“What are you doing here?” I asked him as he took the seat right next to me.
I did not expect to see him here. The Royal hall had reopened, and was holding a gathering in remembrance of the ill-begotten day. It was more or less an all okay signal to the public, but I needed to be here for some personal business.
I thought I had pretty much removed myself from the main stage by sitting in the corner and trying to catch up with finances. I was waiting and he wasn’t here yet.
“I am working. It’s my night shift.” Jungkook replied. I thought he was one of those people who avoided opulent and conceited company as much as possible. “Speaking of work, you haven’t been there for the past couple of days.”
I had been avoiding him and that included not going to work. “I have been to work. You just weren’t there.” Joon had a theory about this whole mystery involving Taehyung. I needed to make some comparison if the theory lined up, but a lot of father’s work from recent years was in the station. I went in when Jungkook would be busy overlooking the reopening checklist yesterday.
“You looked through Jimin’s files.”
“No." I did look through his file though. I had been careful enough to jumble records to make it less conspicuous, but I had to take the record books around his disappearance, which had been extensive. The prince stirred the police station greatly. It was very detailed, which I was thankful for.
"Do you know him? Umm, personally?" One usually did not refer to the price without his royal prefix, no matter how removed he was from his duty.
“Yes, we used to play around when we were younger. Didn’t even know what being the prince meant then.” That's unexpected. Usually who and what was around a prince would be tightly controlled, but it did not seem like he was going to expand what he meant.
Silence settled in awkwardly. Jungkook fidgeted with his fingers and leaned back awkwardly.
“Just go away if you are going to be like this.” I stared annoyed at him. He had started to move his legs. I rather get back to my useless work than watch him act this way.
He straightened up at that. “ Maybe you should come back to work.”
“Maybe,” I hummed. I hated that father labeled the book with huge writing saying “finance.” I had closed it as soon as I sensed Jungkook walking around. I did not want to work on it at home. Moonbyul had a pretty decent idea of how things were going on, but I did not want Joon to be aware of it.
I sighed and went back to it. Jungkook awkwardly looked away to give me some privacy. “Things going rough?”
“Yeah, how did you know?” I groaned while working. Everyone knew. It wasn’t a secret that the Gray household had been plummeting ever since the lack of government funding.
Apparently, we had been exaggerating the vampire crisis to get funding to expand our large fortune. I sometimes wished it was completely true. The fact that we had been doing well for this long did mean some of my ancestors embezzled funds. It just wasn’t as large of one as people assumed.
“How long?”
“Maybe two years in the house if everything remains stable.”
Jungkook looked worried. Father probably told him about the house.
“He was being stupid,” I continued. “With the inheritance tax, the whole thing is going to the government as they probably intended it to be.”
“I am sorry.”
“No need. It’s just a house.”