Fire and Ice | A TzuKook FF

6. Fathers

The hallway is silent. Not a soul in sight save for me. The click of my heels on the ground is suddenly joined by the footsteps of a second person.

"Hey Choi Juhee! Could you slow down for a moment?" I turn to look at him.

"What?"

"Geez," Jungkook exhales loudly, "How did you leave so quickly?"

I cross my arms. "What do you want?"

He shoots me an irritated look. "It's about our project. When do you-"

A phone rings. Jungkook takes out his phone, shooting me another dirty look. Guess he hasn't forgotten about that particular incident.

"Yes Father?" I give Jungkook a cheery wave and start walking again. He scowls but doesn't chase after me. Father. I look back at Jungkook now, slowly pacing up and down and slowly, a memory begins to surface.

He still hadn't returned. It had been twenty minutes since Jungkook had been called downstairs by his father for a 'talk'. Tzuyu wondered if she should check on him, and finally decided to. Her bare feet made no sound on the blood-red carpet as she made her way to the spiralling staircase.

She could hear a heated argument from one of the rooms below her. One, the voice of her best friend, the other, an aristocratic drawl, laced with the innate authority that only the patriarch of the Jeon family could possess. Tzuyu leaned on the railing, straining herself to catch snippets of their argument.

"I will not!" Jungkook's voice was harsh and Tzuyu could sense his agitation.

"I'm afraid it's not up to you," his father drawled, "You will marry a proper woman, then dally as you will after you give me a grandson or two. A proper woman."

"It's my life! I'll marry whoever I want!" She had never heard him like this before.

"Your life . . . ," his father mused. "I suppose it is, isn't it? Well then if you want your own life, you can leave now, if that's what you want." A moment of silence followed by a dark chuckle. "That's what I thought. You should be grateful that I'm allowing you to keep such ... questionable company."

"What do you mean?"

"That girl you always hang around with. Who are her parents again? Which company is she slated to inherit?" Tzuyu coloured slightly, but didn't move from her position on the stairs.

"Who gives a fuck about that shit. I love her!"

"Silence! You will not speak to me with such insolence, Jeon Jungkook." She heard Jungkook mumble something inaudible before his father continued, "Do you understand what it means for you to marry? It's not about whether or not you like or love whoever. For us, it's a pact between two conglomerate corporations, who will share stock shares, share technology, a pact to create something worth hundreds of millions of dollars. You may not understand now, but you will when you ascend."

"When I ascend, I won't force my children to marry before they're 25. I won't act like a cold-blooded tyrant who doesn't give two fucks about them."

"My silver tongued son. How noble you are." Her phone started vibrating with a call, and she didn't quite catch Jungkook's angry retort as she fumbled for her phone.

She declined the call and turned her focus back to the brewing storm. She crept down further and could see them from the stairs, hidden behind the marble-white banister in a wreath of shadows. Her breath caught in her throat as-

As his father stood abruptly, towering over Jungkook. Jungkook clenched his fist, his back to her, she could still feel his stubborn determination to hold his ground against him.