Loyal • Muse | NamMin || BOOK 2#

XXV. The nymph who can drag everything with her

"Another painting? How many do you need to be satisfied?"

"I don't know." replies Namjoon frankly to the general of the guard: Jungkook. Jimin stands still over some decorative rocks in a pond. The painter takes his time on each small stroke of the curious kisaeng with bluish hair. Jungkook finds it almost funny, Namjoon totally falling for Jimin's charms is a comical way to find the situation. However, the lack of laughter and naughtiness about it makes it lose that funny note. It reveals that something is going on.

"How do you take care of something about yourself? And how do you remember to be yourself?"

"No offense, friend, but little do I understand when you come out with questions with that level of consideration. What do you have? Is something going on?"

"There is contact."

"And?"

Namjoon doesn't answer him and Jungkook gets an idea. He returns his gaze to the half-asleep boy of whom a painting is made. Namjoon never made contact with him. He remembers it as frustrating in his earlier teenage years. Jimin looking so idiotic about Namjoon and somehow, Namjoon turning his back on him. Allowing the indiscreet crush to exist just because he couldn't be bothered to even watch him.

"It's a natural human reaction, but my inability to enjoy it at all is.... Frustrating."

"What don't you enjoy? How can you not enjoy it?"

"I just see it and when I touch it I feel like I shouldn't."

Jungkook opens and closes her mouth. They spent their entire childhood and adolescence seeing the same thing: the emperor's kisaeng broken into tears from being touched. The one who didn't seem to be important to anything else. Namjoon was fine with not getting close, with barely glancing at him out of the corner of his eye because then he could not be equal to those who hurt him. Namjoon refuses to be like those people he made disappear from the picture. Hojoon, Hosung, the council, the nobles who fall one by one for being against what Agust puts forward. And now that he has been able to be with him, that situations are still in bloom, he feels that he falls into the same hole as them.

That he begins to drown and that at some point when the water fills his lungs, he won't be able to live without it and will be just as horrible as they are. That's what Jimin causes: drowning, dependence on his beauty, on his cold and his heat, on his texture and voice.

"If there's no harm and humiliation there's no reason to be ashamed, because that's the big difference between them and you." states Jungkook with great assurance. After all, that's what it's all about.

They took over the empire to be better than those who led it before. They will be able to achieve that. Namjoon will be no exception. The counselor gives a sigh. I would like to have his trust. At the same time...

"Somehow I don't feel like myself. Even if I were to be convinced by your words how does a dead man enjoy?"

Jungkook is unable to fully comprehend it. Namjoon falls into existential holes too deep for anyone to help him. He must come up with the answer himself.

~ * * * ~

"I think we could live forever."

Namjoon stops and looks to the right. He finds Jimin sitting on the lawn in the garden, he moves his hands to generate small bubbles of water floating. Some with fish inside, others where Soo jumps, cowering to play.

"In each other's faces 'cause I always see my youth in you."

Jimin blows a kiss to a bubble, the Koi fish circles, with apparent embarrassment and joy. Jimin smiles, tapping each one and making them move with little bounces. He hums softly and his tender face with discreet outlining exhibits joy at being in his own world.