The first thing Taehyung registered after being knocked out for hours by the wendigo's poisonous bite was how heavy his body felt. It was as if he were submerged in a pool of glue. He couldn't move his fingers, neither could he open his eyelids which seemed to be sealed together by an eerie force.

As he tried to reckon memories from the moment before the world burst into an infinite of black, his heart began sinking down to the bowels of the earth, swallowed by an endless void. Panic started flooding his already mushed thoughts, causing a dull ache to stab him in the skull.

The most alarming thing to him was that his own body didn't respond to any of his commands. He could hear his brain screaming at his muscles, telling them to desperately contract and change their reposition, to no avail. They remained still, heavy under the glue.

Taehyung wasn't someone who accepted defeat easily: he'd never been the type of guy to just let go of a task and focus on something else. On the contrary, he would spend every tiny bit of his power and energy into completing whatever he was trying to achieve.

Kim Taehyung never loses.

But an itching and flaring feeling settled in the pits of his stomach, almost as it were being filled with acid, the liquid spilling into his esophagus and flowing to his throat, was dwindling his resolve. It was overwhelming, it was burning, and it was suffocating. He attempted to put his hands around his throat, but again, they remained anchored at his sides.

Anxious and on the verge of losing his own sanity, Taehyung couldn't do much but pray for this hellish torture to end. Right before getting swallowed up by the maddening sense of vulnerability, his eyes fluttered open, and a scorching whiteness enveloped his vision.

Suddenly, his sight cleared, and he was no longer engulfed by the vast blackness.

Instead of seeing everything in obsidian black, Taehyung gazed at a beige ceiling. His chapped lips were slightly parted as he breathed in and out, fragments of dispersed memories transmitting into his mind quickly, overwhelming him.

With sluggish movements, he brought his hand up to his face, wincing at the sudden rattle of metal. Turning his head slightly to the side, he stared at the handcuffs wrapped around his wrists. As Taehyung slowly came to realize that he was cuffed to a bed in a room completely unfamiliar to him, his heart began picking up its rate, doing fast hurdles.

Who the heck is this perverted fucker?

Instantly, he bolted upright, examining his body for any signs of harm. Taehyung's frantic eyes trailed down to the bitten arm, which was now fully healed without a single trace of teeth marks. The wendigo's poison should've killed him by now, judging by how fast it spread through a human body.

Wondrously strange for him though, Taehyung was very jugular and alive.

Releasing a sigh of pure relief, he let his gaze roam over the new surroundings, getting more perplexed by the second. The room was relatively large – with its walls painted in a hideously dark-blue color and a poignant scent of nail polish soaring up in the air. His only light came from a slit between the sagging curtains at the window, the feeble brightness barely enough for him to make out anything.

As he contemplated the quaintly setting of the bedroom, he realized that the place didn't bring any notion of recollection to him, attesting the unfamiliarity of the environment. This, wherever it was, couldn't be his own home because Taehyung's budget for the month could barely afford him a flat bigger than the boxy 'cabins' which were usually sold out at the suburbs of Seoul. Neither could it be Jimin's apartment since he lived under the same conditions as Taehyung. Moreover, they both wouldn't keep handcuffs in their bedrooms.

Could it be another hunter?

Taehyung rarely worked in groups, though he did have his own team of trainees. The hunter would rather be left on his own – doing all the tough job and hardly leaving any remnants for the rest. Besides, he clearly remembered exiting his home alone to wander the streets at night and hunt for monsters.

In addition, he was left sticking to the second-best assumption which he had no intentions of adhering to – being left at the angel's mercy.

The mere thought of it caused Taehyung's body to convulse. He, in all his senses, had never allowed the idea of being rescued by a supernatural creature to cross his mind. Yet here he was – connecting the dots with an invisible string of insinuations.

He was so engrossed in his own thoughts that he didn't hear when the door had been opened. Immediately, Taehyung shrank away from the intruder, who happened to be no one else but the mysterious dark angel. From behind the broad-shouldered frame was peering over the face of a person whom he'd never seen in his life.

"He is awake," the one hiding behind the angel blipped, his plethora of flawless features was soiled by an ugly scowl. Taehyung noticed that a pair of pointed fox ears were popping out of his head, strained like radio antennas.

Deciding to cover up the surprise that was prancing across his visage, Taehyung slowly let go of the clean sheets at which his hands were clutching for dear life and summoned every bit of willpower in order to stop himself from shaking with livid anger. "Release me, now!" He said as feasibly calm as he could, though it came out rather crudely.

The angel's eyes on him were soft yet leaden, seemingly not minding Taehyung's quips. "We don't want to hurt you, Taehyung," he pronounced his name with such subdued tone that the hunter's next words got brewed in his throat.

Despite the number of times the dark angel had proved his solicitude towards him, Taehyung stubbornly refused to believe it was out of good intents. There had to be a secret ploy behind the mask of tender benevolence. He wouldn't do him the courtesy of being the naïve damsel in distress who trusted people easily without being a tad dubious.

"You don't?" Taehyung inquired, to which the angel responded with a nod of his head, raven curls of silky hair falling over his obscenely handsome face. "Then why am I cuffed?" He contended, lifting his arm to give a better view of the metal handcuffs coiled around his wrists.

"Hoseok found it necessary," the latter relented somehow indecisive in his gesticulating. "If it were up to me, I wouldn't have taken such strict measures."

"Don't go soft on him," the one with the fox ears hissed, prodding him in the ribs with his elbow, canines sharp yet malleable, like infants, as they released from the hold they had on his bottom lip. "He is a hunter! You should be more careful around him."

"You must be Hoseok, right?" Taehyung assumed, casually interrupting their little chit-chat, meanwhile fighting back the tempting urge to roll his eyes. Said guy visibly flinched at the call, not expecting to be the one put under the spotlight. "I haven't seen a kitsune in a while. You must be one of the few lefts." He said with a hint of challenging irritability lacing his voice.

"You and your crazy band of lunatics are responsible for that!" The fox pointed an accusatory finger at him, gathering the courage to take a bold step forward. The hunter didn't move, looking him straight in the eye, like a starving wolf ready to lunge himself at a herd of deer.

To be frank, he wasn't at all that chagrined by the allegation. After so many years of nonstop fighting against the supernatural realm and yet Taehyung hadn't grown a single soft spot for those creatures. In fact, his hatred towards them had intensified over the time. He couldn't be vindicated for what he'd caused, neither did he want to be forgiven.

"Is that so?" Taehyung's eyes narrowed to crescents, granting the kitsune with his vilest glare. His stare was depleted of any sorts of compassion, making the latter recoil in slight horror. "Are you sure you don't want to join the count? I haven't dealt with a kitsune in a while..."

The fox's irises flashed a bright yellow color, heart thrumming with nothing but animosity towards the hunter. "You little piece of – "

"Enough," the dark angel finally decided to intervene after standing there for solid two minutes and doing nothing to prevent the argument from happening. He grabbed the kitsune by the elbow, patting his shoulder in an amicable way of calming him down. "I think it'll be better for you to leave."

The fox pondered over his words before letting out a displeased scoff, shrugging off the angel's hand from his shoulder. "With pleasure," he said and with that he stomped out of the room, closing the door with a hefty slam that blared throughout the four blue walls.

Silence loomed over them, resting in the air, and swallowing up every small noise. Taehyung was glowering at the angel from afar, continuing to stay in the bed with barely any sources that could be of use to him in case he had to defend himself.

"Care to explain why I'm here?" The hunter asked after some time, basking in the jaded expression that veiled the angel's face.

Sighing, the angel slowly made his way over the bed and propped himself on the edge, mattress sinking under the weight of another body. Taehyung watched him warily, not squinting away as he previously did when the man first entered the room.

"I didn't know where else I could bring you," he started off, tugging at his hair, to the extent he appeared like he had a disorder, like he wanted to pry it from his skull. "No hospital could treat a wound like the one caused by a wendigo." The angel's gaze travelled to Taehyung's arm. "So, I had to take care of it on my own."

Raising a suspicious eyebrow at him, the hunter retorted. "Why?" he gulped down the rising bile in his throat. "Why would you do such a thing?"

Why? Wasn't that such a stupidly simple question that really couldn't be labelled as 'simple' due to the insane amount of thinking capacity it required?

The angel's tongue rolled over his lips, wetting them a bit, hands now resting in his lap. He looked awfully disturbed, dark eyes morbidly clement, beseeching, and tremendously insecure. "This is a bit hard to explain," he chuckled, though it came out as dry and exaggerated.

"Why?" Taehyung let the question slip through his lips for a second time, inching closer to the angel, an uncanny feeling of horror crumpled at his lungs, like they were merely made of paper, like the hand of a corpse was grappling at them, scrunching them, wrecking them. "Why do you keep coming back? How do you even know my name?"

Taehyung was observing the look of desperation that scuttled along the angel's visage. There was something sad pulling at his eyes, as they melted into bubbles of water, reflective to every surface around them, as if so easily popped. "Do you know who I am, Taehyung?" his tone was imploring, as if he'd hoped to hear one particular answer.

The hunter shook his head frantically. "No," he breathed out, and the air let him, allowed him to take and his lungs felt full again, as he tried to speak. Despite having no recollection of ever meeting him, Taehyung could swear there was something indefinably familiar about him.

The angel reached out to take a hold of Taehyung's hands, and he startled, his entire body jerking, seemingly lost in thought for a moment. His palm was unusually warm, yet it'd got this strange tenderness to it, like it could be brushed or weaved through fingers, like embers of smoke. "My name is Jungkook." He said and with that Taehyung froze.

His blood was rushing too fast in his ears, and his skin felt cold all over, while his innards hollered with heat, burning, and striking, like Satan's pit. Taehyung couldn't come up with a plausible explanation as to why the name brought such a horrendous pressure on him, piling upon his stance, weighing him down, down, down.

It was the same name which imperceptibly escaped him the night he accidentally mistook a complete stranger for someone he'd thought he knew. A name which origins he wasn't aware of until now. All this time he'd known the angel's name without having any memories of ever seeing him.

Upon noticing the raising panic on his face, the angel quickly let go of his hands and put some distance between them, though his whole being was screaming at him to wrap his arms around Taehyung and sooth him down.

"Does it spike up anything?" He inquired, the worried voice sank into the crevices of Taehyung's abandoned soul, and it seemed to somewhat restore balance. He couldn't look at him though, because his vision was blurry, and his stomach was like a windstorm – bombardments of sick stirring.

"N-no," Taehyung lied bluntly, blinking rapidly to banish the waters from his eyes. "Nothing."

The angel, thankfully, seemed to buy the cheap lie as he carefully rose on his feet, supporting himself on the bed's pot. "It's fine." He coerced the frown etched to his features into a smile, albeit faux. "I shouldn't have been so foolish as to believe something would change after telling you my name."

Taehyung's eyebrows furrowed in a confused countenance, more and more questions continuing to flow into the open bowl that his mind was. Either this bizarre man was speaking complete concocts or there was indeed something happening that the hunter couldn't seem to figure out himself. Nevertheless, he had to seek for answers.

"Don't you think it's unfair to leave me hanging?" Feigned kindness was accentuated through loose expression. "Treating my wounds, sheltering me under your own roof, then leaving me without any explanation. And for the sake of what?"

The angel felt the blunt severity of his own mendacious words creep behind without cause, there to corrode and fester a mood which could be one of pure festivity in the first counting second, meeting a rather quick, soggy, and demising end in the very next. And the hunter sitting right ahead broke various records regarding his regnant emotional wrath.

"I can't hide anything from you, can I?" he urged himself to show moderation.

"No, you can't." The latter said succinctly.

Nodding, the angel's eyes travelled to an arcane drawer which appeared to be locked on the outside. With a mere flick of his two fingers, it yawned open and from there a book with leather covers quickly flew into the angel's arms.

Taehyung observed avidly how the man's calloused fingers traced the outlines of the hardcover with careful tenderness, as if it were a very precious yet burdening belonging to him.

"Here you will find your answers," he handed it to the hunter who sluggishly picked it up.

"A book?" Taehyung treaded to open it.

"A diary," the angel corrected tranquilly.

Licking his lips, the hunter fervently went to the first page of the diary, thumb caressing the vellum papers. Upon seeing the beautiful handwriting, a vortex of emotions stirred within him. He started reading, slow in his pace, going through some sentences repeatedly to make sure he'd read them right. The words engraved with black ink seemed eerily familiar of him, almost like he'd seen those style of writing before.

"I'll be back by the time you're done." The angel said on his way to leave the bedroom, offering Taehyung nothing but a hollow sense of void and a diary full of memories.  

♧thoughts?♧