Blood Ink ✔️

12: Bad News

For a moment, the other end of the line is completely silent.

"Where did you hear that name?" Jisoo asks quietly.

There's something odd in the tone of her voice, something you haven't heard before. She's worried, and afraid.

For you.

Jisoo isn't afraid of many things.

Uh oh. That's not a good sign.

"I've just heard it around," you say casually. "I'm serious, Ji. I need you to tell me everything you know."

More silence, then, "Fine. Hold on."

Jisoo shuffles around again, and then you hear a muted clicking sound traveling through in grainy distortion.

"I don't know a lot, but what I don't know I can look up," your cousin says absently. You assume that she's typing on her computer.

"You working?" you ask, to which she hums in affirmation.

"I said I had to go to the bathroom and stepped into the broom closet down the hall," Jisoo sighs. "I'm currently sitting on a tub of rat poison. Ironic, isn't it? Thanks Y/N."

Chuckling, you feel yourself relax a little for the first time, comforted by her voice.

"Really?" you laugh. "No one noticed you carry your laptop with you to go to the bathroom?"

The clicking stops.

"No ones paying attention to me, Y/N. They're trying to find you."

You sigh, and take another peek at yourself in the mirror.

Your hair is frazzled and bushy, and your cheeks have been pinkened by the nip in the air outside. Dark circles ring the undersides of your eyes.

You look dead.

Why is anyone bothering to look for someone like this?

"Why can't they just leave me alone?" You grumble into the phone, voicing your complaints to your most trusted friend.

Jisoo scoffs over the line. "As if. You know you're too important for that. Blood is blood, and you're a purebred."

The statement forces your mind to remember all of those years, the same number of years that you're trying really hard not to remember.

You close your eyes and concentrate to drag yourself away from that mental wasteland of loneliness.

"Jeon..." Jisoo suddenly hisses over the line. "Jeon Jungkook? Is that what you said?"

"Yeah. Why?"

Your cousin swallows hard. "I already knew that he's been brought up before," she says shakily. "But I didn't know why. You haven't actually seen him, have you?"

"What? No!"

Yes.

"Good," Jisoo sighs. "If you do, get away as fast as you can. He's bad news, Y/N, and I mean really bad."

So, not some low-level drug dealer after all.

"What did he do?" you ask curiously.

"Mm, no, it's not him individually. It's what he's a part of." A few more clicks, and Jisoo continues on. "He's been on the family's radar for a while. A couple years, at least. Him and his whole crew."

Ah.

It also isn't just him.

You bet your favorite pair of orange socks that his 'crew' is a six-member group of tattoo artists, running a shop as their cover. Honestly, it hurts a little to think that such sweethearts like Jimin and Hoseok could be capable of criminal activity.