s mind replies. “How comes?” he asks.

Namjoon shrugs one shoulder lazily, his facial expression blank and unreadable. “So I can prepare for it. Spend time with my family. Especially if my death is soon, like in the next few years.”

You don’t have a few years, Seokjin furrows his brows as a dark cloud settles in over his mind. You’ve got eighty-eight days. Seokjin parts his lips, but for what? Does he open his mouth and tell Namjoon hey, you’re in luck! I know exactly how long you’ve got left! Does he tell Namjoon to take some time off work so that he can spend time with his family? No, he can’t do any of that. It’s absurd. It doesn’t make sense. It’s an anomaly even Seokjin can’t comprehend. He draws in a breath and tries not to let any emotions show through. “Is there anything you want to do before you die?” he asks, and hopes like hell that the question doesn’t seem suspicious in any way.

He scratches the back of his neck, deep in though. “Hmm… I want to skydive… and travel the world… and learn to drive…”

“I can teach you how to drive.”

“Really?” Namjoon furrows his brows.

Seokjin nods. “Yeah. I taught Jeongguk how to drive, too. What do you say?”

A few seconds pass in silence that Namjoon just stares blankly at Seokjin, lips pursed ever so slightly. “I mean, if you don’t mind,” he replies mildly.

With a smile, Seokjin nods. “Cool. I can give you lessons after work, then.”

“Thanks,” Namjoon smiles at him, and Seokjin looks back at his screen because that smile of Namjoon’s is going straight to somewhere dangerous: Seokjin’s heart. He continues watching his drama.

On the twenty-first of March, Namjoon is going to die. As of right now, Seokjin has no idea how it’s going to happen, why it’s going to happen, and why his lifespan changed to being with. All he knows, however, is that he’s going to try and make Namjoon as happy as possible in his final remaining eighty-eight days. Help him fulfil his wishes.

“Hey, Namjoon,” Seokjin pipes up while he keeps his eyes glued to his screen, at the tension building between the two characters, “why don’t you ever trap me against the wall like the guys in these dramas do?”

“And why would I do that?” Namjoon asks back in a perfectly level and cool tone of voice.

“Because it’s hot.”

Namjoon’s eyes flicker over to Seokjin, lips straight and taut, before he wordless looks back at his own computer and ignores Seokjin.

Seokjin resumes the drama and watches as the male lead traps the female lead to the wall and with a heavy, longing heart, he imagines Namjoon doing the same to him. He sighs and cups his chin into his palm, watching the drama languidly all the way up until lunch time.

His stomach growling at him is what indicates to him that it’s time to eat. He presses his hand to his stomach to suppress the sounds as he exits out of the screen because he’s gotta eat, and when he comes back from his lunch he knows he’s going to have to work. He doesn’t doubt that Namjoon is already penning another anonymous complaint about Seokjin and he doesn’t want too many of those going through, because while right now none of Namjoon’s complaints have ever been followed up, one of these days Seokjin is going to be called up for a meeting. And Seokjin hopes to hell that it doesn’t come anytime soon.

He heaves himself out of his chair and walks over to where he’d hung up his coat. He zips it up tightly and wraps his scarf around his neck. “Hey, Namjoon. Do you want to join me for lunch?” he asks towards the younger male’s direction.

“I’m alright. I bought something to eat on my way back from my check-up. Besides, it’s freezing out there and I’d rather stay here,” his subordinate says without looking up from his desk.

“Suit yourself,” Seokjin pulls out his phone from his pocket to text Hanyu, who reads the message and responds immediately.

From: Hanyu
I want samgyetang

To: Hanyu
good choice, see u in 5 mins

He pockets his phone, adjusts his scarf so that there’s no gaps between the soft material and his skin. Pats his pockets to make sure he’s got his card and his car keys with him. Namjoon stands and plants his hands into the desk. “Wait, Seokjin-ssi. What are you going to eat?”

“Samgyetang,” Seokjin replies blankly as Namjoon walks around his desk, approaching him. He shoves his hand into the pocket of his coat and fishes around for something.

“Buy those hot pancakes for me, please,” he requests as he finds his card, and holds it out to Seokjin.

Seokjin pushes the card away. “Keep your money. Hot pancakes? I gotchu.”

He turns away from Namjoon and reaches out for the handle, pulling it down to open the door. But before he can produce any kind of gap Namjoon reaches over Seokjin’s shoulder to press his hand flat against the door, keeping it shut. Seokjin spins around, confused, but when he comes face to face with Namjoon’s nose he squeaks and steps back, his shoulders hitting the door. “Take my card,” Namjoon says, his voice low and commanding. Seokjin suddenly feels hot, and suddenly the scarf and coat is suffocating, but he plucks the card from Namjoon’s hand anyway. “Hot pancakes, okay? Hot.”

Seokjin almost feels like he’s going to shit himself. “Hot pancakes,” he repeats after Namjoon shakily, and tries like hell not to react as much as he is to how close Namjoon is right now. Namjoon, apparently satisfied, leans back and removes his hand from the door.

He takes the opportunity to escape immediately, blasting out of the office with all the haste he can muster in his cocooned body. “What the fuck,” he whispers to himself as he barrels down the hallway and to the elevators. He jumps in, presses the button for the ground floor, and when the doors slide shut he lets out a sigh while pressing his hand against his chest. “What the fuck,” he whispers again.

But the second he closes his eyes he remembers how close Namjoon was to him, so he snaps them wide open. Keeps them open. Fuck, Namjoon, Seokjin curses in his mind. At least give me a warning.

That stupid drama that Seokjin gave him bad ideas, and Seokjin is already stupid enough for half the things that come out of his mouth. How was he supposed to know Namjoon would actually carry out one of Seokjin’s requests? It didn’t make sense! Namjoon never listens to Seokjin! He slaps his hands over his cheeks several times to try to force himself to forget about it.

Of course, he doesn’t forget. It’s the first thing he tells Hanyu about when they meet in the car park as they walk towards Seokjin’s car. Hanyu is, bless her, but she’s totally useless with this. She tells Seokjin that Namjoon likes him and that it’s the only logical conclusion, but hello? Namjoon finds him annoying as hell! He’s told him so on many occasions!

There’s also the fact that Namjoon’s sexuality is a complete mystery. He’s never mentioned any past relationships, has never showed a preference to anyone in the company, has never so much as hinted at what his orientation is. It’s a complete mystery and Seokjin doesn’t have any evidence to reach a verdict on what it could be.

He finishes off his samgyetang unenthusiastically and leaves the restaurant before he zips back in because he’d forgotten that Namjoon wanted hot pancakes. He quickly slips back in, orders them, and bounces on his feet as they are prepared. Hanyu waits in the car for him.

The hot pancakes, which he’d requested to be extra hot, Seokjin uses as a lap warmer as he drives back to the company building. He parks, and just as he steps out of his car his phone buzzes in his pocket. He tells Hanyu to go first and he looks at the screen of his phone. It’s Jeongguk.

“Hey, Jeonggukkie. What’s up?” Seokjin answers languidly as he shoves his car keys back into his pocket. He wedges the phone between his ear and his shoulder as he adjusts how he’s carrying the pancakes.

“Hey. Just dropping in to let you know the kitten’s been taken by Jimin. You can come with me to visit it when we’re free,” Jeongguk informs him.

“What did you name her?”

“Well, me and Tae wanted to name her Sasuke but Jimin wanted to name her Tofu. It was two against one but somehow Jimin won anyway, so now she’s Tofu.”

Seokjin chuckles a little as he enters the elevator and presses on a button. “Tofu is cute, Jimin made a good decision. How’s your relationship going?”

“Eh,” Jeongguk begins, and laughs. “It’s going okay. I don’t see them as often as they see each other, but when I do see them it’s great. Perfect,” he tells Seokjin though an airy and light-hearted voice. “Besides, I’ve got two gorgeous boyfriends and you’ve got none. That feels good.”

“Dickhead,” Seokjin spits down at his phone.

“Don’t be rude. Otherwise I’ll add Namjoon-hyung to my list of boyfriends.”

Seokjin peels the screen away from his ear and hangs up, just in time for the elevator to come to a stop on the floor he needs to get out of. Pocketing the phone he makes his way towards his office, and when he stands outside the door he suddenly feels nervous. The hot pancakes are hot, but his cheeks are hotter. Namjoon’s waiting for him inside.

“Brought your pancakes!” Seokjin chimes as he walks in, disguising his nervousness with cheerfulness so fake that Namjoon furrows his brows at it. But that tension between his brows let up as soon as Seokjin shows him the wrapped pancakes and brings it to his desk. Namjoon unwraps them quickly, takes the first pancake, and hands it to Seokjin.

“You can have one,” Namjoon allows as Seokjin returns to him his card that he didn’t use.

“Only one?” Seokjin laughs lightly as he takes the rolled-up pancake from Namjoon and sticks it between his teeth.

“If you wanted pancakes you should’ve bought your own.”

There’s a tiny, almost non-existent hint of amusement on Namjoon’s lips that Seokjin thinks he’s hallucinating. It’s small, barely there, but even so it makes Seokjin’s heart quicken. He wants to press his hand to his chest and tell him not to get his hopes up too high because this tiny little smile on Namjoon’s lips doesn’t mean that Namjoon likes him. Namjoon probably smiles at a lot of people.

Jesus H. Damn It, Seokjin thinks to himself as he turns on his heel and tries to push out every juvenile thought in his mind. What was he going to do next? Grab a flower and pick the petals off one by one, chanting he loves me, he loves me not as he goes? Was he going to input their names into an online love calculator to see how compatible the internet thinks they are?

“Seokjin-ssi, wait,” Namjoon calls, and Seokjin pauses. Takes a deep breath and looks back over to Namjoon who’s plucking a file from the side of his desk. He holds it out towards Seokjin. “This came in while you were out. It’s another case.”

Seokjin licks his lips. “Why don’t you lead it?” he suggests, his eyes flickering up to the numbers above Namjoon’s head ever so momentarily. Namjoon doesn’t consider the suggestion at all.

“The client requested you, specifically,” he informs Seokjin after shaking his head. “Besides, I’ve read through it, and this has your name written all over it.”

The file is in Seokjin’s hand, but he’s staring at Namjoon through wide and curious eyes. For a moment, Namjoon doesn’t let go of the file either. “What do you mean?” he asks mildly, but Namjoon just shrugs and lets go. The file suddenly feels heavy in Seokjin’s hand.

“Just read it. See for yourself.”

Pressing his lips together, Seokjin takes the file and returns to his desk. Slaps it down in front of him and gets comfortable in his chair before he turns to the first page.

It’s not Seokjin’s name that’s written all over it, as Namjoon had said. It’s the Grim Reaper’s.

The first victim, a twenty-three-year-old university student named Jang Jaewon was found dead in his dorm room. He’d been drugged and his throat was sliced open. There were no signs of struggle – the cut to his throat being the only injury that ended his life, but the killer had decided that perhaps that wasn’t enough. A series of slashes to his chest saw an indiscernible mess of cuts in the photo provided with the autopsy, but more harrowingly, the victim was left without his eyes. They’d been completely removed and taken from the scene. Currently, the police do not know where they are.

The second victim was a young girl named Hong Haejoo, aged fourteen. She’d been found dead in her room, sitting in a chair, her hands tied behind her. She’d been drugged and was beaten with a blunt object until she died. The post-mortem investigation showed severe internal haemorrhaging and several broken bones. Her skull had not been caved in – and when Seokjin reads that her skull was not damaged in any way, he shivers. The killer chose to beat the young girl to death, but he was not merciful. A blow to the head would’ve ended her life much quicker, and instead he chose to elongate the process. He was so meticulous in keeping her alive for as long as possible that her skin remained fully intact – save for her ears, which were cut off and removed. Again, the police do not know where they are.

Seokjin has seen many gruesome crime scene photos in his life, but the photo of this fourteen-year-old almost makes him sick. Her skin is black and blue all over, her arms and legs are no longer straight. Her ears are missing.

From the outset, they look like two completely different murders. Carried out by two different people. One: a quick and swift murder. The other: a cruel beating to a young child. There are no connections between the two; the victims were not related or associated to each other at all, but at first glance it’s blindingly obvious that both murders share a common killer.

In Jang Jaewon’s room, three red spider lilies were taped to the walls. One opposite the door, one on each adjacent wall. In Hong Haejoo’s room, two red spider lilies, one opposite the door, and one on the door itself. The man arrested for the two murders: a young florist who pleads innocent.

Seokjin doesn’t know much about flowers, and he wouldn’t have known what the flowers meant, if it had any meanings at all, if Namjoon didn’t clear his throat and begin talking.

“Red spider lilies,” he pipes up as if he’d known Seokjin was mulling over that part of the case record, “are sometimes thought of as the flower of death. I looked it up just before you came in.”

“Flower of death?” Seokjin asks curiously as he places the file back down on his desk and looks up to meet Namjoon’s gaze.

Namjoon nods. “In Japanese, they are called the Higanbana. Higan is the shore of the Sanzu River that souls must cross to reach the afterlife. These flowers usually grow in cemeteries, and legends say they grow in hell.”

Seokjin swallows thickly. “Remind me why the client requested me specifically,” he requests quietly as he stares at the crime scene photos, looking past the bodies of the victims and solely on the red flowers taped to the walls.

“Because you’re the Grim Reaper,” Namjoon answers flatly.

“Right…”

When will that name wrought from hell ever leave him? Will it ever leave? How much longer does Seokjin have to walk while carrying the weight of death on his shoulders? The black cloud of ruin keeps hanging over his eyes, keeps filling up all his senses. He wishes to be rid of it, he wishes to have nothing to do with it. He wishes to be oblivious to it, to be blissfully ignorant about it. About his mother’s coming death, about Namjoon’s coming death. About every death that will come his way, deaths he had no part to play in, deaths he may have helped compose.

Seokjin doesn’t want to be a part of it, at all. But the bells of death keep ringing, the choir ready in front of him, and he’s the one conducting the orchestra.

“These pancakes are really good,” Namjoon muses as he digs in deliciously.

He sweeps the photos back into the file and sighs resolutely. No matter what his wishes are, he must see this through to the end. The song of death needs a finale, and Seokjin will not fuck it up.

He owes it to the people who are going to die.

 

For the first time ever, Seokjin sits in the passenger seat of his own car. It feels strange not having the wheel in front of him, and it feels strange looking at the rear-view mirror and not having it aligned for him. His hands itch to reach up and adjust it, but Namjoon’s hands get there first. He fiddles around with it until he’s satisfied. “I need to see the whole of the back windshield in this mirror, right?” Namjoon asks as he continues staring up at the reflection.

“Yeah.”

“Okay, cool. Done. Now…” he looks to either side and peers into the side mirrors. “I think those are aligned. Now I just gotta… put the key in.”

He looks at Seokjin and holds his hand out expectantly, but Seokjin just presses his lips together. “What are you missing?” he tries to prompt Namjoon.

“Um… faith in myself?”

“No,” Seokjin laughs and indicates to his own chest where his seatbelt is secure and tight. He watches as Namjoon’s lips form a surprised o just before he scrambles to pull the belt down and over him. He clicks it into place. “Okay, so…” Seokjin begins as he fishes his keys out of his pocket. “Down there, you have your gas and your brake pedals. You use your right foot on those. Gas is for accelerating, brake is for, you know, braking.”

Seokjin watches as Namjoon experimentally hovers his foot over each of those pedals.

“That other pedal, the clutch, is needed when you change gears. The gears are all here,” Seokjin points down at the stick between them, directing Namjoon’s focus and attention away from the pedals. “Gears one to six, and then the letter R for reverse.”

“Fuck,” Namjoon whispers to himself as he stares at the gear stick. “I don’t have enough eyes. You expect me to look at the road ahead, at the mirrors up front and on the sides, and the gear stick all at the same time? That’s impossible.”

“If it was impossible, nobody would drive.”

“Can’t I just learn how to drive automatic? Apparently those bad boys change gears for you.”

Seokjin chuckles. “I mean, yeah. They do. But my car is manual, so I’m teaching you manual.”

Namjoon sighs and stares at the gear stick for a few more moments to try to commit the image to his memory. He grabs a hold of it and experimentally tries to wiggle it around. “Do you change gears without looking at the stick?” he asks languidly as he continues to get a feel for it.

“Yeah,” Seokjin answers. “It’s like second nature, now.”

The younger male looks around the car a few more times before he begins to look around the parking lot which is almost completely empty now as most of the employees here have gone home. “I think I’m ready,” Namjoon breathes out as his hands clutch the wheel tightly.

“Okay,” Seokjin accepts and hands him the key. “Press your feet down on the clutch and the brake pedals,” he says, and Namjoon does so. “Now, turn the ignition on.”

Namjoon does as he’s told and Seokjin listens as the car hums to life.

“Put the car in first gear,” Seokjin orders, and Namjoon looks down at the stick to find the first gear, moving the stick accordingly. “And release your foot from the brake, and onto the gas. Press down lightly,” Seokjin coaches him, carefully and gradually. “Now, release the clutch.”

The car starts to move forward, slowly. “I did it! I’m driving!” Namjoon exclaims, his mouth open wide and his brows raised excitedly. He grips the wheel.

Seokjin can’t stop himself from smiling at the sheer excitement in Namjoon’s voice. “Try pressing down on the gas a little more,” he encourages, and Namjoon obliges. But he’s over-excited, he presses down way too hard, and Seokjin almost feels the whiplash in his neck as he’s blasted back in the seat. “Shit!”

“Fuck!” Namjoon yells back and immediately lifts his foot off the gas and slams down, hard, on the brake. The car comes to a screeching halt and Seokjin flies back off the seat and careens forward, held back only by the seatbelt. He bounces back against the seat when the car stops.

“What…” Seokjin begins, breathing heavily as he presses his hand to his chest and tries to will his heart to stop hammering against his sternum, “did I say about pressing down lightly?”

“Sorry,” Namjoon breathes, shoulders heaving as his hands continue to squeeze the wheel, “my hand-eye coordination is piss-poor.”

“That was your foot that went out of whack,” Seokjin spits back.

Namjoon scratches the back of his head. “Sorry.”

A heavy and laboured sigh escapes Seokjin. “It’s okay. My car is safe. And you’re a beginner.”

“Were you like this when you first started?” Namjoon asks curiously.

“No. Neither was Jeongguk. This isn’t Need for Speed, it’s driving a car I paid a lot of money for.”

Namjoon purses his lips and nods solemnly. “Sorry,” he apologises again, and Seokjin can’t hold onto his exasperation any longer, the sight of Namjoon pouting and looking like a puppy that’s been scolded makes Seokjin laugh.

“It’s alright. Baby steps. We can continue tomorrow, I’ll teach your foot how to press lightly,” Seokjin informs him, and Namjoon looks over at him. His pout melts away into a small but grateful smile. “But if anything happens to my car I’ll press my foot into your backside.”

The smile on Namjoon’s face disappears, and Seokjin smiles sweetly at him.

 

It isn’t late at all, but the sky is almost pitch black when Seokjin drives back to his apartment alone. He’d dropped Namjoon home because it wouldn’t have been polite at all to kick him out of his car and then drive home by himself and simply because Seokjin wants to be near Namjoon as much as possible, but now he’s alone in the car and the heater is on but it’s still very, very cold. It’s going to be the twenty-third tomorrow, the last day he’d be at work before the office closes for Christmas and New Year’s, and there’s about seven days left before his mother passes away. He’ll give Namjoon another short lesson on driving, and then he’ll drive back up to visit her. If Jeongguk is available to come, he’ll bring Jeongguk.

If he’s not, then he’s going to have to get ready to beg Yoongi to let Jeongguk take some time off. Jeongguk deserves to see their mother before she passes. Seokjin doesn’t want him to regret that, too.

He taps on the interactive screen above the radio on his car when he reaches a red light, and dials Hoseok. Hoseok picks up on the third ring. “Hey, Seokjin-ssi. To what do I owe the pleasure?” he greets, his loud voice filling up the car.

The red light becomes amber, and then green, and Seokjin presses his foot down on the gas. “I’ve been assigned a new case,” he starts, and bites down on his lip.

“I know,” Hoseok replies. “I’ve been assigned it, too. The Red Spider Lily Serial Murders.”

“Ah, so it has a name already.”

“Mm. It’s gaining some popularity because of how gruesome those two murders were. And those flowers, of course. The flowers of hell.”

Seokjin licks his lips.

“You nervous?” Hoseok asks, and chuckles. “That’s not like you.”

“Shut it. I’m just… I’m…”

“This has your name written all over it,” Namjoon had said to him. “The Grim Reaper.” He shakes the memory of Namjoon’s voice out of his mind, but it comes right back to him. Namjoon’s voice, usually so smooth and low, sounds like acid in his mind when he calls Seokjin the Grim Reaper. He bites down on his lip.

“Worried you’ll lose? Or worse, that you’ll win?”

Seokjin releases his lip from between his teeth. “Why would I be worried that I’ll win?”

He hears Hoseok sigh. “If you win, it means the killer is out there. If he’s killed twice already, he’ll kill again.”

“One of them was a little girl. Beaten to death.”

Silence fills the car.

The heating suddenly turns the air thick, and it isn’t circulating through the car at all. It becomes a little hard to breathe, so Seokjin turns it off. Takes a deep breath and tries to clear those thoughts out of his mind. “I heard you tried to coax Namjoon into working for you, you weasel.”

Hoseok chuckles, but it doesn’t sound genuine at all. Seokjin’s lips pull taut. “He’s a good one. I’m jealous of you.”

Seokjin swallows, hard. “Yeah, well, he’s mine,” for the next eighty-eight days. “And I’m not going to let go of him,” until he lets go, first.

“Seokjin-ssi,” Hoseok starts. “I don’t think the guy they arrested is the killer.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Gut instinct,” he answers vaguely, and the temperature in the car feels like it’s dropped a few degrees. Seokjin’s hand cracks off the wheel and inches towards the heater again. “And this case… there’s something off about it. Be careful, okay?”

“Ew,” Seokjin replies flatly. His face remains dead-straight. “Are you worried about me?”

“Of course,” Hoseok answers, his voice equally as flat. “If something happens to you, who’ll be my rival in court? My frenemy?”

“Your what?”

“We have such amazing chemistry, you and I. Pure intellectual and sexual tension, nothing else.”

“I’m hanging up,” Seokjin replies and quickly taps the button on the screen to end the call.

 

He flips the light switch on when he walks into his apartment. The curtains haven’t been drawn yet, so he walks over to them first. Pulls them shut and stands there for a few moments. And stares at the shut curtains.

There’s something swirling around in Seokjin’s mind – little flakes of snow caught in a violent and cold wind and Seokjin can’t make sense of any of it. He takes in a deep breath, the winter air still clinging to his coat, so he peels it off and chucks it behind him. The year is coming to an end, and his mother is going to die. Just like his father did, just like Jeongguk’s father did.

“Why would you marry someone who had a short lifespan?” Seokjin had asked her, once. He was drunk and angry, because it was the anniversary of Jeongguk’s father’s death, and he’d walked past his room and heard his brother crying.

“What am I meant to tell you, Seokjin?” she questioned sombrely. “I loved him. Like I loved your father. Their lifespans didn’t matter to me.”

“But they matter to us,” Seokjin was crying by now. He heard a door opening and knew Jeongguk had come out, but he didn’t think about stopping. His mind was clouded. “Didn’t you care about your children, at all?”

Seokjin had spent so many of his adult years apologising to his mother for that. Even after she’d forgiven him. Even after she scolded him for bringing it up again. Seokjin still feels guilty about it, and even more so now that her numbers were rapidly hurtling towards zero.

He sighs and he turns away from the closed curtains, his gaze heavy as he brings it up and latches onto the red flower taped to the door. His heart jumps up in his chest and his lips part, but when he blinks, he realises there’s nothing there.

Seokjin licks his lips and keeps his eyes focused on the door, just in case, as his heart rate returns to normal. There’s nothing there. His mind was just playing tricks on him.

He walks to his bathroom and showers under hot, almost scalding water. Dresses in his pyjamas and climbs into his bed. He dreams, as always, of the little girl he thought he could save when he was thirteen, but when she dies in his arms as she always does, the blood from her head drips to the ground and from the dark grey concrete, red spider lilies grow and bloom.

 

 

Notes:

ooohh symbolism~

please leave a comment lemme know what u think!

 

 

 

 

 

twt

Chapter 7: Divine

Summary:

Seokjin's eyes are playing tricks on him, again.

Christmas isn’t a happy time, this year. Before this Seokjin was able to enjoy this time, enjoy the festivity and the presents and the time off work. He was able to pick up Jeongguk and drive up to their mother’s home and spend the short holiday with her. But this time, and for the first time in a few years, Christmas isn’t happy.

Driving up to the house he grew up in, with Jeongguk besides him in the passenger seat after Yoongi had granted him some time off, isn’t how it used to be. There’s the dull music playing from the radio that Seokjin isn’t paying attention to, and there’s the hum of the engine as he drives along the motorway. There’s an untouched bag of snacks in the backseat that Jeongguk had bought just before Seokjin picked him up, and a few videogames stuffed in both of their bags.

“When is she going to…” Jeongguk trails off, his voice sounding a little muted over the festive songs playing on the radio.

“On the thirty-first,” Seokjin replies, his voice just as bland.

Jeongguk settles back in his seat and looks up at the road ahead. From the corner of Seokjin’s eyes he can see the way his little brother’s face is taut, the corners of his lips pulled downwards. Briefly, he glances at him. His eyes are shining.

“Hey, Jeongukkie,” Seokjin coughs, clearing his voice and forcing himself to raise his pitch. “How’s the kitten doing?”

“She’s good. Keeps biting me and Taehyung, but loves Jimin for some reason.”

“Understandable. I wish her a long and happy life.”

“You should come and visit.”

Seokjin’s hands tighten on the steering wheel, and he isn’t sure if Jeongguk notices or not. He licks his lips. He tries to push down the ugly, dark feelings rising up in his throat but it’s too much to hold back. Too much to ignore. “I can’t.”

Jeongguk turns slightly in the seat, angling towards Seokjin. “Why not?”

“I’m afraid I… I’m afraid that I might be the one causing people to die,” Seokjin confesses, and he expects the murky blackness inside him to simmer down. It doesn’t. “You heard it. Mom said I feel like death. I think I-“

“That’s bullshit and you know it,” Jeongguk faces the road again. “Everyone’s lifespans are fixed and predetermined. How could you have influenced it?”

Seokjin furrows his brows. “Maybe it was predetermined that I would be a part of their lives. And that’s why they’re dying too early.”

For a few moments, Jeongguk doesn’t respond. Seokjin continues to drive on, silently, until he hears Jeongguk sigh. “It could just be an unfortunate coincidence,” he suggests, but there’s a hint of desperation in his voice that almost breaks Seokjin’s heart.

“I don’t think it is. Jeonggukkie, I… I think I influenced a change in my subordinate’s lifespan,” he admits, and bites down on his lip. “He was meant to live until eighty-something years old, but now he’s only going to live until the twenty-first of March.”

Jeongguk nearly jumps in his seat as he turns to face Seokjin completely, the seat belt straining against his chest. “What!?”

“Yeah,” Seokjin licks his lips. “I saw it change with my own eyes.”

“T-that… that’s impossible.”

“I thought so, too. But… but I guess it’s real. And I guess it’s my fault.”

“How could it be your fault…?” Jeongguk almost whispers.

“I was with him when it happened. I saw it change. And- and it’s not just him. My dad died young. Your dad died young. And now it’s mom’s turn. Then it’ll be Namjoon.”

A deep and heavy sigh leaves Jeongguk’s lips. “What about me?” he asks in a small voice. “When will I die?”

Seokjin’s hands tighten around the steering wheel, and he doesn’t answer for a few moments. His mind is tripping over itself, trying to deal with the weight of Jeongguk’s request, the meaning behind his words. He shuts his mind off and tries to focus on driving. Takes a few deep breaths. “I can’t tell you that,” he replies.

“Why not? Am I also going to die young?”

Seokjin grinds his teeth together. “I made a vow to never speak about lifespans to another person. I made a mistake, back in school, when I told some kid that his mother would die soon. That was a mistake I can never fix.”

“But you told me about mom’s lifespan.”

“I know. I just… saw how devastated you were when your dad died. I didn’t want you to… to be unhappy with me. For keeping it to myself. You’re the only exception to my vow and… I’m still wondering if I made a mistake or not.”

“I’m not unhappy with you,” Jeongguk replies quietly, looking out onto the road. “Never was. I’m glad you told me.”

Seokjin briefly turns his head to look at Jeongguk. His eyes are still shining, his face taut, his lips pulled down. Seokjin looks up at the numbers above Jeongguk’s head.

Seventy-three years, two months and seventeen days. Jeongguk would live to be ninety-five. Seokjin smiles at that thought despite everything in his head that makes him want to cry. His baby brother is a policeman and would always risk his life to protect other people. Despite all of that, he’s going to live. Way beyond the life expectancy of the average South Korean man. Jeongguk is flowing with vitality and all Seokjin wishes for is that he’s happy for all of those years to come.

That is, if those numbers don’t suddenly change like they did for Namjoon.

 

The days Seokjin and Jeongguk spend with their mother trickle through their fingers too quickly. Seokjin revisits cooking, a hobby of his he let go long ago, and whips up dishes that Jeongguk and their mother wolf down heartily. They say it’s even better than they remember it. Say it’s been a long time since they ate homemade food this good. Somehow, Seokjin doubts it.

Jeongguk lets go of the high-strung tension in his body from days and days of stressful work, and spends most of the days playing video games, playing with their mother’s cat, or chatting to their mother’s neighbourhood friends who haven’t seen them in a while.

Their mother confesses she couldn’t buy any Christmas presents for them, because she’d been growing too weak and she no longer was able to see. Jeongguk pretends to be upset, and Seokjin whacks him. They laugh.

On the twenty-eighth, Jeongguk enters the dining room where Seokjin is reading through reports and preparing himself for the upcoming trial. He still needs to speak with the defendant, but he supposes he can leave that until after the new year’s. For now, he’ll just study the case at hand as much as he can.

“Hey, do you want to watch me swallow a meat bun, whole?” Jeongguk asks him, excitedly. Seokjin glances up at him and pushes his glasses up.

“Why would I want to watch that?” Seokjin replies dryly and looks back down at his reports in front of him. He reads two words, and pauses. “God, that was so Namjoon of me.”

Jeongguk pulls a chair out by the table and sits down, quietly. Rests one arm on the table and leans in ever so slightly. “Do you like him?” Jeongguk asks softly.

The words in front of him slowly begin to swirl and merge together, until Seokjin can no longer read them. He blinks a few times, and then screws his eyes shut. Looks away from the report and up to Jeongguk. At the concern pulling tight along the muscles of his face. That, he can see clearly. That, he can’t run away from. He sighs. “Yeah. I do.”

“He isn’t going to… live for long,” Jeongguk whispers.

Seokjin licks his lips and slowly pulls his glasses off. Folds the sides over and sets them down on the table and accepts the fact that spending time with his mother and little brother this year wouldn’t be happy. At all. He sighs again. “Ironic, isn’t it? I yelled at mom for falling for someone with such a short lifespan. And here I am… doing the same.”

A heavy moment festers between them, the air turning stagnant until Jeongguk sucks in a breath of it. “Maybe it can change again. If it changed once, it can happen again.”

“I don’t know,” Seokjin replies instantly. “The chances of that are… too small to think about.”

He can feel Jeongguk’s eyes on him, making his skin crawl and itch. It feels unpleasant. He knows what Jeongguk is going to say and he doesn’t want to hear it, he doesn’t want to deal with it. He doesn’t want to entertain the thought because it’s futile, it’s always been futile, Seokjin is powerless against everything and anything this cruel world throws at him, so he absolutely doesn’t want to hear that he could possibly have any-

“Hope,” Jeongguk breathes out heavily, and inches his fingers resting on the table towards Seokjin. “You should have hope.”

“I’ve been alive for twenty-seven years,” Seokjin replies quietly, drumming his fingers along the table to get them away from Jeongguk’s reach. “That’s twenty-seven years of despair. Do you know how devastating it is to have hope when you know that things are never going to get better?”

“Don’t say that-“

“It’s true,” Seokjin cuts him off. He swallows, but his throat has begun to close up, and it’s painful. It’s so painful. “I know things won’t change. Not for the better. I’ve accepted it.”

“So…” Jeongguk trails off, his voice impossibly quiet, and impossibly small. It hurts him to hear it. “What are you going to do? About Namjoon?”

Seokjin shrugs one shoulder and puts his glasses back on. “I don’t know. I have no clue what’s going to end his life.”

“I meant,” Jeongguk tries to clarify, “about your feelings for him.”

“Uh,” Seokjin blinks a few times and meets Jeongguk’s gaze. “Nothing, probably. I’m pretty sure he doesn’t like me like that.”

“Are you sure? He’s very loyal to you and puts up with all your bullshit.”

Seokjin laughs. “He puts up with my bullshit because I’m his superior. And he’s loyal because I’m a good attorney, and he wants to learn from me. Not because he has romantic feelings for me. Besides, I don’t even know if he likes dudes or not.”

“Everyone likes dudes,” Jeongguk replies nonchalantly.

“Not everyone is bisexual like you,” Seokjin reminds him. “There are some straight people in the world, you know.”

Jeongguk makes a disgusted face, and Seokjin laughs again. A short, loud laugh. Presses his lips together and meets Jeongguk’s eyes, and then they laugh again, together.

And then they subdue, the giddiness slowly slips from Seokjin’s body. But it leaves behind a small, withering smile on his lips. He looks down at the table, at the distance between his hand and Jeongguk’s hand. He swallows, hard, and his throat no longer feels like it’s fighting against him. He reaches forward, slowly and hesitatingly, to tap the back of Jeongguk’s hand with his index finger. “This life of mine might’ve been unbearable without you, baby brother.”

Jeongguk smiles. “Funny, since you make my life unbearable.”

“Dickface,” Seokjin breathes out just before he swings an arm out to whack Jeongguk.

He leans back in his chair to dodge Seokjin’s attack, laughs, and then leans forward again to reach out for the reports Seokjin was pilfering through. Takes the closest page to him and skims a quick read. “You were assigned this case?” he asks, his eyes still glued to the report and still flickering back and forth between sentences.

“Yeah,” Seokjin huffs out and rests his chin in the palm of his hand, his elbow digging into the table. He watches as Jeongguk reads through a page, and then another, and another.

Jeongguk licks his lip. “Jang Jaewon…” he mutters, and then squints at something on the paper. Seokjin furrows his brows and leans forward.

“What is it?”

His younger brother puts the papers down and looks up at Seokjin, creases between his brows. He parts his lips, closes them, purses them, and looks away for a second. Then, he looks back at Seokjin. “I have a weird feeling,” he begins slowly and unsurely, “that we were warned of this murder before it happened.”

Seokjin cocks his head to the side. “What do you mean?”

“Both victims were reported to us, right? That was the first time we were aware of both murders. But I think that we were warned about the first murder.”

“Who warned you?” Seokjin asks, licking his lips.

Jeongguk shrugs one shoulder and holds his chin in his hand. “I don’t know. Our department received an anonymous letter, a while ago. There was a crossword in there, and the clues were in English. Nobody could figure it out, of course, because at that time the first victim was still alive. But looking back… I think the answers to the crossword was his name.”

“Do you still have that letter?” Seokjin asks quickly and impatiently.

“Yeah. The other officers gave up pretty quickly but I kept it because I’m competitive as fuck. But I left it in my locker at the station.”

“Okay. Send it to me as soon as possible. Did the station receive anything that might’ve indicated Hong Haejoo’s murder?”

Jeongguk shrugs again. “Don’t think so.”

“Okay. Well, if you remember anything else, no matter how irrelevant it seems, tell me straight away.”

“I gotchu,” Jeongguk promises, and returns the pages he took to Seokjin’s pile of reports. “Do you wanna watch me swallow that bun, now?”

Seokjin closes his eyes and sighs, heavily, through his mouth, and then pushes his chair back to stand. “Fuck it. Yeah, why not.”

 

Jeongguk senses it. The morning of the thirty-first, Jeongguk senses it. He comes into Seokjin’s bedroom, still dressed in his pyjamas, and stands by the door. Seokjin looks up at him from where he remains in his bed, awake but unmoving.

“It’s today, isn’t it?” he asks quietly.

Seokjin doesn’t need to ask to know what Jeongguk’s talking about. He just nods in response.

 

Their mother catches on quickly, when both brothers refuse to leave her side all day long. She catches on quickly, and Seokjin knows she does, but she doesn’t show it. She tells them to answer their phones and reply back to texts, but neither of them do.

 

Jeongguk tells a joke to try lightening the mood, but he starts crying before he even gets to the punchline.

 

“Seokjin, come in here,” his mother’s quiet and weakened voice sounds through the door. He pushes against the wall he’d been sitting against, outside their mother’s room, and braces himself. His knees feel frail. Taking a deep breath, he pushes the door open and walks in to find Jeongguk pressing the heels of his palms against his eyes, sitting by their mother’s bedside. Seokjin wills himself to approach them, and he stands over Jeongguk. “Seokjin, my son. Come here.”

She reaches up and Seokjin leans down, lets her cup his cheek and bring his head down so that she can kiss his forehead. Seokjin wills himself not to cry, he squeezes his eyes shut, tight. Jeongguk’s shoulders are shaking as he tries to keep quiet.

“Seokjin, I’m so sorry,” she says, and Seokjin leans back, pulling himself out of her grasp. He bites down on his lip as his eyes flicker up to the numbers above her head, and wills himself not to cry again. There’s just a few minutes left.

“Sorry about what?” Seokjin replies quietly, reaching down to take her hand in his. “There’s nothing you need to apologise for.”

“There’s so much I need to apologise for. I… If I wasn’t your mother, you-“

“No,” Seokjin cuts her off, his voice strung high and thin. Jeongguk pulls his hands away from his eyes and his tear-streaked cheeks. “Don’t say anything.”

His mother smiles a melancholy, heart-breaking smile. “If I wasn’t your mother, you would’ve led a normal life. You wouldn’t have to see the things that you do. I’m sorry.”

“Stop it.”

“I know how hard it’s been, Seokjin. You’ve never once had a break from it. I’m so sorry.”

“Mom, stop it,” Seokjin warns her again, but his voice is almost completely gone, now. “I mean it.”

His cheeks are wet.

“I’m so sorry,” she whispers, and reaches out with both arms, desperately, taking both Jeongguk and Seokjin in. “Your fathers, and now me. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. I love you two more than anything in this world. I wish I could’ve given you the lives you deserved.”

There’s so much Seokjin wants to say, so much he wants to refute and to reassure but every word of his gets caught in his throat. He can’t get them out. Instead he just clings to his mother and cries even though he told himself he wouldn’t. Even though he knows crying won’t make a difference. Even though he’d been prepared for this since he found out what the numbers meant.

Being prepared didn’t make it any easier.

 

The house he and Jeongguk grew up in doesn’t feel the same without their mother. Taehyung and Jimin had come over a few days after the new years to comfort him. Taehyung took Gandalf and promised to look after her well.

 

Seokjin doesn’t call anyone, nor does he reply to any of the messages he’d been sent.

 

They don’t hold a funeral. Seokjin takes care of all the legal documents, he accepts the house as his own, now, and he packs his bags and drives himself and Jeongguk back to Seoul. Settles into his quiet, modern apartment and stares at the wall for more time than he can account for, before showering and going to bed. It’s been ten days since his mother passed away, and Seokjin still doesn’t feel like himself. He wonders how long it’ll take, this time, to recover from a death.

He wonders if he’ll recover in time for the next one. He wonders if there’s any point in recovering at all, because the cycle of death will just continue, whether he’s ready or not.

In the morning, it takes all of him to grasp the door handle into his office. He knows Namjoon is already here, already working. Already typing or writing or reading something, oblivious to it all, and Seokjin feels like it would be painful to look at him. It’s already beginning to hurt.

His chest feels empty when he releases a sigh and pushes the door in. Namjoon looks up at him, and Seokjin returns the look.

Seventy days left.

“Good morning, Seokjin-ssi,” Namjoon greets him mildly. He watches as Seokjin peels his coat off and drops down in his chair in front of his desk. “Everything okay?”

“’Morning. Why wouldn’t it be?” Seokjin laughs lightly as he stares at his screen as his computer turns on.

“Haven’t heard from you since Christmas,” Namjoon replies flatly. The sound of his fingers on his keyboard turns into background noise that Seokjin listens to like it’s music. “You normally reply, even if you’re on holiday.”

“Right… sorry about that.”

“Why are you apologising?”

“I…” Seokjin trails off, and presses his lips together. Sure, he hadn’t replied to any of the texts he’d gotten, but at the very least he’d read them. Made sure that no one needed him. None of the texts needed urgent replies and so Seokjin decided against replying. He licks his lips and thinks about what he should say to Namjoon, but nothing sensible comes to mind.

Instead, he remembers the brief conversation he had with Jeongguk back in their home. He presses his lips together and decides to just keep his mouth shut.

“Hey, Seokjin-ssi,” Namjoon calls out, and Seokjin snaps his head back up. Meets Namjoon’s eyes from across the office. “Did something happen over the holiday?”

Seokjin parts his lips to reply, but nothing comes out.

“You don’t have to tell me. But I’ll listen if you want to. Or pick up the slack if you need to take a few more days off.”

Seokjin bites down on his lower lip and looks down at his desk, where his papers have been organised neatly and his desk had been tidied. Undoubtedly, the work of Namjoon. Seokjin pinches one of the buttons on his shirt. “I’ve got a case to deal with…” he reasons quietly.

“Hmm… then how about… just for today, you take things easy?”

Seokjin looks back up to Namjoon. The numbers above his head stare back. “I’ll be fine,” he forces himself to say. "I’ve been away from work for a while, now, anyway.”

“Okay. Well, if you need anything, let me know, okay?”

He smiles at Seokjin, and Seokjin isn’t sure if the pain inside his chest alleviates or if it gets infinitely worse. He bites down on his lip again and tries to will himself to feel better. “What if I asked you for a hug?” he ventures and forces himself to smile.

The expression on Namjoon’s face doesn’t change. “Then I’d hug you.”

“And if I asked for a kiss?”

“Don’t push it.”

Seokjin laughs lightly, the feeling of it reverberating in the emptiness of his chest. “Okay. I’ll cash in on that hug, then.”

Accepting the request immediately, Namjoon pushes himself up and out of his chair, walking around his desk to approach Seokjin’s. Seokjin quickly looks down at his desk and presses his lips together, suddenly feeling hyperaware of the fact that Namjoon is walking towards him, is coming to hug him, and his heart starts to pick up speed. He wants to press his hand to his chest to still it, but he doesn’t want Namjoon to see that. So instead he swallows, hard, and blinks a few times.

Namjoon pulls on the back of Seokjin’s chair so that he faces him, and leans down. Wraps his arms around the elder. Seokjin immediately reaches up and around him, his hands flat against Namjoon’s back. He leans upwards, and Namjoon tightens his hold.

His fingers scramble to hold onto Namjoon, but they slip against the smooth expanse of his back and curl in on themselves. Seokjin presses his nose against Namjoon’s shoulder and swallows, hard.

Seokjin doesn’t want to let go. Namjoon is so warm and big and Seokjin feels so small and safe right now that he doesn’t want to let go. He deserves to hold onto Namjoon for a long time, he thinks. He’s suffered enough in his life to deserve a reprieve like this. He inhales Namjoon’s faint soapy scent just before Namjoon lets go, and leans back.

“Feel better?” Namjoon asks, brows raised, a fist on his hips as he looks down at Seokjin still sitting in his chair.

“I’d feel better if you didn’t let go.”

Namjoon rolls his eyes widely and dramatically before he returns to his desk, and Seokjin watches him go. The seventy days go with him, and Seokjin’s hands beg to reach out for him again, to hold onto him, to let him protect Seokjin while Seokjin protects his seventy days.

But that’s impossible, too.

“Are you sure you don’t want to take the day off?” Namjoon asks Seokjin after he’s sat down.

Seokjin draws a sharp, deep breath in. He pushes his chest out as he pulls it in, and he readjusts himself in his chair. He doesn’t know when he’s going to recover, if he’s going to recover, but if there’s one thing Seokjin’s good at, it’s pushing things to the back of his mind and putting a smile on his face even when he doesn’t feel like it. “I’ll be okay,” he replies to Namjoon, and there’s a little seed of something in him that tells him it really will be okay. He doesn’t believe in it, because he knows what that seed is. It’s hope.

“Okay. Let me know if you need anything.”

Seokjin just nods in response and pushes everything to the back of his mind.

 

On the tenth of December, the Monday following the first trial Namjoon had led, an anonymous letter was sent to the precinct where Jeongguk and Yoongi works. The letter contained a single sheet of paper that detailed a blank crossword and a single sentence in English underneath it that served as the puzzle’s clue. Seokjin can see faint pencil markings where Jeongguk had tried to work out the answers and didn’t erase them properly. There’s a sticky-note with the letter, penned in Jeongguk’s handwriting, that shows what he believes the answer is. Jang Jaewon.

Seokjin flattens the crumpled paper out on his desk. Namjoon peers down at it, one hand pressed against the edge of the desk as he leans down.

“The chapter begins, and from ashes, we form a circle,” Namjoon recites in perfect English. “Your little brother is smart.”

Seokjin licks his lips and looks up at Namjoon, who’s still staring down at the crossword, brows furrowed in deep concentration. He doesn’t say anything, and Namjoon reaches out with one hand to point at the word chapter.

“Chapter in Korean is Jang,” he says, and then slides his finger over to the empty crossword. “J, A, N, G,” he traces out the letters into each empty box. Then, he returns to the clue. “Ashes in Korean is Jae,” he says, and traces those letters out again. “And finally, circle in Korean is Won.”

“Ah,” Seokjin sounds, quietly, as he images the letters that Namjoon had traced out with his fingers. He licks his lips drums his fingers against the desk. “This kind of clue would be impossible to figure out unless you know about the murder, first,” Seokjin speculates. Namjoon nods.

Three days after the letter was received and thought nothing of, on the thirteenth, Jang Jaewon was murdered in his dorm room and discovered by his roommate. There was no suspect at the time, nothing to suggest anyone would have a motive for murdering him, until ten days later, on the twenty-third, Hong Haejoo was found dead by her mother.

Both victims had something removed, and both victims were left with red spider lilies in their rooms. Other than those two factors there was nothing else to connect the two murders. Hong Haejoo’s parents were wealthy, but Jang Jaewon was not. Seokjin ruled out money as an objective.

“We’ve got a crafty little fucker on our hands,” Namjoon inputs, leaning back and stretching his arms behind him. “Why would he go through all the effort to leave this clue?”

“He wants to taunt us. Make us feel incompetent that we can’t catch him.”

“But he was arrested, wasn’t he?”

Gut instinct, Hoseok had told him, when Seokjin questioned why the prosecutor didn’t believe the defendant was guilty. He’d questioned it at the time, but Seokjin can’t deny the fact that he doesn’t believe it, either. He was arrested because he was a florist whose shop was near both victims, and he didn’t have an alibi for the murders. It’s not him, Seokjin thinks to himself. He wishes he’s wrong, he wishes like hell that he’s wrong, but every logical cell in his brain tells him that he's not.

“I think I’ll pay him a visit, today,” Seokjin muses as he picks up his phone from the side of his desk, and looks up at Namjoon. “Do you want to come with?”

“Yeah, of course,” he answers immediately, and heads back to his own desk. He sits down, flattens his tie against his chest, and then looks at Seokjin from across the office with a sigh. “Hey, Seokjin-ssi. You didn’t look at my messages over the holiday.”

“Oh, sorry,” Seokjin quickly offers and with his phone still in his hand, he unlocks it and navigates to Namjoon’s chat. There’s nothing there that would’ve required Seokjin’s immediate attention – just a few messages wishing Seokjin a happy new year and before that, a message for Christmas.

From: cute assistant
Merry Christmas, Jingle Bell

Seokjin snaps his head back up to Namjoon, who presses his lips together sheepishly when their eyes meet. “I was waiting for Christmas to call you that,” he explains, awkwardly, and his eyes flicker over to his screen before they return to Seokjin.

He swallows, hard, and his hand closes around his phone tightly. He purses his lips. “Namjoon-ah, will you marry me?”

“No, thanks.”

Seokjin watches as he fixates on his computer screen, unaffected and unbothered by Seokjin’s bullshit as he calls it, until the smallest of smiles appears on the corner of Namjoon’s lips. Seokjin blinks, hard, but when he opens his eyes that smile is gone.

His eyes are playing tricks on him, again.

 

Namjoon takes a hold of Seokjin’s seatbelt and clicks it into place for him before he straps himself in, and he watches unapologetically as Seokjin quickly checks all his mirrors before he pulls out of the parking space. Once he’s carefully edged his car out and switches gears, he returns Namjoon’s gaze. “You want to continue learning how to drive?” Seokjin asks mildly just as they get on the road.

The younger male looks out ahead. “Yeah. Actually, I met with Hoseok once during the holiday. He let me drive his car for a few minutes.”

Seokjin nearly slams his foot down on the brake. “Hoseok?!” he screeches, brows flying up incredulously. “Of all people, Hoseok?!”

“Yeah,” Namjoon laughs. “He’s a decent guy.”

“Decent, my ass,” Seokjin mutters under his breath and he clutches the wheel.

“Why do you hate him so much?” Namjoon enquires, fiddling with the interactive screen above the gearstick as he picks out a radio station.

“Because I have to. He’s my rival.”

“Your rival?”

“Yes. Everyone needs a rival.”

“So you picked him to be your rival, and that means you have to hate him?”

“Yes.”

Namjoon laughs again. “God, you’re so annoying,” he muses light-heartedly. “Who knew I’d actually miss you during the holiday?”

Seokjin briefly glances at him for a second before he returns his gaze to the road ahead. “You missed me?”

“Only a little bit,” Namjoon replies mildly. “You anime protagonist.”

Seokjin presses his lips together to hold back a smile. “If I’m the protagonist, then you’re my-“

“Sidekick?”

“No, my love interest. The heroine with massive ti-“

“On second thoughts, I didn’t miss you at all.”

The sound of Seokjin’s laughter is all that circulates in the car for a moment, and then it peters out into nothing but the hum of the engine and the tyres on the road. Seokjin flips the indicator, and then turns right. He comes to a red light, and slowly brings the car to a halt.

“Seokjin-ssi. Why did you decide to become an attorney?” Namjoon asks flatly. Seokjin glances at him, but he’s looking straight ahead.

“Video game,” Seokjin replies vaguely and returns his gaze to the traffic lights. Once they turn green, he switches gears and hits the gas.

“Are you serious?” Namjoon asks in disbelief.

“Yep. It’s called Phoenix Wright. You should play it.”

“I’d rather not.”

“Are you sure? In the second case of the first game, there’s a character that reminds me of you. She uses her huge boobs to get away with things.”

“Jesus Christ,” Namjoon laments, and Seokjin pulls up in the parking lot of the detention centre. Seokjin switches gears and turns the engine off. He unstraps himself and climbs out of the car as Namjoon does the same. Seokjin tightens his coat around himself in the cold air as they head into the detention centre.

He registers himself and Namjoon in at the reception desk and waits quietly for ten minutes before an officer arrives to take them to the defendant. He’s sitting at a table, his hands cuffed and chained to the table. Seokjin sits down in the chair opposite him, and Namjoon remains standing. The officer closes the door but stations himself in the corner of the room.

“Lee Mirae,” Seokjin addresses as he faces the florist. The headshots that Seokjin received made him look years beyond his age, but the young man in front of him is nothing but just that – a young man. Silky black hair, smooth skin. There are shadows under his eyes, but that doesn’t come as any surprise to him. “I’m Kim Seokjin, I’ll be representing you in court. This is my subordinate, Kim Namjoon.”

Mirae nods and licks his lips. “Nice to meet you,” he greets.

“I wanted to ask you a few questions, if that’s okay. I know you’ve been interrogated a lot, already, and I apologise. But I’ll do everything in my power to defend you.”

Mirae looks down at the chains keeping him anchored to the table, and smiles a sad smile. “Thank you. And that’s okay. Ask whatever you want.”

Seokjin clears his throat and pulls out a small notebook and pen from the inside of his coat. “So, Lee Mirae-ssi. You’re the owner of a small flower shop, is that correct?”

The florist nods. “Yes. Floral-Lee,” he names it with a quaint, bashful smile on his lips. “I opened it up three years ago. Also, you can call me Mirae.”

Seokjin wants to applaud him for the pun, but now is not the time, he reminds himself. “You’re twenty-two, now. So that would’ve made you nineteen when you opened the shop?”

“Yes. I know, I was very young.”

“You’re the same age as my little brother,” Seokjin smiles lightly, and Mirae smiles back. His eyes seem to brighten up, a little. He doesn’t look as distraught as he did when Seokjin and Namjoon first walked in. “Anyway. Did you always plan on being a florist, or did you have other plans for your career?”

Mirae pushes his bottom lip out, slightly. “I was never really that smart back in school. I thought I wouldn’t get into university, so I decided not to apply. I liked flowers, so I decided to open up this shop.”

“And how did you manage, financially?”

“Hmm,” Mirae looks off as he tries to recall, “not that good, at first,” he laughs. “But my parents helped me out as much as they could, and now the shop is doing well. I don’t think I ever truly struggled, if that’s what you’re asking.”

Seokjin makes little notes about Mirae’s answers into his notebook. “Thank you. One last question, Mirae. What’s your goal in life?”

Mirae blinks, his eyes widening a little. “My goal in life? Well, right now it’s to be declared innocent. And then later… I want to get a dog, get married to someone nice, and continue selling flowers in my shop.”

“Thank you, Lee Mirae,” Seokjin finishes making notes. He pockets the notebook and pen and stands to his feet, pushing the chair back as he goes. “If I have any more questions, I’ll drop by. But otherwise, I’ll see you in a few days for your trial.”

“Okay. Thank you.”

With a quick and courteous bow, Seokjin walks out of the room with Namjoon in tow. The officer takes them back to the reception, where Seokjin signs them out, and together they head back to Seokjin’s car. Once inside, strapped in and with the heating turned on, Namjoon speaks.

“You didn’t ask him anything about the murders,” he notes.

“There’s nothing else I wanted to know about the murders from him that wasn’t in his testimony,” Seokjin answers as he pulls out of the parking space.

“So, how did your questions today help you?” Namjoon asks curiously.

“Well…” he begins as he joins the road, “now we know that he didn’t excel at school, and he isn’t struggling financially, nor is he striving to be wealthier. The person who murdered Jang Jaewon and Hong Haejoo must have been smart and crafty. He could’ve been after money, we don’t know, but Lee Mirae isn’t hungry for money.”

Namjoon looks out of the passenger mirror and brings his elbow up to rest along it. “Are you just going to take his word for it?” he asks.

“No,” Seokjin laughs, “but that’s why I’m going to make a request for his grades from school. Evidence is everything.”

“Shit,” Namjoon mutters. “You’re always thinking two steps ahead.”

Seokjin detaches one of his hands from the wheel to tap the side of his head. “You gotta be prepared. I know Hoseok will be.”

“I can’t believe you hate Hoseok just because you think you need a rival.”

“Actually,” Seokjin sighs, and when he stops at a red light, he looks at Namjoon. “It’s not just that. I met Hoseok at a bar the night before one of my trials. We hooked up, and I left in the morning. Went to court, and found him at the prosecution’s table, smirking at me. He told me he was an attorney that night and that he knew who I was, but I’m the gay that can’t do maths so I couldn’t put two and two together. Anyway, that was where this whole Legendary Jung vs Kim Trial thing started.”

Namjoon throws his head back and laughs. It almost startles Seokjin. He laughs for way too long that it starts to hurt Seokjin’s pride.

“It’s not that funny,” Seokjin pouts.

“It is. But don’t worry, I’m the gay that can’t drive.”

Seokjin blinks, once, twice. He looks over at Namjoon, who wipes a tear from his eye, and just before Namjoon turns his head to look at him he quickly looks back at the road ahead. His hands become stiff on the wheel.

gay
/ɡeɪ/
adjective

1. (of a person) homosexual (used especially of a man).
2. light-hearted and carefree.

Yeah, Seokjin’s thinks to himself shakily, gripping the steering wheel tightly. It’s gotta be the second one. Haha. Dumb bitch. Don’t get your hopes up.

He drives back to the office, nervously and with his fingers itching to text Hanyu. As soon as he parks the car in the parking lot he rushes out, locks it, and heads straight for the elevators. Namjoon joins him, and they ride the elevator going up together in a silence that Seokjin knows Namjoon finds comfortable, but he himself finds nerve-wracking. He pulls his phone out of his pocket and angles the screen away from Namjoon.

To: Hanyu
HE SAID HES THE GAY THAT CANT DRIVE

To: Hanyu
WHAT DOES THAT MEAN

Hanyu replies almost instantly.

From: Hanyu
I think it means that he’s gay and that he can’t drive

To: Hanyu
GREAT, THANKS

He pockets his phone angrily.

Namjoon doesn’t react at all to Seokjin’s agitation, whether he detects it or not. He probably does sense it but chooses to ignore it, as he’s become so well accustomed to. He just follows Seokjin down the hallway and to the office. Lets Seokjin walk in first.

Sitting atop his desk is a bouquet of red flowers. Seokjin pauses, his hands frozen at the seams of his coat he had just started to take off, and he shuts his eyes. Tells himself that his eyes are just playing tricks on him, again, but when he opens them the bouquet is still there. He hears Namjoon grumble behind him and walk around him since he refuses to budge, but when he sees the bouquet he freezes, too.

“Are those…” he begins and walks past Seokjin to approach his desk. He lifts the bouquet and inspects the flowers up close. “Red spider lilies,” he confirms quietly.

His fingers card through the flowers and find a small card. He peers closer at it. “’Sorry for your loss’, it says,” Namjoon reads out. He turns and looks at Seokjin. “It’s for you, but it isn’t signed by anyone.”

Seokjin takes a step closer, but his phone buzzes in his pocket, and he stops. It keeps buzzing, and Seokjin realises someone is calling him. He quickly fishes the phone out and looks at the caller ID. It’s Jeongguk. He accepts the call and presses the phone to his ear.

“Hey, hyung,” Jeongguk’s concerned voice comes through the receiver. “We got another anonymous letter.”

Seokjin’s eyes, latched onto the bouquet of red flowers, lose focus and his vision blurs.

Notes:

ahsdfsd sorry for all the cliffhangers lmfao u can scream at me if u want in the comments

 

 

 
twt

Chapter 8: Clairvoyance

Summary:

A bouquet of red spider lilies sent to Seokjin, and a second anonymous letter forewarning a third murder no one was prepared for.

Notes:

for those of u who participated in trying to figure out the clue i posted on twitter, thank u so much!! i didn't actually anticipate anyone with interact with me lol but i'm so glad so many of u did! but i have to apologise because the full truth of it won't be exposed in this chapter lol

also, i'm sorry this chapter came so late. i've been so busy and bogged down with work and study.

ALSO, ignore typos and such, it's 1am and i have to be up at 6 for work lol fuck me

The tie around Seokjin’s neck suddenly feels like a noose, so he pulls at it and opens it up. Lets the knot unfurl and the tie fall to the table. With that hand he picks up his beer, brings it to his lips and tips as much as he can allow down his throat before he drowns himself in it.

“So,” Yoongi sighs as he looks off somewhere in the bar, eyes unfocused but tense. “There’s going to be another murder.”

Seokjin nods and feels himself lament silently over the rim of his glass of beer. One hand in his hair, fingers running through it like he’s trying to relieve some of the stress running around the skin of his scalp, but it doesn’t help. His skin is still tight, still suffocating. It doesn’t help.

“Your little brother was the one who found the anonymous letter. He showed me, but neither of us could figure it out.”

Seokjin just licks his lips and reconstructs the image of the letter Jeongguk had taken a picture of and sent to him in his mind, and he takes another jab at deciphering what it could mean, but nothing comes to mind. Neither he nor Namjoon at the time could decode it, but what did Seokjin expect? The letter that foretold Jang Jaewon’s murder was impossible to figure out until after his murder, and only because they knew what to look for. Jang Jaewon’s name.

Right now, they don’t have a name. The name is what they’re trying to figure out so that the murder could be prevented, but Seokjin doesn’t even know how to tackle the problem, let alone what the answer could be.

So instead, he pulls his hand down from his scalp and uses it to cradle his chin, to keep his head up. “There’s one other thing I haven’t mentioned yet,” he huffs, and keeps his eyes latched onto the middle of the table even as he realises from the periphery of his vision that Yoongi has raised his head to look up at him. “Just before Jeongguk called me to tell me about the letter, I received a bouquet of flowers. Red spider lilies.”

He hears Yoongi shift uncomfortably at that.

“Sorry for your loss, it said,” Seokjin continues. “On my first day back to work after my mother’s passing.”

For a moment, neither of them speak. Seokjin, because there’s absolutely no words he could think of that will explain anything that’s been happening. Yoongi, because he’s trying his damned hardest to help Seokjin with that.

“Seokjin,” Yoongi sounds after a moment, and Seokjin looks up to meet Yoongi’s serious face. There’s a shadow cast over his face from how deeply he’s furrowing his brow, but none of it elicits a response from Seokjin. He’d expected it. He’s expecting something to hit the fan, and he’s pretty sure it’s absolute shit. “Do you have any enemies?”

“None that I can tell you the names of,” Seokjin replies flatly.

“Does that mean you think you have enemies, you just don’t know who?”

Seokjin apathetically shrugs one shoulder. “I’m sure I have enemies. I’ve sent to jail people who have hid from the law. But my job aside, there will always be people who hate other people. Maybe it’s my personality. Maybe it’s something I can’t explain.”

“Can you think of anything that may make someone want to target you?”

Seokjin shakes his head.

“I would tell you to ignore the bouquet,” Yoongi sighs, “but don’t. Red spider lilies aren’t normal flowers you give to a grieving person. Especially to someone leading a case like the ones on our hands.”

Seokjin just nods and finishes off his beer before the two of them head out of the bar. He waits with Yoongi until their cabs arrive, and Seokjin climbs into the back, rolling his head back against the headrest. The driver glances at him momentarily through the rear-view mirror and doesn’t ask any further questions past Seokjin’s destination.

He feels like he’s stranded on an island. Immediately after finding the flowers waiting for him on his desk, he’d stormed over to Hanyu’s office to look at security footage. Surely enough, there was a man who’d come in to deliver the flowers while Seokjin and Namjoon were out to question the defendant. The man who’d delivered the flowers had nothing to do with the bouquet; he was just the delivery man. But the flowers themselves came from the flower shop Seokjin is well aware of: Floral-Lee.

So he and Namjoon paid a quick visit to the store. While Lee Mirae was being detained, he’d had his brother look after the shop.

But the trip itself was futile. The flowers were purchased with cash, and the only figure to show up on the security tapes was clad entirely in black, completely unrecognisable.

And the anonymous letter sent to the station that Jeongguk and Yoongi worked at may as well have been for naught. The first letter contained a crossword that spelled out the victim’s name in English. This new letter that’s currently being speculated over by the police doesn’t seem quite so straight-forward.

A large empty triangle in the centre. An animated eye at the top corner of the triangle, and down at the first corner on the bottom side of the triangle, the roman numeral for the number two. The final corner points to a straight vertical line.

All Seokjin could understand from the diagram is that there was always meant to be three murders. Why he didn’t see it before, Seokjin doesn’t know. Why no one else saw it, he doesn’t know.

But it was so clear, in hindsight. It was right in front of his eyes! In the bedroom of the first victim, three out of the four walls had little bunches of red spider lilies taped to the walls. In the bedroom of the second victim, two of the walls had the lilies. By that extrapolation, someone should’ve known there would’ve been a third murder. There would be a third victim, found in their bedroom, with one of the walls adorned with the flowers.

Or perhaps… perhaps the police did think about that possibility, but had brushed it off because they’d apprehended the killer. Lee Mirae. Arrested him and eliminated the possibility of the third room with just one set of red spider lilies. And the only reason why Seokjin overlooked that circumstance was because he did not believe Lee Mirae was the killer.

Either way, both Seokjin and the police blinded themselves to the prospect of a third victim. He wants to give himself the comfort of knowing that the third murder hasn’t happened yet, but how long Seokjin and the police have to prevent it, he doesn’t know either.

Ten days transpired between the first and the second murder. Anyone with two braincells to rub together and try to make fire could tell you that the third murder would happen ten days after the second, on January the second. But it’s now the eleventh and no third victim. Yet.

Yet.

The triangle with the eye only tells Seokjin one thing: that there was always going to be a third victim, that it was never going to end with just two. He can come up with all the ways in which it tells him that, but what it doesn’t do is tell him who the victim will be, and when they’ll be murdered.

There are unread messages from Namjoon when he finally lets his head hit his pillow, but his brain feels like it’s on fire right now and he can’t bear to open his eyes to try and form any kind of response. He’ll speak to Namjoon tomorrow.

He falls asleep almost as soon as he lets his eyelids flutter shut, but when darkness falls, the curtains pull back, and a garden of red spider lilies come into full bloom.

 

Seokjin can not and will not deny the way his mood elevates, even if by a little, amongst the shit and darkness swirling around his head when he grasps the handle on the door to his office, knowing that Namjoon will already be inside, sitting pretty at his desk. Seokjin’s only human: he absolutely detests mornings but walking into his office knowing that Namjoon’s gonna be inside makes his mornings bearable. But this morning, when he walks into the office, Namjoon isn’t here yet.

So he frowns at the empty seat where Namjoon should be, and he sulks all the way to his own seat. Pulls the chair in, hands on top of his desk, and he lets his shoulders sag.

There’s so much that Seokjin should know, that Seokjin needs to know, and it aches to reach out desperately for answers like his fingers are scrambling around in the darkness. Nothing makes sense, and there’s too many factors that are keeping Seokjin’s mind from stopping and calming down.

Not that he believes he should calm down, that’s for sure. There’s no way he’s going to stop thinking. He needs to figure out what that diagram meant, who the next victim will be and when, and who the murderer is if it isn’t Lee Mirae. He needs to find out why Namjoon’s lifespan has suddenly changed, but more importantly, how to stop it or change it back before Namjoon dies, too.

He stops.

He lifts one butt cheek off his chair so that he can reach efficiently into his pocket to fish out his phone. Unlocks it and quickly opens up his chat with Jeongguk, finds the photo he’d taken of the second anonymous letter, and stares at the diagram, pinching his brows together harshly.

There’s the number one, the roman numeral for the number two, and then an eye up at the top. The entire diagram looked like it was drawn in a marker pen with little to no effort because none of the lines look straight or clean. The eye up at the top is just a horizontal ellipse with pointed corners, a circle in the middle of it, and a few short, stubby lines for eyelashes pointing upwards. Seokjin hadn’t realised it before because it was just so unspeakably obvious that it was drawn so roughly, but now he sees it. Or rather, he doesn’t. Any signs that the eye is a right eye or left eye, that is. There’s no pointed medial canthus, no rounded lateral canthus. Seokjin had, at first, disregarded the lack of those details as a fault of the one who drew the eye, but now Seokjin realises it was intentional.

It’s not a right eye, nor is it a left eye. It’s placed at the upper vertex of the triangle, on its own, in between the numbers down below. It’s neither the right eye or the left eye, but the third eye. Third eyes see things that normal eyes don’t.

Like lifespans.

The door opens and Namjoon walks in, eyes wide when he notices Seokjin is already here. His lips part, his thick bottom lip nearly stealing Seokjin’s attention just before his eyes quickly rush back up to the numbers floating above Namjoon’s head. Sixty-six days left until he dies.

“The last time you arrived to work before me was the day of my interview,” Namjoon remarks as his expression softens. He looks down and smiles an easy, relaxed smile as he shrugs his coat off and heads over to his desk. “Do you remember what happened that day? I was so sure I would get rejected, straight up.”

Seokjin licks his lips and watches, intently, as Namjoon flattens his tie against his chest, re-tucks a little part of his shirt back into his pants with his fingers, and then pulls his chair out. Sits down and smooths his hand over his hair that’s always styled perfectly, pushed back like he’s some kind of celebrity. “I remember,” Seokjin replies lightly and watches, unabashed, as Namjoon turns his computer on. “You were so nervous that you dropped all of your documents on the floor.”

Namjoon laughs lightly. “And when I went to pick them up, I banged my head on the edge of your desk. I thought to myself that you’d never want someone like me as your subordinate.”

“Well,” Seokjin sounds, finally looking away from Namjoon to look back at his own computer. He checks his emails. “I thought to myself that if I took you on, you could bang me on the edge of my desk as hard as you banged your head.”

He doesn’t look at Namjoon, pointedly, for a second or two before he lets his eyes pan over to where Namjoon is, undoubtedly, about to crumble. He is, understandably, wide-eyed and surprised, but when he meets Seokjin’s gaze he chokes, coughs into his fist a few times, and quickly looks back at his screen. Seokjin’s lips stretch wide but he tries not to laugh, because his focus drifts from the embarrassment on Namjoon’s face to the numbers floating above his head. He sighs, deeply and despairingly.

“Do you have any enemies?” Yoongi had asked him. “Can you think of anything that may make someone want to target you?”

The letters sent to the station where Jeongguk works. The third eye on the triangle. The flowers sent to his office. Seokjin’s pretty sure he knows who the next victim will be, but that realisation makes him feel sick to his core. He swallows.

It’s going to be Namjoon.

“What’s going through your mind, now?” he asks, and Seokjin snaps back into reality, and forces himself to relax the tension growing between his brows. He looks across the room to where Namjoon is watching him, a soft mix of concern and curiosity on his face. “You look pensive all of a sudden.”

“I’m thinking about you,” Seokjin replies, easy, breezy and light-hearted, or so he wishes. No, he can definitely hear how thin his voice sounds, how strained it feels. Like he’s holding his vocal chords between pinched fingers and he’s stretching them out, seeing how far he can pull them, and holding them at the point just before they snap. There’s so much tension in his voice, tension he can’t hide or cover up. Namjoon isn’t blind to it either.

“What about me in specific?”

Seokjin licks his lips and takes his gaze away from Namjoon’s bright eyes. “The case at hand,” he huffs, changing the subject abruptly, “is messing with my head. Ten days transpired between the first and second. How long do you think it’ll be before the third?”

“Are you sure there’ll be a third?”

Seokjin nods, but whether Namjoon is watching him to see that nod he doesn’t know. “Yeah. The triangle. There’s the number one, the roman numeral two, and the eye at the top… which is a third eye. One, two, three. The murderer is warning us. And then who knows what’ll happen after that one? Maybe there’ll be a fourth.”

He doesn’t hear anything from Namjoon save for some shuffling and shifting, so he glances over and finds him scribbling something down on a piece of paper. He chucks the pen onto the desk and extracts himself from it, striding over to Seokjin’s desk. Slaps the page down.

It’s a replica of the diagram send anonymously to the police station. Namjoon half-parks his ass on the edge of Seokjin’s desk and leans forward to tap his finger on the drawing of the eye. “That’s a third eye, for sure. But if we’re saying this is the murderer’s tally of victims, then you’re reading it wrong. It’s not one, two, three. It’s three, two, one.”

Seokjin purses his lips.

“The third eye at the top,” Namjoon says as he points to the eye. “The roman numeral two,” he points to the symbol on the bottom left side of the triangle, “and the number one. It’s a countdown, not a tally. There’s only going to be three murders.”

Namjoon straightens back up, and Seokjin licks his lips.

“Well, two murders if we can stop the third.”

Seokjin looks up at Namjoon, and Namjoon looks down at Seokjin. For just a second, because he quickly looks away from Seokjin’s straight and taut expression before he lifts up off the desk.

“We just need to find out… who and when the murderer is planning to kill. I feel like the answer is in the letter like it was in the first one, but… I can’t imagine what it could be,” Namjoon sighs as he makes his way back to his desk.

Who the murderer will kill, Seokjin knows is Namjoon. When he’s planning to kill, Seokjin knows is in exactly sixty-six days. Seokjin licks his lips and keeps them shut, for the love of all that’s keeping him going, Seokjin keeps his mouth shut.

“What’s going through your mind?” Namjoon asks once more when he’s seated, hand flattening his tie against his chest.

“You seem eager to find out,” Seokjin’s reply is empty and hollow.

“Of course, I am. I would be honoured to know what goes on inside your head.”

Seokjin forces himself to smile a little. “What did you say last time…? Pure gold with layers of bullshit guarding it?”

He isn’t sure if he’s imagining the fine dusting of a blush on Namjoon’s cheeks. “Yeah,” Namjoon admits, and Seokjin tries to keep his smile on as he returns his focus to his screen. Namjoon is cute, he’s too cute for Seokjin to handle, but oh, so wrong. There’s layers of bullshit up in that wretched skull of Seokjin’s, but that’s all there is. Varying layers of bullshit, bullshit of different forms and densities and sizes. The gold that Namjoon speaks of doesn’t exist.

His phone starts to ring, and it snaps Seokjin out of his mind. He quickly looks down and away from Namjoon’s light blush and to the screen of his phone. It’s Yoongi. Seokjin lets a breath whistle through his lips before he accepts the call and presses the phone to his ear.

“Yo. What’s up?” he asks just before he watches Namjoon wipe his little smile and blush off his face, return to stoicism and his work. Seokjin licks his lips and turns back to stare aimlessly at his screen.

“Hey. You sound half-dead,” Yoongi grunts through the receiver.

Well, Yoongi isn’t wrong about that. He is the grim reaper, after all. He chuckles cynically. “Yep. That, I am,” he jokes, but when Yoongi laughs in response Seokjin just lets it go.

“Anyway, I was just calling because I haven’t stopped thinking about the letter. Lee Mirae’s trial has been pushed back to accommodate for it, but we’re all pretty much stumped. We’ve got no clues.”

“Yeah, us too,” Seokjin admits.

He hears Yoongi sigh. “Anyway, I want you and your subordinate to investigate a little. This afternoon, you can head into the crime scene of the first victim. My team have already investigated it, but I’m hoping you and your subordinate might see something else we might have missed.”

Seokjin furrows his brows and purses his lips. “Why would we investigate the f- you know what, sure,” he concedes and runs a hand through his hair. “I’ll head over there after lunch if that’s cool.”

“Sure. We need to get to the bottom of this before someone else dies.”

“Yeah,” he breathes, and bids his farewell to Yoongi before he hangs up. Looks up to tell Namjoon the news and finds Namjoon already looking at him. “So. We’re going to investigate the first crime scene this afternoon,” he tells Namjoon.

Namjoon just nods slowly. “Alright. Some hands-on experience. Good.”

“I’ll give you some hands-on experience if you just take your pants off.”

“Seokjin-ssi, that’s borderline harassment.”

“Alright, I apologise.”

But then he hears Namjoon laugh, and that seems to lighten up some of the layers of bullshit in his mind.

 

Seokjin stumbles on a step walking up to the dorm where Jang Jaewon resided before his life was taken from him. He would’ve tripped forward, probably would’ve smacked his front teeth against the edge of a step falling forward, if it wasn’t for Namjoon’s fast reflexes in the way he quickly reached forward and grabbed at Seokjin’s waist, holding him steady from behind. Seokjin’s heart stutters a little in his chest in between the fear of ruining his face on a step and from the way Namjoon holds him so firmly. But he lets go, and Seokjin has to straighten himself up. Has to laugh it off.

“You okay?” Namjoon’s smooth voice filters into his ears, silkily and disarmingly.

“Yeah. Of course,” Seokjin tries to laugh, but it comes out nervous and shaky. He bites down on his lip and resumes walking up the stairs to hide his embarrassment, but he feels Namjoon’s hand curl around his forearm, stopping him.

“Hey. Seokjin-ssi.”

Seokjin presses his lips together. He’s got one foot on one step, one foot on the step above it. He’s paused, halfway up the stairs and he’s hesitating, but he’s not entirely sure why. He swallows painfully and supposes that whatever confusing thoughts and emotions are swirling inside his head alongside dust and debris and all the shit that’s been slowly accumulating over the years he’ll have to push aside, once again, and turn around. Twists at the waist, and looks down at Namjoon. His brows are pinched together in concern.

“I want to know,” he starts, and that smooth, deep voice of his disarms Seokjin once again, “before we go in there, what’s going through your mind.”

How many times has Namjoon asked that? It hurts Seokjin’s brain to try and recollect. It hurts him even more to wonder why. How many times has Seokjin slipped up that it’s become obvious there’s something bothering him, something weighing him down? Something so heavy that it’s impossible to carry. His mother, once, had told him that this life will never give him a burden too heavy for his shoulders, and he’d been stupid enough to believe it at the time. Stupid enough to carry that hope. Because wasn’t it his mother who had lost her sight so early in her life? Lost her life soon after? Didn’t she say that she could share some of her own burden with Jeongguk’s father, but what happened when he died, too? The burden came back to her, tenfold, to carry alone.

Seokjin can’t fathom how she managed to cope with that kind of loss not once, but twice. Seokjin doesn’t remember much about his own father, he was so young when his father passed, but his mother remembered. She kept it close to her heart. She held everything together. She held it all in until she no longer could, and her life was taken from her.

He has lost his father, he’s lost Jeongguk’s father. He’s lost his mother, and he’s about to lose Namjoon, too. These eyes of his aren’t a burden he can carry. He doesn’t have any hope. It’s only a matter of time until his shoulders crumble like old, weathered stone under the weight of it all. He doesn’t have any hope, at all. All he has is delaying disappointment.

So he parts his lips and tries to delay it for as long as possible, just so that he doesn’t have to inject his poison into Namjoon, too.

“Don’t try to joke your way through this,” Namjoon warns him before Seokjin could get a word out. His brows are pulled down, now, stern and serious. Unwavering.

“I’m just thinking about who the killer is,” Seokjin evades, and turns back to continue up the stairs. Namjoon doesn’t let go of his arm.

“I’ve seen you deal with difficult cases before. But this is different. There’s something else.”

Seokjin presses his lips together, tightly, like that’s going to help him hold himself together. “I’m… mourning a loss. But don’t worry about me, I’ll be okay soon. I promise. Sorry for worrying you.”

The tight hold around his arm loosens, slightly, but it doesn’t let go just yet. “Don’t apologise to me,” Namjoon tells him softly, and take another step up the stairs. “I just want you to be okay. If there’s anything I can do to support you… or even if you just want to talk and have someone listen to you… I’ll be there. Whenever you want. However much you want me.”

Seokjin turns around, and Namjoon’s hand falls from his arm. He looks down at Namjoon, standing just a step below him, and evaluates the look on his face. His expression is laced in concern and something that looks like pity, Seokjin can only tell by the way he feels like absolute shit, but it’s also sincere and genuine.

“I know what it’s like to hold everything inside,” Namjoon continues. “You’re only one human. You might not be able to hold it all. But you’re not an island, I promise. You can joke all you like and try to keep everyone at a distance all you want, but you’re not an island.”

In that moment, there’s an overwhelming force brewing inside Seokjin that wants him to fall into Namjoon’s arms, to unleash everything that’s worrying him, that’s ever worried him and made him despair. It fills him up like water, and the waves are crashing against the seams that hold his human body together. And he feels it along his skin, oedematous and tender to touch, like one more word from Namjoon might just poke a hole in his skin and let everything ooze out. He pulls in a breath through his nose, and lets it out through his mouth, and forces the waves to calm down.

He stands at the shore, the water up to his knees. He’s stranded on an island, the water level is steady rising, and he’s looking out at the far stretch of blue water in front of him. One day, the water will knock him off his feet and drown him. One day. His burden is not something he can carry, and one day it’s going to make him crumble, but he’s going to keep fighting to keep himself together until that day comes.

“Thanks, Namjoon,” he replies lightly, and smiles. Namjoon doesn’t return that smile. “I’ll keep that in mind. But for now, let’s go investigate.”

“Sure,” Namjoon breathes out.

 

The dorm looks like what a dorm would look like if it belonged to a university student in his early twenties. Small, a little dingy. A tiny kitchen attached to a tiny shared living area, with three doors; two leading into bedrooms and one to the bathroom. On the thirteenth of December, Jang Jaewon was murdered in his own bedroom while his roommate was out. He was first knocked out with some sort of drug before his throat was sliced open. There were no signs of struggle – all things considered, a smoothly executed crime.

Seokjin opens the door to the bedroom, his hands already gloved, with Namjoon following behind him. It’d been three weeks since the murder, but the police were obviously keeping the place clean. There isn't a speck of dust anywhere.

“The entire dorm’s already been dusted for prints, from top to bottom. Nothing was found,” Namjoon reminds him as they head into the room. “Not a single fingerprint. He was clever enough to wear gloves.”

Seokjin shakes his head. “No, this guy is a maniac. He might’ve worn gloves, he might not have. This guy… apparently, he wiped clean every fingerprint in the house. Not just in this room, but in the room of Hong Haejoo, too.”

Namjoon clicks his tongue. “Oh, yeah. I remember reading that in the report, but I didn’t think anything of it… everything was wiped when the police came to investigate.”

“I mean, fine, wipe things down if you’re scared you left fingerprints. But this guy wiped down the bookshelves, each spine and cover of every single book, and even the tops of the shelves. Why the fuck would you have touched the top of the shelf when your goal is to murder someone?” Seokjin scrutinises as he walks into the centre of the room.

“So he’s a clean-freak. Or a maniac, as you called him,” Namjoon concedes.

Seokjin huffs and looks around the room. The bookshelf on one side of the room is clean, fully intact. The books shoved in there are all pristine. The other three walls are bare now that the flowers that were taped up there have been taken down. The bed where the victim was found is clean, made up. Just three weeks ago, Jang Jaewon had laid there, dead, slashes to his throat and chest. Seokjin reaches into his bag and pulls out photos of the body, and scrutinises it. “He’s a clean-freak who left an indiscernible mess of cuts to the victim’s chest. Usually, when the killer engages in this kind of meaningless destruction of the body post-mortem, they have a deep-seated grudge against their victim… but Jang Jaewon was a poor university student who didn’t have any enemies. And even if he did, there’s absolutely no connection between him and Hong Haejoo.”

“What if the killer had a grudge against Jang Jaewon, and Hong Haejoo was murdered to disguise that? Throw us off?” Namjoon suggests, pushing his hands into the pockets of his slacks.

“Well, if you want to think of it that way, then you could argue that Hong Haejoo was the one he had a grudge against. Jang Jaewon was murdered quickly. Hong Haejoo was beaten until she died. If anything, she was the one the killer had a grudge against… but why would anyone want to do that to a young girl?”

“He’s sick,” Namjoon shivers.

“That’s for sure.”

Seokjin continues to look around the room, peering closely at the walls where some of the sticky residue from the tape used to stick up the flowers was left behind after they were taken down. He looks at the photos in his hands several times as he moves around the room.

“The police received a letter three days before, forewarning the murder,” Namjoon pipes up after ten minutes or so, and Seokjin looks up and across the room to where he’s stood, peering intently at the bookshelf. “A crossword nobody could solve until after the murder, the answer being the victim’s name. And now, we’ve got another letter, most likely forewarning a third murder.”

“Yeah,” Seokjin sounds, furrowing his brows as he waits for Namjoon to continue.

“Why didn’t he send a letter to the police forewarning the second murder?”

Seokjin purses his lips. “Maybe he didn’t want the second murder to be predicted.”

“But he wanted the first one to be predicted. And the third. Why not the second?”

“Maybe…” Seokjin trails off, crossing his arms over his chest, “maybe the forewarning was the flowers.”

“No,” Namjoon shakes his head, “the flowers aren’t a warning if there’s only one incidence. Three sets of flowers on each wall means nothing. It only means something when the second murder has occurred, and there’s only two sets. Only then can you say that the flowers in the first murder are a forewarning of subsequent murders.”

Namjoon touches his chin like he’s in deep thought, and Seokjin watches him. He can see the way Namjoon’s mind is on fire, electricity running through him, and Seokjin wishes he wasn’t so preoccupied. He wishes he could be the superior that Namjoon regards him to be. He doesn’t want to let Namjoon down, but right now he feels too sluggish to catch up. He huffs and tries to let everything go. Joins Namjoon by the bookshelf.

“I think,” Namjoon breathes out when Seokjin joins his side, “that a message was sent. It just wasn’t received.”

He looks at Seokjin like he’s just pitched in an idea and he’s concerned about what Seokjin thinks about it. “What are you thinking about?”

Namjoon looks away and reaches out, dragging a gloved finger lightly down one of the spines of a book packed into the bookshelf. “The first warning was a crossword. The second… I don’t know what the fuck that could be. But it was written on paper, and it looks like a rebus pictogram. We just don’t have the information at this time to figure it out. Both those clues involve words. And here…” he gestures to the bookshelf, “we have a lot of words.”

Seokjin takes a quick count – there’s seventy-four volumes of a manga. They’re packed so tightly in that when he tries to pull one out at random he has to pry it out. He flips through the pages, but he is well aware how pointless this is. He’s just keeping his hands busy while he figures out what to do. It would’ve been great if there was a message slipped in between the pages of one of these books, one that has HONG HAEJOO written big and bold in a thick black marker pen, but that was too much to hope for. According to the extensive files, every book had been checked, and each page was unmarked, unblemished

Or perhaps, as Namjoon suggested, there was a message hidden in here in such a way that the police had not noticed, something that looked like an ordinary bookmark, maybe, but there was nothing of the sort in any of the books. Jang Jaewon didn’t use bookmarks.

He looks around the room. Cranes his neck back and becomes just the slightest bit desperate. “There must be a message here, then… but where…” he mutters to himself quietly. “Under the carpets…? No, that’s been checked. The wallpapers, maybe…?” he rambles on, but then he stops himself. “Wait,” he turns to Namjoon. “He sent the crossword straight to the police. He wants the message to be found. He didn’t hide it the first time, so why would he hide it now?”

Namjoon looks a little lost. “If he wants it to be found, why hasn’t it been found?”

“Because he wants to mock us. To show us that we’re beneath him. He sent us a crossword, we couldn’t figure it out, and Jang Jaewon was murdered for it. He left another message, and we didn’t find out, and then Hong Haejoo was murdered.”

“Then…” Namjoon purses his lips, “the message has to be something that’s obvious… right in front of our faces. The first thing we see. Because the crossword was the first variable in the first murder. So… the message this time has to be the first thing we see.”

Seokjin furrows his brows harshly, and he starts to feel a headache brewing behind his brow, so he closes his eyes and squeezes them shut. Takes a deep breath, and lets it go through his lips.

He imagines himself as the roommate. He doesn’t explain himself to Namjoon as he runs out of the bedroom, and thankfully Namjoon doesn’t question him.

He’s in the centre of the small living area. He imagines himself calling out Jang Jaewon’s name and imagines getting no response from him. So he walks towards his bedroom, the door shut. He wraps his hand around the handle, and opens it. The first thing he sees is the wall opposite the door. He imagines the bunch of red spider lilies taped to it at eyelevel.

But it’s not the flowers. He knows that. The flowers aren’t the message. It has to be something that can be written down, can form words or numbers. So he looks away from the flowers he envisages on the wall, and the next thing that catches his eye is the dead, mutilated body on the bed. Jang Jaewon is lying face up on the bed, his throat slashed open, his eyes gouged out, and an indiscernible mess of cuts on his chest.

Seokjin looks down at the photo once more. Turns it this way and that, peers closer at it, brings it away from him.

“Hey, Joon. Is it just me, or do these cuts… kinda look like letters…?”

Namjoon rushes over to his side, peers in close over his shoulder. He doesn’t say anything, and Seokjin wonders if he’s reaching for an answer he’s also imagining.

“V… C… I?” Seokjin mumbles, regardless. “Is that an L? And that one… an X? Some of them are in a row…” he huffs and closes his eyes for a moment. But something flashes in his mind and he jerks himself awake. Stuffs the photo under his armpit as he fishes his phone out of his pocket and finds the picture of the second letter. The symbol on the bottom left corner of the triangle was a roman numeral for the number two.

“Hey, Joon. You’re good with numbers,” Seokjin says gingerly as he hands the photo to Namjoon. “What are these roman numerals?”

Namjoon takes the photo from Seokjin’s hand but he can feel Namjoon’s eyes on him, so he looks up. And finds Namjoon smiling lightly at him. “I knew you’d figure something out.”

He quickly takes the photo and looks down at it. His eyes scan across it several times before he sits down, cross-legged on the floor, and pulls out a little notebook and pen. Opens up to a fresh page and starts scribbling down.

Seokjin joins him on the floor carefully a moment later, but by then Namjoon’s already etched several things in. He sits down and he watches as Namjoon blooms.

XCVII – 97
CI – 101
CCXXXVII – 237
LXIII – 63
CCLVI – 256
XXXII – 32
CLIV – 154
CXCII – 192
CCI – 201
CCXL – 240

“That’s all the combinations I could find that make any sense,” Namjoon huffs when he leans back, but he flickers his eyes across the photo again in case he can find any more roman numerals etched into Jang Jaewon’s chest in the photo, but he doesn’t. He hands the notebook to Seokjin as if the numbers will mean anything to him. “Of course, there’s a huge chance we’re making mountains out of anthills.”

Seokjin sighs. “And this doesn’t change anything unless we know what this means. If it means anything at all.”

Namjoon sighs, too, and leans back. Plants his hands into the floor behind him and looks around the room. For a moment neither of them talk but the both of them are ruminating, desperate to come up with some kind of answer that’ll satisfy them, because until they can figure out how to decipher the message left behind in the first murder, they won’t be able to figure out the message left behind most recently. And Seokjin knows he shouldn’t hope, but he sure does wish that he was wrong about what the triangle meant. He looks over at Namjoon and wishes like hell that he’s wrong about this. Namjoon’s staring at the bookshelf, intently.

“Namjoon?” he calls out softly, but Namjoon doesn’t look away from the bookshelf. “Is everything okay?”

“Yeah…” Namjoon mutters. “I mean, no. Look,” he detaches one hand from the floor to point at the bookshelf. Seokjin slowly follows his finger but doesn’t know what Namjoon’s trying to direct his gaze at. “Jang Jaewon’s bookshelf is filled with every volume of the manga, Bleach.”

Seokjin squints a little to stare at the spines of the books. Sure enough, Namjoon’s right.

“But there’s one volume missing. Volume twenty-two. It’s been replaced with a book,” Namjoon states, and launches off the floor to head to the bookshelf. He pulls the book out of the bookshelf, and flips through the pages, and a part of Seokjin expects something from the book, a note, a message scribbled in, but he finds nothing. Namjoon pulls his phone out and starts to search something online. “This book has the same number of pages that volume twenty-two of Bleach has. Two hundred and sixteen.”

“Someone replaced it with a book with the same number of pages… so that there’s no gaps in the bookshelf,” Seokjin mutters.

“The killer. He’s meticulous,” Namjoon notes, and returns to where he’d been sitting to snatch up his notebook. “I’m gonna take a shot in the dark and say this might be the message left behind.”

He looks at his notebook. The first number scribbled in is the number ninety-seven. Namjoon flicks through the book until he hits page number ninety-seven and his eyes zero in on the first word. Scribbles it down in his notebook. “Some of these numbers are bigger than two hundred and sixteen… so maybe we have to work around it. Two hundred and thirty-seven… if we wrap it around two hundred and sixteen, we get page twenty-one. We’ll use that page instead for numbers bigger than two hundred and sixteen,” he talks to himself. Seokjin will tell him later that he’s completely enamoured by Namjoon right now, watching him buzz with these ideas, and whether he’s going in the right direction or if he’s completely off or not, it doesn’t matter. Namjoon’s brilliant, and Seokjin will not deny it. He watches Namjoon work.

97 – heart
101 – ordinarily
21 – end
63 – gesture
40 – charismatic
32 – another
154 – even
192 – justified
201 – or
24 – together

He pushes the book back into it’s place in the bookshelf and sits down again. Seokjin follows him. “If we take the first letter of each of these words…” Namjoon ventures, writing down the result of his trials, “we get… hoegcaejot.”

“Which means absolutely fuckall, Namjoon.”

Namjoon presses his lips together sheepishly, and he tries his best not to blush out of embarrassment just before a lightbulb seems to click inside his mind. “Wait. These letters… kinda… have a vague resemblance to… to Hong Haejoo’s name. There’s only three letters different.”

Seokjin licks his lips. “Yeah… but three letters out of ten is too many. The killer’s first message perfectly spelled out Jang Jaewon’s name. Unless this one spells out Hong Haejoo, your theory is moot. It’s not worth calling a message.”

He almost laughs at the way Namjoon looks so defeated. “I thought… I thought I was on to something. It’s such a coincidence.”

“If they don’t match, they don’t match,” Seokjin huffs, and rubs his hand against his cheek. He’s getting tired. He needs a coffee. He doesn’t know how Namjoon has so much energy to do all of this, so he looks at the notebook and just stares at it, blinking slowly and lazily. “Wait,” he stops himself, and clasps Namjoon’s knee. “All the letters that are wrong match up with numbers over two hundred and sixteen.”

Namjoon quirks a brow. “Was there another way to deal with those numbers?” he asks, confused but alive, once again. He looks down at his notebook. “How else do we get words from the numbers that exceed two hundred and sixteen?”

“But we’re not getting words,” Seokjin tells him. “We’re getting letters. You took the first letter of the first word on the pages that match up with the roman numerals you found, but since you had to wrap the numbers around for three of them… what if you took the second letter of the first word, instead? That turns the e in end to an n, the c in charismatic to a h, and the t in together to an o.”

He looks up at Namjoon, and his expression is mirrored in Namjoon’s face. “That spells out Hong Haejoo.”

Notes:

here's that triangle clue that i posted on twitter which y'all had a go at trying to decipher:

lol that was fun

anyway if u liked this pls leave kudos and a comment!

 

 

 
twt

Chapter 9: Unwavering

Summary:

Seokjin and Namjoon are working together to try and figure out a pattern to the murders in the hopes of understanding how the killer's mind works in an attempt to prevent the third murder.

Notes:

guess we back on this fortnightly update schedule

Seokjin stares down at Namjoon’s little notebook, at the way he’d scribbled down Hong Haejoo’s name under the mess of roman numerals and random words. He swallows, hard, and looks up to Namjoon. “So.”

“Yeah.”

“The killer did leave a message. It just wasn’t received,” he concludes. Namjoon nods slowly and returns the book to the bookshelf, shoving it in so that it fits back into place amongst the volumes of manga. But his fingers linger along the spine of the book, and he continues to stare at it intently like he isn’t done with scrutinising it. “Where did volume twenty-two go?” he asks, his brows furrowed heavily.

“Huh?”

“Volume twenty-two,” Namjoon repeats, meeting his eyes. “The one that was taken out and replaced with this book,” he taps along the spine. “I doubt that Jang Jaewon would’ve collected seventy-three out of seventy-four volumes and missed out a random one somewhere in the middle. Besides, even if he did for whatever reason, not have volume twenty-two, why would it be replaced with this book that has exactly two-hundred and sixteen pages, the same number of pages that volume twenty-two has?”

Seokjin licks his lips. “If this was any other case I would’ve told you that you’re reading too deeply into this… but not this time. Our guy has already proved to us he’s considered all details, down to a t. But… I’m drawing a blank.”

“Me too,” Namjoon sighs. “Is it okay if I take this book?” he pokes at the spine of it, looking at Seokjin with big, expecting eyes. “I want to cover all grounds possible. I don’t want to miss another thing this bastard may have hidden.”

“Let me call Yoongi and ask him,” Seokjin pulls his phone out of his pocket and hits dial on Yoongi’s number.

Yoongi picks up just before Seokjin has had enough of waiting and is about to hang up. “What,” he snaps through the receiver, and Seokjin just presses his lips together, unimpressed.

“Hello to you, too. We found a clue here that spells out the second victim’s name. I think it’d be a good idea to have a look around the second crime scene, as well.”

Seokjin hears a sigh coming from Yoongi. “Fucking shit. Yeah. You can head over there now if you have time.”

“Will do. I have one request,” Seokjin edges in, “to take a book from the bookshelf here.”

“No,” Yoongi barks. “Either you read the whole damn book then and there or you buy a copy for yourself. Okay?”

Seokjin almost feels like a scolded puppy. “Okay,” he concedes, a little bit hurt and a little bit embarrassed.

“Alright. Keep me posted on anything else you find, okay? We’re working hard to find the guy who purchased the flowers from Floral-Lee, so you guys better put in the work, too.”

“Of course, sir,” Seokjin tries to laugh, but he’s only met with a grunt from Yoongi, who doesn’t sound amused in the slightest.

“Look out for yourself, okay?” Yoongi requests, and Seokjin just hums a noise of affirmation before he bids his farewell and hangs up. Then, he looks at Namjoon who’s watching him intently and patiently.

“You can’t take the book, unfortunately,” Seokjin breaks the bad news to Namjoon who doesn’t seem fazed at all. Instead, he just pulls out his phone and makes a note of the title, the author, before slipping it back into place. “Now what?” he asks Seokjin.

“Now, we head over to the second crime scene,” Seokjin tells Namjoon as they scan the room once more for anything they might have touched and misplaced. Once he’s satisfied, the two of them head out of the dorm, down the stairs, and into Seokjin’s car.

He waits until Namjoon’s seatbelt has clicked into place. “What if the killer left a clue in the second crime scene like the one he left here, and because no one realised he decided to deliver to us another?” Seokjin muses as he starts up the engine.

Namjoon hums. “Why would he plant a clue in Hong Haejoo’s room and then send another warning if he didn’t do the same with Jang Jaewon? He planted a clue in the first crime scene, but that was it. No one found the clue, and he didn’t send another.”

The sun lowers just enough to beam directly into Seokjin’s eyes, so he squints and tries to offset his line of sight. Pulls the visor down to provide some relief to his eyes as he continues to drive, both hands firmly gripping the wheel. He sighs deeply and tiredly, and glances at Namjoon briefly from the corners of his vision. “Maybe he wanted to watch us try to prevent the third, unlike the second.”

“He’s playing with us,” Namjoon mutters as he shifts in the passenger seat.

“Yeah,” Seokjin sighs as he narrows his eyes and allows himself this short drive to be a reprieve, he focuses on driving and tries to focus on nothing else until he’s sucked back into reality. He wishes to drag out that car journey for as long as possible, but it seems to fly by in a flash, as if Seokjin had just blinked and they’d arrived at Hong Haejoo’s residence. Seokjin wonders how he didn’t get into any accidents when he doesn’t remember any of the drive up to here.

“Come on,” Namjoon encourages him quietly as Seokjin parks the car and kills the engine before they head out. They enter the apartment building that Hong Haejoo once lived in and make their way to the elevator. Silently they enter, Seokjin presses on the button for the fifth floor, and the doors slide shut. A soft exhale escapes Namjoon’s lips, and the air shifts as Namjoon sags his shoulders. “This case feels like it’s draining all my energy, and it isn’t even mine. I have no idea how you’re not freaking the fuck out completely.”

Seokjin can’t stop himself from letting out a short laugh. “Trust me, I’m freaking out on the inside.”

The elevator starts moving, and Namjoon turns his head just a little to look towards Seokjin. “Meanwhile I’m freaking out on the inside and outside. Every day I go home and punch a few of my pillows. Break a couple of things, who knows.”

Seokjin turns his head to face Namjoon as the elevator reaches the second floor. “That’s how you relieve stress?”

“Yep. It’s very therapeutic. Otherwise I would never be able to remain as calm as I do during work. Especially with you as a superior.”

“What’s that?” Seokjin raises his brows at Namjoon curiously. “You think about me when you relieve stress? Is punching pillows all you do?”

A soft exhale whistles past Namjoon’s lips. “Are you asking me if I jack off to the thought of you?”

Seokjin nods, but he isn’t blessed with an answer because the elevator reaches the fifth floor and the little chime that precedes the doors sliding open makes Namjoon snap back into reality and head out of the elevator. Seokjin’s brain doesn’t click back on as quickly as Namjoon’s does, and he stutters on his feet momentarily before jogging to catch up to Namjoon as they head down the hallway. But he stays just a step behind Namjoon, and stares at his broad back as they walk slowly and purposefully. He’s a little breathless but he keeps his mouth shut and continues to breathe through his nose, his chest rising and falling with each inhale.

“Here it is,” Namjoon says as they enter the apartment that Hong Haejoo was murdered in. Her mother had moved out and was currently living with her parents, but the apartment itself looked untouched, like nothing was moved or packed away. Seokjin takes the first step towards the bedroom he knows belonged to the victim, and Namjoon follows, sticking close to him as he goes. He pulls out two pairs of gloves from his bag and hands one pair to Seokjin to pull on before Seokjin grabs the handle to the door and opens it.

The first thing Seokjin notices is the wooden chair left erect in the middle of the room, directly opposite the door. It looks nothing like the rest of the room, like the rest of the apartment for that matter, and for a few moments Seokjin notices nothing else. He stares at the chair, fists clenched by his sides, unblinking.

A little girl died on this chair. A little girl was strapped to this chair and beaten until she died. Seokjin swallows, hard, but his throat seems to be closing up and his hand slowly reaches up like he wants to claw at it, to release some of the pressure there. Jang Jaewon had his throat slit and his eyes were removed. Hong Haejoo was beaten to death and had her ears removed. Seokjin knows that two consecutive murders aren’t enough to pick apart so that he could extrapolate and assume what the third murder will be like, but by this point Seokjin no longer has free reign on his mind. It’s running wild in his head and he has long since let go of the controls. The third murder will, from the outset, be even more gruesome and cruel than the second. The third victim will have his tongue cut out.

See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.

Mighty pretentious of someone with the conscience to kill a young child.

Namjoon has already walked into the middle of the room and scrutinises the chair for a few minutes before he moves onto the walls, undoubtedly to find any hint of a clue the killer may have left behind. Seokjin remains at the door, staring at the wooden chair. He licks his lips. “The clue will be on this chair,” Seokjin begins, abruptly enough to make Namjoon startle a little.

“What makes you say that?” Namjoon asks from across the room, his gloved hand touching one of the posters Hong Haejoo had taped up on the wall.

“Everything the killer has done thus far was left in plain sight. The bodies were not hidden at all. They were killed and left where they lived, where they slept. The clues, too, were left in plain sight,” Seokjin begins to speculate as he finally creeps closer to the chair. “The first letter was sent straight to the police. The first thing you would’ve seen when you walk into the first crime scene would’ve been the body. There were cuts on his chest fashioned into roman numerals. That was right in front of our eyes, we just didn’t understand. Not at first.”

He looks up and finds Namjoon furrowing his brows, a taut look in his lips. “Then in that case, wouldn’t the clue be on the second victim’s body?” he asks as he fishes into his case to pull out the file and find the crime scene photos.

“No,” Seokjin stops him. “It won’t be. Not again. The first letter sent to the police was a crossword with a sentence in English as the hint. The second letter was a drawing. The killer doesn’t do the same thing twice.”

“That’s quite the assumption to make… considering there’s only been two murders so far.”

Seokjin licks his lips and looks up at Namjoon again, and blinks a few times because the expression on his face suddenly looks blurry. His lips part and he inhales sharply, but his vision quickly clears up. “I know,” he exhales after a moment.

Namjoon continues to stare at him, brows furrowed, like he’s waiting for something else. Something else Seokjin might say. An explanation, perhaps, but Seokjin doesn’t know how to put into words what Namjoon is waiting to hear. Not that he would if he could, for that matter. How was he meant to tell Namjoon that he’s the one that’s next to be murdered? How does he even begin to explain that? That the only reason why Seokjin knows this is because he can see lifespans and that the third eye on the triangle referred to himself? The third eye at the top of the triangle, and the numbers two and one at the bottom of it. The more Seokjin thinks about it the more confident he is of his hunch. Three, two, one. Means there’ll be three murders. Can also read as March the twenty-first, which is the day that Namjoon’s lifespan determines he’ll die.

The only reason why Seokjin is even here is because he’s hoping he’ll find something in this room that’ll suggest it isn’t Namjoon. Fat chance of that, he knows. All the evidence that Seokjin has points towards his subordinate. Hope doesn’t exist, and Seokjin would be a fool if he believes in it. The lifespans never lie.

But they did, a voice in the back of Seokjin’s mind crawls out of its recess and starts to fill his mind with black. They changed from sixty-one years to one hundred days.

Seokjin kills the thought before his mind could get polluted with that dark hope. He looks up at Namjoon and continues to kill the thoughts in his mind but they keep respawning and cropping back up. He looks at Namjoon and the numbers floating up above his head read sixty-six days. A month ago it was sixty-one years. That’s proof, isn’t it? That things could change. That it could change back. That things might be okay.

No, it will never be okay, the voice comes back, and Seokjin tries to kill it again. It dissipates from his mind but it pops up again, unfazed. Things only get worse. It never changes for the better.

What do you want from me? Seokjin screams in his mind as he tries to supress the fog that’s almost completely filled up his head. You tell me to have hope, and then you take it all away.

He coughs when the fog starts to seep out of his head and into his throat, his lungs, and he chokes, but it continues to grow and darken and Seokjin can no longer feel his fingers even though he’s clawing at his scalp, trying to release the pressure built up in his skull, it’s too much, it won’t end, Seokjin feels like he’s suffocating-

All of that is blasted out of him when something wraps around Seokjin’s body, and his eyes that he momentarily could see nothing with take a few seconds to focus on the wall, first, and then Namjoon’s neck where half his face is pressed into. Namjoon tightens his arms around Seokjin, pulling him even closer in, and tears roll down Seokjin’s cheeks following tracks already laid down previously. He’d been crying.

“Shh, it’s okay. I got you,” Namjoon is whispering. It’s the first thing Seokjin hears when the fog clears and his ears start working again. “I got you. You’re okay. You’re okay,” he continues to whisper as he holds Seokjin tightly, cradling his body and rocking him back and forth gently, calmly.

Slowly, Namjoon starts to walk out of the room, pulling Seokjin along with him, not once letting up his hold around Seokjin’s body. Seokjin allows himself to be pulled along, moves his legs in time with Namjoon’s, and once he realises that his legs do, in fact, work, he moves his arms too and clings onto Namjoon.

The sound of a door shutting makes Seokjin jump and realise what’s going on. He pulls back just enough that he no longer feels Namjoon’s heartbeat against his own chest.

Namjoon look down at him, his eyes narrowed in concern. “Are you okay?” he asks quietly, his face so close to Seokjin’s that he feels his breath on his face. It makes Seokjin grow warm with embarrassment.

“Yeah, I’m fine. Sorry,” Seokjin tries to convince Namjoon as he looks away, his hands now gripping Namjoon’s shoulders so that he could put some distance between them. Namjoon doesn’t let go.

“Are you sure?”

Seokjin only nods because he’s trying his best not to melt in Namjoon’s arms, but that’s proving to be quite difficult if his lightheaded-ness is anything to go by, in the way that his head was, in one second, filled with so much heavy darkness, and in the next second completely clear. He feels lightheaded in the way that Namjoon holds onto him like he isn’t just Seokjin’s subordinate, like it was completely natural for him to embrace Seokjin like this. He feels lightheaded in the way that Namjoon’s eyes are right in front of his, and they’re all Seokjin can see, and they’re such a rich, deep shade of brown that Seokjin feels like he could get lost in them.

“Seokjin-ssi?”

He raises his brows and snaps back into reality. “N-Namjoon,” he breathes.

“Do you want to come back another day?” Namjoon asks as he slowly releases his hold on Seokjin, but as they detach Namjoon clasps Seokjin’s arms gently, but firm. Like he’s holding Seokjin up just in case he crumbles to the ground.

“No,” Seokjin looks towards the door they’d just walked through, and there’s an inexplicable feeling inside him that tells him he needs to detach himself from Namjoon, that he needs to walk through that door again. His fingers curl around Namjoon’s biceps in a conscious effort to stay anchored to him despite that force inside him that’s trying it’s best to repel from him. He doesn’t understand it, so he digs his fingers deeper into Namjoon’s arms.

“Hey, Seokjin-ssi,” Namjoon pulls his arms away from where they’d been circled around Seokjin, and he lifts his hands up to clasp Seokjin’s face, squishing his cheeks inwards just enough to force his lips out a little. “We’re going home.”

“We’re going home?” Seokjin repeats dumbly, quietly, eyes wide and staring up at Namjoon.

“I mean- you’re going to drive yourself home. Now.”

“I’m fine,” Seokjin tries to convince Namjoon as he tries again to pull away from him.

“Even if you are,” Namjoon reasons, “we can still come back tomorrow.”

“Come on, Namjoon. Let me just look at that chair.”

“Seokjin-“

“Come on,” Seokjin whines, bouncing on the balls of his feet like a whimpering child, and Namjoon pulls back, blinking, astonished.

Namjoon licks his lips and blinks a few more times to wipe the surprise away from his face. “Alright…” he starts slowly as he brings his hands back down to his sides. “Let’s… let’s finish investigating before you, uh, throw a tantrum.”

Seokjin pulls in a deep, cleansing breath into his lungs in an attempt to push out everything that makes him want to curl into a ball and die of embarrassment, so he flashes a smile at Namjoon in an earnest way to show him that he is okay. That he’s back to his normal, annoying self. That Namjoon doesn’t need to be concerned anymore, because while in theory that side of Namjoon is all Seokjin could ever hope for, it just doesn’t feel quite right. Like that side of Namjoon is only reserved for the side of Seokjin that is vulnerable, pitiable and weak. Seokjin doesn’t like that side of himself, so why would Namjoon? He doesn’t want Namjoon’s pity. He doesn’t want Namjoon to be concerned for him if it’s only because Seokjin is weak. He doesn’t want Namjoon to think about him if it’s only because Seokjin is weak. He doesn’t want it, so he parts his lips and he does what he knows best: he gets to work.

He pushes the door open and blasts back into Hong Haejoo’s room purposefully and strides right up to the wooden chair in the middle of the room, his hands resting on his hips as he looks down at it, narrows his eyes at it, and gives it a dirty look. He hears Namjoon slowly enter the room behind him. “I’ll start looking around while you check out that chair,” he tells Seokjin. He nods at Namjoon just before he bends at the waist and starts to inspect the chair.

For all intents and purposes, it’s a wooden chair. Seokjin doesn’t find anything glaringly out of place about the chair, but he doesn’t let that deter him in the slightest. He ends up squatting in front of it, peering in very closely, and he inspects every inch of it. His eyes scan over the woodgrain, following each and every line, swirl, stripe. He is determined not to let anything slip under his radar.

His gaze lowers down, now, to the legs of the chair. They have little dots and lines punched into them, running down each leg like an accent. He inspects all four of the legs and sees the same accents running down each of them. He pauses and stares at them. And stares.

“Hey, Namjoon,” he calls out mildly as he continues to squat in front of the chair, staring at the legs. He doesn’t know if Namjoon has heard him, if he’s in possession of Namjoon’s attention, but he continues to talk anyway. “By any chance, can you understand Morse code?”

He hears footsteps approaching him until he sees from the corners of his vision Namjoon’s legs as he stops besides Seokjin. “Why would I understand Morse code?”

Seokjin shrugs. “Dunno. You seem to know everything.”

“Why do you ask?” Namjoon follows up as he lowers and squats beside Seokjin. Seokjin holds one hand out, index finger pressed against the first dot at the top of the first leg of the chair. Then he lifts his hand and presses the tip of his finger to the dot below it. Slowly, and one by one, he traces his fingers over the accents on the leg of the chair. “Oh,” Namjoon mutters like it all makes sense as he follows Seokjin’s finger.

He quickly pulls out his notebook and pen and starts to copy down the codes on each for legs as Seokjin watches him do so, his arms now wrapped around his knees, hugging them to his chest. Once Namjoon is done jotting them down he takes his phone into his hand and uses the internet to translate the code into letters and, hopefully, words.

In the meantime, Seokjin just stares at Namjoon. His eyes are flickering back and forth between his notebook and the screen of his phone and his eyebrows are drawn together, face taut in concentration. He’s jutting his chin out a little, and he looks so determined that it entrances Seokjin, and for a moment he forgets about everything else. For a moment, there’s only Namjoon.

Then, Namjoon looks at him, brows raised, face relaxed. “I got it,” he announces, and purses his lips. “It says, History repeats itself. He will lie in the bed you’ve made. Which means… we know it’ll be a dude. That narrows things down by fifty percent.”

Seokjin licks his lips as he looks at the page in Namjoon’s notebook where he’d scribbled down the words he’d deciphered from the code, and he stares, hard. It’s a direct warning to Seokjin, he knows that, and he’d been hoping that whatever he would learn from investigating here would throw him off his course in his suspicion that Namjoon was next, but this only emphasises it further. Namjoon will have to pay for Seokjin’s mistakes. Whatever Seokjin’s mistakes are.

He pushes up on his knees and straightens, stretching up to his full height. He swallows, hard. “Alright. We found our clue. Let’s go,” he tells Namjoon, who cranes his neck up to look at Seokjin curiously from where he’s still squatting on the floor.

“Already? Don’t you want to investigate the whole room?” he asks.

“Nope. I got what I wanted,” Seokjin replies gingerly and turns on his heel to head towards the door to punch home just how done he is with investigating. He hears Namjoon sigh but comply, following closely after Seokjin.

They exit the apartment and head quietly down the hallway, silently waiting for the elevator. It arrives, and together they step into the cart. Namjoon presses the button for the ground floor, and the doors slide shut. The cart jiggles a little just before it begins its descent downwards, and like a light bulb bursting, Seokjin’s vision goes completely black.

 

The walls are stark white, bright and clean, and Seokjin is oddly calm. The doctor, Dr Kang, returns, adjusting her white coat as she sits at her chair in front of her monitor. “So, Seokjin-ssi, I’ve had a look at all the results of the tests we’ve done,” she tells him, a slight crease forming between her brows.

“What’s the verdict? Am I dying?” Seokjin jokes, but he’s not smiling and neither is the doctor.

“Well,” she begins, bringing her hand up to her chin like she’s in deep thought. “You’re completely healthy, let’s start with that. Weight, fine. Blood pressure, fine. Blood glucose levels, fine. Both your vision and peripheral vision seems to be good. Your pupils are responding normally to light. The only problem is that the pressure inside your eyes are quite high.”

Seokjin furrows his brows. “Okay…”

“Now, the normal values we’d expect to see in healthy individuals would be between nine and twenty-one millimeters of mercury. Yours are averaging twenty-five in each eye.”

“Is that what made me go blind for a minute?” Seokjin asks, his hands curling at his knees, nails digging into his palms.

“Could be. I don’t know if the pressures of your eyes are always this high or if they’ve shot up because of that. I’ll have to monitor you. You said your mother has glaucoma, right?”

“Had glaucoma. Yes.”

Dr Kang presses her lips together. “Sorry. My condolences. At what age was she diagnosed with it?”

“She was forty-five,” Seokjin answers quickly and unhesitatingly. “She went blind from it at the age of fifty.”

A moment passes where neither he nor the doctor say anything, and dread starts to slowly fill Seokjin up like murky waters, and he suddenly becomes afraid he might break down like he did earlier in Hong Haejoo’s bedroom, so he inhales sharply and digs his fingers into the muscle of his thighs.

“Do I have it, too?” Seokjin asks slowly.

“No,” Dr Kang replies quickly and firmly. “You’re not displaying any other sign of glaucoma right now. But I’ll need you to take these eye drops to lower the pressures of your eyes,” she says as she places a small box in front of Seokjin, “twice a day. I’ll asses you again in two weeks and see how you’re getting along. Is that okay?”

Seokjin nods. “Yeah,” he breathes, “I guess it’ll have to be.”

“Alright. If you have any issues, or if anything else crops up, let us know immediately, okay?”

“Sure,” Seokjin agrees as he stands up, pushing his chair back. He reaches the door. “Thank you. Bye.”

He walks out of the consulting room and finds Namjoon waiting patiently for him outside. “What did she say?” he asks as soon as Seokjin reaches his side and they start to walk down the hall. Namjoon hands Seokjin his coat and Seokjin shrugs it on quickly.

“Just that I need to take these eye drops,” he answers mildly, “and that I need to stress less.”

Namjoon lets out a soft, quiet laugh. “Easier said than done. How can you relax when you’ve got a case like this on your hands?”

Seokjin shrugs noncommittally. “Well, she said I could do things to relax if I can’t change how much work I have to do.”

“Like what?”

“Massages,” Seokjin tells him, and turns his head to look up at him as they walk out of the hospital. “But I can’t give myself a massage. Will you do the honours?”

He watches as Namjoon visibly gulps, his throat bobbing up and down in his neck just before he turns his head to look at Seokjin, too. “If it would help,” he says.

“Wait, is that a yes?”

Namjoon returns to looking straight ahead as he walks. “Yeah.”

Seokjin smiles to himself as he, too, looks straight ahead, as they head towards Seokjin’s car.

 

There’s still some tenderness to the muscles around Seokjin’s eyes; his forehead, his cheeks, his eyelids, all feel a little sore. It isn’t sore enough that Seokjin would think he needs to pop a painkiller at all, and he knows that he won’t have troubles falling asleep, but it’s still there and it still reminds him of what happened.

His vision had completely gone out inside that elevator as if someone had blown out a candle and drenched Seokjin into darkness. Immediately after that all the energy in his body vanished and he’d dropped to his knees, panting, exhausted, like he’d just run a marathon. Namjoon was at his side in an instant, but his head was swimming and it felt like he was trapped in a whirlpool and he couldn’t find his footing. He felt dizzy, he felt nauseous, he felt lightheaded all at once. But after a minute, his vision had come back, unchanged, like it was never gone to begin with. All that was left behind was a slightly tenderness to the muscles around his eyes.

He’d tried to tell Namjoon that he was okay, that he can see, that he no longer felt dizzy or nauseous or lightheaded, but Namjoon wasn’t having any of it. Dragged Seokjin to the nearest hospital. Waited patiently for him through all the tests performed on Seokjin. Made sure that Seokjin texted him when he got home after Seokjin dropped Namjoon off at his. That was several hours ago, the tenderness is still there but petering out, little by little, and a hot shower has helped to clear his mind, somewhat.

He opens the small box that Dr Kang had given him and he pulls out the little dropper bottle from it, and peers closely at the label on it.

Lat… Latano… fuck it. Seokjin doesn’t need to know what it’s called, if the doctor tells him to use it, he’ll use it. He takes his glasses off, rocks his head backwards, uses the fingers on one hand to pry his eyelids wide open, and squeezes a drop onto the surface of his eye. He repeats with his left eye.

After he’s blinked several times to help it disperse properly over his eyes, he checks the time on his phone and decides to head to bed early. He climbs into bed, pulls the blankets up to his mouth, and closes his eyes, unfazed by now the prospects of the same, recurring dreams he knows he’ll have.

But barely ten seconds pass before his phone buzzes and Seokjin snaps his eyes open and reaches out for his phone, bringing it close to his face as he squints. It’s Namjoon.

From: cute assistant
Hey, Seokjin-ssi. How old is ur little brother?

Seokjin blinks at his screen a few times, confused but indifferent.

To: cute assistant
22, why

Three little dots appear instantly after Seokjin sends his message, so he waits for Namjoon to finish typing.

From: cute assistant
Can we meet up? I need to talk to u face to face

To: cute assistant
are u really gonna make me put my contacts back in

To: cute assistant
once I take my contacts out, I’m done for the day

From: cute assistant
U have glasses???

To: cute assistant
and let u see me looking like an ugly dork? NEVER

From: cute assistant
Doubt u could ever look bad tbh

From: cute assistant
it’s important, pls. meet me at the grocery shop round the corner from my apartment

Seokjin groans out loud for absolutely no one to hear as he peels himself out of his bed that he’d only got to rest in for a total of one minute, perhaps even less. He swings his legs over the edge of the bed and squints at his nightstand, locates his glasses, and puts them on. He pushes up off his bed and finds a hoodie and a pair of sweatpants to wear. Then, he grabs his keys and he heads out of his apartment.

The first thing he does when he enters his car is turn the heating on. He doesn’t start driving until it’s toasty warm, and he drives at a leisurely pace towards where Namjoon lives, and as he turns a corner, he drives past Namjoon sitting at a table outside a grocery store. Seokjin finds somewhere to park his car nearby.

He rubs his hands up and down his arms as he crosses the road and approaches Namjoon, who’s also wearing just a hoodie and sweatpants. Namjoon looks up at Seokjin when he arrives and smiles, amused. “We’re both idiots. We should’ve brought coats,” he laughs as Seokjin sits down opposite him at the table. He has two cups of ramyeon in front of him, lids open and chopsticks sticking out them, steam wafting upwards. He pushes one of them towards Seokjin. “Here, have this. It’ll help warm you up. I think this is the first time I’ve seen you in glasses. Or casual clothes.”

Seokjin licks his lips as he watches Namjoon, carefully, slowly taking the ramyeon. “You mean, this is the first time you’ve seen me looking like shit,” he corrects him, giving Namjoon the dirtiest look he can muster.

Namjoon purses his lips like he doesn’t agree. “I think you look cute.”

The steam from the ramyeon makes Seokjin’s face grow warm. Well, he tells himself that it’s the steam from the ramyeon. Not Namjoon’s nonchalant comment. No way. Seokjin clears his throat. “Whatever,” he dismisses as he uses his chopsticks to pick up some ramyeon, blowing onto it three times before he shovels it into his mouth. He chews and swallows. “Why’d you call me out? I was in bed.”

“Sorry. It’s important.”

“Okay, I’m listening,” Seokjin gestures towards Namjoon with his chopsticks to hurry and speak.

“I think I figured out who’s next to be murdered, and when.”

Seokjin snaps his head up, eyes wide, ramyeon hanging out of his mouth, in shock. He slowly bites the ramyeon off, letting the rest of it drop back into the cup. “What?” he barks after swallowing his mouthful.

“Okay, look. Hear me out,” Namjoon begins. “So, after I got home, I found a copy online of that book that replaced the manga in Jang Jaewon’s room. It wasn’t very long and I’m a fast reader, I ended up reading it all. It’s a story about some kid named Jeongguk and his coming of age. I don’t think the story itself is important in any way… but…”

“But…?” Seokjin prompts him, his hand that’s clutching his chopsticks paused in mid-air.

“But,” Namjoon breathes, and then he sighs. “I was thinking about the message left on the legs of the chair. History repeats itself. He will lie in the bed you’ve made. Do you know who else was lying in a bed? Jang Jaewon.”

Seokjin slowly picks up some more ramyeon, but he eats it slowly and stressfully.

“History repeats itself, so the next victim will also be lying in a bed. And…” Namjoon trails off a little, looking out to the night sky and empty roads. “This might be me reaching… but think about this. The first victim, if you spell his name in English, his initials are J.J., and the second victim, her initials are H.H.”

“Okay…? How is that significant?”

Namjoon pulls out his notebook from one of his pockets, flicks to one certain page, and shows Seokjin something he’d scribbled in earlier. “Jaewon’s initials written in upper case, because he was an adult, looks like two lines. J.J. Like a body lying flat. And Haejoo’s initials written in lower case, because she was a child, h.h., kinda looks like a chair from the side. And that’s how she was found. Dead in a chair.”

Seokjin narrows his eyes as the crime scene photos start to run, dangerously, through his mind at a mile a minute.

“All of this leads me to believe… that your little brother is the next to be targeted. History repeats itself. He will lie in the bed you’ve made. The third victim will lie in a bed. Jang Jaewon was lying in a bed. His initials were J.J., the same as your little brother’s. Jeon Jeongguk. The main character in the book that replaced the manga was called Jeongguk. The manga that was removed was volume twenty-two. The same age as your little brother. The number of pages of both the manga and the book are two-sixteen.”

Namjoon takes a deep breath.

“On February the sixteenth, the killer will attempt to murder Jeongguk.”

Notes:

woo ain't it fun having ur feelings fucked up!!
scream with me in the comments!!

 

 

 

twt

Chapter 10: Intrepid

Summary:

It feels like Seokjin's world is starting to crumble.

Notes:

yah i realised this is getting more and more angsty ya boi is running out of jokes

Seokjin drums his fingers along the top of the table outside the grocery store. He looks out, his eyes unfocused but fixated on something in the pitch-black sky as his mind quietens into a stupor, a tired and exhausted silence that neither he nor Namjoon bother to break. There’s only the faraway sounds of cars driving by every now and then, the sounds of the grocery store’s door sliding open every now and then. The wind whips up a little and it nips at the exposed skin just above the collar of Seokjin’s t-shirt, so he shivers and brings his focus back to his ramyeon in front of him. He picks up his chopsticks and picks up as much as he can and shovels it into his mouth.

“Seokjin-ssi?” Namjoon mumbles as he watches Seokjin resumes stuffing his face.

He only returns Namjoon’s look after he swallows down everything in his mouth. Wipes his lips on the back of his hand. “No one is going to hurt my baby brother,” Seokjin tells him flatly, adamantly, before he continues with his ramyeon. Slowly, cautiously, Namjoon does the same.

“You seem rather… calm.”

“Yeah,” Seokjin replies in between mouthfuls. Jeongguk is his little brother and Seokjin’s last surviving family member, and Seokjin loves him more than anything this world can offer, so he knows Jeongguk’s lifespan like it's imprinted onto the front surface of his brain. Jeongguk’s lifespan was and is always going to be the one ray of light in Seokjin’s life; in the midst of everything that is rotten and decaying in Seokjin’s world, Jeongguk’s lifespan is the one thing that makes him realise that this life of his isn’t so bad. That there’s something worth living for. That his baby brother would have a long and prosperous life. He knows Jeongguk’s lifespan like it's imprinted onto the surface of his brain, and there is absolutely no way he would die in a month.

And even if his lifespan does change, even if the world is cruel enough to do that to Jeongguk the way it had no qualms of doing so to Namjoon, Seokjin would stop it. No matter what. This wasn’t up for discussion.

There’s a fire lit in Seokjin’s heart, and it burns away every shred of sadness in him. He looks up at Namjoon, his lifespan blaring sixty-six days and the fire grows, blazing down every doubt, every concern, every fear that he’d carried around until now.

Seokjin might have once believed that he was powerless against the numbers, to change them or fight against them, but he douses that version of himself in petrol and he ignites it.

“No one,” Seokjin begins resolutely after he finishes off his ramyeon, “is dying under my watch. No one.”

He remains motionless as he watches that weaker version of himself dying in the midst of the flames that he kindled himself. The blaze grows and grows until there’s a storm in Seokjin’s chest that burns down everything in its wake, and from the ashes of everything left behind, he rises anew.

 

He doesn’t sleep at all, that night. After he and Namjoon had finished off their ramyeon, Seokjin had driven him back home even though his apartment was just around the corner, and before Namjoon had stepped out of the vehicle, he turned to Seokjin and told him something that, along with the image of Jeongguk’s lifespan that’s burned into his memory, keeps replaying over and over in his memory, keeping him awake.

“Seokjin-ssi,” Namjoon had started, after they’d both finished their ramyeon and started to feel the cold seeping back into their skins, “do you remember, in your final year of university, a mock trial that you participated in?”

Seokjin’s drawn expression didn’t change as he stared at Namjoon, who, for some reason, had leaned back in the plastic chair and looked somewhat relaxed. Seokjin didn’t answer him, and Namjoon didn’t seem to mind.

“I watched the trial. That was the first time I saw you. I was working towards international law at the time, but after that trial… I switched to criminal law, like you. I didn’t hesitate. I just… was completely entranced by you.”

Seokjin turns over in his bed and curls his hands into fists. It’s nearing three in the morning and he’s still wide awake. There are still thoughts racing through his mind, rushing by so quickly that Seokjin can’t quite make out the details of any of them, and it makes his head spin. All he understands from the blur is that Jeongguk is being targeted, Jeongguk is being targeted, Jeongguk is being targeted.

“I know I’m mean to you a lot of the time,” Namjoon had said to him, “but I’ve never once regretted working with you. Tonight, as well, I was reminded of how much I admire you.”

Seokjin reaches out and holds onto the words Namjoon had uttered to him, holds onto it like it’s an anchor amidst the whirlpool stirring inside his mind. He focuses on those words, he takes deep breaths, and he forces his mind to stop. To ground himself onto those words.

He doesn’t sleep at all that night.

 

He’s up and out of bed the second the sun breaks above the horizon and the first tendrils of light start to seep into his room through his curtains. He marches over to his bathroom, showers and brushes his teeth, dresses himself, and he’s in his car while the sky is still half dark. Seokjin’s hands are curled tightly around his steering wheel as he drives, the roads quiet but thrumming slowly with other early risers before the rush hour really sets in. He drives, determinedly, taking a route he could navigate through with his eyes closed.

Jeongguk’s hair is sticking up in all different directions when he comes to answer the door, eyes glued shut and a pissed off look squeezing his facial features together. “What the fuck time do you think this is?” he mumbles, voice raspy and tired as he scratches his belly.

Seokjin ignores the question. He flicks his eyes up to Jeongguk’s lifespan.

Seventy-three years, one month and eight days. The numbers still tell Seokjin that Jeongguk will live to the age of ninety-five, but seeing those numbers, seeing them unchanged, doesn’t release any of the tension from Seokjin’s shoulders. His mind is still filled to the brim with dread.

“Hyung,” Jeongguk mutters, cracking open his eyelids. “What do you want?”

Instead of answering, Seokjin just lets himself in. Jeongguk takes a few steps back into his apartment to let Seokjin in, and he closes the door shut behind him. He looks around the apartment, takes a step inwards, and then realises it’s useless to search the apartment. If there was anything off about this place, Jeongguk would know.

“Do you mind,” Jeongguk pauses to yawn, “telling me why you’re here so early?”

Seokjin turns to face Jeongguk who looks like he’s desperate to crawl back into bed. “Do you have that letter?” Seokjin ignores Jeongguk and asks his own question. “The most recent anonymous letter.”

To this, Jeongguk opens his eyes and stops scratching his stomach. “It’s at the station. Why?”

Seokjin stuffs his hand quickly into his pocket and pulls out his phone. He navigates quickly to his chat with Jeongguk and finds the photo of the letter Jeongguk had sent to him. Jeongguk arrives by his side and looks down at the screen of Seokjin’s phone. “This eye,” Seokjin begins sombrely, causing Jeongguk to peer a little closer to the phone as if he doesn’t already have the image burned into his memory, “refers to me. A third eye. It sees things normal eyes don’t. It sees lifespans.”

Jeongguk pulls back and looks at Seokjin. Seokjin doesn’t return the look but from the corner of his vision he sees Jeongguk part his lips, to question him, to argue against him, he doesn’t know, but he doesn’t give Jeongguk the chance to do either.

“And down here,” he points to the two symbols at the base of the triangle, “these aren’t numbers. It’s hangul. ㅍ and ㅣ. Put those together, you get blood.”

“Hey, hyung,” Jeongguk slowly reaches out to clasp Seokjin’s shoulder, firmly. “How much did you sleep, last night?”

“Not even a little bit. These two letters make up the word blood, but they’re separated on this diagram. Split in half. ㅍ on one side, ㅣon the other side.”

“Okay…” Jeongguk trails off, his voice thick with concern. Seokjin hasn’t slept and his mind is running at a mile a minute, too fast to stop and think about anything other than this, but even now he can tell Jeongguk is more concerned about Seokjin than about what Seokjin is trying to tell him. He huffs.

“Half-blood, it’s saying. Half-blood of the third eye. Do you know who the half-blood of the third eye is? It’s you, Jeongguk.”

Jeongguk’s tired, half-asleep eyes open slowly, until they’re wide open and staring at Seokjin. Seokjin bites down on his lip and suddenly feels his mind screeching to a halt as his tiredness catches up to him, and he feels every single hour he’d spent awake and staring at the ceiling. He cranes his neck back, feeling it creak and ache, and he stares up at the ceiling again. “Is that true?” he hears Jeongguk whisper.

His mind is at a standstill.

“Hyung, is that true? Am I next?”

Seokjin stands at the shore of an island he’s stranded on. The water is up to his hips, now, slowing his legs down, anchoring him into the sand. It’s difficult to move, now, and it’s only a matter of time, Seokjin knows, until a wave knocks him off his feet, and he drowns. Dread rises in him slowly and steadily, much like the water he knows will claim him one day.

He pulls in a deep, sharp breath. “You,” he begins, huffing out and expelling all the air in his lungs, “are the next target, yes. But whoever it is… they won’t kill you.”

Jeongguk presses his lips together, pinches his eyebrows down. “So I’m guessing… my lifespan is long. Well, long enough to make you think I won’t be killed by them.”

Swallowing harshly, Seokjin nods. He looks at Jeongguk’s lifespan like he has to make sure, like he doesn’t trust it to change at the drop of a hat, but it’s there and in all it’s glory. Jeongguk will live to see ninety-five. He was always going to live to see that age, and nothing will change that.

He realises comically late, as he pulls the soft and sleepy Jeongguk into his arms and hugs him tightly, that the one who will die will most likely be himself.

Because if the killer is going to target Jeongguk, then Seokjin will stop it. There’s no question about that. Seokjin will do whatever it takes to keep his brother alive.

You feel different, his mother had said to him.

You feel like death, she said. He didn’t know what that meant, back then. Had a couple of ideas in his mind that feel like acid to think about, thoughts that orbit his title, the Grim Reaper, but that wasn’t it. That wasn’t it, at all. He felt like death because his lifespan had changed. She couldn’t see it, but she sensed it.

Seokjin smooths his hand over Jeongguk’s soft hair. “Don’t worry,” he tells him, his voice steady and calm. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”

There’s a storm brewing, far out in the horizon. The skies are turning dark and clouds begin to gather and coalesce. The water is up to Seokjin’s hips, but he stares into the eye of the storm and he vows to stay stalwart until he’s protected the ones he loves. He will not be swept away in the waves until then.

 

By the time Seokjin arrives to work, Namjoon is already there, already working. There are more files on his desk than before, and he has a pair of glasses perched on the end of his nose. When Seokjin walks in Namjoon looks up and pushes the glasses back up. “Oh, you’re here early.”

Seokjin looks up at the clock on the wall behind his own desk. It’s nine AM, and Seokjin supposes that Namjoon is right. Seokjin never arrives to work this early. He looks back at Namjoon, at his sixty-five remaining days, and then back at his face, the thick-rimmed glasses he’s wearing. “I guess I am. Do you always wear glasses?”

A sheepish laugh from Namjoon surprises Seokjin just before he takes the glasses off and sets them down on his desk. “No. These are just for concentration. My eyesight is good.”

“Keep them on,” Seokjin replies as he walks into the office, dumps his coat onto a hanger and plops down in his chair. “They look good on you.”

Namjoon doesn’t reply, but he wordlessly slips his glasses back on and tries to re-immerse himself in his work. But he doesn’t get very far with trying, Seokjin realises, as he straightens back up again and looks over at Seokjin who hasn’t yet begun to prepare himself for working. “Hey. Seokjin-ssi, what are you going to do?”

“About?”

“Your little brother.”

Seokjin licks his lips and presses them together. He looks away from Namjoon and down at his desk and he takes a deep breath before he looks back up at Namjoon. “I’ve already told him. He’s going to be heavily guarded on the sixteenth if we don’t catch the guy before then. I’ll be with him on that day as well. Just in case.”

Namjoon nods slowly. “Do you want me there, too?”

Blinking, Seokjin looks up at Namjoon from across the office. “Why would you want to? It’s going to be dangerous,” he warns Namjoon.

But Namjoon doesn’t seem to be fazed, at all. He shrugs like it’s no big deal. “Yeah, well,” he mutters vaguely, and he looks up at Seokjin. Their eyes meet, suddenly, and it almost catches Seokjin off-guard. He freezes, a little, and stares back like he can’t do anything else. He doesn’t know what to say, if there’s anything to say at all, until Namjoon looks away, first. Seokjin lets his shoulders sag.

He presses his lips together and holds back his tongue like there’s a million things he wants to say, a million different things on his mind that he can’t verbalise even if he wanted to. He just looks at his screen, and he tries to push back all the dark clouds in his mind so that he can focus on work.

 

“Hey, Seokjin-ssi,” Namjoon calls out to him, snatching his attention away from the file he was looking at. Namjoon is looking at him from across the office, a sheaf of paper in his hand and a wrought look on his lips. Seokjin only raises his brows as an invitation to speak, and Namjoon understands straight away. He shows the paper to Seokjin, but from across the office Seokjin can’t make out what’s printed on it.

“What’s that?” Seokjin asks, leaning forward on his chair, squinting.

“I don’t know, you tell me,” Namjoon begins. “I found it in one of my drawers. It’s a marriage document.”

Seokjin stares at him, confused.

“It has both our names written on it, in your handwriting. You signed your part.”

“Oh,” Seokjin sounds as he remembers what Namjoon is talking about. A marriage document he’d printed out a while ago and filled out with the intentions of annoying Namjoon. He’d hidden it in one of the drawers of Namjoon’s desk one day and left it there. He’d hoped that Namjoon would find it, and he’d hoped to see him get annoyed and flustered, but it was left unnoticed, Seokjin guesses, until now. “Sorry,” he tells Namjoon, “you can throw that away.”

Namjoon folds the paper up until it’s too small to fold up anymore. “That reminds me,” he starts, his voice mild and airy like Seokjin’s previous wishes to annoy him had completely and utterly failed, “Jugyeong and her boyfriend are getting married this weekend.”

“Huh?” Seokjin mutters, perking up slightly and facing Namjoon. “Is the wedding that soon?”

Namjoon nods. “Did you forget?”

Seokjin presses his lips together and doesn’t confirm nor deny, but the tiny smile that appears on Namjoon’s lips tells Seokjin that Namjoon realises that he did, in fact, completely forget. He doesn’t, however, say anything about it. He doesn’t try to tease Seokjin about it or tell him off for forgetting the wedding of one of their colleagues. Instead, he asks, “are you going?”

“Don’t think so,” Seokjin replies, licking his lips.

“Why not?”

“I don’t really feel like it.”

“I think you should,” Namjoon begins, thumbing edges of the papers in the file on his desk. “There’s a lot going on, I know. But it might be nice to go. Take your mind off it all. Besides, I’m going, and I don’t want to go alone.”

“You have friends, here,” Seokjin reminds him. “You won’t be going alone.”

“Still,” Namjoon presses, his voice deepening with a hint of urgency, “I want you to come with me. Now, can you say something inappropriate because I’m getting anxious.”

“W-what?” Seokjin stutters. “You want me to say something inappropriate?”

He nods. “It doesn’t feel right when you don’t.”

Seokjin bites on his lip. “S-sorry. I… I’m not really in the mood. I’ll… I’ll be back to normal soon. I promise.”

“Okay. Don’t apologise. Just… come to the wedding this weekend.”

“I…” Seokjin trails off momentarily, and swallows, hard. He looks over at Namjoon who’s staring at him, intently, but with a hopeful look in his eyes under his furrowed brows. Seokjin licks his lips again for what feels like the hundredth time. They feel dry again. “Okay. I’ll go.”

Namjoon smiles mildly and returns his attention to his work. “Good,” he replies lightly.

Seokjin turns his head down and stares at his hands atop his desk. The storms raging on in the distance feels like it’s pelting Seokjin with harsh rains and he wonders if he’s already beginning to crumble. If the rain is weathering him down already. He clenches his hands and he tries to stand back up, tries to stand proud and tall. This isn’t who he is; he isn’t weak and he isn’t easily beat down.

But the storm in the distance is slowly creeping closer to his island and it’s only a matter of time that it swallows him up. His fires are burning, still, but this never-ending battering of rain threatens to put his flames out.

He needs to keep them burning until he’s sure that Jeongguk and Namjoon are safe. He’ll put aside all of his worries and his aches until then.

“By the way,” Namjoon edges his voice back in, “you have your follow up at the hospital next week, right?”

Seokjin nods mildly.

“I’ll come with you.”

“You don’t have to-“

“Monday at eleven, right? Try not to be late.”

 

Seokjin waits a total of a minute and a half in his car with the engine on just so that he could keep the heating on before he pulls his phone out of the pocket of his dress pants while he taps his foot incessantly by the pedals.

To: cute assistant
how long u gonna make me wait

To: cute assistant
its been, like, 20 mins

He freely chucks his phone onto the passenger seat and sinks back into his own, knowing that it’s only been, like, two minutes since he’d arrived at the street Namjoon lives on. He turns the heating off in his car when he starts to feel stuffy. His phone buzzes.

From: cute assistant
come up pls

Seokjin stares at the message that has come through, and he stares at the name he’d saved for Namjoon on his phone. It’s remained unchanged since Namjoon first joined the lawfirm, and Seokjin knows exactly how much Namjoon hates being called his assistant. He licks his lips and he changes it.

To: Joon
okay

He pockets his phone, turns off the engine, and exits his car. He hears the little beep that tells him the car is locked, and once he’s satisfied he starts to make his way into Namjoon’s apartment. Fixes his cuffs in the elevator going up, and steps out into the hallway. He already knows which door belongs to Namjoon, so he makes his way to it, knocks twice, and waits.

A thin black tie hangs limply around Namjoon’s neck, the collars of his dress shirt popped up. “I need help with the cufflinks,” he huffs in defeat.

Seokjin takes a few steps into the apartment when Namjoon takes a few steps back to let him in. With one hand he pushes the door shut behind him. And he looks up at Namjoon.

His hair, which he usually styles for work so that it’s out of his face but just barely so; like he’d brushed some of it out of his forehead in the morning and pushed it to the side before coming in to work, and he usually looks effortlessly cool and handsome (but then again, when does he not look handsome?) but today, Namjoon has slicked his hair all back.

Seokjin’s throat goes a little dry and he quickly looks back down, to Namjoon’s cuffs that have yet to be fastened together. He holds his wrists out to Seokjin, and Seokjin swallows like he’s trying to deny how nervous he is before he reaches up and takes one of Namjoon’s wrists. With overly conscious fingers, he fiddles with Namjoon’s cufflinks until they’re clasped shut. He moves onto the other wrist. And when he’s done, he brings his hands back to himself.

“Thanks,” Namjoon says mildly as he inspects his wrists for a brief second before he walks away, heading further into his apartment. Seokjin wanders in after him, following him into Namjoon’s bedroom where he stands in front of the mirror attached onto the door of his wardrobe. Seokjin remains at the doorframe, leaning against it.

He watches Namjoon’s side profile as he gets to work on his tie. Namjoon angles his chin upwards to get a better view of his neck and décolletage, his eyelids low as he concentrates. Seokjin watches the taut expression in his face; the way his jaw in clenched, lightly. Shadows form behind his dimples. Seokjin curls his fists, tightly.

“Is that okay?” Namjoon mutters lowly as he angles his body towards Seokjin, chin still tipped upwards, trying to draw Seokjin’s attention to his tie. Seokjin, however, is finding it difficult not to stare at Namjoon’s face.

“Mhm,” Seokjin sounds an affirmative even though he hasn’t looked at the tie at all. It’s probably fine. Whatever. Who’s going to care about Namjoon’s shitty tie when he looks like that? Not Seokjin, that’s for sure.

“Do I look okay?” Namjoon asks, plucking up his suit jacket from the end of his bed after he’s smoothed down his collars.

“Yeah,” Seokjin mumbles in response as he watches the buttons of Namjoon’s dress shirt strain and hold on for dear life in front of his chest when he stretches to shrug his suit jacket on.

“My eyes are up here,” Namjoon says flatly, and Seokjin draws in a sharp breath, flicks his eyes up to meet Namjoon’s low-lidded and amused eyes. Namjoon laughs at Seokjin.

He walks out of his bedroom, walking past Seokjin who takes a moment to snap himself out of his bewilderment. He makes his way to the front door after collecting his phone, keys and wallet.

“Let’s go,” he tells Seokjin. Seokjin stutters into gear.

 

Seokjin feels like he needs a crash course in Driving 101: How to Drive When There’s a Hot Guy in the Passenger Seat.

Especially when said Hot Guy glances over at him every time he glances over at him. It makes him a little nervous, and he isn’t entirely sure why. He’s had Namjoon in his car before, and he sees Namjoon almost every day. And Namjoon is always hot. Even in his company ID card where he was just about to sneeze before the photo was taken and Seokjin didn’t let him retake it. Seokjin’s pretty sure Namjoon is incapable of looking bad. He should be used to that.

I guess not, he thinks to himself.

The hall where the wedding is taking place is almost full of guests when Seokjin parks his car and enters with Namjoon. There are people standing around, talking, laughing, and Namjoon starts to make his way through the friends and families of the bride and groom, and he quickly locates their colleagues. They greet each other, Seokjin hugs a few of them, and then he leaves Namjoon with them as he makes his way over to one of the waiters that he sees is carrying a serving plate with dainty flutes of champagne balancing atop it. He plucks two of the glasses and smiles at the waitstaff.

He guzzles down the contents of both, dabs at his lips with a napkin, and finds Hanyu. She’s chatting with another woman from the lawfirm, but when she sees Seokjin approaching her she excuses herself.

“Hey, Seokjin, you look sharp!”

“I always look sharp,” he replies.

“True. You know, I didn’t think you were going to come. You said you weren’t.”

Seokjin sighs. “Namjoon convinced me.”

Hanyu laughs, her lips stretching wide as she does, and Seokjin pouts a little. “You’ll do anything that Namjoon asks you to do, right?”

“Hey, not tru-“

Hanyu laughs again, and her eyes twinkle as she does. “You’ve only got eyes for him. Don’t deny it.”

“I mean. I have eyes for you too. Prettiest girl I’ve ever seen,” Seokjin winks at her in an attempt at being good-natured. Hanyu just laughs and shakes her head.

“You’re flirting with the wrong person. Look, Namjoon is looking at you.”

She tips her chin towards something behind Seokjin, and he looks over his shoulder to find Namjoon, still with a few of their colleagues, but just as Hanyu had said, he’s looking straight at Seokjin.

From across the wedding hall, Namjoon is looking straight at Seokjin. His hair is slicked back and his suit is crisp and he looks absolutely stunning. And for a moment, he doesn’t register Namjoon’s lifespan. It’s like it doesn’t exist. All he registers is that they’re looking at each other like no one else exists in the hall, like they’re the ones who are going to get married. Like they’ve already told each other the feelings they have for each other, and they’ve already agreed to spend the rest of their lives together. Seokjin’s mouth goes dry and Namjoon begins to smile, the corners of his thick lips curling upwards, slowly, minutely, until someone says something to him and they snatch his attention away. Seokjin swallows and returns his focus to Hanyu.

“I hate weddings,” Seokjin huffs.

Hanyu takes a sip from her champagne at that.

 

Seokjin hangs back a little, almost like he’s loitering by the wall. He watches the wedding guests talking and laughing with each other. He watches the bride and the groom. They’ve just finished their first dance together and are now laughing and chatting with their friends and family. Jugyeong’s boyfriend, no– her husband, has a hand at her back as he stays by her side throughout it all. They both look beautiful and happy. And Seokjin feels miserable.

He yawns and decides to just grab a seat at one of the desolate tables at the back that no one else is near, planning to just scroll aimlessly through memes on his phone until the food gets served and he has to reconvene with his colleagues. Until then, however, he’ll just continue to be grumpy.

“Hey.”

He turns his head towards the voice directed at him, and his lips part in a small dose of surprise when he sees Namjoon walking towards him, two flutes of champagne in his hands and a soft smile on his thick lips. He hands one dainty glass to Seokjin and then shoves that hand into the pocket of his dress pants. He takes a tentative sip and then turns to lean his back against the wall besides Seokjin as they both look on, distally, at the joy and celebration. Seokjin keeps his eyes ahead, as Namjoon does, but he’s focusing on anything but. He’s hyperaware, now, of Namjoon besides him. Namjoon might still be feeling the joy and celebration of the wedding, but Seokjin feels none of that shit. The beautiful couple laughing and dancing with each other? Seokjin can’t imagine ever being in their position. The guests who are happy for them? To hell with it. Seokjin guzzles his champagne down in one go.

“You don’t look like you’re having fun,” Namjoon muses after a moment, his glass of champagne still half full. Seokjin angles his head a little towards Namjoon, only enough to stare at his shoes, but no further than that. “Sorry. I thought maybe this might take your mind off things, but…”

A little sound of indignation leaves Seokjin. “You should go back to mingle with the others, otherwise you won’t have any fun either.”

Namjoon shuffles a little against the wall but he doesn’t show any hints of taking flight. He stays rooted to the spot. “Nah. I’d rather stay here.”

“With your batshit-insane superior who hates weddings?”

Seokjin doesn’t know what he expected from Namjoon after that left his tongue, but a laugh is far from it. He turns his head to look up at Namjoon and suddenly he’s overwhelmed with images and ideas of marrying Namjoon, of standing side by side with him dressed in tuxedos as they are now, with him looking as beautiful, as handsome and as happy as he is now. Seokjin has to tear his gaze away from Namjoon because it’s a little bit too much to think of that, to hope for it, when he knows it’ll never happen. “Why do you hate weddings so much?” Namjoon asks lightly, taking another nonchalant sip.

He shrugs one shoulder. “It’s bullshit. It’s a huge celebration you throw all this money towards, just because you decided to spend the rest of your life with someone. So you think you found The One, who gives a shit? Marriages can end. People can cheat. I think all of this is bullshit.”

A slight shift in the air between himself and Namjoon tells Seokjin that the taller male is looking down at him, ever so slightly. But Seokjin doesn’t return the look. He keeps his eyes on his empty flute of champagne still in his hand. “I guess I’m a romantic, then,” Namjoon pipes up airily. “I like the idea of it. The big, grand gesture to the one you love, the declaration to the world. That I’ll spend the rest of my life with this person, and we’re going to be happy.”

Seokjin shakes his head and can’t suppress the ugly, cynical laugh that bubbles up his chest, fizzling through his throat, and then onto his lips.

“What, do you not like the idea of committing yourself to one person for the rest of your life?” Namjoon asks curiously.

“If it were possible,” Seokjin begins, “then yes. But this country will not accept or celebrate my love, and I will never be married. I will never get to have a wedding. So what’s the point? If the man I love wants to commit himself to me, then I will commit myself to him. But no one will give a shit about us, so why should I give a shit about them? Weddings are meaningless. Marriages are useless.”

A few moments pass by that Seokjin slowly becomes more and more aware of how Namjoon’s staring at him, pointedly and unabashed. He doesn’t look back. He knows how he sounds and he knows what’s on Namjoon’s mind. There’s a piece of paper, most likely already shredded and discarded of, in the office where Seokjin had written both his and Namjoon’s names down on a marriage contract he’d found on the internet and printed out. He knows. The things he says and does are shit, and there’s a lot of it. Seokjin knows how he sounds, now, to Namjoon. Unreliable and full of shit, but what's new? He grows more and more aware of how Namjoon’s staring at him, thinking everything Seokjin knows he’s thinking, until it starts to tickle his neck and he parts his lips to say something else when Namjoon finally decides to break the silence. “There’s someone that you love?”

“Is that your question?” Seokjin asks incredulously, looking up at Namjoon with a questioning cock of his brow.

Namjoon just nods.

Seokjin pulls his gaze away to give himself some time to think up an answer, but Namjoon apparently doesn’t have time.

“You do have someone,” he deduces flatly. “I didn’t know you were in a relationship.”

“I’m not,” Seokjin coughs, covering his mouth his fist as he tries to angle his body away from Namjoon.

“Then what? You like someone?”

Seokjin presses his lips together like he’s trying to show Namjoon that he absolutely will not answer. But that little show of defiance doesn’t deter Namjoon at all; no, it spurs him on even more, he pinches Seokjin’s side and makes him yelp out in surprise.

“Tell me who it is,” Namjoon beseeches before he places his flute of champagne down on the nearest table to pinch Seokjin again and again, his hands moving to tickle while also evading Seokjin’s hands that are trying to keep him at bay. Seokjin starts laughing against his will, loudly and ungracefully, at the tingling at his sides from Namjoon’s hands. He tries to back away from Namjoon but there’s a wall behind him and he has nowhere to go. The tickling slowly ceases when Seokjin gives up trying to fight Namjoon away.

“It’s you,” Seokjin breathes out when all the laughter and the giddiness drains out of him. Namjoon’s hands are still on his sides, skirting lightly over his waist, and the dress shirt and suit jacket do nothing to stifle the way Seokjin feels his hands on his skin. He feels it all. He meets Namjoon’s gaze and finds whatever giddiness that was in Namjoon’s expression has also fizzled out.

“Me?” he asks in disbelief.

“I don’t know why you’re surprised,” Seokjin starts offhandedly. “I’ve flirted with you and harassed you for as long as you’ve worked with me.”

“Yeah, but this is different,” Namjoon counters, and very slowly, very subtly, he pushes his lower lip out. He lets go of Seokjin’s sides and returns to where he was, standing by Seokjin’s side with his back to the wall.

“Yeah, I guess this is,” Seokjin concedes. “But you better not act weird with me now, because I’ve said way worse things to you than declaring my love, you bastard. Just pretend this never happened, like you always do.”

Namjoon pouts even harder. Seokjin isn’t sure if Namjoon knows he’s pouting. “I don’t want to pretend it didn’t happen.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m a romantic,” Namjoon reasons simply and curtly, and he looks down at Seokjin again. Seokjin swallows down a whole load of nerves and bad feelings and shit to look up and return Namjoon’s stare, and he fucking wishes he didn’t, because the smile on Namjoon’s thick lips and the soft look in his pretty eyes are dangerous, and there’s no way Seokjin can let this continue. He has to nip this in the bud before it blooms into what he thinks it’ll become. So when Namjoon parts his lips to utter those dangerous words, Seokjin strikes his hand up and clasps Namjoon’s mouth. His words are reduced to a confused muffle.

“Don’t say a word,” Seokjin orders, forcing his voice to come out as level as he can make it. “I know what you’re going to say. Don’t say it.”

His eyes are wide but he presses his lips together under Seokjin’s palm, but Seokjin doesn’t pull his hand back until he’s sure Namjoon isn’t going to speak, isn’t going to try. He quickly drops his gaze down to Namjoon’s shoes before he detaches his hand from Namjoon’s mouth. His hand returns, limply, to his side.

Namjoon clears his throat and wordlessly reaches for his flute of champagne and takes a seemingly absent-minded sip. With his other hand he straightens up the lapels of his suit jacket.

“It doesn’t matter if people don’t give a shit about us or not,” Namjoon pipes up after a sore, throbbing moment. His voice is low-pitched once again. “Why do you care?”

“I don’t.”

“Then what are you so afraid of?”

Seokjin keeps quiet. He's good at that.

Notes:

wooo don't we love dumb angsty namjin u can tell me how much u love it in the comments
i guess that's it for the triangle eye clue thingamajig y'all can rest
but not too much
because the killer is still out there
:)

 

 
twt

Chapter 11: Esoteric

Summary:

Seokjin has confessed his love for Namjoon, but won't let Namjoon confess it back.

Notes:

i was having a phone interview with someone trying to recruit me into another clinic and he asked me what i do outside of healthcare and i said i write, so he seemed interested and asked what i write...
"um... i write fic...tion."

Namjoon stays quiet in the passenger seat. The sky is dark and the beautiful, happy, oblivious couple are on their way back to their apartment to finish packing up before they head off to their honeymoon somewhere hot and peaceful. Seokjin is driving with both hands holding the wheel, clenching tightly and nervously. And Namjoon remains quiet.

Thoughts race in his mind and he doesn’t know how to quieten them. They vie for his attention but Seokjin tries to ignore them all; he doesn’t have an answer for any of the questions swirling around his mind like a snowstorm. What’s going to happen? Seokjin wishes he knew. Who’s going to die next? He’s still working on that one. Did he make the right choice when he stopped Namjoon? Seokjin isn’t sure, he'll never be sure.

When he reaches Namjoon’s apartment, the younger male finally turns his neck to face Seokjin, and Seokjin stupidly does the same. He swallows, hard.

“Thanks for the lift,” Namjoon tells Seokjin, his voice low and quiet.

“Don’t worry about it,” Seokjin replies.

Namjoon nods and releases himself from the clutches of the seatbelt, and he turns his body to head out of the car, but he stops himself like he’s just remembered something that had temporarily left his mind. He turns back around and faces Seokjin again. “Take it easy this weekend,” he tells Seokjin. “Look after yourself. If you need me for anything, call me. Okay? I mean it.”

Seokjin’s throat goes dry. All he manages to do is nod. And that seems to satisfy Namjoon, because he smiles a tiny smile at Seokjin before he heads out of the car. Closes the door behind him and walks to his apartment, and disappears inside it.

He stares at the entrance to Namjoon’s apartment complex for a while before his strength comes back to him and he clears his throat, readjusts his mirrors like they need to be readjusted, and he sets off. And when he reaches home he falls face first into his bed and he blacks out.

 

His Sunday slips through his fingers like a blur. Vague recollections tell him he’d woken up sometime after two in the afternoon, and that the first time he’d eaten that day was a little after the sun had already set. He collapses back into his bed at night, his muscles feeling tired and worn out but at the same time cramped and tight and he doesn’t know what he needs to do to stop feeling this way. He shuffles around until he’s lying on his back, eyes glued to the ceiling, and now he can barely feel anything. His arms and legs feel like they don’t belong to him. His heart feels like it’s pumping through heavy, murky waters.

He shifts onto his side, tired eyes latching onto his phone besides his pillow. He wants to do something, he wants to grab his phone and do something, but all the suggestions that are cropping up in his mind are being deflected because sure, he wants to do something, but that isn’t the right thing. He huffs, exasperated. What he wants to do is call Namjoon, ask him to come to him so that he could curl up into a ball and tuck himself tightly against Namjoon. He wants to build a cocoon around himself and let Namjoon take care of him. He wants to be protected.

It’s too hard to push those thoughts away. There’s a little voice in his mind that’s telling him no, Seokjin, you’ve got it all wrong, you’re the one that has to protect him, and usually that voice of his would be louder, stronger, would govern all other thoughts in his mind, but right now it’s small and quiet and it’s trembling in the corner of his mind. Seokjin hates it. Seokjin really, really hates it.

So he gives up. He lets a sigh whistle past his lips and he stops trying to rekindle the fire in his heart. For just tonight, he’ll give up and let the murky, heavy waters fill up his mind and let it run rampant. It’s far too difficult to fight back right now and he’s completely alone, so the only person he’s letting down right now is himself.

The sleep that claims him is heavy and dark and when he wakes up in the morning it feels like he hasn’t slept at all.

On Monday morning he heads into work and puts on his fakest smile like he didn’t spend the whole of last night longing to be in Namjoon’s arms and says, “who’s ready to fuck shit up?”

Namjoon just stares at him, expressionless, and Seokjin feels ridiculous. He quickly licks his lips and reduces himself to his chair and pretends like that didn’t just happen (as Namjoon undeniably does) and tries to get to work. He tries to sort out his paperwork, tries to work out what needs to be done about Lee Mirae who has effectively been proven innocent but is still being detained until whoever is responsible for the murders has been apprehended, and tries to work out how he can further protect Jeongguk. He kind of wants to put Jeongguk in a bunker with mile-thick walls made of titanium or whatever the fuck material is strong enough to resist knives, bullets, bombs, a nuclear war, natural disasters, the Devil himself, Seokjin doesn’t know, but what he does know is that it needs to be done. Jeongguk isn’t dying. There’s no debate about that.

Whether it’s with a bunker made of titanium or Seokjin’s own body, Jeongguk will be protected.

He looks over at Namjoon, whose face is devoid of emotions as he works. Fifty-nine days remain, according to his lifespan. If Seokjin is alive after he’s managed to keep Jeongguk safe, then he will do it all over again for Namjoon.

“You’re not allowed to stare at me like that,” Namjoon drawls, eyelids low over his eyes where he’s still concentrating on a file in front of him, seemingly not bothered to look in Seokjin’s direction.

Seokjin swallows. “What makes you think you can give me orders?” he replies as he continues to stare.

Namjoon continues to focus on his work. “The fact that you confessed to me but didn’t let me say it back. I’m not going to let you get away with all the things I used to let you get away with.”

“You didn’t let me get away with anything. You filed many complaints against me.”

“I’ll file some more.”

Without angling his face away from his screen, Namjoon flicks his eyes over to Seokjin, and Seokjin’s breath catches in his throat like he’d just accidentally swallowed a hard candy. He pauses when Namjoon looks at him but luckily Namjoon looks away just as abruptly as he’d looked at Seokjin. And when he does Seokjin finally releases that breath.

“We should leave now if we wanna make it on time for your appointment,” Namjoon says calmly when he looks away from Seokjin to raise his wrist and look at the time on his watch. He straightens his back and turns a little to face Seokjin as if to say come on, let’s go. But Seokjin just looks confused.

“We? You’re coming with me?”

“Yeah,” Namjoon answers like it was obvious, “I said I would, didn’t I?”

Seokjin’s fingers trail along the edge of his desk nervously. He licks his lips, again. “I thought…”

“You thought what?” Namjoon raises his brows, challenging the thoughts racing through Seokjin’s mind. “I said I wouldn’t let you get away with things like you used to. Nothing else has changed. I’m still going to support you in everything else.”

“Namjoon…”

He stands up and goes to collect his coat. “Hurry up, we don’t wanna miss your appointment.”

But Seokjin remains sitting at his desk, watching with unblinking eyes as Namjoon coolly circles his coat around him to settle it on his shoulders before he pushes his arms through the sleeves. His heart is picking up speed in his chest and he doesn’t know why – scratch that, Seokjin knows why. Seokjin knows exactly why. His heart is thumping in his chest like he’s some shoujo manga heroine because he is completely and undeniably in love with Namjoon, and Namjoon makes it so easy for Seokjin to fall harder and harder for him.

Namjoon seems to realise that, too, because after he’s slipped his phone into the pocket of his coat he looks at Seokjin who’s still sitting at his desk, having not moved an inch, and the corner of one side of his lips quirk upwards ever so slightly that Seokjin thinks he may have imagined it. “I told you not to look at me like that,” he tells Seokjin.

Seokjin coughs. “Like what?” he asks as he quickly looks down in the pretence that he’s trying to find his phone.

“Like you like me. You didn’t want me to say it back, so don’t look at me like you’re in love.”

He stands up and turns around just to relieve himself of the pressure of having to face Namjoon, and he releases a heavy breath as he pulls his own coat on. “I can’t help it,” Seokjin says to the wall behind his desk, “your tits are so huge they have their own gravitational force that pulls my eyes towards them.”

He hopes that this annoys Namjoon, that he huffs and walks out of the office, but Seokjin doesn’t hear any sounds of indignation coming from him. Instead, he hears “uh-uh,” come from Namjoon, “I told you not to talk to me like that, either.”

There’s a pang of something indescribable in Seokjin’s chest as he turns around and finally faces Namjoon who’s ready and waiting by the door, one hand on the handle. He lowers his gaze a little and circles around his desk to join Namjoon who, realising that Seokjin is finally coming along, opens the door and keeps it open for Seokjin. That feeling in Seokjin’s chest doesn’t dissipate even as Namjoon walks in front of him, taking them to the elevator. It doesn’t dissipate even as they ride the elevator down in silence. As they walk through the parking lot to Seokjin’s car. As they board and as Seokjin starts to drive.

Seokjin still can’t put a name to that feeling, but it feels like it could be regret. Seokjin wonders if he made a mistake.

But what’s new? Seokjin makes a lot of mistakes.

 

At the hospital Namjoon waits outside in the waiting area while Seokjin sees the doctor. He’d just silently shrugged his coat off, folded it, and placed it on his lap after he’d sat down.

A nurse collects him and whisks him off somewhere to get a few preliminary tests done and out of the way before Dr Kang sees him. The nurse takes Seokjin’s blood pressure, his blood sugar levels, his weight, BMI, the pressures inside his eye, and a few others that Seokjin doesn’t pay enough attention to. Then, after waiting for half an hour quietly with Namjoon, Dr Kang calls him and leads him towards her consulting room. She asks him how his day has been, a light preamble before she cuts to chase.

“The pressure inside your eyes have decreased somewhat,” she begins as she peers closer to the results of the preliminary tests Seokjin underwent. “But not to the point that I can discharge you. When you came here last, they were averaging twenty-five in each eye. Now, they’re averaging twenty-two.”

Seokjin just nods.

“It’s an improvement, of course, but you’re not in the clear just yet. Have you had any other problems with your eyes?”

“I mean… sometimes my vision goes funny. Kind of like it goes out of focus but then it comes back.”

Dr Kang releases a heavy sigh, and Seokjin feels it deeply, settling into his bones like a thick trickling of anxiety. She laces her fingers together atop her desk. “Keep using the drops I gave you. I’ll review you in a month’s time.”

Seokjin inhales deeply and swallows every question that swims up in his chest. He pushes it all down, and he settles with just “alright,” and then proceeds to set the date of their next appointment. The questions in his mind, the worry of the fate of his eyes, Seokjin leaves unanswered. He wonders if this is a mistake, too.

But he smiles as good-heartedly as he can to Namjoon when he finds him in the waiting area and mouths a come on to him, beckoning Namjoon to join him. Together they walk quietly out of the hospital, to the car park, and into Seokjin’s car.

“How did it go?” Namjoon asks mildly as they strap themselves in.

“As good as any appointment with a doctor would go,” Seokjin replies vaguely as he pulls out of the parking spot.

“Which means…?”

“It means you don’t have to worry,” he smiles to Namjoon when he looks into the mirror by the passenger’s seat.

“I’m going to worry either way,” Namjoon claps back resolutely.

The traffic lights up ahead turn red and Seokjin slows the car down until he reaches a standstill. Then, with the car completely stationary and with only the hum of the engine swimming between them, he lowers his head and sighs. “Why have you suddenly become so caring?”

“What’s the problem? You like me. I should be caring.”

“So that’s it? You’re only being nice because now you know that I like you? Did you only want to- to say it back to me because I like you? Do you- do you actually-“

“Yeah,” Namjoon breathes out. “I do. I have for a long time. But you’re very annoying most of the time.”

“I try.”

“Yeah. You’re really annoying. And I’m not the type to idolise anyone. I don’t think the sun shines out of your ass. I don’t think you’re perfect. But I still lo-“

“Rude,” Seokjin cuts him off quickly, foot pressing down on the gas when the lights turn green. “The sun does shine out of my ass, and I am perfect. You bitch.”

Namjoon lets out a soft exhale. “So you’re going to stop me from saying it whenever I try?”

“Mm,” Seokjin sounds a soft affirmative.

A few moments of a soft, tender silence flits through the space of the car, backed up by the low thrum of the engine.

“Why?” Namjoon asks, quietly after a minute.

Seokjin presses his lips together and tightens his hold on the steering wheel. “I can’t tell you.”

He feels Namjoon’s gaze on him, on the side of his face, but he doesn’t meet Namjoon’s eyes. He can’t. He focuses on the road ahead and he narrows his eyes and he tries to push out all thoughts in his mind about the one sitting next to him, about his lifespan. He tries to push it all out and focus only on what’s ahead, but the road is long and Seokjin isn’t sure if there’s an end to it, after all.

Namjoon stays quiet until they return to the company building, silently walking besides him to the elevator, silently pressing the button that takes them up to the floor their offices are on. The doors slide shut, and the elevator starts moving up. When there’s about three more floors to go, Namjoon exhales. “Do you want to be with me?” he asks like he hasn’t stopped thinking about this, like their silence meant nothing in the way of stifling the conversation and their thoughts. Seokjin inhales sharply through his nose.

“Namjoon, I told you, I-“

“You told me you love me,” Namjoon cuts him off, “but you didn’t say if you wanted to be with me.”

Two more floors to go. “I won’t let you say it back. That’s all you need to know.”

“No. I need to know if you want to be with me or not.”

“I’m not going to answer that.”

“Then I won’t stop asking. But if you tell me, now, that you want nothing to do with me in that sense, then I’ll stop.”

One more floor to go. “Why is it so important to you?”

“Why isn’t it important to you?”

The elevator pings when they reach their floor and the doors slide open. Seokjin quickly steps out of it and walks so fast down the hallway that he’s almost running, and the sound of his own heart racing in his chest, crashing against the walls, makes him deaf to the sounds of Namjoon’s footsteps behind him. He rips open the door to his office, throws his coat to one side, and drops himself into his chair. Turns his screen on before Namjoon even enters the office.

“Sorry, I’ve got a lot of work to do,” Seokjin tells him when he appears in the doorframe, huffing like he’s equal parts tired and irritated.

“Yeah, I know,” he huffs, “I know you have a lot of work to do. Guess who does it when you can’t be bothered? Me.”

“Namjoon-“

“Nuh-uh,” he shakes his head at Seokjin. “I’m gonna sit here and watch One Piece while you catch up to all the work you have to do. Do you know how many episodes there are in One Piece? Nearly nine hundred, you nut job.”

Seokjin licks his lips as he watches with bated breath as Namjoon ends his little rant and slips some earphones into his ears and presumably starts watching the anime on his computer screen. His brows are drawn, pushed all the way down, and there’s a frown on his thick lips.

“Namjoon-“

Without looking up, Namjoon raises one finger to him to silence him.

So instead he pulls out his phone from the pocket of his coat he’d discarded on the floor.

To: Joon
I’m sorry

After hitting send, Seokjin looks up, expectantly, at Namjoon. He watches as Namjoon’s phone buzzes and he pauses the anime to look at his screen. He reads the text, and he takes his phone into his hands without looking up at Seokjin.

From: Joon
I know

He locks his phone and places it back onto his desk and re-immerses himself in his anime.

Seokjin swallows slowly and takes one last look at Namjoon. In another life, he might’ve been with Namjoon. They might’ve been free to tell each other words of love. They might’ve been happy. Seokjin sighs and looks at his screen.

 

 

He tries looking for Jeongguk when he walks into the station even though he knows Jeongguk will be on patrol. He grows worried even though he knows this; knows that Jeongguk won’t be here, he’s out doing his job, but he still worries. It’s not yet the sixteenth of February, hell, it’s still January, but Seokjin can’t help but worry. Jeongguk is being targeted, and despite the fact that his lifespan hasn’t changed, Seokjin still worries. That’s his baby brother.

One of the officers approach Seokjin and recognises him straight away, promising to notify Yoongi. He hangs around the lobby area with his coat folded in his arms until Yoongi appears in front of him and beckons him to follow. So Seokjin does, following him until they reach Yoongi’s desk where they sit.

Yoongi brings his arms up, fingers interlaced in front of his mouth as he sighs. “Seokjin,” he starts heavily, “you’re my friend, and I want to help you.”

Seokjin doesn’t say a word. He just waits for Yoongi to continue, for the sentence that begins with the word but.

“But I just can’t wrap my head around why you’re certain that Jeongguk is going to be targeted next. I will provide all the security I can, but… I don’t know. It just doesn’t feel right. I don’t understand.”

You won’t understand, Seokjin wants to reply, but he doesn’t. Instead, he sighs and sags his shoulders. “Look, Yoongi, I just… I just know.”

“Know what, though? The Morse code on the legs of the chair means that the third victim will be your brother? The books in the shelf of the first victim contain some subliminal message that points towards your brother? I don’t know. I just don’t buy it.”

Seokjin drops his gaze down to the desk as he tries to think of something he can say that’ll satisfy Yoongi. Hey, so, funny thing – I know when you’re going to die! Seokjin pushes that thought out of his mind. Actually, Yoongi, the killer is targeting me by finishing off my family first. The first two victims? Nah, don’t know them.

“Look,” Yoongi sigh heavily, shaking his head as he does, “Jeongguk seems to believe you, and like I said, you’re my friend, so I will make sure he’s protected on that day. And if it turns out Jeongguk really is being targeted, then I will need you to explain to me exactly how you knew.”

Seokjin presses his lips together. “Sure,” he resolves, his voice tight and high-strung. “Just keep him alive. He’s all I have left.”

Yoongi unlaces his fingers and reaches across the desk, tapping Seokjin on the underside of his chin. “I know,” he tells Seokjin. “I know, so keep your head high, okay? Now come on, I’m hungry. Let’s go get some tteokbokki.”

 

Twenty minutes later they’re seated at a rusty round table at a tteokbokki stand somewhere near Seokjin’s apartment just so that he can walk home, mildly drunk, and not worry about his car. He thinks about this as they sip on their bottles of soju while the auntie who runs the tteokbokki stand makes their order.

Another two minutes later, Hoseok appears out of nowhere and plops down at the table besides Seokjin and reaches out for a bottle like it belongs to him, chugging down a mouthful while Seokjin’s eyes go wide and he gapes at the unwelcomed newcomer. “Excuse me?” he gawks at Hoseok, who places the bottle back down on the table and meets Seokjin’s eyes. “What in the name of shit do you think you’re doing?”

“Having a drink with my two favourite people?” Hoseok replies, feigning confusion as he greets Yoongi, who greets him back like he’d been expecting Hoseok.

Seokjin gasps. “Did you invite him?” he asks, and when Yoongi nods Seokjin dramatically slaps his hand to his chest. “This is betrayal.”

Neither Yoongi nor Hoseok seem to give a shit about Seokjin’s anguish because the tteokbokki comes over, fresh and steaming, and the two of them begin eating immediately. Seokjin pouts but he realises that neither of them truly care anymore (not that they ever did) and now that his food is here, he’s starting not to care, either. He pulls the plate towards him and he just starts to eat while occasionally throwing dirty looks towards both Hoseok and Yoongi.

Yoongi wipes his mouth on the back of his hand when he’s finished and takes a swig from his bottle of soju before he looks Seokjin in the eye. “There’s something fishy going on with the case at hand,” he starts abruptly, and Seokjin raises his brows. “Too many things aren’t adding up.”

“Tell me about it,” Seokjin sighs as he sips on his soju.

“The first two victims have nothing to do with each other,” Yoongi begins, furrowing his brows, “and they have nothing to do with you. So why were you sent a bouquet of those flowers? Why are they now targeting Jeongguk? And why so long after the second murder? It just doesn’t make sense.”

Seokjin pulls in a deep breath and lets his shoulders sag as he exhales.

“I found out something interesting, though,” Hoseok edges in as he plays with the rim of his soju bottle. Seokjin flicks his eyes up from it to Hoseok’s eyes which are low-lidded now, his face slightly flushed. “A connection between the first two victims.”

“What?” Yoongi barks as he slams his fist on the table. “Why didn’t you say so earlier?!”

Hoseok startles. “Relax, you tiny gremlin. I only just found out today. That’s why I called to meet you.”

“What did you find?” Seokjin asks before Yoongi could get riled up.

“Both Jang Jaewon and Hong Haejoo’s mother are a part of the same… uh… church? Well, it’s not really a church. I don’t know what it is. But they’re a part of it.”

“Okay…” Seokjin sounds, cautious and anticipating. “Didn’t you find out more about it?”

“No. Couldn’t. It’s not… it’s not an established thing, you know? Like it’s not on the internet. I don’t know,” Hoseok waves his hand and burps. Seokjin makes a mental note of speaking to him when he’s sober.

“Did you at least get a name? Something about this… thing that we can use to identify it?” Yoongi asks hopefully.

Hoseok shakes his head. “Nah. Jaewon’s friends knew he was a part of something, but none of them knew what. And Hong Haejoo’s father said the same thing about her mother, but her mother refused to speak to me.”

“That doesn’t mean it’s the same thing they’re talking about,” Seokjin refutes.

Hoseok shrugs one shoulder. “Yeah. But it’s still a connection.”

“It ain’t a connection until we know exactly what it is,” Yoongi replies dejectedly, and Hoseok presses his lips together.

“Anyway,” Seokjin waves his hand as he finishes off his soju. “What’s going to happen to the kid? Lee Mirae? Is he still in custody?”

Yoongi nods. “He’s still our main suspect. No one has died since his arrest, so unless another murder does occur, he’s going to remain our main suspect.”

“Poor kids,” Hoseok laments.

Seokjin sighs and rests his arms on the table just before his phone buzzes in his pocket. He lazily fishes it out of his pocket and looks at the screen to find Namjoon calling him, so he presses on the screen to answer it. He presses the phone to his ear. “Howdy.”

“What kind of yeehaw bullshit is that? Who the fuck says howdy,” Namjoon spits on the other side of the line. “You, I guess. Anyway. Are you okay? How drunk are you?”

“Who’s that?” Hoseok half-drawls, leaning in towards Seokjin. Seokjin shoos him away.

“Only a little bit drunk,” Seokjin replies. “Maybe, like, half a cup of shitfaced.”

“Lovely. How are you going to get home?”

“I’ll probably just walk. I’m not far from home.”

“Do you want me to come?”

“Why?”

“To make sure you get home safely? Because when you’re drunk you’re like a baby deer who isn’t quite sure of how to walk properly?”

Seokjin pinches his lips together. “Hmm. Are you sure you’re not just saying that because you want to take me home and get in my pants?”

He hears Namjoon sigh. “Not when you’re drunk and can’t give consent.”

“Wow. What a gentleman.”

“Jesus Christ,” Namjoon breathes and he hangs up. Seokjin detaches his phone from his ear and stares at the screen for a few moments, blinking lazily at it, before he hears Yoongi’s phone ringing. Yoongi answers it after he decides it’s a call worth taking.

“Yep, he’s with me,” Yoongi says to whoever had called him. “He’s a little drunk, yeah. Okay. Cool. Yeah, we’re at a tteokbokki stand near the station, you know the one with the- yeah, that one. Alright, cool. See you.”

Seokjin blinks a few times and watches as Yoongi nonchalantly pockets his phone. “Who was that?” he asks.

“Who do you think? Your subordinate that honestly? You don’t deserve.”

“Shut up.”

Twenty minutes of a colourful cocktail of complaining, bickering, and name-calling later, Namjoon makes his appearance. He taps Seokjin on the shoulder and gestures for him to stand. Seokjin pouts.

“Come on. We have work tomorrow,” Namjoon tries to convince him.

“I’ll just call in sick, it’s cool.”

“And what, make me do all your work? No thanks.”

He hooks his hands under Seokjin’s arms and pulls, lifting him up and off his seat. He forces Seokjin to follow him by clamping his hand around Seokjin’s wrist, dragging him along towards Seokjin’s apartment. Seokjin tries to whinge some more but after a second of being totally ignored by Namjoon, he gives up and stays quiet as they walk. It doesn’t take long, walking through the neighbourhood, but when Namjoon reaches Seokjin’s apartment complex he doesn’t let go of Seokjin’s wrist. Instead, he walks inside, locates the elevator, and takes Seokjin all the way to his front door.

“Alright, go inside. Take a shower. Drink some water. Do your skincare routine. Brush your teeth. And then go to sleep,” Namjoon rattles off a list of instructions to Seokjin, all of which goes in one ear and comes out the other.

“How about: I strip naked and just go to sleep?”

Namjoon sighs. “Do whatever you want,” he huffs and takes a step back before he turns around to leave. Seokjin, with all the speed of Sonic the Hedgehog, darts his hand out and grabs Namjoon’s wrist.

“Stay with me,” he tells Namjoon’s back.

“I told you, not while you’re drunk and can’t give consent. Besides, if you were sober you wouldn’t want this.”

“But I do. Want this. I want you badly. I-“

“No,” Namjoon cuts him off harshly, turning to face him. “Tell me when you’re sober. Then I’ll believe you.”

Seokjin frowns.

“Go inside. We’ll talk tomorrow morning.”

With a prim huff, Seokjin spins on his heel. “That’s if I show up,” he mutters under his breath before he walks into his apartment and kicks the door shut behind him.

He walks into his apartment, loosening his tie as he goes. He pulls it off his neck and discards it on the floor. As he moves into his bedroom his shirt is unbuttoned and dropped onto the ground besides the bed. Then, his pants. He remembers to remove his contact lenses but where he drops them he doesn’t know, and he falls into bed.

 

In the morning, Seokjin feels like absolute shit. But what’s new? He groans and tells the sun to fuck off before rolling over on his bed to grab his glasses, put them on, and then pick up his phone. There are a few texts from Namjoon, all written in capital letters, telling him that he better come in to work.

To: Joon
make me

He heads into the shower and brushes his teeth and tries to make himself feel more like a human and less like a walking headache.

From: Joon
I know where u live

From: Joon
I will drag u to work if I have to

“Jesus,” Seokjin mutters under his breath as he reads the text, and there’s no doubt in his mind that Namjoon can and will drag him to work like he says he would. Seokjin doesn’t doubt him at all. His head is pounding and he really wants to drop back into his bed but he forces himself to get dressed. He pops a painkiller or two and heads out.

 

He pushes the door to his office wide open and enters slowly, watching as Namjoon looks up at him from his desk, eyes wide in surprise and bewilderment. “Bonjour, bitch,” Seokjin greets as he strides past Namjoon and takes a seat at his own desk. He places his coffee on the desk and starts up his computer and tries to ignore the throbbing of the left side of his brain along with the way Namjoon is staring, intently, at him.

But he can’t ignore it any longer – he feels Namjoon’s stare on his skin like ice water, and it prickles against him until he can’t ignore it any longer. He turns his head to meet Namjoon’s gaze.

“Take a photograph, it’ll last longer,” Seokjin tells him.

“Do you spew bullshit whenever you’re uncomfortable?”

“I’m not uncomfortable.”

“Alright then,” Namjoon concedes, and lets out an exhale. He runs a hand through his hair. “I don’t want to keep talking about this, but I have to know. Especially after last night. Did you mean what you said?” Namjoon asks, his eyebrows raised. Seokjin quickly looks away and glues his eyes to his screen. “You said you wanted me,” he continues. “And I told you we’d talk when you’re sober. So unless you took up day drinking, we’re going to talk.”

Seokjin swallows, hard, as he remembers being drunk enough to say what he did to Namjoon, but not drunk enough that unfortunately, he still remembers. He presses his lips together in a bid to keep his words to himself, but they push at his seams and he kind of really wants to let it all go.

“Seokjin-ssi. Please. At least tell me why you don’t want this.”

He swallows again, hard, and wonders how that conversation will ever go. Sorry, Joon, we can’t be together because it’s only gonna hurt me more when you die. Which is going to happen in fifty-four days, by the way. What a joke. I’m selfish, I know.

He hears Namjoon sigh and he wonders if he’ll ever stop being a disappointment.

“It’s unprofessional for co-workers to date each other,” Seokjin tells Namjoon, licking his lips and hoping that this fact he’d plucked out of thin air is enough to deter him.

“I have a copies of every complaint I ever made about you, you want to talk about being unprofessional?”

“Namjoon, I-“

“Okay, whatever,” he waves his hand, dismissing Seokjin, and apparently returning his focus to his work as he plasters on his most unbothered, uncaring expression onto his face. “I’m done talking about this. I’m gonna watch Boku no Hero.”

“I thought you were watching One Piece?”

“Too many episodes.”

Seokjin nods. “Understandable.”

 

“This Aoyama guy reminds me of you,” is what Namjoon says after a few hours of total silence in the office. Seokjin whips his head towards him.

“How dare you! I-“

“Shh, Midoriya and Todoroki are about to start their match.”

“Asshole,” Seokjin spits, muttering under his breath, pushing out his lower lip as he sulks.

 

Seokjin absentmindedly checks through all of the notifications on his phone as he walks into his apartment that evening, swiping away the ones he doesn’t care about, leaving the ones he’ll attend to later. He reaches his bedroom and is about to chuck his phone onto his bed when he realises that one of the texts he’d received is from an unknown number. So he pauses, at the foot of his bed, and peers closer at his screen.

From: Unknown Number
It’s tough, I know, but you have to stay strong.

Seokjin furrows his brows, deep, as he stares at his screen. He doesn’t recognise the number at all, and when he copies and pastes it into his search engine, nothing comes up. He continues to stare, trying to figure out who the sender could possibly be, when he yawns and gives up because he’s tired. He holds his phone in both hands and starts typing back.

From: Unknown Number
This is the only way, Seokjin. Don’t give up.

The number, this time, is different from the first. This one, too, doesn’t flag up any results when he pastes the number into a search engine. He quickly dials the number and presses his phone to his ear.

The line rings once, twice, three times, before it goes dead.

Notes:

sorry to those of u who don't watch anime lol

scream at me in the comments?

 

 

 

 

twt

Chapter 12: Cathartic

Summary:

They've contacted Seokjin, but what do their messages mean? Seokjin needs to find out one way or another.

Notes:

i listened to lana del ray while writing this chapter

The cold February air tastes clean in Seokjin’s lungs when he inhales deeply, looking up at the sky that is devoid of clouds. It’s bright and it’s blue but it’s cold and there’s a certain dark and oppressing gloom in the atmosphere as he stuffs his hands into the pockets of his long coat. There isn’t another soul in the cemetery, Seokjin is by himself and surrounded by graves. He makes his way through, slowly but purposefully, following a path he’s only recently had to familiarise himself with, but has already memorised.

It’s like his feet take him there. He doesn’t quite remember where his father and stepfather are buried but he knows that he has those locations written down somewhere if he wanted to find them. His mother’s grave, however, is a memory deeply rooted into his being like it’s been there all along, like it’s a part of him now, like it’s always been a part of him. He arrives at the grave and squats down in front of it like it’s second nature, closing his eyes to take a deep breath. He holds the breath in his lungs for a long time before he releases it.

“Mom,” he begins quietly. “I don’t know what to do,” he laments as he stares at the headstone. “Am I shooting myself in the foot by staying quiet? Would things be better if I say something?”

The cold winter air whips up slightly, blowing on some of Seokjin’s hair. He licks his lips.

“I’m disappointing everyone. And I keep telling myself that it’s fine because I’m keeping them safe, but I don’t know if that’s the case, anymore.”

His mother doesn’t respond.

“Sometimes it feels like I’m on the right track, and I feel like I’m fierce enough to save them. But sometimes I feel like I’m stranded on an island and it’s only a matter of time until a wave comes and knocks me off my feet.”

He sighs and looks down at the earth, and tries to find purchase in the soft, unreliable sand under his feet. He can try as hard as he likes, but he isn’t going to find stability. The numbers he was once certain was set in stone are now as fickle and untrustworthy as the sand that betrays him.

“Please tell me what to do, mom,” he implores, biting down on his lip. “I don’t think I can do this alone.”

Seokjin remains squatting in front of his mother’s grave, eyelashes wet, until his feet start to hurt. He cranes his head back, looks up at the bright blue sky, and he parts his lips. Pulls in a long, deep inhale. Blinks away the last few salty tears left in his eyes before rubbing them lightly and pushing himself up on his feet. He bids his farewell to his mother’s grave.

Then, he finally acknowledges the bouquet of red spider lilies someone had laid down for his mother, sitting atop the grave. He exhales lightly as he reaches down and picks it up.

The bouquet gets haphazardly thrown into the passenger seat when he climbs into his car to drive back to his apartment.

 

The next day, he returns to the cemetery after work. There’s a fresh bouquet of red spider lilies laid down on his mother’s grave. Seokjin presses his lips together as he stares at it, sticking out like a sore thumb with it’s bright and blood-red petals. Seokjin was right. The bouquet that he’d found the day before was fresh, which meant that someone had only just placed it by the grave.

Either it was a coincidence that Seokjin had visited his mother’s grave right after someone laid the flowers down, or they’ve been returning every day to put out new flowers.

And the bouquet in front of Seokjin’s eyes are definitely new.

 

The following day Seokjin wakes up earlier than usual and drives by the cemetery, paying a quick visit to his mother’s grave. He doesn’t find any flowers.

 

After work, he makes a stop at the cemetery, and surely enough he finds a bouquet of red spider lilies.

“Mom,” he laments that evening, his head hanging low and desolate. His hair hangs in front of his face but he keeps his eyes on the ground in front of him. “Mom, I’m getting desperate. Please tell me what I’m supposed to do.”

He remains, squatting in front of her grave for a few more minutes, until the sky begins to darken. Until his knees begin to hurt and his feet start to ache. He sighs, heavily.

“The clock keeps on ticking, and I’m just… stuck here. I don’t think I can escape this, Mom. I… I kinda want to give up.”

 

He doesn’t go to work the next day.

 

Or the day after.

 

He arrives at the cemetery but doesn’t step out of his car. He parks it as far from the entrance to the cemetery as he can without ruining his visibility, and he stays there from dawn until dusk. He keeps his hawk-like eyes trained on the entrance. Watching out for who may enter the cemetery, who may leave. What they may be carrying with them. Whether it’s a bouquet of red spider lilies or not.

Those first two days that Seokjin spends keeping watch like a stalwart sentinel, he sees no one. And at the end of the day when he finally steps out of his car and enters the cemetery, he finds nothing laid in front of his mother’s grave.

On the third day, he decides to keep watch outside Floral-Lee, the flower shop where the red spider lilies were bought. He knows already that whoever purchased them to adorn the two murder scenes with had paid in cash and were clad in black and were virtually unrecognizable in any of the CCTV footages that depicted them, but this time Seokjin isn’t going to rely on anything or anyone but himself. He sits in his car, his eyes trained and unwavering, his mind sharp and buzzing.

But no one purchases any red spider lilies today.

 

Or the day after.

 

When he returns to his apartment his movements are almost robotic, stiff, as he peels his clothes from his body and steps into his shower. The water is hot, scalding almost, as it batters down on his body, but all he registers is that the water is hot, and not that it’s probably hurting him. His skin is tinged pink when he steps out but he dries himself off regardless, sits on the edge of his bed, and runs through his night-time routine as usual. Lotion is rubbed on his skin before his pyjamas come on, and his facial products are massaged into his face before he climbs into bed.

He makes sure to set the alarm on his phone to wake him up tomorrow at six, ignoring all the calls and texts he’s missed and is avoiding.

There’s just the tiniest pang of guilt reverberating in his chest, constricting around his heart just a little, but he smothers that feeling and kills it without even trying. He turns over in his bed, turning his back to his phone, and he falls asleep.

That night, he dreams, as he always does, of the little girl he thought he could save when he was thirteen. Of her blood dropping onto the concrete and causing red spider lilies to bloom around her and Seokjin.

 

In the morning, he returns to the cemetery, but this time he leaves his car behind and he walks, instead. Decked out in black and black only, his glasses on instead of his contact lenses, he looks nothing like himself. Just before he’d left his house he’d snatched up a black face mask and once the cemetery comes into view, Seokjin fishes it out of the pocket of his hoodie, securing the handles over his ears, pulling the mask up and over his mouth and nose. Then, he pulls his hoodie up and over his hair. He stays well away and already has a list of vantage points that he can keep watch by without having to stick to one for too long.

He hangs around near a bus stop, looking around as if he’s waiting for a bus that seems to never come. He earns a few looks that he registers but ignores them all. He moves from the bus stop after a few hours.

His next vantage point is by a lamppost somewhere near the cemetery. He has his phone out and pressed to his ear and he’s having a conversation to absolutely no one at all. He talks for a few hours like that, talking about everything and anything the layers of bullshit around the gold in his mind can come up with.

When Seokjin was fifteen, he’d gotten his first job walking dogs. He would go over to the home of the couple who lived a few blocks down at seven thirty in the morning, take the dog for a walk for half an hour before returning the dog to his owner and then heading to school. On one of those walks he had accidentally let go of Bom’s leash and he ran off trying to chase down a squirrel that had somehow pissed him off. Seokjin scrambled to his feet and started running after them.

It was nearing eight, the time Seokjin was meant to bring Bom back to his owners and he still couldn’t locate the damn dog, and he was just about to drop to the ground and let his legs rest when he heard the tell-tale barking that could only belong to Bom. He looked up and saw Bom, his leash held by a dude who looked like he could be a K-pop idol – who might’ve just jumped through a bush to grab Bom because he had a twig and three leaves stuck in his hair.

But that K-pop idol-looking dude with foliage in his hair and dirt on his school uniform holding Bom’s leash was all the fifteen-year-old Seokjin needed to confirm that he was undeniably and irrevocably gay. He’d skirted around the idea that he may have been for a long, long time before then, but that guy was the nail that drove that idea home.

He’d thanked the guy profusely, introduced himself and Bom, and he’d wanted to speak to the guy, Minhyuk, more, but Minhyuk had to return home and clean himself up before heading to school.

The next day however, at seven forty-five in the morning, Minhyuk was waiting for him in the neighbourhood. Well, he said he was waiting for Bom, but whatever. The two of them sat on the curb with the sun still barely peaking over the horizon and the sky still a very pale, early blue behind the tops of the houses as they scratched behind Bom’s ears and chatted together before they needed to head off to school.

Minhyuk was nineteen and in his final year of high school. He was going to study veterinary science at university and Seokjin had asked if that was why he put his neck on the line to capture Bom the day before, and Minhyuk had laughed and said it was just because he’s a good guy.

This quickly became their morning ritual. They never spoke about it. Minhyuk would just stand up, brush himself off, say see you and then go, prompting Seokjin to realise that he needs to go, too. And then the next morning Seokjin would find Minhyuk waiting for him on the curb, he would sit down with him, they would scratch Bom’s ear and feed him treats while talking about anything and everything.

And then the day before Minhyuk was due to move out of his parents’ home to move into his dorm near his university, he gave Seokjin a hug and wished him all the best. Seokjin blurted out that he loved him and wanted to be with him.

“Ah,” Seokjin says out loud, repeating the words Minhyuk had uttered over a decade ago, “thank you. I’m flattered, but I’m not attracted to guys.”

He pretends to hang up on whoever he was pretending to have a phone call with. He stares at the screen of his phone for a brief second before he returns his gaze to the entrance of the cemetery to continue his sentry work.

“Was that the story of your first love?”

Seokjin spins on his heel, almost losing his grip on his phone as he does, and he comes face to face with Namjoon.

There’s a dark, sombre expression on his face that Seokjin doesn’t recognise. He presses his lips together and stuffs his phone into his pocket. “What are you doing here?” he asks slowly, his voice level and flat.

“Watching you. Everyone’s worried about you and why you’re not answering any calls or texts. And you’re not turning up to work, either. So I decided to follow you and watch what you’ve been doing.”

Seokjin’s hand around his phone clenches tightly. He licks his lips. “How long have you been watching me for?” he asks, furrowing his brows.

“Last two days,” Namjoon responds, his eyes unwavering in the way he stares at Seokjin, never once breaking their gaze.

Connections in Seokjin’s brain come alive with electricity, sparking like livewire in the midst of the haze that was starting to settle in between every sulcus and gyrus of his brain. He swallows, hard, his throat suddenly becoming dry. He licks his lips. “It’s you,” Seokjin says as he shuts down every protesting thought in his mind. “You’re the one I’ve been waiting for. The bouquets stopped coming because I started keeping watch. Who else could it be, but you?”

“Have you lost your mind?” Namjoon asks, the pitch of his voice lowering slightly. He doesn’t sound angry, but Seokjin can see the creases between his brows, he can see the way his fists are clenched.

It doesn’t faze him, though. “I lost my mind years ago,” Seokjin laughs. “I’m cursed, and everything I touch turns to shit.”

“I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about,” Namjoon says calmly, “but let’s go home so that we can talk and be reasonable. Okay?”

Seokjin shakes his head. “No,” he firms, taking a step back. “Who else is in on this? Yoongi? He’s in a position to take my little brother’s life. Or what if it’s those two kids that Jeongguk is dating? Who else are you working with?”

The creases between Namjoon’s brows deepen, his jaw pulls taut. “You’re being ridiculous, Seokjin-ssi. Why would they want to hurt you? Why would I want to hurt you?”

“I don’t know,” Seokjin spits as he takes another step back. His shoulder blades hit a tree.

“Seokjin-ssi, please. Calm down,” Namjoon beseeches, taking another step forward. “Think logically. You’re good at that, right? You’re the best attorney I know. You’re the reason I-“

“I’m the reason why you wanted to be in criminal law. And I’m the reason why you wanted to work at our law firm, and why you refused to quit even though I made your life hell. You made so many complaints about me. I- I’m glad I didn’t let you confess to me. It would’ve been a lie. You don’t love me. You want to mur-“

“Seokjin-ssi,” Namjoon’s voice drops. “That’s enough.”

Seokjin curls his hands into fists that shiver by his sides and he bites down on his lower lip to stop them from quivering. He bites, hard.

“Do you really believe I killed Jang Jaewon? Hong Haejoo? That’s just-“ he scoffs in derision, “the most ridiculous shit I’ve ever heard.”

“C-can you prove that you didn’t?” Seokjin spits back, but his voice is quiet and small, unstable and tinged with a fear he can’t curb. He holds onto the bark of the tree behind him, anchoring him as his knees start to feel weak. “You were the one who told me about the red spider lilies. You were the one who solved the riddle in the first crime scene. And the second anonymous letter. You- you were in a perfect position to pull all of that off.”

Namjoon’s jaw pulls taut as he stares into Seokjin’s eyes, a mere few metres away. There are people walking by, minding their own business and getting on with their lives while Seokjin feels like his life is crumbling and rotting away. The water is up to his neck, now, and Seokjin has lost all hope he might’ve had about escaping the island he’s stranded on. The water is up to his neck and it’s weighing down on him, making it hard to breathe. “Seokjin-ssi,” Namjoon utters lowly, “if you seriously believe what you’re claiming, then I will calmly prove to you why you’re wrong. Let’s go back to my apartment. Or yours. Whatever.”

Seokjin shakes his head. “No. We’ll go to a café. Where there’s lots of people.”

“Fine,” Namjoon huffs. “There’s one just a few blocks down. Follow me.”

He turns on his heel without confirming whether Seokjin was going to follow or not. He just starts walking, and Seokjin has half the mind to turn tail and run like the wind. But before he can put that plan into action, his feet start moving. The concrete ground feels like wet, waterlogged sand that slows him down and tries to swallow him whole. He keeps moving nonetheless, following Namjoon, keeping his eyes on Namjoon’s back. His heart seems to slow down.

They walk into the first café Namjoon sees, and Seokjin follows him to the corner of the quaint shop, to a small table flanked by two cosy looking armchairs facing each other. Namjoon takes a seat at one and stares up at Seokjin blankly until Seokjin lowers himself and sits at the other.

“What do you want to order?” Namjoon asks as he turns his head to stare at the menu boards at the front of the café, his eyes flitting back and forth between possible choices. When Seokjin looks over, he realises that he can read the names of the hot beverages, but he can’t read the prices.

“I don’t want anything,” Seokjin replies, returning his gaze to Namjoon’s side profile.

“Are you sure? This time I won’t complain about fetching coffee for you. I won’t even charge you for it.”

Seokjin just stares at Namjoon, who feels the stare and turns his head back to face Seokjin.

“Suit yourself,” he says as he pushes himself up off the armchair and heads over to the counter.

Seokjin stuffs his hand down his pocket and fishes out his phone while Namjoon is at the counter, relaying his order to the barista with his back to Seokjin. He unlocks the device and looks at all the calls he’s missed, all the texts he’s been ignoring. He opens up his chat with Jeongguk.

To: Jeongguk
come to my place when u finish work

He pockets the phone and stares at Namjoon’s back, his brows furrowed and causing a headache to brew behind his forehead, until Namjoon turns around and Seokjin quickly looks away. He stares at the table in front of him until Namjoon returns with a coffee and a muffin. “The muffin is for you,” he says. “You like chocolate chip, don’t you?”

Seokjin licks his lips and pretends he doesn’t see the muffin.

Namjoon takes a sip of his coffee and stares at Seokjin over the top of his cup. Seokjin stares back and feels something twist in the pit of his stomach, but he ignores that, too. Namjoon lowers the cup and leans back in the armchair. “On December the thirteenth, I was at work. From eight-thirty in the morning to five. I didn’t leave the building for lunch. If you don’t remember that far back, I’m sure CCTV will jog your memory. Jang Jaewon was murdered at two in the afternoon. I couldn’t have killed him.”

Seokjin’s throat goes dry and he wishes that he’d ordered something to drink, but he doesn’t let that show. He just licks his lips and keeps his gaze strong and unwavering.

“On the twenty-third, I was at work, again, from eight-thirty until five. I had lunch with Jisoo. I went straight home, packed, and got on the train at six to head back to Ilsan to spend Christmas with my parents. Again, if you don’t believe me I can give you proof. That I didn’t kill Hong Haejoo, either.”

For a few strained moments, neither of them speak. Namjoon lifts his cup of coffee again to take small, tentative sips as he allows the soft murmuring from the other patrons fill the silence between them.

Seokjin reaches forward and takes the muffin in his hands. He breaks off a small piece from the top and slowly puts it in his mouth. He chews slowly, and swallows slowly.

“What else do I need to prove to you?” Namjoon asks when Seokjin continues to stay silent. “That I don’t have any intentions or desires to kill you or your brother? That even though you’re a pain in my ass, I do truly love you?”

Suddenly, the muffin has lost all flavour and Seokjin can’t taste the sweetness of it. He snaps his head up from the confectionary to stare, wide-eyed, at Namjoon, who looks just as calm and collected as he had when he’d sat down with his coffee. “Y-you-“

“Hmm? You want me to elaborate?” Namjoon raises his brows. “Alright, since you insist. You’re smart, you’re kind, you’re funny, you’re strong, you’re all kinds of beautiful. I would follow you to the ends of the earth. You’re a little bit insane and I’m pretty sure you were dropped on the head as a child, but whatever.”

Seokjin’s bottom lip quivers lightly before he bites down on it to still it. His hands curl around the armrests.

“Do you believe me? Or do you need more convincing?”

“You’re an ass,” Seokjin mutters in response. “You can’t just end your confession like that.”

“How was I meant to end it?”

He flicks his eyes up to meet Namjoon’s, but instead he hones in on the light, almost subtle smile tugging on one corner of his lips. Then, he parts those lips and his tongue peaks out to lick them. Seokjin swallows, hard, and returns his gaze to Namjoon’s eyes that feel like they’re burning holes through his skin. He quickly looks back down at the muffin he’d almost completely forgotten about, and he snatches it back up, stuffing the rest of it in his mouth as he quickly and efficiently as he can. Then, he pushes himself up off the armchair, turns on his heel, and heads out of the café. Namjoon jumps up to his feet and follows after.

His arms pump back and forth as he strides through the neighbourhood, powerwalking back towards his apartment. He kind of wants to run, to sprint, but he knows that Namjoon who’s following behind him will start running to and he doesn’t really want to be chased, right now. Well, he’s not opposed to being chased, per se, but his mind is still a groggy mess and there are neurons in his brain synapsing with other neurons they have no business synapsing with. He can tell that the connections his brain pieced together in the past hour or so were completely wrong, he knows that he’d completely jumped to conclusions and that all those connections are now detaching and trying their best to find something else to anchor to, and amidst his confusion he really does not want to be chased. In case he accidentally feels something he shouldn’t, right now. Like fear.

Namjoon follows him all the way to his apartment, and only when Seokjin reaches his front door he turns around and faces him. He’s a little breathless even though he didn’t run. “Why are you still by my side?” he asks, his voice thin and strained. “I’m a piece of shit. All I ever do is cause you trouble.”

“Yeah, you do.”

He scoffs and punches him in the shoulder. “You weren’t meant to agree.”

“What was I meant to do? Kiss you?”

Seokjin licks his lips and looks down at Namjoon’s shoes, feeling some unwanted warmth growing in his cheeks, his neck.

“Where’s all your bravado gone? You used to be so shameless,” Namjoon snorts. “Or was that all fake?”

“No.”

“Then look at me,” Namjoon orders, his voice turning quiet. Seokjin looks up from Namjoon’s shoes and meets his eyes. “And tell me if you want me to kiss you.”

“I’m your superior.”

“That’s great. Answer my question.”

Seokjin swallows, hard. He looks down at the space between himself and Namjoon, at the way Namjoon is keeping just enough distance for Seokjin to feel comfortable. He knows, just by looking at this space between them, that if Seokjin told him to go, then Namjoon would go. He knows that if he doesn’t say anything, Namjoon wouldn’t assume he wants to be kissed. He knows, and it hurts him to admit it to himself, that he was wrong to ever doubt Namjoon’s sincerity. He doesn’t know why Namjoon is still here and why he still wants to be with Seokjin, but Seokjin is tired and his feet are anchored in the sand that’s holding him back, and he wonders if asking for help would free him. So he gives it a shot.

“Kiss me.”

Namjoon licks his lips and steps forward, into Seokjin’s apartment, closing the door behind him. He reaches forward and takes Seokjin’s cheeks into his hands, cupping them fully. For a brief second Seokjin wonders if he’d made a mistake yet again, if this was the wrong thing to do, if this would only crush the pieces of his broken heart into dust he has no hope of gluing back together later down the line. The numbers above Namjoon’s head warn him of that.

Seokjin ignores the warning, and he leans forward. Namjoon takes that as his final cue and he comes forward, kissing Seokjin fully on the lips. Seokjin reaches up and grabs Namjoon’s wrists as he starts to take steps backwards, into his apartment, bringing Namjoon in with him. His hands that were clasped around Namjoon’s wrists now reach upwards and circle around Namjoon’s neck, draping around him, and Namjoon lets go of his cheeks to wrap his arms around Seokjin’s waist. He pulls, making Seokjin tiptoe as they press their torsos together.

He’s breathing heavily when Namjoon pulls back, even though they’d barely done anything, had just pressed their lips together and nothing more. Namjoon slowly loosens his hold around Seokjin’s waist until his hands settle on either side of him, pushing, pushing, until he pushes down and Seokjin drops. His bed materialises under his ass and he gasps like he hadn’t even realised he’d arrived in his bedroom. He puts his hands behind him, planting his palms into the mattress, and looks up as Namjoon stands over him.

“Is this okay?” he asks as he leans over and holds Seokjin’s waist again.

Seokjin nods, and Namjoon lifts Seokjin up just enough to move him back, pushing him down until he’s lying on his back and Namjoon moves over him, his forearms flat against the mattress on either side of Seokjin’s shoulders. And he slowly lowers himself as Seokjin angles his face upwards.

His stomach rumbles, loudly and achingly, and Namjoon rolls off Seokjin, onto the bed besides him, and he laughs out loud. He clutches his stomach as he laughs while Seokjin clutches his stomach in hunger. He pouts. “It’s not that funny.”

“It is,” Namjoon wheezes. “It’s so you. I ain’t even mad.”

“Stop laughing and get me some food.”

Namjoon turns on his side and props his head up on his hand. He looks down at Seokjin and smiles lightly. “Yes, sir. I’m feeling chicken, how about you?”

His stomach rumbles again. “Yeah. Chicken sounds great.”

Namjoon smiles down at him for a brief moment before he sits upright and then pushes himself up off the bed. Seokjin remains lying down across it, staring up at the ceiling as he listens to Namjoon’s footsteps moving away from him. Then, he hears Namjoon speaking on the phone to order their food.

Seokjin brings his hand up, slowly, lethargically, and touches the tips of his fingers to his lips. They’re soft and warm and a little plumper after kissing Namjoon. He licks his lips and they don’t taste like his own. His fingers curl inwards and he squeezes his hand into a fist. Seokjin wonders if this was a mistake, too. If he should’ve said no to Namjoon. He keeps trying to tell himself that it was a mistake, that he shouldn’t have kissed Namjoon, but the rapidly growing knot of nerves in his stomach forms a very strong case against his doubt.

“Take a nap,” Namjoon tells him as he returns to the bedroom, pocketing his phone. “I’ll wake you when the food arrives.”

“I don’t want to sleep,” Seokjin props himself up on his forearms.

“You look like you haven’t slept in days. You look ridiculous.”

Seokjin pushes his bottom lip out and pushes his glasses up his nose. “You said I’m beautiful.”

“I also said you’re insane, which is just as true.”

With a huff, Seokjin drops back against his bed and closes his eyes, turning to the side. He curls in on himself, pretending like he’s going to get any kind of sleep between now and their chicken arriving. The mattress depresses with Namjoon’s weight when he perches himself at the end of it, and Seokjin listens to him sigh heavily.

He listens to Namjoon’s slow, sombre breathing. In, out. A deep inhale, a shallow exhale. Seokjin can’t see his face right now but he’s imagining it. He cracks open his eyelids and looks over his shoulder to glare at Namjoon’s back. He can’t see his expression, but he can see his lifespan. Forty-four days left.

“Hey, Namjoon,” Seokjin whispers out into the quiet.

“Yeah?”

“Do you have any secrets?”

“Don’t we all?”

“Answer my question.”

Namjoon turns around, twisting at the waist and looking over his shoulder at Seokjin lying down on his bed. “I do have secrets.”

“Tell me,” Seokjin implores, “your secrets.”

“Tell me yours, first.”

Seokjin swallows, hard, and his doorbell rings. Namjoon rises to his feet and relieves the mattress of his weight, heading to the door to answer while Seokjin concentrates his efforts on sitting up. He shimmies himself to the edge of the bed and stands. As Namjoon carries the bags of chicken in he walks past Seokjin’s bedroom and gestures with a flick of his chin for Seokjin to follow him. So he does, and they walk into the living room where he sets the bags down and pulls out the boxes of chicken onto the coffee table.

“Time to dig in,” Namjoon announces as he sits down in front of the table and opens the boxes up. Seokjin sits down opposite him and he tucks his legs under him before he reaches forward and grabs a wing to sink his teeth into.

Namjoon cracks open the two cans of soda he’d ordered along with the chicken and slides one across the table to Seokjin.

They don’t talk much. The air between them is heavy with the smell of chicken grease and the sounds of teeth ripping into crispy coatings fill the silence between them. Seokjin isn’t quite sure if it’s awkward or not, but he only really notices it when he decides he’s had enough, and he stops eating.

“You’re done?” Namjoon asks curiously, brows raised in disbelief.

Seokjin nods.

“I’m sure you can eat more than that,” Namjoon prods him, gesturing at the few chicken wings still left in the box.

“I can, don’t get me wrong,” Seokjin defends himself as he takes a sip of his soda, “I just don’t, you know, want to look like I’m three months pregnant.”

Namjoon shrugs one shoulder. “Who cares? It’ll disappear in a few hours.”

“I don’t want to wait a few hours,” Seokjin protests, pushing his bottom lip out as he sulks.

“What are you in such a hurry for?” Namjoon asks flatly as he goes to pick up another wing. When Seokjin looks up at him, his lips pressed together like he’s trying to hold back his tongue, Namjoon flicks his eyes back at him. The suddenness of it causes Seokjin to hiccup. And then, Namjoon offers a quick and infuriating half-smile before he gets to work on his chicken wing. He finishes it off before he speaks again. “I’ll love you whether you have rock hard abs or a soft squidgy tummy.”

The edge of the table suddenly becomes very fascinating. Seokjin pokes his finger against it and stares at it intently.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you this shy. It’s cute.”

“I’m just- I’m just not used to this. To you. Being like this, I mean.”

“This, being… affectionate? Open?”

Seokjin nods.

“Yeah, well, who do you have to blame for that? Meaningless harassment, inappropriate flirting, refusing to accept my feelings… hmm. Sounds like that was all you.”

“Well,” Seokjin huffs before he pauses because he doesn’t really have much to say in the way of a rebuttal. “How was I supposed to know you liked me? You never showed it.”

“I can show it to you now, if you want.”

“What will you do to show it?”

Namjoon purses his lips and pretends he’s in deep thought. “I would go over to you and pick you up. Then I would carry you to your bedroom. Finally, I’d fuck the living daylights out of you.”

“Hmm,” comes Seokjin’s response, a tight-throated sound that he tries to stifle by readjusting himself at the table. He feels himself grow warm and he presses his lips together to contain himself, but he can feel himself falling apart at the seams. He’s doing a terrible job at holding himself together but he wants Namjoon to think that he has some semblance of control in all of this. “You called yourself a romantic, didn’t you?”

“I am,” Namjoon replies quickly, planting his palms into the table and pushing himself up, leaning over it. “If I had a flower for every time I thought of you, I could walk through my garden forever.”

“Disgusting,” Seokjin spits. “What are you waiting for? Pick me up already.”

A small and satisfied smile graces Namjoon’s lips. “Yes, sir,” he obliges before he ducks his head and stands to his full height, walking around the table to reach Seokjin’s side. Seokjin looks up at him just as Namjoon reaches down and hooks his hand under Seokjin’s knee, his other circling his shoulders. Then, he hoists Seokjin up.

Seokjin breathes out a quick gasp like he wasn’t expecting it, like he wasn’t sure if Namjoon would comply with it, but he quickly reaches up and loops his arms around Namjoon’s neck as he walks, with Seokjin in his arms, through the living room and towards the bedroom.

And their eyes – throughout the short but heavy moment passing through rooms – are locked onto each other. Namjoon stares at Seokjin and Seokjin stares right back, his breath bated and waiting, waiting, for the moment Namjoon reaches his bed and leans over, dropping Seokjin onto the mattress. He comes down, too, one forearm propping him off besides Seokjin’s head, his other hand running down the curve of Seokjin’s waist.

“Things are getting really crazy,” Namjoon murmurs, “and everyone’s stressed as hell. I haven’t felt this relaxed in months.”

“Speak for yourself,” Seokjin scoffs as he turns his head off to the side to pointedly look away from Namjoon, whose face is so close it’s a miracle he isn’t blushing as hard as Seokjin knows he is.

Namjoon pulls his hand up and uses his index finger to touch Seokjin’s cheek and brings him back to face him. “Are you sure you want this?” he whispers into the space between their lips.

“Yes,” Seokjin breathes.

“If you tell me to stop, I will stop,” Namjoon reassures him before he closes the space between them and kisses him again, rolling his body down onto Seokjin. Seokjin leans upwards to accept the kiss, his arms coming up to hold Namjoon’s body, his hands roaming over Namjoon’s back.

And suddenly, Namjoon’s hands push under Seokjin’s body and snake around his ribcage, hugging him tightly, and then he’s on his knees pulling Seokjin up and moving them further up the bed. He lets go of Seokjin and he hangs over Seokjin, hands bracketing his head, knees bracketing his thighs, looking down at him with a dark and unreadable expression on his face that Seokjin isn’t sure if he’s ever seen before – and it lights a fire deep in the pit of his stomach.

“Has anyone ever told you you’re the most beautiful thing in this entire world?” Namjoon asks, his voice quiet and low.

“Literally all the time,” Seokjin answers before he leans upwards and throws his arms around Namjoon’s neck, tightening them, pulling him down. He slots their lips together and works Namjoon’s mouth open, licking in. He pulls apart for a moment, pulls in a breath, and moves back in to kiss him again.

A small voice far in the back of Seokjin’s mind protests quietly. It tells him to stop, to hold Namjoon at a distance, to keep him safe. That the closer Seokjin gets to him, the more it’ll hurt when he has to let go. That when the sea finally swallows him, there’ll be a raw and gaping wound too big to heal and fix itself. The voice keeps on protesting but Seokjin pushes it further away, cramming it into the recesses of his brain, and he tries to pretend it’s not there.

Seokjin has made many, many mistakes. He’s twenty-eight and he can’t remember a single time in his life that he’s ever done something right. He can’t remember a single time that he wasn’t afraid of inevitable consequences of actions he’d undertaken after outright ignoring the warning signs. He can’t remember a single time he felt even a modicum of satisfaction and relief.

Except now.

His hands grip onto Namjoon’s hips as the younger male fits them together, as he rolls his hips down onto Seokjin and continues to kiss deeply, urgently. Seokjin’s fingers wander curiously along the hem of his sweater, edging along the soft material of it, and then he slips his hands underneath. Slides his palms up the sides of Namjoon’s ribcage, pushing his sweater up.

Namjoon pulls apart from Seokjin and they both draw in a deep inhale as Namjoon sits up, his knees bracketing Seokjin’s hips, and he covers Seokjin’s hands with his own. He gives them a squeeze before he takes the hem of his sweater and in a slow, heavy movement, he pulls the sweater off.

The sweater is discarded onto the floor off the side of the bed just as Namjoon leans back down to kiss Seokjin, but Seokjin’s mind is elsewhere, he’s barely kissing back, his fingers digging into the thin layer of fat under Namjoon’s skin just before he becomes firm.

And his hands move to Namjoon’s chest before he starts to massage his pectorals.

Namjoon pulls back once again but leaves just a hairs width of space between their lips. He looks down at Seokjin through low-lidded eyes. “What is it with you and my chest?” he asks quietly, his voice low enough to send shivers down Seokjin’s sides.

“Anime girl titties,” Seokjin responds just as quietly, and he continues to massage the muscles of Namjoon’s chest.

A low chuckle reverberates through Namjoon’s ribcage. “You’re a nutcase,” he teases, pulling back even further. Seokjin parts his hot, swollen lips to complain but Namjoon shuts him up as he grabs the hem of the hoodie Seokjin wears and pushes it up, taking the t-shirt underneath along with it. Seokjin helps the process, and within seconds he’s shirtless, too. He reaches up to take Namjoon’s face in his hands and continue kissing him with everything he can muster, but Namjoon has other plans. He lowers himself down and takes one of Seokjin’s nipples in between his lips.

Seokjin gasps and leans his head back as Namjoon licks at his nipple, his hands and fingers teasing his other, and Seokjin has never felt something quite like this before. He’s had sex before, sure. He’s topped and he’s bottomed, he’s given oral and he’s received it, but he’s never had his nipples played with before. And he’s not sure why he’s never experienced it before, but it feels fucking phenomenal and he can’t, for the love of himself, hold back the moan that escapes his lips.

“That feels good?” Namjoon mutters against his chest.

“Mm,” Seokjin sounds.

He feels Namjoon’s thick lips stretching into a smile against the skin on his chest and he presses his lips together, tightly, to contain himself somewhat. His hands find Namjoon’s head and he runs his fingers through Namjoon’s soft hair, gripping in as he squirms his legs a little against the bedsheets. Namjoon continues to tease his nipples with his fingers and his tongue until Seokjin releases another moan, and he leans back for air.

“That wasn’t fair,” Seokjin breathes, letting go of Namjoon’s hair to plant his forearms against the bed, propping himself up. He then wraps his arms around Namjoon’s torso. “I’m the one who should be worshipping your tits.”

“Go ahead,” Namjoon allows as Seokjin to connect his mouth to his chest, and he begins to suck on Namjoon’s nipple. He swirls his tongue around the bud, flicking at it, and he uses his other hand to massage his pectoral. He squeezes on it, he massages it, and then he hears Namjoon sigh. He releases Namjoon’s nipples from his lips and leans back a little to see him with his head thrown back, his neck stretched out in front of him.

But he quickly leans back in and meets Seokjin’s eyes. He adjusts himself on Seokjin’s lap and moves in to kiss him again, but there’s something else on Seokjin’s mind. He snakes one hand up Namjoon’s back, cards his fingers through Namjoon’s hair at the back of his head, and grips on tightly. Then, he pulls Namjoon’s head back, forcing his jaw up, exposing his throat. He leans up and presses his parted lips to Namjoon’s throat, kissing hard and urgent.

“Seokjin…” Namjoon moans. His own hands are gripping at the base of Seokjin’s skull, fingers pressing in to his nape desperately. “Your lips…”

Seokjin pulls back and looks up at Namjoon. “My pornstar lips?” he asks with a cheeky smile.

“You remember that, huh?” Namjoon angles his jaw back down, meeting Seokjin’s eyes.

He nods in response. “I remember everything when it comes to you.”

“Even my complaints?”

“Especially your complaints, you little shit.”

Seokjin presses his hands against Namjoon’s chest again, but this time he pushes Namjoon off of him, forcing him onto his back on the mattress. Seokjin comes up, twisting at the waist to roll over Namjoon, straddling Namjoon’s hips, and slowly, maddeningly, he lowers himself onto Namjoon’s crotch. He steadies himself with his hands on Namjoon’s chest again, squeezing his pectorals again for good measure, and just because he can.

Then, he grinds his hips down, and his weight rams into Namjoon in all the right places, a rush of something unearthly, something so heavy and dizzying, runs up and down Seokjin’s body. He feels all his blood racing downwards, his head feels light and uncoordinated, but he grinds down again, and again. He feels so hot, he’s so turned on, and he can’t stop.

Namjoon groans, his hands gripping onto Seokjin’s hips, fingers pressing in hard, desperately. He rocks his head back and his jaw goes up, exposing his throat once again. Seokjin bites down on his lip as he rolls his hips again, and he feels his hardening cock colliding with Namjoon’s separated by their clothes that suddenly feel offensive to keep on.

“Take your pants off,” Seokjin orders.

“Can’t,” Namjoon mumbles. “There’s a big heavy person sitting on me.”

Seokjin scoffs and lifts himself up slightly on his knees. Namjoon takes this opportunity to sit upright, shimmying himself back on the bed, his hands still grasping Seokjin’s hips, until his back hits the headrest and he’s brought Seokjin along with him. Then, he gets to work on pulling down Seokjin’s sweatpants and boxers. Seokjin raises one knee at a time to help Namjoon discard them onto the floor.

“Your pants,” Seokjin reminds Namjoon as the younger male suddenly becomes transfixed on Seokjin’s goods. He reaches forward to take Seokjin’s cock into his hands but Seokjin quickly intercepts, grabbing Namjoon’s wrists and pulling them up, pinning them onto the headboard on either side of Namjoon’s head. “Uh-uh. Not yet.”

“Fuck,” Namjoon breathes out.

Seokjin leans in and presses a soft, hot kiss to Namjoon’s cheek as he lets go of his wrists and finds the front of Namjoon’s jeans, unzipping them, pulling them down his legs. Namjoon quickly kicks them off.

“Fuck, Seokjin-“ Namjoon pants quietly towards Seokjin’s neck as he wraps his arms around Seokjin’s ribcage, pulling their bodies together, warm skin flush against warm skin. “You’re so beautiful. You’re so fucking gorgeous.”

“You too,” Seokjin breathes against Namjoon’s ear. “Do you know how hard it’s been not to grab you and have my way with you all this time?”

“Pity I thought you were only joking.”

“How could you think I was joking?” Seokjin grazes his teeth along the shell of Namjoon’s ear. “You’re gorgeous. You’re so, so pretty. And smart. And kind. And hard-working.”

Seokjin grinds his hips down once again, but this time there’s no barriers in between them, nothing to stop his skin from rubbing against Namjoon’s skin, nothing to stop Seokjin’s cock from rubbing against Namjoon’s stomach, nothing to stop Namjoon’s cock from rubbing against the inside of Seokjin’s thigh. “Do you have, ah-“ Namjoon pauses to pull in a sharp inhale, “do you have condoms? Lube?”

“Yeah,” Seokjin replies quickly. “Check in my nightstand.”

Namjoon leans over to the side and blindly fumbles about until he finds one of the drawers in Seokjin’s nightstand and pulls it open. Struggles and blunders about until he finds what they’re looking for.

He takes one of the condom packets into his hand, the bottle of lube in the other. “Why do your condoms look dusty but your lube looks fine?”

“You know damn well why.”

Namjoon laughs. “How long has it been since you fucked something that wasn’t your own hand?”

“Don’t make me call the police on you.”

Namjoon laughs again, and Seokjin has half the mind to climb off his lap and pull all his clothes back on. “The condoms are still in date, so I’m good to go so long as you are.”

“Yeah. I’m ready.”

Namjoon smiles up at Seokjin and flicks his eyes back down as he fiddles with the bottle of lube, snapping open the lid, and then pouring a generous amount of the slick liquid onto his fingers. Then, he reaches around Seokjin, and Seokjin leans forward, connecting his lips to Namjoon’s neck. He wraps his arms tightly around Namjoon’s shoulders.

Then, he feels one of Namjoon’s slicked up fingers sliding along his perineum as he kisses and sucks on a patch of Namjoon’s skin, but when those fingers keep skirting about, teasing him, Seokjin whines a small noise of complaint against Namjoon’s neck. He hears Namjoon laugh softly just before he feels Namjoon’s finger pressing against his rim, and slowly but firmly, pushes his finger in.

Seokjin holds his breath in his chest as Namjoon pushes his finger deeper in, slowly pulls it out, and then back in. In, and out, until Seokjin releases his breath and he rolls his hips down on Namjoon’s lap, urging him to continue. So Namjoon pulls his finger out and then presses the tips of two fingers to Seokjin’s rim, and slowly he works his way in. The sensations Namjoon’s fingers bring cause Seokjin’s legs to shiver, and his fingers dig deep into the muscles of Namjoon’s back, and when Namjoon crooks his fingers inside him, Seokjin gasps and feels his body tense up, and he shivers.

Namjoon continues, moving his fingers a little faster now, working Seokjin open slowly but surely, until Seokjin is panting and he can feel his skin growing warmer and warmer, but Namjoon comes forward and presses his lips to Seokjin’s collarbones, licking at the sweat forming there. “You ready?” he whispers against Seokjin’s skin as he continues to push his fingers in and pull them out at an infuriating pace.

“Yes, yes, god-“ Seokjin gasps as Namjoon crooks his fingers inside him again, hitting his prostate just right and causing another full-bodied quake. “Hurry up and- and fuck me.”

With another laugh, Namjoon pulls his fingers out and grabs the condom he’d left on the mattress behind him, and he carefully pulls the packaging apart before he rolls the condom onto his cock. He grabs a hold of the bottle of lube and pours some more into his hand which he uses to lubricate his cock. Then, he looks up at Seokjin through low-lidded and heavy eyes. “I would’ve never thought, all those years ago when I saw you in that mock trial in university, that I would get to be with you like this. It’s amazing.”

“You know what else would be amazing? If you could shut up and put your dick to work. Or do you want me to do all the work?”

“That would be nice. Since you always make me do your work in the office.”

“Fine, watch me work.”

Seokjin raises his hips and lifts himself off Namjoon’s lap, and the younger male quickly adjusts himself, hands steadying his cock as Seokjin holds himself over, and when Namjoon grabs at his hips, he slowly lowers himself, working his cock inside him slowly, carefully.

But the burn and the stretch hits him altogether all the same, and Seokjin pulls in a sharp inhale as he continues to lower himself down onto Namjoon’s cock. He pauses when his entire body tenses up from the pressure and the pleasure, and he squeezes his eyes shut. He lets go of Namjoon’s shoulders and grabs onto the headboard on either side of Namjoon’s head, and then he continues lowering himself.

Then, finally, he’s sitting on Namjoon’s lap. For a moment, neither of them move, neither of them breathe evenly, and the silence is only broken by Namjoon choking out his breath. “God,” he pants, his voice high-strung, “fuck. Fuck. You’re so tight. Feels… feels so good.”

Seokjin parts his lips and releases his breath. “Mm,” he mumbles as he wills his thighs to obey him, and he slowly pushes himself up, up, until he’s no longer sitting in Namjoon’s lap. Then, he lowers himself again.

Namjoon groans and tips his head back against the headboard. “Seokjin. Fuck. Seokjin,” he pants out Seokjin’s name like it’s all he can think of, like it’s all he remembers right now. Seokjin moans in response, his hands squeezing tightly against the headboard because he doesn’t trust his limbs to stay strong right now. Namjoon brings his jaw back down and cracks his eyelids open to stare dazedly into Seokjin’s eyes. “You look so good… riding me.”

Seokjin is near breathless. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Namjoon confirms and squeezes Seokjin’s hips, his hands moving back, holding onto his backside. His hands continue to press in, to massage. He pulls Seokjin towards him slightly, and the sensations that spark lightning bolts up and down his body spur him into moving, into pushing himself up off Namjoon’s lap and down again, until he feels none of the burn and all of the pleasure from Namjoon’s thick cock moving in and out of him. He moves faster now, slamming himself down onto Namjoon’s lap, and suddenly there’s a string of colourful words leaving both of their lips as they try to contain everything within them.

“F-feel good?” Seokjin asks as he grinds down.

“Mm. Yes. I- I’m gonna… I’m gonna-“

“N-not yet,” Seokjin slows down a little. “Wanna get off with you.”

Namjoon understands immediately and fumbles about blindly until his hand finds the bottle of lube that had strayed away from them. He flicks the cap open and pours some into his hand, snapping the cap shut and throwing the bottle off to the side. He wraps his hand around Seokjin’s cock and begins to pump him up and down. Seokjin’s legs shiver again and he bites down on his lips to hold back the moan he wants to release, but he continues to fuck himself on Namjoon’s cock as Namjoon takes care of him. They both start to feel more and more desperate, moving faster, harder, and neither of them care anymore about how they sound until Seokjin can’t hold himself together anymore and he collapses on Namjoon’s lap while his orgasm ripples through him, spilling come onto Namjoon’s lap. Namjoon gasps as he gets off inside Seokjin, too, and his arms go limp.

Seokjin leans forward and rests his forehead against Namjoon’s. They breathe together, panting for air but sharing it between them all the same, until Seokjin thinks his breathing has become regular again. “That was…”

“Amazing.”

“Yeah,” Seokjin breathes.

They continue to pant and regain some of their strength for a few more moments until Namjoon shifts and shuffles under Seokjin, and he helps Seokjin up, pulling himself out of him. Seokjin leans back and rolls off him. Namjoon pulls the condom off him, tying it at the end, and he slowly swings his legs off the edge of the bed. “Let me go clean us up,” he tells Seokjin weakly as he disappears off to the bathroom. Seokjin listens to the sound of the taps turning on, of Namjoon washing something, and returning with a damp washcloth that he uses to clean Seokjin with. “Where do you keep your underwear and stuff?” he asks.

Seokjin points lethargically to one of his wardrobes. “The bottom one,” he indicates. Namjoon walks over to it, pulls the drawer open, and picks up two pairs of boxers.

“I’m borrowing one of your boxers, okay?”

“Yeah, sure.”

Seokjin props himself up against he headboard just enough so that he can look forward and watch Namjoon.

He’s naked from head to toe. His skin is a beautiful tan colour, glistening with sweat every time he moves and his muscles ripple under his skin. His shoulders are broad and his physique is sturdy, strong. He’s tall and his legs are impossibly long. The muscles in his thighs pull taught as he pulls a pair of Seokjin’s boxers onto himself, and then he turns around to face Seokjin with the other pair.

Namjoon isn’t particularly muscular- not like himself or Jeongguk, but he’s built like a truck all the same, thick in all the right places, muscle where it needs to be, fat where it looks absolutely beautiful on him. His pectoral muscles look delicious and firm, and if Seokjin wasn’t too tired right now he would want to bite them. He climbs onto the bed again and shimmies the pair of boxers onto Seokjin, dipping down to press a kiss to his collarbone before he pulls the covers up and over them. Seokjin shuffles in the bed until he drapes one arm over Namjoon’s stomach.

“You can put your hand on my tits. I know you want to,” he tells Seokjin, and Seokjin can’t hold back the laughter that bursts past his lips.

But he does exactly what Namjoon suggests, bringing his hand up to hold onto one side of Namjoon’s chest.

“So? You’ve been harassing me for a long time. Did I satisfy?” Namjoon asks cheekily.

“Hmm. I did all the work this time, so…”

“You wanted to.”

“Yeah, I did. It was good.”

“Just ‘good’? Was I at least better than Hoseok?”

Seokjin shivers. “Ew. Don’t mention that name to me. I will fire you.”

“Right,” Namjoon laughs and curves his arm over Seokjin, hugging him tightly. They tangle their legs together. “I love you. But you knew that already.”

“Mm. I love you too. You know that already.”

“What about… what about being with me? Do you want to be with me?”

“Like… in a committed relationship?”

“Yeah.”

Seokjin presses his lips together and listens to the beating of Namjoon’s heart in his chest while he stays silent for too long, because Namjoon shuffles and starts to loosen his arms around Seokjin.

“You… don’t want to be with me.”

“N-no, it’s not that,” Seokjin quickly rectifies, his arms around Namjoon tightening, refusing to let him go.

“Then what is it?”

“It’s just… it’s just not a good time.”

Namjoon stares up at the ceiling with a blank look on his face for what feels like way too long, and the clouds that were once fogging his mind start to come back. But he fights to keep his expression clear. Doesn’t want to poison the air with his bullshit, not now, not while Namjoon is in his arms like this. He wants to hold Namjoon to him, like this, forever and ever, but he knows that it’s impossible. He’s going to have to let go sometime.

Whether he can come back to Namjoon or not depends on whether Seokjin is successful in keeping him safe.

He props himself up on one forearm and leans over Namjoon, pressing a kiss to the corner of his mouth. “I love you, Namjoon. I have done for a long, long time. You’re more important to me than you know. But this… this just isn’t a good time.”

Namjoon angles his head slightly, looking up at Seokjin, their lips mere centimetres apart. “Why not?”

“I… can’t tell you.”

“Does this have to do with… those secrets you mentioned earlier?” Namjoon wonders softly, curiously.

Seokjin nods.

Namjoon turns his head back to look up at the ceiling again. He licks his lips. “I had a dream I saw you running through the woods. But you didn’t look afraid. You just looked really, really determined.”

“What was I running from? Or towards?” Seokjin asks quietly.

“I don’t know,” Namjoon replies, slowly closing his eyes as he runs a hand up Seokjin’s arm, his fingers trailing lightly along his skin. Then, he settles his hand on the side of Seokjin’s neck. “But I hope you know… I would do anything for you.”

He pulls Seokjin closer and presses his lips against Seokjin’s. It isn’t like their first kiss, or their second kiss, or any of the kisses shared between them when they were wrapped up in lust and love. This kiss is deep and weighted and filled with something dark and melancholy. It’s just lips against lips, closed mouthed and chaste, but it feels heavier than any of the kisses Seokjin has ever had before.

When he pulls away he looks deep into Seokjin’s eyes, brows drawn in resolve, eyes steeled. “I’ll wait for you. For when it is a good time. For when you’re ready. I’ll wait.”

Seokjin slides his hand over Namjoon’s cheek, smoothing his thumb over his cheekbone. “Thank you,” he whispers to Namjoon, and leans in one more time for another kiss before Namjoon tucks his face into the crook of his neck and shoulder, and they try to sleep.

But tonight, as all nights, Seokjin doesn’t sleep very well. He dreams of rushing to help that young girl when he was thirteen, of cradling the body that was dying in his arms, crying, wondering if there would ever be a way to change the numbers. He dreams of crying and looking into the face of the first person he’d ever witnessed the death of, and the face, this time, belongs to Namjoon.

His blood drips onto the concrete ground around them, staining it dark red. From the pool of blood, red spider lilies grow and bloom.

 

 

In the period that Seokjin had damn near lost his mind, had stopped coming to work in the hopes of catching red-handed the person leaving behind those wretched bouquets at his mother’s grave, he’d almost completely lost track of time. Seokjin doesn’t know how far he’d managed to fall, or how desperately he chased after something that already proved time and time again that it was in total control here.

Whoever it was, they chose victims that fit perfectly into their little game. Victims whose initials looked like positions they could be killed in. Victims who had body parts taken from them just to send a profound message. And for some reason, Seokjin was in the middle of it, even though Yoongi didn’t quite believe him.

But then again, why should he? Seokjin has damn near lost his mind. He’s fallen so far that he doesn’t even know how he’s meant to think, how to pretend his mind isn’t half crumbled apart. All he knows is that he’s chasing after something that he might not ever reach. He’s chasing, desperately, something that he knows is chasing him right back. And it’s going to pick off Seokjin’s loved ones, one by one, before it gets to Seokjin.

He’s determined, so determined, to stop it. He will not stop chasing after it. He’d already burned to the ground the version of himself that was hesitant and uncertain, and he’s already risen from the ashes of his former self, determined to burn down everything in his path, but now he wonders if he’d burned away his logic, too. He has started down a path he can’t return from, and now he wonders if it was the right path to go down at all.

It’s the fourteenth of February. The days he spent with his mind half crumbling away seems to melt together into one indiscernible film-roll in his mind. It doesn’t feel like nineteen days had passed. It still surprises Seokjin to think about it. It doesn’t even feel real.

It only feels real when he walks into the office at five minutes past nine on the morning of the fourteenth and looks upon Namjoon, sitting at his desk, looking like everything good Seokjin was ever graced to know, with numbers floating above his head that say he has only thirty-five days left to live.

It feels like just yesterday they read ninety days. It feels like just last week they read sixty-one years.

Everything feels wrong. Seokjin’s starting to wonder if he’s not actually dreaming.

“You okay?” Namjoon asks, his brows raised curiously as Seokjin approaches his desk, limbs feeling heavier than usual to carry around.

“Mm. Yeah,” Seokjin mutters as he sits down on his chair.

“Have you spoken to Yoongi-ssi yet? He’s been bugging me about you.”

Seokjin adjusts himself in his chair and grumbles. “Tell him to piss off.”

“Seokjin-ssi. It’s serious,” Namjoon huffs.

“What does he want to talk about?”

“You,” Namjoon tells him, and Seokjin sits upright in his chair, looking across the office to meet Namjoon’s eyes. “He wants to talk to you about why you suddenly stopped coming to work and stopped answering everyone’s calls and texts. I mean, no matter how you look at that, it’s shady as fuck.”

“I tried to take matters into my own hand. Tell him that. Tell him he needs to focus on keeping Jeongguk safe, and that this isn’t the time to be suspicious of me.”

“Jeongguk is safe. Trust in the police a little more.”

Seokjin pushes his bottom lip out and stares down at his desk. “Whatever,” he huffs and continues to sulk for a few more minutes until Namjoon breaks the silence.

“It’s Valentine’s Day today,” he mentions nonchalantly. “Let’s go on a date.”

Seokjin looks up. “You’re more eager about this than I am. Even though I was the one who harassed you endlessly.”

“Like I said, I liked you sincerely from the very beginning. It’s not surprising that I’m eager. Is it a yes or a no to the date?”

“I told you-“

“Yeah, I know what you told me. We could just go to watch a movie. We don’t have to talk much. It doesn’t need to feel like a date,” Namjoon tries to reason. “You can even choose the movie we watch.”

“Fine, you got yourself a deal. We’re watching a documentary on the migration patterns of calliope hummingbirds.”

“What the fuck.”

“Take it or leave it, you bastard.”

“Jesus Christ. Alright, fine. We’ll watch whatever the fuck you just said.”

 

An hour after they leave work, Seokjin and Namjoon arrive at a nearby cinema, and they stand in the middle of the lobby trying to find a queue to join that isn’t too overcrowded by young couples. They finally decide to just jump the gun and join a queue and hope for the best.

“I’m not seeing this documentary about birds anywhere on the movie listings,” Namjoon purses his lip in deep thought as he scours every listing throughout the lobby.

“Yeah, I was chatting shit.”

Namjoon rolls his eyes. “I should’ve known. What do you want to watch instead?”

Seokjin squints at the movie listings, straining his eyes to make out the words on it. He skims through the titles aimlessly, knowing next to knowing about each of them. But his eyes fall upon one title that hits the spot, and Seokjin is convinced. “That one,” Seokjin points to the listing. “The Dude in Me.”

“Do you even know what it’s about?” Namjoon questions as they near the front of the queue.”

“Nope, but I hope it’s a porno.”

Namjoon just sighs and says nothing. They reach the front of the queue and Namjoon orders two tickets to the movie Seokjin had decided on along with overpriced popcorn and giant cups of soda. Seokjin takes out his card to pay. “Hey, I’m the one taking you out,” Namjoon stops him from paying.

“Yeah, but I’m older than you.”

“Act it, then. If you do, I’ll let you pay.”

Seokjin grumbles, but he’d be a liar if he didn’t say free snacks and a movie that is mostly like a porno was the best.

 

As it turned out, The Dude in Me wasn’t a porno. It was a movie about two guys swapping bodies with each other. Seokjin was disappointed at first, but he ended up enjoying the movie. Namjoon, on the other hand, fell asleep with his head on Seokjin’s shoulder. Seokjin would’ve pushed him off, but him being asleep meant Seokjin could eat all his snacks, too. Which he did. And when Namjoon woke up at the end, Seokjin convinced him that he’d eaten his snacks before falling asleep. Namjoon believed him.

And in the car going home, they talk about the movie even though Namjoon slept through most of it. Specifically, what they’d do if they swapped bodies with someone else.

“What if you swapped bodies with a girl?” Namjoon asks tiredly.

“Masturbate. Hook up with a guy. Apparently female orgasms feel better than male orgasms. And play with my boobs.”

“Do you ever have thoughts that aren’t dirty?”

“Of course not, don’t be ridiculous. What about you? What would you do if you swapped bodies with a girl?”

Namjoon pauses for a moment, his face turning blank. “Probably the same stuff you’d do,” he responds honestly, and Seokjin laughs. Namjoon laughs too. “What about… if the two of us swapped bodies? What would you do first?”

Seokjin glances over at Namjoon through the corners of his eyes, ever so briefly, and then they return to the road ahead. If he’d swapped bodies with Namjoon, the first thing he’d do is see how much time he has left. Or would that even work? If he swaps bodies with Namjoon, would he still have the ability to read lifespans? And even if he did, would his own lifespan become visible to him if he looked at his body?

He shakes his head; there’s no point mulling over this. It’ll never happen. “I’d play with my tits. Your tits,” is what Seokjin settles on saying. “What about you?”

His remark doesn’t faze Namjoon. “I would…”

“Look at me naked in the mirror? Admire my reflection all day long? Understandable.”

Namjoon laughs lightly as Seokjin pulls up outside Namjoon’s apartment. He turns to Namjoon.

“Alright. I’ll, uh, see you tomorrow,” Seokjin says as Namjoon unclips his seatbelt and frees himself.

“Yeah. See you tomorrow,” Namjoon returns, and just before he opens the passenger side door, he leans in towards Seokjin and gives him a peck on the cheek.

It catches him off guard and he pulls back, a hand over his cheek where Namjoon had stealthily kissed him. He watches, stunned, as Namjoon circles around the car, makes his way over to the front entrance of his apartment complex. Then, when he no longer sees Namjoon, he switches gears and drives back to his own.

That night, like all nights, he doesn’t sleep very well. The body dying in his arms has the face of Jeongguk. Red spider lilies grow and bloom from the blood-stained concrete.

 

On the night of the fifteenth, Seokjin gets another text from numbers he doesn’t recognise.

From: Unknown Number
Get ready, Seokjin.

From: Unknown Number
You’re more important than you know.

Seokjin stares at the screen, paused and tense. The numbers and letters seem to swim around, his vision starts to fluctuate, but he closes his eyes and breathes in deeply, breathing out deeply. When he opens his eyes, nothing has changed.

You’re more important to me than you know, Seokjin had told to Namjoon during the night they spent together.

He lowers himself onto his mattress where the two of them became intimate, where Seokjin allowed himself to lower his guards, to be vulnerable, to open up his heart and let it crumble. His hand smooths over the sheets.

He feels his heart break and turn to dust.

 

The skies are grey and gloomy on the morning of the sixteenth, and there are police officers standing guard outside the apartment Jeongguk lives in. There are officers in the area to boot. Seokjin knows that Taehyung and Jimin are in there, too, and that Jeongguk won’t be too bored cooped up in his apartment all day long. Seokjin instead joins the patrol because he can’t stand the thought of being anywhere else when his baby brother could possibly be a target of murder.

Namjoon and Hoseok are also helping out, but they’re inside the apartment. The skies are grey and gloomy and it looks like it could start raining at any given moment.

But Seokjin stays as he is, his mind buzzing at a mile per second, so fast that his hands are trembling in his pockets and he can’t stand still. He walks around the same spot for hours until he takes a twenty-minute break to eat and use a restroom.

He returns and continues to stand guard.

 

When night time rolls around and the skies turn dark, another officer comes to him and takes his post, urging him to get some rest. Seokjin doesn’t need rest, he will stand guard to protect Jeongguk forever if he has to, but he supposes he can take a quick break. He pulls his phone out to text Namjoon, but he sees that there’s a message from him already.

From: Joon
i’m heading back to my apt to sleep

From: Joon
but if u need me, i’ll come.

That was dated for half an hour ago. Namjoon’s probably already in bed.

Seokjin makes his way over to the police station, not feeling even the slightest amount of lethargy. The officer at the entrance recognises him immediately and lets him in, and Seokjin makes his way through the station that looks almost empty as most of the officers are on patrol. There are only a few left, right now, and they all greet Seokjin and tell him to just go straight through to locker rooms where everyone knows Jeongguk fills his locker with sweets and snacks, but only he and Jeongguk know the password to.

As if this was his own workplace, he makes his way to the locker rooms. He’ll grab some sour gummies to give him a sugar rush and keep his brain alert throughout the night and possibly pick some up for Jeongguk, too.

He flips the lights on in the locker room, and he goes cold from the inside out.

Lying in a pool of blood in the corner of the locker room is a body so horribly mutilated that Seokjin, or anyone for that matter, would ever be able to recognise. The limbs have been cut off and arranged in a sequence Seokjin doesn’t dare come closer to inspect. The body’s mouth is wide open and it’s lack of a tongue makes Seokjin feel sick down to the pit of his stomach, and he quickly pulls his hand away from the light switch, grabbing the door frame to steady himself. His vision starts to blur, coming in and out, and he slaps a hand over his mouth. He turns around to hightail it out of there, but when he looks at his hand on the doorframe, he sees red.

Peeling his hand off the frame and inspecting his palm, he sees blood all over it. He looks up at the wall. There’s blood on the light switch. There’s blood on the wall. And in the midst of all the blood splattered onto the walls, a single bunch of red spider lilies are taped up.

He wretches and tries his goddamn hardest not to vomit. He turns on his heel and runs out of the station, ignoring the few officers left in the station. He tries not to think. He tries to shut off his mind. The killer could be anywhere. The killer could be in the station. Seokjin doesn’t know. Seokjin doesn’t know anything.

He knocks, urgently, on Namjoon’s front door, begging to be let in. Namjoon answers it, looking tired and pissed off, but when he drinks in Seokjin’s crazed appearance he snaps his eyes wide open.

“What’s wrong? What happened?” he asks, grabbing Seokjin’s arms.

“I… I saw- I saw a d-dead body. I- I- I ran I didn’t know what to do. There’s blood on my hand. I didn’t know what to do. I… I’m gonna vomit.”

He pushes Namjoon out of the way and runs to the bathroom, falling to his knees in front of the toilet. He grabs the rim and starts to empty out his stomach into it. Namjoon is by his side in a moment but his words start to sound muffled and incoherent, and he doesn’t even bother trying to understand what he’s saying. Seokjin leans back after vomiting up everything he’d eaten in the past two days, after heaving up acid, and he wipes his mouth on the back of his hand. Then, the bathroom turns sideways and everything goes black.

 

 

The blood on the linoleum floor of the locker room stains the floor, and from the pool of red liquid, red spider lilies grow and bloom.

 

 

“Oh, hey, Seokjin. You’re awake,” Namjoon says softly when Seokjin’s consciousness returns to him. His vision feels fuzzy and he feels so, so weak. He tries to sit up, but his arms shiver and he drops back onto what seems to be Namjoon’s bed. Namjoon helps him up and hands him a cup of water to drink. Seokjin grabs the cup and guzzles all the water down, holding his stomach to stop it from freaking out.

He hands the cup back to Namjoon who settles it down on the floor and shuffles closer to Seokjin. Seokjin licks his lips and bites down on the inside. “What happened? How long have I been out for?” he asks weakly.

“Only about half an hour,” Namjoon replies, his voice quiet and concerned, his brows drawn and furrowed. Dark shadows are cast over the tops of his cheekbones. “You witnessed a dead body, came here and passed out.”

Seokjin tries to pull in a breath, but he shakes so hard that Namjoon grabs his arms again and tries to still him. “Who… who was it? Who was murdered? I didn’t recognise the face. Or body.”

Namjoon continues to hold Seokjin. “It wasn’t Jeongguk, that’s for sure. I spoke to him on the phone a few minutes ago.”

“Oh, thank god. He’s okay,” Seokjin sighs in relief and his quaking subsides, just a little.

“Don’t relax just yet,” Namjoon tells him, and Seokjin snaps his eyes open, facing Namjoon with wide and anticipating eyes.

“What? Was… was the killer not caught?” Seokjin asks slowly, hoping like hell that Namjoon tells him what he wants to hear. But the way Namjoon’s frowns grows deeper only makes Seokjin’s stomach sink further and further. He wants to vomit again, but he has nothing left to expel.

“No. Worse,” he replies, his expression turning dark. “The police… the police think it’s you.”

“What?!”

Namjoon nods. “Yoongi called me ten minutes ago and asked if I knew where you went. They’ve already searched your apartment. The officers in the station saw you enter and run out. Your fingerprints are on the wall where the body was found.”

“B-but I… I didn’t…”

“I know,” Namjoon tries to assure him, but Seokjin doesn’t feel any less afraid. “I told them I haven’t seen you. Let’s… figure something out.”

Seokjin looks down at his lap and unclenches his fist. The blood that was on his palms, his fingers, half an hour ago are no longer there. Undoubtedly, Namjoon had cleaned his hand after he’d passed out. He bites down on his lip, bites hard, until it starts to hurt and he tastes metal. “Like what?” Seokjin asks, his voice impossibly quiet and small.

“I don’t know. But you need to eat something. You look really pale.”

He hoists himself off his bed and disappears out of the bedroom, presumably going to the kitchen to fix together something for Seokjin to eat. In the meantime Seokjin swings his legs off the side of the bed and stands despite the way his knees are shaking and his muscles feel like there’s nothing there, and he takes a step before becoming dizzy and nearly losing his footing. He steadies himself with a hand on Namjoon’s nightstand.

He takes a few breaths before he straightens back up and tries again.

The first drawer in the nightstand is open by just a sliver, and Seokjin couldn’t care any less about privacy right now, so he pulls the drawer open and finds, amongst some skincare products, a tiny folded up piece of paper. He picks it up and unfolds it.

It’s the marriage document he’d found on the internet and printed out all that time ago. There’s Seokjin’s name and signature that he’d penned onto it before slipping it into Namjoon’s desk, but now there’s Namjoon’s name and signature etched into it, too.

Seokjin bites down on his lip again and draws more blood. He folds the paper back up, puts it in his pocket, puts his shoes on, and quietly makes his way to the front door.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers into the apartment. “This isn’t how I thought this would go.”

He opens the door silently, slips out of the apartment, and shuts the door just as quietly.

Pulling his coat tighter around him, he walks back to where he came from. Yoongi looks up when he walks into the station and slams down the phone, hanging up on whoever it was he was speaking so urgently and desperately to.

“Seokjin. What the absolute fuck.”

Seokjin offers him a small and sheepish smile. He pulls his hands out of his pockets and holds them out in front of him, wrists held together. “I’m a murder suspect, now. So do your job. Arrest me. Read me my Miranda rights.”

Yoongi furrows his brows so harshly that lines appear in between them and his frown grows impossibly deep. “Did you do it?” he asks quietly.

“I guess you’ll find out in court.”

Notes:

lol

 

 

 
twt

Chapter 13: Catatonic

Summary:

The third murder has finally happened, but it wasn't how Seokjin or Namjoon had predicted. Instead, Seokjin is the prime suspect, and he's just turned himself in.

Notes:

hello

Seokjin finds a particularly sharp rock and he immediately picks it up, brings it closer to his face to inspect every side and facet of the rock before he clutches it close to his chest and runs excitedly back to his cave to-

No, no, no. This isn’t right. Seokjin shakes himself awake.

After Yoongi had reluctantly and painfully taken Seokjin in, he’d gone and disappeared and for a long, long time, Seokjin was completely alone in the holding cell. He wasn’t cuffed and there was no one else locked in there with him, but something just didn’t feel quite right.

Where were all the police officers? Where did Yoongi go? Is Jeongguk alright? Namjoon?

He paces up and down, around and around, his feet greeting every inch of the cold, grey concrete floor of the holding cell. Sometimes he sits down, and other times he wraps his hands around the bars that keep him incarcerated.

Sometimes, he lets his mind slip.

Sweat trickles down his collarbones as the kiln continues to burn in the background and the smell of molten metal fills up the air, turning it thick. Sweat beads at Seokjin’s brow and he wipes it away with the crook of his arm, his hands still gloved as he hammers away at the long piece of iron. He’d been experimenting with iron recently in making small daggers, but he’d just found enough iron that he can melt together and create something larger, bigger, deadlier.

He wants to make a sword. He hammers away at the metal, straightening it out on his workbench. He knows it won’t be the best sword out there, but hopefully if he continues to perfect his craft one day he might be able to sell them, and he might be able to eat meat more than just a few times a year.

Hands slamming down on the table shakes Seokjin awake, and suddenly he’s plunged back, back in the police station, in a small box of a room with dark grey walls and a large mirror on one of the walls. He knows that mirror. It’s not a mirror at all. He stares at it for a few moments, imagining the number of people that are staring right back. He imagines being on the other side of it.

“Seokjin, please focus,” Yoongi huffs, leaning back in his chair opposite Seokjin. Seokjin slowly tears his gaze away from the people who are undoubtedly observing him, scrutinising him, picking him apart. He finds Yoongi’s eyes instead, the deep with dark circles under them, the frown pulling at his lips and making him look years beyond his age. “Tell me what happened on the night of the sixteenth.”

“I already told you,” Seokjin begins calmly, threading his fingers together. They hadn’t cuffed him, not when Seokjin walked right into the station and gave himself up, not while he was being held, not during any of the interrogations. He continues to remain uncuffed, but that was more at the request of Yoongi rather than himself. Seokjin wonders if he’d feel better if he was cuffed. It’s confusing. “I went back to the police station and found the body in the locker room.”

“Why did you go to the police station?” Yoongi asks as he keeps his eyes down on some papers in his hand.

“I was going to take a short break from keeping watch. I went to get some snacks from Jeongguk’s locker.”

“And that’s where you saw the body?”

“Yes.”

“So why are all my officers saying they saw you go in, and then come running out all frantically?”

Seokjin shrugs nonchalantly. “Probably because I just saw a mutilated body.”

Yoongi pulls in a sharp inhale. “Myung Minwoo was last seen alive and walking at around ten past eleven on the sixteenth. He was stationed outside of your little brother’s apartment. His shift ended at eleven, like yours. He went back to the police station, went into the locker room, and never came back out alive.”

“Right,” Seokjin confirms, his eyes latched onto Yoongi’s, but Yoongi is still looking down. He keeps looking down until he huffs, pinches the space between his brows, and slaps the papers he’s holding back down on the table.

“Right, my ass. What the fuck, Seokjin? Did you really kill one of my officers? Did you really kill somebody?”

Seokjin flicks his eyes back down to the papers on the table. “May I?” he asks demurely, pointing to the papers. Yoongi nods like he couldn’t care any less and so Seokjin reaches over, grabbing the papers and sliding them towards himself.

Thumbing through the pages, Seokjin ignores the written reports and plucks out the crime scene photo. He brings it to the front and stares at it.

“Myung Minwoo,” Seokjin mutters as he stares at the photo. He pushes his lower lip out. “Do you have any more photos? Preferably one that has an aerial view of the body?”

“Yeah, they’re at the back,” Yoongi concedes. Seokjin calmly flicks to the back of the report and finds the photo in question. He brings it up and holds the photo between both hands.

“The body was arranged into the letter M,” Seokjin points out, index finger on the photograph, eyes up at Yoongi. “Myung Minwoo. The killer chopped the arms and legs off and fashioned it into an M.”

“Are you fucking serious, Kim Seokjin? You’re not the attorney for this case, right now. You’re not an attorney at all. You’re a murder suspect, you hear me? A murder suspect.”

The report in Seokjin’s hand is plucked right back, and Yoongi tucks it under arm, well away from Seokjin’s reach. It doesn’t faze Seokjin, though, because he looks up and meets Yoongi’s eyes. They’re steeled, angry and livid, but Seokjin doesn’t react. Doesn’t flinch or shrink away. “I know,” he says, “I’m the one who turned myself in.”

“Why did you turn yourself in?”

“I knew I was being suspected. I decided to make your life a little easier.”

“How did you know?”

“I can’t tell you that.”

“Seokjin. I can’t help you if you aren’t completely transparent with me, you know that. You’re only making yourself look more suspicious.”

“I don’t care if that makes me seem suspicious. I’ll let the evidence speak for itself,” Seokjin dismisses as he shifts a little in his chair. His butt feels stiff and his back is starting to hurt and Seokjin isn’t even sure if it’s day or night, let alone what time it is, and quite frankly, he’s over this. He’s written a testimony, he’s told his story, he’s recounted everything once already and he doesn’t want to sit here and tell it again. Especially not to Yoongi.

“The evidence is pointing towards you,” Yoongi sighs. “Your fingerprints on the wall, the fact that you were caught on CCTV walking into the locker room after Officer Myung, and then leaving in a hurry. So tell me. Did you do it or not?”

“Would you even believe me if I told you?”

“Depends on what you tell me.”

“I want to speak to Namjoon.”

“Forget about it,” Yoongi huffs. “I think I need another coffee.”

 

Seokjin fixes his tunic as he walks, determined in the direction of his journey. The sun is beating down on him, bright and heavy, and if it weren’t for his wide-brimmed hat he might’ve felt like the back of his neck was on fire. He’s thirsty, there’s not much water left in his pouch, and he’s starting to grow tired.

His tunic is drenched in his own sweat but he fixes it all the same, adjusting the clasp at the front and the hem of the white material just as it ends above his knees. He really wants to strip himself of it and jump into an oasis, but there are greater matters at hand, right now.

The Temple of Zeus finally appears before him but in the sweltering heat and the bright, harsh light of the sun at zenith it almost looks like a mirage. Seokjin narrows his eyes, squinting, and soon the columns of the temple stop swimming and swaying in his vision.

It’s hot, and Seokjin wants to give up, but he keeps on walking.

Wait, no, that isn’t right. No, no, no. The bench under his ass is cool, the air is cold, and he’s in a holding cell. He’s in a holding cell. That’s right, he’s in a holding cell, the concrete is dark grey and there are metal bars holding him inside and there are footsteps, sturdy soles slapping against smooth linoleum floors, coming towards him, coming towards him-

“Kim Seokjin,” an officer with a straight, impenetrable expression calls him, beckons him over. He produces a set of keys and uses one to free Seokjin, but instead of letting him go he grabs a hold of Seokjin’s elbow and forces him to walk.

“Another interrogation?” Seokjin asks. “I’m starting to get bored of these.”

“Unfortunately, I don’t give a shit,” the officer spits.

Ah, Seokjin thinks. He believes I killed Officer Myung.

He keeps his mouth shut and lets the officer take him to wherever it is he’s needed now. He lets his mind wonder and slip but when he realises they aren’t heading to the interrogation room he snaps back into focus and his eyes go wide and his mind starts to buzz.

The officer opens a door and leads Seokjin to a room with a table in the middle. It looks like any of the other interrogation rooms but with a lack of a two-way mirror and a glaring intrusion of one Jung Hoseok sitting at the table.

Seokjin slowly approaches the chair opposite him.

“Sit down,” the officer barks at Seokjin, making him jump into action and park his ass into the chair. He then moves to stand in the corner of the room, watching them like a hawk. Seokjin looks back at Hoseok sitting opposite him, and for possibly the first time ever, Hoseok isn’t smiling.

“Alright, just spit it out,” Seokjin sighs, letting his head hang slightly.

Hoseok doesn’t answer. Doesn’t even shift in his chair. Seokjin looks back up, and he meets Hoseok’s piercing gaze that feels heavy to hold but Seokjin doesn’t dare to let it go. He keeps it, he holds onto it, and he doesn’t look away. “Why are you here?” Hoseok finally asks, and still, he doesn’t smile. The corners of his lips are pulled downwards in a fashion Seokjin isn’t used to, has never seen before. It almost makes him uncomfortable to look at. But he doesn’t let go of their gaze, keeps holding on.

“I should be asking you that,” Seokjin replies.

“I’m a prosecutor visiting a murder suspect, why do you think I’m here?”

Seokjin’s lips part and a soft exhale falls out of him. “Ah. I see.”

“Yeah.”

“Is there a point in us talking, right now? I told Yoongi everything. I plead innocent.”

Hoseok’s frown grows deeper. “I just have to know,” he begins with a deep sigh. “How did it get to this point? I’m so conflicted.”

“About what?” Seokjin asks, furrowing his brows. “Just do what you normally do. Try to prove me guilty in court.”

There are deep and aching bags under Hoseok’s eyes, and if Seokjin was any wiser he might’ve believed that Hoseok was losing sleep. Over him. But Seokjin casts that thought out quickly because there’s no use in thinking that to himself, in trying to convince himself that it’s true. Hoseok sighs. “I don’t want to do this, Seokjin. I really don’t. It makes me sick to the stomach knowing that I’ll be in court, trying to convince the world that you murdered and mutilated that officer.”

“Then why did you accept the case?”

“Better me than the next blood-thirsty prosecutor.”

Seokjin fixes the sleeve of his sweatshirt. “Are you sure there won’t be any conflict of interest?”

“No,” Hoseok resounds. “I’m a professional. I won’t go easy on you, and I won’t go easy on your defence attorney, either.”

“Okay,” Seokjin breathes. “Thank you.”

“For what?”

“For believing in me.”

Hoseok furrows his brow harshly. “Who said I believe in you?”

 

The lotuses are in full bloom. Seokjin adjusts the sleeves of his silk hanfu, carefully pushing them up to his elbows before he tucks the fabric under his knees when he squats down by the water. He stretches one hand out and lightly touches the tip of his index finger to the blessedly cool water, and when he lifts his finger, he watches as ripples grace the surface of the water.

A light, almost translucent pink lotus wafts closer to him. Seokjin shouldn’t really be here, his teacher will be arriving soon and Seokjin needs to be in his room, ready and waiting, if he wants to make a good impression. He needs to be ready and eager to learn as the crown prince who’ll take the throne when his father passes.

But the lotus comes nearer, it beckons him to stay. He reaches out for it, mesmerised and entranced, so he holds out his hand and he touches his finger to a petal.

The light and airily beautiful lotus suddenly warps and distorts, the petals rotting down until they turn a deep, disgusting red. Seokjin snaps his hand back to him, disturbing the water as he goes. The ripples that exude outwards on the surface of the water taint every lotus that it greets, and before Seokjin can even grasp his mistake, he’s standing in front of a pool filled with red spider lilies.

“Seokjin-ssi,” comes Namjoon’s voice, pulling Seokjin’s head out of the void. He snaps his head up and surely, sitting across the table from him is Namjoon. His hair is pushed back and unkempt, there are dark circles around his eyes. He looks haggard, like he’d been dragged through hell and back. “Seokjin-ssi, are you even listening to me?”

“Sorry, what were you saying?”

Namjoon sighs heavily, his shoulders slumping as he does. He shifts in the hard metal chair and arduously brings one hand up to rub against his face. “I know there’s a shitstorm going on inside your head,” he mumbles, his voice low and tired, “so please, drop the act.”

“There’s no act. I’m a murder suspect. I plead innocent. I’m not hiding anything.”

He presses his lips together and watches as Namjoon flicks his eyes up, meets his gaze, and looks like he doesn’t believe a word Seokjin says. “Can you please, please, just talk to me,” he beseeches.

“We’re talking now.”

“Tell me what’s going on. Tell me what you’re feeling. Tell me what happened.”

“I told you already,” Seokjin sighs. “I walked into that locker room hoping to get some snacks from Jeongguk’s locker, but instead I found the body.”

“Then why were you the only person caught on CCTV entering the locker room after him?”

“How am I supposed to know that?”

“You’re the best attorney I know. Come on, Seokjin. Get yourself out of this.”

“I’m not an attorney, right now. I’m a murder suspect.”

“Did you do it?” Namjoon whispers.

“No, I told you, like I told everybody. I didn’t kill him. I didn’t kill anyone.”

“Then why did you turn yourself in?!” Namjoon suddenly shouts, slamming his fist down on the table, causing Seokjin to jump in his seat. The officer stationed in the corner of the room keeping watch on the both of them twitches and almost springs into action, but Namjoon’s lack of action prompts him to relax once again. “I told you I’d figure something out!”

“Did you?” Seokjin asks quietly, biting down on his lip.

“What?”

“Did you figure something out? Something you could’ve done that night that would’ve saved me? Saved us both? Running would’ve made me look guilty, and hiding me would’ve made you look like an accomplice. You know that, Namjoon.”

Namjoon grits his teeth and his fist atop the table shakes as he tries to contain himself. He seethes to himself for a few seconds before he forces himself to let it go, and his shoulders slumps once again.

“It just doesn’t make any sense,” he says, his voice quiet and trembling, like he’s still trying to hold himself back. Seokjin curls his hands into fists and he squeezes until he feels his nails digging into his palms. “Why it has turned out like this. Why you’re here, while the killer is still out there, taunting you. I can’t imagine the kind of stress you’re under, right now.”

“I’m fine,” Seokjin replies, reaching over the table to slip his hand over Namjoon’s clenched fist. He pushes his fingers in and forces Namjoon to unclench, to ease the tension in his body. Namjoon doesn’t let go, not immediately, but Seokjin doesn’t give up. He pushes his hand into Namjoon’s and holds it, tightly. “I’m fine,” he says, quietly, and feels Namjoon release the tension he’d been holding so forcefully in his body. “I’m fine,” he repeats while chaos swirls in his mind and threatens to break him.

The officer takes a step forward. “No touching,” he growls, and Seokjin snaps his head towards him.

“I can do whatever I want. I’m Kim Motherfucking Seokjin.”

Namjoon chokes a little, and Seokjin quickly turns his attention back to him, brows raised in concern, but his expression softens when he sees Namjoon try to suppress a laugh. He squeezes Seokjin’s fingers. “I miss you,” he says when he’s composed himself. “I’ll find the best attorney in the country to represent you in court, and you’ll be out of here in no time. I promise.”

Seokjin squeezes his hand back. “Yeah,” he replies with a soft smile. When Namjoon gets up and has to leave, his smile drops and he lets the darkness in his mind clouds over him once again.

 

The flames crackle away at the logs of wood in the fireplace, roaring softly and gently in Seokjin’s ears from where he sits in his armchair, angled towards the window. The sky is pitch black outside save for the few flakes of snow falling from the sky. He could count them if he so wished, but he knows that by tomorrow morning the dark grey concrete ground will be blanketed by a layer of pure white. Seokjin rubs his hands together and revels in the heat from the fireplace.

Light footsteps down the stairs catch his attention, so he turns his head slowly to watch his wife come down the stairs, her small hands holding her skirt up so that it doesn’t get caught under her dainty feet as she descends.

Her pretty eyes meet Seokjin’s, and he gives her a small smile. He’d been working long and hard hours at the coal mine and he hasn’t seen Hanyu for what feels like a long, long time. He leaves their home before she wakes, and he returns long after she’s already retired to bed. She isn’t upset because of that, Seokjin knows. Hanyu is smart, too smart. She doesn’t deserve to be cooped up at home while Seokjin goes out to work. But that’s just the way it is, and Hanyu knows that if Seokjin doesn’t work as hard as he does, they probably wouldn’t be able to eat or survive the cold, harsh winter.

She isn’t upset about that, Seokjin knows. She isn’t upset about anything she’ll fault Seokjin for. She arrives by his side and slides a soft hand onto his shoulder as he looks up at her. She’s smiling, but there’s so much sadness in that smile that it almost breaks Seokjin’s heart.

“I’m not upset,” Hanyu tells him like she could read his mind. “I love you, and I want you to be happy.”

“I am happy,” Seokjin tries to convince her. She just shakes her head.

“You could be happier.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Hanyu’s hand squeezes on Seokjin’s shoulder. “Our neighbour. Namjoon. I know you have feelings for him.”

Tension builds between Seokjin’s brow as he presses his lips together and tries not to frown or let his ribs constrict around his heart and suffocate him at the sound of that name. “I’m not going to leave you for him. We… we’ve been together fo-“

“Seokjin,” she stops him, her voice still soft but firm enough to put a halt to Seokjin. “I know you love me. And I know it’s not the same as the love you feel for Namjoon. So let’s… let’s just end our marriage.”

Seokjin’s eyes start to sting but he squeezes them to stop tears from forming. “Hanyu, I-“

“You belong with him. He’s your soulmate. Not me.”

 

“Hey, pretty boy,” the officer that walks past his holding cell sneers at him. He approaches the bars that separate him from Seokjin and pulls out his baton, knocking it against the bars to intimidate Seokjin. it doesn’t faze him. “You’re going to pay for killing Minwoo.”

Seokjin flickers his eyes up at the officer. He keeps his mouth shut.

“What? You want to kill me, too?”

Seokjin doesn’t reply, and he doesn’t want to acknowledge the officer, either. He looks away and returns his gaze to his hands that he’s clasping together. That doesn’t, however, deter the officer like he’d hoped. Instead, he slaps his baton against one of the bars, suddenly, making Seokjin jump.

“Look at me!” he bellows. “You killed my friend! Look me in the eye when I speak to you!”

Seokjin presses his lips together and continues to stare at his hands, hoping that the officer goes away. That something higher than him tells him what he needs to do. How he can diffuse this situation. If he was right or wrong in turning himself in. If Jeongguk was ever targeted to begin with, or whether this was all in his head. He wonders about how wrong he is and for how long he’s been mistaken. It clouds his mind, seeping into every corner of his mind, darkening his senses until the rattle of metal shakes him out of his conscious, and he snaps his head up to find the officer with a set of keys that he rifles through, no doubt to find the one he needs to unlock Seokjin’s cell.

He quickly jumps up to his feet and watches with alert, bewildered eyes as the officer struggles. He takes a step back but he knows at least this much: that when the officer finally lets himself in, Seokjin will have nowhere to go. That when the officer gets his hands on him, he won’t be able to defend himself. He wants to call out for Jeongguk, but he reminds himself Jeongguk isn’t here. He’s working alongside Yoongi in investigating the murder to help Seokjin’s case.

By some freak of nature, another officer arrives and grabs the first, pulling him away from the bars. “Jangmin! Calm the fuck down!” he shouts.

The first officer, Jangmin, tries to shrug him off. “No. This bastard deserves it.”

“I know, man. I know, but you have to be patient. He’ll get what’s coming to him in court.”

It takes roughly five minutes for Jangmin to calm down, and he is convinced to leave Seokjin alone, but not before he glares at him with a look filled with all the malice he could muster. When they leave and silence finally graces Seokjin’s ears once again, he sinks back into his seat.

The storm grows bigger and stronger and it’s closer than ever. The harsh winds and rain battering down on him almost blows him away. It’s only a matter of time, Seokjin knows and has accepted, until he loses his footing and the currents take him away. He just hopes he sticks around long enough to ensure that both Jeongguk and Namjoon are safe.

 

Seokjin looks up at his mother’s face, confused and wondering about what all of this means. He wasn’t even aware that there are numbers bigger than one hundred – he’d kind of assumed one hundred was the biggest number in the world, but now he’s old enough to know that those strange red things floating above everyone’s heads are numbers, and he was so sure that one hundred is the biggest number in the world, but the weird floating things above everyone’s heads has opened his eyes to a whole new world of big numbers.

“Mama,” Seokjin looks up, curiously, at his mother’s face. “What do the numbers mean?”

She smooths a hand over Seokjin’s head, her fingers running through his hair as she goes. She offers Seokjin a light smile. “I’ll tell you when you’re older,” she continues to smile. “Okay?”

Seokjin pouts. “I want to know now,” he huffs.

“You’re too little to understand now.”

 

“Mama,” Seokjin approaches the door to his parents’ bedroom. The door is slightly ajar and Seokjin isn’t sure if that means he’s welcome to come in or if it was just a product of a moment of forgetfulness, but he approaches the bedroom anyway, his hands gripping onto the doorframe. “Mama,” he calls out softly.

“Yes, dear?” she responds, her voice inviting him in. Seokjin lets go of the doorframe and he comes into the room.

“The numbers,” he mutters, looking down at his socked feet, holding onto the bottom of his sweater. His mother shuffles slightly from where she’s sat on the bed, a book in her hands. “What do they mean?”

“I told you, Seokjin,” she persists, “you’re too little to understand now.”

 

But Seokjin is pretty sure he knows, now. Whether she refuses to tell him or not, he’s pretty much figured it out, now. He’s little, sure, but he’s not stupid. He’s not naïve, he’s not sheltered, and he’s not ignorant. He’s seven years old, and seven years is a long time to be alive. Seven years is eighty-four months. Seven years is three hundred and sixty-five weeks. Seven years is two thousand, five hundred and fifty-five days. That’s a long time. It’s a very, very long time. And although Seokjin can’t see any red floating numbers above his own head, he can surely see the numbers above everyone else’s.

He’s certain he knows what they mean, now. He realised it when his father died.

 

For some reason, he’s the only one in his school that can see the numbers. He found that out the hard way when his mother was late on her way to pick Seokjin up from school and he was waiting, by the school gates, his hands tight around the straps of his backpack, wondering if he should just go home by himself because he knows the way, and he’s responsible enough to be trusted to do so.

He remembers Daehyun’s mother smiling down at him just before she goes to meet her son, bends over to kiss the top of his head before whisking him away. Seokjin watched their backs as they walked, his hand in hers, listening to them talk about what he’d done at school, what they learned. That conversation petered out, grew fainter and further away until Seokjin could hear no more. And then, they turned around a corner and Seokjin could no longer see them.

Or the numbers above Daehyun’s mother’s head that, like his own father’s, was small. Impossibly small. He wasn’t entirely confident about what they meant before his father died, but he's sure, now.

And the next day at school, he discovered that he’s the only one who could see those numbers. Daehyun told Seokjin to shut his mouth, to stop lying, to go fuck himself and a couple of other things Seokjin didn’t know seven-year-olds were allowed to say. He went home that day with his feelings hurt.

A few weeks later, when Daehyun returned to school following the inevitable death of his mother, he approached Seokjin and let him know exactly how much he believed Seokjin’s words, now, in the form of fists and kicks. He went home that day with his entire body hurting. The blood on his lip and the bruise on his cheekbone; he couldn’t hide from his mother. The bruises on his arms, legs, ribs; he kept a secret. The fact that he’d managed to confirm, in the worst way possible, what he believed the numbers meant; he sounded off like a burst pipe to his own mother, whose numbers were nowhere near as low as Daehyun’s mothers was. His mother, the last time Seokjin saw her, showed that she would pass away in a few days. Seokjin’s mother would remain alive for another twenty years.

Twenty years is a long time, Seokjin thinks. He’s got enough time, he thinks.

 

It wasn’t enough time, Seokjin realises as he sits in his holding cell, twenty-eight years old with only one remaining family member left and a handful of friends who can’t believe he turned himself in for a murder he didn’t commit.

 

Seokjin can’t remember when he started to feel detached to the numbers, and he’s not sure if it’s because he can’t see his own numbers or because he was told by his mother never to mention the numbers to anyone else, never to act upon the numbers, never to let them affect his judgement. He can’t remember when he started to feel detached to them, when he started forcing himself to pretend they don’t exist and ignore them.

That seemed to help him make more friends in middle school than he had in elementary. That seemed to help him escape that nickname he walked away with that day Daehyun beat the living shit out of him.

The Grim Reaper, they called him. The weird kid in school that never got close to anybody, never looked at anyone in the eye. The Grim Reaper, they called him. The kid who predicted that Daehyun’s mother was going to die even though she was perfectly healthy. They didn’t believe him when he said it was going to happen, and they didn’t believe him when he said he wasn’t a psychic, and they didn’t believe him when he said he didn’t cause her to die.

Sure, he’d made some friends in middle school, and he learned how to detach himself from the numbers he saw that nobody else saw, but that didn’t make him blind to those numbers. He was still the Grim Reaper, and he learned that he will continue to be the Grim Reaper for as long as that nickname follows him around.

 

The sky is darkening, a pale blue where the sun is still making its descent melding together with the navy above it when Seokjin is returning home from cram school. It’s starting to get colder and he wonders if, from tomorrow, he should start wearing his puffy coat that makes him look like a marshmallow.

He stops in front of the corner shop near his home and heads inside for just a moment and picks out a few snacks he could share with Jeongguk. A few snacks turns into an armful of snacks by the time he reaches the counter and he pays the cashier with his pocket money. He stuffs the sweets into his backpack, slings it back over his shoulders, and then heads out of the corner shop after saying goodbye to the cashier.

The pale blue has almost disappeared, and he stares up at the sky as he walks on, watching as it melts away, until he hears footsteps and realises there’s someone on the streets with him. He brings his gaze back down to the pavements ahead of him and sees a girl, a few years younger than him, about to cross the road. Her little hands grasp the straps of her backpack tightly before she looks both ways. She crosses the road.

The numbers above her head look nothing like the kind of numbers he sees above the heads of every child he’s ever set eyes upon. He’s never met another kid with a lifespan less than twenty years at the very least. Maybe Seokjin was naïve, or maybe he just made himself believe that the world wouldn’t be this cruel.

And yet, there’s a girl up ahead, about to cross the road, and number above her head in this moment reads fifteen seconds. Seokjin feels his vision start to tunnel and constrict and he hears tyres on asphalt and he rips his backpack off him before he breaks into a sprint. The girl is already in the middle of the road by the time she realises Seokjin is running towards her, and her head flicks towards him, first, before it flicks towards the car that’s speeding its way towards them.

She freezes in fear but her number keeps on dropping, and Seokjin hurls himself at her, grabbing her arm. Her falls forward with her and they tumble across the road, falling forward and onto the pavement on the other side. The car rushes on by and the girl is coughing underneath Seokjin, so he quickly scrambles up, looks down at her, and realises that he’d lunged for her without thinking, forgetting that no matter what he does, he could never, ever, change the numbers that he sees.

The girl chokes on something caught in her throat. Her hands scratch at her throat, desperately trying to release the piece of candy caught there, desperately trying to breathe, and Seokjin is shell-shocked, frozen in fear. He thought he could save her. He thought he’d saved her. He thought that if he was desperate enough, if he tried hard enough, if he wanted it enough, he could change the numbers.

But he couldn’t. He can’t. Three turns into two, two turns into one, one disappears and the girl dies in Seokjin’s arms.

 

“Seokjin-ssi. How are you feeling?”

He flicks his eyes up to meet Namjoon’s from across the table. He briefly looks over at the officer standing in the corner of the room, eyes trained on Seokjin like he thinks he’ll suddenly lunge at Namjoon and slit his throat. He ignores the officer. “Just peachy,” Seokjin replies mildly.

“Your trial is tomorrow,” Namjoon tells him, licking his lips. His brows are drawn, furrowed deeply with creases forming between them. He looks even more haggard than he did the last time he visited, the bags under his eyes look deeper, the circles look darker. There’s stubble on his chin and above his lip.

“Brilliant,” Seokjin yawns. “It’s gonna be my first trial as the defendant. Make sure Taehyung is there with his camera to take pictures. I’ll make sure to flash a few winning smiles.”

Namjoon drops his gaze to his hands intertwined atop the table and he sighs. “Seokjin-ssi. Please. I still haven’t found you an attorney that’s willing to defend you. I’ve spoken with a few, but they want you to plead guilty and get off on a reduced sentence. If I don’t find someone by tonight, someone’s going to be appointed to you. And I know that whoever it is won’t give a shit about you.”

“Hey, Namjoon,” Seokjin dismisses him, “why do you think people call me the Grim Reaper?”

His eyes widen in astonishment. “Huh?”

“I asked you if you have secrets,” he begins, keeping his gaze steady on Namjoon’s confused look. “And you turned the question on me.”

“Yeah…?”

“Does the date March the twenty-first mean anything to you?” he asks.

Namjoon doesn’t respond. He just keeps staring back at Seokjin, lips pressed into a straight line, eyes confused but determined. He doesn’t respond, not for a moment, for a few moments, but he continues to stare back at Seokjin unwaveringly. “Why do you ask?” he bats back quietly.

“It’s a very important date,” Seokjin answers, his own voice growing quieter. He doesn’t look up at the numbers above Namjoon’s head, the red floating numbers that tell him he’s going to die in twenty-nine days. On March the twenty-first. “It means a lot to me,” he tells Namjoon, because it’s the day that Namjoon is going to die and there’s probably nothing that he can do about it.

Namjoon furrows his brows, shadows forming under them, darkening over his eyes. The corners of his lips pull downwards and his jaw is set sternly. “Tell me,” he begins, his voice low and dull, “your secrets.”

Seokjin pulls in a long and deep breath. He holds it in his lungs for a few moments before he releases it. “I am the Grim Reaper.”

 

Like a man called to the gallows, Seokjin walks sombrely through the courthouse dressed in a black suit that’s not at all form-fitting or flattering at all. He looks like he’s attending a funeral and there’s a dark thought in the back of his mind that this’ll be how he looks when Namjoon dies in twenty-eight days. There isn’t long left, at all. There isn’t enough time, Seokjin thinks as he walks through the same halls of the courthouse he’s become accustomed to, the same courthouse where he’s won many trials, where he made a name for himself. Whether that was a good thing or not, he guesses he’ll find out. Until now, making a name for himself had mostly brought him fortune; it brought him recognition, reverence, and mostly importantly, money.

Now, he’s not sure. Now, that name condemns him, now it convicts him.

This time, no matter how familiar the halls of this courthouse feels to him, he isn’t walking as an attorney. This time he’s the defendant.

He enters, flanked by two officers, and walks into the courtroom. All eyes are on him but his eyes are focused only on what’s ahead of him. The officers take him to his seat and he complies easily. He looks out into the gallery and finds some of his colleagues there. He sees Hanyu. Her brows are pinched together in concern and when their eyes meet, she frowns. He sees Taehyung, Jimin and Jeongguk sitting together, looking just as concerned.

They’re perhaps the only people in the gallery who seem like worried. Everyone else looks at Seokjin like he’s a monster, like they think he’s guilty. Like they know exactly who he is, what he is, and what he’s done.

The large wooden double-doors swing open, and two men walk in. The first is Hoseok, the prosecutor in charge of attempting to prove Seokjin guilty by presenting every incriminating piece of evidence that paints him as a murderer. Behind him, Yoongi, there to provide that evidence.

Behind him comes Namjoon, and when their eyes meet, Seokjin feels like time stops altogether.

The numbers above his head that read twenty-eight days now look brighter, more vibrant. They almost seem to pulsate. Seokjin narrows his eyes, squinting at the numbers. They haven’t changed, Seokjin can tell that much, but they look different. Bolder, larger, stronger. Pulsating, like it’s alive. Pulsating like it’s alive even though they promise Namjoon’s death in less than a month.

Hoseok sits at the prosecution’s desk, and Namjoon at the defence’s desk. Seokjin continues to stare at him, eyes narrowed and questioning. Namjoon keeps his expression taut and unforgiving. He doesn’t give anything away.

The judge enters the courtroom and everyone rises. “A Jung vs Kim trial, today,” he notes, but there’s a certain melancholy in his voice Seokjin doesn’t think he’s ever heard before. “I don’t think I’ll ever forget this case,” he muses quietly before he smacks his gavel down. “Court is now in session for the trial of Kim Seokjin, convicted on the premeditated murder of Officer Myung Minwoo.”

Even sits back down in their seats, Seokjin included. Hoseok remains standing. “The prosecution, Jung Hoseok, is ready, your Honour,” he announces with a small nod of his head. He looks miserable and nothing like his usual cocky, arrogant self.

He sits back down and looks over at Namjoon at the defence’s table. Seokjin looks over there, too, and finds that Namjoon is sitting alone. Didn’t he find an attorney that would represent him? Didn’t he say someone will be appointed to Seokjin if he didn’t one? He furrows his brows in confusion and clenches his fists in anticipation.

Namjoon stands, smoothing his tie down against his abdomen. “The defence, Kim Namjoon, is ready, your Honour.”

Notes:

this chapter was a lil trippy i know lol
leave a comment!
 

 

 
twt

Chapter 14: Chaotic

Summary:

Namjoon promises to find Seokjin an attorney who will help, who won't try to make Seokjin change his plea. But nobody wants to defend the Grim Reaper unless he pleads guilty. He runs out of time and puts aside all his insecurities to stand up for Seokjin himself.

Notes:

BEFORE WE BEGIN:
I know that I used to reply to every comment you guys would leave for me, and I haven't been doing that recently. This will most likely continue. That doesn't mean, however, that I am not reading your comments because I read every single one of them. I read every comment on every fic or chapter. I just don't have the time to write out replies the way I used to, and I don't see the point in replying with just a "thank you". Please continue to send me your wonderful comments and know that I DO read them, they make my day, and I am eternally grateful!
HOWEVER:
If you have a question you want answered, I WILL reply. Of course, this doesn't apply to questions about what will happen in future chapters or anything that warrants spoilers. Please do continue to write your theories and predictions because I love reading them, I just won't comment on them (as always).
If you would like a guaranteed response, then please find me over on my twt or cc

Okay, now that I've said what I wanted to say, let's just jump into the chapter!

Namjoon sits back down and readjusts his glasses on his nose. There’s a heavy, taut pull on the corners of his lips and his jaw is set, almost strained, his eyebrows drawn.

The judge clears his throat and Seokjin realises just how much pressure is pushing down on him. The entire gallery is full, and all eyes are trained on him. He feels every single pair of those eyes, weighing down on him like bricks.

His feet are no longer anchored to the sand. The water has now just risen above his head and he’s struggling to keep his nose above the surface. To keep pulling in air.

But every pair of eyes that are trained on him feels like a brick tied to his ankle, pulling him down.

There’s an immense pressure in the courtroom, filling up every space, and Seokjin tries to pretend like he isn’t being crushed under it.

“Jung-ssi, your opening statement, please,” the judge requests. Hoseok clears his throat into his fist and rises to his feet with a piece of paper in his hand. His lids are low over his pupils as he looks down at the information printed out.

“Yes, your Honour,” he begins, his voice the slightest fraction strained. He coughs and clears his throat again. “On February the sixteenth, the defendant, Kim Seokjin, was caught on camera entering the locker room at the police station after the victim, Myung Minwoo, and was caught rushing out. It was then that suspicions arose and the victim’s body was discovered.”

“Very well,” the judge accepts solemnly. “Please call in your first witness.”

“I’d like to call in Detective Min Yoongi to the stand, please,” Hoseok requests, and Yoongi rises from his seat and wordlessly takes the witness stand. His eyes are stern and his lips are set in a straight line. “Please state your full name and occupation to the court.”

“Min Yoongi, chief investigator.”

“Thank you. Please tell the court about the events of February the sixteenth.”

Yoongi coughs into his fist to clear his throat. “I had a patrol up and around the apartment of one of my officers, Officer Jeon Jeongguk. At eleven PM, the officers on patrol retired for the night at the end of their shift. Defence Attorney Kim Seokjin was, at his request, also on patrol. At eleven, Officer Myung Minwoo returned to the police station and headed into the locker rooms to change. He was caught on CCTV just outside the locker room at ten past eleven. Defence Attorney Kim Seokjin walked in after, recorded at eighteen minutes past eleven. And at twenty-six past eleven, he was caught on CCTV fleeing the locker room. This was confirmed by the officers who saw him in the station.”

Seokjin furrows his brows. Something doesn’t seem right. He was caught on camera walking into the locker room at eleven eighteen, but was caught leaving at eleven twenty-six? Did he really spend eight minutes inside that locker room? No. He couldn’t have done. He’d walked in, flipped the light switch on, saw the body and ran out. He couldn’t have spent more than a minute, at the most.

But when the judge asks if either Hoseok or Namjoon wishes to question Yoongi, neither of them do. Apparently, what Yoongi had testified was correct. Apparently, Seokjin did spend eight minutes inside that room.

He looks down at his hands. For a moment, the lines on his palms disappear.

“Thank you, Detective Min Yoongi. I’d like to call the defendant up to the stand, now,” Hoseok requests, flicking his eyes down at where Seokjin is sitting.

“Go ahead,” the judge allows.

Seokjin silently rises from where he’d been sitting and takes up the witness stand. He clasps his hands together and swallows, hard, and tries to keep himself from shivering in anticipation and dread.

“State your full name and occupation to the court,” the judge orders Seokjin.

“Kim Seokjin, criminal defence attorney.”

Hoseok looks like there are a million different things he’d rather be doing than this. “Please tell us, in your own words, what happened on the night of the sixteenth.”

He rises above the water for just long enough to inhale. “I was working with the police in keeping patrol,” Seokjin begins. His voice sounds hollow and empty but he doesn’t think he could do anything to fix it. “My shift ended at eleven at night, but I wanted to continue on into the night. I decided to take a break and went back to the police station because I knew Jeongguk kept snacks in his locker. When I walked into the locker room and turned the lights on, I discovered the body.”

There’s a pause in which nobody talks. The whole courtroom is silent. Seokjin presses his lips together and watches as Hoseok circles around his desk and comes to stand in front of Seokjin. “Why were you helping the police keep patrol?” Hoseok asks, his face stern and cold.

“The person who’d killed Jang Jaewon and Hong Haejoo was going to kill again that day. We needed to prevent the murder and hopefully catch them.”

“How did you know the third murder was going to happen on that day? Who was it that predicted it?”

Seokjin swallows. “I did,” he answers and tries to ignore the way Namjoon’s shoulders seem to stiffen. “I predicted it.”

A soft but painful sigh escapes Hoseok. “Please explain to the court how you came to that conclusion.”

“There were clues left behind by the killer in the rooms belonging to Jang Jaewon and Hong Haejoo. The first murder hinted at the second, and the second murder hinted at the third.”

“And yet, the police and detectives found no such clues when they carried out their investigations.”

Seokjin presses his lips together and doesn’t falter in his steeled gaze.

Hoseok takes a step away, but he doesn’t return to his seat. Instead, he heads to his table and picks up a remote control. He directs everyone’s gaze to the screen on the side of the courtroom, presses on a button, and blows up a photograph of a letter. The first letter sent to the police station where Jeongguk works. “Please explain this letter to the court, Kim Seokjin.”

The letter has faint pencil scratchings etched into the surface where Jeongguk had tried and in the end, succeeded to decipher the message. Seokjin recognises his handwriting. But he doesn’t recognise the writing of the one who’d written it out. “That letter was sent anonymously to the police on the tenth of December. Nobody was able to figure it out, but Jeongguk decided to keep it and continue trying to solve it.”

“Tell the court who Jeongguk is and what your relationship is with him.”

Seokjin swallows. “Jeon Jeongguk is an officer at the police station where the murder occurred. He’s my younger brother. Half-brother. We share the same mother.”

“And he was the one who solved the puzzle detailed on this anonymous letter?” Hoseok prompts, raising a brow.

Seokjin nods. “But it wasn’t until after Jang Jaewon was murdered. It would’ve been impossible to solve it before. The answer to the puzzle was Jang Jaewon’s name.”

“What were you doing on the tenth of December?”

Heat starts to rise in his chest. He clenches his fists and tries not to think about this; about any of this, but it’s so hard not to. But he knew this was coming, that he would be linked to the first two murders, as well. How could he not? He’d been accused of murdering someone in the same fashion as the first two, so he had already prepared himself to be accused of the first two, as well. But the reality of it, now weighing down on him, makes his blood boil. “I was in trial with my subordinate. Against you, Jung Hoseok.”

Hoseok doesn’t change his expression at all or let Seokjin’s words rattle him. “What were you doing before and after the trial?” he clarifies.

“I helped my subordinate prepare, as he was leading a case for the first time. After the trial, I drove to my mother’s home with Jeongguk.”

“Can you confirm that that’s what you were doing?”

“Look at the footage from my dash camera. You’ll see that I didn’t make any stops to the police station or anywhere else.”

Hoseok doesn’t look at all, fazed. “You could have walked there.”

“I have a Bentley, why would I walk?”

“Objection,” Namjoon calls out, interrupting the face-off Seokjin seemed to be having with Hoseok. “Relevance.”

“Sustained,” the judge replies.

Hoseok rubs his nose and accepts it like he’d just been scolded, but he bounces back unscathed. “Tell the court about what you found at the first and second crime scenes,” he requests from Seokjin.

“In the case of Jang Jaewon,” Seokjin begins after pulling in a deep breath, “we noticed that the cuts on his chest looked like roman numerals. And those roman numerals indicated page numbers of the only book in his bookcase that stood out. Using the first and second letters of the first word on those pages, we pieced together Hong Haejoo’s name.”

“Who’s we?”

“Myself and my subordinate, Kim Namjoon.”

Hoseok’s eyes flick over to where Namjoon is sitting, his expression still stoic and taut. “The same Kim Namjoon who is defending you, today?”

Seokjin nods.

“And who was it that deciphered that hint? Who looked up all those pages and found the first word in each?”

“Namjoon.”

“And did you, yourself, have a look at the pages of that book? The words he’d picked out?”

Seokjin bites down on his lip as he pans his vision, slowly, over to Namjoon. His brows are furrowed, much deeper now, and there’s tension building up in his shoulders and his clenched fist. Last time, Seokjin was by Namjoon’s side, ready to reach over and take his hands to ease his grief. This time, Seokjin is the cause of Namjoon’s grief.

Hoseok just nods. “Tell us about the clue you found in the second crime scene,” Hoseok continues.

“The legs of the chair Hong Haejoo was found dead in had little dots punched into the wood. The patterns were different on every leg, so I speculated that it was Morse code for something. We looked it up, and the clue read out History repeats itself. He will lie in the bed you’ve made.”

“Again, who deciphered the code?”

“…Namjoon.”

“Did you verify it?”

Seokjin doesn’t reply. He only stares back, trying to hold back his anger. “I have no reason to doubt him,” he says instead.

“Answer the question, defendant.”

“No, I didn’t verify it.”

Namjoon hasn’t said a word since the beginning of the trial but when Seokjin looks over at him it looks like he’s barely containing himself. His fists atop the table are shivering and though his lips are set, sternly, in a straight line, Seokjin knows what’s really going through his mind.

That this isn’t looking good for either of them.

“So you took your subordinate’s words for it,” Hoseok confirms, and though his expression doesn’t change, Seokjin can hear the hint of smugness in his voice, the way he knows he got what he wanted. “Tell us, now, about what that clue meant to you.”

“That the third victim would be a male.”

“How did you come to the conclusion that your little brother would be targeted?”

Seokjin swallows, hard. He hadn’t even explained in full every reason Seokjin had to think that Jeongguk would be next, that the killer, whoever they were, was fixated on Seokjin. How was he meant to explain that? To put it across without digging for himself an even deeper grave? “I just… had a feeling,” he replies vaguely.

“That’s not gonna cut it,” Hoseok snaps at him. "You predicted Jeongguk would be targeted on the sixteenth of February, and you had an entire patrol out to protect him. That’s too specific and serious for just a feeling. And while no one was looking, because you’d distracted everyone, you slipped into the locker room and took your third victim.”

“Objection!” Namjoon shouts out, almost making Seokjin jump. “The prosecution is speculating.”

“Sustained,” the judge accepts, and Seokjin feels his shoulders sag a little as if he can relax, now, even though he knows it won’t be as easy as that. It will never be as easy as that, but Seokjin still exhales and allows himself these short few seconds of reprieve. He prepares himself once more, but the judge smacks his gavel down and snaps him out of his mind. “We shall reconvene after a twenty-minute break,” he decides, and Seokjin exhales again, heavier and deeper this time. He feels relieved, and when he stands he takes a step towards Namjoon before a bailiff stands in his way and stops him.

For a second there, Seokjin had forgotten he’s the defendant in this case and not the defence attorney. He’d almost gone to join Namjoon, to talk and laugh with him, to make jokes to lighten the mood.

He doesn’t know, right now, how he can lighten his own mood. The bailiff leads him into another room from the back exit of the courtroom while everyone else leaves through the main entrance. The bailiff closes the door and Seokjin waits in the room, alone.

The room suddenly feels cold. Seokjin stares down at his hands and he remembers how there’d been blood on them, just after he’d flipped the light switch on in that locker room. He looks down at his hands and he can almost envision that blood still on his hands, covering the soft skin of his palms, making them slick and shiny.

He blinks and squeezes his eyes shut, and the blood on his hands disappears. It’s not there anymore. Seokjin frowns as he tries to take himself back to that night, tries to remember what had happened. He’d walked into the locker room, he flipped the light switch on, and he saw a dead body. He ran to Namjoon’s apartment. He washed his hands in the sink… but there wasn’t much blood on his hands anyway. He’d only touched the light switch.

His reflection stares back at him, his eyes bloodshot and his skin pale and lifeless, in the bathroom of Namjoon’s apartment. There’s blood running from his hands into the sink where he’d left the taps on. His reflection stares back at him.

You’re running out of time, his reflection says to him.

“To do what?” Seokjin asks in return.

To save everyone. You have to fix this. It can only be you.

“But I’m powerless,” Seokjin laments, and his eyes start to sting. He reaches up and rubs at his eyes in an act of defiance against his tears, and when he pulls his hands back down, he’s left streaks of blood on his eyelids. “I can see the numbers, but I can’t change them.”

Yes, you can.

“I can’t.”

The door to the side room opens, and Seokjin snaps his head away from the mirror. Namjoon steps inside the room and closes the door behind him.

“Are you allowed in here?” Seokjin asks as he stands from the bench he’d been sitting on.

Namjoon walks fast and purposefully, crossing the distance between himself and Seokjin. “Yeah, they gave me five minutes,” he ushers out breathlessly, and when he bridges the gap between them he grabs Seokjin’s face in his both hands, and he crashes his lips onto Seokjin’s with the all urgency of a dying man. Startled, Seokjin stumbles back but is caught by the wall, and once he’s breathed in a lungful of Namjoon’s soft, familiar scent, he reaches up and wraps his arms, tightly, around Namjoon’s neck, as if he would lose Namjoon forever if he lets go.

They kiss desperately and frantically, until Seokjin has to pull away because for a moment, breathing just wasn’t as important as Namjoon. He inhales, long and heavy, before he leans back in and he kisses Namjoon again.

Namjoon presses into him, urgently, pushing him harder against the wall. His tongue finds its way into Seokjin’s mouth, tasting him, letting himself be tasted.

He tastes like everything good in Seokjin’s life that’s about to get taken away from him. It’s sweeter because he knows it’ll be gone, soon.

And he pulls back to gasp for air, again.

Namjoon caresses his cheeks with his thumbs and leans forward, touching their foreheads together. He looks into Seokjin’s eyes, his gaze heavy and forlorn like they hadn’t just been kissing as if their lives depended on it. “I’m so sorry. I couldn’t find anybody else to represent you,” he whispers.

“It’s okay,” Seokjin whispers back. “It’s going to be okay.”

“I wish I believed that.”

Seokjin licks his lips to say something, anything, that could possibly raise his spirits and heal his pain, but nothing comes to mind. His own heart is breaking and bleeding all over the floor. His head is filled with chaos and he doesn’t know how to clear it. He doesn’t know how he’s supposed to save everyone, let alone save himself.

“I have to go,” Namjoon murmurs solemnly, closing his eyes for a moment before he lets go of Seokjin and detaches his forehead from Seokjin’s.

“Wait,” Seokjin breathes, pushing himself off the wall to wrap his arms around Namjoon’s waist. He tightens his arms around Namjoon, squeezing him, and he buries his face in Namjoon’s neck.

And Namjoon envelopes Seokjin’s body, keeping him safe and warm, but only for a moment. Because then he’s gone and he’s no longer in the room and Seokjin is once again all alone with nothing but a heart that’s aching and crying out in pain. He sinks back down onto the bench.

He doesn’t know how long he waits and stares at the marble floors until the bailiff returns to collect him and escort him back to the courtroom. He takes a seat in the witness stand like he had been, before the break, and waits as the gallery fills up once again, as Namjoon and Hoseok return.

The judge smacks his gavel and silences all the voices and chatter in the gallery. “Namjoon-ssi. Please begin your cross-examination,” he requests, and Namjoon clears his throat. Readjusts his glasses, flattens his tie against his abdomen. Then, he stands.

“Kim Seokjin, please repeat to the court what happened on the night of the sixteenth.”

Seokjin sighs heavily. He looks down at the marble floor and wishes that it would open up and swallow him whole and end his misery. Instead, he parts his lips and starts talking. “I was helping the police in keeping patrol – to make sure that Jeongguk was protected and to hopefully catch the killer. My shift ended at eleven, but I wanted to continue on during the night. I went to the police station for a short break and went into the locker room to take some snacks from Jeongguk’s locker. I flipped the light switch on and discovered the body.”

“Why did you agree on helping the police keep patrol, and why did you want to continue on into the night?” Namjoon asks. “You’re not a police officer. It isn’t your job to keep patrol.”

“I couldn’t sit back while someone out there was planning on murdering Jeongguk.”

“Who is Jeongguk to you?”

Seokjin’s eyes flicker over into the gallery, where he meets Jeongguk’s eyes. “He’s my brother. My last remaining family member. He’s all I have left.”

Namjoon nods. “What made you believe that he was going to be targeted, next?”

“There was a single volume missing from Jang Jaewon’s bookshelf of an otherwise complete collection of a manga series. It was volume twenty-two, Jeongguk’s age. The book it was replaced by, the one that held the clue that led to Hong Haejoo, told the story of a boy named Jeongguk. There was two-hundred and sixteen pages in both the missing volume and the book – detailing that the murder would occur on the sixteenth of February. In Hong Haejoo’s room, the Morse code told us that history would be repeated. The third victim would have the same initials as Jang Jaewon. J.J. Jeon Jeongguk.”

“What were your thoughts when you made that connection?” Namjoon asks.

“I thought… I thought that I would protect him, no matter what. I wasn’t going to let anything happen to him.”

“What did you do after that?”

“I told him, and I told Detective Min Yoongi. I knew I would need help if I wanted to protect him.”

Namjoon nods and his facial expression doesn’t shift. “What were their reactions?”

“They were sceptical of my reasonings, but they trusted me. I guess.”

“Why did they trust you?”

“A bouquet of red spider lilies was sent to my office along with another anonymous letter to the police station on the day I went to question the suspect at the time, Lee Mirae. I couldn’t have dropped that letter off or sent the bouquet to myself.”

“That bouquet was purchased from Lee Mirae’s shop on that same day,” Namjoon tells the judge as he pushes his glasses up on his nose. “The defendant has an alibi for the time that transaction was made.”

“Do you have an alibi for night of the sixteenth?” Hoseok challenges, resting his chin against his palm at his table.

“Yes, I do,” Namjoon snaps back, and Seokjin licks his lips in anticipation. For a moment, Seokjin can’t bring himself to trust Namjoon. They’d omitted the fact that it was Namjoon who’d figured out that Jeongguk would be targeted next, not Seokjin. They omitted the fact that Seokjin had run to Namjoon’s apartment after stumbling upon the dead body. It doesn’t sit right with him that they’re keeping those facts hidden, and now he’s scared that Namjoon might just do something he shouldn’t. He sits at the edge of his seat, halted in dread and anticipation.

“Please detail to the court this alibi,” the judge prods Namjoon.

“Yes, your Honour. For that, I’d like to call the second person to discover the body. Officer Hwang, if you will.”

An officer, dressed in the same uniform Jeongguk wears, approaches the witness stand as a bailiff escorts Seokjin back to the defendant’s seat. The officer sits down and dusts some imaginary dust off his knees.

“Please state to the court your full name and occupation,” the judge requests.

“Hwang Daehyun, officer in homicides, you Honour,” he replies meekly.

Namjoon shoves his hands into the pockets of his dress pants, pushing back his suit jacket. “Please tell the court about the events of February the sixteenth.”

Daehyun pulls in a deep breath, letting his eyes close for just a moment. Seokjin looks down at his own feet and he wonders how many times he’s going to be forced to relive that night, how many times he’s going to have to hear it being told again and again, from different angles and perspectives, with none of them painting him in a good light. It doesn’t matter who recounts those events, because in every version of the story, Seokjin was the one who walked in after Myung Minwoo, and he was the one who left right after.

“I normally work during the nights, so I arrived at the station at eleven twenty-five. I was planning on having a cup of coffee, relaxing for a while, before I went out on patrol,” Daehyun begins. “I headed to the locker room first to leave my jacket there before I went into our break room. As I approached the locker room, Kim Seokjin came out, running. I tried calling after him, but he didn’t respond. He looked shaken up, so I went into the locker room to find out why, and that’s when I saw the body.”

Namjoon drums his fingers along the surface of his desk. “You arrived at the station at eleven twenty-five exactly?”

“Yes,” Daehyun confirms. “We have a clocking-in system to record the exact time we arrive to work.”

“Did you recognise the defendant straight away?”

“Yes,” Daehyun confirms again. “He’s Officer Jeon’s older brother. And a friend of the chief's. Everyone at the station knows him.”

“Describe how he looked that night,” Namjoon orders.

Daehyun nods and purses his lips like he’s wracking his brain to remember. “He was wearing a tan-coloured trench coat and black jeans.”

“Was he carrying a bag of any sort with him?”

“No.”

“Did you see any blood on him?”

“No, not really.”

Namjoon nods, and he looks over at Seokjin. The gaze only lasts for a moment, less than that, but he offers Seokjin the tiniest of smiles that he’s sure nobody else saw. Seokjin wants to feel reassured by it, he wants to feel what Namjoon is trying to make him feel, but nothing gets through to him. The lack of blood on Seokjin’s clothes speaks volumes about how he could’ve executed such a grisly murder without soiling his garments, and he knows this, he knows how good it makes him look, but he can’t seem to unwind. He doesn’t feel any more reassured than he did when he’d first discovered the body.

Dark clouds continue to laud over him and nothing he does, nothing Namjoon tries to do, will clear those clouds away.

“Now, please tell us what you saw when you walked into the locker room. Be as descriptive as you can.”

Daehyun visibly gulps, and he clasps his hands together atop his lap. He looks nervous – whether he’s nervous to be here or nervous about retelling the horror of what he’d seen in that locker room, Seokjin doesn’t know, but suddenly he doesn’t want to be here or hear this at all. There’s something in him that desperately wants to reject everything right now, to run away from it all like he did that night. He wants to run and run and fall into Namjoon’s arms and be cocooned in his warmth and his protection.

But he doesn’t get to do that.

“There was blood all over the walls,” Daehyun begins his testimony. “All over the floor. Myung Minwoo… Officer Myung… his body was… in pieces on the other side of the room.”

“What about the flowers taped to the wall?” Namjoon asks, his tone of voice not holding any kind of questioning lilt to it.

“Oh!” Daehyun’s meek-looking eyes widen. “I heard that those were there. I didn’t notice them, though. I uh, was too shaken up. Sorry.”

“So,” Namjoon begins, walking around the table to stand in front of the gallery. “There was blood all over the walls, blood on the floor. And yet when Kim Seokjin ran out of the locker room, only eight minutes after entering, there was no blood on his clothes or soles of his shoes.”

“He could’ve changed his clothes,” Hoseok suggests from where he’s sat at his table. “He has access to Jeongguk’s locker. They’re both similar in height and build – he could’ve easily changed into something from Jeongguk’s locker.”

“Where would those bloodied clothes have gone, then?” Namjoon challenges, turning to face Hoseok. “Because he wasn’t carrying a bag with him when he ran out of the locker room, and there was nothing of the sort found there either.”

“He wore black jeans and a tan trench coat. Blood wouldn’t show on the jeans, and he could’ve easily covered any blood on his shirt by buttoning up his coat,” Hoseok reasons. Namjoon just shakes his head.

“Can you explain the shoes, then? He didn’t leave behind any bloody footprints.”

Hoseok presses his lips together and doesn’t speak for a few seconds, but those few seconds to Namjoon means everything.

“Yeah,” Daehyun pipes up, snatching everyone’s attention back to himself. “He didn’t leave behind any bloody footprints.”

“There’s no way Seokjin could’ve murdered Officer Myung, dismembered him, sprayed his blood over the walls and floor, changed out of his sullied shoes and made them disappear, all in eight minutes before running out of the locker room and being seen empty handed, wearing clean clothes,” Namjoon reasons, counting off points on his fingers one by one. “He couldn’t have done it.”

Hoseok plants his hands into the table and he pushes himself up to his feet. “Then what was he doing for eight minutes? According to the defendant, he walked in, turned the lights on, saw the body and immediately ran out. That doesn’t sound like eight minutes.”

Namjoon’s lips part, but he, like Hoseok had been just a few moments earlier, is speechless. He doesn’t say anything, and Hoseok continues to stare, to challenge him, but neither of them back down. Neither of them wants to drop the ball, and it’s only becoming more and more difficult for Seokjin to bear.

All eyes are on him. Namjoon and Hoseok are staring off at each other, but every pair of eyes in the gallery are focused on him like bricks tied to his ankles. The weigh him down and Seokjin knows it’s only a matter of time until he runs out of air and his lungs fill up with dirty water. He swallows, hard, and his hands curl into fists atop his knees.

He tries to look down at his knees in the hopes that he might stop thinking about all the eyes. Like he could pretend they aren’t there if he can’t see them. But he still feels them, every single pair of them, oppressing him like a pressure he can’t fight. The room feels like it’s starting to go dark, and Seokjin’s vision starts to feel fuzzy. He narrows his eyes – he tries to clear it away, but his attempts are futile. So he raises his chin and he looks up.

His reflection stares back at him, in the mirror after Seokjin had run like a coward to Namjoon’s apartment. The harsh white light is on, his skin is pale and almost translucent. Dark circles under his eyes make him look like he hasn’t slept for years. He looks down and there’s blood on his hands. His hands are covered, slick, dripping with blood. He quickly turns on the taps and he frantically tries to wash the blood away, and within seconds there’s a stream of red draining into the sink.

He rears his head once again to greet his reflection now that his hands are clean, now that everything has been washed away. Seokjin stares at his own face in the mirror; a face he isn’t entirely sure he recognises, until a line appears on its forehead. The line splits, the skin on either side pushing apart, and from the fissure on his forehead, an eye emerges.

The third eye on Seokjin’s reflection looks around, hysterically, before it notices Seokjin and fixates on him. His own eyes begin to sting but before he can even think about stopping himself from sobbing, tears spill out and roll down his cheeks.

His reflection starts to cry tears of blood. A little rivulet of red streams down the centre of his face from his third eye.

Like a light bulb bursting, Seokjin’s vision goes completely black.

 

Seokjin stands at the shore, the sand soft and warm by the edges of his lonely island. The sky is a pale, dull blue, with cottony clouds wafting far out in the horizon. The soft and salty breeze whistles past his skin, drying the tear tracks left behind on his cheeks.

He reaches up and he touches the tips of his fingers to his cheeks, to the dried tears just under his eyes. He stands at the shore and he looks out into the horizon, wondering wistfully if he’d managed to save everyone, and if they’re all happy.

Nothing else really matters. He pulls his hand back down from his cheek, and he holds it out in front of him. There’s blood on his palms.

 

A sudden quake jostles Seokjin awake, and when he snaps his eyes wide open he quickly discovers that he can’t see anything – only tiny patches of light pinpricking through the cloth that’s been secured over his eyes. He reaches up to remove the cloth but promptly realises that his hands are bound, tied together with something, and held behind him.

Panic and dread come crashing in like waves. He parts his lips to start yelling but there’s a gag over his mouth and his words turn into muffled cries of desperation.

The car he’s in drives over another rock in the uneven, bumpy road. Seokjin almost falls forward from the tremor of it. Seokjin cries out, and he thrashes against the seat he’s in, against the ties that bind his wrists together, against the seat in front of him, until a voice he doesn’t recognise barks at him to shut up. He screams out even louder in resistance, but he doesn’t even have time to regret because something hard and heavy collides with his jaw, snapping his head backwards, smacking it into the window of the car.

The lights go out.

 

Thunderclouds start to form far out in the horizon. The sand under Seokjin’s feet is still soft, still lukewarm. But Seokjin doesn’t really feel that anymore – he can’t remember when he stopped feeling it, because all he feels now is dread and anticipation as he watches those grey, melancholy clouds looming in the distance. He wonders if they’ll reach him, if they’re going to destroy him and everything he loves.

Those clouds are still far, far away. Seokjin still stands at the shore, watching them, as if he’d get swept away in the storm if he turns a blind eye for just a second.

 

Two hands grasp his shoulders from behind, tough fingers digging into his muscle, before they push him down and force him to kneel. His hands are no longer bound behind him but there’s still the blindfold over his eyes and a gag over his mouth, and once his knees hit the floor the two hands on his shoulders lift off and roughly, harshly, they untie the blindfold and gag. A few hairs from Seokjin’s scalp rip away with the knot in the cloth, but Seokjin doesn’t even register the pain in the face of the bright, blinding white light that assaults his eyes and causes them to sting.

It takes a minute for his eyes to adjust to the light, but before that happens everything around Seokjin’s head is thrown into utter disarray; a mess of coloured lights, a cacophony of voices whose words he can’t decipher. They all meld together, low-pitched and slow, and it takes Seokjin a minute to make sense of anything.

There’s a throbbing pain in the right side of his jaw and in the back of his head where he has vague recollections of being smacked ruthlessly until he'd passed out.

Then, when his vision finally returns to him, his eyes first fall upon the marble steps in front him. He cranes his neck up, up, until he finds a grand baroque throne of black velvet and intricate gold filigree. The chair is empty, but there’s a man standing beside it, his hand resting on the back of the chair. Seokjin looks up and narrows his eyes in an attempt to sharpen his vision and make out the features of the man standing beside the chair.

He doesn’t recognise him straight away. But a short moment later it all comes crashing back to him and a clamouring pain bursts in the back of his head, causing him to drop his head and cradle it in his hands. It radiates inside his skull, the pain pulsating and sending shockwaves of agony through his head like bolts of lightning. His fingers dig deep into his scalp and he grits his teeth but no matter what he tries, he can’t contain the pain or make it quieten down.

“Seokjin, raise your head,” the man besides the chair tells him. His voice, though he knows is a voice he’s heard very recently, sounds nothing like what Seokjin remembers of it. “You have a duty to fulfil, so raise your head and take responsibility.”

With his hands still cradling his head and the pain still demanding to be heard in waves, he raises his head slowly but surely. Daehyun’s hand lets go of the back of the chair, and he calmly, almost demurely, walks down the marble steps. He seems nothing like the little act he’d put on for the trial, he doesn’t look meek or shy or nervous. And he seems nothing like what Seokjin remembered of him, twenty years ago, when he’d predicted that his mother would die in a few days. He doesn’t look angry or brash or dangerous. Seokjin hadn’t realised it then, during his trial, that the witness Namjoon called to the stand was the kid whose mother Seokjin predicted the death of. He hadn’t realised it then, but Daehyun was the first person Seokjin had ever failed.

That had all come crashing back to him, just moments ago, and it continues to reverberate in his skull like unbridled chaos and clamour.

Seokjin bites down on his lip. “What are you talking about?” he tries to ask but his voice is reduced to a raspy whisper.

Daehyun doesn’t answer. He just holds a hand out to Seokjin to help him up.

“Tell me,” Seokjin seethes, ignoring the hand. “What the fuck is going on.”

The owners of the two hands that had forced Seokjin to kneel now grab him again, gripping his shoulders to yank him up to his feet. Seokjin tries to shake them off him, to struggle out of the hold of the two that flank him, but he barely has enough energy to keep himself upright, let alone fight away two large, muscular men.

But Daehyun seems to fight Seokjin’s battles for him. He narrows his eyes at the two men. “Do not,” he begins, his voice dropping low and dangerous, “ever touch him like that again.”

Seokjin furrows his brows, confused beyond words. His lips are pressed together and he doesn’t say anything, but he watches Daehyun and questions flit around his mind at lightspeed. What was Daehyun doing here? What is his role in all of this? Why doesn’t he seem angry at Seokjin, like he was twenty years ago?

Because he doesn’t, at all, look angry at Seokjin. Like he blames him. Like he still carries it with him the way Seokjin still does. Instead, Daehyun returns his focus to Seokjin in front of him and smiles delicately. Reaches up with one hand and cups Seokjin’s cheek gently. It’s only now that Seokjin’s eyes widen and his lips part in shock. He stands, still as stone. “I’m sorry for all your suffering until now,” Daehyun tells him, his voice softening. “It was all to prepare you for this.”

“What,” Seokjin whispers, his voice impossibly quiet and shivering along the edges in fear as Daehyun smooths his thumb over Seokjin’s cheekbone, “is going on?”

“There will be time for explanations later,” Daehyun answers vaguely as he drops his hand from Seokjin’s cheek. He moves around him until he stands beside him, and he places his hand onto Seokjin’s back.

He starts to walk forward, gently but firmly pushing Seokjin along with him. Seokjin complies, but only because he’s shivering with fear and dread and he’s scared out of his wits about what’s to come. Together they walk up the marble steps, Daehyun escorts him to the baroque throne, and he coaxes Seokjin to sit. Scared of what would happen if he refuses, Seokjin sits down.

Daehyun stands in front of him, and then he lowers himself onto one knee. The two men who’d manhandled Seokjin into this place also lower to one knee.

“Our God has returned to us,” Daehyun announces, pressing a hand to his heart. “To set straight the path that this wretched world has fallen down.”

Seokjin’s hands grip tightly onto the cold metal of the armrests on the throne, tightly, and he swallows hard. “What are you talking about?” Seokjin asks, his voice nothing more than a whisper that strains against his vocal chords and hurts to get out.

“You,” Daehyun angles his head up just enough to meet Seokjin’s eyes from where he remains, kneeling in front of him, “are more important than you know. You aren’t Kim Seokjin, criminal defence attorney. You aren’t the grim reaper.”

“Then,” Seokjin begins quietly and fearfully, his knuckles turning white from where they clench hard around the armrests of his throne. “Who am I?”

“You are Chronos, God of Time.”

 

The tide comes in, Seokjin tells himself, even though the moon has yet to rear her head and bring with her the darkness of night. The tide comes in and water laps at Seokjin’s feet. It’s cold, and it feels good on his dry skin, and Seokjin wants to enjoy this, he really does, but the thunderclouds look like they’ve slowly but surely inched towards Seokjin like a lion ready to pounce on him at any moment to devour him whole.

The sky is still a pale, dull blue. Thunderclouds with Seokjin’s name written in them stalk a littler closer to him. Seokjin takes a step back, but the sand that’s now waterlogged anchors him in place. When the time comes for those thunderclouds to finally meet him, he’ll be swept off his feet. It’s only a matter of time, now.

 

Seokjin walks through the long, empty hallway. The floors, the walls, everything is made of polished white marble. There are simple chandeliers hanging from the ceiling every few metres, and though the hallway is well and brightly lit, Seokjin can’t really see through to the end.

He continues to walk nonetheless.

It’s been a few days since his trial. He doesn’t remember much from it – only that it seemed like nobody was on his side and even the ones who were could do nothing to help him. He remembers that Namjoon had represented him in court even though he barely had any faith in himself to lead such a case; how nervous he was and how much he doubted himself when Seokjin tasked him with leading Park Jimin’s trial. He wonders about the days leading up to his own trial, how Namjoon must have tortured himself before he’d finally decided to represent Seokjin. He wonders about how it must have felt. He wonders about why it had to happen in the first place.

He wonders about every step he’d taken in his life that had led him to this destination. The numbers he saw above Daehyun’s mother’s head that didn’t look right to him. The numbers above his father’s head. The numbers above that little girl’s head, and the numbers above Jeongguk’s father’s head. He wonders how many of those were just coincidences, and how many of those he had a part to play in, how many he had influenced.

He wonders about how much of what Daehyun told him was true, and how much of it was fallacy. He wonders why he’s even entertaining the idea.

 

The courtyard is beautiful, with a grand marble fountain in the centre and lush greenery around it, the buds of flowers waiting to bloom lining the fountain. Seokjin walks along the stone path, watching the water gushing up and out of the fountain. He watches it come up, come down, and then become one with the water once again.

He looks up at the dull, pale blue sky. It’s been over a week now since his trial and he has no idea where he is, how far from home he is, and what everyone is doing right now. If they’re worried about Seokjin or if they’re angry at him, and whether or not they’re searching for him.

He wishes he could get out of this place, but he’s been here for over a week and he still can’t manage to leave. It seems like a big, almost gigantic settlement in the woods far away from civilisation. There’s the main house – a large mansion with a courtyard, and several smaller houses around the area. There are tall gates encompassing the settlement constantly watched by guards as if every single one of them knows that Seokjin wants to escape.

But it’s been a while since he started pretending that he doesn’t want to escape anymore.

Daehyun calls themselves Timekeepers. They’re a group of people who believe that the timeline the world is embarking on is wrong, and that the path needs to be set straight. That all the wars, bombings, killings, are all by-products of this mistaken track.

It was the morning after his trial that Daehyun told Seokjin all of this. After he and his men had effectively kidnapped Seokjin and forced him here, against his will. Seokjin had woken up to the late morning sunlight filtering in through thin white lace curtains billowing softly with the breeze. Someone had rid him of his suit and dressed him in a soft white shirt that hangs off his shoulders like it’s a size or two too large, and a pair of white shorts that just about reach his knees. He’d swung his legs over the side of the grand bed with the mattress and duvet softer than anything he’s ever slept in before, and he walked out of the room.

The hallways were long, made of polished white marble that made Seokjin wonder if there was ever an end to them.

But somehow, he’d reached a set of double doors, and he pushed the doors open. Found inside a large open room with nothing but a long dining table, two chairs on either end, in the middle of the room. To the side, a grand piano, with Daehyun sitting at it.

“Chronos, my Lord, please sit,” Daehyun immediately stood when Seokjin walked in, ushering him into one of the two seats at the dining table. In front of Seokjin sitting atop the table was a tray, adorned with a plate filled with fresh fruit and a glass filled with a liquid Seokjin didn’t trust.

“What the fuck is going on?” Seokjin had spat, giving the tray of food in front of him no more than a glance. “What happened yesterday? Where am I?”

Daehyun didn’t answer, not at first. Instead, he reached down and plucked a grape from the plate and brought it up to Seokjin’s lips. “Here, eat.”

“No,” Seokjin replied, angling his head away. “I want answers.”

Slowly, obediently, Daehyun placed the grape back down. Then, he turned just enough to sit atop the side of the table, one hand planted into the table in front of Seokjin. His other reached forward and touched tenderly at Seokjin’s hair. “What would you like to know, my Lord?”

Seokjin flinched away from Daehyun’s touch, but he didn’t seem fazed by Seokjin’s disgust. “Why am I here?” he asked first.

“I told you yesterday, my Lord. You are Chronos, the God of Time.”

I am not, Seokjin immediately thought. He swallowed, hard, and pressed his lips together as he looked up at Daehyun from where he sat. Daehyun didn’t move from where he was perched atop the table. “What makes you think that?” he followed up with instead.

“You have the ability to see time,” Daehyun answered mildly, “and manipulate it.”

“I can’t manipulate it,” Seokjin challenged, furrowing his brows harshly over his eyes.

That didn’t seem to disappoint Daehyun the way he’d wanted it to, because Daehyun had just leaned over, smiled, and brought his hand up once again to touch his finger under Seokjin’s chin, angling his face upwards. “Don’t underestimate yourself, my Lord. I have prepared you to be the strongest you can possibly be.”

Seokjin gritted his teeth together, hands clenching tightly into fists beside the plate of fruit. “What are you talking about?” he seethed.

“You can never gain true strength without adversity,” Daehyun told him. “A piece of coal turns into diamond but only if it’s under extreme pressure. We did what we had to do to prepare you for this role.”

“Like… like murdering those three innocent people?”

Daehyun nodded. “You are accustomed to death, already. I needed to subject you to something more sinister, more personal, more difficult. I needed to break you before I remade you.”

“But why?” Seokjin bit down on his lip.

“To awaken your true power. Seeing lifespans isn’t your limits. You have the power to influence those lifespans, to manipulate them. The goal of the Timekeepers is to set straight the path that this corrupt world has embarked on, and to do that, we need a God. We need you.”

“What are you going to make me do?”

Daehyun looked down at the plate of fruit he’d put in front of Seokjin and reached down to pluck up a few pomegranate seeds. He lifts them up to Seokjin’s lips, and this time, he makes Seokjin eat them. “You will cleanse the world of the people who don’t deserve time.”

 

That was over a week ago. Little by little, in small doses so that Seokjin can adjust himself to it, Daehyun teaches Seokjin about their cult. Daehyun doesn’t like it when Seokjin calls it a cult, and he was really unhappy after the first time Seokjin tried to escape, so Seokjin doesn’t try anymore and he doesn’t call it a cult.

After his first attempt to escape, Daehyun had made sure Seokjin never walked anywhere unaccompanied. It seemed as though Daehyun was the leader of the cult – had taken over from the previous leader.

Little by little, he teaches Seokjin about the Timekeepers. Their beliefs, their ethics, the things that they do. On the very surface of it all, they just look like a religious cult who condone the actions of the wicked and the criminal. But as Seokjin peels back the layers of the organisation he realises it’s no where near as good and well-intended as Daehyun thinks it is; they’d organised the deaths of three innocent people: Jang Jaewon and Myung Minwoo, two of their very own members, and the child of another member, Hong Haejoo.

“They weren’t sacrificed,” Daehyun stands firm against his actions, but his tone of voice doesn’t sound challenging or opposing in the slightest. “They were catalysts, necessary to make you who are meant to be. It’s for the greater good.”

Seokjin pretends to go along with all of this, because while he knows that Daehyun or any of the Timekeepers would never hurt him, he doesn’t doubt that they won't extend that hospitality to Jeongguk. They’d already threatened Jeongguk’s life before, and it seems like they won’t have any remorse in doing so again.

 

“Why me, though?” Seokjin asks one day, just as Daehyun is about to leave after the end of Seokjin’s training. “I come from a long line of Seers. Why did you pick me, specifically?”

Daehyun stands by the door. “You are special, Kim Seokjin,” Daehyun tells him as if he doesn’t tell Seokjin the same thing every single day. “You aren’t like everyone who came before you.”

“And why is that?”

“The DNA belonging to those of the Seers will die with you,” Daehyun tells him. “Your offspring will not be a Seer like you.”

“W-what?” Seokjin stutters, his lips parting in shock. “But… why? My mother was a Seer, and her mother was a Seer, and-“

“They were all women, weren’t they?” Daehyun asks. “Seers are always women. It resides in their mitochondrial DNA, which is inherited solely from the mother. As a male, your biological offspring will not inherit your mitochondrial DNA, which you inherited from your mother. Your offspring will not be a Seer.”

“B-but… I thought it was always the first child who would be a Seer,” Seokjin asks in disbelief.

“It’s the first female child.”

“So I was… an anomaly? A mutation?”

Daehyun shakes his head slowly and smiles softly. “No. You are the chosen one. You are perfect. You are not just a Seer, you are a God.”

 

“Daehyun,” Seokjin sounds softly as the other man brushes his hair from behind. He sees less and less of Daehyun these days; as the leader of the cult he has certain duties he needs to fulfil (though what those duties are, Daehyun doesn’t tell him and Seokjin doesn’t want to know), and on most days he goes to work where he pretends to be an officer alongside Seokjin’s little brother, whom Daehyun reports back as fine and healthy.

Fine and healthy is what Daehyun assumes Jeongguk is, even though Seokjin knows that Jeongguk won’t be fine or healthy. He knows that Jeongguk won’t be well, not in the slightest, not when Seokjin’s been missing for a while, now.

He hasn’t asked about what the police are doing or how they’re taking Seokjin’s disappearance. Do they see this as a kidnapping, or do they think Seokjin is on the run? Are they trying to save him, or are they trying to apprehend him?

“Yes?” Daehyun responds, softly brushing Seokjin’s hair. It’s getting longer, now, and so long as Daehyun doesn’t mention a potential haircut, neither does Seokjin.

“Do you remember when we were seven years old?” he asks lightly, cautiously. “I told you that your mother didn’t have long left.”

“I remember,” Daehyun answers, putting the hairbrush down on the bed beside Seokjin. Then, he rests his hand atop Seokjin’s head.

“You were really mad at me at the time. Why… why aren’t you angry anymore?”

“How could I ever be angry at you?” Daehyun asks, shuffling around the on the bed to come in front of Seokjin. He reaches forward and cups Seokjin’s cheeks in both hands delicately.

Seokjin furrows his brows and feels something burning in his chest, but he doesn’t move away from Daehyun’s touch. “You were angry when I tried to run away,” he recounts.

A soft smile replaces the concern on Daehyun’s face. “You didn’t understand your importance, or who you truly were. I wasn’t angry.”

You could’ve fooled me, Seokjin wants to say. My scalp still hurts from the way you dragged me by my hair across the floor. “Right,” Seokjin mumbles.

Daehyun’s smile grows wider, and his thumbs stroke over Seokjin’s cheekbones tenderly, before he leans in and presses a kiss to Seokjin’s lips that he doesn’t return.

 

His own reflection in the mirror in front of him stares at him, scrutinises him, sneers at him. Seokjin doesn’t know why, but for the first time in a long time, he feels like his mind is clear. He’s been here for a while, now, and he doesn’t entirely recognise the face he sees in the mirror. The person looking back at him has hair that reaches just below his earlobes, wears a billowing white shirt that hangs off his shoulders and exposes his collarbones, and has a third eye in the centre of his forehead.

His third eye is open, but when Seokjin reaches up to touch it, he feels nothing at all. His forehead is completely smooth.

A hallucination, Seokjin tells himself, but acknowledging it as such does nothing in the way of stopping himself from seeing it every time he catches sight of his own reflection. His mind feels clear, clearer than it has for a long time, but still he continues to see a third eye that he knows isn’t there.

There are many people who call themselves Timekeepers. Lee Mirae and his older brother, for example. When he isn’t working, Lee Yoonseo comes to Seokjin and weaves flowers into his hair.

People he’s seen once or twice, people he’s walked past on the streets. People he’s worked with, his friends have worked with, that he’s crossed paths with. He doesn’t interact with them, because it’s much too strange to remember speaking to them as Kim Seokjin, criminal defence attorney, and to now be spoken to as Chronos, the revered God of Time.

He doesn’t believe, even for a moment, that he is capable of manipulating the lifespans that he sees, or that he deserves any of the reverence Daehyun bestowed upon him. He is not a God. He is just a human cursed with the ability to see lifespans. He cannot manipulate them. He refuses to believe that any of the three lives that were taken in the hopes that it would break Seokjin were necessary or had any effect on him. They were senseless murders, nothing more. They were not catalysts as Daehyun told him they were. The Timekeepers were just as bad as the people they claimed Seokjin would cleanse the world of.

Of course, Seokjin never voices any of these opinions, to Daehyun or to anyone else in the cult. He remembers what happened the last time he tried to escape, the last time he disobeyed, and he knows that he’ll have to bide his time. He’ll have to play along and pretend that he is who they say he is.

Until March the twenty-first.

 

Daehyun eases Seokjin into the big, soft bed but tonight, before he pulls the duvet up, he climbs into the bed with him. He pulls the duvet up and pushes one arm under Seokjin’s neck and circles it around his shoulders. He turns his head on the pillow to face Seokjin and buries his nose into Seokjin’s hair.

Seokjin stays stock-still. Continues to stare up at the ceiling and tries to ignore the way Daehyun holds him so tenderly and affectionately. “Daehyun,” he whispers into the night.

“Yes, my Lord?”

“How did you do it? Myung Minwoo? Hong Haejoo and Jang Jaewon?”

He pauses to gauge Daehyun’s reaction to his question, but the other man doesn’t seem fazed at all. His hand tightens around Seokjin’s shoulder, but there’s nothing else in his demeanour that says Seokjin shouldn’t have asked. “There’s no need for you to know, now,” comes his short reply.

“I want to know,” Seokjin protests.

Daehyun sighs, his breath fanning over Seokjin’s ear. “Alright, if you wish. I had arrived at the station long before you did and signed in with another officer’s card. I hid myself inside my locker and waited while many officers came and went. Then, when Myung Minwoo arrived, I exited my locker and took care of him.”

“And then…?”

“I returned to hide inside my locker. Another Timekeeper arrived at the police station and signed in with my card. Then, you arrived, found the officer, and ran. My aide posed as me until I was able to get out of the locker before more officers came to investigate.”

“And Jang Jaewon? Hong Haejoo?”

“I was responsible only for Myung Minwoo. You’ve already met Lee Mirae and his brother, Lee Yoonseo. They were responsible for Jang Jaewon and Hong Haejoo.”

“You pulled all of this off… to make it look like I did it. To point all the fingers towards me.”

“You have to understand, my Lord,” Daehyun squeezes Seokjin’s shoulder and nuzzles his nose into Seokjin’s hair, “that we had to do this to prepare you.”

Seokjin wants nothing more, right now, than to push Daehyun as far away from him as possible. His stomach feels queasy with the thought of being held so affectionately, so intimately, by someone who had taken the life of another and in the way that it was carried out. Daehyun had chopped Myung Minwoo’s body into pieces. Splattered his blood across the walls and the floor. Did all of this because he wanted to break Seokjin down.

He’d succeeded in that, Seokjin will admit. It did break him. It pounded him, it crushed him, and it cremated him. But where Daehyun believed that he’d remade Seokjin into Chronos, the God that would cleanse the world of people who didn’t deserve time, he was wrong.

Seokjin is not a God.

 

His hair reaches his chin, now. Seokjin doesn’t recognise the man in the mirror at all.

The third eye in the centre of his forehead is still there, and it’s wide open, now. It’s still painful to look at, so he turns away from the mirror and looks back at Daehyun, standing at the foot of his bed, brandishing a dagger that he polishes with a cloth.

“Tell me again,” Seokjin requests quietly, “why I’m here.”

Daehyun raises his brows and looks up at Seokjin curiously. After a moment he places the dagger down on the bed and crosses the distance between himself and Seokjin, and with one hand he reaches up and clasps the back of Seokjin’s neck. “You are here to cleanse the world of the people who don’t deserve time. You are our God, Chronos.”

Seokjin doesn’t say anything.

“Have you ever heard of the Eleusinian Mysteries, my Lord?” Daehyun asks, coming forward slowly to ghost his lips over the skin on Seokjin’s neck. “In ancient Greece, it was believed that Persephone, the daughter of Demeter, was the Goddess of Vegetation and Springtime. She was kidnapped by Hades and taken to the Underworld. Demeter forced him to return her daughter, but unfortunately she had done the one thing she shouldn’t have done in the Underworld – she had eaten the food of the dead, pomegranate seeds.”

Daehyun presses his lips to Seokjin’s neck, over his throat, kissing it softly. Seokjin remembers being fed pomegranate seeds, remembers swallowing them. Daehyun continues to caress his throat before he pulls back just enough to speak more words into Seokjin’s skin.

“As a result, she was forced to return to the Underworld every year much to the grief of Demeter. In their honour, the Greeks had the Eleusinian Mysteries, in which initiates were shown the real nature of life and death.”

Daehyun’s hands now circle around Seokjin’s back.

“But the great work was destroyed. The Temple of Demeter was ransacked. The Christians took over, and the mysteries were thought to be destroyed, and their knowledge gone. But knowledge lives on, and the rituals continue. Which is why we had to do what we did.”

“By killing people?” Seokjin breathes out as he tries to move not even a single muscle.

“We all need a victim. We have blood debts to pay. In the original mysteries, you had to be free of blood guilt, that you can’t have killed anyone. But we are executing the advanced mysteries now, and now a blood debt is required. You need to meet it in order to be initiated. Mine: Myung Minwoo. Lee Mirae’s: Jang Jaewon. Lee Yoonseo’s: Hong Haejoo.”

Seokjin now pulls back, ever so slightly, so as not to disturb Daehyun as he goes. Daehyun leans back and looks at him, his arms still around Seokjin’s back. He swallows, hard, and tries not to let his fear and dread show on his face. “What’s going to happen tomorrow?” he asks, his voice turning quiet and trembling along the edges.

“We kill two birds with one stone,” Daehyun answers him confidently. “It’s March the twenty-first tomorrow, the Spring Equinox. The time that Persephone returns from the Underworld. You will fulfil your blood debt and complete your rites to unleash your true power. Then, we will begin to cleanse this world.”

“I… will have to kill someone?”

“To initiate your power, yes,” Daehyun nods. “Right now, as a Seer, you are able to witness lifespans and you have a small amount of influence over them. But tomorrow, once you fulfil your blood debt, you will become a true God. You will slay the one that stands in your way, absorb his life force and his power the way Chronos did to everything around him. Then, you will be able to see the hearts of every human, whether they are good or evil. And you will be able to manipulate their lifespans.”

Daehyun hugs him, tightly, one hand at his back and another on his head. “Who do I need to kill?” Seokjin asks quietly in the dark room.

“Kairos, the God of the Fleeting Moment. He is everything that you are, and at the same time, nothing. You must end him tomorrow and bring back his blood so that we can begin the rituals.”

 

The sun continues to make its descent from zenith, throwing brilliant orange streams of light into the hall. The white walls are bathed in bronze light and the chandeliers refract those rays into a thousand different colours. Seokjin sits on his throne, white lilies woven into his hair braided around the crown of his head, leaning over on one side to prop his elbow up on the armrest, his closed fist a seat for his chin. He looks out at the hall, at the mass of people congregated before him below the marble steps.

Each of them kneels in front of him, their hands clasped together as they pray. The sun continues to fall, painting everything that Seokjin sees in bright, vivid golden rays. For the first time in a very, very long time, it doesn’t feel like winter anymore. Seokjin doesn’t feel cold from the inside anymore. He doesn’t feel like the same boy who, on that cold winter night, cried and held a girl as she died in his arms. He doesn’t feel like the same boy who lost his father, his step father, his mother, all on cold and desolate winter nights. He doesn’t feel like the man who had watched the lifespan of the one he loves change in front of his own eyes as he stood in the middle of the night, tiny snowflakes flurrying to the ground around him.

Seokjin doesn’t feel powerless anymore. The Timekeepers who pray to him start rocking back and forth, growing frantic in their prayers. They praise Seokjin, they call out his name, they call him Chronos. They ask him to rid the world of evil, they ask him to rid the world of the people who hurt them. Daehyun is there, too, at the front of the mass but there nonetheless, crying and praying with them. He, too, begs Seokjin to cleanse the world of the people who hurt him.

I had hurt you, Seokjin thinks as he watches the heretics. He doesn’t say anything, however; he sits silently atop his throne and he watches. I am not your God. I cannot save you.

 

Just after the sun dips below the horizon, Seokjin finally leaves the settlement. Though it doesn’t feel like it at all, Seokjin had been held prisoner here for four weeks. In between brief conversations with Daehyun, of exploring the settlement and promptly finding that there was not a single vantage point he might’ve thought he could escape from, and from avoiding every other cult member who spent time there, he had undergone some sort of training as Daehyun called it – preparation for Seokjin to become to human weapon Daehyun wanted him to be.

He’d thought about lopping off his hair with the dagger Daehyun gave to him, but even though he’s been held captive for four weeks he doesn’t want to leave looking like an insane person with hair that’s uneven and choppy. He’d thought about it, sure, that he might have a kind of Mulan-type moment where he cuts it all off and looks like a badass, but for this Seokjin will have to admit to himself he won’t do a great job on. Instead, he ties his hair back at the base of his skull into a tiny ponytail that’s only about an inch long.

The settlement, Seokjin discovers, truly is in the middle of nowhere, and he can understand why, now, that in the four weeks he was missing, nobody had found him. He doesn’t even know where he is, or where he’s meant to go. He just runs, through the woods, and hopes that he ends up somewhere where there’s people. The more people there are, the better his chances are in keeping himself safe and away from the Timekeepers once they realise that he isn’t coming back.

Daehyun had pointed him in a direction and told him that he must do this himself, that he must return before midnight with the blood of Kairos on his hands, and for some reason he believed in Seokjin’s loyalty to the Timekeepers. Daehyun was a cunning man, a very smart man, but he was crazy. He was batshit insane. He was completely senseless.

He believed in Seokjin’s act, that Seokjin was on their side, and had accepted the role of being their God.

Absolute bullshit.

He runs through the woods as quickly as he can, trying his hardest not to trip over tree trunks or foliage, with only the rising moon as his source of light. He doesn’t know where his phone is; hasn’t known since he was knocked out at his trial and brought here. But he runs, nonetheless, because he needs to get away.

 

Seokjin’s legs give up on him and his knees buckle. He falls forward but catches himself on his hands before he smashes his face into the dirt. Huffing heavily to regain his breath, he decides to take a short break. He’s not out of the woods yet, and he doesn’t even know how long he’s been running for or how much longer he has to run. He swallows, hard, but his throat is dry and it’s painful.

Trying to stand back up is next to futile. The moon has risen and Seokjin stares up at it, his chest heaving with every laboured breath, and he wonders again why his life has come to this. Why he had to be plagued with this curse. Seokjin has never asked for much in his life and he’s always worked hard. He’s not perfect, but he tries to be a good person. He really does.

He pushes himself up onto his feet but his thighs want to lock into place. He can feel the lactic acid building up in his muscles, can feel it slowing him down and holding him back. He can’t run, he knows this much, so he starts to walk instead. When his muscles no longer feel like solid lead, he might try to run again.

He follows the path Daehyun told him to take, he knows he’s going in the right direction, but Seokjin isn’t sure if he’s taking the right path at all. What will happen when he returns? Will he be welcomed back with open arms, or did his absence paint him into the killer they thought he was, wracked with enough guilt that it made him run away? Will they believe him?

It’s March the twenty-first. The day that Namjoon is fated to die. One-hundred days ago, Seokjin was as happy as his cursed life allowed. He still had his mother, even if she had completely lost her sight and was dying, and he had Jeongguk. He had a subordinate that he loved and knew would live until old-age. One hundred days ago on a cold winter night, Namjoon had bundled him up and put him in cab to take him home.

It was around midnight, one-hundred days ago, that Seokjin saw with his own wretched eyes as Namjoon’s lifespan plummeted down from sixty-one years to one-hundred days and counting. It’s coming close to midnight now, Seokjin realises as he continues to walk on, regardless of whether he’ll be accepted back or not. It’s not cold or snowing like it was one-hundred days ago. The trees around him are starting to grow back their leaves. Plants have sprouted little colourful buds that will soon bloom into beautiful flowers. Life is seeping back into the earth, while Namjoon’s life seeps out of him.

Five minutes. Those are the numbers above Namjoon’s head when Seokjin reaches a small clearing in the woods and finds Namjoon, huffing, pressing a hand to his chest. He pants for air as he slumps slightly against a tree. He narrows his eyes at Seokjin.

“How’d you find me here?” Seokjin whispers, holding onto the bark of the tree besides him for support. The numbers atop Namjoon’s head are glowing, pulsating almost. Four minutes and fifty-one seconds left. Four minutes and fifty seconds left. Four minutes and forty-nine seconds left.

“A hunch, I guess,” Namjoon answers breathlessly, his hand still pressed to his chest.

“You don’t just… find someone in the middle of the woods after they’ve been missing for a while on a hunch.”

Namjoon pushes himself off the tree and comes into the clearing, letting the white moonlight fall on him. There are dark circles under his eyes, his hair is unkempt, and there’s stubble along his jaw. He looks haggard and messy, like he hasn’t taken care of himself for a while. Seokjin wonders if he looks just as wild as Namjoon does, but he remembers that the Timekeepers took that responsibility upon themselves. They shaved him, they bathed him, they trimmed his nails and they kept his skin moisturised. Up until his departure from the settlement, he had flowers woven into his hair. “Do you remember…” Namjoon begins as he stops in the middle of the clearing. Seokjin walks slowly and joins him there. “When I told you that I had a dream I saw you running through the woods?”

“Vaguely,” Seokjin replies as he takes a step forward.

“It wasn’t a dream.”

He looks up and meets Namjoon’s eyes, furrowing his brows heavily over his eyes.

“When I… when I touch someone’s skin,” Namjoon begins, looking down and letting his eyelids droop low over his pupils as he lifts his arm up and trails his fingers along Seokjin’s wrist, “I can see the moments that have or will impact their lives the most. The moment that a person stands at the train station and boards the train that will take them away from their past lives. The moment that a child first holds onto his father’s finger and the man realises who he is. The moment that you witness a dead body for the first time.”

“Y…you see all of this?” Seokjin whispers quietly as Namjoon’s fingers on his wrist trail up, lightly, gently, until his hands curl around Seokjin’s arms.

Namjoon nods. “I don’t know why. But I’ve always been able to see those fleeting moments. All I have to do is… touch their skin.”

Kairos, Seokjin remembers Daehyun telling him, the God that opposed Seokjin, the God he was tasked to kill. It’s Namjoon, Seokjin realises then. There are three minutes and thirty-two seconds left until the end of March the twenty-first, three minutes and thirty-two seconds left until Namjoon dies. Seokjin bites down on his lip, hard.

“I can manipulate those moments,” Namjoon tells him softly. “That’s why I’m here, now.”

“Y-you can manipulate them? Why… why didn’t I know about this before? Have you ever manipulated anything before?”

Namjoon nods and squeezes his arms. “Only once, though. A long, long time ago. I knew a girl who was being abused by her father. Kept coming to school with bruises that she tried to hide and never told anyone about. Her fingers brushed mine when we both went to pick up the same pencil, and I saw the moment that she would come home early from school and find her father with another woman, and the moment ended there… I didn’t see anything past that short, fleeting moment, but it was enough that I knew I had to do something.”

“What did you do?”

“I made is so that she didn’t go home early. Delayed her bus. Made a reason for her mother to return home to catch her cheating husband and kick him out of the house.”

“And the girl…?”

“Her bruises healed. I don’t know what would’ve happened if I didn’t intervene… I try not to think about how sinister it could’ve been… so I don’t regret what I did.”

Seokjin reaches up and grabs Namjoon’s arms, anchoring himself to him. “If you don’t regret it, then why haven’t you ever done it again? You said that was the only time you ever did.”

“Because there’s a price to pay when you mess with timelines that have already been mapped out. I might’ve saved that girl, but her father died a few months later from an overdose. He might not have been a good person, but it’s not up to me who lives or dies. I wanted to be a lawyer so that… so that bad people got what they deserved, and I would be justified in my actions.”

Two minutes and twenty-six seconds left. “Then why… why are you here?” Seokjin asks quietly as if that would mask the fear in his voice. It doesn’t.

Namjoon cups Seokjin’s cheeks and leans down to press a soft, chaste kiss to his lips. “Because for you, I’ll do anything.”

“…why?”

“I love you.”

He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a folded-up piece of paper that he holds up and shows Seokjin. Seokjin knows what it is before Namjoon even unfolds it, before he even speaks.

“I’ve signed my part,” Namjoon tells him softly, a wistful smile on his lips. “It doesn’t matter if this country doesn’t accept us, or if nobody cares. I am yours, and you are mine.”

Seokjin closes his hand around Namjoon’s, burying the folded-up marriage contract in his fist. He pushes himself up on his toes and he kisses Namjoon with every inch of his being, with all the fire that he can muster up in himself. He kisses Namjoon like it’s their first kiss, like it’s their last. He kisses Namjoon like he hasn’t seen him in a long, long time, and he kisses Namjoon like he won’t ever see him again. And just before Seokjin runs out of the fire that keeps him going, he pulls back and he remembers to breathe.

Ten seconds left.

Seokjin pulls out the dagger from his holster and grits his teeth before he holds it, determinedly and resolutely, between both his hands. He clasps it tightly.

Seven seconds left. Namjoon’s eyes widen in shock and his lips part to say something, anything, but whether he speaks or not Seokjin doesn’t know. All he hears is his own blood rushing through his ears like the tidal wave that has finally come to knock him off his feet and sweep him away in the currents.

Six seconds left. Seokjin squeezes his eyes shut.

Five seconds. He opens his eyes and looks, one last time, at the face of the man he loves, the man that he’s fated to. Kairos, the God that stands alongside himself, the God Chronos.

With all the strength he can muster in his muscles, Seokjin drives the dagger up and towards his own eyes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Seokjin has long since stopped questioning whether his actions were wrong, whether he was mistaken in every decision he’s ever had to make. Briefly, he thought about where he might be right now if the decisions he made were different, but there were perhaps a million choices he had to make in his life, and each of those choices led to another million choices, and the path that he followed in his life was one out of an infinity. Maybe the path that he’s on isn’t the right one, and maybe there were paths that he would’ve been happy to take, but it’s too late now to go back and do it all over again.

So he continues resolutely down this path that he’s chosen, and he walks. Back to the Timekeeper’s settlement with Namjoon’s blood dripping from his hands.

 

 

Notes:

FIRST OF ALL ain't nobody dying, don't worry!!!
secondly, that was one hell of a chapter lol those of you who follow me on twt know how nervous i have been about this chapter/about what the truth behind the murders were, because i hyped them up and made them into this big deal, and even after uploading this chapter i'm still nervous and scared that people won't like what i've done with this story. this doesn't mean i'm not proud of my fic or that i would do anything differently because this is how i envisioned it from the very beginning (like, why else would i name this fic 'kairotic'?) but yh. i guess what i'm trying to say is that i'm nervous but that's ok and for all the people who will have liked this plot, thank you for all the support from start to finish.

And as always, leave a comment and kudos!

 
twt

Chapter 15: Kairotic

Summary:

So he walks and he approaches Daehyun, and he stops in front of him. “I did it,” Seokjin breathes, his voice raspy and dry. “I killed him. Kairos.”

Notes:

it's finally here! the finale!!

Five seconds. He opens his eyes and looks, one last time, at the face of the man he loves, the man that he’s fated to. Kairos, the God that stands alongside himself, the God Chronos.

With all the strength he can muster in his muscles, Seokjin drives the dagger up towards his own eyes. He hears Namjoon scream, he thinks, he’s not sure, he can’t distinguish it from the sounds of his own blood rushing through his ears like a warning sign telling him no, Seokjin, don’t do this, don’t-

Hot blood sprays all over Seokjin's face and he squeezes his eyes shut instinctively, to close his eyelids on the dagger he’d plunged into his eye, but for the first few seconds Seokjin doesn’t feel anything other than the blood on his face. He doesn’t feel anything in his eyes, nothing at all, so slowly, warily, he cracks his eyelids open.

The sharpened point of the dagger is mere centimetres in front of him. His eyes widen is shock, in fear, in a dreadful kind of anticipation that’s been put on hold and he’s confused, for only a moment, because after that the rest of the world around him and the dagger’s point becomes visible, and he sees that Namjoon had lunged forward to grab the dagger before Seokjin could gouge out his own eyes.

He’s got one hand gripped tightly around the hilt of the dagger, his hand shivering over the top of Seokjin’s hand, and his other and holding the blade. It was Namjoon’s blood sprayed over Seokjin’s face and it’s Namjoon’s blood that’s dripping onto the foliage under their feet. “N-Namjoon…” Seokjin stutters, quietly, in shock.

“Thank god,” Namjoon whispers back as he softens the pained look on his face, “I made it in time.” And then, just as quickly as it happened, his expression turns sour as he rips the dagger from Seokjin’s grip and flings it onto the ground. “What the hell were you thinking?!” he nearly screams at Seokjin.

Seokjin’s eyes travel to Namjoon’s injured hand that he cradles with his other in front of his chest. There’s so much blood that Seokjin can’t see the gash or how deep it is. “I- Namjoon, this isn’t-“

“This isn’t what you were planning?” Namjoon finishes Seokjin’s question as he now uses his other hand to hold tightly over his wrist in the place of a tourniquet. “What were you planning? To blind yourself?”

“Mm,” Seokjin sounds, his voice small and scared. “None of this would’ve happened if it weren’t for these eyes of mine.”

And once those words leave his lips he suddenly remembers what his eyes are for, the curse of having them, so he snaps his head up and looks at the numbers floating above Namjoon’s head because surely they were ticking down, surely the seconds were running away from him, surely he should be dead by now-

One second left.

One second left, but even as Seokjin stares at it with wide eyes and bated breath, the counter doesn’t move. It stays, frozen, on just one second. The number is pulsating, it’s flickering, and with wide eyes and a bated breath, Seokjin reaches up to touch it.

But Namjoon grabs his wrist before he can. “You told me, before your trial, that you are the grim reaper. You didn’t elaborate. But I’ve never stopped thinking about it since you said it, and I remembered how many times you would look at something above my head. I didn’t understand at the time, but now I do.”

“Yeah?” Seokjin breathes, his wrist still held by Namjoon’s bloody hand.

“You can see how long I’ve got left to live. You can see how long everyone has left to live.”

He brings Seokjin’s hand back down, away from Namjoon’s lifespan that reads just a single second, nothing more, nothing less, and doesn’t change. “Yeah,” Seokjin whispers in response.

“It was my time to go, wasn’t it? I saw it. When I kissed you just a minute ago,” he tells Seokjin before he slips his bloody hands around Seokjin’s. “You were going to murder me.”

“N-no,” Seokjin gasps, “I would never. Why- why would you-“

“I don’t know,” Namjoon cuts him off with furrowed brows and a stern, concerned look on his face. “But when we stopped kissing and you took out that dagger, I had to step in.”

“You manipulated the moment,” Seokjin ventures, and Namjoon nods.

“I wanted you to direct the blade somewhere else – somewhere that wouldn’t kill me, like my side instead of my chest. But you ended up directing it towards your own eyes.”

“But you stopped me.”

“I did.”

Seokjin lifts his hands and feebly grips into Namjoon’s arms, holding on tightly. His knees are shaking and he isn’t sure how much longer he’d be able to hold himself up for. “What now?” he asks, his voice barely a whisper, raspy along the edges.

Namjoon steps closer and reaches up to hold Seokjin’s face, and with his thumbs he smooths over his cheeks, streaking his blood across his skin as he goes. “Someone’s going to die,” Namjoon tells him before he leans in and kisses Seokjin. He tastes like blood.

 

The taste of Namjoon’s blood lingers on Seokjin’s tongue. He’s not sure how it happened, or more importantly why, but he pushes all of those questions out of his mind. He’s standing on the shore of his island, feet anchored in the sand while vicious winds whip up around him and form tornados that threaten to tear him apart. But Seokjin doesn’t budge, doesn’t get swept off his feet. He puts one foot in front of the other and he walks, unshaken, back the way he came.

Namjoon’s lifespan had paused. Seokjin was reluctant to leave him, was afraid that the second he looks away, Namjoon’s lifespan might just drain right out of his grasp. But Namjoon had told Seokjin to trust him, so he did. He turned around and he made his way back to the settlement.

He isn’t aware of the details that flesh out what might have flashed through Namjoon’s mind in that second, whether it was a spur of the moment, a fleeting idea, or whether he’d planned it days, weeks in advance. But Seokjin trusts Namjoon. He doesn’t need details. He doesn’t need facts. He doesn’t need witnesses or testimonies or evidence. All he has is Namjoon’s blood on his hands.

 

He's panting heavily by the time he returns. The moon is clear in the night sky, Seokjin doesn’t know what time it is, but his skin feels itchy with dried blood. He stops in front of the gates, his chest rising and falling with laboured breaths. He’s tired, his eyes are threatening to close, and his thighs are aching from the climb. He presses one hand against his chest in an attempt to calm his heart that’s hammering against his ribs before he holds both hands out and he pushes the gates open.

Daehyun is waiting for him. He holds his arms out, a wry smile on his mouth, but Seokjin ignores the look on his face to look up at his lifespan above his head.

It, too, has paused. Seokjin quickly flicks his eyes back down, hoping that Daehyun didn’t notice his fleeting fixation on his lifespan, hoping that it doesn’t make him suspicious of anything. So he walks and he approaches Daehyun, and he stops in front of him. “I did it,” Seokjin breathes, his voice raspy and dry. “I killed him. Kairos.”

He holds his hands out, palms up, to Daehyun as proof. Daehyun looks down at his hands and his smile grows wider. “Good,” he praises Seokjin and reaches out to take his cheek in his hand, but Seokjin lowers his chin, and Daehyun’s hand touches the top of his head instead.

Daehyun doesn’t seem to react to that, nor did he seem to pick up the way Seokjin’s eyes flickered to his lifespan.

“Come with me,” he tells Seokjin, and turns on his heels to walk into the settlement. Seokjin stands where he is for a moment, sizing up the trust Daehyun must have in him not to turn tail and run, but he guesses that if he had come back after he was let out, Daehyun has no doubt Seokjin will run. So he puts one foot in front of the other and he follows.

The winding path that leads up to the mansion is lined on either side with small lanterns. The trees that flank the path look especially dark, the branches reaching towards Seokjin like they’re going to pluck him up off the ground at any moment. There’s no one else around, and Seokjin doesn’t hear so much as the wind whistling through the trees. He only hears Daehyun’s footsteps in front of him, followed by his own.

And the air around him becomes still, grows colder, quieter, with every step. It screams at him to turn, to run, to get away. Daehyun’s paused lifespan flashes above his head, pulsating like it’s alive. Fifty-two years it’s paused on, staring into Seokjin’s eyes, taunting him. Beckoning him. Tells him to keep going despite the rest of the world that tells him to stay away.

Daehyun waits for him at the bottom of the stone steps that lead up to the mansion. He holds one hand out for Seokjin to take, and Seokjin swallows down the sour taste in his mouth that ignites when he reaches out and takes that hand. Daehyun smiles and helps Seokjin up the stairs. Then, he pushes the doors open and light from inside floods outwards.

He leads Seokjin along a path he knows well. Daehyun takes him to the room Seokjin slept in, opening the doors for him as he goes. He pushes at Seokjin’s shoulders to make him sit at the edge of the bed. Then, he lowers both hands until they’re flat on his chest. “Finally,” Daehyun begins quietly, the low light of the lamp in the dark room causing shadows over his eyes, “everything is falling into place.”

His hands slide down Seokjin’s front, over his abdomen, but before they reach his hips and the front of his pants, Seokjin clasps his wrists and halts them there.

A disgusting smile finds its way onto Daehyun’s lips. “Are you nervous?”

Seokjin swallows, hard, but he tries his best not to react. If Daehyun’s hands move any further down, he’ll find the phone that Namjoon tucked into the band of his boxers just before they parted ways, the phone that’s currently recording. Seokjin licks his lips. “No,” he answers, his voice thin and dry. “I’m just tired. I want to rest.”

With a sigh, Daehyun pulls his hands away from Seokjin’s waist and leans back. “Fine. But we must perform the Rites, though you won’t have to do much for that. Look, I’ll even change your clothes for you.”

He reaches for the bottom of Seokjin’s shirt to lift it up, and Seokjin quickly stops him. “No, I’ll do this myself,” he interjects.

“Why are you so shy all of a sudden?” Daehyun smiles. “I’ve already seen you half-naked.”

“I-“ Seokjin begins, his mind tripping over itself in an attempt to make up an excuse that Daehyun won’t find suspicious. “I need to change my boxers,” he mutters.

“Okay,” Daehyun accepts Seokjin’s excuse. He turns on his heel and starts walking towards the door. “I’ll be waiting just outside. Clean off all the blood.”

Seokjin stares at Daehyun’s back until he disappears behind the door, until he hears the click of the door shutting. Then, he stands and he quickly strips himself of his dirtied clothes. He finds some wet wipes and starts to scrub at Namjoon’s blood on his hands, face and neck. He discards the wipes into the small bin in the corner of the room, repeating over and over until the wipes come away white. Then, he dresses himself in yet another loose, billowing white shirt and a pair of white pants. And once again, he tucks the phone that’s still recording into his pants.

Then, he swallows down all his bad feelings and dread and fear to open the door and join Daehyun once again, who takes his hand and leads him to the hall. They enter through a side room and when the door opens, the brightness of the white light hurts Seokjin’s eyes. He squeezes them shut for a few seconds before he peels his eyelids open and tries to adjust to it. Then, he looks over the hall, to the mass of people at the bottom of the stone steps, kneeling and praying. Once they see Seokjin, their prayers grow louder, more frantic, more senseless. Seokjin can’t even tell what they’re saying, what they’re crying for, what they’re begging Seokjin to do for them.

Daehyun guides Seokjin to his throne. Seokjin sits down and tries his best to subtly readjust the phone he’d tucked into his pants so that it’s closest to where Daehyun stands, by his side.

Seokjin continues to watch the heretics below him, rocking back and forth, shaking their clasped hands in front of them, crying and praying to him. Soon, Daehyun holds a hand out and silences them all, and it takes a moment for the hall to quieten.

“Tonight,” Daehyun sounds, his voice carrying through the hall, loud and low, “we celebrate the most sacred mystery in our faith,” he announces and walks over to the side where Seokjin follows his movements. He approaches a table in the corner, draped in a pure white cloth, atop which sits a large, intricately designed crystal decanter. “The kykeon, sacred drink of the mysteries. I’ve prepared it exactly as it should. The sacred barley, mint, and honey.”

He uses both hands to pick the decanter up and slowly walks back to where Seokjin sits, standing in front of him. He hands the decanter to Seokjin.

“Your following have all paid their blood debts, have all fasted and washed themselves in holy water. Now, you must bless this drink so that they may drink from it and be elevated. Tonight is the Spring Equinox – the time that Persephone returns to Demeter from the Underworld. With your power we will transform this world, we will rid the world of all darkness and evil. Persephone will never again return to Hades. Chronos,” Daehyun addresses Seokjin, “please, blow onto the kykeon.”

Seokjin takes the decanter into his hands. It’s heavy, but he doesn’t react at all. Instead, he just looks up at Daehyun with a straight look in his face. “Before I do,” he begins, forcing himself not to look up at Daehyun’s lifespan, “I want you to tell me all the names of everyone whose lives were taken. As part of your blood debts.”

“If that is your wish,” Daehyun concedes before he reaches out and smooths his palms over Seokjin’s cheeks. Then, he recites names one after the other, names that mean nothing to Seokjin, names that Daehyun has memorised. He continues to utter the names of people that Seokjin realises were murdered, of people who are no longer alive. Names of people that Seokjin doesn’t recognise, but of whom mattered to somebody. And then, the names of people that Seokjin does recognise. “Jang Jaewon, Hong Haejoo, Myung Minwoo,” he states, and Seokjin licks his lips to prepare himself to speak, but Daehyun parts his lips once more. He takes a breath. “Kim Namjoon,” he finishes off.

Fire ignites in Seokjin’s chest, sizzling along his skin, turning his veins into livewires. He feels heat coursing through him and it takes all of his willpower to stay seated, to not lift the decanter up above his head and smash it against Daehyun’s head. He presses his lips together and reminds himself to breathe, to appear unaffected, to stay silent. He’d left Namjoon in the woods because Namjoon told him to have faith, and what he saw before he turned his back on Namjoon was his lifespan blaring the number one, paused on it, flashing and pulsating it, much in the same way that Daehyun’s is in this moment. Seokjin doesn’t know what it meant, and he doesn’t know if Namjoon is still alive or not. If it didn’t drain right out of him the moment Seokjin was far enough away from him.

But he contains himself. “So what, do I just blow onto this drink?” Seokjin asks. Daehyun nods.

He lifts the decanter up slightly and angles his head downwards towards it. The liquid inside looks milky, and at first Seokjin feels the light and mild scent of barley, mint, the sweetness of honey, but it’s only when he parts his lips to blow that he notices it. He freezes.

The smell of almonds is faint.

“What’s wrong, Chronos?” Daehyun asks.

“Nothing,” Seokjin replies without looking up. He tries not to inhale because by now he’s almost entirely certain what that almond scent means. He knows that smell, he’s dealt with it before. Has defended someone accused of killing with it. He knows all about it.

“Bless the kykeon,” Daehyun prompts him. Seokjin licks his lips and looks up at Daehyun in front of him.

Across the hall, behind the mass of heretics watching Seokjin, pinned to the wall is a small cluster of red spider lilies. Seokjin doesn’t know how he’s able to see them so clearly, he’s sure his vision isn’t this good, but it all makes sense once he blinks and the flowers disappear.

Seokjin lowers his chin and blows into the decanter. Then, he looks up and stares, pointedly, into Daehyun’s eyes. “You. Drink first,” he orders as he holds the decanter up.

Daehyun doesn’t seem fazed. He just smiles. “I think your followers want to drink first,” he replies mildly, and his comment is adorned with the cries of the people kneeling below Seokjin. “They’ve worked harder than I have.”

“Don’t belittle yourself,” Seokjin fights to keep his voice level as his battle with Daehyun is hidden under a veil of white. “You’ve done a lot. You’re more important than you know,” he tells Daehyun, his voice holding just the subtlest hint of challenge.

He rises to his feet and holds the decanter out towards Daehyun, but Daehyun keeps his hands by his side and refuses to take it.

“Take it,” Seokjin orders once again, his voice lowering despite the way his fear and dread grows inside him. Daehyun doesn’t budge. “Take it, or I’ll drop it,” he warns, but before Daehyun can react Seokjin drops the decanter to the floor and lets the crystal vessel smash onto the marble floor, spilling the concoction of barley, mint, honey and cyanide. It trickles down the steps, makes its way towards the heretics.

Daehyun moves faster than Seokjin can prepare himself. He whips his hand up and grabs a fistful of Seokjin’s hair, the hairband he’d used to tie it back snapping in the clinch, and he pulls Seokjin by the hair towards him. Seokjin doesn’t yelp, doesn’t make a sound at the burning pain in his scalp, because this has already happened before and he knows how this feels, and he knows what’s going to come. Daehyun doesn’t say anything, just like last time, he just turns and he drags Seokjin by the hair out of the hall.

He takes Seokjin through hallways, through doors, until he lets go of Seokjin’s hair and pushes him, making him stumble until he falls against something big and soft. His bed. He quickly shakes his hair back and out of his eyes to look up at Daehyun, slamming the door shut behind him. “How dare you,” he seethes, his fists curling into balls by his side, “drop the sacred kykeon?”

Seokjin presses his lips together and remains where he is, propped up on the edge of the mattress for support. He stays silent and just watches as Daehyun pushes his sleeves up to his elbows and stalks closer to Seokjin, closing the distance between them.

“I don’t want to hurt you, but it seems like everything we did to prepare you to become Chronos wasn’t enough,” he says. “I should’ve bitten the bullet and killed Jeongguk that night like I planned. I had to settle with that other officer and apparently, Myung Minwoo didn’t affect you enough.”

Still, Seokjin doesn’t speak. He bites down on his lower lip, hard, and his fists curl around the bedsheets of his bed. Daehyun now stands in front of him, and his expression turns dark. Seokjin’s stomach sinks with dread.

“There’s one last thing I could do to break you,” he whispers just before he pushes Seokjin, forcing him onto his back on the bed. Then, he climbs on top, his knees flanking either side of Seokjin’s hips. Seokjin quickly reaches up, tries to push him off, but Daehyun had anticipated that and clasps his wrists, pinning them down beside his head.

“Get off of me,” Seokjin growls at him. “You fucking psycho.”

“Oh my,” Daehyun leans in, curving over Seokjin, “I thought I groomed you into a kind and polite God?”

There’s another disgusting smile on Daehyun’s lips just before those lips touch Seokjin’s for a brief moment – and for just a second his hold on Seokjin’s wrists loosens just enough that he can break out the restriction, grab the back of Daehyun’s head by his hair and pull backwards. With his other hand he smashes his fist dead in the centre of his face.

For the second time that night, blood splatters onto Seokjin’s face. But it doesn’t faze him, he kicks Daehyun off him and throws him to the side. Then, he scrambles up off the bed and runs for the door.

Daehyun is on him in a moment, pouncing on him like Seokjin didn’t just break his nose. The two men fall to the floor in front of the door, and Daehyun straddles Seokjin once again. He reaches down and grabs a fistful of Seokjin’s hair in both hands, lifting his head up before slamming it down on the floor.

His head slams against the floor once, twice, countless times, and with every hit he feels pain busting through his skull, radiating inside his cranium. His vision blurs and he tries to reach up, to stop Daehyun, but he’s so disoriented by the repeated slams that he can do nothing but go limp and wait for Daehyun to stop.

Finally, he does, and he leans back, panting heavily. He lets his head hang back, staring up at the ceiling as he huffs. Seokjin clenches the muscles in his stomach and he forces himself to sit up despite the waves and waves of intense pain radiating through his head, and he strikes one hand out to grab at Daehyun’s throat. His hand is slick with the blood from Daehyun’s nose but he grips, as hard as he can, and forces him back, cutting his air for just long enough to pull his other arm back and launch another fist into Daehyun’s face, and Seokjin hears a sickening crunch of cartilage.

He doesn’t waste a single second. He quickly pushes Daehyun off and forces himself up on his feet, but as soon as he rises he stumbles to the side, lightheaded and unsteady from the repeated attacks. His vision focuses and unfocuses, pulling in and out of blur. With a shaking hand he reaches up and lightly touches his fingertips to the back of head, where it feels tender and sore and suspiciously wet. When he brings his hand back in front of him, his fingertips are bloodied.

Daehyun manages to get up, but he too is disoriented from Seokjin’s punches. He loses his footing and stumbles to the side while Seokjin tries to ground himself and stop the world from spinning.

“You…” Daehyun breathes out, his eyelids drooping, his face covered in blood from the nose down, “are letting the whole world down.”

“Yeah, well,” Seokjin rasps, “I’m not kind or polite, and I am not your God.”

Daehyun tries to wipe away some of the blood on his face before he lunges at Seokjin. He’s still unstable on his feet, so when Seokjin stumbles to the side Daehyun falls forward and loses his footing. Seokjin inhales sharply and turns on his heel, reaching down with his hand to grab at the back of Daehyun’s head, grabbing a fistful of his hair. He pulls Daehyun up, forcing him to straighten, to face Seokjin.

“Three is your lucky number, isn’t it?” Seokjin wheezes. “Jang Jaewon, Hong Haejoo, and finally, Myung Minwoo.”

He pulls his arm back and musters all the strength he can in his body and catapults his fist into Daehyun’s face for the third time. The sheer weight of the punch sends Daehyun’s head backwards and it connects to the door just behind them, ricocheting with a loud smack. Then, Daehyun falls forward and he doesn’t move.

Seokjin quickly rushes over to the bed as fast as he can, powering through the way the floor is swimming underneath him and his vision is blurring. He reaches the bed and rips apart some of the sheets into long thin strips before he wraps them around his head as makeshift bandages in the hopes that it might stifle the bleeding. Then, he gives one last look to Daehyun who twitches on the floor and starts to move his arms, planting his hands on the floor to push himself up, he quickly leaves the bedroom.

With one hand steadying him on the wall, his other hand pressed to the back of his head where he’s starting to feel less and less of the agonising pain, he moves along through the hallway. It’s long and seemingly neverending, and it’s swaying back and forth in front of him. The world is still spinning, the hallway seems like it’s suspended on a pendulum, and Seokjin feels like vomiting.

Oh god, Seokjin thinks, even though the voice inside his head is drowned out by the sound of ringing in his ears. I’m concussed.

He furrows his brows and keeps walking. He tries to reject every symptom that screams at him, begs to be heard, and he walks. When he feels like vomiting, he pauses and presses his hand to his stomach to stifle it. When he sees white spots in his vision, he shakes his head to get rid of them, and then promptly discovers that shit, ow, no head shaking, but once those white spots return Seokjin forgets that he shouldn’t shake his head, and he does it again.

Footsteps make themselves known amongst the ringing bells in Seokjin’s ears, so he slowly turns so as not to disturb his head, and he finds Daehyun, blood streaking down his face and staining his shirt, following him slowly. He looks just as dazed as Seokjin feels.

“Get… back here,” Daehyun wheezes.

“No,” Seokjin breathes out, his voice barely audible. “Fuck you.”

He continues to walk through the hallway, faster this time, as fast as his heavy spinning head will allow. There’s so much pressure inside his head and his vision keeps blurring and all he wants to do is pass out, but he can’t. He has to keep going. He can’t allow Daehyun to get a hold of him, not again. He doesn’t know if he’ll be able to endure another blow, and he doesn’t know if he’ll have the strength to fight Daehyun back.

So he just focuses on walking. One foot in front of the other. Hand on the wall, steadying him as he goes. He listens to Daehyun’s footsteps behind him, to make sure he won’t catch up, but those footsteps grow faster, faster, until he’s running.

Every muscle in his body cries out when Seokjin, too, starts running. The pressure built up inside his head is suddenly ignited, set aflame, and it's pure agony. The world is spinning faster, he feels like he’s going to vomit at any moment, but he keeps running.

He pushes the doors open with his shoulders when he reaches them and he stumbles out, falling forward after tripping over his foot, but he catches himself on his hands just before the marble steps that lead down and out of the mansion. He snaps his eyes wide open as he looks down the steps that he might have fallen down and injured himself even more, and then he looks up and meets the gaze of Namjoon, who’s just as wide-eyed and shocked. Flanking him is Yoongi, Jeongguk, and a multitude of officers.

Suddenly, Seokjin feels okay enough to stand. He pushes himself up on shaky knees and smiles despite all the pain his body is wracked with, but before he can take a step down, an arm comes from behind him and circles around his neck, pulling him back and against a flat, heaving chest.

A dagger appears in Seokjin’s vision.

“Don’t shoot,” Daehyun warns the officers, who must be brandishing guns that Seokjin can’t see. “Or I’ll slit his throat.”

“What do you want?” Namjoon asks, his voice loud and carrying through the night air.

“I want you to leave us alone. We’re just a harmless religious group.”

“I’ll be the judge of that,” Yoongi chimes in. “So why don’t you let go of Seokjin and come with me, Officer Kang? Or should I even call you that?”

“Are you going to arrest me, chief? I’ve done nothing wrong. I’m one of your officers. I’m a witness in this case,” Daehyun reasons.

“You can witness my fucking fist down your throat you piece of-“

Yoongi holds a hand out to silence Jeongguk. “Let go of Seokjin,” he orders, his voice lowering in pitch.

“What if I said no? If you shoot, I’ll slit his throat.”

Seokjin grasps at Daehyun’s forearm, tightening his hold around in an attempt to pull it away and release him. The blade of the dagger is pressed right against his throat and all the officers, including Jeongguk, have their arms by their sides like they’ve lowered their weapons. Seokjin can’t see them well, it’s too dark, but he knows exactly what kind of expressions are painting their faces and the kind of decisions that they have to make that are flashing through their minds. The dagger is starting to cut into the skin of his throat, and one wrong move might just sever his neck. He’s sure that Namjoon is calculating the time it’ll take for an officer to raise their gun, aim at Daehyun behind Seokjin, and shoot; versus the time it’ll take for Daehyun to press in just enough to fatally wound Seokjin. Numbers are most likely flying through his mind in much the same way they’ve always flown through Seokjin’s, like they’re flying through his mind right now, so he puts a halt to those numbers. He leans his head forward, ever so slightly so as not to alert Daehyun to anything, before he launches his head back and smashes it against Daehyun’s nose for the last time.

That final blow to the back of Seokjin’s head bursts all the lightbulbs and everything goes black.

 

 

 

From the moment Seokjin had woken up, surrounded by white walls, white sheets, white curtains, he’d been whisked off by the nurses for immediate testing. They’d asked him if he knew his name (Kim Seokjin), his age (twenty-eight), his occupation (criminal defence attorney), and what had happened to him to land him in hospital. That last question threw Seokjin off just a little.

They’d checked his eyes first and foremost. Shone a pen torch into his eyes one at a time, checking to see if his pupils were responding normally. They checked his vision. Both of which he was told was fine. They checked his hearing, one ear at a time, and that too appeared fine.

Then, he’d asked Seokjin to perform various tasks, such as picking up a pen, pushing his hand against the doctor’s as hard as he could, walking in a straight line, keeping his balance, and checking his reflexes. Seokjin was quite wobbly, he still is, but the doctor told him he’d be fine after he’d recovered.

He’d sustained an inch-long laceration to the back of his head. While he was unconscious it seemed that it was stitched up, and despite how badly he wants to reach around and feel it, the doctors tell him to leave it alone for a few days. He does, however, touch it once while they’re not looking.

They’d had to wait until after he woke up to take scans of his head to rule out the possibility of subdural haematomas or fractures in his skull, of which they found none, luckily.

But he was concussed, and they decided to keep him in the hospital for a day so that they could monitor him. Seokjin wasn’t really complaining.

 

For a brief moment, Seokjin waited in his hospital bed, staring out of the window from his private room, a drip connected to the inside of his arm, wondering when his parents would come and visit and bring him delicious homecooked meals to make him forget about the disgusting hospital food he has to eat. For a brief moment, Seokjin waited patiently because his dad still had to go to work and his mom had to look after Jeongguk who was still young. Seokjin didn’t mind waiting, because he had his phone with him and he had his handheld game consoles, but most of all he knew that his parents would come and visit soon and everything would be okay.

When Seokjin pulls himself out of that daze and remembers that his parents aren’t alive anymore, that no matter how long Seokjin waits, they’re not coming to visit, he buries his face in the clinical white bedsheets and he cries out loud.

 

There’s a knock on the door to Seokjin’s hospital room, which snaps him out of his attention that he’d funnelled into a book he was reading. He looks up from where he’s sat upright in his bed, and watches as the door slides open and a tall, young man walks in. His hair is pushed back and he’s wearing a long black trench coat. Seokjin watches him with wide, blank eyes as he walks in and takes a seat beside his bed.

Now, up close, Seokjin can make out every detail of the man’s face. His straight eyebrows, his cute nose, his taut face and the slight stubble along his jaw and chin. There are dark circles around his eyes like he hasn’t slept in days, and with those haggard eyes he looks at Seokjin deeply. Above his head, the numbers sixty years glow in bright red. “Seokjin-ssi. How are you?” he asks, his voice deep and smooth.

“Um. I’m okay. Who are you?” Seokjin asks, brows furrowed as he stares at the handsome man in front of him.

His eyes go wide. “D-did you forget who I am…?”

Seokjin doesn’t react.

“Seokjin. I’m… I’m your-“

His eyes gloss over and he pauses before he can finish sentence, but Seokjin decides to put him out of his misery and he laughs, out loud. “I’m just fucking with you Namjoon, I know who you are.”

The despair on Namjoon’s face quickly morphs into irritation. “Hey! Fuck you!”

Seokjin falls back against his bed, laughing out loud.

“That wasn’t funny, you asshole.”

“Shut up, I can do whatever I want.”

Namjoon doesn’t respond, and a soft, comfortable silence settles in the hospital room between them. For a moment, neither of them speak or move, or even look at each other. Then, Namjoon slowly reaches forward and slides his hand over Seokjin’s. “I was so afraid,” he begins quietly, “that you wouldn’t be okay.”

“It was just a little bump to my head.”

“But you bled so much.”

“Head wounds always bleed a lot.”

Namjoon sighs heavily and lets his shoulders sag. “I know. I know, I was just… so afraid.”

Seokjin presses his lips together and tightens his hold on Namjoon’s hand. “I’m okay, Joon. I promise. I’m just a little woozy. The doctor said I might still be for a while, and I might show bizarre behaviours or get confused with my talking, but that should go away soon. I’ll be fine.”

“Your behaviour is always bizarre, so no difference there.”

“Fuck you.”

Once again, silence settles in between them. Namjoon doesn’t let go of Seokjin’s hand, continues to stroke his thumb over the back of his hand soothingly. The humidifier in the corner of the room makes Seokjin feel calm, but being here with Namjoon makes him think that everything will be okay. He looks up to meet his eyes.

“What happened to me? I remember having my head bashed against the floor by that psycho… but I don’t remember much after that,” Seokjin furrows his brows and as he tries his best, again, to recall, nothing comes back to him save for a pounding headache.

“You smashed the back of your head against his face like an idiot. And you passed out right after,” Namjoon recounts with a straight-laced expression on his face.

“And Daehyun…?”

“Jeongguk shot him in the leg and in his hand. Blew his hand right off. But that crazy fucker used his other hand to slit his own throat.”

“H-he killed himself?!”

Namjoon nods solemnly. “He was bleeding out on the ground as we approached him after Jeongguk shot him twice, and he was crying something about god abandoning him, that you were meant to be his saviour. And then he killed himself.”

Seokjin licks his lips slowly. “His lifespan paused when I returned to the settlement,” he recalls quietly, the pain in his head dulling out at the corners, “just like yours did. And you told me someone was going to die.”

“Yeah,” Namjoon begins, looking down at Seokjin’s hands. “That was the price. If it was me who died, then all the followers of that cult would have also died from ingesting cyanide.”

“So… what happens now? Am I still…?”

“No,” Namjoon answers resolutely. “The phone I gave you recorded everything. There’s going to be a trial for Lee Mirae and his brother and everyone else who was a part of the cult, but… the police have dropped all charges against you.”

Seokjin lets his shoulders sag as he looks down at his hand enveloped in Namjoon’s much larger one. “It’s over, huh?”

“Yeah,” Namjoon responds quietly. “I would’ve never thought… a few months ago… that this would happen. Or that you and I were… regarded as Gods.”

“Do you believe that?” Seokjin asks, raising his brows softly as he meets Namjoon’s gaze. “That we’re Gods?”

Namjoon shrugs one shoulder nonchalantly. “No. I’m just a normal human being.”

“Who can manipulate fleeting moments. Yeah, sounds very normal to me.”

“Says the one who can see people’s lifespans.”

Seokjin laughs again, and then reaches over to take Namjoon’s hand in both of his. “Hey. You should be my boyfriend.”

A wide smile stretches onto Namjoon’s lips, baring his teeth. “I have a marriage document in my wallet that says we’re married.”

“You didn’t even propose to me.”

“Neither did you. You just slipped the document onto my desk.”

Seokjin tightens his hold on Namjoon’s hand, and his other hand comes to cover Seokjin’s. They sit there like that, comfortable in each other’s presence, with soft smiles on their faces. Soon, Namjoon adjusts himself to stroke Seokjin’s hair that needs a cut and he stays there until Seokjin falls asleep.

 

Jeongguk comes by as soon as he has time. Jimin and Taehyung are with him, waiting outside the room for them. He’s wearing just a t-shirt and sweatpants and he sits on the edge of the hospital bed and drapes himself over Seokjin’s lap, just like he used to do to their mother when he was younger. Seokjin smiles as he looks down at him and strokes at his hair.

“I can’t feel my legs, you big baby,” Seokjin hisses at him after way too long. Jeongguk slowly raises his head, his brown hair a messy cloud around his head, and he blinks a few times through swollen eyelids. “Oh my god, have you been crying?”

“Shut up,” Jeongguk pouts. “I thought you were going to die.”

“I literally got a bump to my head.”

“You split your head wide open.”

“It was an inch-long split.”

“I heard your skull cracked in half like a coconut.”

“Who the hell told you that?”

Jeongguk shrugs.

“As you can see, I’m fine,” Seokjin stresses, holding Jeongguk’s shoulders and plastering on his most resolute expression. He presses his lips together, but Jeongguk doesn’t seem convinced.

“You look really disturbing with facial hair,” he blurts out instead, “I brought a razor, please let me shave your face.”

Seokjin sighs. “Yeah, go ahead. Give me a haircut while you’re at it.”

“I only know how to do bowl cuts.”

“In that case, stay far the fuck away from me.”

 

Yoongi and Hoseok visit him at the hospital, too, bringing flowers with them that are (thank god) not red. They’re white lilies, and they smell divine. They update Seokjin on the situation, how the court proceedings are going, but after a while Seokjin doesn’t want to hear any more. He doesn’t want to think about it anymore. He just wants to rest.

So when the hospital finally discharges him and he returns to work that following week and is subsequently met with a multitude of varying reactions, he immediately makes his way over to the chairman’s office. There were people whispering to each other when they saw him, there were people asking him questions he wasn’t comfortable asking, there were people trying to show him articles written about his whole ordeal. People asking him what happened while he’d been abducted. The chairman doesn’t look too pleased to see him, and Seokjin doesn’t know if that’s because he’d missed work for the last four weeks or if it’s because he’s just never liked Seokjin from the beginning, but he walks in, walks right up to the front desk, and slides over an envelope.

“What’s this?” the chairman asks, fingers laced together as he stares at Seokjin, not acknowledging the envelope at all.

“My resignation letter,” Seokjin answers. “Effective immediately.”

This, finally, garners a reaction. The chairman startles, leans forward, and his eyes go wide. “No, Seokjin, you-“

“I’ve already made up my mind. Thank you for everything until now. Take care of yourself.”

He turns on his heel and walks out of the chairman’s office, and he makes his way back to his own. Some of his colleagues find him along the hallway as he goes, and they follow him, curiously. Once he returns to his office he slams the door shut behind him, and Namjoon immediately looks up at him from his desk.

“I quit! I fucking quit. Haha,” Seokjin effervesces as he reaches his desk and starts to clear it away. His files that he no longer needs, he tosses into the shredder. His drawers filled with his belongings he sweeps into his bag. He logs out of his computer.

“Are you still concussed?” Namjoon asks incredulously, standing up from his desk.

“Maybe I am, maybe I’m not. Who the fuck knows?”

Namjoon starts to pack his bag, too, frantically trying to make sure he has everything with him. “And what exactly do you plan on doing now?”

“I’m going to fly off to Bora Bora or something and have cute boys feed me grapes while they massage my back.”

“What about me?”

Seokjin pauses his packing to meet Namjoon’s eyes, which have since gone dark. “What about you?”

“I’m your boyfriend. I could feed you grapes and massage your back. And I’m cute.”

“Hmm. You make a strong case for it.”

“Yeah, well, I am a lawyer. And I told you that I was only here for you. So if you go, I go too.”

Seokjin presses his lips together and hoists the strap of his bag up on his shoulder for just a moment before he makes his way over to Namjoon’s desk, leans over it and clasps his cheeks in between his hands. Then, he closes the distance between them and kisses him. “Alright,” Seokjin concedes after their lips disconnect, “I guess it’s me and you, then.”

Namjoon smiles as Seokjin pulls his hands away, but after he circles around his desk and joins Seokjin’s side, he slips his hand into Seokjin’s and clasps it tightly.

With their hands held tightly together, unapologetic and daring, they walk out of their shared office for the last time and they leave the company for good.

 

 

Seokjin settles in, wriggling about in the soft quilted chair until he’s comfortable. Namjoon walks into the room, his tan just a little deeper than before, a little more golden. He has a fresh bouquet of white lilies in his hands that he brings over to the dresser and carefully he cuts the stems at forty-five degrees exactly before he places them into the vase he’d just filled with fresh water. He arranges them until he’s happy, and he looks down at Seokjin.

“Have you seen Tapioca?” Namjoon asks just before Seokjin pulls his laptop onto his lap.

He furrows his brows as he tries to recall when he’d last seen their kitten. “No… not since we fed her.”

Namjoon purses his lips. “Hmm. Lemme go look for her.”

“Okay.”

He watches as Namjoon pads out of their bedroom on fluffy slippers in search for their kitten. He then pulls his laptop back up and opens up the browser, returning to his search for an office to rent.

His phone buzzes in his pocket and he pulls it out to look at the screen. It’s Hanyu.

From: Hanyu
Hey, Seokjin! I found a good office just on the outskirts of Seoul

From: Hanyu
It’s in a good area, and it’s not that far from ur home

From: Hanyu
We can check it out tomorrow if u want?

Seokjin smiles down at the screen of his phone. Since he’d walked out of his previous company where rumours continued to course through the halls of his status as the grim reaper, of his absence and of his connection to the gruesome serial killing-turned cult mystery, he and Namjoon had taken a long and much needed vacation, and has since returned to the home his mother lived in before she passed. Namjoon moved in, too, and they’d adopted a small kitten from a nearby shelter.

Upon returning to Korea he’d promptly discovered that Hanyu, too, had quit. She reached out to Seokjin and they decided to start their own company. Hanyu was too good for just an admin role, so Seokjin decided that it fitted her much better to be the director of the company, with Seokjin and Namjoon as the two lawyers. One day they’ll expand, and they’ll hire more attorneys, but they have to start small to begin with, start from the very bottom and work their way back up. Seokjin didn’t want to be known as the grim reaper anymore. He didn’t want to be a legendary trial lawyer anymore. He didn’t want the acclaim that he once had.

He closes his laptop and places it on the ground beside his chair just as Namjoon walks back into the room, Tapioca nestled in his arms. She’s so tiny compared to Namjoon’s thick forearm, but she looks both bewildered and comfortable at the same time. Seokjin shoves himself into the side of the chair to force some space for Namjoon to sit, but he doesn’t. Instead, he stands in front of Seokjin, Tapioca still in his arms, and then he kneels in front of him.

“Look what I found on her collar,” Namjoon says, edging the kitten towards Seokjin. She mewls softly as Seokjin leans forward and touches his fingertips to the underside of her jaw, lifting it up lightly. Attached to her collar in place of her bell is a ring.

“N-“

“Will you marry me?”

There’s a hopeful glint in his eyes as he looks up at Seokjin from where he is, knelt in front of him, a little kitten in his hands with an engagement ring attached to her collar. All thoughts and words leave Seokjin, he can only stare in shock, at his boyfriend whom he loves more than words will do justice for.

“I know you said you don’t care for marriages or big grand announcements to the world, but…” Namjoon trails off as he brings Tapioca back to his lap and detaches the ring from her collar. Then, he gently allows her back down on the floor. With a small mewl, she patters off somewhere. Namjoon then reaches out and softly takes Seokjin’s left hand. “The rest of the world doesn’t need to accept us, or even know about us. It’s better if they don’t. But I love you and I want to make a big, grand gesture to you, to make sure that you know.”

“I do know,” Seokjin whispers.

“Then, will you marry me?”

“Yes.”

Namjoon forgets to slip the ring onto Seokjin’s finger because he’s overcome with love, and he reaches up to take Seokjin into his arms and kiss the breath right out of him.

 

 

Seokjin fixes his collars that are peaking out from under his sweater one last time as he watches Namjoon tie his shoelaces. He’s tapping his feet on the floor, making sure Namjoon knows that he wants him to hurry up, because they’re meant to meet with Hanyu in, like, fifteen minutes, and it takes about forty to reach Seoul. They’re going to check out the new offices and speak with the agency about the rent and bills. Then, after that, they need to meet with Jeongukk, his two boyfriends Jimin and Taehyung, Yoongi and Hoseok, for dinner. There, they’ll announce to them that he and Namjoon are engaged, and will be holding a small ceremony to celebrate their partnership.

He looks up at the clock on the other side of the wall to check the time. He huffs just so that Namjoon knows he needs to haul ass, but he can’t actually see the time on the clock.

He narrows his eyes. Rubs at them. But no matter what he does, his vision doesn’t clear. His focus doesn’t shift in and out, and the blur remains constant. He can’t see it. He used to be able to see it from this distance, but no matter how much he strains his eyes, he can’t make it out.

Namjoon looks up at him. “Seokjin? Is everything okay?”

The winds have settled around his island, and he’s no longer alone. The skies are clear, not a tell-tale hint of a storm in the horizon, and he’s standing side by side with the one he loves. But when he looks down at his island, it’s all destroyed in the wake of the inferno Seokjin had ignited himself.

Seokjin pulls his gaze away from the clock whose numbers and hands he doesn’t see, and he looks down at Namjoon’s concerned face. He smiles so that Namjoon doesn’t worry.

“Yeah, everything’s okay.”

Notes:

thank you to everyone who has read this fic up until the end, whether you were here from the time i uploaded chapter one or whether you've waited until the fic was finished. thank you for sticking with this absolute shitstorm of a fic, for all your theories and your comments. I read them all, and i love you all for it. i hope you've enjoyed this final chapter, and that you realise that the "angst with a happy ending (kind of)" tag really wasn't anything to worry about too much.

 

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