Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

He was twelve years old when he first saw Seoul.

The ferry had groaned into the dock earlier than expected, its hull scraping against the tires that lined the pier. Taehyung had spent the entire crossing from Daegu to Seoul pressed against the rusted railing, watching the coastline of Daegu dissolve behind them and watching a new skyline emerge from the grey autumn haze. 

He hadn't spoken much during the journey. His mother had told him to stay out of the way, to keep his hands in his pockets, to not look at the other passengers for too long. He had obeyed, mostly. 

It was idiotic how she demanded too much knowing he was curious, he had never seen Seoul before and it was hard to keep to himself. Stepping onto the wooden planks of the harbour he forgot to obey.

The noise hit him first - not the sharp desperate quiet of their village, but a symphony of shouting dockworkers, clanking rods, engines shouting, and somewhere in the distance, the teeny tiny sound of a radio playing a tune he didn't recognize. He loved radios.

The air was filled with the smell of fish, coal smoke, and the faint sweet perfume of an omega woman who hurried past him in a pale yellow dress, her wrist brushing his shoulder. Taehyung turned his head to watch her go, her heels clicking against the wood like small hammers. He had never seen someone dress so elegant, definitely not back where he lived.

He instantly realized Seoul was different, Seoul was loud and fast. Seoul was already moving past him before he'd even taken ten steps.

His mother walked ahead with her back straight, her cheap threadbare coat pulled tight around her thin shoulders. She carried their only bag - a brown satchel with a broken strap that she clutched to her chest like a wounded bird.

Taehyung lagged behind, his eyes darting from a group of sailors unloading wooden crates to a woman selling roasted sweet potatoes from a cart. He hadn’t even realized when he had stopped to watch a young alpha - maybe fifteen? with a cigarette tucked behind his ear, folding a newspaper with the practiced ease of someone who'd done it a thousand times. The headline was in Hangul, too far for Taehyung to read, but the photograph beneath it showed a man in a suit shaking hands with another man in a suit.

He wondered what it would feel like to be in a newspaper. To have your face printed for everyone to see.

“Move!”

The voice was sharp and the hand that grabbed his arm was sharper. His mother yanked him forward, her fingernails digging into the thin fabric of his sleeve. Her scent - jasmine, always jasmine, even when she hadn't bathed in days, was sour with exhaustion. He wondered if he stank sour too.

"I said follow," she hissed, her eyes scanning the crowd and not him, she was always cold like that. "You want to get lost before we've even arrived? You want me to leave you here?"

Taehyung pulled his arm free but said nothing and then fell into step behind her, close enough to not be called again, far enough to still watch.

They walked away from the harbour into streets that narrowed and darkened. The buildings grew older here, their wooden facades stained grey with rain and neglect. Laundry hung from wires strung between windows. The cobblestones were uneven as always and slick with something he didn't want to identify. 

His mother turned left, then right, then left again. She'd been here before. Taehyung didn't ask how he knew. He just knew. 

They finally stopped in front of a building that might have once been painted blue. Now it was the colour of bruises. It was so ugly. The door was warped in its frame and the window beside it was covered with newspaper from the inside. A single bulb hung above the doorway, flickering like a dying heartbeat. 

The smell here was different from the docks. 

It stank of urine and rot but underneath it, there was this the cloying sweetness of an omega, old and spent, layered over everything like a film. The kind his mother would smell on a heat. It worried him slightly.

His mother knocked twice.

Taehyung stood on the cracked pavement and watched her shoulders rise and fall. She was small, smaller in age than the other mothers he'd seen in the village, smaller than the women who'd sold vegetables at the market. Her hair was pulled back severely, revealing the delicate points of her ears. 

She was pretty, people said. Pretty for an omega. Pretty for someone her age. Pretty despite everything. He dint exactly know what that meant but knew it was bad.

The door opened.

The man who filled the frame was not tall, but he was wide broad shouldered, the kind of bulk that came from manual labor and cheap meat. His eyes were small and dark, set deep in a face that had been probably handsome before. He smelled like an alpha - smoky and a little sharp.

His mother's voice came out sweet. Too sweet. Taehyung recognized the change immediately, it was the voice she used with men, the voice she used when she needed something.

"I need work," she said, and she tilted her head just so, exposing the pale column of her throat. "Any work. I'll do anything."

The man's gaze traveled down her body, slow and unhurried, like he was reading a menu he'd already memorized. His lips curled into something not quite a smile nor a sneer. Something in between. Something that made Taehyung's hands curl into fists inside his pockets.

"Anything?" the man asked.

"Yes."

He stepped aside, just enough for her to slip through. She glanced back at Taehyung once, a flicker of something he couldn't name and then she was inside. The last thing Taehyung saw was the man's hand reaching for the small of her back.

The door shut with a click.

Taehyung stood outside and rolled his eyes. He knew what would happen. He'd known since he was seven, since the first time he'd been told to wait outside a room and not listen to the sounds. He didn't listen. He never listened. But he heard anyway.

So he turned his back to the door and looked at the street instead.

That was when he noticed the boy.

He was sitting on the steps of the building across the street, elbows propped on skinny knees as he watched Taehyung intensely. He had dark short hair and a plum face. There was a scab on his chin, fresh, like he'd fallen recently. 

Taehyung stared back like it was a challenge. It definitely had to be.

The boy ahead didn't look away for a long moment and neither of them moved. Then the boy stood up suddenly and hopped off the steps, walking straight towards Taehyung. He stopped when he was close enough for his voice to be heard.

"Weirdo," the boy said.

That was all. Just weirdo. Then he walked past him, his shoulder brushing Taehyung's arm and continued down the street without looking back.

Taehyung blinked. Then he snorted a small involuntary sound that was almost a laugh. Weirdo? He'd been called worse. More importantly Seoul was the land of weirdos and he was in the right place.

Later, far from the room he found a spot against the wall of the blue building and slid down until he was sitting on the cold ground. He pulled his knees to his chest and watched the street. 

Time passed. Taehyung didn't know how much. The sky had begun to deepen, the grey turning to something closer to violet and that’s when he heard the shouting.

His head snapped up.

The voices came from the alley beside the building across the street, the same building the boy had emerged from. He followed the sound instantly without hesitation, as if he had been waiting for it and in no time saw the commotion. 

There were three tall boys, maybe four, definitely older, their words overlapping into a wall of noise. Taehyung heard a loud ‘thief and give it back’ and then an unmistakable sound of flesh hitting flesh. 

Those boys had crowded someone against the wall and were kicking him into oblivion. 

He stood there watching quietly as he told himself it was none of his business. Reminding himself what his mother had warned him a hundred times: Don't get involved. Don't draw attention. Don't make enemies.

But he heard the voice.

"Hey! Weirdo!"

Taehyung's brain clicked into recognition and his feet were moving before his brain caught up.

He knew how to fight, but not the way the street kids did, but what he did know was how to be angry. 

Taehyung dint hesitate as he threw his entire body and launched himself at the biggest one and wrapped his arms around his waist. They crashed into the wall together and Taehyung heard the air rush out of the other kid's lungs. 

Instantly the group of four let go of the boy and now there were hands on him, pulling and shoving him. A fist connected with his cheekbone and another with his stomach, the world became a blur of pain and heat and the metallic taste of blood.

But he didn't let go. And the boy, now free, didn't run. What a waste it was.

The fight lasted maybe two minutes. Maybe less. It felt like an hour. When it was over, the four older kids had scattered, cursing and clutching their own bruises, disappearing into the maze of alleys they'd come from. 

Taehyung was on his knees on the wet cobblestones, one hand pressed to his ribs, the other wiping blood from his nose. His knuckles were split and his cheek throbbed. 

God his mother was going to kill him.

The boy was sitting against the wall, breathing hard, his clothes torn at the shoulder. He was grinning.

"You're dumber than you look," he said after a long pause, his voice rough. 

Taehyung looked up. Blood dripped from his chin onto his shirt. "You called me a weirdo."

"You are a weirdo." The boy tilted his head, studying Taehyung's face like he was trying to solve a puzzle. 

Taehyung stared at him. Then, despite the pain and blood, he laughed. It was a short surprised sound. The boy ahead looked ragged and beaten and so incredibly stupid it was hard not to. 

The boy quietly grinned back then pushed himself to his feet and stuck out his hand. His fingers were chubby and dirty, but his grip when Taehyung took it, was strong.

"I'm Jimin," he said.

Taehyung pulled himself up. His ribs protested but he ignored them.

"Taehyung."

_____________

As much as Taehyung loved Seoul, it did not take long for him to realize how vast, cold and indifferent the city was. Time passed different in Seoul. It was too fast for the poor, too slow for the hungry, and never fair for either.

He grew older, but the city did not grow kinder.

At thirteen, Jimin and him were inseparable, they ran errands for a fishmonger with yellow teeth who had a habit of paying half of what he promised. They carried crates of squid and mackerel through the morning market, their arms burning, their shoes soaked through while the neighbourhood ajummas spat and called them street rats under their breath. The fishmonger called them boys. That was worse.

At fifteen, the prices rose and they graduated to stealing.

It started small - a wallet from a distracted businessman's back pocket, a purse from an omega’s open handbag on a crowded tram. Jimin was fast and Taehyung was bold.

They sold the stolen goods to a fence named Mr. Choi, who ran a pawn shop out of a shipping container near the train station. Mr. Choi had one eye and a soft spot for orphans, which meant he only cheated them half as much as he cheated everyone else.

At seventeen, they tried legitimate work. It must have been the most peaceful time of his life and he had come to love it. 

However, it lasted three months.

Taehyung had got a job at a garage, changing tires and fetching tools for a mechanic who smelled of motor oil and cheap soju. The mechanic fired him after Taehyung had beaten a customer who called his mother a whore. He never regretted it. 

At nineteen, they ran a small gambling game behind a teahouse. It was dice mostly, sometimes cards. They made enough to eat. Never enough to save.

At twenty-one, Taehyung grew into his body. Jimin went around saying the lanky boy had become a man, it was extremely embarrassing and it made him cringe, but, at the same time he loved it. He could feel it too, his broad-shoulders, thick-neck, his jaw sharpening into something that made omegas look twice and alphas look away. Jimin stayed short, but still intimidating. 

As time passed things changed but they were still best friends. And they were still broke.

At twenty-three, they'd done it all - pickpocketing, petty theft, running numbers, collecting debts for loan sharks who paid in insults instead of coin. They'd been chased down alleys, beaten in back rooms, arrested twice (released both times due to lack of evidence and the police's general indifference to street kids). They'd watched friends disappear to prison, to the countryside, to the bottom of the Han River.  

Now at twenty-four, Taehyung had stopped counting birthdays, they were uneventfyl and boring, only the rich could indulge themselves in such celebrations. He quietly walked back to the whorehouse in the blue building.

The building hadn't improved with age. If anything, it had decayed further, like a wound that refused to heal. The flickering bulb still flickered. The smell still lingered. It was disgusting. 

Taehyung climbed the creaking stairs to the second floor, his boots heavy on the wood and his hands shoved deep into the pockets of a coat he'd stolen three winters ago.

As he climbed upstairs he could already hear his mother's voice - high, cracked and desperate slicing through the thin walls before he even reached her door.

"promised! You promised me fifty won! I had to give that to Mr. Park by tomorrow or he'll—-"

A man's voice, low and bored cut her off "That's your problem, not mine."

"You said if I could have it!" Her voice broke. "Please, I have nothing else. I have nothing."

Taehyung stopped outside the door. He didn't knock. He just stood there, listening to his mother beg and felt something cold settle in his chest. Familiar. Old.

"You're an omega," the man said, and Taehyung could hear the smirk in his voice. "Figure it out."

He pushed the door open.

The room was small - a single cot, a rickety table, a curtain over a tiny window. His mother stood in the center, her hair loose around her face, her scent jasmine, thick with distress. The man was an alpha, mid-forties, soft in the middle, his shirt untucked. He turned to look at Taehyung with narrowed eyes and a grin. As if laughing at him.

Taehyung didn't look at either of them. He pulled a crumpled wad of won from his pocket, his share from a job that week of selling stolen radios - and tossed it onto the table.

"There," he said, his voice flat. "That’s enough?"

His mother stared at the money. Then at him. Her face was still pretty, but the years had carved lines around her mouth, and her eyes had gone the color of old tea.

"Where did you get this?" she asked.

"What does it matter?"

"Don't you talk to me like that!"

"Don't you—-?" He stopped and inhaled in deeply, almost in frustration. He still didn't meet her eyes as he spat. "I get you money. Isn't that fucking enough?"

The silence that followed was thick enough to choke on.

When he finally looked up he saw his mother's face harden. She walked ahead and pushed him hard and fast, past the door.

"Mind your fucking business," she said, and shut the door in his face.

The wood shuddered against the frame. Taehyung heard the lock click.

He stood there for a long moment, staring at the grain of the door, his hands shaking at his sides. Then he raised his fist and slammed it against the wood, once, twice, three times - hard enough to split the skin on his knuckles.

"Open the door," he said. His voice was low. Dangerous, but no answer.

"Open the door!"

Nothing.

He hit it again but the door didn't open. Behind him, someone cleared their throat and Taehyung spun around.

Jimin stood at the bottom of the stairs, his arms crossed, his face unreadable. He'd possibly been there the whole time. Of course he had. Jimin always followed, always watched, always kept Taehyung from doing something that couldn't be undone and Taehyung hated it. He couldn’t stand to look at Jimin’s face.

Taehyung walked down the stairs and pushed past him, shoulder-checking him hard.

"Where are you going?" Jimin called after him.

"Don't follow me."

"Where the fuck are you going"

Taehyung didn't answer. He was halfway down the stairs when he felt Jimin's hand on his arm.

He reacted without thinking.

"Don't touch me!" He wrenched his arm free roughly, spinning around. His voice came out as a snarl in pure alpha rage. "I'll beat you up, you hear me? I'll fucking —"

Jimin didn't flinch. Instead he shoved Taehyung hard, two hands to the chest, sending him stumbling back against the stairwell wall. Then Jimin's hands were on his shoulders, gripping tight, pinning him in place. For someone so lean, Jimin was strong. His fingers dug into Taehyung's coat like claws.

"Don't try that shit with me. You hear me? I'm not your mother. I'm not one of those bastards you fight in the street. You don't get to talk to me like that."

Taehyung chest heaved. His fists were still clenched. It was unfair how Jimin always saw him like this. At his worst. He hated how he saw through his bullshit. 

He wanted to push Jimin back but he didn't.

Jimin held his gaze for a long, silent moment. Then he exhaled a sharp, frustrated sound and let go.

"Come on, fucker," Jimin said, and he started down the stairs without looking back. "I know where you should be."

Taehyung stood there for a heartbeat. Then he followed.

Jimin led him through streets that grew darker and narrower the farther they walked. Past the last streetlamp. Past the last honest business. Into a district that didn't have a name on any map, just a collection of warehouses and empty lots and buildings that had been abandoned so long they'd become something else entirely.

Taehyung could hear it before he saw it. The raging scent of alphas and the sound of people shouting. The thud of flesh hitting flesh. The metallic clang of something - a cage maybe, or a gate. It was rattling with every impact.

Jimin pushed open a heavy metal door, and the noise hit them like a wave.

It was an underground fighting ring housed in an old factory. 

A crowd was packed tight around a central cage, a cube of chain-link fencing that rose maybe eight feet off the ground. Inside the cage, two alpha men were circling each other, their bodies slick with sweat, their knuckles wrapped in fraying tape.

Most of the crowd were alphas - working class, scarred, smelling of booze and aggression and something darker. But Taehyung noticed the omegas, too. The hookers, he realized. They lingered at the edges of the crowd, their eyes bright, their painted mouths curved into knowing smiles. Some were watching the fight. Some were watching the wallets of the men watching the fight. 

Jimin pushed through the crowd like he belonged there. It slightly ticked him off how Jimin had been here before. Many times and without him. Why would he do that?

They reached the cage just as one of the fighters went down.

He was a big man, broad and bald, his chest covered in tattoos that crawled up his neck like black vines. But he wasn't the one on the ground. The man on the ground was smaller, younger, his face already a mess of blood and bruises. He tried to stand, but his legs wouldn't obey. What a daring bastard.

Meanwhile the crowd was screaming for the tattooed man. They chanted "Japanese! Japanese! Japanese!" in union. Guess all of them bastards betted on him.

Japanese or whatever his name was stood over his fallen opponent, breathing hard, his chest heaving. He looked like a Japanese man hence maybe that’s what they just called him.

The smaller man didn't get up.

The referee - a thin alpha with a whistle and no patience, grabbed the tattooed man's arm and raised it. The crowd exploded. Money changed hands. Somewhere, an omega laughed.

The tattooed man - Japanese - circled the cage, his arms spread wide, his mouth open in a grin that showed too many teeth. Taehyung could see he was drunk on the noise, the victory, the blood.

"Anyone else?" Japanese called out, his voice rough. "Anyone wanna try?"

The crowd hooted but no one stepped forward.

"Come on," Japanese taunted. He punched the chain-link fence, making it shudder. "I didn't come all this way to fight children. Is there a brave bastard in this room?"

Taehyung watched and noticed him. Fascinated. The way Japanese moved - like he knew exactly what his body could do, like he'd tested every limit and found them all acceptable. There was something beautiful about it. Something Taehyung wanted.

But what he didn't notice was Jimin moving. Didn't notice when Jimin reached for his hand.

When he did his arm was in the air, raised high above the crowd, and Jimin's voice was shouting: "He will!" 

Taehyung's head snapped toward his friend. Jimin was grinning that sharp, crooked-toothed grin that hadn't changed since they were twelve.

"Go," Jimin said, quiet enough that only Taehyung could hear over the roar of the crowd. "Use your aggression in the right place for once bastard."

Taehyung stared at him. "I don't know how to—-"

"You know how to fight. You've been fighting your whole life." Jimin shoved him toward the cage door. "Now go fight someone who'll hit back."

The first punch knocked him sideways.

He hadn't even seen it coming. Japanese was fast- faster than a man his size had any right to be. His fist connected with Taehyung's jaw, and the world went white for a fraction of a second. He tasted blood. He tasted copper and salt and the inside of his own cheek, split open by his teeth. He better not break a tooth was all he thought.

The crowd cheered.

Taehyung staggered, caught himself on the fence, and turned back around. Japanese was already moving in, his grin still in place, his fists still raised.

Don't think, Taehyung told himself. Don't think. Just move.

The second punch he dodged - barely. He felt the wind of it against his ear. The third he blocked, his forearm taking the impact, the bone vibrating all the way to his shoulder. Fuck it was painful. He swung back, wild and untrained, and his fist glanced off Japanese's cheek.

Japanese blinked. Then he laughed haughtily. Oh this bastard had to go.

"Not bad," he said. "Now try again."

Before Taehyung could bite back he came at him like a damn wave, relentless and inevitable. Punches to the ribs. A knee to the thigh. A hook to the stomach that made Taehyung double over and gasp for air that wouldn't come. He truly did hate Japanese men he realized. 

The crowd was screaming, celebrating his loss but Taehyung couldn't hear them anymore. All he could hear was his own heartbeat, too fast, and the wet sound of his breathing.

He should have fallen and given up. Any sensible man would have fallen but Taehyung had never been sensible.

He straightened up, blood dripping from his split lip, one eye already swelling shut, and he laughed.

Japanese paused. Just for a second. Just long enough for Taehyung to lunge forward and drive his forehead into the bridge of Japanese's nose.

The sound was satisfying - a wet crunch that made the crowd go silent for one perfect moment. Japanese stumbled back, his hand flying to his face. Bet he dint see that one coming. Blood poured between his fingers. His eyes, when they met Taehyung's, were no longer amused.

"You little —"

He swung. Taehyung ducked successfully and with adrenaline rushing through his veins swung back at him and landed a punch to Japanese's kidney. He couldn’t control himself and laughed, Japanese grunted but to his bad luck that bastard didn't go down.

Instead, he caught Taehyung's next punch - he caught it in his massive hand, fingers wrapping around Taehyung's fist, he had always thought of his hands as big but right now it looked like a child's toy. Once the Japanese completely had his fist, he squeezed.

Taehyung felt bones grind together. He bit down on a scream.

Japanese pulled him close, until their faces were inches apart, and spoke low enough that only Taehyung could hear.

"You've got fire, kid” and then headbutted Taehyung right in the already swollen eye and Taehyung's legs finally gave out.

He hit the floor hard, his cheek pressed against the cold bloody sawdust. He tried to push himself up but his arms wouldn't obeyy.

He watched with his one eye as the referee counted. One. Two. Three.

Taehyung heard the number five, and then he heard nothing at all for a moment.

When his vision cleared, Japanese was having his arm raised again. The crowd was cheering again. Jimin was at the cage door, his face a mask of concern and something that looked almost like pride.

Taehyung crawled to the fence. Pulled himself up, hand over hand, until he was standing and swaying, bleeding, one eye completely shut, but standing.

The crowd noticed. Some of them started to clap.

Taehyung spat blood onto the floor. Then he laughed again, a wet broken sound that hurt his ribs and split his lip further.

Jimin grabbed him once through the fence. "You idiot. You dumb stupid idiot." He screamed.

"How long?" Taehyung asked, his voice slurred and slow like he was drunk. 

"What?"

"How long did I last?"

With the little he could see he saw Jimin's expression soften. "Longer than anyone expected. Almost three minutes."

Three minutes. It felt like a lifetime.

They counted out the money in the back room, a cramped space behind the cage that smelled of liniment and old sweat. Taehyung had earned two hundred won for lasting as long as he did. The loser's share. He'd made more stealing wallets in an afternoon. But this felt different. This felt like something he'd built with his own body.

He was pressing a rag Jimin found to his swollen eye when the back room door opened.

The man who walked in was not like the other men in the factory. He was older, maybe forty but his body was lean and kept, his suit tailored, his shoes polished. His scent was alpha but there was no aggression in it. Just presence.

He looked at Taehyung the way a man looks at a horse he's thinking of buying.

"You played well," the man said. His voice was low, cultured. "Better than well, considering you've never been in a cage before."

Taehyung lowered the rag. His vision was still blurry, his purple eye would heal in a week but he could see the man clearly enough. The sharp jaw. The calm eyes. The way he held himself like someone who'd never had to ask for anything in his life.

"Who are you?" Taehyung asked.

The man smiled. It didn't reach his eyes.

"My name is Na Haein," he said. "And I have a job for you. I saw how brave you are, and I have use for men like that."

Taehyung looked at Jimin. Jimin looked back, his expression unreadable but he knew damn well.

Then Taehyung turned to Na Haein, and he said the only thing he could say.

"What kind of job?"

_____________________

The job was simple Na Haein had said, but Taehyung knew simple jobs paid the least. But he also knew dangerous jobs paid more. This one was both.

The beach was somewhere south of Seoul, a strip of dark sand that the maps forgot, accessible only by a dirt road that wound through salt marshes and abandoned fishing huts. 

Taehyung had never been there before, but Na Haein's driver knew the way. The truck bounced and groaned over the uneven ground and Taehyung sat in the back with five other men - alphas, mostly, with the big necks and flat eyes of men who'd done this before. 

No one spoke. The only sounds were the engine and the distant cry of gulls. He preferred it that way.

They arrived at midnight. Taehyung could smell salt and seaweed and something else, it wasn’t unpleasant entirely at the beach.

Na Haein stood at the water's edge, his shoes protected from the sand by a folded newspaper, why even wear those shoes he thought to himself. Beside him, two men held flashlights pointed at the horizon, their beams cutting weak paths through the darkness.

The rest of the men beside him spread out along the shore instantly when the torch light flashed twice.

Gold, Na Haein had told him earlier, in that calm, cultured voice. “There will be Gold biscuits. You don't need to know where they come from or where they're going. You just need to move them from the boat to the truck. Do you understand?”

Taehyung had nodded. He hadn't asked how much gold. He hadn't asked who was sending it. He hadn't asked what would happen if something went wrong.

Now, standing on that dark beach with the wind cutting through his coat, he wished he had.

"There," one of the flashlights said.

A light flickered on the horizon, three short flashes came from a boat, then a pause, then three more. A signal. Na Haein raised his arm and waved sharp. The response.

The boat then came into view slowly, a dark shape against the darker sea. It was small - a fishing trawler, he had expected something bigger. It drifted toward the shore until its hull scraped against the sand.

"Move," Na Haein said.

Taehyung waded into the water.

The cold hit him like a fist, the sea bitter enough to steal his breath. His trousers soaked through immediately, clinging to his legs, weighing him down. But he kept moving, his teeth gritted, until the water was at his waist and his hands found the side of the boat.

A man on the deck - a beta with a weathered face and no expression handed down the first box. It was smaller than Taehyung had expected, maybe the size of a shoebox, but when he took it, his arms nearly buckled. Fuck it was heavy. The gold inside was dense, unforgiving. He clutched it to his chest and turned back toward the shore.

Walking in water was hard but walking in water while carrying forty pounds of gold was nearly impossible. But Taehyung didn't stop. He couldn't stop. He planted one foot in front of the other, the waves pushing against his thighs, the box cutting into his ribs, until finally the water receded and he was on dry sand, his breath coming in ragged gasps.

He carried the box to the truck, a black van with its rear doors open and set it down inside. Then he turned and went back for another.

The second box was harder. The third, harder still. By the fourth, Taehyung's arms were screaming, and his lungs felt like they'd been scraped raw with sandpaper but he kept moving. 

Around him, the other men did the same, a silent chain of dark figures, trudging from the sea to the truck, from the truck back to the sea. A bore some routine.

It was when the fifth box was in his arms and water hardly around his ankles, when the night exploded with light.

Sirens. The police.

Blue and red strobes cut through the darkness, spinning, screaming, bouncing off the water and the sand and the faces of the men frozen mid-stride. 

Taehyung to his luck was already on the sand, his  head snapped toward the land, the dirt road where three police cars had appeared from nowhere, their headlights blinding, their doors already opening.

"Stop! Police! Nobody move!"

Men were shouting. Orders, curses, the slap of shoes on wet sand. Taehyung turned and saw Na Haein running, his tailored coat flapping behind him, his expensive shoes sinking into the sand.

The other men scattered. Some dropped their boxes and ran. Some tried to fight, a flash of fists, a grunt, the sound of a body hitting the ground.

Taehyung however didn't think twice.

He ran.

The box was still in his arms, the fifth box, the one he'd been carrying from the boat. He didn't remember deciding to keep it. His body had decided for him. He clutched it to his chest and ran up the beach, away from the lights, away from the shouting, away from Na Haein and the police and everyone else.

His legs burned. His lungs burned. The box dug into his sternum with every step, a sharp, punishing weight. But he didn't stop.

Behind him, he heard an officer's voice "Let him go! We need to catch Na Haein!"

And Taehyung didn't look back. He ran until the sirens were distant whines. He ran until the beach gave way to marsh, and the marsh gave way to road, and the road gave way to streets he recognized. 

The whorehouse was quiet at that hour, not sleeping exactly, but dozing, its occupants curled in their rooms like wild animals in burrows. The smell of old sex and cheap perfume hung in the air, thick enough to taste. Taehyung climbed the stairs on silent feet, his shoes leaving wet prints on the wood, his heart still hammering against his ribs.

He stopped outside his mother's door.

No sound came from inside. He pressed his ear to the wood and heard only the slow, even breathing of sleep.

He pushed the door open, the room was dark, lit only by the faint glow of the streetlamp through the curtain. His mother lay on the cot, curled on her side, her face slack with sleep. She looked younger like this. Smaller. Taehyung looked away.

He dropped to his knees and slid the box under the bed.

There was already clutter there, old tins, a cardboard box full of shoes she never wore, a stack of newspapers yellowed with age. Taehyung pushed them aside, shoved the gold box into the gap behind them, and covered it as best he could. When he was done, no one would know anything was there unless they went looking.

He stood up. Looked at his mother one more time. Thought about waking her, telling her to hide the box somewhere else, somewhere safer.

But he didn't.

He left the way he came, silent as a ghost, and walked through to Jimin's place.

"Where the hell have you been?" Jimin's voice was rough with sleep when he opened the door, but his eyes were sharp, scanning Taehyung's face, his wet clothes, the wild look in his eyes. "What happened?"

Taehyung pushed past him into the room and collapsed onto the thin mattress on the floor. He was still shaking. He didn't know if it was from the cold or the fear or something else entirely.

"Na Haein," he said. "The police. They raided the beach and his smuggled gold."

Jimin's face went pale. "Did they see you?"

"I ran." Taehyung laughed, a short, breathless sound. "One of them said to let me go. They wanted Na Haein so I ran."

"You're lucky," Jimin said. He sat down heavily on the edge of the mattress, his shoulder pressing against Taehyung's. "Stupid, but lucky."

Taehyung turned his head to look at his friend. His eye was still swollen from the fight at the ring, his lip still split. But he was grinning.

"The gold," he said. "I got one of the boxes, Jimin. I kept it."

Jimin's eyes widened. "You what?!"

"One of the boxes. I was carrying it when the police came, and I just, I don’t know what came over me, I didn't drop it. I ran with it. It's under my mother's bed right now."

"Taehyung —"

"It's ours." Taehyung sat up, his grin widening, his voice rising. "The gold is ours. Ours. We don't have to do odd jobs anymore. We don't have to steal from trams. We can —"

Jimin grabbed his shoulders, the way he had on the stairs, and shook him once. Hard.

"Listen to yourself," Jimin said. "You stole from Na Haein. A man who has men like Japanese on his payroll. A man who —"

"He's probably in jail," Taehyung said. "Or running. He won't come looking for me."

"You don't know that."

"No." Taehyung's grin faded, but only a little. "But I know we have gold. And gold changes things."

Jimin stared at him for a long moment. Then he sighed, a long, tired sound and drew out a cigarette from nowhere.

"You need to disappear," Jimin said as he lit the cigarette. "For a while. Until we know what happened to Na Haein. Until we know if anyone's looking for that box."

Taehyung nodded. He'd already thought of that.

"I'm not coming back home this week," he said. "Maybe longer. I'll stay... somewhere. I'll figure it out."

Jimin opened his mouth to say something but Taehyung shook his head.

"Better if you don't know where I am," Taehyung said. "Safer for both of us. I’ll telephone you"

Jimin closed his mouth. Nodded and passed the cigarette to Taehyung. 

____________________

The days after the beach were a blur of hiding and waiting.

Taehyung slept in abandoned buildings, in the back rooms of bars that owed Jimin favors, in a storage closet behind a beta tailor's shop that smelled of mothballs and old wool. He had stayed at places worse than this so it wasn’t really all that disturbing to him.

He made sure to move every night, never staying in the same place twice. He had listened for whispers about Na Haein, an arrest, a manhunt or anything at all but the streets were quiet. Too quiet. Like the city was holding its breath and scaring him further.

On the third day, his restlessness became unbearable. He thought of telephoning jimin but that would be too risky so he held back.

Later that night he found himself in a part of Seoul he didn't know well, a maze of narrow streets south of the river, where the buildings leaned toward each other like drunkards sharing secrets. The neon signs were older here, some of them broken, their colors shining into the wet pavement. 

The club didn't have a name on the outside, just a red lantern hanging above a doorway and a faded poster advertising something called The Velvet Rose. Taehyung ducked inside, more out of boredom than intention.

The front room was small and dim, with a few worn booths and a bar that looked like it had been beautiful once, maybe twenty years ago. A handful of customers sat scattered around, most of them alphas, some of them betas and all of them drinking alone or in low murmurs. The air was thick with cigarette smoke and the sour smell of cheap liquor.

Taehyung found a booth in the corner, pulled out the joint he'd rolled earlier, and lit it. 

The smoke curled toward the ceiling and he watched it drift, his mind empty for the first time in days. No thoughts of Na Haein. No thoughts of the gold under his mother's bed. Just the burn in his lungs and the quiet hum of the club around him.

He was almost asleep, his head heavy, his eyes half closed when he heard the voices.

"come on, let's go check out the stage."

"There’s a new one I heard."

"There’s always a new one” another snorted

“Are you coming or not?”

Taehyung cracked one eye open to the lame chatter. Two alphas were passing by his booth, their faces flushed with drink, their voices loud with a particular boredom that came from men who had too much money and not enough sense. He watched them disappear through a curtain at the back of the room. 

He sat in his booth for a while just thinking, then he took another long drag of his joint and closed his eyes again.

Not interested. This was nothing much different from the whorehouse his mother lived in. 

The music started a few minutes later - jazz, slow and sultry, a trumpet weeping somewhere beyond the curtain, it seeped through the fabric like honey through the honeycomb, warm and golden and impossible to ignore. Sue Taehyung for being a sucker for jazz, his fingers tapped against his thigh without his permission and his foot began to move almost involuntarily. 

Tired of fighting himself he stubbed out the nasty joint that tasted more like gutter grass, stood up, and followed the sound.

When the curtain parted, he didn't know whether it was his buzzed brain or did he really step into another world.

The room was smaller than he'd expected, really tiny - intimate and almost secret with walls the color of dried blood and with the ceiling lights so low they seemed to float just above his head like captured fireflies. Red velvet (fake) draped the walls in soft, heavy folds, swallowing the sound, making everything feel closer, warmer and welcoming.

A few small round tables dotted the floor, there was hardly space for them but each one held a small lamp and an ashtray, they were probably for the reserved rich people who could afford them. Other than that there were men standing around the room, and as far as he could tell, almost all men, mostly alphas, were wealthy. They held cigars between their fingers and wore suits that cost more than Taehyung had earned in the past year.

Was this some secret hideout for the rich? He swore it definitely just looked like some random jazz club from the outside.

A live band played in the corner - piano, bass, drums, and that trumpet, its player's cheeks swollen with breath. He suddenly remembered how he had wanted to be a saxophone player when younger, he looked at the band and almost thought how he could have been a part. 

The music they played was slow, aching, the kind of melody that made you think of things you'd lost and things you'd never had.

Taehyung clicked his tongue, trying not to daydream of what could and couldn’t have been, that was useless now because a box of gold waited for him. 

With a curious gaze he quietly looked across the room, where a heavy velvet curtain hung from ceiling to floor. It was the stage.

But it wasn’t really a regular elevated stage, not really. Just an open space without any stairs. The curtain was closed, hiding whatever - whoever - lay behind it. He watched how the men in the room weren't looking at the curtain, they were looking through it, their eyes hungry, their bodies leaning forward like dogs on a leash. 

Omegas, Taehyung thought. They're waiting for the omegas.

He should have felt disgust. Or pity. Or something righteous but he'd grown up in a whorehouse for fuck sake. He'd seen worse than this before breakfast so he just found a spot against the wall, crossed his arms, and waited.

Soon the intro song ended and the band paused, the lights which were already dim somehow dimmed further and finally the curtain began to rise.

Taehyung breath for some reason stopped in his chest instantly. 

An omega stood alone in the center of the open space, his hands at his sides fidgeting, his posture stiff with something that looked like terror masquerading as composure. He was wearing a white dress shirt - nearly transparent, the kind of thing that hinted at everything and yet revealed nothing. It was tucked into tight black trousers that clung to his hips like a second skin. The trousers were high waisted, cinching at a waist so small Taehyung swore he could have spanned it with his hands. His collarbones which were slightly peaking caught the dim light, delicate as bird bones, and his wrists.. his wrists were so slender that Taehyung felt a strange, protective ache bloom behind his ribs.

The omega was gorgeous no doubt but it almost looked painful. He looked like a different kind of beauty, his skin was the color of golden honey, warm and luminous under the red lights. His hair was brownish and thin with gel, falling slightly across his forehead, catching the light like some shiny surface. His eyes looked large in that moment, all dark, doe like, with a shine that might have been fright or might have been the reflection of the lamps, he couldn’t tell.

But it was the mouth that held Taehyung's gaze.

A heart shaped mouth, the top lip curving like Cupid's bow and his lips pink were slightly parted. And Taehyung thank god that he stood close enough cause above it, nestled at the crest of that curve of his lips was a tiny mole, so small that Taehyung might have missed it if he'd been standing anywhere else, but he wasn't standing anywhere else. He was rooted to the spot, his heart hammering and his lungs forgetting how to work.

That mole.

He wanted to touch it. He wanted to press his thumb to it, to feel its small rise against his skin. He wanted to trace the shape of that mouth with his fingers, with his lips, with his… 

As if under some spell he watched as the omega's gaze swept across the room, quick and nervous, like a deer scenting the wind and sizing a territory. Then for one impossible second his eyes met Taehyung's.

Taehyung forgot how to breathe.

But the omega looked away almost immediately, his attention darting back to the crowd and to his dismay the moment shattered. Taehyung was left standing there, his chest tight, his hands curled into fists at his sides, feeling like he'd been struck by lightning.

A man by the band- the singer- Taehyung realized, a beta in a sequined jacket stepped up to the microphone.

"Everyone," he announced, his voice smooth as butter, "welcome our newest omega... Jung Hoseok."

Jung Hoseok.

Taehyung whispered the name to himself, tasting it. Hoseok. It sounded so good that it felt like something he wanted to say again and again.

Before he could think further the music began - a slow swaying number, the piano walking a lazy bassline and the drums brushing soft as a heartbeat. And then the omega - Hoseok, began to move.

The omega was all sorts of awkward in his movements, a stiffness in his shoulders, a hesitation in his hips, a bend in his wrists. He looked like someone who'd been told to dance without his heart in it. His face looked like a mask, pretty but not smiling, not frowning, just blank, his eyes fixed somewhere above the crowd's heads and his jaw tight. Like some marionette doll tied on strings. 

Taehyung however, couldn’t resist watching him, he watched and watched, until beneath the awkwardness he spotted something else, something raw and unpolished and extremely captivating.

Hoseok's body moved to the rhythm like it was remembering a language it had forgotten. His hips swayed - hesitant at first, then with more confidence, a slow figure eight that made the fabric of his trousers pull tight across his thighs. The omega was a skinny little thing. His arms lifted to the beat and his fingers slowly spreading like petals. His wrists, those dainty wrists twisted in circles that seemed to have nothing to do with the music and everything to do with some private melody only he could hear.

He was scared. No shit. Taehyung could see it in the way his throat worked when he swallowed, in the way his gaze flickered to the floor and then back up, never landing anywhere for long. He was scared, and he was trying not to show it, and the effort of that trying was written in every line of his body.

But Taehyung just couldn't look away. The rest of the room had dissolved. The wealthy alphas with their cigars, the red velvet walls, the weeping trumpet - all of it had faded into a blur, it was a backdrop, a dream he'd forgotten the moment he'd woken up.  For him there was only Hoseok, watching the way his mouth stayed closed and serious and perfect.

This is it, Taehyung thought, and the thought came not as a realization but as a recognition, his alpha knew it before he did, it was like remembering something he'd always known. He didn't know how. He didn't know when but he knew with a certainty that settled into his bones like a fever that he was going to win him. Slowly. Nicely. Properly.

Just then Hoseok's gaze swept the room again and this time, when it reached Taehyung, it stayed.

Just for a second. Just long enough for Taehyung's heart to stop and then restart, faster this time, tripping over itself like a drunk on alcohol. The omega's eyes were dark and unreadable, but there was something in them, curiosity maybe? or surprise?. Taehyung couldn't tell, maybe he looked mad or maybe it was his swollen eye that caught his attention. He didn't care though, all he knew was that Hoseok was looking at him and no one else, and that the rest of the room could have burst into flames and he wouldn't fucking care.

Much to his dismay Hoseok looked away, back to the crowd, back to the unknown space above their heads that gave him peace.

Taehyung stood rooted, still holding various feelings when suddenly a drunk alpha stumbled onto the floor where Hoseok danced.

Taehyung didn't notice him at first. He was too busy watching Hoseok, memorizing the shape of his profile, the line of his jaw, the way he moved and swayed awkwardly to the music but stlll precise. 

But then the crowd shifted and Taehyung saw him.

The alpha was tall and broad, his suit expensive but rumpled, his tie loosened, his face flushed with whiskey and arrogance. He held a glass in one hand, amber liquid sloshing over the rim and he was walking toward Hoseok with the slow confidence of a man who'd never been told no.

No.

Taehyung's body went cold.

The alpha reached Hoseok just as the omega was turning, his arms lifted, his wrists circling and he grabbed it.

Hoseok startled. His steps faltered. His eyes went wide and for a split second and Taehyung saw something flicker across his face. Fear. Real fear, quick as a snakebite, there and gone.

"Come on" the alpha slurred, his voice loud enough to carry across the entire room. He raised the glass toward Hoseok's mouth. "Drink with me."

Hoseok shook his head, his lips parting to speak, to decline, Taehyung could see it but the alpha didn't wait for an answer. He pushed the glass forward, the rim pressing against Hoseok's lower lip, the liquid spilling down his chin in a thin stream.

Hoseok tried to step back. The alpha's other hand found his nape and grabbed it 

"Don't be shy," the alpha laughed. "One drink come on be a sport?"

The room was silent and watching. Some of the men were smiling but no one was moving.

Taehyung moved.

He didn't remember picking up the chair nor did he remember crossing the room. His body had taken over, his alpha flooding his veins with something terrible and absolutely clear. 

All he knew was that one moment he was against the wall and the next moment the chair was in his hands - a solid wooden thing and he was bringing it down on the alpha's back with every ounce of strength in his body.

The crack was beautiful. Deserved. He heard the wood splintering then some bone crunching and finally the alpha's drunken laugh cutting off into a wet, surprised grunt. The glass flew from his hand and shattered against the floor and beside it was the man’s knees hitting the ground, his hands scrambling in confusion as he turned - sitting on the floor, and Taehyung was on top of him.

He didn't think. He just hit.

His fist connected with the alpha's jaw. Once. Twice. A third time, blood sprayed across his knuckles, red and slick. The alpha tried to raise his arms to block, but Taehyung grabbed them - put them under both his knees then caught his collar, pulled him up and punched him again and again, until the alpha's face was a mess of red and his eyes had rolled back in his head.

"Get him off!" 

"Security!" Somebody shrieked. 

Hands grabbed Taehyung from behind - strong hands, many of them and dragged him backward. He dint resist as they pulled him off the alpha and pinned his arms behind his back and held him down.

Ahead of him the alpha lay motionless on the floor, his expensive suit soaked with blood and spilled whiskey.

But Taehyung wasn't looking at him.

He was looking at Hoseok.

The omega stood where the alpha had left him, his hands pressed flat against his stomach, his chest rising and falling and his eyes fixed on Taehyung.

Not the crowd. Not the fallen alpha. Not the chaos.

Only Taehyung.

The omega's gaze was unreadable, shock maybe? or fear, or something that looked almost like wonder but it didn't waver. Even as the guards dragged Taehyung toward the door, even as the room blurred past him in a smear of that room and smoke, Hoseok's eyes stayed on his.

The door slammed open. Cold air hit Taehyung's face sharp and sobering. The guards shoved him onto the wet pavement and he stumbled, caught himself, turned back towards the doorway but the door was already shut and the alpha was alone in the alley.

He stood there for a long moment, his knuckles bleeding, his chest heaving, his hair plastered to his forehead with sweat. The cold seeped through his coat and the adrenaline began to fade, leaving behind a bone deep exhaustion and this strange, buzzing lightness. He had hardly felt that ever.

He looked up at the sky, a sliver of moon hung overhead, had it always looked so beautiful? Quietly he laughed to himself and walked away. 

He went back the next night.

And the night after that.

And the night after that….

Taehyung told himself he was being careful. He changed his route each time, circling three blocks before ducking into the alley with the red lantern. He kept his collar up and his head down. He never stayed past the last song. But the truth…

The shameless, wonderful, impossible truth was that he had stopped caring about being careful the moment Hoseok's eyes had found his across that crowded room.

The gold under his mother's bed had become a ghost. He did think about it sometimes in the gray hours before dawn, when the city was quiet and his hiding places felt too small but the thought no longer carried weight. 

It was just a box. Just metal and minerals. It couldn't dance. It couldn't look at him with dark, unreadable eyes and make his chest feel like it was caving in.

He hadn’t called Jimin yet, he did wanna walk up to the phone booth and ring him but the gold could wait. Jimin could wait. The whole world could wait.

Hoseok was dancing.

_____

The first few nights, the omega barely looked at him.

Taehyung would stand in the shadows, his arms crossed and his body still, and watch. Hoseok would move across the floor awkward and stiff, his face still that careful blank mask and his gaze would sweep the room like a searchlight, passing over Taehyung without stopping. 

It was just a flicker. A near-miss interaction. Nothing more. Nothing special to an ordinary eye but Taehyung noticed the way Hoseok's steps would hesitate when he reached his side of the room. The way his shoulders would tense, just slightly, as if he could feel the weight of Taehyung's stare. The way his breath would catch a tiny hitch, invisible to anyone who wasn't watching as closely as he was.

On the fifth night, Hoseok's gaze landed on him directly and stayed.

It was just for a second. Just long enough for Taehyung's heart to stutter. The omega's eyes were the same as before, they weren’t warm nor cold, just present and then he looked away, back to the music, back to his dance.

He didn't sleep that night. He lay on the floor of an abandoned warehouse staring at the ceiling and replayed that single second of eye contact over and over until it lost all meaning and then gained a new one, brighter and more terrible than before.

On the seventh night, Hoseok smiled.

It was barely anything - a twitch at the corner of this mouth, it was there and gone so fast that Taehyung might have imagined it. But he hadn't imagined it. He couldn't have imagined it. The tiny mole above Hoseok's lip had lifted, just slightly, and the skin around his eyes had softened, and for one impossible moment, the omega had looked almost... happy.

Taehyung’s knees went weak. He had to brace his hand against the wall to stay upright. He couldn’t tell if it was the joint he smoked or the omegas smile or both, it was embarrassing.

By the tenth night, Hoseok had begun to change.

It was subtle, so subtle that Taehyung wondered if he really was crazy. The omega's shoulders were less hunched. His steps were less hesitant. When he moved his hips, there was a confidence that hadn't been there before, a knowingness that made the men in the room lean forward in their seats. It irked him slightly. 

But the biggest change was in his face.

The blank mask was cracking. Slowly, carefully, like ice thawing at the edges. Hoseok's mouth would twitch towards a smile even when he wasn't looking at anyone. His eyes would drift closed during the slow songs and he would sway like he was alone in the room, like the music was a private conversation between his body and the night.

And when he opened his eyes his gaze found Taehyung in the shadows and the mask fell away entirely.

It wasn’t anything great but it was something softer. Something that looked like recognition.

On the twelfth night, Taehyung walked into the club with blood still drying on his knuckles from a street fight he'd barely remembered getting into. His ribs ached. His lip was split again. He hadn't slept in two days, and the gold under his mother's bed had ceased to exist entirely. God why was he always a mess.

But those thoughts flew away like dust, because as soon as he pushed through the velvet curtain, he saw Hoseok and Hoseok was laughing.

Not the ghost of a smile. Not a twitch. A real, full, heart shaped laugh, wide and bright and so beautiful that Taehyung forgot how to breathe. His teeth were long and pearly, he’d never seen something so perfect. 

The omega was dancing to an uptempo number, his body loose and free, his arms lifted above his head, his hips swinging in a way that made the tight black trousers strain across his thighs. His brown hair bounced with the rhythm, falling into his eyes, and he tossed his head back to fling it away, laughing as he spun.

And in the middle of that spin, his eyes found Taehyung.

The laugh didn't fade. It widened.

Taehyung felt his heart crack open. Something hot and sweet spilled through the fissure, flooding through him entirely.

Hoseok held his gaze for three full seconds. Then he turned away, still smiling, still dancing, and Taehyung watched the muscles of his back move beneath the transparent white shirt and just stood still watching, maybe even grinning. 

Just then he noticed a man, very tall, taller than him. He stood near the edge of the dance floor apart from the other patrons, his posture rigid, his hands clasped behind his back. He wore a tailored suit so perfectly fitted that it must have cost more than the fucking club, why did these rich assholes come to places like these when they can afford the world? The man’s hair was slicked back from his forehead and his eyes were long and narrow, dragon like. 

He wore wire rimmed glasses and had a cigar smoldered between his fingers, the smoke curling upward in thin streams.

He was watching Hoseok, well everyone were but this man he wasn't blinking.

Taehyung felt something cold settle in his stomach and he crossed the room before he could talk himself out of it. His steps were light, almost casual and when he reached the tall alpha’s side he draped his arm over the man's shoulder like they were old friends.

"Don't look too hard, sir," he said with a grin, "That omega is mine."

The tall man didn't flinch.

He didn't move at all, in fact, he just turned his head slowly. His eyes met Taehyung's and for a long long moment neither of them spoke.

Then the tall man lifted his cigar to his lips and took a slow, deliberate drag. The tip glowed orange. Smoke curled from his nostrils, and as it cleared his mouth curved into a smile.

The smile transformed his face.

Deep dimples appeared in both cheeks, softening the sharp angles, making him look almost kind but then suddenly the smile vanished. The tall man raised one hand and pushed Taehyung's arm off his shoulder and simply walked away. A pussy. Warding off these rich bastards wasn’t so hard after all.

_________

He can’t tell for sure but it was probably a friday morning when he finally called Jimin, he had stopped counting days, watching Hoseok alone made his days go by faster.

"Hello"

"Finally." Jimin's voice was breathless, almost giddy. "I've been waiting for days you fucking idiot. Where the hell have you been?"

Taehyung leaned against the side of the booth, the cold glass pressing against his temple. "Admiring beauty. What's wrong?"

"Wrong? Nothing's wrong. Everything's right." Jimin laughed, a bright sharp sound that Taehyung hadn't heard in months. "Na Haein got arrested. His whole syndicate in fact ! They're going to prison for a long, long time, Taehyung. Decades and nobody is looking for you or the box!"

Taehyung’s breath caught.

"The box," he repeated. His voice sounded strange to his own ears. Distant. "The gold."

"It's ours. All of it. No one's coming for it. No one even knows it exists." Another laugh. "We're rich, you bastard. We're actually —"

Taehyung slammed the phone back onto the hook and ran.

He ran like the devil was at his heels. The fucking gold was his, all his and he could finally - Hoseok's face flashed through his mind and he ran faster.

He didn't know Hoseok. Not really. He'd never spoken a single word to him but that didn't matter. Nothing mattered except the image that had been blooming in his chest for the past two weeks: Hoseok dressed in something soft and clean, sitting across from him in a quiet restaurant, laughing at something Taehyung had said and him reaching across the table to touch his hand.

He rounded the corner and saw Jimin waiting on the steps of the blue building, his face split by a grin so wide it showed his crooked tooth. Jimin fell into step beside him, matching his pace and they ran together like they had when they were twelve years old.

"We've hit the jackpot," Jimin gasped, laughing. "Do you understand? Jackpot”.

Taehyung couldn't speak. He could only grin, wild and breathless and take the stairs two at a time.

His mother's door was unlocked.

That was the first wrong note.

Taehyung didn't notice it at first, or rather he noticed it but didn't register it, his mind too full of gold and Hoseok and the glorious shape of their future. He pushed the door open and stepped inside, Jimin close behind.

The room was empty.

Not different really, the same stained walls, the same flickering light, the same threadbare curtain over the window but it was very wrong. Very very wrong.. the cot was made, which his mother never did. The ashtray was empty, which it never was and most importantly the air smelled only of dust and old linen, not of jasmine.

Taehyung didn't pause. He dropped to his knees and slid under the bed.

His hands moved quickly, shoving aside the tins, the cardboard boxes, the yellowed newspapers. He reached for the spot where he'd hidden the gold.

His fingers touched bare floorboards.

"No."

He shoved more boxes aside, his movements turning frantic. The newspapers tore under his hands. He swept his arm through the entire space under the bed, from one end to the other and found nothing but dust and disappointment.

"No, no, no NO!"

He pulled himself out from under the bed and stood up so fast his vision went dark at the edges. Jimin was watching him, his grin gone, his face slowly arranging itself into something that looked like dread.

"It's not there," Taehyung said. His voice was flat. Hollow. "It's not there."

"Check again."

"I checked!" He grabbed the edge of the cot and threw it aside. The thin mattress flopping onto the floor. He kicked aside the rickety table. He tore the curtain from the window. He opened the tiny wardrobe and threw out his mother's few dresses, his hands shaking, his breath coming in short, sharp gasps.

Nothing.

The gold was gone.

He stood in the middle of the ruined room as his mind ran blank. It refused to let him think the thought that was pressing against it from the other side.

She wouldn't. She couldn't. His own mother.. 

But even as he thought it, he knew.

Jimin's voice was quiet. Careful. "Taehyung."

"Don't."

"Taehyung, listen to me-"

"Don't."

He walked out of the room then down the stairs. His footsteps were heavy, mechanical, like a machine that had forgotten how to feel. He didn't know where he was going. He didn't know what he was gonna do. He only knew that he couldn't stay in that room with its empty space under the bed and its smell of jasmine that was already fading.

Halfway downstairs, one of the doors opened and a woman stepped out. Taehyung recognized her face, if not her name. She had lived here for the longest and knew his mother well.

Leehi, he thought. Or something like that.

She looked up at him and grinned, a slow knowing grin that made something hot and ugly twist in Taehyung's stomach.

"Well, well," she said, brushing her hair. "If it isn't Nari's boy. You dint go with her handsome? She packed up and left two days ago. I’ve never seen her happier. Thought she’d take you along but well"

“Mind your business” Taehyung uttered in the lowest voice and quietly staggered backward and walked away. 

He should have felt betrayed or angry. He should have felt something, but all he felt was a vast hollow emptiness that was spreading through his chest like water through cracked ice.  

She was gone. 

In the evening Jimin and him cleared out his mother's room - the whorehouse needed it empty by morning and there was no one else to do it. They worked together in silence, pulling out the few things that remained - a cracked mirror, a hairbrush with her hairs still tangled in the bristles, a half empty bottle of cheap perfume that smelled of jasmine and lies. 

They sold what little had value to a pawnbroker who gave them barely enough for a meal. 

Then for one last time he lay down on his mother’s thin mattress while still wearing his shoes and coat. He pulled his arms across his chest like a corpse and stared at the water stain on the ceiling.

Don't think about her.

He thought about her.

Don't think about the gold.

He thought about the gold.

Don't think about…

He thought about Hoseok. And somewhere in the middle of that thought he rose and started walking. 

By the time Taehyung reached the club's alley, the night was already deep, the sky dark and cloudy. He walked with one hand in his pocket and the other holding his cigarette burning low between his lips, his mind already drifting toward the red velvet room and the omega who waited inside. He knew it was too late and they had probably shut down but he yet walked. 

He turned the corner towards the club and immediately stopped dead in his tracks.

The car ahead was black and long and so polished that it reflected the streetlights like some sheet of dark water. It was the kind of car that belonged to men who had never waited for a tram in the rain, never had to travel in crowds, the kind that never felt the discomfort of life. And standing beside it, one hand opening the passenger door, was that alpha with the glasses and the cigar from the club.

The rich alpha. The one with the dragon eyes and the dimples that had walked away, but he wasn’t what made him stop. 

That alpha was opening the door for someone.

Taehying’s blood went cold, then hot, then cold again.

No.

Hoseok slid into the front passenger seat of the car, his movements unhurried, almost tired. He wasn't wearing his club clothes - no almost transparent white shirt, no tight black trousers. Instead he wore a simple sweater, slightly too big for him, the sleeves falling past his wrists. His hair was softer without the stage lights and gel, falling across his forehead in gentle waves. He carried a large purse on his lap, clutching it with both hands like a shield.

He was beautiful, so beautiful that Taehyung's heart cracked open all over again cause he was getting into another man's car.

The cigarette fell from Taehyung's lips.

"HEY!"

He screamed, the words tore out of him, raw and furious, echoing off the alley walls. The alpha and Hoseok's heads turned towards him in union but Taehyung didn't wait to see their expressions. He was already sprinting.

He crossed the distance in seconds, his shoes slapping against the ground, his teeth clenchinh, his vision narrowed to a single point: the back of that fucking alpha's neck. 

He grabbed it. His fingers closed around his nape. He felt the expensive fabric of the man's collar, the warmth of his scent gland beneath and then he slammed the alpha's face to the bonnet of the car with a sound that was almost musical - a sharp crack of metal meeting flesh, followed by a grunt of surprise more than pain. 

Taehyung pinned him there, one hand on his neck and the other pressing his cheek against the cold black car. The alpha's glasses skewed sideways on his face.

Inside the car, through the front glass windshield, Hoseok watched.

Taehyung didn't look at him. Not yet. He instead leaned down until his mouth was inches from the alpha's ear.

"Mr. Bigshot," he said, his voice low and pleasant, almost friendly. "What's your name again?"

The alpha didn't struggle. His body was tense but still like an animal waiting to see if it needed to fight or flee. When he spoke, his voice was calm and unhurried

"Kim Namjoon."

Kim Namjoon. Taehyung filed the name away for later. Then he lifted the alpha's head - just enough to turn it, enough for them to look through the windshield at the omega sitting on the other side of the glass.

Hoseok's eyes were wide.

But not too wide. They were not the panicked frightened eyes of someone witnessing a crime. They were something else. The omega sat very still, his hands still clutching his purse, his body angled slightly toward the open window at his side. He was watching. Just watching. His face was mostly blank except the slight furrow in his eyebrows. There was no makeup, no stage lights, just the soft, bare reality of his features. He looked softer like this, younger this way Taehyung noticed. The sharp lines of his jaw seemed gentler and the mole above his lip seemed darker. 

Taehyung's heart ached, harder than he had when his mother ran away with his gold.

He turned back to Namjoon, still pressing him against the car.

"Mr. Kim Namjoon," he said with a smile. "Didn't I already tell you? This one is mine."

Namjoon didn't move. His voice, when it came, was quiet and precise, like a blade sliding into a sheath.

"You said that to me." A pause. The faintest hint of something like amusement colored his words. "Did you tell that to him lover boy?"

Taehyung's grip loosened immediately, he hadn't expected that. He hadn't expected the alpha to say anything at all, let alone something that made terrible sense.

He looked at Namjoon's face for a moment then he let go.

He stepped away from the alpha as if the man had suddenly become unimportant - which he had - and walked around to the passenger door and bent low at the window Hoseok sat at.

Hoseok’s face was close to him now, his expression hadn't changed much but something in his eyes had shifted. A softening at the edges. A question that he didn't ask.

"Get out of the car," Taehyung said. His voice came out soft, almost gentle. "Come out."

Hoseok didn't move.

He didn't reach for the door handle. He didn't shake his head. He just looked at Taehyung and then almost imperceptibly - his gaze shifted past towards Namjoon, who was straightening his jacket and adjusting his glasses. Probably even recovering from embarrassment.

Taehyung followed his gaze, then looked back at Hoseok. His chest tightened.

"What are you looking at that bastard for?" He tapped his palm with one finger. Once. Twice. "You're written here. Right here. You're written in my fate." He said with a smile, not his sharp smile but the smaller one. Something almost shy. 

"Now come out."

At that, Hoseok's eyebrows - which had been slightly furrowed as if in confusion or concern - slowly smoothed out. The crease between them disappeared and his face became something softer, something almost vulnerable. He didn't speak. He didn't move. But his expression changed, just a fraction and Taehyung felt that change like a hand reaching into his chest and squeezing.

He pressed on.

"Look." He leaned closer, looking him in the eyes. His voice dropped and became intimate, the kind of voice you used only for someone loved. 

"Today or tomorrow, we're gonna be together. You belong with me." He glanced back at Namjoon, who was now looking elsewhere and smoking. Then back at Hoseok. "And if you come out now, I'll let this pretentious big guy live a little longer yeah?"

He dint know why but then he laughed, it was hopeful and reckless and absolutely defeated.

"What do you think?"

Silence stretched between them, thick as honey. The city made its usual noises but Taehyung heard none of it. He heard only his own heartbeat and the soft sound of Hoseok's breathing.

The omega's lips parted just slightly and then they curved downwards while his eyes became softer and wide. The downturn barely moved the corners of his mouth. If Taehyung had blinked he would have missed it.

But he didn't blink.

He closely watched the softest rejection he had ever received in his life. The kind that said not now instead of never.

Taehyung stared at Hoseok, and his own smile grew wider. He didn't feel rejected somehow, he just felt seen.

Namjoon moved. He walked around the car, cigar smoke trailing behind him like a ghost. He didn't look at Taehyung. He opened the driver's door, slid into the seat and started the engine. The car purred to life.

Taehyung slowly stepped back from the window but Hoseok was still looking at him. The small downturn curve on his mouth had faded, but something of it remained in his eyes, a warmth, a curiosity, an apology. 

Namjoon put the car in gear and the black sedan pulled away from the curb, its tires whispering against the wet road. The car drove ahead but still, Hoseok looked back.

His head slightly poking out the window, his profile illuminating by the passing streetlights - the sharp line of his nose, the soft curve of his cheek, the dark fall of his hair. He was watching Taehyung recede into the distance.

Taehyung watched him back. Then, just before the car turned the corner and disappeared he raised his voice.

"THAT GUY HAS NOTHING TO OFFER!" he shouted into the night, his voice bouncing off the buildings, filling the alley and he dint care who got disturbed. 

"I'LL WAIT FOR YOU!"

The car paused at the corner for taking a turn just for a second. Just long enough and he saw Hoseok smiling wide. It was wide and bright. It lit up his whole face and made his eyes crinkle at the corners which made his eyes look like fishes.

Then the car turned, and he was gone. Taehyung stood in the empty alley, his chest heaving, his heart pounding. He was smiling so wide his face hurt.

____________

The underground fighting ring was packed that same night. This was probably the longest day of his life.

He stood in the center of the cage, blood dripping from a fresh cut above his eyebrow, his chest bare and slick with sweat. Across from him, his opponent - a thick necked alpha with a shaved head and dead eyes circled slowly, looking for an opening.

Taehyung didn't give him one.

The bell rang, and he moved.

He was faster tonight. Sharper. Every punch he threw landed with a precision that surprised even him. His body felt light, almost weightless, as if the loss of the gold had lifted something from his shoulders. He ducked a wild swing. He sidestepped a kick. He drove his fist into the other man's ribs.

The crowd was screaming, but Taehyung didn't hear them. The alpha lunged. Taehyung caught him by the wrist, twisted, and brought his elbow down on the back of his neck. The man crumpled. The referee counted to five and the crowd erupted.

Taehyung stood over his fallen opponent and grinned. Jimin was at the cage door, a cigarette burning between his fingers. His expression was hard to read, half concern, half awe.

Taehyung walked to the edge of the cage and spat a mouthful of blood onto the floor. He looked at Jimin, and his and his grin widened.

"The one last thing I had saved," he said, his voice rough but steady and bright "I gave it away tonight."

Jimin didn't ask what he meant. He just reached through the bars and handed Taehyung the cigarette. Taehyung took a long drag, the smoke filling his lungs, burning away the last of the numbness and exhaled slowly.

"Now come try taking anything from me," he screamed with a crazed laugh. "I'm not afraid anymore."

Later they walked back after his win, Jimin walked ahead, his shoulders hunched against the wind and his thumb moving across the crumpled bills in his hand. He didn't look up. He never looked up when he was counting.

"You're going to walk into a wall," Taehyung said, wiping blood from his split lip with the back of his hand.

"Then I'll count faster."

Taehyung laughed, a short breathless sound and followed his friend up the final flight of stairs. The door at the top was rusted shut, but Jimin threw his shoulder against it once, twice, and on the third try it groaned open onto the rooftop.

The city sprawled below them, a constellation of neon and shadow. The rooftop was littered with old antennae, broken furniture and the skeletal remains of a water tower. They'd been coming to this rooftop since they were seventeen.

Jimin settled onto the ledge, his legs dangling over the edge and resumed counting. Taehyung dropped down beside him, close enough that their shoulders brushed.

"He likes rich men with big cars,"

Jimin didn't look up. "Who?" he asked, his voice sounded interested but also not really.

"Hoseok." The name came out soft, almost reverent. "The omega. He gets into cars with men who are bigshots. I need a good car."

Jimin's thumb paused on a bill. Then he resumed counting. "Taemin, a friend of mine has a big garage in Yongsan. We could work there and even drive the cars for free.” 

Taehyung shook his head. "I cant work like a slave under someone."

Jimin finally stopped. He looked at Taehyung - really looked and sighed.

Taehyung snatched the money from his hand. The bills crumpled in his fist.

"Stop counting, we're gonna be counting bundles soon. Bundles so big we'll need a table."

Jimin pulleed out a cigarette, lit it and exhaled smoke toward the stars. "You've always been a dreamer."

"I wanna be big, Jimin." Taehyung leaned back on his hands and stared at the sky. "A real big shot. I'll have a huge car. That imported one where the engine growls when you press the pedal."

He lifted his hands, miming a steering wheel.

"Hoseok will come all dressed up. Nothing like that dirty club though, it’ll be something prettier and he'll smell like heaven. I'll open the door for him like a gentleman and he'll sit down beside me.” 

He grinned to himself, imagining every detail as he narrated further.

“I'll pull him close, scent him and drive fast. There’ll be wind in his hair and he’ll be laughing while I’ll hold onto him and drive into the sunset or whatever they do in those Hollywood movies."

He gripped the imaginary wheel tighter while Jimin took a long drag. The smoke curled from his lips and vanished.

"You don't even know him," he said quietly.

Taehyung turned his head. His eyes were bright, almost feverish. “I don’t, but what I do know is a plan.”

__________________________________

Taehyung stared at the bank while Jimin sat in the driver's seat, one hand on the wheel, the other hanging out the open window.

"Keep the engine on," Taehyung said.

Jimin didn't turn his head. “Try to not get caught or die, and just so you know I think this plan is bullshit and you’re a moron."

Taehyung nodded at the usual talk and opened the door, Jimin said all that and still showed up. The cold air hit his face, sharp and sobering. He looked back at his friend who was finally looking at him flat eyed, unimpressed, but not objecting. Jimin never objected. He just watched and waited and was right more often than Taehyung cared to admit, but well he had made his mind.

"Leave it running," Taehyung said again.

Jimin flicked ash out the window. "If I see cops, I'm gone."

"You wouldn't."

"Try me."

Taehyung grinned quick and sharp and closed the door. That bastard.

The bank was warm inside, too warm, the air thick with the smell of old paper and floor wax. A few customers stood in line, their heads bowed, their hands in their pockets. Taehyung's heart was a drum in his chest and his palms were damp. He shoved his hands into his coat pockets and forced his breathing to slow.

He had done this his entire life he told himself, convinced himself this was nothing but it wasn't nothing. This was different. This could put him in a prison cell or worse. This was the kind of risk that separated the street rats from the big shots, but he was too far gone now.

He slowly, almost casually reached the cash withdrawal line and stopped.

There, as if heaven intended, at the front of the line he spotted a man.

He was short - surprisingly short for an alpha. Fat too. The kind of fat that reeked of generational wealth. His suit was charcoal gray, exquisitely tailored which meant it was worth more than his ans Jimin’s life combined. His shoes were polished to a mirror shine and he wore a pair of dark sunglasses even indoor that hid his eyes.

Overall it was hard to miss that man’s presence but it was the bag he held that held Taehyung's attention.

It was a leather satchel, held open as the cashier counted out stacks of won and placed them inside. The man watched in silence, his head tilted slightly, as if he had all the time in the world.

The bank cashier loaded stack after stack until the bag was full. Almost overflowing. That fucking bastard surely had a lot of money.

He quietly watched as the cashier said something- to which the man nodded once while uttering a thank you, then closed the satchel and turned to leave.

He walked toward the exit with the unhurried gait of someone who had never been in a hurry in his life. His steps were steady. His breathing was calm. His sunglasses gave nothing away.

Perfect. This bastard was perfect. 

He immediately fell in step behind the man, close enough to smell his cologne - something rich and woody, expensive but not so close as to be noticed. His hand slipped into his pocket and found his handkerchief. White cotton, folded into a neat square.

Don't think. Just do.

As the man pushed through the bank glass doors, Taehyung followed. And soon as they were out Taehyung raised his hand and pressed the handkerchief against his index finger, wrapped it tight and extended his arm. The white fabric over his finger looked almost like the barrel of a pistol. Almost, he knew the risk but if it worked it worked. 

He pressed his fingers right against the man's back - exactly between the shoulder blades where the spine was most vulnerable.

The man stopped feeling the press.

"Don't look back," Taehyung said, and he pitched his voice low, harsh, the way he'd heard gangsters do in movies. "I've got a gun. One move and I'll shoot your guts off."

The man ahead didn't move, dint make a sound.

Taehyung's heart was pounding so hard he could feel it in his throat. He pressed the handkerchief coated finger harder against the man's back.

"Hand over the bag," he said. "Nice and slow. Don't make a scene and I’ll let you live."

Silence. Shit it wasn’t working.

Taehyung almost thought the man would run or scream but instead he turned around. 

Not slowly. Not carefully. He turned around the way a man turns when he's bored - a full, casual pivot, his weight shifting from one foot to the other, his free hand rising. And before Taehyung could react the man's thick fingers closed around the handkerchief and he plucked it from Taehyung's hand like a parent taking a toy from a child.

Taehyung stood frozen, his hand still extended, his bare finger still pointing at nothing. The handkerchief dangled from the man's grip. The man's sunglasses reflected Taehyung's own face back at him - pale, wide eyed, terrified.

The man didn't speak. He didn't shout for help nor did he call for the police. He just stood there holding the handkerchief, his expression hidden behind those dark lenses, and then his mouth curved just slightly into something that was almost a smile looking at Taehyung’s two pointed fingers.

Taehyung ran.

His legs carried him before his brain could catch up. He sprinted across the sidewalk, his coat flapping behind him, his lungs already burning. The car was twenty meters away. Fifteen. Ten.

Jimin was leaning against the driver's door, smoking, with the fucking engine off. That dumb bastard

"START THE FUCKING CAR!" He screamed loudly not caring anymore. He needed to be out of here.

Jimin's head snapped up. His eyes went wide and threw the cigarette aside and dove into the driver's seat fumbling with the keys. The engine coughed. Sputtered but dint catch.

Taehyung yanked open the passenger door and threw himself inside. "I told you to keep it on you fucker!"

"I told you the plan sucked!" Jimin twisted the key again. The engine growled, died, growled again.

"GO!"

"I'm trying —-“

The back door opened.

Both alphas froze.

The fat man slid into the back seat as if he'd been invited. He settled his weight in, adjusted his suit jacket and placed the leather satchel on the seat beside him. His sunglasses were still on and expression was still unreadable.

Taehyung's hand scrambled for the door handle. Who the fuck was this man. Jimin's hand scrambled for the keys but neither of them moved fast enough.

We're dead, Taehyung thought. We're so dead.

But before he could run again, the man surprisingly held his satchel full of cash towards him. Taehyung flinched expecting a gun, a knife, a pair of handcuffs. Instead…

"Here," he said. His voice calm and quiet. Almost gentle. "Have it."

Taehyung stared at the satchel full of money. Then at the man. Then at Jimin. Was this a joke? Did the police wanna play with them before they were thrown into prison?

Jimin beside him stared back. His face was pale, but his eyes were sharp and calculating, trying to understand.

The man didn't move. He just held the bag out, patient as a statue.

"Take it," he said again.

Slowly…very slowly Taehyung reached out and took the satchel. With slow fingers he opened it and saw the bills inside, they were crisp, new and very much real. He could smell them. That clean alkaline scent of fresh currency.

He looked at the man. "My own mother never gave me money." His voice came out rough, half joking, half genuine. "Who the fuck are you?"

The man removed his sunglasses.

His eyes were small and dark, set deep in a face that was round and unremarkable but there was something in them, a stillness, a watchfulness that made Taehyung's skin prickle. This was no ordinary man.

"Drive," the man said. He folded his hands over his thick stomach and settled deeper into the seat. 

Jimin looked at Taehyung. Taehyung looked at Jimin. Then Jimin turned the key and the engine somehow caught finally.

They drove in silence while the fat man gave directions in a low unhurried voice. Jimin drove with his eyes fixed on the road, his hands tight on the wheel. Taehyung sat in the passenger seat, the leather satchel heavy on his lap, his mind still reeling from what had just happened.

The buildings grew older as they traveled - less glass and neon, more brick and posh and at the end of a long quiet avenue, the car pulled to a stop.

The building was old. Huge, but old. A sign above the entrance read ‘Seoul Cafe’ in faded letters, the paint peeling, the metal frame rusted. The facade was gray with decades of exhaust and rain and the windows were dark as if the building were sleeping.

"This way," the man said, and walked through the door without looking back.

Taehyung followed. Jimin followed close behind.

Inside, the cafe was a time capsule. Old wooden booths lined the walls, their red vinyl seats cracked and faded. A long counter stretched across the back, its surface scarred by decades of coffee cups and cigarette burns. 

But the building was bigger than it looked from the street. Taehyung craned his neck, looking up at the higher floors visible through a central atrium. Floors and floors of empty space, dark windows and unused rooms. The place was a skeleton waiting for flesh.

The man led them past the counter, through a door marked Private. The walls here were newer - fresh paint, new light fixtures, the hum of an air conditioning unit. At the end of the hallway, he pushed open a heavy door.

The office was small but immaculate.

A mahogany desk dominated the center of the room, its surface bare except for a telephone, a fountain pen, and a single sheet of blank paper. Behind it, a tall leather chair gleamed under the soft glow of a brass lamp. The walls were paneled in dark wood and the floor was covered in a thick some sort of expensive rug that muffled their footsteps.

But it was the refrigerator that caught Taehyung's attention.

It stood in the corner, sleek and white and humming softly - a luxury he hardly seen so close in reach and for free. Beside it, an air conditioning unit hummed in the window, pushing out cool, clean air that smelled of nothing at all, just wealth.

Taehyung had never been in a room with air conditioning before. He had never stood on some insane rug. He had never seen a refrigerator that wasn't shared by an entire building.

He walked to it without thinking and pulled open the door. Cold air rushed out, raising goosebumps on his arms. Inside, rows of glass bottles glistened with condensation - water, soda and then something that looked like expensive juice. He grabbed a bottle of water, twisted off the cap and took a long drink. The water was so cold it hurt his teeth.

He turned back to the man, who had settled into the leather chair behind the desk. The chair sighed under his weight. His glasses glinted in the lamplight.

"Sir," he began, gesturing with the water bottle. "Is this all yours? This building?"

The man folded his hands on the desk. "Bought it recently. We're going to break it down and build something better."

Taehyung looked around again, at the empty floors visible through a dusty window then at the staircase leading up into darkness. "You're clearly some bigshot"

The elders eyes didn't change. They were small and dark and still, like a snake's before it strikes.

"Do you want to be a bigshot, son?" He paused. "What's your name?"

Taehyung set the water bottle on the counter and straightened his shoulders.

"Kim Taehyung."

At that the man hummed a low, thoughtful sound. "Bang Si-hyuk," he said, and extended his thick hand across the desk.

Taehyung stepped forward. He looked at the hand, thick, pale, the nails clean and trimmed and then at the face above it. The face that had caught him robbing a bank and had given him the money anyway. The face that had brought him here to this cold, quiet room, instead of handing him over to the police.

He took the hand. The grip was firm, dry, and brief.

"If you do what I say," Bang Si-hyuk said, releasing his hand and leaning back in his chair, "you'll be one, Kim Taehyung."

"Earlier when I saw you at the bank today, I thought you were incredibly stupid." He pulled out a cigar - thick and dark and sniffed it before placing it between his lips. "But daring. I like daring." He lit the cigar with a silver lighter. Smoke curled toward the ceiling. 

"I thought I could use you."

Taehyung snorted at that. The sound was sharp, involuntary. He knew that already in the back of his mind.

"Everyone's used me my entire life," he said in that bored tone. "Heck even my own mother" He then sat down into one of the empty chairs, spreading his arms along the armrests. 

"Everyone tells me I'm going to die broke right here on the streets. They tell me I’m a dreamer, that I’m delusional, and fuck maybe I am but that’s because I want everything. I want it all" His voice then dropped, became quieter, harder. "So go ahead and use me. But it should be done fairly. I get what I want. You get what you want."

Si-hyuk didn't react, his small eyes watched Taehyung through the haze.

"There are few men I need to overthrow" 

Taehyung nodded slowly. "And I'll help you do that." He tilted his head, his gaze sharp, making sure bang Sihyuk knew he meant business. "But you ain't my owner. And I'm not your slave. There's a price for everything."

Silence.

The refrigerator hummed. The air conditioner clicked. Somewhere in the building, a pipe groaned.

Then Bang Si-hyuk smiled.

It didn't reach his eyes - not quite - but it transformed him. Made him look almost grandfatherly. Almost warm and then he extended his hand again.

Taehyung glanced at Jimin, just a flicker, just a heartbeat. Jimin's face was unreadable but the corner of his mouth twitched. A tiny grin. An acknowledgment.

We're in this together.

Taehyung looked back, reached out and shook it.

___________________________________

Taehyung knew it wasn't going to be easy.

With the wealth Bang Si-hyuk possessed, he was bound to have enemies and with enemies came dirt - dirt that a man like Si-hyuk would want to collect. Dirt he'd want to clean up.

Firstly the mayor was a problem.

Si-hyuk had been trying to negotiate terms for his new business ventures - a string of clubs, some real estate, a few import deals that required city approval. The mayor, a stout alpha with a reputation for incorruptibility had refused every offer. Money didn't move him. Threats didn't move him. He was a wall that wouldn't break.

So Si-hyuk found another way.

"Everyone has a weakness," he had told Taehyung, 

“His is the same as most men's. He just hides it better." 

The house was in the hills, a traditional building with a tiled roof and a garden that smelled of pine. Taehyung and Jimin had been waiting for hours, crouched behind a hedge, their legs numb, their breath fogging in the cold night air.

Taehyung held the camera. His finger rested on the shutter. He had practiced using a night before and turns out he was a gifted photographer.

They had waited there for too many hours that it almost felt like a day. Patience, he told himself. Patience.

And then, finally, a light flickered on in the room ahead. In the correct room where they’d have the best shot.

The window was old but easy to see through from the right angle. Taehyung immediately raised the camera as two silhouettes appeared behind the glass. One short and slender - an omega.  The other broad and stiff - the mayor.

They didn't speak. They didn't need to.

The omega's hands found the mayor's chest, pushing his jacket off his shoulders. The mayor stood still for a moment - hesitating, perhaps thinking of his wife and kids - but then his arms wrapped around her waist, and his mouth found her neck.

Click.

Taehyung lowered the camera. It was too early, it was not enough so he waited and watched.

The omega in the room knew what she was doing. Every movement was deliberate, choreographed, the tilt of her head, the arch of her back, the way she stepped backward toward the window, drawing the mayor into the light. Her eyes flickered toward the hedge. Toward Taehyung. A brief, sharp glance as if scolding them to be ready.

As Taehyung looked closer, his eyes widened as he recognized the omega. He immediately looked and Jimin and his friend was already looking at him in the same shock. They both exchanged shocked glances but immediately got back to work.

Ahead, the mayor drunk on lust noticed nothing. He pulled at the omega's top, the soft silk slipped from her shoulders and pooled at her feet. Her breasts were bare now, pale in the dim light. The mayor bent his head and took one nipple in his mouth, sucking on it like a hungry child while his hands gripped her hips.

Now.

Taehyung pressed the shutter.

The flash was brief - a single blinding pulse but it was enough. In the shot the mayor's face was frozen- lips latched onto the omega's breast, eyes half closed, cheeks flushed with desire. When the flash went off Taehyung was already running.

He didn't look back. Jimin was ahead of him vaulting over the garden wall and Taehyung followed, his heart pounding, his grin splitting his face in the dark. That mayor of Seoul had just posed for his death warrant.

They ran until the hills gave way to streets and the streets gave way to the city and the city swallowed them whole.

When they finally stopped, leaning against a brick wall, gasping for air, Jimin looked at Taehyung.

"That was bang Sihyuk’s wife!"

"That was his wife."

Jimin shook his head in disbelief. "Cold bastard."

Taehyung looked down at the camera in his hands. The image was trapped inside, waiting to be developed - that negative waiting to become a leash around the mayor's throat.

"We're cold bastards too, now," 

__

The second task was when he knew things got real. 

The minister was already dead when they picked him up.

Taehyung didn't know how Si-hyuk had killed him. He didn't ask because it dint matter. The body was wrapped in a tarp, loaded into the trunk of a borrowed car. The smell was already beginning to bloom - sour and foul. Taehyung had driven while Jimin sat in the passenger seat, his window rolled down, his face turned away from the back of the car. 

They drove to the edge of the city towards a bridge, it was old, unused and suspended just above the river in its deepest parts.

Taehyung parked the car and killed the engine. The silence was immense as he opened the trunk.

The tarp had shifted during the drive and one of the minister's hands had slipped free - pale white, bloated, the fingers curled like he’d wake up any second, however the smell hit Taehyung's face like a wall. He stepped back, gagging, his eyes watering.

Behind him, Jimin stood at a distance, a cigarette already burning between his fingers. He wasn't looking at the body. He was looking at the river, Taehyung knew his friend dint agree to this but had got himself to.

This was hard and dirty but this is what it takes, he thought. This is what it takes to get to the top.

He had known somewhere deep down that it would come to this. You didn't work for a man like Bang Si-hyuk without getting blood on your hands. You didn't rise through the ranks of Seoul's society by keeping your conscience clean.

But knowing and really knowing were different things. Jimin wasn’t coping well with it but he had to. 

Taehyung pulled the tarp open.

The minister's face was gray, his eyes half open and his mouth slack. He had been a handsome man once- strong jaw, thick hair, the kind of alpha who commanded rooms. Now he was just meat. Just a problem to be disposed of.

Don't think. Just do.

Taehyung reached for the knife in his belt.

Bang Si-hyuk had trained him earlier that day, in the empty basement of the Seoul Cafe.

"You can't just dump a body in the water," Si-hyuk had said, standing over a slab of pork he'd bought from the market. "It bloats. Fills with gas then floats to the surface within days. You want it to sink. You want it to stay sunk."

He had handed Taehyung a knife - long, curved, sharp enough to split hair.

"You make holes. Here, here, and here." He had tapped the pork with his finger. "The chest. The abdomen. The thighs. They have to be deep incisions all the way through the muscle. The gas will then escape and the body will sink like a stone."

Taehyung had practiced on the pork. Slice. Slice. Slice. The meat had parted under the blade like butter.

But pork wasn't a man. Pork didn't have a face. Now, standing over the minister's body, Taehyung gripped the knife and lowered himself to his knees.

Don't think. Just do.

He made the first incision in the chest.

The skin resisted - tougher than pork, more elastic. He pushed harder and the blade sank in and a dark thick liquid oozed out around the metal. It wasn't blood anymore. It was something else. Something that smelled of rot and iron and the end of everything.

Taehyung's stomach heaved. He swallowed the bile rising in his throat.

Don't think. Don't think. Don't think.

He made the second incision. The third. He moved to the abdomen, the knife sliding through flesh that had lost all fight. The smell was worse here, the organs had begun to liquefy and the blade came out coated in something that looked like jam. 

Jimin was still smoking, still not looking.

Taehyung's hands were shaking, his vision blurred but he didn't stop. He made several incisions in the thighs, deep and long and then he sat back on his heels and made some elsewhere. He doesn’t even remember. 

Once done he wrapped the body in a new tarp - thick waterproof and weighted with stones he had collected from the riverbank. He tied the ends with rope, pulling the knots tight, tighter, until his fingers hurt.

Then he dragged the body to the edge of the bridge. For a moment, he just stood there, his hands on the tarp, looking down at the water and then finally he pushed.

The body hit the water with a dull splash, quieter than he'd expected. It sank quickly, the tarp disappearing into the darkness and the stones pulling it down, down, down.

Within seconds, the river was smooth again, as if nothing had happened.

Taehyung stood at the railing for a long time, staring at the spot where the body had vanished. Jimin after a while  walked up beside him and held out a cigarette.

Taehyung took it and Jimin quietly lit it for him.

They didn't speak.

____________________________

Bang Si-hyuk seemed very pleased with Taehyung and Jimin. The proof came a week after the mayor's photographs had been developed into negatives.

Si-hyuk called them into his office. He was sitting behind his desk, the telephone receiver in his hand, a rare look of triumph softening the hard lines of his face. He hung up without a word and gestured for them to sit.

"The mayor," he said, lighting a cigar. "He approved the demolition this morning and signed the papers an hour ago. The Seoul Cafe will be rubble by the end of the month."

Taehyung leaned back in his chair, a slow grin spreading across his face. Jimin, standing by the door, allowed himself a small nod.

"That's good, sir" Taehyung said simply.

"That's power," Si-hyuk corrected. He drew on his cigar, the tip glowing orange. "Do you know the difference between a businessman and a king?"

Taehyung shrugged. "One wears a crown? I don’t know"

"A businessman works within the law. A king makes the law work for him." Si-hyuk tapped ash into a crystal tray. "The mayor is my law now. And when the law bends, money flows."

He then stood up - a rare occurrence - and walked to the window. The empty floors of the Seoul Cafe stretched out beyond the glass, dark and waiting.

"Seoul is my land of miracles, Taehyung. The miracles it gives me they're more than any bank could ever store.”

“But money like mine needs to be washed. Scrubbed clean. Given a new face." He turned back to face them. "For that, I need a place. A place where whiskey and omegas flow and dance while we talk shop. An exclusive gentleman's club. Do you understand?"

Taehyung stared at him. The words washed over him, that man spoke too fast and in English sometimes.

"I'd have been a billionaire if I knew a lick of what you're blabbering."

Jimin made a small sound, almost a laugh and quickly suppressed it.

Si-hyuk didn't laugh. But his eyes crinkled at the corners and he removed his sunglasses - the same dark lenses he'd worn the day they met and began to wipe them with a soft cloth. The gesture was slow, methodical, almost meditative.

"You wanna be a bigshot, right?" he said, not looking up. "I'll make you one."

He finished cleaning the left lens and held the glasses up to the light, examining them, nodding to himself.

Then he extended them toward Taehyung.

"I'll own the club on paper," he said. "But you'll be the face. You'll run Seoul House. Taehyung you are going to manage and operate an upcoming club that will change your life and mine."

Taehyung looked at the sunglasses. They seemed to float in the air between them, it was like an offering, a challenge, a crown of a different kind.

He reached out. Took them. Slid them onto his face. They definitely looked better on him.

The world went dark for a moment, tinted, and then refocused. Through the lenses, Si-hyuk's office looked different - sharper, cooler, more dangerous.

But Taehyung only grinned.

"I'm ready, sir."

______

The days that followed blurred into weeks.

The Seoul Cafe came down in a cloud of dust and shouting - wrecking balls were swinging, beams were groaning and there were walls crumbling into piles. 

Taehyung stood at the construction site every morning, a clipboard in his hand, his sunglasses shielding his eyes from the sun and the workers' curious stares. He learned the names of foremen, the rhythms of cement mixers, the language of blueprints and load bearing walls.

He learned, too, that Bang Si-hyuk's dirty work never stopped.

Between overseeing renovations, he ran errands that left stains on his hands. A delivery to a warehouse in Incheon. A message delivered to a banker who owed Si-hyuk a debt. A late night meeting with a man whose name Taehyung never learned because the man was dead by morning.

This is what it takes, Taehyung reminded himself every time his stomach turned. This is the price. He was getting things fast and this was what it took.

At  night, when the construction site fell silent and the workers went home, Taehyung thought of Hoseok.

He thought of the omega's face - the mole above the lip, the dark eyes that had looked at him through a car window and smiled. He thought of the way Hoseok had danced, awkward at first and then free, his body finding a rhythm that belonged only to him. He thought of the small, almost invisible curve of rejection that had been the softest he'd ever received.

Not yet, he told himself. Not just yet….

Every evening, as the sun bled orange and red over the city, Taehyung found himself reaching for his car keys. The car was a gift from Si-hyuk - a sleek red sedan, German-made, with leather seats that still smelled new and an engine that purred like a satisfied cat. It sat in the garage of his new apartment, a building in a clean part of the city where the neighbors didn't know his name and didn't want to. They would soon though. 

The apartment itself was a miracle - heated floors, a refrigerator that made ice, a bed so large and soft that Taehyung had lain on it for an hour the first night, just staring at the ceiling unable to believe it was his.

Jimin had an apartment two floors down. They had keys to each other's doors.

Everything was changing. Everything was rising.

But it wasn't enough. Not yet.

Not until he had Hoseok. 

Taehyung would stand in his living room, the keys to the sedan in his hand and picture the route to the club - the red lantern with the velvet curtains, the stage where Hoseok danced for hungry alphas who didn't deserve to breathe the same air as him. Those rich bastards who probably just thought of him as some piece of meat. He would not. All he wanted was to be capable enough for Hoseok. 

He would picture himself walking through that door with his new clothes, his new car, his new fate of running Seoul house. 

So he waited.

He went to the construction site and ran Si-hyuk's errands, then he sat in his apartment every night, the city lights spilling through his windows and thought of Hoseok's smile.

Soon, he promised himself. Soon. 

It took three months. Ninety two days of dust and steel and sleeplessness to watch a skeleton become a palace. Finally, Seoul House was ready.

Taehyung stood in the center of the main hall and turned slowly, taking it all in. The club was nothing short of magnificent, it looked like a monument to excess, a cathedral of sin. 

Gold leaf gleamed from every cornice, catching the light of a hundred crystal chandeliers. The floors were polished marble, black and white, arranged in a geometric pattern that seemed to shift as you walked, he had got the idea from a movie he watched at the theatre. The walls were paneled in dark velvet, rich as spilled wine and the stage was a grand crescent of polished oak, large enough for a dozen dancers, ringed by footlights that hadn't yet been lit. 

Huge round tables dotted the floor, each one draped in white linen and set with silverware that hadn't been touched by any hands, and at every end of the room was a bar - three of them in total that stood ready, their shelves lined with bottles that caught the light like jewels.

Taehyung had never seen anything like it. He had never imagined anything like it but it was his. His to run. His to command.

Bang Si-hyuk walked beside him, a cigar trailing smoke in his wake, his round face split by a rare, genuine grin. He had finished his inspection an hour ago - the kitchens, the private rooms upstairs, the security office in the basement. The staff had been hired and their uniforms fitted along with their schedules drawn. Cooks were hired from France and the bartenders from Spain. Guards at the doors were built like mountains while the background dancers had legs that seemed to go on forever. There were even theatre actors for the little plays Si-hyuk liked to play between sets. 

There were alphas, betas and omegas of every description all of them under Taehyung's command.

Si-hyuk stopped beside him and placed his thick hand on his back and patted twice - firm and approving.

"You've done a great job," the old alpha said. 

"We'll be opening this weekend. All the biggest personalities, the richest bastards in Seoul. They're going to be here, Taehyung and you're going to serve them. Fulfill their needs. Keep them happy. While I sit in my booth at the side like a ghost and talk business for the benefit of both."

He turned to look at Taehyung, his small eyes unreadable behind the dark lenses. "Hope you're ready."

"Don't you worry," he said. "I am"

Si-hyuk nodded at the firm reply and began to walk away. But after a few steps he stopped and turned back.

"I noticed" he uttered, his voice low and curious. "Everyone's hired except a lead dancer. The star of the stage." He raised an eyebrow. "Any particular reason?"

Taehyung took a long, slow drag of his cigarette. The smoke filled his lungs and he exhaled. He smiled, the smile that had nothing to do with filthy Si-hyuk and everything to do with the image burning behind his eyes.

"I have it sorted, I have someone in mind. Someone who'll light up the club."

Si-hyuk was silent for a moment. Then his mouth curved slowly.

"Surely," he uttered and then he was gone, his footsteps fading down the marble hallway, swallowed by the vastness of Seoul House.

Taehyung stood alone in the grand hall, his cigarette burning between his fingers and allowed himself to imagine it.

Hoseok on that stage. Moving to the music without fear, he’d be a star overnight, the entire Seoul would know his name and he would be there right beside him.

He crushed his cigarette into a nearby ashtray and walked out of Seoul House, already planning as he knew it was time, finally the time had come.. 

The sun was setting when he returned to his apartment. After a long shower he stood before the mirror in his bedroom, his reflection staring back at him - but it wasn't the old reflection, he was a new man. Nothing had really changed about him internally and he knew, but right now he was a man with a new suit, a grey one, tailored to his shoulders and tapered at the waist. 

Right now he was a man with a new watch who’s bands made of leather were so soft it felt like skin, he was man with clean shaven cheeks and hair slicked back from his forehead in that neat, Hollywood way he'd seen in magazines.

This is exactly who had dreamed to become his entire life and it was true now. Except it wasn’t complete, not without hoseok. 

As he watched himself his door creaked open and Jimin walked in without knocking as he always did, a cigarette in one hand while his other hand held a bouquet of roses - deep red, velvety, tied with a black ribbon. He tossed them onto the bed like they weighed nothing.

"Here's the best I could find" 

Taehyung turned from the mirror at the reflection of the roses. His grin was so wide it almost hurt.

"That's fucking perfect" 

Jimin dropped into an armchair, crossing his legs, watching Taehyung with curious eyes. He took a drag of his cigarette and said nothing as Taehyung turned back to the mirror, fussing with his hair, adjusting his tie, checking his cuffs. Everything just had to be perfect. 

After a long silence, Jimin spoke.

"I saw the new red car parked downstairs. The imported one. The drop top new model." He paused. "You bought it?"

Taehyung didn't look away from the mirror. He was adjusting his tie for the fourth time, his fingers trembling slightly in anxiety.

"Yeah," he answered unfazed. "It’s one of Bang Si-hyuk hyung's. He gave it to me."

Jimin laughed a short dry sound. "That bastard has so many, he hardly cares." He then took another drag and exhaled. 

"So a new car, a new suit and a clean shave. Have I ever seen you so clean? Then you’ve got these big fat fucking roses." His voice was casual, but his eyes were sharp. "Where are you off to exactly?"

Taehyung finished with his tie finally, he somewhat looked perfect. He turned and picked up the roses from the bed and sprayed a fine mist of cologne over the petals. Then he moved toward the door, his steps quick, almost skipping.

Just before he left, he looked back at Jimin and winked.

"Hoseok."

And then he was gone, the door swinging shut, behind him he heard Jimin's voice, faint and exasperated.

"I still don't know who the fuck Hoseok is."

__________

The drive to the club felt like forever. 

Taehyung's hands gripped the steering wheel not from nervousness, but from the effort of containing himself. He was finally gonna see Hoseok after months, different thought almost had him spiralling anxiously.

Would he come right away? h wondered… Or has it been too long? He hadn't visited the club in three months. Three months of construction and dirty work and waiting. Three months of telling himself soon, soon, soon.

What if he's forgotten him?

The thought was a cold blade between his ribs.

After all, he was probably just another admirer. Just another alpha staring at him from the shadows. Moreover that bastard Namjoon he probably took Hoseok home a few more times. Probably bought him things. He probably..

Taehyung pressed the accelerator harder and the car surged forward.

It doesn't matter now he told himself. None of it mattered. He was here and he was different. If Hoseok hadn’t remembered him he would remember now.

He parked the car in front of the club in a jiffy. The red lantern still hung above the door swaying gently in the evening breeze. Outside hung the same faded poster with the same cracked pavement.

But Taehyung was not the same.

He stepped out of the car, roses in hand, and walked through the entrance.

The change in the room was immediate.

Heads turned and conversations stuttered. The same alphas who had once pushed past him andlooked down at his worn coat and his scuffed boots now shrank back against the walls, their eyes wide, their mouths snapping shut. They didn't recognize him he knew, of course they wouldn’t but they recognized the suit, the watch and the same attitude he carried. 

He had often heard money changed people, and fuck it was true, everyone around him really did change, he couldn’t help but grin at his fate. Taehyung walked past them without a glance. His eyes were fixed on the velvet curtain at the back of the room.

He's in there. And when the curtain opens.. he couldn’t wait.

He found his spot against the wall, the same spot he'd stood every time before, where Hoseok eyed would shyly search for him before reverting elsewhere. 

The band was playing a slow, aching number, the trumpet weeping. It was almost perfect and finally the lights dimmed and the crowd leaned forward.

The curtain rose.

And Taehyung's heart stopped, but all for the wrong reasons.

There was an omega on the stage, but it was not Hoseok.

She was pretty, her body moving with practiced sensuality but she was wrong. Her smile was too wide. Her eyes were too hard and she didn't stumble, didn't hesitate, didn't dance like she was learning a language she'd forgotten. 

She was a professional. A replacement.

Taehyung's hands tightened around the roses, gripping it so tight they could burst open.

He waited until the song ended then he pushed off from the wall and walked to the front reception, where the manager - a thin beta with nervous eyes stood behind a podium.

"Where's Hoseok?" Taehyung's voice was flat. Controlled. The alpha in his chest roared "The other dancer."

The manager looked him up and down. The suit. The watch. The roses. His eyes flickered with calculation and then with something that looked like greed and fear all together.

"Sir," he announced, with an awkward laugh, "there are so many of them. Point a finger and that omega is yours. Any one you want."

Taehyung's hand shot out and closed around the manager's collar, twisting the fabric and yanking the man forward until their faces were inches apart. The manager's eyes went wide and his mouth flew opened but no sound came out.

"I asked you a fucking question," Taehyung spat. His voice was low and cold, it almost wasn’t his. "Answer it."

The manager's hands flew up grasping at his wrist, trying to pry himself free. "He - he left! A month ago! He wasn't from Seoul and didn't have a fixed place - I don't know where he lives! I don't know anything else! Please-" 

Taehyung held him for a moment longer. Then with a shove that sent the manager stumbling into the podium he released him and walked out of the club, the roses still in his hand, their petals crushed.

_______

The month that followed that was the longest of Taehyung's life, and the most dreadful. 

Seoul House opened to a frenzy as expected. The invitations had been sent to every name that mattered - actors with caked up faces plastered on billboards, musicians whose voices poured from every radio, businessmen who owned entire city blocks and of course politicians whose hands shook other hands in darkened rooms. 

They came in and their luxury cars lined their parking lot, they filled in their pockets while their jewels caught the clubs light and their laughter echoed off the gold leafed walls. 

Taehyung stood at the center of the club every night, his suit pressed, his black thick hair slicked back and his smile fixed in place. He shook hands with men who he hadn’t even met before, big names and personalities. He accepted compliments from women who wouldn’t glance twice at him if they had seen him three months prior. He poured whiskey for alphas who had big secrete and even bigger pockets. The press with their big cameras gathered almost everyday to catch a glimpse of all the celebrities entering and exiting his club.

Si-hyuk called him the face of Seoul house, the man who climbed from the gutter to the gold.

Taehyung knew better. Behind the kind words, behind the crystal chandeliers and the marble floors were the private booths where Si-hyuk conducted his business - sending in booze, drugs and omegas to keep the corrupt men pliant. 

Taehyung dint really care all that much about it. This was all he had ever wanted, but now, most of the time he felt more like a shell. A man going through the motions while his heart beat somewhere else.

He had looked for Hoseok every day.

He had people looking - a network of informants, taxi drivers, street kids who owed him favors. He paid them enteirly in cash and not promises, gave them descriptions and sent them into every corner of the city. ‘A dancer. Brown hair. Honey skin. A mole above his lip. The most beautiful omega he had seen.’

But week after week the reports came back empty. 

Taehyung lay awake at night staring at the ceiling of his apartment and wished he had gone to the club sooner. Wished he hadn't waited for Seoul House to be finished. He just so strongly wished he had driven that borrowed car from Taemin, in that cheap suit, with those crushed roses, and claimed Hoseok before the omega had a chance to disappear.

And if he were to never see him again.. he couldn't finish the thought. It was a door he refused to open.

_______ 

Amongst everything else, the club still lacked a main dancer.

Every morning, Taehyung walked through the lobby of Seoul house to find a crowd of omegas gathered at the reception - young, beautiful and eager. They sat in the waiting chairs with their legs crossed and their lips painted. Their eyes followed him as he passed by as if sizing up meat. Some of them winked while some of them called out to him. The other stood a little straighter when he walked by, hoping to catch his attention.

Taehyung ignored them all.

He had made sure the auditions were entirely Jimin's responsibility now. He couldn't bear to watch the stage that he had built for Hoseok become someone else’s. At first he had strongly refused to let another omega step onto it, to let another dancer claim the spotlight that belonged to Hoseok.

“He'll come” Taehyung told Jimin, even as the days blurred into weeks. He had to, but the hope was growing thin and was worn down by the silence, by the empty reports, by the faces of omegas who weren't his.

The shareholders' meeting was a necessary evil.

Taehyung sat at a long marble table in a conference room that smelled of old leather and older money. It really stank to him. Around him, three men - Si-hyuk's associates, his closest allies droned on about profit margins and operational costs and quarterly projections. Their voices were a dull hum like bees trapped behind glass. It was annoying and grating to his ears.

Taehyung understood none of it. He didn't care to. He had gotten where he was not through spreadsheets and boardroom politics, but through blood and grit and the willingness to do what others wouldn't. These men - these rich bastards, had inherited their positions from fathers who had inherited from their fathers. Taehyung had built himself from nothing and yet here he sat, pretending to understand words like liquidity and divestment, because Si-hyuk had insisted.

“You're the face” the old alpha had said. “You need to look the part.”

So Taehyung looked. He nodded when the others nodded and frowned when the others frowned. When the meeting finally ended he walked out of the conference room with Jimin at his side, already forgetting everything he'd heard.

Jimin talked as they walked to the car. Something about the pretentiousness of the shareholders and the way one of them had looked at his watch every five minutes. Well he did that too, it was hard not to. 

Taehyung nodded to every word his friend uttered and said nothing.

They drove back to Seoul House as the evening began to settle over the city, the sky streaked with orange and purple. The parking lot was undergoing minor construction, they were building a new entrance, wider and more grand. So Jimin parked the car a short distance away and they walked the rest of the way.

The street was quiet. Their footsteps echoed off the buildings.

Jimin was still talking.

"and did you see the way that runt Kim kept adjusting his glasses? Like he was trying to look intelligent. I swear, if I have to sit through another meeting where they talk about synergy I'm going to-" He glanced at Taehyung. "God, are you even listening? Or are you still sulking over that imaginary omega?"

Taehyung kicked a stone. It skittered across the pavement and disappeared into a drain.

"Don't," he whispered irritated.

Imaginary. The word stung more than it should have. Sometimes in the dark hours before dawn he wondered if Hoseok had been imaginary. A dream he'd dreamed and a face his starving heart had conjured to keep him going. The memory of that smile through the car window.. had it been real? Had any of it been real? It would definitely hurt less if he wasn’t real. An imaginary omega couldn't reject you, an unreal omega couldn't disappear.

Jimin, oblivious to the war inside him lit a cigarette and spoke in that casual needling voice he used when he wanted something.

"Speaking of omegas," he began, exhaling smoke, "you need to stop rejecting the ones I select for that lead dancer position. We have to fill it you know? We can't keep delaying it for - what's his name again? Your omega.”

They reached the glass doors of Seoul House. The butler - a tall beta in a crisp uniform pulled them open with a bow of respect, and they stepped inside, his hands in his pockets, his expression bored and annoyed. Jimin struck his nerves sometimes, he wasn’t making it any easier.

Jimin however followed, still yapping. "We have auditions every day. Good omegas. Talented omegas who would kill for that spot but you just—-"

Taehyung stopped.

Not slowly, he stopped mid-stride and his body froze as if someone had poured ice into his veins.

The world around him dissolved. The voices - Jimin's, the receptionist's, the distant hum of the band warming up all of it faded into a muffled roar, like sound underwater. He felt the air thickened and his heart - his stupid, reckless, hopeless heart began to pound so hard he could feel it in his throat, his temples, heck even in his fingertips.

Because ahead of him, in the lobby, in one of those waiting chairs he despised, sat an omega.

The lobby was nearly empty at this hour, the evening crowd had not yet arrived and the morning auditions had long since ended. But this omega sat alone in plain clothes late into the evening, his hands folded over that worn large purse, his posture straight and his eyes cast down at the floor. Waiting.

Taehyung's breath left his body.

Hoseok.

Then as if the omega heard him like there was some strange string attached between them, he looked looked up.

Their eyes met.

He looked tired, there were faint shadows beneath his eyes but still he glowed like some candle in a dark room, and Taehyung was drowning just looking at him.

Hoseok's eyes widened when he saw the alpha and immediately stood up from the chair. His purse hung from his hand, the worn leather brushing against his thighs.

Taehyung immediately recognized and the surprise in his eyes, the flicker of something that might have been disbelief. Those dark eyes grew larger, their depths catching the light and for a moment Hoseok looked exactly as he had that first night on the stage - frozen, uncertain, unsure of what was happening.

Time really fractured as they looked at each other. The lobby, the club, all of it fell away until there was nothing but the space between them, a distance of maybe twenty feet and the weight of everything Taehyung had felt for the past four months pressing down on his chest.

Then, slowly.. so slowly Taehyung watched in real time what his heart had been aching to see for months.

The tension in Hoseok’s shoulders eased and the furrow between his brows smoothed. His lips, which had been pressed together in a thin line, parted slightly, as if he wanted to speak but had forgotten now. It melted away.

It was the only word Taehyung could think of. Hoseok melted. His hard edges softening, his guarded eyes opening and his whole body relaxing into something warm and vulnerable and achingly beautiful. 

Some sort of fear drained from his face and it was replaced by something else. He couldn’t tell what exactly but soon that dint matter, because Hoseok then flashed him a smile like he had from that car window.

It deepened the corners of his eyes like fishes and that tiny mole above his lip seem to dance.

It was the most beautiful thing Taehyung had ever seen.

He's real. He's real and he was right here, standing in front of him. 

Taehyung's hands, which had been shoved deep in his pockets slowly emerged and he smoothed his palms down the front of his coat, brushing away imaginary dust, straightening his lapels and grinned back.

It was not his sharp grin nor his reckless laugh. It was something smaller and softer, a smile of a winner. 

I waited and you came.

Behind him Jimin's voice cut through the silence like some knife - curious, confused, a very much impatient.

“What happened?" Jimin asked eyeing Hoseok standing ahead "Who's he?"

Taehyung didn't turn around. He didn't take his eyes off Hoseok. The omega's gaze was steady, warm and waiting. To him the world had narrowed to this single point and Taehyung had never ever been happier to answer his friend. 

"It’s Hoseok”