Sempiternal: • Contaminated • || BOOK 3#

40. Contamination complete

"How could you even think of going there! You could have been bitten! You could have died and we wouldn't have known!"

"I know, Namjoon. You don't need to scold me like that."

Namjoon turns away, even with the pressure skyrocketing. As soon as they arrived, Hongjoong told him with tension high that Yeosang, Yunho and Hoseok were nowhere to be found. A few minutes later, they arrived in a car as if nothing had happened and Hoseok full of ashes, with his clothes dirty from the smoke and the clear answer to why the building was burning like that.

Everyone wants to beat him up for making such a risky move. Regardless of how good and useful it was. Doesn't take away how risky and how much it complicated them.

Jin decides to leave that for later, more pending on all the counting that goes on. They have food, weapons, even beds. He doesn't know how they managed to take so much from the now charred and still burning base. He congratulated the entire collection team and as punishment, it is Yeosang who has to do all the counting up to three times to be sure. Yunho on his part has to clean up the whole mess of unsupervised animals.

No one had energy for anything other than lying down to sleep.

~ * * * ~

"Are you okay?"

Namjoon turns his head to the right, finding Jungkook at the door. Tucked into his Iron Man sleeping bag to hold in the cold. He's especially silly and out of place, but he doesn't even manage to get a laugh out of Namjoon, much less take away his reason for being so troubled in bed.

"You don't look well." says Jungkook in a low voice. He comes over with a few hops and ends up lying down on the bed. Namjoon looks at the ceiling again.

"What we did yesterday... what I planned and and did yesterday" Namjoon corrects and realizes how much his throat hurts. "It was real."

"Of course it was."

"I don't like that it's real."

Jungkook climbs out of his sleeping bag and gets under the sheet, lying down next to Namjoon, but not seeing each other or even making contact. "It had to be real. Now we don't have any problems, the Twice girls are fine, the ONEUS are finally awake and calm and we got everything back. That's what's right."

"No. It's not okay."

Namjoon lets out a broken, anxious breath. In his mind is very much alive the pile of rooms he entered just by shooting. That indifferent to Jin stopping him once, he didn't stop him in ten others and the corpses of those who lived there, they were also the Yagtalja that prevented them from leaving.

Are the nine lives he saved worth the nine lives he killed without giving relevance to them? To the ones he knew and so they were worth more somehow. Jungkook does not try to contradict Namjoon. Everyone knew this would happen. Namjoon is like that. When he is too emotional, he is unable to control himself no matter how hard he tries.

And when he calms down, he regrets so many things. The difference with before and now, is that before it could only be raising his voice, already causing argument with any of them, with Sihyuk, some producer or a friend he would apologize to eventually. As soon as he had the right words for that.

Now it's not so simple.

Now it's having so much blood on him, Namjoon can't even distinguish his tears or his own skin.

And he hates it.

Namjoon just doesn't any more than he hates himself.

~ * * * ~