“It’s me,” said Jungkook. “Hello?”

He stepped back from the receiver installed by the steel door and glanced up at the CCTV camera directly above him. He raised his hands, more of a symbol that he came in peace and was for all points and purposes unarmed. Then he pulled out a sheet of paper from his back pocket as further proof of his purpose of visit.

A moment passed and the receiver hummed with static, a dead response to his earlier queries. The aged brick building was located at the side of the city almost by the edge of the river, an area with inroads at every other block if you weren’t used to living here you’d easily lose your way. This was a part of the city no one wandered off to without purpose, and the street was empty on both sides. Jungkook looked up at the tall strangeness of the four storey building, entertaining the thought that if no one were to let him in, he could just leave and no one would know better.

Just as Jungkook was about to head back, he heard the metal tumblers of the lock roll and slide against each other. He took another step back as he heard the release and the latch. Slowly, the door creaked open.

* * *

The beginning of summer were the days Jungkook had even less to do. Having barely scraped past the passing marks, he was saved from summer school but not the idleness that came without it. He’d sit on his bed and spend hours on some online game on his laptop grinding levels and completing dungeon quests until a new first person shooting game came out. He would then spend the rest of the afternoon killing off zombies and aliens. When he got bored, he would lie down, put his laptop on his chest and scroll through endless social media posts for the rest of the night. He had more free time he ever needed or wanted.

It was a depressing scenario when he considered his place in society. Most of the kids in his class were preparing for college entrance tests if they weren’t already in advanced college placement courses. Others had part-time jobs, others were already lining up to inherit a family business. Every time they were asked to fill out college applications forms, his brain would freeze. Dreams, he had none. Aspirations, he barely understood the meaning of. The future was a concept too foreign, too unreachable for him to ever think about.

In any case, school was pointless. In his younger years, school appeared to him as a beacon of hope, of happiness, even love. He wasn’t particularly good at studying, but after a couple of tries he would eventually get the hang of lessons and tests, and he did well. He did enough. Coasting by had been a matter of maintaining the minimum amount of effort required.

Until one day he looked up from taking notes and realized the meaninglessness of it all. It came to him as a shock at first, but the more he paid attention, the more the system made no sense. As he sat in his desk, the image of his classmates’ noses in their books, memorising and regurgitating information appalled him. The playground soon became a factory and school the shortest path towards a dystopian future. Surviving was a matter of counting the days until he could graduate. He might not have had a plan, but there was a checklist: Get an education, get a stable income job, get married, have children, retire, and die.

Somehow, his summer routine lead him to the streets. His mother worked night and graveyard shifts, so to avoid unnecessary interaction that lead to screaming, Jungkook left the apartment in the mornings. It was walking to the point of exhaustion that had saved him from his boredom.

The city was a good place for walks, and soon Jungkook’s legs were strong to enough to take him across town and back. All afternoon, he wandered the city streets, going wherever it was his feet took him. Walking was both a blessing and a curse. On good days, it got his mind to shut down completely. On bad days, the voices in his head would run a thousand miles per second, screaming at him, congregating in deafening whispers, competing to see which one of them broke him first. On better days, he’d scan for Help Wanted ads. He didn’t have much experience, but he could use the money.

His new routine had lead him to a new escape, though not in the way he had expected.

Fourth Avenue was a good place for walks if you were feeling adventurous. The avenue was located near the bay area, a square dotted with uneven roads and the boundary punctuated by the sea. Jungkook would follow vistas, minding his own business, passing through empty lots overgrown with grass, and suddenly the ground would lift him high up he could see straight down the valley and into the beach with the wharf lit up pink and violet.

How long he was walking, he didn’t even remember anymore. But it was after sunset, or maybe it was closer to midnight, when he found himself at the fringe of the city. He kept his head down, wary of the group of men in his path. Despite his avoidance, he had rammed right into some random guy’s shoulders. Next, he was slammed into a wall. That was the first time he felt it. Sharp pain shot up his spine and lit his brain on fire. Jungkook felt alive. The first punch connected to his jaw and he saw the light flicker beneath his lids. The second punch was even better, the knee to his solar plexus like fireworks exploding in a dark sky. Then it was over.

Jungkook slid down the wall as a trickle of blood slid down his cracked lips. Inside, it was dark again. Footsteps grew closer until he saw scuffed sneakers next to his feet. Jungkook raised his eyes, against the light he only saw shadows from the man clad in black.

“Get up,” said the rough voice.

Jungkook pushed himself to his feet.

“Why didn’t you fight back?”

He didn’t answer.

“Kid,” said the guy with silver hair, “I want you to hit me as hard as you can.”

That was how he met Kim Namjoon.

Word around the city was that you don’t find The Underground, The Underground finds you. Three nights later, Kim Namjoon had brought him to a part of town Jungkook had only heard about in urban legends heard from a friend of a friend of a friend. The old train yard had been abandoned for decades, but the trains remained on the tracks, relics of the past frozen in time. Namjoon lead him through a maze of containers, navigating through the darkness of the evening with confident footsteps. Jungkook craned his neck to look around, angry words vandalised the walls in violent reds and neons that made the place seem narrower and more dizzying than normal. The tracks faded smoothly into the shadows, making him think they would just go on forever.

They stopped by a container with a ladder clinging to its side. Namjoon knocked once, then opened the door. Inside was an ominous darkness that stretched into the gloom. A forest beyond the shore, just beyond the light’s reach. Jungkook had not realised what an important threshold he was about to cross.

Kim Namjoon called it therapeutic physical contact.

“Rules are simple,” Namjoon said as they walked further down the hidden underground passageways. He held up a finger. “The Underground doesn’t exist.”

When his mother asked the following morning, Jungkook had told her he fell off the stairs. No one gave him those bruises. He did this to himself.

“You don’t talk about what doesn’t exist,” Namjoon said, holding up another finger.

The concrete floor was bounded off by a ring of fifty or so guys waiting for their turn. Jungkook peered at their faces half obscured by blood clots, purple bruises, and shadows. No one is who they seemed Underground. Students aren’t kids here, accountants are just as good as stock boys or convenience store clerks. Jungkook could never tell who anyone was in real life. It only mattered that you could hold ground for about ten minutes and kick the air out of someone twice your size.

Namjoon continued counting off the rules with his fingers. “Only two guys to a fight, no shirts, no shoes. It starts when it starts, it ends when it ends.”

In the middle of the ring was a burly guy with his head trapped between the ground and a headlock from a guy half his size. Headlock’s fists slammed into Skinny’s nose, again and again until blood sprayed from his mouth when he yelled stop.

“Stop means stop,” Namjoon explained. “It’s not about the fight. You have nothing to prove here.” He laid a hand on Jungkook’s shoulder. “And if it’s your first night, you have to fight.”

Namjoon said self-destruction was the answer.

When you didn’t know what or who to be angry at, you hate yourself. The first night was Jungkook and Namjoon pounding at each other.

“Self-help is a lie,” Namjoon told him. Once you’ve accepted your inevitable mortality, the only thing left to do was die with scars. You fight like it’s your last.

Under the single light flickering in the blackness of the basement, the voices in Jungkook’s head were quiet.

One month later, they called him Golden Boy. Two months after that, on the night of his birthday, he almost died.

Even days that culminate in near death experiences, emergency room visits, and vandalism and destruction of private property usually start out pretty normally. The morning of his birthday, for example, started out sluggishly. He had woken up to his alarm, but stayed too long in bed, and took too long before he managed to drag his feet to the bathroom. In Jungkook’s defense, it was his eighteenth birthday, though it didn’t feel much like a birthday. Instead of waking up to breakfast and seaweed soup, Jungkook crossed the claustrophobic interior of their apartment to find his mother asleep on the worn out couch. Had he anything else better to do, he would have skipped school, he was late for first period anyway, but as it were, he barely had an existing social calendar.

Jungkook had marched into class only to fall back asleep on his desk. The teachers didn’t bother with him, his classmates barely spoke to him, and there was hardly reason for him to participate, much less pay attention. He spent the rest of the day in his classroom, sleeping, waking up to check the time, preying on some poor first year’s lunch, and then back to looking at the clock above their chalkboard. As much as it seemed that the day would never end, the dismissal bell finally rang.

Hours later, Jungkook was swallowing more blood than ever before, teeth shining with blood as it trickled down his mouth and chin. Strong arms closed in on his neck and cut off circulation to his head. The pressure was in his eyes and he wheezed for breath as he stared at the pool of his own blood on the concrete.

No one used words Underground. Jungkook had tapped a guy and that’s it. They were in the ring, and he was receiving the blunt end of the bad week the other guy had. Two minutes into the fight and Jungkook was trapped in a poorly executed half nelson. What he really wanted to ask was: Where was Kim Namjoon?

Jungkook wasn’t alive unless he was Underground. Unless it was him and another guy in the middle of the crowd and the single light swaying overhead. On his first night, Namjoon had beat him to a pulp, seven weeks later Jungkook was ready to show Namjoon what he’d learned. But he hasn’t seen Namjoon in three weeks, and he let it all out when he rammed the back of his head into the bridge of his opponent’s nose.

He didn’t care about getting hurt anymore. As a child, he worried about bullies, getting hit, and the pain. After Namjoon hit him, all Jungkook could think of was how much more could he take. How much more was he capable of? But it was only Namjoon that Jungkook felt it was safe enough to ask. Namjoon, who disappeared on him three fights after asking him to hit him as hard as he could.

In one fight, Namjoon had taught him about self-destruction, explaining that the only way to die was with scars. Scars were proof of life, he said. But Jungkook didn’t have proof of Namjoon yet.

“Ever hit anyone before?” Namjoon had asked when Jungkook didn’t hit him as soon as he said so. It was a Thursday night when they met.

He said he’d never hit anyone in his life.

“Let me have it, then. Surprise me.”

Jungkook closed his eyes.

“Look at me when you hit me.”

So he did.

Jungkook swung his fist in a straight punch aiming at Namjoon’s face. It connected, shattering the nerves in his hand but at the same time breaking down a wall somewhere inside.  Namjoon staggered back, rubbing his jaw. Then Namjoon hit him in return, straight in the chest and he slammed right back onto the wall. They had reached some form of inexplicable understanding, as if they had just entrusted each other their lives. The rest of it didn’t happen in words, but in Namjoon’s fist to his stomach, a kick to his side, blood on their hands. Instead of hitting Namjoon, Jungkook was hitting his father, he was hitting his teachers, his bullies, his peers who couldn’t care less.

Lying on their backs in the empty yard, Jungkook asked why Namjoon asked him to hit him. Namjoon said sometimes you just needed to break to make something out of yourself. Sometimes you just needed a good fight. Even if nothing was solved in a fight.

“So why do you fight?” Jungkook asked.

Namjoon told him that if he wanted the answer, he should meet him again at this same spot three days later. Jungkook liked to think it was a test, because Namjoon had taken him Underground after that.

Jungkook went Underground every weekend, and every time he waited for Namjoon to show up. Fights weren’t the same, the pain was the same and the scars were the same, but it wasn’t enough that he bled. He needed the questions Namjoon asked. But then Namjoon stopped showing up, and Jungkook didn’t deal well with abandonment.

He wasn’t Jungkook if he wasn’t in a fight. It didn’t matter if he won or if he lost. It wasn’t about looking good or being a man. Namjoon said a fight was simply a fight. Like life, it was only worth the meaning you put into it. Namjoon had warned him then, not to put meaning into anything. Attachment was dangerous. Never get attached to anything you can’t take with you when you get caught up in a storm. But it was too late for that.

On their last fight, Namjoon had asked him, while Jungkook’s face was pinched between the ground and Namjoon’s arms, why he thought guys came down here to fight. Fifty men came at any given time, all fighting meaningless fights, breaking bones and bleeding on the ground. Jungkook said he didn’t know.

“It’s because they’re afraid of something in real life,” Namjoon had said. “They think that fighting here will make them less afraid.”

“What are you afraid of?” Jungkook had asked through a mouthful of blood and spit.

“Me?” Namjoon had chuckled darkly as he tightened his full nelson. “I’m afraid of the same thing everyone is afraid of: my own inevitable mortality and the meaninglessness of my existence.”

The voices came rushing back, and Jungkook had yelled stop.

The same way the guy whose face he had on the ground was yelling at him to stop. Jungkook released his chokehold and pushed himself off the concrete. He stared back at the imprint of blood his opponent left behind. Namjoon was nowhere to be found.

Another man stepped into the ring. “He’s not here,” he said as he dropped his shirt to the floor. Jungkook focused only on the dragon snaking up his new opponent’s left arm. “Show me a good fight and I’ll tell you where he is.”

The Dragon’s directions led him to a building a few blocks away from the train yard. With a bottle of spray paint in each hand, he colored the grey walls with black and red, outlining a body and slashing through it. Down the side of the building, he found windows leading to a lower ground floor. The Dragon said Namjoon would be somewhere up the third floor, and with his vision clouded red, Jungkook smashed the windows open and slipped through.

He didn't find Namjoon on the third floor, but he did find a way to send his message across. If Namjoon hadn’t thought about the Underground in the past three weeks, then he was definitely going to remember now. Or maybe not.

In the end, it didn’t matter. After all, when faced with one’s inevitable mortality, life becomes meaningless.

* * *

And yet for all of his rampant existentialism, he still found himself with two hundred hours of community service at the Unplugged studios. It was either this or a payment for damages that amounted to a number that went over his head. He swore then, that the moment he laid eyes on Kim Namjoon, he was going to beat the living daylights out of him.