Doll Parts (taekook)

Chapter 5

"—Delicious! Nutritious! All real ingredients! Now comes in juicy Mango flavour!—"

"—Your final destination for ultimate beauty. Free lunchtime consultations! Now, everyday except for Saturd—"

"—Will Razor recover in time for the championship match against the undefeated Whiplash—"

"The usual, Nam."

"Comin' right up," he hollered back and smacked the bartop.

Taehyung looked around; the same crowd of losers, outlaws, and cyberpunks. Just like himself. He turned to Jungkook, a beacon in the grime, bright-eyed with shiny doll parts.

"You good?" he offered.

"Huh?" Jungkook strayed from the monitor and blinked at Taehyung. "Oh. Yeah," he added, adjusting his bum on the barstool. "What's your usual?"

"Bourbon. On the rocks."

"Is that good?"

"It's shit," Taehyung confessed right as the bartender slid the glass his way with a scoff. It clinked to a stop in his grasp, splattering a few drops on the epoxy.

"Why do you drink that, then?"

A heavy gulp. It stung all the way down to his belly. He winced. "It gets the—"

"Job done?" Jungkook shot him a cheeky grin. "What do you recommend? Something that's... not shit."

Taehyung hummed. The bartender brought out a tablet menu. "One of the cocktails, maybe? A cosmopolitan? Or a Moscow mule. Used to be my fave but, y'know, takes too long to hit."

"I think I need something stronger than those," Jungkook stated with a tilt of his head, eyeing the ingredients per cocktail.

"Okay. Wow." Surprising, but he indulged him. "Uh, something simple. Rum and Coke, then."

"Got it," the bartender said.

"Go light on the Coke, please, Nam," Jungkook added.

Taehyung raised an eyebrow. "Sure you can handle it?"

"Just see." Jungkook flashed him a smile. The bartender swooped in with Jungkook's two-ingredient blend and refilled Taehyung's one-ingredient drink automatically.

"Let's cheers!" Jungkook raised his glass.

"To what?" asked Taehyung, but drank ahead anyway.

"To friendship!"

"Uh. Okay." They clinked their glasses together. A dollop splashed on Taehyung's hand.

"You're my first friend from down here." Jungkook beamed.

"You're... my first friend too." Lie. A flash of a run-down orphanage, a lock of hair under a paper-thin pillow, and a twelve year-old boy— What about me, Taehyungie?

Yeah, and what about you?

It was far easier to delete those moments than to long for a half-forgotten face and wonder. A too-common first name. No last name. An undercity of eighteen million, an aerial city of seven million, and a world with a population inflating by the minute. Sixteen billion people in connected isolation. Don't even try. Impossible.

"What?" Jungkook was thrown into a coughing fit. He took a sip of his drink before composing himself. "No way! Where'd you live before?"

"Uh." Taehyung scratched his chin, fingers moist from Bourbon sweat. "Here. My whole life."

"Oh." Jungkook frowned. "Do you have any siblings?"

"Nope."

"Where are your parents?"