Beauty and the Mystery || Kim Taehyung ✓

16: I am here for you

"I drew you! Look, Mr. Park!" Changho took the paper from me and skimmed it, but he didn't look happy as I had expected. My smile dimmed. Why was he frowning? Wasn't my drawing good? Jin always praised me when I drew him.

"What's this?" "It's a drawing about who I admire most?" I twisted my hands behind my back, growing more nervous. I wished Jin was here, but he was off duty and I didn't have anyone to play with until Mr. Park suddenly visited me in the middle of the night.

He smelled like something unknown to me, kind of a smell I didn't like and his eyes were barely open. He was looking sleepy and bending continuously. As if he wasn't on his right senses. 

"I drew you because you saved me." I didn't remember him saving me, but that was what Jin and the maids told me. They said I fell into the bathtub a few years ago and would've died if Mr. Park hadn't pulled me. 

"I did, didn't I?" He finally smiled, but it wasn't a nice smile. I suddenly didn't want to be here anymore."You look so much like your mother," he said. "A carbon copy of when she was your age."I didn't know what a carbon copy was but based on his tone, it probably wasn't a good thing. He stood, and I instinctively stepped back until my legs hit the couch. 

"Do you remember what happened in the bathroom when you were five, darling Y/n?" He brushed his fingers over my cheek, and I flinched. I shook my head, too scared to speak."That's for the best. Makes things more manageable." He smiled another ugly smile. 

"I wonder if you'll forget this too?" He picked up a pillow and pushed me onto the couch. I didn't have time to respond before I lost the ability to breathe. The pillow pressed into my face, cutting off my oxygen supply. I tried to push it off, but I wasn't strong enough. 

A strong hand locked my wrists together until I couldn't struggle anymore. My chest tightened, and my vision flickered.
No air.
No air. Noair noair—

Y/n gasped for air and sat up on the bed. She started breathing heavily and Taehyung sat up beside her as well. Tears brimmed her eyes and Taehyung frowned. He hugged her from the side and she looked at him. Tears streamed down her face that pained Taehyung.

"What happened, sweetheart?" He asked in a soft voice. 
"I don't know if it's even...if it's true," Y/n whispered. "I could have imagined it." 

His knuckles turned white around his knee.
"Imagined what?"
"I—" She gulped, her eyes haunted. "My childhood memories. They came back."

The confession hit him like a freight train, blindsiding him. Of all the things he had expected her to say, that had not been one of them. 

Repressed memories were usually the result of a traumatic event and could resurface if the person encountered a trigger—a sound, a smell, an event. But Y/n had been in a hotel room, where she had grown up her entire life. What had happened over at the warehouse that could've triggered her? 

"Okay." He kept his voice calm and even. Soothing to her. "What do you remember?" Y/n's shoulders trembled. "I don't remember everything. But I remember the day I...the day I almost died." 

His entire body flushed hot, then cold.
Almost died.
If she had died, if she was no longer somewhere in this world...

The invisible loose around his neck tightened; a tiny bead of sweat trickled down the back of his neck.

Y/n's near-death experience wasn't his fault. It had happened long before he met her, but still... His breath grew shallow.

"I was floating paper boats in the bathtub." She licked her lips. "Jin wasn't appointed at that time. There was a maid taking care of me. Her name was Pyeon Chaeha. We were playing in the bathroom, and we ran out of shower gel. She was really big on shower gel —said it was the most important thing we could do to clean our skin. I didn't want to stop playing, so she made me promise to stay put while she ran into the bedroom. She was supposed to be gone for only a few minutes."

Y/n sniffed in Taehyung's arms while he watched her eyes gaining that far-off quality that told him that she was lost in her unearthed memories. "I did. I stayed put. Watched the bath bomb float, and threw rubber ducks in the water—I loved the ripples they made. I waited for her to come back so we could play again. I've had nightmares about this day for as long as I could remember, so not all of this is new. I remembered her leaving, and I remembered her returning and me falling into the water. Only..." She drew in a deep breath. 

"I don't think she returned. I thought I smelled her perfume, but in my nightmares—my memories—I never got a good look at the face of the person who pushed me. It all happened so quickly. More memories returned, and I realized I'd seen more than I'd thought. Before I fell into the water, I saw a flash of gold. A signet ring. PC." 

Dread and shock coiled at the base of his spine and flared their wings, enveloping him in their dark embrace. "Pyeon Chaeha?" Y/n shook harder. "Taehyung, the maid didn't try to kill me. Mr. Park did it when he was drunk."

°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•

Chanyeol slammed his fists on the table. "How did the bomb stop on its own? Didn't you check it?" He screamed at his guards. "We don't know ourselves, boss. We really did check it. I don't know how it stopped."

"Useless!" He yelled when Jinhua entered the room. "Why are you yelling here?" "Dad, I finally got hold of the witch but she has a mate now!" 

"Mate? Who? How did you know?" His father asked when Chanyeol showed him the dash cam footage of Jimin where he was fighting with Taehyung earlier. "How did you get a hold of this footage?"

"I have replaced Jimin's dash cam with a camera of our own."

"Isn't this the same kid whom we asked the principal to throw out before the final semester?" Chanyeol nodded his head. "Yes, he is Kim Taehyung. That witch's mate." Jinhua thought for a while before replying.

"If her mate is alive then probably her powers will shift to favor to the mate. We can't manipulate her powers until her mate is alive."

"So you mean to say is?" Jinhua flickered his eyes to Chanyeol and smirked before saying. "We need to kill that vampire named Kim Taehyung."

°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•

Y/n heaved into the toilet, her stomach rolling, her skin drenched with sweat as Taehyung held her hair back and rubbed circles on her back.

He was livid. Not at her, but at Changho, her past, the entire situation. 

She could feel it in the tenseness of his hands and the aura of barely leashed violence that had swirled around him since she confessed her memories. After she had thrown up what must've been all the contents in her stomach, she sank onto the floor. 

Taehyung handed her a glass of water, and she downed it with long, grateful gulps. "I'm sorry," she rasped. "This is so embarrassing. I'll clean up—" "Don't worry about it." He ran a gentle hand over her hair, but an inferno raged in his eyes. 

"We'll figure everything out. I am here for you, my sweetheart."