WITHOUT You [YOONGI] (Book 2)

Chapter 31 [Taehyung's Story pt.2]

Age 13

The sleek and golden nameplate embezzled with the name 'Lalisa Manoban' sat proudly on the table as it twinkled like a jewel against the bleak background of her office.

Chipped paint flaked off the walls and the hanging lightbulb cast swaying shadows across the walls as it listened to two people directly underneath its watchful eye.

"You passed." Lisa told the now teenage Taehyung sitting in front of her desk. Her leather chair creaked as she leaned back, casually puffing out a cigarette in between her red stained lips as she watched the boy proudly for his reaction.

"I don't feel ready." Taehyung told her in a hauntingly mature voice that shouldn't belong to a thirteen year old kid.

Sometimes his own voice scared him. He had been taught his whole life to not show emotion, not question authority and not reveal any feelings that when he did speak, his own voice sounded too foreign against his ears.

Gradually, his cold, detached personality that the KSI created was something that he accepted as part of him.

Stubbing out the cigarette into the ashtray, Lisa then dragged her laptop towards her on the table, the screen blaring his profile.

"Your training record says otherwise," she said nonchalantly, scrolling through the hundreds of pages, "at age eleven, you can already withstand electric shocks without passing out in the first hour. Your psychometric tests are the best we've seen in a while. You already know how to work all the weapons and armoury invented. You know all the drugs and its worth in the streets to date. You know drug code names, hacking code names, police code names. Your sniping skills are so perfect that you've already got the nickname of 'silent killer' among the rest of the other trainees."

Shoving the laptop back, she glared up at him, "that doesn't strike me as someone who's not ready."

Taehyung stayed silent. It was true what Lisa said. Taehyung easily excelled at everything during training and seeing that, Lisa didn't fail to put all of her efforts into nurturing him into one of the best.

"But I don't know anything about the White Thorn Gang." He said finally, tapping his nervous fingers on his lap.

He was perplexed, but not shocked, that as soon as his training was finished Lisa had already summoned him into her office to give him his first mission as a newly qualified agent.

"We'll teach you everything about them." Lisa laughed at what she considered a stupid reply from him. "Their history, their members, their illegal activities. We're not throwing you into a lions den without making you into a lion yourself. All you have to do is join the gang and befriend Min Yoongi."

"Who's he?" Taehyung asked, finally sitting up straighter as interest picked at him.

"Right hand man of the leader. He's tasked with protecting the leader's daughter, Kwon Bora, in school. His parents were our agents."

Taehyung met Lisa's eyes surprisingly. "Were?"

Lisa nodded, smiling sadly at him. "They were the two agents that Lim Jaebeom betrayed years ago. Do you remember your first kill?"

A shiver ran down his spine when that name was mentioned.

How can I not?

"Min Yoongi's parents were tasked with getting information from the then up and coming White Thorn Gang. At the time, the country was rocked when a new gang took over the streets, mysterious deaths and disappearances spread throughout the country and the underground became uncontrollable. Kwon was rising in power rapidly and he gathered followers very quickly too. We realised we were too far gone and there was no way we could crush the White Thorn Gang. And so, we sent Min Yoongi's parents in to help him set up the gang, gain his full trust, access information, become our eye."