The hours ticked by like thorns beneath Jungkook’s skin.

He hadn’t moved much since Taehyung stormed out. After making sure Sanjana was finally resting again—nestled under the covers with a calm, dreamless expression—he had quietly slipped out of the room, showered, changed.

He told himself it was to review intel. To stay ahead. To maintain control.

But his mind hadn’t left the mansion.

Jungkook sat behind his sleek glass desk, surrounded by silence and walls that reflected nothing of the chaos inside him. His fingers drummed ceaselessly against the tabletop, a restless staccato betraying the storm beneath his blank expression. The file in front of him might as well have been empty. The words blurred. Charts bled together.

But the data refused to take shape in his mind.

Not when the only thing replaying in his mind was the way she had gasped awake—like something inside her had snapped.
Not when her hands trembled so violently she couldn’t even hold the blanket.
Not when her wide, glassy eyes weren’t just reacting to a loud noise—but reliving something darker.
Not when she pressed herself against his chest, hands raised—not in defense, but in surrender, as if she expected pain to be coming.
That wasn’t just fear.
Her reaction—raw, involuntary, full-bodied terror—had lodged itself in his chest like a burning stake.

His jaw clenched as he leaned forward, arms resting on the desk, trying to piece it together.

That kind of response—it didn’t come from surprise. It came from trauma.
What the hell happened to her?

His fingers hovered over his phone, about to call the one person he trusted with things like this—

Hoseok.

But before he could tap the screen, his phone buzzed sharply in his hand.

Hoseok Calling.

Jungkook’s heart skipped.

He snatched the phone to his ear in one swift motion. “Hoseok?”

“Jungkook-ah,” Hoseok’s voice was clipped, unusually urgent. “Where are you?”

“Office,” Jungkook replied, sitting up straighter, cold demeanor still holding. “Why?”

“I just finished reviewing Sanjana’s latest neural behavior reports. There are irregularities… and I noticed a spike in her psychological markers from earlier today. Something happened this morning, didn’t it?”

Jungkook froze.

The air felt heavier.

“You saw it?” His voice was quieter now, the mask beginning to slip.

“I didn’t see everything, just the outer hall’s feed. But I heard the crash. I matched the timestamp with her vitals. Jungkook…” Hoseok’s voice dipped, serious. “Her nervous system showed signs of emotional overstimulation. Not normal anxiety. It bordered on dissociation.”

Jungkook stood up so abruptly his chair scraped backward across the floor.

His hand tightened around the phone.

“Don’t say a word about this in the mansion,I didnt want her to hear anything about this” he said sharply, panic leaking through the cracks of his control.

“I wasn’t going to,” Hoseok assured him. “I called because I knew this was serious.”

“It is,” Jungkook muttered, grabbing his coat with trembling fingers. “I was just about to call you. I need to tell you exactly how she reacted... and you need to tell me everything you’ve seen.”

“I’ll be there in ten.”

The call ended.

Jungkook didn’t move for a second.

His phone stayed clutched in his hand, screen gone dark—but his chest felt like it was caving in. The cold mask he wore so effortlessly?

Gone.

All that remained was the echo of her gasp—her trembling frame burned into his mind—and the gut-twisting feeling that whatever happened to Sanjana...

…was something far worse than he had ever imagined.

Meanwhile, back in the mansion, Taehyung paced his room like a caged animal.

The echo of Jungkook’s words from earlier—“Get. Out.”—still rang in his ears. He had replayed that humiliating moment a hundred times already. His fists had balled, his chest heaved, his pride burned.

But worse than the humiliation... was the ache in his heart.

Because she hadn’t stopped him either.

She didn’t reach for me. She didn’t even say my name.

Taehyung stood there for a moment, fists trembling at his sides, breath coming in shallow, uneven bursts. The weight of everything pressed down on him—shame, anger, heartbreak—all boiling over in his chest like a storm waiting to break.

With a strangled sound, he lunged forward and grabbed the glass paperweight from his desk, hurling it across the room. It shattered against the wall with a deafening crash, leaving jagged pieces glinting on the floor like his splintered pride.

“Damn it!” he growled, voice hoarse, teeth gritted.

His chair went next, slammed to the ground so hard one of its legs cracked. He kicked it, once, twice—until his toe throbbed—but the pain didn’t even register. It barely scratched the surface of what burned within him.

Then his arm swept across the dresser in a furious arc, sending everything flying—bottles, books, and the photo frame.

It landed face-down on the floor with a sharp thud, a thin crack echoing through the silence that followed.

He stood in the middle of the chaos, chest heaving, eyes wild. But something—something—pulled his gaze downward.

The frame.

Slowly, hesitantly, he crouched and turned it over. The glass had splintered with thin, jagged veins—but the image beneath remained painfully clear.

It was a picture of her.

She was caught mid-spin in her classical dance attire, hair slightly undone in a loose braid, a faint smile on her lips—so immersed in her world that she hadn’t known he was watching. Or that he had captured it.

He had taken it secretly that day, unable to resist the pure, unfiltered joy on her face. She had thought she was alone, dancing her heart out in that sunlit rehearsal room. But he had seen her.

And he had kept that moment.

Not because she was beautiful in it—though she was—but because it was herself. Her truest self. The version of her the world rarely got to see, and he had fallen in love with it.

Now the photo was cracked. Like his heart. Like the quiet hope he had carried for years.

“…She was never supposed to flinch away from me,” he whispered, voice shaking. “Not from me.”

His knees buckled and he sank onto the bed, the broken frame cradled in his hands, glass digging into his skin—but he didn’t flinch.

He had stood back too long. Loved too silently. Let others claim her light while he remained in the shadows.

But no more.

“No,” he muttered, eyes blazing with a fragile kind of hope. “Not yet. I won’t let it end like this.”

His grip tightened on the frame, voice low and raw.

“She has to know. She has to feel it—what I’ve been holding back all this time.”

“One last time,” he whispered, eyes brimming with emotion. “Just once… she’ll see and believe that I was the right one for her all along. not Jungkook.”

There in her room, Sanjana was sitting quietly by the window, a soft blanket wrapped around her as she stared out into the garden. Her breathing had calmed, but her eyes were distant—still tracing the cracks left from the morning storm.

A knock at the door broke the silence.

“Sanjana?” Taehyung’s voice came softly from the other side.

She turned her head, recognizing the weight behind his voice instantly. “Come in,Taehyungiee... You dont need to ask.” she said gently, without hesitation.

The door opened slowly, and Taehyung stepped inside.

Her eyes immediately narrowed with concern. His face was pale, eyes rimmed with exhaustion and something heavier—guilt, maybe. He looked like he hadn’t slept since morning, and his shoulders sagged with a weight she couldn’t yet name.

“Taehyungiee?” she said softly, rising to her feet. “What happened?”

He blinked at her, startled by the warmth in her voice. “I—uh...” he tried to speak, but the words didn’t come. His throat bobbed.

She walked toward him without pause, stopping just a breath away. “You look like you’ve been through hell,” she whispered.

“I deserve to,” he said hoarsely, looking down.

Sanjana frowned and gently cupped his face. “My Taehyungiee and hell. Worst combination. Can never happen. Talk to me.”

He let out a shaky breath, finally lifting his eyes to hers. “I’m sorry, Sanjana,” he said, voice barely a whisper. “I’m so sorry for yelling earlier. I... I lost control. I saw myself in the mirror afterward and I didn’t even recognize the person I’d become.”

“Taehyungieee...” Her voice was soft but firm. “It was a mistake, it doesn’t make you are a bad person.”

“I swore I’d never be that person around you,” he said, voice breaking. “But I was. And seeing your face afterward—like you were trying to hide how much it hurt—Sanjana, it killed me.”

She looked at him with heartbreak in her eyes, not for herself, but for him. “You didn’t scare me, Taehyungieee. You just... brought back some memories I wasn’t ready for. But you also came here. You apologized. That’s more than most ever do.”

“I don’t deserve your kindness,” he murmured, shaking his head.

She took a step closer. “But my Taehyungiee always have it anyway.”

He looked like he might fall apart right there.

His throat bobbed. “Do you... do you forgive me?”

She didn’t hesitate. “Of course I do.”

A breath left his lips, shaky and filled with quiet disbelief. He nodded, as if trying to accept the grace she so effortlessly gave.

“Then…” He reached into his coat and pulled out a sleek black box, tied with a pale blue ribbon. “If you’ve forgiven me, then accept this.”

She looked at the box, puzzled, still smiled. “What is it?”

“A dress,” he said, voice hushed. “For tonight.”

She blinked. “But why?Whats tonight?”

A tiny smile tugged at the corner of his mouth, though his eyes were still heavy with emotion. “It’s a surprise. Just... please wear it. Be ready by seven.”

She looked at the box, then back at him. “Taehyungieee, that’s not necessary. You don’t have to make up for anything like this.”

“I want to,” he said firmly. “Please, Sanjana. Let me do at least this much. Let me make things right, even in a small way.”

Her heart softened even more. He wasn’t trying to fix her pain with gifts—he was trying to rebuild what he feared he’d broken. Not with grand gestures, but with sincerity.

“Okay,” she said finally, offering a gentle smile. “I’ll be ready.”

Relief washed over his features like rain over dry earth. “Seven,” he whispered, backing toward the door.

She gave a small nod. “Seven.”

As the door closed behind him, Sanjana looked down at the box in her hands, the ribbon catching the light.

One burning with desperate love,

The other clinging to fragile memory, to protect her,

And in the center of it all… stood Sanjana.

Torn between the boy who made her feel safe… and the man who made her feel seen.