Twisted Every Way || Vmin/Yoonmin {Complete}

15 -- First Love

Taehyung mustered up as much courage as he could as he and Namjoon ran across the building and then through doorways and stairwells that Taehyung didn't even know existed--one of which Namjoon had to pull out a key for. After descending down three different flights of stairs, he stopped counting. Eventually, when there was no more lighting, they pulled out their phones to use as flashlights. The road before them seemed endless, and though for a long while he could only listen to the sounds of their footsteps and heavy breathing, his mind was racing. At last, he couldn't stop himself from voicing his thoughts.

"If you could have done something about this sooner, then why didn't you?" he blurted, yet he didn't feel much regret after the words escaped his lips. He'd suspected Namjoon far before this, but the man had lied well enough to fool him. The older of the two sighed, but never stopped moving forward.

"It's complicated," Namjoon admitted. "The 'ghost' and I go back a ways."

"I'm listening," Taehyung said numbly, matching the pace of his steps. Namjoon realized there was no way out of this now and took a moment to collect himself, but then spoke with sincerity.

"We must have been high school aged when I met him," Namjoon began. "He was from a poor family, and his parents sounded like horrible people. They neglected him, never showed any affection, and physically abused him left and right. So he ran away and started hanging around the wrong crowds. It's a shame because the guy's a genius, musically and otherwise. He wanted to make music; that was the one thing we had in common. When he wasn't caught up with the gang stuff, he sat around writing. He was trying to find a way to make it in the industry but never quite found a way in, maybe because he was dabbling with drugs too much and didn't have the proper schooling."

"Well, how'd he end up here if he was caught up in gangs?" Taehyung interrupted him, curiosity in his eyes.

"I'm getting there," Namjoon assured him. "I got an internship here right out of college, when the worst of his drug and gang stuff was happening. I think he was jealous of me, so he went all in with whatever could distract him. I used to spend evenings here, working on my own stuff. One night I stumbled upon all of this. There are tunnels all over the place in this building, and I eventually found they they let out into a few different basements. At first I thought nothing of it, it was just fun to explore when no one was looking. Maybe they were originally here for the convenience of performers, but they must have been abandoned ages ago. I never saw anyone else noticing or mentioning the tunnels.

"After a year I was hired in officially. Meanwhile, he'd gotten into all kinds of trouble with the gangs and owed them impossible amounts of money. He was homeless and on the run, and had already been to jail once or twice. I couldn't help but feel sorry for him. He'd just lived this awful life, and he couldn't seem to get a break anywhere. So I told him, if he cleaned his act up and tried to focus on writing some music, I could give him somewhere to hide. I brought him here, keeping one key to myself and passing off all of the others to him. No one seemed to know all of this existed, so it wasn't like the keys were missed. That was a few years ago."

"So... You just let him release havoc and turned a blind eye to it all?" Taehyung interjected, his eyebrows furrowing.

"It wasn't like that at first," Namjoon sighed. "At first, he really seemed to be trying. He seemed to wean himself off of the drugs and sat in the basement writing music. But he also spent some time listening in to what goes on here, and he started to think someone like Jungkook was undeserving of so much praise--because he it was for the fame, not for the love of music. So he started pulling pranks on him as a pastime."

"And then he heard Jimin," Taehyung concluded grimly.

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