Supremacy || Taekook

42

I entered the apartment slowly, and my eyes immediately fell there, on the floor, at the same place where I had discovered Daejung's body.

"Good evening..."

"Good evening." my mother whispered. She was sitting at the table, a cup of coffee in front of her.

I bit my lip as I slowly took off my jacket, then approached her. I gently pulled out a chair and grimaced as I sat down. My back hurt, it was strange.

"If you want me to leave, I can- -No it's OK. Stay." She told me in a soft voice.

I nodded, and came to clasp my hands on the table, looking everywhere except into my mother's eyes. It was very difficult to face him, but by this late afternoon, I had discussed with Taehyung when I was going to go back, and we had concluded that giving it a try now was a good idea. So he dropped me off at home, and told me I could come back if things didn't go as planned.

"Hoseok saw you." I jumped, surprised.

"What ? -Close to this man, when you came home after the masked ball." My blood boiled and I began to stammer strange explanations, before my mother cut me off.

"He was so surprised that I went to see what he was looking at through the window. I saw this Taehyung kiss you near the neck. I was very surprised, then I finally said to myself that it was logical... That it made sense with your behavior these last few months." I now remained silent, shocked to the highest degree. So my mother knew all this time, and pretended not to know?

I thought to myself that she had surely waited for me to tell her about it and I, fool that I was, had never dared. She didn't seem disgusted or worried or anything. Just curious, but pale and tired. Her condition seemed better, but I suspected that it would take months or even years for her to recover from all this. Already because she loved this man, I knew it, but also because she had seen what I had seen. A dead, bloody, inert body. It was an image that neither she nor I could ever erase from our memory. And living with that was going to be very complicated, especially for her. I'm a little more used to it, I've been immersed in this world for almost a year.

"Do you like this man?" My hands were shaking slightly and I didn't then swallowing, putting myself back in my chair or juggling between his eyes and the table.

"Yes..." I then admitted, in a voice so small that I thought for a moment that she hadn't heard me. I looked up to see his reaction, and my eyes widened. She smiled as tears rolled down her cheeks. This image was almost worse than that of Daejung on the ground.

"I realized it w-when he explained everything to me." she cried. She put a hand to her lips to hold back an audible sob and I wanted to get up to go see her, but she offered me her hand, telling me to stay seated.

"How are you." She said with difficulty.

She took a deep breath, then looked into mine.

"You did this for me, didn't you? Work there. Was it for the money?" I shook my head, honest.

"Only afterwards, but... I didn't have a choice at first. Taehyung forced me to work for him because I knew too much about the network." I whispered.

"So you had nothing to do with it, did you?" I looked at her, pained.

"If I hadn't been in this network, Daejung would be alive. I articulated slowly, feeling my heart crack after my words. -What if... What if Taehyung had given you a choice? What if he told you you could leave? Would you have stayed in the network?" With my eyes wide open and my face worried, I kept my attention on my mother, who was wiping the underside of her wet eyes to chase away the last tears threatening to fall. And the answer was obvious to me.