ethereal | park jimin | ✓

chapter 15 wounded animals

The girl is still unconscious.

She lies on the ground of the large cage, shivering and twitching. Her fingers occasionally clench into a tight fist. She whines in pain but remains trapped inside her mind. She is pretty, even with the bruises covering her soft skin.

He overheard the men talking about her as they put her inside their cage. They said she was the key to finding Jimin. They said she knew where he was.

But he knew better than they did.

If she knew where he was, she would have given him up. That's how all people are. They're selfish and cruel. She is no different than the rest of them.

Even Jimin himself betrayed him. He swore they would escape together and now he is long gone.

Taehyung knows he is never coming back. Nobody ever does.

He makes the mistake of leaning against the cage bars. He winces sharply as his fresh wounds reopen from moving his back muscles. He looks over his shoulder and glimpses the mangled flesh still hanging from his back. The area around it has already begun to scab over but the old blood still perfumes the air. A stink of discharge and infection has grown stronger.

Taehyung was a failure.

He was supposed to become a hawk hybrid. The injection only did so much and left him with half-grown wings. The wings withered as they struggled to grow from his back. He doesn't remember another time that wasn't as painful as that moment.

Becoming a hybrid is a slow, and excruciating process. It isn't sudden. It isn't magical. It's the long and painful torture of growing entire limbs from scratch. It's being sent into blind moments of terror and animalistic instincts due to hormone imbalances. It's watching your friend's ears shrivel up and fall off over the course of days. It's watching the horror in their eyes as they momentarily lose their vision for their eyes to "adjust".

They ripped Taehyung's wings out after two months of growing them.

They decided the time to grow the wings wasn't worth it.

Now they have other plans for him but they won't begin until Taehyung is fully "recovered". He is still picking out feathers from his back. He fears the wings will regrow and begin the horrible process all over again. He never wants to go through that again.

Jungkook stirs from his sleep. His body is pressed against Taehyung's side, still curled into a small ball. He lifts his head sleepily, his black hair hangs in front of his eyes and past where his ears used to be. A pair of fluffy dog ears stick out from his messy hair with one flipped out to show the dark gray skin on the inside. His long tail curls around him; the black fur has grown long and has tangled from years of mistreatment.

There was a time when Jungkook tried to rip his tail off.

Taehyung only feels twisted envy for Jungkook and Jimin. Their injections didn't fail. It successfully turned them into hybrids. They didn't have their wings ripped out. They didn't have to go through reversal therapy.

They don't have to go through the experiment twice.

The men won't allow Taehyung to go free. Once he recovers from the hawk injections, they'll try to turn him into something else. He'll have to suffer all over again when the time comes.

Taehyung reaches over and gently runs his hand over Jungkook's ribcage. Jungkook is dangerously skinny; he can count each rib without pressing into his skin. Taehyung's eyes soften with tenderness as he looks down at the young boy, wishing with all his heart they could escape together.