«Grim» → kth | jjk

XI

Taehyung sat on one side of the couch, staring at the fireplace absently. The flames were small, almost to the point they were nothing more than just an orange glow. The house was quiet, and the silence was suffocating Taehyung slowly. It was driving him crazy.

To spare himself the pain of sitting and doing absolutely nothing, he'd take a stroll around his large, empty home, something he had done countless times before. Each time he took this lonely walk, he ended up in the same spot- the mystery doors.

With a heavy sigh, Taehyung pushed the doors open, revealing a small room that had only a bookshelf taking up the back wall. The room was big enough for a person to walk into, but it was still quite small. Taehyung's fingers brushed across the spines of the books on the shelf that was eye-level to him. He found the deep red book spine with gold embroidered letters, the title being in German and not something Taehyung cared to translate. He hooked two fingers on the top of the book and rested his thumb on the spine, giving it a firm push in. There was a series of mechanic clicks as the bookshelf lowered into the floor, revealing a much larger room.

It was typical and cliche, Taehyung had thought that the first time he had discovered the hidden room, but he later learned his grandfather had had the design that way to make sure no one got in. It was effective, somehow his grandfather knew that no one would think much of an old, dusty bookshelf. That is until Taehyung moved in and stumbled upon it, with a nasty curiosity and obsession with secrecy.

Taehyung stepped into the room and let the bookshelf return to it's position as a wall between the two rooms. The way out was just as simple as the way in, all one would have to do was firmly push upwards on the jaw of the lion statue that sat beside the now closed bookshelf.

His grandfather had put a great deal of time and money into manufacturing such a simple, yet genius mechanism.

The walls in this room were different than the walls in the rest of the house, as was everything else. The walls were a deep midnight blue lined with a golden colored baseboard, the floor was a deep grey up to the center of the room, where there were nine silver, almost glass looking, tiles arranged in a square. On top of these tiles was a black table, with nothing but an almost ancient piece of paper.

That was what peaked Taehyung's interest the most upon his first time entering this room. Not the many priceless artifacts decorating the walls, not the chandelier that most likely cost a fortune, but the paper.

Now the paper made him sick to his stomach. It wasn't that the paper itself was nauseating, in fact it was quite aesthetically pleasing with it's worn appearance and beautiful calligraphy that graced it's thin surface. Rather, it was the words itself. Words that Taehyung had made the mistake of reading.

Words that were more than just words. Laced into the beautiful, inked cursive was a cursed ritual, but how was Taehyung supposed to know that? How was he to know that his life would do a complete flip? How was he possibly to have known that he would fall victim to the same fate his grandfather had endured?

"Money can buy everything but true love. True love sets you free." Taehyung mumbled to himself, recalling the last words his grandfather had written in his journal before passing. It took him a while to decipher, especially since his grandfather wrote a lot about finding 'the one' to 'set him free.' Taehyung thought nothing of it, but now he had figured it out. The only way to break this curse was to find 'the one.' Whatever that meant... It still felt too cheesy to Taehyung. The amount of cliche stories he had heard as a kid about 'true loves kiss breaking the spell' made it impossible for him to take it seriously.
Honestly, to Taehyung, the whole situation felt like some Beauty and the Beast shit.

But... there was Jungkook. That strange young man with the bunny-toothed smile and the eyes that could light up the galaxy.

Taehyung's eyes scanned the room as his mind began to wander.

"Jeon Jungkook." The name rolled off the tongue nicely, it felt right to say. It was a new sensation. Taehyung had never had much interest in anyone like he had in Jungkook. Now he just had to get closer to Jungkook to figure out why.

There was a slight pain that shot up Taehyung's spine suddenly.
The growing discomfort in Taehyung's bones caused him to shift focus, as he caught his reflection in the elaborately decorative mirror in the corner of the ominous room. His eyes were beginning to lose their chocolate warmth to a darkness that no word could easily describe. He felt a deep burning sensation in the pit of his gut and his face twisted into an expression of disgust and a bit of pain.

He needed to feed.

A/N: hi i know what you're probably thinking, no tae isn't a vampire

but i also dunno what he is

yet

i'll get there eventually
Also hi opinions on the new cover pls?