HAEGEUM. liberty of power.

part 1: haegeum

*the night after Yeeun and Yoongi do the extensive research on Mr Jeon, chapter 38 in Welcome To Your Last Race*

*Yeeun leaves*

Min Yoongi's disgust fuels his rage. A guy like him isn't often taken for the biggest empath in the industry, but as he scans the gut-wrenching records of Jeon Haeil, he's livid.

Park Jimin leans one hand at the back of Yoongi's chair and the other on the edge of the desk, giving the file on the screen a quick read. As he traps Yoongi between himself and the screen, the proof inescapable, Yoongi feels everything in him constrict. He's never liked to be in constraints, always looking for a way out of the limitations.

"I know that face," Jimin says. "It has revenge written all over it."

Yoongi cannot hide much from someone he's tied to in so many different ways. "So what? Plan's in motion, anyways."

Jimin straightens his back and looks at Yoongi with a smirk. "But it has nothing to do with jail, am I right?"

It's strange to see so many people in one person. Yoongi weighs every word he says to Park Jimin these days, never sure if he's talking to the school kid with whom he shared feelings bordering on fierce friendship and carefree first love, or to the person that stabbed him in the back when power became sweeter than whatever was between them, or the guy that regrets everything in between then and now and desperately treads the path towards forgiveness.

It's not like Yoongi's trying to reignite any feelings. These are long gone, and Yoongi's relationship is beyond what he could ask for, but the aftertaste always lingers.

"Don't say a word about it to anyone," Yoongi says. "I'm gonna carry it out as if I'm putting them in jail."

"Do you want me to help?"

That's a weird way of asking a question like that. Not with a 'should', or 'have to'. Want. It erases the possibility of Jimin and Yoongi working together out of necessity. Does Yoongi want Jimin's help? Yoongi wants to go back to the sweet spot when they were friends joined at the hip and could trust each other, during missions and out of them.

"You will," Yoongi says, playing it safe. "The job requires your expertise."

"I'm glad you realized you're more powerful with me."

Yoongi rolls his eyes, making Jiming laugh. Jimin laughs rarely, and it reminds Yoongi of middle school. He is, in a way, more powerful with Jimin. Not because he lacks something Jimin can give him, but because neither of them lacks anything. When they come together, they are unrelenting.

The job Yoongi got Jimin out of jail for - he could have done it himself. A few weeks before, still in the planning stage, he had laid wide awake, unable to shake off the idea of doing the heist with Park Jimin. For the sake of fun. A while after the heist, Taehyung asked for help with Hyoshin, Jimin and Yoongi's common enemy. Opportunities were handed to Yoongi without much effort. Ignoring or refusing them felt like going off track.

Crime used to be entertainment for Yoongi. When he did it with Jimin, he felt like the world wasn't real. He didn't have to abide by the rules. Nothing was that serious. All of it was like a video game, crime and life.

Without Jimin, everything got serious - too dark, too boring.

He doesn't trust Jimin - he can't trust him - but the heists have started to become fun again.

He wants to destroy his and Jungkook's fathers, not only because of the rage, but because the revenge will feel like a playground again. All those years revenge was dark and necessary. A chore. But Park Jimin is back in Yoongi's life, and Park Jimin will turn Yoongi's life back into a video game.