You can't believe it.

Is this freaking Minions?

Everyone in the room goes totally still in the midst of disbelieving silence, staring with astonished eyes at the youngest member of their group.

Namjoon and Jin glance at each other.

Jin grimaces.

"Jungkook, honey...you do know that there isn't a real CrimicalCon, right?"

Taehyung leans closer to you from his spot on a nearby chair, a hand held to his mouth as if to shield Jungkook from some damning secret.

But what comes out of his lips in an obnoxiously loud whisper  is, "Don't be too surprised, Y/N. Jungkook got four points out of one hundred on his English test in high school. We don't expect much anymore."

"Hey!" Jungkook slaps at Taehyung, making him withdraw to the safety of his chair. "I'm not talking about a real convention! I'm talking about that fancy thing they do every year!"

Fancy thing?

Consistent blank looks across the faces of the other members doesn't encourage your belief in the man next to you.

You scoot away from Jungkook, trying not to be too obvious about it. You weren't kidding earlier.

Stupidity is really contagious.

"Don't you freaking-" Jungkook grabs your arm and drags you back to his side, baring his teeth at the other men. "Stop telling her irrelevant things. I'm not saying there's a CriminalCon. Don't they always have a big party thing where everyone can show off how much money they have or something?"

The words trigger something in your head.

Faint memories flash through your mind, gold and silver and a pretty dress that your father bought you when you were thirteen. There had been people crowded together in a giant gilded hotel ballroom, studded with diamonds and jewel-cold smiles.

A teenage boy dressed in a tuxedo had smiled at you, running a ringed hand along his gel-thickened hair.

Your father had never brought you again.

"Holy..." You trail off as the memory fades, streaks of wealth and self-importance drifting back into reality. "No, he's right. My dad brought me once when I was younger, I think."

Jungkook points at you, like your semi-memory is all the evidence he needs. "See? It's like a cease-fire, and all the families get together and show off all the sparkly stuff they got with their dirty money."

Jimin's face scrunches. "A ball where all the mob bosses in the country get together and drink the night away? They have that? People go to that?"

Jungkook shrugs. "Mine did."

"Mine too." Glancing between the serious face around you, you hesitantly bite your lip. "No offense, but if our parents are going, then it must be a fairly big deal. Right?"

Yoongi screws his lips up into a scowl, glancing off to the side, away from everyone. "It's real. And yeah, it is a big deal."

Opening your mouth, you start to ask how he would know, but stop abruptly when you remember.

Yoongi used to be a mob boss in his own right.

And if he got an invite to this big, secret society ball, he must've been just as big of a deal as yours and Jungkook's fathers.

Looking at the quiet black-haired man slumped into a chair in the corner of the room, his chocolate brown eyes narrowed against the shards of morning light drifting in, you find it easier than expected to see him there, back in Daegu.

Shrouded in smoke, his slender form made somehow larger than life by a ground- length coat and a gun clasped in his long-fingered hand, Min Yoongi would have surely cut a fierce figure as he ruled with iron-clad force over his bevy of men.

In your imagination, he stands tall and confident, his shoulders back like royalty and his face a cold mask of determination and sharp intelligence.

The King of Daegu.

You wonder if he ever misses it.

Everyone goes quiet.

"If we end up going to this thing, I can't go in," says the slender man with the tear drop on his cheek. "Someone would recognize me. Nobody knows where I've been since I left Daegu, and I don't want them to."

"Then I can't go either," Jungkook says. "My dad might be there. And Jimin hyung can't go either, and neither can Namjoon and Jin hyung." He pauses for emphasis, a nasty attitude obvious in his voice. "If we're going by people who might recognize us from our past, then none of us can go. We'd all be recognized by someone."

The truth of his statement deflates any sense of hope that's built up around he possibility of attending this event.

It just wouldn't work.

All of you appearing there together would definitely get the attention of your father; unfortunately, it would also draw the eyes of every demon and skeleton from the men's pasts, like a pack of slavering wolves to a piece of fresh meat.

There's no way you could all get out alive with red targets painted onto your foreheads.

You feel a collective slump in the mood of your little group, until Namjoon speaks up again.

"Isn't that the whole point?" he muses. "We want to be seen. It's almost like we're a- a symbol, that the power of the families as a whole doesn't run as deep as everyone thinks it does. Not just Y/N's father, but Jungkook's, and Taehyung's, and mine. We're all children of dark pasts who were strong enough to escape, strong enough to make a new life."

Namjoon's serene eyes glance up, make deep contact with yours, then Jungkook's, and around the room in turns. "We all defeated them. If every person who's ever beat you at something important showed up in one room, banded together, would you be intimidated?"

Would you be intimidated?

If Kim Yuna and Lee Jinae, the two girls who demolished you in high school athletics, appeared together once again, there's no doubt in your mind that you'd be running for the hills faster than the speed of sound.

Their intentionally-aimed spikes with a volleyball could even send the great Min Yoongi limping away with a couple of teeth missing.

Namjoon's words are like magic.

A spark flares in your chest, a mixture of anxious excitement and nausea. All of you walking into that glittering, cruel ballroom together, a unified force representing the failures of the biggest families in Korea.

"Whoa, whoa. Hold up for a minute." Jin holds his hands out, drawing everyone's attention. "We can't get ahead of ourselves. Even if we actually find out where and when this thing is, if it's real at all, we don't even have an invitation."

Yoongi waves his hand at that, sighing with the great burden of having the most experience among the high-class crime families. "It's not something you get invited to, really. It's more of a 'you only know about it if they want you to know about it' thing. If you know the when and the where, then that's all the invitation you need."

"So it's simple." Hoseok clasps his hands together, a smile brimming on his full lips. You notice, with a start, that there's a freckle on the top one, bisecting the line between the pink and tan of his mouth. "We just have to find out the time and the place, and then we can crash the party."

Ever the realistic voice, Yoongi snorts his disagreement. "If you think that's going to be simple then you have another thing coming, Jung Hoseok."

"Another thing, huh?" Hoseok pauses, his head tilting ever-so-slightly to the side, like a dog that's heard a faint noise off in the distance.

The other men in the room go utterly still, eyes locked onto Hoseok. It's obvious that they know the face he's making, and that exact angle his head is tilted at.

Hoseok knows something.

He says, "We need to visit Wooseok and Mina. I think..it's important."

Glancing  at all of you one by one, light shimmers in the endless depths of Hoseok's eyes. "We're going to get into that party, and I think our little friends know how."

[A/N]
Unedited
If anyone is confused, please let me know. There's a lot of info in there and while it makes sense to me, sometimes it doesn't to others. My brain is weird lol so please, please let me know if it made sense.
I hope you enjoyed!
❤️PB