"He's fine now, he's just sleeping, so calm down," Namjoon said, seeing Taehyung in all his states looking at Seokjin from head to toe, stopping at his red and swollen face which was starting to turn purplish in places.

"THIS IS NOT FINE!" Taehyung yelled pointing at Seokjin's face.

"No, but he'll be fine, don't dramatize the situation. It surely could have been tragic, I am aware, but it wasn't," replied Namjoon, whose calm contrasted with Taehyung's agitation.

Seeing his brother so calm in such a situation didn't help matters.

"WHERE WERE YOU?!" Taehyung yelled. "I sent Jin to you because I knew he would be safe with you but you weren't there and no one could find you anywhere else. SO WHERE WERE YOU?!!!"

Namjoon was about to make a scathing remark at him but he suddenly noticed that Taehyung, proud Taehyung, had his eyes shining with tears and his fists clenched, but more to hold back tears than to hit him. He was visibly devastate to have seen Seokjin on that railing and must have been terrified of seeing him fall.

Namjoon knew about his brother's trauma and even if he openly made fun of it most of the time, especially because he considered that Taehyung was responsible for his own suffering, he knew that it was serious and that his parents had underestimated the aftereffects that this childhood incident had left on Taehyung.

He walked over to his bed and laid Seokjin down carefully. There wasn't much left of his impeccable appearance from earlier in the evening : his suit was messy and stained with alcohol, there was no longer any trace of his bow tie, his hair was disheveled and his red face looked like it had changed shape because it was swollen in places.

In a few hours he had gone from being the happiest boy in the world to have been invited to such a party with his friends, to a person whose dreams had just been destroyed. But Seokjin, deeply asleep, still ignored that.

Namjoon sighed deeply.

"I should have been there, I regret. What happened is my fault."

"Perfectly!!" Taehyung yelled. "Wait, what did you say?"

Taehyung, just as shocked by his brother's statement as his brother had been by his tears, looked at him in astonishment. Namjoon admitting his wrongs? It was something he had never seen before. Under other circumstances, he would have seen this as his first crushing victory over his brother after almost fifteeen years of living together.

But after what had happened to Seokjin on his watch - after all, it was he who had invited him to attend a high society party he should never have set foot in, not Namjoon - he realized he couldn't blame everything on his brother.

"I'd like to say it's your fault but I'm the one who left him with Jungkook because I was angry that they get along so well," Taehyung replied angrily.

"What does Jungkook have to do with this?" Namjoon wondered but looking at his brother's face, he realized that he had the mark of a blow to the chin and understood that he must have fought with Jungkook.

It wasn't unusual for there to be tension between Taehyung and Jungkook but he didn't understand how Jungkook could be connected to what happened to Seokjin according to Taehyung.

"That bastard is a damn druggie. He drugged Jin, that's what put him in this state," Taehyung explained, although he didn't know why Seokjin's face was so red and swollen.

Although he was stunned by this revelation, Namjoon quickly pulled himself together. His brother was giving him a way out of putting the blame entirely on him. It was unexpected, luck smiled on him.

"Why did he do that to him?"

"What do I know? To have fun? To target me indirectly?" Taehyung ventured.

"So he knows you care about Jin, it means you let him see your weakness in him when you weren't able to handle it afterwards. Well done, little brother," Namjoon quipped.

"Now is not the time to make me feel even worse reminding me what an idiot I am, I know I screwed up!" shouted Taehyung who was lost and who proclaimed his defeat loud and clear, without any further shame in front of his greatest enemy. "Namjoon I... I don't know what to do. I don't think I should go to Whimoon with Jin. He's right, if I stay with him, I'll only get him into trouble, like tonight. I- I thought... I really thought I saw him dead and it was... It was really..."

He didn't finish his sentence because his throat was tight and his tears were threatening to fall: however, he forbade himself to cry in front of Namjoon, it was the ultimate mark of weakness and the last that his arrogance preserved with all his might.

Namjoon didn't expect that. His little brother suddenly seemed very vulnerable. Here he was exposing his doubts to him and what's more, he was showing altruism towards Seokjin, putting aside his own wishes and preferring to give up following him than to be responsible for making him suffer more.

Taehyung was really changing since he was friends with Seokjin again, it was no longer an assumption: he had truly matured and become a more altruistic person, capable of thinking of others before himself. It was the most amazing thing Namjoon had seen.

His selfish little brother who had always done everything to keep Seokjin with him, thinking about himself before thinking about Seokjin and his happiness, his explosive and capricious demon little brother was holding back tears and thinking about letting Seokjin go to protect him from himself.

Namjoon suddenly had the impression that evil had changed sides. He had always considered himself better than his brother and his parents, proudly trumpeting that he was different from the rest of his family and that he was the most worthy of Seokjin's friendship. Why did he suddenly feel disgusted with himself? He didn't like this feeling.

Taehyung had let go of his pride and showed himself to be mature. Namjoon remembered that out of the two of them, he was the older brother. Could he knowingly let Taehyung believe that everything was his fault? A voice whispered to him that this way he would have everything to gain and that he would keep Seokjin's friendship while keeping him away from Taehyung forever.

But another voice, a new, brighter voice, whispered to him from another side that he couldn't do that. It was a voice full of good intentions that he didn't know and didn't want inside of himself. Yet, it started shouting so loudly, drumming in his head, that it hid it the first time and forced Namjoon to say slowly:

"Taehyung, I'm not sure Jin will go to Whimoon either."

"Why do you say that ? He was accepted and he graduated, you know that well," Taehyung reminded him, relieved that he hadn't taken that from Seokjin. It was perhaps the only thing he hadn't taken from him and it was thanks to this that he would continue to be happy despite everything that had happened to him.

"Yes, but something else happened tonight. I didn't know that Jungkook drugged Jin and that could have been the only reason for his current state but that's not the case. You didn't notice it but Jin is drunk."

"Drunk?" Taehyung repeated, looking back at Seokjin's red face. "How can he be drunk, he doesn't even drink!"

He didn't have to get very close to Seokjin to realize that, indeed, he reeked of alcohol.

"No more than he smokes weed and yet!" Namjoon replied.

"B-But how?!"

"Yoona."

Namjoon saw guilt cross his brother's eyes.

"Yoona and her friends were here earlier, when he came to my room, they were the ones who did this to him. It was Yoona who hit him in revenge for what you did to her at school, but given the marks on his face, I guess she didn't hit him alone."

This new information made Taehyung pale. He had thought that Yoona hadn't seen Seokjin and it was because that had reassured him that he had agreed, because of Hoseok who threatened him from afar, to dance with Yoona before going to join Seokjin.

Now that he knew that, he thought he should have strangled Yoona instead of dancing with her. Besides, Seokjin had seen him dancing with Yoona after what she had done to him and he had screamed those terrible words to him...

"Jin said he hates me. Now I understand why. He... He really hates me."

"Finally? It took him a while," Namjoon quipped, without taking any pleasure in it however this time.

But unlike usual, Taehyung didn't glare at him or send him a sharp reply. All he could think about was what Seokjin had shouted at him. He seemed even more desperate than before.

"It's my fault that Jungkook AND Yoona attacked him and he will never forgive me. He must have thought I sent him home on purpose to trap him and let Yoona go after him."

Furious, Namjoon suddenly winced and Taehyung interpreted his anger as being directed at him. This was always why Namjoon was angry with him: when he hurt Seokjin.

"You are right to be angry with me. I am angry with myself too. Don't worry, I won't go to whimoon with Jin, you won't need to stop me."

"No, I'm not angry about that," Namjoon replied, seeming irritated.

"Why then?" Taehyung asked.

"I'm angry because I could have won the game between us that we've been playing for way too long and left you crying like a baby. However, I can't let you think you did it all on your own, it wouldn't be fair."

"What do you mean?" Taehyung wondered.

"I mean I had to act on my own as always since I can't count on anyone but myself. When I saw that you didn't do anything to stop Jin from going to Whimoon even though I had counted on you, it destabilized me a little because I was counting on you to do that," Namjoon explained.

"So you don't have to do it yourself and I'm the only one Jin hates?" Taehyung asked darkly. "You bastard, I already knew that, don't you have anything new to teach me?"

"I lied," Namjoon confessed, "I said I wouldn't do anything, but in the end, I couldn't do it since you weren't willing to do anything since you decided to go to Whimoon with Jin instead of finding a way to get him to Eunma.

So I decided to let Yoona do what she wanted tonight, thinking this would be the only opportunity, and I suspected that she wouldn't act alone, even though I thought she would act with her brother.

I planned to send Jin here but I couldn't find him and in the end, you did it for me. Now, Yoona and her friends might have already sent the director of Whimoon something to compromise Jin's entry there because that's the idea I suggested to her in a way."

Shocked by what he had just learned, Taehyung took a few seconds to react.

"You... you bastard, you did this?!" he shouted, grabbing his brother by the collar. "You knew how much Yoona hated him and you used that against Jin even though I had done everything to keep him away from her! You knew she was going to hurt him and you shamelessly let him into that room!"

"Yes, I did," Namjoon sighed. "Sometimes it takes bad to lead to good. Unfortunately, it was necessary."

"Stop with your bullshit! There were a thousand and one other ways to go about it, I'm sure of that, because your brain is always full of ingenious ideas, but you decided to use Yoona instead of anyone or anything else because you wanted Jin to hate me at the same time as you stopped him from going to Whimoon! And since you also knew that Hoseok wanted to make me dance with Yoona, you must have laughed knowing that Jin was going to see us together and to think that I had betrayed him!"

"Exactly, I'm surprised you understood everything by yourself," Namjoon said clapping his hands.

"You are the worst scum in this world, why did you have to be my brother?!" Taehyung screamed, enraged.

"I often ask myself the same question," Namjoon giggled.

"Don't act like it's nothing and stop laughing!!" Taehyung yelled, "JIN ALMOST FALLED AND BREAK HIS NECK BECAUSE OF YOU, JUST BECAUSE YOU'RE AN ASSHOLE!!"

"It's true, I lacked judgment and I bet everything on your psycho ex-girlfriend thinking that she would act with her tricky brother but I lost. Hoseok wouldn't have let her act so stupidly and wouldn't have run the risk of Jin's life being put in danger, I'm sure, he's too cautious and smart for that.

And that was probably why Yoona didn't want to do this with him but with people who would have no problem with it. She didn't say anything to Hoseok and acted with her idiot friends who acted in the messiest way possible and put Jin in danger of death. I played very badly this time."

"THIS IS NOT... A GAME!" Taehyung yelled, punching Namjoon which the latter gave up trying to avoid, as if he accepted it. "YOONA... NO... YOU ALMOST KILLED JIN!"