Phantoms | jjk.

[43]: Paper Walls

The surrounding wildlife seemed to have come to a ceasefire silence once Yoongi began speaking. It was as if they had given him the floor, and you had too.

"You consider yourself to be quite familiar with your Boss, by now, yes?"

You nod with a blatant expression that screamed: yeah, obviously.

"And because of that, would you say that you know her quite well? You know who she is and why she does what she does."

Your wondering eyes ask a million questions. "Yeah. Mostly."

"'Mostly', right." Yoongi played with his fingers, breathing slowly to secure what seemed to be a dramatic start to a story. "Have you ever noticed how abnormally tight she is on security? Specifically, her own?"

You took a shaken moment before responding, taken aback by the point he was taking his time to get at.

It sounded like sarcasm, it was so obvious.

What game is he playing?

"There's nothing abnormal about it. She's not an idiot; she knows people want her dead." you deadpanned, "There's thousands of people who devote their lives running themselves to the ground trying to kill her. Anyone who doesn't care for their own safety is dumb as fuck, in any corner of this field. It's not safe. It's a dangerous world."

He pursed his lips and nod, making a face that insisted that he knew you were going to say something like that. "Agreed."

He was smartly manipulative, foreseeing which direction this conversation was going well before you could.

"You're right, your Boss is a primary target for a lot of people. People that are riled with pure, angry bloodlust. Powerful people."

"Yeah, so? It's all part of the parcel." your eyes trial off slowly, not sure of what he was getting at. "And we're pretty big now. Everyone small is envious of the big, that's how it goes. She's built an empire below her, peoples' hatred towards her comes from respect."

After being met with silence, and no immediate response from the man beside you, you turned your head to the right to assure he was still there.

Sure enough, he was.

Staring at you with some sort of confused pity.

"An empire? And you think she built it."

He wasn't asking. It seemed more like mocking, to you.

"I've watched her build it," you corrected, "Fuck, I built it with her."

Yoongi scoffed. You—being under the microscope from this man you barely knew at all—felt a sudden moment of embarrassment, forcing you into a quiet rage.

He was getting the upper hand in that moment.

Beating you. Mocking you.

You wondered for a pause if you should have paid more attention to him before this encounter. What was to come of it, you had no idea.