Taekook Oneshots

Shangri-La

(Quick warning: references to violence and torture suffered by both of them, lack of other members (I promise I do really love them honest) mention of weird ass rituals?? I can't think of anything else? Long ass chapter???)

I never meant to run away like that. Honestly, I was willing to live out my life in the way that the world had told me to. I had been told from my birth that I had a great duty, and I was happy to fulfil that duty. It was my right. My thing. My purpose, I guess we could call it that.

The version of me from two years ago would hate what I have become. He would look down upon me like one who is wealthy regarding one who is cheating the system. He would ask what my existence is for, now that I have crushed the possibility of actually following the path that the rest of humanity set out for me.

I would have one simple answer for him. One that I hope will explain all of my inexcusable actions, and make them seem more intelligent and human than the actions and objectives of those who provided me with the wrong purpose in the first place. He may see it as overly romantic, something concocted by a sappy old man with no real understandings of the problems of youth.

Now, I exist for the benefit of one person, and he exists only for the benefit of mine. It's a closed system of interdependence, one that we can never really escape from. And I would never want to escape from this. He is all I have left to exist for. And I have always been searching for this idea of purpose, this idea of where I am truly supposed to be.

The answer, hard to swallow as it was to begin with, lies in my meeting with Kim Taehyung.

But in order to understand it, I must start from the beginning.

I was born to a pair of poor farmers, who were forced to give me in to the authorities the moment I was weaned. Why? Because an experiment was being trialled, one which I was donated for, without my consent. The concept of four people suffering for their whole lives, living together in pairs, so that everyone else can be happy.

In theory, it makes sense. It's a noble sacrifice, for the good of the many.

In reality, the sheer selfishness of natural human nature means that it's simply not possible. Nobody is willing to feel that much pain, from the age of around five to the age of their natural demise. They would simply try to remove themselves from the world to avoid it, go mad, run away.

After a mere twelve years of suffering, I took the third option, and fled, the other person who was suffering joining me without much persuasion. I was raised on the principle that I was meant to save others, fed the ideology that my pain would be worth it.

And they nearly succeeded in persuading me to believe their honeyed words, all the rituals and the cleansing which happened every night before I was left to sleep on a stone floor, naked and exhausted. I was never given clothes, always given the impression that it was spiritually better for everyone if I didn't wear them.

In reality, the cost would have been too much. We were supposed to be cheap. And we were. We were cheaper than the expense of literally anything else. Which, I guess, was the whole point.

The first few years of my life were not as terrible as those that followed, mainly because they had to prepare us for this continuous suffering. Research had been done into the different effects of pain, in every type, and as a result there was a greater understanding of how to force someone to avoid giving up for as long as possible.

Every morning, we were woken by the same person, washed in cold water, dried with rough towels that left our skin red and slightly raw. We were given the plainest of food, just enough to make sure we were strong, and provided with enough water to keep surviving. Any nutrients we didn't get from fortified wheat biscuits were provided in pill form, perfectly calculated, at the end of every single day.