Aptitude [Vkook]

Two: City After Hours🔞

Seoul.

The capital city of South Korea - the place where movement is consistent, technology is modern, and there's a sense of rush and urgency in the atmosphere these days. 

A place that once felt like home.

It was home, can't deny that.

The same city that was once filled with desperation of being normal - well, for those who don't experience it. They throw it right to your face with the propaganda and billboards of the ideal family standards that one should be pursuing for - no, urging for.

Similarly to the American dream.

Maybe mortals see it differently, but as someone with abilities, it's a dream too difficult to reach for and accomplish without something happening.

You're always caught, no matter how good you try to hide.

A city once filled with everyone dreaming to fit in now became a city where everyone is living in that illusion happily, or at least portraying it: Not a frown in sight, or hysteria of stress that once use to coat the streets for distressed being with abilities. Now everyone is happily dancing with the fantasies of life, yet screaming in their lonely hours of how unfair life is.

The mortals have it easier, as for the rest with aptitudes hidden in society? A suicide note is what lies after their fears of losing that dream, or a bullet through their head from assassins who work for the government to get rid of them.

Taehyung once had many suicidal moments like those, but not writing notes to anyone in particular - since he didn't have anyone, but to himself.

For letting himself down.

The pressures being too much.

Tired of being a puppet to society, and not embracing who he truly was.

He had many letters written just like that, but he's still here - not by choice. Orchids never really made that a choice for him, and Jungkook was the shift in making it all better.

Returning to this city only feels as though those memories were young, and not sixteen years that have gone by missing in the wind. Everything is the same, aside from a few new buildings and the happier ambient than how sullen the world used to rotate.

Maybe Jungkook was right to some extent: You miss being in this environment after a while, and Taehyung perhaps did.

However, this visit wasn't meant for being a tourist and breathing in how life is now. Taehyung came with a mission to do, and that mission involving his son.

And an old friend.

That's why he's resting here in Seoul Forest Park, sitting on a bench as he watches over the Hangang river, breathing in the calmness of the view as he waits. He can hear the sounds of the city in the far background, but he preferred embracing this moment alone- seeming to feel like he just paused through time when things weren't so bad. 

Back when he was in Orchids, him and Jungkook would find themselves sitting here and envision life through their glossy eyes. They'd share a cigarette, murmuring into the air the desires of an ideal world - a life where they could be happy.

"It'd be nice to stretch out my wings every once in a while," Taehyung remembered Jungkook saying, letting the smoke oozing his lips twirl in the air, "Imagine in public? Those regulars won't know how to even react."

"To them we're a myth, nonexistent," Taehyung ventured back, taking the cigarette from Jungkook's hand, "If only they knew, maybe life would be peaceful."