The Dark Secret

Jungkook was bright, sharp-a child the world praised. Taehyung was not.

Slow. Stuttering. A boy with too-large blue eyes, fair skin, and sunlit hair, too tall for his age but brittle, like a sapling bent under unseen weight. The other children avoided him-mocked the way his words stumbled, the way his hands shook. But Jungkook didn't.

He became Taehyung's first friend. His only friend.

They shared secrets, snacks, scraped knees. Jungkook carried Taehyung's voice when it faltered, and Taehyung-soft, fragile Taehyung-smiled at him like he'd hung the stars.

(And maybe, in some small way, he had.)

Then, one day, Taehyung was gone.

No note. No struggle. Just-vanished. The last whispers placed him near the woods, where the trees swallowed sound and shadows clung too thick. No one searched hard. No one cared enough.

No one but Jungkook.

He screamed. He cried. He clawed at the earth like Taehyung might be buried beneath it. But the world was cruel, and brutal, and it did not give back what it took.
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The people who smiled behind noble masks, who preached kindness with poison on their tongues-they were not human. Not really.

Monsters wore many skins.

And Taehyung?

He had seen their teeth.