The dryness at the back of Taehyung’s throat caused him to grimace as he swallowed. A pounding ache girdled his head, as if a spike were being driven into his skull. He blindly reached for his bottle of water that was squeezed between the bed and the wall beside him and lifted his torso to gulp it down.

His eyes split open, and he blinked on repeat as he took in the brightness of the room. The next thing his eyes absorbed was Jay, who was sitting in his bed cross-legged and staring at him with a notion of concern.

Too disoriented from his headache to analyze his view, Taehyung glanced down at his friends’ beds in turn. “Guys. What time is it?”

“It’s after eleven, Tae,” Jimin uttered, smiling softly, as he stood up. “How are you feeling?”

“Like shit,” he sighed. “We missed our morning swim because of me. Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Hoseok chirped. “We can go now if you want.”

“No, I feel too tired and everything hurts. You guys can go, though. I want to take a shower.”

“Are you sure?” Jimin asked.

“Yes.”

“Okay, let’s go out for lunch later, at least. I have a date with Yoongi in the afternoon.”

“Have fun,” Taehyung said with a knowing smile and lay down again, as his two friends got ready for the beach.

Jungkook nipped at the inside of his lower lip as his agitated eyes remained at a standstill on the opposing bed. The five minutes Jimin and Hoseok took to change their clothes and head towards the exit felt like an eternity by his bottled-up apprehension.

“Bye, Tae,” Jimin smiled.

“See you later.”

“Bye, guys.” Taehyung followed them with his gaze until they stepped out of the room. He absently looked ahead and caught Jay in the same stance and still peering into him. “What?”

“Why did you drink so much yesterday?”

Taehyung’s face wrinkled in bafflement at the unexpected question. “I just felt like it. Why do you ask?”

“Because. Did you do it?”

“What?”

“Did you find a guy to fuck?”

Taehyung heaved himself to a sitting position, questioning eyes lingering on him. “Why do you care?”

“Just tell me,” Jungkook snarled.

Taehyung could recognize his annoyance even with his mask on, and he gazed at it long and intently before his lips slanted in a faint smirk. “Yes, I did. It was the best fuck I ever had.”

A riptide of bitter rage crashed over Jungkook’s form at once. The blood in his veins felt like lava searing his skin and his stomach lurched with ultimate exasperation.

He shouldn’t feel like this. He brought it to himself. Taehyung practically begged him yesterday, and he threw him out of the room without another word. Himself was the one to blame. But it still drove him outrageously mad.

“Why are you so pissed?” Taehyung questioned as his vision narrowed on his seething eyes. “You had your chance.”

“I’m glad I missed it, seeing how easy it was for you to find a replacement. Just any cock is good enough for you, huh?”

Taehyung scoffed. “Don’t be an ass just because your ego is hurt.”

Jungkook’s menacing gaze spoke louder than any comeback. He jumped off his bed in a spurt of fuming fury and bolted out of the room before Taehyung could try to stop him.

As the door slammed shut, Taehyung’s features drooped in overwhelming gloom. Maybe lying to him wasn’t a good idea, judging by his reaction. He just wanted to make him a little jealous. He never thought he would infuriate him so much.

 
He didn’t make an effort to talk to him after he returned from his lunch with his friends. He was only able to spend about an hour in the same room as him before his urge to tell him the truth toppled over him hard enough to smother him. But with Hoseok in the room, he couldn’t. So he asked his friend to go for a walk instead, as Jimin was with Yoongi.

The two boys strolled along the beach with the palliative sound of the sea waves accompanying them.

Hoseok observed the persistent fog of sullenness that meandered around Taehyung’s features with slight worry. “Tae. I can tell something is wrong. What is it?”

Taehyung’s eyes didn’t lift from the sand. A deep nasal exhalation sank his shoulders a little lower as he chewed on his bottom lip. He couldn’t tell him the real reason for his melancholic mood, and it bothered him. “Jay is just being an ass without a reason. I don’t understand why.”

“What I don’t understand is why it’s affecting you that much. Did something happen between you two?”

“No,” he muttered, lips barely splitting to release the word.

“He seemed rather worried about you yesterday, though.” He cast a glance at him to check his reaction and detected only a minimal tightness in his jaw. “And this morning, he was just sitting in his bed staring at you.”

“I don’t know why he did that.”

“I think you know. You just can’t tell me.”

Taehyung twisted his head slowly and gave him a tight-lipped, saddened smile. “Sorry. I hate this. But I really can’t.”

Hoseok cracked a smile and tapped his back. “It’s okay. I’ve told you my opinion about him. His secretiveness means only trouble. But if you want to go for it, no one can stop you.”

Taehyung’s immense need to discuss this with someone soared up in his gut and his tongue itched so much it couldn’t stay still any longer. “I saw his face. He’s ridiculously gorgeous, hyung.”

Hoseok’s steps stuttered to a stop by the surprise that clenched at his muscles. “How did that happen?”

“When I said I’ll go buy something to drink yesterday, I actually went to find him. He was in the private bathroom. Don’t tell Jimin. I hate doing this, but I think Jay is friends with Yoongi, Namjoon, and Seokjin. How else would he know about the bathroom?”

Hoseok continued walking as he reflected on his words. “You’re right. So that means Yoongi is hiding a lot more than we thought.”

“Yeah, probably,” Taehyung said.

Hoseok’s eyes passed over his form in a dance of hesitation. “Did you have sex with him?”

“No.” Taehyung received a light push on his shoulder and regarded the loaded look his friend sent him. “Really! We didn’t. We just... We sucked each other off.”

A gasp spewed out of Hoseok, then he chuckled. “I hope you didn’t do that in our room when we were sleeping.”

“No!” Taehyung exclaimed and joined Hoseok’s outbreak of giggles a second later. “We went to the storage room.”

“Wait, was he wearing his mask while... You know?”

“Actually, he asked to blindfold me.”

“Yah,” Hoseok snarled, disapproval oozing from his gaze. “You sucked someone off without seeing his face first?”

“Yes. I was that desperate, okay?” Taehyung admitted with a small pout. “I wanted to feel him close, touch him, kiss him. It wasn’t about his face. It was about how he made me feel. And trust me, if you had seen his body, you would have done the same.”

Hoseok snorted, shaking his head. “He’s that muscular?”

“Yes. You know I’m weak for muscles. But still, the mystery he has around him just draws me to him. I want to know him so bad.”

“And what have you found out so far?”

“That he’s gorgeous and has a big dick.”

Hoseok erupted into another round of chuckles. “You’re good then. You know the important stuff.”

Taehyung huffed a laugh at his friend’s obvious mocking, though he didn’t reply.

“Why is he acting like that now? Yesterday, it looked like he was waiting for us.”

“I don’t know. Yesterday in the bathroom, I asked him to have sex with me and he said no. Later, I said I wanted to find a guy to fuck me just to see his reaction. And this morning when you went for a swim, he asked me if I found someone. I think he was a little jealous, right?”

“Yeah, that’s what it seems like.”

“But I went too far,” Taehyung uttered, bitterness cloaking his tone. “I lied to him that I found someone. And he got so pissed he stormed out of the room.”

“Yah, that means he was indeed jealous. But I don’t understand why he said no when he apparently wanted to have sex with you.”

“I don’t know that either. He wouldn’t tell me.”

A frown of thought sprawled on Hoseok’s traits. “So, what are you going to do now? Will you tell him the truth?”

“Yes, I wanted to. But I couldn’t with you in the room. That’s why I asked you to go for a walk instead.”

Hoseok glanced at the time. “Jimin will be with Yoongi for about twenty more minutes. Why don’t you go talk to him now?”

Taehyung set his anxious eyes on him. “You think? He’ll probably still be mad.”

“You’ll explain, and he won’t be mad anymore.”

Taehyung nodded at his reasoning and gathered any scrap of courage he had. “Let’s go back.”

And they did. They sauntered back to the hostel and soon reached the entrance. They used the elevator to go to the second floor, and once they got off, they resumed their way to their room.

Taehyung opened the door and scoped the empty room as his features sank yet again. “He’s not here.”

“Go find him.”

“No,” Taehyung said in complete defeat. “Maybe he’s with his friends. He disappears around eight, so I guess he goes to meet them. I’ll talk to him later when he comes back.”

Hoseok draped his arm over his shoulders and offered him a soothing smile. “It’s okay, Tae. Let’s watch a movie while we wait for Jimin.”

With a nod from Taehyung and a faint smile, they sat at the table to pick a movie to watch.

. . .

Jungkook trudged back to his room after his usual gathering with his friends. An oppression was lodged into his chest since the moment Taehyung told him he fucked someone else, and it only became heavier as time passed.

It’s just four days. He’ll disappear and I’ll forget him. He’s just another guy. Nothing special. I can have a bunch of other guys even hotter than him. Yeah. He’s nothing special.

The lies he fed himself mollified the heaviness over his existence only by a fraction. Because somewhere in the depths of his heart, he knew he was special. He knew there wasn’t anyone hotter than him. And a muted whisper at a corner of his mind told him he wouldn’t be able to forget him that easily, if not at all.

Jungkook found the three cheerful friends sitting at the table, playing a game with cards while drinking beers. They ignored his presence, and he reciprocated their indifference by climbing up to his bed without a word.

He lay there, listening to their giggles and chatter for definitely over an hour, and it didn’t seem like they would stop playing anytime soon.

The buzz of Jungkook’s big button type phone had his forehead flooding with creases of dreadful mystification. If his father called him so late, it wouldn’t be for good news. He squeezed the phone out of the bed’s inner side, and his confusion only deepened as he read Namjoon’s name on the screen.

“Hm?”

“We have Ji Hoo in the garage.”

Jungkook lurched into a bolt upright position, eyes double their size. The information took a few seconds to settle in, but once it did, he hung up the phone and shoved it in his pocket. He hopped off his bed in haste and burst out of the room, leaving three completely baffled men behind.

Jungkook sprinted all the way down to the ground floor. He only slowed his pace when he reached the reception as a group of people walked into the hostel, and he shared a glance with Seokjin before he stepped outside.

He scuttled towards the right until he arrived at their private garage. He knocked on the large metallic door and a mechanic sound rang as it crawled upwards. He ducked under it to enter, too impatient to wait longer, and focused his frantic gaze on Namjoon, who just pressed the button to shut the door. “How?”

“I saw him outside of the hostel.”

Jungkook walked further inside and halted behind their SUV as he located Ji Hoo tied up on a chair.

“Kook,” Yoongi sighed. “He’s saying some weird things.”

Jungkook’s skin flamed with pent-up rage as a deadly sinister glint simmered in his eyes. He surged towards him and seized the collar of his shirt with both hands. “Where is your father?”

Ji Hoo gulped, an instant alarm constricting his throat. His bottom lip trembled as he attempted to find words to say under Jungkook’s wrathful gaze. “Jungkook, listen—” A crushing blow in his face convulsed his entire frame and strangled his remark in a stifled groan.

Jungkook yanked him closer as his breath flew out of him in quick, deep waves of consuming fury. “Where is your father?” he repeated, each word ground out through clenched teeth with vicious effort.

“I don’t know—”

Jungkook delivered another mind-reeling punch that was powerful enough to make his nose bleed. “I’ve been living in hell because of him. Tell me where the fuck he is.”

Ji Hoo whimpered on repeat as he blinked through the hammering dizziness in his head. “Fuck, it hurts,” he slurred. “I’m telling you, I don’t know where he is.”

“You’re his son,” he roared as he slammed him against the chair. “Where is he?” His wrath reached a danger point at the silence he received. “I’ll beat you until you die. So talk.”

“We only talked on the phone once in the last four months.”

Jungkook released a shivery breath and drove his fist into his face. His arm swung back for a consecutive punch, but Yoongi was fast enough to wrench him away from him. “Let him talk, Kook.”

Jungkook’s lungs ached by his rapid breathing as he strove to ease his turbulent nerves. “Talk.”

A string of pained groans spilled from Ji Hoo’s mouth, that was covered in blood. His eyes remained half closed as his disoriented state hindered his task of collecting his thoughts. “I really... I don’t know where he is. After what happened, he disappeared. I’m trying to find something to clear his name for four months now.”

“You won’t find shit because he did it,” Jungkook spat out.

“He didn’t do it! My father has done a lot of awful things, but he would never do something like this. Maybe I haven’t found anything that acquits him until now, but I haven’t found anything that incriminates him either. That’s why I wanted to talk to you.”

A glimmer of mystification etched into the hard creases on Jungkook’s forehead. “I thought you were hiding on Jeju Island after what happened. That’s why we came here. To find you.”

Ji Hoo wiped his mouth on his shoulder, staining his black shirt. “I came here three weeks ago because I found out you’re here. About a week later, my men located the hostel your friends opened, and I assumed you’d be with them. I was waiting to see you, but you never appeared. I asked a guy who stays at the hostel if he knows you, and he said no. I thought you weren’t here since I didn’t see you either, so I stopped coming. But then I learned from my men that someone had asked about me. And I realized you were searching for me like I was searching for you. That’s why I came back today.”

Jungkook’s puzzled gaze locked with Yoongi’s similar one, then he aimed it at Ji Hoo again. “So you came to Jeju Island just three weeks ago. And you came because you found out I’m here. You weren’t hiding this whole time.”

“No, I wasn’t hiding. I wanted to talk to you. My father really didn’t do this, Jungkook.”

“Kang Soo hates the Jeon family,” Namjoon jumped in the conversation with an undertone of hostility. “He hates them for years now. It has to be him.”

Ji Hoo rolled his head in muted exasperation. “You don’t believe me, fine. You guys are so sure my father did this just because he’s Hyun Joo’s rival. Do you actually have proof? I’m telling you, I’m trying to find out the truth, just like you guys.”

“What if you’re lying?” Yoongi asked, dubious.

“If he had done this and I were on his side, I wouldn’t have come to talk to Jungkook. The past four months have been like hell for me too. I want to return to my home with my family. It drives me crazy not knowing where my father is.”

Jungkook scrutinized his beaten-up face for any shred of mendacity, but couldn’t be sure if there was any. “So what now? That’s what you wanted to tell me?”

“Yes. And that you should stop wasting your time searching for my father. Start looking for the one who actually did this. I know my father. He won’t appear until his name is cleared. Because he knows you will kill him.”

Jungkook’s enraged state melted into pure bewilderment as his chest dropped with a long exhalation. He dragged his feet closer and untied the rope from behind the chair. “Give your number to Yoongi. And leave for now.”

Ji Hoo stretched his strained arms and rose to his feet. He tapped his number into Yoongi’s contacts and silently shuffled out of the garage once Namjoon opened the door for him.

“Something doesn’t feel right, Kook,” Yoongi murmured, a contemplative frown embellishing his traits.

“Yeah. Why did my father say Ji Hoo was here and sent us to find him?”

“Maybe the information he got was wrong?” Namjoon guessed.

“I don’t know... What the hell is going on?”

A fragile silence poured into the dark room that only broke when a throaty sigh was heard from Yoongi. They could conceive no answer to the torrent of questions that swirled in their heads, but one thing was certain; something was definitely not right.

───⭒───༺🎭༻───⭒───

Let the mystery begin 😁

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