— "you're crazy,
little boy!"

FOUR YEARS PRIOR:
KIM TAEHYUNG

==

taehyung is numb.

he feels disassociated, like he's submerged in a bottomless pool of water. there's a strange, sharp feeling in his abdomen that he can't quite pinpoint the cause of, and a dull heat pulsates in his neck. why is he so tired? he's cold, aching, trembling: it's as if all of the energy he once had has been sucked out of him.

with all the effort he can possess, taehyung opens his eyes.

everything around him is swamped in darkness—not complete darkness, but rather the absence of any source of light he can physically pinpoint. it seems like he's in some sort of isolated, extremely vast by the way every noise he can hear echoes, and musty cave. but it's not a cave. taehyung sees a ceiling, halfway broken and allowing a thin stream of moonlight, maybe, to seep through from the night sky, and numerous racks, crates, and other packaging paraphernalia. clearly, he's in a warehouse: an abandoned, awfully large, and eerily unsettling warehouse.

as if on impulse, taehyung heaves a long, laborious cough, and a spike of pain shoots up from his abdomen in response. he groans, weakly pushing himself from the cold, wet ground and licking his lips dry of something metallic—blood, he realizes numbly.

it's so cold.

where am i? what's going on? where's mom and dad? where's jimin?

somehow forgetting the striking pain in his body, taehyung straightens his back and looks to his abdomen, his breath escaping. blood. blood covers his shirt, his pants, his hands; it's a miracle he's even conscious right now. is it all mine? how is that even possible? clearly, there's a wound, maybe even multiple, under his shirt—and clearly, they aren't minuscule. he doesn't exactly want to see them yet. 

taehyung winces as he wracks his brain, trying to remember what happened. i was alone. the lights burst...mom's steak knife...the window broke into pieces...

and then, something growls lowly in the dark corner of the warehouse. taehyung's heart seems to momentarily stop, watching as something disfigured moves in the shadows. when another low howl echoes in the room, he collapses to the ground and closes his eyes on instinct. maybe it's to play sleeping (or dead), or maybe it's to shield himself from looking at whatever lurks there; he doesn't have the energy to decide which option it is.

the growling stops.

holding his breath for the next several moments, taehyung tentatively opens his eyes.

it's dark and empty, quiet and lonely, no sign of the being anywhere. he exhales, suddenly feeling the dizziness come back in full power.

and then he's being lifted.

taehyung almost gasps. he's thrown over something hard, a shoulder maybe, something bumpy and slick with—god, what is this, it's dark and bumpy and disfigured and—

he stops.

he realizes.

and then taehyung is thrown roughly onto a tall stack of crates, wincing as his wounds seems to intensify; he didn't even think the pain could get worse. it takes him a span of several seconds to regulate his heartbeat and catch his breath, cracking one eye open as his hand rests shakily on the side of his abdomen. no. no, no, no. it broke the window, it got in, it hurt me. it caught me. it's never caught me before. it's never caught me...

time seems to slow when taehyung sees it.

the monster, hunched over the pool of blood taehyung had just laid in, numerous sharp talons extended towards it. it groans, a horrible, intense screech, unpleasant as fingers scraping against a chalkboard. taehyung momentarily forgets how to breathe. the sight is horrific, is grotesque, is something he wishes he had never seen. something he wishes never existed.

one of its talons dip into the blood on the floor slowly. and it takes a moment for taehyung to see because of the dark atmosphere, but the pool of blood seems to shrink—

no. it's turning black.

hyperventilation threatens to take over taehyung's body. he's on the verge of panicking, of screaming his lungs out, crying for help, crying for someone to be next to him instead of this—this demon. they were all hallucinations before. the monster was never real, right? the monster could never hurt him, right? it was all just something made up from his fucked up mind, right?

no. you knew, taehyung. you knew it was real the entire time.

the monster howls almost in satisfaction, body contorting in a way taehyung had only seen in the worst nights before. bile rises inside his throat.

i need to get out of here.

his body aches, his mind is weak, his energy is little to none: but taehyung needs to get out of here. he's determined to. if he stays here any longer, the monster will kill him. it's such a sure fact that taehyung is almost unfazed by it. but his heart still races, and sweat still trickles down his back, and his wound still agonizes him; it's unlikely that he'll manage to get far from here with all the injuries he has.

but you have to. you have to get back to mom. to dad. to jiminie.

taehyung looks down. he's about three crates up from the ground, but the boxes aren't exactly small; if he's to jump from here, he has to brace himself for quite an impact. but he can't afford to collapse there. the monster will most likely hear him jump, so he has to be ready to sprint the moment he falls. the question is if he'll have enough energy to even sustain the jump, much less the rest of the escape.

deep breaths, taehyung. he has to do this. he can either try to escape or stay here and be killed by the monster. the former seems much more appealing.

three.

taehyung scoots to the edge of the crate.

two.

takes a deep breath.

one.

and jumps.

but the moment his bare feet hit the ground, he collapses as easily as if his legs were twigs. taehyung gasps in pain, watching his vision go double and blur from pained tears. a high scream exits the monster's mouth, and taehyung watches vaguely as it turns around slowly to face him sprawled across the floor.

no, no, no! get up! get the hell up!

it's excruciating. taehyung momentarily finds himself accepting of this fate, of submitting to this monster in the most pathetic way possible. it just hurts too much; can't he just stay here and sleep, nod off and let whatever happens happen...

no. get up, taehyung. you are not going to let this bastard take over you.

as if jolted with energy, taehyung's eyes fly open again and he stumbles to his feet. there are several deep cuts in his soles and heels, and it feels like he's treading through fire every time he takes a step: but he has to move. it's his only hope.

he knows what he's about to do will hurt like hell.

so taehyung sprints.

he runs past tipped over crates, multiple trails of black blood, past the roars of the monster as it quickly tries to follow taehyung. but it's weak, too; it can barely take three steps before it's long appendages retract back into its body. taehyung notices this with confusion, but an urge of satisfaction overtakes it; he'll take any aversion he can get. yes, he can do this; he can get out of here.

and when he bursts through the doors of the warehouse, taehyung grins. although his feet burn and his abdomen feels like it's shredding itself to pieces, he grins. but the joy is short-lived when he scans his surroundings.

he doesn't have a clue of where he is.

the area is dark and desolate, with the scarcest amount of functioning streetlights. it carries no resemblance to the urban nightlife of sunab city taehyung is used to. he must be several, several miles from the interior of the city, far from his apartment; not a soul is around. taehyung's heart seems to drop twenty stories.

an overwhelming wave of fatigue suddenly hits him all at once, all from that minute or so sprint. his pain seems to triple and the pounding in his temple overtakes him. it feels like hell, just like the brunette had anticipated, but it's even worse than he thought it would be. without meaning to, taehyung collapses to his knees, leaning his head against the grimy brick wall of an abandoned building behind him. he can't keep his thoughts straight; everything is spinning, uncontrollably chaotic. it feels like his brain is exploding.

something burns numbly on his neck, right under his ear, and taehyung shakily puts two fingers to the gash. when he pulls back, his fingers are coated in a thick, black liquid.

the blood, he thinks, right before he blacks out.

==

five minutes.

the clouds pass over the moon, shielding whatever minimal light it had to offer. now, the slum-like area relies only on the flickering lights of the lampposts.

ten minutes.

inside the warehouse, a low, guttural groan echoes through the shadows. the monster does not know where its host has gone, but that's okay. it has what it needs most: red host blood, and memories.

twenty minutes.

down a thin, broken-down backroad (a quicker option versus the crowded expressway that bridges useol and sunab) right next to the abandoned, supposedly "haunted" town in sunab—it's apparently quite the tourist attraction in daytime—, an old woman drives back from a late shift at the hospital. on some whim tonight, she decided she wanted to use her brighter headlights. little does she know, that move will save a certain boy's life tonight.

thirty minutes.

kim taehyung wakes up with a completely wiped mind.

pulling apart his chapped lips from each other, he manages a weak breath. he feels halfway dead, like it's a struggle to even get the oxygen into his lungs. a numb pain resounds in his abdomen, and he looks down at his blood stained shirt with only the slightest arch of his eyebrows. his reaction time, clearly, is much too slow right now.

i'm hurt. why am i hurt? he wonders.

finally, taehyung begins to realize his situation. he can't remember what happened before. he can't remember how he got here, how he became injured—what his life was like before. it takes a few numb moments to realize the last thought.

i can't remember anything.

taehyung is dizzy, straining his already weak brain to remember. "my name is kim taehyung," he whispers, barely audible. "i'm...seventeen? am i seventeen years old? yes, i am. my mother is...what? who's my mom?" he coughs in sudden, excruciating pain. "oh hell, oh hell...i...and yesterday i...okay. okay, my name is kim taehyung, i'm seventeen years old, i—"

the situation is agonizing. his memories are so close, so tangible, it feels like with just a bit more effort, taehyung can retrieve them. but somehow, he knows it's useless; there's an empty, void feeling in his mind, as if every single memory has been sucked out of him. he's helpless, robbed of anything he used to know. for some reason, he remembers the factual things, the structured things: his name, his age, his multiplication, the national anthem—hell, even some stupid jingle to a burger place called the "shick shack". so why can't he remember any of the things that make him kim taehyung? why can't he remember the things that define his entire life?

why can't he remember the things that truly matter?

his cheeks are suddenly wet. he's exhausted, completely drained both physically and mentally. taehyung can't do this. he's weak for reasons he doesn't even know, stuck in some abandoned place with absolutely no one to help him. his eyes flick to a broken, old bottle next to him on the ground, a thin layer of dirt obscuring it's label.

he takes it in his cold fingers and holds it to his chest.

"my name is kim taehyung," he whispers, one more time.

"and i'm lost."

==

lines of trees and broken-down buildings whiz past lin jae as she drives down the backroad, her eyes lazy on the stretch in front of her. there were an awful amount of appointments today, and she's tired as hell. a cup of warm tea will do her good when she gets home. the thought of sitting near the fireplace and drinking something hot makes her smile in content. maybe she'll call her son when she gets home; it's been a week or two since they've spoken, and she makes sure to keep a strong bond between them. she knows how chaotic life can get: especially when you're a well-known doctor and a worker of a paranormal society at the same time.

it's hard to catch a good wink of sleep nowadays, but jae makes sure to keep her health well; she refuses to let old age get the best of her. her bones still have several more years and much more work to do before she'll allow them to quit on her.

so honestly, it's almost sheer luck that jae, tired and paying little attention to the road, manages to spot that boy leaning against the building. somehow, she does. on impulse, she slams the breaks and squints through the slightly foggy air.

"oh my lord," jae whispers.

without wasting a breath, she pushes open the door of her car and rushes to the building, tiptoeing across the unlevel ground. jae knows, technically, that this place is one of the creepiest areas, especially at night. but there's a boy there. there's a boy there, and though the situaion makes no sense, she's going to go to him.

the moment she gets into a five foot radius of him, her heart seems to drop.

the boy is beat to hell: his clothes are bloody, his skin is sickly, his chest is barely rising. regardless of being a doctor of several decades, she's never seen a situation like this. he genuinely looks like he's minutes away from his last breath. there's an expression of pure distraught on his face, one she has never seen so intensely before. it pains her; what has this boy been through?

"oh my lord," she repeats, stepping closer to the boy. he slowly turns his eyes up to her, lips parting slowly. "okay—okay sweetheart, it's okay. you're going to be okay, alright? i'm going to help you. you're wounded severely, and i'm going to take you to my personal clinic. don't move, i'm going to help you get up—"

but when jae extends a hand to the boy's shoulder, he screams. it's weak, and it carries barely any volume, but the message is loud and clear: he's afraid. he's afraid to death and jae feels her throat grow dry.

"no, no, kiddo, it's okay, i'm going to help you—" she trails off when the boy's eyes suddenly flutter shut, and his body goes limp. he's blacked out again. jae inhales sharply; she only has a limited amount of time to help the boy, so she has to act quickly.

gently (but as fast as possible), jae takes the boy onto her back and hobbles back to her car. he's cold as ice against her skin, and it's a miracle, she thinks, that he's survived this long. as soon as the boy is buckled, supported and bundled by all of the coats and blankets she could find in her car, jae ignites the engine and turns the complete opposite direction she came from.

quietly, to herself, she speaks.

"i'm going to save you, kiddo."

==

this was so hard to write what the hell
there are Lots of parallels between the prologue chapter & this, so hopefully they connect easy for you guys!! i'm sorry if this was written poorly i've been #wrecked by school😔😔
but yeah bts won artist of the year mic drop had like 3 extra dance breaks the times are crazy folks🤧👀😰
tune in next time for some wilder times ilu