Detonate Me, Granulate Me | BTS

Chapter 21

The weather cools, hot summer fading into a mild winter, and Jungkook wakes up one day with the realization that they've already been here for half a year.

While he once craved the tidy neatness of Paradisus, the enclosed, solitary sleeping capsules and rigid structure of every day, he finds that these days, it's more of a faint memory. Sometimes, he'll jolt in the middle of the night after a bad dream, or sit up in bed after imagining the Paradisus alarm signaling him to head off to the Foodhall for breakfast and proceed to training with the instructors, but then Jimin or Taehyung will wrap a hand around Jungkook's waist, comfort him, pull him back down, press comforting kisses to his forehead, and Jungkook is reminded that everything is all right.

It's strange, the relationship between the three of them.

It's not like they're left with much choice but to spend every moment of both their waking and sleeping hours with each other, but Jungkook thinks that even in a world where they were free to roam and choose their friends, their partners, he would still pick Taehyung and Jimin. Entirely physical relationships are easy to write off, say that it's only for their mutual benefit, that there's nothing else involved but helping each other through their heats and getting off, but if Jungkook's honest with himself, that's not quite all. While Jungkook hasn't thought much of it before, now he's too aware of it, the warmth in his chest when Taehyung beams at him, the way his mood lifts when Jimin bounces up to him, draping an arm over Jungkook's shoulder. At these times, Jungkook will pretend to act annoyed, scowl and push Jimin off, but secretly, he craves more, craves their attention, wants to see them happy and smiling.

Feelings are something that Jungkook's never really had the time or freedom to consider or experience before. None of them have, really. Paradisus didn't allow space for it—they pit all the undergraduates against each other in intense competition, treated the heat sex like something scientific, something necessary, something to get over and done with so the Hybrida could resume their daily training. Out here, out in Seoul, time is slow, and there is much more to hear, to see, to feel.

While the Hybrida were never taught, never exposed to the complicated feelings the people out here in Seoul call love, it surely exists, deep inside them, a capability locked away and left unexplored. Paradisus just couldn't risk it, risk having their products led astray because of lingering attachment. It makes sense, too. In a world based on control, love is something unpredictable, something foreign, something that could make the careful calculations of the Paradisus scientists go awry.

But this is no longer Paradisus, and they are no longer bound by the rules they've adhered to their whole lives.

Taehyung discovers an old cult hit from thousands of years ago, a drama about a four-hundred-year-old alien from another star who visits Earth and finds his one true love, and makes Jungkook and Jimin watch it with him. While the graphics are atrocious, the image not even in 3D, but 2D, the emotions are raw, real, and something stirs in the depths of Jungkook's chest that he's never felt before, an aching longing. By the end of the drama, all three of them are teary-eyed, Taehyung positively bawling.

"He...he was willing to die for her..." Taehyung says, sniffling and curling up into Jungkook's side. "He risked everything just so he could protect her, to be with her. That's... "

"Could you do that?" Jimin asks, voice soft. "Risk your life to protect someone?"

"I don't know," Jungkook says, in deep consideration. The Hybrida don't have family. They're raised in spartan environments, in constant competition with one another. They're taught that feelings are a hinderance rather than a benefit to their training. It's a question none of them would have ever considered, had they not been rescued by Yoongi. "How do you figure something like that out?"

"Imagine a world without them, I guess," Taehyung muses. "That's what Do Minjoon did. Imagine a world where they're not there, and think about if you can live with that."

"That's pretty dumb," Jungkook says gruffly. "I mean, you'd have to live on, wouldn't you? Not like you suddenly stop functioning just because one person isn't there anymore."

But, Jungkook thinks later that night, when all three of them are in bed, Taehyung's arms and legs draped over Jimin's body, Jimin nuzzling into the crook of Jungkook's neck, if he really, seriously considers it...

A world where Taehyung's not there to greet him in the morning, purring sleepily and whacking Jungkook in the face with his tail...

A world where Jimin's bright blue eyes and dazzling smile are no longer there, his smell, so full of life, a dusty nothingness...

No, Jungkook thinks, chest aching. He couldn't live with that.