Everybody Wants to Rule the World

18

Trigger Warning(s): suicidal thoughts, minor character death, gun violence (that is kind of a stretch tho. this is a far less heavy chapter in terms of potential triggers than 17.)

I'm a Wanted Man by Royal Deluxe

~ Jimin's Point of View ~

20:48, SUNDAY, MAY 9, 2021. BUSAN, SOUTH KOREA.

It wasn't long before the police came. In fact, mere moments after I shot the English speaker, I heard the sound of police sirens breaking through the city chatter and the screeching of tires. A loud pop resounded through the narrow alley, and my muscles spasmed and seized up. I fell face-first into a puddle of rainwater and spluttered for air while the police officer jammed a knee into my shoulder, forced my hands behind my back, and snapped cuffs on my wrists. She was silent as she led me away from the scene and pushed me into a police car. I could feel the burning glares of the paramedics, red and blue shadows cast across their mournful faces, while they hurried around me to assist the wounded. They wanted me dead. I probably would die.

"Please, I panicked, you don't under" – she slammed the door shut, locking me in the vehicle with the stoic driver – "stand. You don't understand. I have PTSD, right? And I completely freaked out and had a flashback. They were trying to mug me, you gotta know... how scary that feels... I can't die, officer." The car door beside me opened, and the officer slid into the seat beside me, holding her taser like a defense mechanism. "Please, I'm looking for someone, the Jade Phoenix, I need her, I'm going... going crazy. I need help."

"Drive," the officer commanded in Korean, and the driver complied. I didn't continue babbling – what was the point? – and leaned my head against the car window, sniffling as tears stained my cheeks.

I was such an idiot. I had listened to the voices in my head. If I had not listened to them, I might not have been convicted with anything worse than manslaughter. But I was a murderer. I had killed someone, someone innocent.

Why would I listen to them? Why was I so stupid? God, maybe I should have killed myself when I got the chance.

"Where are you going?" the officer beside me asked. "The station is that way."

The driver mumbled something under his breath, then abruptly whipped around and drew his gun from his holster. He shot the woman before she could even lift her taser. I flinched at the loud explosion and scrambled to stay away from the slumping body. "Y-you–"

"I'm saving you from a lifetime in prison," the driver said in English. "Thank me."

"But I'm a murderer. I deserve to die, I should just... why are you still pulling into the police station?"

He parked the car and turned around to stare directly at me. His eyes were the lightest shade of brown I had ever seen in an Asian – they were almost hazel. Then again, he didn't appear to be fully Korean. "Do you really believe those things? That you're a murderer, that you deserve to die?"

"Well, of course, I just killed a–"

"Do you believe those things?"

I don't know why the emphasis made a difference, but it did. "...no."

"You want to live."

"Yes."

"You want to find the Jade Phoenix and live the life that you truly deserve – a happy life. Because you've experienced so much pain, so much more than the average person, and you deserve an inkling of the same happiness everyone else experiences, right?"