You are playing my game now.

Rain

"How good are you at keeping secrets, Rei?" 

Suga smirked at me.

I saw a light in his hard eyes, tantalizing and playful and daring and warm like opening a hand to reach—

A knock on the door kept me from pouncing like a tiger and clawing his face out.

I stilled.

Suga immediately ordered whoever was on the other side to come in.

The door opened before I was able to stand, another cold wave of shame washing over me as I turned to see who was the lucky one to bear witness to my on-fours humiliation and get a bonus hard-on of seeing me like that.

But from this angle—sandwiched in the space between Suga and his desk and lowered to kneel, I couldn't see.

And thankfully, I realized with relief, whoever was at the door, couldn't see that I was there either.

A bored expression had replaced the rueful smirk on Suga's face, as without looking at me, he landed his palm gently on my shoulder behind the desk.

Squeezed once.

Signaling me not to move.

To keep quiet.

To play along.

I closed my eyes, held my breath, and internally said the word shit in ten languages.

Then listened carefully.

Suga's stare stayed focused on the guy —judging from the heaviness of the footsteps on the carpet— that crossed the office from the threshold. 

I heard the sound of paper bags rustling. 

The smell of sweet-spicy soy glaze fried chicken and vegetables filled the room.

If this turned out to be just a food-delivery guy, I was going to deliver Suga his balls. Deep-fried. 

However, deep down, I knew I was wrong. 

I had misjudged him and jumped to the quickest conclusion, and I was utterly, completely wrong.

Suga went as far as serving me a humble pie. Nothing more.

He would never drown me.

He knew how much I could take.

He had asked whoever this guy was to come.

He had let me think the worst of him.

Only to show me how wrong I was.

He wanted me to hear for myself this conversation. Play by play. With someone who wouldn't have a fucking clue that I was there listening.

Infuriating.

It was outstandingly infuriating.

And if Suga felt like a secret before, now he was a covert sin.

I heard the stranger coming closer. I heard the chair on the other side of the desk scrapping on the floor as the man placed the food on the desk and then took a seat.

Hold on. I know this expensive perfume—

"Hey, man." JB's voice echoed, clear, serene, and self-assured as always.

Hey  ...man?

What.

The.

Fuckety.

Fuck.

Suga and JB were having dinner. 

Suga and JB were on "hey man" terms with each other. 

Pals. Buddies. Bros.

Probably have a secret handshake or fistbump or something.

How the fuck I missed this?

—"Ever been stabbed with a spoon?" I had hissed at V for tricking me into eating, thinking he would tell me about what the hell was going on with Jungkook, but instead, he was talking about JB.
"No, but I have stabbed someone with a fork. Anyway, you know JB grew up with S—"

JB  grew  up  with  Suga.

RM had interrupted us, and V never got to tell me. And how V knew in the first place?

Holly, motherfucking shit.

Does this mean that there's a possibility that Suga knows everything I've told JB? 

Shit. Mierda. Skit. Merde. Scheisse. Σκατά. Nimiral.

Suga had an insight into what I was doing this whole time. No, not the entire time. He knew that I was meeting with his father and JB here and there. He didn't know how I had done it. Which confirms they don't talk about everything.

Yet, Suga got pissed enough to raise hell only when he found out about Violet. Which means JB hadn't told him anything about her. And why would he? JB doesn't know that I knew Violet in the past. He thinks she's just another random chick I saved. 

"So, what did you find out?" Suga reached out, opening the takeout boxes between them. 

"Nice to see you too, fucker. All is good, thanks for asking." JB mocked. "Why did you ask me to bring enough food to feed an army if it was going to be just the two of us?"

"Just had an extra appetite. I will save the stir-fry noodles for later."

Hey, that's my favorite dish...

Ugh!

I hate him!

You kinda lov—

Shut up. It's the same.

JB took a long exhale. "I haven't found a connection with Chin-hae and the trafficking ring."

"Then there has to be something we're missing." Suga pointed out, opening a box of something that smelled delicious. 

If he eats my noodles, I'm gonna bite his thigh. 

"Suga, I know you would love to pin it on him and tie this mess up. But it doesn't add up. I've searched every tiny fucking detail. Hell, Rain has even questioned everyone. Frankly, I think we should stop before he is up to our asses and gives us a headache."

Suga raised both eyebrows in the most arrogantly superior way. "I think I would remember if I asked for your opinion. My father is behind it. It's a fact, not an assumption. The proof exists, we just haven't found it yet."

Suga thinks his father was behind the trafficking scheme? 

And he has JB digging up info, like a fucking double agent.

I'll say it again. In case it didn't have the major effect I was going for the first time:

WHAt ThE FucKety FuCK?

JB was playing me the whole time. While I was playing him to show me the tape.

"Right, sorry. Old habits die hard. Still haven't digested the whole now you're Oyadaddy shit." JB chewed a mouthful of something. 

"What the fuck did you just say?" Suga, snort-laughed, thankfully before taking a bite. He would have choked on that.

"Oh, come on. Don't tell me that I need to change how I speak to you now that you have a new fancy title. At least in private—"

"No, no." Suga pressed his lips. Bitch was trying not to laugh out loud. "Did you just say Oyadaddy?"

"Yeah, sounds like something Rain would come up with." JB sounded like grinning. 

Oh, don't pin it on me, JB. We are cut from the same twisted cloth.

"Can you read her mind or something?" Suga humored him. 

Nah, he is just, as V has put it, my male version. 

"Nah. Just have gotten close enough to her to know a few things. For example, I thought she would be here when you asked me to bring noodles and barbeque chicken. That's what she usually eats from the restaurant down the stree—"

"How close?" Suga cut him short. And definitely was not humoring him anymore. 

Bitch, what are you doing? Why the fuck do you care? I wanted to yell at him. 

Great, now they were having a silent, dick-measuring, stare-off. 

"If you're asking whether I fucked her, the answer is no. I'm not that stupid."

Suga held his stare but said nothing. Well, at least not with words. His glare could fill twelve pages, front and back, with sadistic death threats. And as he smiled again, the temperature in the room had dropped ten more degrees, and I was sure the promise of completing those death threats was crawling upon JB's skin.

Fucking fantastic. Not only I got renounced as untouchable in the bloody waves after Suga told J-hope and everyone else what had happened and declared me off-limits, now he was going to do the same with the Ryuzaki clan. 

It's the Min clan now.

Whatever, semantics. 

Why would he do that when he had laughed at my accusation that he was jealous?

Cause he is a liar. 

How much trouble will I get into if I throw him off the sixty-ninth floor?

"Just close enough for doing what you asked." JB clipped. He dropped his chopsticks in the food in front of him. I could picture him crossing his arms and hardening his diamond jaw. "I had to be convincing, to make a bargain for showing her the video. To know if I could trust her." He might have failed to mention he had invited me for a late-night jacuzzi time. Or was that all for a show? Did he pull on me the same tricks I pulled on Sakai?

"What did you ask for an exchange?" Suga's tone was low. Calm and sure. Like death.

"The clan."

He is going to tell him everything. 

Suga's narrowed stare remained calm. But he hadn't picked up his food yet either. 

So they are friends, but they haven't talked about everything. More like, they grew up together and still are close, but talk once in a blue moon.

"Before you say anything, I negotiated for things I knew she wouldn't give up. I got a hard no as an answer. But I had to test her somehow before showing her the video. What if she ran off to Chin-hae and told him I had it?"

Who thinks like that? JB is literally me. 

Suga smirked. Then took a bite of seaweed rice roll. "So you asked for the clan? The only way for that was through a marriage deal."

"Which, of course, Rain declined. Also, implied she will kill me. But turned it around since she was set on finding Nanami's killer."

I looked up discreetly. Suga's expression was unreadable.

I couldn't see JB's face, yet from the pounding silence that followed, I was sure it had fallen to the floor.

Then a nervous laugh followed. "Oh, come on, man, I didn't have anything else to blackmail her with."

Suga was silently scattering his food before him. Found a piece of chicken that he brought to his mouth.
"Have I ever told you what was the first task Nanami assigned to me before leaving, the day she took me away?"

JB calculated his answer for a second. "To follow Rain. To protect her and bring back info about her."

Bitch. JB knows shit! Like a looot of shit.

Suga lifted his stare to look at him. "No. My first task was to clean your father's and that other fucker's blood from the table and the floor. Pull Nanami's knives out from their temples. It was a lesson, she had claimed." Suga's eyes were cold as the ocean. "To learn how hard it is to clean up after someone else's mess. To learn how easy blood is spilled yet how hard it is to remove it from a surface. And also," he paused for emphasis, "that traitors always die."

He kept his stare.

"Served him right," JB answered without a second thought.

"You know that your father had found out about Rei. He tried to blackmail Nanami with it." Suga was fishing. Or feeding me information. I knew Nanami had killed JB's father. But I didn't know it was because of me.

"And you know," JB countered, "he couldn't have found out from me. I didn't know Rain existed at that point. You didn't even know she existed at that point."

Suga smirked but didn't argue.

I kept storing every piece of info in the back of my mind for later.

"Careful, Jb. My toys are mine, so keep your hands out of my toy box," Suga warned.

JB didn't ask what Suga meant. He knew. The warning was obviously about me.

I wanted to get up and do something. Anything. But this was, till now, the best opportunity I've ever gotten to find out things. Puzzle pieces handed to me from other perspectives.

Still, what was true or not, fell onto me to judge.

JB smiling, observed. "You're just like a fucking clone of her."

Nanami.

"I guess it's true what she used to say. With whichever teacher you sit, you will learn such letters. But no worries. Message received," JB agreed but sounded like he rolled his eyes in a duh way. 

They both resumed eating as nothing happened, but I knew better than to assume JB took Suga's warning lightly.

Holy Fucking Shit.

I would have figured it out— that JB was set on showing me the video by Suga's direction— if I hadn't got that hammered. 

JB didn't want to let me go driving like a sixteen-year-old that just got its first fake ID, as he had put it. 

And I had asked him why he cared. 

I knew JB was lying when he said Since Chin-Hae will use my spine as a scarf if anything happens to you.

Not Chin-Hae.

Suga.

This makes me only wonder what other things I've failed to notice that night. 

"Did Rei say anything after seeing the video?"

JB laughed an exhale. "She might not have said it, but she definitely figured out things. I don't know how. And she realized something. Something that made her chug down half bottle of vodka. Then she was asking weird clan questions and kept saying she fucked up."

"Did she now?" Suga was grinning. He connected that I felt terrible about rubbing Violet on his face. I was so obsessed with our cold war that I used everyone as ammo. Violet is a victim of circumstances, and I don't know how I will explain this. Just admit you were a bitch. 

So JB took the tape from the police and also killed his source, only to help out Suga. Buddies, I'm telling you. 

Wait.

After the tape, JB said something. Well, he said many things, but I was too drunk to pay attention. Shit. I wish I could remember everything clearly. 

But there was one thing that stuck. He said, look toward where it hurts the most. That's where the answers always are. 

JB knew it was Suga in the tape. 

But he doesn't know that Nanami is alive. That she planted a body in the car that resembled her after the video. 

Which means, drumroll: 

JB thinks Suga has killed Nanami. 

Also: Bite his thigh, bite his thigh, bite his thigh.

"Why the fuck did you lock up Violet, anyway?" JB mused over a salad.

Shut up, JB. Shut up. Shut up. Shut up.

Suga's smug smile disappeared, an interrogating stare taking its place. 

"So you know Snowflake?" 

"Snowflake. Catchy." JB murmured. "I don't exactly know her. Only exchanged a few words with her here and there. Rain is very possessive about her."

"Of course she is," Suga commented. His face, though had twisted like the seaweed roll had a bitter taste. Which wasn't the case.

"She is helping her adjust and all. She found her a place to stay and a job."

Thanks a lot, JB. Throw more fuel to the fire. Suga was definitely going to kill her.

Surprisingly, he didn't comment on that. Just kept eating, his stare on the table empty.

"What are you going to do with Rain now, by the way?"

"I have a few things in mind."

"Like?"

"Like finding a position for her. Something to keep her occupied."

"I hope you don't mean like an office job. Because either she will kill everyone here, or she will kill herself from boredom—"

"Shut the fuck up."

Suga's interference was instant. His glare at JB was shot like a bullet between the eyes.

I don't know what hurt more. I don't even know why it hurt.

Was it that he stopped JB because I was listening, or because of the truth—that Suga didn't want to hear JB saying it. 

It was a joke, I wanted to say, crawl up, look him in the eyes and hold him.

Somehow, it broke me too, seeing him reacting so instantly and irrationally. 

But Suga knew —how the fuck did he knew?— that it never stopped being a joke for my thoughts. It was always there. Sometimes in the form of a sea or a bathtub. Other times when I looked down the balcony. Every time, when I waited that pedestrian's red light in Itaewon. 

I've never spoken about it. We have never talked about it. We both had pretended that the frozen black sea never happened. 

And for me, it almost didn't. I didn't feel most of it.

But Suga...

He  lived  it. 

He saw me dying. 

He thought for some minutes that I was dead. 

And when I regained my senses and realized... 

Well, I am not ready to talk about that. 

"Okay..." JB sounded completely serious by now. "I have to ask."He dropped his chopsticks again on his plate. "What is she to you, man? Why you're helping her this much?"

I felt Suga stiffening over me. He wasn't prepared for JB to ask that kind of question.

And he could tell him to fuck off, right? Even though they obviously were a step-before-getting-matching-tattoos kind of dudebros.

So it baffles me, even more, why he answered.

"Because she needs this help. And because I had promised it to Nanami."

"That's all?" JB drawled in a cut-the-crap kind of way.

"Yes." Suga's reply was curt. He definitely didn't want me to listen to that. Then the atmosphere changed as he grinned and added, "And because satan's little spawn Shi-no-Gamboed me."

JB sprouted bbq ribs pieces all over the place—I know because one landed next to me— then choked into a coughing fit.

"You're kidding!"

"I wish I was. Also, you know my humor is better than that."

"When? How?"

"Today, and you know how it's done." Suga stopped chewing and narrowed his eyes on JB.

"Don't look at me like that! Is this why you called? You think I am the one that told her about Shi no Gambo?! Are you insane?!"

Suga kept chewing slowly. "Whoever did it, is a dead man walking."

"Please. You know the only possible culprit." JB commented after a beat of silence. "There are other things that might keep your father up at night, though."

"The only person that would keep that man up at night is no more around," Suga commented sarcastically. 

Was that a dig about Nanami?

But JB had assured me that nothing went on between her and Chin-Hae— yeah, scratch that. JB is above me eating kimchi, reminiscing about fake blackmailing me after Suga's orders to show me the tape.

Why everyone has to be so complex?

"Good one. But What I'm talking about is incoming trouble from every side. Literally." 

JB got up from his seat, placing the empty food trays back in the bags. I heard him shuffling then sitting again. Then the flick of his Cartier zippo. Then the sweet smell of... five-star weed.

If Suga wouldn't threaten to Jingi-kill JB's ass, then cross my heart, hope to die, I was going to bite his thigh.

"Rain as an Oyabun was like Nanami." A sweet cloud spread. "Royal face, black heart, and golden legacy. Rain was quite the character in Seoul. Her reputation proceeded her. Her reign was indisputable in the clans, and after the massacre, the only stir that was caused was about who was going to be the lucky bastard to live like a king and rule beside and through her. And with Chin-hae under her thumb, no one was questioning her position. All Korean mob bosses were interested in an alliance with her."

"Her money and position you mean," Suga added.

"And her pussy," JB completed. "Nonetheless, they didn't want war with her."

"I don't like where you're going with this." Suga looked away, tapping his fingers on the desk.

"Sure you don't." JB sounded like he was smiling as he exhaled. "They are questioning your power. The clan seems frail. If your father had fallen in the past, they think you can fall too." JB took another inhale. 

Was Suga taking the blunt?

BITCH.

If he isn't secretly passing it to me somehow underneath the desk, I'm gonna bite both his thighs.

"The subject of a regional clan meeting has been dropped as a proposal," JB stated, his tone completely solemn.

Suga said nothing as he took a short drag.

"The subject of Nanami's death being "coincidentally" exactly after the last regional meeting might have also been thrown to the table." JB continued.

"That doesn't worry me." Suga exhaled a thick cloud undeterred. "It's the same bullshit my father has spread —that everyone was there, so Nanami's murderer is from the Bloody Waves. They are just grasping for an opportunity."

"Who wouldn't? You suddenly, out of fucking nowhere, came out of the Oyabun closet and inherited the whole lot of Nanami's empire. The investments and businesses alone have a profit larger than the budget of an average-sized country. You kinda stole the seat they were planning on sitting. The seat is Rain, in case you don't—"

"I get what you're saying."

"Chin-hae told me he tried to bring up the subject before, but you weren't in the mood or had a headache."

"We were kinda interrupted by a storm," Suga smirked like the cat that ate the canary.

I bit his thigh. Hard.

The fucker kept his calm like a statue. Didn't let it show.

He wasn't pretending. JB indeed didn't have a clue that someone was listening.

"So what you gonna do?" JB asked as he took the blunt back.

Suga prolonged an exhale, crossing his arms behind his head. "Does it look like I have a fucking option here?"

"Let's be real, bro. You care about your heritage as much as I care about discount coupons."

Suga scrunched his nose. "I'm surprised you are aware of the existence of discount coupons."

"Oh, I am aware of a lot of things." JB grinned mysteriously.

Suga's stare was now fixed on the ceiling, his hands still behind his head. "Are you aware that that day, Nanami didn't take me away? That it was me that went to her and forced her to? That I have overheard her talking with my father? She promised she would find a way for the clan to get back to the hands of the rightful owner when the time was right." He smiled like he knew things would end up in a shitstorm and had tried everything to prevent that from happening. "Are you aware I never wanted this position? In fact, I never wanted to have anything to do with clans and gangs and power and money. None of it." 

He wasn't talking to JB anymore.

He was saying it to me.

"Are you saying what I think you're saying?" JB took another drag, listening carefully, almost transfixed.

"Yes." Suga narrowed his eyes outside. On the dark velvet night sky that enveloped the city; On the bright, flickering lights adorned it like jewels.

"I sold my freedom to Nanami, so she would take me away from my family. From the Ryuzaki clan, my father, and everything else I hated. My options were either that or death. I explained to her why I wanted to leave. I told her that I thought my father was orchestrating his own sketchy business behind her back." He stopped, furrowing his eyebrows.

"You Shi-no-Gamboed her." JB's words were breathless, his voice low, a mixture of surprise and fascination.

Suga smiled and nodded. 

Shut the front door. 

"It was the first and only time I've ever seen surprise in her eyes. Cold hard, and calculating poured out of them though, only a second after." He extended his hand. Waiting for JB to pass him the blunt. Can you pass some down here? I'm kinda in the middle of an existential crisis.

"She saw an opportunity," JB said, transfixed.

"Yes," Suga confirmed. "The next day, I found out that everything comes with a hefty price." He took a sharp inhale. "And took my first ten-hour flight." He smiled, exhaling the smoke.

Suga was indeed forced by the most life-binding oath to follow Nanami's orders. 

He hated following me. He found it wrong as well. 

He hated orders—both giving and receiving them.

He got himself caught up in a situation where he did everything Nanami asked, more than the others, in exchange for denying his life, his family, his origin, and legacy. 

And now he was showing me how stupid was my reckless decision of repeating his curse. He never wanted this —me ending up like that.  He had given me the best option he could figure out. Made me Oyabun, something he knew I would want. Accepting to stay a subject in silence when in fact, everything was his from the start.

Suga was born with wings and preferred to crawl through life.

In the end, Nanami had sentenced Suga to a reality he hadn't wanted.

Caged him into a situation he'd struggled with every day.

For the rest of his life.

Or —I realized in shock—hers.

One of the reasons that Nanami faked her death was to pass the clan back to Suga. 

So she would keep her promise.

So he would inherit everything. 

So she will break his Shi no Gambo.

A/N

Fun irrelevant fact:

I had written a scene where Rain wakes up and finds messages on her phone from JB.
That was supposed to happen shortly after Rain found out that Suga was the Oyabun, but I had decided to delete it because it didn't fit with the current plot and contained a line that someone might have understood that JB knew Suga.

In those messages, JB was the first character that referred to Suga as Oyadaddy —in a snobby way, of course. 
Still, he is the one who thought it first. He didn't copy it from Rain. 

Bloopers or deleted scene that NEVER HAPPENED.

(I will make a long chapter with all of those when the story finishes.)

JB: I know that I couldn't be that high, so for the sake of my sanity, please tell me what happened after Suga announced in a dramatic tone that he is Oyadaddy now, and RM kicked me outside like a dog.
JB: Jinyoung said that he was honestly afraid I would end up in pieces.
JB: Btw I am fine. Thanks for not asking.

JB: You could have told me you fucking cunt. Chin-hae has busted open five campaigns. I've never seen him happier ever. I've never actually seen him happy before, period.

JB: Of course I am always hard for you babe.

JB: Sorry, last two messages were for others.
JB: Unless you want the last one to be for you.
JB: Wait, just ignore it.
JB: Oyadaddy is going to be a headache.
JB: Did he really said something about tieing you up?
JB: Damn, I knew my kink-o-meter pinged hard around you.
JB: Should have let you watch the clan party vid.
JB: Way more fun than Nanami's murder ;)

Also, why the fuck everyone thought that Suga was waiting for Nanami?

Trust me, if she ever makes an appearance, you definitely won't be expecting it.