The Symbol Of Darkness

㊿It's All Your Fault

 
The scurry of Taehyung’s breath seared his lungs. His entire body trembled like the leaves of a tree that were hit by an unmerciful wind. His brain attempted to make sense of what lay before his round, flickering eyes, but his mind couldn’t function around the unexampled shock.

Jungkook crawled closer in vast worry at his panicked behavior and gently pressed his body to his side. “Tae, what’s wrong? Calm down, please,” he uttered with a quiver of the said worry.

But Taehyung was profoundly lost to the brume of his terror that everything felt numb, and his spasmodic, rapid breaths echoed in a muffled wave in his ears, along with Jungkook’s voice.

“Taehyung, listen to me. Look at me.” Jungkook shifted in front of him, blocking his vision from the unnamed man. He witnessed a vortex of vile emotions eddy in his unblinking eyes that clawed at his heart in a ruthless grip, squeezing it achingly. “Tae, snap out of it!” His voice rose in volume by the overwhelming tide of dread that washed over him.

Taehyung blinked at the resonance of his growl. His eyes centered on him. They still shimmered with a consuming whirlwind and gathered a burning moisture that soon spilled over in a slow trickle. But his thoughts returned to him together with a dreg of his lucidity.

“My dad.” His gravelly voice was wrecked and muted with bemusement.

The words hung over Jungkook’s senses like a dark cloak, threatening to blear them. The sobering fact that he was in a life-or-death situation along with Taehyung, though, breached from the cesspool of alarm that was his mind and rushed him back to coherence. “Did you just say... dad?” He crawled back to his spot beside Taehyung with the weight of his surprise slowing his movements, and just stared dumbly at the man, who crept closer.

“Yes, Taehyung. It’s me.” Ji Sun’s voice, that was coiled around a gruff bass, broke out of him with a light sigh. “I missed you so much, son.” He halted in front of him, the tips of his lips fixed on a sad smile. His torso curved forward as he reached out to cup his cheek, but his brows wrinkled in puzzlement at his reaction.

Taehyung whipped his head away as he lurched, ramming his back against the column. “Don’t—don’t touch m-me,” he let out in a broken stammer, his breath turning thin and shallow again.

Ji Sun glaciated for a moment, then straightened his posture. “Why, son?”

“Are you... Are you kidding me?” Taehyung’s tears had now dried on his cheeks as his shock overruled each one of his senses. Shock agonizingly threaded with confusion and disbelief. “You’re alive. How can you still be alive?”

A notion of a sweet smile dangled on his lips. “I informed my right hand, Sang Jon, that something was wrong using my ring. When those fuckers ran after you, he saved me. Your mother is really dead, though.”

Taehyung stayed in silence as he processed his words. A sudden spike of fury ignited a fierce flame in his eyes, and he swung them to him, piercing him. “You let me live the past nineteen years thinking you’re dead!” An unnatural loudness coated his tone, which spawned from the mixture of gruesome emotions that kept roiling within his gut.

“I had to stay hidden from everyone, Tae,” he answered calmly. “It was the only way I could continue the legacy.”

“But you went to find Jae Wook.”

“Because I needed someone to do the killings for me. I’m over sixty now. Too old. And Jae Wook will be the successor of my position when I die. I had to train him.” He squatted close to him. His gaze, glimmering with a dose of softness, remained anchored on him. “I wanted to tell you a thousand times, Tae. But if I got near you, Chae Yeon would know I’m still alive. When I found out that Jin Mo killed her, I was happy because I could meet you again.” Something chilly hardened the previously relaxed muscles of his face. “But you screwed up everything by falling in love with a detective.”