lies

Chapter 6 - Taeyong POV

After about half an hour I go back inside the building.

I try to remain calm but I can't. A little after I entered the mafia world, I came back to this building and reformed it to become SM headquarters. Ever since then I've visited the roof every single night. I never knew I'd meet the girl who saved me under these circumstances...

I take my time to go to my bedroom, trying to process the information. Jeon (y/n), daughter of Jaebeom, sister of Jeongguk, is the girl from all those years ago who stopped me from committing suicide and who allowed me to see the light in the world. She is the girl who I thought I would do anything to meet.

And here I was, plotting to hurt her every night her father didn't appear to pick her up. And I'd even made her believe I'd killed her brother and was going to kill her dad.

I couldn't do that.

But at the same time, I needed to.

What was I supposed to do? Should I ignore our past and keep going with my plan? Or should I ignore my plan and do what's right, even if that means not getting revenge for the death of my parents?

***flashback***

I had nothing else in the world. Nothing else mattered to me anymore.

I walked along the streets of Seoul in the early evening, the day I learned that both of my parents had been shot and killed by Jeon Jaebeom. I could barely think. All I knew was that I was alone and I had no one.

My parents had gotten married against the will of my grandparents. So even if I knew where they were, they wouldn't let me in. Being the conservative elderly I imagined they were, they'd probably call me an abomination and throw me out of the house, even if I begged and cried and told them I was orphaned.

As I was walking I came across an abandoned, creepy-looking house with a roof a few stories above. I made up my mind: I didn't want to stay in this world anymore. I tried the door of the house and unsurprisingly it creaked open slowly. I stepped inside, ignoring my fear. There were stairs on my left, but they faced the other side of the room. I walked to the bottom of the stairs and began a steep climb up. The house shook under me.

After a while I got to the fourth floor, which was the roof. I overlooked my city, where I was born and grew up in, and bid my farewells. If I had no one, I had no purpose. I didn't need to be alive anymore. I climbed over the steel fence, my feet dangling a few meters from my death.

Just as I took a deep breath and was about to plummet, I heard a voice behind me. "Hey! What are you doing?"

I stumbled backwards into the roof, hitting my back. I scrambled to my feet. There was a girl there, seemingly a few years younger than me. "Who are you?"

She glared at me. "I said, what are you doing?"

I looked at the fence and then back to her. "I was gonna jump."

She stomped up to me and shook my shoulders violently. "Why? Why would you do that? Do you not care about your life?"

"No," I replied simply.

"Why?"

"Because my parents died today."

"Oh." She let go of my shoulders and looked down. "I'm sorry."

I smiled. "It's okay. They were killed by some people. But that means I have no purpose here on this planet anymore."

She looked up at me and glared again. "That's not true!" She sat down, facing the glittering lights of Seoul. I sat down next to her, waiting for her to speak again. "I know how you must feel. When my grandparents were killed by a bunch of burglars that broke into their house, I wanted to die. They'd been so nice to me and they'd actually cared about me. No one else in my family does, you know. My parents are busy with work and my brother is always fooling around, and he barely has time for me. Today, he agreed to play hide and seek outside with me so I was hiding here. But that doesn't matter. You can't kill yourself! You have to be thankful for the life your parents and God gave you, right? You can get revenge later on. But in order to get revenge, you have to first stand up and know what you want to do. That's how everything started. It began with the will to continue and not give up."

***end of flashback***

Thinking back now, she'd said some wise words for a nine-year-old. But she had taught me something all the same. She'd taught me to value my life and continue with it even if the most important things were gone.

I enter my bedroom and collapse onto my bed.

I will think about this tomorrow. I've done enough thinking for the day and I'd been tired enough waiting for hours for the Big Hit team to arrive. We'd caught only the Jeon siblings and none of the others but that was enough. They were the most well trained in the bunch and without them, their team wouldn't do very well.

I hear a knock on the door. "Come in," I say lazily, not moving from my bed. Yuta comes in. "Ah," I say, sitting up. "Yuta-ssi."

He smiles at his nickname. Yuta and I have been friends for longer than I've been with the other members of NCT and it's nice to have him around. "Hey, Taeyong. How're the kids doing?"

"I told Mark and Haechan to secure the brother in his cell but not to hurt him. The girl is in her room, I believe."

"Is she being kept locked in?"

"I don't know, but I don't really care, either. Listen, Yuta. I just found out about... some things."

He sits down at my desk, crossing his long legs. "What?"

"You know how I told you that the day my parents died I was about to kill myself by jumping off a roof?" I ask. He nods. "Well, I'd always been wishing that I'd meet the girl who stopped me from dying. And today, I met her. It's (y/n)."

"No way."

"I'm not kidding. She recognized me by my eyes and now I feel too horrible to hurt her or kill her dad."

Yuta sighs, rubbing his temple. "Taeyong, you can't let this waver you."

"But I wouldn't be here if it weren't for her, Yuta. I don't want this to stop me from accomplishing my mission, either, but this is the girl who saved my life we're talking about here." Thankfully, my angelic side is beginning to take over, at least for now.

Yuta's silent for a while, but when he speaks, his voice is soft. "I know that you feel bad about killing her dad after everything she's done for you. But killing her dad and getting your revenge is not the end point of your mission, Taeyong. You can't forget what you're trying to do by killing her dad. You're trying to teach the other mafias that you'll defeat them. And in the end, you're trying to get rid of all the mafias in the world, or, if not, at least around here. Right? Killing her dad is just the beginning. So get over it and accomplish what you really want to: to end the bad in this world."

He's right. The devil inside me begins to stir at his words. "Alright, alright."

Yuta smiles. "Get some sleep. It's already past one."

He leaves my room and I lock my door behind him. Changing into my pajamas, I climb into bed and fall asleep immediately.

---

how y'all like the name yuta-ssi

also YuTae is adorable uwu