Hunt

file four: kth + pjy

"How long do they usually stay in there?" Hwang asked.

Taehyung hummed, leaning back against the couch with an expression of faked interest. "Usually it's about three to four days," he said mildly, not even looking up to see her eyes widen comically. Chwe and Lee could be unreasonably withdrawn, but he loved exaggerating—a little fun never hurt anyone. "But to be fair, they've probably never had a lover return from the dead before. Probably."

Jinyoung stifled a laugh next to him, and she deflated with a sigh. "Hilarious," she muttered, chest rising and falling with a deep breath, and collapsed against the couch. Improvement, he thought. Just two years ago—well, maybe not just—she would probably have had a meltdown over a joke like that. He could be exaggerating again, but there was an improvement in her behavior.

It had only been a week since her return, but he had already noticed some very obvious differences. She seemed less withdrawn, a little less suicidal and much steadier. Not like she was balancing on the edge of a knife, about to fall into either insanity or the clutches of death.

Of course, there was still some of the same uneasiness. Her eyes were in shadow, like those of someone who had seen a lot more than a normal twenty-four-year-old. Her hands were steady, but Taehyung looked at them and remembered the girl from five years ago, with wandering fingers which were steady only when they gripped the wheel, whose eyes would widen at even the mention of death. It wasn't the same now. With a kill count of over a hundred, even more than Taehyung's own, she was no longer the same person.

As he watched, she pulled out a lollipop from the pocket of her leather jacket, unwrapping it with jittery fingers, and raised it to hold it between her teeth as she crumpled the wrapped. Okay, maybe a little bit the same.

"They do that a lot?" she asked, gesturing to Taeyong's and Vernon's room with a tilt of her chin. "Shut themselves off from the rest of the house?"

"Even before you came back, they stayed a little apart from the rest of us," Jinyoung said, kicking his booted legs up to rest on the table. "Don't take it personally."

"Why?" she whispered, looking distracted as her eyes flickered over the door as if looking for a hidden clue traced on the wood. "Just the two of them?"

"Shared grief, I guess?" Taehyung raised an eyebrow at her, then grinned, turning to Jinyoung. "I looked it up, you know, after that bet we had. Asexual homoromantic something." Jinyoung's faded smile widened at that, and Taehyung chuckled when he felt her inquisitive eyes on him again. "I don't know, princess. They're something, for sure, I just don't know what it is."

"None of us do," Jinyoung added, shrugging. "And honestly, we don't care. We just leave them to it."

"It's their thing," Taehyung agreed. "As long it helps them function fully, then what the hell? Do whatever."

She looked curious, as she always did when anything concerning the two came up, but there was a fractured melancholy in her eyes. Nothing followed their explanations—no follow-up questions, and certainly no answers. Taehyung played with the remains of his cigarette, watching her secretly as the stick poked out of one corner of her mouth. The muscles in her jaw tightened, and a moment later she was biting down on the lollipop stick with her teeth.

Briefly, he wondered what it must be like being in her position. He had thought about her boys, too, and their position was easy to understand, but when it came to her, he didn't know what to make of the situation. And for the first time, too. She felt off, but accepting. Willing to wait forever.

The question was, would she have to keep waiting forever?

"Get up, all three of you," said a new voice behind him, and Taehyung grinned at recognizing it. He jumped to his feet, whipping around to find Yeeun standing behind the couch with her hands on her hips. "Just because she's back doesn't mean you get to loiter around."