Shadow Dancing | K.TH

To be Brave

"Hey— Jimin?"

Whilst the others were busy laughing, I'd gotten hold of the man that had retired to his room. The door is firmly closed, so I knock carefully— I would never think of just barging in there without alerting the occupant.

"Tzuyu?"

My name has a note of surprise to it as I hear the hurried sounds of footsteps and falling papers. Only when the ruckus on the other side had ceased, I can hear his soft voice allowing me in.

This is the first time I've ever seen his room, and I gawk at the amount of sheer technology covering every exposed inch. There must be at least six computers and to my amazement, I could even catch some drones lying around the cluttered desks.

A hacker's workspace.

Fascinating.

Jimin himself scratches the back of his head nervously as he glances up at me and back down on the floor. His cheeks are blushed with heat, which makes me wonder if he's flustered because this is the first time a girl had been in his private space.

That was cute.

"Sorry— I'll be out of your way soon," I reassure him, partly because he looked like on the edge of hyperventilating. "I just wanted to ask you a question."

"Question?" His eyes peek up at me in surprise, and the sheer amount of it makes me wonder what he'd been assuming earlier.

"Yeah... uh, this morning, V told me something that I had to know more about. He can be so vague sometimes, you know?"

V's name fully gets Jimin's whole attention, and he finally swerves around to face me directly.

"What did he tell you?"

An instinctive pause runs through my lips before I pass on his words. The fact that we were talking about V himself had filled the atmosphere with so much tension I could describe it as suffocating.

"That he was dying."

Jimin takes in a breath sharply, as if I had somehow stumbled upon a topic that I should've stayed clear from. His eyes narrow with suspicion as he tilts his head in my direction.

"He told you that he was dying?"

"Yes. I wanted to know if it was true or not. He also asked me something else— if my father was Kim Kisung— which he is. You know, and then I just felt like you were the best person to go to. The others didn't seem like they would take it well if I told them."

Jimin nods slightly. "That's true— you were right to not go to the others. If they knew that he told you, then they would never have left him alone.
For the rest of his life."

"Why? So does that mean it's true? But why would he tell me something like that— did he slip up?"

Jimin shakes his head with such firmness that I instantly close off the doubting part of my mind. "V never "slips up"— he would never make such a blatant mistake like that. Unless he meant to tell you."

"So he is dying," I breathe. "But he looked completely fine! How could someone like that possibly be—"

Jimin suddenly looks ten years older as sorrow weighs down on his features. He purses his lips together before he speaks, like this was a struggle for him.

"He was born with this condition— and sooner or later," He pauses abruptly, suddenly back to his anxious state as he peers back and forth.

"Gosh, the hyungs would choke the life out of me if I told you this."

But when I start to tell him he doesn't have to, he waves me off. I can see determination creasing his face as he explains V's condition.

"Sooner or later, he will die. That's why your father is so important— you see, he made the cure for his condition. The problem is that his stupid fortress is too well guarded to attack without someone guiding us through. No one has ever been in there and gotten out alive and in one complete piece, you know."

"I can help you." The words are out of me before I can consider them. Going back to that place was worse than anything than I'd ever dreamt, but I had to help these men to the best of my ability. They'd saved me and shielded me— a stranger that they weren't sure if they could trust.

And for that I'd forever be indebted to them.

"Every day, his experiments would differ for the required elements. Because of that, it was basically a new room for another day— so I know most of that compound like the back of my hand."

"We'd been planning to capture some of their guards and torture information out of them—"

I quickly shake my head at his words, eyes wide with horror. "No, no. If you do that, then I can assure you that the rest of your plan is going to go up in flames. My father divides up the compound in different sections— and the guards are assigned. And once they're given a section, they can't leave. Under any circumstances. And if they're reported missing, they have a tracker embedded to the backs of their necks to locate them. It's so deep that it would be fatal to dig them out."

Jimin suddenly gets a wide look as he points at me. I roll my eyes, clearly knowing what he was so shocked about.

"Park Jimin, do you think anybody could put anything in me and expect it to stay?"

My body flickers violently as if to prove my point, and Jimin relaxes back again. But then he lifts his head, eyes tentative and concerned.

"What about tracker injection? They could've put chemicals in you that they could've tracked. You know, like radiation signaling."

I'd thought of that as well. Well, my body had, to be more precise. "What is one chemical that all tracking injections require?"

"Don't tell me you're allergic to mystiophine."

"I am. My father tried to inject a tracking chemical into me, and I nearly died. For some reason, my body rejects that substance so strongly I spent weeks trying to get back to my original state." An involuntary shiver goes up my spine as I recall the terrible pain that had wracked through my body every single minute of the day— pain worse than the experiments my father shoved down my throat, pain worse than anything I'd ever been put through.

"You see, he didn't want his precious test subject to die from another dose like that."

In the corner of my eye, I see his eyes soften at me as my own curve with bitterness. I would never forget anything I'd experienced in that compound, no matter how hard I tried to.

It just didn't seem to be possible— the trauma had been burned into my mind like a permanent brand.

"And you'd go back to that place to help us?" Jimin shakes his head in awe as he fiddles with an incomplete design on his desk. "You're brave, Tzuyu. Braver than any of us, no matter how you think of yourself."

"It's the least I can do." I say, trying not to acknowledge the intense strain the flickering brings me. My body felt weak— I had to get out of here before I collapsed. Instead, I lean heavily against the wall.

"If it weren't for all of you, I would be living in my own version of hell right now."