Divergent | Jungkook AU

Chapter Fifteen

VISITING DAY. The second I open my eyes, I remember. My heart leaps and then plummets when I see Molly hobble across the dormitory, her nose purple between strips of medical tape.

Once I see her leave, I check for Yeonjun and Drew. Neither of them is in the dormitory, so I change quickly. As long as they aren’t here, I don’t care who sees me in my underwear, not anymore.

Everyone else dresses in silence. Not even Hanni smiles. We all know that we might go to the Pit floor and search every face and never find one that belongs to us.

I make my bed with the tight corners like my father taught me. As I pinch a stray hair from my pillow, Suho walks in.

“Attention!” he announces, flicking a lock of dark hair from his eyes. “I want to give you some advice about today. If by some miracle your families do come to visit you…”

He scans our faces and smirks.

“…which I doubt, it is best not to seem too attached. That will make it easier for you, and easier for them. We also take the phrase ‘faction before blood’ very seriously here. Attachment to your family suggests you aren’t entirely pleased with your faction, which would be shameful. Understand?”

I understand. I hear the threat in Suho’s sharp voice. The only part of that speech that Suho meant was the last part: We are Dauntless, and we need to act accordingly.

On my way out of the dormitory, Suho stops me. “I may have underestimated you, Stiff,” he says. “You did well yesterday.”

I stare up at him. For the first time since I beat Molly, guilt pinches my gut. If Suho thinks I did something right, I must have done it wrong.

“Thank you,” I say.

I slip out of the dormitory. Once my eyes adjust to the dim hallway light, I see Hanni and Kai ahead of me, Kai laughing, probably at a joke Hanni made.

I don’t try to catch up. For some reason, I feel like it would be a mistake to interrupt them.

Taehyung is missing.

I didn’t see him in the dormitory, and he’s not walking toward the Pit now. Maybe he’s already there.

I run my fingers through my hair and smooth it into a bun. I check my clothes—am I covered up?

My pants are tight and my collarbone is showing. They won’t approve. Who cares if they approve?

I set my jaw. This is my faction now. These are the clothes my faction wears.

I stop just before the hallway ends. Clusters of families stand on the Pit floor, most of them Dauntless families with Dauntless initiates.

They still look strange to me—a mother with a pierced eyebrow, a father with a tattooed arm, an initiate with purple hair, a wholesome family unit.

I spot Drew and Molly standing alone at one end of the room and suppress a smile. At least their families didn’t come. But Yeonjun’s did.

He stands next to a tall man with bushy eyebrows and a short, meeklooking woman with red hair. Neither of his parents looks like him. They both wear black pants and white shirts, typical Candor outfits, and his father speaks so loudly I can almost hear him from where I stand.

Do they know what kind of person their son is?

Then again…what kind of person am I?

Across the room, Kai stands with a woman in a blue dress. She doesn’t look old enough to be his mother, but she has the same crease between her eyebrows as he does, and the same golden hair. He talked about having a sister once; maybe that’s her.