level 23 / btsvelvet

episode fifteen

yoongi stands at the door, his knuckles tingling from prior contact when a young woman opens the door, still dressed in a black business suit, raven hair pulled in a tight ponytail that falls flawlessly over her shoulders.

"you are?" she asks, perhaps with a hint of hostility, a sharp eyebrow slanting upwards with a wary expression.

yoongi clears his throat awkwardly.

"i'm sorry for the bother," he begins to explain, "i'm looking for your neighbor, son seungwan. i've been knocking the door and calling her for quite some time. i was wondering if you would know where she might be."

for a moment the woman is silent, leaving yoongi to hold her gaze uncomfortably.

her face is inexplicably beautiful, he finds, but harshly contrasted against a demeanor that leans more toward cold rather than warm. the woman is expressionless, but her bright eyes seem unforgiving.

"i'm trying to make things better." he adds, perhaps guessing the source of her concern.

it's only then that the woman relents.

"she's in here," the woman finally answers, albeit hesitantly, opening the door a bit further to reveal a battered son seungwan sitting on the leather sofa.

"seungwan?" yoongi says when the woman steps aside and gestures that he come in.

seungwan doesn't look at him as he approaches, turning her head to the side, and a part of him knows she's only hiding her tears.

"yoongi." is all she manages to croak before burying her head in her hands. "i just want to be left alone." she lies, "you don't have to come find me."

but yoongi doesn't relent. "listen seungwan, if this is about the money-"

she interrupts him.

"of course it's about the money." seungwan shakes her head, her red hair cascading over her shoulders. "it's always been about the money."

he stares at her, a flash of confusion flooding the shadows of his irises, an anomaly within the once placid darkness.

"i've had a while to think about it, while running away from you." she inhales sharply, "and the truth is, i have a sense of pride, yoongi. we all do."

there's a short lull as she chuckles bitterly before continuing, no longer looking him in the eye.

irene takes the opportunity to leave the two alone and busy herself tidying the kitchen, but yoongi stands his ground, still as stone except for the whitening of his knuckles.

she turns her head to the window, cracked lips parting, "since i was little, you know. my parents, they always thought my brother was-was deserving, i guess you could put it that way."

her voice cracks at the word deserving, because it is everything that son seungwan thinks she is not.

"whenever he was wrong, whenever things didn't go well for him, they'd always find a way to put the blame on someone, something else." she explains, "and a lot of times, that someone was me, and that something was my lacking.

"whenever he needed something, they would make sure to find a way to give it to him. and most of the time, that way was me.

"and i thought-i thought they were right for a long, long time. until the day i paid for his entire house only for it to be put under his name, until the day my mother called me heartless for forgetting to pay my nephew's tuition one time, until i began to dread calls from home and from him because he walked around the town jobless while i worked myself to exhaustion. until the day he became a criminal, despite all i had given him."