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CHAPTER THREE
THE TRUTH UNTOLD
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KIM TAEHYUNG
He had been barely four years old when the capital had taken him family and his from their homes in district twelve. At the time, he didn't know what was going on, or, what was going to happen them.
Still, even then, he hadn't felt like their move to the Capital had been a good one. Partly, because Areum hadn't come with them, but also, because Taehyung felt that there was something wrong going on there.
His little sister, Areum, had been sick and so the people of the Capital had let her remain in District thirteen. Taehyung only knew that she had been put under special supervision.
Back then, it was clear that Areum wasn't going to be able to hang on much longer, so the people in the capital didn't really have much use for her anyway.
Taehyung realized that he should have noticed how wrong their reasoning was then. But how could he have? He had been but a child.
When they didn't need someone, they left them behind. Areum hadn't been needed and so, she had been left behind.
The same could not be said about him and his parents, no, everything was different for them. They were needed.
Taehyung hadn't know why all of this was happening, but while in captivity, he had found out that his mother had meddled in things she definitely shouldn't have. She had meddled in bad things.
While doing so, she had involved his father. It hadn't taken them long to make discoveries that turned heads.
Their discoveries had drawn attention to their humble abode in District twelve.
In district twelve, Taehyung's mother had been known as the only doctor, since their district wasn't rich enough for them to really have one. His mother, a self trained healer, would have to do.
It was a good thing that his mother had always been smart with a great will to help people. As soon as people had noticed that, she had unofficially been given the position of a doctor.
It had been her job to try and save the sick. She hadn't excellent at curing ailments, nor had she been particularly good at giving good at giving good advice, but for a place like district twelve, she had to do.
And while she hadn't excelled in everything, his mother had been revolutionary in her own way. She had taken pride in being the perfect doctor for childbirth.
Even at a time where Labour often ended in death for both the baby and the mother, Taehyung's mother had found a way to, in almost all cases, prevent the death of the baby.
No one before her, had been able to do it like her.
In her time as a doctor, Taehyung's mother's heart had always ached when she wasn't able to save the babies.
While she always managed to save the majority, there were still cases where she hadn't had the resources to save the kids. In some rare other cases, there just hadn't been anything anyone could do.
Nevertheless, his mother had started blaming herself, destroying herself and a lot of people around her in her craze of trying to save everyone. It had been terrible, Taehyung recalled that quite vividly.
His father had been a good man who, along with a group of his friends, had sought to help my mother with her condition. With her obsession.
His father and his friends had regularly ventured into the forest to hunt for herbs. Everything had been done in order to help his mother.
It had worked somewhat, as for about two months, Taehyung's mother had finally been content. There had been no deaths in those two months, and eleven successful births.
Taehyung's father had finally been able to breathe freely again. His mother had started smiling again in that period of time, Taehyung remembered.
But it hadn't lasted long and soon, his mother had gotten it into her head that it was her job, and her job alone, to save every single baby that was to be brought into this world.
And for that to work, she had gone down a very dark road. From that point onwards, his mother had only concentrated her efforts on saving the babies. She no longer cared for the mothers.
Something had changed in her as soon as she had made that realization.
Taehyung had started noticing when she no longer had showed any interested in the healthy vegetables he had found. She had snapped at him once, saying that those wouldn't help the babies.
His sister had started noticing the change when the two of them had heard their mother talking about how they could no longer do anything to save her. Taehyung clearly remembered the tears that had slid down Areum's cheeks after their mother had basically given up on her, claiming that there was nothing that could be done for her.
His mother had wanted to devote her life to saving babies, she didn't want to occupy herself with saving her own daughter whose health was deteriorating rapidly.
And lastly, Taehyung's father had started noticing when she no longer cared for the wounded or the sick, instead dismissing them do die.
She had wanted to find a foolproof way of bringing kids into this world, and more importantly, she had wanted to make sure that those kids would be healthy forever.
She had wanted strong kids who were naturally physically strong and mentally resistant. She had wanted perfect children.
Taehyung remembered having heard her talk about how they would be able to succeed with kids that were just physically superior to others.
How successful a new generation would be...
How district twelve would never lose kids to the hunger games ever again...
He hadn't really understood her words as a child, nor had he been able to make the connection between his mother's beliefs, and those of the Capital.
The capital was similar to his mother in the way that they wanted the same thing, despite them wanting it for different reasons.
They were not thinking of a way to help out babies, no, they were thinking of a way to breed an army of perfect youths who would be able to do the fighting. Physically superior children.
Taehyung hadn't known anything about it then, but he knew now. He knew everything now.
But the president hadn't been stupid about. She had been well aware of the fact that his mother would never help her and the Capital with her real goal, so she had lied.
Under the pretense of wanting to help his mother with her goal, she had offered to move our family to the Capital, where my mother would have better conditions for her studies.
His mother had agreed without blinking an eye, never suspecting. Still, Taehyung wondered if she would have even minded the truth. That was how far gone she had been when last he saw her.
And so they had been taken, leaving only his little sister at home who would die two months after their disappearance. Taehyung wouldn't find out about her death until years later.
Having been only a young child then, Taehyung had been kept in the dark with a lot of things. Now, he knew about all those things.
Taehyung hadn't even been able to say a proper goodbye to Areum...
In the capital, his mother had become someone of importance the moment they had arrived.
Everyone had wanted to know the person who was going to change a lot of things, but nobody had wanted to know Taehyung and his father. Taehyung had felt like extra baggage.
The Capital didn't need Taehyung and his father close to his mother, in fact, they had no use at all for Taehyung's father. Taehyung himself, however, would prove useful for them later on.
The Capital started with slowly making Taehyung's mother turn against his father, someone the capital portrayed as a nuisance.
Of course, Taehyung hadn't expected it to work...
All those fairytales clearly stated that love would always prevail.
And his parents were in love, weren't they?
Soon, his mother stopped protecting his father and Taehyung's father was sent away under special supervision. Even Taehyung, five at the time, had realized what special supervision really meant.
But both Taehyung and his mother had pretended that they didn't.
How did the Capital continue with trying to make his mother into a Capital monster?
Well, he was the next victim.
His mother had a lot ideas and while the capital was always ready to sacrifice someone for her experiments, they had wanted to test her loyalty one day.
In the beginning, Taehyung remembered having been proud of how his mother had stood up for him, and told everyone that she would never ever perform an experiment on her own son.
But sadly, that hadn't lasted long. As soon as he had turned six, his mother was ordering his to lie down on a white mattress while injecting him with her newest concoction.
Things started there and with the help of tracker Jacker venom, fear and hatred, they had managed to change Kim Taehyung.
Maybe change was not really the right word, for not a lot of him really changed, no, the truth was that they added someone into his consciousness. It was probably not what they had intended to do, but it still had happened.
His name was V.
He was very different from Kim Taehyung, even if he had not turned out how the Capital had hoped.
That had made him a failed experiment. Failed experiments were either disposed of, or, taken apart for other uses.
None of that happened to Kim Taehyung. He remained on that white hospital bunk, until one day, V had enough.
V murdered his mother and escaped from the Capital. And even if Kim Taehyung hated V, Taehyung knew that V had saved him.
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