Continuum

스물 둘

Taehyung scoffed, falling back unceremoniously to sit on the couch. "So, what?" He challenged. "It happens and you just never talk about it again? That's how that works?"

Remnants of the fury Jeongguk had displayed the night previous came back into his eyes. "We-"

"Not exactly," Namjoon's much calmer voice cut in. He walked through the door, laundry in his hands, and threw them onto the opposite side of the couch from where Taehyung sat. He pulled the hairbrush from Jeongguk's hair and began brushing the dark locks himself with much better luck. "We accept what has happened. We realize it, we understand that it's a part of what we do, and we move on with our lives."

Taehyung sighed and sat a little straighter. "Don't you ever want to leave?"

The two stared at him in surprise.

"You do realize that you are speaking to the two out of the six that have no choice but to be here, right?" Jeongguk asked.

Taehyung looked up. "Huh?"

Simultaneously, the two raised their right hand, revealing the trackers that Taehyung had seen for the first time the night previous. "We were forced to come here," Namjoon said. "That, or stay in prison. We got lucky to be pretty enough and to know instruments and a few languages to be let out."

"And now we can't leave," Jeongguk said before his entire body shivered. "Not that I would ever want to. I don't want to go back to prison."

"Why were the two of you in prison?" Taehyung asked. "Why do you have to wear trackers?" Cold realization ran through him. "Did you two-"

"No!" they both shouted at the same time.

"We never-"

"I didn't-"

"They never-"

The two of them sputtered over their own words. Taehyung jumped up and started waving his hands. "Okay! Okay! I believe you!"

The stopped shouting.

"What I meant to say," Taehyung said, sitting back down, "is why did you guys get stuck in prison?"

The boys looked confused. "Because our families committed crimes," Jeongguk said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

"Yeah, but you didn't do anything wrong..." his voice trailed off.

"So what?" Namjoon asked.

Taehyung didn't have an answer. He didn't know how to explain how unfair it was that these boys had to live with the consequences of what their families had done. It was something so intrinsically obvious that he didn't know how to say it.

Obvious or not, the two of them seemed clueless.

"Nevermind."

The boys gave him an odd look but then went back to what they were doing. A few minutes later, Jeongguk had his usual silky hair back and Namjoon went to go clean the kitchen, humming as he did so. Jeongguk went back to the mostly-finished painting and picked up his paintbrush again. He stood there, silently staring at the painting for a minute.

"What's wrong?" Taehyung asked.

Jeongguk shrugged. "I know what I'm painting now," he said. "I don't know what to do."

"What do you mean?"

The younger boy sighed, then set the paintbrush down. "I've never thought about what I was drawing or painting until I was done with it. Now I know I'm painting you and I don't know what to do about it." He walked away from the painting and unceremoniously flopped onto the couch across from Taehyung.