[ The Potential of Perhaps ]

Part Three

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Week Seventeen

“Jungkook!” she shouted, and the younger boy looked back over his shoulder quickly, and down.

He stood on the roof of a crumbling building, holding onto its feeble roof and rotting structure.  Bian looked at him worriedly, praying that it wouldn’t collapse with him on top.

“Please get down!  It’s not safe!”  He scoffed, but obliged, and slid from the rickety surface to land beside her.  They had all been being kinder to her, save Namjoon, but he was a brick wall, she was beginning to realize, and hardly cared about anything save his comrades and their funds.  She was eerily aware of how little he cared for even his own well-being.

“Satisfied Noona?”  She nodded.  “You have no concept of entertainment, do you?  While you and them train and punch random walls, I choose to scale these walls and soar over roofs made of twigs.  I once made it around the entire town in a day, without ever touching the ground,” he said happily, eyes already scanning for a new hazard to mess with.

“Yah?  And how many times has Hoseok had to patch you up?  Once, twice?”  He blushed slightly.  “Thirteen times in a year, I heard, so I suggest you pick something else to teach me before I inform Seokjin that your lessons are frauds.”  Her threat caught his attention, but he merely sighed.

“How about…”  He clicked his tongue repeatedly, swiveling on the spot to peer down alleyways and into old shops.  “…We play…”  Bian crossed her arms at the mention of “play,” already having taken note of the fact that to her Kookie, everything was a game to be played.  “…Run!”

“Run?” she asked, raising her eyebrows in disbelief.  He shrugged and smiled wide.

“I like to run.”

“But doesn’t that lack a bit of creativity?”  His dumb grin only grew.

“I don’t need to be creative, just fast,” he concluded before taking off down a nearby street.

“But don’t you need to tell me the rules first?” she screamed after him, and he turned mid-sprint to shout back.

“You run.”  Wow.  “I chase.”  Just… wow.  “If I catch you…”  He chuckled to himself.  “…You’re dead.”  And so he bolted away to presumably hide and wait until it was time for her to be “chased,” leaving her to ponder whether or not to actually play.

“Seokjin’s probably sleeping…” she mused, looked back in the direction of headquarters.  “Taehyung’s a pain to talk to…  Jimin just barely stands me…  Yoongi is slightly frightening…  Hoseok’s out…  Namjoon…”  She sighed.  “And Jungkook loves me…”

“Indeed I do,” a voice replied from somewhere, the walls and stands reflecting the sound until she was uncertain of where the child was hiding.  “And the ground will too, soon, if you don’t start running.”  The statement gave her the awful feeling of being watched, and an uneasy feeling in her gut.  She glanced around, and only caught a blur of black hair disappearing behind a building to her right, a slight giggle giving her the chills.

And so she ran, down the twisting roads and away from his chuckles, hopefully never letting on to how shook up she truly was.  But despite the boy’s successful attempt at scaring her, the wind was crisp and the field blowing the scent of dried leaves into the town, reminding her of autumns past and making her think of those to come.  Would they be held in this empty town?  In a proper village somewhere far from this sinful place?

Would she be alone?

Certainly not with the boys, she told herself, reminding herself of the mission.

Autumns at the palace were always so beautiful, and as she admired the colorful trees while standing beyond the gates, she sometimes wished that she was an iron bar, able to witness everything the seasons had to offer and standing straight and sturdy forever.

“Noona~  You must run farther and faster if you wish to evade my clutches, and my sight~”  She wavered where she stood, listening for any sounds of footsteps or scrabbling fingers; she was fairly certain that he was climbing everything to get a better view and preferred to jump the roofs than walk on the ground like her.

But he was silent as always, using his specialty to his advantage, and she huffed a frustrated huff.  “Come get me then!  I’m done running!”  A disappointed breath could be heard behind some building to her left.

“But that’s the game!”

“I don’t care!  Come out and engage me in a fair fight,” she continued, listening further for his voice.

“You talk too much Noona; you’ll never have a fair fight if you talk so much with the enemy.”  He was definitely behind those buildings, and with clear patches on either side, he couldn’t escape without her seeing.

“Taehyung talks often, what about him?”

“But he never fights; he only likes books and poison and bombs…”  His voice was across the road now, and she turned, confusion etched into her forehead.  “…Sometimes, he’ll make a gas bag; those are the best.  They explode and smoke for an hour, and everyone falls asleep.”  He was to her right, and she whirled around as his voice grew closer.  “Once, I saw him even use it on himself.”

This time, the pause was unintentional, and the silence felt to her as though he was having a difficult time talking.

“That was the night you arrived, the night we returned from our mission…”  Jungkook sounded remorseful and sad, like she often imagined she would if she talked about her forbidden past.  “Bad things happened that night.”  He paused as if thinking, wondering if he should continue.  He did.  “There was this kid, saw the entire thing; Namjoon told us to take him out, and then he left, he left me, and Jimin, and Taehyung.  The three youngest; he left the three youngest to kill a ten-year-old little boy, paralyzed from the waist down.  Taehyung didn’t want to do it, he begged Jimin to leave the kid behind, but…”  Bian felt a twitch of sympathy, already feeling their little game dissolve into something sadder.  “Jimin killed him, real quick too.”  There was but a moment of silence before he spoke again, his voice chipper and very much Jungkook.  “But enough with the distractions; have you figured out where I am?”

She hesitated, but spoke.  “No…”  He giggled.

“That’s because I’m right here,” he whispered, and she turned quickly, only to stumble back as he poked her in the chest.  He was grinning as wide as Hoseok, and looked so young, she wanted to squeeze him tight like a little kid.  “I win.”

“Yah, I guess you do,” Bian muttered, looking up at his 177 cm build; staring into the face of such innocence, she found it hard to believe that he was an assassin.  But then he spoke, leaving her to pity his upbringing.

“If the target sees you, you’re already dead.”  So I was dead from the start…  You little bastard…  “Now, why don’t we play something fun!”

“That wasn’t fun for you?  Chasing me down and winning wasn’t fun for you?” she asked incredulously, and he shrugged.  “Fine, then I’ll just go talk with Taehyung oppa.”

“No!” he called, grabbing her elbow before she could saunter away, coming face-to-face with her small grin of victory.  “And besides, you can’t call Hyung that.”  She raised an eyebrow.

“Why not?”  Jungkook let go of her and stuffed hands into the crude pockets of his shorts.

“Seokjin is your Oppa, not Taehyu-”

“Seokjin is my mentor, Jeon Jungkook, and nothing more.”  Her words were sharp, but required; she had to be especially careful of such a topic, lest she slip into uncertainty.

Seokjin was a touchy subject area, and all because of the events that took place a week before, when they stayed the night together curled under his blankets.  Her morning was met with an empty bed and a plate of eggs on the dresser, still warm, and the sheets underneath sticky with sweat.  It was spoken of never, and even Jimin could sense the seriousness of the situation, and avoided mentioning it.

A teacher takes care of his student, she reminded herself, but it did nothing to quench the tide of emotions too foreign to be deciphered in her heart head.  Jungkook nodded to himself, before looking up.

“Want to go eat?” he offered, and she gladly accepted, knowing that Jungkook liked to bring his meal onto the roof of their house and munch in silence, looking down below at the doings of his hyungs.

She was in the mood for some peace and quiet.

Week Twenty-Four

It was getting harder for her to ignore the obviousness of their situation.

It was getting harder to keep her plan in mind.

It was getting harder to keep him out of her mind.

It was impossible to dismiss the growing feelings of something in her heart head, and absurd to claim that she couldn’t see the same thing in his eyes.

It was near futile to resist the attraction, but, goddammit, she tried and told herself she could, that she could, she really could…

And she did…

Week Twenty-Eight

Namjoon finally held a decent conversation with her, sitting next to her on a bench outside while she ate, assumedly in the hopes that she wouldn’t talk back.  Boy was he wrong.

“You did good last mission,” he commented, never looking directly at her, but at somewhere far in the distance; maybe he was watching the snow fall on the pine trees that overlooked their entire operation.  “You and Yoongi worked out the steps well, and in the field, you do your best work alongside Taehyung.”  She nodded, knowing full well that the deceptive little talker was quite a stimulant when he needed to be, and helped her to forget the faces of those she had ended, at least for a little while.  “One would think you’d work best with Seokjin, though.”

She paused from her meal to contemplate the reaction he wanted, always reading too far into Namjoon’s words like he was a book of riddles in which the answers were the simplest of responses.  “Sometimes we don’t meet eye-to-eye; a pupil will never completely agree with his instructor.”  The albino looked amused.

“Pupil…”  He tested the word on his tongue quietly, eyes reminding her of bad things and deep fears.  “I do agree with you on one thing, however, and that is Seokjin’s interesting take on things.”  The hardened criminal finally looked to her before standing up.  “He sees the world differently… that’s for sure.”

Week Thirty-Three

By now, winter had taken a solid hold of their world, icy fingers gripping the landscape in a frozen chokehold.  At least the cold took her mind off the fiery inferno she had witnessed so many weeks ago.

She and Seokjin were gearing up to go hunting, and this time she planned on returning home before him, with a fairly large catch in tow.  He was looking for deer, but she was tired of venison (she had been for the past month), and was looking forward to hunting something that actually appealed to her.

“Don’t forget,” he began, strapped the quiver to his shoulder.  “Keep moving; it’s freezing out there and if you stop, you might not start again.”  The heavy coats that wrapped around them both were swelteringly hot in the furnace-heated house, but outside was another story.

“I will,” Bian responded, knowing full well how cold it could get in the woods; she and Jungkook had been messing around in the trees and he hid from her among the taller branches, choosing to stay hidden for an hour.  That was a mistake.

She found him practically frozen, too cold to move properly, and it took her another hour to get him down from the tree without falling; they had spent the rest of the day cooped up in the house, his head in her lap as they lay by the fire.

“Remember,” she said, grinning up at Seokjin.  “Don’t come back until you’ve caught something.”  He chuckled and tossed her a series of leather straps to stuff in her backpack; they were for hauling game home, and she was very much grateful for their assistance.

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