a/n: welcome back~ i can't believe i've written 50 chapters of this fanfic! 🤯
ps: this man aged beautifully 🥺😭
•❅──────✧❅✦❅✧──────❅•
"Why are you doing this?" Hoseok's gaze looked as if he was shooting daggers from it, all the while his hands were up to the back of his head.
Despite of his cold exterior, no one in that corridor knows how much his heart truly wavered. Especially when the man that's pointing the gun to his head was his own 'father'.
-ˏˋ. ~ 𝓪 𝓯𝓮𝔀 𝓶𝓸𝓶𝓮𝓷𝓽𝓼 𝓪𝓰𝓸 ~ ˊˎ-
Time continued to tick as they waited for Jae to make his appearance to the promised place. It was just five of them at the private room of the fancy restaurant; Yoongi, Hoseok, Namjoon, Seokjin and of course, Hyuna herself.
After the deeper investigation, Hoseok shared his findings to the rest of the members. It was confirmed that all of the recent raids at their territorries were caused by Jae.
The streets were whispering about the high possibilty of the mad man wanting to initiate a war against Bangtan. And their guess was that Hyuna was acting as an internal distraction as the rebels weaken their remote defenses.
That, of course, enraged Yoongi. He came too close to murdering Hyuna right there and then, but was stopped by Namjoon.
He said that will only make things worst, as they might expose themselves to more uncalled risks.
And Hoseok felt bad for letting the enemy into their base just because of the useless reason of repaying his gratitude to Jae. But, no one blamed him, though. Because none of them ever thought Jae, of all people, would use Hoseok like he did.
But, people change.
With the limited time, they rushed a counter plan to end the opponent before they decided to attack their base.
By ending the life of their leader first.
Therefore, they decided to use this 'trade-off' to meet Jae face to face, and end this once and for all.
On the other hand, Hyuna was being awfully quiet despite sitting close to the man she was wagging her tail at for almost a month.
Her hands were fiddling with the shiny utensils on the table, chewing her lower lip as the faint sound of the impatient thumps of her feet on floor filled the silenced space.
That's not like her at all.
It was as if she was anxious of something.
But, Yoongi didn't picked up on such small habits since he was preparing himself for the upcoming battle. He couldn't care less about the state she was in, as long as his first bullet will pierced her skull, that's all that matters.
"...How much longer does that old man need to come here?.. He knows that I hate waiting, right?" Yoongi's voice instantly stopped Hyuna's restless feet.
Hyuna reached her hands into her bag, trying to find her phone. Pulling it out upon finding it, the quick tapping of the screen was indicating she was trying to reach for Jae.
It took a few seconds later to get a reply when the notification sounds hits. She opened the inbox and read the message.
Awfully long though.
There was hesitation in her eyes but she quickly announced, "He'll be here soon."
Such short reply for minutes of reading the text.
Yoongi took a glance of suspicion at Hyuna as she shoved her hand in to her bag, placing her phone back into the space where she took it from. Looking away, Yoongi just hummed in reply before making silent eye contacts with the others.
It's funny how the two sides were completely unaware that they were both on a mission to kill.
Hyuna took a deep breath as she placed the bag on the table, her hands were out of the bag but her phone was still in her hands.
So, what was she doing when her busy hands was in the bag?
She stood up as abruptly as she excused herself, "I'm going to the ladies' room." She said in that one deep breath that she held awhile ago.
Suddenly, 'speed' was her middle name when she rushed to exit the room, as if she was running for her life. In a way, she was. She managed to remove herself from the scene so much in haste, that she didn't notice that Yoongi signalled Hoseok to follow her.
Upon arriving in the bathroom, Hyuna clutched on the edge on the wet sink. Breathing heavily as she had been holding her breath until she was far enough from the room she left behind.
After managing her breathing patterns in a calmer pace, she unlocked her phone to contact Jae once again. Opening the conversation inbox, she typed as fast as she could.
"I DID IT. WHERE TF R U?"
- sent
"YOU'RE NOT DITCHING ME R U?"
- sent
"ANSWER ME U MF!"
- sent
Although she was the one who agreed to do this, the adrenaline was still too high for her to handle. The panic was too much in control of her body, that she couldn't even wait a second before sending those consecutive texts.
What she knew was she needs to get out of this building before it too late. It's like a constant ringing of siren sounds were booming in her head, warning her to escape the tight situation as soon as possible.
It was unexpected of her to be quite an airhead that she thought she was alone. As soon as she came out of the restroom and went towards the opposite direction, Hoseok grabbed her by the hand, pulling her back by force.
"Where do you think you're going?" He threatened.
"Fuck" she cursed in her mind.
But, as soon as she turn around, the tense in her body relaxes when she saw Jae standing behind Hoseok's figure. This time, Hoseok was the one frozen in his spot. Especially when there was a gun right behind his head.
"Don't try anything funny, boy." Jae warned as he circled around Hoseok, changing his position to stand in front of the boy who he saved many, many years ago.
Even though Hoseok himself did the digging, and he knows the truth that Jae was indeed having malicious intend towards Bangtan, that he was just using Hoseok to get Hyuna to infiltrate the mansion; he knew that.
But, deep in his heart, Hoseok was still hoping it wasn't true. Fooling himself with false hope, just to be broken by the dissapointment of the reality.
Wanted to verify the situation, Jae asked, "Have you..." but he didn't get to finish his question Hyuna already answered.
"Yes I did! Didn't you read my mess-- forget it. Let's just go!" Hyuna urged hurriedly.
"Calm down, little girl. We've got enough time. "
ˏˋ. ~ 𝓫𝓪𝓬𝓴 𝓽𝓸 𝓹𝓻𝓮𝓼𝓮𝓷𝓽 ~ ˊˎ-
"Why are you doing this?" Hoseok's gaze looked as if he was shooting daggers from it, all the while his hands were up to the back of his head.
Despite of his cold exterior, no one in that corridor knows how much his heart truly wavered. Especially when the man that's pointing the gun to his head was his own 'father'.
"I thought I already teach enough but I guess I didn't..." the older seemed genuinely disappointed.
"...power, kid."
"...The throne, the wealth and the power that comes wearing that crown. All of it..."
"...'Strive to be the at top.' Isn't that what I've always taught you? "
While Jae was taking his sweet time, lecturing his 'son' for probably the last time, Hyuna grew impatient and becoming more and more perturbed.
She tugged the unoccupied arm of Jae with a firm force, "...Need I remind you, Jae. That thing will kill us all if we stay here any longer." She growled.
"That thing? What thing?" Hoseok's mind went into a spiral, trying to recollect whatever pieces of memories of any suspicious movements of Hyuna back there.
Failing to recall any, Hoseok grew in ire, "...What the fuck did you do?!" He almost moved more than Jae liked him to be.
The gunman shove the tip of the firearm further to Hoseok's forehead as a final warning. The threat forced the younger man to return to his primal, static state.
Jae chuckled darkly, "Ohh, I did nothing. I just came here..."
"...but this girl right here, just released the sarin gas for quite sometime now..." he briefly titled his head to the side.
Smiling manicly, he continued, "...Your brothers are dying as we speak."
[ a/n: read the comment that I leave behind, to know about 'Sarin' ]
⊱ ━━━━━━━━ ❅ ━━━━━━━━ ⊰
ˏˋ. ~ 𝓫𝓪𝓬𝓴 𝓲𝓷 𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝓹𝓻𝓲𝓿𝓪𝓽𝓮 𝓻𝓸𝓸𝓶 ~ ˊˎ-
At first, it came quite gradually, but once it reached the peak, the pain hits like a bite from a snake.
Quick and strikingly painful.
The sudden drowsiness, turned into exploding headaches. The casual coughs, turned into gasps of desperation for air. The damp eyes, turned even more watery as their pupil shrinked into a tinier circle.
Every part of their body aches, as if it was poked with billions of sharp-point pins; all piercing at a different time with a different pressure that were increasingly excruciating.
It was everywhere, from the tips of their toes, to the lines of their shins, side of their waist, crooked of their collarbones; it was in their mouth and even in the entirety of their eyeballs.
None of the three could even speak up their mind before their body completely lost its ability to withstand and pulled to the gravity, collapsing on the floor.
As their ruptured veins continued to spasm uncontrollably, their hearts punctured, and their lungs beaten. And in each of the passing second, it get torturously painful and much harder to breath.
To the point that it took away their will to even think of anything but the pain itself.
⊱ ━━━━━━━━ ❅ ━━━━━━━━ ⊰
Though Hoseok was not well versed enough about all chemical weapon, but he knows enough that any type of toxic gas is bad news. The more he stands there, the more time he'll waste, instead of saving his brothers.
Though he wanted to extract more information from the rebel himself, unfortunately the time seemed to envy him. Even if Hoseok was in the disadvantage, however Jae was a fool to let his ego think that Hoseok couldn't fight back.
With a swift movement, Hoseok removed his head to the side, avoiding any loophole to get himself back into the target. Sliding his hand to his back, he took his dagger plunged it into Jae's armed hand before he could pull the trigger.
Jae groaned to the stabbing wound on his wrist. The striking pain made his grip on the gun to weaken and loosen, which quickly became an advantage to Hoseok when he slapped it away from the enemy's hold.
Taking another advantage of Jae's stunned state, Hoseok hooked the older's legs from the back and pulled it forward. The sudden tug on his legs caused him to lose balance and fall on his back.
Getting Jae immobilized for a few second was the only time Hoseok had, to make a turn-around and run back to where they were supposed to meet in the first place.
So, he did exactly that.
As Hoseok was sprinting farther and farther away from the threat, Jae was squirming to reach for his gun that flew to the side of the corrider. Grunting and inching nearer, he grabbed the handle and swiftly pointed the gun to Hoseok's running silhouette.
It's quiet far and the shot might not land on his head, but at least, it will definitely hit his back. The vital area where his lungs were caged.
A little bit of force on the trigger was all it need for Jae to become Hoseok's very own angel of death but Jae's mind glitched with the flashes of memories when Hoseok was merely a child.
And that, halted his action into a heart-gripping hesitation.
Though it didn't take much time for him to recover back to his killing intent, but it was enough for Hoseok to disappear from his target.
Hyuna rushed to fallen rebel, helping him to get back on his feet as she urged him to bail out from the building.
Gritting his teeth in disatisfaction and anger, "Fuck!" he cursed underneath his breath as both of them sprinted towards the opposite direction.
⊱ ━━━━━━━━ ❅ ━━━━━━━━ ⊰
The room was echoing the faint sounds of gasps and grunts of pain.
And the occasional sound of gurgling caused by the blood mixing with the air escaping from their corrupted lungs, could sometimes be heard when one of them cough out the crimson fluid from their mouth.
Every single sound was subtlely loud enough to fill the room, but not quite enough to be heard from the outside.
And even if it only been a few minutes but felt like they were stuck in that agony for at least a couple of decades.
Yoongi was one of the first to get hit by the unknown pain, as he was the closest to the toxic source.
Paralyzed from where he first collapsed, and though his mouth was leaking with drool and blood, his body was limping on the floor, every inch of it was spasming in an abnormal rate of convulsion, he tried the best of his dying will to endure them all.
-ˏˋ. ~ 𝓕𝓵𝓪𝓼𝓱𝓫𝓪𝓬𝓴 ~ ˊˎ-
"Are you sure you don't want me to go with you?" Ae-Ri asked again as she came closer to Yoongi's back, clinging to him like a koala to a tree.
His grovel tone chuckled endearingly and as naturally, reacting to her fond embrace.
He replied to the question with the same answer he had before, "No, love. You're safer here." he spoke softly as he adjusted the black tie around his collar.
Ae-Ri released the hug and tugged on shirt as a signal for him to turn around, which fortunately he caught on.
Yoongi spun on his feet, facing the woman he loves the most in this world. She looked so pretty in her pregnant glow, he couldn't help but to smile with admiration.
Ae-Ri removed his hands from the tie and took over the job, "You do know that I'm the best student of your finest gunman, right? I'm pretty sure can take care of myself."
A proud smile glowed across his face, "Of course you can, sweetheart..." one of his hand went up to reach for her, caressing the back of his fingers on her cheek dearly.
"...But this little one can't." His other hand palmed her belly as delicately.
"...So stay there until it's over. After that, we can finally celebrate the news the boys, yeah?" How noncholant he was as he tried to reassure her.
And even if Yoongi didn't tell her about the plan of them going into a blood bathing battle and putting on this act as if it was just a normal business meeting, however, Ae-Ri was sharp enough to know that he was hiding something.
Done with his tie, she pressed it neatly on the center of his sturdy chest. She had that ominous feeling in her guts about this 'trade-off' and the trepidation grew stronger as the time for him to go was getting closer, "You're going to be safe... right?"
Ae-Ri, herself find it hard to finish that sentence, let alone the man who was walking into the war himself.
Yoongi didn't reply with verbal answer, instead he flashed her with a warm and loving smile, "...Come here." He pulled her into a hug, pressing her head to his chest, where she could hear his beating heart.
It's soothing but it wasn't enough to calm the unexplainable anxiety within her, "...Promise that you'll come home to me..." she pulled away to meet his eyes, pleading to him, "...come back to us." she asked earnestly.
Truthfully, Yoongi hesitated for awhile until he was trying to reply, "...I pr--"
That's when Jungkook called, "Hyung, it's time." He stood at the entrance door of the couple's bedroom.
Yoongi simply nodded towards the youngest member, before focusing back to the one in his arms. His fingers drowned into her hair, "...I gotta go, love." He leaned in for a loving kiss on her lips, receiving a hum of satisfaction from her.
Pulling away from her delicate features, he rested his forehead on hers as he whispered, "I love you so much. Both of you."
-ˏˋ. ~ 𝓕𝓵𝓪𝓼𝓱𝓫𝓪𝓬𝓴 𝓔𝓷𝓭𝓼 ~ ˊˎ-
For split second, in between those agonizing coughs and the dying heartbeat, Yoongi found himself missing Ae-Ri more than he thought he could ever before.
As the feeling of longing and yearning engulfed in his heart, He let the blood to seep out from his eyes, blurring his vision as his body goes numb, one finger at a time.
A part of him realized that he don't want to die. He wanted to grow old and be even crankier than he already was. There's so much more he wanted to do with Ae-Ri, so much more he wanted to learn with her.
He wanted to know how it feels to hold his baby, he wanted to compare how small is the baby's hands compared to his much larger ones, he wanted to lay next to the small bundle of joy as Ae-Ri lulled both: him and their child to sleep.
He wanted to be there for his child's firsts. First kick in Ae-Ri's belly, first cry, first laugh, first step, first word.
He wanted everything and more.
Was he being too greedy for desiring such things?
With his throat tightening, only little air was able to reach his lungs. His voice could not be found anymore and movement of his heart began become slower and slower.
Guess he will never know.
And when his vision was beginning to charcoal, he regret for so many things that's he weren't able to do with his family, however, he was still glad that Ae-Ri wasn't here.
He was glad that, in some ways, he managed to spare her and their unborn child from this pain; He was glad that he was able to save their lives, even if at the cost of risking his own.
⊱ ━━━━━━━━ ❅ ━━━━━━━━ ⊰
Ae-Ri woke up swimming in her bed, drowning in the flood of sheets and bullets of sweats running down the side of her temples.
As if the nightmare of her past wasn't enough to jolt her body up from her deep slumber. The thought of Yoongi made it worst.
Call it instinct or overthinking but she had a bad feeling about the meeting. Slowly, with the arrival of consciousness, it feelings sank deeper, harder.
Just then, her attention quickly shifted to the side when Jungkook burst into her room; rushed and uninvited. Holding out his hand towards her as his eyes stayed alert to the surrounding outside, he urged the lady, "Ae-Ri, we need to get out of here now!"
•❅──────✧❅✦❅✧──────❅•
a/n: ahh the good old cliff hanger 🤡
Jae was smart though. A coward move. But, it was smart. Maximizing the success rate rather than risking the lack of man power. But, still... shame on you 😌
Not going to lie, I hope I manage to make some of y'all cry on Yoongi's birthday lmao 🤣 but I still hope that you enjoyed your reading today!
I'll see you when I see you!
Until then, stay safe and borahae 💜