I read over this 50 million times and I still feel like it's wrong or missing something 😭
Also, I beg you don't pay attention to the ages on the first chapter, I'm still trying to develop the pasts of Yoons, Jimin, and Tae. The Yoonmin sequel has Jimin's past already and honestly, the ages themselves are confusing me, so...yeah
---
Kim Namjoon was raised to be a proper, well-mannered man that lacked any sinful desires; no lust, no envy, no wrath, no greed, no gluttony, no laziness, and most of all, no pride. Pride can be deadly for a man or a woman. However, Namjoon was taught to not ask for help but not because of pride, but because people are untrustworthy. People will only help you for their own benefit. Never allow someone to take advantage of your situation.
Namjoon's parents had very specific roles in his life. It was as though before he was born, they went over what roles they'd play; it was like an act, a blanket to cover up the truth. His mother was with him from day one. She nurtured him and made sure he was behaving the way a respectful young boy should behave. Whereas his father wasn't as active, he was gone for days to months - sometimes even a year. There were days in Namjoon's early childhood where he sometimes forgot he had a father. His mother never talked about his father and his father never talked about his mother.
They said they were married - happily married - but they acted as they were strangers forced to do a project together.
Namjoon was homeschooled due to his father's distrust in society. His mother was a scholar with the highest IQ Namjoon could remember. Yet she stayed at home cooking and cleaning, letting her intelligence seemingly go to waste. Namjoon barely ever learned from school books, his mother would make him learn with experience.
"The world isn't 2D, baby," his mother had said, "and neither are people...there are several sides to everyone, several layers. Never trust them."
His father and his mother filled him with fear of his own kind. So much so that when he began to mature, he stopped trusting his own parents. His mother taught him that the only person he can trust is himself and sometimes, that wasn't even true. She taught him to view himself as another person and think without a mind; to seemingly get rid of internal monologue; to put himself on autopilot and listen to only his instincts; his heart was his biggest traitor.
"At some point in your life, love, I want you to stop trusting your father and I; stop loving us. Then, you have fully passed your classes and you will begin learning on your own."
"I don't want to stop loving you, Mommy..."
"Then your father will fail you."
And failed him, he did.
As soon as it became evident that Namjoon was reliant on them, his father sent him away. He was eleven at that time and knew absolutely nothing about the real world. He didn't know how to talk to people more or less order anything, he didn't know how to use a credit card, he didn't know how to live. It happened at night. His father had come home from a business trip that lasted eighteen months. He jerked Namjoon out of his bed and told the boy,
"Wake up, boy, how can you sleep knowing you've failed?"
The man proceeded to hastily pack Namjoon two outfits and 2 pairs of shoes before pushing him to the back of a car.
"Come back when you're angry."
Namjoon was terrified at first. He was put in a group home for homeless children where he was forced to go to a trash school and eat food that definitely wasn't his mother's cooking. His mother had taught him that it was okay to cry, however, Namjoon was only to cry for a few minutes and then he must move on. Namjoon's earliest memory of crying was when he was four and he knocked his head pretty hard against the door of an open cabinet. His mother had let him whine about for exactly three minutes before tending to him.
"Crying too long will make you miss what's in front of you, your vision gets blurry and how will you take care of yourself if you can't see?"
"You'll take care of me, won't you, Mommy?"
"I won't always be here."
However, Namjoon went against his mother's teachings and allowed himself to cry more than he should have. He definitely missed the boy sneaking into the bunker while he sat on his cot, wallowing in self-pity. Due to his blurry vision, he didn't see the boy stand atop the window seal nor did he see the boy tie a rope around his neck.
"Hey, what are you doing?" Eleven-year-old Namjoon had asked.
"If you had a chance to stop being sad and lonely forever, would you take it?"
"Yeah."
"I'm taking my chance."
Namjoon thought about it as he watched the boy plummet to the ground before the rope caught him and jerked his body back up. But he concluded that he didn't want to die. He still has to prove to his father that he's not a failure.
The path to proof was halted when he was questioned by the woman that found him on the streets. Namjoon was the only witness and when asked if he tried to stop the boy, he honestly answered, no.
He was kicked out after that and Namjoon spent another two years in and out of homes and on the streets. At thirteen, he managed to get in some trouble with a gang after stealing a pair of shoes from the leader. During his two years alone with nowhere to call home, he managed to become a good negotiator and liar. His business and deceitful attitude landed him a position in the gang, of course, after receiving a good beating from the leader. He found himself in dangerous situations for the next five years of his life and for a while, he began to think that his parents had abandoned him.
"Say...you related to Namhyun Kim?" One of the gang members had asked when they were preparing a drive-by.
"Yeah."
"How?"
"He's my dad."
Wrong answer.
Eighteen-year-old Kim Namjoon found himself being dragged out of the car and brutally beaten by all four guys in the car with him. Even his past experience with fighting - which wasn't much as his mother taught him about wrath and fighting only led to more fighting - he couldn't fight back as they already had him on the ground.
Once again, he found himself homeless but this time no one cared. For another year, he trudged along the South Korean streets with no money, no home, no food, no nothing. But Namjoon wasn't mad, nor was he sad. His mother taught him about commitment and how nothing lasts forever; to never fully invest himself into anything because everything ends eventually.
No wonder Namjoon had no real standard of living; he never allowed himself to think that he could live better because, eventually, he would die. So what was the point?
So he wasn't sad, mad, or happy that he was a homeless teen who was abandoned by his parents for seven years. He had no wants, no needs that exceeded basic personal care. He was fine considering his circumstances.
After a year of wandering the South Korean streets, his father finally found him.
"Do you hate me yet, son?"
"Yes." It was a lie, Namjoon was still failing to complete the last lesson he was supposed to learn.
"If you don't now, then you will later."
His father had let his mother die. Namjoon learned about it as soon as he returned home to burn down the small home where he was raised. During the explanation of his mother's death, Namjoon finally found out what his father did all that time when he left. A group of people from an opposing mafia had raided their small home, finding his mother who fearfully allowed them to take her life.
"Her work on earth was done, she wasn't needed anymore," his father had said with no hint of emotion in his deep voice. "You see, we're all put on this earth to do something. She was put here to marry me, have my son, raise him properly, and then die. I was put here to marry her, impregnate her, ensure my son is raised well, teach him the last bits of his learning career, tell him why he's here, and then die."
Namjoon was silent not from respect but from shock. It was the first time in years where he felt the need to cry but he held it back, not wanting this man who he barely knew to see such a vulnerable side of him.
"Cry, let it out, this will be the last time you'll feel these emotions," his father simply stated, "your training begins shortly."
"You didn't love my mom?"
"We weren't put on this earth to love each other, son."
"Was I put on this earth to love someone?"
"You'll figure out the other details of your purpose but as of now your only goal is to be trained, take control, and get rid of the predecessor. Just remember, you'll die."
Namjoon went through a long and gruelling period to gain the respect and title his father held. His training lasted only three years but it felt like an eternity. Rivals after rivals, attacks after attacks, dead bodies after dead bodies. Namjoon didn't like blood, he realized that after shooting the daughter of an opposing mob boss by accident. He shot her in the chest and Namjoon had begrudgingly tried to stop the bleeding, but after touching the blood just above her petite breasts, he decided he didn't want to. It was...nasty.
"We're all put on this earth for a reason," he said to the young girl as she gasped fruitlessly for air, "maybe I was supposed to kill you. You were supposed to be killed. Things don't happen spontaneously, everything is planned."
"P-Please-"
Namjoon hushed her before putting his large, bloodied hands over her face and closing her eyes. He stood up before pressing his gun against the girl's head. For a second he questioned himself. Was this showing weakness? Should he let the girl die from the chest wound? Would he need the bullet for something else? Selfish, don't think selfish thoughts, don't think about yourself.
He pulled the trigger and watched the little bit of life she had left quickly drain out of her eyes which she had reopened after sensing his hesitance. He quickly closed her eyes and left her there to be found.
During his training, he and one of his father's gangs were assigned to break a patient out of a mental hospital for children. His father called the patient a special case and wanted him under the mafia immediately.
This was how he met Jung Hoseok - Guns. The boy was the opposite of what Namjoon had thought he'd be like. He realized that the fourteen-year-old had been placed in a mental hospital out of pity from the court when they found he was being molested by his father who had killed. He wasn't crazy at all, he was just very vengeful and fueled by wrath.
"You can't let wrath rule your life, Guns."
"At least I feel something, you feel nothing."
When the time came, his father announced to the mafia that his son had almost successfully completed his training. The only thing he had left to do was kill the man who started it all.
"Remember, son, even those who work for you can't be trusted."
The day after he killed his father and had him buried beside his mother, he received a call from a man his father had worked with. The conversation was short and the man requested to meet in person.
"I realize your family has strict rules towards life itself," the man stated. His voice was deep and raspy and he wheezed like a smoker. "How would you feel if you became the most successful man in the world?"
"Success is suggestive."
"My son is set to be my successor," the man stated as he swirled his bourbon while dumping ashes of a cigar into a try. "With your brains and his lack of humanity, I can see a very prosperous future for the business."
"I work within my own circle, no outsiders."
"Then how do you expect to grow?" The man inquired with a hint of amusement in his tone, "I'm not asking you to put all your trust into my son, I'm saying that I have a plan - I've heard of your work and I can say that I'm not impressed. You're weak, the only good thing about you is the fact that you can follow orders. You're smart, but you haven't got what it takes to play this game properly. My son is other half you need - you will never have to worry about getting blood on your hands again with my son co-leading with you."
Namjoon wasn't offended at all. He's been through much more to get hurt by words. If anything, he respected the man before him even more for saying such insults knowing that with just a snap of Namjoon's fingers, he would get shot in the back by the man standing guard behind him by the door. But Namjoon made no move to kill him or act out in any way. He simply stayed seated as he thought about what the man said.
His father never told him about expanding the mafia. Would expanding go against his mother's teachings? As Namjoon observed the man in front of him, he could tell he was a greedy, wrathful man. The man was indeed incredibly rich as the money from his mafia went several generations back while Namjoon's went only a few generations back. They were both wealthy, but the man smiling as he took a long draw of his cigar was much richer.
"I'll offer a $500 million USD investment into the business if you partner up with my son," the man had said after a long moment of silence, "in a few years time, no one will be stupid enough to even breathe in your direction the wrong way - I have connections with the Japanese Yakuza, the German mafia, Italian mafia, Mexican cartel, several politicians including Kim Jong-Un, Vladimir Putin, United States congressmen-"
Sometimes bribery is good.
"I'll take the offer. What is your son's name?"
The man smiled and held his hand out to shake and seal the partnership. Namjoon took the man's huge hand in his and it only made the man smile more.
"Kim Seokjin, may I warn you, he's quite troubled."
---
Word Count: 2328
Summary:
Namjoon was abandoned by his dad at age 11 and he spent some time in a homeless shelter and was kicked out due to a boy committing suicide.
After that, he spent 2 years in foster care before running into a gang at age 13. He was basically adopted by the gang and spent 5 years with them before being kicked out due to the gang beefing with his father.
His father found him at age 18 and trained him to become the next leader of the mafia for 3 years. This is when he met Hoseok.
He became the leader and killed his father upon command at 21 before securing a deal with the other Kim (Seokjin's dad). That's when the 2 leading Kims in South Korea merged the mafias