"Let's take it from the top!"

Left, right, turn. Right, left, turn. Left, right, left, turn... Right? Left? Tu--

"Jungkook, what's up with you today? You had no problem with these steps last week."

A raven-haired boy blinked, sighing and stretching his arms as he felt everyone in the little dance studio stare at him. The booming bass and the catchy melody had faded into silence, catching him off guard. "Sorry, guys. I'm a bit out of it today," he apologized sheepishly.

"But why? Did you not sleep enough? Not eat enough? You look like you just failed fifty tests at once!," Hoseok, their 'leader' persisted relentlessly, looking strict with his hands on his hips. Due to all the dancing, his skin was glistening with sweat and his fringe was slightly damp, making him look a tad intimidating.

"Knock it off, Hobi. We had the creepiest thing ever happen in uni this morning! I got goosebumps- and our friend Taehyung even left before lunch, said he had a bellyache!," Jimin, who was also part of the dancing crew, spoke. He was also sweating, fanning himself with his little hand as he tended to do.

"Taehyung? I know Taehyung! The one you're in love with! Okay, Jungkookie, I understand you're worried about your lover boy's health, but you still need to focus. Team spirit is important," Hoseok kept scolding but now sounded a tad softer. Jimin widened his eyes so much that they practically had the size of plant pots and goggled at him in disbelief. Jungkook wanted to facepalm.

"Lover boy?!-- We're... We're talking about this later, young man!," he whisper-shouted, looking aghast.
"No, please don't. Hoseok doesn't know what he's talking about, it's a big misunderstanding," the ravenette pleaded, his ears turning red.

"Uh, guys? Are we gonna keep practising or not?," another voice asked. It was Hwang Eunbi, the only girl on the team. And also Jungkook's (and Hoseok's) ex-girlfriend, but all of them were casual and friendly with each other, no harsh feelings left at all. The four of them were breathing heavily, her clutching her sides while looking at the rest of them in confusion.

Hoseok seemed to think for a while. "Fine. Let's have one more go and then we'll wrap it up. Jungkook, don't think about creepy uni or Taehyung or whatever, just the way your body moves," he then instructed, grabbing the remote control to turn on the stereo.

To Jungkook's utter luck, he was able to keep his mind off certain things for the last round and managed to focus on the way his body moved in combination with the music and its rhythym, he managed to do all the steps correctly and hit all the beats almost flawlessly. At least remotely content, the four of them retreated into the changing rooms and changed out of their sweaty clothes.

"So, Hobi thinks you have a crush on TaeTae?," Jimin asked suspiciously while stripping off his loose t-shirt and changing into a fluffy sweater. The ravenette visibly flushed, mumbling something incoherent and taking extra long to take off his shirt in order to hide his face until the redness disappeared.
"I didn't catch that. Hmm?," the blonde kept pushing, making him groan in annoyance.

"He's misunderstanding. I absolutely don't, but you know him. He likes to make up cock-and-bull stories sometimes." He then changed into a grey hoodie, craving nothing more than a relaxing, steamy shower to overcome the embarrassment at home. He wished for the ground to swallow him up whole, but of course, that was not possible.

"Good, because TaeTae is really hard to please. I can tell, I'm good at that stuff. Reading people and all that. You'd go crazy with him. Like, I know you're not the type to make super big efforts in a relationship."
This did not make him feel particularly better, but he nodded with a little smile and took a long sip out of his water bottle in order to avoid further conversation.

He had to admit, Hoseok's words reverbrated inside his brain constantly, completely unwished for. They did not only embarrass him, they also made him feel something else. Something that felt an awful lot like guilty conscience and desperate denial at the same time.

Every single bone in his body tried to prevent him from exactly that happening, but the guilty conscience he felt might be a little hinch that that had already happened.
He couldn't like him, he couldn't like a vampire. And up until now, he had convinced himself that he absolutely didn't. However, it was getting harder and harder to deny.

He would have never stolen from a jewellery store for anyone else, not even his closest friends. Yes, stolen.

He might have panicked a little at the thought of celebrating Christmas without giving Taehyung any gift. Originally, he had planned on giving it to him after the holidays, but as the vampire had invited him over for Christmas Eve, he conveniently had the chance of handing him his gift on the very night of the celebration.

He wasn't too fond of criminality and normally, he wouldn't dare break the law and risk his reputation by creating a criminal record. But in this case, the opportunity was too golden to resist. The bracelet lying on a soft blue velvet cushion on top of the glass counter, shimmering alluringly just for him to take and the owner of the jewellery store not even present. So he just went for it and took a risk, taking the piece without thinking about it.

He didn't know if he should be ashamed of himself or concerned for himself. Part of him also wondered if he should be resenting Taehyung for making him do such a reckless thing, he wasn't sure if the redhead meant danger and self-destruction but he sure as hell didn't mean any good, either. Why he stole that damn bracelet, he didn't even know. Should he be staying away from him?

Who was he even kidding? Taehyung's entire existence stirred up nothing but trouble. A supernatural creature that had been alive for centuries, lived off human blood and had a mind as stale as stone, him probably having witnessed countless things that would make regular humans' skin crawl. Taehyung was basically trouble in person and he knew that. As a rationally thinking human, he'd probably do anything to keep the vampire away from himself and other fellow humans around him.

But the strange thing was that he didn't want to.
His entire family would want to see him hanging to his death for purposefully seeking the vampire's company. However, there was something about the redhead that couldn't quite seem to leave Jungkook's head.

Taehyung was more than a blood-thirsty, viscious and evil, cursed creature. He was the person that he had taught bowling to, the person that acted like a complete nuthead when drunk, who looked adorable yet fierce in unicorn onesies, who loved looking at night skies, who valued nothing more than the safety of his Gucci blazers, who had nice and very long legs, who shied away from sleigh rides on top of tall hills and the person who had gifted him two breathtaking gemstones for no reason and had fixed his hair and touched his hairstrands ever so tenderly...

And yet, he still was a complete mystery. But a mystery he'd be excited to solve. He was just... Kim Taehyung.

And before he could interfere in the slightest, a little jolt of hot electricity went through his body every time he saw the vampire and his heart started jittering like a bat's little wings. Adding to that, the redhead crossed his thoughts more than he should. He wasn't stupid, he knew exactly what was about to happen. He had felt like this before, and yet it was so different.

Kim Taehyung was the person he least expected to have a liking for but life always had surprises coming his way and it would until the very day he died, that was for sure.

As he dashed out of the studio after bidding his companions a hasty goodbye, he now craved that shower more than anything. His head was whirring of thoughts running wild inside them, the events of today constantly replaying inside his mind, especially after thinking of Taehyung.

Who had drawn that creepy picture on the whiteboard? And why a vampire? Was it intentional? Or did somebody else know about Taehyung? Did they mean any harm?
Taehyung surely looked shaken up after the course, the nauseous and sickly pale look on his face before he had excused himself burned a pit of worry into the bottom of the ravenette's stomach. The older hadn't even looked at him before leaving.

Adding to that, Jungkook felt watched. Ever since he had nicked that bracelet from the jewellery store, he had the feeling that two dark eyes were watching him and following him around everywhere. Not only that, but every time he walked through a bigger crowd of people, he thought he saw one particular person always stick out and face him from afar, as if they were spying on him. Male and short, that's all he could tell. January was extremely foggy.

Taking long strides through the cold fog and forcing all the worrisome thoughts out of his brain with a strong shake of his head, Jungkook entered his dormitory and jumped straight into the shower after throwing off all of his stuff and his clothes, staring holes into the wall opposite of him as he let the warm water run along his limbs and sighed deeply. The warm water was extremely soothing and put him at ease, he didn't even hear Hoseok entering few minutes after.

However, this day wasn't done with him yet.

Just as he had stepped out of the shower, put on a white and casual bathing gown and was about to dry his hair, he heard the doorbell ring shrilly. The ravenette groaned in annoyance when Hoseok wouldn't go and open the front door, the unexpected visitor kept ringing the poor bell continuously for over a minute.

"You fucker, too damn lazy to open the door even though you knew damn well I was in the shower, I'm fuckin killing you," he muttered as he exited the damp and warm bathroom and shambled towards the door grumpily, his two hands covering his ears since the doorbell was extremely loud.

"Who are you and why do you feel the need to abuse our poor doorbell like-- Oh, hi. What's up?" He grinned sheepishly, gazing at the persistent visitor and feeling a tad embarrassed about his current state.
"How fucking dare you."

The person stomped into the room angrily, Jungkook taking a few steps back out of panic. "You traitor. How dare you pull a stunt like this?! Wasn't Mina's warning enough for you? Do I really have to crack your fucking skull so you finally understand? This is serious, I could get killed for this, forced to travel around half the globe again to find another place to hide! Do you have any fucking idea what you've done? People will talk about this, and I will be forced to--" The ravenette interrupted the raging red-headed creature briefly.

"What the fuck are you talking about?" Taehyung exhaled deeply as if to calm himself down.
"Don't you play all innocent now, you treacherous bastard. That horrid drawing on Mr. Kim's whiteboard, Mr. Kim of all people, so he'll become extra suspicious of a vampire being among his students. For how stupid do you take me? It wouldn't surprise me if you were still working with your cretinous parents, having tea parties every week and discussing how to finish me off! I shouldn't have thought for a single second that someone like you could be tr--"

"Woah, woah, woah. You think I drew that thing? How could you think of me like that? Don't you trust me?" The vampire scoffed, walking closer towards him with a sinister look on his face. When they were only a few inches apart, he looked up and gazed straight into his eyes with a gaze so cold and murderous, Jungkook thought he'd better brace himself for getting slapped. Surprisingly, that never happened.

He couldn't seem to move back or forth, he couldn't find the ability to move at all. Taehyung continued boring a literal hole through him with further stares of pure fury. "Trust is for the weak, you have just reminded me of that once again. I just came to give you one last warning. Try to expose me again one more time and you will feel my utter wrath. Your entire bloodline, including you. Remember my words." With those quietly but all the more powerfully spoken words, his eyes left Jungkook's and he turned around and started walking away.

Suddenly, the ravenette seemed to fall out of his daze. He took a huge leap forward, grabbing the redhead's wrist harshly to turn him around again. "Stop this nonsense, I don't have anything to do with this!," he exclaimed in frustration and felt himself get thrown off by a strong force and get pushed across the whole room just a second later.

That was the first time he had experienced Taehyung's vampire strength. And felt it, his back ramming into the wall with full force that made him see white for a brief second.

"Don't you dare try to manhandle me, that shit doesn't work on me. You may have all your precious muscles but my strength is simply unmatched and it always will be. You should have thought about it before betraying and lying to me, you traitorous fool," he spoke lowly, glaring at Jungkook with one last blazing look.

And the next second, he was gone faster than light speed, not even bothering to close the door behind him.

☆☆☆☆☆☆☆

(A/N: shjsjsjs hiii please don't be too mad at taehyung for blatantly accusing since getting betrayed is kind of part of his nature👉🏻👈🏻

this was also the first chapter written out of jungkook's point of view, finally after 26 chapters :D yeahh i always take my sweet time writing my stories but i have to say this book gotta be my favourite out of all the ones i wrote simply bc i somehow like the dialogues and stuff and all my other books seem kinda lame in comparison ngl sjdjsjsk

anyways i had lots of fun writing this chapter so thank you for reading it i love you lots💜💜)